Lord Dismiss Us (37 page)

‘Looked as if he’d swallowed a bloody ghost,’ said Pryde. ‘Better than Finch Minor, balling in front of everybody.’

‘You once put cough mixture down his throat,’ Carleton thought.

‘Steele says they’ve had it a long time coming,’ Pryde went on. ‘The Head saw them himself on the first day of term. Good riddance.’

Carleton realised what was different: the uproar of the last Seniors going to bed; the slamming of the shower door; it was missing. Everyone was chastened.

‘Beauchamp was spitting and puking about the place,’ said Rogers. ‘That’s the one I’m most pleased about. Though why they let Sinnott off the hook I’ll never know.’

‘Steele says the Butcher found nothing on him,’ said Pryde. ‘But the Head’s had it in for Beauchamp ever since Gillingham and the shambles.’

Carleton had finished his toast, and was trying to think of an excuse to get out. It was too early for their shower. What was Johns thinking? Did he know that this conversation was making him feel sick and weak in the stomach?

‘I don’t know about Peters, but his hair was too bloody long,’ said Rogers.

‘That trip to the woods with Fitzmaurice was his little idea – though the Beard was in on it. Steele says the Beard’s had a ticking off.’

‘Is that all?’

‘He’s a Master.’

‘And what about Fitzmaurice? He’s no angel.’

‘He’s an Honourable.’

‘Yeh. . . . That won’t save his backside next time I get the chance.’

‘Nor me.’

There was no sound except the munching of toast and the turning of pages by Johns – who suddenly said: ‘Aren’t you two a little over-enjoying this?’

Carleton sat very still, wondering – ‘Is this some kind of defence of me?’ – and then, ‘Is Johns braver than me – or is he just detached from every blessed thing?’

‘What?’ said Pryde.

‘This rash of expulsions. Aren’t you both being a bit sadistic about it? It’s giving you kicks, is it?’

‘Ah, read your blasted book,’ said Rogers, settling his spectacles agitatedly.

‘And mind your own bloody business,’ said Pryde.

‘That was more or less going to be my advice to you,’ said Johns.

This was the best of Johns for a long time, Carleton thought. It was the person he had once known – before Nicky appeared.

They were quiet, but there was something seething at the table.

‘Carleton’s not saying much,’ said Rogers at last. ‘What’s eating your pal, Ashley?’

‘How do you mean?’ Carleton said faintly.

‘He cut both classes this afternoon. Steele went to look for him, and found him in his room, stinking drunk.’

‘Pissed as a newt,’ said Pryde, turning his poxy face round.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Carleton.

‘Guilty conscience, I expect,’ Rogers remarked.

But all at once they seemed curiously uninterested.

‘I’ve a ginger cake,’ Pryde announced. ‘Want some?’

‘O.K.,’ said Rogers.

Pryde rose and took down a tin from the shelf below the Bible, and placed it on the table, having trouble removing the lid.

His knobbly face was a marvel of vacuity as he stared down into the tin.

‘It’s gone,’ he mumbled stupidly.

Rogers had leaned forward and was peering through his spectacles.

‘Oh glorious Gower!’ Carleton was thinking. An enemy had become an ally in this moment of absolute elation. He even wanted to laugh out loud at the glint in Johns’s eye as he turned slowly from his book – and somewhere far off was the thought of Roly in the shower, waiting for a proper encumbrance.

‘The bastard!’ said Pryde gazing into the empty tin. ‘That bloody little bastard.’

Chapter Twenty-four

Next morning the Butcher had to move his car away from the front steps.

A tripod was placed there instead, surmounted by a black cloth.

Percy T. Fothergill – as he signed all his works – had come to take his annual photograph.

When everyone turned up at the start of Break, they found this curious visitor standing there alone, as if it had dropped out of the sky. Old Fothergill was indoors, paying his respects. The sky was good – blue, with fat white clouds. A bit breezy, but bright. Percy T. had notorious luck. He resembled an aged sorcerer, and it was a Headmasters’ jest that he could arrange his fine days by casting spells.

Under the black gaze of the new arrival, pandemonium raged on the steps.

Dr Rowles, to whom punctuality was sacred, was already seated on his chair, with his hands over his ears.

This had been for years the Pedant’s self-appointed pigeon. His voice was testily snapping out instructions. His bony forefinger stabbed. His frown seemed to express agony – ‘Not there, Merryman, you blasted idiot! On the table!’

The steps didn’t rise sharply enough, even though the boys rose in height. So tables were placed on the wide top step, and chairs on the tables. The rougher Senior element mounted this shaky edifice by chosen right, their heads as high as the lintel over the hall-door. Not having been made Prefects, in this way they staked their own claim to superiority. Gentler spirits jostled for position beneath them, spurred on by the Pedant’s – ‘Get in there, you people. Don’t stand round like the young woman of Rome. We want you in this blasted picture. We have no option.’

The Prefects stood behind the row of masters’ chairs; Steele behind the Head’s throne; Carleton behind Rowles, who was seated on the lesser throne used by Ma Crab at lunch. (Ladies were omitted from this memorial).

‘Take your fat head out of our light, Seaton-Scott!’

