The History Boys (7 page)

Posner
I'm not sure I want it to pass.

But I want to get into Cambridge, sir. If I do, Dakin might love me.

Or I might stop caring.

Do you look at your life, sir?

Irwin
I thought everyone did.

Posner
I'm a Jew.

I'm small.

I'm homosexual.

And I live in
Sheffield
.

I'm fucked.

Mrs Lintott
Did you let that go?

Irwin
Fucked? Yes, I did, I'm afraid.

Mrs Lintott
It's a test. A way of finding out if you've ceased to be a teacher and become a friend.

He's a bright boy. You'll see. Next time he'll go further.

What else did you talk about?

Irwin
Nothing.

No. Nothing.

Mrs Lintott goes
.

Posner.

Posner
Sir?

Irwin
What goes on in Mr Hector's lessons?

Posner
Nothing, sir.

Anyway, you shouldn't ask me that, sir.

Irwin
Quid pro quo.

Posner
I have to go now, sir.

Irwin
You learn poetry. Off your own bat?

Posner
Sometimes.

He makes you want to, sir.

Irwin
How?

Posner
It's a conspiracy, sir.

Irwin
Who against?

Posner
The world, sir. I hate this, sir. Can I go?

Irwin
Is that why he locks the door?

Posner
So that it's not part of the system, sir. Time out. Nobody's business. Useless knowledge.

Can I go, sir?

Irwin
Why didn't you ask Mr Hector about Dakin?

Pause
.

Posner
I wanted advice, sir.

Mr Hector would just have given me a quotation.

Housman, sir, probably.

Literature is medicine, wisdom, elastoplast.

Everything. It isn't, though, is it, sir?

Scripps
Posner did not say it, but since he seldom took his eyes off Dakin, he knew that Irwin looked at him occasionally too and he wanted him to say so. Basically he just wanted company.

Irwin
It will pass.

Posner
Yes, sir.

Irwin
And Posner.

Posner
Sir?

Irwin
You must try and acquire the habit of contradiction. You are too much in the acquiescent mode.

Posner
Yes, sir.

No, sir.

Posner accompanied by Scripps sings the last verse of
‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross'
.

Dakin
So all this religion, what do you do?

Scripps
Go to church. Pray.

Dakin
Yes?

Scripps
It's so time-consuming. You've no idea.

Dakin
What else?

Scripps
It's what you don't do.

Dakin
You don't not wank?

Jesus. You're headed for the bin.

Scripps
It's not for ever.

Dakin
Yeah? Just tell me on the big day and I'll stand well back.

Scripps
I figure I have to get through this romance with God now or else it'll be hanging around half my life. But I don't see why I should wish it on any other poor sod.

The parents, of course, hate it. So ageing.

Drugs they were prepared for, but not Matins.

Some of it, though, I still don't get. They reckon you have to love God because God loves you. Why? Posner loves you but it doesn't mean you have to love Posner. As it is, God's this massive case of unrequited love. He's Hector minus the motorbike.

God should get real. We don't owe him anything.

Dakin
Good thing to say at Cambridge, that.

Scripps
No.

Dakin
Why? It's an angle.

Scripps
It's private.

Dakin
Fuck private.

Scripps
Don't let Hector hear you say that. You're his best boy.

Test me.

Dakin
What on?

Scripps
T. S. Eliot.

‘A painter of the Umbrian School

Designed upon a gesso ground

The nimbus of the Baptised God

The wilderness is cracked and browned.

‘But through the waters pale and thin

Still shine the unoffending feet

And here above the painter set

The Father and the Paraclete.'

Dakin
This is the one about the painting in the National Gallery.

Scripps
Yes.

Dakin
Don't tell me.

Piero della Francesca.

Actually, you know what?

We are
fucking
clever.

Scripps
(
laughs
) Do you know how to seem cleverer still?

Don't say Piero della Francesca. Just say Piero.

Dakin
Yes?

Scripps
Apparently.

Dakin
Like Elvis.

Scripps
You've got it.

Dakin
The more you read, though, the more you see that literature is actually about losers.

Scripps
No.

Dakin
It's consolation. All literature is consolation.

Scripps
No, it isn't. What about when it's celebration?

Joy?

Dakin
But it's written when the joy is over. Finished. So even when it's joy, it's grief. It's consolation.

That's why it gets written down.

I tell you, whatever Hector says, I find literature really lowering.

Scripps
Do you really believe this?

Dakin
Yes.

Scripps
You're not just doing a line of stuff for the exam? Original thoughts?

Dakin
No
.

Scripps
Because it's the kind of angle Irwin would come up with.

Dakin
Well, it's true he was the one who made me realise you were allowed to think like this. He sanctioned it. I didn't know you were allowed to call art and literature into question.

Scripps
Think the unthinkable. Who's going to stop you?

Only don't mention it to Hector.

Dakin
No.

Scripps
But if you reckon literature's consolation, you should try religion.

Dakin
Actually it isn't wholly my idea.

Scripps
No?

Dakin
I've been reading this book by Kneeshaw.

Scripps
Who?

Dakin
(
shows him book
) Kneeshaw. He's a philosopher. Frederick Kneeshaw.

Scripps
I think that's pronounced Nietszche.

Dakin
Shit. Shit. Shit.

Scripps
What's the matter?

Dakin
I talked to Irwin about it. He didn't correct me.

