At a little after seven on a sunny morning in June, Arnold Tusker arrived at work. He gently guided his trusty Wolseley 6/110 up onto the apron by the rickety black back gates to the Masters’ Car Park and gave a toot on the horn. There was a clunk as Mr Cutting the caretaker lifted the bar at the back of the gates and swung them open touching the peak of his cap to Mr Tusker as he glided past and came to rest in the parking space marked Headmaster.
Cutting scuttled across to the Wolseley, opening the front door as Tusker turned off the ignition.
‘Morning Headmaster’ he said touching his cap again as Tusker unfolded himself from the front of the car. ‘Good morning to you Mr Cutting’ replied the Headmaster ‘we have a big day ahead of us, I trust everything is order’.
‘Yes indeed sir’ replied Cutting wiping his hands on the leather jerkin he was wearing over his boiler suit. He opened the back door of the Wolseley and reverentially took out a folded academic gown which was on the rear passenger seat. Tusker stood with his arms extended to the side while Cutting slipped the gown on to him. ‘Thank you Cutting’ he said with a nod of his head before purposefully striding off along the alleyway that led to the main playground between the science block, the woodwork room, and the gym.
Arnold Tusker was a tall birdlike man with an angular beaklike nose and thinning silver hair combed backwards from his high forehead. As he strode briskly across the playground towards the Masters’ Garden and then on towards the sanctuary of his study he resembled nothing so much as a giant heron stalking in search of prey. However, because of his surname he was known amongst the boys (and by many of the teachers too) almost universally as “Jumbo” although nobody would ever dare call him that to his face.
Not that many of the boys ever got the chance to address Mr Tusker at all. He preferred to remain an aloof figure and rarely left his study other than for ceremonial purposes. When he had first joined the school he had taught the occasional class for A Level English Literature but for some years now he had managed to reduce this commitment to merely tutoring those boys who were taking Oxbridge entrance exams for English. He would appear each morning on stage in the main hall to lead the morning prayers in assembly and he made welcoming speeches at open days and at the annual prize giving but other than that his only other interaction with the students were his Life Chats to the upper sixth.
No one, possibly not even Jumbo, were exactly sure what the purpose of the Life Chats were, but they had become something of a rite of passage for the students. During the course of their last year at school the boys were invited, six at a time, to take tea and biscuits with the Headmaster in his study. The boys would be ushered into the otherwise inaccessible inner sanctum where they would sit in a semi-circle facing Mr Tusker who would pontificate on whatever took his fancy whilst puffing on a string of Senior Service and working his way through a very large tumbler of Johnny Walker Red Label.
Opinion on how useful these sessions were was divided. This was partly because the sessions were extremely variable in quality and partly because the boys themselves had very varying attitudes towards them. Some would spend the whole half hour quietly terrified in case they committed some hitherto unsuspected faux pas and acutely aware of the slight tinkling noise produced by their spoon and bone china cup and saucer as their leg trembled. Others would spend the time trying to suppress a fit of the giggles and desperately trying to avoid catching the eye of any of their peers in case they set each other off. A third group would sit rapt with attention drinking in every word that Tusker had to throw at them, they would emerge blinking into the sunlight to recount his wise words and confirm to each other that what old had to say Jumbo was bloody deep regardless of whether it had made any sense.
And to be fair, what Jumbo had to say was sometimes extremely erudite. If you got him on form, he would have some very useful life lessons to impart or at least some very interesting tales from his younger days to recount. On the other hand, get him on one of his off days and he might ramble on for the full thirty minutes on the subject of rawlplugs or pre-war omnibus tickets. On one occasion Jumbo had welcomed a group of boys into his study but as he took his seat his eye caught the laurel bush outside the window. It had been a warm summer day but there had been some sharp showers in the morning and there were little water droplets on the waxy green leaves. The combination of sunlight, water and lush green foliage set Jumbo to thinking about his time laying railway track in the Tenaserrim Hills and he spent the rest of the session staring at the leaves as tears silently rolled down his cheeks. The boys sat quietly staring into their teacups until the bell rang and they were able to tiptoe out of the room. None of them were quite sure what they had witnessed or why but they all agreed that nobody else needed to know about it.
When Mr Tusker reached the main building on this morning it was very quiet. Jumbo liked the school best when it was like this. He liked to roam the corridors early in the morning and take in the smell of the furniture and fittings and soak up the atmosphere which he felt was saturated into the walls. He walked through the main hall looking up at the high vaulted ceiling with its heraldic bosses and scarlet panelling and casting an eye over the various boards listing prize winners, captains and scholarship winners dating back for hundreds of years. His own name appeared on the boards three times, as captain of cricket and winner of Lady Cordwainer’s Prize for English Literature in 1935 and as Headmaster from 1964.
Exiting the main hall he took the covered way around the Refectory then passed into the corridor that ran past the secretary’s office with its cabinets of school trophies and memorabilia before finally crossing a lobby and entering his own study. Once inside he bolted the door behind him, opened the left hand door on his large Chesterfield desk and took out his whisky and cigarettes pouring himself his first stiff measure of the day and inhaling deeply on the tobacco.
Leaning forward he pulled yesterday’s leaf from his desk calendar and sat contemplating today’s page upon which he had scribbled “Founder’s Day” nearly a year ago when it had still been a comfortably long way ahead. He exhaled a long plume of bluish smoke with a sigh and told himself that it would all be over in a few hours for another year and he could go back to his normal quiet life where, like a constitutional monarch, he relinquished all roles and responsibilities to his underlings. Of these the two most important were Mr Hartley the Deputy Head and Mr Brush the Head of Lower School, two characters who could not have been more different. Jumbo spent a moment or two thinking about them.
Roger Hartley was urbane, intellectual and universally popular with pupils, parents and staff alike. He was responsible for organising the timetable and for overseeing most administrative and pastoral functions of the school. The nerve centre of his operations was a small office in a converted anti-aircraft bunker in the school grounds. Behind a four inch thick steel door, the concrete walls of the bunker were covered in a mass of charts each of which in turn were plastered with a bewildering array of coloured stickers representing the various teachers, subjects, classes and classrooms. Mr Hartley also acted as the school’s bursar, oversaw the annual drama festival and provided the other masters with the funds and encouragement to run a whole host of school trips and extra-curricular activities. Roger was the sort of person you didn’t necessarily notice until he wasn’t there anymore. Quietly efficient and self-effacing, sooner or later he would be lured away to bigger and better things. Jumbo was dreading that day and wondering if Roger might be persuaded to stay another ten years on the understanding that he was his chosen successor but knowing in his heart of hearts that it wasn’t to be.
Wilberforce Brush on the other hand was disliked and feared by the majority of the boys and a significant number of the masters. He was a large man with a Stalinesque moustache and a hairline that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Vlad The Impaler. He also had a severely mangled right hand which was missing half a thumb and half of his first two fingers. Many stories circulated between the boys concerning how the injury had occurred although Mr Brush had never allowed himself to be drawn on it other than indicating that it was some kind of war wound related to the Normandy Landings. He liked to think of himself as a man’s man, although most other people thought of him as a swaggering bully. Brush had three main passions in life.
One was impressionist art, which was fair enough as he was employed as an art teacher although his intolerance of almost every other art form apart from impressionism was something of a drawback. More than one promising young artist had produced very good work in the style of the old masters only to receive a clip round the ear and the comment ‘If I want something that looks realistic I’ll take a damn photograph, what you have produced is not art!!’ followed by a second clip round the ear.
His other two passions, which he took far more seriously than art, were Rugby Union and winning. He was at his happiest when he could combine the two. His ambition was to build the strongest school team in the country and he had kicked off a number of initiatives to help realise this.
Firstly, in his position as Head of the Lower School he was responsible for deciding which applicants were successful in gaining a place at the school. Taking inspiration from the methods which were working so well for the East German Olympic team Mr Brush was always on the lookout for boys who either had some previous exposure to rugby or who looked as if they were going to be good physical specimens. Technically, the school was a grammar and a series of academic and intelligence tests had to be passed before a candidate could be considered for admittance. However, Mr Brush was known to be very sympathetic to appeals from the parents of failed candidates as long as the child was well above average height for his age. As Head of the Lower School Mr Brush was also responsible for allocating each new boy to a house and by a strange quirk of fate his own house had won every inter-house rugby competition in every age group for the last seventeen years.
Secondly, he realised the importance of having a good coaching staff. He had managed to secure the services of three ex-England internationals Cliff Seaford, Dave East and Ron Candlemas as Physical Education teachers and over a number of years had managed to ensure that no less than eight of the teachers in other subjects had played rugby internationally either at full or schoolboy level.
