R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (9 page)

His relationship with Herries was sufficiently relaxed to encourage him to slip back into the familiar idiom and he replied, smiling, 'Play the piano by ear, I do, Mister Herries. Blew the cornet too, as a boy in Chappel now,' and Herries responded, 'You see, I have second sight. We're not hoping to qualify for tattoo status, at the Tidworth annual camps. All Carter wants is something to jolly the company along on route marches.' He glanced shrewdly at David under his tufted brows. 'You and Carter don't hit it off, do you?'

'I wouldn't say that. He seems to resent my not taking an active part in the Corps but frankly, sir, I've had a bellyful of bullshine and brass. Did Carter actually propose me for bandmaster?'

'No, he didn't. As a matter of fact he doesn't yet know we've got the instruments, but he's put in several requests to the Governors for a band allocation over the years. It's my idea. I'm not putting any pressure on you to join the Corps. It's run on a purely voluntary basis, even for the boys, and this job is unofficial. You wouldn't have to appear in uniform, or even turn up on parade. Just supervise the practices.'

It was as close to an order as Algy Herries ever issued concerning extra-scholastic pursuits. Put like this David did not see how he could refuse without seeming churlish, so he said, 'I'll take a crack at it, until somebody more qualified turns up,' and Herries said, 'Splendid! I'll get that tip over the armoury cleared out and you can use it as a bandroom. I'll also post a notice, announcing auditions.'

Before the last day of term David had mustered a band and Herries was correct in his assumption that this would re-establish a working relationship with Carter. It was impossible to like the man. He was too sure of himself and inclined to be testy if his prejudices were challenged, but he saw a band as something likely to enhance the prestige of his beloved Corps. Luckily he was tone deaf and unlikely on this account to challenge the dispositions of any bandmaster.

There were those whose steps led them past the bandroom in the early days of the Lent term who would have regarded tone deafness as a boon. Of the sixteen boys selected only three were familiar with instruments, that included
four bugles, as well as six fifes, a bass drum, two sidedrums, two kettledrums, and a pair of cymbals. A seventeenth volunteer, Boyer, was chosen for drum-major on account of his stature, imposing for a boy of sixteen.

From the first session David enjoyed the extra chore thrust upon him and arranged rehearsals three times a week, fitting them in between tea and prep and sometimes consulting Rapper Gibbs on technical points. Rapper advised him to discard the bugles but the embryo buglers made such an outcry that David improvised fanfares at stipulated intervals, wedging them into tortured renderings of 'The British Grenadiers' and some of Sousa's marches.

The Corps band was soon an institution and a great joke for those unconnected with it. The bandsmen did not mind, aware that there were a dozen volunteers waiting to take advantage of one resignation, as was proved when fourteen sent in their names after the inexpert cymbalist had clipped a piece from his thumb. David gave the job to Briarley, the boy he had tried to console the day news came that his father was lost on the Lys. He had kept his eyes on Briarley, noticing that the boy was slow to shake off his depression and inclined to walk alone, daydreaming on an old log up at the Planty, or on the seat under the fives court where every Bamfeldian seemed to drift when he was in the dumps. The cymbals did the trick. After a rehearsal or two Briarley became an ornament of the band, whirling the polished discs in a way that spilled sunlight over them like a gyrating halo. Boyer made a spectacular drum-major in his pipe-clayed collarette and spent hours in a secluded corner of the rugby field, practising his extravagant flourishes, including one that sent the staff spinning twenty feet into the air. The fife players soon learned to read notes marked out on cards by Rapper, who was unaware that he was thus identified with a group known, at first, as 'The Boys' Brigade', then as 'The Cacophoneers' but finally, through the agency of Barnaby, the classics master, as 'The Orpheans'.

Barnaby was a good jester, but he liked to send his jokes out to work. It happened that he was presiding over a construe in the Lower Third, who occupied the nearest classroom to the bandroom, on a day when the band had been granted a free period to rehearse for the drill competition. Intermittent snatches of 'The British Grenadiers,' graced by the shrill blasts on the bugles, reached the juniors and Barnaby ignored the chortles until he happened upon a passage from Horace and invited Taylor, the most promising Latinist in the class, to try a free translation. Taylor began, 'Dapibus supremi – Grata testudo Jovis… – The lyre is welcome – at the feasts of supreme Jupiter…'
The general titter was enlarged into a gale of laughter as Barnaby slammed the window, saying, 'We are not feasting, gentlemen. And Orpheus, alas, has lost his touch!'

