The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (3 page)

Mr. Sermon sat, or rather was pushed, into the spoon-backed Victorian chair reserved for parents and visiting Government Inspectors but even then he did not appear to make much effort to revert to the calm, earnest and utterly rational Sebastian Sermon who had conferred with the Headmaster in this very room for the past sixteen years. He just sat there, with his hands limp on his knees,

21

staring before him like a man who has seen somebody drown before his eyes and whose brain is still numb with shock. At last he said, almost inaudibly:

"It was the lilac, Headmaster!"

"The what? The ... the lilac you say?"

"The scent of lilac! It was coming through the window. Then he touched off that stench, that foul, acrid stench! I don't know, I lost my temper I suppose and I gave him what he deserved! He's been asking for it for a very long time!"

The Reverend Hawley coughed and looked away but behind his dismay was a certain relief for it was now clear that Sermon had suffered some kind of brainstorm and this in itself might provide an emergency exit for the reputation of the school. The very worthiest of men had brainstorms. Wasn't nervous prostration accepted as an occupational risk for schoolmasters?

"Look here, old fellow," he said, more kindly, "I... er ... I think you had better go in to Mrs. Hawley and ask her for a cup of tea. You're obviously not well, not at all well! I'll tell you what, I'll phone for a taxi and you can go home and rest. Don't come in tomorrow and I'll pop over and see you on Saturday! By that time I daresay I shall have sorted things out a little. I'll go and see Lane-Perkins now. Leave everything to me!"

Suddenly Mr. Sermon raised his head and looked hard at the Headmaster. It was as though he was seeing him for the very first time, a squarish, grey-polled old bore, a pedant who concealed his inadequacies under a threadbare gown and a smoke-screen of muscular Christianity and Kiplingesque enthusiasm, a wily old hypocrite intent upon playing the game as played by the Empire-builders of a generation ago, and Mr. Sermon suddenly decided that he had always hated the Reverend Hawley's physical and moral flabbiness, hated his flabby jowls that made him look like an old spaniel and his pursy little mouth that betrayed a weak man's obstinacy. He had, Mr. Sermon decided, flabby, flaccid, outdated mannerisms and tricks of speech. He also had a large brown mole on his receding chin and the mole, unsightly in itself, was made more so by the presence of sprouting hairs. Mr. Sermon took a good look at his Headmaster. Then, shivering slightly, he stood up and was

22

surprised to discover that he topped the Headmaster by at least two inches. It was something he had never previously noted.

"I'm done with it all!" he announced, "I'm getting out of here!"

The Reverend Hawley began to stammer. He looked, thought Mr. Sermon, exactly like one of those idiotic stone dwarfs who smirk at passers-by from the front gardens of suburban houses, vaguely pathetic yet repulsively silly.

"Oh come now, old man . . . it's like I said ... you're not yourself, you're run down, tho' I can't think why on the second day of the term! Has something happened at home? Have you had a ... a shock of some sort?"

"I'm perfectly fit," said Mr. Sermon, unexpectedly, "and I never felt less repentant in my life! I don't care what happens to Lane-Perkins ! I don't care a jot what his father says or does! It's like I said, Headmaster, that boy, and some of his cronies, have been asking for this ever since they came here and you can regard me as a pioneer. Sooner or later we'll all come to it, mark my words! If somebody doesn't begin handing it out the entire male population of Britain will consist of juvenile delinquents before any of us are much older and greyer!"

The Reverend Hawley swallowed deliberately, choking back a tart rejoinder that would have been expanded into a string of cliches about the sympathetic handling of boys and adult allowances for youthful high spirits. He realised, just in time, that he must forgo platitudes and concentrate on Sermon's health.

"How old are you, Sermon?"

"I was forty-nine last week, Headmaster!" said Mr. Sermon, who seemed almost to have been expecting the question.

The Reverend Hawley relaxed. "Ah, then it's The Change!" he said, gravely.

"Change?"

