‘All what, Iain?’
‘All about School House. Of course everybody has known about it for quite some time. Or everybody except masters. Particularly Mr Taplow. He’s our top stinks man is Taplow, no doubt. But there are stinks he wouldn’t be aware of even if you stuck his head in them. And now the letters have been scrawled in the sick-beds and sent home. In no time the mothers will be queueing up in that second family car, and the fathers will be sitting down to write letters to The Times. So there’s the background to Robin’s present state of mind. School House is in the middle of a reign of terror or worse. Ever since last term. And this David is in the thick of it.’
‘About School House, Iain, I’ve been listening to nonsense of one kind or another for getting on for thirty years. Are you sure this isn’t just more of it? I don’t mean about Robin’s fondness for a junior boy there, which I won’t hastily censure, but that there has been some large outbreak of bullying throughout the house. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Oh, yes—that, certainly.’
‘And a collapse of morale in other ways as well?’
‘You name it, they have it.’
‘Iain, stop talking in that fashion. It’s a kind of funk in face of something it’s no doubt unpleasant for you to feel you have to talk about at all. And I still find it hard to believe – particularly of School House, which seems to go in for quiet and studious boys.’
‘Sorry, sir. I know it’s not a thing for perky chat. But it’s a terrific facer for Robin, and I’m upset about it. But it’s true that it sometimes happens, isn’t it? Really just another kind of bug.’
‘Well, yes. Winchester had a famous reign of terror for some weeks about a hundred years ago. Letters in The Times, all right, and the Head Master and his senior assistants professing themselves ignorant and astounded. And no doubt in varying degree in plenty of other schools since then. As for Helmingham, it’s true we’ve had our tough phases from time to time. But nothing to any point of outright scandal. And don’t think, Iain, that I suppose you to be making a mountain out of a molehill. You’re too sensible for that. So it’s upsetting. As for Robin, we must do what we can.’
‘There’s another funny thing, although I don’t suppose it’s important. This little Daviot is the son of the judge who put Robin’s father in gaol.’
‘The grandson, actually.’ I was glad to show myself as well-informed at least on this minor aspect of the matter. ‘But the boy’s parents are dead, and his grandfather is his guardian.’
‘I see. Was he particularly hard on Mr Hayes – in sentencing him, I mean?’
‘Rather the opposite, if anything. But I’ve heard he’s a very severe man with professional criminals.’ I fell silent for some moments on this, feeling there was nothing to be gained by thus passing on to irrelevant matters. ‘Robin is going out to dinner with his uncle this evening, Iain. I’ll think over what we’ve been discussing – and take no action before I’ve had another word with you. What you’ve told me is no more than advance notice of what would come to me anyway in time, and I wouldn’t like Robin to get the notion you’d been telling secrets.’
‘Of course I’m going to tell Robin I’ve been doing just that. I shan’t enjoy it. But it will be the proper thing.’
‘So it will,’ I said.
The rest of that evening was variously irritating. Several boys banged on my door in order to make trivial and vexatious requests or demands of one sort or another. The muted sounds of what seemed to be more tramping and shouting than usual assailed me through the green baize doors which were supposed to insulate me from the legitimate brio of healthy juvenile life. But what really disturbed me was the new light I had received on my Head of House.
It must not be thought that I was particularly alarmed by the mere fact of Robin’s having formed a romantic attachment to a younger boy. It was rather the association established in my mind between this fact and something insidiously disagreeable in the conversation of Robin’s uncle that obscurely irked me. Or this taken along with something else. It was now necessary to believe that Robin hadn’t in the least wanted to come back to Helmingham in order to help me to run Heynoe as it should be run. Anything of the kind that he had intimated to the dons, and also through the Head Master during my absence in Vermont, had been largely disingenuous. With his father’s disgrace as no more than a concomitant factor, he had wanted on that side of things only what he had eventually confessed to as respectable seniority and a private life. His real object had been as much as he could contrive of the sight and society of this small boy, Daviot – the impulse being much strengthened, no doubt, by a laudable wish to protect Daviot from an unwholesome state of affairs already believed to be building up in School House. That Daviot was the grandson of a particular circuit or High Court judge was a slightly bizarre but not essentially relevant aspect of the situation.
