A Future Arrived

by Phillip Rock

  “Nor to Mrs. Daintree, I gathered.”

  “No. She told me I was making a mistake when I took him back to Archdean. Mrs. Daintree was his nanny. More than that, actually. My daughter-in-law was ill for many years. She died when Derek was eight … of a lung disorder … brought on by the influenza epidemic in nineteen nineteen. Nearly died then, poor child … as did Derek.” He hesitated over his own glass and then sloshed in an extra dollop of whisky. “A sensible, no-nonsense woman, Mrs. Daintree. Yorkshire born and bred. The West Riding. A hard country. She saw her five brothers sent out into the world when they reached fourteen to sink or swim in the mills or the mines. But prepared for it from birth, you see. She feels that I sheltered Derek from the realities of life far too long. She may well be right.”

  “As the twig is bent …” Charles said as T. C. handed him his drink.

  “She told you that, did she? Yes, her favorite aphorism where Derek is concerned. Well, I bent the twig all right. Best of intentions … but, the road to hell and all that.” He scowled at his whisky and then took a drink. “Derek has been expelled from Archdean. I was just on the telephone to Dr. Grace, the headmaster.”

  “Probably for the best,” Marian said quietly.

  T. C. nodded. “Yes, quite so. Dr. Grace will write the expulsion down in soft pencil as it were. It will not affect Derek’s chances of attending another school in a year or so … Charterhouse … Winchester, perhaps. We shall see. He’s really too young for that now. And although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that my grandson is eccentric, he is different … too vulnerable to the odd bully.” He began to pace the room slowly, holding his glass tightly in both hands. “Derek was a rather special child. He was born three weeks after my son was killed. Tom dead. No reminders of him except a few photographs and a medal from the king … and then a healthy, bouncing boy. Yes, he took on quite an importance indeed.”

  It had been an age for death, the war grinding on through 1918 and then the terrible winter and spring of 1919 with influenza sweeping an exhausted world. Derek and his young mother had come down with the disease and had not been expected to live. That had been the supreme moment of despair for T. C. Ramsay. He had felt balanced on the edge of a chasm for the damned.

  “Pamela never fully recovered,” he said in a toneless voice. “A semi-invalid the rest of her short life. Derek had become a pallid, sickly little thing who required constant care until he was five. I kept him away from other children as much as possible. You see, I was still terrified of death. Children died of diphtheria … there was a German measles epidemic … what disease I didn’t know I invented. The result was that I insulated the boy until I was convinced he was strong enough to withstand anything. I kept him home, with a tutor, until he was nine. By then he was as healthy as a horse and just about as broad. He read books the way a shark eats, had gutted my own library and every public one from Wimbledon to Richmond. I decided, finally, to send him to school as a day boy. I chose Larchwood in Roehampton, just down the road. He did well there, academically, at least, but lacked any sense of conformity. I realized that he was turning into something of an outsider and that it would not stand him in good stead later in life. He needed … oh, discipline … abiding by the rules … playing the game, one could say. That was when I enrolled him in Archdean. But, as Mrs. Daintree had told me many times, the twig had been bent. I can see now how foolish it was of me to expect Archdean to accomplish in one term everything that I had failed to do in twelve years.” He paused by the windows, his large, oval body silhouetted against the sunset. “I rather libeled your school in my anger, sir. Called it a haven for misfits. Derek has more sense than I. He knows precisely where he belongs.” He drew the curtains and switched on a lamp. “I might … merely as an experiment, you understand … place Derek at Burgate for the remainder of the term. Might, I must stress. I would have to look the place over.”

  “Of course,” Charles said with studied casualness. “Any time.”

  “And not one of those tours where one is shown only bright work and no tarnish. I would wish to stroll about a bit on my own and poke my nose into the odd corner or two. Any objection?”

  “None at all.”

  “This Saturday would be convenient for me.”

