The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon

The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon

Scanned by Aristotle

CHAPTER ONE

In Which

Mr.
Sermon Smells Lilac and Hits Out

I
t
is not given to many of us to pinpoint the actual moment of our entry into a world of new beginnings. In any case, most of us don't have new beginnings but spend half our days and nights dreaming of them, of a fresh start, a setting out on a beckoning high-road to adventure and romance, a spiritual and physical rebirth. Very few of us get beyond the early stages of packing and on looking back we can recall only the trivial things, nothing really important, like being born or reborn. But Mr. Sermon can! He can recall exactly how it happened, and why it happened, and when it happened! He remembers every irrelevant detail, the season of year, the time of day, the slant of the sunbeam through the tall classroom window that invested Lane-Perkins (Satanic if unconscious midwife of the event) with a golden halo. He remembers too the battle of the smells that was being fought out under his nostrils that afternoon, the massed aromae of ink, new exercise books, dust, apple-cores, lozenges and chalky dusters all marching to vanquish the gallant smell of Spring. He remembers this and will never forget it, not even when he is an old, old man, dying in some impersonal nursing home, watched by impersonal mutes. And he remembers so well because it was the most stupendous thing that ever happened to him

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or ever would happen to him, come earthquakes, global convulsions, nuclear wars and landings on the moon.

It began on the nineteenth of April, the second day of the summer term, at precisely 3.20 p.m., a soft, warm, sweet, nostalgic afternoon. It was quieter in class than he ever remembered, so quiet that it had crossed his mind earlier in the period that mischief was fermenting somewhere among the hard core of the Upper Fourth, somewhere near the tall gothic window under which Lane-Perkins and his cronies sat like knots in a bulk of grained oak, knots that would resist to the very end the efforts of educational sawyers and then, come September, disappear only to materialise instantaneously in the Lower Fifth, whence they had gone after the process that ejects all dullards from familiar desks, forcing them to adjust themselves to new syllabuses and fresh opposition.

You could almost feel the quiet. Nothing disturbed it save an occasional scrape of shoe against the uncarpeted floor or the soft rustle of a turned page as the odd boy ploughed through Froude's English Seamen of
the
Sixteenth Century, the Upper Fourth's summer-term author*. This was the book that the Upper Fourth were reading that period, the book that 'Preacher' Sermon, in his capacity as English and History master at Napier Hall College, had chosen as a means of attacking simultaneously on two fronts. It was good literature and it was stirring Protestant history. Mr. Sermon had read English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century at least once a year ever since he was a boy at school and continued to enjoy its rich cadences and shameless Victorian bias.

It was very early in the term for Middle School to have a free period, with no questions asked and no prospect of an oral examination on the task they were set, but Mr. Sermon had good reason for the novelty. The Reverend Victor Hawley, owner-headmaster of Napier Hall College, had not yet returned from his extended holiday in Lucerne and had wired Mr. Sermon, his deputy, to prepare the school timetables, a chore that usually occupied the Head the last week of the holidays.

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Mr. Sermon had not minded the extra work. He was a man with a neat, precise mind and he loved graphs and charts and timetables for their own sake. He was also an exceptionally conscientious employee, always eager to oblige any member of the staff or any earnest scholar or even a tradesman at odds with Mrs. Fishwick, the matron-housekeeper. Like all the married masters at Napier College, Mr. Sermon lived out but he seldom caught his bus to Wyckham Rise until five-thirty, more than an hour after the end of afternoon school. Usually he remained behind to stake out pitches, supervise games, mark books, stack chairs, or carry out one or other of the innumerable duties connected with the boarding section of the school. For this, and for his painstaking tutorial work, the Reverend Hawley paid him seven hundred a year, less an insurance stamp and P.A.Y.E. deductions. It was not a big salary for a man who had only just entered his fiftieth year but neither Mr. Sermon himself nor the headmaster had ever given a thought to its inadequacy, the one because he enjoyed his work and had never been interested in money, the other because he was aware (and often boasted of the fact to parents) that his most trusted colleague had married money and, in addition, had a real vocation for teaching. Otherwise, why should Sermon have remained at Napier Hall ever since his discharge from the Ordnance Corps in 1944, and he the only man on the staff with a worthwhile degree?

