‘About last night. I’ve come to apologise.’
As I had predicted, Robin was in my study that afternoon. He still looked physically disordered, and a slight down on his face suggested to me that he hadn’t shaved. I ought to have been pleased that he had thus promptly turned up. But in fact I had felt that something was going to go wrong from the instant of his entering the room. Once or twice boys had been sent to me by a well-meaning colleague with a command to apologise to me about this or that. And they had done so with an icy formality which had been very disagreeable indeed. Nobody could have given Robin such an order on the present occasion (Miss Sparrow was far too sensible to have done so), but the effect was much as it had then been. Robin Hayes was in the presence of an enemy, or at least of somebody hopelessly in an enemy’s camp.
‘And to resign,’ he said.
‘Resign? Resign from what?’
‘From being your Head Boy, of course. Unless it’s unnecessary, because I’m going to be chucked out of the school. Iain tells me the Head Master was lurking around last night.’
‘He certainly was not lurking. And you are certainly not going to be chucked out. That’s his decision, just as it would be mine. As for resigning, Robin, I’ve heard that from you before. I’ve also heard you talk about the loyalty biznai. It’s time you got going on it. I know that various difficulties and discouragements beset you – miseries, if you like. Nothing can be better for you in that situation than to grit your teeth and do your thing. And not take to the bottle. In fairness I have to mention that, although I won’t do it again. Another performance of that kind, and you will be on your way home. At the moment you’re Head of House and a school prefect as well.’
‘Iain tells me he has told you about—about David.’
‘So he has – and he told me he was going to tell you he’d told me. I think he has been most terribly concerned, Robin. But whether he ought to have discussed it with me, I hardly know. There are sad things among young people that older people can’t really be much help over.’
Robin was silent for a moment, and I felt that it was by way of conveying the impression that he had been listening to a thoroughly feeble speech. Perhaps he had.
‘You’re only thinking of the fact that I’m fond of the kid,’ he said. ‘I expect that’s just my bad luck – just as my father is bad luck. But you’re no good. None of you lot are any good. You won’t face up to what can happen in those places. That bloody Belsen! It’s contemptible. I hate it, hate it! Fuck you all.’ And Robin Hayes turned and walked out of the room.
So thus had the boy apologised. I was left in a condition which might conventionally be described as ‘stunned’. But in fact it was a condition more complex, or merely confused, than that. There was an element of relief in it. Robin, it seemed to me, had tumbled abruptly from a crise de nerfs into a condition of positive nervous breakdown. However deplorable the state of affairs in School House (and I strongly suspected that Iain Macleod’s highly coloured account of it had itself been influenced by Robin’s rhetoric) what I had just been treated to was a sick boy’s disproportionate reaction to a testing situation. It was also the reaction of a boy who had been plied with wine to the point of helpless drunkenness by an uncle whom I was increasingly disposed to view in a sinister light. But a sick Robin Hayes – and this was where my fugitive sense of relief came in – was a Robin Hayes who would become sane and well again. He was to be seen as ill – and illnesses run their course.
I had arrived at this facile and comforting view of the matter when, for the second time that day, I was summoned to the telephone.
‘Pog.’ For a moment this conveyed nothing to me.
‘Pog – it’s Owen Marchmont.’
‘Hallo,’ I said. ‘Hallo, Owen.’
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
‘Do your boys get newspapers?’
‘Newspapers?’ Not surprisingly, I was bewildered. ‘Yes, of course. The senior ones have their own papers delivered to them in their studies, and I always see to it that there’s a paper in the junior day-room. But why . . .?’
‘That boy Hayes is still with you?’
‘Yes, of course.’ An indefinable foreboding assailed me. ‘Is there bad news for him?’
‘I suppose it’s that. Anyway, you’d better get hold of him and let him have it before he comes across it in one of tomorrow’s rags. His father has left us.’
‘Left you? I don’t understand.’
‘This is an open prison, isn’t it – heaven help us? Just walked out – you might say with his brief-case and his bowler hat and his umbrella.’
