Phoenix and Ashes (31 page)

And
of course, Reggie himself would have to present the prizes to the winning
scholars, to put the final fillip of glory on the whole day.

No,
he quite agreed with the whole notion, and the only thing that made him wish
the school and the children to the steppes of Mongolia was that because he had
forgotten, he had not been able to tell poor Eleanor that he would
not
be at the meadow at teatime.

And
he did not know how to find her to send her a message to that effect, either.

The
thought of her arriving at the meadow only to find it deserted made him feel
sick—she would be so disappointed, and he found the idea of disappointing
her made him feel like a right cad.

Well,
maybe someone would remind her what day it was. Yes, hopefully, wherever she
was working, she’d be told, and wouldn’t turn up only to be
disappointed.

Meanwhile,
he listened with some surprise and growing pleasure to his mother go on about
her
preparations for the great day. It was the liveliest he’d seen her since
he had arrived. Of course, her father was still sulking, taking his meals in
his rooms, so that particular pall was not being flung over the dinner-table.

And
perhaps he will
leave. Or at least, go off to bully his own servants
until—

No.
He would not think of going back to the Front, to the war. Not now. He turned
his mind resolutely to the plans for the morrow.

“It
seems like an awful lot of work for you, Mater,” he said doubtfully.

She
laughed—really laughed. “Don’t you remember? You did most of
the planning work, when the date was first changed last year. It was all in
your letters. Everything was a great success, especially the prizes.”

Good
gad—
I do remember—
telling her that the vicar could give
out Bibles and prayer books all he liked, but that we ought to be giving things
the kiddies would enjoy reading. Picture books for the littlest. Good ripping
yarns for the boys
—

“You
told me to patronize the local shops, so I did. Really, all I had to do was to
consult with Pearl Shapland at the bookstore about what was
popular—she’s been a great help. She’s picked out truly
delightful books this year—and for the older girls, lovely writing paper
and pen sets instead of books. Well, I
did
make one little
change.” She blushed. “When I found out that Lisa Satterfield, the
head girl, had won the first prize for essay, I thought, a pretty girl like
that, and
no
money to spare in her family—well, I went to Annie
Hagan the milliner, and I got her a hat. I thought she would like it so much
better than writing paper.”

“I
think you’re entirely right, Mater,” he said, hiding his amusement.
School prizes were supposed to reward scholarship—trust his mother to
think of giving a hat instead! Then again, he’d seen perfectly sensible
girls go all foolish with inchoate longing over a milliner’s window
display. “That was a capital idea, and terribly kind of you.”

It
really did seem as if he had been very clever in his suggestions—it was
just too bad he didn’t remember them very clearly. Those letters seemed
to have been written a century ago, by someone he couldn’t even
recognize. Swings hung from the trees in the park—a treasure-hunt among
the paths for tokens to be exchanged for little bags of nuts and other small
prizes—crackers at tea to ensure that every child went home with at least
some trinket—it amazed him. How had he thought about such things in the
middle of death and gunfire?

“So
you see, I really had very little to do—other than this year, finding
ways of getting the sugar for the cakes and ice creams,” she concluded.
“The rest of it, I just left orders for.”

“I
don’t believe you for a minute, and you are an angel, Mater,” he
said warmly.

She
smiled at him, then sighed. “It’s so little, really, when there
isn’t a family in the village that hasn’t got someone at the
front—or has lost someone,” she said, pensively. “If I can
just help those poor little ones to forget that for part of one
day—”

He
went up to bed now feeling guilty that he had put his
own
pleasure
ahead of those poor kiddies. As if they had anything much to look forward to
anymore. They weren’t the only ones who were trying to forget, for just
one day, what was going on outside the walls and fences of Longacre Park.

Knowing
he would have to look presentable for the children, he took the precaution of
using a strong sleeping draught to insure he got a decent night of slumber.
He’d avoided them in hospital—preferring to doze during the day
when
they
were less inclined to try and attack him—and since
coming home, he’d generally found his drinks at the Broom to be soporific
enough.
But we don’t want to frighten the little ones
, he told
himself, as he felt the narcotic take hold. You don’t want to look the
way you feel.

