Lord Dismiss Us (3 page)

All afternoon a trail of Starlings came past the oaken chest that had reputedly belonged to Lady Jane Grey, into the rear of the Main Hall, and up the fine staircase. Mud came with them. Mrs Crabtree intercepted three, complained about the mud, asked each where he was going, and received a disturbingly direct answer.

She also intercepted Philomena Maguire, an Irish witch whose height was six foot two under a mop of black hair which covered her eyes. She could look out, but nobody could look in. It was an unintentional but ingenious arrangement. Philomena was carrying a large silver tray, loaded with cakes, cups and saucers of priceless china, and an exquisite silver teapot. The same question was put to her and she looked out through her hair at this peculiar woman and replied: ‘It’s the Chaplain’s tea. I always do it, Miss.’

‘Mrs,’ said Mrs Crabtree.

‘Mrs,’ said Philomena.

Mrs Crabtree shivered. This girl was one of a terrifying company of black-clothed, occasionally white-aproned, harridans who inhabited the dark stony basement cellars and were known as the domestic staff. Shrieks were heard constantly from below. But it was not what Mrs Crabtree at first feared. In addition to belonging to the untouchable lower orders, they were hideous beyond even adolescent desire and banished in toto under the name ‘skivvy’; and in turn the boys were to them a weird joke, vaguely regarded as the Upper Class.

Down in those dank places great steaming cauldrons were heaved about in practised bony biceps, and black-clothed armpits exuded astonishing odours. Fortunately between Mrs Crabtree and them there was a Lady Housekeeper fittingly named Miss Bull. But Mrs Crabtree’s was the superior command, and she could not entirely escape contact.

‘By the way, Miss . . .’ said Philomena.

‘Mrs,’ said Mrs Crabtree.

‘Mrs then,’ said Philomena. ‘Has the Chaplain told you about his food?’

‘His food?’

‘Yeh. He gets these pains in the tum . . . stomach, poor soul. And he has to have special food brought up. I bring it. Miss Bull does the orderin’.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

‘Ah that’s all right. It’s just, it seems the School food wouldn’t do him at all. He has to have smoked salmon and cold duck and that sort of thing. Special like. D’yeh know what I mean?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

‘Righto. I just thought I’d tell you.’

Philomena went upstairs.

The Chaplain was sitting in his black habit and silver-buckled shoes in a great oaken chair by the fire, and the Starlings tended to sprawl about the floor. He liked them looking up at him. They were the Chosen for reasons incomprehensible to the more average members of the School. To them the Starlings were the ugliest, dirtiest, slackest, stupidest and smelliest boys on display. Terrible slackers, they were. Most of them did ‘Farming’, which had lately become a legitimate alternative to Games. Several of them had almost continuous ailments to similar effect. Two of them, perhaps the weirdest of all, doted upon a falcon which they kept in a cage up in the woods.

But there was a clue to their Charm in the pictures on the Chaplain’s walls. Above the mantelpiece was a reproduction of an enormous Academy painting, showing five boys, freckled, pimpled, and with flaming ginger hair, leaping naked out of a rowing boat into brilliant blue water. The Chaplain considered them angelically hideous. And there were other paintings of beggarly boys, of the Spanish School, who were hideously angelic. (The three naked figurines were Greek, and of less complex appeal.)

Mrs Crabtree had looked in here out of curiosity, before the Chaplain’s return, noted the adornments, and suffered a fluttering of the heart which for a moment she feared was going to turn into an out-and-out attack. It was one of the brand new things which she had been going to tell her husband. The Chaplain had been attending a Retreat in the Hebrides. She had looked up the place, studied the qualifications of those present, and come to the conclusion that the proceedings would be Very High indeed. She herself was a clergyman’s daughter, and similarly inclined.

Because an undeniable odour arose from the Starlings – partly farmyard and pigs, and partly pure Starling – the Chaplain burned cedar wood in the fire, which was lit all summer by Philomena Maguire who was in love with him. He even took a second precaution. Always in his hand, and sniffed at every now and then in the manner of Cardinal Wolsey, was an orange. He went through roughly a dozen a term.

The Starlings looked up at the Chaplain in fascination. He was an astonishing sight. His head was absurdly impressive: a livid white face with a vast forehead and a thin smooth covering of inky black hair. The central parting was white and faultless. Black eyes twinkled and mocked. The mouth was a wide slit above a square jaw, and it could smile with an infinity of sarcasm and worldliness. Centuries ago he might have been some terrible leader of the Church, and he looked especially right for the Inquisition. Now he was Chaplain at Weatherhill School, Bucks.

