Schooling (21 page)

5

At the interval. Brickie and Owen in lobby consultation. The filing in. The squeezing past knees. The unsettled. Audience of rustle audience of toffee offerings and assessing Bath fashion. Yellow winter wear in the gallery. Bad hat in the second row. Man down front rehearsing the cough he’s excercised nicely during Act 3. Chime. And a sharp dig between the wings.

You’re hurting me.

Brickie, on the edge of his seat jabs her again . . . If you’re desperate to know, eyebrows jerking each jab, I’ll give you a quest.

Quest? Another chime, imminent theatrics.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to know—

I do I do want to know.

Do you have it in you?

Yes. I accept. Any quest.

Noise in the back of his throat, skeptic ocean.

I have done things, Brickie. I have gone against their rules. Led men across deserts.

Shh . . . this from some Mareka, Daphne.

Brick—

It might kill you.

Nothing here could.

Alright, his mouth by her ear breath tickling . . . The way you’ll know at last is.

Their lights fade, Brickie’s voice drops.

The way you’ll know at last is.

Drumroll.

Found in.

Cleante and Tartuffe step onto the stage beauty-marked and powdered.

Number 26.

They’re all talking about it. This is the time to tell you bluntly
After school when our English Tutor is earning and ensuring the affections of a certain coquette, steal into his office. Up the door through the stairs. Disturb the papers flooding his desk, rummage in books piled thereon
shhhh
old man’s compiling a new history of Monstead says the actor or Brickie
pardon the o fense
one or the other
sacrifice your resentment
finally putting all those scribbles to use. In the office of Monsieur Betts is where you will discover the ghastly tale of yore I mean your father.
Unjustly accused.
If you fail, Evans, if you fail you are just a girl who cannot read between the lines then you
Lose glory
deserve not to know
shhh
neither what your father did nor how it is that an apple never falls far from its tree.

6

They prepare to return to Chittock Leigh, for the hypocrite has been flushed out, the lover tested and found sincere.

And here he is. In the shabby cloakroom, extricating his coat from a pile of duffels.

Mr. Gilbert?

He turns . . . Ah, Diogenes. Searching the streets for an honest man?

Do you like her?

Sorry, what’s the question?

Fi Hammond . . . outside, the sound of a cheer . . . Whether you like her.

Fiona out there, Fiona taking her chemistry O level, that Fiona?

Another cheer, Puck’s voice clear above the others.

Whatever it is, come out and say it. You burst in here like your hair was on fire.

I didn’t.

Do I
like
her, I think the question was. Let me see. Fi Hammond seems intelligent enough. Has always displayed respect for the science. Seems to do her Prep. Has always been courteous. Has never, to my knowledge, tampered with the levels of dangerous chemicals while entrusted with the upkeep of the chemistry lab.

What can she say to that.

All in all, I would say that Fi Hammond is quite likable.

You had your hand on her back. Maybe she’s not sure about your motivations.

Which are?

Pressing a finger against the window, watching the tip of it whiten . . . I don’t know.

The school rules are quite clear. I suggest you go back and review them . . . Gilbert’s tone changes, becomes serious.

He turns back to his coat. When she is inches from the door, sullen inches, Gilbert calls . . . Wait.

She stops.

Come back.

She does.

I have a gift . . . pulling out a square of cloth, he hands it to her . . . My handkerchief from our day in Oxbow. Paint won’t come out. It’s an accidental canvas.

Greens she tried to rename.

Don’t scrutinize it, not much good at the abstract stuff.

She folds the handkerchief into tidy squares.

A tug. He has hold of her hair. Pulls it gently . . . What goes through this mind at such warped speed, funny Punchinello? I’m going to conduct a study. Something to make my fortune, hum? . . . winding the theory in his fingers her hair . . . Oh . . . letting go . . . Was that unkind? I was trying for a joke.

Sometimes you’re funny.

Halting by the window, he registers the comment, face changing from a big intake of breath to a stunned expression involving his chin . . . Sometimes? . . . folding arms . . . Well how often would you say? . . . down his nose at her . . . If you were forced to estimate?

What is he talking about.

What’s the number? Come on, you’ve done it in maths, percentages. I’ve seen it.

Mr. Gilbert—

No, no. I’m fascinated . . . folded arms forming channels in his sweater . . . What’s the percentage of my success?

Seventy—

Seventy?

Eight.

Seventy-eight. Not so bad. And yours . . . he does the math . . . Ninety-one.

That’s high.

Yes. But I’ll have to try harder or make fewer jokes.

Maybe I miscalculated.

You seemed quite sure.

I wavered a bit.

It came out very absolute. Seventy-eight. There was no questioning it at the time.

