Bones of the Buried (24 page)

They walked out into the sun, Verity’s high heels clicking and clacking on the uneven stone. College, the ancient crenellated building in which the black-gowned scholarship boys known as
‘tugs’ lived, glowed bronze. They strolled round the mildew-green statue of King Henry VI, the school’s founder, into the cool and pleasant cloisters where they read the names of
those Old Etonians who had fallen during the war. Solemnly, Frank pointed out his uncle’s name which was, of course, also his own. Edward shivered, assailed by memories and forebodings.

‘I wish I had known him,’ he said wistfully. ‘They don’t make heroes nowadays. I can’t wait till I’m old enough to go out to Spain and fight for the Republic.
It’s the only government in the world doing something to stop the Fascists. I just don’t understand why our people are being so stand-offish.’

‘There’s no one to fight yet . . .’ Verity said.

‘Not with guns,’ said Frank, looking at her earnestly, ‘but we must fight the Fascists now, before it’s too late. Don’t you agree? I know you do because I’ve
read your reports in the
New Gazette
.’

Verity blushed with pleasure but said quickly, ‘Please don’t think I take any satisfaction in the idea of war and young men killing and being killed like last time . . .’

‘But we have to fight for what we believe in,’ the boy said, gripping her arm again. ‘You believe that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Verity soberly, ‘I do.’

Edward was pleased with his nephew. He might have known that he would side instinctively with the underdog and the liberal-minded but even he was a little startled by the boy’s ready
espousal of communism. Verity was gracious and a little impressed: it was, after all, flattering to have a good-looking young Etonian, a duke in the making, look at you with admiration, ready to
accept without protest even your most outrageous statements.

‘I agree,’ Frank said earnestly to Verity at one point, ‘the aristocracy is finished. I have terrific arguments with my Pa about it. He calls me a “pinko”, but
I’m right, aren’t I? Dukes and earls and so on – it’s all bosh, isn’t it?’

With some amusement, Edward saw Verity actually being driven to defend the Duke of Mersham.

‘Your father’s a good man, Frank. He has a great sense of responsibility and he means well. My only quarrel with him is that he has not been elected. He’s probably a better man
than many MPs but . . .’

‘That’s what I mean,’ the boy said fervently. ‘He oughtn’t to be put in that position. I know it’s a burden to him. Why should Pa have a castle and lots of
servants and all that “my lording”? I’m going to give it all up.’

Edward and Verity looked equally shocked.

‘No . . .’ Verity began.

‘No . . .’ Edward said at the same time. ‘You have responsibilities, Frank, whether you like them or not. Surely it’s better to work within the system in order to change
it rather than run away?’

Frank looked at his uncle critically. ‘It’s easy for you to talk, Uncle Ned. You have all the fun of being a rich aristocrat without any of its burdens.’

‘
Touché
,’ Edward said, and Verity smirked.

They went back to Frank’s house and were introduced to Mr Chandler, his housemaster. He was about Edward’s age, good-looking with a rather shaggy beard but a sensible, humorous man
whom Edward liked immediately. He seemed much taken with Verity and went so far as to suggest that she might like to come and give a talk to the sixth form about the situation in Spain.

‘I thought public school housemasters wanted nothing to do with women,’ Verity said in surprise.

‘Oh, we try to change with the times,’ Chandler said mildly.

‘It was different in my day,’ Edward remarked. ‘I remember my mother saying my housemaster, Henry Hobbs, never addressed a word to her in all the years I was in his
house.’ He turned to Chandler: ‘I suppose he must be dead now?’

‘Yes, I believe so but, if your Dame was Miss Harvey, she’s still very much alive and lives in the town.’

‘Goodness me,’ Edward exclaimed. ‘Old Miss Harvey still alive! She seemed ancient to me twenty years ago!’

‘Why don’t you call in and see her if you have time? She loves it when old boys drop in. Her memory is excellent, better than mine, and I’m sure she will remember
you.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ said Edward thoughtfully.

‘Miss Browne,’ said Chandler, turning to Verity, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Lord Edward hadn’t told you about his sporting triumphs here at Eton?’

Verity gave a little moue. ‘He played cricket, didn’t he? Isn’t the phrase “a useful bat”?’

‘Oh come now,’ said Chandler laughing. ‘Frank, you know what your uncle did here?’

