The Balliols (72 page)

It was months since he had enjoyed himself so much.

He woke with a thirst, a headache, and the sunlight on his face. He blinked, reached for his tumbler, drained it, felt for his Eno's.
It wasn't there. What! He sat upright, blinked at the bare wall. The uncurtained windows. Of course, yes, he remembered now. He was at Fernhurst. He'd forgotten to pack the Eno's. He lay back, turned his pillow. For an instant the coarse cotton was cool against his forehead. He looked at his watch. Twenty past five. He must have been bad last night. He judged the thickness of the night by the hour he woke next morning. Anything before six was bad; anything after seven good. Twenty to seven was his usual time. Hell! but he was a fool not to have packed his Eno's.

He closed his eyes. This was going to be a bad day. He knew the signs. He must have made heavy weather of it the night before. That vintage port at dinner; then, without any real interval, killing the whisky with old Terence. It had been a grand time. He couldn't remember a great deal about it. They'd talked about the war, as far as he could remember. There'd been a couple of young masters there.
They'd
only been drinking beer. Then they'd gone. And after a while the Chief had come up to say good night. He'd told the Chief that he'd make war service a qualification for a seat in Parliament. He must have been pretty far gone by that time. Had the Chief noticed anything? Most likely not. The Chief wouldn't see a fellow half-seas over once in a dozen months. He wouldn't know what it looked like; thought of it in terms of sailors hiccoughing across a road. He'd never be able to spot it in a man like himself, who never really showed it. Nobody who didn't know him really well could tell when he'd had a couple. It was probably all right. Of course it was all right. If only he'd remembered to pack his Eno's.

With eyes closed, a thudding headache, and a mouth that felt as though it had been scoured with an oil rag, he waited for his morning tea; listening to the quarters chime on the abbey clock. Six, quarter past six, half past, and on the first chime of the half, the clatter of the bell ringing down the school-house dormitories. Old William going round shaking his hand bell; not a soul stirring; dead silence; till the quarter chimed. Then one or two languidly pushing back a blanket. The patter of reluctant feet down the boarded passage; the splash of a shower on to the zinc hip-bath. Then from the dining-hall the clatter of the five minutes bell, pandemonium breaking out; sheets flung back, towels grabbed at, doors swung open, shouting down the passage, shouting in the bathrooms, in the dormitories. A silent hasty collecting of odd garments, the first chime of the clock and a stream of flannel figures, tying their ties as they ran, pulling on their coats, panting to the roll-call at the study door. How clearly he
could see it all! Only fifteen years ago. And all that had happened in that time.

At a quarter past seven they brought his tea. There were two pieces of bread and butter at its side. He took a mouthful, then for a moment he thought that the effort of swallowing it was going to make him sick. It
was
going to be a bad day. When he put his feet to the floor, he felt so dizzy that he had to sit back upon the bed. He cut himself when he was shaving.

He smiled at the sight of the Chief's breakfast table. In the centre a revolving table set with loaves of bread brown and white, toast, butter, marmalade, jam, honey, fruit: the sideboard laden with a bowl of porridge, a plate of kedgeree, a dish of fried eggs and bacon and tomatoes. “I'm afraid I've got an urban appetite at this time of the morning,” he told the Chief, as he poured himself out a cup of tea and began the half-hearted peeling of an apple.

No matter how bad the night, Hugh was, however, capable of conversational enterprise at breakfast. He did most of the talking. Amusing and pertinent talk, too, he fancied. That would show the Chief that he had been running well within his strength last night. As they rose from the table, the Chief placed his hand affectionately on his arm. “I don't suppose you'll want to come to morning chapel; I'll leave you alone here with the paper. I'll be back in twenty minutes.”

