The Shadow and the Peak

by Richard Mason

  “Naturally,” he said. “On account of my divorce.”

  His quickness of uptake pleased Pawley.

  “You understand it’s only a question of safety-first.”

  Douglas said, “Well, you’re not going to send Miss Waring down just because I’ve been divorced and because I showed her round the estate yesterday afternoon?”

  “No; in view of the other point you mentioned, we might find an alternative. That is to say, if you wouldn’t take it as a personal criticism . . .”

  “You mean you’ll let her stay, but you don’t want me to see her?”

  Pawley smiled apologetically.

  “I’m afraid it’s imposing rather an unwarranted restriction on you.”

  “Very well,” Douglas said. He was feeling pretty rattled, but after the way he’d nearly gone to Judy last night it was only what he deserved. “But you don’t mind if I see Miss Waring to explain? Otherwise she’s going to think it rather odd.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” Pawley said readily. He had evidently been expecting much more of a fuss. “And I’d like to say that I’m delighted you approached me about this—there’s nothing like a personal discussion to clear the air.”

  At first he thought he would just send up a note to Judy, and then he thought he wouldn’t, he would at least make his one rationed visit to her, and he put it off until after tea. He went about feeling pretty rattled all day, and then in the afternoon he had trouble with Silvia, which rattled him more than ever.

  During the last few days a much more positive attitude towards Silvia had developed amongst the other children. At a meeting of their own, convened to discuss her anti-social behaviour, they had come to a unanimous agreement to ostracize her for a week. They were putting this agreement into effect conscientiously. In class and at table they ignored Silvia with the same inflexible purpose that Duffield ignored the Morgans. Silvia had reacted with a show of lofty indifference. At the same time she had probably been plotting how to attract their attention again—she missed it badly.

  She was present that afternoon in one of Douglas’s out­door classes. He had started off the class with twenty minutes of Situations, which the children thought of as a game, but which was no less an exercise than making a précis or writing an essay. The idea was to start a discussion about how they would act in some hypothetical predicament. “You hear that five pounds has been stolen from the village post-office. You know it was stolen by a nice peasant whose mother is starving. Would you report him to the police?”

  When the children had expressed their opinions and the majority had decided against reporting the peasant, he would complicate the issue: “Then supposing the peasant hadn’t stolen the money from the post-office, but from another peasant whose own mother would starve unless he got the money back?” If they now agreed that the thief must be handed over, he would make it more difficult still: “But if the starving mother of the robbed man was cruel to her grandchildren, while the mother of the thief had once sold her only hat to buy her grandchildren bags of toffee for Christmas . . .?” The final conclusion was seldom unanimous, but it helped to teach the children clarity of thought and expression.

  This afternoon he had no real poser ready, so he just turned them loose with a hundred thousand pounds. One of the girls, who was eleven, thought she would buy the whole of Jamaica and make herself Queen. He asked her what she would do then. “I’d execute all the other women,” she said. The two boys had more modest ideas. One wanted to spend all the money at once on a firework display. The other decided altruistically that he would buy a huge house with lifts instead of stairs for all the people in the world who had only one leg. He asked Silvia what she would do with it, and she said superciliously, “I don’t want a hundred thousand pounds.” The other children looked away from her and kept silent as if she hadn’t spoken. Douglas said she was probably the most sensible of them all, and left it at that. A short while later Silvia stood up.

  “Please may I go?”

  He asked her why.

  “I want to go to the lavatory.” She spoke in a sing-song way, still smiling superciliously, presumably to underline that this was only an excuse. He hesitated a moment, and then said:

  “All right, you can go.”

  She gathered up her books and went off purposefully in the direction of the Great House. He went on with the class. A quarter of an hour later Silvia came down the slope again. She had changed into her best dress and was carrying a small fancy handbag. She passed along the path which ran twenty or thirty yards from the class. The path led to the main entrance of the school. She didn›t look at the class as she went by, but she must have come this way to enable them to see her. The direct path from the Great House to the entrance lay out of sight.

  The children’s resolution to ignore her died in the face of this new development. So did their interest in the class. They all stared after her.

  Douglas asked, “Nobody knows where she’s going?”

  Nobody did know. They only knew that she hadn’t got permission to leave the school. They began to chatter excitedly. She must be running away. No—if she had been running away she would have taken more of her clothes. No, she wouldn’t—if she had taken more of her clothes, it would have made it too obvious . . .

  Someone said, “Aren’t you going to stop her, Mr. Lockwood?”

  He didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t want to run after her. He wondered if he ought to send someone down to tell Pawley.

  “Suppose she is running away, Mr. Lockwood?”

  She was just disappearing round the corner of the hill. He was damned if he was going to call Pawley.

  “Norah,” he said. Norah was the girl who had wanted to be Queen of All the Male Jamaicans. “Run after her and ask her what she’s doing.”

  “Shall I tell her to come back?”

  “No,” he said. “Just find out where she’s going.”