‘Our friend Robert is evidently partial to chocolate cake,’ said the Chaplain, with his eyes wickedly twinkling.

It was one of several unique features of the Chaplain’s salon that the Starlings were called by their christian-names. This often confused the Starlings, who were not sure what they were. But they could all tell that Robert was really Hastings, the spiky-haired, filthy-necked, much stained boy sprawling beside the plate of chocolate cake. The Chaplain saw him as a charming elder brother to Huckleberry Finn, and was delighted to detect a faint blush.

‘Yes, steady on, Hastings, you greedy hog.’

The Chaplain was mildly amused and gratified that they addressed each other in their quaintly rough way as if he were not there, or rather as if he and they were friends and equals. But a sudden waft of hog, or something, came from the speaker, who was seated beside his extravagantly buckled shoes; and at once he brought the orange to his nose. His nails were manicured, and he wore a huge blue ring.

‘Not so
violent
, Philip,’ he said, placing his free hand on the boy’s unexpectedly sticky head. ‘Ugh!’ he exclaimed, and he made a face of the most elaborate disgust. They all laughed; but the disgust was in great part genuine. He put the orange in his skirted lap, and took a large handkerchief of exquisite lacework out of his pocket and wiped his hand with care.

‘Philip has his own brand of frankincense,’ he said. ‘It’s called Frankenstein.’

The laughter came thinly. He did not notice. He knew that he had an especial gift for making the sort of jests that schoolboys enjoy.

‘I have to raise a matter of extreme seriousness. And then we may continue with our festivities.’

Everyone stopped chewing.

‘The summer term is, as you know, the time for Confirmation. I believe I espy five of you who will be preparing for this profound experience. Let us have hands up, shall we?’

The five, who included Robert and Philip, put up their hands. One of them had been told by his parents to say that he was having nothing to do with it, but
they
were not sitting here on the floor in this room.

‘I believe that’s what they nowadays term Bingo,’ said the Chaplain, and there was laughter, but of a near-hysterical kind. ‘Profound experience’ had come out most awesomely in his deep Shakespearian voice.

‘I shall be preparing you privately,’ he said, and the five paled, and the fifth began to think that his parents had been right. ‘But I take this opportunity of reminding you that you will be expected to attain a state of Grace. There will be abnegations.’ He relented. He smiled wickedly. ‘A little less cake for Robert?’ There were titters, of release. ‘A little less Frankenstein for Philip?’ There was laughter.

‘I shall not insist upon it, but I would like to point out that it will be very much easier for you if you decide to make Confession.’

There was a hush; a sense of excitement, and embarrassment, and guilt.

‘I will be available at all times to hear your Confessions,’ said the Chaplain.

Several of those present had confessed in former years, and would incidentally be Starlings until they left. Of the five, the fifth decided that his parents had been right, and the four wondered what they had done, to confess, or, with such short time at their disposal, what they could do, so that they would have something to confess.

They could only think of one thing.

But could they confess it?

Or could he possibly mean smoking? Which was an indulgence a bit like cake or hair-oil. Or had that been a joke?

Was smoking, or was it not, connected with a state of Grace?

Everybody sat in pain; those who knew and those who didn’t.

‘And now let us hear of your holiday escapades,’ said the Chaplain, smiling. ‘Has Charles been bird-watching again?’

So they continued with their festivities. Stupefying in the heat, and in any case being almost uniquely limited conversationalists, they talked with difficulty. Philomena had pulled the green satin curtains on both windows, to exclude the sunshine which the Chaplain found so painful. The coal fire and the cedar wood blazed. The tropical air was perfumed. There was an atmosphere of exotic dalliance that had always made an irresistible contrast to life in the farmyard. And there was safety.

They sat secure from all beatings and raggings, and the verbal abuse to which they were continually subjected; absolutely safe, and a little sickly on a very rare species of China tea.

The Chaplain himself well understood these attractions. The truth was that, in addition to the pleasure of dirty necks and imagined dirty knees, this assembly was a blow struck against the Rest; the unspeakable games players and takers of cold showers. The Chaplain had suffered too, if only verbally. It was mutual shelter. It was languorous disdain. The flag of ‘No Surrender’ flew from the top of the Head’s own House.

