Once Again Assembled Here

by Sean O'Brien

  Not you as well, I thought. ‘Good. Now go away and take this rabble with you.’

  When I opened the door, the benches in the high, raked room were packed. The place was in semi-darkness, with the ragged blackouts drawn and tall candles burning in holders on the front desk. It was hot and stank of sweat and the sour gas which haunted the science block. The boys’ excited faces leaned down out of the dark as if there must be at any moment a revelation.

  Steerman, who was speaking, did not see me, and carried on ranting into the excited silence about immigration and empire and communism and the coming days. He did not refer to notes. The script was so far beyond the boy’s narrow capacities that I knew it must have been written for him by Rackham, who now appeared from the shadows, swirling his gown like an opera cloak, and whispered in my ear. ‘If you stop him now, there will be a riot. You don’t want that, do you?’

  And I was afraid, and I let Steerman finish his oration. When he did so, and the place broke out in furious cheering, I switched on the light.

  ‘The lesson bell has rung,’ I lied. ‘Hurry along now.’ There was a groan of deflation, but as the boys dispersed – and how like uniforms their black uniforms looked – they were still talking excitedly, and a number surrounded Steerman, who gave me an insolent smirk as he went off down the corridor. Rackham was nowhere to be seen. Arnesen came past. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Arnesen.’

  ‘It’s not just me, sir,’ he said. ‘What about the others?’

  ‘What, indeed? Get a move on.’ I went round opening the windows.

  Tim Connolly appeared in the doorway and shook his head. ‘We can’t have this,’ he said.

  How did he know? ‘No, but we seem to have got it.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to do about it, Maxwell? It’s getting out of hand.’

  ‘What do you suggest? My hands are tied. The BPP are in until Gammon says they’re out.’

  ‘Well, it won’t do. It’s like being in a madhouse. God knows what Carson would have thought. You’ve got your work cut out following him, haven’t you?’

  ‘Thank you for your support,’ I said, and left Connolly to it.

  At the end of the day Gammon called a meeting. When I arrived in the Headmaster’s office, Connolly was there, with Major Brand and Rackham.

  ‘Mr Connolly has raised some concerns about your handling of the mock election, Maxwell,’ Gammon said.

  The blame was mine; by implication I was the only begetter of the damned election and responsible for all aspects of its conduct, including what went on in people’s heads, especially Rackham’s and his acolyte’s. Not for the first time, I thought how well suited Gammon would have been to the internal politics of a totalitarian regime. At provincial level he would have been an accomplished performer – until, I consoled myself, he was exiled or summarily strung up when the extent of his dereliction became inconvenient for his superiors.

  ‘I can’t say I’m happy about the lunchtime meeting,’ I began. ‘The stewarding left something to be desired.’ Rackham looked insouciant.

  ‘It was like a torchlight rally,’ said Connolly. ‘They had the blinds in the science lecture theatre closed and the place was lit by candles.’

  ‘You weren’t there,’ I said, though of course he was right.

  ‘But I was,’ Rackham remarked. ‘It was certainly theatrical.’

  ‘You mean play-acting?’ asked Gammon, who did not much like plays.

  ‘It’s not good for the boys to get worked up like that,’ said Major Brand. ‘Save it for the rugby field.’

  ‘Or the battlefield,’ said Rackham.

  The Major sniffed and shook his head. ‘Teach them the difference between play-acting and what’s real,’ he said, to no one in particular.

  ‘We shouldn’t really have a party like the BPP standing in the mock election,’ said Connolly, as if it were only just becoming clear to him. ‘They’re not really democrats, are they?’

  ‘The BPP exists in the world,’ said Rackham. ‘It obviously appeals to some voters. Ought we to pretend otherwise? Or when it suits us are we not to be democrats?’

  ‘You know what I mean, Rackham. There have to be limits,’ Connolly insisted. He looked at me and I nodded, assuming what I hoped was a sufficiently concerned expression.

  ‘I understand you very well,’ Rackham replied, with his infuriating smile.

  Connolly shook his head, at a loss.

