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CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Staff Meeting
Chapter 2: Burleigh
Chapter 3: Parents’ Evening
Chapter 4: Boys
Chapter 5: Teachers
Chapter 6: A Concatenation of Circumstances
Chapter 7: Young Man, I Think You’re Dying
Chapter 8: Mr Crumwallis’s Consternation
Chapter 9: Master and Slave
Chapter 10: The Morning After
Chapter 11: Decline and Fall
Chapter 12: Takeover
Chapter 13: Turnabout
Chapter 14: Mothers
Chapter 15: Suggestions and Discoveries
Chapter 16: Truth
Chapter 17: Life After Death
About Robert Barnard
CHAPTER 1
STAFF MEETING
A fly buzzed in the Staff Common Room of Burleigh School. It provided a fitting accompaniment to the voice of the headmaster.
‘I sometimes think that the Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board has taken leave of its senses,’ said Mr Crumwallis, in his inconsequential tenor drone. ‘First it was someone called Golding, then it was Weskit or some such name, and now it’s a woman with a name like a Victorian tart, who writes books about girls who get pregnant by homosexuals. Is this the kind of stuff for teenage boys? What was wrong with Black Arrow, I’d like to know? Or Westward Ho?’
Or, to put the matter more honestly, thought Dorothea Gilberd, tearing her glance from Tom Tedder, why don’t they prescribe books that Burleigh School has already got copies of? Miss Gilberd (Junior English, Junior History and Junior anything going) had had, over the years, more than her fill of Black Arrow.
‘I’m sure I will have the support of Mr McWhirter in any representations I may feel called upon to make to the Board,’ said the headmaster.
Iain Ogilvy McWhirter (Senior English and Religious Instruction) had been asleep for the past ten minutes, but Tom Tedder (Art and Woodwork) said ‘Arrgh’ through closed lips, and that seemed to do well enough.
The bust of Gibbon, purchased in Geneva during the headmaster’s first post-war vacation, sneered down on him as he proceeded.
‘Then there is the question of . . . metalwork.’ The headmaster wielded that pause with all the virtuosity of Edith Evans in her prime. Nobody could doubt that metalwork was going to get its comeuppance. Nobody, indeed, who knew anything of the school’s finances, could have doubted that its prospects were nil. ‘It has been suggested to me by the parents of Tomkiss and Wattling that their sons are skilled in . . . metalwork, and that the school should have an . . . option that would enable them to pursue their interest in this . . . field. Other schools, they inform me, offer . . . metalwork. But then, other schools, I am informed, offer their young gentlemen courses in car maintenance. Or bricklaying. And in any case the question of should we, may be pre-empted by the question of can we offer such a course . . .’
You mean old sod, thought Tom Tedder, torn between a consciousness of Dorothea Gilberd’s eyes on him again and some residual interest in the subject in hand. You wouldn’t offer them art if you didn’t see the chance of slapping on the cost of paint as an extra. If you could just pick up a load of scrap iron and shove it on the bill under metalwork you wouldn’t be turning up your nose at the subject. If I had any guts I’d walk out of the front door now, this minute, and I’d hitch my way to Italy and rent a shack in Tuscany, and I’d paint trash to sell to the tourists in the Piazza della Signoria, and I’d paint . . .
But what else he could paint, other than trash for the tourists, brought him back to earth.
‘. . . but even were we able to come to some agreement with the authorities at Cullbridge Comprehensive, they would demand, would they not, a quid pro quo? And what are we in a position to offer them? I hardly think they would be interested in using our gymnasium. Even on his last visit, two years ago, the Ministry Inspector declared that it would soon be more of a hazard to health than a promoter of it.’
Taking advantage of this unusual spurt of self-criticism, Bill Muggeridge (P. E., Games and Religious Instruction) threw forward a hefty fist and said: ‘In that connection, Headmaster—’
‘But then what do these Ministry Inspectors know about education?’ resumed the headmaster hastily, discarding doubts as quickly as he had assumed them. ‘About schools, no doubt, they know something—perhaps they have schedules and inventories that tell them in wearisome detail what they should look for in the structure, the physical fabric. But to the soul of a school, to education itself, they are blind. I question, personally, whether these inspectors have not outlived their usefulness. It is not as though the country were riddled with Dotheboys Halls!’