But now I’m remembering some things you said in Oxbow that were pretty funny.

As a scientist, hindsight is not your friend. As a scientist, you must back up your data before going public with it.

But. You were standing there like that. Waiting. I was pressured.

Ah . . . crossing . . . You’ll be better prepared next time . . . over his shoulder . . . To stand the pressure . . . at the door . . . I’ve given you a Gilbert original. And you can rest assured that however promising a student Fi Hammond proves to be, she doesn’t own art like that.

Paint thick in spots. Doesn’t have him, is that what he means, Fi doesn’t have him. Gilbert opens the door. Pulls on his jacket, shirt creasing as he shrugs it over his shoulders. She runs to the window to watch him walk.

Outside, Owen is leaning against the building, bored, arms folded. The doors swing open. Here comes Gilbert pulling at his sleeve as he jogs down the steps. As he passes Owen, Gilbert stumbles, lurching forward abruptly. She lurches with him, bumping her forehead against the glass. Awkwardly, Gilbert manages to catch himself on the railing. He looks at Owen in disbelief. Owen takes out his toothpick, throws it to the ground and walks away. Gilbert runs his hand through his hair. But she saw. Owen’s foot flick out.

7

Back at school, Pythagoras proves to be the final unraveling of Duncan Peaks. The Maths teacher has disappeared in the night, baby, cough turned fatal, no one is certain. Spenning stands at the front of the room holding a ruler in one hand. Rulers go with mathematics, this he knows. Sophie goes to the blackboard. Mr. Spenning, we are onto triangles, scribbling out a = Mr. Spenning, sir, b
²
+ c
²
. We have moved onto the stupidity of the Obtuse, the sagacity of the Acute. Gently, Sophie takes the ruler away from him, We are done with metrics, sir. But Spenning, frozen and paling, stares at the back of the classroom. Sophie looks up, her eyes widen. One by one they turn. Duncan Peaks lies in the corner of the classroom wrapped around an abacus, shucking the beads, rocking himself.

8

Boys had differently shaped heads in the nineteen forties. Square back then. Boys crossing hockey sticks, half-men in tennis whites. Trophies. Classical music dribbles down the corridor from the short part of the L. Photograph after photograph. Red carpet. Courage. Lawrence in all that sand. Contending with the breath of camels and poisoned spiders in his blankets. 26. A swan and a beckon. She pushes open the door. The office is empty.

9

Four days ago I asked for your replies to Hitch’s letters. Today I hold before me seven pages of quasi–William Butler rip-offs from Chambers in the Third. Apparently this pitiful sheaf comprises your concern for overseas friends greeting death. You boys recall the meaning of the word comrade, don’t you? Yes, well, think about what it’s like for your old friends now in aeroplanes, now staring down the wrong end of a Howitzer. These are boys with whom you once sat around a fire, boys who once advised you in your quotidian schoolday struggles. These same boys dare I say friends are today huddled in trenches, barbaric and confused. And you think you suffer you with your lessons in temporary classrooms. Yes perhaps they once housed farm animals but Western Literature will not be diminished by the faint trace of pig. Need I remind you what’s happening across our river? Your fathers are dying. Where the devil do you think poetry will get the O.M starving in a trench? Darvish, Treat. Give our boys incentive, feed a boy’s soul with school stories, boost him with tales of less haunted days. Set it down, set it down. If a schoolgirl in the second half of our century steals through these secrets won’t she want our history? Shattered eardrums! Lost fathers! Banished children! Alright, alright, so I digress. Brickman, I asked you to signal when I began repeating myself. Assembly notes. 15/3/47 I have been informed that older boys have been beating out the younger for their share of the squish. Any boy caught doing so will lose games privileges for a week. It tries my patience it really does. We will not behave like castaways during our time in this Welsh hell. A word concerning the
frisson
which took place in the science laboratories yesterday. Not very amusing, it nearly set fire to the dormitories above. Boys doing science will remember that Tangley and Duke are housed overhead so wash the vegetables carefully don’t run on wet floors please remember delousing at four remember your FATHERS ARE DYING. Wash your hands. Please. Please. Vegetables are not bootscrapers. Please, your letters to Hitch in Italian trenches please, a warm word for Stokes who recuperates in Sussex please remember our masters departed in service, M. Drake, Dr. Bovart, S. E. Powers and R. C. Farthing-Smith in your prayers in our dirty nights. Don’t forget India, don’t forget the Maharajah. Remember V. Banks his gypsy moth a dark dart in the flaming skies of Africa, he was a target, boys. Your fathers are targets, YOUR FATHERS ARE CRYING. And our beloved D. E. McGraw, shot down over France. Bad luck. We will miss them all. But, Negland, dear Negland, who only returned to Monstead last month, has already led the cricket elevens to our biggest victory streak ever adding a win over Cheltenham to those over Monmouth and Bromsgrove. Round of applause. Word of warning to those engaged in private wars. Tangley and Duke have formed an alliance and last night undertook an ambitious raid on Conwell via the vegetable passage. Do you understand that your friends will die do you understand that if this is what passes for strategy, we might as well rip off the bedsheets and surrender before Prep. No. This is not how it will be. We will not have scattershot attacks. Boys will first present tactics to Prefects. You will calculate risks. You will project casualties. Yes, this includes midnight feasts, dorm raids, ratcheting a child to his bedsprings. Each act of arbitrary ostracization, all your works of torture. Boys will be men about the whole thing or see me. What would Hitch think had he witnessed the scene I came across last night while making the rounds of houses. These blubbers youknowwhoyouare will take yourselves suitably to task via self-mutilation, suicide attempts or psychiatric disorders in your mundane futures. I won’t have boys thinking of their fathers I won’t have namby-pambys longing for Sussex and the dear departed you will pull yourselves together you will you will try to remember