Thirdly, to ensure that the boys’ minds were properly focussed on rugby union, all other forms of winter ball game were banned. Hockey was discontinued for being effeminate and association football was branded as being a game fit only for yobs and hooligans. Indeed the very word football was to be understood as only to apply to rugby football and if the other type of football had to be mentioned it had to be referred to as soccer. Mr Brush was also able, via his extensive contacts at the RFU, to obtain for the school library a large collection of rugby related books. He was not at all amused when some with managed to deface a copy of “Rugger: A Man’s Game” and change the title to read “Buggery: A Man’s Game”
Finally, some of the boys that Mr Brush let in to the school on appeal failed to gain the necessary five O Levels that were required for entry to the sixth form. Mr Brush was able to introduce a scheme whereby these boys were able to stay on at school and repeat the fifth form until such time as they did achieve the required grades. Naturally while they were doing this they were entitled to play for the school team and there was no actual stated age limit for the first and second fifteens. The authorities that organised school rugby tournaments assumed that most pupils would leave at 18 but some of Mr Brush’s boys were still turning out for the school well into their twenties.
It occurred to Jumbo as he finished his scotch that Brush was far more likely to harbour ambitions for the Headmaster’s chair than Hartley. Apart from anything else, Brush was unsuitable for employment anywhere else but had sufficient weight and bluster with the governors to be able to bully his way into the post. Jumbo didn’t find this an attractive proposition at all as he had already had to arbitrate between Mr Hartley and Mr Brush when the latter had tried to pressure pupils into missing important exams in order to be able to go on a rugby tour. ‘He’ll have this job over my dead body’ thought Jumbo with a shudder as he realised that it was a distinct possibility.
There was a knock at the door. Tusker considered being very quiet and hoping they’d go away but then hauled himself up and ambled across to the door unlocking and opening it. Outside was a man of about fifty wearing army battledress with a captain’s pips on his shoulder. ‘Good morning Headmaster’ he said removing his beret.
‘Good morning Cedric’ answered Tusker ‘what can I do for you?’
Cedric Vermeer was head of the History Department as well as commanding officer of the school’s Combined Cadet Force. He was known to the boys as Walnut, not only because his surname sounded a bit like veneer but because his face looked a bit like a walnut too both in terms of texture and colouring. He also had an unfortunate speech impediment in that he tended to pronounce the letter r as a w. This worked strangely to his advantage as he gave a great deal of thought to coming up with useful phrases which his speech impediment would make more memorable for the boys. Thus even boys who were not very engaged with history as a subject were able to remember that ‘Bribery and corruption were extremely rife in eighteenth century Europe’.
Cedric explained that he just wanted to go over the final arrangements for the Guard of Honour and inspection for today’s ceremonies and to tell the Headmaster that he had found some blank 303 ammunition in the stores and was wondering whether a twenty-one gun salute might be a nice touch.
‘Oh no Cedric, that is to say it’s a wonderful idea in principle but there are good reasons why we can’t have it today’ said Jumbo holding up his hands in what he hoped was a conciliatory manner. ‘I think we would need to have notified the police in advance if we were intended to fire guns other than in the indoor range’ he continued ‘we wouldn’t want to cause public alarm. What if the townsfolk thought it were the IRA?’
Walnut chewed his lip and looked doubtful ‘Surely their style is more about blowing up pubs and dustbins Headmaster’ he ventured.
‘A rampage with guns is not out of the question’ answered the Head ‘if not by the Irish then by Palestinians or mad German Trotskyists, one never knows. Anyway, I thought that all the 303s we have were deactivated and for drill purposes only. Surely only the 22s actually fire?’
‘Ah, I must confess that you may be right Headmaster’ replied Walnut. ‘I do leave all those kind of practicalities to Mr George and Mr Moran. We’ll just make do with an ordinary present arms as we have done in the past then. I’m sure the boys will do us proud. Thank you.’ He opened the door to leave and on his way out held the door open for the Headmaster’s secretary Mrs Crippen who was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a bundle of papers in the other. She placed both on Jumbo’s desk and beat a hasty retreat back to her own office.
Jumbo lit another cigarette, poured a drop of whisky into his coffee and started to leaf through the papers the topmost of which was the programme of events for the day. He looked glumly down at the heading which read;
Merkiners’ Archdeacon’s Dunford Boys’ School – Celebrations for Founder’s Day – Friday June 23rd 1972.
The name of the school, and the correct positions of the apostrophes therein had been a source of much confusion, both for townspeople and pupils, for over three hundred years. Some assumed it alluded to an Archdeacon Dunford or at least an Archdeacon of Dunford while others assumed it referred to the school being in Dunford and that the Archdeaconry was some kind of a rank within Merkinry, although few knew (and even fewer confessed to knowing) exactly what a Merkiner might be.
In fact the school had been founded by Troilus Archdeacon who in 1674 had been Master of The Worshipful Company of Merkiners, a London Livery Company. The company had been founded in 1617 as a trade association for the makers of pubic wigs but the Puritanical attitude of the authorities during the Interregnum had meant that they had not prospered for a large part of the mid seventeenth century. The Restoration had greatly changed their fortunes especially when it became known that their clientele included John Wilmot the rakish Earl of Rochester, the Duchess of Portsmouth and Nell Gwyn. By the mid 1670s they were prosperous enough to emulate other great livery companies such as the Merchant Taylors, Skinners and Haberdashers and endow their own school. However, the available funds were not quite enough to build a school within London or its environs and the decision was made that the school would initially be founded elsewhere and moved to the capital when circumstances allowed. As it happened the end of the Stuarts and the advent of the Hanoverians was to herald rather more sombre times and a long slow decline in the demand for merkins. There never had been enough money to move to London, but London’s loss had been Dunford’s gain.
Troilus Archdeacon himself was a Londoner but his grandfather was a Dunford man and Troilus successfully lobbied the company that the town would greatly benefit from a school for “Orphaned poore boyes and the sonnes of diverse honest yeomen of the parishe”, he neglected to mention that the plot of land he intended to purchase for the building of the school still belonged to him and over the course of protracted negotiations was able to beat himself down to only three times the actual market value. In recognition of this selfless act the school was to bear his name as well as the company’s and a statue of Troilus was erected in front of the school. The statue showed Troilus Archdeacon as a slightly portly balding man in middle age dressed as a Roman soldier with a crown of laurel on his head. His arms were held out slightly to each side one clutching a scroll to represent the baton of knowledge being passed forward, the other clutching a small limp object in tribute to the source of the school’s funds. During Victorian times the nature of the object in Troilus’ left hand became a source of much embarrassment and the Headmaster of the time the Reverend Ondon Park, a high Anglican vicar who later defected to the Catholics and was posthumously canonised[1], came up with the story that Mr Archdeacon had actually found a large quantity of ancient gold coins hidden in a bird’s nest in his hedge and had used this money to build the school. Reverend Park explained that the object in Archdeacon’s hand was actually the nest.
Every year on the penultimate Friday in June the Master Merkiner plus the Aldermen of the Worshipful Company and the governors of the school would meet the Headmaster for a tour of the premises followed by a procession to St Athelfrigge’s church and a service of thanksgiving. Afterwards there would be a formal late luncheon for the visitors and masters.
For the pupils Founder’s Day was to begin like any other with a uniform check and registration at a quarter to nine followed by the first period on the hour. From ten to twelve each class had been allocated a special activity which they would repeat over and over for the next two hours so that at whatever time the Headmaster’s tour arrived they would always have some highlight to demonstrate. In addition to the normal academic lessons there were also displays by some of the most talented sportsmen and musicians as well as by some of the specialist clubs and societies.
By half past eight, all of the masters and most of the boys had arrived at school. The teachers were mainly up in the staff room drinking tea or coffee and discussing the day ahead whilst most of the pupils were milling about in the playground where roughly five hundred of them were engaged in around about twenty distinct football matches in the same space. The larger boys rampaged through the throng scattering skinny first and second years before them in their pursuit of a goal. One or two of the more sadistic ones ignored the competitive side of the game altogether and just concentrated on kicking the ball at younger kids as hard as they could.
Next to the room in the bunker occupied by Mr Hartley were a number of other similarly reinforced rooms of varying sizes which were divided between the Combined Cadet Force and the Music Department. Both areas were a hive of activity on this morning with the school orchestra being put through its paces in preparation for the service later in the day and the CCF making preparations for mounting the guard and putting on various displays of military prowess.
The boys selected to form the guard of honour had been gathered in the quartermaster’s stores to change into their battledress uniforms. The uniforms themselves were of a pattern which dated back to the second world war, with uncomfortable serge trousers with very stiff button flies and shirts with detachable collars. The boys jostled around in the stores, which were crammed with all manner of military and camping equipment, much of it antique, breathing in the unique smell of cordite, gunpowder, brass and old canvas which hung so thick in the subterranean room that they almost fancied it might become visible as a kind of air force blue smoke. Some of the boys were busy giving boots a last polish while other were engaged in the struggle to get Blanco onto belts and gaiters without ruining the shine on brass buckles and clasps or to get Brasso onto metalwork without it spilling on to their webbing. Other boys were struggling under the weight of an enormous Boer War bell tent which they were planning to take out an erect in the grounds for a camping display.
