by Sean O'Brien
My relatives were kind people in their pale, bloodless way, but seemed vague and preoccupied in their chilly house, and when they sent me away they were doing their best. As time went on our relations became occasional and formal. I tended to spend the holidays at the school, in the library or mooching about in the woods, until I discovered girls, when I began to mooch more widely. In the sixth form I moved into digs nearby, run by Mrs Jessop, and was more or less free to please myself in respect of the libraries, the woods and the girls. Perhaps the authorities thought I was at the pictures. But this story is only incidentally about me.
‘I don’t want to have to keep repeating this,’ Carson had said, back in June when he’d finished setting out my duties and timetable, ‘but take the chance to do something properly. Give yourself a start. Work steadily, embrace the routine of this place, and things will become clearer and more manageable. The mind has mountains – who could deny it? But the point – for all we know, the only point – is to keep going. And who knows, Maxwell? You may prove to be good at schoolmastering. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not what I imagined for myself, but it suits me well enough.’ He paused to fiddle with the pipe.
‘Anything in particular I should be aware of?’
‘Blake’s is Blake’s. As you may have noticed, it desires mediocrity. It sees it as normal and seeks to enforce it.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Do you? I should damn well think you do. And we are the loyal opposition, in favour of serious study, enlightenment and so on, against the dead weight of place and precedent. We will very likely lose. You think I’m joking.’
‘Perhaps a bit.’
‘Well, I’m not. Arnold Bennett was right about this lot, I mean the English, of which this shower are an essential strain.’ Carson took a book from his desk. ‘Read this.’
‘Do you mean now?’
‘Of course now. Where the card is inserted. In fact, read it aloud.’ I did as I was told. I inherited Carson’s copy of the book in question, and I have it before me now.
Another marked characteristic is [its] gigantic temperamental dullness, unresponsiveness to external suggestion, a lack of humour – in short, a heavy and half-honest stupidity: ultimate product of gross prosperity, too much exercise, too much sleep. Then I notice a grim passion for the status quo. This is natural. Let these people exclaim as they will against the structure of society, the last thing they desire is to alter it. This passion shows itself in a naive admiration for everything that has survived its original usefulness, such as sail-drill and uniforms . . . The passion for the status quo also shows itself in a general defensive, sullen hatred of all ideas whatever. You cannot argue with these people. ‘Do you really think so?’ they will politely murmur, when you have asserted your belief that the earth is round, or something like that. And their tone says: ‘Would you mind very much if we leave this painful subject? My feelings on it are too deep for utterance.’
‘Well, yes,’ I said, when I’d read the marked passage. ‘I suppose I see what you mean. But if this is how you feel, why not go somewhere else?’
‘And admit defeat? Anyway, it’s too late. And now I’ve got you to help me with the good fight, haven’t I?’ He put the book carefully back in the pile it had come from. ‘You’ll have Feldberg in the 1914–45 group. He’s bright.’ I knew Feldberg’s father. I had often visited his antiquarian bookshop in the arcade in the city centre. ‘The boy’s the best we’ve had in my time. English want him too but we’re not going to let them have him. He’s a born historian. Whatever happens we have to get him into Cambridge. They don’t come along very often, the real thing.’
Carson met my gaze for a moment, as if about to say more, then looked down into the quad, his great Roman head in profile, a head deserving a coin to be struck in its honour. Much later I read of someone with whom he seemed to stand comparison.
He seemed to me
Like one of those who run for the green cloth
Across Verona’s field, and in that race
Appeared among the winners, not the lost.
I assumed he had decided not to refer to the fact that I too had allegedly been the real thing in my time. I was partly right.
‘Have you anything to occupy you until the autumn?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Then spend time about the place. Help with the play. Help in the library – someone will need to look after it now that Horobin’s leaving us. Look as if you belong.’
‘Well, I do belong, don’t I?’
‘You know what I mean, Maxwell. Show willing.’
So I did.
