‘All the same, I think it’s a bad rule.’
‘Indeed, why?’
‘I don’t mean that masters should go round as they used to, I believe, in the old days, with a stick in one hand and a Latin grammar in the other.’
‘I’m glad you don’t think that,’ said Mr Fairfax, who was also getting angry.
‘But I think, if the boys knew that if they went too far they’d get it hot and strong, on the spot, they’d behave themselves a lot better. And save everyone a good deal of trouble.’
‘Perhaps you’ll forgive me for pointing out,’ said Mr Fairfax, ‘that saving masters trouble is not the primary object of education.’
‘It may not be the primary object,’ said Nigel, ‘but if they were allowed to get on with the teaching without having to spend half their time putting down riots, a lot more knowledge would be imparted in a much shorter time.’
‘I am not prepared to argue about it.’
‘You may not want to argue, but you ought to think about it. And whilst we’re on the point, I suppose you realize that if he’d been given a bit more authority, Millison would be happily teaching here, not sitting at home nursing a nervous breakdown. You ought to consider your responsibility to your staff as well as to the boys.’
‘I think that’s an entirely unjustifiable criticism.’
‘Then perhaps you’d explain why.’
‘I’ve no intention of explaining anything. I’ve laid down a rule, and if you don’t agree with it you have a very simple remedy.’
‘I thought it would boil down to that,’ said Nigel. ‘Do what you’re told or get the sack. It still seems to me to be a rotten argument.’
‘Excuse me if I’m interrupting a momentous discussion,’ said Mrs Fairfax, making one of her cat-like entrances.
‘What is it?’
‘Mr Tennyson has arrived. I have put him in the dining-room.’
‘Mr Tennyson?’
‘No relation to the poet, he assures me. He telephoned on Monday. He has two boys he would like to entrust to us. He is taking up a post in the Persian Gulf.’’
‘Oh, yes. I’ll come right along. I think we’ve said enough about – what we were discussing.’
‘I think so, too,’ said Nigel.
‘You know,’ said Mrs Fairfax to Nigel. ‘Miss Shaw has really no need of a knight in armour to fight her battles for her. She is perfectly capable of looking after herself. More than capable, believe me.’
Nigel stalked out without a word.
‘You appreciate,’ said Mr Fairfax, ‘that it was originally built as a gentleman’s private residence. We’ve kept it that way as far as possible.’
‘It’s a fine house,’ said Mr Tennyson. He was a thin, fit-Iooking man, so tall that he had to stoop to get through the doorways of the little rooms on the upper floor.
‘It means, among other things, that we have no conventional dormitories. This is one of the largest bedrooms, and it only takes five beds. It’s for the little boys.’
‘Things have certainly changed since my time,’ said Mr Tennyson. ‘If I’d brought back a teddy bear and taken it to bed with me, I don’t think I should ever have lived it down.’
‘Boys are more babyish in some ways,’ agreed Mr Fairfax. ‘More grown up in others.’
‘The older boys have rooms to themselves, I imagine.’
‘Not actually to themselves. Watch your head as you come up here. We’re in what must, I think, have been the servants’ quarters.’
‘That’s another thing that has changed, isn’t it? Having servants, I mean. Who sleeps along here?’
‘Three of the senior boys.’
‘It’s very snug.’
Mr Tennyson looked approvingly round the turret room, with its scrubbed wooden floor and its three white iron beds, each with a red and white striped blanket. There were no teddy bears here. Joscelyne had the makers’ plan of a Ferrari Dino pinned up over his bed. McMurtrie had a picture showing equally interesting construction details of a young lady wearing a minimum of clothes, who had been photographed, for reasons known only to herself and her publicity agent, lying on top of an ironing-board. Sacher had a pile of books on the shelf above his bed, and beside the books a photograph.
‘I know that face,’ said Mr Tennyson. ‘Surely it’s Ben Sacher.’
‘It is. I expect you saw in the papers about that business at the Embassy.’
‘I did indeed,’ said Mr Tennyson. ‘It was lucky it came out the way it did.’
