Lord Dismiss Us (39 page)

‘What game?’ asked Gower, looking at all four of them, and overacting Innocence.

‘You rang that bell last night, Gower,’ said Pryde, who had gone very red and poxy. ‘And I’ll tell you why. Because you’re mad, Gower. You’re cuckoo. You should be locked up!’

‘Me? I
never
.
. . .’

‘Cut that out, Gower!’ Rogers shouted. ‘Admit it and let’s have done with it. You’re not getting out of here until you do.’

‘But I didn’t. Carleton knows I didn’t.’

Carleton heard the whining appeal, and saw the sly look. Gower and the note. Was this blackmail?

‘And how do I know that?’

‘Because you got us up. You and Dr Rowles. Don’t you remember?’

‘No, I don’t. Were you really there, Gower?’

‘Of course he wasn’t,’ said Rogers. ‘Listen, Gower, you stupid little swine, don’t you realise that by not admitting this and all the other things, you’re only making matters worse for yourself?’

‘What other things?’ asked Gower.

‘Your filthy thefts,’ roared Pryde. ‘Your stealing from us here, and from the lockers. You should be flayed alive.’

‘My pocket-knife, Gower,’ said Rogers. ‘Where is my pocket-knife?’

‘And what about my chocolate-cake?’ shouted Pryde.

Gower smiled. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

It was flawlessly done. Carleton thought he had better exert control.

‘Gower, did you or did you not ring that bell?’

‘I didn’t,’ said Gower. ‘Honest, Carleton. I’ve never heard of such an idea.’

‘Oh yes, you did,’ said Rogers, hitting the rug on the table.

‘You’d better prove it,’ murmured Johns; and Gower smiled again.

‘We don’t have to,’ said Pryde. ‘Gower is going to admit it, or bleed.’

‘But you can’t. . . . I haven’t. . . .’

It was true. Carleton interrupted.

‘You may go for the present, Gower. But you’ll hear more of this.’

‘What the deuce?’ said Rogers.

‘We’ll collect the proof,’ said Carleton. ‘Someone must have heard him. Hop it, Gower.’

‘Thanks awfully,’ said Gower, opening the door.

‘You’re crazy,’ said Pryde.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Carleton.

It was the first time he had controlled them, as Head.

Gower went out. He left them to quarrel. But they had insulted him. It was an injustice. He was bitter. He would hit back. He had scanned the room and seen little. But there was another possibility. In Break maybe. Pity it had to be Carleton.

There were these awful stupid exams. Two papers before Break. He made ink-blotches on both. One of them, set by Ashley, was last year’s; though Gower did not perceive it.

In Break, conditions were good. They were playing Cloister Cricket, and a number of people were rushing about in the Quad, after the tennis-ball that came flying through the arches. Up on the Chapel Square, McCaffrey was drilling Juniors in detested P.T.: they were jumping up and down and waving their arms. They were sweating too: it was now a broiling summer morning. In short, there was noise and confusion, and no one saw him go up in the long grass; no one except Lucretia. Her school term had ended. She was brooding over her rabbit-hutches higher up in the wood.

He edged round the corner of the Chapel, and so towards the buttress. Oh, yes, he knew! He had seen. He had seen for weeks. Keeping a watching brief on the entire demesne, Gower had seen everything possible outdoors.

What luck! A piece of paper sticking out above the nettles. Was it any good? Yes, it was first-rate. It was not in the previous writing, so it must be Carleton’s – ‘Surely behind the San would be all right now? There are so few days left. What can possibly go wrong?
Please
. I
must
see you before we break up. You say when, and I’ll be there.’

These activities were incomprehensible to Gower, but one could tell that it was good copy. Slyly, he went further up through the trees, and then crosswise in the direction of Lucretia, on whose face he saw, to his satisfaction, a look of unaccustomed bemusement.

‘What’s that?’ she called out.

