Lord Dismiss Us (11 page)

‘Don’t use those eyes on me, dear child. Save it for next-door. Farewell.’

Carleton went out. He was hurt, and angry. What eyes? How use them? Ashley would talk to you straight, as man to man, and expect you to understand, and then he’d suddenly be sarcastic and treat you as a child. He wasn’t going to come here alone again.

Some of these creatures were ridiculously beautiful, Ashley was thinking. Thank God it was a matter of no interest.

A short queue of boys, wearing hangdog expressions, stretched away from the dispensary, along the corridor. Some were unwell, and the rest feigned being unwell. Gower was not among them. But Break was nearly over, and he ought to have paid his customary call by now. He was usually first in the queue.

Rowles had sent Carleton along to check that all was well. He intended to put his as yet unrevealed plan into operation that afternoon. But it depended entirely upon Gower having similar intentions. He did not operate every day. Had he come to ask ‘leave off’ Games or not?

Gower was useless at cricket. Games, for him, was more likely to be the cross-country run – which almost everybody detested. A Prefect went to the stipulated destination on a bicycle, to make sure that everyone completed the distance. Even if the Prefect did
not
go, there was no means of knowing. Goody goodies, on their way back, would never tell you whether there was anyone there or not.

If Gower
had
come with some complaint, Matron was to give him the afternoon off. Dr Rowles had involved her in his plot.

The room was crowded; not merely with patients, but also Matron, three voluntary helpers/admirers, and, to Carleton’s surprise, The Butcher.

Dr Boucher’s visits to the School, except in time of epidemic, were always a surprise. They were infrequent and followed no pattern. Matron hated them. They upset her routine, and her authority.

The Butcher was standing with his back to the window – the sun making a halo round his short-cropped red hair – talking about his customary subject, starvation in India. Matron was bandaging a boy’s ankle, and saying ‘Really’ and ‘How terrible’ every now and then. Carleton thought her an awfully nice and gentle person in her white coat; and frightfully capable at the same time. He could not understand the grand passions that were aroused. She wore hardly any make-up! He gathered from the Hearties that she could be fun when not on duty. She laughed a lot, and had lively blue eyes. But her hair was in old-fashioned permanent waves, and she must be over thirty!

Nevertheless, there were three Seniors there, giving out tonics and things, and you could sense their adoration in the very atmosphere. Strangely enough, one of them was his fellow Prefect, Pryde, a hulking fellow with a poxy face. In the middle of last term, Pryde, who you’d think would never do anything unusual in his whole life, and who had certainly never opened a book, had told Carleton he was going to read the entire Bible as a penance. ‘Why?’ Carleton asked. ‘I’m hopelessly in love with her,’ Pryde replied. ‘But why are you reading the Bible?’ Carleton demanded. ‘There’s nothing else for it,’ Pryde replied. He had meant it too. He had very nearly finished the Old Testament.

‘. . . a mere bundle of flesh and bones . . . Morning’ (a nod to Carleton) ‘. . . flies crawling all over the poor wretch . . . look here, I said, you’re not going to leave that poor blighter sitting there, are you? By God, they were too! Bring him in at once, I said. . . .’

The Butcher was not entirely boasting. He had, in fact, led a Medical Mission to India that had met with remarkable successes, considering its size. A former university boxing champion, he was made for tough, adventurous, ginger-headed doctoring of this kind. He was certainly not made for attending to the manifold minor distresses of high caste English boys at the most impressionable time of life.

Dr Boucher cracked arms and legs back into place. A notable footballer himself, he believed that influenza and similar illnesses were best shaken off by getting the chap back into the scrum as soon as possible.

It was, therefore, not merely the convenience of his surname that had gained him the title of Butcher.

Dr Boucher, who had just returned from his third Indian visit, was of the opinion that everything taking place in the dispensary at this very moment was preposterous.

Matron knew this.

She had finished with the bandage, and with a movement of the head she indicated that Carleton was to come over to the window. Doing so, he passed Pryde, and their eyes met, and Carleton felt keenly embarrassed on Pryde’s behalf. He was in the act of spooning cough mixture into Finch Minor’s mouth. If this was what Love did to you, thought Carleton, heaven save him!

‘Doctor Rowles sent me,’ he whispered. ‘Has he been?’

‘Yes. I told him he could be off Games,’ she said softly.

‘What’s all this?’ boomed the Butcher.

‘Ssh,’ said Matron, glancing round the room.

‘Shush, shush? What the devil are we shushing about? Who’s off Games now?’

The Matron had coloured a little. That great giant, Pryde, was looking across with moon-calf eyes.