‘It certainly was. Now, if we go down these back stairs they will bring us out in the north wing and I can show you some of the classrooms.’
‘I hope you’re not going to get the sack on my account,’ said Elizabeth.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Nigel. ‘I wouldn’t say that TEF and I parted the best of friends, but on the strict understanding that I never do it again, I think I’ve been forgiven this time.’
‘I wish I could have seen you do it,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Nasty little beast. I should have enjoyed watching it.’ She kissed him very warmly.
‘He was remarkably well behaved in geography class this morning. Who was that chap TEF brought round?’
‘A prospective parent, I believe. Why?’
‘I thought I recognized his face, that’s all. Maybe I saw it somewhere in the papers.’
‘I think you were absolutely right,’ said the Commander. ‘When I joined the navy, snotties were regularly beaten by the Senior Sub-Lieutenant, and it never did them any harm. Do you know, I believe it’s that same tin of terrible biscuits.’
‘Let’s take them out and bury them,’ said Nigel. ‘Then we might get some decent ones.’
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ said Latrobe.
‘If there are none left, Lucy will have to open a new tin.’
‘I’m not talking about biscuits. I’m talking about beating boys. How can you sit there, smugly saying that it never did them any harm? How do you know it didn’t?’
‘Because they all turned out to be damned good chaps in the end,’ said the Commander.
‘And how can you tell that?’
‘Because I happened to fight alongside them in the war. Of course, you’d be too young to remember much about that.’
‘You’re evading the issue. Tell me how assaulting a boy who’s too small or too frightened to resist can do either of you any good.’
‘Ah ha. I thought we should get on to the old trick-cyclist line soon. You’re going to tell me that corporal punishment is all bound up with sadism and sex and does the perpetrator more harm than the victim–’
‘Since you press me,’ said Latrobe, ‘that’s exactly what I was going to say.’
‘And so,’ said the Commander, who wasn’t really listening to him, ‘if a parent lays a hand on his children they run screaming to the NSPCC. If a school master beats a boy he sues him for assault. And the end result of all this flabbiness and evasion of responsibility is a generation without moral standards or physical guts.’
‘I have never in all my life,’ said Latrobe hotly, ‘listened to such fascist clap-trap. You’re elevating physical violence to a moral virtue.’
‘Well, I must say that I agree with GG,’ said Nigel. ‘Look at the way students are behaving. What do you think, Ken?’
‘I think it’s like fox-hunting,’ said Manifold. ‘All the practical arguments are in favour of it and all the moral arguments are against it.’
‘What do you think, Dip?’
‘It’s no use asking me what I think,’ said Mr Diplock, ‘unless you define what you’re talking about. So far you’ve raised four quite distinct questions and answered none of them. Do I think that corporal punishment raises moral issues? Certainly not. It is an arbitrary method of maintaining law and order and has no more moral basis than confining a soldier to barracks for not cleaning his buttons. Do I use it myself? No, I don’t. I have more sophisticated ways of maintaining control. Do I approve of the way student
s behave? Certainly not. I think they are cutting off their noses to spite their scholastic faces. Was there one other point? Oh, yes, these biscuits. There I entirely agree. They should be taken out privily, after dark, and buried. I would suggest, the asparagus bed. They would make excellent humus.’
After tea that day, finding himself off duty, Manifold decided to stroll down to the village. He did not go by the direct route, down the drive and on to the main road, but crossed the corner of the lawn and came out under the shadow of the cedar of Lebanon which the nabob had planted with his own hands two centuries before, and which had now spread until it over-shadowed path and lawn with its umbrella of boughs.
Here he paused for a moment. From a distance he might have been thought to be admiring the tree, but a close observer would have seen that he was looking beyond it, at the thick row of shrubs which masked the high iron fence and at a wilderness of bushes which had once been a formal sunken garden, now abandoned as being beyond the efforts of the one gardener and boy employed by the school.