  “That would be perfect. Should we say eleven? You could stay for lunch. Sample the school cooking.”

  “I’ve consumed a good deal of school cooking in my time, Greville. The culinary qualities of your institution are of no concern to me.”

  He walked them to the front door. There was a slight scuffling sound coming from the upper landing and then Derek, wearing pajamas and a robe, peered over the railing.

  “May I say something to Mr. Greville, Grandfather?”

  “You may.”

  The round, pale face was strained and anxious. “I really would try, sir … do my very best.”

  Charles smiled up at the boy. “I know you would, Derek.”

  T. C. Ramsay cleared his throat loudly as Derek ran off down the landing, slippers thumping against the floor. “Well, now,” he said, opening the front door. “I know what he wants, but we shall see … we shall see.”

  Marian started the car and shifted into gear. “Engaging little fellow. Do you really think he has a chance?”

  “I don’t know. I certainly hope so, but we’ll have to pass muster first.”

  “I’m sure we’ll come through with flying colors.” They reached the end of the drive and she turned the car into the road. “God, but that was a depressing house. The piano. Like a shrine.”

  “It is a shrine.”

  “Poor, chubby Derek. Pictures of his father as school hero … war hero … the V.C. for bravery. Too many things to live up to. I truly feel sorry for him. But he’s a scrapper in his own way.”

  “Courage takes many forms.”

  “I quite agree.” They were driving past the great park with its shadowed woods and glades, deserted now under a pale rising moon. “I don’t know about you, but I could go for another gin and something to eat. I know of a place in Putney, a pub where Swinburne did his modest drinking. Are you game?”

  “I could go for something.” He was looking reflectively through the window. They were passing a golf course, the deep, sandy bunkers catching the moon. “Tom Ramsay’s photograph reminded me strongly of my brother.”

  “The horse-racing chap? I only met him once, but he doesn’t look at all like Derek’s father.”

  “Not facially. Same sort of man, though. Tom Ramsay and Willie. A cut from the same cloth. Both school leaders … caps and colors in everything … cricket, footer, rugger. Strong sense of duty to school and country. Willie joined up the moment he became eighteen. He was in officers’ training here, oddly enough … where the links are now. Within walking distance to Ramsay’s house. Curious.” He looked away, took a cigarette from a box in his pocket and held it between his fingers, unlit. “There could so easily have been a photograph of Willie at home … on the mantel, perhaps … a posthumous medal dangling from the frame.”

  There was an odd tone to his voice as she glanced at him curiously.

  “So many like William,” he went on. “They’d come up to the front line at night with the replacements. Fresh as paint, eager to get at Jerry and win the war. They were impossibly young and full of high spirits. It was all a lark to them, you see. They were drunk on the excitement of it all. Most of them were dead or wounded within a week. I was acting colonel and I would write names into the roll one day and scratch them off the next. So many destroyed for no bloody purpose whatever.”

  “The war is over. Don’t dwell on it.”

  “It’s all right. Being able to talk is healthy. My problem for years was keeping everything to myself. I still do to a certain extent. A withdrawn personality.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Solemn, yes.”

  “Solemn as an owl. I’m really quite happy, though. I enjoy what I do and I believe I’m good at it.”

  “You’re
marvelous. Kind … patient.”

  “There were so many years when I couldn’t function at all. Common knowledge around the school. I assume that Simpson or Wallis has told you.”

  She nodded slowly. “In an offhand way. You had a breakdown. A malady of the times.”

  “Everyone has a certain … limit. I reached mine one day and snapped. I didn’t go howling mad or anything like that. I simply withdrew into a safe world of my own after doing something that I felt I must do.”

  “And that was?”

  “Protest the war … the utter, useless carnage of it. Four hundred thousand men lost on the Somme, and a new batch being trained to take their places—my brother among them. A boy such as Willie … he would have leaped over the top as though hurrying to join a football match. Been shot down within seconds.”