‘Owen, surely that’s madness? And he’ll be picked up in no time?’
‘Of course it is – in a way. And of course he will be, without doubt.’
‘And then he’ll be transferred to somewhere much less pleasant for the rest of his time?’
‘He may be—but, you know, the system is extremely rum. I’ve ceased to think I’ll ever understand it. But there it is. I’m deprived of the society of Mr Hayes, that distinguished legal luminary and former Carthusian. It’s quite a blow.’
I realised that, to the Governor of Hutton Green, it was a blow; that it further undermined what faith in his institution he retained. I felt annoyed with Mr Hayes. Then I remembered Robin, and my annoyance turned to anger.
‘The stupid old bastard!’ I said. ‘As it happens, his boy has a good deal of trouble on his plate already, just at present. This will be a bit more.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Pog. But the kid mustn’t take it too hard. It shows a certain spunk in his old dad – in a way.’
‘It shows nothing of the kind.’
‘If you’d been put in quod, Pog, and suddenly saw an open door in front of you . . .’
‘All right, Owen—all right. Where do you think the chap will have made for? His unappealing wife in that cathedral city?’
‘Perhaps so. But what about his son and Helmingham? Give me a call – there’s a good fellow – if the door-bell rings and there he is in front of you.’ Marchmont paused briefly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s got me a little rattled, really. I’ll keep you informed, Pog. Goodbye.’
And the telephone went dead with a click.
Marchmont’s news must be conveyed to Robin at once, and perceiving this made me realise that my relationship with the boy had now become almost an impossible one. It was all very well to tell myself he was sick; his behaviour, and the words with which he had left me, suggested a trouble better to be described as a personality change – if that expression didn’t imply something with a character of permanence I wasn’t prepared to accept. The disturbance, however radical for the moment, would pass as a brain-storm passes. Of this I remained convinced, but the conviction didn’t make for less of awkwardness – really impossible awkwardness – in the short term. Sadly I had to confess to myself that there was no point (or none but the wretched Daviot aspect of the thing) in Robin Hayes remaining for another day at Helmingham. Nor, I found, did I want to summon him and attempt as sympathetically as possible to tell him of his father’s stupid behaviour. He had, in effect, told me to get lost, and I had an irrational feeling that there would be an element of ungenerous retort in giving him such dismal information. In this demoralised condition I thought of Father Edwards, who was regarded throughout the school as the proper man to convey to a boy the fact of some sudden domestic tragedy. Mr Hayes’s conduct wasn’t quite of that order, but I didn’t see why Edwards shouldn’t be brought in. So I rang him up, explained as much of the situation as was necessary, and readily persuaded him to come over to Heynoe and seek out Robin Hayes at once.
It thus came about that I didn’t see Robin again on that Sunday. Nor was he on view at breakfast on the Monday morning. This was no more than a mild irregularity, and although I thought of sending Iain Macleod to haul him out of bed (these two boys had bedrooms of their own, immediately adjoining the two junior dormitories; the
other senior boys had what were called study-bedrooms) it seemed to me better not to fuss. Then at lunch-time a colleague rang me up to say that Hayes hadn’t appeared at two classes, and as there hadn’t been a chit about him he supposed he’d better let me know. I said something vague about the boy’s having been seedy the day before, and put down the receiver. Within seconds the bell rang again and I was listening once more, to John Stafford’s voice.
‘Syson? I’ve had a note from Hayes.’
‘From the boy’s father, Head Master?’ I supposed that Mr Hayes had been employing his precariously achieved liberty to enter into correspondence with Stafford about his son.
‘Of course not. From the boy himself. It enclosed a blank cheque to pay for the repair of your front door. He wasn’t minded, he says, to hand it to you himself.’
‘How very extraordinary.’ Most of the senior boys had their own bank accounts, and it wasn’t this turning up of another cheque in the affair that astonished me. It was the further evidence of Robin’s complete alienation.
‘Or to say goodbye.’
‘To what?’
