The Shadow and the Peak

by Richard Mason

  “You’re not suggesting, of course, that my wife purposely held back a cable addressed to you?”

  “Yes,” Douglas said. “That is exactly what I’m suggesting.”

  “Aren’t you being a little hasty?”

  “I want to know why the cable wasn’t given me.”

  Pawley replaced the spectacles slowly, looking extremely distressed.

  “There must have been a misunderstanding,” he said. “My wife has no reason to withhold your private communications.”

  “Only one reason,” Douglas said. And he elucidated, “Spite.”

  “Come, come, Lockwood,” Pawley said, in a hurt way. “We don’t want to get offensive.”

  “As a member of your staff,” Douglas said, “I find it offensive to be ignored by your wife for weeks on end. I find it even more offensive when my letters are delayed and my cables not delivered.”

  “It’s a matter we can look into.”

  “I’d like to look into it now.”

  Mrs. Pawley had just appeared in the doorway of the verandah. She had evidently heard their voices. Pawley turned round to her and said in his awkward, pompous way:

  “Ah, Joan! There appears to be a little misunderstanding. Lockwood’s been telling me that a cable of his has gone astray. It was supposed to have arrived last Tuesday.”

  Mrs. Pawley said impatiently, “Yes, I signed for it. What’s the matter?”

  “I never got it,” Douglas said.

  “I sent it across to your bungalow.”

  “It never arrived at my bungalow,” he said.

  Pawley took on the role of impartial mediator. “If my wife sent it, old chap, it must have been mislaid somewhere. We can’t blame her for that.”

  “I blame her for not sending it at all,” Douglas said. “I blame her for opening it. How else do you think she knew I’d be back before Monday?”

  Mrs. Pawley went white. After a moment she said to her husband in a tone that was meant to sound like cold disdain:

  “I’m not going to be insulted by a member of your staff. I’ll leave you to talk to Mr. Lockwood alone.” She turned and went.

  Pawley said reprovingly, ‘I’m afraid I must agree with my wife, Lockwood. Those remarks of yours were most uncalled-for. I should take a more serious view if it wasn’t so close to the end of term. As I’ve pointed out to you before, we’re all inclined to get over-wrought in the last few weeks. I shall make allowances. By next term I’m sure you’ll have both got over your little differences.”

  “I shan’t be here next term,” Douglas said. “I’d like to give notice.”

  This took Pawley by surprise. He looked extremely shaken.

  Douglas said, “I know my contract was for a year. But you needn’t worry—I’ll refund the cost of the air passage.” The cost of the air passage was more than a term’s salary; but it was worth it, to buy his way free of this place. Pawley took off his glasses and began to wipe them again. “Are you doing this because of the cable?” he said.

  “Partly,” Douglas said. “But I’d thought of it before.”

  “I hope I’ve given you no reason to feel dissatisfied with your position?” Pawley said, sounding hurt.

  “No,” Douglas said. “I’m just generally dissatisfied with the way things are run. I’m dissatisfied with always having to bother about what people think. I’m dissatisfied because we can’t afford to have the courage of our convictions.” As he said this he knew that he had no right to say it. It wasn’t with Pawley and the school that he was dissatisfied, it was with Judy—and himself.

  Pawley took it quite mildly.

  “I think perhaps you’re being a little ungenerous, Lockwood,” he said. “However, I don’t mind admitting I should be sorry to see you go. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I felt you were making a real success of the job. The way you’ve handled Silvia has impressed me most favourably. As you know, our reputation hung on that. We owe you a great deal.”

  “I’m sorry,” Douglas said. “I’ve quite made up my mind.”

  “Very well,” Pawley said. “But I shan’t accept your resignation tonight. You’ll be in a less disturbed frame of mind in the morning. I’d like to discuss it again then.”

  “I’ll come down and see you again in the morning,” Douglas said. “But there’ll be nothing to discuss.”

  The moon was shining as he walked back to his bungalow with his bag. It was a full moon. It was the moon that should have been shining at this moment on Judy and himself at Ocho Rios. They should have been walking along the sand, and the sand should have been white in the moon, and the moonlight breaking into showers of silver splinters on the sea.

  He went into the bungalow and shut the door and shut out the moon. He put the bag on the bed and gave himself a glass of rum. The anger had left him. It had only been an convenience: a clear-cut passion directed at the Pawleys to hide his real pain. It had made Mrs. Pawley responsible for Judy’s deception and for the guileless way he had let himself be deceived. Now the anger had gone suddenly, not because of Pawley’s blandishments, but because he had resigned. The decision awed him. He had no idea what he was going to do. This afternoon he had left the school without any clear picture of the future, but with the sense of having his feet on some sort of track. In relation to the school and in relation to Judy, he had had a definite existence. One or other or both would lead him down the track far beyond the week-end. Now he existed in relation to nothing—to nobody. The life that he had begun to build up since burning his boats in England, the context into which he had put himself, had vanished. He was alone—with a small suitcase, a bit of money, and nowhere to go. He might have been better off without the money. The lack of money would have dictated the future. Perhaps it would have sent him along the track to the doctor’s dispensary, if only he’d had Judy’s courage. Judy’s courage? If he had been mistaken about the frankness in Judy’s eyes, he could have been mistaken about her courage as well. How sick it all made him feel! To remember his ludicrous infatuation—to remember how he had seized on Judy to convince himself of his existence, to make her the heroine of his dreams. To remember himself protesting that the lingering dreams of adolescence were not to be realized, and at the same time believing, always inwardly believing, that their realization lay only just ahead . . . And he set himself up to guide the young!