‘Um, Gower, Doctor. . . .’

‘Gower! Gower! What’s that little blighter cooked up this time?’

‘He has quite a bad rash, Doctor . . .’

‘Nettles!’ thundered Dr Boucher. ‘We’ve had that one before. The little blighter goes out and rubs himself with nettles.’

‘That was not my opinion, Doctor.’

Matron spoke very firmly indeed. The Butcher blinked, hesitated, and then relented, patting her on the shoulder.

‘You’re too kind to ’em, Nancy. You’d never do in India. It’d break your ruddy heart.’

‘Ah, Carleton! Come in. Close the door like a good fellow. Sit yourself down. What’s the verdict?’

‘It’s all right. He has a rash.’

‘Good, good. Couldn’t be better. A rash! Hee! Extra
ordinary
bird. Well, never mind,’ said the Doctor, suddenly turning very solemn, ‘let’s get down to business. Now, listen here, Carleton, the whole essence of this thing is we’re not going to catch the chap flagrante delicto, as it were. We’ve had you under the table rug.’

‘You mean when I lunged out and caught Johns around the ankle?’ said Carleton, trying not to smile, because Rowles sounded so serious.

(After an hour in the dark under the rug, sweating with apprehension – a packet of biscuits being laid as bait on the table above – he had heard someone quietly enter. He lunged, shouting, ‘Got you, Gower!’ Poor Johns had let out a shriek like a maniac. He had to lie down on the ottoman for a while to recover. The idiot had known all about it, but ‘forgot’).

‘The extraordinary thing was that those damn biscuits had gone,’ ruminated the Doctor; more in his old style. ‘Now, listen, the only way we’re going to catch him is to see him in possession. Ah, good, there’s the bell. I was counting on that. Who have you got now?’

‘Um, D . . . Mr Dotterel.’

‘That’s all right. You can tell him you were with me. The Washroom, Carleton. Now! Ponder that for a moment.’

‘I don’t quite see, Sir.’

‘This extraordinary bird hovers about that room, leaves it and returns to it again, like some damn jackdaw around its nest. For all I know, the poor chap may regard it as the womb, or the arsehole, or something. I’m no head shrinker. Now, Carleton, it’s my strong hunch that the first thing our jackdaw does is to take the prize straight to its nest and gloat over it.’

‘He goes to the Washroom?’

‘Precisely. He wants to look at the damn thing. I mean, no one’s suggesting that he’s
eating
all those extraordinary foodstuffs of yours. If he is, he’s more of a monster than I thought. At any rate, if he doesn’t enter, he
must
pass the Washroom door – which, as you know, has no door – and so out that way towards the jacks. He’s only one other way out.’

‘Through the Common Room window – or the two dormitory windows.’

‘Right. But you’re going to be posted out there in the wood. You’ll have to tackle him straight. He’ll have it under his coat.’

‘Where are you going to be posted, Sir?’

‘If you think I’m going to be hanging around outside the jacks all afternoon, you’re mistaken. I’ll show you,’ said Rowles, glancing at his huge watch. ‘We’ll just let those chaps get back into Class.’

They waited, and the Doctor puffed his pipe.

‘What’ll happen to him, Sir, if we catch him?’

‘He’ll have to go. We’ll have to tell the parents.’

‘I think I’d die if something like that happened to me.’

‘Really? Really, Carleton?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah well, it’s not quite what you have in mind. I mean, it’s not the poor fellow’s fault. He needs medical attention. I fear it’s not exactly . . . within the scope of our own good Doctor, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Come along now.’

Rowles eagerly led the way downstairs, into the corridor, and so into the Washroom.

‘Now then,’ he said.

They had paused by a wooden cubicle about six feet high, just inside, in a corner.

This was the Doctor’s private shower.

Every morning at seven the boys left their towels on the Washroom bench and scampered across the corridor into the shower-room, which had a sliding door which clanged back and forth. Anyone caught evading a cold shower immediately got three on the bare backside from a Prefect or the Doctor himself.

At the same time, Rowles went into his own cold shower, and closed the door, and gasped and huffed and puffed, obtaining total cleanliness for what seemed an eternity to others who were rushing in and out of the icy waters.

‘Have a look at this?’

Rowles had taken something from his sports coat pocket.

‘What on earth is it?’

‘It’s one of these damn women’s affairs. Matron lent it to me.’

It was a lady’s mirror, handbag size.

‘See this.’

To the back was affixed a little cardboard stand.

‘I made it myself,’ said the Doctor, with evident pride.

‘Now then, fetch me a chair from the Common Room.’

‘A chair?’

‘Yes, yes, look smart.’