  She ran off. He said to the others:

  “I thought you were all supposed to be ignoring her. It looks as if she’ll win the game yet.”

  “I don’t believe she’s going anywhere,” one of the boys said. “She’s just trying to make everyone look at her.”

  Douglas said, “I should forget about her if I were you. What were we talking about just now?”

  After five minutes Norah came back.

  “She says she’s got a friend coming up in a car to meet her, Mr. Lockwood. She says she had a letter this morning. He’s going to take her down to Kingston. She says she’ll probably be back this evening.”

  There was a moment’s awed silence; then an outburst.

  “She did have a letter this morning.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “She did, I saw it.”

  “It’s probably her father.”

  “I think it’s colossal cheek.”

  “She’d have asked permission if it was her father.”

  “You’re not going to let her go, are you, Mr. Lockwood?”

  He said, “Well, I’m not going to start a fight in the road and carry her back on my shoulder.”

  “Supposing everybody went off like that without permission?”

  “That would be most unfortunate,” he said. “The only way to run the school would be to keep policemen hidden behind all the bushes. But luckily most people have more sense. It’s worth losing Silvia for an evening to save the rest of us the bother of a police force.”

  “I don’t see why she should be allowed to do it, all the same.” This was the fireworks boy.

  Douglas said, “If you kept stealing my pocket-handkerchiefs, Alan, I might stop you with a spanking. But the spanking wouldn’t tell me why you wanted to do something silly that Michael didn’t. I couldn’t help you unless I knew why you wanted to do it. I can’t help Silvia either unless I find out why she’s alwa
ys doing silly things that the rest of you aren’t.”

  “I don’t think Silvia deserves to be helped.”

  “Whether she deserves it or not, it happens to be why she’s here. Her father pays fees like your father. But if you don’t like her, you can leave the helping to me. Just go on ignoring her.”

  He could see that this explanation didn’t satisfy the children, but they were silent and he went on with the class. He was trying not to show that he wasn’t satisfied either. It was a fairly safe bet that Silvia wasn’t meeting anyone and would be back in time for supper, but he couldn’t absolutely count on it. In any case something might happen to her in the meantime, something she didn’t intend. If she was knocked down on the road or fell over a cliff or got herself raped, he wasn’t going to have a leg to stand on. He began to see what a fool he had been to let her go off.

  As soon as the bell went at four o’clock he packed up the class and walked down towards the school entrance. Joe was washing down the station-wagon outside the garage. He hadn’t stopped Silvia because Norah had told him not to.

  “She done walk off down the road, sir,” he said.

  “All right, Joe.”

  He went out of the gate, between the eucalyptus trees.

  When he reached the first corner he could see most of the road for the next two miles, winding in and out of the ravines on the hillside. He stood and watched for five or ten minutes, but there was no sign of either Silvia or a car. It wasn’t surprising. She had already been gone for half an hour.

  He turned and walked slowly back towards the gate. It looked as if he would have to tell Pawley what had happened, but he was very reluctant to do so. Probably Pawley would fly into a panic and send out search parties and telephone the police. On the other hand, if he didn’t tell Pawley and then some harm came to Silvia, he was going to find himself in a worse mess than ever. It was taking too big a risk. He walked slowly down the path to Pawley’s bungalow, wondering if it was better to defend himself for letting Silvia go off or just admit that he had made a stupid mistake.

  He didn’t have to do either as it happened, because Pawley wasn’t there. The maid said he had set off for a walk with his wife a few minutes before. Douglas might have followed them—he knew the direction in which they always went for their afternoon walks—but he was damned if he was going to explain about Silvia in front of Mrs. Pawley. After his efforts over Judy this morning, she would have been only too delighted to see him in a mess. He decided to leave it and catch Pawley alone. By that time Silvia might be back. You could soon get tired of sitting in the undergrowth sucking your thumbs.

  His tea was standing on the verandah table. It was nearly cold. He drank a cup and went inside to do some work. At half-past five he went up to the Great House. Silvia still hadn’t turned up. He had already left it so long without telling Pawley that he now thought he would leave it until after the children’s supper-time at half-past six.

  He was beginning to feel calmer. The more he thought of it, the more improbable it seemed that Silvia had been met by a friend or that she would come to any harm by herself. She was twelve. She had often been out in Kingston alone, and up here in the hills she was a great deal safer than amongst the traffic of a city street. She could recognize a cliff when she saw one, and the local peasants were not in the habit of committing rape. Curiosity alone would bring her back quickly. She must have been dying to know what sort of impression she had made.

  He left the Great House and went down the garden to the modelling shed. It was empty, except for Rosemary. Douglas himself knew little enough about modelling in clay, but he had been put in charge because none of the other staff knew anything at all. Several of the children had shown great enthusiasm at first, they had spent every spare minute digging clay—the clay in the neighbourhood was ideal for the purpose—and moulding it into animals and heads. Douglas had hoped to discover some real creative talent, but the results were disappointing and the craze had died quickly. He suspected that Rosemary only kept it up because she was afraid of losing his favour if she didn’t. She had less talent than most, and it wasn’t easy to discourage her without hurting her feelings. Her present effort was meant to represent a bird. It might just as well have been a lion or a whale. There was nothing interestingly surrealistic about it either; it was simply bad observation and no sense of form. He told her she’d be better off trying to copy something in front of her, and sent her out for a pear. While she was copying the pear he tried to do a bird himself, but it didn’t go very well.

