The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

  Gordon was in the Sixth, and its privileges were indeed sweet. He felt very proud as he sat in the same room with Harding, a double-first, and head of the House, and with Hazelton, the captain of the House. Though it was an ordeal to go on to “con” before them, it was very magnificent to roll down to the football field just before the game began without attending roll.

  “I say, Caruthers,” Lovelace would yell across the changing-room, “do buck up; it’s nearly twenty-five to three, and roll is at a quarter to.”

  “I don’t go to roll,” came the lordly answer.

  And he felt the eyes of admiring juniors fixed on him. It was sheer joy, too, to wear the blue ribbon of the Sixth Form and to carry a walking-stick; to stroll into shops that were to the rest of the school out of bounds; to go to the armoury and the gym. after tea without a pass. But it was in hall that the new position meant most.

  While the rest of the house had to stay in their studies and make some pretence of work, he would wander indolently down the passage and pay calls. When he paused outside a study he heard the invariable sound of a novel flying into the waste-paper basket, of a paper being shoved under the table, or a cake being relegated to the window-seat. Then he came in.

  A curse always greeted him.

  “Oh, damn you, Caruthers, I thought it was a prefect. Foster, hoist out that cake; we were just having a meal.”

  He now had the freedom of studies that had before been to him as holy places. Where once Clarke had dealt out justice with a heavy hand, Tester and he sat before the fire discussing books and life. In the games study, where once he trembled before the rage of Lovelace major, he sat with Carter in hall preparing Thucydides. Steps would sound down the passage, a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” bawled Carter.

  “Please, Carter, may I speak to Smith?” a nervous voice would say. No one could talk without leave from a prefect during hall.

  “Yes; and shut the outer door,” Carter answered, without looking round. The prefectorial dignity seemed in a way to descend on Gordon; just then life was very good. But there were times when he would feel an uncontrollable impatience with the regime under which he lived. One of these was on the second Sunday of term. It was Rogers’ turn to preach, and, as always, Gordon prepared himself for a twenty minutes’ sleep till the outburst of egoistic rhetoric was spent. But this time, about half-way through, a few phrases floated through his mist of dreams and caught his attention. Rogers was talking about the impending confirmation service. With one hand on the lectern and the other brandishing his pince-nez, as was his custom when he intended to be more than usually impressive, he began the really vital part of the sermon.

  “In the holidays there appeared as, I am sorry to say, I expect some of you saw, a book pretending to deal with life at one of our largest Public Schools. I say, pretending, because the book contains hardly a word of truth. The writer says that the boys are callous about religious questions and discuss matters which only grown-up people should mention in the privacy of their own studies, and still more serious, the purport of the book was to attack not only the boys but even the masters who so nobly endeavour to inculcate living ideas of purity and Christianity. I am only too well aware when I look round this chapel tonight—this chapel made sacred by so many memories—that nearly every word of that accusation is false. Yet perhaps there are times—in our mirth, shall we say?—when we are engaged in sport, or genial merriment, when we are inclined to treat sacred matters not with quite that reverence that we ought. Perhaps—”

  Rogers prosed on, epithet followed epithet, egotism and arrogance vied with one another for predominance. The school lolled back in the oak seats and dreamt of house matches, rags, impositions, impending rows. At last the Chief gave out the final hymn. Into the cloisters the school poured out, hustling, shouting, a stream of shadows. Contentedly Rogers went back to his house, ate a large meal, and addressed a little homily to the confirmation candidates in his house on the virtues of sincerity.

  “What a pitiable state of mind old ‘Bogus’ must be in,” sighed Tester, when the scurry of feet along the passage had died down kind of quiet, and he and Gordon were sitting in front of a typically huge School House fire.

  “I don’t think I should call it a mind at all,” muttered Gordon, who was furious about the whole affair. “The man’s an utter fool. When he is told the truth he won’t believe it, but stands there in the pulpit rambling on, airing his rotten opinions. Good God, and that’s the sort of man who is supposed to be moulding the coming generation. Oh, it’s sickening.”

