Gentlemen & Players (11 page)

Fallow has his
place now. Fat Fallow, with his loose lips and ancient donkey jacket. He has my father’s slouch too, from years of driving the ride-on mower, and like my father’s, his gut spills out obscenely from over his narrow, shiny belt. There is a tradition that all school porters are called John, and this is true of Fallow too, though the boys do not call after him and bait him as they did my father. I’m glad; I might have to intervene if they did, and I do not want to make myself conspicuous at this stage.

But Fallow offends me. He has hairy ears and reads the
News of the World
in his little lodge, wearing ancient slippers on his bare feet, drinking milky tea and ignoring what happens around him. Half-wit Jimmy does the real work; the building, the woodwork, the wiring, the drains. Fallow takes the phone calls. He enjoys making the callers wait—anxious mothers asking after their sick sons, rich fathers detained at a last-minute meeting with the directors—sometimes for minutes on end as he finishes his tea and scrawls the message on a piece of yellow paper. He likes to travel, and sometimes goes on day trips to France, organized by his local workingmen’s club, during which he goes to the supermarket, eats chips by the side of the tour bus, and complains about the locals.

At work he is by turns rude and deferential, depending on the status of his visitor; he charges boys a pound for opening their locker with the master key; he gloats at the legs of female teachers as they walk up the stairs. With lesser staff he is pompous and opinionated; says “Know what I mean?” and “I’ll tell you this for nothing, mate.”

With the higher echelons he is obsequious; with veterans, nauseatingly pally; with juniors like myself, brusque and busy, with no time to waste on chat. He goes up to the Computer Room on Fridays after school, ostensibly to turn off the machines, but actually surfing Internet porn sites after hours, while outside in the corridor, Jimmy uses the floor polisher, passing it slowly across the boards, bringing the old wood to a mellow shine.

It takes less than a minute to obliterate an hour’s work. By eight-thirty on Monday morning the floors will be as dusty and scuffed as if Jimmy had never been there at all. Fallow knows this; and though he does not perform these cleaning duties himself, he nevertheless feels an obscure resentment, as if staff and boys were an impediment to the smooth running of things.

As a result, his life consists of small and spiteful revenges. No one really observes him—a Porter lives below the salt and so may take such liberties with the system that remain unnoticed. Members of staff are mostly unaware of this, but I have been watching. From my position in the Bell Tower I can see his little lodge; I can observe the comings and goings without being seen.

There is an ice cream van parked outside the school gates. My father would never have allowed that, but Fallow tolerates it, and there is often a queue of boys there after school or at lunchtime. Some buy ice cream there; others return with bulging pockets and the furtive grin of one who has balked the system. Officially, junior boys are not supposed to leave the school grounds, but the van is only a few yards away, and Pat Bishop accepts it as long as no one crosses the busy road. Besides, he likes ice cream, and I’ve seen him several times, munching on a cone as he supervises the boys in the yard.

Fallow, too, visits the ice cream van. He does it in the morning, when lessons have already begun, making sure to circle the buildings clockwise and thereby avoid passing under the Common Room window. Sometimes he has a plastic bag with him—it is not heavy, but quite bulky—which he leaves under the counter. Sometimes he returns with a cone, sometimes not.

In fifteen years, many of the school’s passkeys have been changed. It was to have been expected—St. Oswald’s has always been a target, and security must be maintained—but the Porter’s Lodge, among others, is one of the exceptions. After all, why would anyone want to break into the Porter’s Lodge? There’s nothing there except an old armchair, a gas heater, a kettle, a phone, and a few girlie magazines hidden under the counter. There’s another hiding place too, a rather more sophisticated one, behind the hollow panel that masks the ventilation system, though this is a secret passed on jealously from one Porter to another. It is not very large but will easily take a couple of six-packs, as my father discovered, and as he told me then, the bosses don’t always have to know everything.

I was feeling
good today as I drove home. Summer is almost at an end, and there is a yellowness and a grainy texture to the light that reminds me of the television shows of my adolescence. The nights are getting cold; in my rented flat, six miles from the city center, I will soon have to light the gas fire. The flat is not an especially attractive place—one room, a kitchen annex, and a tiny bathroom—but it’s the cheapest I could find, and, of course, I do not mean to stay for long.

