For Love or Money

by Tim Jeal

  ‘Played Lifton, played,’ yelled a distant Crofts. A thin cheer rose from the chilled spectators. David got up slowly, mud all over the front of his body; he walked back with the ball for a few yards before tossing it to Hotson, who was going to try and convert.

  David trotted down the field again and turned in time to see Hotson’s massive kick rise high between the posts. There was another slightly weaker round of applause.

  Over on the far touchline, David caught sight of Andrew Matthews wearing a dark overcoat and a silk scarf round his neck. Even at that distance he could tell that he was smiling. David felt enormously proud—of course it couldn’t really make any difference, only somehow it undeniably did.

  The game ended without further scoring. Greville had won.

  Several days after, lunch was drawing to an end in Greville.

  ‘Any more for you, Lifton?’

  Crofts invitingly held out a spoonful of trifle.

  ‘No, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have some anyway, won’t you, Chadwick?’

  Crofts was smiling.

  ‘I think I’m fairly full actually, sir.’

  ‘No offers?’ Spoon still poised, Crofts glanced round the table, ‘I’ll have a bit myself anyway.’

  Every week two boys from the middle of the house enjoyed the privilege of sitting on the housemaster’s table: the idea being to give the house a sense of unity. So far neither David nor Chadwick had opened their mouths. Crofts made several hopeless efforts to save the flagging conversation before finally admitting defeat. Sometimes he began to doubt his abilities as a schoolmaster. It was a rare day indeed when the conversation rose above the standard of Intermediate English for Beginners. Slowly he rose to his feet amidst the usual scraping of chairs.

  ‘For what we have received, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

  Crofts paused respectfully before going on to other matters.

  ‘Father Peter will be taking House Prayers this evening and will be having coffee with me afterwards. Anybody who would like to meet him would be most welcome … confirmation candidates especially. Last time very few people came, so I hope that there will not be a similar occurrence tonight.’ He paused again, then, taking a deep breath, went on: ‘I’m afraid it has once more come to my notice that the lavatories are being improperly used.’ The inevitable titters died away. David caught Andrew Matthews’s eye momentarily. Had he winked? David looked down at the table. ‘Orange peel and waste paper should be put in the receptacles provided and not down the lavatories. It only causes extra work for the cleaners. I think that’s all.’

  As they walked out of the room together, Chadwick turned to David, ‘I do wish Crofts wouldn’t clean his teeth with his tongue while he’s speaking.’

  *

  Half an hour later David was sitting in the Biology laboratory writing down Mr. Fisher’s words.

  ‘Then I took a length of glass piping and covered one end with a semi-permeable membrane. I then …’

  ‘How do you spell that, sir?’

  David relaxed gratefully and looked around him. All along one side of the room were specimens in glass jars, floating in transparent preserving fluid. Sad and isolated … brains, eyes, intestines; rows and rows of them stared at him. In some other glass cases rested bone after bone, all of them neatly labelled, ulnas, tibias, clavicles. David didn’t like biology. Worst of all was a single frog in a tank. The creature was breathing heavily as it sat in a corner, waiting to be dissected by the sixth form after a speedy execution.

  Fisher droned on,

  ‘After one week the water had risen six inches up the piping, after two, nine inches. The water to equalise the sugar content …’

  David stopped listening. Since he had returned to Edgecombe he had still been unable to come to any decision about George. School routine had not, as he had feared, made the burden more difficult to bear. It was only when left by himself that he had time to think about it. Night was the worst time, although half-days in the study with Hotson and Chadwick were none too easy. Looking out of the window he could see the main drive twisting down towards the village. He thought of the following day when Matthews was to take him out to tea. He had said nothing about it to anybody else as yet. Boys were not often taken out by masters. There was no doubt about it, it was a considerable privilege. David smiled. He looked at the frog and no longer felt sorry for it. Come to think of it, the thing looked rather like Mr. Fisher: all wrinkles and pouches.

  At last the talking stopped. Everyone sat back and waited.