  “Well, my good boy, what more can you expect? The really brilliant men don’t take up schoolmastering; it is the worst paid profession there is. Look at it, a man with a double-first at Oxford comes down to a place like Fernhurst and sweats his guts out day and night for two hundred pounds a year. Of course, the big men try for better things. Rogers is just the sort of fool who would be a schoolmaster. He has got no brain, no intellect, he loves jawing, and nothing could be more suitable for him than the Third Form, the pulpit, and a commission in the O.T.C. But perhaps he may have a few merits. I have not found any yet.”

  “Nor I. But, you know, some good men take up schoolmastering.”

  “Oh, of course they do. There is the Chief, for instance, a brilliant scholar and the authority on Coleridge. But he is an exception; and besides, he did not stop an assistant master long; he got a headmastership pretty soon. Chief is a splendid fellow. But I am talking of the average man. Just look at our staff: a more fatuous set of fools I never struck. All in a groove, all worshipping the same rotten tin gods. I am always repeating myself, but I can’t help it. Damn them all, I say, they’ve mucked up my life pretty well; not one of them has tried to help me. They sit round the common room fire and gas. Betteridge swears Ferrers is a wonderful man; personally, I think he is an unmitigated nuisance. But at any rate, he is the only man who ever thinks for himself. Oh, what fools they all are.”

  For the rest of the evening Gordon and Tester cursed and swore at everyone and everything, and on the whole felt better for having got it off their chests. At any rate, next day Gordon was plotting a rag on an enormous scale with Archie Fletcher; and in a House game assisted in the severe routing of Rogers’ house by seventy-eight points to nil. It takes a good deal to upset a boy of fifteen for very long. And the long evenings were a supreme happiness.

  * * * * *

  It must be owned that during hall Lovelace was rather unsociable. It was not that he studied Greek or Latin; he had a healthy contempt for scholastic triumphs; horse-racing was the real interest of his life. “This is my work,” he used to scoff, brandishing The Sportsman in Gordon’s face. “I am not going to be a classic scholar, and I sha’n’t discover any new element, or such stuff as that. I am going on the turf. This is my work.”

  For an hour every evening he laboured perseveringly at “his work” with form books, The Sportsman, and huge account books. For every single race he chose the runners, and laid imaginary bets; each night he made out how much he had lost or made; and it must be confessed that if he had really laid money on the horses, he would most certainly have done a good term’s work. By Christmas he was one hundred and seventeen pounds up. This pursuit, of course, rather militated against his activities in the class-room; but, as he said, “It was only Claremont, the old Methuselah—and they had a damned good crib.” Lovelace did his work from seven to eight, and during this time Caruthers, who seemed to be in the happy condition of never having any work to do at all, wandered round the studies. And during his peregrinations many who had been to him before merely units in a vast organisation detached themselves from the rest, and became to him living characters; especially was this so with Foster. He had played with Foster for two years in the Colts and in A-K sides, but there had never been anything in common between them; their interests had been far apart; neither stood for anything to the other. But now, when Gordon found himself frequently dropping into Foster’s study
for half-an-hour or so, he realised how many qualities Foster had. Foster was strong-willed, obstinate almost, quite regardless of tradition, in his own way slightly a rebel, and a past master in the art of deceiving masters. There are two ways of making a master look a fool: one is by introducing processions and coloured mice; the other by bowing before him, making him think you are hardworking and industrious, and all the while laughing at him behind his back. Gordon preferred the former, because he had the love of battle; but Foster held to the second method, in its way equally effective, and anyone who shook a spear against authority was sure of sympathy from Gordon.

  It was a great sight to see Foster bamboozle Claremont. With the greatest regularity Foster was ploughed in his con., failed to score in Latin prose, and knew nothing of his rep. And yet he never got an imposition. He would point out how hard he worked; he often stayed behind after school for a few seconds to ask Claremont a point in the unseen. Such keenness was unusual, and Claremont could not connect it with the slovenly productions that he had learnt to associate with the name of Foster. For a long time it was a vast enigma. At half term Foster’s report consisted of one word, typically Claremontian—”Inscrutable.” But manners always win in the end. Foster showed so much zeal, such an honest willingness to learn, that Claremont finally classed him as a hard-working, keen, friendly, but amazingly stupid boy. The Army class, which Foster honoured with his presence, always did Latin and English with Claremont, and for over two years Foster sat at the back of Claremont’s room, scoring marks by singles when others scored by tens. Yet his reports were invariably good; he never had an imposition; he never needed to prepare a line of anything.

