The Sandcastle (2 page)

‘Don’t go out of your way to annoy me,’ said Nan. ‘Haven’t you got a lesson at
two-fifteen?’
‘It’s a free period,’ said Mor, ‘but I ought to go and do some correcting. Is
that Felicity?’
‘No, it’s the milkman,’ said Nan. ‘I suppose you’d like some coffee?’
‘Well, maybe,’ said Mor.
‘Don’t have it if you’re indifferent,’ said Nan; ‘it’s expensive enough. In
fact, you weren’t really thinking about my German. You’re still stuffed up with
those dreams that Tim Burke put into you. You imagine that it’s only my
narrowmindedness that stops you from being Prime Minister!’
Tim Burke was a goldsmith, and an old friend of the Mor family. He was also the
chairman of the Labour Party in a neighbouring borough, where he had been
trying to persuade Mor to become the local candidate. It was a safe Labour
seat. Mor was deeply interested in the idea.
‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ said Mor, ‘but you are timid there too.’ He was
shaken more deeply than he yet liked to admit by his wife’s opposition to this
plan. He had not yet decided how to deal with it.
‘Timid!’ said Nan. ‘What funny words you use! I’m just realistic. I don’t want
us both to be exposed to ridicule. My dear, I know, it’s attractive, London and
so on, but in real life terms it means a small salary and colossal expenses and
absolutely no security. You don’t realize that one still needs a private income
to be an M.P. You can’t have everything, you know. It was your idea to send
Felicity to that expensive school. It was your idea to push Don into going to
Cambridge.’
‘He’ll get a county grant,’ Mor mumbled. He did not want this argument now. He
would reserve his fire.
‘You know as well as I do,’ said Nan, ‘that a county grant is a drop in the
ocean. He might have worked with Tim. He might have knocked around the world a
bit. And if he learns anything at Cambridge except how to imitate his expensive
friends — ’
‘He’ll do his military service,’ said Mor. In persuading Donald to work for the
University Mor had won one of his rare victories. He had been paying for it
ever since.
‘The trouble with you, Bill,’ said Nan, ‘is that for all your noisy Labour
Party views you’re a snob at heart. You want your children to be ladies and
gents. But anyhow, quite apart from the money, you haven’t the personality to
be a public man. You’d much better get on with writing that school textbook.’
‘I’ve told you already,’ said Mor, ‘it’s not a textbook.’ Mor was writing a
book on the nature of political concepts. He was not making very rapid progress
with this work, which had been in existence now for some years. But then he had
so little spare time.
‘Well, don’t get so upset,’ said Nan. ‘There’s nothing to get upset about. If
it’s not a textbook, that’s a pity. School textbooks make money. And if we
don’t get some extra money from somewhere we shall have to draw our horns in
pretty sharply. No more Continental holidays, you know. Even our little trip to
Dorset this year will be practically ruinous, especially if Felicity and I go
down before term ends.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nan,’ said Mor, ‘do shut up! Do stop talking about
money!’ He got up. He ought to have gone into school long ago.
‘When you speak to me like that, Bill,’ said Nan, ‘I really wonder why we go
on. I really think it might be better to stop.’ Nan said this from time to
time, always in the cool, un-excited voice in which she conducted her arguments
with her husband. It was all part of the pattern. So was Mor’s reply.
‘Don’t talk that nonsense, Nan. I’m sorry I spoke in that way.’ It all passed
in a second.
Nan rose, and they began together to clear the table.
There was a sound in the hall. ‘Here’s Felicity!’ said Mor, and pushed quickly
past his wife.
Felicity shut the front door behind her and put her suitcase down at her feet.
Her parents stood looking at her from the door of the dining-room. ‘Welcome
home, dear,’ said Nan.
‘Hello,’ said Felicity. She was fourteen, very thin and straight, and tall for
her age. The skin of her face, which was very white but covered over in summer
with a thick scattering of golden freckles, was drawn tightly over the bridge
of her nose and away from her prominent eyes, giving her a perpetual look of
inquiry and astonishment. She had her mother’s eyes, a gleaming blue, but
filled with a hazier and more dreamy light. Nan’s hair was a dark blond,
undulating naturally about her head, the ends of it tucked away into a subdued
halo. Felicity’s was fairer and straighter, drawn now into a straggling tail
which emerged from under her school hat. In looks, the girl had none of her
father. It was Donald who had inherited Mor’s dark and jaggedly curly hair and
his bony face, irregular to ugliness.
