Mr Campion's Fault (5 page)

‘Yes, actually I was,’ said Rupert smartly, slightly uncomfortable, though not knowing quite why, at being in a headmaster’s study.

They had been met at the oaken door by a prim, blue-rinsed woman wearing a cardigan buttoned to the neck as if it was a uniform, who had introduced herself as Mrs Celia Armitage and informed them that ‘the headmaster’ (not, Rupert noted, ‘my husband’) was ready and waiting to receive them.

‘Thought as much,’ said the headmaster, ‘always was the best house when it came to school plays and things dramatic. Sadly, we don’t have that sort of tradition here at Ash Grange, but then those things take time and growth. Fortunately, the Comprehensive system is helping us enormously.’

‘
It is?
’ Perdita squeaked in surprise, the blue china cup and saucer she held rattling loudly and the Rich Tea biscuit she had been dunking surreptitiously quivered dangerously.

‘Oh, yes, my dear, it most certainly is. If the Labour government pushes ahead with its plans for Comprehensive Schools then more and more parents will opt for private education for their children and I envisage we will be fully fee-paying within the next three years.’

‘You’re not at the moment?’ asked Rupert.

‘Only about sixty per cent of our boys are private pupils,’ said the headmaster. ‘The remainder come via the local education authority after sitting the eleven-plus. Of course, the local authority is strongly Labour and supports the Comprehensive ideal.’

‘It does sound an attractive ideal,’ Perdita said, turning her face up and smiling sweetly at her godfather.

The hairs on the back of Rupert’s neck began to stand to attention. Had he really married a Bolshevik? Fortunately Brigham Armitage, although he had the demeanour and sartorial smartness of an off-duty church warden, did not seem at all worried by radical concepts, especially not when issued from a perfectly pretty mouth.

‘Which of course it is,’ said Mr Armitage, returning Perdita’s smile from underneath a neatly clipped moustache, ‘in theory. Equal opportunity in education is a perfectly sound ambition. The problem is, my dear, that in practice it will mean catering to the lowest ability and the brighter children will be held back.’

‘The brighter children or just selected children from privileged and richer families?’ Perdita asked, noting that her husband was staring fixedly into his teacup and shuffling uncomfortably in his chair.

The headmaster, as headmasters are trained from birth to be, remained unflappable.

‘Some of our best pupils are county boys as we call them and not only do they not pay fees but many win scholarships from the various foundations and charities in the mining industry, which even covers the cost of their uniforms and their bus fares. As long as they are pupils at Ash Grange, our aim is to get as many of them as possible into the five per cent of young people who go on to university, whatever their background. If that is condoning privilege and selection, then so be it.’

For the second time since they had entered school premises, a strident electric bell rang out, the sound bringing the same relief to Rupert as it would to an out-matched boxer reeling from a first round battering.

‘That’s the end of final period,’ said the headmaster, ‘and we should remove ourselves to the staff room where we can catch your new colleagues or at least some of them before they disappear.’

‘Do some of them live off the premises?’ Rupert asked, thinking it an innocent enough, non-political issue.

‘All of them,’ said Mr Armitage. ‘My wife and I are here all the time, of course, and the senior staff are on a rota. Two of them are on duty every night to supervise the boarders. We have about thirty boarders, mostly sons of army families, at the moment but Celia hopes we will have many more in the future. She rather likes the idea of being a den-mother. We never managed to have children of our own, you see.’

Brigham Armitage eased himself from the captain’s chair and stood to attention behind his desk. He raised his right hand to his face, almost as if he were about to salute, but with finger and thumb stroked the wingtips of his moustache to ensure every individual hair was in its proper place, then he tugged down on the hem of his waistcoat and buttoned his jacket, all with clipped military movements.

‘If you would follow me, I’ll lead the way to the staff room,’ he announced, ‘if, that is, we can avoid being trampled by a herd of boys thundering to leave now that school is finished for the day, then I’ll give you a brief tour of the premises, just to get your basic bearings.’

He ushered the young Campions towards his study door. ‘I am sure you have a preconceived notion of us,’ he said genially, ‘especially if you’ve read
Nicholas Nickleby
.’