  “Well, Foster,” Claremont used to say, as he returned a prose entirely besmirched with blue pencil, “I believe you really try, but the result is most disheartening.”

  Foster always looked profoundly distressed; and at the end of the hour he would go up, prose in hand, and ask why the subject of an active verb could not be in the ablative. Two minutes later he would emerge with a broad grin on his face, and murmur to whoever might be near that Claremont was “a most damnable ass, but none the less a pleasant creature.” And in the evening hall he and Gordon would discuss how one or other of them had advanced a step further into the enemy’s country, and taken one more pawn in the gigantic game of bluff. They were both in their own fashion working to the same end.

  But at this point the serene calm of Gordon’s life was suddenly rudely interrupted by an incursion on the part of “the Bull.” About three weeks after the term had begun the Colts played their first game, and like most sides at the beginning of a season, they were terribly disorganised. Lovelace, who had been in under-sixteen teams for years, was the Senior Colts badge and was captain. Burgoyne led the scrum; he was a rough diamond, if indeed a diamond at all, and was not too popular with the side. Foster was scrum half; Collins and Gordon were in the scrum. It was really quite a decent side, but this particular afternoon it started shakily. “The Bull” raged so madly and cursed so furiously that the side became petrified with funk, and could do nothing right.

  Once and only once did the Colts look like scoring, and then Lovelace knocked on the easiest pass right between the posts.

  “Never did I see anything like it,” bellowed Buller. “For eighteen years I have coached Fernhurst; and before that I coached Oxford and Gloucestershire; and I am not going to stand this. Lovelace, you are not fit to be captain of a pick-up, let alone a school Colts side. Burgoyne, skipper the side. Now then, two minutes more to half-time; do something, Colts.”

  The Colts did do something. They let the other side score twice. At half-time Buller poured forth a superb torrent of rhetoric. And suddenly there came over Gordon an uncontrollable desire to laugh. “The Bull” looked so funny, with his hair ruffled, and his eyes flaming with wrath. Gordon had to look the other way, or he would have burst into paroxysms of laughter. When one is overexcited and worried, hysteria is not far absent. Gordon turned away.

  Then suddenly he felt a terrific assault on his backside. Someone had booted him most fiercely, and turning round he saw the face of Buller still more distorted with rage.

  “Never saw such rudeness! Here am I trying to coach the rottenest side that has ever disgraced a Fernhurst ground, and you haven’t the manners to listen to me. Good man, are you so perfect that you can afford to pay no attention to me? For heaven’s sake, don’t make your footer like your cricket, the slackest thing in the whole of Fernhurst. Come on, we’ll go on with this game.”

  For ten more minutes “the Bull” watched the Colts making feverish endeavours to do anything right. But his powers of endurance were not equal to the strain.

  “Here,” he shouted, as Harding was going up to change after superintending a pick-up, “you might referee for about ten more minutes here, will you? I can’t bear the sight of the little slackers any longer.”

  A sigh of relief went up as the figure of Buller rolled out through the field gate. Strangely enough, the Colts did rather better after this, and Collins scored a really quite fine try. But the side left the field glowing with resentment. None more than Gordon and Lovelace.

  “What does the fool mean by making a little ass like Burgoyne captain?” complained Gordon. “Dirty little beast, who does not wash or shave. And he hacked me up the bottom, too, the swine. I’m getting a bit sick of ‘The Bull.’”

  “So am I. What we really want is my brother back again. He kept him in order all right. My brother was a strong man, and did not stand any rot from Buller or anyone else.”

  “Hullo, you two, you look about fed up! What’s the row?”

  They turned round; Mansell was coming up behind them. Lovelace burst out perfervidly:

  “It’s that fool Buller. He cursed the Colts all round, and he made Burgoyne captain instead of me, and he hacked Gordon’s bottom, and told him he had no manners. Believe me, we have had a jolly afternoon.”

