The Merciless Ladies (2 page)

As for Holly, their daughter of nine, one imagined her as an afterthought in the biological experiment which had produced Bertie and Leo. As a tiresome afterthought, too, since long before she was born Dr and Mrs Lynn had passed to a consideration of the De Broglie theory of the electron. She had been brought up in a home in which meals were never to time and usually makeshift; she breathed an atmosphere in which the academic idea was everything and the practical fact of the moment nothing. She had long spindly legs and arms, an anaemic face, and spectacles and boots sizes too big. Her hair was lank and greasy, and the solitary redeeming feature was a clever mouth like her father's but without its accompanying long jaw.

For the first two days she stared at me through her great spectacles with an air of intense curiosity, as if I were a fish in an aquarium; but later I grew grudgingly to admire the gameness with which she joined in her brothers' sports and pranks. Her elder brother Bertie did far more for her than her mother, and it was not cheering to think of the life she must have led when they were at school. They treated her as a boy of their own age and by dint of much perseverance on both sides were already teaching her to bowl and bat in an orthodox manner.

Mentally she was a precocious child, a not uncommon result of being the youngest of a family; but Holly's precocity was a monstrous thing. She already knew more of elementary physics, biology and simple chemistry than her brothers would ever know; but of the ordinary commonplace joys of childhood she knew practically nothing.

By the spring of the following year the disadvantages of a week spent at Newton had faded into the background and I was looking forward to another invitation. Its atmosphere of freedom from restraint was not like any other house I had ever been in. I used to wonder sometimes why the three children had not turned out little savages. Presumably they were born civilized.

Of Paul Stafford's existence I suppose I'd been aware since the September before, when he came to the school, but only as one of the hundred and sixteen other boys enjoying the dubious advantages of education at Turstall. Then in April he moved into my form and into my dormitory. He was two years older than the boys he had been working with, and the school had decided to push him up a year so that the disparity in ages was not so great.

Of course, as everyone knows, he was born near Lancaster, the son of the village grocer, and at thirteen was serving behind the counter and running errands, his thoughts of schooling already done with. But Mr Stafford had come in for a little money and with determined ideas of betterment, had decided his son should continue his education, and at a place which would lay its own veneer on him. Hence Paul, and hence his unpopularity. Today it would hardly matter, but in those days the idea that a boy should finish his education at a council school and then begin it again at Turstall was more than some of the more delicate-minded of us would accept. And some of the masters too.

He was a tall boy, which emphasized his backwardness, but also a strong and muscular one, which prevented the fact being too loudly commented on in his presence. No photographs of him remain of this particular time, except the small-scale school photographs, but I remember him with a shock of brown hair, cut short and standing up in a brush like a prize fighter's. He had light blue eyes and very long lashes which persisted even into middle age. Sometimes his eyes could be very cold, steely, when he encountered opposition; but more often they were intent, concentrated on the object before them, and then rather engaging. He had a strong Lancashire accent with a trace of Westmorland burr, which was easy to mimic.

We got friendly. I was tall and reedy, shy and self-contained, a poor mixer. I was hopeless at all games except cricket, and I couldn't box however much they put me in the ring. I could fight if necessary but then only with an effort of violence which might leave me the winner but for which I paid in nervous strain for hours after. He was older and had grown up in a community where one learned to look after oneself. But without fuss. In those days I thought he had no nerves. He was without talent for or interest in any games. He would sometimes commit bloomers in speech or behaviour which much diverted his classmates. I helped him to avoid these, although he never seemed too embarrassed when they happened.

The stories of his extreme poverty are well known and authentic enough; of his going to his first school with ill-patched and threadbare trousers which were a source of diversion even in the neighbourhood in which he lived; of his first pair of shoes that he wore all day on the wrong feet; of a two-roomed tenement without fire or food; of his mother's early death from overwork and malnutrition; of his father being helped by his brother to start the tiny shop that later just maintained him.

