‘It’s not bluff,’ she said steadily. ‘And don’t underestimate Mr Roscoe. He has ambitions for this place. He wants to see standards raised and the quality of people coming here raised too — scholastically, that is. There’s nothing wrong with the quality in any other way.’ Why did I need to say that? she thought. In case he thinks I’m racist? Oh, God, but it’s getting complicated.
He seemed to be aware of her thinking because he smiled slowly and said, ‘Well, ma’am, I sure thank you for that,’ and sketched a bow as though he were a caricature of a black servant in a 1930s Hollywood movie.
‘So don’t think it wouldn’t make any difference if I told him,’ she went on doggedly, doing all she could to hold on to her control over the conversation she had started. ‘Because it would.’
‘I can’t take the risk,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a career to think of, a university to think of. So you’re right. You hold the cards. I’ll do what I can.’
He turned to go and then came back into the room. ‘Those magazines …’
This time she couldn’t control it. She went a bright red. ‘They’re none of my business. People’s sex lives are their own affair. I have no interest in them. You must read what you choose. I’m no censor.’
He looked at her curiously, and then said, ‘It’s only cannabis and tobacco that worries you? Oh, well, I suppose that’s what I should have expected.’
‘If you expected me to be the sort of — of prude who makes judgements about people’s sexuality, then you’ve badly misjudged me.’
‘You saw the sort of magazines they were?’
‘I wasn’t all that interested.’
He laughed. ‘I love it when people say that. So lofty. It’s funny, because no one can help it. When there’s stuff like that lying about you can’t help but be interested. Your eyes behave like iron filings and the magazines are your actual pole.’
‘It was dark,’ she said unwillingly. ‘Of course I looked; as you say, it’s impossible not to. But I couldn’t see much —’
‘Leather and whips?’
‘I don’t want to discuss it,’ she said and now she was angry. ‘I told you, I make no judgements on people’s sexual needs, whatever they are.’
‘Boring or fancy, straight or gay …’ He said it in a dreamy sort of tone, still looking at her with that half-amused gaze he’d kept on her face almost throughout.
‘I told you. I’m neither a prude nor a censor. I believe everyone has the right to choose his or her own sexual style, as long as —’
‘Yes I know. I’ve heard all the liberal claptrap before.’ He sounded angry suddenly. ‘As long as no one’s hurt, as long as there’s no coercion, as long as it’s consenting people in private, da de da, de da de da, sing the old song.’
‘It’s the fact that you and your friends were smoking an illegal drug that concerns me. I’ve told you where I stand. I won’t involve the Headmaster or the police or anyone as long as I have your assurance that you and the rest of the boys involved will make sure it stops. It’s all that matters, as far as I’m concerned. The rest of your interests are your own affairs.’
‘Very well, Mrs Clements.’ He was suddenly different again, and she was bewildered. Now he was all schoolboy, obedient, a little shamefaced, subservient. ‘I’ll tell the others. We’ll be at the next learning-to-live class, then, and thank you, Mrs Clements.’ And he was gone, closing her door behind him carefully, and she stood and stared at it nonplussed. Bloody boys, she thought then furiously. I’ll never understand them. Thank God for my two girls.
‘You’ll do as you’re told, Jer. And you’ll like it,’ Harry said softly. ‘So don’t damage my ears filling ’em with bullshit. Anyway, she’s not that bad. You went to her first class without too much fussing.’
‘It’s one thing to go because you choose to, another to do it because you’re being bullied,’ Dalrymple said, and winked at the fat boy, who was sitting wheezing gently beside him and looking glum.
‘Yeah,’ the fat boy said and squinted at Harry, who ignored him.
‘I thought it might be some good dirt we’d get,’ Jerry went on, looking sulky now. ‘But all she really goes on about is —’
‘I know what she goes on about.’ Harry was getting irritable and it showed. ‘And I couldn’t care less for any opinion you might have of it. You go to her bloody classes for the next four Wednesday lunchtimes. And forget about being bullied. You’re not. You’re just being told.’