So he sat, smiling and at peace, and was mildly amused as a fetching young ragamuffin, Humphrey Watson-Wyatt, haltingly regaled them with some perfectly gruesome details of a fortnight spent with his golfing parents at Gleneagles.

Chapter Four

Tea parties were also being held on this first strange day by Mr Dotterel, who was known as Dotty, and taught Mathematics, and Mr De Vere Clinton, who was known as the Beard, and taught Art. Both had premises in the New Buildings.

The company at Mr Dotterel’s was rugged and none too brainy. They all smoked, though not in his presence, and several of them had achieved the most daring of all forbidden activities – a visit to a public house in Marston.

The company at Mr De Vere Clinton’s was artistic. Hair was long. Sports coats were colourful. Trousers were kept up with pink tweed ties. Sandals were worn, and vivid socks.

At both receptions, behaviour and discourse were of a much freer nature than those which prevailed at the Chaplain’s assembly. Both Dotty and the Beard tended to put arms round their young visitors. And both showed an appreciation of ribaldry and could join in to uproarious effect.

Also, the subject under discussion by each group this afternoon was identical. There were nine new boys this term, and it was important to decide upon their potential.

This sorry collection had come a day early and wandered about together, suffering from homesickness and mutual disinterest; and this morning had come under close observation as to their sex appeal and possible willingness to make themselves available. Unknown to each, his one hope of being gently treated was centred on his claims towards being a ‘bijou’ – a quaint term of whose origin even Dr Rowles – who was known as Roly, and occasionally, on account of his tendency to call a spade a spade, as Arsehole Rowles – had declared himself ignorant, even though he had been Assistant Head through four reigns and nearly forty-seven years.

The annoying fact was that both assemblies agreed that there were only two potential jewels in the whole bunch; and that it was one of the worst bags in years.

Of the two, Dotty’s group gave the major vote to Allen, who
was well-built and dark, and the Beard’s favoured Fitzmaurice, who
was slim, fair and an Honourable.

At least three of the remaining seven were agreed to be very likely Starlings; than which no one could say worse.

The majority was not invited to tea. The Junior House messed about and became re-acquainted. There was an uproar of chasing between desks, slamming the lids, ping pong and argument in the Big Schoolroom, alongside the Quad. The attraction of a sunny day for decaying adults was meaningless to them. It was dark and cool in there and clouds of dust could be seen in rays coming through the windows.

Everyone went into the Junior House, and became fags, for the first year. Then they went into one of three Houses, named after former masters, Priestley, Sheldon and Pryor, which were presided over by Roly, the Pedant and the Cod. The Junior House was more or less controlled by Mr Wall, who was older, gentler and more vague than Mr Chips.

Up from the War Memorial, on the Chapel Square, through a beautiful wood, and on top of a grass hill, was an ancient swimming pool, whose cement had turned green. It was crowded. Boys walking the still higher hills could hear the shouts and splashes from below. These were the Lovers – though some were merely Smokers. Up on these heights there were vast clumps of gorse bushes, whose scent would be a nostalgic memory in the future, mingled in many cases with the oddly exciting smell of the first cigarette, inhaled through the nose. They gave ideal protection to the amorous – and to the smokers.

The Lovers walked slowly in pairs, lingering and shy, and nervously happy; nothing to be said except ‘I missed you’. This was unthinkable in the holidays. It belonged here.

Of course, some went too far. It was thought shocking that Henderson, who was a Prefect, and Finch Minor, should be seen walking through the Quad in their bathing trunks, and on up into the wood, with Finch Minor, who had only been here for two terms, carrying a bearskin rug.

Carleton changed in his dormitory. Jimmy Rich had decided that there would be no cricket, but boys were invited to come to the Nets and exhibit their prowess. As a result of the year’s departures there were five vacant places on the First Eleven.

This was Carleton’s last term, and it was going to be marvellous. He had gained his entrance to Oxford. His decision, by which he had surprised even himself, not to be Senior Prefect, would now pay off in freedom and pleasure. It was a point well understood by his Housemaster, Dr Rowles, who had not objected. Having himself spent a lifetime as second-in-command, he was secretly pleased to see so intelligent a boy in a similar position, leaving the Captaincy to that crashing bore, Steele. Everybody knew about it, including Steele, who was too flattered and thick-skinned to care; and in a distant way it gave a little unfamiliar lustre to Dr Rowles’s own position.

