‘I hope you’ll be able to give me a hand with the games,’ said the Commander.
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Manifold. ‘But it’s years since I last touched a cricket bat.’
‘You must have played a few games at your last school, surely. A place up in Cheshire, wasn’t it?’
‘There always seemed to be a lot of other masters who were much better than I was.’
‘And what about Kenya? They’re pretty hot at the game out there, I’m told. Play it almost all the year round.’
Manifold said, a little abruptly, ‘I’ll do what I can. If you loose me on the third game I can’t do much harm.’
‘It’ll be a help if you could. TEF lends a hand occasionally, but otherwise it all seems to devolve on Ware and me. Latrobe’s quite hopeless. And old Dip prefers pottering round with his camera. Anyway, he’s too old.’
‘How do you all get on together?’ Seeing the Commander’s look of surprise, Manifold added, ‘I mean, in a small school like this, all being bachelors and all living in. It would be pretty easy to get on each other’s nerves, I should think.’
‘I wouldn’t say that it was an entirely happy ship,’ said the Commander. ‘But we rub along all right. After all, we’ve known each other for some time now. Ware’s the newest, and he’s been here over two years. Latrobe’s been here three. I came five years ago. Old Dip’s been here – I don’t know – must be at least ten years.’
‘What about Millison?’
‘Oh, Millison.’ The Commander barked out a quarter-deck laugh. ‘He was a freak. He came at the beginning of the Easter term. He’d been to one of these teacher training colleges. A complete waste of time, if you ask me.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I’ve no idea. Why?’
‘Idle curiosity. He isn’t in a nursing home, I suppose.’
‘I don’t think it’s as bad as that. Resting quietly I should imagine, and trying to forget One-B. Come to think of it, he was really the nigger in the wood pile.’
‘Oh. In what way?’
‘Stupid little things. But then, it’s always stupid little things that upset people. Give you an example. He had a second-hand car he was very proud of. Spent hours polishing it and tarting it up. You may have noticed that there’s only room for four cars in the staff garage. Being the new boy, naturally he was expected to keep his outside. But he couldn’t see it. He was always slipping his car in. Then one of ours had to stand out in the open. It became such a sore point – you may not believe this – but when we heard you were coming, the first thing old Dip said was, “Where’s he going to put his car?” I can’t tell you how relieved we were when you turned up on a motor bike.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to buy a car sooner or later. I shall be pretty broke till I collect my pay at the end of term. What have you all got?’
‘Mine’s the Cortina. Quite a reliable bus. The Rover is Dip’s. It’s almost as old as he is. Latrobe’s got that Austin 1100 and the open Lotus two seater, as you might guess, belongs to young Ware.’
Manifold said, ‘When I buy a car it’ll have to be old, reliable and easy on petrol.’
In the distance Sergeant Baker performed a vigorous solo with the bell.
‘Back to the treadmill,’ said the Commander. ‘Three-B Geography. Thank God it’s the last period of the morning. No more classes till Monday.’
‘I get off this one,’ said Manifold. ‘I think I’ll slip down to the village.’
‘Oh, Mr Manifold.’
‘Yes, Mrs Fairfax.’
‘No need for formality. My name’s Lucy. And yours, I gather, is Ken.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘I hope I’m not interrupting you.’
Intercepting, more than interrupting, thought Manifold. He had been ambushed on his way to the front door.
‘Nothing that matters,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this period off. I was going down to the village to get some cigarettes.’
‘You can be there and back in fifteen minutes,’ said Mrs Fairfax. ‘Come in and talk. We haven’t had an opportunity to get to know each other.’
Manifold followed her into the drawing-room. Mrs Fairfax poured out two man-sized glasses of sherry, and sat down on the sofa. Taking the slight wave of her hand as an invitation, Manifold sat down beside her and waited for her to open the bowling.
When it came, it was a fast yorker.
She said, ‘I’ll tell you something, Ken. I don’t believe you’re a schoolmaster at all.’