‘You mean Dotheboys Hall?’ said Rupert with convincing innocence. ‘That thought had not crossed our minds.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it did. The comparison is always made by people from down south, but we have broad shoulders here in Yorkshire. We are used to being characterized as a race of skinflints who wear flat caps, like their beer with a big head and only listen to brass band music, and whenever I tell a southerner that I run a school in Yorkshire, they inevitably call me Wackford Squeers.’

‘Surely not,’ soothed Perdita, slipping an arm around as much of her godfather’s shoulders as she could reach. ‘He was a perfectly horrid man and you’re a perfectly sweet one. Ash Grange isn’t anything like Dotheboys Hall, is it?’

Mr Armitage smiled, his heart obviously melting at his Bolshevik goddaughter’s flattery.

‘Only in one respect, I hope. The advertisement for Dotheboys, according to Dickens, claims that the school offers “No extras, no vacations and diet unparalleled”. Well, we do supply extras and we certainly have vacations, but when it comes to offering a diet unparalleled, I have to say we are inordinately proud of our catering and our diet – as you can see’ – he patted his well-filled waistcoat – ‘is indeed unparalleled. But then, I have to say that as my good lady wife is in charge of catering and that is the one area of the school where the headmaster has absolutely no authority whatsoever. Do not, however, repeat what I just said in the staff room. As far as the staff – and the boys come to that – are concerned, the headmaster is all-knowing, all-powerful and absolutely everywhere at once.’

Rupert and Perdita dutifully followed the omniscient and omnipotent Brigham Armitage along a high, windowless corridor which led into the bowels of the school. As was clearly the highway code of traffic within the establishment, they walked on the left and a trickle of schoolboys pulling on coats and scarves, or struggling with heavily laden haversacks or satchels, marched in procession in the opposite direction. To a boy they were quiet and orderly and all greeted the headmaster with a polite ‘Good night, sir’. The older ones, or at least those over five feet tall, all gave Perdita a second if not a third glance. Rupert wondered whether he should scowl at them but restrained himself on the grounds that boys were apt to be, when all was said and done, boys.

Along the length of the corridor, well above head height and out of reach of the casual juvenile vandal hung an eclectic series of framed oil paintings without any apparent linking theme. Yet two of them, hanging side by side, struck a chord of recognition in Rupert.

‘Excuse me, Headmaster,’ he said formally as there were boys in the corridor, ‘but those two paintings look rather familiar.’

‘Are you an art lover, Mr Campion?’ Mr Armitage stopped in his tracks, acknowledged a brace of boys hurrying past with a respectful nod and then concentrated on the paintings Rupert was pointing at.

‘Not really,’ Rupert confessed. ‘It was just that those two are both landscapes, or should I say “seascapes”, of the Suffolk coast, are they not?’

‘They are indeed. Do you know the artists?’

‘Not a clue, I’m afraid, but we know that coast.’

‘Yes, of course,’ the headmaster mused, ‘you would. They are both of the area around Walberswick and Southwold. The one on the right is a Bernard Priestman and the other’s a Rowland Suddaby. East Anglia seems to have exerted quite a pull on our artists.’

‘
Your
artists, Headmaster?’ Perdita asked. ‘Are they connected to the school?’

Mr Armitage glanced along the corridor and his eyes flashed in a silent warning that they were being overheard by several sets of juvenile ears working with bat-like precision.

‘Sadly no, Miss Browning; I meant “our artists” in the sense that all the paintings hung here are by Yorkshiremen. The next one, that rather surreal daub which looks like a draughts’ board someone has taken an axe to, is by Edward Wadsworth. Not to my taste at all, far too modern, but he was a Yorkshireman – born in Cleckheaton actually, which is not that far from here – and he did some sterling work for the navy in the First War on “dazzle camouflage” on ships. Zigzags and big black and white stripes, that sort of thing, to break up the outlines and confuse the enemy.

‘And next to that is my personal favourite: a Yorkshire scene by a Victorian painter of the old school, as it were. That’s one of Atkinson Grimshaw’s views of Whitby harbour at evening. Grimshaw was a Leeds man, but I don’t hold that against him. He’s often looked down on as a journeyman painter, slightly mechanical perhaps, and clearly no Turner.’

