Lord Dismiss Us (4 page)

‘It’s no matter. Far be it from me to expose myself to your cynicism, Carleton.’

‘I’m
not
cynical.’

‘Ah come off it, Carleton! By the way, have you made the acquaintance of our newcomers?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘He’ll want to see all you Prefects.’

‘They say he’s a tough nut,’ said Carleton.

Rowles opened his mouth like a fish in exaggerated surprise, and, flushing a little, made a high soprano noise – ‘Tee, hee!’

Carleton wished he hadn’t dared it. Dr Rowles would pass it on gleefully to his confrère, The Pedant, and they would commune over Carleton’s ‘cynicism’.

‘Well, isn’t he, Sir?’

‘Oh come now, don’t ask me, my dear fellow,’ said the Doctor, swivelling on his chair towards the desk, and, through a cloud of smoke, bending over some problem he had set himself in an exercise-book.

‘Cautious to the last,’ thought Carleton, going out.

Chapter Five

His Housemaster’s assumption about mere existence in the holidays was much to the point in the case of Carleton. It was true that he had reaped all the benefits of a cultivated background. But at home he knew no one of his own age. T. P. Carleton (Terence Philip) had lived a virginal, sinless, essentially solitary life for just eighteen years. It would have been beyond belief to youths born in less exceptional circumstances, but it seemed entirely normal to him. He was shy about answering the telephone in anyone’s presence, had smoked several cigarettes in the lavatory, and had recently taken to drinking a glass of beer openly at home.

The same was true of many of his associates.

Carleton was good-looking and intelligent. He had not learnt humility or unselfishness. He had brown hair and brown eyes set far apart. He was an only child, in the sense that he had a sister
who was ten years older, and married, and gone. His mother adored
him and his father was extremely proud of his batting averages. They lived only fifteen miles from the school; his father being a gentleman farmer of literary tastes, and his mother a poetess of repute.

‘Is there no friend you’d like to bring home?’ they would ask, until they learned better.

There was none, and it was not so strange. In this immature Society friends were really first made at the university. At school there was love and there were other people good at cricket too. But friendship demands a development of the persona in two people; and this was rare.

He had some community of interest and humour with Johns, with whom he was joint editor of the school magazine. (Carleton had vague hopes of being a writer, and he had returned from the holidays with a short story which he intended to submit to Ashley, if he could nerve himself to do so. Johns wrote satirical poems of great promise.) But Johns despised Games. His father would not care for that. Also, he was ugly; which would be embarrassing and would reflect on Carleton. He is asked to pick one companion from the whole School, and he comes home with this beaky-nosed fellow! Is this the best he can do? Is our boy not popular?

This assumed reaction by his parents was nonsense. But ‘looks’ were terribly important at Weatherhill.

Carleton had maintained this strict partition in reverse as well. That is to say, his parents had never been permitted to come to the school; neither on Weatherhill Day, nor to the end-of-Term summer ‘musicals’, in which he had twice taken a leading role; nor even to the Chapel on Sunday nights.

They could collect him on the four permitted Sundays, provided that they stayed in the car. Once his father had come wandering through the place, against this ruling, and after some moments of horror Carleton had felt an unexpected sense of pride. He looked more interesting and distinguished than most of the other fathers. The barrier erected by his own caution had been broken for him, and there was release. Still, it must not happen again.

On the two main days when parents exhibited themselves Carleton’s ban was not merely provoked by the dangers inherent in such an exhibition. On his account there was also the danger of upsetting the picture of perfection so zealously maintained at home. The Old Boys might bowl him out for a duck. And heaven alone knew what the end-of-Term Show looked like from out front! Was he really acting? Or was it a laughably pathetic children’s charade? He would not dream of risking it.

He went downstairs, along the corridor where Gower operated, and into the Prefects’ Common Room, to collect his bat which stood in a corner among their four canes. Johns was stretched out on the faded ottoman, engrossed in some book about his passion, the Cinema.

‘Gosh, how you can lie in here on a day like this beats me.’

Johns did not answer.

