Mr Campion's Fault

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, move!’ the woman snapped at a startled boy who consequently dropped his satchel in panic.

  The woman’s staring eyes, not softened by an excess of blue eyeshadow, and a large, hooked nose, approaching at speed made Rupert feel grateful he had the protection of the headmaster’s authority and military bearing at his side. Yet it seemed as though the woman had not registered the fact that the headmaster was there, even though she was on a collision course.

  Only at the last possible moment, as the woman reached the foot of the stairs, did she sidestep rather clumsily, missing the Campions entirely but brushing against the headmaster’s shoulder. As she accelerated by and almost sprinted down the corridor, the Campions registered that a vocal exchange had taken place through gritted teeth and tight lips on both sides.

  ‘Brigham.’

  ‘Hilda.’

  It was only when his hand was on the handle of the door to the staff room and there was an ebb in the tide of passing schoolboys that Mr Armitage offered an explanation of sorts.

  ‘That was Hilda Browne,’ he said to Perdita, ‘and this was clearly not a good time for introductions, but you will have to meet her at some point. You see, she’s your Helen of Troy.’

  FIVE

  Dragons’ Den

  Two of the pupils who had taken evasive action to avoid being trampled by the hurtling Hilda Browne watched the door of the staff room close behind the headmaster and his visitors and exchanged knowing looks with the world-weariness only fourteen-year-old boys can conjure at will on the slightest excuse.

  ‘Do you think that’s the replacement for Barmy Bertie?’ asked the larger of the two in a conspiratorial whisper.

  ‘Could be; how should I know?’ replied the other with studied indifference.

  ‘You two should get on well. All you carrot-tops stick together.’

  ‘Don’t be a dunce, Andy. Just because we’ve both got ginger hair doesn’t mean we’re related and anyway, if he is the stand-in for poor Bertie, you’ll see more of him than I will on the rugby field with the under-fifteens.’

  The two boys, their school blazers and ties hanging fashionably askew, kept their voices low as they descended the stairs until the satisfying click of the staff room door signalled the all-clear. Only then did the boys’ voices resume their normal volume which a casual eavesdropper, had there been one, would have categorized as ‘argumentative’ given that the boys, as fourteen-year-olds of that sex are prone to do, punctuated their conversation with violent shoulder-to-shoulder nudges as if trying to force each other off a narrow bridge.

  ‘So who d’you reckon the dolly bird is?’ murmured Andrew Ramsden suggestively, being a boy who liked to appear older and more worldly than his age, though rarely convincingly. Had he been able to grow a moustache, he would probably have twirled it.

  The ginger-haired Roderick Braithwaite refused to engage into the nudge-wink banter his friend favoured. ‘I don’t know if she’s a dolly bird but she looks nice.’

  ‘Nice? You fancy her then?’ leered his compatriot.

  Roderick sighed, ignored the barb and retaliated as only a good friend would, with one of his own. ‘You’d better get a move on if you’re catching the same bus as Horrible Hilda. I bet she’s saved a seat for you. She likes you; you’re her favourite.’

  Despite himself, Andy Ramsden felt himself blushing. ‘It’s not me, it’s my Dad she wants to keep in with!’ he protested.

  ‘Got a crush on policemen, has she?’

  Young Ramsden began his riposte in the time-honoured way among schoolboys by shoulder-charging his friend. It was a relaxed, almost nonchalant collision of bodies, without significant force or great malice.

  ‘She’s always on at Dad about vandalism or littering or Teddy Boys, as she calls them, hanging around the phone box, not to mention speeding cars. She’s gone mental about that after what happened to Barmy Bertie. If I catch that bus she’ll just start nagging me about how Dad should be doing more about speed limits and road safety.’

  ‘Do you want to come round mine and wait for the next one?’ said Roderick, throwing his friend a lifeline, which Andrew grasped with mercenary speed.

  ‘What’ve you got?’

  ‘Mum’s always baking, so there’ll be sweetcake of some sort and we’ve got Black Beer and lemonade.’

  ‘Any Coca-Cola?’

  ‘No, Mum always gets Vimto. You could stay for tea if you wanted to.’

