CHILDREN OF THE HEADMASTER

A SHORT STORY BY WILLIAM TREVOR

THE greater part of the house was shabby from use. The white paintwork of the corridors and the rooms had been chipped and soiled. Generations of feet had clat- tered against skirting-boards; fingers had darkened an area around door-handles; shoulders had worn patches on walls. The part of the house known as 'private side' was in better decorative repair, this being the wing occupied by the Headmaster's family — six people in contrast to the hundred and twenty-odd boys who com- prised the boarding-school. In the holidays the house regained its unity, and the Headmaster's children were together again. Jonathan returned to his own room from whichever dormitory he had occupied during the term, and was glad to do so. Margery, Georgina and Harriet explored the forbidden territory of the last few months.

Mr Arbuary, the children's father, had bought the house with money left to his wife in a will. On learning about the legacy, the Arbuarys returned to England from Hong Kong, where Mr Arbuary had been a police officer. The legacy allowed them the first chance in their married life to 'do something', as they put it privately to one another. In those days Mrs Arbuary was on for anything, but had since de- veloped a nervous condition that drained her energy. Only the two older children were born before the family's return to England, Jonathan and Margery.

Mr Arbuary was a tall, bespectacled man with a sandy moustache, increasing in stoutness as the years advanced, and bald- ing at about the same rate. His wife, once stout herself, was skin and bone due to her nervous complaint, with lank fair hair and eyes as darting as a rabbit's. The combina- tion had produced children who were physically like neither of them except that they were blue-eyed and were not sallow- skinned or black-haired. Yet among the children there was a distinct family re- semblance: a longish face in which the features were cut with a precision that lent them an aristocratic air, a tendency to stare. Margery and Georgina, when they were ten and nine respectively, were pret- ty. Harriet, at eight, gave little indication of how she would be in the future. Jonathan, the oldest, had already been told by the Classics master, Old Mudger, that he was not without good looks.

The house that was both school and home was on the outskirts of a seaside town, at the end of a brief, hydrangea- laden drive. In purchasing it and deciding to start a boarding-school, Mr Arbuary did his homework carefully. He recalled his own schooldays and all that had gone with them in the name of education and 'older values'. He believed in older values. At a time when the country he returned to appeared to be in the hands of football hooligans and trade unionists such values surely needed to be re-established, and when he thought about them Mr Arbuary was glad he had decided to invest his wife's legacy in a preparatory school rather than an hotel, which had been an alternative. He sought the assistance of an old school- fellow who had spent the intervening years in the preparatory-school world and was familiar with the ropes. This was the Classics master whom generations of boys came to know as Old Mudger when Mr Arbuary had enticed him to the new establishment. Mrs Arbuary — presenting in those days a motherly front — took on the responsibility of catering and care of the boys' health. The boarding-school be- gan with three pupils, increasing its intake slowly at first, later accelerating.

'Now,' Georgina prompted on the first afternoon of the Easter holidays in 1988. 'Anything good?'

The furniture-room, in the attics above the private part of the house, was the children's secret place. They crouched among the stored furniture that, ten years ago, their mother had inherited with the legacy. That morning the boys had gone, by car mostly, a few by train. In contrast to the bustle and the rush there'd been, the house was as silent as a tomb.

'Nothing much,' Jonathan said. 'Really.' 'Must have been something,' Harriet insisted.

Jonathan said that the winter term in the other side of the house had been bitterly cold. Everyone had chilblains. He re- counted the itching of his own, and the huddling around the coke boiler, and his poor showing at algebra, geometry and Latin. His sisters were not much impress- ed. He said: 'Half Starving got hauled up. He nearly got the sack.'

Three times a year Jonathan brought to his sisters the excitement of the world they were protected from, for it was one of the Headmaster's rules that family life and school life should in no way impinge upon one another. The girls heard the great waves of noise and silence that came whenever the whole school congregated, a burst of general laughter sometimes, a master's voice raised to address the ranks of boys at hand-inspection times in the hall, the chatter at milk-and-biscuits time.

They saw, from the high windows of the house, the boys in their games clothes setting off for the playing-fields. Some- times, when an emergency arose, a senior boy would cross to private side to summon their father. He would glance at the three girls with curiosity, and they at him. On Sundays the girls came closer to the school, walking with their mother and the under- matron, Miss Mainwaring, behind the long crocodile of boys to church, and sitting five pews behind them.