What Carson had managed to do when I went into the sixth form was to make history urgent. I came to care about the reign of Stephen, about nineteenth-century British history and, for some reason, about Italian unification in particular. Victor Emmanuel, Mazzini and Cavour seemed like live presences, their struggles still taking place in some almost-accessible dimension. It mattered that our group were interested. Then there was the First World War and the rise of fascism and I was decisively tempted away from English. Tim Connolly, my English teacher, accepted defeat with good grace, extracting a promise that I would continue to write what he considered promising stories. This narrative will be the only fulfilment of that undertaking.
Carson’s sober charisma was a legend in the school. I stayed on into the third-year sixth, prepared for Cambridge entrance and gained an exhibition. Things went well. Then they went wrong, from the moment I was introduced to the don’s wife at a party in the summer term of my second year. Causes, effects.
Carson had fallen silent for a little while. We looked out at the chestnut trees surrounding the quad. Then he said he had a favour to ask.
‘Of course.’ I supposed it was some minor piece of administration.
‘I need you to be my executor.’ For the first time in my acquaintance with him he seemed not quite certain where to look.
‘I beg your pardon? Me?’ For a moment I wondered if he was joking.
‘It’s simply a formality,’ he said. He was embarrassed. So was I.
‘Yes, but I’m not qualified, am I?’ I asked. ‘I’m too young, surely. I don’t even know what it means, really, to be an executor.’
‘Well, look it up, Maxwell, in a book. You’ll find some in the library. You’re of age and you’re employed. I’ve known you for years. You have your faults but I consider you honest.’ He paused while I absorbed the balance of this judgement. The frankness restored his authority intact. ‘Besides, I have no family, no one else I feel I could call on. It would be a help to me, and it would mean a good deal, if you could agree to take this on.’ He looked away. I couldn’t think of any other time when he had struck such a personal note. Was this blackmail? Surely not, though clearly I was in his debt. I put the thought aside as unworthy. If only it had been so simple. Carson must have known it wasn’t, which makes me wonder what other hopes he might have had of me, and whether he was, knowingly or not, offering me the chance of a larger vindication. If so, there a dimension of ruthlessness to his request, almost a Roman severity.
‘Then, yes,’ I said, ‘but are you sure? I mean, I’d be honoured, of course.’
‘Oh, let’s not overstate things, Maxwell. But yes, I am sure.’
‘Forgive me, but is there something I should know? Are you ill?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. Anyway, all in good time, Maxwell. And I think that from now on, in informal settings, we should use Christian names.’ I knew I would never be at ease doing that.
We act as though our motives and even those of others were known to us. Beyond the most superficial and immediate level I have never understood why I have done or not done things: I wanted something or did not want something, or I was afraid, or I did not want to think about whatever was at issue. Carson, I then believed, would have acted on the oracle’s instruction: know thyself. But perhaps he was drawn to weakness and failure anyway. Or perhaps I really was the only reso
urce to hand at Blake’s.
THREE
It was in the natural order of things that after my job interview at Blake’s I had gone round to the Narwhal at six o’clock. I rang Smallbone. He joined me at the bar.
‘So what are we drinking to?’ he said, easing himself on to the stool.
‘Success, so huge and wholly farcical.’ I indicated the pint that awaited him.
‘Who is she?’
‘It’s not that. You have two more guesses before the floor opens and delivers you to the piranhas.’
‘Gammon’s died.’
‘He was still alive earlier on.’
‘So you’ve seen him.’
‘And Carson, and Brand, and the governors.’
‘You mad twat.’
‘I thank you, my friend. Drink, drink! Nunc est bibendum.’
Smallbone took a leisurely swallow. ‘So you’re back in. The iron lid has slammed shut.’
‘As of lunchtime. I start in September. History, plus running the library.’
‘I didn’t know there was a library. They never let on.’
‘I can tell you’re delighted for me.’
‘As I said: you mad twat. You’re only just out of the place.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought you were going to be over the hills and far away. Someone the rest of us could envy in our parochial torpor.’
‘Events, dear boy. Events.’
‘Is that what you’re calling her? I hope she was worth it.’