Carleton hurried down the corridor and came back with one of their small wooden chairs.

Rowles had unlocked the shower door and was standing inside it.

‘Put it there, in the corner.’

‘In the shower, Sir?’

‘Now then.’

Rowles sat on the chair and bent forward, with an inadvertent grunt, and placed the mirror on the floor.

‘Now, close the door.’

‘Shut you in, Sir?’

‘Yes, yes. Now then, can you see me in the mirror?’

He could. Presumably to save it from being rotted by the shower water, the door did not come down to the floor, but stopped some six inches above it. The mirror, at a slight angle, showed him the Doctor’s great head.

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘And I can see
you
, which is more to the point!’ said Rowles, and even through the door one could appreciate his triumph.

‘Now go out, Carleton, walk past the door and out towards the jacks.’

Carleton did so, and returned.

‘I saw you all right.’ The Doctor’s voice came rather muffled this time, from his burrow.

‘Well,’ he said, emerging. ‘What do you think of it?’

‘It’s brilliant, Sir.’

‘I’ll spring out on him, you see,’ said Rowles, looking almost bashful about Carleton’s compliment. ‘Now there’s only one thing left – the bait.’

‘Um . . . I’ve got a tin of mixed fruit salad, Sir.’

A flicker of disgust passed across the Doctor’s face.

‘Admirable,’ he said.

Chapter Nine

Even while involved in these unfamiliar happenings, Carleton had been conscious that he would be sitting beside Ma Crab at lunch. Work was no distraction: there was neither Ashley nor Milner that morning – his favourite lessons. Instead, Rowles did incomprehensible sums on the blackboard, The Cod was equally bewildering with test tubes, and Dotty waffled about the Wars of the Roses. None of it was necessary in any case: school work was over for Carleton.

The tinkling of the first lunch bell brought a renewal of apprehension.

The Prefects stood behind their chairs along the High Table, up on the dais, while the School did likewise at the smaller tables running crosswise out from the narrow windows of the Dining Hall. Down the aisle, a master was due to sit at the head of each table, and the boys moved round daily, so that each had the opportunity of adult communion.

The Prefects also moved round. The Head and his wife sat together at the centre, looking down the Hall. Carleton had been beside the Head the previous day; so he would now be beside his wife.

Prefects across the table were free of embarrassment, or boredom, because the line of huge silver trophies running down the middle made conversation almost impossible. In any case, to hear Mrs Crabtree you had to be up very close.

Over in a corner of the dais, the butler, Lloyd, waited beside the same soup tureen that had been employed at Carleton’s baptism. Lloyd was a wonderfully grotesque creature who had been here even longer than Dr Rowles, and had never been known to speak or smile. Tall and thin in his tail-coat, with a skeleton face and batlike ears, he was a butler from a horror film. From the point of view of Rowles, the man must know at least as much as himself – covering more than fifty years – but, damnation, the fellow would tell, or share, nothing!

Waiting for the School’s usual pandemonium to cease, his mouth dry with dread, Carleton felt the need to confide. Unfortunately, Johns, who usually sat beside him, was today set apart by the Crabtrees’ two regal chairs with high backs; while standing at Carleton’s right elbow was the fourth Prefect in Priestley House, Rogers, a square fellow with powerful spectacles and dandruff, with whom he had never been able to converse.

The strange fact was that he had decided not to confide in anybody about last night’s astonishing tableau. The woman at the Chaplain’s feet, and in tears! And that look!

He had felt it unfair to pass this on. Cruel. They had been here only a week. He did not even know her. Roly and the Pedant – and, far worse, the School – could make murder out of it. Whatever it was – as he had frequently experienced with Ashley – he suspected that there was something more serious at stake than he could understand. But what? She couldn’t
possibly
have fallen for Cyril Starr. Surely she must know: and anyway they were both about a hundred years old!

Pryde, who was Prefect on Duty for the day, struck the clapper a bang, down by the distant door, and the noise subsided.

They would be parading from the Head’s Hall, as they did for Chapel. The masters’ Common Room was across the Hall from his Study. He would put his head round the door and say, ‘Ready, Gentlemen?’

She came in through the open door first: head down, and hands behind her back. The Crab was following: head up, flushed, with his mouth down to show Authority. Then the masters, standing at their places in the prevailing silence. (The Chaplain was up in his room, eating duck).

She rounded the end of the table, under the cavernous eyes of Lloyd. ‘She’s really terribly shy,’ Carleton thought, ‘it’s not just me.’ She approached. A murmured ‘good morning’ might have helped, but no; she stood beside him, in silence, with eyes lowered.

On her left, her husband had his only moment which approached the role she would have wished for him.