He
still felt a bit groggy when his valet woke him, but a couple of cups of good,
strong “gunpowder” tea chased most of the mist from his brain. He
thought about wearing his uniform to make the presentations, then decided
against it. The children saw too many uniforms as it was; he didn’t want
to remind them of fathers and brothers who were gone, fighting, missing, or
dead.

By
the time he finished breakfast, his valet Turner came to tell him that the old
pony had been harnessed to the cart, and it and the auto were waiting on the
driveway.

“What
else is done?” he asked.

“The
gardener and her helpers have finished seeding the garden with the buttons that
will serve as prize-tokens, sir,” Turner said, “And the tent has
been set up for the refreshments. Her ladyship is already out there, overseeing
everything.”

He
might have known; he finished breakfast and strolled out to be, as he expected,
“made useful.”

Within
the hour, the vicar, his wife, and the entire contingents of the Ladies’
Friendly Society and the Women’s Institute had made the pilgrimage up the
drive with farm carts full of tents and stalls and the bric-a-brac to fill
them. And by ten, the fair was set up and waiting for the children. There were
already adults moving among the stalls in summer frocks or tea-gowns and
tennis-dresses, and cricket-flannels or summer suits suitable for a day at
Brighton Pier, or at the very least, their Sunday best.

It
all looked so normal until you noticed that frocks outnumbered suits by a
factor of four or five to one. It was at that point that Reggie elected to go
and stand by his auto and wait for the children to arrive.

Fortunately,
they did turn up very shortly after that—being hauled up from the village
in two old hay-wains pulled by four ancient workhorses that were spared being
sent to pull guns because they couldn’t have gotten out of a plodding
walk if their lives had depended on it.

Having
had the experience of last year, Lady Devlin had very sensibly decided that the
first thing to do was to allow the children to run off as much of the energy of
excitement as possible. To that end, it was the button-hunt that took place
first; well
away
from the flower-beds, with the buttons seeded all
over the artificial “wilderness” and the follies that some Georgian
Fenyx had erected. He thought to improve the landscape by dotting it with
completely manufactured ruins. With happy disregard for the state of their best
clothing, the younger children swarmed the wilderness while the older ones
sauntered along, pretending that they were too sophisticated for such a
childish pastime, but just as excited as the little ones when they found a
button. It took a good hour before the last button was found and handed in for
a prize; by then, the smaller ones were lining up for rides in the pony-cart
while the older boys were doing the same for a ride in Reggie’s motor.
The swings in the trees were all fully occupied, the maze had its own set of
explorers, and the games at the booths were doing a surprisingly brisk business.

At
one, there was a break for luncheon in the refreshment tent, a break that
Reggie was pleased to see. He had forgotten, when he had volunteered to take
children for rides up and down the long driveway, that this would mean hours of
driving
. His leg was telling him that it would be some time before it
forgave him.

After
luncheon, to his relief, came the official proceedings of the day, beginning
with the Maypole dance. Reggie’s gramophone was pulled into service, with
Jimmy Grimsley, the head boy, dragooned into service to keep it cranked up. It
had to be the first time in the history of Broom that Maypole dances were held
to the tune of melodies by Bach instead of the pennywhistle and fiddle. The
adults dutifully gathered around to watch, first the little ones blunder
through an attempt at a simple in-and-out weave, then progressively more
complicated weaves as the teams of dancers increased in age—the girls
with enthusiasm, the boys with reluctance. The eldest—all girls, since
not even the headmaster could convince teenaged boys to dance around a Maypole—did
a quite credible job, leaving the pole with its crown of flowers covered in a
tightly woven, patterned set of ribbons. Then it was time for everyone to
assemble for the academic prizes.

A
low platform had been erected for the purpose, and the audience sat on blankets
and tablecloths usually used for picnics. Reggie and the teachers all stood on
the platform, while the children waited, squirming, on the blankets in the very
front “rows.”