Hugh was curious to see whether or not Yorkshire had won at Birmingham. They had seemed in a bad position yesterday. But the close-set type blurred before his eyes. He wasn't equal to that yet. He laid the paper down, resting his forehead against the window-pane; momentarily cooling it. Why in Hell's name did he let himself get in a state like this? Why didn't he check himself in time? There was a point, surely, when you could push your glass away. There should be. With wine there was. But with spirits, with whisky in particular, you weren't aware that you were drinking heavily. You were just warm and comfortable and at ease. And then suddenly, without warning, you knew: it was too late. If you once started, it was just luck if you stopped in time. He closed his eyes. It was a long time since he had felt as bad as this.

He must have dozed, for it was with a start that he was conscious of the Chief's hand upon his shoulder, the Chief's voice saying, “I've got to go up to the sanatorium to see the matron. Would you care to walk up there with me?”

The sanatorium was a quarter of an hour's stroll away. They walked in silence across the courts.

“Now about this question of your coming back to join the staff here—” He paused. From the tone of his voice Hugh could guess what the reply would be. So he had spotted then. I did give myself away. I've liked to think of myself as a man who can hold his liquor. But I'm not. Even someone like the Chief, who wouldn't be suspecting that, wouldn't be on the look-out for it, he can tell. I'm sodden, I suppose. I may not recognize it, but everybody else can. That's what I've become. Of course he wouldn't want a fellow like me down here now. He may have said he did in 1917, but I was a different person in 1917. I've crumpled up.

The Chief could not have been nicer.

“The point, my dear Hugh, is this.” And it was the first time that he had ever called Hugh by his Christian name. “Schoolmasters are criticized for their unworldliness. They never, it is said, step outside their own cloistered atmosphere. They leave school, they go to Oxford, they return straight to a mastership. They have never seen the world for which they train the young. This is held to be a deficiency. I could argue very easily that the critics of a scholastic profession are, on this point, justified. But my own belief is that for certain professions, unworldliness of a kind is necessary. For the priesthood, for example; and school mastership was at one time, and to some extent still is, a branch of the priesthood. At any rate, I have found that men who have lived for a long period in the world, are unfitted for a return to this particular atmosphere.

“I do not believe, my dear Hugh, that you would be able to fit back happily into what is a subscribed and narrow world. During the war it was rather different. You had spent practically your entire life in conditions of organized discipline. Here; at Oxford; then the army. The change was not great. But now, seven years later, I am convinced that you would find yourself fretted by restrictions which we scarcely notice, because we have never known what it is to be without them. A great many schoolmasters found themselves unable, after the war, to take up their old life where they had left it. In your case.…”

Yes, yes, thought Hugh. He's trying to put it nicely; to let me down easily; to refuse me on general grounds, not because I am what I am, what I've become. Of course he's right. You can't have a drunkard on your staff. I ought to thank my stars that I did make that exhibition of myself last night, so that he was warned in time; so that I did not come down here as a master and disgrace myself in about the one place left where I'm respected.

He closed his eyes while the Chief with gentle tact developed his theory of the general unsuitability for mastership of the man-of-the-world type. “I'm convinced you would not be happy here. And only the schoolmaster who is happy at his job can make a success of it.” And that was true, too. And in another hour his train was due to go. He would be able to go down into the restaurant car and get a whisky. The hair of the dog: that was what he needed.

It was a three-and-a-half hour journey up to London. The waiter asked him if he'd like a sandwich. He shook his head. No, he wasn't hungry. Just leave that bottle there. He sat in the dining-car watching the landscape that had been once so familiar slide backwards into the blue Wessex distance. When the train ran into Waterloo there wasn't much change out of a pound. He jumped on to the platform before the train had stopped. He felt better now. He wondered if there would be trouble at the shareholders' meeting that afternoon. He rather hoped there would. He felt belligerent. He strode towards the barrier with an aggressive confidence.

The meeting was fixed for three o'clock. He arrived in the board-room at a quarter to. Usually at such a time the fireplace would have been occupied by Victor and his father. The row of chairs with their printed notices of the meeting would have been occupied by three self-conscious members of the staff. There would have been an atmosphere of constrained but friendly informality. To-day, however, the fireplace stood empty.