‘But you know what you like!’ Perdita said cheekily.

‘We usually do in Yorkshire,’ said Mr Armitage stiffly, ‘and being Yorkshiremen we naturally ignore the rather snooty comments of so-called art critics.’

‘Not just those critics based in London and the south?’ asked Rupert gently.

‘I thought all critics were based in London,’ the headmaster said casually whilst aiming a steely stare at his goddaughter. ‘Especially theatre critics.’

‘Well, we certainly don’t pay them any heed, do we?’ Perdita bristled.

‘We wouldn’t give
their
opinions house-room in Yorkshire, my dear … my dear Miss Browning.’

‘Good for you, Headmaster, and whatever my hus— Whatever Mr Campion thinks, I like your Atkinson Grimshaw.’

Rupert, who could not remember passing an opinion on the painting, bit his tongue and remained silent.

‘Thank you. He is an artist who is yet to have his day, I feel. I bought that canvas ten years ago for seventy pounds and I look on it as a sound investment. It’s going to be worth a pretty penny one day. But enough of my hobby. The working day of a headmaster extends long after the last day bell has gone and I want you to meet at least some of the staff before they disappear, so let us proceed to the Dragons’ Den, as the boys call it.’

Mr Armitage indicated they should continue down the corridor which ended in a small hallway, where a set of incongruously modern stairs rose to the first-floor level providing a bridge to a more recent extension to the house. As the stairs were clearly in use by a trickle of departing schoolboys all wearing relieved expressions, it was a safe assumption that they led to a series of classrooms. On the far side of the stairwell was a polished oak door with a shiny brass plate proclaiming: staff room.

In any school, particularly in the early morning before assembly and at going-home time in the afternoon, a headmaster has to take on the role of a traffic policeman on point duty. It was a clearly a role which came naturally to Brigham Armitage, who stepped into the midstream of pupils descending the stairs, one arm raised to halt traffic, the other waving the Campions across the hall to the safety of the staff room.

Their crossing should have been unremarkable and without hazard, despite Perdita having to smother a giggle at the sudden thought of Mr Armitage assuming the responsibilities of the Tufty Club, were it not for a sudden commotion at the top of the stairs just as the Campions were being given right-of-way across the bottom.

‘Oh, do get out of my way, you stupid boys! I have a bus to catch.’

The owner of that angry feminine voice appeared through a scrum of startled boys, all of whom melted to the side of the staircase to allow the bustling tornado to pass freely. It was a woman of late middle-age, very tall and very thin, who clearly demonstrated that her elbows were sharp and that she could use them destructively. She wore a double-breasted brown-and-grey check plaid wool coat and a beige hat of plush sheepskin which could only be described as bucket-shaped.

She descended the stairs in a fury, using the handbag she clutched to bat away any boy who might obstruct her progress, and for a second Perdita thought the woman could not have seen them in their little tableau at the foot of the stairs, directly in her path.

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, move!’ the woman snapped at a startled boy who consequently dropped his satchel in panic.

The woman’s staring eyes, not softened by an excess of blue eyeshadow, and a large, hooked nose, approaching at speed made Rupert feel grateful he had the protection of the headmaster’s authority and military bearing at his side. Yet it seemed as though the woman had not registered the fact that the headmaster was there, even though she was on a collision course.

Only at the last possible moment, as the woman reached the foot of the stairs, did she sidestep rather clumsily, missing the Campions entirely but brushing against the headmaster’s shoulder. As she accelerated by and almost sprinted down the corridor, the Campions registered that a vocal exchange had taken place through gritted teeth and tight lips on both sides.

‘Brigham.’

‘Hilda.’

It was only when his hand was on the handle of the door to the staff room and there was an ebb in the tide of passing schoolboys that Mr Armitage offered an explanation of sorts.

‘That was Hilda Browne,’ he said to Perdita, ‘and this was clearly not a good time for introductions, but you will have to meet her at some point. You see, she’s your Helen of Troy.’

T
wo of the pupils who had taken evasive action to avoid being trampled by the hurtling Hilda Browne watched the door of the staff room close behind the headmaster and his visitors and exchanged knowing looks with the world-weariness only fourteen-year-old boys can conjure at will on the slightest excuse.

