In At The Deep End

by Anabel Donald

  ‘And for boys of other denominations? The Catholics, for instance?’

  ‘The Catholics go to Mass in town.’

  ‘By themselves?’

  ‘Oh, no. Catholic members of staff accompany them. I’m a Catholic myself and it used to be my responsibility to take charge. Then, when my Alistair came as housemaster here, he took over.’

  ‘Mr Brown originally trained as a priest?’ I tried to sound uninterested.

  ‘Yes, dear, he did. Later, he decided to do God’s work in the teaching profession.’

  Claudia was looking excited. I wished she wouldn’t and I coughed, to warn her. She wiped her face blank, before Mrs Brown saw her, I thought.

  The telephone rang, Mrs Brown answered it. ‘Yes . . . Yes . . . Of course, straight away.’ She turned to us. ‘You’re wanted down in GHQ.’

  ‘Immediately?’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid so, dear, yes. Wish we could chat all morning.’

  She bundled us out of the flat, past the open door to Brown’s study, now empty. Then she watched us on our way.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ said Claudia, hurrying to keep up with me as I increased my pace.

  ‘No idea,’ I said. ‘Originally, Li Sung was keeping us away from something or someone, I suppose.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘What we’re told. Eventually, try and find out what they want to stop us from doing, and do it.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something about Olivier?’

  ‘She was sharp. I’ve already asked her son. I told the solicitor no one at Rissington would know what I was after, and I’ve got to make that good.’

  ‘But you’ve told the fat boy. Tim Robertson.’

  ‘And he can’t afford to tell on me in case I tell on him.’

  ‘Tell what?’

  ‘Tell the school that he couldn’t run the community service programme properly. That he lied about what Olivier was doing when he should have been working on Matilda Beckford’s house.’

  Claudia was still talking. ‘How do you know? You said to crosscheck everything, right, not take one person’s word?’

  ‘Not now,’ I said. ‘Tell me later.’ I was waiting to see who came out to meet us. I was sure it would be Alistair Brown, or possibly a boy following his orders.

  But it was the Major who came down the front steps and walked towards us.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Another lovely day,’ I said, but the Major wasn’t interested. He was looking at Claudia. His expression was wistful, almost sad. ‘You’re here. Miss Tanner,’ he said. ‘With your assistant.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘My wife’s come back,’ he said to me flatly. ‘She’d like to see you.’ He took a handkerchief from his sleeve and patted away sweat from his face. Was he anxious? Ill? Perhaps he saw the documentary, his immortality, being dashed from his lips. Perhaps Mrs Ellis had come back to stop it. ‘Better all round if your assistant waits in the hall, huh?’

  ‘I’d like her with me,’ I said. ‘She’s part of the team.’

  Claudia grinned delightedly. He hesitated, then shrugged, as if prospects were already so bad that an assistant more or less would make no difference. He hurried us through the hall, up the Gone with the Wind stairs, down the corridor to his private quarters. We passed two boys on the way: they both stood back and saluted, then watched the receding seat of Claudia’s jeans.

  The Major opened the door for us and waved us through to the sitting-room where a woman stood waiting with her back to the window. ‘My wife,’ he said. ‘Miss Tanner And – um – Claudia.’

  ‘Mrs Ellis,’ I said, we shook hands, and I took stock of the original of the ‘artistic’ photographs, thirty years on. Kelly’s newspaper article had placed her at fifty-three and that looked about right, I reckoned, though her face hadn’t dropped. She was tall, much taller than her husband, and her hair was still black. Her eyes and complexion showed that she had once genuinely been very dark but the condition of her hair shrieked ‘dyed’. There was masses of it which she wore on top of her head in carefully arranged disarray, stuck through with wooden hair ornaments like small African spears. Her large dark eyes swam in reddened whites, surrounded by faded bruising. She looked hungover and not at all pleased to see us, but she’d dressed up enough to make an entrance down the stairs. She wore a deep red linen skirt, a short, fitted cream linen jacket, high-heeled red and blue leather sandals, and a liberal sprinkling of some expensive perfume. When I met her eyes her personality engulfed me in waves. It was rich and rather over-fruity, and so was her voice.

