Self Condemned (19 page)

W
hen René stepped out of the train on to the platform of Rugby station, he wished he had not come. This feeling was so strong that he nearly crossed to the opposite platform, to take the next train back to London. For the big rough word, Rugby, stank of Kerridge; that is the Reverend Robert Kerridge, husband of his youngest sister Helen. However, he checked this impulse to fly, and made his way to the telephone.

Kerridge! the very name was unseemly; the name of the Kerridges was probably “carriage,” but as the more archaic carriages doubtless spelled things as they pronounced them, Robert had inherited the surname Kerridge, or at least this was the philology sponsored by René, for the name of his brother-in-law. Apart from one’s reactions to the particular clergyman involved, how much jollier it would have been had this been a visit to the Reverend Amos Barton of Shepperton, who one might have accompanied to the local workhouse, known as the “College,” sniffed the roasting goose, or exchanged a word with the one-eyed rebel, Poll Fodge.

How colourless was the existence of the Kerridges: how tiresome a “pink” bank clerk was Kerridge himself! Helen had indeed got herself embedded in a squalid
matière
.

Such reflections moving through his mind, he at last reached the telephone, and almost immediately was hearing the voice of his dear sister, who in many ways he valued more than anybody. He breathed the atmosphere of her voice, standing erect in the glass box, and it was the voice of the Helen of yesterday, and this was the last time he would be in touch with her down here; for once he reached the Vicarage there would be Kerridge all round them, and it would be difficult to see her as distinctly as he now could hear her. Helen told him that Robert K. was down in Rugby shopping. They lived a half-hour’s ride outside it, but almost daily Kerridge bicycled in to shop, or to chat with some friends he had there. The news, however, that he was in Rugby, and not in Starbrook, had not even a practical interest, for René could not pillion ride with him back to the Vicarage for there was of course no pillion, and had there been he would have declined so close a contact with his relative.

Outside the station he found a taxi and came to terms with the driver. He was humming

“It won’t be a stylish merridge,
For we can’t afford a Kerridge,”

as they started off. This almost springless vehicle punishing him badly, he speculated as to the likelihood of hackney vehicles no longer able to pass the Metropolitan Police test being shipped down to the provinces.

Rugby is a dull town, with none of the distinction that might be expected as a background for the ancient school. In the days of Tom Brown, yes: the approaches to the gaping gate, leading into the school house quadrangle, would still have possessed some style. But long ago the industrialism of the Midlands had converted everything into a drab uniformity.

As the taxi was turning at right angles in front of the great gate, he remembered how he had witnessed, on a January morning some years before, a snow fight.There had been a heavy snowfall during the night, and half the school house were in the dark interior of the gateway preventing the rest of the school from entering. From all the outside houses the boys had duly arrived to go to their form rooms, and had been met by a hail of snowballs. They laid siege to the gate, answering the fire of the school house from such cover as they could secure along the sides of the shopping street which led to the gate. Windows were broken and snowballs also caused casualties among those attacking and those defending the gate. In the rear of the school buildings, a similar battle was in progress. It was a scene to René’s mind, typical of this rough school.

They bumped along in this new street but very soon they once more turned to right angles, and moved along the side of the school precincts. Next came the close, and as they began to move forward beside the close railings, René leant out of the cab window and looked at the line of school buildings facing the close, the library tower, and the windows of the school house and headmaster’s quarters, from which Dr. Arnold once would gaze down upon the close, a biologist scrutinizing work in progress. From this position, seated at his study window, he was able to watch his burly young Christian gentlemen playing their own especial version of the game of football. The spectacle would probably cause him to reflect how lawless this school had always been, and how raw still was the material with which he had to work. After all, Tom Brown’s School Days was going on under the same roof, within a few yards of him.

It had been found impossible, in an earlier time, to persuade its scholars to confine themselves to
foot
ball. Some passionate young blackguard would snatch up the ball, and rush wildly towards the goal with it, pursued by a howling pack of agnostic gentlemen. (And the Christianizing of such creatures could be no easy matter.) — Since there was no means of keeping this a ball-kicking game new rules had to be drawn-up to regulate the rushing about with the ball under the arm: and to limit, to some extent, the ferocity of attacks upon the man who had run off with it.