  ‘Liberalism bares its fangs, eh?’ said Rackham.

  ‘We could proscribe the BPP for electoral misconduct,’ I suggested.

  Rackham laughed. ‘Proscribe? Now there’s word you don’t hear very often. Usually reserved for times of grave emergency.’

  ‘Look,’ said Gammon, ‘we need to deal with the situation as we find it. We don’t need any trouble. The city council would like nothing better than an excuse to incorporate us with the rest in this comprehensive-school nonsense.’ Gammon’s paranoia meant that all problems were bound up with that threat. I thought the governors might have something to say about it, should it arise, but Gammon was clearly in no mood to listen to such a suggestion. He needed to be right.

  ‘We can hardly proscribe the party during the election,’ said Rackham. ‘What kind of example would that give? If that were going to be done it should have been decided before the campaign began.’ Supposing we’d been given chance, I thought, but I kept my impotent counsel. ‘But it seems not to have occurred to anyone, because the whole election was unplanned and casually set in motion,’ Rackham concluded.

  The lie sounded wholly reasonable.

  ‘No, apparently it didn’t occur to anyone,’ Gammon muttered, glancing at me. He looked at Major Brand for comments. The Major, who, whatever his private opinion, clearly saw himself as unpolitical because a simple soldier, shook his head unhappily and peered out of the window at the dark field.

  ‘But surely there can be no more torchlight rallies,’ insisted Connolly.

  Rackham conceded this with a smile. The event had already happened and its excitement and allure could not be undone now. In the course of the afternoon it had become a legend, though I can assure you that you will not find it in the official history.

  Connolly had not finished: ‘Some of the boys are likely to attend the actual BPP meeting in the town, where the General is to speak. Can that be prevented? Some of them are rather stirred up.’

  ‘You mean ban them from attending?’ asked Gammon. ‘I wonder. If you’d asked me last year I doubt if I’d have hesitated. Now, though . . . Isn’t that a matter for their parents?’ An incident taking place off the school premises might be more likely to draw the malign attention of the local council than a meeting a school at lunchtime, surely, but Gammon’s other great fear – the parents – took over now.

  ‘Do you suppose that if they want to go they’ll actually tell their parents their plans?’ Connolly asked.

  ‘Some of their parents might be planning to attend anyway,’ I said. Nobody responded to this.

  ‘If it were a matter for expulsion,’ said the Major, ‘that would be a harsh penalty. They’re, well, they’re just our boys, after all, and all this is a game to them, an excitement, something out of the routine. In the end, it’s up to us to try to make something of them. They may in any case see these BPP types for what they are when they see them in action. I must say I think it’s a shame Allingham’s involving himself. You’d think he’d have learned by now. Should have stuck to soldiering. Had a lot to offer in that sphere.’

  Gammon shook his head. He had come to the end of his competence and no more could be asked of him. The world could not be made to conform, and I should have known that in Gammon at such a time there would emerge an aspect of Pilate. You’re in charge, Gammon, I thought. So be in charge, one way or the other. Ignore Rackham. Ban the BPP and forbid the boys to attend Allingham’s meeting.

  But in the end Gammon was an appeaser of whatever powers presented themselves. As an act of empty rebellion
I lit a cigarette, since the Major had started wheezing away on his unlit pipe. But again nobody seemed to notice.

  ‘Up to you, Acting Headmaster,’ Rackham said. ‘Unless you think you should consult the actual Head, though of course he’s unlikely to be available.’

  ‘Whatever anyone thinks about it,’ said Gammon, recovering, ‘the BPP is a political party with an official candidate standing in the actual parliamentary by-election, and whatever we think of the candidate’s political views, he is a distinguished military man with a life of service, and a writer of books, as well as being an old boy, and we do want the boys to take an interest in current affairs.’ I had never heard Gammon express such an aspiration before, but its convenience was evident. ‘So as long as the boys are not in uniform I think we may have to accept it,’ Gammon replied. ‘We can hardly allow them to attend BPP meetings here and ban them from the real thing, can we?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Rackham. ‘In any case, a ban would, I strongly suggest, provoke disobedience on a large scale. We know what happened at the CCF recruitment meeting, Major. Mr Gammon as Acting Head would not be expelling a mere two or three boys, from what I’ve seen. Bearing in mind his comments about the local council, the consequences of that should be considered before any attempt to exert power in such a way. And their parents, who pay the fees, have some understandable expectations.’

