Vintage Stuff

by Tom Sharpe

  Inside Glodstone’s room he checked the letters in the cigar box, replaced the one at the very bottom and was no wiser. Why on earth did Glodstone bring these letters out and handle them as if they were precious? Slymne looked round the room for a clue. The photograph of Rear-Admiral Glodstone on the quarter deck of HMS Ramillies told him nothing. Nor did a watercolour of a large square Victorian house which Slymne supposed to be Glodstone’s family home. A pipe-rack, another photograph of Glodstone at the wheel of his Bentley, the usual bric-à-brac of a bachelor schoolmaster, and shelves filled with books. An amazing number of books. Slymne had had no idea Glodstone was such an omnivorous reader. He was about to cross to a bookshelf when a sound outside halted him. Someone was coming up the stairs.

  Slymne moved. With understandable swiftness, he was through the door of Glodstone’s bedroom and wedged up against the washbasin behind it when someone entered the study. Slymne held his breath and was conscious of a horrible weakness. Who the hell could be about when the school was supposed to be empty? And how in God’s name was he to explain his presence hiding in the bedroom? For a moment he supposed it might be the woman who cleaned Glodstone’s room and made his bed. But the bed was made and whoever was in the study was putting a book back on a shelf. Several minutes passed, another book was withdrawn, there was silence and the sound of the door opening and shutting again. Slymne slumped against the wall with relief but stayed there for five more minutes before venturing out.

  On the desk he found a sheet of paper and a message written in neat but boyish script. ‘Dear sir, I’ve returned Rogue Male. It was just as good as you said. I’ve borrowed The Prisoner of Zenda. I hope you don’t mind. Clyde-Browne.’

  Slymne stared at the message and then let his eyes roam round the room. The books were all adventure stories. He ran along a shelf containing Henty and Westerman, Anthony Hope, A. E. W. Mason, all of Buchan. Everywhere he looked there were adventure stories. No wonder the beastly man had boasted that he only read decent manly stuff. Taking a book from a side table, he opened it: ‘The castle hung in the woods on the spur of a mountainside, and all its walls could be seen, except that which rose to the North.’

  It was enough. Slymne had found the connecting link between Glodstone’s treasure of mundane letters from the Comtesse de Montcon, his Bentley and his belligerent datedness.

  As evening came, and with it the sounds of cars and boys’ voices, Slymne sat on in the darkness of his room letting his mind loose on a scheme that would use all Glodstone’s adolescent lust for violent adventure and romance to lure him into a morass of misunderstanding and indiscretion. It was a delightful prospect.

  6

  For the rest of the term, Slymne soaked himself in adventure stories. It was a thoroughly distasteful task but one that had to be done if his plan was to work. He did his reading secretly and, to maintain the illusion that his interests lay in an entirely different direction, he joined the Headmaster’s Madrigal Singers, bought records of Tippett and Benjamin Britten and, ostensibly to hear Ashkenazy playing at the Festival Hall, drove down to London.

  ‘Slimey’s trying to worm his way into the Head’s good graces by way of so-called music,’ was Glodstone’s comment, but Slymne’s activities in London had nothing to do with music. Carefully avoiding more fashionable stationery shops, he found a printer in Paddington who was prepared to duplicate La Comtesse de Montcon’s notepaper and crested envelopes.

  ‘I’ll have to see the original if you want it done exactly,’ he told Slymne, who had produced photographs of the crest and printed address. ‘And it’ll cost.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Slymne, uncomfortably supposing that the man took him for a forger or blackmailer or both. The following week, he found an excuse to be in the Secretary’s office when the mail came, and was able to filch Wanderby’s letter from his mother. That Saturday, on the grounds that he had to visit a London dentist about his gum trouble, Slymne was back at the printer’s with the envelope he had carefully steamed open. He returned to Groxbourne with a lump of cotton wool stuck uncomfortably in his mouth to suggest some dental treatment. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do without me. Dentist’s orders,’ he explained thickly to the Headmaster. ‘Not allowed to sing for the time being.’

  ‘Dear me, well we’ll just have to do our best in your absence,’ said the Headmaster, with the later comment to his wife that at least they couldn’t do worse.

  Next day, Wanderby’s lost letter was found, rather muddied, in the flowerbed outside the Secretary’s office and the postman was blamed.

  By the end of term, Slymne had completed his preliminary preparations. He had collected the envelopes and notepaper and had deposited most of them in a locked tin box at his mother’s house in Ramsgate for the time being. He had renewed his passport and taken out travellers’ cheques. While the rest of the staff dispersed for the Easter holidays, Mr Slymne took the cross-Channel ferry to Boulogne and hired a car. From there he drove to the Belgian frontier before turning south at a small border crossing near Armentières. The place was carefully chosen. Even Slymne had memories of old men croaking ‘Mademoiselle d’Armentières, parlez-vous?’ in remembrance of their happy days of slaughter in the First World War, and the name would arouse just the right outdated emotions he required in Glodstone. So must the route. Slymne stopped frequently to consult his maps and the guidebooks to find some picturesque way through this industrial grimness, but finally gave up. Anyway, it would heighten the romance of the wooded roads and valleys further south and the slagheaps and coalmines had the advantage of lending the route a very convincing reality. If one wanted to enter France unobserved, this was the way to come. And so Slymne kept to side roads, well away from autoroutes and big towns during his daytime driving, only moving into a hotel in a city at night. All the time he made notes and made sure he was maintaining the spirit of Glodstone’s reading without bringing him too closely in touch with the real world.