Remember what?

She spins, pages float to the floor.

A quest, Yank, didn’t I say quest? Don’t waste time . . . Brickie picks up a book from Betts’ desk . . . You’re pathetic. Do I have to show you?

She gathers up the spilled papers, replaces them on a desk covered with letters, notes, bits of bark. Two red berries. Still life of Apple Core, slantingly cubist Sandwich Crusts on Foil.

What’s his story?

Who, Betts?

He’s unhappy.

Aren’t they all . . . Brickie flips pages distractedly.

Brass ashtray in the shape of a palm. Offering Greek coins, string. Catarrh pastilles. Cuff link. Jade dot. Clipping a young cuff as he raced across the Oxbow quad. To his wedding. Marjorie in white. Smooth to the touch. She zips the delicious dot into her moneybelt. Sifting letters on his desk. Yellowing
Dear fellows Much encouraged
to know the school’s behind me on this lark, not like on that mad canoe
down If the gerries ever In an airlift with an O.M. Hughes several
weeks back Used to snore through Latin with Berger Send over more
Monsteadians, not many are used to these conditions

Brickie outlined at the window, Certain it was this one bastard eyes scanning dark eyes dark

Brick—

Shut up, Yank.

Yes, dark Heart. A black chapel gown hangs behind the door, deflated crow. Brickie still at the window. Unhooking the gown, the slippery black of chapel, collar sheened to purple by his hairoil
and the
betrayal of mind betrays me
his sleeves hang long past her hands
I run
across the quadrangle I delve the fog I am

Not as bad as you might be at the English Language.

Brickie looks up . . . Idiot.

Grim reaper.

He tips the book toward her, pointing to a photograph.

Stokes?

Yes . . . Brickie says . . . And he’s got both his eyes. But down here’s the good bit. Your father—

A noise. Shadow in the doorway. They freeze. Betts. He looms, he enters.

Quickly, she slips off the gown, kicking it into a shadow.

Well, he says, well well what have we here a pile of mischief the American girl the boy from London in places where they should not be rifling through the belongings of a teacher. And my notes do they amuse? Or do they mean so little as to mean nothing? Am I simply another figure knocking about, lost to a better past, meting out the old grey matter in this blighted setting?

Betts walks to the window, holds his hands to the radiator beneath it ... Out there’s where you two belong, isn’t it? Isn’t there some hockey some rugger—

Don’t play rugby here sir, on account of—

Don’t patronize me, Brickman, I know there’s no rugby here and there hasn’t been for years . . . Betts considers the playing fields, quietly . . . There was a time before girls. We were a serious school then.

Zipped at her waist, his round cuff link presses the point. The three of them stare below at figures in grey zagging purposefully around the field. The window rattles. Cue thunk of ball, a solitary shout.

Betts turns . . . Why are you going through my possessions as if they’re trifles?

Sir, she asked about her father. I meant to show her the book where—

Brickman, do you intend to make absolutely nothing of yourself? Is that your objective?

Brickie shrugs.

Don’t the two of you have enough to do don’t I for one give you enough Prep have you revised for the test on Monday? Do you know the meaning of the words Husbandry, Capitulate or Thews? For you clearly understand Defile, and you have provided ample definition of the word Sully . . . Betts leans back on the radiator, the window behind him rations light . . . Ten sides. Both of you. On the subject of history. You seem to share a fondness for it.

Ten sides, sir, not really fair.

You’re absolutely right, Brickman. Let’s make it fifteen.