‘So what’s the worst she can do?’ Jeremy was feeling argumentative. ‘Tell on us? Much that dickhead’d care! The less he knows about what’s going on with us the better he likes it. Can’t afford to have any nasty scandals, so it’s easier to pretend everything’s lovely. He wouldn’t take any notice if she took him an ash tray full of roaches —’
‘He gave Spero the push,’ Harry said and there was a little silence between them, underlined by the shout that was coming from the lower form’s play area. The fat boy gazed gloomily at the scratch football that was going on at the other side of the playing field between people from the third and fourth forms and then opened his mouth to speak, saw the look on Harry’s face and closed it again. Then Jeremy stretched, looking as insouciant as he could.
‘It’d suit me.’
‘It wouldn’t suit me,’ Harry said softly. ‘You understand me? It wouldn’t suit me. So we’ll see you there at the next class Wednesday lunchtime, right?’
Jeremy looked at him and then let his eyes slide away. ‘Load of shit if you ask me,’ he muttered. ‘Oh, don’t look like that! I’ll be there. Might as well be if everyone else is —’
‘Oh, they’ll be there,’ Harry said. ‘They’ll be there, never doubt it. You needn’t worry about that.’
‘Everyone except Tully,’ the fat boy said suddenly and giggled shrilly. ‘I’d like to see that, him sitting there listening to talk about women fancying men’s arses, wouldn’t you?’ And he nudged Jeremy who slid a glance sideways at Harry and then giggled too.
‘You know something, Burchill?’ Harry said. ‘You’re so stupid you oughtn’t to be out without a minder. One more word like that and you won’t have a tongue left to talk with. Do you believe me?’
‘Only joking, Harry,’ the fat boy said uneasily and nudged Jeremy again. But Jeremy took no notice and slid off the bench they’d been sharing and moved away as the bells began their raucous shrieking again to mark the end of the lunch break. ‘Only joking. Won’t say another word —’
‘You’re bloody right you won’t,’ Harry said with an affable air and grinned at him, and then walked away with Jeremy close beside him, moving in a diagonal line towards the small group of girls who were standing watching the football. Genevieve was standing a little to one side of it, and as Harry approached moved with apparent casualness so that he came up to her. Jeremy looked at Harry sleepily, seeking cues, and clearly got them, because he moved away, leaving the two to talk. But the fat boy hardly noticed. He stood disconsolately kicking the grass; he’d never learn when to say the right things, he thought mournfully. Yesterday he’d said something about Tully and they’d all laughed. Why hadn’t they laughed today? He’d never understand.
The notice went up on the common-room notice board not long after half-term, and Sam Chanter stopped to look at it over her shoulder and laughed.
‘That’ll be a first for you, won’t it? Oh, you’ll love this!’
‘Why? What happens?’
‘Oh, such goings-on! Such rushings-around and carryings-on and eatings and drinkings and general drive-you-maddings! It starts with the procession, of course. That really is something, you must have heard about it. Our Founder’s Day procession! It makes the TV screens every year, God help us.’
She frowned. ‘Red tunics and white stockings?’
‘You’ve got it. Yup. What the modern young man wears, a scarlet surtout, matching breeches with white hose and buckled shoes, full lawn sleeves — it’s a travesty, it really is.’
‘You may well ask. Of education. Of what life’s all about, if you want to wax philosophical about it. We’re supposed to be here to rear these kids to be good European citizens for the first half of the twenty-first century and how do we do it? Why, by encouraging them to dress up in the clothes of Elizabethan charity children to march through the streets to be gawped at.’
‘It’s tradition,’ Edward Wilton said, coming in and pushing past them towards the coffee pot. ‘And it’s only once a year. I don’t know why you’re always so rude about it, Sam. I rather enjoy it, you know. I mean, it’s so very English and so splendidly historical —’
‘Historical my arse,’ Sam said and reached for his own coffee. ‘It’s got about as much to do with real history as Anne Hathaway’s cottage embroidered in chainstitch on a tea cosy. It’s nostalgia run rampant. Enough to make you sick.’
‘Sick again, Chanter?’ Dave Tully had come in and was standing scowling at the place where the Headmaster’s secretary had pinned yet another of her despairing appeals about the proper use of the small car park. ‘You’ve got the queasiest stomach of anyone in the place, one way and another.’ Sam’s face was suddenly mottled with angry red patches and Hattie stared at him, startled at the sudden change in him. He was looking at Tully with such an expression of anger and loathing that she felt cold for a moment.