It is virtually unfurnished. I have a sofa bed; a desk; a light; a computer and modem. I shall probably leave them all behind when I go. The computer is clean—or will be, when I have wiped the incriminating stuff from its hard drive. The car is rented and will also have been thoroughly cleaned by the rental firm by the time the police trace it back to me.

My elderly landlady is a gossip. She wonders why a nice, clean, professional person such as myself should choose to stay in a low-rent flatblock filled with druggies and ex-convicts and people on the dole. I’ve told her that I am a sales coordinator for a large international software company; that my firm has agreed to provide me with a house, but that the contractors have let them down. She shakes her head at this, bemoaning the ineptitude of builders everywhere, and hopes I’ll be in my new home by Christmas.

“Because it must be miserable, mustn’t it, love, not having your own place? And especially at Christmas—” Her weak eyes mist over sentimentally. I consider telling her that most deaths among old people occur during the winter months; that three-quarters of would-be suicides will take the plunge during the festive season. But I must maintain the pretense for the moment; so I answer her questions as best I can; I listen to her reminiscences; I am beyond reproach. In gratitude, my landlady has decorated my little room with chintz curtains and a vase of dusty paper flowers. “Think of it as your little home away from home,” she tells me. “And if you need anything, I’m always here.”

7

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysThursday, 23rd September

The trouble began on Monday, and I knew something had happened when I saw the cars. Pat Bishop’s Volvo was there, as usual—always first in, he even spends the night in his office at busy times—but it was almost unheard-of to see Bob Strange’s car there before eight o‘ clock, and there was the Head’s Audi too, and the Chaplain’s Jag, and half a dozen others, including a black-and-white police car, all parked in the staff car park outside the Porter’s Lodge.

For myself, I prefer the bus. In heavy traffic it’s quicker, and in any case, I never need to go more than a few miles to work or to the shops. Besides, I have my bus pass now, and though I can’t help thinking that there must be some mistake (sixty-four—how can I be sixty-four, by all the gods?), it does save money.

I walked up the long drive to St. Oswald’s. The poplars are on the turn, gilded with the approach of autumn, and there were little columns of white vapor rising from the dewy grass. I looked into the Porter’s Lodge as I walked by. Fallow wasn’t there.

No one in the Common Room seemed to know exactly what was going on. Strange and Bishop were in the Head’s office with Dr. Tidy and Sergeant Ellis, the liaison officer. Still Fallow was nowhere to be seen.

I wondered if there had been a break-in. It happens occasionally, though for the most part Fallow does a reasonable job of looking after the place. A bit of a crawler with the management, and of course he’s been on the take for years. Small things—a bag of coal, a packet of biscuits from the kitchens, plus his pound-a-go racket for opening lockers—but he’s loyal enough, and when you consider that he earns about a tenth of even a junior Master’s salary, you learn to turn a blind eye. I hoped there was nothing the matter with Fallow.

As always, the boys knew it first. Rumors had been flying wildly throughout the morning; Fallow had had a heart attack; Fallow had threatened the Head; Fallow had been suspended. But it was Sutcliff, McNair, and Allen-Jones who found me at break time and asked me, with that cheery, disingenuous air they adopt when they know someone else is in trouble, whether it was true that Fallow had been arrested.

“Who told you that?” I said with a smile of deliberate ambiguity.

“Oh, I heard someone say something.” Secrets are currency in any school, and I hadn’t expected McNair to reveal his informant, but obviously, some sources are more reliable than others. From the boy’s expression I gathered that this had come from somewhere near the top.

“They’ve ripped out some panels in the Porter’s Lodge,” said Sutcliff. “They took out a whole bunch of stuff.”

“Such as?”

Allen-Jones shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Cigarettes, maybe?”

The boys looked at one another. Sutcliff flushed slightly. Allen-Jones gave a little smile. “Maybe.”

Later, the story came out; Fallow had been using his cheap day trips to France to bring back illicit, tax-free cigarettes, which he had been selling—via the ice cream man, who was a friend of his—to the boys.