‘You’ve been listening to One-B,’ said Manifold. ‘They think I’m Hitler and Stalin rolled into one.’
‘I don’t mean you don’t do the job. I expect you do it very well. I mean that you’re not my idea of an assistant master.’
‘And what is your idea of an assistant master?’
Mrs Fairfax considered the matter seriously. She said, ‘Of course, you’ve got to understand that I’m talking about the sort of school master I know. I don’t mean people who teach in state schools, or even masters at public schools. I mean schools like this one.’
‘The preparatory boarding school,’ said Manifold, ‘a remarkable and very English institution the like of which is not now found in any other country in the world. I doubt if they can survive here much longer, but they were top value while they lasted. Sorry. I interrupted you. You were going to give me a thumb-nail sketch of the typical prep-school master.’
‘He’s educated, but not intellectual.’
‘No intellectual could tolerate One-B,’ agreed Manifold.
‘He’s someone who prefers the company of his own sex, and who’s opted out of the world into a snug retreat, full of men and boys of all ages.’
‘Like a monk.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Fairfax. ‘Like a monk. Except that one imagines that monks did it for more spiritual reasons. Some men become prep-school masters out of laziness. Look at Nigel. The one thing he was good at was games. He was in the Cambridge rugby football side – fifteen?’
‘Fifteen for rugger, eleven for soccer. He didn’t actually get a blue.’
‘But he was a blue or a half blue or something at some other game. And he spent so much time playing games that he never got round to taking a degree at all. So what did he do? He drifted into this.’
‘And will soon be drifting into matrimony, by the look of it.’
If Manifold had hoped to provoke some reaction by this, he was disappointed. Mrs Fairfax said, in the same equable tones she had used throughout. ‘He’s not drifting. He’s been hooked. It’s pathetic. If that girl offered him a lump of sugar, he’d balance it on his nose and beg for it. If the thing does come off, which it may do, if Elizabeth doesn’t come across someone who amuses her more, he’ll find himself fetching and carrying for the rest of his married life. Have another drink.’
She got to her feet, supporting herself with one hand on Manifold’s arm as she did so.
‘I don’t think I dare,’ said Manifold. ‘I have to sit next to Cracknell minor at lunch, and I don’t want him starting his Sunday letter to his mother, “The new master came into lunch absolutely blotto. I could smell his breath”.’
Mrs Fairfax poured herself out a drink, and stood for a moment with it in one hand, looking down at Manifold. When she had been sitting down there had been a suggestion of floppiness, the beginning of middle age in a woman who had stopped caring very much about her appearance. Standing, she looked suprisingly vital and by no means unattractive.
‘I’ll tell you something else, Ken, about the typical prep-school master,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have sat on the sofa beside me. He’d have picked the chair which was farthest away and sat on the edge of it, nervously crossing and uncrossing his legs.’
Manifold got up, too.
‘I wasn’t unduly apprehensive,’ he said. ‘It didn’t seem to me that half past twelve on a Saturday morning was an appropriate time for a seduction scene. Now I really must be going, or I shall be
awarded a double demerit for being late for lunch.’
As he closed the door Mrs Fairfax stood looking after him. An observer would have found it difficult to say whether the expression on her face was one of puzzlement or anger.
‘We’re supposed to go to church,’ said Nigel. ‘Dip gets off by pretending to be an atheist, but the rest of us troop down with the boys. It isn’t bad fun. Straight C of E and Hymns Ancient and Modern.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘Since you’re not master on duty, you’ll be free after lunch. Why not come down around tea-time and look us up. Elizabeth has told her stepfather about you, and he’d like to meet you. He can’t communicate much, but he hears what you say, and can nod his head a bit. Don’t come if it would embarrass you.’
‘It wouldn’t embarrass me at all,’ said Manifold. ‘I’ve got a great-aunt who’s deaf and dumb. She talks nineteen to the dozen in deaf and dumb language. I’ve learned to follow it, more or less.’
‘I don’t think Mr Merriam has got round to that yet. It might be a bit difficult for him. He can only use one hand.’