First,
Miss Kathleen Davis, the teacher for the youngest children (who were not segregated
by sex at their age), announced the winners of Best Penmanship, Most Books
Read, Best Speller, and Best Recitation. The children solemnly and shyly, and
with maternal encouragement, paraded up to the platform, and Reggie gave them
their picture-books, wrapped in beautiful paper and ribbons, with just as much
solemnity as if he had been distributing medals.

They
all sat through a repetition of the prize-winning recitation—predictably,
“How Doth the Little Busy Bee”—which at least the child in
question managed to get through without needing to be prompted, without
mumbling, or without bursting into tears, all of which Reggie could recall
happening on previous prize days.

Then
it was Miss Judith Lasker’s turn to announce the prizewinners for the
older girls. Best Penmanship, Best Recitation, Spelling Prize, Literature
Prize, and Best Essay on the subject of (Reggie tried not to groan) “My
Country.” The winner of the Best Essay looked very surprised when Reggie
presented her with a hatbox instead of a stationery set or a book, and when she
and her friends gathered around to discover what could be
in
the
intriguing box, the winner was so delighted to discover that it really
was
a hat she almost forgot to return to the platform to read her winning essay
aloud.

Next
time it’ll be two hats
, Reggie thought, ungraciously.
That ought
to keep them busy enough they’ll completely forget to read the blasted
thing
.

The
Literature Prize winner, Maria Holmes, did not get a stationery set; that
seemed wrong to Reggie, who had instead culled several unread volumes from his
own stores—things given to him in the hospital that he had not had the
heart to read.
Poems of a V.A.D
. seemed appropriate enough, and the
complete Kipling verse as well as
Kim
and
The Light That Failed
,
and a book of Shaw’s plays. They weren’t the sort of thing that a
girl would ordinarily be given, but he had the feeling that a
“bookish” girl was more than ready for something stronger.

The
Best Recitation was from a girl improbably called Marina Landman, and was, to
Reggie’s complete shock, “The Last Meeting,” written only the
year before by Siegfried Sassoon. She recited it beautifully, clearly—he
had to wonder if she really understood what the words she was speaking from
memory actually
meant
—

Or
to her was it all Romeo-and-Juliet, doomed, romantic young love? Certainly the
poem was written that way. Where had she found it?
Dear God, if she had
seen any of his other poems, she surely would have tossed the book away,
weeping
. Sassoon might have begun writing his poetry about the nobility of
sacrifice in war, and the glory of a grand death, but he was not writing of
that now…

Well,
it might make
him
uncomfortable, but evidently no one else was
bothered. Or else they had no idea who had written this piece; well, truly
there was nothing in it to mark it as the work of a man in the trenches.

Probably
someone saw it in The Strand or some other magazine or newspaper, and thought
it appropriate for a young girl to recite
, he decided.
She can’t
possibly have seen any of Sassoon’s other poetry
.

He
presented her with her prize of stationery and a silver pen-set. She seemed
pleased. “I want to be a teacher,” she told him, when he’d
asked her the usual question of what she wanted to do. “Like Miss
Lasker.”

Miss
Lasker colored up and looked pleased. “I’m sure you’ll be a
fine teacher,” Reggie told her, and signaled the headmaster with his eyes
that it was time for the boys to receive their prizes. One more lot, and then I
can sit down…

Michael
Stone stepped forward and announced the winners. Mathematics Prize, History
Prize, Geography Prize—why weren’t the girls given challenges like
that?—Latin Prize, Best Recitation, and Best Essay on the subject of
Patriotism.

The
recitation, unmercifully, was “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
Reggie tried not to listen. It called up too many memories of similar idiotic
charges he had seen from the relative safety of his aeroplane—yet another
suicidal dash “over the top” straight into the machine guns. He
kept his face fixed in what—he hoped—was a vaguely pleasant
expression and wondered what idiot had encouraged the boy to memorize this
particular piece at this particular time.