R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (63 page)

'No,' he said, 'there's something in what you say. I'd be a fool to deny it.'

'Well, then…'

'That's the rub, Chris, the “Well, then…?” What are you really saying? That now I'm acting head of Bamfylde, with every prospect of it being made official, we should stop seeing one another? Break it off? Finish?'

She said, tracing a pattern in breadcrumbs, 'I'm saying we should give this break we've both had a fair chance. For a year at any rate. You won't miss me nearly as much as you think you will. You'll be fully stretched in that job.'

'And you?'

'I'll get by.'

'And a year from now?'

'All kinds of things can happen in a year. A year ago we hadn't even met.'

'You said something about a plan.'

'A sort of plan. It's sheer coincidence this offer leads to Canada. Rowley was still in Canada the last time I heard.'

'Where does that take us? Assuming he's still there, and assuming you get to see him and talk to him?'

'I don't know, Davy. How could I know? It's getting on for three years since I set eyes on him.'

'I know, Chris. You could sue him after seven. That's four years from now, and God knows how long after that the divorce comes along. I'll be forty and you'll be over thirty. You once mentioned children.'

'Don't make it harder, Davy.'

'Is that possible?'

'Yes, it is possible. You've got what you've always wanted and worked for, and I'm making progress. How many can say as much in their mid-thirties and late twenties?'

'It isn't enough. Not for me.'

'It'll have to be, Davy. At least for the time being. Deep down you know that.'

The sparkle had gone from the evening. Across the restaurant the stage party was erupting. Jokes and laughter emerged from it and the place was filling with customers, most of them oiled with Christmas cheer. Gloominess invaded him, making objective thought and discussion all but impossible. First Beth, then Alcock and now this. And away behind that a serious-eyed boy coming home with his satchel, to be told at a street corner that his father and two brothers had died underground. And after that the trenches. Three unspeakable years of trudging to and fro across a desolate swamp, three years of seeing friends torn and mutilated. When the hell did life settle and lie on an even keel? When could a man hope to enjoy the fruits of personal fulfilment, of the kind he had glimpsed so briefly, in the early days of his marriage? He said, beckoning the waiter, 'What choice do I have? What choice do I ever have?' and she said, 'How about me, Davy?'

'You're making the decision.'

'No, I'm not, circumstances are. All I'm doing is facing them. Or trying to, and you aren't helping much. It isn't like you. I always took you for a fighter.'

'I'm bloody well sick of fighting. Sick to death of it. Some way this has to be resolved. If it isn't we'll drift apart.' He remembered Howarth, husked and emotionally sterile at fifty, showing him that photograph of Amy Crispin, the day he received her legacy. Well, he could level with Howarth at around forty. He, too, would have photographs tucked away in a drawer, one of Beth, one of her. Three, if you counted Julia Darbyshire.

'I'll write,' she said, 'often, and telling you everything. It's the best of a bad job.'

'Yes, it is,' he said, 'but you've got more guts than I have, or maybe less need.'

'Need? No Davy, we're even on that score. God knows, there have been times lately when I would have risked everything to spend one night in your arms. That night before the election was only one of them.'

'It's more than that with me. That way a man can manage. Howarth has, and Barnaby has, or seems to. Even I did for a long time after Beth. It's sharing, unloading, talking things out for a long time with someone who matters, understands. I'm supposed to do all that on paper from here on. Indefinitely.'

'Not indefinitely, Davy. Only until you've had a sporting chance to concentrate on something you love. You think of me as important and so I am, but not so important as that.'

They left it there. She was staying in the flat of a university friend at Crick-lewood. There was no question of them going there, and none of taking her home to the Marwoods, at Elmer's End. They could book in somewhere, but he did not fancy Grace waking on Christmas morning and asking where he was. She walked him down to Charing Cross, saying she could get a bus or tube any old time. In forty-eight hours he would be on his way back to Bamfylde and she, he supposed, would be making ready for the Canadian adventure. At the barrier he kissed her, noting that her cheeks were wet and that she had difficulty in speaking. Compassion, of the kind he had felt for her after that rowdy meeting, returned to him.

'It's still a case of hanging on, of waiting for the next spin of the wheel. I can't say any more just now. Will you be going back to Bilhampton before you take off?'

'If I do I'll ring. I'll ring, anyway, wherever I am. I can cope when you're at a distance.'

He left her then, sensing that she preferred it, but knowing that she was watching him move along the platform to catch yet another train. Bamfylde, like Paris, he had once told her, was worth a mass. But was it, now that he had it under his hand?

He was able, to his own surprise, to keep thoughts of her at a safe distance during the next few weeks. Bamfylde engulfed him like a long, rumbling avalanche, a clamorous torrent of letters, decisions, long- and short-term plans, the least of which was that perennial bugbear of the schoolmaster, the timetable.

Throughout the early part of January he worked alone, spending long hours in Algy's old study. When he could escape he set out on tours that took him into every nook and cranny of the great sprawling place, noting down its deficiencies, conjuring with changes, adjustments and adaptations, and getting an inspiration now and again from all he saw and remembered.

One came when he turned out the contents of Alcock's study cupboard and came across the cane he had inherited from Algy. He tossed it aside, with a pile of other rubbish. There would be no question of him beating mischief out of Bamfeldians. He made up his mind as to that long ago. Neither Algy nor Alcock, to do them justice, had been floggers, in the old tradition of headmasters and towards the end of his long reign Algy had all but discarded
corporal punishment, but the right to beat Junior and Middle School boys was still reserved by senior prefects. Alcock had preferred outright expulsion for what he regarded as major crimes, and subtle humiliations for minor infringements.

