‘I think I wanted to see you.’
‘Was that wise?’
‘It may have been necessary.’
‘Oh, you foolish boy. You foolish boy. Did you think I would be impressed? Did you think I might fall on my knees and worship the conquering hero? I am sorry to disappoint you. To me you are a grubby, ignorant little boy, I am afraid, and will ever remain so. That is the penalty of being a schoolmaster. We are invincible realists. We know that all boys are grubby, ignorant little reprobates and thus they remain. It is not the uniform that makes the man. Many are called, but few are chosen. Original sin, you see, is so very unoriginal.’
Caverner watched Margetson unmoved. He looked up at the sky which appeared, strangely, to be getting lighter. Finally, he said: ‘I read about you in The Times. The Coroner brought in an open verdict.’
For a moment Margetson appeared startled, then he came back at Caverner. There was now a touch of real venom in his voice.
‘Well I saw something about you. Mametz Wood, wasn’t it? July 1916?’
‘It is August now. The term is over. The holidays have begun.’
‘I did not take my own life. It was taken from me.’
Caverner looked at Margetson for a long time. ‘I think I despised you once,’ he said, then he smiled.
‘How dare you, sir!’ Margetson was silent for a time. He appeared to be struggling to articulate something. Finally he said: ‘It was not suicide, whatever the Coroner may have thought; whatever other people said. It was not.’
‘Who hanged you then?’
‘I did not mean to . . .’
The image was conveyed to Caverner, as vividly as when he had first been given the details. When he had read the bald announcement of Margetson’s death in the newspaper, he had immediately written to a friend in England and asked for further information. Though guns and death surrounded him, he burned to know. The friend, a fellow sufferer under Margetson, had been happy to oblige.
One morning, early, towards the chilly end of a Michaelmas term, when it was barely light, the boys of St Cyprian’s had trouped into the gymnasium where, according to the school’s inflexible routine, they were to line up before going into chapel. Something was dimly swinging from one of the ropes that hung from the rafters of the gym’s great beamed roof. The process of realisation that this was The Head, the Reverend C.W. Margetson, and that he had hanged himself, came to the boys surprisingly slowly but was all the more terrible for that. The Head was in his usual rusty black, with his dog collar, even his master’s gown. His long neck had been stretched still further by the rope; the face was almost black but recognisable and his spectacles clung to his nose. Stranger yet was the fact that his trousers had come loose and were gathered in exhausted corrugated bags around his ankles. The effect for an instant might almost have been comic. Witnesses declared that the vision burned itself indelibly into their minds: it remained with them day and night. It remained with Caverner too, even amid the stench of death in Flanders, even though he had received the news at second hand.
‘You cannot hurt me now,’ said Caverner.
Margetson clawed at the air around him, a gesture of such impotent rage that Caverner almost laughed.
Caverner said: ‘Very soon you will meet Minos or Rhadamanthus. Perhaps even Cerberus too.’ That was what he had come to say. It was not to see the terror in Margetson’s eyes, so he turned away from him before he could.
Margetson turned too and began to hurry from the field towards a belt of dark firs in the distance. A host of shadows followed after him. Caverner remained standing in the ancient light by the pavilion but he no longer felt alone. The Great Field was Great once more, greater even than the War in which his body had perished.
Contents
MRS MIDNIGHT and Other Stories
Mrs Midnight and Other Stories
MRS MIDNIGHT
COUNTESS OTHO
MEETING WITH MIKE
THE DANCER IN THE DARK
MR PIGSNY
THE BRIGHTON REDEMPTION
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE DAMNED
THE MORTLAKE MANUSCRIPT
THE LOOK
THE GIACOMETTI CRUCIFIXION
A PIECE OF ELSEWHERE
MINOS OR RHADAMANTHUS
Mrs Midnight and Other Stories Page 35