‘He has departed, Syson. Had you happened to see a taxi leaving your own shattered door an hour ago, you might also have seen your Head Boy inside it.’
‘I see.’ I took hold of myself as I spoke – resolved, although for the moment almost shattered by this intelligence, to deal with it in a forthright and composed fashion. ‘Perhaps – if in a graceless way – he has made a sensible enough decision. Oxford is in front of him, and his having come back to school wasn’t working out too well. He was having difficulties.’
‘So it appears – and that one of the difficulties goes by the name of Daviot. I hadn’t been apprised of it.’ And Stafford made one of his pauses. ‘Of Hayes’s departure in itself I’d not be disposed to take much account, Syson. But unfortunately he hasn’t departed alone. He has taken Daviot – a very much younger boy – along with him.’
VII
So Robin Hayes and his father were both, in a sense, at large. But there was a difference. Mr Hayes was already being hunted for, and as soon as hand was laid upon him he would be locked up. Robin had simply chosen to go upon his lawful occasions. And although there was doubtless something equivocal about his having chosen to take with him what Stafford had grimly called ‘a very much younger boy’, no police officer or magistrate would feel prompted to hasty action in face of the escapade. A good deal would depend here on the attitude of David Daviot’s grandfather, the judge. But he, too, was unlikely to act in a hasty way provoking public scandal. Nobody would want that – and John Stafford would be particularly anxious to see the dubious event kept out of what he was fond of calling, in the idiom of a past age, the penny papers.
One question occupied my mind almost as soon as perturbation had a little subsided in it. Mr Hayes had left his open prison, and his son had left what he had perhaps chosen to regard as a similar institution, roughly speaking within twenty-four hours of one another: Mr Hayes first, and Robin, along with David, second. And Robin had known about Mr Hayes’s absconding from Hutton Green, since Father Edwards had broken the news to him – or had so done if it had been news. For there were two possibilities. Either father and son had for some reason contrived to work in concert together, or Robin’s action had simply been triggered off by what Edwards had revealed to him; Robin had been – in what was becoming a current phrase – ‘destabilised’. There seemed to be no present means of determining which of these interpretations of the situation was the more probable.
Was any light to be shed on the mystery through a consideration of Robin Hayes’s character? Asking myself this question revealed to me the disconcerting fact that, until these current troubles, I had never done more than take a mild unreflecting pleasure in him. He had been an agreeable boy of whom it was easy to approve, and he had done a little more than adequately everything to lead him to his position of authority and general acceptance in the House. But what about this typically satisfactory English schoolboy in his family relations? That his father’s disgrace had deeply wounded him I didn’t doubt, but injured pride or even vanity could be a large component in this. There had been that hint of a grasping disposition embarrassing to his father’s purse. And there had been what I had taken to be a certain hardness, or even cynicism, lurking in his attitude to the whole family disaster. But all this was ground which I had in a way mulled over already, and it really told me very little when thus considered again. I couldn’t be sure, for example, that Robin’s sudden bolting from Helmingham hadn’t been prompted, at least in part, by a filial impulse to contact his father and make him see some saving sense. And he might have taken David Daviot with him – snatched from the horrors or presumed horrors of School House – from a not too clear-headed impulse to kill two laudable birds with one stone.
Jasper Tandem came into my head next, and I presently saw – or thought I saw – the significance of that cheque so brutally flourished at me as Iain Macleod hauled Robin off to bed. I knew it to be Jasper’s cheque, and now saw it as given to the boy simply to finance the major folly by which we were confronted. Jasper Tandem, I decided, was precisely the wicked uncle that Robin and his sister had predicated. He had planned mischief, perhaps in some obscure fashion to his own advantage, more probably for the mere pleasure of unmotivated malice. Having thus brought an Iago-like figure into the picture I felt a momentary satisfaction – and then told myself I was wasting my time.
