I surprised myself not a little in the course of this speech. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was accustomed to writing in end-of-term reports. Tandem contrived to receive my remarks as if a profound wisdom inhered in them. Then he asked a further question.
‘Would you say he has many friends – or is he the sort that goes in for just one particular crony?’
‘I think Robin’s chief friend – naturally, perhaps – is his fellow house-prefect. A very steady boy called Macleod. I’m not sure how many other boys he’s particularly friendly with.’
‘I seem to remember, Mr Syson, that when one has attained to being one of the top boys of a school –in the sixth, and a prefect, and all the rest of it – one can feel a little short of anybody to admire any longer. Would that be at all Robin’s position, do you think?’ Tandem glanced at me sharply. ‘And with any particular boy?’
‘I can only say that I haven’t thought at all on the question – whether in regard to Robin’s position or to that of anybody else. For that matter, I doubt whether what you say about the issue in general has much truth to it.’ I had begun to feel something uncomfortable in the drift of this conversation. ‘No doubt anything like hero-worship is ruled out among senior boys. But they have come to know a good many of their contemporaries thoroughly well, and to distinguish in them qualities they are generous enough to admire as they should. Robin, for example, is admired because he has exceptionally safe hands with a rugger ball.’
Mr Tandem received this rather stuffy speech (as I suppose it was) with a bow that appeared to acknowledge the receipt of a further hand-out of wisdom. But he wasn’t yet finished with the train of thought he had embarked on.
‘Of course I also remember, Mr Syson, how in one’s last year or couple of years one has the satisfaction of helping younger boys – at least in one’s own house – to find their feet, and so on. It’s a protective instinct coming into play, and a good and elevating thing.’ This time, Robin’s uncle plainly felt that he was getting going with wisdom himself – if in his always decorous way. ‘And sometimes it can be a matter of just one younger boy, so that there is a certain element of romance to it. Or am I wrong?’
Wrong or right, the man had a bee in his bonnet – and it was a bee whose buzz I had heard before, particularly at the mildly penitential dinners of those Old Boy associations which it is incumbent upon a schoolmaster to attend from time to time. Just as there are some men who, according to the psychologists, have never succeeded in breaking free from the womb, so are there others who have similarly failed to leave school; who go on living a schoolboy’s fantasies in a hung-up way, and whose curiosities can embarrassingly reveal themselves as distinctly immature. This pop-music man was one of them.
To those who, like myself, have chosen to work in schools as a means of earning their bread, there is something tiresome in the spectacle of grown men frequenting such institutions in a purely nostalgic way. There is, moreover, what may be called a small sub-species of such persons whose interest in adolescent life is of a predatory character, and of these it is irresponsible not to beware. But I had no reason to believe that my present visitor belonged here – or at least no reason sufficiently pronounced to warrant my showing any wish to be rid of him. And Mr Tandem was now on his feet, as if our interview were concluded to his satisfaction. It turned out, however, that he had something further to say, and that the occasion for this might have been very like a telepathic perception of what had been going on in my own head.
‘I hope you don’t mind my having come down,’ he said. ‘It has always been rather a habit of mine: inquiring, you know, into a situation on the spot.’ Mr Tandem paused as if this merited an approbatory word. I failed to manage anything of the sort, not having much cared for ‘situation’. The word seems to suggest that some sort of cleaning-up process may be required. And I didn’t think that Heynoe called for anything of the kind.
‘What small success I’ve had,’ Tandem went on, ‘has depended a good deal on that. I speak of business, of course. The discos and the youth clubs – particularly the religious ones, which are much more important than has been realised. And, of course, all those big festivals in parks and places. And the love-in affairs: there’s a lot doing at them. So I keep on dropping in. Informing myself. And taking action as required.’
‘Most interesting,’ I said. ‘And now I’ll find a boy to hunt out Robin for you.’ This was my common formula with visiting relations.
