Hindsight (4 page)

But did anyone
read Steen?
I had to go into Winchester the morning I got Dobbs's letter and parked my car behind the public library, so it was easy to check. Most of his books were in stock, and had been borrowed at least a couple of times in the previous year. Even
The Fanatics,
that great white whale of a novel, had a recent date-stamp in it. Mine had more, but then Steen had died in 1927, the year I was born. How many date-stamps did I expect
my
books to carry in 2027? Ridiculous question.

In the end I overcame the urge to pretend to Dobbs that I knew and liked Steen better than I in fact did, and simply said that I had not read enough to be able to form any opinion other than that he wrote good English.

As for the effect of Dobbs's letter on my own book, I decided I could afford to make the Captain a bit more openly contemptuous of his colleagues and poor Mr Wither more bewildered. I had already written the scene of their first appearance but the tone could if necessary be adjusted in the re-write. As for Daisy O'Connell (I'd never heard her called Désirée, as far as I could remember), I was within a day or two of describing her first real entrance, but still had little idea whether her role would be more than that of a walk-on grotesque. That's the sort of thing I tend to find out as I go along. If I actually remembered more about her than I needed for the book I could always amplify for Dobbs on a separate sheet, as they say on the accident report forms—but not until after the accident had occurred.

I sent my next instalment off, addressed to the hospital, before the end of the week.

5

O
n the first evening of the Christmas term Chapel was always extended to allow all the notices to be read. They still called it Chapel, though at Paddery it took place in Big Space, as what had once been the ball-room was now called. This was the only one of the State Apartments into which the boys were normally allowed, and then only for Chapel, indoor activities on wet days, and a few other things like that. With its frothy white-and-gold décor and its painted ceiling it never felt quite gloomy enough for a chapel. You could get a drill-mark for deliberate staring at the ceiling because most of the ladies had at least one breast bare. In fact, after the first week of mild shock the boys by silent vote had agreed to ignore it, so that Venus and her attendants hovered unnoticed and unconsidered above their activities, just subliminally there, like all those other aspects of the adult world for which they felt they were not yet ripe.

The Man read the notices after the first hymn. First, the names and new schools of leavers, with any awards they had won—more leavers than usual as eight boys had been sent by their parents to America. Next, this term's praes; Scammell was Head Prae, though he was only in 5; that wasn't unusual, because it was important that the Head Prae should be pretty good at games; Paul was not on the list of new praes. Next, heads of forms; Paul was Head of Schol. Next, the Freshers; again, more than usual—some, like Carreras, coming from other schools, probably because they hadn't managed to evacuate to as good a place as Paddery. Then a lot of new School Regs, because of the war—things like no second helps at boys' dinner, and the tuck-shop closing. The one on which The Man laid most emphasis was the black-out.

‘The Hun is just across the water now,' he said. ‘Soon the evenings will be getting dark. I have fought against the Hun, gentlemen, and I know how his mind works. He's efficient, but he's a bully, and like all bullies he's a coward at heart. You'll have read in the papers how he's been trying to bluster us into giving in by a show of frightfulness, sending his bombers day after day, but thanks to the gallant chaps in the RAF—including, I'm proud to say, not a few Old Aidanians—all he's got is a bloody nose. So now he's started night bombing, sneaking across in the dark. We've had the luck to move away from the worst of it, but that's not to say he won't be over here too, looking for targets like Plymouth and Exeter and Falmouth. He's not going to be choosy. He's only got to spot one spark of light below and he'll drop a bomb on it. Let me tell you this, gentlemen. Suppose one of you could fly up there and sit beside this Hun in his cockpit and tell him the light he saw was only a school, full of children—do you think he'd give a hoot? No, he'd be glad of the information, glad of the chance to wipe out eighty young men who in a few years' time would be doing their bit about keeping the Hun in his place. So it's up to you. Mr Stock will be official Air Raid Warden. Dorm praes will be in charge of black-out in their dorms, and form heads in their forms. The duty master will be going round outside after dark, and if he spots one chink of light every boy in that dorm or form will be punished. Understood? You are all soldiers in the war against the Hun, and this is an important part of your soldierly duties.'

Next The Man introduced the new staff in ascending order of seniority. There was an Assistant Matron, who looked friendly, and a pale young woman called Miss Penoyre who was going to teach Freshers. Two new masters, Mr Wither, who would take Senior Maths and Captain Smith who would take Greek as well as some Latin and History. To avoid confusion with himself The Man said that Captain Smith should always be referred to by his rank.