A snuffle of laughter from the body of the meeting was hastily suppressed. Please God, thought Penny Warlock (Junior Classics, Geography and Religious Instruction), get me a job in a real school before next September. Please God let me be doing real work. Penny Warlock, twenty-three, pretty and serious-minded, believed in God, and her words were not random aspirations. But they lacked conviction, because she could not believe in a God who answered prayers. If God answered prayers, why was she here? Why were any of them here?
‘So if Tomkiss and Wattling feel impelled to express their artistic bent in any form of . . . metalwork, it will have to be, I fear, in their own time, and at their parents’ expense. And so we come to the antepenultimate item on the agenda. The vacant position of matron.’
‘If I might say a few words, Headmaster, on that,’ put in Glenda Grower (History, French and World Religions if absolutely pressed). Her voice, like everything about her, rang confidently, but the headmaster was not to be put off his stride.
‘Really, Miss Grower, this is a staff meeting. As I was saying, the position of matron has now been vacant since term began, and in spite of valiant efforts to fill the position—’
‘Too mean to offer a living wage,’ muttered Tom Tedder to the young man beside him.
‘—we have been unable to fill the position. Meanwhile, as you know, my good wife has stepped in to fill the breach, and—’
Goaded beyond endurance by the reference to the headmaster’s wife, to whom she had that morning sent a boy with a high fever, only to have him sent back with iodine on his knuckles, Glenda Grower chimed in again in her rich, ringing voice:
‘I would remind you, Headmaster, that small as our boarding section is, the Ministry recommendation is that for any establishment of twenty boarders or more, a qualified matron be employed. Grateful as we are, of course, to Mrs Crumwallis for her sterling . . . efforts.’
The headmaster regarded her with disfavour.
‘As I was about to say, this situation cannot be allowed to continue, trespassing as we are on my wife’s time and goodwill. Efforts will therefore continue to find a suitable person before the commencement of next term. My penultimate item is that term ends on April 13th, and reports and class lists should be in my office one week before then. And the final item: I move that we all adjourn to my sitting-room for a glass of sherry.”
Penny Warlock perked up. This was the first sensible suggestion she had heard from the headmaster since she had come to Burleigh School, one week after the beginning of Spring term (her predecessor having expired, Kennedy’s Latin Primer in hand, in the middle of the pluperfect of Amo with Form 2B). She let Glenda Grower lead the way, splendidly striding forward
with that swing that showed off her tall, slim figure, and watched the other, older members of staff follow in her wake. Together with Toby Freely, the fresh-faced young man who had been sitting next to Tom Tedder, she brought up, modestly, the rear of the exodus.
‘Best thing that’s happened since I arrived,’ she muttered to him, as they shuffled along the lino’d passage towards the headmaster’s quarters.
‘Absolutely,’ said Toby. ‘I suppose I’ll get some, will I? They couldn’t not.’
‘You poor young things,’ said Corbett Farraday (Physics, Chemistry, and anything vaguely in that line) who was flapping his overgrown boy scout’s body along with the mass of teachers, and now looked around at them with his unnaturally innocent expression. ‘What a jolly lot you have to learn.’
And certainly the atmosphere was less than festive in the headmaster’s sitting-room. Near the fireplace a table had been installed, and on it placed two bottles. Behind the bottles stood Mrs Crumwallis—tall, bony, straggly of hair, the only memorable feature about her being her large, round, immensely thick-lensed glasses. As each slightly shamefaced figure came up to the table, she peered intently at the face, muttered ‘Sweet or dry?’ and then poured from one of her bottles as if administering Syrup of Figs or Cod Liver Oil to the infant sick.