The profits were excellent—a single cigarette costing up to a pound, depending on the age of the boy—but St. Oswald’s boys have plenty of money, and besides, the thrill of breaking the rules right under the nose of the Second Master was almost irresistible. The scheme had been going on for months, possibly years; the police had found about four dozen cartons hidden behind a secret panel in the lodge, and many hundreds more in Fallow’s garage, stacked floor to ceiling behind a set of disused bookcases.

Both Fallow and the ice cream man confirmed the cigarette story. Of the other items found in the lodge, Fallow denied all knowledge, although he was at a loss to explain their presence. Knight identified his bar mitzvah pen; later, and with some reluctance, I claimed my old green Parker. I was relieved in one sense that no boy in my form had taken them; on the other hand I knew that this was yet another small nail in the coffin of John Fallow, who had at one blow lost his home, his job, and quite possibly his freedom.

I never did find out who had tipped off the authorities. An anonymous letter, or so I heard; in any case, no one came forward. It must have been someone on the inside, says Robbie Roach (a smoker and erstwhile good friend of Fallow); some little snitch keen to make trouble. He’s probably right; though I hate the thought of a colleague being responsible.

A boy, then? Somehow that seems even worse; the thought that one of our boys could single-handedly do so much damage.

A boy like Knight, perhaps? It was only a thought; but there is a new smugness in Knight, a look of awareness, that I like even less than his natural sullenness. Knight? There was no reason to think so. All the same I did think so; deep down, where it matters. Call it prejudice; call it instinct. The boy knew something.

Meanwhile, the little scandal runs its course. There will be an investigation by Customs and Excise; and although it is very unlikely that the school will press charges—any suggestion of bad publicity sends the Head into spasms—Mrs. Knight has so far refused to withdraw her own complaint. The governors will have to be informed; there will be questions asked concerning the role of the Porter, his appointment (Dr. Tidy is already on the defensive, and is demanding police reports on all ancillary staff), and his probable replacement. In short, the Fallow incident has created ripples all over the school, from the Bursar’s office to the Quiet Room.

The boys feel it and have been unusually disruptive, testing the boundaries of our discipline. A member of the school has been disgraced—albeit only a Porter—and a breath of revolt stirs; on Tuesday, Meek emerged from his fifth-form Computer Studies classes looking pale and shaken; McDonaugh gave out a series of vicious detentions; Robbie Roach fell mysteriously ill, incensing the whole department, who had to cover for him. Bob Strange set cover for all his classes on the grounds that he was too busy with Other Things, and today the Head took a disastrous Assembly in which he announced (to general, if unvoiced amusement) that there was no truth whatever in the malicious rumors concerning Mr. Fallow, and that any boy perpetrating such rumors would be Dealt With Most Severely.

But it is Pat Bishop, the Second Master, who has been most affected by
Fallowgate,
as Allen-Jones has named the unfortunate affair. Partly, I think, because such a thing is completely outside his comprehension; Pat’s loyalty to St. Oswald’s reaches back for more than thirty years, and whatever his other faults, he is scrupulously honest. His whole philosophy (such as it is; for our Pat is no philosopher) is based on the assumption that people are fundamentally good and wish, at heart, to do good, even when they are led astray. This ability to see good in everyone is at the core of his dealings with boys, and it works very well; weaklings and villains are shamed by his kind, stern manner, and even staff are in awe of him.

But Fallow has caused a kind of crisis. First, because Pat was fooled—he blames himself for not noticing what was going on—and second, because of the contempt implicit in the deception. That Fallow—whom Pat had always treated with politeness and respect—should repay him in such spiteful coin dismays and shames him. He remembers the John Snyde business and wonders whether he is somehow at fault in this case. He does not say these things, but I have noticed that he smiles less than usual, keeps to his office during the day, runs even more laps than usual in the mornings, and often works late.