‘Do you think that’s the replacement for Barmy Bertie?’ asked the larger of the two in a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Could be; how should I know?’ replied the other with studied indifference.

‘You two should get on well. All you carrot-tops stick together.’

‘Don’t be a dunce, Andy. Just because we’ve both got ginger hair doesn’t mean we’re related and anyway, if he is the stand-in for poor Bertie, you’ll see more of him than I will on the rugby field with the under-fifteens.’

The two boys, their school blazers and ties hanging fashionably askew, kept their voices low as they descended the stairs until the satisfying click of the staff room door signalled the all-clear. Only then did the boys’ voices resume their normal volume which a casual eavesdropper, had there been one, would have categorized as ‘argumentative’ given that the boys, as fourteen-year-olds of that sex are prone to do, punctuated their conversation with violent shoulder-to-shoulder nudges as if trying to force each other off a narrow bridge.

‘So who d’you reckon the dolly bird is?’ murmured Andrew Ramsden suggestively, being a boy who liked to appear older and more worldly than his age, though rarely convincingly. Had he been able to grow a moustache, he would probably have twirled it.

The ginger-haired Roderick Braithwaite refused to engage into the nudge-wink banter his friend favoured. ‘I don’t know if she’s a dolly bird but she looks nice.’

‘
Nice?
You fancy her then?’ leered his compatriot.

Roderick sighed, ignored the barb and retaliated as only a good friend would, with one of his own. ‘You’d better get a move on if you’re catching the same bus as Horrible Hilda. I bet she’s saved a seat for you. She
likes
you; you’re her favourite.’

Despite himself, Andy Ramsden felt himself blushing. ‘It’s not me, it’s my Dad she wants to keep in with!’ he protested.

‘Got a crush on policemen, has she?’

Young Ramsden began his riposte in the time-honoured way among schoolboys by shoulder-charging his friend. It was a relaxed, almost nonchalant collision of bodies, without significant force or great malice.

‘She’s always on at Dad about vandalism or littering or Teddy Boys, as she calls them, hanging around the phone box, not to mention speeding cars. She’s gone mental about that after what happened to Barmy Bertie. If I catch that bus she’ll just start nagging me about how Dad should be doing more about speed limits and road safety.’

‘Do you want to come round mine and wait for the next one?’ said Roderick, throwing his friend a lifeline, which Andrew grasped with mercenary speed.

‘What’ve you got?’

‘Mum’s always baking, so there’ll be sweetcake of some sort and we’ve got Black Beer and lemonade.’

‘Any Coca-Cola?’

‘No, Mum always gets Vimto. You could stay for tea if you wanted to.’

Andrew’s head, after a short struggle, got the better of his stomach. ‘Better not. My Mum’ll kill me if I spoil my dinner.’

His friend did not miss the opportunity and said with fake surprise: ‘Oh, I forgot you snobs have
dinner
whereas us poor folk have
tea
.’

‘I’m not a snob.’ Andrew straightened to his full height (a single, but crucial, inch taller than his companion) and hitched up his haversack by the shoulder straps. ‘I can’t be, can I, if I talk to you?’

‘Don’t force yourself. You don’t have to come back to mine if you don’t want.’

‘Can’t resist it, really; I’ve never been in a haunted house before.’

Rupert, when he and Perdita were alone later, reflected that their introduction to the inhabitants of the Dragons’ Den had been akin to stumbling into an officers’ mess in Poona – or somewhere in the Raj – during the monsoon season, the two main differences being that gin-slings had been replaced by tea in mismatched cups and cracked saucers, and that the temperature was anything but sub-tropical. It had not taken Rupert long to deduce that the school’s heating went off precisely as the final bell of the afternoon sounded.

Even though those staff present had only had a few minutes to get themselves settled before Brigham Armitage arrived with his guests, they had already insulated themselves against the falling temperature by boiling kettles and creating an acrid, floating layer of tobacco smoke.

The dragons were in the majority male and seated. The only two females were standing at a small butler’s sink in one corner guarding a dreadnought of a kettle balanced precariously on a hissing gas ring. The only face familiar to the Campions was one of the female ones, that of Celia Armitage who had shown them to her husband’s study on arrival.