The school stared at the two men. (Matrons hardly counted and Freshers, except for the two or three older ones who would be put into higher forms almost at once, kept rather separate.) All masters were extraordinary at first sight, almost freaks. The relationship gave them such power over the boys that they seemed to stalk or creep on stage like monsters; and so some of them remained, a sense of dread and misery, or more rarely of glory and release, hanging round them always; others lost their apparent potency but never became human, reaching instead an accepted indifference, idols as it were of deities in whose power few citizens any longer believed.

Mr Wither was visibly a bit of a freak because one of his shoes had an enormously built-up sole, almost six inches high. He was quite young, pink-faced, grinning with obvious unease as he stood to be introduced. His wispy blond hair flopped sideways and his blue eyes blinked behind gold-rimmed specs.

Captain Smith was older, short and tubby. His head seemed not to belong to that body, looking too large with its high, bald brow, and too lean with its sculptured cheekbones. Furthermore he wore a quite extraordinary moustache which bristled out sideways, as if it had been a bundle of horsehair stuck on for amateur theatricals. He too rose from where he had been sitting with the rest of the staff in a line along the wall to the left of the dais.

‘It will be a pleasure to get to know you better, gentlemen,' he said, lowering his head in a curiously oriental fashion as he finished. He had a very deep voice, like a priest's or an actor's.

Paul felt a tremor run through the school, perhaps surprise that he had spoken at all or at his complete self-confidence. Later Paul wondered whether they had not sensed, with that mild telepathy common among groups of children, a tinge of mockery in his use of the word ‘gentlemen'. For The Man the purpose of St Aidan's, and therefore of his own existence, was to train gentlemen who would grow into the natural leaders England required—he said so in his Leavers' Sermon at the end of each term. There was never any irony in his calling the boys gentlemen. But they were to learn that the Captain seldom spoke of anything without layer under layer of what might or might not be ironical intent, unfathomable. Certainly Paul's first impression was correct. There was something much more freakish about Captain Smith than about Mr Wither, despite the latter's deformity.

Chapel resumed its normal course for a while. Scammell read a bit of St Luke. Dormer read three collects. The boys rose for the last hymn. But at this point The Man came back to the dais.

‘Since we last gathered here,' he said, ‘I have learnt that the following Old Aidanians have made the supreme sacrifice. Pilgrim, J. P. c.; Wynn-Williams, H. J.; Darlington, s. v. Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends. We will sing
O Valiant Hearts,
St Aidan Book, number nine.'

This was a favourite hymn with everyone. They belted it out. Matron played the piano.

Schol and Midway were stacking the chairs back against the wall of Big Space when Dent said, ‘Bit of a swizz, Rogue, not making you a prae.'

‘Suits me,' said Paul.

‘Head of Schol's always …'

‘Honestly! I don't want it!'

‘Rogers!'

That was Scammell calling from near the door, and then waiting, clearly expecting Paul to go to him rather than be shouted at from that distance. Paul lounged over, determined to demonstrate his free will in the matter.

‘In the Study. Now,' said Scammell.

‘What does?'

‘You'll find out.'

To get to The Man's study you went through the green baize door half-way down Long Passage and came out under the stairs at the back of the entrance hall. The stairs were marble, curling up on either side of a black bronze statue of Hercules strangling the Nemean lion. Beyond it you could see the slim white pillars that supported the cupola, and then the front door, almost as large as the door of a barn, always locked now. The hall was dim-lit by one yellowish bulb, any daylight excluded by permanent black-out screens. Your heels clacked on the marble floor as you walked round the left-hand flight of stairs to tap on a shiny red mahogany door. The Man called to you to come in.

He had made the Study as like his one at Brighton as he could—the same photos of XIs and XVs were ranked on the walls, the same portrait of his father, a red-faced man in a dog-collar who had been the school's founder, hung over the fireplace, there were the same deep floppy armchairs and sofa covered with rose-patterned chintz, the same smell of sweetish pipe-tobacco and bat-oil and some large tame animal—it must have been The Man himself, as he kept no pets.

Paul found him working. The only light in the room spread across the desk-top from the green-shaded lamp. His face was little more than a presence in the shadows beyond, but his hands, their backs covered with curling gingery hairs, moved in the plane of light like animals browsing on the paper repast.

‘Sit down, Rogue. You notice I haven't made you a prae?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘What do you think about that?'

‘I don't mind, sir. I wouldn't have been very good at it.'

‘Oh?'

‘I don't like taking sides, sir.'

‘You can overdo that attitude, Rogue. “Once to every man and nation Comes the moment …” You don't think so?'