I took a second look at this last thought and saw that it wasn’t strictly true; was not, indeed, fair to Robin. That it had been to Mr Justice Daviot that there had fallen the duty of clapping Mr Hayes into gaol must have been thoroughly upsetting in itself, and I ought to remember this when inclined to feel that my top boy had been less than candid with me.
It was my custom at that time to preside over and share the boys’ midday meal, and to have my housekeeper provide a civilised supper to which I sometimes invited a guest or guests, but more commonly ate alone. I was on my own on this particular evening, and I had just finished my glass of wine and settled down with a book when I was called to the telephone.
‘Tim here,’ Tim Taplow’s voice said. ‘Do I disturb you at piquet with Miss Sparrow?’
‘Nothing of the kind.’ This was a joke of Taplow’s of which I had grown rather tired. But I made my reply with good humour, since it occurred to me that perhaps he had become belatedly aware that all was not well in his house, and was anxious to have the benefit of such experience as I possessed. ‘I believe the lady’s at the Staffords’, as a matter of fact, playing bridge.’
‘Then can I hop over, Robert, and consult you about that grand old fortifying classical curriculum?’ This was another established joke. ‘It’s this boy of mine, Dunlop, you know. He’s determined to storm Corpus and win all those prizes for Greek verse and what have you. You know far more about his chances than I do. So . . .’
‘Of course I do, Tim, It wouldn’t be all that difficult, would it? Yes, do come over straight away. Port or brandy?’
‘The first first and then the second. And beer as a chaser later on.’
There had been something forced about this jocular injunction, and I wasn’t sure that Taplow really had nothing but the ambitious Dunlop in his head. So I made the necessary hospitable arrangements and prepared to be enlightened on the point. It turned out that the Corpus postulant was a genuine anxiety of his housemaster’s, as he already was of mine. We spent the better part of an hour in sorting him out, during which time Taplow made little progress with his glass of port. But he then sat back and abruptly asked a question.
‘Robert, whatever made you accept a house? You hadn’t kids to educate, or even a wife to take to Margate or to gay Paree. And I’ve been told you were the sort of chap who can keep up his scholarship even while teaching school. Explain.’
‘It’s simple enough, Tim.’ The implication that I was no longer ‘that sort of chap’ didn’t offend me. Candour is a prime possession of schoolboys, and a sense of its value at all times perhaps a little rubs off on their teachers. ‘I’ve always liked young people, whether boys or girls. I sometimes think that if Helmingham went co-educational – and quite soon we’re going to see a number of such schools taking the plunge – I’d be one of those who wouldn’t turn a hair, even although it was happening more or less at the end of my time. I like to see more of my pupils’ minds than the chunks they pass examinations with. I think that’s your answer.’
‘Co-education – and co-residence, which is the nub – certainly deserve thinking ab
out.’ This time, Taplow did address himself adequately to his glass. ‘Is there essentially something brutalising – not that that’s not too strong a word – about sexual segregation in adolescence? It’s a question we must all ask ourselves at times. Only I can’t say I’ve ever been pertinacious about it myself. I tend, you know, to shy away from conundrums to which scientific method can’t really be applied.’
Taplow now drained his port with a very improper gulp. ‘Hell!’ he said. ‘What I’m skating round is the fact that some sort of lid has blown off School House. The bug has done it. For quite some time there have been goings-on that neither Jane nor I managed to tumble to.’ Jane was Taplow’s wife.
‘How is the bug?’ I asked – I suppose by way of gaining time in face of this sudden unveiling of anxiety. ‘More or less over?’
‘Yes, I hope so. The juniors are out of quarantine and around again.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it.’