After her offer of tea had been politely declined, Mrs Armitage suggested she ‘do the honours’, to which the headmaster agreed with a cheerful grunt and a shrug as if to indicate he had little say in the matter. Rupert had heard that an officer’s rank cut no ice at all in a sergeants’ mess and presumed that the same applied to headmasters in a staff room.

Ladies went first, of course, and the female who was not Celia Armitage was introduced by her as Miss Daphne Cawthorne, who taught mathematics and music, though presumably at different times.

‘Actually, it’s
Mrs
Cawthorne,’ the woman said with a thin smile as she shook Perdita’s hand, ‘but the tradition of the school is that all females are “Misses”. I’m not sure why.’

Daphne Cawthorne was a fair-haired, middle-aged woman wearing a deep pink woollen suit which clung not unfavourably to her not-un-shapely figure. The skirt hung to an inch above the knee – Perdita guessed it would be exactly an inch – displaying legs clad in sheer brown stockings and square-toed shoes with good heels which would give stability whilst bustling up and down a classroom and just a little additional height so that she would not be dominated by the taller boys.

She had, thought Perdita, a stern face though not an unkind one, and the expression of one who had forgotten how to smile, but did not miss the experience much.

‘And this is my husband, Stuart,’ as a dark-complexioned man whose black, close-cropped curls sat on his head like a knitted swim cap materialized at her side. ‘He teaches music and maths in that order, whereas I teach maths and cover for him in music. You might say we’re a double act.’

To Rupert, the Cawthornes were the only double act in the den, for all the other dragons, slouched in armchairs strategically placed at angles so they did not have to face each other, were clearly solitary animals.

There was – and his rank was much stressed – Wing Commander Raymond Bland, a wide-shouldered, red-faced man in his fifties with bushy white eyebrows to match a white-clothes-brush moustache. He taught geography, ‘Whether they like it or not!’ and the fact that he was wearing a leather flying jacket zipped to the throat indicated that he had little time for impromptu staff meetings after school hours.

Next in the receiving line, and clearly responsible for most of the blue layer of tobacco mist in the den, was a pipe-smoking vicar with a round face, small round glasses and a smile which would have been beatific were it not for the pipe stem clenched between yellowing teeth. The Rev. Stanley Huxtable cheerfully announced that he taught physics and, of course, religious education and, as if clarification were necessary, he removed the briar from his mouth and pointed the stem at the dog collar around his neck. He embellished his accomplishments by adding that he tutored ‘the brighter boys thinking of trying for Oxford and Cambridge’ in Latin and Greek.

Rupert and Perdita exchanged furtive glances, each wondering how much extra work this might realistically entail for the cleric. Perdita framed the question diplomatically by asking cheerfully: ‘Does that leave you any time at all for your parishioners in Denby Ash?’

‘Good heavens, I am not the vicar of this or any other parish. I do not have a living in the church; I toil at the coalface of education.’

‘Stanley was an army chaplain,’ Celia Armitage explained as she gently eased Perdita away. ‘Rank of captain, I believe.’

‘Whereas I was a major,’ said the next dragon in line in a strangely measured voice which was high-pitched and slightly feminine.

Physically, this was the smallest and thinnest of the dragons, and though he gave the impression of being a minor civil servant who was bullied at work and brow-beaten at home, Rupert suspected that Major Manfred Poole, the school’s senior chemistry master, ruled his science classes with a rod of iron if not tungsten.

‘Don’t worry, that’s the last of the proper officers,’ said the next male dragon in the queue, despite the fact that he snapped to attention, his heels almost clicking, in front of Perdita.

This was a dragon of the Campions’ generation and though only an inch taller than Perdita and two shorter than Rupert, he was of a muscular bulk which exuded an animal strength and created the impression that here was a man who could expand to fill a room should he so desire. He was dressed in a faded blue tracksuit top-and-bottoms and wore battered white (verging on grey) plimsolls. Celia Armitage introduced him as though she had only just remembered he was on the staff.

‘This is Bob Ward.’

‘Petty Officer Bob Ward, Miss,’ he grinned, offering a meaty hand, ‘formerly of the Royal Navy. In fact, the only naval man in the whole Denby Grange crew. I do PE with a vengeance and I also teach French. Could do Russian if there was a call for it.’