  At half-past six Rosemary left her pear, which hadn’t gone very well either, and went up to supper. He waited another ten minutes and then followed her up to the Great House. All the children were in the dining-room—all except Silvia. Mrs. Morgan, who was supervising the supper, had just heard what had happened. She accompanied Douglas into the hall. He told her not to worry, Silvia would be back in a minute, and in any case it was his responsibility. She looked very upset, and said she had always known that Silvia would come to a really bad end. He left her and walked down to the entrance again, and then to the corner of the road. Still no sign of Silvia. As he returned to the grounds, he met Duffield coming away from Pawley’s bungalow.

  “Just been having a row,” he said. The row had been about a boy whom Pawley had allowed to give up maths because he didn’t like it—which probably meant he didn’t like Duffield. Pawley had stuck to his guns. He had told Duffield that the boy’s difficulties over maths had been upsetting his other work, not to mention his digestion, and that it wouldn’t do him any harm to go without it for a term. Duffield was profoundly fed up. “It’s a lot of damn nonsense,” he said. “I’ve a mind not to turn up for my own maths class one day. If Pawley says anything, I’ll tell him they’re upsetting my digestion. See what he says about that.”

  Something made Douglas tell him about Silvia. Duffield was less outraged than might have been expected.

  “Won’t be any loss if she doesn’t come back,” he said. “Should tell Pawley you didn’t see her go off, if I were you.”

  “I can’t do that. All the children saw what happened.”

  Duffield shrugged.

  “I expect you were afraid of making a scene, weren’t you? If you ask me, half these new ideas are only because the masters are dead scared of the kids.”

  “There may be something in that.”

  “It’s all wrong,” Duffield said, almost paternally. “Unless they’re afraid of you, you might as well try and educate a herd of wild pigs. That’s why you’ve got to have proper punishments. Needn’t necessarily use them—but you must have ’em handy to create the fear of God. They’re only animals, you know.”

  “Quite.” It was no time to start an argument.

  “That’s your trouble, Lockwood—you’re too easy with them. They take advantage of you. I’ve often heard your classes making the devil of a row if you arrive a bit late. Know what I do, if I catch anyone chattering after the bell’s gone? Make them all sit for five minutes in silence. Anyone who fidgets has to sit for another five minutes after the class.”

  He might have risen to that one, but he was still too worried over Silvia. Duffield noticed it and said comfortingly:

  “Shouldn’t worry, if I were you. I expect she’ll be back. Then you’ll have to give her something to think about. Scare the daylights out of her. Why not ask Pawley if you can shut her up in her dormitory after class every afternoon for a fortnight? That’ll stop her bolting off again.”

  “That’s what they tried at her last school.”

  “Can’t have given her enough of it, that’s all.”

  As Duffield went off, John came running down the juniper slope.

  “Mr. Lockwood, you promised to come and see my tree-house.”

  “I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

  ‘Not since I fixed up the rope.”

  “I’ve got
something else to do now.” He had to go and see Pawley.

  “Can’t you come just for a minute?”

  “All right—for a minute.”

  John’s tree-house was in one of the mango-trees above the farm. As the trees were not part of the farm, the building activity was tolerated by Morgan, who even dispensed the necessary wood and nails. John spent most of his free time playing there. He had built a platform three or four feet square between two horizontal branches, and then added sides and a roof, making a rather oddly shaped hut. There had once been pieces of wood nailed to the trunk, making it easy to climb. Now these had been removed and the only access was up the rope which hung over the side. The rope was fortunately knotted.

  “You’ve got to go up,” John said imperiously.

  “I hope it’s safe.”

  “It is. Mr. Morgan tried it.”

  He began to climb the rope. The platform of the hut wasn’t more than ten feet from the ground. As he put his head through the opening he saw that three children were already squashed into the corners—two boys, and Norah, Queen of Jamaica. He registered suitable surprise. John screamed with delight from below.

  “You didn’t know anyone was up there, did you?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Get right in, I’m coming up too.”

  He squeezed into the small space. John scaled up quickly after him, and then pulled up the rope.

  “Nobody else can get up now.”

  “There wouldn’t be much room for them if they could.”

  “It’s like having a castle with a moat and pulling up the drawbridge. I wish I had some enemies. I’d pour boiling oil on to them.”

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to pour boiling oil on to Silvia?” said the Queen of Jamaica. Everyone agreed.

  Douglas said, “Will you let the drawbridge down again, please, John. I’ve got to go.”

  “Supposing I threw the rope away? Then you couldn’t get down.”