‘Watch it, for Christ’s sake, or we’ve all had it!’

‘Ouch, damn you!’

‘Clear off, Gower. You stink.’

‘We want Percy T.!’

‘We want Percy T.!’

‘We want Percy T.!’

‘You people, get down on your arses, we haven’t all day,’ the Pedant shouted at the Juniors. They subsided on to the bottom step, under the masters, and the lowest row on to the gravel itself.

Old Mr Wall came edging his way along behind Junior backs, and sat, by right of longevity, beside Rowles. Looking down, Carleton noted with a fascinated distaste that his white hair was curiously streaked with yellow, like tobacco stains.

‘Well, he’s brought the sun again, Wall.’

‘What was that, Rowles?’

‘Ah, never mind. It’s impossible to communicate in this unearthly din.’

The Chaplain, at his most benign, was seated beside Wall. He smiled with almost total amusement. Every year he was taken thus; by the place pretending communion, and posing for a portrait with no approximation to truth. The smile darkened a little, but with pity for mankind, when the Beatle sat beside him and to the Chaplain’s near-disbelief remarked: ‘I say, what fun!’

‘We want Percy T.!’

‘We want Percy T.!’

Ashley moved in beside the Beatle. He felt dazed, distant, and curiously elated. He was unexperienced; and it was only the sudden swoops in which the earth seemed to disappear beneath him, that told him it was a hangover. He found himself hypnotised by the black spectre on three legs.

‘We want Percy T.!’

The truth was, the Head had overdone his attentions to Fothergill – a well-known figure in public-school circles – and when they came out into the hall they found the door blockaded by the backs of the student body, rising up out of sight. Accompanied by the Butcher, they had to retreat, proceed out along the Cloisters, up the steps towards the Chapel, and round the front of the House.

Until then, everyone, for want of anything else except the tripod, had been looking out on to a magnificent view of Buckinghamshire. The outer world; occupied, so it was said, but as blank as Mars as far as they were concerned. The Seniors on the top of the pyramid could even see, miles away beyond the trees, the roofs of Henley and the winding river.

But this remarkable trio turned the corner. The customary cheer for Percy T. broke, and rapidly faded. The Butcher was there.

He took an end seat, and the Head, with mortar-board to his chest, edged between the two rows and assumed the throne.

Percy T. held the stage, gripping his shoulder-length grey hair with both hands, to prevent it flying about in the breeze, and running his intent, half-closed eyes up to the highest point of the human pyramid, on which he focussed, awestruck, with open mouth, as if this absolute commonplace of his existence were a supreme achievement.

‘Bravo,’ he said, releasing one arm into the air, so that his hair flew about.

‘Bravo,’ several voices instantly responded.

He didn’t hear. He leaped forwards at the front row, calling out, ‘Legs crossed, children. Legs crossed, if you please. . . .’ Passing down the line, like a huge bird, in a long black all-year coat, tapping them on the knees. His fine head was all nose and chin, surmounting a high wing collar, and a cravat with mother-of-pearl pin.

Back in place, he surveyed them again.

He knew them not, Percy T. He portrayed them as one happy family, and assumed them to be so. Everyone smiled, more or less, from his pictures – as one. School. Strangers saw them as such. You had to have been there to realise that the serried ranks, the compact group, the One Smile, seethed with difference, with loves and hates.

It was not his concern; nor had it ever occurred to him. He went about England photographing schools and he knew exactly what they were. They were jolly groups. It was very agreeable, paying his calls, though the work was nervously exacting. He had no preference among these cheery places, though there were a few at which he was given a dry sherry before leaving.

Nobody was likely to inform Percy T. that four had been removed from his picture the previous night; being quietly shunted away, in extreme distress, like coffins from a hospital. Their absence was regretted by Carleton. It made the most important photograph ever, not one hundred per cent complete. It was a pity, too, about Jimmy Rich; though he had him in last year’s photo. Otherwise, what a memento!

Nicky had cunningly manoeuvred himself to a place on the steps just above, so that he would be looking over his shoulder. He would have this framed. It would hang in his bedroom all his life. It would be the one absolute possession to be saved when the house went on fire.

‘There are three handsome fellows up there who won’t see my birdie,’ Percy T. shouted out in a tremendous voice. ‘They won’t see the cuckoo. Could we have you forward a little, please. Make room there. . . .’

There were shouts, catcalls, giggles, whistles, and ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’

All the same, Carleton thought, it means we’re soon leaving. Strange, but it had not struck him before. He had felt that this golden term would last for ever. But in a few weeks it was only going to be a memory. All the more reason why they
must
find a way of meeting. True, they would meet afterwards. But it had happened here, and here it was especially sweet. Besides, he couldn’t wait. Every day without a private meeting would be empty.

‘Yes. Yes. But such frowns, my dear people. That will never do. Oh no. Let us see some smiles. That’s it. Come along. That’s better. Now everyone will watch for the cuckoo. . . .’

What are you doing, you Old Actor, thought Ashley. You are framing in admiration a portrait of an establishment that can put four children through terror. ‘You come of a theatrical family,’ Rowles had said. Had that really any relevance? Players and painted stage took all my love. . . . Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

It was extraordinary: he was not yet sober.