It was the only part of the room that did.

The rows of chairs were mostly occupied; the three members of the staff were submerged by a wave of strangers. The directors had taken their seats on the other side of the table. The leather-bound, brass-locked ledger was black with entries. It lay between the directors and the shareholders rather like the football that before a match divides the opponents who are shortly to fling themselves on one another. The field was set for a battle. The last shareholder had arrived several minutes since. They were all resolved to be in time. It was annoying that the whistle could not be blown before three o'clock. The opposing forces whispered together, pretending not to notice their adversaries, but taking swift, suspicious glances across the table. Clearly there was going to be trouble. Balliol, glancing over the typewritten copy of his speech, was reminded of Prentice's warning long ago. “Thank heaven there are no shareholders.
We shall see them here soon enough when things start going badly.”

And they were going badly. It was no use pretending they were not. They were made to sound no better by the Chairman's speech. There were the obvious statements about taxation, income tax in particular; D.O.R.A.; the licensing laws; the duties on wine; the restricted circumstances of the wine-drinking classes. Victor explained why things were bad. He ended on a note of optimism. He was confident that things must mend. He gave no tangible reasons for this confidence. He would call upon the general director to explain the situation in greater detail.

That Balliol did not do. He did not explain the situation. He amplified the chairman's statements. He spoke of the debt settlement in America, of Germany's gold-backed currencies, of night clubs, the modern flapper. He explained why it was more difficult to sell wine profitably to-day than it had been ten years ago. He gave no indication of the reasons for which both he and the chairman were confident that next year the board would have a more satisfactory balance sheet to present to the shareholders.

The chairman asked whether before he moved the formal adoption of the balance sheet any shareholder had any remarks to make or questions to ask. Three shareholders rose to their feet simultaneously; looked at one another; then sat down simultaneously. After a whispered conference—”Yes, you go on” “After you” “I'll wait” —the presumably senior of the three stood up. He had not a great deal to say but what he had got to say was this. This was the third year running that the ordinary shareholders had received no dividend. The preference shareholders were seven per cent, in arrear. It did not look as though the ordinary shareholders were ever going to get a dividend. It was the limit, that's what it was, the limit.

As he resumed his seat, the second of the objectors rose. He agreed with the last speaker that it was the limit. What he wanted to know was this: When was it going to stop being the limit? What were the directors doing about it? The chairman had said that times were bad. Were the board just going to sit there waiting for times to mend? Were they doing nothing of their own account to make things better? Times might get worse.

His successor produced from his attaché case copies of the last six balance sheets. His complaints were arithmetical. He compared various items; bad debts, sundry creditors; sundry debtors; goodwill; the salary list. He did not draw any conclusions from these comparisons, he merely called the board's attention to certain facts: that
the balance in the bank was greater than it had been in 1922, less than it had been in 1921; that the sundry debtors were less than in former years, the reserve for bad debts stationary. His only practical criticism was his assertion that the auditors' services were overvalued at a fee of a hundred and fifty guineas. Balliol listened to his remarks with sympathetic interest. He felt a kinship with anyone who took so much interest in statistics. As he had once, over his bicycle records, and now did over the cards which he returned on medal days to the Hampstead Golf Club, and of which he was careful always to preserve a duplicate.

From the other speakers he could scarcely anticipate, nor did he receive, any particular amusement. One after another they rose to amplify the first speaker's opinion that it was the limit, that's what it was, the limit. Balliol looked down the table, caught the chairman's eye. The chairman nodded. The instant the next speech was finished, Victor rose to his feet.

“We have now heard, gentlemen, a number of speeches deploring the position of the company. No one can deplore that position more than I do myself. I speak personally. For I hold as many shares as I fancy anybody in this room does. With the general director I can assure you that the losses sustained on this side of the table are as great as those sustained on yours. I can assure you that we are not going to sit here quietly waiting for times to improve. We shall take time by the forelock. I will now, unless any shareholder has any further question he would like to ask, move the adoption of report and balance sheet.”