‘Of course!’ the boy said proudly. ‘He was captain of the eleven and scored a century at Lords against Harrow.’

‘He did indeed, but did he tell you about his success at rackets?’

‘Oh please, Chandler,’ Edward begged, ‘spare my blushes. I had a good eye, nothing more.’

‘What’s “rackets”?’ said Verity belligerently. She was getting a bit fed up of all this praise of Edward. Wasn’t it enough to be rich and a lord and not
altogether an ass? Was she now to be told he was a sporting hero?

‘Rackets, Miss Browne,’ said Chandler solemnly, ‘is generally considered to be the fastest game in the world. It’s played with a small hard ball in something like a big
squash court. It’s been estimated that the ball travels at over a hundred miles an hour.’

‘And you were good, Uncle?’ said Frank appraisingly.

‘Oh I . . .’ Edward began in some confusion.

‘You didn’t know then?’ Chandler broke in. ‘Just as I supposed. Your uncle, Frank, played doubles with Stephen Thayer and they were almost unbeatable. They won the Public
Schools championship and the Noel Bruce Cup – that’s right, isn’t it, Lord Edward?’

‘Yes,’ Edward mumbled, ‘but the Noel Bruce Cup – that was with someone else. I had rather lost touch with Stephen by then. Anyway, what does it all matter?’ he said
testily. ‘I’m sure the last thing Verity or any of you wants to hear is tales of my schooldays.’

‘On the contrary, Mr Chandler,’ Verity said coolly, ‘I’m very interested in what Lord Edward got up to at school, before he went off to rule the empire. From what you
tell me, I’m surprised he’s not in our Olympic team.’

‘I don’t think rackets is an Olympic sport, is it?’ said Chandler, taking her seriously, which irritated her. ‘Do you still play, Lord Edward?’

‘Oh, occasionally, at Queen’s Club, don’t y’know.’ He was distinctly uneasy now, seeing the expression on Verity’s face. ‘Chandler, might I just have a
word with you about Charles Thayer?’

The two men went into a huddle in the corner. Verity and Frank amused themselves talking politics. Verity discovered that, if anything, Frank’s views were more extreme than hers but, when
she tried to temper his enthusiasm with a bowdlerised account of the left’s factional fighting in Spain and the Party’s problems in England, he did not want to hear. ‘Don’t
try and put me off, Verity. By the way, you don’t think it cheek me calling you Verity but I seem to know you so well . . .’

‘No, of course not,’ Verity said faintly.

‘I know you want to put me off – all my family try it. They say – Pa specially – that I’m just a child and know nothing. Well, I agree. I know I’ve no
experience but even a child can tell right from wrong. As soon as I’m twenty-one – earlier I hope – I’m going to fight for . . . Oh, you’ve finished, Uncle,’ he
said looking up, annoyed at being interrupted.

‘Yes, I’ve fixed up things with Chandler. He’s going to speak to Caine, Charles’s tutor, and keep me in touch with . . .’

‘Fixed things up!’ Frank exploded. ‘You see what I mean, Verity? Grown-ups are always “fixing things up”.’

‘Hey, steady on, old lad. I’m just trying to help your friend.’

‘I know you are, Uncle Ned, but I wish you wouldn’t . . . oh, I don’t know.’

Edward was a little hurt. He had thought Frank would be pleased he was taking an interest in his friend’s future but somehow he had managed to say or do something wrong; he didn’t
know what. He looked at Verity for help, but she was looking interestedly at her feet. He said more coldly than he had intended, ‘I’m going to take up Chandler’s suggestion of
visiting my old Dame. Will you two be all right if I leave you together?’

‘I think so, don’t you, Verity?’ Frank said with exaggerated consideration.

‘I think we’ll muddle on along somehow,’ Verity agreed. ‘Dames? They sound like they belong in a pantomime.’

‘Very funny; matrons are called “Dames” at Eton,’ Edward said.

‘Uncle Ned . . .’

Edward put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. ‘I know you want to talk about this dreadful thing which happened to Mr Thayer, and I do too, but I want to do this first – talk to old
Miss Harvey. It’s not just nostalgia. I think she may be able to explain one or two things which are puzzling me about . . . about what happened when Stephen and I were at school. What I
suggest is that you do a bit more sightseeing and meet me at the Cockpit – that’s the teashop in the High Street, Verity – at four thirty. I’ve booked a table and then we
can all three go over what we know about this murder. I promise you, Frank, I intend getting to the bottom of it, for both our sakes.’