'Why did Half Starving get hauled up?' Georgina asked.

Half Starving was the sobriquet the current junior master had earned because of his unhealthily pallid appearance. As such, he had been known to the girls ever since their brother had passed the nick- name on. By now they'd forgotten his real name.

'Because of something he said to Hax- by,' Jonathan said. At lunch one day Half Starving had asked Haxby what the joke was, since the whole table had begun to snigger. No joke, sir,' Haxby replied, and Half Starving said: 'What age are you, Haxby?' When Haxby said nine, Half Starving said he'd never seen a boy of nine with grey hair before.

Georgina giggled, and so did Harriet. Margery said: 'What happened then?'

'Another boy said that wasn't a very nice thing to say because Haxby couldn't help his hair. The boy — Temple, I think it was — said it was a personal remark, and Half Starving said he hadn't meant to make a personal remark. Then he asked Haxby if he'd ever heard of the Elephant Man.'

'The what?' Harriet stared at Jonathan with her mouth open, the way her father said she never in any circumstances what- soever should.

'A man in a peepshow, who looked like an elephant. Someone asked Half Starving if Haxby reminded him of this elephant person and Half Starving said the elephant person had had grey hair when he was a boy also. Then someone said Haxby might be good in a peepshow and Half Starving asked Haxby if travelling about sounded like a life he'd enjoy. Everyone laughed and afterwards Cuthbert hauled Half Starving up because of the noise.'

Cuthbert was the school's nickname for the children's father. Jonathan had felt embarrassed about using it to his sisters at first, but he'd got over that years ago. For his own part, Mr Arbuary liked simply to be known as 'the Headmaster'.

'I think I know which Haxby is,' Margery said. 'Funny looking fish. All the same, I doubt anyone would pay to see him in a peepshow. Anything else?'

'Spence II puked in the dorm, first night of term. All the mint chocs he brought back and something that looked like tur- nips. Mange-coloured.'

'Ugh!' Harriet said.

Baddle, Thompson-Wright and Wardle had been caned for giving cheek. Thompson-Wright had blubbed, the others hadn't. The piano master had been seen on the promenade with one of the maids, Reene.

Jonathan's sisters were interested in that. The piano master's head sloped at an angle from his shoulders. He dressed like an undertaker and did not strike the girls as the kind to take women on to the prom- enade.

'Who saw them?' Georgina asked.

'Pomeroy when he was going for Old Mudger's tobacco.'

'I don't like to think of it,' Margery said. 'Isn't the piano master meant to smell?'

Jonathan said the piano master himself didn't smell: more likely it was his clothes. 'Something gets singed when it's ironed.'

'A vest,' Harriet suggested.

'I don't know what it is.'

'I think a vest probably.'

Soon after that the children left the furniture-room. There was tea in the dining-room then, a daily ritual in the holidays, the long mahogany table with carved ends laid for six. The Headmaster liked it to be so. He liked Mrs Arbuary to make sandwiches: sardine and egg in win- ter, in summer cucumber and tomato. The Headmaster's favourite cake was fruitcake, so there was fruitcake as well.

The dining-room was a darkish room, wallpaper in crimson and black stripes combining with two sets of curtains — velvet, in crimson also, and net — to set this sombre tone. The grained paintwork was the same deep brown as the curlicue- ed sideboard, on which were arrayed the silver tea-pots and water-jugs, the gravy boats and loving cups, that Mrs Arbuary had inherited at the same time as the furniture and her legacy. It was an aunt who had died.

The children took their places at the table. Mrs Arbuary poured tea. The maid who had been observed in the piano master's company brought in a plate of buttered toast. She and the other domestic staff — Monica and Mrs Hodge and Mrs Hodge's husband, who was the general handyman — continued to come daily to the school during the holidays, but for much shorter hours. That was the only way the Arbuarys could keep them.

'Thank you, Reene,' the Headmaster said, and the girls began to giggle, thinking about the piano master. He was a man who had never earned a nickname, and it was a tradition at the school not ever to employ his surname. Since Jonathan had passed that fact on to his sisters they had not, even in their thoughts, done so either.

