IV
There seemed no reason why the vacant living of Shallowford-cum-Coombe should concern Ikey Palfrey, yet it did and in more ways than one. Indirectly it was to teach him to box; years later it helped to change his entire cast of thought.
Ikey returned to school soon after the birth of the twins (by that time, and after interminable discussions, christened Andrew and Stephen) and found himself saddled with the melancholy task of chaperoning a new boy, Keith Horsey, fifteen-year-old son of the Reverend Edward Horsey, who had replaced Bull as Rector of Shallowford-cum-Coombe.
The Reverend Horsey’s appointment came about through a combination of chances but the most important factor, unknown to Squire Craddock until much later, had been the bishop’s anxiety to hide a troublesome shepherd in a remote pasture, where his embarrassing social and political views would be likely to cause the minimum number of ripples in the diocese.
The newcomer was recommended to Paul as a Radical, and at the initial interview Paul found him a pleasant, scholarly little man, although somewhat too innocuous for his taste. After consultation with Rudd, however, it was decided to offer him the living on the theory that Bull’s overbearing ways had isolated the substantial non-conformist minority in the Valley whereas it seemed likely that a man of Horsey’s temperament would contribute to the spirit of teamwork Paul had worked hard to foster.
The new rector was short and slightly built, with myopic brown eyes and a few wisps of grey hair that made him look years older than in fact he was but he had a soft, persuasive voice and, as Paul was quick to realise, a very lively appreciation of the problems of the poor. He had been engaged in missionary work in China but his health failed under the strain and he had taken a curate’s post in London’s dockland. Here again, however, his physique proved unequal to the strain and he was given a curacy in a residential stronghold of the newly rich, in a Birmingham suburb where he soon alienated parishioners by pulpit attacks on conditions in local factories. From here he drifted south-west but it was apparent to his superiors that no Tory parish would keep him long and when Bull died, and the bishop recalled that the area south-east of Paxtonbury had just sent a Liberal M.P. to Westminster, he made a gift of Horsey to Paul. Horsey was quick to settle in, passing as harmless and establishing contact with dissenters like Farmer Willoughby and the Methodist fishermen of Coombe Bay and this he achieved without any noticeable falling-off of his official flock who had become accustomed to regarding the local pulpit as a source of entertainment.
A month after his arrival the Reverend Horsey made a request of the Squire, informing him that his only child, Keith, had gone to High Wood much later than most new boys. His education had been interrupted by illness and he would not have gone away to school at all had not the doctor prescribed upland air as the best medicine for the child. Horsey, however, was anxious about his son, fearing that his stammer and poor physique might invite persecution, and when he heard that the Squire had a relative established in the Upper School he asked Paul to write to Ikey and request him to keep an eye on the boy.
Paul complied without a second thought but Ikey received his letter with misgivings. The ragging of new boys, particularly well-grown ones, was traditional at High Wood and Ikey was now removed from the hurly-burly of Lower and Middle Schools, for he was almost seventeen and his progress up the school had been spectacular in the last year or so. He was not yet a ‘Blood’ but was in a fair way to becoming one after being awarded his running colours and a place in the pack of the House fifteen.
Ikey had never varied the original technique of his entry into public-school life via scrapyard and stable-yard. He never made the mistake of trusting to luck and was therefore never wholly off-guard. From the moment of arrival he had put one object in mind—to do Squire Craddock credit and justify the faith reposed in him. His entire stock of nervous energy, plus his not inconsiderable powers of mimicry and assimilation, had been directed towards this end so that, four years later, he still had everyone at High Wood thoroughly hoodwinked. They thought of him, from the headmaster down to second-form urchin, as an accomplished eccentric and within certain limits eccentrics were encouraged. As a scholar he was reckoned capable of achieving far better results than he did in fact achieve, but in general deportment he was accepted as a gentleman and the son of a gentleman. He made friends easily, dressed casually but not too casually, employed the careless drawling, ‘g’-dropping speech that was de rigueur in the Upper School, was earmarked for a prefecture and a house-captaincy, and was permitted to despise all forms of sport except running in which field he was supreme, holding the under-fifteen and under-sixteen school records for the mile. Everybody at High Wood believed that Ikey Palfrey (rumoured to be the son of a Hungarian countess) could have excelled at cricket, football, shooting, swimming and even fives had he been so inclined but he continued to devote himself exclusively to cross-country and track events, never hurrying, or never appearing to hurry, but making light of all opposition. It was even said to his credit that he could have lapped most of his competitors had he chosen but checked his stride in order to encourage them and this was, in fact, partially true, although Ikey himself never admitted it; it would have seemed to him putting on side and he set great store on modesty, at least outwardly.
