The Paper Chase (3 page)

At seven o’clock a Brooker-Timla supper was served. It proved to be a hot meal of vegetarian food, all of which seemed to have been passed through a mincer. Oddly enough, the mixture was quite palatable; or perhaps the Marsh winds had made Applegate hungry. Boys, girls and staff ate together in a large hall in the Victorian Gothic addition. Pont sat beaming at the head of the table, and Hedda at the bottom. The meal was eaten with fair decorum, but just as it finished Applegate saw the boy next to him give a vicious pinch to a girl who sat on his other side. The girl yelped and then punched the boy in the stomach. Crockery clattered on the table, a glass of water went over. The girl was Maureen Gardner, the boy was the gangling Derek.

Applegate waited expectantly. Pont said mildly: “What was the reason for that?”

“He pinched me.”

“She stole my knife.”

“It’s the kind of knife he’s not supposed to have. Look.” Maureen fumbled below her skirt and produced a short-handled knife with a long slender blade. “I found it in his locker.”

“Take the knife, Charles, will you?” Applegate took it rather gingerly, and put it in his pocket. The point was extremely sharp.

“He’s not supposed to have a sharp knife. He’s violent,” Maureen Gardner said, more to Applegate than to the others, who obviously did not regard this as news. Derek merely glared at her.

“He was not supposed to have it, nor you to take it,” said Pont imperturbably. “You did the right thing for the wrong reasons. Let’s say no more about it.”

“Can I have my knife back?” Derek held out a large, grimy hand to Applegate.

“No.”

“Why not? It belongs to me.”

“It’s a dangerous weapon.” Applegate felt slightly absurd.

The grimy hand was bunched into a fist. “Supposing I took it? I can fight, you know, and no Queensberry rules either.”

“I’ve been known to ignore them myself. But supposing you were able to take the knife away from me, what then? Everybody would know you’d taken it, and you’d just have to give it back again. Stupid.”

The boy made no reply to this argument. He stood up, picked up his plate and dropped it on the floor, where it broke into four pieces.

“You look intelligent,” Applegate said. “What made you do something so foolish? You’ll simply have to pay for the plate.”

“Liberty Hall,” the boy snarled as he walked away from the table. Applegate felt a ridiculous sense of triumph, which was slightly marred when he saw the smugness with which Maureen Gardner was eating her treacle sponge.

The sense of triumph revived, however, when he presented himself at half past eight and was congratulated by Pont. “An awkward little episode, although of the kind we must expect. I thought you handled it perfectly. Derek Winterbottom is a difficult case. He came here a year ago with a record of sadistic activity applied to animals and other children. He burnt another boy’s hand with a poker. It was hushed up – his father is an important Civil Servant. Had it reached the courts he might have gone to an approved school. They sent him to Bramley instead, and we are doing what we can for him, but I fear it may be too late. His character was set when he arrived, and I am afraid I may have to ask his parents to take him away.”

Pont looked genuinely distressed. They were talking in the square drawing-room of what appeared to be the Ponts’ separate suite upstairs. It contained an old sofa and three or four armchairs covered with various materials, apparently indiscriminately chosen. There were a few books and an electric fire. The room was shabby without being comfortable. There was no sign of Mrs Pont, or of coffee.

There was a perfunctory knock, and then suddenly two doors opened at the same time, at opposite ends of the room. Through one of them came Montague, red-faced and perky. Through the other there entered slowly a large shapeless woman with beautifully waved silver hair, who walked with a stick.

Pont sprang up from his chair. “Janine, my dear, how are you feeling?”

“I have had a headache, but it is better now.” With immense dignity she walked to one of the armchairs and sat down. It was an impressive entrance, and would have been more impressive still had not the chair springs creaked as she sat down.

“May I present my new assistants – Charles Applegate and Francis Montague. My wife has been more than a helpmeet, she has been an inspiration through the struggles of more than twenty years.” Pont spoke the lines like a ham actor. The change from his assured manner in talking of Derek Winterbottom was remarkable.

Applegate and Montague advanced, took the limp hand that was offered to them, and murmured something. Mrs Pont’s great flat white face was turned up to them, apparently almost unseeing. She said slowly: “I am pleased to meet you. Jeremy, if you will bring the machine over here I will make coffee.”

“Yes, my dear.” The machine turned out to be a Cona and while Mrs Pont, with immense deliberation, lit the flame beneath it, her husband talked rapidly and nervously. “When I say an inspiration, that is no more than the literal truth. Through my struggles as an educationist, and the way of the pioneer is hard, it is a thick jungle of ignorance that we attack with our machetes, Janine has supported me. She has done more than that, she has made positive and very real suggestions about the nature and scope of education. No doubt you have read my little volume,
Education in an Ideal Society.
I think I may say that it was a forward-looking work, in ideas if not in expression. The ideas were Janine’s, my task was merely to provide the clothing in which they were dressed. My dear – if you will excuse me…” He moved the methylated wick away from the bubbling coffee.