The side gate was equipped with a stout chain and a heavy padlock, but the gate was unchained at the moment. He opened it and stepped out on to the side road. Ahead of him lay the tangled miles of Tinmans Common. A right turn would have brought him back again to the main road. Instead, he turned to the left. He was now skirting the gardens which lay behind the school and formed an important item in its prospectus, (“The School grows all of its own vegetables and much of its fresh fruit in its own kitchen gardens and orchards”).
At the end of the garden, Manifold turned to his left again, using the footpath which ran along the outside of the wall. This brought him out eventually into a lane which he recognized as the one which led to Mr Bishop’s woodyard. Beyond it he could just see the roof of Mr Merriam’s house, at the point where the lane ran out into the main road.
It seemed he was going to turn into the lane but, changing his mind at the last moment, he crossed it and kept along the path. This brought him out at the west end of the church. Here he turned left, passed between a row of new looking council houses and a Georgian rectory which was keeping itself to itself behind a thick yew hedge, and emerged eventually into the main street of Boxwood village, slumbering peacefully under the late afternoon sun.
His objective was Mr Raybould’s wireless and general electrical shop, a small dark cluttered establishment, presided over by Mrs Raybould.
‘Mr Merriam’s wireless set?’ she said. ‘I’m afraid we had to send it up to Reading. In a terrible mess it was. The old gentleman must have fairly sent it flying off the table. I expect he was trying to get at it, to turn it on. He’d be likely to be awkward, poor soul.’
‘How long do you think it will take to get it mended?’
‘You never can tell, nowadays, can you? If they have to send back to the makers for parts it might take quite a time. It does seem a pity, seeing as how it’s one of the few things left he can enjoy.’
‘Would it be possible to hire one for him?’
‘Hire one?’
‘One of your sets.’ Seeing the look of doubt in her eye, he added, ‘My name’s Manifold. I work up at the school.’
‘Ah, I thought I recognized you. I saw you walk past with young Mr Ware. The one who’s courting Mr Merriam’s stepdaughter.’
So much for Nigel’s idea of keeping his intentions secret, thought Manifold. One of the disadvantages of living in a village was that everyone knew everything about everybody.
‘I’d be happy to put down a deposit,’ he said. ‘If this one got broken I’d pay the difference.’
‘Well, if you’d be willing to do that,’ said Mrs Raybould, ‘it certainly would be a kindness for the poor gentleman.’
They chose a sturdy looking battery-operated set and Manifold carried it back down the main road to Mr Merriam’s house.
When he rang the doorbell nothing happened. This was odd. It seemed unlikely that Mr Merriam would be out. And he remembered that Elizabeth had told him that, when she was not there, a woman from the village kept an eye on things. He rang the bell again.
At this point Mr Bishop appeared at the side gate. He said, ‘It’s no use ringing. Mrs Loveday just slipped down to the shops. When she does that she always asks me to keep an eye open. Being next door, it’s no trouble.’
Manifold reflected that there was something to be said for living in a village after all.
‘The key’s under the mat. Why don’t you let yourself in? That’s a new set you’ve got there. Mr Merriam will enjoy that. He used to have that old set going all day. You’ll be just in time for the six o’clock news.’
Mr Merriam seemed pleased to see him. He wrote on his pad, “Beer in the corner cupboard”. They listened to the news in companionable silence. It seemed to be mostly about cricket. Manifold was finishing the beer when Elizabeth arrived, admired the wireless set, and opened a fresh bottle. Whilst they were washing up the glasses she said, ‘Really, you put us to shame. Of course we ought to have done it ourselves. But near the end of term we’re all pretty broke.’
‘I happened to have a bit of money,’ said Manifold. ‘That’s because I sold my car before I came here. By the way, I hope you haven’t been having any more trouble.’
‘Trouble?’
‘With Lucy.’
‘Oh, her.’ Elizabeth paused, glass in one hand, drying up cloth in the other, to consider Mrs Fairfax. She said, ‘Sometimes I loathe her. At other times I feel deeply sorry for her.’
‘I’m not sure which sentiment she’d find more provoking,’ said Manifold.
Elizabeth looked at him curiously. ‘You’re an odd fish,’ she said. ‘You don’t really belong in this outfit at all, do you?’
