by Peter Rimmer
“The boy’s nine years old,” his mother was saying, “and he can’t read. He’ll never get his common entrance and then what do we do with him? Senior school favours boys from their own junior school so he’ll have a better chance. He won’t listen, that’s his trouble.”
“The war,” began his father before he was interrupted.
“All the other children went through the war and they can read. Maybe he’s just stupid. There’s something wrong with him. You think it’s all my fault he didn’t wear glasses sooner? How was I to know? We couldn’t run off to Poole every ten minutes and tell anyone who would listen the boy can’t read.”
“He’s not stupid,” said his father in defence. “You said so yourself in the air-raid shelter he was the best at I spy. Look how well he takes care of his rabbits.”
“Damn those rabbits… I’d asphyxiate the lot of them… I’d drown them!”
Outside, Will turned in desperation and ran away to the arbour where he kept his four cages of rabbits and stuffed two of them in his jumper and ran round the back of the big house and through the kitchen where the new cook was preparing lunch.
“What you got there, nipper?”
“Nothing, Cook. Nothing.”
He ran on through the kitchen, into the big hall and up the staircase. One of the rabbits had pushed its face out of the top of his jumper, tears were falling on its big ears as the soft eyes looked up. Will couldn’t see where he was going.
“What are you doing?” shouted his mother from the bottom of the stairs.
“You’re going to drown my rabbits,” Will choked out.
“Of course I’m not, darling.”
“You said so. You yell at me, you always do what you say. They’re my rabbits.”
“Don’t be silly, William.”
“You won’t clean the cages every week. You don’t like my rabbits. I hate you. It’s not my fault you don’t want me. If you drown my rabbits, I’ll go away and never come back.”
Appalled, both parents watched the small boy run up the rest of the stairs; they heard the nursery door slam shut. Adelaide Langton burst into tears and sat down on the bottom stair.
“What am I going to do with him?” she said in despair. “What am I going to do?”
“He’ll probably turn out the best of the bunch,” said Red. “Must have been in the garden when we were talking. I’ll go up to him. Any little boy who looks after animals is good inside. We want him to be like Byron, that’s the trouble. And Jo and Randolph never gave us a moment’s worry and we expect the same from Will. I’ll go up. Get Cook to make some tea. The boy’s sensitive and we’ve had too many things on our minds to take enough interest in him. We’ll send him to full-time boarding school when he goes to public school, and that’s not for another four years… Maybe Granda can teach him to read. The boy loves all the stories about Africa. We’ll tell Will there are lots more stories about Africa in books when he can read. That might do the trick… A lot of children are late starters.”
“Thank God you weren’t killed, Red,” said Adelaide, as she wiped across her face with the flat palm of her hand.
“I’ll agree with that,” said Red, chuckling, then he mounted the stairs. “Tea outside on the terrace,” he called back. “The sun’s out… And find some lettuce leaves.”
2
Byron Langton found life at Langton Manor generally boring. He was cursed with a younger brother who followed him everywhere and a twin sister who should have been a brother, a brother that played catch and would bowl to him in the nets he had built next to the old tennis court that nobody ever used. None of the local kids played cricket and Randolph was useless. Since his father came back from the war he was distant, preoccupied, and Byron had enough of chapel at school without being invited in to the local church. Hilary might make a cricketer but he was too young and Byron considered him a hanger-on who should have gone back with the other boys when the Germans stopped bombing Poole Harbour.
Uncle Cliff, who had gone away to the war as Uncle Clifford, sometimes came down from London; then he needed his wits about him in the nets but the price was listening to the rubbish his mother’s brother talked about. The only way fifteen-year-old Byron could see to get on in the world was to get rich: all the talk of Labour and trade unions was for losers, when he made his own money he wanted to keep it and not be forced to give it away.
Uncle Cliff had been up at Oxford for two years and then the war came along. Byron’s mother thought he should have been made an officer but Uncle Cliff wanted to stay with the men and went right through the war as a private. Granda said he was too bolshie to make officer and that he should take off the damn cloth cap and throw it in the dustbin and get himself a proper job, which was why Uncle Cliff did not visit Langton Manor very often. The side of the matter that puzzled Byron was Uncle Cliff’s Military Medal, won for outstanding bravery in the Western Desert when the Allied forces in Libya were being pushed back towards Egypt by Rommel’s Afrika Korps in ’41. Even Byron’s father said Uncle Cliff had deserved a Victoria Cross. Byron had asked his uncle many times how he won the MM but Uncle Cliff would say nothing and change the subject right back to the plight of the working man and how the Labour Party were going to change all that with a welfare state. Byron heard every small detail of the welfare state, from the free doctors to the free schools and universities, right down to half a pint of milk every day for every child in junior school: it all went in one ear and out the other; as Granda put it, the likes of Byron would be footing the bill and when the rich and energetic had been robbed poor the whole thing would collapse. Jo thought the idea of everyone being equal was simply wonderful, to which Granda said there was nothing wonderful about everyone being equally poor. It had been during Uncle Cliff’s last visit that Jo had announced she was going to London University when she finished school, to read for a degree in social welfare so she would know how to redistribute the wealth. Granda tersely replied saying that ‘our land was going to the dogs’ and why had he fought the Boer War, the Great War and his son was fighting in the second war, if all they were going to do was give away the colonies and bugger the poor sods who did the bloody work? He never got around to mentioning the two sons who had died in the Great War before getting into his car and rattling off down the driveway to Corfe Castle and the pub.