He was not a clever boy, which made more pathetic his father's determination to spend his small legacy so fruitlessly. Stafford senior could well have enlarged his shop or moved to a more prosperous village, or even made some provision for his old age. But no. He put down all his own troubles to lack of education. Paul must be different. Paul must work and get a scholarship to carry him to some university where he would take a degree. Stafford senior, Paul said, spoke of a degree as if it were some charm to ward off want. A peculiar inflection always came into his voice when he referred to it. The qualified man, in whatever, relatively humble capacity, would never, he believed, fear unemployment. A teacher, a civil servant, even – rising higher – a lawyer or a doctor. Paul must get a degree.

It might have been kinder if, after a term or two, Dr Marshall had told Mr Stafford that Paul had little or no hope of getting a scholarship anywhere, or any further education unless the legacy would run to it. Stafford senior would no doubt still have persisted and hoped, having overlooked the one inclination his son had shown by tanning the hide off him for stealing crayons from a stationer's shop. To say that when I first met him Paul had no ambition was almost true, for it had hardly dawned on him that the only thing he really wanred to do in life might be accounted a profession – of a sort – too.

No doubt it would have come to him sooner or later. Even had he had no further education beyond thirteen his talent would have surfaced and found its own level. Someone would have ‘ discovered' him. You cannot ignore or overlook or fail to notice something so powerful and so purposive. But as it happened it was the innocent affair of Dogden and the paper darts that gave it outlet and direction.

III

By now the war was raging. Paul had already been home twice with me to Grimsby, where my father had bought a practice ten years before. On the second visit my father was – already in the RAMC and there was a total black-out in the port, against the risk of Zeppelin raids and enemy cruisers – for Scarborough and Hartlepool had already been bombarded. But my mother still allowed us to use our dinghy, and in that fine August of 1915 we seemed scarcely ever to be out of the boat. It was on his visits to us and in these troubled years that Paul developed his love of the sea and of small craft. And it must have been those holidays which, when the war extended long enough to draw him in, made him opt for the Navy.

When we returned to Turstall its staff, exiguous at the best of times, had been depleted by the loss of four masters, and three women only had so far come to take their place. Dogden, the maths master, of uncertain temper anyway, was in a vile mood. In fact, although he looked to us a man far gone in age, he was thirty-four and a bachelor, and during the holidays two separate ladies with bright smiles but hard eyes had presented him with a white feather.

Paul, slow at any but the simplest of sums, and coming from a background that Doggy despised, was an obvious butt, and I remember distinctly the first words addressed to him that morning. ‘Stafford, stand up when I speak to you. You're lazy, you're idle, you're insubordinatious, you never have cared the toss of a button whether you do your work or not! I don't believe you even know what a square root is, unless you suppose it to be something your father grows in his vegetable garden!'

There was much laughter at this, and much laughter followed. If Doggy cared to entertain us with his sarcasms, well and good, so long as they were not directed at us. And it all helped to get through the forty-five minutes. But soon another diversion occurred. Dogden hated summer flies and of late had been suffocating his class by keeping the windows shut. The Headmaster chose this moment to put in one of his rare appearances. He came in noisily, banging the door, and stumped with his club foot across to the desk.

‘Mr Dogden, pardon me; I came to ask you about – mm – mm – mm – mm – Infernally stuffy in here – mm – mm – mm – mm – Why don't you open the windows? mm – mm – mm …'

‘Well, Dr Marshall, that is what I have always maintained – mm – mm – mm – it's latgely a matter of a group decision …'

While they were talking Marshall limped across to the long window at the end of the room and Dogden went with him. So they had their backs to us. Paul had a talent for making paper darts, which he had passed on to me. We often practised at home, and now, perhaps to assert himself after a bad few minutes, he threw a dart across the room at me.