But he turned his back and descended towards the Square, where the gymnasts were still jumping up and down. Allen was standing there, pretending to watch them; getting ready to nip round behind the Chapel. Oh, yes, very satisfactory. He skirted the lower dormitory windows, and went in past the washroom, and up the stairs. No reason why he shouldn’t be visiting the Upper Dorm. He looked into it: vast and empty. He nerved himself, and ventured all, for the second time: he knelt at Roly’s keyhole. No one there. The handle turned softly. He was in. It was done.

A shout from the bottom of the stairs – ‘Lower your voices, damn you!’

Roly was coming up.

He hurried into the Dorm, and was quickly behind a locker. It wasn’t his own; which would be hard to explain. But it was all right. Rowles had gone into his room.

Swift results indeed!

But more was to come. There was the sound of Roly’s door flying open, and a shout down the stairs – ‘Come up here, one of you!’

Gower’s pulses were actually putting on speed.

‘Ah, you! Find Gower for me, will you! I want him, and I want him now!’

‘Yes, Sir.’

The door slammed.

Gower’s heart had jumped into his mouth. This was not what he had anticipated.

But there was no future in being undiscoverable. He tiptoed over the bare wood, down the stairs and into the Big Schoolroom, where all was uproar: and at once that beastly Metcalfe shouted – ‘You’re wanted, Gower! Roly’s on the warpath. You’re for it.’

‘Oh,’ Gower whined. And he went upstairs and knocked on the door.

‘Come in!’

Rowles was holding the note. The sun blazed through the window. It was all happening with horrible speed and nakedness.

Rowles was boiling.

‘Thank you for this,’ he said.

‘How do you mean, Sir?’

‘Cut that out, Gower! It’s high time for plainness. I’ve had enough. Where did you get this?’

‘Um. . . .’

‘Answer me!’

‘Behind the Chapel, Sir.’

‘Well, I don’t in fact thank you for it. But it gives us an opportunity to clear things up.’

‘What things, Sir?’

Rowles had cultivated the rare gift of cooling, from white heat. He took up the pipe, and the pouch.

‘I’m afraid the game’s up, old man.’

‘What game, Sir? I don’t know any game, Sir.’

‘I’m afraid you do. You’ve been stealing from my Prefects, and my chaps, all term. I’ve been foolishly lenient. But I’ve done now.’

‘Stealing, Sir? Stealing what?’

‘I’ll grant you may just be loopy enough not to know it. But it’s immaterial. I’m no longer concerned with proof. I’m afraid you’ll have to go, old chap.’

‘Go, Sir?’

‘Yes. I’m writing your father. You needn’t worry. I’ll explain, so that you’ll have no trouble. You’re not well, my dear fellow, you see. You need attention.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Sir?’

‘Ah, don’t, Gower, don’t.’

The Doctor sighed. Gower looked ashen, as well as dirty.

‘Since it won’t make any difference one way or the other, you may as well tell me. Did you ring that bell?’

‘Me? No, Sir.’

‘God knows whether that’s true or not.’

He sighed again, and turned to the note.

‘This you certainly do know about, and I don’t know what you think you’re doing to these wretched people. The curious thing is you could have done much more harm in handing them elsewhere; and I can’t decide whether this is some vestige of generosity in you or mere stupidity.’

‘But I don’t even know what it is, Sir.’

‘Ah, cut that out! I’ve done now. You understand the position. I’m sorry, but that’s it. Would you send Carleton to me, please. Straight away. Run along now.’

‘But, Sir. . . .’

‘Get out! Hop it! Off with you!’

Gower went wanly out. He was not smiling.

The Doctor put his head in his hands. The blasted sun was back. He felt drowsy. A knock on the door brought him alive.

‘Come in, Carleton!’

‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

Ashley entered. He shut the door and stood there, brooding and tense, and running a finger through his hair.

‘Oh God,’ said Rowles, putting his hands over his head.

‘You may be able to give me some advice – even help.’

Rowles, embarrassed, scratched his forehead with a delicate thumbnail.

‘This is a school, Ashley. Not a sanatorium.’

‘That’s it. Tell me more about that. These schools of yours. These public schools of yours.’

‘Mine?’

‘Yes, one-sexed and presided over by benighted bachelor Old Boys. What is their purpose? What are they producing? Homosexually experienced persons who believe themselves superior, but are, in fact, pitifully limited. You really can’t. . . .’