Yet Ikey’s performance as a Highwodian was not entirely a charade. As the terms passed he began to develop an almost mystic affection for the place, for its dove-grey stones, for the music of distant shouts rising from the playing fields, for the bells, the fads, the newish traditions but more particularly for the country beyond the ridge of beeches from which the school derived its name. Imperceptibly it grew on him like another skin, covering his two other personalities—the Ikey Palfrey of Bermondsey, and of the Shallowford stable-yard, so that his pretences were subconscious and there were times when he almost came to believe in the fiction of his relationship to the Squire. Paul’s marriage to Claire, and the secret understanding this had developed between himself and the lady doctor, removed the source of anxiety that had clouded his first year and as he increased in importance and felt more a part of the place, his life became serene and untroubled by anything more urgent than a house-match or an end-of-term examination.
And now, when he was poised for the final leap into the top echelon, when he looked like getting into the first fifteen and perhaps succeeding Henley-Jones as Captain of the House, the Squire was asking him to play nursemaid to a new kid, the son of the Shallowford parson and whereas Ikey’s loyalty to Paul was absolute, and therefore any request amounted to a command, it was also an insufferable bore and Ikey hoped fervently that the wretched kid would not place too much reliance on a chap to steer him through his first, troublesome year. He was soon disillusioned. When, after some slumming in the Lower School Keith Horsey was unearthed and interrogated it did not take Ikey long to assess the new boy’s vulnerability or the risks one would invite attempting to pilot such a drip through the Lower School rapids. To begin with he was as thin as a beanpole, with a tin-whistle voice and, to crown all, old-fashioned steel-rimmed spectacles and as if these were not sufficient handicaps, the whey-faced toad also possessed large, nobbly knees and was clearly outgrowing his strength, for although very thin he was also tall and his height made him noticeable among the bullet-headed scruff who had joined the school as newcomers that year.
Yet it was not merely Keith Horsey’s physical oddities that singled him out as a target for the second-year boys, all resolved to exact payment for their own sufferings in the past. He was also, it seemed, a brilliant scholar and proved as much by beginning his school life in the Upper Fourth, which was rather like an enlisted civilian starting an army career as a first lieutenant. Ikey found the new boy hiding in the latrines (where he himself had sought refuge a thousand years ago) and after ordering him out led him behind the sanatorium where they were unlikely to be overlooked.
‘Squire told me to look you up,’ he mumbled, ‘your pa
ter being the new rector at our place. The fact is, you’re likely to get hell this term but if you don’t let it bother you it’ll soon ease off, the same as it does for all new kids.’ He stopped and ran his eye over the shambling figure. Having just finished Nicholas Nickleby, the set book for half-term exams, it occurred to him that the new boy was curiously like the wretched Smike and he added with a sigh, ‘Is there anything you are likely to shine at? Anything at all? Just to start working on?’
‘Lllatin,’ said Keith hopefully, ‘I’m gggood at Latin!’
Ikey winced, not so much at the discovery of yet another handicap, but at the idiocy of the reply. The toad did not even know enough to understand that familiarity with Latin verbs was as good as a leper’s bell among the Middle and Lower School riff-raff. Just in time, however, he recalled his duty to the Squire and said, patiently, ‘No, kid! Cramming don’t count! I mean spor—games, football, anything?
‘I haven’t played any games,’ admitted Keith blandly. ‘I was too anaemic they said. I didn’t go to a Prep School, you see, but had a private tutor. Pater taught me too, he’s a first-class classical scholar, you know.’
‘Well,’ said Ikey heavily, ‘you can keep that under your thatch to begin with! If I was in your shoes I should muff your first term exams and aim for somewhere near the bottom. If you got moved up at the end of your first term God help you, because I couldn’t!’
They walked in silence for a moment, Keith relaxing in the patronage of this tremendous being, whom he knew to be one of the most popular boys in the school. He had had a wretched time so far but now, it seemed, the worst part was over, for surely nobody would dare to put him through the Sunday new kids’ ritual when Palfrey was his champion. He said, pleasantly, ‘Do you lllike it here, PPPalfrey?’
‘Yes, of course I like it,’ Ikey said irritably, and then defensively, ‘why shouldn’t I? It’s the best school in the West, isn’t it?’
‘Pater said it was,’ admitted Keith doubtfully, ‘but I’m not so sure now. The classical standard isn’t all that good, you know, and that Latin master made a shocking mistake on the board this morning.’
Ikey’s small stock of patience burned itself out and he stopped, swung round, took Keith by the shoulders and shook him so hard that the new boy’s glasses slipped down his long nose.
‘Listen here,’ he said savagely, ‘I told Squire I’d keep an eye on you and I will, but you’ve got to help! You’ve got to stop … asking for it! If Henley-Jones had heard you say what you’ve just said about the school he would have tanned your hide so hard that your arse would have looked like a ploughed field! You’ve got to … got to …’, and he broke off, for the boy’s chapfallen expression proclaimed the magnitude of his task. ‘You’ve just got to keep out of sight, that’s all. Hide in the bog when the chaps aren’t playing rugger and are milling about in the quad and passages! Keep out of sight, you understand? And don’t try too hard at half-term tests—get things wrong on purpose … and well, play the fool in class, just to make some kind of a name for yourself!’
He could think of nothing else calculated to help the boy, deciding that he would have to give the matter more thought. He walked swiftly away, leaving Horsey standing under the beeches, with tears in his eyes and a sense of having somehow mislaid the key to the citadel.