  For that reason he avoided Rouen and crossed the Seine by a bridge further south, but indulged himself on Route 836 down the Eure before backtracking to Ivry-la Bataille and noting an hotel there and its telephone number. After that, another diversion by way of Houdan and Faverolles to Nogent-Le-Roi and Chartres. He was hesitant about Chartres, but one look at the cathedral reassured him. Yes, Chartres would inspire Glodstone. And what about Château Renault just off the road to Tours? It had been four miles outside Château Renault that Mansel and Chandos had gassed Brevet in his own car. Slymne decided against it and chose the minor road to Meung-sur-Loire as being more discreetly surreptitious. He would have to impress on Glodstone the danger of crossing rivers in big towns. Slymne made a note ‘Bridge bound to be watched’ in his notebook and drove on.

  It took him ten days to plan the route and, to be on the safe side, he stayed clear of the countryside round the Château Carmagnac with one exception. On the tenth night he drove to the little town of Boosat and posted two letters in separate boxes. To be precise, he posted envelopes, each with a crest on the back and with his own address typed onto a self-adhesive label on the front. Then he turned north and retraced his route to Boulogne, checking each mark he had made on his maps against the comments in his notebook and adding more information.

  By the time he sailed for Folkestone, Mr Slymne was proud of his work. There were some advantages to be had from a degree in Geography after all. And the two envelopes were waiting for him at his mother’s house. With the utmost care, he prised off the self-adhesive labels and steamed open the lightly gummed flaps. Then he set to work with an ink-pad to obliterate the date on the postmark while leaving Boosat clearly visible. For the next three days, he pored over the photograph of the Comtesse’s letter to Glodstone and traced again and again her large flowing handwriting. When he returned to Groxbourne, even the Comtesse herself would have found difficulty in saying which of the letters she had written without reading their contents. Mr Slymne’s skills had come into their own.

  *

&nb
sp; It was more than could be said for Peregrine Clyde-Browne. The discrepancy between his school report and his failure to pass any subject at O level apart from the Maths which, because it allowed of no alternatives to right and wrong, he had managed to scrape through with a grade C, had finally convinced Mr Clyde-Browne that sending his son to Groxbourne might have had the advantage of keeping the brute out of the house for most of the year, but that it certainly hadn’t advanced the chances of getting him into the Army. On the other hand, he had paid the fees for three years, not to mention his contribution to the Chapel Restoration Fund, and it infuriated him to think that he had wasted the money.

  ‘We’re almost certain to be lumbered with the cretin at the end of the summer term,’ he grumbled, ‘and at this rate, he’ll never get a job.’

  ‘I think you’re being very hard on him. Dr Andrews says he’s probably a late developer.’

  ‘And how late is late? He’ll be fifty before he knows that Oui is French for Yes and not an instruction to go to the toilet. And I’ll be ninety.’

  ‘And in your second childhood,’ retorted Mrs Clyde-Browne.

  ‘Quite,’ said her husband. ‘In which case you’ll have double problems. Peregrine won’t be out of his first. Well, if you want to share your old age with a middle-aged adolescent, I don’t.’

  ‘Since I’m spending my own middle age with a bad-tempered and callous—’

  ‘I am not callous. I may be bad-tempered but I am not callous. I am merely trying to do the best for your … all right, our son while there’s still time.’

  ‘But his reports say—’

  But Mr Clyde-Browne’s patience had run out. ‘Reports? Reports? I’d as soon believe a single word of a Government White Paper as give any credence to those damned reports. They’re designed to con parents of morons to go on shelling out good money. What I want are decent exam results.’

  ‘In that case you should have taken my advice in the first place and had Peregrine privately tutored,’ said Mrs Clyde-Browne, knitting with some ferocity.

  Mr Clyde-Browne wilted into a chair. ‘You may be right at that,’ he conceded, ‘though I can’t imagine any educated man staying the course. Peregrine would have him in a mental home within a month. Still, it’s worth trying. There must be some case-hardened crammer who could programme him with enough information to get his O levels. I’ll look into it.’

  *

  As a result of this desperate determination, Peregrine had spent the Easter holidays with Dr Klaus Hardboldt, late of the Army Education Corps. The doctor’s credentials were of the highest. He had drilled the Duke of Durham’s son into Cambridge against hereditary odds and had had the remarkable record of teaching eighteen Guards officers to speak pidgin Russian without a lisp.

  ‘I think I can guarantee your son will pass his O levels,’ he told Mr Clyde-Browne. ‘Give me anyone for three weeks of uninterrupted training and they will learn.’

  Mr Clyde-Browne had said he hoped so and had paid handsomely. And Dr Hardboldt had lived up to his promise. Peregrine had spent three weeks at the Doctor’s school in Aldershot with astonishing results. The Doctor’s methods were based an his intimate observations of dogs and a close connection with several chief examiners.

