The Balliols (57 page)

Hugh, after his talk with the chief, had little doubt of the atmosphere that awaited him. He went to meet his class in a belligerent spirit, resolved to get his blow in first. As he walked up the three short stairs to his daised seat, his mortar board on his head, the unaccustomed gown tucked under his arm, he compared with his present mood the spirit in which he had walked up to his platoon for the first time. He had been nervous then. But he had known that he was addressing himself to friends. “If I play square by you, if I prove to you that I'm a man you can trust and follow, and you are prepared to let me prove it—you want me to prove it—then you will stand by me.” Then he had been addressing potential friends. But now he was addressing potential enemies. “Unless you prove to us that you can master us, we will make your life a misery.”

He looked down at the twenty-seven boys who comprised the Shell. Not one of them was older than sixteen, several of them were only thirteen. Some of them were neat and dapper with carefully-brushed hair and broad, white Eton collars; others were awkward, their neckties like bootlaces, their dark-clothed shoulders powdered with dandruff, the front lock of their hair swept with one sweep of a damp brush across their foreheads. Some had bright, keen, alert expressions; others were dull, stupid, irresponsive. There was not one who in a drawing-room would not have been shy and stammering in the presence of a man of thirty. It was extraordinary that in a group these Lilliputians should be able to make the life of a grown man hell. They had done that for his predecessor. They would do that for him if he were to let them.

He was in the kind of mood when one welcomes conflict. He was feeling ill; his head ached; he had the sensation of wanting to be sick, feeling he was going to be at any moment; yet knowing very well that he was not. He had had a heavy night of it. He had been talking over old times with one of the house masters. His wound had begun to hurt him. Whisky was the one thing that could stop that. He was feeling like hell now, but he would have felt even more like hell last night if he had stuck to beer. As happens so often when one is feeling ill, his perceptions were preternaturally acute.

As he took his seat in his cushioned chair, he heard beneath him the faint scrunch of broken glass. A second later a foul and penetrating smell had begun to fill the air. A stink bomb. That old trick. There was an atmosphere of nervous expectancy in the room. They're all waiting to see what'll happen; what I'm going to do. Well, I'll fool them. Nothing's going to happen. I'll take no notice. Then one of them will feel it's up to him to start the party. He'll be the man I'll go for.

He proceeded with the lesson as though nothing was happening.

“While I'm hearing your repetition, you'll prepare the next chapter of Roman history. Meredith, we'll start with you.”

A small, spectacled urchin, with a long beaked nose that gave him a birdlike look, came up to the desk, and in a quick, breathless voice so that the sentences were run one in another, rattled through his repetition. Hugh scarcely listened. The smell of the stink bomb was growing insupportable. One or two boys had begun to sniff, to look enquiringly at one another. One of them's bound to say something in a minute. It may be a completely innocent person who does, but the betting is that it will be the ringleader. He'll be growing nervous, feeling that his plot's failed. I'll act, anyhow, as though he were. If one has to make a mistake, it's better to be on the side of injustice than over-leniency. One's got to concentrate one's attack. I'll go straight for the one who speaks. It'll frighten the rest if it does nothing else. Someone's bound to speak in a minute.

He had foreseen correctly. Before Meredith had finished his repetition, Nichols had risen to his feet.

“Please, sir, there's a very curious smell somewhere in the room.”

“Really, Nichols?”

“Yes, sir. It seems to be coming.… Well, I'd have said, sir, that it was coming from your chair.”

There was a titter from the benches. It was the prelude to the
kind of ragging that consists of cheeking a master with a serious face, a respectful manner and remarks to which no logical exception can be taken. It was a kind of attack at which Nichols was an expert. Hugh had employed it in his time and recognized the gambit.

“Really? Now, that's very interesting. Do any of you others notice it?” he asked the form. There was a chorus of assent. He raised his eyebrows. “So? Then my cold must be worse than I had thought it was. I confess I hadn't noticed. Still, we can't have the form suffering on that account. Nichols, will you go to the master's common room and ask the steward to give you my great coat, my cardigan waistcoat and my scarf?” In a minute Nichols was back. “Thank you. Will you help me on with my coat? Thank you again. Now, will you open every window in the room?”