At length the boys for the camping display were led over to the lawns by Mr Moran. They were followed by Mr George and two more of the boys, Danny Vanner and Mark Collins, who had been chosen as the best two boys at stripping and reassembling a Bren Gun in the dark. Both boys were going to go through their paces for the benefit of the visitors while blindfolded and each was now carrying their Bren Gun out to a pair of trestle tables they had set up earlier for the purpose. Collins was a strapping sixth former who was nearly six feet six inches tall and he carried his weapon with ease. Danny Vanner on the other hand was a slight fourteen year old who was grateful that he only had to carry the gun for a hundred yards or so.
Back in the storeroom, Walnut called for the guard of honour to form up outside for a final inspection and run through of the drill. He handed each boy a rifle and they filed out, blinking in the bright sunlight as they emerged from the dimly lit storeroom. There was a metallic bang as the door clanged shut behind them.
Now there was only one boy left inside the Quartermaster’s store. A tubby dishevelled looking youth with permanent ink stains on his fingers who had been leaning against a pile of folded up uniforms in the corner. Barry Hargreaves was a member of the corps but being of what Walnut described as an unsoldierly demeanour it had been deemed best that he remain with his classmates today in fourth year German. Thus he was in normal school clothes. He had only wandered in to the stores because he had walked into school with Danny Vanner who was his next door neighbour, their fathers’ shops being next door to each other. Left to his own devices in the storeroom Barry was in his element. He poked and prodded around on the shelves examining the items that were stored there and making a mental inventory of them. Barry’s dad was a greengrocer, but Barry had little or no enthusiasm for fruit and vegetables, he dreamed of opening an army surplus store when he was older.
As he peered at the shelves through his thick round spectacles some smallish objects scattered on top of one of the many metal cupboards in the room caught his eye. It was the quantity of 303 blanks that Walnut had discovered earlier. Barry thought that it was both careless and dangerous for ammunition to be out in the open and he looked around for an old ammo box to put them in but the only boxes in the room were for smaller 22 shells and were either full of unused bullets for the rifle range or of spent shell cases waiting to be collected by the army. What he did find was an empty magazine and, reasoning that the blanks would be safer in one place, he carefully pushed them in to it one at a time. He had just finished when the bell rang to call everyone for uniform check and registration and he placed the magazine carefully back on top of the cupboard where he had found it before hurrying off to the playground to join his class.
In the playground the boys of the first five years were forming up as they did on every morning if it wasn’t raining. The playground sloped down from the science block at the top end with the gym on the left and the masters’ garden on the right. The bottom edge was bounded by the tennis court and the lawn where the bell tent was being set up. Each year within the school was composed of ninety boys split into three classes of thirty. They were now grouped with the fifth formers nearest the science block and the first years nearest the lawn with each class standing in two neat parallel lines. For every class two sixth formers acted as prefects, one of whom was holding a clipboard with the class register. The names of the boys were called off and their presence or absence duly noted. The prefects walked up and down each line inspecting the younger boys to make sure their uniforms were up to scratch. This included barking the order ‘Socks’ at which all the boys had to pull their trousers up from just above the knee so that the prefects could check that they were all wearing charcoal grey socks, followed by the order ‘Cuffs’ at which the boys had to bring their hands up towards their shoulders so that the prefects could be sure that they were in possession of the correct number of crested gold cuff buttons. The names of any malefactors were noted down and they were expected to address any shortcomings by the following day. Those members of the Lower School who failed to do this were hauled up before Mr Brush which was a terrifying enough prospect to ensure that there were few repeat offenders. In the Upper School offenders were brought before Mr Hartley who had a rather more laissez faire attitude towards uniform which had resulted in the appearance of flared trousers and platform soles for the more daring and fashion conscious members of the fourth and fifth forms some of whom also sported haircuts which Mr Brush certainly would not have tolerated. At nine o’clock another bell sounded, and the boys scurried off to their first classes of the day.
By ten to ten the local governors had all arrived and were standing amiably chatting among themselves amid the trophies outside the secretary’s office. Mrs Crippen and her assistant Jane Finch flitted around them offering tea and sandwiches. Jumbo had emerged from his office and was meeting and greeting them with a cheery smile managing to remember a fair number of their names and bluffing very convincingly when he didn’t. When the ten o’clock bell rang, he called for their attention and asked them to follow him out to the front of the school leading them through a set of double doors into a small lobby and thence out through a further pair of doors to stand facing the statue of Troilus Archdeacon. On queue Captain Vermeer and his squad of twenty cadets appeared marching smartly around the corner and came to a halt between the statue and the front gate. The cadets with rifles formed two lines facing inwards across the path with Walnut and the senior cadet and the end nearest the gate each wearing a pair of white gloves and holding a sword. The cadets looked very smart although some of the governors privately thought that they had rather too much hair poking out from under their berets. Jumbo made his way down to the gate and stood outside waiting on the pavement. Glancing down towards the corner he noticed Mr Cutting loitering under a plane tree. When he saw him, Cutting stubbed his cigarette out on the tree trunk and waving a hand in Jumbo’s direction disappeared around the corner. A moment later a pair of elderly but very shiny black Bentleys emerged from Milksop Street and pulled up by the gate. Chauffeurs emerged from both cars and shuffled around to the pavement side of the vehicles opening the rear doors and saluting as the passengers disembarked.
The first car was occupied by the Honourable Master of The Worshipful Company of Merkiners, Lord Gassman of Finchley and his wife Lady Melody. Lord Gassman was a shortish sallow skinned man in his early thirties who resembled a genial toad. He looked slightly comical in his ostentatious golden chain of office, tricorn hat and scarlet cloak trimmed with beaver. Lady Melody was about ten years younger than her husband and about ten inches taller. She was very fair skinned and very blonde and was wearing a fashionable dress in the same shade of red as her husband’s robe the shortness of which caused an audible gasp among some of the boys in the guard as she swung her legs round to disembark.
It was Lord Gassman’s first year as Master and Jumbo found himself wondering what the new man would be like. His predecessor, an octogenarian Welshman by the name of Lord Gruffydd Wyn Ogwen of Criccieth, had been in the role for over fifty years and had tended to dodder through it on autopilot in his later years, Jumbo hoped Lord Gassman would find the right balance between showing enthusiasm for what the boys were doing without questioning the school’s methods too much.
Jumbo stepped forward to meet his lordship and offered his hand. ‘Good morning my lord, may I extend a heartfelt welcome to you and your lady wife’ he said. Gassman beamed and clasped the offered hand in and two handed grip enthusiastically pumping the Headmaster’s hand up and down.
‘Delighted Headmaster’ he replied in a nasal North London twang ‘may I say what an honour and a privilege it is to be here. Isn’t it Melody?’ he asked over his shoulder. Lady Melody nodded and demurely held out her hand for Mr Tusker to shake.
Vince Gassman was not only in his first year in the role of Honourable Master, he was also in his first year as the second Baronet Gassman, his father Solly having passed away in the Autumn having choked on a prawn canapé at a Masonic reception.
Solly’s early career had been colourful involving a number of stays at his majesty’s pleasure in a number of institutions for a wide variety of offences, not only in England but in Canada and South Africa as well. The turning point for the Gassman’s had been the war. Several of Solly’s cousins in Germany and Austria had disappeared without trace in the run up to 1939 and several more were subsequently rounded up in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Solly resolved to bring the full weight of his business empire to bear in the fight against the Nazis. He used his black market contacts to supply the government with things they were finding difficult to obtain through normal channels and he put the girls who worked in his many brothels wholeheartedly into the twin tasks of keeping up the morale of key personnel and keeping their ears open for any information that would root out fifth columnists. When the end of the war came he was duly rewarded with a peerage on the understanding that in peacetime he would be expected to clean up his act and become rather less disreputable.
Vince had been largely kept in ignorance of the seedy side of the family business. His uncle Lionel had come into the business after it turned legit and had helped Solly build up a fairly impressive property portfolio. They bought up city centre bombsites and built shopping centres and car parks and became very astute at handling local politicians. As for Vince, he had little interest in this and eventually Solly had despaired of him and set him up as the manager of a caravan park in the south of France where he had spent the last few years in a carefree existence which suited his laid back and affable personality.
