The Old Boys

by William Trevor

  11

  It was true what H. L. Dowse had said: a boy in his time had hanged himself from a tree. Years after the occurrence the facts had leaked out; related deliriously, it was said, by a dying master who had allowed the story of an accident to affect his conscience. By then it didn’t matter. No boy of that generation remembered the incident, or had even heard of it. Five years is a generation at a school; three generations had passed.

  With the truth, however, the tree became famous. New boys were led to it; it was pointed out to parents and timid sisters. Certain rites concerned the tree; certain odd little ceremonies. ‘If you walk round it,’ a boy once told his brother, ‘if you walk round it three times slowly, it will bring you bad luck: boys have been expelled.’ The younger boy, fresh from prep school and anxious to prove himself, walked as he was dared and was not expelled. But on the way back to the school buildings he tripped and broke his knee-cap. So the legend of the tree grew. It came to be said that if you smoked within sight of it you would be caught by the Headmaster himself; that if you passed within ten yards of it at night your mother would be found dead in the morning, or, if you had no mother, your closest female relative.

  ‘Religious superstition finds a perfect example in Symonds’ tree,’ an atheist has recently claimed at the School Debating Society. He spoke at length about the tree, deploring its fearsome effect on naive new boys, demanding that the tangle of myths be officially denied. Christianity as a religious superstition did not enter his argument. He knew what he was about. The tree was part of the School, was closer to the root of the matter; the School was society, and he spoke in terms of what his hearers knew.

  ‘The School may do as it likes,’ H. L. Dowse had said. ‘It may keep its own time. It may be almost entirely self-supporting. It may train its own small army; print and publish its own propaganda. It may invent traditions, laws and myths.’ At the School a man once taught the boys in his care that New Guinea was part of Canada, that steppes were steps, that the Danube flowed through Spain. He used no text-books, and allowed only the maps he drew himself on the blackboard. They found him out eventually, but many still carry with them his strange geographical images. The School belonged to itself, adapting what it decided it required. ‘A miniature of the world,’ said H. L. Dowse to every new boy he interviewed. But once, later in his life, he said instead: ‘The world is the School gone mad.’

  The School itself was spread over a great area. Gothic blocks, quadrangles, formal gardens, statues set in cloistered niches, tablets of stone and flights of steps. Porches, pillars, Grecian urns, oaken doors with iron handles. Battlements and fire escapes, flag-poles and war memorials. Small new buildings in the old style, but those of recent years moving away from it a bit: music-rooms, classrooms, recreation rooms, laboratories, called after the men who had given them. The Headmaster, following the lead of his predecessors, said that the Chapel was the centre of school life. But his pupils would have disagreed with him, for the centre of school life varied with every boy.

  On Old Boys’ Day there was a cricket match between the first eleven and the Old Boys. It began in the morning and continued all through the day; but it was not, as it were, the pivot of the day, not the main attraction. The day was not like that; it was designed without a centre, without a climax; it was a centre and a climax in itself.

  Cricket formed an agreeable background of hushed applause and the smack of ball from bat; white figures in distant formation, moving with dignity, small and rather strange. The cricket seemed as endless as the sea, while Old Boys, not engaged in it, stood in groups talking of past events. There were exhibitions of photography, of printing, woodwork, art, pottery, metalwork, bookbinding. The Old Boys weren’t very interested: the exhibitions were really for the parents, who had visited the School on Open Day a week before.

  Lady Ponders disliked the day. She quite enjoyed sitting in the sunshine watching the cricket, although she did not fully understand the game. More, however, was expected of her: as wife of the President she was obliged to sit next to the Headmaster at lunch and be led away by the Headmaster’s wife afterwards, to the lavatory, which was all right, and then to the rose garden, in which she had no interest at all. She had to keep up a conversation with the Headmaster and his wife, a rubbishy conversation that flagged after every remark exchanged, and had to be tended and repaired so that a dozen times during the day it might emerge from its own ashes. Lady Ponders knew, and she knew that the Headmaster and his wife knew, that the convention was a little absurd. The Headmaster was interested in boys, she presumed, not in Old Boys; his wife, like Lady Ponders, probably in neither. Lady Ponders enquired as to the number of boys in the School. Wearily, though with a smile, the Headmaster explained to her the construction and organization of the Houses. She listened attentively, wondering about her daughter who had written to say she was seeking a divorce.