It was a bitterly cold day. May at its worst and bleakest. The central heating was not on. The form began to shiver in its place. “They won't be grateful to Master Nichols for this,” Hugh thought, as he turned up the collar of his coat and tucked his hands deep into his coat pockets.

“Now, Nichols, let's hear what you've made of your repetition.”

Nichols came up to the desk in a manner that was in part nervous, in part apologetic, in part aggressive. Things were not going in quite the way that he had planned. He was uncertain of his next move. He was shiveringly cold. He had the form's antagonism. His position of leadership was threatened.

“I'm very sorry, sir, but I've made a mistake. I've learnt the wrong passage for repetition. I thought it was page thirteen, not thirty.”

His nervousness made the statement sound unexpectedly convincing. Hugh looked at him searchingly. It might be that the excuse was genuine. A first day of term mistake, before the form had settled down into its routine. Nichols' tone of voice was that of a boy who was worried not so much by the prospect of punishment as by the loss of marks. Had a private soldier produced an excuse in that manner Hugh would have accepted it. But he was determined not to earn a reputation for mildness.

“Have you, Nichols? That's a pity. I must learn to write more distinctly. It's bad luck on you. But as you have not prepared and therefore do not know the passage that I set the form, I must ask you to do me fifty lines.”

Nichols gasped. The passage on page thirteen, which he had
prepared, he had had no need to learn. It was a very familiar passage. It was the stock passage that had been shown up as lines to Hugh's predecessor. Everyone in the form knew it by heart. Nichols had looked forward to the titter with which his recitation of the opening phrase would be received.

“But, sir.…”

Hugh caught him up.

“Yes, perhaps you're right, Nichols. I had thought fifty lines would be enough, but perhaps a hundred would meet the case more satisfactorily.”

“Sir!”

“Or a hundred and fifty. Yes, I think we'd better say a hundred and fifty. And before lock-up to-morrow night. Splendid. Now then, Ferguson, your turn.”

In the cloisters afterwards, as the form was separating on its way to lunch, Jones-Evans, the patriarch of the form, brought down his hand heavily on Nichols' shoulder.

“Well, my lad, and what now of this plaice-faced-looking ass of yours? Is he going to be a softer job than old Musty?”

There was a titter at Nichols' expense; from quite small urchins, too, children who had only been in the school a year, and the form a term. It was galling to Nichols. He liked to be thought a big man by his juniors.

“That's nothing. It's only the first round. Haven't you ever seen a boxer let himself be hit in the first round, so as to make his opponent over-confident?”

“We have. But, at the same time, I think we can say, in terms of sport, of that hundred and fifty lines that in the first round Nichols took a straight left to the jaw and went down for a count of six.”

Nichols laughed.

“Boxers often go down to take a rest. And besides, I don't intend to do the lines.”

Nor did he. The hour between tea and prep., which is usually reserved for impositions, he spent playing stump cricket in the day-room.

“Do those lines? You don't catch an old-stager like me out that way. Just you wait. I've got a plan up my sleeve that will make that Balliol look the biggest ass that ever sat in a Fernhurst form room.”

Two mornings later the Shell assembled in that mood of happy and tense expectancy that is always caused by the prospect of a row
in which one's own safety is not involved. The form was not to be disappointed.

When Hugh arrived a couple of minutes later, he was carrying under his left arm a pile of books, and in his right hand a large sheet of foolscap paper. He placed the pile of books upon his desk and stood for a moment looking at the sheet of foolscap. Then he turned to the form.

“I don't want to be personal, Nichols, but is your Christian name Adolphus?”

There was a moment's silence. Then Nichols rose from his place.

“Yes, sir.”