The following day, the family learnt Randolph had failed his War Office Selection Board interview and would spend his two years of national service in the ranks, which brought a smile to Jo’s face, a smug smile that annoyed everyone else in the room. Byron was working on a plan to fail the medical and avoid two years of his life in uniform, not one second of which would make him any money. Byron had worked out in the early days at Stanmore that rich boys had it all, from pocket money in the tuck shop to special coaching in the hols if they were any good at a sport. Money bought everything. From the age of thirteen and a half, Byron only wasted his time on boys with rich fathers, or the curious few who were popular. Byron hunted with the pack and sucked up to anyone who kept him in the pack. Flattery came cheap and easily to Byron Langton. At school, popularity was everything, but it took skill to be an arse-creeper without the arsehole being crept up realising it was being had. Being good at sport was one of the keys and Byron worked hard at sport, which was why he wanted to practise in the nets and not be annoyed by a twin sister with a fringe, fat legs and a face full of pimples.
“Will, why don’t you go away?” he said to the nine-year-old with the ancient junior tennis racket and the moth-eaten tennis ball.
“Show me how to hit the ball properly?” pleaded Will.
“No. Go away. Go and play with your rabbits or, better still, pester Jo.”
“She always talks about Labour, whatever Labour is, and that’s boring… Can’t you teach me to ride a horse?”
“No. Mother said you’d kill yourself… Where’s Hilary?”
“Went to church with Dad… Why does Dad spend so much time in church, Byron?�
� He must like God very much.”
“You’ll find out twice a day when you go to boarding school.”
“Do you like boarding school?”
“It’s all right if you know what you’re doing.”
“Will you teach me?”
“Can’t teach that.”
Will looked up at his big brother through the round little lenses that stuck halfway down his nose.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” said Byron.
“They all say that.”
“Maybe I should have flicked you harder.”
“What you mean, Byron?”
“Knock some sense into you… Can you read?”
“Some… Not really. Granda’s trying to teach me.”
“Go find Granda.”
“Gone to the Ship Inn to see his friend who fought the Bittereinders.”
“What are Bittereinders?”
“Don’t know… It’s going to rain. What are you going to do now?”
“Look at my stamp collection. I swapped a pretty stamp that was worth nothing with a new boy and got a penny red that is probably worth a fortune.”
“I want to see.”
“Go away and irritate someone else.”
Will slowly turned away and half put his thumb in his mouth.
Behind him, Byron kicked a stone and looked up at the sky. He would be glad when the hols were over. At school there was something to do, and he hoped last term’s new boy would pinch a pile of stamps from his old man’s stamp album. The little creep wanted the big, worthless picture stamps the French and Belgians printed in their millions. It was a fair swap. No one could say he was stealing. The excitement was back again. Every time he thought of easy money he had a tingling feeling in his toes.
The summer holidays dragged on to a boring end. Jo went off to her public school outside Eastbourne, complaining she preferred the secondary modern school in Poole. Granda had given the twins ten shillings each and their mother had given them a pound. Byron knew rich children at school came back with ten quid or more. The big problem at Langton Manor was money to pay the new taxes imposed on the rich by the new Labour government and to maintain the farm. Most of the produce from the farm was subject to a fixed price; there was no way of increasing the income. As the pound dropped against the dollar, costs rose in England. Byron, at fifteen, understood the mathematics, a subject he found as easy as riding a horse. England brought in raw materials which now cost more because of Uncle Cliff’s trade unions and the Americans sold the same product cheaper from a longer assembly line that didn’t go on strike. His dad was faced with a government-controlled milk price, a wool price in competition with the Australians, rising costs, and a tax rate that took no account of the farmer needing new equipment to compete on the world market. When Byron left school, he was going to find a business that the government could not control. He was definitely not going to be a farmer.
Stanmore was settled in a large tract of the Surrey countryside with the old buildings housing the chapel, the quadrangle, some of the classrooms and the bogs. The original buildings had been a grammar school with a strong Church of England influence, the masters mostly priests, the headmaster always a priest, all under the direction of the Bishop of Dorchester. Fifty years earlier, the priest had been invited to the Headmasters’ Conference. Fees, small at first, were introduced by the church and the new dormitories, house common rooms, classrooms and science laboratories were built, opening the school to boarders and the title of an English public school. By the time Randolph and Byron attended the school it was one of the most expensive in the world, but as Langtons had been educated in the same place for five generations, Red found the money for the fees by selling the small dowry Adelaide had brought to their marriage from her family, the Critchleys, family solicitors of Poole. Red had hoped one of his children would win a scholarship, but with the war interrupting their education none of them had taken the scholarship examination. What he was going to do with Will only time would tell and if Hilary was to remain part of the family, money would have to be found for him as well.