‘And for Charles’s,’ Frank added.

‘For his sake too,’ Edward agreed.

It was with mixed feelings that he knocked on the door of the little house in the High Street where Miss Harvey now lived in retirement. It took the old lady some time to
answer but she recognised him immediately and with evident pleasure. She had put on a lot of weight since he had been a boy at Eton but in every other respect seemed to Edward much as she had
always been: sharp-eyed and benevolent. She had had an ability to spot immediately when a boy was feigning illness to get out of an exam or a cross-country run and the shrewdness to know when one
of her charges was genuinely ill or unhappy. She had no favourites and she was not ‘soft’. She did not attempt to be a surrogate mother but was conscientious in returning the boys to
their homes at the end of each half, sound in mind and body. Her responsibility was all the more onerous when she knew the housemaster, Henry Hobbs, was shirking his.

Edward had been impressed with Chandler and compared him favourably with the man who had been his housemaster. Hobbs had been a strict disciplinarian, when he remembered, but most of the time
had ignored the boys in his care and left the house to run itself. In retrospect, Edward considered him to have been guilty of gross dereliction of duty, whatever his personal problems, and,
inevitably, Miss Harvey had had to bear more than her share of the burden in the running of the house. It was all right for Edward, who was a high-spirited, confident boy, but there were others who
suffered from not having anyone to monitor their development, encourage and direct them. By modern standards, conditions in the house were primitive. The food was plentiful but virtually
vitamin-free, and beating and bullying, which a good housemaster would have repressed, were rife. The lavatories were outside and in winter froze. Indeed, one of the early morning duties of a fag
was to sit on a scuffed and none-too-clean wooden seat and warm it for his master.

Edward wondered if it was possible to feel nostalgia for a period one had not particularly enjoyed. On the whole, he thought it was. As a child, every setback and every triumph is branded on the
memory – the caning he received for three ‘rips’ in a week, for example. It was a solemn moment when the form master ripped the top of a bad piece of work and told the erring boy
to present it to his tutor, and Hobbs had been brutal with him. But these moments were, at least in his case, outweighed by moments of joy more intense than any he had experienced as an adult: the
memory of getting his house cap for cricket, and that glorious day in his last summer when he had carried his bat against Harrow at Lords. Had he ever been happier? He realised now that he had been
protected by Stephen. First as his fag and then as his friend – though always his dependent because of the three-year age difference between them. He had basked in the reflected glory of
being Thayer’s ‘boy’. There had been nothing overtly sexual in their relationship – Edward was totally innocent of any such emotion – but, looking back, it had all
been a little unhealthy. A good housemaster might have nipped the friendship in the bud.

Thayer had been a glamorous figure, tall, good-looking, good at sport and no fool academically. He had been elected to Pop much earlier than usual. In fact, most boys never were elected. He had
collected a host of sporting honours, coloured caps and scarves, and had been much liked by the beaks who relied heavily on boys of his stature to run the school. During the war, Eton had been
short-staffed and beaks past their retiring age had been kept on. In their dotage, they sometimes found discipline a problem. And yet, in the end, it had all gone wrong. When, in 1917, Thayer had
left a few weeks before the end of the summer half, Edward had been surprised but, as boys do, had taken it in his stride. He had asked a few questions but had allowed himself to be fobbed off with
bland remarks about his friend having been ill. Life was too full to allow him much time to dwell on such little mysteries, but now he blamed himself for not having made more effort to discover
what had really happened. Children then were used to grown-ups having secrets and when, a few months later, rumours reached him of some unpleasantness, he had resolutely shut his ears to them. It
was part of schoolboy honour that one did not listen to stories of friends’ misfortunes.

It seemed odd to him now but, even when he met Thayer at parties after he himself had left Eton, he had not asked him whether there was any substance in the rumours. Verity would think it absurd
but he had, quite simply, been too embarrassed. In just a few months one of the most important friendships of his life had atrophied. Thayer had said no goodbyes, left no messages, written no
letters – at least none to Edward. Now he was dead, he thought it was time to find out what he ought to have discovered all those years before. He had a hunch it might shed some light on why
his friend had not enjoyed as an adult the success he had achieved as a schoolboy and, perhaps, even why he had been beaten to death in his own home.