Lord Dismiss Us (12 page)

Still, one could never be sure. . . .

He turned his head and whispered: ‘McIver.’

‘Uh? What?’

‘Ssh. Have you been asked to take anybody in the past week?’

McIver did a mild roll of the eyes.

‘Stop that, and answer me.’

‘One or two.’

Carleton felt like murdering him.

‘Who?’

The wretch started to laugh.

‘Ssh!’

‘You won’t catch me out that easy. I told you I don’t tell.’

McIver leaned forward, nearly falling off his bed, and said in an eager whisper: ‘Who do you want? I can do it this afternoon.’

‘Nobody, you fool. Stop talking!’

‘Does that make any sense to
you
, Petty?’

The Pedant, leaning on leather elbows, frowned over his spectacles, with his eyes fixed on his own copy of the book in hand. His voice was thin, acid, and full of danger.

‘Uh. Not really. No, Sir.’

‘I do wish you people would do your blasted Preparation when it’s set.’

They sat feeling frightened for Petty. He wasn’t a Prefect. The Pedant could keep him in, and set hundreds of ‘lines’; but, more than that, Milner was in his person the most frightening of them all. The only one who never shouted. A master of sarcasm, and cold ferocity. When he used the word ‘blasted’ it was more alarming than all the thunder of his colleagues.

‘I did do it, Sir, but . . . I’ve forgotten.’

‘Let us not add falsehood to stupidity, damn you. Would you kindly explain it to him, Johns.’

This first afternoon period in the summer always gave the most trouble. In the spring and winter terms, Afternoon School came between Games and Tea, as darkness fell. But in the long summer days it came – it was got over with – before Games, and after a lunch and a lie-down that made everyone drowsy and irritable.

Milner had told them all to come from their desks and sit round a long table, so that he might spur them on at closer quarters. But it made little difference. It was ‘Caesar’, and Carleton, like the others, had never viewed these Romans as anything other than wraiths behaving in a meaningless manner. Horace and Virgil as well; it was all the same. The object was simply to get the words right. Carleton relished it when they came in single sentences as an Exercise: there was a strange satisfaction in doing them. But these great paragraphs out of old and senseless books were death to pleasure and concentration.

‘Oh, do stop that, you two!’ The Pedant suddenly interrupted Johns testily. ‘If you can’t wait till afterwards, try and remember the old man of Peru.’

The two kept their eyes down on Caesar, and blushed – and smiled!

‘Johns. Get on with it!’

Carleton was amazed. They had been doing something under the table. Two Prefects from other Houses. Both quite fat!

They didn’t seem to care.

He would have died!

The Pedant didn’t seem to care.

‘No, boy! No, boy! No, boy! No, boy!’

It was Dotty next door.

Johns stopped.

‘Oh
get on with it
, Johns. That is none of our business,’ said the Pedant.

‘I will not have it, boy! I will not have it! Do you hear . . . ? Do you hear . . . ?’

The Head was waiting apprehensively for the second period in his study. Ashley would be taking the Sixth, in French. Crabtree had now heard all the others teach; by entering their classrooms, saying ‘carry on’, and discreetly seating himself at the back. He had been surprised. He had been impressed. Indeed, much that he had heard had been out of his ken. Unfortunately, the question was – was it also beyond the ken of the boys?

There remained Ashley. He had kept him to the last, in fear of some repetition of the man’s excessive impertinence in the very classroom, in front of the boys.

The other one to be watched was, plainly, the Chaplain. Having persuaded himself of the charitable conclusion that the man was out of his mind, and might perhaps be shortly removed on medical grounds, the Head had been faced with entirely opposite sentiments by his wife, his former partner in all administrative matters. On the contrary, it seemed, he was a true vicar of Christ, and a man who had, in her words, ‘achieved greatness’. This baffling view of a lunatic insurrectionist might not have made him pause, merely on its own. Unfortunately, he had also discovered, on questioning Steele, that the same sermon had been delivered for many years, and that the older Governors on the Board had all heard it frequently.