  Late in the afternoon, when stumps had been drawn, there was a service in Chapel, called the Reunion Service. Old, favourite, forgotten hymns were sung and a little of the emotion that had accompanied them in the past was briefly recaptured. Those returning make more faithful than before … That hymn had little logic on Old Boys’ Day, or, if it had logic, it was of a morbid order, but the hymn was always included: the most emotional of the lot, most popular of all. In the evening there was Old Boys’ Dinner in Dining Hall, speeches and much hilarity. The few wives who attended the occasion had a meal with the Headmaster’s wife in her private dining-room. Wives did not come in very great numbers, or very often, perhaps once in a lifetime. Lady Ponders felt it a kind of duty, not to the Association or to the School, but to her husband, who was a little lost without her. After dinner there was a second performance of the school play, the first being on Open Day. Usually it was Shakespeare or Gilbert and Sullivan. Once it had been Oscar Wilde and once, a mistake, Ibsen. This year it was The Mikado. Then the guests would disperse to local hotels for the night, or motor back to London.

  General Sanctuary sat by himself, watching the cricket. He did not know why he came. He had begun the habit five or six years ago and had not missed an Old Boys’ Day since. The school was a hundred and eight for one. The School always won. It had won when he was a boy, and it still won now. He remembered that for the School eleven the game was the dullest of the season.

  ‘General Sanctuary, do you mind if I sit here beside you? I will not speak.’

  He looked up and saw a blue linen dress and a rather pretty straw hat. The face that came between them was familiar, but only just familiar: he could not place it. The face moved. Lady Ponders said:

  ‘We met last year. I am Lady Ponders.’

  General Sanctuary smiled and rose. ‘Of course sit down, Lady Ponders. Do not feel you must not speak. I am glad of a companion.’

  ‘I escape while I may. George has disappeared. I have lunch to face and things to think of to say. The day stretches long ahead.’

  ‘You should not bother to come. I suppose I feel it makes an outing for me, otherwise I would be contentedly at home. Each year I half look forward to it and then regret my presence. The older I become the more I feel one knows so little about oneself, one’s motives, et cetera.’

  Lady Ponders nodded.

  ‘One can see others more clearly. One does not have to send another person to a psychoanalyst. One does not need to. Am I making any kind of sense?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘You are being polite. The chances are I am talking nonsense. I have talked so much in my time I see no reason for a change now.’

  ‘One collects a little wisdom.’

  ‘Ah yes. I think that is right.’

  From her husband Lady Ponders had learnt that General Sanctuary had done, and achieved, much: more than her husband, far more than the other Old Boys, more probably than anyone here today.

  ‘You speak modestly, General.’

  ‘Do I? It is not deliberate. It is not an affectation.’

  ‘I did not mean
that. I meant that you could afford to be conceited.’

  ‘I wonder. It does not look like it now, as I re-enter childhood.’

  ‘There are compensations in age. For instance, two younger people, man and woman, could not speak as we speak. I could not say to you at any other age – except a more advanced one – that you have elements to be conceited about. You may think, though, that I shouldn’t anyway; that I am being a bore.’

  ‘We are neutralized, is that what you mean? I agree, it is a good experience. Flattery between man and woman becomes simply flattery. One can speak one’s mind without being misconstrued or without being doubted.’

  ‘When the old meet as strangers, as we do, they are at their best. They may be direct and need not pretend. I must pretend with the Headmaster’s wife and she with me. If she were my age the relationship would be simpler. As it is, I could so easily offend her. How I wish we could cut away all these frills!’

  ‘The middle-aged are most susceptible, are easily hurt and most in need of reassurance. They are strait-laced in their different ways, serious and intent. They have lost what they have always been taught to value: youth and a vigour for living. They suspect their health, scared to lose it too. The prime of life is a euphemism.’