Sam said nothing but turned away with obvious contempt and Tully grinned. ‘No more lectures for me, Chanter?’ he said loudly and Wilton, after one worried look at the pair of them, scuttled for the door. ‘No more teaching your grandmother to suck eggs?’
‘I’ve said what I have to say,’ Sam said, still not looking at him. ‘I’m not interested in adding anything more.’
‘How kind of you!’ Tully said and winked at Hattie who also reddened and looked away. ‘To think that I might be allowed to know my own business best — such a treat for me. I’m much obliged to you, Mr Chanter, sir, Mr Chanter ever-so-sir —’
‘One of these days someone’ll cut your throat for you, Tully,’ Sam said and suddenly laughed. ‘And no one’ll cheer more loudly than I will. I don’t know why I let you irritate me the way you do. You don’t matter enough, after all.’
‘Don’t I? Well, we’ll see,’ Tully said, clearly feeling himself the victor in the exchange, and peered into the coffee pot. ‘This stuff looks like shit, I’m going to pinch some of the Headmaster’s. Interested, Mrs Clements? I’m much better company than Little Lord Fauntleroy here,’ and he leered at Hattie so absurdly that she laughed, uneasy though the spat between the two men had made her.
‘I’m not that desperate for caffeine, thanks,’ she said, and Tully shrugged.
‘Please yourself,’ he said and went and there was a little silence behind him.
Hattie stole a glance at Sam. He looked his usual self again, calm and relaxed, and she wondered for a moment if she’d imagined the sudden spurt of cold fury that had been in him; and then, as he caught her eye and smiled, pushed it all to the back of her mind. Tully was always an irritating person; clearly there’d been some disagreement over something unimportant and Sam had for once let his annoyance show. It was no more than that, she assured herself, and smiled back at him.
‘Bloody Founder’s Day.’ Collop had come in and was scrabbling in the battered leather holdall he carried everywhere with him. ‘As if I hadn’t enough on my plate, I’ve got to revive the Shrew for it.’
Sam laughed, genuinely amused. ‘Oh, that’ll be a joy! You’ll never get the little bastards to get that together again, will you?’
‘You watch me.’ Collop sounded grim as at last he found the bottle he was looking for and began to unscrew it. ‘I’ll murder them if they don’t and they know it. It’s a fact that I find works like aqua vitae on a midwife.’
He tipped his head back and held the bottle high and they all watched silently as the stream of liquid from the bottle ran into his mouth and he swallowed it, splashing not a drop. It was his party piece, a trick he’d learned years ago in Spain when he’d worked in bars and restaurants during the long vacs from university, and he was proud of it, and when he’d finished, he screwed up the bottle again and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
‘That’ll get me through the first period, I hope. I’ve got the fourth, I ask you, the fourth! A bigger bunch of halfwits I have never had to suffer, even here, and if I had my way I’d get the lot of them sweeping the quadrangle or something. It’d do them more good than listening to me elucidate the inner meanings and hidden delights of Silas Marner. But what can I do, with Staveley off sick and someone having to hold the fort for his bloody sixth years? As if I hadn’t enough to provoke me —’
‘They’re not that bad,’ Hattie heard herself saying and could have bitten her tongue off. It was never clever to say anything at all to Collop; ever since the rehearsals for the play at the end of last term they’d been on the coolest of terms, but she had an affection for the boys in the fourth who were, it often seemed to her, the most bewildered of all the bewildered young ones in the place. The thought of their suffering Collop for the afternoon had made her wince. Now she braced herself for the acid of his reply, whatever it was.
But he ignored what she had said and only looked at her owlishly and said, ‘I’ll need your precious ewe lambs again. Am I to enjoy the pleasure of your company at all the rehearsals? Again?’ And there was enough of an insult in the way he said ‘again’ that made her furious and she snapped, ‘Of course!’ without stopping to think. And then was even more furious, but this time with herself. She had enough on her plate with her girls at home and her own work here to want to sit it out again at late afternoon and early evening rehearsals.