Felicity took off her hat and threw it in the direction of the hall table. It
fell on the floor. Nan came forward, picked up her hat, and kissed her on the
brow. ‘Had a good term, dear?’
‘Oh, it was all right,’ said Felicity.
‘Hello, old thing, said Mor. He shook her by the shoulder.
‘Hello, Daddy,’ said Felicity. ‘Is Don here?
‘He isn’t, dear, but he’ll come in tomorrow,’ said Nan. ‘Would you like me to
make you lunch, or have you had some?’
‘I don’t want anything to eat,’ said Felicity. She picked up her suitcases.
‘Don’t bother, Daddy. I’ll carry it up.
‘What are your plans for this evening?’ said Nan.
‘I’ve just arrived, said Felicity. ’I haven’t got any plans.‘
She began to mount the stairs. Her parents watched her in silence. A moment
later they heard her bedroom door shut with a bang.

Chapter
Two

IT
was a fine dear evening. Mor closed the door of the Sixth Form room and escaped
down the corridor with long strides. A subdued din arose behind him. He had
just been giving a lesson to the history specialists of the Classical Sixth.
Donald, who was in the Science Sixth, had of course not been present. It was
now two years since, to Mor’s relief, his son‘ had ceased to be his pupil. Mor
taught history, and occasionally Latin, at St Bride’s. He enjoyed teaching, and
knew that he did it well. His authority and prestige in the school stood high;
higher, since Demoyte’s departure, than that of any other master. Mor was well
aware of this too, and it consoled him more than a little for failures in other
departments of his life.
Now, as he emerged through the glass doors of Main School into the warm
sunshine, a sense of satisfaction filled him, which was partly a feeling of
work well done and partly the anticipation of a pleasant evening. On an
ordinary day there would be the long interval till supper-time to be lived
through, passed in reading, or correcting, or in desultory conversation with
Nan. This was normally the most threadbare part of the day. But this evening
there would be the strong spicy talk of Demoyte and the colour and beauty of
his house. If he hurried, Mor thought, he would be able to have one or two
glasses of sherry with Demoyte before Nan arrived. She made a point of arriving
late, to the perpetual irritation of Handy. Then there would be wine with the
meal. Nan never drank alcohol, and Mor did not usually drink it, partly as a
lingering result of his teetotaller’s upbringing and partly for reasons of
economy, but he enjoyed drinking occasionally with Demoyte or Tim Burke, though
he always had an irrational sense of guilt when he did so.
Demoyte lived at a distance of three miles from the school in a fine Georgian
house called Brayling’s Close, which he had acquired during his period of
office as Headmaster, and which he had left to the school in his will. He had
crammed it with treasures, especially Oriental rugs and carpets on the subject
of which he was an expert and the author of a small but definitive treatise.
Demoyte was a scholar. For his scholarship Mor, whose talents were speculative
rather than scholarly, admired him without envy; and for his tough honest
obstinate personality and his savage tongue Mor rather loved him: and also
because Demoyte was very partial to Mor. The latter often reflected that if one
were to have him for an enemy Demoyte would present a very unpleasant aspect
indeed. His long period as Headmaster of St Bride’s had been punctuated by
violent quarrels with members of the staff, and was still referred to as ‘the
reign of terror’. A feeling of security in their job was a luxury which Demoyte
had not had the delicacy to allow to the masters of St Bride’s. If the quality
of an individual’s teaching declined, that individual would shortly find that
Demoyte was anxious for his departure; and when Demoyte wanted something to
occur it was usually not long before that thing occurred.
Demoyte had not been easy to live with and he had not been easy to get rid of.
He had persuaded the Governors to extend his tenure of power for five years
beyond the statutory retiring age - and when that time was up he had only been
in duced to retire after a storm during which the school Visitor had had to be
called in to arbitrate. Ever since Mor had come to the school, some ten years
ago, he had been Demoyte’s lieutenant and right-hand man, the intermediary
between the Head and the staff, first unofficially, and later more officially,
in the capacity of Second Master. In this particular role, Mor was sincere
enough to realize, he had been able to experience the pleasures of absolute
power without remorse of conscience. He had mitigated the tyranny; but he had
also been to a large extent its instrument and had not infrequently enjoyed its
fruits.