  ‘How do you do, Miss Tanner,’ she swooped, like a contralto loosening up in the dressing room before a recital. ‘I’m not at all sure about this documentary.’

  The Major was jittering from foot to foot and looking at his watch. ‘Perhaps we should ask our guests to sit down, my dear? Huh? Ah – coffee?’

  He waved us all to chairs, especially Claudia, who Mrs Ellis had ignored, and started distributing cups from the waiting tray. I was surprised. I’d thought him the sort of man who would have expected serving coffee to be a woman’s privilege.

  Impatiently, she sat down too and accepted a cup. Then she started niggling. The coffee was too weak. No, she didn’t want him to make any more. No, she didn’t want him to ring for the duty batman to make some. Oh, she’d drink it, and why didn’t he stop fussing? I watched her irritated gestures. She often pushed at her hair, to lift it off her neck. She was big, deep-breasted, handsome, and self-absorbed.

  Eventually she turned to me with the air of someone whose attention was worth getting. ‘I hope you won’t be too terribly disappointed if we send you packing,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said blandly.

  The Major looked at his watch again. ‘I really must go. I have an appointment.’

  ‘Nobody’s keeping you,’ said Mrs Ellis scornfully. ‘Why don’t you run along?’

  ‘I’ll see you later. Miss Tanner—’ The door closed behind him.

  I turned to Mrs Ellis. ‘I thought you were coming back next week,’ I said mildly. ‘Change of plan?’

  ‘I came as soon as I heard about this ridiculous programme . . . Really, I can’t imagine what he was thinking about, letting the media in. We run a school, not a circus.’

  ‘My producer is most discreet, and you’d be consulted every step of the way.’

  She chuckled. It was a low, expressive chuckle. She had an air of over-ripe sexuality that was flaring up for the last time before the pension-book and the cocoa and before her breasts met her waist in the run-up to Matilda Beckford’s old age. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘But I’m not sure the parents will like it . . . and I don’t think the Major realizes how dangerous the media can be. You could easily make him look a fool. He’s not, he’s an idealist.’

  But you treat him like a fool, I thought, and wondered about her motives. ‘You’re not committed to anything yet,’ I said. ‘We’ll need your permission to film, of course, and then before that, Alan may not decide to use your school. So if I were you I wouldn’t worry about anything, yet. And we’re nearly finished with the preliminary research.’

  ‘What does she do?’ Mrs Ellis lit a cigarette and waved it at Claudia. ‘Can she talk?’

  ‘I said “How do you do” when I came in,’ said Claudia politely. ‘I don’t think you heard. I’m Alex’s assistant, learning the job.’

  ‘Learning the job.And what have you learnt so far?’ One eyebrow raised, a quizzical, denigratory swoop of the self-conscious voice.

  ‘It’s very interesting. Your school is fascinating.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Mrs Ellis turned back to me. ‘What do you have left to do?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to some of the boys. And I’d like to hear from you, of course. You’re almost as involved in running the school as your husband is, I expect.’

  ‘Almost,’ she said ironically, puffing the smoke in my direction. I wo
ndered why she’d cut short her holiday. If she wanted to throw me out, she could just have rung up and told the Major the documentary wasn’t on. She certainly had enough clout with him to do that. What didn’t she want me to find out? Or did she just want to make sure that she had a big enough part in the eventual programme?

  And who, or what, had she dressed up for?

  She made me uneasy. There was a turbulence in the air about her: she overflowed with undirected resentment. I’m disappointed, her manner said. Make it up to me. I could suggest we filmed her in a white dress clinging to a basketball stand: other than that, nothing sprang to mind.

  What she appeared to want, for the rest of the morning, was our company. She talked about her father, the Founder, about her exciting youth (she’d been a beauty: many men had been after her: she’d chosen Geoffrey because her father, the pop-eyed Colonel, had wanted him as a successor). ‘My father the Colonel’ cropped up so often I felt I was in the Katherine Mansfield short story. I turned on the tape, Claudia took notes, and we both pretended that Alan might use them. Her mother, Mrs Colonel, had died when she was three.