"Change of life, dear fellow! Physiologically, the change is supposed to be the prerogative of women but I've never believed this, not entirely. Men undergo a change in the late forties and sometimes the manifestation is more subtle than that of its feminine counterpart. It usually lasts about three or four months and takes us all different ways. Sometimes it is a barely susceptible heightening

23

of our innermost faculties but with the highly-strung-and I think you're a case in point, Sermon-the change is very abrupt and ... er ... often disturbing. It needs a great deal of sympathy and understanding and I ... er ... I think perhaps you should take a week off and discuss it with your wife and doctor. Get some tablets. They have tablets for this kind of thing, you know, not a sedative exactly but something that aims at restoring balance and ... er ... mental tranquillity. Now if you'll take my advice . . ."

He stopped because Mr. Sermon was now staring at him with an expression that he could only identify as one of insolence. A little smile hovered about the corners of the man's mouth but the eyes were not smiling.

"Headmaster," said Mr. Sermon, heavily, "you are talking a lot of damned nonsense and what's more you know it!"

The Reverend Hawley's carefully mustered patience ran like liquid from an upturned jug.

"Now look here, Sermon, I've had enough of this! Hang it man, I come home from abroad a day or so late and expect to find things running smoothly and instead I find you thrashing a boy in a manner calculated to ... to put him in hospital and yourself in front of a Magistrate! I ..."

But the Headmaster was again interrupted, this time by a perfunctory knock on the door and the appearance of Mrs. Fishwick, the Matron, with a tear-stained Lane-Perkins in tow. Mrs. Fisfrwick looked very efficient in her starched coif and overalls and Mr. Sermon noticed that Lane-Perkins had a large piece of sticking-plaster on his temple. The moment he saw Mr. Sermon he shrank back, as if faced by a growling mastiff but Mrs. Fishwick took him firmly by the hand, studiously ignoring Mr. Sermon.

"I'm sending Lane-Perkins home," she announced, "and I think someone had better go with him, Headmaster. May I fetch Vincent or one of the others ?"

"Certainly!" said the Reverend Hawley, still flushing from the effects of Mr. Sermon's thrust, "but since he's here we can ... er ... sort this matter out a little. Come in, Lane-Perkins, nobody is going to hurt you, my boy! Now then, admit to provoking Mr. Sermon beyond reasonable limits. Admit it, boy, in the presence of all of us!"

24

The malignant imp had now enlarged his lodging in Mr. Sermon's brain and with the cooling of his rage Sermon found that he could look at Lane-Perkins almost affectionately for the timorous urchin now standing beside Matron had been milked of his cockiness and was clearly afraid to approach a step nearer. This realisation would have distressed the original Mr. Sermon very much but now it had a reverse effect. For the first time since he had entered the world of school he felt a kind of grim pride in his achievement and pride elevated him to a position where he could look down on the Reverend Hawley and feel contempt for his entire approach to the business of educating thirteen-year-olds.

Lane-Perkins mumbled: "I had the stinkbomb, sir, I... I lit it, but he ... he ..." and his voice trailed away as he pointed an accusing finger at the erect Mr. Sermon, now regarding him with clinical interest, rather as a confident doctor confronts a detected hypochondriac.

"Mr. Sermon lost his temper and is quite prepared to admit as much," said the Reverend Hawley, briskly. "Come now, I don't like this kind of thing any more than you do. Suppose you shake hands and apologise to one another?"

The glint of triumph that showed itself in the eye of Lane-Perkins did not escape Mr. Sermon but it caused him to waver for an instant, telling him that the boy was already congratulating himself on having forged a formidable weapon against authority, something that he could use mercilessly throughout the coming term, thus winning complete immunity from punishment or close observation. Then, as by a reflex, the new Mr. Sermon reasserted himself. Turning from the boy and Matron to the hovering Headmaster he said, very deliberately:

"Lane-Perkins has always been a bad influence here. I'm not going to apologise to the insolent little rascal. I don't mind in the least shaking hands with him but I'm damned if I'll apologise for drubbing him and he can go home and tell his father as much if he cares to! If I apologised to him, nobody would be able to do anything with him for the rest of his life. That won't concern me any longer but it wouldn't be fair on the boy himself," and before the Headmaster could reply to this summarisation, Mr. Sermon nodded rather

distantly and stalked from the room, ignoring the Headmaster's croak of protest and the look of astonishment that came into the sullen face of the boy.