Mr Merriam’s house stood on a corner site by the lane which led up to the church. It was not large, but was a bit more pretentious than the village cottages, and was isolated from them by a stretch of undeveloped building land. Behind the house, in the lane, its nearest neighbour was something which looked like a timber yard.
Nigel opened the door. He was in shirt sleeves, and seemed very much at home.
‘Elizabeth’s getting tea,’ he said. ‘Come through to the garden and meet the old man.’
He led the way through to a room which looked out, through open French windows, on to a smooth stretch of lawn.
‘One of my jobs,’ said Nigel. ‘Mowing and clipping and weeding. It’s the devil to keep it all down at this time of year.’
‘It’s a nice place.’
‘Until some blighter builds on those plots next door and we have a horde of children squealing on the other side of the hedge. It’s all right at the moment. Nice and quiet. Mr Bishop is our only neighbour.’
‘Mr Bishop?’
‘Teaches carpentry at the school. He was in the Lion last night. I introduced you to him.’
Manifold recalled, out of a medley of characters dimly seen in the public bar on the previous evening, a brown-faced man with a trim beard.
Mr Merriam sat tucked into a wheelchair under a sycamore at the end of the lawn. At six paces he looked completely normal. It was only when you got closer that you could see the signs which the onset of paralysis had left behind. The left leg dangling, the left hand resting inertly on the arm of the chair; limbs which were attached to, but no longer controlled by, their owner. The muscles of the face had sagged, too, dragging the cheeks and chin down with them. But there was still a lot of life in the eyes.
Mr Merriam raised his right arm, which he could control, and shook hands with Manifold who said, with the emphasis of someone making a momentous announcement, ‘What beautiful weather we are having. Nice to be able to sit out of doors.’
Mr Merriam signified agreement by nodding his head, and at this moment, Elizabeth arrived with the tea things. She cut up two slices of bread and butter into squares, poured out a cup of tea, and put plate and cup on the table close to the right hand side of Mr Merriam’s chair. The attack on his nerves and muscles had crippled the left side of his body, but he was still half a man. Using his right hand he fed himself and drank tea without too much difficulty. Manifold wondered what would happen when the paralysis spread to the other side of the body, but chased the thought away. Like most healthy and insensitive people, the sight of disability embarrassed him but did not touch him.
After a short time even the embarrassment subsided. Elizabeth and Nigel took it in their stride. Their technique, he noticed, was to frame anything they said to Mr Merriam in the form of a question which could be answered by a nod of the head for “yes” or a shake for “no”. On two occasions when Mr Merriam felt called upon to make an original contribution he wrote it down on a pad which Elizabeth had put beside him on the table.
The second of these Manifold read, as he passed the pad over. ‘Has it been mended yet?’
‘It’s the wireless,’ said Nigel. ‘It fell off the table last Sunday and broke some of its parts. Rayboulds have promised to let us have it back as soon as possible.’
‘What he really misses are the news programmes,’ said Elizabeth.
When dusk fell they all moved back into the house and seemed so genuinely anxious for Manifold to stay to supper that he agreed.
‘Cold beef, beetroot and Lucy’s conversation. That’s all you’d have got at the school,’ said Nigel.
‘I had some of that yesterday,’ said Manifold. ‘A private session.’
‘That must have been exciting.’
‘Stimulating was the word that occurred to me.’ He gave them an edited version.
Elizabeth said, ‘Do you know, there are times when I feel sorry for her. It can’t be much of a life being married to TEF. She ought to be living in Chelsea and running a salon.’
‘With half a dozen lecherous artists competing for her favour,’ said Nigel.
After supper they took their coffee into the front room and Nigel treated them to a concert, pop and classical alternately, on his record player. Elizabeth prepared a cigar for Mr Merriam. This was evidently a nightly ritual. She moved a table close to his right hand, made a pile of three volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on it, and placed a large table-type lighter on top.