  “Thank heaven that didn’t happen. Just a game leg.”

  “He got it here on the final day of his training.”

  “An accident?”

  “Not exactly. I put a bullet in his knee.”

  It was said with such dispassion that she wasn’t sure at first if she had heard him correctly. She gripped the wheel tightly and drove on toward the lights of Putney.

  “To keep him out of the trenches.” Her voice was husky.

  “I could think of no other way. It was wrong, of course. One shouldn’t play God by interfering with the strands of fate. Willie hated me for it. Not now, you understand. He’s grateful that he escaped the butchery. I wanted a full court martial on the charge of, quite literally, shooting a brother officer. My request was refused. The War Office had no intention of providing a forum where I could protest the slaughter in France. I was given a medical hearing instead. Quite a farce. The brass had already judged me shell-shocked … innocent by reason of insanity. I was committed to an asylum in North Wales where I sank into a stupor for four years.”

  The road curved past Putney Heath and there was the pub, light streaming through its windows. “A gin,” she said firmly. “A very large, double-portion gin.”

  HE HAD NOT felt solemn in her presence, in the smoky pub where Swinburne had taken his daily pint of beer. He had felt oddly light-headed and buoyant, as though a punishing load had been removed from his shoulders.

  And time remembered is grief forgotten,

  And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

  And in green underwood and cover

  Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

  He had quoted that stanza from “Atalanta in Calydon” because it had seemed fitting somehow, and perhaps the ghost of the little poet lingered in the place. They had drunk gin and lime and eaten Scotch eggs, bread and cheese; seated at a small table perilously close to the dart board. He had told her things about himself that he had been incapable of telling the vicar’s niece, or any of the other women that his mother had tried to bring into his life: of his brief, disastrous wartime marriage and the horrors of Gallipoli and the Somme that had led to his breakdown. Calmly objective as though discussing the trials of a stranger.

  And time remembered is grief forgotten.

  And she had told him of her childhood in North London, of her father, a flamboyantly spendthrift Irish tenor who had toured for years with the D’Oyly Carte company, and of her marriage to Gerald Halliday and the divorce—of which he had not read so much as a word, much to her surprise.

  Yes, he was thinking as he finished his morning shave, a most enjoyable evening. He looked forward to seeing her and was glad that this was one of the days she would be at the school. He rubbed his cheeks with bay rum and got dressed, eyeing his shapeless tweed suit with regret. Wearing it, the image reflected in the mirror was drab and gray. The colorless tie did not help matters. He looked every inch the aging schoolmaster. A solemn owl indeed. He touched his forehead. Nothing much he could do about a receding hairline, but a new wardrobe was as close as a London tailor.

  He sought her out after her last class and asked her to come to his study. She looked, he thought, very lovely in a pale green dress that complimented the rich chestnut of her hair, but found it difficult to tell her so.

  “I had a fine time last night,” she said easily, sitting in the chair facing his desk.

  “So did I. I like old pubs … places with character.”

  “We should do it again. I understand there’s an inn near Dorking where Nelson used to stay with Lady Hamilton.”

  “Yes. It’s famous for its beef and kidney pies … and a beer the monks brew at Pebble Coombe. I’ll take you there, if you’d like.”

  “Lovely! When?”

  “Well …” He felt flustered. “Soon, perhaps.” He leaned back in his chair and frowned at the ceiling. “I need some advice … this Ramsay business. Putting our best foot forward is easier said than done. I took a hard look at the school today, trying to see the place from T. C.’s point of view. A view not much different from my father’s, I would imagine, and Lord knows I’ve heard his comments over the years.”

  “What exactly did you find to be the matter?”

  “The very things that make us unique … the freedom of individual expression and dress … the total air of nonconformity about the place. Wallis, as only one example, was teaching his geometry class this morning on the west lawn, using string tied to croquet stumps. The class lounging about, laughing and joking, dressed every which way. Some still in their pajamas.”