  ‘Yet more happens in middle age –’

  The General agreed. ‘Everything happens in middle age. One is old and young at the same time. One bids farewell and prepares. One’s children begin the command they later take over completely. It is true for instance that an old man grows to be an infant. He is regarded by a son or by a daughter as he himself once regarded them – as a nuisance, a responsibility, something weak and fragile; something that must be watched and planned for. Think of a man in middle age. He is father to children and parents both, and he must see two ways at once. One dies in middle age, certainly one is well beneath the net. We are lucky, Lady Ponders: it is pleasanter to be over seventy, as it was to be very young. Nothing new will happen to us again. To have everything to come, to have nothing to come – one can cope. Pity our middle-aged Headmaster and his greying wife.’

  ‘But there are still little ambitions, still things one would wish to do –’

  ‘You are right to call them little. They are slight and petty, and often unworthy of us. As the greedy ambition of the baby may be unworthy of the man he later becomes. Look, another wicket has fallen.’

  ‘I scarcely know what wickets falling means.’

  ‘Do not bother to discover. I could tell you all the rules and laws of cricket, but it would only be unnecessary information to carry about with you. Cumbersome and dull.’

  ‘I would forget by next year – no, there needn’t be a next year. George will not be President, I shall not feel obliged to help him out.’

  ‘I’ll say it too: I shall not come next year. When the time arrives I know I shall. I have had what people call an iron resolve all my life; to leave it behind now is rather a joy.’

  ‘Is that another wicket fallen?’

  ‘Three for a hundred and twenty. The Old Boys are doing better.’

  There was clapping as the batsman returned to the pavilion. He walked slowly, his bat beneath his arm, peeling off his gloves, his face without expression. The sun was high in the sky, dazzling and powerful. The next batsman strode to the wicket. Three balls were bowled and allowed to go their way. One was a leg bye, another seemed almost a wide but was not given as such. The umpires lifted the bails. It was time for lunch.

  Mr Nox glanced round the Dining Hall. It hadn’t changed since last year; it hadn’t changed very much since he was a boy. The ceiling was still stained with the marks of butter, flicked there from the points of knives. For a hundred years this habit had been maintained; today, as in the past, boys were beaten once or twice a term for indulging in it. The same House Cups stood on the same pedestals on the walls, above the antiquated radiators that Basil Jaraby had slopped his porridge behind. Had the cutlery lasted? It was thin and worn, but Mr Nox could not remember what the cutlery in the old days had been like. He remembered a boy snatching his away from him on the first day of his first term. The boy had done it nastily, keeping the cutlery until the meal was over, forcing him to eat meat and potatoes with his fingers, and to wait for someone else’s spoon before he could eat his semolina.

  ‘Hullo, Nox.’

  Cridley, Sole and Turtle sat opposite him, crowded together as particular friends used to sit. For a moment he imagined they might begin some mockery of him as a twosome or threesome had often mocked someone on his own.

  ‘Turtle is getting married,’ Mr Cridley said, laughing about it. ‘Turtle is a blushing bridegroom.’

  Mr Nox thought it was a joke. Turtle could not seriously be getting married; Turtle had worn worse than anyone; how could he be? Who would want the old man?

  ‘Surely not. Are they pulling your leg, Turtle?’

  ‘Turtle is to marry our landlady,’ said Mr Sole. ‘The insanely beautiful Miss Burdock. A white wedding in September.’

  ‘They are making fun of me, Nox. I am marrying again, that is all. Miss Burdock of the Rimini Hotel has consented.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Two people alone who like one another’s company. Isn’t it natural? People get married all the time. At a greater age too.’

  ‘They coo like doves at the Rimini. Turtle calls for her, they go to cinematograph shows.’ Mr Cridley was pointedly mischievous, employing the dated word to remind Mr Turtle of his period. The development was beyond him. He and Mr Sole had accepted their impotence in the matter, regretting it and hoping for some upset in the arrangement.