‘But it got them down and they came out with tales of woe. For some stupid reason School House has always been a bit of a butt. And now we’re going to have to face more than a whiff of scandal. You must have heard all about it already.’
‘Only a vague word.’
‘Vague words are the worst. There have certainly been some high jinks, as well as pretty low ones, I ought to have had my eye on. I’m thinking of asking young Johncock to move in on us. The school makes him pay for his flat, you know, so he’d gain some advantage from the arrangement. And he might get around and make the young beasts toe the line a bit. It’s just an idea. And there’s quite a lot to be said for Johncock. On the side of mere mystique, he has no use for places like Helmingham.’
Although far from certain that this was a recommendation in itself, I refrained from expressing any doubt about Johncock. It definitely looked as if Taplow required a companion on the bridge. And Johncock, so markedly a no-nonsense character, might serve in the office very well. But one point did occur to me.
‘Of course, Tim, you have to think ahead. These troubles suddenly start up in a house – and then as suddenly blow over. And when that happened you might find yourself landed with the man until he went to another school.’
‘I’ve enough to do, thinking of the present week. Two letters from mums this morning, Robert. And in no time a dad or two may be weighing in. And nowadays so many of them just don’t know the drill! They’re capable of writing straight to the Head Man about Billy or Bobby having his arm twisted.’
‘Certainly they are.’ It seemed to me that the deterioration in the morale of School House had extended itself to the housemaster’s study. And I was curious to know whether one problematical situation had come to its occupant’s awareness. ‘Dads are bad,’ I said. ‘But uncles are worse. I had a call from a pestilent one this afternoon. My top boy at the moment is his nephew. A capable lad called Robin Hayes. I don’t know whether you’ve come across him?’
‘I think not. I don’t recall the name. One of your out-and-out humanists, I expect. So I won’t have taught him.’
‘Probably not. The man’s excuse for coming to see me was that the boy’s father has had the misfortune to be put in gaol. But you won’t have heard of that.’
‘Definitely not, Robert. My life’s too crowded to be studying the Newgate Calendar. And I’d imagine that in any one term several Helmingham boys have a father doing time.’
‘I think that may be an exaggeration. But what I was going to say was that there’s an odd link-up between my boy’s father and the grandfather of one of yours. An old gentleman called Daviot.’
‘Ah, yes. He came to see me when his grandson was enrolled. A formidable old person. Some sort of judge.’
‘Yes – and it was he who sent the father of my boy Hayes to prison. Incidentally, the boys were at the same prepper.’ I paused for a moment, and got no reaction to this. It had become evident that the situation of David Daviot, so intolerable in the regard of Robin Hayes, was not in the mind of Tim Taplow as a significant part of his current problem. And about that problem I had now been sympathetic enough. So I led the talk to other things. We had got very comfortably to the brandy – although not to the beer – when my guest at length glanced at his watch.
‘Good lord!’ he said. ‘After eleven o’clock. I must be on my way, Robert. Heynoe’s a great comfort, you know. Just purrs along: good order and good feeling and a blessed quiet everywhere.’ This was perhaps a slightly barbed speech, and Taplow – who had cheered up a little during the preceding half-hour – glanced at me almost mischievously as he got to his feet.
Then, as if at a signal given, from just outside my study came the sound of a door violently thrown open, followed by that of much shattered and falling glass.
I should explain that when boys returned to Heynoe late at night it was by way of the front door to my own part of the House and not by their normal daytime entrance. It was a door directly opposite my study, across a fairly spacious hall, and it thus came about that within a couple of seconds of this unholy din – and with Taplow close behind me – I was surveying the disgraceful cause of it. I was surveying Robin Hayes, that is to say, now standing in the middle of the hall, and swaying uncommonly oddly on his feet. In fact he was very drunk, and behind him was the shocking spectacle of my front door decidedly in disrepair. Having become aware of unsatisfactory behaviour on the part of his latch-key, Robin had used a vigorous kick to further his entrance. And unfortunately my own golf-clubs, thrust within their bag at an awkward angle in an umbrella stand, had produced a surprising shambles far and wide in the hall. There was even blood involved, some flying splinter of glass having gashed one of Robin’s hands. And the boy was contriving to glare wildly around him, much as if he had been precipitated into a bandits’ den.
