Lord Dismiss Us (32 page)

‘That’s no rescue.’

‘It’s peace, of a kind.’

‘Who is the Doctor here now?’

He nearly smiled the way she remembered.

‘I bought a bottle of whisky in the Crown and Anchor. It’s better.’

‘You? No, not that. Not for you. You know, I think you have too much peace. You need to fight – like I have had to.’

‘I fought for Cambridge and lost.’

‘Fight again, for heaven’s sake.’

‘I fought for two good people here. I lost.’

‘I think you always expect to win, Eric. It’s perhaps my fault. You always had everything. You always had me.’

‘I seem to remember you were invariably on stage.’

‘Your memory is poor, Eric. We were together all day. Every day. You even came to rehearsals. Until you left for this place. And even then in the holidays. I never went anywhere without you. You wouldn’t allow it. Your father wasn’t much help.’

‘Perhaps you wouldn’t let him be.’

She was quiet for a moment.

‘You’re making me angry now,’ she said.

‘Father loved children.’

‘If they were small enough. When they started to develop he got out of the way. Your father lost all interest in you from the age of eight.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I’m sorry, but it’s true. He went back to his books.’

‘Do you swear to that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you have to say it?’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m tired of being always the villain. It’s true.’

‘Classic situation,’ Ashley murmured. ‘Oh God.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘They all are, I suppose. There’s nothing new under the sun.’

‘If you’re starting on your father’s dreadful friend, Ecclesiastes, it’s time to go. No, I’m joking. I’ll be late. Keep in touch, darling. Let me know what you decide.’

They were standing.

‘Good-bye,’ Ashley said. ‘It was nice to see you.’

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

She turned, rather shyly, and went away up the slope.

She heard shouts behind her in the distance, and clapping; but without interest. She was touched by their parting. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said that about his father. But he seemed to have taken it. She turned to wave when she reached the gate.

He was not looking. He was standing with his back to her, and his hands in his coat pockets. Everyone else was clapping the boy with a bat who was coming quickly up the steps from the field: a handsome, brown-headed boy.

There was something disturbing. She felt uneasy.

That dreadful child was still lying on the steps.

‘Depends who’s playing.’

She averted her eyes and walked straight to the car. But she sat in it for a moment before putting in the key, and found that she was being drawn to the steps.

It was unnerving; even sinister. The child stared back at her, unblinkingly, in a strangely cold and meaningful way.

She shivered. She had always disliked this place. She turned the key and started the engine.

‘A panic necessity for another’, she remembered, driving away. What did it mean? She had never lost interest, never ceased loving deeply, but she had lost real connection and understanding. Whatever it meant, it was frightening. He must
not
come back next term.

Forty-two. It wasn’t bad. Everyone seemed to approve. Carleton felt pleased with himself. ‘Well done,’ murmured Dr Rowles, who was sprawled on the bank in his best tweed coat, with Nicky close beside him. It was bewildering: all kinds of people here clapping; the Crab, Ma Crab, the Bishop, strange men and women. . . . Bewick, who was passing, looked at him questioningly. ‘The slow man’s easy,’ Carleton said. ‘Nearly all off-breaks. Watch out for the fast. He swings them in from the leg.’ He went into the deserted Pavilion, to take off his pads, feeling important, and almost relieved that it was over and with dignity.

A long musty room, with a nice wood smell. He sat on the Bag. He had flirted here with Hamilton Minor. ‘Are you going to do up my pads for me?’ ‘Not likely,’ Hamilton Minor had replied – which was cheeky. As well as the photographs, there were teams of the past, for years, written in gold on the wooden panels. His name would soon be there. An Old Boy.

He wasn’t going to sit near Nicky, but Rowles barked out – ‘Carleton!’ and nodded at him to come over.

He sat on the bank, so that Rowles lay sprawled between them. He said nothing, but chewed a blade of grass. As with conversations at night, it was his pose to keep you waiting. His watch, among hairs, lay on the grass, and Carleton remembered: yes, when he came to Glen Court, and I was to be in his House. A hundred years ago. Nicky’s school too. How small their world was!

‘Did that swing in?’

‘Yes.’