‘Ah, yes—Robin, Mr Syson. I assure you he is constantly in my mind. His situation being as it is, you will understand that I feel myself to be entirely in loco parentis to him.’
‘No doubt, Mr Tandem.’ I reflected that this phrase had been very much in my own head. ‘Of course we must remember that Robin has legally come of age. Whether young men still hold twenty-firsters at the university, I don’t know. But men most of them are while still in their final year at school. The change since our own day is a mere legalism for the most part. But I’ve known it turn out something more than that.’
I was moving over to the door of my study as I offered these remarks, which were prompted by the feeling that I had been rather less than forthcoming in a conversable way. But Mr Tandem raised a restraining hand.
‘Please don’t disturb yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m in no need of a guide.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘And I know just where Robin is to be found. At your admirable swimming-pool, is it not? We must be glad that he is making the effort to overcome that odd disability of his. I approve of his resolution. And I’ve no doubt you do, too.’
I doubt whether I managed a reply. In this quite short interview I had moved from the impression that Jasper Tandem was at least less ‘wicked’ than his nephew had painted him to the persuasion that the more one saw of him the less pleasing was he likely to prove. There was no reason why he shouldn’t know about Robin’s current habits. The boy presumably wrote a weekly letter home, and such routine letters tend to be filled out with an enumeration of routine activities. Mrs Hayes must have learnt about the swimming sessions, and have passed the information on to her brother when hearing that he proposed to visit the school. Yet I didn’t like the man’s so brusquely asserting that he knew his way around, and I had the habit of regarding some sort of escort about the place to be the polite thing to summon up when visitors appeared. But I didn’t really much bother about this on the present occasion. Tandem had the air of a man who has fixed himself up with something thoroughly agreeable, and when he took himself off I turned at once to other matters.
He was back within an hour, apparently from some sense of punctilio. I had to be shaken hands with in a valedictory manner.
‘I’ve seen Robin,’ he said. ‘But he wasn’t swimming. He was playing rugger. I had a chat with him in the changing-room afterwards, and then we strolled round the place. Very pleasant. And how it comes back to one: that smell of steamy boys and steamy towels.’
‘Ah, yes.’ I saw no need much to respond to this. ‘If he’s back on the football-field, that will be something satisfactory to the House. They’ve been missing him there.’
‘The swimming was very much half-cock.’ Tandem reported this with some appearance of momentary displeasure. ‘I had a word or two with the fellow Vass. None too civil. I just mention the fact.’ The silence with which I naturally received this didn’t seem to disconcert my visitor. ‘But you’ll be glad to know that I think things are now likely to go quite well. There’s been a certain amount of strain, of course. I hope to have relieved it to some extent.’ Perhaps to give me confidence in this cheerful view of things, Mr Tandem produced a momentary and elusive smile. ‘In fact, I think you will find the boy relaxed. It’s the word, decidedly it’s the word, that occurs to me. But if problems do arise, my dear Mr Syson, please get in touch with me at once.’
I didn’t know quite how to respond to this request, since I had received no word from either of the Hayes parents that Jasper Tandem was to be treated as, so to speak, an
ambassador or deputy head of family. But I reminded myself again that there might be money for Robin in this tiresome uncle, and that on humouring the man might depend getting the boy to Oxford and subsequently into a career. So I made some non-committal reply – whereupon Tandem proved to have a further request to bring forward.
‘I’m putting up for the night at the Three Feathers,’ he said. ‘It’s not at all a bad pub of its kind. So would you be agreeable to my having young Robin out to dinner? I let him know I’d ask you.’
‘But of course.’ It was something in the man’s favour that he should request this leave on his nephew’s part rather than simply announce an intention. ‘Are you thinking of having him with a friend?’
‘Well, no—although it’s perhaps the usual thing. Without making heavy weather of it, my dear Syson, I feel I ought to get a little further with the boy in the way of discussing family affairs.’
‘Very naturally.’ I wasn’t disposed to quarrel with Tandem over ‘my dear Syson’, although I thought it not wholly appropriate to a first meeting.