‘Benedictus benedicat,’ he prayed, slowly drawing it out. ‘Per Jesum Christum dominum nostrum.’

Everyone sat down, with a noise like a barrage. The Crabtrees resembled royalty on their thrones. Since the Old Man’s death, the matching chair for Mrs Crabtree had been resurrected from a storeroom.

Conversation had broken out all about him. He could even hear The Crab talking with Johns. The ghostly Lloyd had inserted himself and expertly ladled soup on to Ma Crab’s plate. Down the aisle, the skivvies rushed back and forth, some carrying seven soup plates at a time. Miss Bull, with her vast bosom above a steaming cauldron near the entrance door, was rapidly dishing it out, with the experience of years.

The dipping action of Mrs Crabtree’s chin was ideally adaptable to the eating of soup. Down she went and up again. Not a word.

What could she say, for goodness sake? ‘About last night . . . ?’

He even turned to Rogers, but that ass was having a loud argument about Japanese motor-bikes, of all things.

Her eyes came up for a second, but not towards him.

‘Master Allen’s dereliction is still with us.’

She dipped so abruptly that the soup nearly spilled from her spoon.

He had only just caught her words, but he looked where she had looked, and saw the triangular window, devoid of glass.

‘We still await the parental cheque.’

‘Do you mean to say . . . you told his mother?’

‘Naturally. . . . You know about his father, I see.’

‘But it wasn’t his fault, Mrs Crabtree.’

‘That is not our opinion.’

Lloyd leaned over them again, exuding a supernatural odour, and removing the plates. It seemed to be stalemate. In the silence, he could not resist searching down the room. Yes, there in the far corner. The black hair. Pinky brown face. The animation. Talking with enthusiasm . . . to Mr Dotterel!

‘I am perfectly well aware that Mr Ashley holds other views. The Headmaster was much distressed over his meddlesome behaviour.’

This took her so long to say that even before the end Lloyd had laid on the English Landscape place-mat at which she had been staring, a plate of shepherd’s pie. (It was Monda
y
.)

‘But. . . .’

‘We may be new here, but we are not as green as Mr Ashley appears to assume. We are fully aware that Fire Practice for the New Boys is an ancient tradition of the school. It was not our place to interfere, and it was certainly not his.’

He thought it just as well that she only showed him her profile and did not see his face. She had a dark mole with hairs on it. He was looking and listening with such interest that he had forgotten everybody.

‘I noted that
you
gave parental. . . .’ She turned a little away – and must have glanced at the Head. He could scarcely hear her now. ‘One trusts it was parental . . . attention to our little window-breaker.’

Carleton felt a blush rising and could not stop it. But at least she was not looking.

‘He . . . Allen . . . got a fright. And he couldn’t get out of the . . .’

‘I hope that you and our Mr Ashley are not founding some sort of adoption society for those temporarily out of favour.’

Gleeful. It was almost meant to be a joke! He was very glad that there was a huge Cup for Cricket between them and the two Prefects opposite.

‘Mr Ashley had nothing to do with it. He didn’t even know it was . . . Allen. I thought he might like to go to the Nets. He’s very good too. Mr Rich said so.’

Carleton found it strangely simple to speak so bluntly to her. In a crazy way, considering the conversation, she was easy to talk to. He would have liked to raise many other subjects. Among adults, women had always been far more approachable, when old enough, and this was the first one here in four years.

‘I wonder that Mr Rich has the time for such matters.’

This from the Headmaster’s wife!

‘How do you mean, Mrs Crabtree?’

‘I have already told you that one is better informed than you seem to imagine.’

He noted that she said ‘one’ this time, and not ‘we’.

He wondered who had been doing the informing – Steele probably.

‘Matron has been looking particularly pleased with herself.’

‘Oh?’

Mrs Crabtree, who was evidently saying no more, did
not
sound pleased. The remark about the other lady was made with even more  acidity than the remarks about Ashley. It was an entirely new experience to hear such alarmingly relevant comments coming from so high a quarter. Sitting beside the Old Man, one had never heard a word about other persons; least of all members of his own staff. Carleton was amazed; and equally so by her nerve. Was it bluff?

Was she challenging him to mention the unmentionable?

Lloyd had taken their plates and served them with bread and butter pudding.

‘My daughter began at Gillingham this morning. I hope nothing fatal has occurred.’

This was a surprise. Gillingham College was a girls’ boarding school five miles away, but in fact mercifully remote. Occasionally, crocodiles in uniform grey, with helmet-like hats and male red ties, were seen upon the roads, provoking embarrassed mockery and laughter.