He could scarcely invite Lord Mountheath and Sir Charles Pike, and ask the Chaplain to repeat his performance.

‘Lucretia!’ he called out, pushing up the lower half of the window.

She had ridden up the drive on her bicycle, looking almost unrecognisable in the grey dress, pot hat and red tie.

‘Come up here a moment, my dear,’ called out her father.

The uniform was made of thick flannel and the poor child looked hot and flustered on this glorious day. It had been a problem getting it on to her; and she and her mother had tussled together in an upstairs room.

She was a mystery to him. He longed for some kind of communion, or at least to see some indication of occasional happiness. Perhaps later these things would come. Devoting, as he did, his whole life to boys, he had very much wanted one of his own; but she could not possibly know that.

‘Well, my dear, how did you get on?’

She was holding the hat.

‘All right.’

‘Do you think you’re going to like it?’

A hopeless question, he knew. She did not like things.

‘They’re all stupid in Class.’

‘Oh dear. Your mother’s an excellent teacher. You must be patient with them.’

‘They’re not allowed rabbits,’ she said, with satisfaction. ‘Miss Hutchins won’t have it. I told them about mine.’

‘They must envy you.’

‘They do. They’re silly too.’

‘Oh?’

There was something indefinable that recalled her mother. Something shocking was on the way.

‘They want me to deliver notes.’

‘How do you mean, Lucretia?’

‘Here,’ she said. ‘They were all around me, silly asses. They want me to bring notes and photos backwards and forwards.’

The Head was nonplussed. Life had become a series of perilous surprises.

‘They said I could have cakes and sweets and things, and they’d pay for the photos. I said I’d think about it.’

‘Now, listen to me, Lucretia . . .’

‘I know how to get the photos.’

The Head paused. He looked like a lobster.

‘How, my dear?’

‘There’s a boy goes round with a camera and stuff. He’s called McIver.’

‘Are you suggesting that this boy be paid for this service to the young ladies of Gillingham?’

‘I think he’s paid already.’

She made no ducks of the chin, but the downcast eyes, the relish, and the pleasure in evoking alarm, were a direct inheritance.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He’s always in the Photographic Room. I heard him saying something as I was passing the door. Mother knows. I told her.’

Was it that he was an honourable man who would not seek information from his own child? Or was it that he could not bear to hear certain things? He was not sure himself.

But this must be halted at once.

‘Now listen to me, Lucretia, you are not to have anything to do with this ridiculous, silly nonsense. I absolutely forbid it. Do you understand? You would put me into an impossible position with regard to Miss Hutchins. Do you understand that?’

‘Yeh. I told them nobody here would write them notes anyhow.’

He never really knew what she might say next, or why.

‘They were furious. One of them nearly had hysterics. I’m going to take off these prison clothes, ugh I hate them!’

‘Very well. And don’t you forget what I said.’

The bell was ringing for the end of the first period.

He put on his gown, and, holding his mortar-board to his chest, went past Lady Jane’s trunk, and out into the sunshine and the gardens with the borders. He walked slowly, so that the classes would be assembled for the second period by the time he arrived at the New Buildings. He found himself looking ahead to October, when he would make his first appearance, with two hundred colleagues, at the Headmasters’ Conference. It would be the high mark of his career, and he intended to show a strongly conservative line. They were trying to call them ‘independent schools’ now. Not Weatherhill thank you very much! Nor was anyone ever going to come here on a grant.

They were all in Class, behind closed doors. The Sixth Form room was at the end of the corridor. Feeling apprehensive about Ashley, he walked almost on tiptoe on the pink flags, and put his ear to the door before entering.

A boy’s voice said: ‘All I’m asking is whether you actually kiss your bijous or not?’

Crabtree threw the door open.

A boy with his back to him, called Peters, was saying: ‘Sometimes. It all depends on the . . .’

‘What is this?’ demanded the Head.

‘Extra Art, Sir,’ someone replied.

Five long-haired and – to the Head – offensively dressed youths, were seated round a table, making senseless abstractions on large sheets of paper.