  ‘Then they could warn their own sons off,’ said Connolly. ‘Perhaps a letter to all the boys’ homes—’

  Gammon waved this away impatiently. ‘The school governs itself or it does not,’ he insisted. Connolly began to talk about convening the governors, but Gammon talked over him and Connolly at last gave up a cause that I suspect he knew had been lost before ever he’d opened his mouth. ‘Rackham,’ said Gammon, ‘you’ve seen the situation at first hand. What do you suggest?’

  ‘That we keep a watching brief. That we have staff in attendance to make sure none of our boys gets into trouble.’

  ‘There might be violence, I’ve heard,’ said Connolly.

  ‘Yes, possibly with the communists from the so-called university and the trade unionists trying to make the whole thing into a circus. All the more reason for our presence to see fair play and good order,’ said Rackham.

  ‘Very well,’ Gammon said, rising. ‘It’s agreed.’ This was news to me. ‘We remain calm. Next week Maxwell and Mr Rackham will attend the BPP meeting, discreetly.’ I thought: you have just legitimized my disgrace. ‘And let us hope that nothing occurs that any of us shall have reason to regret.’ He looked at me as he spoke. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

  In the hall the Major took me by the arm. ‘Steady the Buffs, Maxwell. That’s what Captain Carson would have wanted.’ Steady them your fucking self, I thought. ‘And take Sergeant Risman with you,’ the Major added. ‘The boys know where they are with Risman.’ Insult aside, that was the best idea I’d heard for ages.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Local press coverage was, to say the least, sparing, and a by-election in a safe Labour seat attracted comparatively little national interest. Allingham had fallen from his former prominence and seemed to be viewed as an embarrassment, almost a joke, to be politely ignored if possible. And even though I was under orders to attend, I might have missed the meeting but for a typed note placed in my pigeonhole stating that the venue had been changed from the Assembly Rooms to Axness Hall, which was not even in the same constituency. The organizers seemed to be trying to avoid trouble.

  The new venue for Allingham’s public meeting had almost slipped out of the city’s collective memory, although it was still standing and in use. Axness Hall had at one time been favoured by Moral Rearmament, by visiting American evangelists who’d wandered from the beaten track, and by spiritualist events involving clairvoyants and the like. It was now mostly used for amateur dramatics and gymnastics displays. The place, then, was rather old-fashioned even in an old-fashioned setting. It was also located on the far side of the River Ouse, which divided the city; thus it seemed full of unhappy portent. People from our side tended to avoid going over there. Proverbially you would ‘catch summat’ if you were foolish enough to cross South Bridge into that slum-terraced back of beyond which so closely and disorientingly resembled our own.

  There were exceptions. It was OK to go to the dog track. That was what Sergeant Risman had been planning to do on the evening in question.

  ‘You say this is what the Major wants, Mr Maxwell?’ Risman asked, seated at his gleaming desk in his cubbyhole.

  ‘He suggested it.’

  When I said that we should arrive separately, he looked at me to indicate that I should have nothing to say on the matter. ‘Until this evening, then, Mr Maxwell. Make sure you wrap up warm.’

  I keep talking about Allingham as if he were a presence, when really he is scarcely a name now, and very nearly forgotten, so here I insert a brief sketch to enable you to place him a little more exactly. Sir William Allingham (Blake’s 1901–8) was a soldier and military theorist, wounded and decorated at Loos and Passchendaele, rising to the rank of general between the wars. His book on mechanized warfare had been a standard work on the topic, carefully studied by Guderian and by the Russians, and tested out at the epic stalemate at Kursk in 1943 with unprecedented bloodiness. I supposed Claes had a copy of this to refer to in his attic operations room when he and Rackham met to correct the historical record. The Wolf’s Lair in miniature: did that make me a member of the July Plot?