  Andrew’s head, after a short struggle, got the better of his stomach. ‘Better not. My Mum’ll kill me if I spoil my dinner.’

  His friend did not miss the opportunity and said with fake surprise: ‘Oh, I forgot you snobs have dinner whereas us poor folk have tea.’

  ‘I’m not a snob.’ Andrew straightened to his full height (a single, but crucial, inch taller than his companion) and hitched up his haversack by the shoulder straps. ‘I can’t be, can I, if I talk to you?’

  ‘Don’t force yourself. You don’t have to come back to mine if you don’t want.’

  ‘Can’t resist it, really; I’ve never been in a haunted house before.’

  Rupert, when he and Perdita were alone later, reflected that their introduction to the inhabitants of the Dragons’ Den had been akin to stumbling into an officers’ mess in Poona – or somewhere in the Raj – during the monsoon season, the two main differences being that gin-slings had been replaced by tea in mismatched cups and cracked saucers, and that the temperature was anything but sub-tropical. It had not taken Rupert long to deduce that the school’s heating went off precisely as the final bell of the afternoon sounded.

  Even though those staff present had only had a few minutes to get themselves settled before Brigham Armitage arrived with his guests, they had already insulated themselves against the falling temperature by boiling kettles and creating an acrid, floating layer of tobacco smoke.

  The dragons were in the majority male and seated. The only two females were standing at a small butler’s sink in one corner guarding a dreadnought of a kettle balanced precariously on a hissing gas ring. The only face familiar to the Campions was one of the female ones, that of Celia Armitage who had shown them to her husband’s study on arrival.

  After her offer of tea had been politely declined, Mrs Armitage suggested she ‘do the honours’, to which the headmaster agreed with a cheerful grunt and a shrug as if to indicate he had little say in the matter. Rupert had heard that an officer’s rank cut no ice at all in a sergeants’ mess and presumed that the same applied to headmasters in a staff room.

  Ladies went first, of course, and the female who was not Celia Armitage was introduced by her as Miss Daphne Cawthorne, who taught mathematics and music, though presumably at different times.

  ‘Actually, it’s Mrs Cawthorne,’ the woman said with a thin smile as she shook Perdita’s hand, ‘but the tradition of the school is that all females are “Misses”. I’m not sure why.’

  Daphne Cawthorne was a fair-haired, middle-aged woman wearing a deep pink woollen suit which clung not unfavourably to her not-un-shapely figure. The skirt hung to an inch above the knee – Perdita guessed it would be exactly an inch – displaying legs clad in sheer brown stockings and square-toed shoes with good heels which would give stability whilst bustling up and down a classroom and just a little additional height so that she would not be dominated by the taller boys.

  She had, thought Perdita, a stern face though not an unkind one, and the expression of one who had forgotten how to smile, but did not miss the experience much.

  ‘And this is my husband, Stuart,’ as a dark-complexioned man whose black, close-cropped curls sat on his head like a knitted swim cap materialized at her side. ‘He teaches music and maths in that order, whereas I teach maths and cover for him in music. You might say we’re a double act.’

  To Rupert, the Cawthornes were the only double act in the den, for all the other dragons, slouched in armchairs strategically placed at angles so they did not have to face e
ach other, were clearly solitary animals.

  There was – and his rank was much stressed – Wing Commander Raymond Bland, a wide-shouldered, red-faced man in his fifties with bushy white eyebrows to match a white-clothes-brush moustache. He taught geography, ‘Whether they like it or not!’ and the fact that he was wearing a leather flying jacket zipped to the throat indicated that he had little time for impromptu staff meetings after school hours.

  Next in the receiving line, and clearly responsible for most of the blue layer of tobacco mist in the den, was a pipe-smoking vicar with a round face, small round glasses and a smile which would have been beatific were it not for the pipe stem clenched between yellowing teeth. The Rev. Stanley Huxtable cheerfully announced that he taught physics and, of course, religious education and, as if clarification were necessary, he removed the briar from his mouth and pointed the stem at the dog collar around his neck. He embellished his accomplishments by adding that he tutored ‘the brighter boys thinking of trying for Oxford and Cambridge’ in Latin and Greek.