He let me call him Kneeshaw. He'll think I'm a right fool. Shit.

Irwin and Hector
.

Irwin
It's just that the boys seem to know more than they're telling.

Hector
Don't most boys?

Diffidence is surely to be encouraged.

Irwin
In an examination?

They seem to have got hold of the notion that the stuff they do with you is off-limits so far as the examination is concerned.

Hector
That's hardly surprising. I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education. Which is not to say that I don't regard education as the enemy of education, too.

However, if you think it will help, I will speak to them.

Irwin
I'd appreciate it.

For what it's worth, I sympathise with your feelings about examinations, but they are a fact of life. I'm sure you want them to do well and the gobbets you have taught them might just tip the balance.

Hector
What did you call them?

Gobbets? Is that what you think they are, gobbets?

Handy little quotes that can be trotted out to make a point?

Gobbets?

Codes, spells, runes – call them what you like, but do not call them
gobbets
.

Irwin
I just thought it would be useful …

Hector
Oh, it would be useful … every answer a Christmas tree hung with the appropriate gobbets. Except that they're learned
by heart
. And that is where they belong and like the other components of the heart not to be defiled by being trotted out to order.

Irwin
So what are they meant to be storing them up for, these boys? Education isn't something for when they're old and grey and sitting by the fire. It's for now. The exam is next month.

Hector
And what happens after the exam? Life goes on. Gobbets!

Headmaster and Irwin
.

Headmaster
How are our young men doing?

Are they ‘on stream'?

Irwin
I think so.

Headmaster
You think so? Are they or aren't they?

Irwin
It must always be something of a lottery.

Headmaster
A lottery? I don't like the sound of that, Irwin. I don't want you to fuck up. We have been down that road too many times before.

Irwin
I'm not sure the boys are bringing as much from Mr Hector's classes as they might.

Headmaster
You're lucky if they bring anything at all, but I don't know that it matters. Mr Hector has an old-fashioned faith in the redemptive power of words. In my experience, Oxbridge examiners are on the lookout for something altogether snappier.

After all, it's not how much literature that they know. What matters is how much they know
about
literature.

Chant the stuff till they're blue in the face, what good does it do?

Dorothy.

Mrs Lintott has appeared and the Headmaster goes
.

Mrs Lintott
One thing you will learn if you plan to stay in this benighted profession is that the chief enemy of culture in any school is always the Headmaster. Forgive Hector. He is trying to be the kind of teacher pupils will remember. Someone they will look back on. He impinges. Which is something one will never do.

Irwin
But it's all about holding back. Not divulging. Something up their sleeve.

Mrs Lintott
I wouldn't worry about that. Who's the best? Dakin?

Irwin
He's the canniest.

Mrs Lintott
And the best-looking.

Irwin
Is he? I always have the impression he knows more than I do.

Mrs Lintott
I'm sure he does.

In every respect. He's currently seeing (if that is the word) the Headmaster's secretary.

Irwin
I didn't know that.

Mrs Lintott
Which means he probably knows a good deal more than any of us. Not surprising, really.

Irwin
No.

Mrs Lintott
One ought to know these things.

Irwin
Yes.

Mrs Lintott
Posner knows, I'm sure.

Scripps
About halfway through that term something happened. Felix in a bate, Hector summoned, Fiona relegated to the outer office.

Hector
I am summoned to the Presence. The Headmaster wishes to see me, whose library books, we must always remember, Larkin himself must on occasion have stamped. ‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness?'

Headmaster
You teach behind locked doors.

Hector
On occasion.

Headmaster
Why is that?

Hector
I don't want to be interrupted.

Headmaster
Teaching?

Pause
.

Hector
I beg your pardon?

Headmaster
I am very angry.

My wife, Mrs Armstrong, does voluntary work.

One afternoon a week at the charity shop.

Normally Mondays. Except this week she did Wednesday as well.

The charity shop is not busy.

She reads, naturally, but periodically she looks out of the window.

Are you following me?

The road. The traffic lights. And so on.

Pause
.

On three occasions now she has seen a motorbike.

Boy on pillion.

A man … fiddling.

Yesterday she took the number.

For the moment I propose to say nothing about this, but fortunately it is not long before you are due to retire. In the circumstances I propose we bring that forward. I think we should be looking at the end of term.

Have you nothing to say?

Hector

‘The tree of man was never quiet.

Then 'twas the Roman; now 'tis I.'

Headmaster
This is no time for poetry.

Hector
I would have thought it was just the time.

Headmaster
Did I say I was angry?

Hector
I believe you did, yes.

Headmaster
Did you not
think
?

Hector
Ah, think.

‘To think that two and two are four

And never five nor three

The heart of man has long been sore

And long 'tis like to be.'

Headmaster
You are incorrigible.

I am assuming your wife doesn't know?

Hector
I have no idea. What women know or don't know has always been a mystery to me.

Incidentally, she helps out at the charity shop, too.

They all seem to do nowadays.

Philanthropy and its forms.

Headmaster
And are you going to tell her?

Hector
I don't know.

I'm not sure she'd be interested.

Headmaster
Well, there's another thing.

Strange how even the most tragic turns of events generally resolve themselves into questions about the timetable. Irwin has been badgering me for more lessons. In the circumstances a concession might be in order. In the future, I think you and he might share.

Hector
Share?

Headmaster
Share.