  He gave himself another rum.

  He saw now why men took to drink. It was the sense of existing in relation to nothing—which was not existing at all. It was uncomfortable not to exist, so you sought an existence in relation to the bottle. The bottle gave you something to think about and hope for, and finally put you in a state in which not only did your own existence become of great significance, but the whole world existed for you and revolved about your person.

  But he lacked the perseverance to attain this condition in solitude tonight, and presently he left the rum and began to unpack the bag. In the bottom of the bag was the wooden elephant. He took it out, remembering how all that week he had kept it pointed to the window. He felt like smashing it on the floor. Then he thought of a better way to show his disillusionment, and he planted it down firmly on the table with its trunk towards the door. At the same moment there was a knock.

  “Come in,” he said.

  It was Mrs. Pawley.

  “Douglas,” she said, “can I speak to you for a minute?” She wore the sort of expression that she might have worn if she had been breaking the feud to come and tell him that Pawley had just hanged himself from a rafter. However, this did not appear to have happened

  “We must clear this up,” she said. “My husband’s told me you’ve given notice because of the cable. I don’t know what happened, but I gave it to my maid to bring you. I’ve just asked her about it. She says she put it on your desk.”

  “I didn’t get it,” he said.

  �
�Perhaps it’s mixed up with your papers. Ivy might have moved it when she was tidying.”

  He went to his desk. There was a mass of stuff in his trays because last week he had been too busy climbing Alpine precipices to do much work. He didn’t expect to find the cable, all the same. He turned over the papers. Presently he came across a buff envelope amongst some English essays. It was the cable.

  “I’m sorry.” He felt damned foolish. “I ought to have thought of it. Ivy’s done this before. I wasn’t expecting a cable, though.”

  He waited for her righteous indignation. It didn’t come. She said without anger:

  “I hope you’ll tell my husband you’re staying now.”

  “I wasn’t going just because of this. I tried to make it clear to Mr. Pawley.”

  “You’re going because of me,” she said.

  “Not entirely.”

  “Yes, I know you are. I’ve been behaving very badly. I want to apologize.”

  “It’s been my fault as well.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been behaving inexcusably. What you told my husband was true. I opened your cable. I read it.”

  He turned over the envelope. The flap was torn at the edges, but had been stuck down again. He felt no anger about this now. The blow-lamp had gone right out.

  “I hope it amused you,” he said. “It didn’t amuse me much.”

  “You’ve been hurt, haven’t you?” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You weren’t sorry last week,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “But I’m sorry now.” Her face was tense. She was standing just inside the doorway. She was wearing her navy slacks and a yellow blouse. Her hands were clutched together in front of her. “I’m sorry because I don’t want you to go—for any reason.” Her voice shook a bit. “Before you came to the school, I thought I couldn’t stand it up here any longer. I don’t think I could stand it if you left.”

  He was still sitting at the desk. The world had become very small. The whole world was the bungalow, and beyond there was only darkness. He had the sense of existing again, after a fashion, in relation to Mrs. Pawley.

  After a time he said:

  “Can I give you a glass of rum?”

  She stared at him without answering. He got up and went to the door behind her and closed it.

  “What are you doing?” she said. She was trembling.

  “Entertaining the headmaster’s wife after dark,” he said. “Did you bring the dogs?”

  She shook her head. He fetched a glass and mixed a rum and ginger, and put it down on the table. Mrs. Pawley gave a queer laugh and tried to sound conversational:

  “That girl let you down, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You were right about her the first time you came here. She was worthless.”

  “I thought she was.” She came across to the table. “Douglas, you’ve given me an enormous drink. Are you trying to make me drunk?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She picked up the glass. Her hand was trembling so much that she had to put it down again.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” She laughed awkwardly.

  “I don’t need to make you drunk,” he said.

  The trembling gradually became worse and she began to shudder. They were long shudders that ran right through her body; and there was an expression on her face that might have been of terrible, unspeakable anguish.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The barber had been up to the school the day before, and DuffieId’s hair was clipped as close as a convict’s. He was in the best of tempers.

  “That was a short week-end, wasn’t it?” he said as Douglas sat down to breakfast. “What’s up? Couldn’t you bear being parted from the old Alma Mater?”

  “No, I couldn’t keep away.” Douglas was trying to look bright, but he felt as though everything that had happened could be read on his face at a glance.