It was while running the campsite that Vince had met Melody or rather had discovered her unconscious in the toilet block one morning. The granddaughter of an Earl, Melody had been seduced away from her exclusive Swiss finishing school by an Italian conman called Fabio who claimed to be a relative of the Duke of Aosta. Fabio introduced her to marijuana and cocaine and whisked her away to the Mediterranean where for six weeks he wined and dined her and treated her to the best hotels and a considerable quantity of drugs all at her expense. Fabio explained that the wicked Italian Republic had sequestered his family’s funds but that a court case was pending which at any moment would restore their former wealth. In the meantime he would regrettably need a subsidy to tide the couple over until such time as they could marry.
When Melody refused to return home her father cut off her allowance and when he found out, Fabio savagely beat her leaving her abandoned and pregnant at a roadside in the Camargue. Melody had wandered into a campsite near Palavas Les Flots and had tried to kill herself with the last of her coke and a bottle of Pernod. She’d woken up with a monster headache and a man that looked like a frog looking down on her and shouting for somebody to fetch a doctor. He’d looked after her and never asked any questions and after a couple of months when she asked him for advice about keeping the baby or giving it up for adoption he told her that he would very much like to keep them both.
When Solly died, Vince returned to England and met with Uncle Lionel to discuss the future. Lionel was a straight laced man compared to Solly and had never approved of his younger brother’s early business activities, but he loved him dearly and had been pleased to see him back on to the straight and narrow. With no children of his own he was equally fond of Vince but could see that Vince might not be necessarily cut out for the property business.
Lionel advised Vince that he should use his seat in the House of Lords and forge a career for himself in politics. ‘You’re good with people boy’ he said ‘and you have an advantage over other politicians in that you won’t ever lose your seat. At the very least you have expenses for life, just for turning up. Make the odd speech and you’ll have companies falling over themselves to get you on the board.’
He went on to advise Vince of other ways of raising his profile, one of which was to do good works. Lionel pointed out that when you were a Lord doing good works consisted less of donating money or going out and picking up litter or looking after incontinent old people and was more to do with opening fetes and eating formal dinners. ‘You know it makes sense’ he said handing Vince a newspaper which mentioned that a London Livery Company were on the lookout for a new figurehead.
After Lord and Lady Gassman had shaken hands with the Headmaster they all turned to face the second car. This contained the Warden and Deputy Warden of the Merkiners both of whom wore blue robes trimmed with beaver and both wearing Tudor style skullcaps and carried long wooden staffs topped with silver company crests. They bowed to Lord and Lady Gassman and were greeted by the Headmaster who knew them both well from their roles as governors, and indeed fellow old boys, of the school.
‘Good to see you Arnold’ said the Warden Colonel Archdeacon warmly shaking Jumbo’s hand ‘I trust you are in rude health.’
‘As good as can be expected Colonel’ he nodded in reply ‘Doctor Cowche, a pleasure to see you’ he added turning to shake the Deputy Warden’s hand. Dr Cowche gave him a wan smile, his watery eyes making him look like he was on the verge of tears. ‘Always a pleasure dear boy’ he croaked.
Colonel Archdeacon and Dr Cowche were lifelong friends having both come to the school aged eleven back in 1923. They had gone on to read medicine together at Guy’s after which Archdeacon and gone into the Royal Army Medical Corps and Cowche into the Colonial Service before he too had eventually ended up in the RAMC for the remainder of the Second World War. After the war they had set up practice together in Harley Street where they specialised in treating the ailments of ladies of a certain age.
The colonel was a distant relation of Troilus Archdeacon and this had been a factor in his becoming Warden of the company. He had been in the role for nearly twenty years and was known to be an efficient organiser. He had a great sentimental attachment to both the school and the company and worked tirelessly for both. In his younger days he had been talented athlete and had been selected to represent Great Britain at the four hundred metres hurdles in the 1936 Olympic although he had refused to go because he thought Hitler was a cad. He was devoted to his wife Augusta, a lady with a startling resemblance to the late Queen Mary, and to their three cairn terriers Wilson, Keppel and Betty.
Although he was the same age as Colonel Archdeacon, Dr Cowche looked a good deal older, partly because he had never shared Archdeacon’s passion for sport and partly because during his time in the Colonial Service he had contracted an impressive array of tropical diseases many of which still had a debilitating effect on his health. He lived quietly in a small flat in Marylebone where he indulged in his one and only hobby of bookbinding. He had never married having been passionately and devoted in love with Archdeacon since they were thirteen, something to which the Colonel was still totally oblivious.
With the group on the pavement now complete, Jumbo asked them to follow him into the school for the tour of inspection. They formed up with Jumbo at the front, Lord and Lady Gassman in the middle and the two doctors at the rear.
As they entered the gate Mick Hawkes, the senior cadet, bellowed ‘Present Arms’ and there was a crunch of hobnail boots on gravel accompanied by the rattle of rifles being swung round in front of the guard. On hearing the command Jumbo had instinctively slowed his pace just a fraction which proved to be just as well as the ostentatious flourish of the sabres by Walnut Vermeer and the senior cadet seemed to flash uncomfortably close to his face.
They passed between the ranks of cadets, Lord Gassman beaming at the boys and exclaiming ‘Splendid stuff! Very impressive! Well done lads!’ and Colonel Archdeacon following on with a rather more restrained ‘Good show boys.’ As they passed beyond the cadets the other governors joined the procession behind them and they followed the Headmaster on into the main hall.
The first stop on the tour was to see a drama class in action on the main stage. Mr Budinauckas was trying to get a group of second tear boys to act out a love scene from a Shakespeare play. He was having a hard time, Dave Cleland, the boy chosen to read the female part was proving to be somewhat unsuited for the task, partly because he had one of the few voices in the class that had actually broken and partly because he insisted on delivering his lines in a flat monotone. For his own part, Dave was not at all happy that he’d been given a girl’s part and even less happy that Mr Budinauckas’ girlfriend Olga, who often came in to work as his unpaid assistant, had decided it would help Dave get in touch with his feminine side if he wore a dress and a wig. He was feeling particularly foolish and itchy in a hideous orange nylon outfit which Robin Denslow’s mother had donated to the school costume basket.
‘But it’s out of period miss’ he protested in the direction of Olga who he could only dimly make out through the haze of smoke from the Turkish herbal cigarette she was smoking. ‘The period is not important, it is the sex that is important, always the sex’ she replied in her gravelly German accent. Olga was doing a PhD in English at Oxford but spent most of her time in Mr Budinauckas’ flat. Before she’d escaped from East Germany she had been a javelin thrower and she had a very well developed upper torso. This, combined with her distain for brassieres, made her an object of both fascination and fear for many of the boys.
Shakespeare had not been Mr Budinauckas’ choice. He would have preferred Brecht or Kafka or even Robert Bolt. ‘Something in modern English would be easier for the boys to interpret’ he had put to the Head of English Mr Crowley who had replied that traditional English occasions called for traditional English literature. When Mr Budinauckas suggested the York Mystery plays he was told to stop being facetious.
On the whole, Mr Budinauckas was popular with the boys. In his mid-twenties he was seen as the epitome of cool with his leather jackets and longish blonde hair. He looked as if he had stepped out of an advert for eau de cologne and he endeared himself to his pupils by treating them all like adults. After university he had initially come to Dunford to become a monk at the Jesuit monastery but he had left to become a teacher before taking his final vows. As he explained to anyone who asked him ‘Like Marlowe before me, I am catholic in temperament but alas too fond of taverns and wenches to prosper within the bosom of the Holy Mother Church.’
On this morning Dave had started his opening speech a number of times and every time either Mr Budinauckas or Olga had stopped him asking him to start again but to try next time to deliver the speech with a little more expression and passion. When he was asked to try again for the fifth time, Dave droned on again in the same dull metallic robot voice the teacher finally lost patience and held up his hand.
‘Okay Cleland I’m going to stop you there. Let’s put the reading on hold for a moment, I’d like us all to gather round and we’ll do a little exercise to make us think about feeling and expressing ourselves. We’ll start with something that’s all about body language and facial expression and we’re going to improvise, you won’t even have to talk for this one.’ Budinauckas walked over to the side of the hall and returned with a fire bucket which he placed in the middle of the semicircle.
‘Now then’ he continued ‘I want each of you to walk over to the bucket and put your hands in it, imagine that you’re putting your hands in whatever is in the bucket right up to the wrists then return to your places.’
The boys all shuffled over to the bucket and took turns to put their hands in while Mr Budinauckas and Olga watched intently. They did not notice Jumbo and his entourage enter the hall behind them.
‘Now’ said Mr Budinauckas with relish ‘I want you to imagine that the bucket was full of shit. Really smelly clingy liquid shit from the worse dose of the squits you can imagine.’ The boys responded with gasps and looks of horror on their faces, mainly because they could see the array of dignitaries lined up behind Mr Budinauckas and Olga, who oblivious to the visitors behind them were extremely impressed with the animation the boys were now showing. Olga gave a smile of encouragement and Mr Budinauckas moved on to the next stage of his exercise.