'Well', the Headmaster said next. 'We are en famine.'

Mrs Arbuary, who rarely instigated con- versations and only occasionally contri- buted to them, did not do so now. She smeared raspberry jam on a finger of toast and raised it to her lips. The school was a triumph for her husband after a lustreless career in Hong Kong, but it had brought her low. Being answerable to often grumpy parents, organising a kitchen and taking responsibility during epidemics did not suit her nature. She had been happier before.

'A good term,' the Headmaster said. 'I think we might compliment ourselves on a successful term. Eh, Jonathan?'

'I suppose so.' The tone was less ungra- cious than the sentiment. Jonathan drum- med as much cheeriness into it as he could muster, yet felt the opinion must be expressed honestly in those words. He had no idea if the term had been successful or not; he supposed so if his father claimed so.

'A single defeat on the hockey field,' the Headmaster reminded him. 'And your own report's not half bad, old chap.'

'Georgina got a frightful one,' Harriet said.

The girls attended a day school in the town, St Agnes's. When the time came they would be sent away to boarding- school, but at the preparatory stage funds could not be stretched. Once, years ago, his wife had suggested that the girls might receive their preparatory education at her husband's school, but this was before she appreciated that the older values would not permit this.

'Georgina', Mr Arbuary said, in his headmaster's rather than his father's voice, 'has much to mend this holidays. So, too, has Harriet.'

'My report wasn't too awful,' Harriet insisted in an unconvincing mutter meant mainly for herself.

'Speak clearly if you wish to be heard, Harriet. Reports are written to be assessed by parents. I would remind you of that.'

'I only meant —' 'You are a chatterbox, Harriet. What should be placed on chatterboxes?'

'Lids.'

'Precisely so.'

A silence fell around the table. Mrs Arbuary cut the fruitcake. The Headmas- ter passed his cup for more tea. Eventually he said: 'It is always a pity, I think, when Easter is as early as it is this year.'

He gave no reason for this view, but elicited nonetheless a general response — murmurs of agreements, nods. Neither Mrs Arbuary nor the children minded when Easter fell, but in the dining-room responses were required.

INCREASINGLY, there was much that Jonathan did not pass on to his sisters. Mrs Arbuary's nickname, for instance, was the Hen because a boy called McAtters had said she was like a hen whose feathers had been drenched in a shower of rain — a reference to what McAtters, and others, considered to be a feeble manner. It had been noticed that Mrs Arbuary feared, not just her husband, but Miss Mainwaring the undermatron and most of the assistant masters. It had been noticed that she played obsessively with one of her forefin- gers whenever parents engaged in con- versation. A boy called Windercrank said that once when she looked up from a flowerbed she was weeding there were soiled-stained tears on her cheeks.

Jonathan had not passed on to his sisters the news that their father was generally despised. It had been easier to tell them about Old Mudger, how he sometimes came into the dorm if a boy had been sent to bed before prep because Miss Mainwar- ing thought he was looking peaky. 'Well, friendly, I suppose,' Jonathan had ex- plained to Georgina and Harriet, 'Any- way, that's what we call it. Friendly.' Margery had an inkling: he'd seen it in her eyes. All three of them had laughed over the Mudger being friendly, Georgina and Harriet knowing it was funny because no one would particularly want to be friendly with their father's old school-fellow. But they wouldn't laugh — nor would he — if he told them their mother was called the Hen. They wouldn't laugh if he told them their father was scorned for his pomposity, and mocked behind his back as a fearsome figure of fun.

And now — this Easter holidays — there was something else. A boy Jonathan did not like, who was a year older than he was, called Tottle, had sent a message to Margery. All term he had been bothering Jonathan with his messages, and Jonathan had explained that because of the Head- master's rules he would have no opportun- ity to deliver one until the holidays. Tottle had doubted his trustworthiness in the matter, and two days before the term ended he pushed him into a corner of the lavatories and rammed his fist into Jonathan's stomach. He kept it there, pressing very hard, until Jonathan prom- ised that he would deliver the message to Margery as soon as possible in the holi- days. When Jonathan had first been a pupil in his father's school, when he was seven, no one had even seemed to notice his sisters, but during the last year or so — because they were older, he supposed — all that had changed. Boys he wasn't friends with asked questions about them, boys who'd never spoken to him before. Once, at lunch, Half Starving had warned a boy not to speak like that about the Headmaster's daughters. 'Fancy them yourself, sir?' someone else shouted down the table, and Half Starving went red, the way he always did when matters got out of hand.