The band provided everybody with light relief during a season of hard frost that reduced football to a minimum but somehow persuaded the diligent Carter that he was training a company of Alpine troops. The band, all members of the Corps, slogged ahead wherever the rank and file went but were relieved of the necessity of humping kit and rifle, a privilege won for them by David. Thus, in a curious way, they formed a nucleus of boys who were disposed to champion unorthodox views on tradition and soon, without in the least wishing it, he found that he was regarded as the standard-bearer of dissenters.

Some of the boys in Middle School, David noticed, had reduced cribbing to a fine art. Everyone in the common room knew it went on, and punished it on the rare occasions when a culprit was caught, but they seemed to draw no distinction in cribbing during examinations for removes, and cribbing during Lent term examinations, when undeserved prizes sometimes went to accomplished practitioners of the art.

By keeping his eyes and ears open, yet without identifying specific culprits, David became familiar with methods employed during his own periods and those of the short-sighted 'Bouncer'. There was the time-honoured blotting paper memoranda, the strategic positioning (with or without complicity) of the more advanced boys during tests, the cautious raising of a sheaf of notes through the cracked lid of a desk, and the more sophisticated method of attaching notes to a shred of elastic fastened to the shirt cuff. He had still not succeeded in catching anyone, but by the end of term he could have assembled a black museum of cribbing apparatus. What dismayed him was the startling result of an examination paper set for the history prize in that citadel of the work-shy, the Lower Fourth. Youings, by far the best scholar in the class, was placed seventh, whereas the position of some of the leading six could only have meant cribbing on an organised scale.

He let the result pass without comment, however, until he had had a chat with Youings on the questions set, and satisfied himself that the boy had answered all but one correctly. Then, after the list had been pinned to the school notice board, he fired a range-finder at the class, announcing that 'the standard of work exhibited in the examination was encouragingly high, so high, in fact, as to pass the limits of credibility.' He let this sink in for a minute before adding, 'I'm not actually accusing anyone in the first six of – shall we
say – jogging their memory a little, or pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Why should I? I didn't catch them at it, any more than I can explain poor performances on the part of those same experts in the weekly tests. Perhaps the questions were happily chosen. Perhaps some of you may have done some… er… late mugging-up,' and at this the class relaxed and there was a subdued chuckle.

He did not react to it, as he generally did, for chuckles were by no means unknown during his periods. Instead he stepped down off the rostrum and sauntered up the central aisle, pausing beside Dobson, who had been placed fourteenth in test averages but who had scored ninety-six out of a possible hundred in the exam and qualified for the form prize. The chuckle died before it had properly begun and Dobson, flushing a little, avoided his eye. He went on, keeping his tone level and jocular. 'There's something of a moral problem here, however. This particular exam wasn't for a place in form, or a comment on the reports you'll take home at the end of term. It wasn't for outside examiners either. It was for a specific gain, a prize with the prizewinner's name on the flyleaf, and there's a difference. To my mind at any rate. Think about it.'

The bell sounded then and he left abruptly, wondering if he had made a fool of himself and feeling somehow that he had. It bothered him so much that he finally took the problem to Howarth, giving it as his opinion that Youings was the only boy in the first seven who had written an honest paper, and recounting as much as he recalled of his sermon. 'Was that the right way of going about it?' he asked. 'I mean, having failed to spot anyone cribbing, wouldn't I have been wiser to keep my mouth shut?' and Howarth replied surprisingly, 'You know a damned sight better than that. As to whether your pi-jaw did any good I can check on that tomorrow.'

'How, without actually accusing anyone?'

'Oh, by means unknown to the beginner, old man,' and he left it at that.

He was as good as his word. Just before prep bell the following evening Howarth accosted him as he was reading the exam lists of the Lower Fifth on the quad notice board.

'Thought you might care to know you scored a bull's-eye with the Lower Fourth yesterday. They've had a public soul-searching and that half-blind ass Acton has been reaping your harvest. You see those Lower Fourth Divinity prize-list results? They represent today's sitting, and the reverend gentleman has assured me they are a very accurate reflection of his preliminary tests.'