  ‘For the rest of the lesson we’ll do some diagrams of corms and bulbs.’

  David looked at his watch; at least twenty-five minutes till he was free.

  *

  When he got back to the study Hotson and Chadwick were in the middle of an argument. David had a fair idea of what it would be about. The previous day Hotson’s mother had come down to the school for the afternoon and had sat in the study long enough to force David and Chadwick into the library; a room that was as cold as it was uncomfortable.

  ‘She could have taken you out to tea or to the cinema. But did she? She has to sit in here all afternoon.’

  ‘Maybe she liked it,’ said Hotson phlegmatically.

  ‘Here of all places. You might have told her it was a half-day.’

  David stood listening in the doorway.

  ‘Shut up, can’t you,’ snapped Chadwick. ‘It isn’t exactly summer, in case you haven’t noticed.’

  Obediently David complied and went over to the table to put his books down. He dropped them on top of a piece of butter, which he noticed just too late.

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to leave your bits of food all over the table,’ he retaliated.

  ‘Who had toast this morning?’ Hotson said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Chadwick backed him up.

  ‘All right, start on me,’ said David wearily. Why did they always have to bicker? The real trouble was that they seemed to enjoy it.

  While wiping the table, David was unlucky enough to knock over a bottle of orange juice. Hotson’s mother was forgotten in the general reprimand that followed.

  ‘Thank God, I shan’t be here tomorrow,’ said David defiantly.

  ‘I’m almost in tears, tell me all. Is it to be the races or the Cup Final?’ sneered Chadwick. ‘Or perhaps another afternoon in the library?’

  ‘Actually I’m going out to tea with Mr. Matthews.’

  ‘Going up in the world I see,’ Chadwick paused, then said more thoughtfully, ‘Really, come to think of it that’s quite smart.’

  ‘No more work,’ Hotson added sourly. ‘I went out with a master once. Some time ago of course.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll say; when you were young and pretty I suppose. Tell us another.’

  ‘With the art master actually,’ said Hotson with dignity.

  ‘And you weren’t asked again?’ said Chadwick sweetly.

  Hotson grimaced.

  ‘I ate six out of eight sandwiches.’

  ‘A lesson for all,’ said Chadwick to David.

  ‘Has anybody ever told you, you’ve got real charm,’ said Hotson, smiling he hoped ironically.

  ‘Frequently.’

  ‘You know, I don’t think I can stand either of you any longer,’ Hotson announced as he got up from his chair.

  ‘You mean you’ve got to go for extra French,’ returned Chadwick.

  ‘I damn well don’t.’

  ‘You’ve changed the day?’

  ‘Yes, if you must know.’

  ‘Aren’t you going then?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind, since you want me to go.’

  David watched them both from over by the window. On and on and on, day after day; biology, even with frogs, was immeasurably preferable. A few minutes and they would be on about Hotson’s mother again. He walked quietly towards the door.

  ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’

  ‘Lovely day for one,’ said Hotson, glancing
at the darkening window. ‘And for Christ’s sake shut the door,’ added Chadwick.

  *

  Andrew Matthews drove a small green Morgan; old but fast. He stole a sideways glance at David sitting in the seat next to him. He liked to drive out of the school grounds at speed in second. The noise was enormous.

  They were approaching the lodge gates already. Ahead of them the road curved down into the valley. The village was hidden by mist streamers which glowed golden in the afternoon sunlight. Patches of snow still shone white in the fields. David rested his hands on the dashboard to stop himself sliding sideways as they cornered into the village street. Andrew turned to him and smiled:

  ‘Thank God for being out of the place.’

  David laughed.

  ‘I’m glad, too. Where are we going?’ he added.

  ‘A few miles yet, wait and see.’