‘Changing in dorm,’ as distinct from the Changing Room, was a Prefect’s privilege. This one was the largest in Roly’s House, which lay adjacent to the Big Schoolroom, and it was a chilly and impressive place, with oak beams up in the vault and square wooden pillars that relieved the monotony of wardrobes and thirty beds under dark blue blankets. The keeping of order was shared by Johns, another Prefect, who slept in a distant corner.

It was exciting to be back in one’s whites after a whole year: a fresh open shirt, the soft feel of his dark blue blazer, the immaculately pressed longs with a white-flannel smell. He was careful to arrange the points of his shirt collar outside the blazer. The badge on his top pocket sported Colours for all games. He put on his blue peaked cap and looked at himself in the little mirror that hung inside the wardrobe. He felt dashing.

His white boots made a satisfying crunch of studs across the wooden floor. Dr Rowles’s study and bedroom were off the stone landing outside the dormitory. As Carleton went down the stone staircase he saw his Housemaster coming out of the Big Schoolroom. There was bedlam behind him and he had his hands over both ears. Dr Rowles – who was a Doctor of Philosophy – could not stand noise or burning toast.

‘Oh
please
have a game of ping pong, sir.’

‘Ah clear off, Harris. Not now. That voice of yours goes right through my head. Ah . . . Carleton!’

‘Hullo, sir. I didn’t see you last night. How are . . . ?’

‘You’re looking fit. Listen here. . . .’ Dr Rowles lowered his voice, conspiratorially, took Carleton’s elbow in a strong grip and turned him back up the stairs. ‘That extraordinary bird, Gower, is on the prowl again.’

He spoke with a critical relish similar to Mrs Crabtree’s, but with more wonder in it.

‘Already?’ said Carleton.

‘I’ve just encountered him in his most unlikely base of operations – the Washroom – and booted him up the arse.’

The Doctor went ahead, into his study. He sat at the desk at which he spent nights working at mathematical problems under a green lampshade. The abstract joy of Higher Mathematics provided an essential and god-given relaxation from the continuous study of humankind at its most curious. Sometimes he would leave off, and invite Carleton, or Johns, to come in his dressing-gown for a cup of tea out of a white mug, with biscuits from a tin. It was fun, sitting there, with the others all asleep next door in bed. They would discuss the novels of E. M. Forster. (The Doctor quoted Ashley’s opinions, with respect.) And the literary criticism of Virginia Woolf, which Dr Rowles considered good, but of the second class.

Rowles was small and strong, with a huge head, and pale blue humorous eyes that wrinkled in amusement or opened wide in wonder. He appeared in a new thick tweed sports coat almost every Term – luxurious and original in colour, though never as gaudy as Jimmy Rich’s – and he ceaselessly brought his brown, spongy-soled, long-lasting shoes to an amazing polish. He exuded a strong, clean, tweedy smell. He was always washing his hands; and as he kept his shoe-polish on a bench in the Washroom, it was not surprising that, for one reason or the other, he had met Gower.

‘He’s an extra
ordinary
bird,’ he said.

He was sitting with his powerful, fleshy, hairy hands folded comfortably in his lap. (His large watch was buried in a black jungle on his wrist.) But he now turned to the desk, picked up his tobacco pouch, and lit his pipe in great clouds. Carleton feared that he was in for a session. He was dying to get to the Nets.

Everyone at Weatherhill was an extraordinary – or, at the least, curious – bird to Dr Rowles; even Steele, who was a curious bird simply because he
was
so crashing a bore. It was the interest, and the distance, that resulted that had maintained him securely in the position of Housemaster for so very long. These qualities also assured stability in times of crisis; of which he had known, and privately enjoyed, a great many.

Rowles met the new creatures with a puzzled amusement and said good-bye to the old without much regret. They came, and subsequently, one presumed, the Lord dismissed them with His blessing. There was not much difference between them when they came, and not much more when they departed. They were all birds of a feather, and all curious. The supply was inexhaustible. It was an agreeable occupation. The only drawback was the teaching. He was a poor and impatient explainer to the simple-minded, and, as he had once sadly remarked to Carleton, he should really have had to concern himself with the Sixth Form only at a school academically superior to this.

Another trouble, of which he was unaware, was that, in his detachment, and out of the necessity to find the boys at least curious, the Doctor tended to exaggerate their characteristics under one convenient and inaccurate label. Carleton had long ago become ‘the Cynic’. No denial was permitted. It had annoyed and hurt, and would not be forgotten.