  Allingham also displayed the familiar right-wing lunatic’s combination of pastoral idealism, evangelical vegetarianism and anti-Semitism. This would not have marked him out among his peers, but he was slightly too slow, or disinclined, to temper his position on appeasement at the end of the 1930s and spent the war sidelined in Home Command. Churchill had a use for most people, but there were limits. It was said that Allingham escaped internment under Regulation 18b by the skin of his teeth. I suspect that he felt he had been robbed in this regard, denied the taste of martyrdom befitting his class, his rank and his convictions. It also meant that he would always be slightly in Mosley’s shadow.

  When the war ended he lived in France. His conviction that we should have made common cause with the fascists to save Europe from communism transformed itself into the pan-Europeanism which became the acceptable postwar version of appeasement thinking, though to his grave disappointment he remained a figure on the margins. He talked of the inevitability of a European state. It was said that he had converted to Catholicism under the instruction of the pro-fascist and later excommunicated Cardinal Lefebvre. It was said that his wife, Lady Anne, was even worse than he was.

  Allingham was seventy-two years old and now he was standing in the local by-election. As if this were not enough, before the First World War he had been a close associate of Aleister Crowley, and had maintained an interest in the occult ever since. So you might say that Allingham covered the waterfront of right-wing manias with unusual thoroughness. He had the status of a joke but there was still a shimmer of the sinister, a whiff of sulphur, about the tail of his dying comet.

  The tide was running steadily as I crossed South Bridge. A barge slipped underneath, heading to join the larger river and then make the journey upstream, the far back of the hinterland’s mind. A crewman stood smoking at the forward hatch. I envied him his certain station, his anonymous purpose. He flipped his cigarette into the dark water and went inside, oblivious to the foot-passengers above.

  You would hardly have known there was a meeting. There was no sign of any opposition in the street outside. The doors stood open. Tonight’s event was soberly advertised alongside recent amateur productions of Quiet Wedding and Rookery Nook. Inside, on the BPP’s poster the party’s symbol, a combined sword and crucifix and rose, seemed as anachronistic as the plays.

  A trickle of people entered, none of the boys or anyone else I knew among them. Security in the foyer was provided by Lurch and an assistant who looked like a younger, less intelligent relative. The pa
ir loomed for a moment as I entered, but then stepped aside. Lurch, as ever, showed no sign of recognition. His pitted skin was dry and flaking.

  Somehow a crowd had got inside, but its members sat quietly minding their own business, reading the paper or talking together in twos and threes. Faintly martial music was playing at low volume. I had expected a greater sense of urgency. Were they all – they were nearly all men, nearly all middle-aged – inured to unglamorous political occasions? Were they awed? Bored? And what was I supposed to do, now that I was here? There was no sign of Rackham.

  Claes appeared by the stage. He smiled at me and gestured expansively for me to join him. But seated at the front I would see little. I smiled back, went out into the foyer and found my way upstairs and then to a position near the back stairs and overlooking the stage.

  The balcony was scarcely lit, and the heating had not been turned on. It turned out that a group of a dozen or so boys from the fourth and fifth forms had positioned themselves on the opposite balcony, much as they would always try to sit at the back of the class, despite the fact that this and their inability to keep still or be quiet would only make them more conspicuous. They were, thank God, wearing mufti, but they were cackling and shushing each other in a simultaneous attempt to remain undetected and draw attention.

  A little further off sat Steerman, with a bored looking Arnesen still in uniform. They couldn’t have seen me yet, since their behaviour did not alter. I moved to stand behind a pillar. I was here. I was observing. What was I supposed to do next? Not for the first time, it would seem to depend on Rackham. As yet he was nowhere to be seen.

  The music grew in volume. It became a crackly recording of ‘Nimrod’. The hall below had just about filled up. The occasion was almost controversial. How soon the music did its fearsome and beautiful work, creating a common sense of loss, of rightful aspiration, of virtue injured but vindicated at the last. Even the boys on the dim balcony had grown quiet, as if unsure what authority laid claim to them like this.