‘So boys, your hands are all covered in poo, what are you going to do?’
One or two boys responded by rubbing their hands on their trousers or their blazers. Mr Budinauckas pointed at one ‘Jarvis, now you’ve got shit all over your clothes’ he turned towards another boy who was scratching his ear ‘Hetherington, you got it in your hair.’ Another boy sneezed and wiped his nose with a handkerchief ‘Ryan, you’ve got it on your hankie and up your nose.’
One or two of the boys hit on the idea of wiping the imaginary excrement off on a classmate. Soon they were chasing each other round shrieking with the excitement of rubbing something unpleasant into each other’s faces or with the fear of falling victim to a phantom poo attack.
Jumbo was staring gloomily at his shoes and wondering whether to attempt a polite cough to alert Mr Budinauckas to his presence and bring things back under control. One or two of the governors looked visibly shocked although some of them looked on the verge of laughter.
‘Bravo! Excellent! Innovative! I wish we’d have had something like this when I was at school’ suddenly Lord Gassman was clapping and hopping from one foot to the other with excitement, his face breaking into an enormous toothy grin. The other members of the party followed his lead by breaking into a polite ripple of applause.
‘Well yes, um very good’ said Jumbo ‘but we must move on, lots to see, lots to see. Follow me please my lord, ladies and gentlemen.’ He led his procession on across the hall and into one of the classrooms. As he passed the blushing Mr Budinauckas he whispered ‘You might want to come and see me in my office on Monday morning.’
The other members of the Head’s party followed on. Mr Hartley told Mr Budinauckas not to worry, no harm done it would all be forgotten over the weekend before hurrying after them. Mr Budinauckas was just about to heave a sigh of relief when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find a red faced Mr Brush right up in his face.
‘Obscene, depraved and degenerate’ he hissed ‘and why is that boy in a dress? Are you trying to turn them all into simpering nancy boys? The sooner you and your Bosch harlot there are removed from this school the better.’ With that he stomped off in pursuit of the others.
Budinauckas was too taken aback to respond but Olga was very angry.
‘Mr Brush’ she called after him ‘Ist dein Schwanz winzigen? Sind Sie deshalb so wütend sind?’ Brush scowled back at her, he was sure it was rude but hadn’t got a clue what it meant. He shut the door firmly behind him as Jarvis who had an Austrian mum explained to the other boys exactly what she had said.
‘That’s why he always wants to win at sports’ observed Hetherington ‘because he’s winzigen.’
Mr Brush was less than thrilled to find on catching up with the others that the next item on the tour was Herr Doktor Schiller’s German class. Schiller was the longest serving member of staff having been at the school since 1926 when he had fled his native Potsdam when his Spartacist past had caught up with him.
Schiller had lived a quiet non-political life in Dunford except during the war, when he had been briefly interned before being recruited into British Intelligence as a translator. He had proved particularly valuable when he discovered transmissions from a spy ring that was passing information by using mistakes in quotes from von Goethe as keywords. If Schiller harked back to his former political beliefs at all it was in his appearance. He had lost the majority of his hair by twenty-three and was thus one of those men who appeared middle aged quite early in life but then barely seemed to age for the next forty years or so. Nature had given him the same hair style as Lenin and his choice was to adopt a very similar beard and moustache. He also had a tendency to clutch his left lapel as he taught while writing on the board and gesticulating with his right hand either in conscious or unconscious imitation of his hero’s arrival at Finlandia station.
After nearly fifty years at Merkiner’s, Dr Schiller had developed a deep and lasting affection for all his boys. He was mocked by some and loved by many, but for his part he had been extremely grateful when the school took him in and saved him in his darkest hour and had repaid them with a lifetime’s devotion to teaching. While some of the boys found him dull or eccentric others had found him inspirational and had gone on to study German at university and beyond. Quite a few old boys continued to visit him for many years after leaving the school including the current ambassador to West Germany and a number of people who had unspecified roles for Her Majesty’s government in both East and West Berlin. Jumbo had explained all this to Lord and Lady Gassman and had finished by adding ‘…so in his way, dear old Dr Schiller has made a very considerable contribution to our national security’.
This last remark had been heard by Brush as he caught up with them and drew a snort of derision from him. Mr Brush approved neither of Dr Schiller or his methods. He didn’t like him because he was German and suspected him of being either a Nazi or a Communist or both. Furthermore he had recently seen ‘Death In Venice’ at the cinema and had noted similarities between Dr Schiller’s mannerisms and those of Gustav von Aschenbach, the film’s main character. This in turn had convinced him that Schiller was a sexual deviant of the worst kind. He had mentioned his suspicions to Walnut who had tried to explain that the similarity between Schiller and von Aschenbach was down to the fact that one of the old boys had worked as a dialogue coach on the film and had actually arranged for Schiller to meet Dirk Bogarde and spend a few days with him working on the character’s development. Far from mollifying Brush, this news had only served to bring him to believe that Schiller had been the catalyst that had turned Bogarde from the wholesome matinee star that he had previously idolised as the very epitome of the English gentleman into a sinister Central European creature of the night.
Schiller was taking his boys through their paces for the benefit of the assembled guests. Firstly, he had some of the less able pupils recite lines from his favourite poem Heidenröslein which they droned through with varying degrees of expression and success. He followed this with an in depth discussion of the poem, conducted entirely in German, with three of his more able pupils. Most of the assembled dignitaries had no idea what was going on but were sufficiently impressed by the speed and fluency with which the conversation was proceeding to conclude that old Schiller must really know his stuff.
Outside the cadets were gathered for their inspection and the Bren Gun demonstration. The guard of honour was marching around the playground in a final practice of the manoeuvres they would carry out before the inspection while Mark and Danny were running through stripping and reassembling the guns on two trestle tables on a patch of grass to the side. The boys were wearing blindfolds and were feeling their way through the procedure well, each ending by sliding back the bolt and then pulling the trigger at which point the mechanism would move forward with a satisfying click if they had successfully put the gun back together. Both of them had been through the procedure several times by the time Mr George came over from helping with setting up tents to check on their progress. He congratulated them on their performance but noticed that the magazine on Danny’s gun had some bright green insulating tape wrapped around it several times.
‘Oh dear’ he said ‘we can’t have that. Everything has to look just so today. I’ll just pull it off if you don’t mind Vanner’. He managed to pull the tape off after a while but it had obviously been there for quite a while as it left behind a sticky white residue which looked even worse than the tape had done and which stuck to Danny’s hand when he picked the magazine up.
‘Blast, that won’t do at all’ continued Mr George. He looked around and gestured for one of the cadets who was helping with the camping display to come over. ‘Here you are Dixon’ he said handing the boy the sticky magazine ‘run back to the stores and get another one of these, and make sure it’s black all over and not scratched’. Dixon set off across the playground at a run but Mr George mindful of how slippery hobnails can be on asphalt shouted after him ‘Walk, don’t run, we don’t want any accidents today please’.
As Dixon disappeared around the corner towards the stores, the door to the Headmaster’s Garden flew open and Jumbo and his guests emerged blinking into the sunlight. They gathered on the grass among the rose bushes for a short break. A pair of matronly dinner ladies waddled among them with glasses of sherry which were gratefully seized by the dignitaries as a haze of cigarette smoke rose above them in imitation of the factory chimneys which dominated the hilltops to the east of town. Lord and Lady Gassman circulated around the group, Jumbo guiding Lady Melody by the elbow to ensure that they exchanged a few pleasantries with as many of the group as possible, Vince greeting each new acquaintance with a beaming smile while enthusiastically pumping their hands up and down until their shoulders ached.
The sherries dispensed with, everybody followed Mr Tusker down to the lawns where Mr Moran was supervising the cadets on the camping display. The boys had erected a selection of different tents and had also built a couple of makeshift shelters out of branches and tarpaulins and were now busily cooking compo rations on small stoves with vary degrees of success. Lord Gassman was soon enthusiastically squatting next to the boys sampling their efforts and telling them about his campsite in France, handing out discount vouchers for their parents as he did so.
A few minutes later a sub-section of the school orchestra which had assembled in the corner of the playground by the gym announced its arrival with a roll on the snare drum before launching into a somewhat pacey version of the British Grenadiers. Hearing the speed of the tune, Mick Hawkes glanced somewhat dubiously at Captain Vermeer but the latter just tilted his head to one side and raised an eyebrow it a ‘get on with it’ gesture. Hawkes shrugged slightly and snapped to attention, simultaneously yelling ‘By the right, quick march’. The honour guard set off, slightly faster than they were used to, in an attempt to keep in time with the music. The speed with which this happened caught one or two of the boys by surprise so that they set off on the wrong foot and one or two of them had to skip a couple of times to get back in rhythm with the rest of the troop. One unfortunate individual at the back, already conspicuous by the bright mop of unruly ginger hair spilling out from under his beret somehow found himself tensing up so much that instead of marching naturally he was moving his left arm and foot together and then his right in the manner of Spotty Dog from the Woodentops. He had almost managed to sort himself out when Mr Heath the music master conducting the orchestra glanced up and noticed the chaos. In an attempt to help out he immediately slowed the tempo of the music but this merely served to further confuse things in the ranks of marching cadets as some slowed down to the new pace whilst other kept going at the same rhythm and some boys found themselves colliding with the person in front.