Mr Merriam did the rest for himself. Using his right hand he picked up the cigar, impaled the end on a spike at the back of the lighter, and bending slightly forward brought the end of it into contact with the flame. It took him a few minutes to get the cigar burning to his satisfaction, but it was clear that he enjoyed doing it for himself. Elizabeth went on talking and seemed not to be watching him, but Manifold noticed that her hand was never more than a few inches from the table during the whole performance.
Manifold was absorbed in contemplation of the puzzles continually presented by human nature. If you took Elizabeth’s opinion of Mrs Fairfax, Mrs Fairfax’s opinion of Nigel and Nigel’s opinion of Lucy, added them together and divided them by the way they actually behaved, it would have puzzled the cleverest mathematician to work out an answer that even began to make sense.
Ten o’clock was Mr Merriam’s bed time. Nigel pushed the wheelchair up a sloping arrangement of planks on the stairs and then came down again.
‘Elizabeth likes to do all the rest herself,’ he said. ‘Help me finish up the beer.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier if he slept on the ground floor?’
‘Easier in some ways. More difficult in others. There’s no lavatory or bathroom down here. What we’d really like to do is build on a self-contained unit, out at the back. Or if the money won’t run to that, we might convert that shed at the end of the garden. It’s quite a solid affair.’
Manifold said, ‘It must be a whole-time job for Elizabeth. Running this house, looking after her stepfather, working at the school.’
‘It’s three whole time jobs. I don’t know how she does it. Of course I do what I can to help. That half-term break was a godsend. Do you know, on that one Saturday, I replaced a piece of guttering, unblocked two down pipes, put a new pane of glass in the kitchen window, mended a fuse, put a new flex in the electric iron, clipped the hedges, and mowed the lawn until it was too dark to see. Then I came inside and fixed one of the wheels on that wheelchair.’
‘Then you went to bed and slept the clock round.’
‘Don’t you believe it. On Sunday – hullo! Who can be ringing us up at this time of night?’
It was Mr Fairfax.
He said, ‘Have you got Manifold with you? Good. I want you both back at the school as quickly as possible.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Perhaps you didn’t hear the ten o’clock news.’
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll explain when you get here.’
‘At eight o’clock this evening three men, believed to be members of a Jordanian terrorist organization, broke into the Israeli Embassy in Gloucester Gate. They climbed over a wall from an adjoining property and forced a door at the rear of the premises. By-passing the guard in the front part of the building they made their way up to the offices on the second floor which were occupied by a cipher clerk and a girl telephonist. The only other person in the building is thought to be the housekeeper who looks after the Ambassador’s flat which is on the top floor. They are holding these three people as hostages. The police have cordoned off the building. The Ambassador, His Excellency Ben Sacher, was dining with friends. Despite his protests the police have not allowed him to re-enter the building.’
Mr Fairfax said, ‘I have already had a telephone call from the Chief Constable. He takes the view that as these people have failed in what was obviously an attempt to kidnap or kill the Ambassador they may very likely turn their attention to his son and bargain with him for the trapped terrorists. He is sending a police car down here. Since we don’t wish to alarm the boys unnecessarily, they will stay outside and watch the main gate. We shall have to do the rest for ourselves. Until this crisis is over, I would like you to remain, as far as possible, in the school.’
‘Oughtn’t we to be armed?’ said Latrobe. He sounded more excited than nervous.
It was Sergeant Baker who answered this question. He said, in tones of unexpected authority, ‘It’s no use fighting these people with their own weapons. What the Headmaster meant, I’m sure, is that we must all keep our eyes open. If we spot anything unusual at all, we must pass a message to him, and he can telephone for help.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Mr Fairfax. ‘And try to do all this policing inconspicuously. The last thing we want is a panic. Incidentally, I’m arranging to have the morning papers diverted. If anyone wants to know why there are no papers, tell them there’s been a strike. That’s easy enough to believe nowadays. Now, I’d like to arrange shifts. Commander, could you and Manifold take the first night shift: eleven to two. Mr Diplock and I will do the middle watch; two till five–’
Night of the Twelfth Page 5