He wasn’t going to call him ‘Sir’ in front of Nicky, who was looking at him with blushing admiration. God seemed to be losing at the moment. It was wonderful.

‘It was a good ball. Ah, watch it Bewick, you ass!’

The Doctor was extremely uncomfortable, and trying to appear calm. Normally he endured this Day of ladies, hats and social hell, by adhering to the Pedant; and it was not easy to accept that his place had been taken by a barmaid. They were seated among the School, over on the other bank, and the Pedant had added injury to insult by putting on his crumpled summer suit. Rowles had passed some social moments with this crowd here: for the Head and his two sycophants, who knew absolutely none of the Old Boys. But he had wearied of it: he was awkwardly shy at this sort of nonsense, and above all he was deeply disgusted by their plans for the morrow. Forty-seven years gave him the confidence to lie down and ignore them and watch the cricket.

He had watched the Ashleys too. He had a reputation for eyes in the back of his great head. He had met her several times, as a Mother, and formed the impression that she was an improvement on that unfortunate breed; though she had shared, even to excess, the notion that her Own was an angel beyond reproach. She had intelligence, and a presence. She followed a lunatic trade, but that was not her fault. All the worthwhile plays were to be read in one’s study. He knew Shakespeare almost in its entirety, and it was pitiful to think that egocentric cretins with painted faces imagined themselves to be of any use to that superlative fellow. Ashley’s
mother was a cut above them too, but she had the emotional nature common to these puppets, and it had caused him concern in the past. She might have been greatly hurt.

She might still be.

What had they said?

He had for a moment experienced the curious temptation to intervene.

To say what?

To say what he had nearly said before?

Take him away?

And now beside him sat this dark, religious, decidedly curious creature, Allen, who was professing love in unnecessary repetition for God knows who.

There was no end to it.

Almost perfect, the morning was, Carleton was thinking, as he glanced repeatedly across at Nicky; perfect except for one frightening fact – Gower. How was he to convey it to Nicky? Its urgency, and something delightfully warm and pleasant about the three of them sitting together, made him reckless.

‘I was just thinking this is an ideal day for Gower.’

The Doctor’s mouth fell open and he slowly turned his head, flushing a little.

Carleton suddenly realised that, of course, Nicky wasn’t supposed to know about Gower; though they had discussed him many times.

‘Oh dear,’ Carleton said.

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Carleton.’

‘I mean, he likes doing nothing, and wandering about and taking notes . . . of what goes on.’

It was very flustered, but he had caught Nicky’s eye, and Nicky was thinking. He was worried. He had understood.

Rowles did not respond to this extraordinary statement. He appeared to have returned to the cricket. But in fact he had received the message too; Carleton having over-emphasised the ‘taking notes’. Yes, of course, Gower must be the culprit; from a locker, presumably. Rowles had eyes in the sides of his head as well: he was aware that they had exchanged a glance. And what was it Ashley had said in an unbelievable, shocking moment? ‘Carleton’s in love.’ Rowles had walked away. But there was no escape now. He held the blade of grass between his teeth, and gazed dismally at Bewick and Southwell running up and down the pitch. Carleton! The one-time cynic. Imagine
him
being vulnerable to that stinking, mish-mash of destruction – the emotions.

The Doctor picked out the blade of grass and flicked it away.

‘I’m the beneficiary, I regret to say.’

‘Of what, Sir?’ said Carleton, in a nervous voice.

‘Of what you guess to be . . . I presume it’s a guess, and I grant you I never thought of it myself . . . Gower’s latest activity. It was on my desk. I tore it up. Bewick won’t last long if he plays another stroke like that.’

Carleton saw that Nicky was scarlet. He himself was dumb with embarrassment. There was something particularly awful about it being Rowles: a person from another world. Ashley had been perfectly understanding, though horribly outspoken and scornful, about it. Even Ma Crab had hinted. But Rowles simply couldn’t know what it meant. No common language whatever.

‘I’m going to insist on it being the last of such excrescences.’ Rowles was pale. He was getting angry. ‘In fact, I’m asking you to cut the whole thing out, now, and once and for all. Do you understand?’