Carleton registered the fact that only after the holidays did one see what an appallingly shabby and smelly little room it really was. There was a gas cooker on an old cupboard, on which the toast was frequently allowed to burn. They would sit and eat it, with jam, at the square table which nearly filled the room. This was covered, not with a tablecloth but with an old rug, which hung down to the floor. One of the other two, Rogers, or Pryde, had stuck a cutout on the wall, of a naked cutie with blown-up breasts. Carleton considered it hideous and – whichever was responsible – falsely boastful.

Carleton and Johns found the other two alien. It was mutual. No one ever said so, but they knew it. Rogers and Pryde could give six strokes with relish. They could strike fear into fags, and apparently relished this too. Carleton and Johns could not manage either of these things. Johns was entirely satisfied with this fact. But Carleton felt that it was a lack in him as a Prefect; especially as he was Head of the House.

He collected his bat, and, wanting to be friendly, said: ‘What is it you’re reading?’

‘A new tome about the Magic Screen, given me as a compensation for returning to prison.’

‘I don’t find it’s prison.’

‘You wouldn’t. You’re off to play ball with your friends, I see. By the way, my trunk still seems to be reposing upstairs. Would you send me a couple of fags?’

Carleton went along the corridor and through the Big Schoolroom, where pandemonium still prevailed. A group of five was arguing loudly about something in the door to the outside. Boys only fagged for the first year, but Carleton knew all five to be eligible. Two of them were humorists, who he had frequently beaten.

Metcalfe made a low bow and said, ‘Good morning, your Honour.’

Trench Minor, who was noted for his ability to yawn and throw out a light shower of saliva, bowed even lower and said, ‘The carriage awaits.’

Carleton managed not to smile, and reflected that it was inconceivable that either remark could ever be made to his inferiors, Rogers and Pryde.

‘You two. Johns wants you in the Common Room at once,’ he said, ‘You’re to carry his trunk to the box room.’

‘Oh
no
!’ said Metcalfe.

‘Oh, crikey,’ said Trench Minor. ‘Why does it always have to be us?’

‘Shut up and do as you’re told,’ said Carleton, and he stepped out on to the Chapel Square – so named because this grey, simple building was at one side, with the wood behind it. ‘Why
did
it have to be them?’ he wondered. Because they gave cheek? But, to be honest, he found it preferable to the mute stupidity of their confrères. Indeed, they must have scented this fact before now: he found it quite difficult to keep order, and depended on Dr Rowles in the background. He had made the right choice: they had asked for it. Still, there was something wrong.

Gower was eating his nails close to the War Memorial.

Carleton was startled enough to say: ‘What are you doing, Gower?’

‘Nothing,’ said Gower, smiling faintly. ‘Why, what should I be doing?’

‘Don’t be cheeky.’

‘I’m
not
,’ said Gower, in his well-known whine. ‘What’s cheeky about that?’

‘Oh, shut up, Gower. You’re a bore.’

‘I’m
not
.’

Carleton had moved away across the Square, and was descending the stone steps that led to the front of the Head’s House. Ashley was standing on the verge of a mown lawn that no one was supposed to stand on. He seemed to be frowning up at the sky. Carleton wondered if he should say something about the Cambridge business, but it was an adult matter of whose meaning and importance he was uncertain. He was also shy, remembering the incident with Ashley’s gown in the morning. It had been embarrassing.

‘Barbarous custom,’ said Ashley, with disgust.

Carleton realised that he was watching the Fire Practice which the New Boys were traditionally put through on the first day by McCaffrey, the gym instructor. From the considerable height of a window of the Junior Dormitory, which was above the Dining Hall, they were being lowered to the ground in a harness which came under their armpits.

He recognised at once the next candidate to come out of the little window. It was the black-haired boy called Allen, who he had spoken to the previous night, because he had been put in Priestley House and in Carleton’s dormitory. This boy was sixteen – two years older than the other eight – and he therefore avoided the Junior House. This also meant that he did not have to fag, and he could put his hands in his trouser pockets.

There was an immediate cheer from the crowd basking in the sunshine below. Carleton noticed with interest that a woman and a young girl – it was obvious to him who they must be – were watching up above from a side window of the Head’s House.