  Rupert and Perdita exchanged furtive glances, each wondering how much extra work this might realistically entail for the cleric. Perdita framed the question diplomatically by asking cheerfully: ‘Does that leave you any time at all for your parishioners in Denby Ash?’

  ‘Good heavens, I am not the vicar of this or any other parish. I do not have a living in the church; I toil at the coalface of education.’

  ‘Stanley was an army chaplain,’ Celia Armitage explained as she gently eased Perdita away. ‘Rank of captain, I believe.’

  ‘Whereas I was a major,’ said the next dragon in line in a strangely measured voice which was high-pitched and slightly feminine.

  Physically, this was the smallest and thinnest of the dragons, and though he gave the impression of being a minor civil servant who was bullied at work and brow-beaten at home, Rupert suspected that Major Manfred Poole, the school’s senior chemistry master, ruled his science classes with a rod of iron if not tungsten.

  ‘Don’t worry, that’s the last of the proper officers,’ said the next male dragon in the queue, despite the fact that he snapped to attention, his heels almost clicking, in front of Perdita.

  This was a dragon of the Campions’ generation and though only an inch taller than Perdita and two shorter than Rupert, he was of a muscular bulk which exuded an animal strength and created the impression that here was a man who could expand to fill a room should he so desire. He was dressed in a faded blue tracksuit top-and-bottoms and wore battered white (verging on grey) plimsolls. Celia Armitage introduced him as though she had only just remembered he was on the staff.

  ‘This is Bob Ward.’

  ‘Petty Officer Bob Ward, Miss,’ he grinned, offering a meaty hand, ‘formerly of the Royal Navy. In fact, the only naval man in the whole Denby Grange crew. I do PE with a vengeance and I also teach French. Could do Russian if there was a call for it.’

  ‘Russian? That’s impressive,’ said Rupert genuinely.

  ‘There was a course an’ I went on it,’ said Bob Ward. ‘The navy wanted Russian speakers, even ones with a broad Yorkshire accent, so we could listen in to the red menace. Can’t say it helped make the world any safer for democracy.’

  ‘But PE probably makes the world fitter,’ Perdita said graciously.

  ‘Mens sano in corpore sano and all that,’ Rupert added affably.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, I only do Frog and Russki,’ the former naval person said with a grimly straight face. ‘I leave the Classics to the h’officer clarse, same as I leave them to play their rugby.’

  It’s a good job you’ve got muscles, Mr Ward, thought Perdita, because they’ve got to support one heck of a big chip on your shoulder.

  ‘You are not involved in school rugby?’

  Ward shook his head as if he had been accused of a crime. ‘Not me; never played t’game in me life. Physical fitness, gymnastics and cross-country runs, them’s my department. The rugby field was always Bertram’s empire.’

  ‘He did play for the Sappers, you know,’ interjected Major Poole through tight, thin lips, ‘when he was in the Royal Engineers, and for Cambridge. He was quite a talent in his younger days and the boys all looked up to him.’

  Whether or not the pupils of Denby Grange viewed Bob Ward with the same respect was left unsaid. It was clear that Major Poole did not.

  ‘Did he take rugby alone?’ asked Rupert. ‘It must have been quite a burden alongside his teaching duties.’

  ‘He was certainly busy during the winter months, but once the cricket season started he could put his feet up. Bertram wouldn’t have had it any other way, he loved his rugby’ – Poole checked himself as though the thought had just occurred to him – ‘and of course he had Harrop to help him.’

  ‘Harrop?’

  ‘Rufus Harrop,’ said Bob Ward, ‘is our groundsman, gardener and general handyman. He’s not officer class either and not even allowed in the staff room.’

  Mrs Armitage, being a headmaster’s wife, did what all headmasters’ wives did instinctively and intervened as a peace-keeper. ‘Manfred, Bob. Permit me to steal Mr and Mrs Campion. I’m sure they want to get settled in their room but they really need to have a word with the wing commander before he goes home, and he’s keen to get off.’

  ‘He always is,’ said Manfred Poole drily.

  ‘Already got his coat on,’ added Bob Ward, and Perdita sensed something of an unlikely alliance between the two of them when it came to the geography master.