  I looked at the photographs, starting about the time of her mother’s death, and wondered. What had the relationship been? Had the little girl in the white dress been fixed by her father at some early stage, and was she suffocating behind the façade of the well-dressed middle-aged Mrs Ellis?

  I found it hard to pay attention. Her voice annoyed me. I watched the tape go round in my recorder and promised myself that I’d listen to it later.

  I switched back on when she started talking about money. According to her, the school was a profitable business. All their building – the craft block, the Sports Hall – had come out of profits. No building appeals. They had no problem with numbers. They filled a particular niche in the market and the applications weren’t dropping. Not, of course, that you automatically believe business people talking about their own profitability, but she really didn’t seem concerned about it. Neither did he, when he rejoined us an hour before lunch.

  I asked her about the specific difficulties of the boys who paid the higher fees rate: how ‘disturbed’ they actually were. She refused to talk about that, though she was ready enough to join the Major in talking about old boys. They were equally interested in their successes, remembered the details of their failures. ‘Brooks – such a sad boy – and we couldn’t do much for him, could we? Ended up in court for forgery,’ she said.

  ‘Terrible. When he put up such a fine show at the endurance exercise on the Brecons in ’82. Almost as good as Eggleston in ’79.’

  ‘Eggleston’s doing splendidly in the Scots Guards . . .’

  Her dissatisfaction might have been with herself or with the Major, but it wasn’t with the boys, although she refused to discuss general educational points. The National Curriculum: ‘Can’t make head or tail of it. Everybody knows what they should learn anyway.’ The Major plunged into another explanation of the Rissington syllabus changes: I switched off. I was trying to decide what to pack for my weekend away with Barty. Should I borrow Polly’s little black Lycra dress? She said I looked stunning in it. I thought my tits looked too big. My body’s in good condition but I think there’s too much of it. Besides, where was Barty taking me? Black Lycra’d be fine in Paris or Rome but if we were going to an unspoilt Greek island I’d look like the town tart. On the other hand wasn’t black Lycra last year’s news anyway? And I’d have to remember to ring Father Corrigan on Sunday. I hoped, wherever we were going, that there’d be a functioning phone . . .

  Mrs Ellis was talking again. I tuned in. She didn’t sit down consistently: she often got up and walked about as she spoke, or stood by the window, smoking. She was smoking by the window now. That was probably why she didn’t bother to buy decent chairs, I thought shifting my tortured bum to the one spot on the chair I hadn’t yet tried. She was telling us about her athletic prowess. Apparently she’d just missed the British Olympic gymnastic team in the late fifties, and later taken up swimming at a high level. She’d only do things she was good at, I reckoned.

  Just before lunch, the Major popped out again, Claudia asked to go to the lavatory, presumably to check on any change in the status of the medicine cabinet, and we were left alone. Mrs Ellis took up her place by the window, arms folded across her chest, one well-shod foot tapping. It seemed that she was impatient with our presence, yet she had kept us there. And was the documentary still on, or not?

  Before I could ask, she said, ‘Still interested in us, Miss Tanner?’

  ‘Very,’ I said.

  ‘Well, perhaps I won’t throw you out just yet. By the way, I’m sorry about your appointment with Tim Robertson.’

  ‘My appointment . . .?’

  ‘You were supposed to meet him this morning, I believe. After break.’

  The bogus appointment he’d talked about in his room while we were fixing the real one, scribbling in my notebook. Her spy system worked well.

  I was appalled. All my usual sharps were blunt. I’d completely forgotten. I’d been mooning over Barty, the day of my first meeting with Tim. What else had I missed? ‘So I was,’ I said. ‘How silly of me. Perhaps I can see him in the lunch break.’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said, smiling. ‘He’s well on his way to Wales by now. A last-minute place was available on this weekend’s Brecon trip . . . My husband decided it would be just the thing for Tim. He isn’t as fit as we’d like.’

  She was watching for a reaction, which I didn’t give. ‘What a pity,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I could see him next week?’

