The History Boys (9 page)

And I was so pleased on the night Mrs Armstrong told me she was startled to find she was the object of unaccustomed sexual interference herself. That is a measure of how pleased I was, though I shan't say that to the inspectors.

Mrs Lintott says nothing
.

You didn't know. He hadn't told you why he was going?

Mrs Lintott
Not that, no.

Headmaster
I assumed you knew.

Mrs Lintott
No.

Headmaster
In which case you must keep it to yourself, both his going and the reason for it.

Mrs Lintott
He handled the boys' balls?

Headmaster
I don't want to spell it out. You've been married yourself, you know the form. And while on the motorbike. He, as it were, cradled them. To be fair it was I think more appreciative than investigatory but it is inexcusable nevertheless. Think of the gulf of years. And the speed! One knows that road well.

No, no. It's to everyone's benefit that he should go as soon as possible. (
He goes
.)

Mrs Lintott
I have not hitherto been allotted an inner voice, my role a patient and not unamused sufferance of the predilections and preoccupations of men. They kick their particular stone along the street and I watch.

I am, it is true, confided in by all parties, my gender some sort of safeguard against the onward transmission of information … though that I should be assumed to be
so discreet is in itself condescending. I'm what men would call a safe pair of hands.

Irwin comes in
.

Our Headmaster is a twat. An impermissible word nowadays but the only one suited to my purpose. A twat. And to go further down the same proscribed path, a condescending cunt.

Do you think Hector is a good teacher?

Irwin
Yes, I suppose … but what do I know?

Mrs Lintott
You see, I probably don't. When I was teaching in London in the seventies there was a consoling myth that not very bright children could always become artists. Droves of the half-educated left school with the notion that art or some form of self-realisation was a viable option. It's by the same well-meaning token that it's assumed still that every third person in prison is a potential Van Gogh. And love him though I do I feel there's a touch of that to Hector … or what's all this learning by heart for, except as some sort of insurance against the boys' ultimate failure?

Not that it matters now, one way or another.

Irwin
Why? What's happened?

Mrs Lintott
Nothing. Nothing. (
She is going
.) Isn't this his lesson?

Irwin
It is. But we're sharing, hadn't you heard?

Mrs Lintott
Sharing? Whose cockeyed idea was that?

Don't tell me.

Twat, twat, twat.

Boys come in, followed by Hector. They sit glumly at
their desks
.

Irwin
Would you like to start?

Hector
I don't mind.

Irwin
How do you normally start? It is your lesson.

General Studies.

Hector
The boys decide. Ask them.

Irwin
Anybody?

The boys don't respond
.

Hector
Come along, boys. Don't sulk.

Dakin
We don't know who we are, sir. Your class or Mr Irwin's.

Irwin
Does it matter?

Timms
Oh yes, sir. It depends if you want us thoughtful. Or smart.

Hector
He wants you civil, you rancid little turd. (
Hits
him
.)

Timms
Look, sir. You're a witness. Hitting us, sir. He could be sacked.

Irwin
Settle down. Settle down.

I thought we might talk about the Holocaust.

Hector
Good gracious. Is that on the syllabus?

Irwin
It has to be. The syllabus includes the Second War.

Hector
I suppose it does.

Irwin
Though in any case the scholarship questions aren't limited to a particular curriculum.

Hector
But how can you teach the Holocaust?

Irwin
Well, that would do as a question. Can you … should you … teach the Holocaust? Anybody?

Akthar
It has origins.

It has consequences.

It's a subject like any other.

Scripps
Not like any other, surely. Not like any other at all.

Akthar
No, but it's a topic.

Hector
They go on school trips nowadays, don't they? Auschwitz. Dachau. What has always concerned me is where do they eat their sandwiches? Drink their coke?

Crowther
The visitors' centre. It's like anywhere else.

Hector
Do they take pictures of each other there? Are they smiling? Do they hold hands? Nothing is appropriate. Just as questions on an examination paper are inappropriate.

How can the boys scribble down an answer however well put that doesn't demean the suffering involved?

And putting it well demeans it as much as putting it badly.

Irwin
It's a question of tone, surely. Tact.

Hector
Not tact. Decorum.

Lockwood
What if you were to write that this was so far beyond one's experience silence is the only proper response.

Dakin
That would be your answer to lots of questions, though, wouldn't it, sir?

Hector
Yes. Yes, Dakin, it would.

Dakin
‘Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.'

Hector groans and puts his head in his hands
.

That's right, isn't it, sir? Wittgenstein.

Irwin
Yes. That's good.

Hector
No, it's not good. It's … flip. It's … glib. It's
journalism
.

Dakin
But it's you that taught us it.

Hector
I didn't teach you and Wittgenstein didn't screw it out of his very guts in order for you to turn it into a dinky formula. I thought that you of all people were bright enough to see that.

Dakin
I do see it, sir. Only I don't agree with it. Not … not any more.

Timms
Sir.

Hector
(
head in his hands
) Yes?

Timms
You told us once … it was to do with the trenches, sir … that one person's death tells you more than a thousand. When people are dying like flies, you said, that is what they are dying like.

Posner
Except that these weren't just dying. They were being processed. What is different is the process.

Irwin
Good.

Hector
No, not good.

Posner is not making a
point
.