‘I said I’d expect him at half-past seven. I hope that doesn’t conflict with any of his duties here in the House?’
‘Not in the least.’ I was a little impatient with this massive parade of correctness. ‘Quite as a matter of course, his friend Macleod will take over anything of the kind.’
‘Then that’s capital. At what time has he to be back?’
‘It’s entirely up to him. He has a key.’
‘Dear me! Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis – eh, Syson?’
Quite unreasonably, no doubt, I judged this canned-music person to be turning intolerable again – chucking at me thus what he probably thought of as my own dusty stuff. But I had persevered with him, and must continue to do so for a further couple of minutes. So I said what came into my head.
‘It’s the Head of House’s job,’ I explained, ‘to let in, and lock up behind, any senior boy who has permission to stay out up to eleven o’clock. If that’s exceeded, the janitor’s job passes to me.’
‘And there’s prompt discipline, eh?’
‘Discipline, certainly, but not of the kind you are perhaps supposing, Mr Tandem. In Heynoe we get along not too badly, on the whole, while managing to behave in a tolerably civilised way.’
Tandem received this snub (for it was that) with a slight old- world bow. He was disappointed in me. So at last we parted, with mutual civilities. Quite obscurely, I was left with the feeling that there was something about the man, and about his visit, that I hadn’t got to the bottom of. I reflected that he belonged to a world totally unknown to me.
Had Robin not thus been booked for the evening, I’d have sent for him and had a chat. But as things stood I sent for Iain Macleod instead. It wasn’t quite the proper course, since in a way it represented going behind Robin’s back. But I remembered how concerned Macleod had been that over his friend’s troubles he and I should enter at need into a confidential relationship. And it seemed to me, although I couldn’t quite have formulated a reason why, that some such need was heaving up over the horizon. It may have been Tandem’s use of that word ‘relaxed’ that alerted me. I didn’t believe in it for a moment. It had been in effect a lie which Robin’s uncle had indulged in for his own amusement. And there was something almost sinister about this. I had to walk warily.
‘So you’ve got back your wing three-quarter,’ I said. I had decided against taking a devious route into our discussion. ‘What’s his form like, after all that splashing around in Vass’s puddle?’
‘Tiptop.’ Macleod paused on this. He might have been himself a near-beginner in Vass’s puddle, uncertain of what would happen if he ventured head-first into it. ‘Robin’s playing like a demon.’ he said.
‘That sounds excellent.’
‘But it isn’t. I can’t tell you quite why, sir, but it isn’t. It’s almost as you shouldn’t play in practice – or ever.’
‘Good heavens – you can’t mean he’s giving people a rough time? Three-quarters can’t do that, even if they feel like it. They’ve got hands and legs, not feet.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Although deadly serious, Macleod contrived a fleeting polite acknowledgement that I had spoken in an informed and succinct manner. ‘It’s that horrible business about his father, I suppose. Or that chiefly.’ Macleod frowned. ‘Getting him down. Or up, really – into a kind of active desperation. He brings it on field along with his boots and gum-shield.’
‘Did you meet his uncle this afternoon?’
‘Yes – it was rather odd. This Mr Tandem came barging in – pretty well dodging through the showers, you might say – after practice. We were quite surprised.’
‘It was nostalgia, Iain. He liked the smell. He told me so.’ I had been unable to resist this absurdity. ‘You were led out dripping and introduced to him?’
‘Well, yes – in a way. I don’t think Robin at all expected him. Then he carried Robin off for what he called a pow-wow. I saw Robin only for a few minutes afterwards, and there was something funny about him. I don’t mean funny. Strange.’
‘That sounds rather worrying.’ I felt that either Macleod was getting out of his depth or that I was perhaps forcing him into a false position. There might, in fact, be something in his friend’s situation that he didn’t, after all, feel entitled to tell me about. So I asked what seemed at least a harmless question. ‘Why should you think Robin was surprised at his uncle’s turning up? Robin mentioned it to me some time ago as likely to happen.’