Among the dignitaries and assembled staff the reactions were mixed. Some were looking amused while others were looking very unimpressed. Jumbo was rubbing one hand on his forehead as if trying to ward off a headache and Colonel Archdeacon and Dr Cowche looked concerned for their friend. Wilberforce Brush looked as if he might at any moment explode with apoplectic rage and behind his shoulder Messrs Seaford, East and Candlemas regarded the scene wearing expressions of absolute contempt. Mr Hartley was amiably chatting with Lady Gassman both seemingly unaware that anything was amiss while Captain Vermeer was staring hard at his shiny toecaps. Eventually the squad completed its lap of the square and was brought to a halt by Mick Hawkes who then did his best to get the cadets back into some order for the inspection. Mr Moran had to hiss ‘sir’ in an increasingly loud whisper five or six times before Walnut responded and looked up from his shoes before shuffling across to lead the Head and Lord and Lady Gassman, all of whom were now smoking again, up and down the two files of cadets. They moved up and down the lines fairly briskly with his lordship once again smiling and nodding encouragement which would occasionally cause the ash to drop from the end of his cigarette and land in a light dusting on a carefully polished boot.
The inspection finally concluded Walnut handed over to Mr George who led the party over to the trestle tables where Danny and Mark were waiting to go through their paces. Dixon had seemed to have been gone for ages and Danny had been worried that he wouldn’t be able to do the demonstration properly, but he had finally returned with a magazine during the march past. Now, with the audience assembled to the side, Danny and Mark donned their blindfolds and Mr George blew a whistle.
The boys worked quickly through their routine, stripping the guns down to their component parts and laying them in a predefined pattern on the table. Danny concentrated hard, his own breathing seemingly made louder by the blindfold feeling his way around the parts. Much as he tried to concentrate only on his own task he was very conscious of the noises Mark Collins was making beside him and was aware that he was slightly behind at the halfway stage. He fumbled slightly on the reassembly and it took him a little longer than usual to reattach the stock and barrel. He heard Mark slot his magazine home, pull back the bolt and the click of the mechanism as Mark pulled his trigger even before he had picked his own magazine up. With a sigh he pushed his own magazine into the top of his gun, pulled back the bolt and depressed the trigger.
There was a flash of light which he could see even through the heavy blindfold and the butt of the gun slammed back into his shoulder with an enormous bang. The shock tightened Danny’s grip on the grip and trigger of the gun, which propelled by the gas from the first shell, continued to fire on automatic mode with a deafening sequence of percussive thuds and flashes exacerbated by the echoes from the buildings which surrounded the square, while Danny unable to loosen his grip was shaken about like a marionette.
In front of Danny, the honour guard, who were mercifully lined up facing away from him, were felled like ninepins as the wadding from the blanks slammed into their buttocks. Off to his right the assembled visitors and staff screamed and dived for cover. All around the square, every window was quickly filled with faces as the boys inside the rest of the school rushed to see what was going on, and then just as quickly emptied again as those masters and prefects who were still inside tried to usher them away from danger.
Only three men remained upright in the group to Danny’s right. Vince Gassman hadn’t yet realised that this wasn’t supposed to happen and was watching events unfold with a lopsided grin which would shortly be replaced by a look of concern and horror as he noticed that boys in the guard had really been shot. Colonel Archdeacon was trying to get around the Brush and the PE teachers who were cowering by his feet and get across to the table, but before he could get past he was overtaken by Jumbo who calmly strode across and taking Danny by the shoulders, gently eased his hand away from the trigger. As the echoes of the firing died away the only sounds were the groans of the honour guard who had been close enough to the gun to leave the seat of their trousers along with their dignity in tatters, but fortunately far enough away to escape with cuts and bruises. Danny was sobbing ‘I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry sir’ over and over as Jumbo awkwardly held him patting his back and telling him that everything was alright. Colonel Archdeacon caught Jumbo’s eye and nodded at him encouragingly before prodding Brush brusquely with is walking stick and ordering him to get over the office and call for some ambulances. As it happened, there was no need. The noise of the shooting had obviously carried across town for the sounds of police and ambulance horns could already be heard in the distance.
The rest of the day’s planned activities were abandoned. The injured boys were ferried off to the county hospital in a procession of ambulances, but their injuries were minor and all had been discharged by the evening. The police accepted that Danny had been unaware that the magazine was loaded and that the shooting had been accidental. Dixon was subjected to some fairly heavy questioning by both policemen and masters to ascertain whether he had been responsible for the loading of the magazine, but his story remained consistent and they eventually accepted his story that he had forgotten to ask where to look for a magazine and hadn’t been able to find it at all until he had noticed one on top of a cupboard which he had grabbed quickly and run back to the demonstration with. Mr George confirmed that it was his idea, not Dixon’s to get the new magazine, and also vouched for the boy’s good character.
For safety reasons those boys who were inside the school buildings had to stay there until the police were satisfied that everything was safe. For a while wild rumours circulated among them that the shootings outside had been real and that various masters had been shot. Some of the older boys had illicitly seen Lindsay Anderson’s ‘if’ and claimed that the film had inspired a copycat in the form of a disaffected prefect. There was much relief when the truth was discovered and the boys were allowed to go home later in the afternoon. By this time news of the earlier gunfire and rumours of what may have happened had spread throughout the town and many of the boys were surprised to find the streets immediately surrounding the school packed with anxious parents waiting for news of their offspring. A policeman with a tannoy on his van had been attempting to calm the crowd, but the earlier emergence from the school gates of a convoy of eight ambulances did little to help his cause. When the boys emerged from the main gates there was something of a melee as the crowd of parents attempted to locate their sons but within twenty minutes or so most people had gone on their way leaving just a few small groups of people catching up on gossip.
Founder’s Day traditionally ended with a formal dinner in the Main Hall for the masters and honoured guests but in the circumstances it had been thought best to cancel this. Jumbo had apologised profusely to Lord Gassman who replied ‘Not to worry. These things happen old man. I thought you handled it magnificently!’ As he helped Lady Melody back into their car he turned and added with a wink ‘We’re really looking forward to what you have lined up for us next year. Toodle Pip. See you again.’
Now, as darkness fell, almost everyone had finally departed. Cutting was on his last rounds locking doors and gates and the only light that shone was in the Headmaster’s study where Mr Hartley, along with Colonel Archdeacon and Dr Cowche, had joined Jumbo to review the day’s events over a whisky. The headmaster held his drink in both hands and stared gloomily into the bottom of his glass.
‘Well, all in all today was a bloody disaster’ he opined nodding at Mr Hartley. ‘I think you’re probably right Roger, the Corps is a bit of an anachronism in this day and age. Boys with guns in a place of learning! When you think about it, it’s an obvious recipe for disaster.’
‘Don’t be hasty Arnold’ interjected Colonel Archdeacon ‘the Corps has its uses. For some boys it provides focus and discipline and a chance to expand their horizons. I dare say its leadership could be improved, and today’s events may turn out to be just what they need to think about putting their house in order.’
‘Boys were shot’ replied Jumbo ‘Thank Christ it was only with blanks otherwise the very future of the whole school would be in doubt.’
‘I don’t think there was any prospect of live ammunition being used’ said the Colonel ‘the police questioned Captain Vermeer at some length and he was absolutely clear that there has never been any live 303 rounds on the premises. Mind you, I’m not sure he wasn’t surprised that there were blanks here. Anyway, in my opinion the man is a buffoon. What kind of fool brings his parade to halt in line of sight of the guns?’
‘It shouldn’t have been an issue if they were empty’ answered Jumbo.
‘Never mind, it’s no use crying over spilt milk’ said the Colonel raising his glass ‘I must say you were cool as a cucumber when everyone else dived for cover. That’ll be your wartime experience I imagine.’
‘Far from it’ the headmaster replied with a wan smile ‘my wartime service was quite ignoble. I was sent out to fight the Italians in East Africa and arrived just as they were surrendering and then was sent on to Singapore where I arrived just as we were surrendering. I never really saw a shot fired in anger, I’m not a wounded war hero like Wilberforce Brush.’
Colonel Archdeacon almost choked on his whisky. ‘Brush, a war hero!’ he laughed. ‘Did he tell you that?’
‘He has always intimated that he was wounded on D-Day’ volunteered Roger Hartley.