David, over the years, had given a good deal of thought to the maintenance of discipline, accepting the fact that it wasn't something to which spot decisions could be applied. Every boy varied as did every offence to some extent. What he aimed at – an ideal, he supposed – was the maximum use of the average boy's response to fair play, to seeing authority's point of view, accepting reproof and apologising with good grace. But every now and again one ran across a boy totally unresponsive to this approach. Then, if one ruled out corporal punishment, what did one do? How did one safeguard the system?

He came up with an experimental idea, one that seemed worth exploring. The institution of a forum of peers, based on where the culprit was lodged. Several such committees might be set up, with jurors voted in, term by term, by boys themselves, sitting under the chairmanship of the current house prefect. As to penalties, here again he opposed the principle of boy beating boy, any boy. In a majority of cases it didn't matter a jot but if the boy at the receiving end was sensitive, or the prefect at the distributing end a bully, it could do untold harm. The whole thing was too fallible and in its place there would have to be a range of sanctions, all the way from the withdrawal of privileges to a vote of censure, expressing disapproval of the majority. It was an idea that Barnaby, with his easy access to the wisdom of the Ancients, might find workable and he made a note of it in his memoranda book.

Scores of random thoughts were finding their way into what Grace was already calling The-Book-From-Which-There's-No-Rubbing-Out. A resolve to tap Old Boys' funds for a gymnasium to replace the old covered playground. An additional classroom block, abutting Big School, that would, in itself, greatly simplify the timetable. Concrete litter disposal units designed to put an end to those stinking bonfires Westacott was always building down by the piggeries. Revival of the Choral Society, that had languished under Alcock. Upgrading of the Owl Society into a Sixth Form Club. Studies, if they could be squeezed in somewhere, for the Upper Fifth. A thorough turnout and restocking of the library. And, with Algy's help, revival of the annual Gilbert and Sullivan opera, an event that had never failed to fill a vacuum in the Michaelmas term, when the days were at their shortest and the evenings not wholly devoted to prep.

Prep was another aspect of the system he hoped to revise. He had unpleasant
memories of homework in his Grammar School days, of sitting hunched in the fireless parlour with a mountain of work to get through, and organised periods of evening prep such as existed in the routine of most boarding schools, had been an improvement on this. It had its faults, however, especially in summer term. It might be an improvement to introduce a period-length spell of early morning prep, between April and July, and possibly through the first weeks of the Michaelmas term. Thus evening prep would be shortened, and boys freed for communal activities, not necessarily aligned with sport.

There were, he soon discovered, whole new vistas to be explored, and much would depend on available funds, no doubt. He had no more than a working knowledge of the school's finances, and a talk with Redcliffe, the bursar, proved depressing.

'We've always run on a tight budget,' Redcliffe said. 'So tight that I confess I was frightened when I took over from Mr Shawn, early last year. The fees are too low, if you want my opinion, Headmaster.'

It would take time, he thought, to adjust to this form of address. Somehow he was unable to rid himself of the notion that his leg was being pulled. He said, 'There's no need to call me “Headmaster” when we're alone, Redcliffe. I know Alcock insisted on it but I don't. Will you pass that around? It's embarrassing to have to tell everyone separately.'

Redcliffe, a young, eager man, looked flustered but said, with a smile, 'Er… what exactly do we call you, sir?'

'Well, it can hardly be what every boy from the Second Form up calls me behind my back and the Old Boys to my face, Pow-Wow, that is. How about taking a tip from Barnaby and Howarth? They've settled for P.J. and it looks to me as if you and I have got a lot of conspiratorial work ahead of us. Do you think the majority of parents would stand for a hoist in fees?'

'Yes, I do,' Redcliffe said, unequivocally. 'It would be a matter for the Governors and would need the approval of the Ministry, of course, but there wouldn't be much difficulty. I could prepare a case for you.'

'You do that,' David said, 'and we'll try it on the dog later in the term. Let me have a look at the waiting-list.'

The waiting-list was even more depressing, the lowest, according to Redcliffe's summary, since 1921. The graph had risen steadily up to a peak in 1929, the second year of Alcock's administration, but then, just as Howarth had predicted, Bamfylde had begun to feel the pinch of the Depression. There had been a slow falling off in 1930, and a steep plunge in 1931. This would have to be considered in relation
to any proposed increase in fees.

Already he had learned the trick of dividing his problems into categories of the kind that encouraged the enlistment of one confidant, selected in advance. Thus, major changes such as those he was now discussing with Redcliffe, demanded the shrewdness and experience of Howarth, but what he thought of as climatic changes, like a new approach to discipline, demanded the more flexible approach of a mind like Barnaby's. He soon made a friend of the newly appointed music master, Renshaw-Smith, whom he tackled about the revitalisation of the Choral Society.

Renshaw-Smith, a young man with a narrow face, thinning hair and a sharp, predatory nose, always put him in mind of a fledgling sparrow-hawk, but although shy and inclined to be self-effacing, he responded to encouragement. When David told him of his intentions he said, eagerly, 'That's good news, Headmaster. We've some very promising trebles and at least two good tenors. I was wondering, would you think it too ambitious to start training a choir for the Devon Musical Festival, in April? At my last school we won high placings, although of course, we had girls there, Melbourne House being co-ed. I really would like to try.'

'Try by all means,' David told him. 'You'll have the whole of the Lent term to bring them on. Who is your best tenor, by the way?'

'Dobson, without a doubt, and keen to improve.'

'Really? I would have said he was the hairy outdoor type but I'll tell you why I asked. I'm hoping to revive the annual Gilbert and Sullivan. We were famous for them in Mr Herries's time. Would Gilbert and Sullivan be too lowbrow for you?'

Renshaw-Smith looked shocked. 'No, indeed, Headmaster. Sullivan wrote some excellent light music, and I know about the Bamfylde operas. I've seen the photographs and old scores. Mr Gibbs gave them to me.'