‘Don’t spoil it, Bone. At least I’ve got a job.’ Small depth charges of horror continued to explode internally when the subject came up. I couldn’t believe it myself. I needed many years to have passed.
‘It’s a job at Blake’s, Maxwell. You know what happens to the ones who go back. They grow pale, they dry out, they disappear like chalk off a board, like paint off a touchline.’
‘Very eloquent. You speak as one who works in his mother’s stamp shop three hundred yards from the school.’
‘Think of Pownall. Think of Spurrier. What are they now? Husks, man, husks.’
‘I’m not like them, though, am I? I’m me.’
‘Well, of course you say that now. But I see the paleness taking hold while you loiter here. Drink up.’ He tapped a coin on the ashtray.
‘It’s a start, Bone.’
‘No, it’s the end, beautiful friend, the end.’ Smallbone began to sing in a grim impersonation of Jim Morrison’s baritone.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Stan Pitt. The landlord, the last known wearer of brilliantine in England, appeared from behind the partition in his best black suit, polishing his gold Albert watch with a blinding handkerchief. His were the photographs: he could be seen in bouts with Bruce Woodcock and Brian London. He had contended, then retired to his pub, bloodied but unbowed and still more than a match for anyone who came through the doors.
‘Well, Stan,’ I said, ‘the hunter is home from the hill,’ which was not, on reflection, an especially apt or encouraging quotation.
‘So I see, Mr Maxwell. And in the mood to celebrate, it seems.’
‘A pint for my ruined friend,’ said Smallbone. ‘And one for me.’
‘Back at Blake’s, then?’ said Stan, as he stooped at the beer-pull. He straightened up and winked.
‘So it would appear,’ I said. ‘For the moment.’
‘You can keep an eye on your friend Mr Smallbone, then. He’s falling into bad ways. Trying to, at any rate. Or have I to tell my friend Jack Risman and have him put you to rights? That’ll be three and fourpence.’ I gave Stan the money and he disappeared again.
‘How did he know?’ I asked.
Smallbone made a face. ‘You fail to understand. Just because the Narwhal is outside the school grounds doesn’t mean it’s not Blake’s. It’s an outpost, a forward position. Blake’s is everywhere, man.’
‘I’ve done it now, haven’t I?’
‘Difficult to disagree with that assessment. Let’s have another one here. Then we’ll go and find some mucky women. They’ve been wondering what happened to you.’
‘I’ve been wondering that myself.’
FOUR
And now it was October, and I was back in the belly of beast. It was almost as though I’d never been away. The place was second nature to me, and my first nature was nowhere to be found. The school day ended. Once again I had pulled off the trick of seeming to know what I was doing.
Arnesen alone of the group had attended class wearing his uniform webbing belt. As I left the main building, I saw him among the cadets gathering for parade in the darkening quad, putting on his beret. Culshaw the boy corporal ordered them to fall in. Dr (Captain) Carson, accompanied by Sergeant Risman and Charles Rackham, arrived in order to perform the inspection. Carson, with his massive shaved head and the bearing of a Renaissance soldier-prelate, always looked as if he belonged in, and could actually see, grander circumstances than the rest of us. It was part of what he meant by ‘the historical imagination’. The provincialism of the setting meant nothing to him: he would make meaning by strength of personality, there among the oafs and toadies. He would redeem a few and make the rest remember him at least, even if they retained not a single date or fact.
When I was a pupil it had been always been taken for granted that in due course we would join the cadets, so I did so happily enough when the time came, and I enjoyed much of it, camping out in the woods by the lake, a trip to climb on Skye, a hike over the island of Kerrera, off Oban, over its heathery spine to a castle sacked by Cromwell’s men and latterly occupied by a few sheep. There was a view southwards, of island after island stepping into the blue glitter where sea and sky fused. It stirred something in me I couldn’t begin to identify until I read Keats’s sonnet on Chapman’s Homer, where a glimpse of the Pacific is compared to the sighting of a new planet. The blue world seen from the island was ancient and immediate, vast and tragic, and I felt a summons to explore it. It looked, then, like a convincing future.