  Andrew was casually dressed in a pair of old flannel trousers and a heavy brown sweater. Just the right off-duty touch, he thought with satisfaction. He had felt a little apprehensive about what to say to David, but now after several pints with lunch it all seemed so easy. They’d talk about school of course and that ass Crofts. ‘Thank God for being out of the place,’ how right it had sounded and how successfully it had put him at his ease. Andrew glanced upwards momentarily at the clear blueness of the sky. The sheep on a hill to their left looked as clean and well-defined as plastic toys.

  ‘Does it seem long since you came to Edgecombe?’ asked Andrew. ‘Ages and ages, I expect, even my month seems like a lifetime.’

  ‘Years, and years, sometimes I can hardly remember having been anywhere else.’

  ‘I hated school myself,’ Andrew eagerly confided. ‘I had the most awful housemaster.’

  David grinned. Did he dare ask? He paused a moment before doing so.

  ‘Worse than Crofts?’

  ‘I don’t know that I ought to be discussing my colleagues with a pupil,’ Andrew said with mock pomposity.

  David was not sure whether he was being serious. Better to play safe.

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said betraying his disappointment.

  ‘Come on, I wasn’t being serious. No, he was far worse than Crofts.’ Andrew wondered how far he dared go. Stories did tend to get back. But David seemed upset. Anyway he’d started so had better go on. ‘Crofts isn’t that bad is he? Just a bit of an old fool with no sense of humour.’

  ‘“The lavatories are being improperly used,”’ David mimicked laughing.

  ‘“The proper receptacles should be used,”’ went on Andrew.

  ‘Have you noticed that he cleans his teeth with his tongue after lunch?’

  This time Andrew laughed out loud.

  ‘Perhaps his wife doesn’t give him enough to eat in the evening.’

  ‘Chadwick says that he hasn’t bought a suit for the last five years. But I suppose one oughtn’t to make fun of him.’

  ‘Quite right. I’m a schoolmaster too.’

  ‘But not like him,’ David added hastily.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Andrew smiling. Ahead of him he saw a sign ‘Double Bend’, he accelerated as they got nearer. David gripped the dashboard as he was thrown first across the gear-lever and then against the door. In spite of himself he let out a little gasp of fear.

  ‘Makes one grateful to be alive, doesn’t it?’ said Andrew calmly.

  ‘But somebody might have been coming the other way,’ said David, trying to get his own back for having so unmanfully squawked.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  David tried not to laugh at Andrew’s show of sadness and contrition, but failed.

  ‘Anyway you won’t do it again.’

  ‘Scout’s honour.’ chirped Andrew in his most unbroken voice.

  ‘Good,’ David returned sternly.

  ‘How do you get on with your room-mates then? Do you put them in their place too?’

  David frowned.

  ‘I don’t often get the chance, they just go on bickering the whole time.’

  ‘Can’t you change your room?’ said Andrew sympathetically, responding to the more serious mood.

  ‘No, they’d say that Mummy pulled strings or something. Last term Prindle’s mother asked if he could have a bigger bed and he never heard the end of it when the thing arrived.’

  ‘I had hell like that too,’ said Andrew, making up the story as he went along, ‘I lived in a study with three other people. One had a tape-recorder, one a wireless, the other a cello and I had a gramophone. It was absolute murder.’

  ‘The worst thing of all is the food that gets left around. I can’t put anything down in the place without getting grease or jam all over it.’

  ‘I always found the smell terrible too,’ said Andrew embroidering again. He had always been a day-boy and a very-well-looked-after one at that.

  ‘Yes, the smell gets me down too; Hotson always comes in after rugger and sits round before having a shower.’

  Andrew remembered David’s performance of a week ago with pleasure. He had never been good at games himself. Rather a ‘swot’ really; but David was the complete man, sensitive with it. Anxiously he looked at him. He should never have brought up his room-mates. It was going to be hard to get the conversation back on to a more frivolous level again. Fortunately they were coming to Coombe Bassett and the tea-rooms would provide other topics of conversation. They could talk about the other people and try and guess what they did from their clothes.

  ‘What’s this village called?’ said David, breaking a few moments of silence.