Demoyte would have liked Mor to succeed him as Head; but St Bride’s was a
Church of England foundation, and at least a nominal faith of an Anglican
variety was required by the Governors in any candidate for the Headship. This
item Mor could not supply; and a storm raised by Demoyte with the purpose of
changing the school statutes on this point, so as to allow Mor to stand, failed
of its object. Demoyte himself, Mor supposed, must originally have conformed to
the requirement; but by the time Mor first met him his orthodoxy had long ago
been worn down into a sort of obstinate gentlemanly conservatism. Under the
Demoyte régime not much was heard at St Bride’s about Christianity, beyond such
rather stereotyped information as was conveyed by the Ancient and Modem Hymnal;
and the boys had to learn about religion, much as they learnt about sex, by
piecing together such references to these blush-provoking topics as they could
discover for themselves in books. What Demoyte cared about was proficiency in
work. This his masters were engaged to produce and sacked for failing to
produce; and during his period of office the yearly bag of College scholarships
by St Bride’s rose steadily and surely. As for morality, and such things,
Demoyte took the view that if a boy could look after his Latin prose his character
would look after itself.
Very different was the view taken by Demoyte’s successor, the Reverend Giles
Everard, whom Demoyte regarded with unconcealed contempt and always referred to
as ‘poor Evvy’. The training of character was what was nearest to Evvy’s heart
- and performance in Latin prose he regarded as a secondary matter. His first
innovation had been to alter the school prospectus, which had formerly
reflected Demoyte’s predilection for star pupils, in such a way as to suggest
that
now
St Bride’s was concerned, not with selecting and cherishing the
brilliant boy, but with welcoming and bringing to his humbler maturity, such as
it was, the mediocre and even the dim-witted. Demoyte watched these changes
with fury and with scorn.
Nan had never taken to Demoyte. This was partly because Demoyte had never taken
to her, but she would have disliked him, Mor thought, in any case. Nan hated
eccentricity, which she invariably regarded as affectation. She did not, it
seemed to Mor, care to conceive that other people might be profoundly different
from herself. Nan had, moreover, a tendency to be hostile towards unmarried
people of either sex, regarding them as in some way abnormal and menacing; and
in Demoyte the sort of bachelor behaviour which made Nan particularly uneasy
had developed, through age and through the long exercise of tyrannical power,
to the point of outrage. Demoyte was overbearing in conversation and rarely
sacrificed wit to tract. Although he was a Tory by habit and conviction, there
were few institutions which he took for granted. Marriage was certainly not one
of these. In the sacred intimacy of the home Nan was often pleased to refer to
‘our marriage’; but she did not think that this was a subject which, either in
particular or in general, could be discussed or even mentioned in the company
of strangers - and everyone beyond the family hearth was to her a stranger.
Demoyte felt no such delicacy, and would often embarrass Nan by outbursts on
the subject of the married state. ‘A married couple is a dangerous machine!’ he
would say, wagging a finger and watching to see how Nan was taking it.
‘Marriage is organized selfishness with the blessing of society. How hardly
shall a married person enter the Kingdom of Heaven!’ And once, after an
occasion when Mor had sharply defended Nan from one of Demoyte’s sarcasms, he
had almost turned the pair of them out of the house, shouting, ‘You two may
have to put up with each other, but I’m not bound to put up with either of
you!’
After that Mor had had great difficulty in persuading Nan to accompany him to
Demoyte’s dinners. But he knew obscurely that if it ever became established
that he went alone, Nan’s hostility to Demoyte would take a more active form
and she would seriously endeavour to bring the friendship to an end. As it was,
Nan worked off her spleen on each occasion by making bitter comments to Mor as
they walked home. With these comments Mor would often weakly concur, excusing
his disloyalty to himself on the ground that he was thereby averting a greater
evil. Nan was prepared to tolerate Demoyte on condition that he was judged
finally by Mor and herself in unison; and to placate her Mor was prepared to
allow the judgement to seem final, and to keep his private corrections to
himself.
On this occasion as Mor walked across the asphalt playground in the direction
of the bicycle-sheds, averting his eyes automatically from the windows of
classrooms where lessons were still in progress, he remembered with a small
pang of disappointment that tonight Demoyte would not be alone. Mor would
sometimes cycle over to Brayling’s Close in the late evening after supper - but
there was something especially sacred about the short encounters before dinner,
when the glow of Demoyte’s drawing-room came as a sharp pleasure after the
recent escape from school. Mor was glad when Demoyte had guests, but he liked
to see the old man alone first, and as he tried to arrive soon after
five-thirty he was usually able to do so. This evening, however, the
portrait-painter woman, Miss Carter, would of course be present. Mor had a
vague curiosity about this young woman. When her father had died some months
ago the newspapers had been filled with obituaries and appreciations of his
work which had contained many references to her. She was supposed to be
talented. Concerning her personal appearance and presence Mor had been able to
obtain only the vaguest account from Mr Everard, who, as Nan had remarked, was
not generally to be trusted in summing up the opposite sex. Mor’s thoughts
touched lightly on the girl and then returned to Demoyte.