But the die was cast and she had to accept it, like it or not. She was to be as much a part of Founder’s Day at the Foundation as anyone else. March 6 would be hectic for all of them, with the procession and church parade to the City in the morning, and the Open Day in the afternoon, an Open Day which, she was told with gloom by Sam Chanter, included gymnastic displays; a series of demonstrations by the Cadet Corps (‘It’s the only thing Michael Staveley lives for all year,’ he said. ‘He’ll be happy, at least’); shows put on by the boys in the computer group; several recitals by boys in the Latin and Greek classes (‘Readings from the poets,’ Sam said. ‘Sheer bloody hell’); and various efforts made by all the rest of the school. The performance of the Shrew was to be the same night, and Sam shook his head as he explained it all to Hattie at length.
‘By the end of it, none of us’ll know whether we’re on this earth or Fuller’s, to quote my good old granny. Just you wait and see. It’ll be murder, one way and another.’
Seventeen
‘The place’ll be like a morgue all morning,’ Hattie said, stopping to look out of the common-room window that overlooked the quadrangle. ‘Rather nice, really. No bells, and a chance to get ourselves braced up for the afternoon.’
‘Not a bit of it.’ Sam looked over her shoulder to where boys were gathering in a great chattering flurry like a cloud of scarlet and white jays. There were some of the rather small barely pubertal ones in a cluster just beneath the window and Hattie looked at their smooth young faces and the way their hair curled against the pleated white ruffs that were set over the scarlet surtouts and felt a wave of tenderness, which she tried to suppress. It was the sort of sentimental knee-jerk response some people have to choirboys; she should be ashamed to be so soggy. But it wasn’t easy to be cool about the way they looked. Long white legs over black buckled shoes were very seductive. ‘The place’ll have humming with people. They don’t all go to the parade, you know.’
‘Oh! I assumed they did.’
‘What, all seven hundred of them? The police’d never agree, even if we had the gear for all of them. No, just a hundred go. The rest stay here getting the Open Day stuff set up.’
‘I should have realized,’ Hattie said as a sweating Edwards, looking parti
cularly resplendent in a crimson and black outfit loaded with gold braid which made his belly seem even larger than it was, tried to line the boys up in size order with the smallest at the front, but not until the Headmaster appeared in his flowing academic gown and crimson and black mortar board did any of them pay the least attention. Then as obediently as sheep they formed into lines of four, ready to move off.
On the far side of the quad there was a little group of men with cameras and microphones on sound booms and Wilton, who had come to join them, said, ‘What’s going on down there? The men with cameras —’
‘What it looks like.’ David Tully had come in and was staring out at the quad with them. ‘The Head fancies a film to use as a fund-raiser at City dinners and he’s got some self-important little shit to do it. Shushing you out of the way when you walk past — what a wanker! Carries on as though he owns the place. I’ll have him before the day’s out, see if I don’t.’
‘I know him,’ Hattie said, peering and recognizing him. ‘He’s been filming the play. He’s Dilly Langham’s father.’
‘And what might Dilly Langham be when it’s at home?’
Hattie wouldn’t look at him. ‘She’s one of my sixth-formers.’ And then in a sudden flush of anger added, ‘You know perfectly well who she is. She’s in one of your sets for A level!’
‘I pay no attention to the girls at all,’ Tully said. ‘Waste of time and energy. They do what the hell they like. And do it very badly.’
‘No you don’t,’ Sam murmured in Hattie’s ear as her muscles clenched so that she could turn on Tully, and, knowing he was right, she obeyed. But it wasn’t easy.
‘You ought to see what goes on when the outfits come up from the storage people,’ Sam said loudly. ‘It’s a circus. They’ve got just the hundred, had them for years. Replaced after the last lot, which were fifty or so years old then, had been blitzed, and they’re threadbare. Well, they would be after almost fifty years. It’s amazing how they can keep on laundering and mending them. But they do, and they bring them here in huge baskets, all starched up and ready, and then sort through the boys to see who fits them. Not the other way around, choosing the boys to parade and then fixing the gear. Nothing so simple. It’s the shoes that give the most trouble. I’d have plenty of blister plasters ready for when they get back for lunch. Which, by the way, is rather good news for us.’
Dangerous Things Page 18