“I thought so. I thought I recognized the clear Roman hand. A quotation. You cannot place it? I feared as much. But that is immaterial. I hope,” he continued, turning to address the form, “that you will pardon me for taking up a few moments of your valuable time on an entirely personal matter, but I have received by this morning's post a very curious communication. It is headed, ‘The School House, Fernhurst,' it is addressed to ‘My dear Parents,' and signed ‘Your affectionate Adolphus.' From the extreme illegibility of the handwriting, the original, I might almost say colloquial, nature of the spelling, and from the information that Nichols has already given us, we may safely assume that this letter was written by Nichols to his parents, and that it has, inadvertently, been placed in the wrong envelope.”

“Yes, sir, I think, sir——” but Hugh cut him short.

“No, no. One moment, please. All in good time you shall tell us later exactly how you think the mistake occurred. In the meantime,” and Hugh again turned to address the form, “in the meantime, there are just one or two little points about the letter that have rather puzzled me. You see, I hardly like to take notice of a letter that was not intended for my eyes, but—well, I should rather like to ask your advice on it. Let me see now …” he cast his eye along the form, “who is the senior boy here—Jones-Evans? In that case I'll make you spokesman for the form. If you'll just come up here, we'll go over this letter and decide what we are to do.”

The form was smiling now, ready to burst out laughing any moment. Hugh had suspected it did not much mind who was ragged as long as someone was. It had expected Balliol to be the Aunt Sally, but Nichols would do just as well.

Hugh spread out the sheet of foolscap.

“The letter opens thus: ‘My dear Parents, the term has begun extremely well.'” He paused. “Really, Nichols, for you I should have hardly thought so.”

There was a roar of delighted laughter. The form, realizing that it was in for an amusing morning, settled down to enjoy itself. Nichols shifted uneasily from one foot to another and blinked uncomfortably. Things were not going at all as he had expected.

“There follow,” Hugh continued, “a few remarks which I will now read you on the probable composition of the School fifteen. There is, however, one little point in connection with this remark. Tell me, Jones-Evans, how would you spell separate? S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E. Exactly. But Nichols spells it E-R-A-T-E. And it is here that I should especially value the form's advice. Don't you consider, Jones-Evans, that when Nichols' father receives this letter containing such an elementary mistake in spelling, he will receive the impression that we of the Shell pay insufficient attention to English grammar, and are a highly illiterate community?”

Jones-Evans accepted the spirit of the joke.

“I consider, sir, it will be most unfortunate.”

“It amounts practically to a libel on the form's intelligence?”

“Practically, sir.”

“Then, as I think the form and I are in complete agreement, we must protect ourselves against the repetition of the libel. Perhaps, therefore, Nichols, to ensure us against such a disaster, you will write out a hundred times: ‘This is how separate is spelt.'”

“But, sir.…”

“Two hundred times, then, Nichols.”

The would-be rebel relapsed into miserable silence.

“We now come,” Hugh continued, “to some rather more interesting material. ‘This term,' our correspondent writes, ‘we have a new form master, a man called Balliol. He is a stupid-looking man, youngish, over-grown. I don't know whether the form will put up with his conceit. But being so unattractive in appearance, I should doubt it.'”

Hugh paused and there was an embarrassed stir in the desks in front of him. No one had quite expected this. It was going to be rather awkward and unpleasant, but not so amusingly exciting as they had expected. Nichols stared stolidly in front of him, rehearsing the defence he had planned the previous day. His confidence had been impaired certainly by that silly mistake in spelling. Balliol had scored there, clearly. But he would get his own back now. “I
am sorry, sir,” he would say, “but I am at perfect liberty to say to my parents exactly what I choose.” Balliol could be as sarcastic as he liked, he had no weapon to pierce that armour.

There was a pause. Then again Hugh spoke, in the same tone of agreeable raillery.

“Of course, Nichols, I am, as your master, extremely interested to learn your opinion of me, but I must confess that your last sentence puzzles me. I cannot understand why, because your personal appearance is unattractive, the form should find it difficult to put up with my conceit.”

There was a titter at that. So he was going to make a joke of it, after all. The form was relieved; it again settled itself down to enjoy itself. He was a sportsman, this man, undoubtedly.