  ‘Coombe Bassett; worthy of a “Beautiful Britain” calendar photograph. Note the Gothic church and fourteenth-century cottages and over there, lichened with age, is an inhabitant …’

  David tried to smile as he fought with his memory. It had been here hadn’t it, about two years ago, that he, George and Mummy had come? And it had been for tea then, too.

  ‘Is the name of the tea-rooms The Green Woodpecker?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘Yes. Why, have you been here before? I hope the place is all right. I’ve only driven past myself.’

  Andrew looked at him apprehensively. Perhaps the ‘White Hart’ at Stockhampton would have been better.

  ‘I came here with my mother once. I can’t remember what the tea was like.’

  But the tablecloths had been blue-and-white check and the waitress had had a limp. George had said, ‘why can’t the damn woman hurry’ and then he’d noticed her limp. His mother had wondered why there should be a cuckoo clock in a tea-rooms called The Green Woodpecker. ‘There ought to be a woodpecker clock, oughtn’t there dear.’ David winced at the memory of it. She could be so stupid.

  Andrew held the door open for David. A couple of steps led down into a large room filled with a number of tables. David had been right about the blue-and-white tablecloths. The cuckoo clock was still there also.

  Andrew saw that he would have to give up his idea of talking about the other customers. The place was empty.

  ‘How about the one in the corner,’ he said cheerfully, indicating a table on the other side of the room. Their feet sounded noisily on the uneven oak floorboards. The room was dark and badly lit. They sat down and Andrew leant out to draw the curtains of the window next to them.

  ‘I could have done that,’ came an irritated voice from a hatch in the middle of the opposite wall.

  ‘Very friendly, I must say,’ said Andrew. ‘Anybody might think I’d spat on the table.’

  He said this loudly enough to be heard. David looked over anxiously at the hatch. In his embarrassment he started fiddling with the cutlery in front of him. They waited for several minutes in silence.

  ‘Pretty quick service,’ Andrew said as loudly as before.

  ‘I think she’s a cripple,’ David replied softly, hoping that this would make him lower his voice. It had the reverse effect.

  ‘I bet the floor plays hell with her joints.’

  David went on fiddling with a knife. Andrew looked at
him despairingly. Crofts wasn’t the only one without a sense of humour. He ought to have looked inside the place before bringing David. Enough to depress anybody he thought sourly.

  At last the waitress was limping towards them. She slammed the tray down in front of them. A few biscuits and a couple of meanly buttered bits of toast was the feast that Andrew saw before him. He controlled his anger and asked whether it was possible to have a cream tea. He was told that he was lucky to get toast out of season. David seemed thoroughly indifferent. Andrew decided not to swear at her as she retreated. Instead he said to David:

  ‘I expect I’d be bad-tempered if I had to carry trays with a limp like that.’

  ‘Me too,’ said David, less distantly. Why, why, he was asking, did he have to have been there before? Just George, Mummy and himself only two tables away. It had been summer and they had had cream tea. George had looked out of the same window and said, pointing at the cottages opposite, ‘All very pretty but just one hydrogen bomb …’ Mummy had told him not to be so silly on such a lovely day and had given him another cream-covered scone. In spite of hydrogen bombs he remembered being happy, but now everything had changed. School made one forget, but the problem was still there, just as it had been there in the train. He took a large bite out of his piece of toast. He looked up to see Andrew staring at him.

  ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ he asked softly.

  ‘No, no, I’m all right, really. I’m an awful day-dreamer that’s all.’

  Then after tea they’d gone to see the house where that famous writer used to live and George had managed to knock over an ink-well that hadn’t been moved since the great man died. But Mummy had been terribly apologetic to the guide, who’d said that it didn’t matter. She was so good like that. David felt suddenly like crying. He pressed his nails into the palms of his hands to try and stop himself, but it was no good. He looked down at the floor as though searching for his napkin.

  ‘It’s here,’ said Andrew pointing at the still unfolded triangle of white paper on the table by David’s plate. As David looked up to take it his eyes caught Andrew’s.