Half the masters in Byron’s third year were priests swishing around the school in long black skirts with big pockets and tight belts. He was sure two of them were queers, inviting the prettiest little boys for tea on Sundays at their bachelor houses in the village. Two of the prefects in his own house were playing around with juniors who if they did not want to play were subjected to the most vicious bullying. Byron had been lucky, his voice breaking soon after he entered school, which brought on a pimple rash that equalled Jo’s. He was a thickset, hairy boy who would grow into a good-looking man but, luckily for him, the hormones found him anything but sexually attractive.
Byron kept a diary of the rich boys who might be of use to him in the future years, quietly finding out the fathers’ occupations, especially those in business. Social class was of no consequence, only money, and boys left out of it because of a common accent were courted by Byron. Uncle Cliff, unbeknown, had set him on the right track in his attempt to deride the ‘old boy network’ that controlled Britain’s commerce and industry.
“It’s not what you know in this world, Byron, but who you know and that’s going to change in a socialist world. The Labour Party are going to nationalise industry so the wealth will be owned by the people.”
Byron had thought about this for a day and then asked Uncle Cliff who was going to run the industries when they were owned by the government.
“The people,” Uncle Cliff had answered. “Everyone will be equal.”
Byron thought again and asked if Dad would be needed on the farm in the new system if the people were going to do everything.
“We don’t need the landowners, lad. They just spend the money the workers make for them. Your father doesn’t plough the land or clip the wool. I don’t think any of your family have ever milked a cow.”
Byron wasn’t sure about the farm without his dad as if the labour did everything so well, why did his dad get up every morning at five o’clock and come back to the manor house at night dog-tired, with only enough energy to eat his own supper and go to bed? His only time off during the day was the hour he spent going to church. His dad could tell a cow with fever a day before the animal looked sick, pick out an infertile ewe, and he always sent the milk to market on time, something that rarely happened when he was away at the war unless Granda got out of bed in the dark and read the riot act. Byron thought the idea of leaving a business to people with no interest in the business dumb. There was a catch in Uncle Cliff’s new ideas, which sounded all very nice but he couldn’t work out why the people wouldn’t work harder if they all owned everything, though something inside him said they’d all work a lot less if the likes of his dad weren’t kicking arse. His mind was fuzzy. Unlike Jo he didn’t think Uncle Cliff’s ideas were quite as easy as they sounded.
Byron had played loosehead prop in the previous season’s Colts XV and hoped the new rugby season would find him in the third if not the second fifteen. The following year he wanted to play for his school and by the time he left Stanmore to have the colours in rugby and cricket, the two main sports at English public schools. He ignored the minor sports taking no interest in athletics, fives, squash, tennis, hockey or boxing. Even in his youth, Byron understood the need to concentrate his effort. He had little natural flair for either of his chosen sports but when it came to rugby, he was the fittest on the field, breaking from the scrum and desperately trying to make himself the extra man in the line that put his winger over the try-line when he succeeded. In cricket, he was an all-rounder, rarely dropping a catch at slip, always scoring a few runs and able to bowl the odd ball to take a wicket. Every report Byron ever received at school included the word ‘dedicated’, applied equally to work and sport. Byron Langton was making sure he would get on in life and enjoy the fruits of wealth and popularity.
When anyone important to him, including his parents, housemaster or headmaster wanted some
thing done, Byron volunteered, making a conscious effort to show his superiors how much effort he was putting in on their behalf. Byron worked best in the limelight and if there was any limelight around, Byron could always be found showing off his considerable, hard-won talents. Everyone liked Byron, and he always praised people he thought worthwhile to their face and behind their backs. For a boy at school to hear that Byron Langton thought he was good at something was a sign of having arrived: naturally, they all said what a good fellow Byron was and how well he was liked. He could not have orchestrated his own establishment better had he employed a political manager. He never flattered too much and was always sincere. He never spoke without a reason and never let anyone know the thoughts that ran constantly through the back of his mind. He always told his seniors what they wanted to hear and never started a criticism. With the care of a leopard stalking in the night, he never made an enemy. His days at Stanmore were days of deep satisfaction and no one, not even the most cynical master, saw him as a fraud. Young Byron was always such a nice young boy.
After supper in the big hall where the entire school, masters and boys, ate together in strict seniority, came one hour of prep in the house common rooms. Before supper they had all trooped off to the chapel for evensong, to end the day where it had begun, on their knees. The powers that ran the school took more interest in spiritual welfare, which cost nothing, than food, whose scarcity was blamed on food rationing which was stringent despite the end of the war: having survived the onslaught of Germany and Japan, the time had come to repay the Americans ‘for supplying the means to finish the job’ and pounds were so scarce the government did not have the financial means to lead the nation. In the dark hours of 1940, Churchill had not been in a position to argue the financial cost of his deliverance.