  Celia Armitage linked arms with the pair to steer them to where the grumpy wing commander was sucking fiercely on an untipped Players’ cigarette, speaking quietly as she ushered them over. ‘Bob can be a little prickly,’ she whispered, ‘and Manfred just loves to torment him, so best not to get stuck in the middle. You should have a quick word with Raymond, though.’

  ‘About rugby?’ Rupert asked under his breath.

  ‘No,’ Celia turned her head into Perdita’s, ‘about Helen of Troy.’

  Before Perdita and Rupert could even exchange befuddled glances, they were presented to Raymond Poole, who made no attempt to rise from the armchair which it seemed would rise with him, so snug was the fit.

  ‘Before you go home, Raymond,’ said Mrs Armitage, gently pushing Perdita forward, ‘we thought you should have a word with Perdita about Hilda.’

  ‘Hah! Wondered why I was in the official receivin’ line.’

  Poole crushed his cigarette out in the small glass ashtray he had balanced on the arm of his chair and then flicked along his moustache with a forefinger; a finger and a moustache, Perdita noticed, both stained yellow with nicotine.

  ‘You’ve known her longer than anyone, Raymond, which makes you the SBO,’ said Mrs Armitage diplomatically. Then with a grin added: ‘So who better to warn Perdita about what she might expect? Now excuse me whilst I wash up these cups.’

  Perdita decided her best strategy was to charm this sulking lion, albeit a lion with a receding mane, and so she ignited her best smile.

  ‘Are you a friend of … Hilda, is it? Miss Browne. She passed us in the hallway but she didn’t stop to chat; seemed to be running for a bus.’

  The balding lion growled softly and eyed Perdita as if she were prey.

  ‘Then you’re lucky she didn’t trample you to death.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, she almost did.’

  ‘That sounds like Hilda,’ acknowledged the wing commander without irony. ‘When she wants to go somewhere she just puts her head down and goes full steam ahead. Doesn’t matter what’s in her way; could be a baby in a pram, could be a blind man with one leg, could be a brick wall – Hilda would go through or over the lot. Bertram always said he could use her on the rugby field if she put on three or four stones. Mind you, she probably will. Spinsters usually do.’

  Perdita bit her lip and resisted the urge to reach out and rip off a chunk of those yellowing moustache hairs. ‘I’m told that Hilda is to play a part in the prod
uction I have … inherited.’

  ‘And the best of British luck to you with that, little lady. This damn-fool Christmas show was all Hilda’s damn-fool idea from the start, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow, Mr Bland,’ said Perdita, conscious of Rupert next to her moving uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He had seen her far from feminine response to being called anyone’s ‘little lady’ before.

  ‘I prefer Wing Commander, if you don’t mind,’ said the pompous lion. ‘That’s why Celia calls me the SBO of the staff room – Senior British Officer, don’t you know.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Perdita said innocently. ‘I thought it stood for something else entirely. Could I ask what you mean by the Faustus production being Hilda’s idea, Wing Commander? I didn’t realize she was on the staff.’

  ‘She’s not, thank the stars. She haunts the school – on sufferance, mind you – because she was Bertram’s sister. No one in Denby Ash, or the adjoining parishes, can stand the woman – me included – but Bertie was a good friend of mine and since he died I seem to have inherited the role of Hilda expert by default.’

  The wing commander’s expression twisted in on itself as he concentrated silently on picking flecks of tobacco from his pursed lips whilst studiously ignoring the young woman in front of him. Perdita was sure she was not the first of her sex to be so ignored and would not be the last. But as she was determined not to stand for bullying in the classroom, she saw no reason why she should put up with it in the staff room.

  ‘Well?’ she said, placing her clenched fists on her hips and leaning over the seated lion.

  ‘Well what?’ growled the startled lion, already betrayed by a pink glow blooming in his cheeks.

  ‘Why was doing Faustus Hilda’s idea? I thought you were about to tell me.’

  ‘Oh, yes … Hilda and her Doctor Faustus obsession …’

  Raymond Bland paused as if reluctant to part with information which, Perdita was sure, would have been common gossip in the all-male sanctuary of an officer’s mess.