‘Stop it, man!’ Rowles banged the back of his fat pipe on a cigarette-box on the desk. ‘You make the mistake, Ashley, of thinking you are representative. You represent nothing except yourself. I did my best with you. It was no use.’

‘There are thousands like me.’

‘There is no one like you, Ashley,’ said Rowles, calming himself again. ‘In my opinion. . . .’ he blew a cloud out into the sunshine, ‘you are a quite extraordinary bird.’

‘Yes, indeed!’ said Ashley, excitedly. ‘Yes, indeed! Because you’re at the heart of the system, Rowles. You need all involved to be extraordinary. You need it. You don’t give a damn whether they’re benighted or not. Misery doesn’t interest you. Eccentricity is all. Staff and School must be as dotty as possible for your entertainment – no, even so that the blood should continue to flow in your veins. Two people who weren’t benightedly, interestingly, lost, were dispatched. There was no place for Rich and Matron here. You said so yourself. There is no place for any simple man here. And certainly for no woman – because they are anathema to you. This is a public school. It is all wrong. And you are in it – up to the neck!’

Rowles puffed his pipe. His hand trembled a little. But otherwise he had gained calm.

‘Ashley, this is a place where people learn to behave with decency towards each other, and where they receive an absolutely first-class education – probably the best in the world. Far from being all wrong, it is ninety-nine per cent right. If extraordinary birds like you choose to come here and misbehave, it is not my fault. It is not the system’s fault. I should have got you out and kept you out. That is my failure.’

‘Rowles, I really believe you’re as blind as you seem. Can you not see that I am a relative of everyone in this factory – including yourself?’

‘I certainly cannot. You are Ashley, and always were. We are not concerned with sausages.’

‘People, people, people. . . ! And, by God, Rowles, you bear responsibility. For me, for Dotterel, Clinton, Starr, and for all the superior children who walk out with undeveloped hearts and souls. . . .’

‘Oh dry up, Ashley!’ Rowles was flushed. His voice was raised. ‘And leave Forster out of it. I’m sick of your interminable complaints. Your indulgence in your own little self has reached a nauseating. . . .’

‘I know!’

Rowles raised his pale blue eyes and studied this very curious bird.

‘What’s that?’

‘I know it has. Help me.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Help me.’

‘Ah, help yourself, man!’

Rowles put his head in his hands again, and the pipe nearly burnt the top of his right ear.

There was a knock.

‘Come in!’

Carleton was surprised to find Ashley there, looking so odd. Something had been happening.

‘You wanted me, Sir?’

‘Yes. Stay, Ashley. You may be able to advise,’ said the Doctor in a funny voice.

He picked up the piece of paper and threw it along the desk towards Carleton.

He felt sick, and stupid, as he saw his writing; and couldn’t even think of Gower.

Ashley put a finger on it and drew it across, and looked down on it.

In the silence, even though it was the worst moment of his life, Carleton felt himself struck with the extraneous thought that it was the first time the three of them had been in one room together.

‘When I saw you at Glen Court, Carleton,’ the Doctor said. ‘And accepted you for my House, I had no idea you were a person who would go in for all this muck.’

‘This isn’t muck,’ Ashley said. ‘This is public school life.’

‘That’s right,’ said Carleton loudly, desperation having given him courage. A sense of injustice at his fate was making him react to Rowles in a quite new way. ‘That’s right. And Glen Court is right too. At that time I was being courted
night and day
by a master called Mr Brownlow. Prep schools are just the same!’

The Doctor dropped his mouth open.

Ashley gave a kind of laugh.

‘Ah, stop your complaints!’ Rowles said; meaning them both.

‘I’m not complaining,’ Carleton said. ‘I’m glad.’

Everyone was astonished.

‘Have you looked at Mr Ashley lately?’ said Rowles.

Carleton looked, and replied, ‘I’m not him.’

‘Show me that thing.’ Rowles groped for the note. ‘You’re glad of this?’

‘Yes.’

Rowles read it. Carleton watched, and felt his confidence ebbing.