It came beautifully – I can see it now – describing a graceful arc like a glider of the future. Hoskin, the boy in front of me, tried to grab it, but I got there first. There was a slight scuffle but the two masters were too occupied with their conversation to notice it. I barely took in that the dart was coloured before I straightened the tail and threw it back.

At that moment Marshall had opened the window and a fresh westerly breeze came into the room. The dart, homing moderately well – I was not as good at it as Paul – was caught by the breeze, swerved upwards and landed at Dr Marshall's feet as he turned to walk back.

All masters are particularly sensitive to anything which goes wrong in front of the Head – particularly anything which suggests they cannot keep their class under control. Dogden went purple. He snatched up the dart.

‘
Who
– is responsible for throwing this – thing?'

No one spoke.

‘Unless the boy who threw this does not immediately stand up, the whole class will come back here after school and do an extra half-hour of maths.'

There was a groan and a murmur and everyone looked expectantly at me. I stood up.

‘
You
, Grant', said Dogden ominously. Then he noticed the colouring on the dart and began to unfold it. On the piece of paper, drawn in crayons, was an insulting caricature which even he could not fail to recognize as being of himself.

The drawing was really of a satyr – though I doubt if Paul had heard the word at the time – in which a naked body covered with red hair from the waist down was surmounted by a head unmistakably Mr Dogden's. It carried a pitchfork in one claw, and impaled on the prongs was a struggling schoolboy.

Although I would have taken the blame, Paul was soon on his feet too, to Dogden's obvious satisfaction. What made matters worse was that, followed by Dr Marshall, who I swear was hiding a faint smirk of amusement under his yellowing moustache, Dogden went to Paul's desk and instructed him to turn it out. So the sketch-book came to light.

I had known from the time of his first holiday with us of Paul's interest in sketching, but it had made no great impression on me. It was similar to knowing a boy who liked strumming on the piano: a quirk of character, a little talent. Sometimes he had shown me his sketches and they seemed rather good. There was one of me on our mantelpiece at home, but I thought I looked too lean in it and too melancholy.

Of particular interest in the sketch-book turned up by Dogden were crayon drawings of almost every master in the school, and quite a number of the pupils. They were not caricatures in the ordinary sense of the word, being more insulting in their near likeness and their loving care for detail. The most unfortunate part of the matter was that the three lady teachers had been drawn without any clothes on.

Being in a sense implicated in the first place, I was present at the interview in Dr Marshall's study.

‘What you must appreciate, Stafford', I remember Dr Marshall saying, ‘is that your father is not paying your school fees with the idea that you should occupy your time making insulting studies of your headmaster and his colleagues. Nor do we exist and draw our salaries for the purpose of acting as models and butts for every young puppy who comes here with a talent for sketching. I trust you will come to realize that.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Indeed, I should feel I had failed in my duty if I allowed you to leave this establishment with such an impression. How old are you?'

‘Sixteen, sir.'

‘Old enough to know better. The more offensive juvenile antics should be behind one by then. Where did you learn your drawing?'

‘Nowhere, sir.'

‘Who taught you draughtsmanship? Not Mr Harper, surely?'

‘No, sir. I could draw as long as I can remember.'

‘And what did Mr Harper think of you? Alas, I shall not be able to ask him as he has answered his country's call.' A pause while the pages of the sketch-book crackled. ‘Ever heard of Adrian Brouwer?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Dutchman. Lived in the seventeenth century. Died in Antwerp when not much more than thirty … The un-beautiul on canvas … One sees the best of him in Dresden and Munich … Tell me, who informed you that I had one shoulder lower than the other?'

‘No one, sir.'

‘Yet I wear a pad which makes it unnoticeable to outsiders. Or so I thought. A perceptive young man. It disturbs me to punish such diligence.'

I was there standing just behind Paul, but at this stage I might not have existed. There was a strange concentration between the boy and the man. I remember staring at the ink pots on the desk – there were six or seven of them – and wondering what Marshall did with them all. Different colours for different moods?