Mrs Pont, who had been staring straight ahead of her, said: “Will you take sugar and cream, Mr – ?”

“Applegate. Both, please.”

She put in sugar and cream with the same slow-motion deliberation. “Jeremy is too modest. He has many admirers who have written about him. Bring me the album, Jeremy. From the cupboard by the window.”

“My dear, please.” Pont’s cheeks were a little pinker than usual.

“I shall get it myself.” Applegate and Montague watched in awestruck silence as she levered herself up in the armchair like some great ship slowly raised from the sea bed. Before she had finally risen Pont, with a murmured inaudible word, had darted across the room. He returned with a large green volume. Mrs Pont sank back in the chair, took the book in her white hands and began to read.

There ensued one of the most embarrassing half-hours of Applegate’s life. The embarrassment came partly from the fact that she read badly, stumbling over words occasionally, and speaking with an almost total lack of expression. Partly he was embarrassed also by the nature of the material. There were many newspaper cuttings and a few letters. Most of the cuttings were ironical in tone, and perhaps half the letters had been written by people on the lunatic fringe of eccentricity.

“You will be interested to know that John shows a great talent for embroidery and that specimens of his work are to be entered in our local exhibition… Jennifer refuses to wear clothes even in bitter weather, she has such a
sense of freedom…
It is thanks to you that Lenore now identifies herself with un-Wordsworthian nature. Her book on fungoid and human growth is being published by…” This, or something like it, he had expected. The truly appalling thing was his sudden realisation that as she read on Mrs Pont was stumbling over words more frequently. He was thankful when she closed the album and gave it back to her husband.

“You see, Jeremy underestimates himself. His work is appreciated.” Applegate and Montague nodded like mandarins. “And now I must leave you. I feel my headache coming back. Pray don’t help me, Jeremy. I can manage perfectly well.”

The levering process went on again, but this time she rose completely from the chair. The silver curls shifted a little to one side as she did so.

“Janine,” Pont said despairingly.

“Perfectly well, thank you. We shall meet again, young men. I am always happy to greet disciples of the Master.” She turned and made her way slowly out of the room.

Applegate and Montague left soon afterwards. “If I know anything about anything the old girl was potted,” Montague said.

“Yes.”

“Lovely head of hair that. Do you suppose any of it was her own?”

“I don’t know.” Applegate felt suddenly depressed. Pupils and staff were housed in cubicles in the Gothic addition, pupils on the first floor, staff on the second. They reached Applegate’s cubicle. “I think I shall go to bed. Good night.”

“Mind if I come in for a minute, old boy?” Montague was in before Applegate could say that he did not mind. He looked round at the iron bedstead, washbasin, utility wardrobe, deal chair and desk and skimpy rug, and shivered. “Just like mine. They don’t spoil us with luxury, do they?”

“Plain living and high thinking,” Applegate said absently.

“Cold enough in this spring weather, like an ice-box in the winter. But perhaps we shan’t be here in the winter, eh?” Montague sat down on the bed.

“Why not?”

“You’ve got a job to do here, and so have I. That’s true, isn’t it? And when we’ve done it we go.”

Applegate sat on the chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? I suppose you’ll tell me next that you’re schoolmastering for the love of it. Let’s face it, chum, let’s have a little frankness. You and I only got jobs here because staff won’t stay with Pont, and he’ll take anybody. That’s why we
got
jobs, but why did we take them, eh? Do I look the type to spend my life in a crackpot school?”

“No,” Applegate said truthfully. Montague seemed to him like a Warren Street car salesman masquerading as a rugger tough.

“I’m being frank with you, but are you being frank with me? Hand on heart, old boy, scout’s honour, are you?”

Applegate began to feel annoyed. “I don’t see any reason why I should be frank with you, as you put it. What business is it of yours why I’m here?”

“Because your business is my business.”

“Is it? I very much doubt that.”

“Or put it this way, we’re both here on Johnny’s business, and we ought to join forces. Quarrelling won’t do any good. Let’s be frank. You know something I don’t know, or you wouldn’t be here. But two heads are better than one, and four hands are better than two. We’re sensible men. We can come to an arrangement. There’s enough in this for all of us.”

Applegate began to warm to the scene, which seemed intrinsically more mystifying than the lurid adventures of his dons. “You’re working on your own in this?”

“You know very well I’m not.”

“Supposing I don’t want to come to an arrangement.”

“That will be just too bad. But you will. Think it over, old boy. Co-operation’s a great thing.” Montague got up.