'Tell her to meet me, first night of term,' Tottle's message was. 'Round by the car- pentry hut. Seven.'

Tottle had looked round and smiled at Margery in church, he claimed. The third Sunday he'd done it she'd smiled back. Without any evidence to the contrary, Jonathan had denied that. 'You bloody little tit,' Tottle snapped, driving his fist further into Jonathan's stomach, hurting him considerably.

Tottle was due to leave at the end of next term, but Jonathan guesed that after Tottle there would be someone else, and that soon there would be messages for Georgi- na as well as Margery, and later for Harriet. He wouldn't have to be involved in that because he'd have left himself by then, but some other means of communica- tion would be found, through Reene or Mrs Hodge or Hodge. Jonathan hated the thought of that; he hated his sisters being at the receiving end of dormitory coarse- ness. In the darkness there'd been guffaws when the unclothing of Reene by the piano master had been mooted — and sly titter- ing which he'd easily joined in himself. Not that he'd even believed Pomeroy when he said he'd seen them on the promenade. Pomeroy didn't often tell the truth.

But it wasn't the pursuit of his sisters that worried Jonathan most: it was what they would learn by the carpentry shed or in the seclusion of the hydrangeas. It stood to reason that their pursuers would let things slip. 'Cuthbert,' Tottle would say. and Margery would laugh, saying she knew her father was called Cuthbert. Then, bit by bit, on similar occasions, all the rest of it would tumble out. You giggled when the Hen was imitated, the stutter she'd de- veloped, her agitated playing with a fore- finger. Cuthbert's walk was imitated, his catchphrases concerning the older values repeated in self-important tones. 'Bad taste' another catchphrase was. When the pomposity was laid aside and severity took its place he punished ruthlessly, his own appointed source of justice. When the rules were broken he showed no mercy. Other people's fathers were businessmen or doctors, Bakinghouse's was a deep-sea salvage operator. No one mentioned what they were like; no one knew.

'Margery,' Jonathan said in the furniture-room when Georgina and Har- riet were receiving tuition from their father. 'Margery, do you know what a boy called Tottle looks like?'

Margery went pink. 'Tonle?' she said.

'He's one of the first three leading into church. There's Reece and Greated, then usually Tottle.'

'Yes, I know Tottle,' Margery admitted, and Jonathan knew from her casual tone that what Tottle had said about Margery smiling back was true.

'Tonle sent you a message,' Jonathan said.

'What kind of a message?' She turned her head away, trying to get her face into the shadows.

'He said to meet him by the carpentry shed next term. Seven o'clock the first evening.'

'Blooming cheek!'

'You won't, will you, Margery? He made me promise I'd tell you, otherwise I wouldn't have.'

'Of course I won't.'

, 'Tonle's not all that nice.'

'He's not bad-looking if he's the one I'm thinking of.' Jonathan didn't say anything. Baking- house's father might turn into some kind of predator when he was at the bottom of the sea, quite different from the person Bakinghouse knew. A businessman mightn't be much liked by office people, but his family wouldn't know that either.

'Why d'you think Mummy's so nervy, Margery?'

'Nervy?'

'You know what I mean.'

Margery nodded. She didn't know, she said, sounding surprised. 'When did Tottle give you the message, Jonathan?'

'Two days before the end of term.'

Lying in bed the night before, he had made up his mind that he would pass the message on when Georgina and Harriet were occupied in one of the classrooms the next day. Best to get it over, he'd thought, and it was then that he began to wonder about their mother. He never had before, and clearly Margery hadn't either. He remembered someone saying that the Hen was probably the way she was because of Cuthbert. 'Poor old Hen,' a voice in the dorm had sympathised.

'Don't tell the others,' Margery pleaded. 'Please.'

'Of course not.'