Dr. Arnold was not a lover of tradition, and his headmasterly blood did not boil, in retrospect, at the thought of this defiance of the laws governing pastimes. The sight of a mud-caked Christian Gentleman tearing down a field hugging a dirty ball, and a dozen dirty Christians, as gentle as himself, at his heels, seemed to him entirely as it should be. Did it not harden muscle: and did it not add hardiness to a Christian Gentleman’s moral uprightness? In the school chapel the CG in question would learn to smite people hip and thigh, and to exact an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. The canes of the prefects, as well as those of the masters, would harden this Christian Gentleman-in-the-making in other ways: and fagging toughen the little rat who was to become a Christian Gentleman, and teach him the beauties of authority. His learning to fear his redoubtable headmaster would be good practice for fearing God.

Then as to the spectacle of the ugly battles which would occur in front of the home goal, it would not be forgotten by Dr. Arnold that many Christian Gentlemen had, a little later in life, to be trained as professional “killers.” There were foot-slogging killers, and mounted (or cavalry) killers. As six furious figures fought for a slippery ball, rolling over and over near a goal-post, punching and strangling and kicking one another, the fresh-coloured rather Jewish-looking face at the window (Jahveh Minor) had a gratified glint in his eye. Just then a boy passed immediately beneath where he was sitting, with a half-dozen books under his arm. He wore the school house colours, and the doctor with some annoyance found he could not identify this pale and earnest face. He made a mental note of the features. The boy did not turn his head to watch the game. A little “swot.” Arnold’s pleased expression was replaced by one of heavy petulance. ’Tis a goodly sight, that knot of violent gentlemen in the great field beyond: but this bookish boy was in danger of never developing into a Christian or into a Gentleman.

At this point René, in imagination, left Jahveh Minor in his observatory, and moved on to a time when Dr. Arnold had abandoned his human laboratory at Rugby, and flung himself into the Civil War of Tractarians and Anti-Tractarians, raging around Oxford. He had no love for tradition, it has been observed above; and this extended into the sphere of Supernatural Grace and the nasty stirrings of the Old Religion. He laid about him lustily. The arguments in favour of a priesthood stimulated his fighting glands to an extraordinary degree — for the delegation of authority, when that authority was God Himself, moved him to as violent an opposition as that he had incurred when at Rugby School he had delegated his authority to members of the sixth form, and even to sixth powers. This was very inconsistent of Dr. Arnold. For why should he object to God delegating His power to a priesthood, whereas, in his capacity of Jahveh Minor, he empowered the boys of the sixth to act in place of him?

While such thoughts were unfolding in René’s mind, the cab had been proceeding on the road to Starbrook, and there, all of a sudden, pedalling along before him, he perceived a familiar figure upon a familiar bicycle. He would have known the neck anywhere. It was the Reverend Robert Kerndge: and it was with considerable satisfaction that he passed his brother-in-law, kicking up, he trusted, a fair amount of dust in the reverend gentleman’s face. But the cab was not equal to the task of reaching Starbrook Vicarage so much ahead of the pedalling parson as to enable him to have more than a few words with his sister before the eruption of Kerridge. She was removing the tea things and he followed her into the kitchen, where she put down the tray and gave him a delighted hug. “My darling René, how glad I am to see you. I have been worrying a great deal about you. We must have a talk … as soon as I can manage it.”

“Do let us.”

They moved back into the drawing room, and they had just passed through the door when sounds announcing Kerridge’s arrival came from without.

“I think that’s Robert,” Helen said, and they both turned towards the door. There was a quick strong step in the hall and the Reverend Robert Kerridge entered the room with his customary
fracas
. “Ah hallo. Was that you in the cab? I thought it might be!”

He moved forward a few steps, swinging his arms and legs, and displaying his glaringly white teeth, attempting to suggest the exhilaration of good-fellowship.