In spite of the difference in their political views Demoyte had, somewhat to
Mor’s surprise, been very much in favour of Tim Burke’s plan to make Mor a
Labour Candidate. ‘You won’t do us any harm,’ he told Mor, ‘since whatever else
you’ll be doing at Westminster you certainly won’t be governing the country -
and you may do yourself some good by getting out of this damned rut. I hate to
see you as poor Evvy’s henchman. It’s so painfully unnatural.’ Mor was of
Demoyte’s opinion on the latter point. As far as this evening was concerned,
however, Mor was anxious to warn Demoyte not to mention the matter in Nan’s
presence. Demoyte’s approval would merely increase her opposition to the plan.
The master’s bicycle-shed was a wooden structure, much broken down and
overgrown with Virginia creeper, and situated in a gloomy shrubbery which was
known as the masters’ garden, and which was nominally out of bounds to the
boys. Beside it was a stretch of weedy gravel, connecting by a grassy track
with the main drive, on which stood Mr Everard’s new baby Austin and Mr
Prewett’s very old enormous Morris. Mor found his bicycle and set out slowly
along the track. He bumped along between the trees, turned on to the loose
gravel of the main drive, until he reached the school gates and the smooth
tarmac surface of the arterial road. Fast cars were rushing in both directions
along the dual carriageway, and it was a little while before Mor could get
across into the other lane. He slipped through at last and began to pedal up
the hill towards the railway bridge. It was a stiff climb. As usual he forced
himself at it with the intention of getting to the top without dismounting. He
gave up the attempt at the usual place. He reached the summit of the bridge and
began to freewheel down the other side.
Now between trees the Close was distantly in sight. At this place on the road
it seemed as if one were deep in the country. The housing estate was
momentarily hidden behind the bridge, and the shopping centre, which lay on a
parallel road on the other side of the fields, had not yet come in sight.
Demoyte’s house stood there, stately and pensive as in a print, looking exactly
as it had looked when company had come down in coaches from London, across
heaths infested by highwaymen, to report to their friends in the country what
was Garrick’s present role and what the latest saying of the Doctor. Mor waited
again for a gap in the traffic to get back across the road, turned into
Demoyte’s drive, and cycled up the untidy avenue of old precarious elm trees.
These trees had long ago been condemned as unsafe, but Demoyte had refused to
have them cut down. ‘Let Evvy do it when I’m gone,’ he said. ‘I don’t grudge
him that pleasure. He has so few.’
The house was long in the front, built of small rose-coloured bricks, and
arching out in two large bow windows. A wide door with a stone pediment faced
the avenue across a square of grass. The main garden lay at the side. Mor
cycled between two pillars and skirted the grass. He left his bicycle leaning
against the wall of what had once been a coach house and made his way on foot
towards the front door. He felt that he was being watched, and looked up to see
Miss Handforth gazing at him out of the window above the door. He waved
cheerfully at her. He was one of Handy’s favourites.
Miss Handforth met him in the hall, sweeping round the white curve of the
staircase with a vehemence which made the house shake. She was a stout powerful
middle-aged woman with a face like a lion and a foot like a rhino. She had once
been an elementary school teacher.
‘Hello,’ said Mor. ‘How goes it, Handy? How’s his Lordship?’
‘No more lazy and troublesome than usual,’ said Miss Handforth in ringing
tones. ‘You’ve arrived early again, but I don’t suppose it matters.’ Handy
never addressed people by their names. She coughed unrestrainedly as she spoke.
‘I’ve got a most awful cold, though how I could have caught it in this
weather’s a regular mystery. It must be hay fever, only the hay’s in, I don’t
know if that makes any difference. If you want to wash, go straight through,
you know the way, the downstairs toilet this time, if you please. The boss is
still getting up from lying down, but Miss Thing is in the drawing-room if you
want to be polite. Otherwise go and knock on the dressing-room door. I must go
and look at the dinner.’