Ikey did give the matter thought, indeed, he thought of little else during the next few days, during which time he took care to keep clear of his new responsibility. Then he had an inspiration; he would solve Keith’s problem, and incidentally his own, by providing The Beanpole with a foolproof alibi, something that would not only explain why he was the kind of person he really was but also blunt and disarm his tormentors into the bargain. He buttonholed the new boy during morning break, pushed him into the band-room and carefully closed the door.
‘Now look here, Horsey,’ he said, ‘I’ve thought of something! All you have to do is back me up when anyone asks you. You got that stammer, and you had to wear those glasses, after being shipwrecked on the way from New Zealand! You were thirty days adrift in an open boat and were the sole survivor! When they picked you up your eyeballs were scorched and you couldn’t remember who you were but now it’s coming back, very slowly, get me? They’ll all swallow that, providing I vouch for it as coming from Squire via your pater and because it’s dramatic, it’ll make everybody … well … decent, you know, at least for a term or so!’
‘But it isn’t true,’ Horsey said, blinking his owlish eyes, ‘it isn’t a bit true, not a word of it, Palfrey. I’ve never been to New Zealand and I’ve never been on a boat, except round the Isle of Wight on a paddle steamer.’
Ikey stared at him, half in amazement and half in anger so desperate that he too began to stammer.
‘True?’ he said, ‘well dammit, man, of course it’s not true! I made it up, didn’t I! I made it up to keep you out of trouble, as Squire asked me. I daresay it sounds mad to you but I know this place and I know how these chaps think! I’ve been through it all myself and I know! You do what I say and spin any yarn you like, so long as we both stick to the same outline.’
The boy’s face was now almost as white as the pipeclayed O.T.C. belts hanging on the racks behind him. He said, falteringly, ‘But I … I couldn’t, Palfrey! It’s jolly decent of you, and I’m grateful, really I am, but it’s a lie just the same and I couldn’t say that to stop boys like Williams and Vesey Minor kicking me and pouring ink down my neck! It wouldn’t be right, don’t you see?’
Ikey saw far more than Horsey suspected and more than he would have preferred to see. The boy’s rejection of the carefully-thought-out alibi was, in a sense, a revelation to him. He saw, for instance, that one could not always judge by appearances, that heroes sometimes appeared under strange disguises, and that this weed’s regard for the truth was likely to prove unassailable. He realised too that it did not spring from self-righteousness but from deeply ingrained lessons learned at home and because, from earliest childhood, Ikey had had the ability to gauge the potentiality of human beings he reassessed Keith Horsey at once, docketing him as a fool and a physical weakling unlikely to collect anything but bruises on his way up the school but also as an individual possessing something quite rare among people—moral courage untarnished by piety. He knew also that he was beaten, that he could never hope to protect Keith Horsey from the Williamses and Vesey Minors of this world and that the best he could do would be to stand by and see fair play within the limits of the code. He said, glumly, ‘Very well, Horsey, forget what I said! I’ll keep an eye on you if I can but it wouldn’t help if I interfered too much, you’d only get it worse!’, and he opened the door of the band-room and mooched, hand in pockets, across the quad.
He was faced with the challenge again the following Sunday, the ominous Last Sunday But Four, when new boys, according to prescribed ritual, were required to Scrub-The-Floor with their toothbrushes and tins of tooth powder. The ritual began with the rising bell and ordinarily Ikey would have paid no attention to it, for he now regarded these practices as the prerogative of The Scruff, that is to say, boys in the Lower Middle School. His disdain, however, was by no means general among other seniors. Some of the more loutish among the Fifth clung to their toys and one of them, a hulking seventeen-year-old, whose idleness accounted for his presence in the Fifth for the fourth term, had elected himself Inquisitor-in-Chief. It was soon clear to Ikey that Piggy Boxall had selected Horsey as his sacrificial lamb, for although Keith, in common with the other new boys, scrubbed his bedspace until it was coated with froth, dust and blanket fluff, Piggy directed him to the bedspace of a boy who had the misfortune to sleep alongside Piggy. This boy protested, not out of sympathy for Horsey but because he did not relish having to stand in the mess of toothpaste but Piggy overruled his objection, standing over the kneeling Horsey and encouraging him with occasional toeflips.
Ikey watched for a moment in silence. Boxall was a head taller and
probably two stone heavier, but he did not intimidate Ikey. His reluctance to intervene stemmed from distaste in becoming involved in such a kindergarten sport and it was only with difficulty that he forced his responsibility to the front of his mind, saying at length, ‘That’s enough, Horsey! Get on and dress now,’ and when Piggy Boxall demanded of Ikey who was senior Ikey cheerfully admitted that Piggy was but that Horsey had already done his quota and had no business messing up someone else’s bedspace. Horsey scuttled off into the wash-room but Boxall seemed disposed to press the point. ‘You’re getting damned bucky for someone who only moved into the Fifth this term’ he said, ‘I’ve a good mind to wallop you here and now!’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 63