  ‘Don’t imagine I expect you to think, because I don’t,’ he explained the first morning. ‘You are here to obey. I require the use of only one faculty, that of memory. You will learn off by heart the answers to the questions which will be set you in the exam. Those of you who fail to remember the answers will be put on bread and water; those who are word perfect will get fillet steak. Is that clear?’

  The class nodded.

  ‘Pick up the piece of paper in front of you and turn it over.’

  The class did as they were told.

  ‘That is the answer to the first question in the Maths paper you will be set. You have twenty minutes in which to learn it off by heart.’

  At the end of twenty minutes, Peregrine could remember the answer. Throughout the day, the process continued. Even after dinner it resumed and it was midnight before Peregrine got to bed. He was wakened at six next morning and required to repeat the answers he had learnt the day before to a tape recorder.

  ‘That is known as reinforcement,’ said the Doctor. ‘Today we will learn the answers to the French questions. Reinforcement will be done tomorrow before breakfast.’

  Next day, Peregrine went hungrily into the classroom for Geography and was rewarded with steak at dinner. By the end of the week, only one boy in the class was still incapable of remembering the answers to all the questions in History, Geography, Maths, Chemistry, Biology and English Literature.

  Dr Hardboldt was undismayed. ‘Sit, sir,’ he ordered when the boy fell off his chair for the third time, owing to semi-starvation. The lad managed to get into a sitting position. ‘Good dog,’ said the Doctor, producing a packet of Chocdrops. ‘Now beg.’

  As the boy put up his hands, the Doctor dropped a Chocdrop into his mouth. ‘Good. Now then Parkinson, if you can obey that simple instruction, there’s not the slightest doubt you can pass the exam.’

  ‘But I can’t read,’ whimpered Parkinson, and evidently tried to wag his tail.

  Doctor Hardboldt looked at him grimly. ‘Can’t read? Stuff and nonsense, sir. Any boy whose parents can afford to pay my fees must be able to read.’

  ‘But I’m dyslexic, sir.’

  The Doctor stiffened. ‘So,’ he said. ‘In that case we’ll have to apply for you to take your O levels orally. Take this note to my secretary.’

  As Parkinson wobbled from the room, the Doctor turned back to the class. ‘Is there any other do … boy here who can’t read? I don’t want any shilly-shallying. If you can’t read, say so, and we’ll have you attended to by the hypnotist.’

  But no one in the class needed the attentions of the hypnotist.

  The second week was spent writing down verbatim the answers to the questions and in further reinforcement. Peregrine was woken every so often during the night and interrogated. ‘What is the answer to question four in the History paper?’ said the Doctor.

  Peregrine peered bleary-eyed into the ferocious moustache. ‘Gladstone’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland was prevented from becoming law because Chamberlain, formerly the radical Mayor of Birmingham, split the Liberal party and …’

  ‘Good dog,’ said the Doctor when he had finished, and rewarded him with a Chocdrop.

  But it was in the third week that reinforcement became most rigorous. ‘A tired mind is a receptive mind,’ the Doctor announced on Sunday evening. ‘From now on, you will be limited to four hours’ sleep in every twenty-four, one hour in every six being allocated for rest. Before you go to sleep, you will write down the answers to one exam paper and, on being woken, will write them down again before going on to the next subject. In this way, you will be unable to fail your O levels even if you want to.’

  After seven more days of conditioning, Peregrine returned to his parents exhausted and with his brain so stuffed with exam answers that his parents had their own sleep interrupted by an occasional bark and the sound of Peregrine automatically reciting the Doctor’s orders. They were further disturbed by Dr Hardboldt’s insistence that Peregrine be prevented from returning to Groxbourne until after he had sat his exams. ‘It is absolutely essential that he isn’t exposed to the confusion of other methods of teaching,’ he said. ‘Nothing is more damaging to an animal’s learning ability than contradictory stimuli.’

  ‘But Peregrine isn’t an animal,’ protested Mrs Clyde-Browne. ‘He’s a delicate, sensitive—’

  ‘Animal,’ said her husband, whose views on his son coincided entirely with the Doctor’s.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dr Hardboldt. ‘Now where most teachers go wrong is in failing to apply the methods used in animal training to their pupils. If a seal can be taught to balance a ball on its nose, a boy can be taught to pass exams.’

  ‘But the questions are surely different every year,’
said Mr Clyde-Browne.

  Dr Hardboldt shook his head. ‘They can’t be. If they were, no one could possibly teach the answers. Those are the rules of the game.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Mrs Clyde-Browne.

  ‘Madam, I am,’ said the Doctor. ‘Time will prove it.’

  And time, as far as Peregrine was concerned, did. He returned to Groxbourne a month late and, with the air of a sleepwalker, took his O level exams with every sign that this time he would succeed. Even the Headmaster, glancing through the papers before sending them off to the external examiners, was impressed. ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it possible,’ he muttered, and immediately wrote to the Clyde-Brownes to assure them that they could go ahead with their plans to enter Peregrine for the Army.