He is speaking from the heart.

Dakin
So? Supposing we get a question on Hitler and the Second War and we take your line, sir, that this is not a crazed lunatic but a statesman.

Hector
A statesman?

Irwin
Not a statesman, Dakin, a politician. I wouldn't say statesman.

Dakin
Politician, then, and one erratically perhaps, but still discernibly operating within the framework of traditional German foreign policy …

Irwin
Yes?

Dakin
… and we go on to say, in accordance with this line, that the death camps have to be seen in the context of this policy.

Pause
.

Irwin
I think that would be … inexpedient.

Hector
Inexpedient? Inexpedient?

Irwin
I don't think it's true, for a start …

Scripps
But what has truth got to do with it? I thought that we'd already decided that for the purposes of this examination truth is, if not an irrelevance, then so relative as just to amount to another point of view.

Hector
Why can you not simply condemn the camps outright as an unprecedented horror?

There is slight embarrassment
.

Lockwood
No point, sir. Everybody will do that.

That's the stock answer, sir… the camps an event unlike any other, the evil unprecedented, etc., etc.

Hector
No. Can't you see that even to say etcetera is monstrous? Etcetera is what the Nazis would have said, the dead reduced to a mere verbal abbreviation.

What have we learned about language?

Orwell. Orwell.

Lockwood
All right, not etcetera. But given that the death camps are generally thought of as unique, wouldn't another approach be to show what precedents there were and put them … well … in proportion?

Scripps
Proportion!

Dakin
Not proportion then, but putting them in context.

Posner
But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.

Rudge
‘Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.'

Hector groans
.

Irwin
That's good, Posner.

Posner
It isn't ‘good'. I mean it, sir.

Dakin
But when we talk about putting them in context it's only the same as the Dissolution of the Monasteries. After all, monasteries had been dissolved before Henry VIII, dozens of them.

Posner
Yes, but the difference is, I didn't lose any relatives in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Irwin
Good point.

Scripps
You keep saying, ‘Good point.' Not good point, sir. True. To you the Holocaust is just another topic on which we may get a question.

Irwin
No. But this is history. Distance yourselves.

Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past and one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be … even on the Holocaust.

The bell goes
.

Irwin
I thought that went rather well.

Hector
Parrots. I thought I was lining their minds with some sort of literary insulation, proof against the primacy of fact. Instead back come my words like a Speak Your Weight Machine. ‘Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner.' Ugh.

Irwin
I was rather encouraged. They're getting the idea.

Hector
Do you know what the worst thing is? I wanted them to show off, to come up with the short answer, the handy quote. I wanted them to compete.

It's time I went.

Irwin
Went where?

Dakin and Scripps come in, a touch
awkardly
.

Hector
Oh, home. Home.

Oh, Dakin, I've got the
Statesman
for you in the staff room.

Dakin
I'll get it tomorrow, sir.

I just want to ask Mr Irwin something.

He waits until Hector goes
.

We were having a discussion, sir, as to whether you are disingenuous or meretricious.

Irwin
I'm flattered.

Dakin
Disingenuous is insincere, not candid, having secret motives.

Meretricious is showy and falsely attractive.

We decided, sir, you were meretricious but not disingenuous.

Irwin
Thank you.

Dakin
What you were saying about the perspective altering, sir …

The stuff we generally do with Mr Hector, the poetry, Shakespeare and all that, will the perspective alter on that?

Irwin
Not now, no, probably not.

Scripps
Better shelf-life than your stuff, then, sir.

Irwin
That's the point. It's art. It has a different shelf-life altogether.

Dakin
Never mind, coach. (
He pats him on the back
.) We still love you, even if you are a bit flash.

Irwin goes
.

Scripps
You flirt.

Dakin
I don't understand it. I have never wanted to please anybody the way I do him, girls not excepted.

Scripps
It's this making it up I can't get used to. Arguing for effect. Not believing what you're saying. That's not history. It's journalism.

Dakin
Just wait till you get started on sex. You're making it up all the time. Being different, outrageous. That's what they go for. I tell you, history is fucking.

Scripps
Discuss.

Anyway I'm not going to, am I? Not while God's still in the frame?

Dakin
Hector's gone right off me.

Scripps
Lucky you.

Dakin
Thinks I've gone over to the enemy.

Scripps
I did notice the lifts seem to have stopped.

Dakin
No. That's something else.

He's going, you know.

Scripps
The big man?

Dakin
Don't let on. Fiona says.

Scripps
Sacked? Who complained?

Dakin shrugs
.

That's why the lifts have stopped.

Dakin
Poor sod. Though in some ways I'm not sorry.

Scripps
No. No more genital massage as one speeds along leafy suburban roads.

No more the bike's melancholy long withdrawing roar as he dropped you at the corner, your honour still intact.

Dakin
Lecher though one is, or aspires to be, it occurs to me that the lot of woman cannot be easy, who must suffer such inexpert male fumblings virtually on a daily basis.

Are we scarred for life, do you think?

Scripps
We must hope so.

Perhaps it will turn me into Proust.

Headmaster's study
.

Headmaster
A letter from the Posner parents. Charming couple. Jewish of course. Father a furrier, retired and, I suspect, elderly. Posner a … Benjamin is it …? A child of their old age.

Irwin
He's clever.