The boy was wearing a brown sports coat, elegantly cut in a hacking style. He was well built and had some difficulty in getting through the window. His face was flushed. He was confused and hung on to the window. McCaffrey had obviously explained nothing. The man’s hand came out and gave Allen a push. It must have been a hard one, because the boy not only lost his grip on the window and was dangling, correctly, in the air; he also swung out, and was spun around, so that the back of his head hit the wall.

There were greatly amused shouts of – ‘Hey! Steady on there!’

McCaffrey had begun to lower him. The pull of the harness twisted him around so that he was now turned in to the wall and his face was scraping against it. The trick was to keep oneself away from the wall with outstretched hands, but McCaffrey never had the wit to explain this.

The crowd gave its customary advice – ‘Kick out!’ they shouted. ‘Kick the wall!’

The bewildered boy did so wildly, and swung out, and came back hard against the wall. There was a cheer. His face was still against it. They advised him again. ‘Kick the wall!’ It was hard to understand why one should trust to such advice again; but Carleton himself had been put through this four years ago and he knew that one did. It was all too sudden and frightening, and there was the obvious thought that the last kick had been too hard. Allen kicked again; not so hard, but hard enough to send a slim triangular window of the Dining Hall flying on to the tables within, with a clatter of falling glass.

There was a tremendous cheer from the delighted crowd.

Carleton was paralysed, but Ashley had rushed forward with an exclamation and broken into the middle of the group and was uttering a flow of abuse at three boys who had done most of the shouting. ‘Vicious little torturers . . . reporting you to your Housemasters about this . . . yes, you three . . . going to have you beaten, and beaten hard. . . .’

Carleton only heard it distantly, because he had gone forward to help Allen. Ashley had removed all attention from him, and he was struggling to get out of the harness.

‘It’s all right, Allen. Stand still,’ said Carleton, undoing the buckle. ‘It’s all right. That wasn’t your fault. There’s nothing to worry about. Let’s have a look at you.’

He turned Allen round. The boy was red in the face. He kept his head down, and he was smaller than Carleton, and it was hard to see; especially as his black hair fell down on one side of his forehead. But there was a crimson bruise on the other side.

‘You’ve got a bit of a bruise, but it’ll be all right.’

‘What’s going on down there?’

There was a shout from above. Carleton, looking up, first caught sight of Mrs Crabtree, who had been seated in the window but was now standing, and evidently dispatching her daughter, because the girl disappeared. She then looked down with an expression of extreme indignation, and it struck Carleton as odd that her look was aimed at Ashley.

But the shout had come from McCaffrey, whose broken-nosed face was framed in the little window. He was pulling up the harness for the next victim.

‘Come down here at once, McCaffrey,’ Ashley commanded.

‘What for, Sir?’

‘Do as you’re told, immediately. I want you down here at once. You’re going to do this the decent way or not at all.’

‘Very well, Sir,’ said McCaffrey, pulling up the harness and disappearing.

‘Come on, let’s get away from this,’ said Carleton, taking Allen by the shoulder for an instant to persuade him to move.

They walked together towards the front of the Head’s House. Allen kept his eyes on the ground.

‘You know, it’s funny, but exactly the same thing happened to me.’

‘Oh?’

‘Even the window.’

‘Oh.’

‘The best thing is to forget it. Listen, are you keen on cricket?’

Allen looked up. He had recovered quickly. There was no sign of tears.

‘Yes, rather.’

‘Well, why don’t you get changed and come down to the Nets? I’ll be there. They showed you the Changing Room, didn’t they?’

‘Yes. . . . I’ve no pads.’

‘That’s all right. The School provides them. We have to get something for our money. You’re a bit older than the others, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I’m sixteen. I . . . was at Eton. My father and brother were killed in a car crash. My mother can’t afford it now, so I came here.’

‘Oh gosh. I’m sorry. . . . It’s funny, I feel I’ve seen you before.’

‘At Prep School. Glen Court.’

‘Oh?’

‘You wouldn’t remember me. I was a little weed.’

Carleton had no answer to this, but he had to say something, and without thinking he said –

‘Did you . . . know Mr Brownlow?’