Nor were Tim Taplow and I the only observers of this irregular state of affairs. Iain Macleod had appeared through the door giving on the boys’ side of the house, and I realised that he must have been on an anxious look-out for his friend’s belated return from his dinner engagement. I realised, too, that Macleod had as yet no notion of the actual situation confronting him; that he was imagining a street accident or something of the sort. When he spoke, it was to confirm this.
‘Robin,’ he said, ‘are you all right? Are there others?’ But as he asked these questions, light broke on him. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ The ejaculation didn’t sound profane. It might have come from a wholly pious boy – which Iain Macleod almost certainly was not. As he uttered it, he put out a hand and laid it on Robin’s arm protectively or warningly – something it came to me that I had never seen one boy do to another before. ‘You’re ill,’ he said. ‘Bad oysters or something. Come to bed.’
And Taplow and I were not the sole observers of this scene. Into the light of an exterior lamp over the front door had walked John Stafford and Miss Sparrow. They were already mounting the steps when I first became aware of them, and the spectacle bewildered me until I recalled the bridge party. It hadn’t broken up until late and the Head Master, with his habitual routine courtesy, had escorted the lady back to Heynoe.
These two were now in the hall, and surveying the scene. It would have been my matron’s impulse, thus suddenly confronted with a contretemps not within her sphere, to murmur a couple of words and mount to her own flat. But this Miss Sparrow did not do. Her eye had been on the Head Master, and she had spotted the fact that he was moved to take charge of the situation. It would have been a false step, for if Helmingham was his school, Heynoe was my house. Miss Sparrow took a step of her own, a single forward step, and held out a hand.
‘Thank you so much, Head Master,’ she said, ‘for seeing me safely home. Good night.’
Stafford took the offered hand, and departed like a lamb. I imagine he was grateful to the woman for saving him from an unsuitable move. He wouldn’t, of course, refrain from expressing interest in the episode later on. But that was unimportant. I had a new problem to think about.
‘Robin
,’ I said, ‘Iain is right. You’d better be off to bed. And don’t make a row. It’s getting on for midnight.’
Perhaps I ought to have known that it would be unwise to lay even the ghost of an injunction on the boy in his present condition. Certainly the result of having done so was unfortunate. So far, Robin had shown no awareness of anybody’s presence except Macleod’s. But now he looked at me; appeared to get me, if uncertainly, into focus; took several stumbling steps in my direction. I saw that he was carrying a slip of paper in his uninjured hand. With this he suddenly lunged forward, and just failed to flip me in the face.
‘Robin, you bloody fool!’ This came from Macleod in a shout, and it was evident that his distress had turned for the moment into fury. He made a grab at his friend; there was a scuffle; but the grab proved to be an expert one. Robin was whirled helplessly round, with an arm twisted between his shoulder-blades. Then, as sometimes happens to quite a small boy, he was propelled forward with a knee in his bottom, and disappeared through that green baize door.
I ought to have been outraged by all this indignity beneath my nose. But, in fact, I was rather in a state of shock. Drunken young men can be variously intolerable, but it is not (I believe) a condition in which they are likely to act wholly out of character. And that insolent gesture of Robin’s towards me had surely to be so described. Certainly it had bewildered and acutely pained me – much as if a son of my own had performed an insulting act.
‘And so to bed,’ Tim Taplow said. ‘For us, too. Even in Heynoe, Robert, one can have something to think about.’ He took a quick glance at me, and I saw him flush. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Miss Sparrow, good night.’ And Taplow bolted through what remained of my battered front door.
So Matron and I were left alone on our territory, and after a short silence I asked an almost inconsequent question.
An Open Prison Page 8