  “And I suppose he said that he had captained Oxford, Cambridge, New Zealand and the Fiji Islands, and that in his whole career he had never seen anything like it.”

  “Oh yes, he fairly rolled out his qualifications, like a maidservant applying for a post.”

  “Oh, well, never mind,” said Mansell; “he is a good chap, really, only he can’t keep his temper. He’ll probably apologise to you both before the end of the day. I remember Ferguson said once: ‘All men are fools and half of them are bloody fools.’ Not so bad for Ferguson that! Cheer up!”

  “Yes; but, damn it all, it is a bit thick,” said Lovelace. “And a tick like Burgoyne to boot.”

  As they were changing, a fag from Buller’s made a nervous entry; he looked very lost, but finally summoned up enough courage to ask Davenport if he knew where Caruthers was.

  “Yonder, sirrah, lurking behind the piano.”

  The fag came up.

  “Oh—I say—er—Caruthers. ‘The Bull’—er, I mean Mr Buller wants to see you as soon as you are changed.”

  “Right,” said Gordon.

  “I said so,” said Mansell; “he will weep over you and shake your hand like a long-lost brother; and after you will follow Lovelace, who will once more lead the lads with white jerseys and red dragons to victory against Osborne. Goodbye; you needn’t stop, you know,” he informed the fag, who was giving a stork-like performance, by gyrating first on one foot then on another.

  “That means I shall miss my tea,” said Gordon.

  “I fear so,” answered Mansell. “I don’t really think you can expect ‘the Bull’ to receive you with crumpets and muffins and other goodly delights. Of course tomorrow is Sunday; you might manage to work a supper-party, but don’t rely on it. Come and tell me the result of your chat; you will find me in my study; don’t knock; just walk in; you are always welcome.”

  As Gordon walked across the courts to Buller’s study he had not the slightest doubt as to how the interview would end. “The Bull” was often like this. Only yesterday Foster had told him some lon
g yarn of how he had beaten a lad in Christy’s and had hit his hand by mistake; and to kick a person was, after all, a far more undignified method of assault. It was almost actionable. Quite contentedly he knocked on the door and went in. He was not, however, welcomed with open arms. “The Bull” stood with his back to the door, facing the fireplace, his hands behind his back. He did not speak for a minute or so. Gordon wondered if it would be correct to take a chair. “The Bull” broke the silence.

  “Well, Caruthers, are you sorry for what happened this afternoon?”

  This took Gordon by surprise: it was hardly the interview he had been led to expect. He murmured “Yes, sir” rather indistinctly.

  “Are you, though? Because if you are going to come in here and say you are sorry, when you are not, simply to smooth things over, you would be a pretty rotten sort of fellow.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gordon had recovered his self-control and was ready for a fight.

  “Well, this is the way I look at things. I am here to coach Fernhurst sides; it is my life’s work. I love Fernhurst, and I have devoted all my energy and care to help my old school, and it seems to me that you are trying—you and Lovelace between you—to ruin my work and stand in my light. Both of you as individuals are well worth your places in both under-sixteen sides, football and cricket. As individuals, I say; and you think you are indispensable to the side, and that we can’t do without you. You can afford to laugh when you miss catches, and not pay attention to me when I am trying to give you the benefits of my experience.”

  “I heard every word—”

  “Will you kindly wait till I have finished. Fernhurst has done very well in the past without you and Lovelace, and five years hence it will have to do without you, and I am not going to have you interfere with the present. You hate me, I dare say; from all I hear of you, you hate my house; and you stir up sedition against me. You show the others how much you care for me. And you are both people who have some influence in your house, and wherever you are, for that matter. And are you using it for the good of Fernhurst? You ruined all my pleasure in the cricket Colts; but I don’t care about myself. All I care for is Fernhurst. Why did I stop Lovelace being captain? Because I want a man who is going to back me up, who is going to play for the side and not for himself. And I tell you I am going to drop Lovelace; he plays for himself; he gives rotten passes; he upsets combination; and I won’t have him on my side.”