‘Do you think it's true, sir?'

‘Explain.'

Paul hesitated. His habit of noticing the meaning of the words he was singing had sometimes given him the giggles in Chapel, once setting his whole pew off and earning them all Sunday drills. He had thought about this hymn fairly often, because it was a favourite of The Man's—but that made answering a bit tricky.

‘I mean, well, it doesn't … Just once, and that's all?'

‘You're a clever infant, Rogue, but you mustn't be too clever. A hymn is not a legal document. It means “at least once”. Everybody gets at least one go, one choice. Some of us have to go on choosing all our lives. You have a fair brain and the makings of becoming a sound chap, some use to your country when you grow up. You'll be given a lot of chances. You'll chuck them all away if you try to spend your life sitting on the fence like a neutral.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Paul felt crushed, though The Man had spoken gently. The idea of being a neutral, crystallised by his enjoyment of the role during the hay-fort War last term, had given him an oddly comforting picture of himself, a way of explaining the slight apartness caused by his too-rapid climb to Schol.

‘Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth,' said The Man with sudden emphasis.

It was obviously a quotation and—as usual when he quoted anything—it was a sort of half-question. The way to please him was to try to answer.

‘St Paul, sir?'

‘Not far off. Revelation. God says it to the church at Laodicea, because they were trying to be neutrals. He will say it about America if they don't join us fighting the Hun. You mustn't let Him say it to you, Rogue.'

‘I won't, sir.'

‘Good lad. Now, about my not making you a prae. It's not because you aren't up to it, Rogue. If that had been the case I wouldn't have told you. I'd have let you work it out for yourself. But it's because your stepfather has insisted on your sitting the Eton Schol next summer. You see, Rogue, there's a lot of competition for these plum scholarships, and that means there are schools which specialise in getting boys through them. I call them cramming schools, and I believe it's a thoroughly bad idea. Boys who've been crammed are like plants which have been forced in a greenhouse—not much use for anything afterwards. You'll notice that if you get to Eton. So I've refused to have you crammed, but I've agreed to see you get a bit of extra tuition.

‘Your best chance is clearly your maths, but Mr Floyd thinks you aren't quite up to getting through on that alone, so we're going to have to pull your Latin and Greek up too. I've sent for a set of old Eton Schol papers, and Mr Wither will be taking you through the maths ones. Mr Stock says your work last term was sometimes good but often very careless, and he doesn't think it's getting any better. I don't think this is because you've been idle, exactly. Your trouble is that when you aren't interested you close your mind up. Right?'

‘Well, sir, it's …'

‘You'll have an unhappy life if you always take that line, Rogue. But for the moment we'll see if a change of approach might help. Captain Smith tells me his methods are a bit different from Mr Stock's so I'll ask him to give you a hand with your Classics. I'll let you know about times in a day or two. The reason I wanted to talk to you at once is so that you can tell anyone who asks that the reason you aren't a prae is that I don't want you distracted from the Eton Schol. To make it absolutely clear that this is the case I'm going to give you praes' privs.'

‘Oh, thank you, sir!'

‘Not for your sake, Rogue, but for the school's. You could easily set yourself up as somebody who was outside the bounds of school discipline. I'm not going to allow that. If a prae gives you a drill-mark I shall back him up, right or wrong. Or if Scammell, for instance, tells you to do something I want to be sure you'll be doing it as willingly as if you were still in 3a or Shell. Any nonsense about this and I shall take your privs away. Got it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good lad. Off you go now. Ask Scammell about the privs.'

Paul had to stand for several minutes in the shadows between the statue and the baize door, trying to master all the symptoms of sobbing except actual tears. The Man had been friendly and helpful. It would be marvellous to have praes' privs, as well as an explanation for people like Dent about not being an actual prae. But … could Scammell … no, there hadn't been time. The Man had
known.
He seemed to be able to get inside your mind and look round, like Matron looking in your locker to see it was tidy. He had known about feeling sometimes so afraid of Stocky that your mind closed up. He had known about the idea of being a neutral, much more than you had let on. He had known what Dent was saying, and how you had behaved when Scammell had called you, and about the already-forming notion that if you were Head of Schol and not a prae there wasn't much Scammell or the others could do if you chose to do as you liked. There was something appalling about having your hidden inward self understood like this. It was like being found out for some kind of rule-breaking when nobody had told you what the rules actually were. Paul spent the rest of the evening alone among the ink-smelling desks in Schol, reading
Fire Over England,
which he had read twice before.