‘Well yes, so he was’ continued Archdeacon with a chuckle ‘but he was nowhere near Normandy at the time, he was in Catterick. Let me tell you, I knew him when he was a boy and I came across him again in the army, as a matter of fact I treated him after his injury. He was always a bounder and a bully.’
Dr Cowche shifted uncomfortably in his chair ‘I say old chap, don’t be too harsh on Brush, he had a difficult start in life what with the stigma of illegitimacy to overcome. Poor chap was brought up in Battersea you know.’
‘Poppycock!’ Archdeacon slapped the table with his hand causing a small tsunami to erupt in Roger Hartley’s glass. ‘True enough, the circumstances of Brush’s birth were difficult and that isn’t the man’s fault and it maybe the very first few years of his life weren’t a bed of roses although many of the boys who’ve passed through the school I’m sure have been through much worse. The fact is from the time he arrived in Dunford he was well cared for and given every chance by his doting grandfather, but he harbours so much anger at the world he sabotages himself time and time again.’
Throughout this exchange both Roger and Jumbo had been mystified. They were both realising that they knew little about Brush’s real background. He had been at the school longer than either of them and both had sensed an air of resentment from him when they had arrived.
‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid that you will have to enlighten us about Mr Brush’s origins’ smiled Jumbo ‘He was already in situ when I arrived and neither Mr Hartley or myself really know when he arrived and in what circumstances.’
‘Ah’ said Dr Cowche leaning forward with his elbows on the arm of his chair with his hands held together in a pyramid beneath his chin. ‘In many ways Brush is a Merkiners’ man through and through. Apart from the colonel here’ he gestured towards his friend ‘I can’t think of a man who has a pedigree so steeped in the school’s tradition.’
‘Yet you said he was illegitimate’ Hartley queried.
‘Not the boy’s fault and an unfortunate and tragic accident’ continued Cowche ‘his father was lost of the first day of the Somme having neglected to marry his mother first. Brush was born in the new year of 1917 with his father long cold in the Flanders mud, poor soul.’ He stared bleakly up at the ceiling leaving Hartley and Tusker wondering whether it was Brush or his father that Cowche meant.
‘So, who were his parents?’ Hartley asked.
‘His mother was Betsy Brush’ replied Cowche ‘well to be accurate she still is. She’d be in her seventies now but I believe she still lives up in one of those little houses by the pickle works in Bleak. Beetroot Street I think.’
‘That might go some way to explaining his complexion’ grinned Hartley. ‘And his father?’
‘You can see his name from here’ answered Cowche pointing out of the window to the school war memorial which stood floodlit on the lawn below ‘third column across, fourth name from the bottom.’
They looked towards the memorial following Cowche’s direction and picked out the inscription;
1st Lt Honoroak Park MC, King’s Own Dunshire Light Infantry, 1st July 1916
‘He was old Ondon Park’s only son’ explained Cowche. ‘The youngest of eight children, the others all girls, he was born quite sometime after his sisters when the Reverend and his wife had quite given up on having a son. By this time the reverend had already given up his headship of the school and had gone to live with the Jesuits and he regarded Honoroak’s birth as a miraculous reward for his conversion to Catholicism.’
‘Surely that wasn’t the miracle he was canonised for?’ smirked Roger.
‘No. That was some other improbable twaddle the Catholics came up with’ said Archdeacon ‘although of course it would have to be improbable, whoever heard of a probable miracle. As for Honoroak’s birth, popular rumour had it that it was less to do with the intercession of the Virgin Mary than the intercession of the Head Groundsman, which might go some way to explain why Honoroak and Brush were both such sporty coves.’
‘That’s as maybe’ said Cowche ‘and the circumstances of Honoroak’s birth whilst the subject of speculation and raised eyebrows for some did not seem to trouble old Ondon. He wholeheartedly accepted the boy as both a gift from God and his own son. He was accepted into the school and he was a golden boy in every sense of the term. Successful in academic work and at sport, handsome, charming and intelligent. He played cricket and rugby for the county, was Headboy and went up to Oxford to read classics. Then the war broke out.
He volunteered at once of course. They all did. He went over to France in 1915. Got the Military Cross for making the best of a bad job at the Battle of Loos in the October of that year and was sent back to Dunsford to convalesce after getting a dose of gas. His father was living with the monks by then so he went to stay with his mother who had been forced to leave the old rectory when Ondon left the C of E and had been given the Lodge at Dunford Hall. It was while he was there that he seems to have taken up with Betsy, a Bleak girl who was engaged as Mrs Park’s housekeeper.
What Honoroak’s intentions to Betsy were we can never know, although people I’ve met who knew him say he was a straight up honourable sort of chap who would have surely stood by her, but when he died Mrs Park was consumed by grief and when it later emerged that Betsy was pregnant the assumption was that the father was somebody from her own class and she was sent away to London to have the baby despite her protestations that the child was a Park. It was only some years later, long after the war, that the truth emerged when one of Honoroak’s old school friends who had been with him in France called in on Ondon Park and asked after his grandchild.
Well, of course it was news to Ondon that he had a grandchild, particularly as it emerged that Mrs Park had never told him of Betsy’s condition or the reason for her dismissal. He immediately hired a detective with the aim of tracking Betsy and her child down and prayed that the child had not died or been given up for adoption. They were eventually tracked down in Lavender Hill, which is neither as floral nor as fragrant as it sounds, and they were prevailed upon to come back to Dunford where Ondon used his influence to get young Wilberforce a place here.’
‘Cowche and I were sixth formers when he arrived’ added the colonel ‘he was an unruly little tyke with a working class London accent. Of course, his classmates ripped the piss out of him until they realised that had an explosive and violent temper.’
‘He was an angry and damaged boy’ Dr Cowche continued ‘angry that he’d been abandoned by his father’s family and then just as angry when he been picked up by them again and transported halfway across the country, far away from all he knew. His mother had instilled two things into him. An unquestioning hero-worship of his dead father and a distain for what she saw as the Park family’s sanctimonious hypocrisy. Betsy was of chapel going stock and Ondon Park’s conversion and subsequent rise through the ranks of the Catholic Church at the same time as his seeming denial and indifference to his own grandson only served to magnify her dislike of the man. To be sure she accepted his help, she had little option and she had the boy to think of, but she did it on her own terms.
Young Brush’s school career was punctuated throughout by boorish behaviour and shocking outbreaks of violence towards his fellow pupils. Rather than mellowing as he got a little older he discovered that picking on those who are younger, smaller or weaker carries much less risk of injury and if anything his propensity for violence increased. The only times he wasn’t in trouble was when he was on the rugby field, when these attributes became rather useful and when he was painting which was the only activity which calmed him.’
‘Of course, he wasn’t any bloody good at it’ mused the colonel twirling the end of his moustache with an impish grin ‘that’s why old Masters[2] steered him towards impressionism. He was always a bit..’ he searched for the word ‘…splodgy.’
‘Just so’ agreed Dr Cowche ‘any other boy with Brush’s disciplinary record would have been expelled without question, but his grandfather was very influential and he made allowances for him time and time again. I assume this was partly driven by his own guilt and feelings of culpability in Brush’s development and partly out of the hope that eventually something of Honoroak would shine through in the boy.’
‘Sadly, we’re still waiting for that’ said Archdeacon waving his empty glass at Jumbo who promptly topped it up.
‘But how did the Reverend Park still wield such influence at the school?’ asked Roger Hartley ‘Surely he was long retired by this time.’
‘You have to remember who he was, and how many cards he had to play’ answered Dr Cowche. ‘In the first place of course he was the former headmaster of this school with many years devoted service to his credit and the school undoubtedly owed him a debt of gratitude for that. A retired head may still wield a deal of influence, even if, as in his case, his departure had been not entirely voluntary.
More importantly, as the younger brother of Lord Dunford, people in the town were naturally inclined to be deferential to him. He was so used to it he probably didn’t even notice. Indeed, he may have been quite surprised to find that other people’s paths through life weren’t always as easy as his was.
And then there was the way in which he transformed himself in his later years into something of a national treasure. When he had turned his back on the Church of England and had left the headship there had been dismay, even anger in some quarters but most people came to regard his decision as sincere even if they thought it was misguided. He had a kindly and saintly air about him which tended to disarm his critics. And within a few years of throwing in his lot with the Papists he became a monsignor, then a bishop and eventually a cardinal. No doubt there was a bit of astute politicking going on in Rome but the upshot was that this served to cast him as a man who was not just important in Dunford but in the world at large.
So his grandfather’s influence kept Brush from being expelled and eventually managed to secure a place for him at an art school in London. Once there he discovered girls and became something of a ladies’ man.’
‘Yes, I have noticed that he is always charming to women, and never as abrasive’ noted Jumbo ‘He actually seems quite nervous of Mrs Brush.’