‘Russian? That’s impressive,’ said Rupert genuinely.

‘There was a course an’ I went on it,’ said Bob Ward. ‘The navy wanted Russian speakers, even ones with a broad Yorkshire accent, so we could listen in to the red menace. Can’t say it helped make the world any safer for democracy.’

‘But PE probably makes the world fitter,’ Perdita said graciously.

‘
Mens sano in corpore sano
and all that,’ Rupert added affably.

‘I wouldn’t know about that, I only do Frog and Russki,’ the former naval person said with a grimly straight face. ‘I leave the Classics to the h’officer clarse, same as I leave them to play their rugby.’

It’s a good job you’ve got muscles, Mr Ward,
thought Perdita,
because they’ve got to support one heck of a big chip on your shoulder.

‘You are not involved in school rugby?’

Ward shook his head as if he had been accused of a crime. ‘Not me; never played t’game in me life. Physical fitness, gymnastics and cross-country runs, them’s my department. The rugby field was always Bertram’s empire.’

‘He did play for the Sappers, you know,’ interjected Major Poole through tight, thin lips, ‘when he was in the Royal Engineers, and for Cambridge. He was quite a talent in his younger days and the boys all looked up to him.’

Whether or not the pupils of Denby Grange viewed Bob Ward with the same respect was left unsaid. It was clear that Major Poole did not.

‘Did he take rugby alone?’ asked Rupert. ‘It must have been quite a burden alongside his teaching duties.’

‘He was certainly busy during the winter months, but once the cricket season started he could put his feet up. Bertram wouldn’t have had it any other way, he loved his rugby’ – Poole checked himself as though the thought had just occurred to him – ‘and of course he had Harrop to help him.’

‘Harrop?’

‘Rufus Harrop,’ said Bob Ward, ‘is our groundsman, gardener and general handyman. He’s not officer class either and not even allowed in the staff room.’

Mrs Armitage, being a headmaster’s wife, did what all headmasters’ wives did instinctively and intervened as a peace-keeper. ‘Manfred, Bob. Permit me to steal Mr and Mrs Campion. I’m sure they want to get settled in their room but they really need to have a word with the wing commander before he goes home, and he’s keen to get off.’

‘He always is,’ said Manfred Poole drily.

‘Already got his coat on,’ added Bob Ward, and Perdita sensed something of an unlikely alliance between the two of them when it came to the geography master.

Celia Armitage linked arms with the pair to steer them to where the grumpy wing commander was sucking fiercely on an untipped Players’ cigarette, speaking quietly as she ushered them over. ‘Bob can be a little prickly,’ she whispered, ‘and Manfred just loves to torment him, so best not to get stuck in the middle. You should have a quick word with Raymond, though.’

‘About rugby?’ Rupert asked under his breath.

‘No,’ Celia turned her head into Perdita’s, ‘about Helen of Troy.’

Before Perdita and Rupert could even exchange befuddled glances, they were presented to Raymond Poole, who made no attempt to rise from the armchair which it seemed would rise with him, so snug was the fit.

‘Before you go home, Raymond,’ said Mrs Armitage, gently pushing Perdita forward, ‘we thought you should have a word with Perdita about Hilda.’

‘Hah! Wondered why I was in the official receivin’ line.’

Poole crushed his cigarette out in the small glass ashtray he had balanced on the arm of his chair and then flicked along his moustache with a forefinger; a finger and a moustache, Perdita noticed, both stained yellow with nicotine.

‘You’ve known her longer than anyone, Raymond, which makes you the SBO,’ said Mrs Armitage diplomatically. Then with a grin added: ‘So who better to warn Perdita about what she might expect? Now excuse me whilst I wash up these cups.’

Perdita decided her best strategy was to charm this sulking lion, albeit a lion with a receding mane, and so she ignited her best smile.

‘Are you a friend of … Hilda, is it? Miss Browne. She passed us in the hallway but she didn’t stop to chat; seemed to be running for a bus.’

The balding lion growled softly and eyed Perdita as if she were prey.

‘Then you’re lucky she didn’t trample you to death.’