The older men established themselves over by the fireplace. The central position was taken by the headmaster himself, and the live coals sent vivid warmth to his posterior. Edward Crumwallis was tall, sunken-cheeked, and he bent his neck and head forward towards his companions, making him look like a bird of prey with indigestion. Next to him on his left, keeping as far as possible from the coals as though to emphasize his lack of pretensions to warmth, was Percy Makepeace (‘We’re distantly welated to the Thackeways’), the pale shred of a mathematics teacher. On the headmaster’s right, encroaching rather than retreating, was Septimus Coffin, sixty-odd if he was a day, retired grammar school classics teacher. A bachelor with a sister as housekeeper, he had found retirement unstimulating, and had been pleased to come back to teaching at any price, any place. He was swilling his sherry with a will, and tugging at his bushy, nicotine-stained moustache as if he expected it to come off.
‘Evenings are drawing out,’ said the headmaster.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mr Makepeace.
It was Septimus Coffin’s weakness that, after a lifetime of schoolmastering, he could never leave alone the flat, meaningless cliché.
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘Surprising if they weren’t, what? If it were March and we were still drawing the curtains at four. Frightening to contemplate, what? Earth stopped on its axle, or whatever you call it.’
‘So heartening,’ said Mr Makepeace, terrified to the depths of his timid soul by Coffin’s tendency to seize on the headmaster’s least utterances, brandish them around, then publicly trample on them. ‘So heartening, the coming of Spring. The new green—’
‘Green, eh?’ said Septimus. ‘Whatever next?’
‘—the buds coming out, the crocuses coming up.’
‘The fuel bills coming down,’ said the headmaster.
• • •
At staff functions at Burleigh, little groups tended to form. For example, by the drinks table Bill Muggeridge seemed to be trying to make up to Mrs Crumwallis. They made an odd pair, she bony and remote, he heavy, grubby and vaguely disreputable. What they could have in common it would be difficult to guess, unless it was that both were defiantly unacademic and felt the need to make a common front against the teachers—not that learning sat particularly heavy on any of them, either. At any rate, if an alliance was being formed, it was as heavy going as bringing together two Middle East states. Mrs Crumwallis was peering at Bill Muggeridge as if he were some little-known species of the rhinoceros family, and she needed to consult the label on his cage to be sure of his name.
On occasions such as this, Dorothea Gilberd tended to gravitate towards Tom Tedder. On occasions such as this, and also on occasions such as coffee breaks, exam supervision and staff booze-ups. She flattered herself this was done discreetly, and was noticed by no one, though the yearning in her look as she gazed at him would be obvious to a child of five, and the staff made frequent jokes about her loving him with a love that made his life a burden. This was not, in fact, true. Tom Tedder—bulky, untidy, and God-dammit-I’m-an-artist in his approach to the world in general—accepted the situation quite calmly, as most men of forty will accept devotion, even from a woman a dozen years his senior.
‘I must say,’ said Miss Gilberd, ‘that however much that precious trio over there may burble on, I don’t see much sign of Spring.’
‘I never really notice things like that during term time,’ said Tom Tedder. ‘I think I go into a sort of visual hibernation. Of course, when it’s vacation, and I can paint more . . .’
‘I don’t think the seasons mean much anymore, though,’ continued Miss Gilberd eagerly, ‘not in an English town, anyway. Now, if this were Italy . . .’
She had touched the right spring. She always did. She had made great capital out of a fortnight’s bus tour to Lake Garda.
‘Ah!’ said Tom Tedder.
‘Spring on the Adriatic coast!’
‘Winter in the Dolomites!’
‘ “Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa,” ’ quoted Dorothea Gilberd, going slightly pink.
‘I saw Siena for the first time in Autumn,’ said Tom Tedder, with a catch in his voice.
‘Wonderful Siena. The cathedral must be a dream for an artist.’
Tom Tedder reined in his emotion.
‘When I painted it, it looked like a bloody great liquorice allsort,’ he said. Tom Tedder’s tragedy was that he had a perfectly accurate estimate of his own talents as an artist.
Over by the fireplace, the headmaster had exhausted his limited store of small talk and had advanced to matters of serious educational concern.