  However, Duffield was not bothering to read. He was not even going to demand a further explanation of Douglas’s early return. The reason for this lack of interest shortly became clear. He had some news of his own. He was delighted about Douglas’s unexpected appearance because it meant he could tell it sooner.

  “I suppose you’ve heard what happened yesterday?”

  “No?”

  “Alan was disobedient. I took a slipper to him.”

  He paused to give this full effect. He was smiling. His face rarely stated anything more complicated than the fact that he was in a good or a bad humour, but now there was restrained though unmistakable triumph in his smile. It was the triumph of a man who had won through against heavy odds.

  “I gave him a damn sound whacking. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it down in Kingston.”

  Douglas said lightly, because it was obviously expected of him, “So we’re back to the evil days of torture.”

  “I don’t know about torture,” Duffield said. “I only know it did him a blighted lot of good. If he misbehaves again this term, I’ll eat my Midgley and Wade.” The Midgley and Wade was his mathematics text-book. “It’s made the others sit up, too. This place was as quiet as a cemetery yesterday—all the children creeping about like mice.”

  “What did Pawley say?”

  Duffield radiated the pleasures of victory.

  “More to the point if you asked what I said to Pawley.” He recounted the incident in detail. Alan had been talking in class despite a previous ticking-off, and Duffield had told him to come down and see him in his bungalow afterwards. He had given Alan a good lecture, and then asked him which he would rather have: a bad end-of-term report or a beating. The fact that Alan had elected to receive the beating, of his own volition, seemed to Duffield a cunning circumvention of Pawley’s ban on corporal punishment. He gave Douglas an intimate account of the manner in which the beating had been administered, and of Alan’s manly endurance. After dealing out six of the best on “the place provided by nature,” he had shaken Alan’s hand and “felt himself respected” for the first time since he had been at Blue Mountain School. The news of his anarchy travelled quickly to Pawley, who called him down to his study. Duffield faced him unrepentant. He pointed out that what had been good enough for the best schools in England for generations was good enough for him—and if it wasn’t good enough for Pawley, he was ready to give notice. This put Pawley on the defensive, and being much more frightened of losing his staff than his principles, he told Duffield that he quite saw his point of view about giving Alan an option, but that in future he would feel happier if they put their heads together before resorting to slippers.

  “But we’ll let the future take care of itself,” Duffield told Douglas significantly. “I don’t mind betting there’ll be a sight more sore bottoms here next term than there were last. And between you and me,” he winked, “I don’t see why we should wear out our slippers when the whole blighted mountainside is covered with bamboo.”

  *

  Douglas ran into Pawley in the hall of the Great House later that morning. Neither of them mentioned his resignation. Pawley probably took it for granted that it had been withdrawn. He beamed in his most expansive manner.

  “I hear that you sorted out that business with my wife last night. I’m most relieved. These little misunderstandings are bound to arise from time to time—but we always manage to surmount them if we keep our heads.”

  Douglas had no idea how much Pawley knew. It was too disturbing to think that his air of satisfaction was due to anything more than the settlement of the cable affair—he could do without Pawley’s beaming acquiescence; yet at lunch, when Mrs. Pawley came in, he found it hard to believe that anyone, adult or child, could have overlooked the change in her. It was so palpable that he was aware of it even across the room. He was appalled. Instead of her usual impatient, neurotic self, she gave off a positive glow. The disco
ntent had gone from her face. It was the first time he had seen her looking really happy. In her presence the children at her table were usually subdued, but today they were full of gaiety. There was also laughter coming from Pawley’s table—and even from Duffield’s, where the fear he had created was being held in temporary abeyance by his present exceptional good-humour. The atmosphere in the dining-room had never been more light-hearted. Probably everybody put it down to the approach of the holidays.

  Douglas skipped coffee in the common-room and went down to his bungalow. Later in the afternoon he strolled round the grounds. It was Saturday, and the children were free. Rosemary was working in the modelling shed, trying to make a piece of clay look like a cat. John was hammering away contentedly in his tree-house, adding an extension so that he could hold larger parties. Silvia was in the garage, urging Joe to explain the gears of a car, for in the future she had planned she saw herself, amongst other roles, as Douglas’s chauffeuse. Other children were playing amongst the junipers. They stopped when they saw him and invited him to join them. In the attitude of most of them he was aware of confidence and respect, unmixed with fear. If he hadn’t messed things up for himself, he might have made a success of this job . . . but that was absurd, the way he had messed things up was the measure of his incompetence, and the confidence and respect of the children had been as meretriciously achieved as Mrs. Pawley’s beatitude. It was not like being an engineer who could build great bridges and yet fail as a man, or a poet who could create beauty out of his own degradation. If you looked after children your function and your character were inseparable, and without integrity there could be no success.

  He went back to his bungalow, wondering what to do: whether to stay at the school as a failure, or to set out with his bag again in search of a new existence. He couldn’t decide. That night, after supper, Mrs. Pawley came again. Impatience had returned to her manner, but it was impatience of a different kind.

  “Were you afraid I wouldn’t be able to come?”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he said. “Someone will find out.”