‘He was quite abrasive to Olga Goethe this morning’ observed Mr Hartley.
‘I don’t think Germans count as women in his world’ quipped the colonel.
‘Talking of Germans, what did Brush do in the war?’ asked Roger.
‘I don’t know all of the facts’ answered Archdeacon ‘but I’ve a good idea. By the time war broke out the Cardinal had finally died and he was no longer able to smooth Brush’s way, not that he would have had much influence with the army anyway. Brush applied for a commission but was turned down as being temperamentally unsuitable and on the basis of his prowess as a rugby player was instead given a post as a sergeant gym instructor in the Physical Training Corps. Back in a fully male environment his behaviour soon deteriorated and he relapsed into his previous pattern of bullying and abuse. After a number of unsavoury incidents he was busted down to the ranks and transferred to the Catering Corps which is where I ran across him on the night of D-Day.
He was brought into the barracks hospital roaring drunk and with a badly mangled hand. I couldn’t save all the fingers. It appeared that he had been on potato peeling duty with some others but when news of the successful landing came through on the radio somebody broke open some beers to celebrate. He had a few more than was good for him and tripped in the kitchen. Unfortunately as he put out his hands to break his fall one hand slipped into the top of a large electrical mincer while the other came down on the lever that started it. And that was the end of Wilberforce Brush’s war.’
‘So you see’ said Cowche ‘you were far more of a soldier than he ever was. You served overseas and you endured years in a Japanese prison camp. That must have been hell.’
‘I hope you’ll forgive me but I don’t like to talk about it’ answered Jumbo quietly ‘it’s not that I don’t want other people to know about the horror of it, or the inhuman things I witnessed, or even the heroism of tiny little acts of kindness which could sometimes cost a man his life. It’s just that if I let it get into the front of my mind it’s very difficult to get it out again. In fact it takes quite a lot of this…’ he waved his whisky tumbler in the air ‘..to keep the jungle at bay.’
He paused for a moment, looking down at his lap, then continued ‘It’s funny what can trigger memories. The Jap officers used to wear these lightweight open neck shirts, ideal for the climate. And funny little caps to keep the sun off. I can’t go to the seaside or to the park in the height of summer to this day. I catch a glimpse of somebody in the wrong kind of shirt or hat and I’m back there, half expecting one of them to stride out of the trees with a samurai sword and lop some poor bugger’s head off. The smell of boiled rice, that’s another one, it fills my nostrils and then mutates into other smells that aren’t really there.’ He looked up with a sheepish glance at the others then slapped himself simultaneously on both cheeks. ‘Sorry, I said more than I meant to.’
‘It’s quite understandable old boy’ said Colonel Archdeacon standing and patting Jumbo on the shoulder and pointing down at Jumbo’s glass ‘but that’s not really the answer. Dr Cowche and I know a good man in Harley Street who can help and who owes us a favour. It’s the end of term in a week or two, why don’t you come down to London for a few weeks and we can get the ball rolling? What do you say?’
Jumbo felt tears welling up ‘Thank you, that’s very kind, I’ll certainly give it some serious consideration.’
‘Make sure you do’ said Dr Cowche sternly. ‘We shall expect you in July.’
A short while later, when Colonel Archdeacon and Dr Cowche had set off on foot in the direction of the Market Place where they had rooms booked for the night at the Cock & Badger, and Roger Hartley had rode off towards the river wobbling on his bicycle with his master’s gown flapping in the darkness like an oversized bat, Jumbo walked back to his car gazing up at the familiar black silhouettes of the school buildings against the navy blue sky and wondered if somewhere, up on one of the twinkling stars he could see above, there was another world, quite like this one, but where there were no wars or people with bad attitudes. How much happier those people must be he thought and how much more time they must have for doing good when they’re not wasting so much time on not doing bad or combatting those that do. He was still pondering these thoughts, reaching in his jacket pocket for his car keys when a figure lurched out of the darkness. It was Cutting, pulling his braces over his shoulders.
‘Don’t worry sir, I’ll get the gate for you’ he gasped, out of breath from rushing from his house.
‘Thank you Mr Cutting, you’re very kind’ said Jumbo sinking into the front seat of the Wolseley.
‘I’m sorry the day didn’t quite turn out to plan’ said Cutting.
‘Not to worry, worse things happen at sea’ smiled Jumbo.
‘I know sir, I used to be in the Merchant Navy’ replied Cutting ‘I remember this one time in the Straits of Mollucca….’
‘I’m sure you do, but I was only speaking figuratively’ said Jumbo raising his hand ‘what I meant was, that the day wasn’t all bad. In fact, things may even have turned out for the best. See you Monday.’
He turned his head towards Mr Cutting with a cheery smile and a wave of the hand as he nudged the car out of the gates. Cutting waved back with an equally cheery smile which dropped away from his face and was replaced almost instantaneously with something else. Jumbo was reminded of the way the destination boards changed at the railway station when a new service was announced and was just trying to place Cutting’s new expression and the reason for it as a lorry which had come around the bend in Baltic Street at some speed ploughed into the driver’s side of the car. He was killed instantly.
The local paper The Dunford Courier made the most of the opportunity for increased circulation at the expense of verifiable fact and sought to imply that Jumbo’s accident was the suicide of a lonely and depressed alcoholic who had been pushed over the edge by the disastrous events of Founder’s Day. It was a strategy that backfired badly as they had completely misjudged the mood in the town. A number of prominent businesses in the town cancelled their advertising with The Courier and the newspaper’s mailbag was swamped with outraged letters condemning their articles and trying to set the record straight as well as a number of glowing obituaries hailing Arnold Tusker’s many achievements. By the following week the paper had performed a seamless volte face and when their earlier story was picked up by one of the national papers managed to act as the town’s outraged conscience in railing against the national press and its ill treatment of one of Dunford’s favourite sons.
Roger Hartley took temporary charge for a year while the selection process for a new headmaster slowly rolled into action. Eventually, in a departure from tradition, the governors plumped for an Oxford man with no prior connections either to Dunford or to the Worshipful Company of Merkin Makers. Mr Hartley’s year in charge gave him a good platform to apply for a step up to a headship elsewhere and he left the following year to take up a post at a prestigious independent school in Surrey.
As for Brush, he had naturally applied for the headmaster’s job and lobbied hard among the governors. Despite a very vigorous campaign on his part he failed to even make the shortlist after which he finally took the hint and retired to a gîte in the South of France. Once there, with only his wife (and occasional visits from his grown up daughters) for company and ample opportunity to paint blurry pictures of the view from his garden, he finally mellowed into a decent contented and relaxed individual, and took enormous satisfaction in being regarded by the locals as the epitome of the English Gentleman.
Afterword
One of the reasons people often cite for becoming historians is that they want to discover the truth about the past. This both is a noble and understandable objective, but more often than not looking at the past soon reveals that ‘true’ history is an elusive beast. How we see the past depends on so many factors. What evidence is available? Who collected it? What was their viewpoint? What were their prejudices and agendas? And even when we have gathered all the available information about a past event we then have to decide what to include or exclude in our narratives and how to use the facts at our disposal. Often our decisions will be based on a host of factors determined by our backgrounds and belief systems. We pick out the things we find interesting or significant and build our own version of history which we then invite others to buy into. Depending on whether anybody else is interested in the topic at hand, and how contentious it is, a debate may then follow about how good a job we have done.
As Public History students we look beyond the realms of mainstream academic history and consider other ways in which history in its broadest sense is consumed by the public. We go beyond the world of non-fiction history books to look at other mediums of conveying history to the public such as via museums, historic buildings, re-enactments, radio and television documentaries and so on, but we also look at historical fiction in its various forms. Here we are dealing with a different take on the past. Sometimes there are real characters but sometimes they are entirely fictional. Sometimes the plots closely mirror, or are at least set against the background of real events, sometimes they are not. Whatever the case we consume historical fiction as if it is telling us something about the past, perhaps not necessarily about real events but something about the feeling of a particular time or place.
All of which brings me to my foray into historical fiction. It’s set in a fictional grammar school in a fictional English provincial town in 1972. Not particularly long ago in the scheme of things, but in many ways a different world. Nothing in the story is entirely true and all of the characters are fictional, but bizarre as it may seem it’s largely based on real memories. Thanks for reading.
[1] St Ondon Park thus became only the second person from Dunford ever to be canonised, the first being St Athelfrigge an early ninth century prioress martyred by the Danes.
[2] Alfred Masters (1868-1952) was the art master at the school from 1899 until 1932. Heavily influenced in his youth by the both the Preraphaelites and Joseph Wright of Derby, he had gone on in the 1930s to lead the influential Bleak School of painting in which meticulously painted industrial scenes acted as metaphors for episodes from the Arthurian legends.
HIND ZEIT 