  “It’s a bright class all the same. Untidy except in mind. I would think that angles made with twine would be easier to comprehend than lines drawn on a blackboard. You could point out to Mr. Ramsay that Andrew Wallis may look rather eccentric in his shabby blazer and cricket cap but that he once chaired the mathematics department at the University of Glasgow and did not leave under a cloud to come here.”

  Charles waved a dismissing hand. “It’s the tableau I’m referring to … the effect such a scene would have on Ramsay. So totally alien from his concept of a proper school.”

  Marian studied her fingernails. “If the scene is wrong, change the scene. An old saying in the theater.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “It would seem to me that the only possible way to create the proper impression is to turn to theater for help.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

  “It’s quite simple. We put on a kind of play.”

  “A play?”

  “Tom Brown’s Schooldays … the Jolly Chaps at Greyfriars … the Eton boating song fondly remembered. That sort of thing. Children are natural actors and I can’t see how we could go wrong. I’ll take charge of it because I’m the obvious choice with my background. Wardrobe will be a slight problem, but then he knows we don’t wear uniforms here.” She stood up abruptly. “Not much time if we want perfection when the curtain rises on Saturday. I’ll discuss my idea with the soviet right away. I know they’ll jump at it.”

  Charles was leaning forward now, staring at her. “I don’t have the foggiest notion of what you’re talking about.”

  “Never mind. Just wait for the matinee and be pleasantly surprised.” She headed for the door, then paused and smiled at him over her shoulder. “Though we will need you. The lead role. The part calls for a tall, handsome, wise, and compassionate headmaster type. Yes, I believe you’ll do nicely.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said as she left the room. Simpson had called her a “spirited” young woman. That was certainly an understatement.

  WHEN THE BLACK Daimler rolled sedately up the drive at eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, the front doors of Burgate House opened and a file of boys and girls emerged walking two by two. They fairly gleamed in the morning sun with shiny faces, washed hair, polished shoes, and neat clothing. They were led by Mr. Simpson, splendid in the flowing black gown he had not worn since his years as a university don. Master and pupils nodded respectfully to the occupant of the car and continued their silent, ordered way across the gravel drive toward the far side of the building.

  “Rather nea
tly turned out, I must say,” T. C. Ramsay remarked, more to himself than to his chauffeur.

  The hall clock had just finished striking eleven when Charles had seen the car coming up the drive.

  “He’s here,” he had said to Marian Halliday. She had then told Simpson to move his group out. The forty or so children, who had been chatting and laughing among themselves, had fallen silent and marched out of the hall as actors onto a stage, with all the solemnity and pomp expected of their roles.

  “Right on time, Mr. Ramsay,” Charles said as he greeted the man.

  “Punctuality is my obsession, sir.” He drew a gold watch from his waistcoat and looked at it. “This shouldn’t take too long. I’m expected in Guildford at one thirty.” He closed the watch cover with a snap. “Well, let’s get on with it.”

  The tour of the school began with a visit to the soviet in their chambers, where beef bouillon and biscuits were served. Extra chairs and a table had been brought into the room to give it a more businesslike atmosphere and the members conducted themselves with the poise of barristers.

  “Soviet,” said T. C. Ramsay with a scowl. “Not the most pleasant-sounding word. At least to me.”

  “Only a word,” Charles said. “When John Mastwick founded the school in nineteen nineteen he let the children pick the name for the governing body. They could just as easily have chosen parliament, or congress, but they wanted something more modern and daring.”

  “To shock the establishment, I presume.”

  “Precisely. But what’s in a name? It’s the purpose that counts.”

  T. C. Ramsay asked a few pointed questions regarding the functions and duties of the soviet, listening attentively as they were explained, and seemed pleased with the answers.

  “Novel, what? A true democratic body at work. And a most pleasant room in which to conduct business.”

  No one mentioned that he was standing on Lenin’s carpet.