‘As far as I can see,’ he said, blinking magisterially, ‘this decision by the European Court is going to have far-reaching consequences. Ver-ry far-reach-ing.’
‘Weally, Headmaster?’ said Mr Makepeace.
‘It spells the beginning of the end of corporal punishment in British schools.’
‘Heavens above!’ said Septimus Coffin. ‘How are the Scottish schools going to manage?’
‘How, indeed?’ said the headmaster, who was tormented with indecision whenever he spoke with Septimus Coffin, how far to take him seriously. ‘It’s another victory for the “reformers”, I’m afraid. One explains to them over and over again the benefits: it’s quick, cheap, no hard feelings on either side—’
‘Considerable enjoyment on one,’ said Coffin.
‘Quite . . . quite. But they won’t listen. They charge ahead with their ill-advised new brooms. The Burleigh School has never, I hope, had the reputation of a beating school, but this will inevitably change the character of the place.’
‘I hope that point was put to the powers-that-be in Strasbourg,’ said Septimus Coffin. ‘Too busy fattening their geese to listen, I suppose. Well, well—to think the days of bottom-slippering are numbered. I think I need another sherry to face up to that prospect.’
• • •
The rest of the teachers, or most of them, stood awkwardly together in the middle of the room. Glenda Grower stood a little aside, as she so often did—splendid, cool, apart. Penny Warlock, Toby Freely and Corbett Farraday grouped themselves around a rickety occasional table, on which was perched one of Mrs Crumwallis’s repulsive collections of cacti. This one was thick and protruberant, and bent unexpectedly at the top: it looked like a cross between a penis and a corkscrew, and the little group looked at it as if wondering who would dare be first to point this out.
‘What’s happened to old McWhirter?’ said Penny, deciding not to mention the comparison in the company of two young men who gave her some gratifying doggy devotion.
‘He nipped off,’ said Toby Freely. ‘Well, hardly n
ipped. I saw him doing a side shuffle to the main entrance as we all trooped along here. Presumably he’s not to be soft-soaped by a glass of Amontillado.’
‘Black mark against his name,’ said Penny.
’What greenhorns you are,’ said Glenda Grower, shaking her great mass of long, auburn hair from over her eyes. ‘You don’t understand the situation here at all, do they, Corbett? Mr McWhirter does what he likes at Burleigh, and the reason is that Mr McWhirter has money in the place.’
‘Money?’ said Toby, incredulous.
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Corbett Farraday, in his enthusiastic, puppyish way. He was all of twenty-nine, but he acted thirteen, and he had great rolls of fat on his tummy, the result of unwise motherly feeding. He rested his glass on the paunch now, regarded them owlishly, and gave the impression, as always, of someone who had not gone through the usual process of growing up, but had remained a toddler, magnified to the nth degree. ‘Isn’t it incredible? I mean, would you jolly well put money into this place? But I had it from Makepeace, who was here at the time. Three years ago, it was, and the school was nearly on the rocks. You can imagine: old Crumwallis going around with the expression of a Soviet agronomist at harvest time. Then along comes old McWhirter and says he will plonk his life savings in the school.’
‘I knew he was mad.’
‘Six months later, comprehensive education comes in in the county of Swessex. Burleigh School starts looking up.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ said Penny Warlock bitterly.
‘Comparatively,’ said Glenda Grower. ‘At least the bills get paid. We get paid—very little, I hear you cry, but we get paid, and on the right day of the month. I will refrain from horror stories of Burleigh’s past, but I assure you, Corbett is right. Things have looked up.’
‘ “Glory and honour unto him, be unto him,” ’ said Corbett Farraday. ‘McWhirter, saviour of the day and hero of the hour.’
‘I say,’ said Penny, losing interest in the fortunes of Burleigh School, which she hoped speedily to put behind her, ‘look at that. Old Coffin is going back to the sherry table. I think he’s going to ask for more. Too Oliver Twist for words. Do you think he’ll get it? He is—he’s getting it. My God, I’m going to try that.’
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