‘I don’t understand. Where is Mr Ashley’s French class?’

‘Outside, Sir.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘They’re out at the back, Sir. You have to go down the corridor and out the other door. Mr Ashley likes to be out in fine weather. Mr de Vere Clinton asked him could we come in here, as we don’t have a table; and the others are behind us, and he likes us to improvise on our own.’

‘I find this very strange indeed.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Well, get on with it, and stop talking.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

For some reason, having left them, he was still almost on tiptoe. Things seemed to disintegrate daily, in this place. As far as he remembered, a ‘bijou’ was either a jewel or a cabbage, and in either case there would appear to be only one interpretation of what had been said. At the corridor crossroads he turned right, instead of going out the way he had entered, and reached the open door and halted immediately.

The Sixth Form sat on the top of the grass bank, and perched high above them on the branch of a tree was Ashley.

The Head retreated a little, in order to observe without being observed. Ashley was comfortably placed on a lower bough. His gown hung down. His left hand was around the trunk to prevent him falling. His right held a book. Two elegant brown shoes dangled high above the grass.

‘My task is the more difficult in that the play is about Love – a subject of which you possess no knowledge or understanding whatsoever.’

‘How do you know?’ Johns demanded.

‘Silence, Sir! It will also come as a surprise to devotees of the motion picture industry to learn that our heroine, Phèdre, is a lady by no means young – who is in love with her step-son. There are no bedroom scenes, Johns. No one even sits down. No one lays a finger upon anyone else. Yet this urgent, profound play is white hot with passion and sexuality.’

The Head stood back closer to the wall. He could not yet accept that there was a man seated in a tree speaking this at the top of his voice.

‘The French is extremely simple, strong as a horse, and of a beauty beyond description. That much at least I am going to
make
you appreciate, even if we have to spend the rest of the term on it. The Love is forbidden. It is sin. The lady, though passionately desirous of the young man, knows it to be such. Her sense of shame, and her dignity, in opposition to the intensity of her desire, give her greatness. “Oui, Prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée,” she lies. Come on now! All of you! Let’s hear it!’

‘What page is it, Sir?’

‘Oh damn the page! Say it with me. You’re on the stage in the Comédie Française. It’s a play. It’s for acting. You’re beginning a confession of burning, hopeless, passion.’

The Head moved out into the doorway.

Ten loud voices in unison imitated Ashley from the slope above.

‘Oui, Prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée.’

‘Again, again! Impassioned! Let yourselves go! You’re burning for someone. Act!’

‘Oui, Prince, je languis, je brûle pour Thésée.’

‘That’s it. Que dis-je? . . . page thirty-nine, eight lines from the bottom, damn you. Hurry up! . . .’

The Head cleared his throat. No one heard. There was a rustling of pages.

‘Que dis-je? . . . Come on, raise your voices, follow me, relish it, indulge yourselves, listen how they fall, listen to the Word made Beauty . . . “Que dis-je? Il n’est point mort, puisqu’il respire en vous. Toujours devant mes yeux je crois voir mon époux. Je le vois, je lui parle; et mon cœur. . . . Je m’égare, Seigneur, ma folle ardeur malgré moi se declare.” We’ll say that again . . .’

‘Ashley!’

Heads turned. The Crab was at the bottom of the steps. Ashley frowned down at him from the tree.

‘
What
do you think you’re doing?’ demanded the Head.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’ said Ashley.

‘I’m sure I’ve no idea, but you will have to cease this noise at once.’

‘This what?’ said Ashley quietly.

‘It makes it quite impossible for anyone in these classrooms to do any work,’ said the Head, gesticulating at the windows.

‘I’ve had no complaints.’

‘Apart from the fact that it is outrageous!’ said the Head, pointing at the figure in the tree.

‘Vous brûlez, Seigneur.’

The Head paused: one could not, in honour, speak before the boys – even if one could think of what to say.

‘You will hear more about this.’

He turned and went back through the building and out the other door.