Described in this way, Robert Kerridge probably has a rather alarming sound. But to the average eye the hearty straggling of his legs and welcoming movements of his arms would indeed have spelled good fellowship, even if the white clerical collar did not in itself carry conviction. He was in his thirties, and according to average standards a tallish young man of regular features and agreeable expression. Looked at more analytically, he possessed rather too long a neck, while his eyes shone with too artificial a geniality through largish glasses. His fine, large, white teeth
were
too much in evidence. When he spoke, he chewed round and round with these teeth the words in his mouth, as if they were too big, and required him to open his mouth wide and reduce them by mastication. The words were all a dark blue. I mean that they had the Oxford colours. The Oxford accent trailed after it the accents of Croydon; but still, with the shining eyes and gleaming teeth, waved about on the top of his long pink-and-white neck, the accent did its work well enough.

There was a derisive something in the gleam as he straddled about and rubbed his hands in front of René. Kerridge made a hearty meal of the eleven words, “It is a long time since I last saw you, René,” his jaws rolling round in the act of mastication.

“It is quite a time,” René drily agreed. “Quite a time.”They looked at one another with very little affectation of pleasure on either side. The clergyman’s aggressive politeness, with the baring of his big battalions of teeth, was answered by a brief amused smile, wiped off abruptly, succeeded by an air of patient watchfulness, as one might keep one’s eye upon a ram of notoriously aggressive habits.

“I have missed you very much,” Helen said. “But I hear all about you from the family, of course. At least, all the family knows.”

“Yes!” Kerridge crashed in. “I was very sorry to hear about your resignation. I always have trotted out at parties ‘My brother-in-law Professor René Harding.’ It sounded very well. I shall not be able to do that any longer now!”

“You can say instead, ‘My brother-in-law, the author of
The
Secret History of World War II
!’” Helen reminded him.

“That,” Robert drawled, “is not I am afraid quite so impressive. You know what I mean; a chair of history is much rarer than mere authorship.”

The young bank clerk face of the Marxist vicar retained a pointed gravity for some time after the mention of René’s book. René’s remained grave too.

“You both look a little glum,” Helen exclaimed. “I will fetch something to drink.”

“Won’t you sit down,” Robert said, and threw himself into a chair. René walked over to the window, and stood gazing out of it. There was nothing to look at except a tree; but he fixed a bored eye upon a baby twig. The voracious Oxford accent of his brother-in-law, with drawling cadences, got busy behind him.

“What was the real cause of your resignation, René? Of course I have read what the
newspapers
say.”

René turned round. “That is all,” he answered indifferently.

“Nothing is concealed. I simply did not any longer wish to teach what is called history.”

“So long as you can afford to indulge a very natural taste for leisure,” drawled his clerical relative, with a very casual laugh.

“Had I desired leisure I should have become a clergyman,”

René retorted. He felt there was nothing else to do.

“I am afraid you do not understand what is expected of a clergyman, if you regard his life as one of leisure!” protested Robert languidly, stretched out like a holiday snapshot in his chair.

“Has your morning been a very heavy one?” enquired René, advancing towards him, goaded into counterattack.

“Terrifically heavy,” Helen answered, as she entered with the drinks. “Robert has been buying groceries, and having a heavy gossip with Jimmy Braybridge, the Vicar of St. Osaph’s.”

“That is most unjust!” Robert drawled, more lazily than ever.“I was discussing with Braybrook a question of great weight and moment.”

“Yes, the transport of a lawn mower!” Helen laughed. “Get up, Robert, and pull this cork!”

But René had the bottle between his knees, and there was the sound of a cork being drawn.

“A clean pull!” sang Robert and no one could say he was averse to others scrutinizing the inside of his mouth. “Other things failing, René, you can always get a job as a waiter, can’t you?”

Helen, frowning, breathed in her husband’s ear, “None of that, now!”

René shrugged his shoulders and moved towards the window again. He recalled the offensive words of another brother-in-law, namely Victor.These two very average sensual men could be said, couldn’t they, to represent Everyman: so this might be taken as the world’s reaction to what he had done. These mocking brothers-in-law could be set beside his mother. They all had much the same view of a man who threw up a professorship for nothing. He looked fixedly at the diminutive twig. He heard Helen’s voice, speaking in an angry undertone, “Robert, I hope that this time you will remember René is our guest! You do your best to stop him from coming down here by your rudeness. It is jealousy! You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”