They heard his steps echo on the tiles in the hall and then the staff-room door bang as he went in to discard his gown and collect his hat and raincoat. Only when his steps sounded again on the tiles and were passing the study door did the Headmaster make a wild grab at the reins of his authority, dismiss Matron and boy and almost run to intercept Sermon as he passed through the conservatory on his way to the path that led round the shrubbery.

"I say, look here Sermon, we simply can't leave things like this. I mean, it's outrageous! That boy's father will be round first thing in the morning. If you could get a doctor's certificate . . . anything . . ." and he trotted beside Mr. Sermon all the way to the wrought-iron gates that opened on to the Crowborough Road.

They reached the road side by side and were moving towards the bus stop fifty yards beyond the gates when Mr. Sermon paused in his stride.

"Leave me alone!" he hissed. "Do you hear? Leave me alone, you . . . you bumbling old ass!"

Then he strode on, breaking into a run as a Number 79A passed and swung in to the stop and the Reverend Hawley, half-stupefied by mortification, stood stock-still on the edge of the pavement and watched his colleague leap on to the step of the bus with a movement that seemed strangely out of character in a man who was nearly fifty, and whose interest in organised games had been limited to marking out the white lines on the perimeter of the sports field.

"He's mad!" said the Reverend Hawley to himself, as, wretchedly, he retraced his steps to the school gates. "He's stark, staring mad and I shall have to say so! At once! On the telephone to his wife and to that wretched boy's father!"

He said this and believed it sincerely but as yet he felt no pity for .his colleague. For the time being he needed all his pity for himself.

The 79A was not Mr. Sermon's customary bus and he had only taken it because it offered an easy escape from his Headmaster.

26

The bus took him as far as the Westbank roundabout and here he descended and set out across the Tedington Common to Wyckham Ridge, where he could enter the new housing estate from the north and pass through it to the older residential district where he and his family occupied a detached, five-bedroomed house in a select cul-de-sac called 'Beechway'.

Sermon topped the ridge that looked down over Wyckham Rise and there he suddenly stopped and sat down on a seat, realising that before he moved another step towards Sybil and the children he must do some objective thinking about what had occurred that afternoon.

The very first thing that struck him was that perhaps he had not burned his boats after all. He remembered the desolate look in the Headmaster's eye when he announced that he was leaving and it seemed to him that this look betrayed a far deeper-rooted fear than apprehension about what Lane-Perkins' father might do when his son arrived home with sticking-plaster on his head. Clearly the Reverend Hawley was dismayed by the thought of losing him, and if he willed it, what had taken place that afternoon could probably be glossed over and forgiven, a thought that led Mr. Sermon to ask himself, calmly and objectively, if he really did want to break the pattern of his life.

At this point, Mr. Sermon made a desperate attempt to concentrate and to continue to think calmly and objectively, but he found the effort beyond him. Objective thought was alien to a man absorbed, year after year, in helping to run a miniature world. It could not be nourished in the soil Mr. Sermon had been tilling for the past twenty-five years-what had Cooper II done with his gym shoes? Would Drake House beat Frobisher in the semi-final? Why had Truscott done so badly in Common Entrance when he had walked away with the History prize two years in succession? Every time Mr. Sermon embarked upon the main stream of his own future he drifted into an irrelevant backwater and had to find his way out again. Then, when he was fairly launched in the current once more, he swirled into a kind of delta studded with islands and sandbanks representing people and problems unrelated to one another, so that he could never determine which was the main stream and which a mere creek.

27

He sat there a long time sweating with the effort of concentration and then he made what seemed to him a fortuitous decision. He would stop drifting and study the islands one by one, isolating them from one another and thus getting them into their correct perspective.