Striking at Carleton with his gown. Years ago. Years. Does one never know anything at the time of its occurrence?

And now Percy T. moves towards his strange black friend, his life’s companion, with a last – ‘All smiling at the birdie. That’s the way our Mammies and Pappies want to see us. They don’t want to see us looking down in the dumps, do they? Certainly not. . . .’

And, yes, this is us. This is how it was. This was our two hundred. Cast together by chance, certainly, but deviously united. Masters apart, here we were when thick hair covered our heads, and all our eyes were alive. Shoulder to shoulder. In one place. In our life which you cannot know, though every day was vivid beyond remembering. Mind you, there is, if you look carefully, more joy in the Junior rows at the bottom. As the pyramid rises, the Smile visibly diminishes – while Gower and the Chaplain, of course, have their own. But this must merely reflect the childish appeal of Percy T.’s humours. Surely this was us – all of us – when it was simple. And Percy T. is establishing it for ever. Yes, the noble head has ducked down and gone quickly in under the black garment, and a hand like a claw is excitedly searching the air for the black bulb. It is discovered. It is held tenderly for a moment. Then the fingers squeeze. In the total silence of the two hundred, there is a sharp click. There you are. That was us; in our spring.

Knowing this, and while Percy T. twice more disappeared, Rowles sat and brooded. It was the same for him always on this occasion: it provoked a slight sadness.

They would soon be going now. Quite an interesting crowd. That was to say, the Seniors of the past two years. (In the first two, they scarcely developed). Carleton – less cynical than of yore, but still complacent; and yet at the same time, curiously naïf. Johns – wry bird, Johns. No flies on
him
. Four or five others. . . .

Still, it was the right age to say good-bye to them, and there would be other crowds. They cropped up at intervals. About eight years ago there was a very good crowd indeed; a chance collection of talented, baffling fellows; extraordinary really. None of them had made a mark; though it was true that one was evidently doing something in the B.B.C.

This was the funny thing. Chaps came back; sometimes up to his room at night for tea and biscuits; and one could sense a disappointment. They found
him
old, limited, unaltering, parochial. . . . They were all profoundly unaware of the fact that
they
had been remarkably curious young birds, filled with unexpectedness, humour, vitality and promise, and were now ordinary, domesticated young men and, by comparison with their former selves, cracking bores.

Chapter Twenty-five

I’m only starting this again because of what Eric Ashley said this morning.

It’s silly really, because if it’s my memories of School – and that was my idea – there is only one thing worth recording now.

We haven’t been alone together.

The Purge is over. There were no more cases; though I think they said something to Sinnott. He’s gone very quiet, and very white. Thank goodness, Nicky wasn’t questioned, I don’t know why.

But the point is, for us, it isn’t over. We’re scared to meet – by the San, in the gorse, even at Little Hammerton. They’re all risky. Nicky said in one note it would kill his mother if anything happened.

We’re writing more notes than ever. The natural result, I suppose. And even that is very tricky. It’s hard to believe no one’s seen me going behind the Chapel.

We meet at rehearsals. I can’t make up my mind. At one moment it’s infinitely better than nothing. At the next it’s agony: it makes me yearn all the more, with no way of doing anything.

The parts we play make it all the worse. It’s funny – we’re not embarrassed any more, I suppose because the Beatle’s story is so unreal. Yet, in another way, for us it
is
real.

I don’t understand this, but I feel an urgency. I feel there is some deeper reason why we must meet before we break up.

I don’t understand that.

But it’s why everything, for me, underlines the fact that the term
is ending.

I had my last Sunday exeat. They must have thought me awful. I was dying to get back here and see him in Chapel.

We had our last match. We were beaten by five wickets. I made
16
and Nicky
27
. But my average is higher because of that century not out –
52
. It’s my best. My father seemed pleased.

Everyone is doing exams, except those of us who are leaving. They let us read books. It ought to be perfect.

Percy T.’s photos were pinned up on the board, and we wrote down our names. He is looking over my shoulder. In the best one, we’re both smiling.

Beside it was a neat little notice by the Pedant asking for all library books to be handed in.

So it goes.

This has nothing to do with Nicky. At least I don’t think so.

I’m a bit scared.

I suppose it is made very easy for us here. I’m a bit frightened about going out.

Anyhow one must be thankful – and I do thank goodness that I came here. Imagine going to a school, like Lucretia, where you return home every day! Or even – horrors! – a school with girls as well.

He came on me very suddenly. Ashley, I mean. I was standing by the War Memorial, looking down into the Quad. I was far off. I was thinking about Nicky, I suppose.

He startled me.

He said – ‘Any news of the story?’

‘No.’

‘It always takes a while.’

He was staring into my eyes and didn’t seem to be concerned with what we were saying. I couldn’t make it out. I was uncomfortable.

‘Have you been writing?’

‘Uh . . . no.’

‘You must. All the time. If you ever stop you will turn into me. That will be the end of you. I think you’ll be all right. The only danger is in your material. You are now in danger of ceasing at eighteen.’