“Not between us, I think.” Applegate added politely: “I know you won’t believe me, but the fact is I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Applegate stepped on to the balcony outside his window, and noted idly that it ran right along this part of the house with no intervening railing, so that all the rooms opened on to it. Out here were odd night noises. A cow mooed somewhere nearby. The wind had dropped, but it was rawly cold. From his room a yellow shaft struck out into darkness. Farther along the balcony there was the spurt of a match. Then Hedda Pont’s voice said by his side: “Have you got a light? The match blew out.”

“In my room.” She followed him in and stood smiling by the window while he looked for the matches. Then she took his wrist and held it steady, still smiling, while he lighted the cigarette.

“Come along now,” Applegate said patiently. “Be your age. You’re acting as badly as a heroine in a British film.”

She let go. “Did you enjoy your coffee? And the conversation? Was Janine as usual?”

“I expect so.”

“There’s bound to be something wrong with anybody who runs a place like this. Janine’s a soak. Sometimes she’s better, sometimes worse, but on the whole, it gets worse. She stays in her room most days when it’s bad, but occasionally she breaks out. A few weeks ago she walked down a corridor naked, shrieking out something about throwing off the trammels of civilisation. Another night she came down to the kitchens and said it was a scandal that we used salt in the cooking. She’s been into a classroom before now, and taken over the teaching. She’s nice, Janine, but she’d wreck any school.”

“He’s devoted to her.”

She detached a piece of leaf from her cigarette, and looked at it critically. “She’s got the money, you know. But I don’t know what the hell makes me say that, or put it that way. He
is
devoted to her. Or he’s devoted to his nutty school, and she makes it possible for him to carry on. Don’t you think it’s nutty?”

“In some ways, yes.”

“I’m nutty too. But I come by it honestly. My father, Jeremy’s brother Jacob, is in the bin. Has been since I was sixteen. And my mother ran away with another man when I was quite small.
I
ran away with a man, too. That was what sent my father finally round the bend.” Applegate said nothing. “He was a boxer, used me as a punching bag. I left him and went to live with his best friend, then left him for a commercial artist named Piggy Lines. Do you know him? He’s rather good. Used to give tea parties – marihuana. Everybody got very high and had a good time with everybody else. And so on, and so on. Living around. You don’t want to hear about it all. Why am I telling you?”

“I wonder. Won’t you sit down?”

Hedda sat on the bed and stared at the wall. Applegate took the deal chair again. “Jeremy and Janine took me out of all that, though it was against their principles really. I was living a free life, wasn’t I? They fished me here out of the police court. It was all… Oh, silly. A party, that kind of thing, you know. I’ve been a prize convert. There shall be more joy in one delinquent converted than in ninety and nine – have I got it right? I can’t remember. I’ve done a job here as teacher and as matron, really I have. And I’m grateful to them both. But there’s something about it all that’s wrong. Can’t you smell it, how phony it all is?”

“Perhaps I can.”

She lay back on the bed. It creaked under her.

“Well. Here we are.”

“Here we are.”

“Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

“Not tonight. Since you’re kind enough to ask me. I’m not in the mood.”

She sat up. Her eyes, intensely blue, looked quite vacant. “I could make you be.”

“Not at the moment. Or at least I doubt it. You see, I’m not sure there isn’t something phony about you too. Have you ever heard of Johnny?”

“What do you mean, Johnny? Johnny who?”

“Montague was in here a few minutes before you. He talked what sounded to me like gibberish. He said we ought to be frank with each other and that we were both here on Johnny’s business. He said I knew something he didn’t know or I wouldn’t be here. Do you know what he was talking about?”

“No. Perhaps he’d been drinking.” Applegate shook his head. “I shouldn’t worry. Bramley air makes people say odd things. You can put me down in your good books as a woman scorned but not indignant. Good night.” She took Applegate’s hand. For a moment her nails, small and sharp, pressed his palm. Then she stepped out again on to the balcony and was gone.

Applegate shut the balcony door, noting without surprise that there was no key to lock it, or to lock the door of his bedroom. He undressed and got into the bed, which creaked again in protest against his presence on it. There was something wrong about the way he took off his clothes, but he could not be bothered to discover what it was.

He switched off the light, but sleep seemed a long way away. He brooded over the events of the day, which seemed to have, from his point of view, a rather discouraging absurdity about them. The success of
Where Dons Delight
had been based partly on the fact that the sturdy respectability of most dons gave wide play to his sense of fantasy. But how could one write fantastically about Pont, Janine, and matron Hedda? To record their words and actions would be fantasy enough. Perhaps he should have tried for normality, a job in a State school. But then, of course, he would never have got one. His thoughts turned to Montague. What had he meant by saying that they were both at the school on Johnny’s business? The lines of a poem came into his head:

O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,

You’d the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,

The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,

Every star rattled a round tambourine;

Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay;

But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

Montague frowned like thunder and Hedda went away, Jeremy burst asunder and Janine stood grand and grey. While Jove’s planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. You had to say Mont
ag
ue to make it scan, Applegate thought, and then the tenses were wrong… He fell asleep.