The drowsy peace of the classroom persisted. Bateman Two, one of the very few boys genuinely interested in the junketings of Hawkins and Drake on the Spanish Main, turned his pages carefully and gnawed the hard skin alongside his thumbnail. Screened by the absorbed Bateman Minor, Vincent and Cooper One were sharing Lady Chatterley's Lover which rested on their knees four inches below desk level. Over near the window Lane-Perkins yawned, picked his nose and began to forage in his jacket pocket for the cone of French incense he had brought home from Ostend. Every now and then Mr. Sermon glanced at the class over horn-rimmed glasses and experience told him instantly that Vincent and Cooper One were not reading English Seamen of the Sixteenth Century but something more up to date. He said nothing, however, believing it to be space fiction.

Then, at 3.16 p.m. exactly, Mr. Sermon was conscious of the first

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pattering rain that was to build into the avalanche that engulfed him and everyone connected with him. A large bumble-bee droned in at the open window bringing with it the rich, nostalgic scent of lilac and Lane-Perkins looked hopefully at the bee, willing it with all his might to settle on Bateman's neck, thus varying the dreadful tedium of the afternoon. Something like that had happened late in the Easter term when a dying wasp had stung Dobbs-Stewart on the mouth but today the Upper Fourth was out of luck. The bee recoiled from the smell of ink, chalk and exercise books and veered round, escaping out of the window as if the Devil was behind it. Moodily Lane-Perkins continued to forage for his incense cone.

Sebastian Sermon, 'Preacher' to everyone at Napier Hall College Preparatory School for Boys, had watched the flight of the bee and it had disturbed him, causing an abrupt cessation of interest in the timetables and setting up a train of thought that had absolutely nothing to do with the filling in of a blank period of Thursday afternoon for Lower School boys who did not take Latin. It was almost as though the bee had swerved in flight to buzz him a message, crying out that Spring was outside the window and that somewhere beyond the dusty shrubbery were rolling acres of download stirring with a myriad form of life pushing and pushing to break through to the sun and, what was worse, reminding him of the curious depression that had obsessed him throughout the last week of the Lent holidays. It was a depression that he had traced to the savage realisation that only a week ago he had been a man in his forties and that now he had almost entered upon his fifties, time was running short and that his life stretched out behind him like a grey track across an empty moor merging into a general pattern of drab-ness and aimlessness, so that he was suddenly frightened of marching another stride into the future. The panic had been real at the lime but he had mastered it, indeed had almost forgotten it in the rush of preparing for the new term. He was a man who never surrendered to panic and seldom to exasperation and he had tried to bring to this curious birthday-morning crisis the cool judgement that he brought to the solving of school problems. He had taken a deep breath and looked long and hard into his shaving-mirror where he saw a narrow, intelligent face, with receding brown hair, a long and slightly

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inquisitive nose, a mouth that was neither too large nor too small, a pair of grey, thoughtful eyes with long, boyish lashes and an Adam's apple that had always seemed to him prominent but which nobody had ever commented upon.

He had studied the face seriously, comparing it with the eager, questing expression that looked out from snapshots of the twenties and the early thirties, or the proud, challenging face of Sebastian Sermon standing beside his bride, Sybil, on their wedding day just before the war and although something had departed from the reflection in the mirror, something that might have been promise, or confidence, or a streak of determination to become something more than an assistant master at a minor Preparatory School, he had not found the face unpleasing. He did not look forty-nine. He still had a clear skin, most of his hair and what his mother had termed his 'sitting-for-examinations look', yet, there was no denying it, something had departed.