As for the Languages department, it has suffered less than most. This is partly thanks to Pearman, whose natural cynicism serves as a welcome foil for the aloofness of Strange or the anxious bluster of the Head. Gerry Grachvogel’s classes are somewhat noisier than usual, though not enough to require my intervention. Geoff and Penny Nation are saddened, but unsurprised, shaking their heads at the beastliness of human nature. Dr. Devine uses the Fallow affair to terrorize poor Jimmy. Eric Scoones is bad-tempered, though not much more than usual. Dianne Dare, like the creative Keane, follows the whole thing with fascination.

“This place runs like a complicated soap opera,” she told me this morning in the Common Room. “You never know what’s going to happen next.”

I admitted that there was occasionally some entertainment value to be had from the dear old place.

“Is that why you stayed on? I mean—” She broke off, aware, perhaps, of the unflattering implication.

“I stayed on, as you so kindly put it, because I am old-fashioned enough to believe that our boys may derive some small benefit from my lessons, and most importantly, because it annoys Mr. Strange.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. It doesn’t suit you.”

It’s hard to explain St. Oswald’s; harder still from across a gulf of more than forty years. She is young, attractive, bright; one day she will fall in love, maybe have children. She will have a house, which will be a home rather than a secondary annex of the Book Room; she will take holidays in far-flung locations. At least, I hope so; the alternative is to join the rest of the galley slaves and stay chained to the ship until someone pitches you overboard.

“I didn’t mean to offend you, sir,” said Miss Dare.

“You didn’t.” Perhaps I’m going soft in my old age, or perhaps the business with Fallow has troubled me more than I knew. “It’s just that I’m feeling rather Kafkaesque this morning. I blame Dr. Devine.”

She laughed at that, as I thought she might. And yet there remained something in her expression. She has adapted rather well to life at St. Oswald’s; I see her going to lessons with her briefcase and an armful of books; I hear her talking to the boys in the crisp, cheerful tones of a staff nurse. Like Keane, she has a self-possession that serves her well in a place like this, where everyone must fight his corner and to ask for help is a sign of weakness. She can feign anger or hide it when she needs to, knowing that a teacher must be above all a performer, always master of his audience and always in command of the stage. It’s unusual to see that quality in such a young teacher; I suspect that both Miss Dare and Mr. Keane are naturals, just as I know poor Meek is not.

“You’ve certainly come in interesting times,” I said. “Inspections, restructurings, treason, and plot. The bricks and mortar of St. Oswald’s. If you can survive this—”

“My parents were teachers. I know what to expect.”

That explained it. You can always tell. I picked up a mug (not mine; still missing) from the rack by the side of the sink. “Tea?”

She smiled. “The teacher’s cocaine.”

I inspected the contents of the tea urn and poured for both of us. Over the years I have become accustomed to drinking tea in its most elementary form. Even so, the brown sludge that settled in my cup looked distinctly toxic. I shrugged and added milk and sugar. That which does not kill me makes me stronger. An appropriate motto, perhaps, for a place like St. Oswald’s, perpetually on the brink of tragedy or farce.

I looked around at my colleagues, sitting in groups around the old Common Room, and felt a deep and unexpected stab of affection. There was McDonaugh, reading the
Mirror
in his corner; Monument, by his side, reading the
Telegraph
; Pearman, discussing nineteenth-century French pornography with Kitty Teague; Isabelle Tapi checking her lipstick; the League of Nations sharing a chaste banana. Old friends; comfortable collaborators.

As I said, it’s hard to explain St. Oswald’s; the sound of the place in the mornings; the flat echo of boys’ feet against the stone steps; the smell of burning toast from the Refectory; the peculiar sliding sound of overfilled sports bags being dragged along the newly polished floor. The Honors Boards, with gold-painted names dating back from before my great-great-grandfather; the war memorial; the team photographs; the brash young faces, tinted sepia with the passing of time. A metaphor for eternity.

Gods, I’m getting sentimental. Age does that; a moment ago I was bemoaning my lot and now here I am getting all misty-eyed. It must be the weather. And yet, Camus says, we must imagine Sisyphus happy. Am I unhappy? All I know is that something has shaken us; shaken us to the foundations. It’s in the air, a breath of revolt, and somehow I know that it goes deeper than the Fallow affair. Whatever it may be, it is not over. And it’s still only September.