But in the case of Gower, Dr Rowles’s summing-up was perfectly accurate. Gower was certainly an extraordinary bird.

Gower belonged to no group and was never invited to tea. He worked alone. His occupation was kleptomania; and though he had only been here for one term the pickings had been considerable. The corridor of lockers containing overcoats, alongside the washroom, and the wardrobes in the two downstairs dormitories to which it led, satisfied his unlikely passion. But he had also made baffling sorties right into the Common Room – also off this corridor – which was shared by Carleton, Johns, and the two other Prefects of Priestley House; and cake, tinned pineapple, and other treasured objects had gone, with Gower, out of the door or window.

This was known only to Rowles and his four Prefects, and known only by circumstantial evidence. Gower had not yet been seen at work, or found in possession. The boy was a master hand; and equally so at producing hay fever, impetigo and many stranger conditions which excused him from Games and left him free to carry on his occupation. Rowles and Carleton, who was Head of the House, had given up long afternoons to depositing the bait and posting themselves behind doors, but to no avail.

And it was not merely that Gower had declined to act. Frequently the bait was gone!

He was a sallow-skinned boy with slanting eyes and a dark neck, and he had the largest organ that anyone had ever seen. It was a truncheon. And it was the object of savage mockery and unexpressed admiration in about equal shares. Whether or not it made him steal tinned pineapple was a matter for the analysts. But it did not appear to worry him; rather to the contrary.

The horrible fact was that Gower had several times smilingly acceded to the request, from junior associates in the Upper Dormitory, to exhibit his extension. There were cries of ‘Gosh!’ and ‘Ugh!’ – again in equal shares – as it spread away across the room.

Gower’s smile was half Fear and half Taunting. Being plain, idle, unwashed, and above all non-conformist, he was open to destruction. Hence the Fear. But he knew himself to be indestructible, and moreover to have a secret advantage in his occupation. Hence the Taunting. The combination could not have been more dangerous: it infuriated others and also encouraged them to action.

He was, for example, beaten harder because of the smile, which he wore throughout that operation. He also customarily wore an exercise-book inside his trousers; which helped the smile. But even when this was removed, the smile remained. And it was still there when he left the room.

The simple fact was that, as long as Gower knew that he held their provisions and pocket-money in the palm of his hand, he could smile at them all.

In studying his case, there was the question of the home background. But Dr Rowles had possessed neither the evidence nor the inclination to investigate this. All he knew, with wry amusement and even a little wondering relish, was that Gower’s father was a High Court judge.

Dr Rowles avoided parents. The mothers were the worst, and women he could scarcely bear to address in any case. They were an extraordinary breed. He was only compelled to speak to them on Weatherhill Day (June
28
th), when they came in hats made of artificial cherries and feathers, and he moved in horrified wonderment amongst them. But the fathers, in the parental sphere, were almost as bad. The way they both regarded the extraordinary birds they had hatched, filled the Doctor with an amazed distaste. They had no comprehension whatsoever of the nature or potential of the creature they had fostered.

Their invariable attitude was an affection that made him wince, and a pride of creation that was blind as a bat; being frequently directed towards idle little liars. It was in part excused, in his mind, by the fact that the creatures could not possibly show their true natures at all in the holidays. Because nobody could be as blind as that.

It was the Doctor’s absolute assumption that the creatures lived, strove, learned, revealed themselves and developed here.

At home they merely existed.

Seated at his desk at this very moment the thought came to him that he was disrupting Carleton’s natural progress, and he said, abruptly –

‘Look here. . . . You were on the way to your cricket. You carry on. We’ll deal with this matter another time.’

Carleton wondered if he should protest his interest. They had otherwise laboured upstairs for nothing. But he said: ‘Righto, Sir. Thanks.’

He moved to the door.

‘You heard . . . by the way, Carleton . . . the Cambridge people turned down the unfortunate Ashley.’

‘Oh. No, Sir. I didn’t. That’s too bad.’

‘Your sympathy is characteristically overwhelming.’

‘I
was
sympathetic,’ said Carleton, beginning to bridle.

‘I don’t like it myself, but it’s none of my business. He’s a very curious bird.’

This was tantalising.

‘How do you mean, you don’t like it, Sir?’

Rowles puffed his pipe, blew out smoke, and clearly decided not to say something.