There was also the running about, weapons training, a handful of blank rounds each, the licence to play at death in our scratchy hand-me-down uniforms and the uncompromising boots we buffed before parade nights from fear of Sergeant Risman. I suppose we thought that with our Molesworthian cynicism we were subverting the Combined Cadet Force. The Force, for its part, saw us coming and acted accordingly to make us its own.
For all Carson’s commanding presence, on that dimming afternoon in the quad the company parade looked a bit ragged to me. As a veteran of such evenings myself, I found I disapproved. Given the wider climate of dissent and revolt, it was, I wrongly thought, the beginning of the end, although that year many of the incoming fourth form had refused to join the Cadets. It was as if a seemingly immutable organization, a fixed star in the late heaven of empire, might be tempted to explain and justify itself to unbelievers.
This revolt had caught Major Brand, local officer commanding, on the hop when the boys made their views known at the special assembly in the Memorial Hall at the end of the previous summer term. It was not my business, but I happened to be helping out backstage during a free period with Mrs Rowan of the Art Department, wife of the Headmaster, painting flats for the forthcoming production of Ruddigore, and we came forward to listen from the concealment of one of the half-finished Gothic arches. I felt like a spy: simply to witness what followed seemed, inexplicably, like a betrayal. But what could I have done about it?
I felt sorry for the kindly, portly, myopic Major, who looked like the object of mild satire in a Giles cartoon and, wholly against the tide of fashion, of which I dare say he was unaware, favoured the Augustans in his teaching, directing his dull and baffled charges to the essays of Addison and Steele. But he was, in the heavily qualified and ironical assessment of the boys, a well-liked figure, decent and fair.
In the way that legends seemed to pass unspoken directly into the pupil brain, it was known that he had several times attempted to escape from a POW camp after being captured in the retreat to Dunkirk
. So Major Brand knew what he was talking about. But that didn’t, as they say now, ‘play’ with the generation of fourteen-year-olds in 1968. Like my own quite recent cohort, many of them would have read The Wooden Horse and The Colditz Story, and seen the films made of them, but their modest realism and matter-of-fact characters had been put in the shade by The Great Escape and the exploits of Virgil Hilts, the Cooler King, impossibly laconic and, in 1944, anachronistically hip. There was no room for Major Brand in that world. Whatever dangers he had risked, he was not to be imagined seeking to breach the wire at the Swiss border dressed in German uniform and astride a stolen motorbike. The Major fell into the category of True but not Interesting.
I need hardly add that it would be a mistake – it would be priggish – to expect the boys’ attitudes to be coherent. Many of them thought the Major was a warmonger. Many would have watched with appreciation the Paris students bombarding the riot squad with cobblestones the previous May. Where this left Hilts, who devoted his entire effort to attempting to escape and presumably get back into his aircraft and kill some more Germans, was not revealed. Many of the boys might have liked the idea of peace, but to a man they hated the Germans, a sentiment which the passage of a further half century has done little to alter and which indeed the altered balance of power has rather tended to emphasize.
Perhaps the Major’s mistake was to ask for a show of hands. Presumably this was to demonstrate the normal unanimous desire of the boys to do the expected thing. Hands were raised, of course, quite a few, but there were significant gaps in the forest, and a certain amount of smirking and muttering among the malcontents.
‘Wake up, chaps,’ said the Major, blinking. ‘Let’s do that again. Hands up.’ The result was the same. Captain Carson shook his head and stared at the floor. Beside him Charles Rackham, brother of Mrs Rowan, wore his usual expression of private amusement. Sergeant Risman scrutinized the ranks of the dissenters, as though filing their names for future use.
The Major came forward. ‘Well, look, you men, would someone care to tell me what the problem is? We’ve all been in the Corps, or the armed forces, and so on.’ He nodded to his colleagues on the platform, who nodded in return, all except Risman, who made no move but was scowling like a military demon. ‘Well? What is it? Let’s hear it. Speak up.’ Another mistake, perhaps.