‘Oh. I thought she was going to a day school.’

‘She calls it that. She feels that in these circles going as a day pupil would be regarded as a disgrace. But it’s only a bicycle ride away, and she likes the idea of dropping in and out. She’s independent – to an almost sinister degree.’

Carleton was most flattered by this domestic revelation, and by her treating him to a sophisticated mode of address. It was a pity that, having abandoned her pudding, she appeared to be concentrating on the portrait of their Founder, which hung away in the distance, above the entrance door. One might almost have thought that she was bored by her neighbour.

With an excitement that made his knees tremble under the table, he was about to put the question – ‘What did you think of the Chaplain’s sermon?’ – when unfortunately the Head rose to terminate the proceedings.

It would be twelve days before he sat beside her again. It was a surprise to discover that this was the source of positive regret.

After lunch the School lay down for half-an-hour. Carleton and Johns had to enforce silence up in that vast and chilly dormitory. He was glad that Allen was away in the Johns half, and he could not see him round the square pillars. He was not so glad that he was in a corner and the end of his bed met the side of Sexy Sinnott’s.

Carleton himself lay next to a revolting specimen called Wolseley, who had a completely unique and vile body odour. But this was not all. He had lately taken to throwing back the sheets in the morning, standing on his pillow, scratching his greasy head in proud and mildly bashful wonderment, and announcing: ‘Gosh! Look! It’s happened
again
.’

‘Shut up, Wolseley, you’re absolutely disgusting!’

‘I’m not. I can’t help it. Isn’t it
amazing
though!’

‘You’re doing it yourself.’

‘I’m
not
. I swear.’

‘Stop whining and clear off to the shower. At once!’

The usual spectators would approach. (‘Oh not again, Wolseley, you filthy beast.’)

‘And that goes for the rest of you, too!’

‘It’s
amazing
. I can’t get over it. It never
stop
s
.’

‘Clear off, Wolseley!’

The exterior of the wardrobe that separated Carleton from the bed on his other side was constantly hung with exposure-meters and other mysteries of the photographic trade. Some of them were most expensive, and Carleton and Dr Rowles had been trying to think of a way of warning their owner about Gower, without naming names. The amateur expert was a comical boy named McIver who could make Eddie Cantor eyes behind his heavily framed spectacles. He had collected untold sums selling photographs of bijous at five shillings a picture; and was for ever pestering Carleton.

‘What about it now, Carleton? I know there’s somebody.’

‘There isn’t. Go to hell, McIver.’

‘Ah come on. I won’t tell if you don’t want. I never do. Ask anybody. Ask Sherriff.’

(Sherriff was a Prefect in Pryor!)

‘Tell you what. I’ll let you see the negative for nothing. Now. I can’t say fairer than that. Come on, who is it?’

‘Go to
h
e
ll
, McIver.’

His head propped up on the two cold pillows, Carleton was trying to begin the Life of Talleyrand by Duff Cooper. He had taken it out from the Library, remembering that Ashley had said something in admiration of it last term.

He found it hard to concentrate. Some people, like Johns, could bury themselves in books, right in the middle of everything. School work was easy enough, because it was enforced, and they all did it together, and in competition. But he had always found it difficult to read outside the curriculum: there was so much going on. In the holidays there was nothing else to do, and he had read a lot.

How could one start considering this dead Frenchman, when right across the dorm lay Gower, with his sallow face hidden behind some ghastly magazine; Gower, who was planning theft at that very moment, while he, Carleton, was planning arrest, and the terrible sentence of banishment?

The silence made him more jittery. You could hear nothing in that vast, crowded room, save the sound of pages being turned. Someone’s fountain-pen was scratching out a letter. News home. What on earth was there to say? What was there to tell that would mean anything? McIver was reading a photographic magazine. Wolseley was eating his thumbnail, and absorbed in some unspeakable Comic Cuts.

He was trying not to visualise someone who, night and morning, went back and forth from that far corner in a brown dressing-gown.

The first night when he came from the shower . . . (warm showers at night) . . . and went past the beds, there had been some wolf whistles; and Sinnott had made a public overture that was supposed to be funny – ‘There’s plenty of room in here.’ The Somebody had merely smiled and got into bed. Such assurance! Was he actually flattered? Did he
enjoy
it?

Cautious Carleton felt suddenly terrified. What on earth would he do if this thing really developed inside him, and forced him to declare himself?

But suppose it developed with another – under his very eyes.

It seemed unlikely: the Other had quickly established himself as a no-nonsense, ‘middle-aged’, lively, popular fellow. (The Honourable Fitzmaurice was languishing about the place, and looked to be just asking for it).