Their mother overheard things in the laundry room when boys came for next week's sheets and clean pyjamas, and in the hall when she gave out the milk. As someone once said, it was easy to forget the poor old Hen was there.

'Don't meet him, Margery.'

'I told you I wouldn't.'

'Tonle's got a thing on you.'

Again Margery reddened. She told her brother not to be silly. Else why would Tottle want to meet her by the carpentry shed? he replied; it stood to reason. Tottle wasn't a prefect; he hadn't been made a prefect even though he was one of the oldest boys in the school. Had he been a prefect he wouldn't have been the third boy to enter the church on Sundays; he'd have led a battalion, as the five houses into which the school was divided were called. He wasn't a prefect because the Headmas- ter didn't consider him worthy and made no secret of the fact.

'It's nothing like that,' Margery per- sisted.

Jonathan didn't want to argue. He didn't even want to think about Tottle now that the message had been delivered. He changed the conversation; he asked Margery about Miss Mole, one of the mistresses who taught her, and about whom Margery was sometimes funny. But he hardly listened when she told him. It hadn't occurred to him before that Tottle was in some way attempting to avenge himself.

THERE was roast lamb for lunch. The Headmaster carved it. There was mint sauce, and carrots and mashed potatoes. 'I think we learned a thing or two this morning,' the Headmaster said. 'I hope we can compliment ourselves on that.'

Was he as bad as they said? Jonathan wondered. It was ridiculous to say he was like Mussolini, yet it had been said. 'Bully- boys are always a bit comic,' a boy called Piercey had said. 'Hitler. Mussolini. Crom- well. The Reverend Ian Paisley.'

'Jonathan.' His mother smiled at him, indicating that he should pass a dish to Harriet. By the end of the holidays she would be far less taut; that was always so. She and Mrs Hodge and Monica would launder blankets and clean the dormitory windows and polish the linoleum and wash down walls where it was necessary. Then all the beds had to be made and the dining-hall given a cleaning, the tables scrubbed and the serving range gone over with steel-wool. Hodge would clean the dining-hall windows because they were awkwardly placed. Crockery that had been broken during the term would be replaced.

'Sorry,' Jonathan said, moving the dish of carrots towards his youngest sister. By the end of the holidays, though still sub- dued and jumpy, Mrs Arbuary would be more inclined to take part in mealtime conversation. Her hands would not quiver so much.

'Mrs Sal kind telephoned in the middle of our labours,' the Headmaster reported. 'Apparently the Salkinds are being posted abroad. Did you know this, Jonathan? Did Salkind say?

Jonathan shook his head.

'Apparently to Egypt. Some business thing.'

'Did Mrs Salkind give notice?' The hopeful note in his mother's tone caught in Jonathan's imagination. With a bit of luck all the other parents might give notice also. Again and again, that very afternoon, the telephone might ring and the news would be that father after father had been posted to distant parts. The school would close.

'On the contrary,' the Headmaster re- plied. 'No, quite the contrary. Our Master Salkind will be flown back and forth at the expense of some manufacturing company. Heavy-duty vehicle springs, I believe it is, that pay the piper where Salkind senior is concerned. I recall correctly, Jonathan?'

'I'm afraid I don't know.'

'No cause for fear, old chap. Heavy-duty vehicle springs, if I am not wildly astray, featured long in a conversation with the senior Salkind. Buses, lorries, military transports. Now, it seems, the good man is to instruct the Egyptians in their manufac- ture, or else to set up a factory, or generally to liaise. The good Mrs Salkind did not reveal.'

While speaking, the Headmaster cut the meat on his plate, adding potatoes and carrots to each forkful. He paused to eat between sentences, so that what he said came slowly from him. When the children were younger they had fidgeted during their father's mealtime dissertations. They had since learned not to.

'No, the reason for the good lady's telephone call was to enquire if Master Salkind might have extra French.'

Not wishing to listen, Jonathan thought of Tottle again. The older boy's rather big, handsome face appeared clearly in his mind, a smile slung lazily across it. He glanced at Margery, seated opposite him.

Was she, too, thinking about her admirer, visualising him also? Was she wondering what it would be like to meet him as he'd suggested, what he'd say, how he'd act?

'French, apparently, is commercially de rigueur in Egypt, or at least in the Salkinds' corner of it.'