Carleton understood, though it was out of the question. ‘The whole thing’. How easily the sense of wrongdoing and indulgence was created by these words! Were guilt, and shame, really part of it? Was it really something one confessed to Cyril Starr? Why was Rowles necessarily right, and why were they wrong?

‘Well, Carleton?’

‘Uh . . . yes, Sir.’

‘
You
amaze me, I must say. The Head of my House, damn you. I could have you out, you know that?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

My Gosh. His mother. His father. Sin and shame. Take him away. Expelled.

‘You’ll go, in any case, if you keep this up. You may as well know, Dr Boucher is starting an investigation into this sort of muck and carry-on tomorrow. God knows what he’ll unearth about you. Personally, I don’t intend to assist. You may rely on that, though you don’t deserve it. It’s nearly time for lunch. I’m going up for a wash.’

Rowles got to his feet, with a grunt.

‘Thank you, Sir.’

‘Don’t thank me. Chuck it in. That’s my advice. No, those are my orders.’

The Doctor walked up the slope, taking care to steer a course a long way from Ashley.

It was a disappointment, and depressing, that some of them simply couldn’t help going in for arse-licking. It was not really disturbing. It was not even interesting. What
was
interesting, by Jove, was that extraordinary creature, Gower. What a masterly little conception! What infernal and extraordinary cheek. ‘Tee-hee!’ Ashley heard him quietly exclaim, as he passed at a distance. ‘My God, he regards me now as a figure of fun,’ Ashley thought. ‘We’ll see about that!’

Carleton was looking across at Nicky, feeling hopeless; absolutely hopeless.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘There’s a crack in the buttress behind the Chapel,’ Nicky said. ‘It’s about my height. We’ll leave the notes there. Don’t put your initials.’

The lunch of the year.

Lloyd’s waxen face conveyed nothing, but this event was the apex of his entire existence. It mattered little to him that the Head was now of inferior stock. Lloyd served the School, and this was his libation. Scarcely had he given the High Table soup, than he was back at his altar, bending over the Cricket Cup, with his ears sticking out of his head like ping-pong bats. He sniffed. And sniffed again at the other silver cup containing a refill in case of need. He stirred with a ladle. It was good. His own creation for half a century: cider and nameless white wine.

All was reversed. The Staff occupied the High Table: fourteen bachelors, three husbands, and Ma Crab. It was the Prefects, instead of the masters, who sat at the head of the tables below. There was quite a crush: one table had been abandoned to the Old Boys team. Most remarkable change of all, the Chaplain graced the High Table. He sat, by careful choice, at one end; at the farthest possible distance from the Crabtrees, and between the Beatle and old Mr Wall who was getting vaguer every day. He was regaling them, to his own mild amusement, with memories of an unspeakable lady organist in a church over which he had once presided in the Outer Hebrides.

Ashley as Master on Duty had the curious privilege of sitting beside Mrs Crabtree. She had been dipping in and out of her soup,
without a word. On his other side, the Cod was elaborating some new theory he had formulated with McCaffrey about Fire Practices.

Down at the end of the Hall, Miss Bull was already tackling a vast roast of beef with a knife like a scimitar. The skivvies in black were queuing up like a funeral party. Lloyd had his own smaller roast for the High Table. One had to get everyone started on the second course, because waiting for the Cup to go round would have taken too long. Possibly the most placid man alive, Lloyd was showing signs of excitement: his hands trembled slightly as he collected and delivered the plates. Until at last his moment had arrived.

The Head was waiting: he had cleared a place. Lloyd carried his treasure across, bent between the Crabtrees, and set it on the table; and as he did so the din subsided, because everyone had really been waiting for this. He backed away, and became a tall black statue in his own private corner.

The Head, Mrs Crabtree and Dr Rowles stood up together in the profound silence, with all heads turned their way. Whoever gave the Toast always had a supporter at either side. It was the Head. Colouring a little, he raised the extremely heavy cup and pronounced the words – ‘Floreat Weatherhill. Et Floreant the Weatherhillians.’

He brought the rim to his lips and drank.

There was a marvellous hush. Most of the boys were impressed. They seemed to be all together, all at one, in their own private place, which they wanted to flourish, in defiance of everybody.

The Pedant was always testy about this: He had tried to Latinise the School name, but had been outvoted.