But what? That was the rub. He had never really known, never having defined a goal, or sat down and cold-bloodedly plotted a course like other men and now, with the warning of the bee buzzing in his ear and the half-finished timetables under his hand, depression swept down once more and he thought it odd and disturbing that a person who had always prided himself on possessing a tidy, depart-mentalised mind should have overlooked such a vital matter as this. Where was he going and why?

The shock of the question and the certainty that he could not begin to answer it caused him to shiver and at once he looked swiftly at the class to see whether any of the front row boys had noticed the shudder. To his dismay Lane-Perkins was looking straight at him, with his usual bovine and slightly insolent expression, so that Mr. Sermon flushed and then rallied, staring back so fiercely that Lane-Perkins dropped his glance and ostentatiously turned a page of his book.

Then it occurred to Mr. Sermon that he might be sickening for something, a chill or an infection, dating back to his birthday a few days ago but in his heart he knew that this was not so, that he enjoyed perfect health and hardly ever caught cold, not even in winter months when half the class was snuffling into handkerchiefs.

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He knew also that this spreading discomfort, this nameless depressive, seeping dread, was a mental and spiritual condition and that it had been hovering in the background for some months but had been held in leash by the reflection that forty-eight was not old, was hardly middle-age and that there was therefore plenty of time, months and months of time in which to discuss the possibility of a change with Sybil and perhaps take Jonquil and Keith, his daughter and son, into his confidence. The trouble was he hardly ever conferred with his family nowadays, they were always so deeply engrossed in their own affairs and did not need him as an audience, much less as a confidant, Sybil was already immersed in her Spring production for the Wyckham Rise Operatic and Dramatic Society and the garden-room at their home was thronged with amateurs five nights a week, laughing, talking, trilling and flirting with Sybil his wife who could be seen queening it over everyone.

Three-seventeen of the clock. Time was running out. Mr. Sermon and all his world were sitting astride a rocket destined for the outer space of experience. In quick succession he thought of his wife, son and daughter: Sybil, dark, creamy-skinned, buttressed from the beginning by cool good looks and her father's money; Keith, tall and rangy, with his mother's regular features and her powers of unlimited concentration-in his case the noisiest and dirtiest machines available; and finally Jonquil, his seventeen-and-a-half-year-old daughter, wide-mouthed, petulant, sought-after, with a little girl's pout, a mature woman's figure and the arrogance of youth perched on her hoisted bust. An impressive trio, anyone would admit that, but what had he in common with it or it with him? What link, what ties, now or in the past?

3.18 p.m. The scent of lilacs was so powerful that it seemed to be whispering like spruce tops in a summer breeze and it spoke to him of youth and laughter and triumph, the triumph he had himself experienced when he led Sybil down the aisle of her father's Methodist Church, treading a carpet given by Sybil's father, past pews restored by Sybil's father, to a car presented by Sybil's father the night before the wedding.

Why? That was what he had been asking himself for nearly nineteen years. How did it come about that the daughter of a man

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owning thirteen suburban grocery shops had favoured his forlorn suit from the outset? Why had Sybil's amused contempt been converted to tolerance and then into near eagerness in the weeks leading up to the engagement? What had he ever had to offer apart from ardour, gratitude and the ability to provide himself with pocket money and a pound or two to spare? Yet Sybil had treated him civilly and the marriage was judged a success. There had been two children in the first three years and thereafter polite acquiescence on her part in bed and out of bed. He was still titular head of the house. She consulted him on matters such as furniture replacements, gas-bills, garden lay-out and the venue of the annual holiday. It was usually he who drove the family car. What possible excuse had he for resentment? She did not nag, she did'not have tantrums. She was not extravagant and if she had been it was mostly her money. She was generous, even-tempered, very popular and in some ways far less of a snob than he was himself. If she had a fault at all it was that of giving too much of herself to social activities, like the Wyckham Rise Operatic and Dramatic Society but surely this was pardonable in a woman who had never, throughout the whole of their married life, been rude to him, defied him or ceased, even at the moment of waking, to look cool, composed and far more desirable than most women of thirty-nine.