‘I see. Well, what I was thinking about was Robin’s once having told me that his uncle hated places like this because of his having been superannuated.’
‘Superannuated, Iain?’
‘It’s what they call – or used to call – being expelled.’
‘So it was, at some schools.’
‘Uncle Jasper had been sacked, and it had put him against public schools in a permanent way. I asked Robin if he knew why he’d been sacked. He said it had probably been because of the usual thing. In those days, you know, they pretty well had your balls off for it – or at least hanged you by the neck until you were dead. The reckless Jasper hadn’t been content with the quiet pleasures of D.I.Y.’
I need hardly say that I found this speech from the staid Iain Macleod astonishing. I always encouraged freedom of utterance around me. Short of a mere senseless use of four-letter words (which they’d scarcely employ anyway) I liked to hear from my boys whatever they’d hear from one another. But this – although not without a stroke of wit – had been a little extreme. And what I seemed to hear in it was the voice less of Iain Macleod than of Robin Hayes: of that new and harder Robin Hayes who had been brought into being by the state of affairs climaxing in Hutton Green.
‘Robin seems to have got some way with his swimming,’ I said, by way of changing the subject. ‘But then he seems to have felt that a man can learn to swim at any time, but that the days are numbered in which he can play rugger for his school or his house.’
‘Well, yes.’ Macleod hesitated for a moment. ‘But there was a bit of a hitch as well.’
‘So there was.’
‘Robin told you about it?’
‘Not Robin, as a matter of fact. Vass. He thought he ought to, since there had been some danger involved.’
‘Yes—but it wasn’t, you know, that Robin felt he’d made a fool of himself and was ashamed of showing himself in the pool again. He says he thinks hardly anybody noticed it. Except, of course, the brat who rescued him.’ Again Macleod hesitated, and I saw with surprise that he had become agitated. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I have complete confidence in you.’
Something like these words one may occasionally utter to an over-diffident boy. To hear them the other way on was distinctly odd.
‘If you have something you want to tell me,’ I said, ‘and if you feel you ought to tell me, go ahead. Only take a moment to think.’
‘I’ve taken a good many. And it’s very simple
, really. Or it begins by being very simple. Robin has become very fond of a boy in another house.’
‘I see.’ I wasn’t, of course, particularly surprised by this information, since such attachments belong with the commonplaces of adolescence in schools like Helmingham. But I was astounded and, I suppose, alarmed by the way in which the information was coming to me. Iain Macleod was a boy who subscribed on the whole – or so I believed – to the general ethos of schools like Helmingham. He was also very intelligent; quite as intelligent as Robin Hayes. That he should come running to me bearing a tale (for so the thing could reasonably be represented) was a phenomenon for which a good deal of explanation was required.
‘A younger boy?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course. A second-year brat in School House called Daviot. David Daviot. A regular bit of crumpet, it seems. And of course as inaccessible as if he was in a nunnery.’
‘Except when swimming.’ I don’t doubt I said this harshly, for ‘crumpet’ had upset me – its use in the present context appearing to me to vulgarise something not necessarily bad.
‘Yes. Robin could at least go and gape. He’d come back to Helmingham pretty well to do that. So far, it’s just pathetic. Like some rubbish out of Courtly Love.’ Macleod paused on this learned allusion. ‘But then, for School House brats, the swimming sessions suddenly packed up. The bug was raging among them, and every bratlet lodged blubbering in his chaste and lonely cot. Which is why Robin returned to the rugger field.’
For a moment I found nothing to say. Macleod seemed to share with his fellow-prefect a liability to be carried away by linguistic exuberance at the crisis of a narrative.
‘And blubbering is the key to the thing,’ Macleod went on. ‘The brats have lost their nerve – and stiff little upper lip and so forth – and have told all.’
An Open Prison Page 7