  ‘If you’re still here, of course. Ah, here’s your little assistant.’ Claudia, back from the lavatory, smiled sweetly and sat down. She wasn’t little. She must have been five foot eight. Mrs Ellis was probably jealous because Claudia had just as much hair as she had, in better condition. ‘I haven’t heard much from you, my dear,’ said Mrs Ellis, patronizing. ‘Have you any questions you’d like to ask?’

  Claudia looked at me. I nodded. ‘Well, yes, there is, Mrs Ellis,’ she said in her elfin I-come-from-nowhere voice. ‘What’s going to happen when you and the Major retire?’

  Mrs Ellis glanced at me. ‘Haven’t you discussed that with the Major?’ I shook my head. She looked, fleetingly, relieved, and went on expansively: ‘Of course we’re giving it thought. Much thought. Nothing’s decided yet. My father’s vision mustn’t die, but the Major’s mortal, and the time will come when he must hand over to a younger man.’

  ‘I see that,’ said Claudia, ‘but I don’t see the financial side, quite. You’ve got a lot of capital tied up in the property, haven’t you? Will you sell?’

  ‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business,’ said Mrs Ellis. ‘As I understand it, your documentary is dealing with education—’

  ‘But unfortunately,’ said Claudia,‘education costs money, doesn’t it? Like everything else. And part of the problem with evaluating educational systems is the cost. Like the problem with health services. If money was unlimited, then there’d be fewer difficult decisions to take.’

  Good for Claudia. She was already strong on flannel. But we were never to know if Mrs Ellis had managed to work out that what Claudia’d said had nothing to do with the Major’s retirement plans, because the phone rang.

  Mrs Ellis answered it.‘Yes—Yes—Oh, I suppose so.’ Ungraciously, she thrust the phone at me. I think the caller wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Miss Tanner? This is the Wanderotel. I have an urgent message for you.’

  It was the Accelerated Trainee.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I didn’t know who might be listening in on the Rissington Abbey phone line, or what Mrs Ellis could overhear – she was standing very close to me. So I told the Trainee I’d come back to the hotel for the message, and rang off. It was a good excuse to avoid lunch in the canteen, anyway.

  Mrs Ellis saw us down the stairs, across the hall and right into the car, as if to make sure we spoke to no one on t
he way out. She seemed irritated by our departure, and her four-square, arms-folded stare was following us up the drive every time I looked in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Who do you think the message is from?’ said Claudia. ‘Maybe the police have—’

  ‘It won’t be the police. Probably not ever, and certainly not yet. And don’t waste time speculating on soon to be established facts,’ I snapped priggishly. I was furious with myself. I’d cocked up. Forgetting the fake appointment with Tim was bad enough – on top of that, I’d lost him, perhaps just for the weekend, perhaps for ever And I’d told him too much, all of which Mrs Ellis and her spy team might already know.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Claudia unapologetically.

  I told her about Tim. ‘Bad luck,’ she said.

  ‘Not bad luck. Bad judgement and bad management.’

  ‘Tant pis,’ said Claudia. ‘Mrs Ellis had a good lift, didn’t she? It’ll be fine, once the bruising’s gone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was a face-lift, wasn’t it?’ Of course. But I didn’t think it through, because Claudia was rattling on. ‘I’ve got something for you. From the Browns’ bathroom, look.’ Another of her medicine-cabinet lists.

  ‘I can’t look, I’m driving,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The usual aspirin etc. Hair dye. Mountain Ash. But – the really crucial thing – a diaphragm, and contraceptive cream.’

  ‘So she had a late menopause and she’s cautious,’ I said. ‘So what? She may be keeping them for sentimental reasons.’

  ‘No, she isn’t, not judging by the sell-by date on the cream. 1995 sometime, must have been bought quite recently.’

  ‘So she’s still sexually active. Good for her.’

  ‘But who with?’ said Claudia. ‘Who with?’

  I saw what she meant. In a boarding school: in a wheelchair: living with her son. ‘It’d be difficult, having a lover,’ I said, ‘but not impossible. If he lived near by, with a place of his own.’