  ‘I would not recommend this,’ Mr Nox said, staring at his plate but not referring to the food. ‘You are set in your ways, Turtle; you could not take a change in your stride. Any woman is an unknown commodity. Have you thought that she might bring you sorrow? You had much better see your days out on your own.’

  ‘At least she would take Mrs Strap in hand. I cannot manage Mrs Strap on my own. And there are other reasons too.’

  ‘You never married, Nox?’ checked Mr Sole. ‘I did, of course; Cridley never.’

  ‘That does not mean,’ protested Mr Cridley, attempting a leer, ‘that I have not had my share of women, that I do not know about them and all their ways. I chose the shelf, I was not left there.’

  ‘I have pupils now who are women,’ Mr Nox put in, ‘though frankly I prefer the company of men. Women are apt to irritate.’

  ‘It must be fun,’ said Mr Cridley, trying out his leer again, ‘to have pupils who are women. You are all alone with them, are you, one at a time? Anything might happen.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean? Are you being offensive, Cridley? Are you insinuating?’

  ‘Nonsense, Nox. Eat up your peas. I am in a jovial mood, pulling your leg as Turtle’s was pulled.’

  ‘Women vary just as much as men.’ Mr Sole, oblivious that a jarring note had just been struck, plunged into the silence it left. ‘My wife was different from Miss Burdock, as different as Nox is from Cridley. Or Turtle from George Ponders.’

  ‘They do not vary quite as much as men,’ a younger man contributed. ‘They have babies. That makes them feel a lot in common at a certain time.’

  ‘I do not follow the logic of that,’ Mr Sole said coldly. ‘This was a conversation between four friends.’

  ‘The old ones stand corrected, they know too little,’ snapped Mr Cridley. ‘This hearty fellow, interloper in our privacy, sets us right at once. I am reminded of the traitor Harp.’

  ‘You none of you know anything of women,’ cried Mr Turtle, a pale blush on his cheeks. ‘You have no right to judge my marriage to Miss Burdock, to cast your sly aspersions. I have experienced the loyalty of one good woman, so I shall experience the loyalty of another. That is the end of the matter. Do not speak of it again today.’

  There was a knocking from the Headmaster’s table. Chairs scraped. Grace was said.

  12

  There was a new c
lassroom block.

  Mr Jaraby examined it disapprovingly. It seemed a little gimcrack to him, a little out of keeping with the main buildings, worse even than New House, that architectural monstrosity that had appalled so many in the early thirties. Mr Jaraby should have felt proud. The Association had contributed handsomely at the time, and he himself had been instrumental in the organized dunning of its members. He sought the Headmaster, not so much to register a complaint as to express a hope that the projected annexe to the Chapel would not follow a similar pattern.

  ‘Those iron window frames, Headmaster!’

  The Headmaster, who detested Old Boys for a private reason, smiled.

  ‘They displease you, Mr Jaraby?’

  ‘Do they please you? Can they please anyone? What a cheap, nasty building after all our efforts!’

  ‘The age we live in, Mr Jaraby, the age we live in.’

  ‘I saw the plans, they did not look a bit like what has gone up. Were they altered?’

  ‘It is difficult, is it not, to make much of architects’ plans? They were approved by the Governors, by Lord Glegg who gave us the bulk of the money, by the Old Boys’ Association and incidentally by me.’

  ‘Let us pray the Chapel annexe will not come from the same mould.’

  ‘That is far in the future, Mr Jaraby. What luck we have had with the weather!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How goes the cricket? Shall we bend our steps in that direction?’

  When he was President there would be no question of his wife attending this gathering. There was no need for Lady Ponders today. Simply, he would behave as an unmarried man. It would be like her, who had never taken an interest before, to develop suddenly an interest while she was in her present condition. As though divining his thoughts the Headmaster asked:

  ‘Mrs Jaraby? Is she well?’

  ‘No. She is far from well. She is in a sad, sorry state.’ He would have liked to continue, to go into detail and tell about his visit to Dr Wiley. But there was no need to shout it from the roof-tops. Already it was widely enough known that he was married to a mad woman.