'How can either of you be sure of that?'

'How? For God's sake, man, don't you know me well enough yet to realise I haven't taken a damned thing on trust since I left kindergarten? I asked Acton to play a little game with me. He wrote down his forecast of the first ten in the exam today and here it is. Compare the two lists and draw your own conclusions.' David took the list and held it alongside the list on the board. It was almost identical. He said, wonderingly, 'Does that mean those young devils have decided to stop cribbing?'

'Only when there's a prize at the end of it, I'm afraid, and you have Boyer to thank for the mass conversion. Don't ask me how I know that either. When you've been at this job as long as I have you develop a sixth sense in these matters. However, you appear to be developing satisfactory techniques of your own,' and with that he drifted away, the inevitable between-periods Gold Flake stuck between his lips.

As it happened, David had to wait until prize-giving for confirmation. Dobson, to the accompaniment of ironic Middle School cheers, marched up and collected his history prize, a leather-bound copy of Prescott's
Conquest of Peru
, and David glowered as he shook hands with Countess Hopgood, the guest of honour. His resentment was premature. A day later a puzzled Youings hung about after second bell and seemed to want a word with him. When everyone had left Big School, he laid the copy of
Conquest of Peru
on the desk, open at the presentation page. Dobson's name had been blocked out and above it, in anonymous script, was the legend,
'Presented to Edward Youings, in appreciation of his unfailing assistance in history periods. By his grateful comrades in the Lower Fourth!'

Youings said, 'Is it… er… some kind of practical joke, sir? I mean, should I keep it? I found it in my desk this morning.'

'It's not a joke, Youings,' David said, 'more of a peace-offering. The kind an errant husband brings home in the form of flowers when he's been out on the beer.'

'Sir?' Youings, like many academics, was not very quick on the uptake.

'Keep it,' he said, 'it's yours anyway,' and went in to lunch with a sense of elation and a sharp awareness of Howarth's sagacity.

He extracted no elation from another episode that occurred on the last Sunday of the Lent term but once again it taught him something.

He was in the library returning books when he happened to glance through the window that gave on the quad. A group of boys were skylarking under the Founder's statue and prominent among them was 'Bull' Bickford, and
his two henchmen, Rigby and Ford, all three engaged in forcing the head of a struggling Second Former into the fountain that ran around the plinth. To further the work Bickford was methodically rooting at the victim's buttocks. David, through the open window, bawled, 'Stop that, Bickford, and come up here! You too, Rigby – Ford. Look sharp about it!'

The Second Former, unaware of the source of his reprieve, scuttled away as his tormentors slouched across the quad and up the steps to the library. Presently they appeared dishevelled, but not particularly apprehensive.

'What was that about, Bickford?'

'Oh, really nothing, sir. We were only teaching Skidmore how to make his bow. It's the last Sunday of all, you see, and Skidmore's a first-termer. He's a bit bucky, sir, and we gave him the chance of doing it on his own. When he wouldn't we had to make him.'

'Make him half-drown himself?'

'Yes, sir, just as it says – “Last day but five, new kids take a dive.” Maybe you don't know how it goes, sir?'

David knew how it went. It was part of a string of doggerel devised, over the years, as an initiation rite for new boys. When Sundays fell on certain days, measured in relation to the days left in the term, rhyming couplets decreed that they perform certain idiotic procedures. One or two came to mind – 'Last Sunday but six, new kids pick up sticks', 'Last Sunday but two, new kids feel my shoe', and so on. Towards the end of term, with only a few days to run, the nonsense proliferated, for the programme of work and games began to run down, and boys like Bickford had time on their hands to flush victims from the limited security of the Bog, and subject them to the rough and ready dictates of the tradition. There was no real harm in it, he supposed, except when they picked on a very sensitive boy, or when the ritual made a sadistic appeal to a natural despot like Bickford. He said, 'Well, I don't give a fig for that kind of tradition. It's no more than a flimsy excuse for bullying. The next time I see you rough-housing a new boy I'll devise some doggerel of my own and you'll be at the receiving end of it. Is that clear?'