And time was passing. Tuesday morning came with still no word of the fugitives. Deciding to confer with Tim Taplow, I walked over to School House, and was admitted by Jubb. Jubb was among the properties distinguishing School House from the rest of us, being the only manservant of a comparable sort at Helmingham. Originally a handyman of humble degree, he had studied the comportment of film and television butlers with such diligence as virtually to transform himself into that sort of person, so that eventually it had become necessary that appropriate duties should be devised for him.
Jubb announced with gravity that Mr Taplow was teaching, but might be expected back in ten or fifteen minutes, and I allowed myself to be ceremoniously ushered into his study to wait for him. There I found another prospective visitor. Johncock – Clive Johncock, as I understood him to be – was standing by the window, impatiently jingling the small change in a trouser-pocket.
‘Oh, hallo,’ Johncock said. ‘Have you dropped in to discuss the Entführung?’
‘The what?’
‘Aus dem Serail, you know. Mozart.’
‘Certainly Mozart.’ I must have looked at this ill-mannered young man (as I no doubt conceived him to be) with disfavour.
‘Well, the elopement has taken place, hasn’t it? I’ve just heard about it. But I’m not quite sure of the seraglio. According to some reports, School House has turned into a bit of a brothel. An exaggeration, perhaps.’
‘Do I understand, Johncock, that you’ve come in to discuss with Taplow the disappearance of a couple of our boys – Hayes and Daviot?’
‘Not specifically that, although it all hitches up. Taplow, it seems, has been worrying over his control of this dump, and has asked me if I’d think of moving in and lending a hand.’
‘Ah, yes. He mentioned the idea to me, as a matter of fact, on Saturday. Are you going to agree?’
‘I think not. Why should I put my unhoused free condition into circumscription and confine? I rather imagine I’ve come in to utter a polite No. If I can utter anything politely, that is.’ Johncock glanced at me in a kind of innocent mischief which I didn’t find disagreeable. ‘But of course the rape of the infant Daviot is quite a facer – for Taplow as well as for yourself. So perhaps it’s an occasion for all good men to rally round. And, come to think of it, I’d save quite a bit on the perks.’
‘If I were you, Clive’ – for I knew I ought to establish friendly relations with this young mathematician – ‘I’d give yourself a little time to think, before deciding one way or the other. I’m su
re you’d be a help to the Taplows. But in some ways your position might be awkward. Don’t you agree?’
‘Of course I do, Robert. And I don’t think it’s a plan that would have come into the head of a man with a natural instinct for housemastering. But that just makes deciding more difficult, as a matter of fact. Hallo, here he comes. But not, one imagines, feeling exactly the conquering hero.’
Tim Taplow’s footsteps had made themselves heard in the hall, and in a moment he was in the room. As one might have predicted, he bore a harassed look, and for a moment he occupied himself with tugging off his gown rather in the manner of a Heracles endeavouring to cope with Nessus’ shirt.
‘Robert,’ he said, ‘I was going to contact you. I’m glad you’ve come. If it isn’t the very devil! Oh, Clive too—good!’
‘I’ll drop in another time,’ Johncock said. ‘Or give me a ring, and I’ll canter across.’
‘No, no!’ What I judged to be a surprising and proper tact on Johncock’s part seemed merely to agitate Taplow further. ‘Stay where you are. You can probably help us. Robert – that’s right?’
‘Yes, of course.’ I could hardly have expressed dissent, even had I wanted to. But in fact I was coming round to the view that Clive Johncock was a useful – if occasionally graceless – man. He was younger than Taplow and very much younger than myself: I had a feeling that he might have a surer sense than either of us of the mind of the more youthful still. ‘Three are better than two in any council of war.’
This was not a particularly meaningful remark, but Johncock seemed pleased by it, and promptly sat down on the most comfortable chair in the room.
‘I’m the outsider,’ he said. ‘It’s my role. Particularly vis-à-vis Messrs Hayes and Daviot. At my sort of school, you know, the boys don’t fall in love with one another – or they very rarely do. I don’t at all know why not, but it’s certainly the case. So here’s one of the points at which public schools score.’
An Open Prison Page 10