Manifold said, ‘You’re the second person who’s told me that.’
‘Who was the first?’
‘Lucy. She had me in for a tête-à-tête. No, she didn’t make a pass at me. She said I wasn’t in the least her idea of a prep-school master. Her main reason, I gathered, was because I sat on the sofa beside her instead of perching on the edge of the chair farthest from her.’
Elizabeth laughed so much that she nearly dropped the glass she was drying. It was a reasonably funny remark, but Manifold had the impression that she was awarding it more laughter than it deserved.
That same night, at a few minutes before midnight, Commander Gaze came padding home across Tinmans Common. He was following a path which he seemed to know well, switching direction without hesitation when it forked, and coming out almost immediately opposite the side gate of Trenchard House.
The fact that it was padlocked did not seem to disconcert him.
He moved down the road about fifty yards until he found the gap in the iron railing that he was looking for, squeezed through it, skirted the tangle of the old sunken garden, and made his way straight across the lawn, heading for the side door in the west wing.
Much of the space between the bulge of the north-west turret and the side door was taken up by a lean-to under which the staff parked their cars. As he approached it, his feet making no noise on the grass, he thought he saw a flash of light inside the lean-to.
It was the sort of light which might have been shown by someone using a pencil torch with great discretion.
As he watched, it came again. No doubt about it. There was someone there.
The Commander paused to take stock of the possibilities. Another member of the staff putting away his car. Impossible. He would long ago have heard the car coming in by the main gate and down the drive. A boy fooling about. Possible, but unlikely. A burglar seeking to steal one of the cars. Equally possible, but unlikely. If he did succeed in getting it started, how was he going to get it out of the grounds? The side gate was padlocked. The main gate under observation by the police.
Well, there was one way of finding out.
The Commander stepped on to the gravel of the path, crunched across it, and said in his most authoritative voice, ‘Who’s there and what are you up to?’
This produced no reaction of any sort.
The light, he thought, had come from between the two cars in the centre, his own Cortina and Latrobe’s Austin. He took a step forward, and as he did so a dark form rose on his left and crashed straight into him. Whoever it was, he was heavier than the Commander and a more skilful in-fighter. A fist hit him in the face and a knee drove hard into his stomach. Then his ankles were hooked from under him and he fell backwards hitting his head on the side of the Cortina.
Thinking about it afterwards he was unable to decide whether he had lain there for ten seconds or ten minutes. His next clear recollection was of finding himself on his hands and knees on the gravel path.
Blood from a cut on his forehead was trickling down his face. Still feeling dizzy he crawled across the path and sat down on the edge of the lawn, his head between his knees.
After a minute he felt steady enough to get his handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe away the blood. The bruise on the back of his head was beginning to throb painfully. It seemed to be the only serious damage.
He hauled himself to his feet and moved towards the side door. What to do next? He could, of course, wake up Mrs Fairfax and demand medical attention, but he shied away from the thought of the explanations which would follow. Best to see if he couldn’t patch himself up. The dizziness was passing and he felt better already.
When he reached his own room he saw that there was a light shining under Manifold’s bedroom door. He knocked and went in.
Manifold, in pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers was perched on the edge of his bed smoking a cigarette. He said, ‘Hullo, GG. Come in.’ And then, ‘Hullo, hullo! What have you been up to?’
The Commander started to tell him. When he got as far as the light in the shed, Manifold jumped up, said, ‘Wait here,’ and disappeared from the room.
He was back in five minutes. He said, ‘The cars all seem all right. No sign of whoever it was. No point in running after him. Be a mile away by now. Let’s see if we can do something for that cut. Better wash your face first.’
He got a roll of plaster and some scissors out of a drawer, examined the cut critically, said, ‘I’ll dab a bit of this disinfectant on. No stitches needed, I fancy.’ He soon had the Commander patched up. Then he got out a bottle of white tablets and said, ‘I should take a couple of these. You’ll sleep like a baby, and feel much better in the morning.’
Night of the Twelfth Page 9