In the darkness of the dormitory there were confessions of desire. When one voice left off another began. Tales were told of what had been seen or heard. Intentions were declared, pretences aired. 'Though, truth to tell, I can hardly think of a reason why French should feature in any way whatsoever since the Egyptians have a perfectly good language of their own.'

The confessions of desire had to do with film stars usually, occasionally with Lady Di or Fergie, less often with Reene or Monica.

'Were you aware of that, old chap? French in Egypt?'

'No.'

'I think, you know, the good lady may have got it wrong.'

Tottle intended to try it on, and then to laugh in that way he had. He would put his big face close to Margery's, he'd put his big lips on to hers, and his hands would go all over her, just as though it wasn't real, just as though he was pretending. And later on, with someone else, it would be the same for Georgina, and for Harriet.

'But since Master Salkind's French is shaky an extra hour a week will hardly come amiss, eh?'

Everyone agreed.

THE days of that Easter holiday went similarly by. The children of the Headmas- ter spent long afternoons on the grey sands that stretched beyond the shingle and the sea-front promenade. They sat in the Yew Tree Café sipping Coca-Cola and nibbling cheap biscuits. When their week's pocket- money ran out they crouched instead among the furniture of the furniture-room. Every morning Georgina and Harriet were given tuition by their father, and Jonathan and Margery read, alone in their rooms.

Tottle was not again mentioned, but as the weeks passed Jonathan found himself more and more dismayed by all that his imagination threw at him. It felt like that: as though heavy lumps of information were being lobbed in his direction, relentlessly and slowly. They dropped into the pond of his consciousness, creating little pictures. They nagged him, and the intensity of colour in the pictures increased, and faces and expressions acquired greater distinct- ness.

Two nights before the holidays ended, restlessly awake, Jonathan arrived at a decision. The next afternoon he did not accompany his sisters to the sea-front and the Yew Tree Café, presenting them with the unlikely excuse that he had some history to read. He watched them set off from the window of his bedroom, delayed another twenty minutes, and then went slowly downstairs. He paused again, in doubt and trepidation, before he found the courage to knock on his father's study door. He had no idea how he might express himself.

'Yes?' the Headmaster responded.

Jonathan closed the door behind him. The study smelt, as always, of his father's pipe tobacco and a mustiness that could not be identified. Glass-paned cupboards were full of text-books. There were sup- plies of chalk and geometrical instruments, globes of the world, cartridges for fountain-pens, stacks of new exercise- books, blotting-paper, pencils. His father sat behind his desk, a pipe in his mouth, the new term's time-tables spread about before him.

'Well, old chap? Come to lend a hand?'

Beyond the geniality lay the ghost of the Headmaster's termtime self, of severity and suspicion. Pomposity wasn't what mat- tered most; talk of 'older values' and 'bad taste' was only tedious on its own. 'Cruel bloody hypocrite,' some boy — neither Tottle nor Piercey — had said once. 'Nasty brute.'

'Always tricky, the summer time-tables.' Jonathan nodded.

'Cricket's greedy,' the Headmaster said. 'Where time's concerned.'

'Yes, it is.'

His father knocked the ashes out of his pipe and drew a tin of tobacco towards him. All his life, Jonathan had been familiar with these tins: Three Nuns the tobacco was called, orange lettering on a creamy ground. He watched his father pressing the coiled shreds into the bowl of his pipe. His father knew: that was what Jonathan had at length deduced. His father had so determinedly separated private side from the school because he knew the girls must not be exposed to crudities. His father knew, but he didn't know enough. You couldn't insist there was a shutter that came down just because you pretended it did. You couldn't insist Old Mudger was a Mr Chips just because he looked like one.

'Girls out somewhere?' his father said.

'I think so.'

A match was struck, the tobacco caught. Jonathan watched it reddening, and smoke streaming from between his father's tightly clenched teeth. There was no conversation they could have. He could not mention the voices in the darkness of the dormitory, the confessions of desire, the declarations of intention. He could not tell his father he was despised for being the person he was, that boys were sorry for a woman they had likened to a hen. He could not warn him of Tottle's revenge, nor suggest what lay ahead for Georgina and Harriet. Lying awake the night before, he had wanted to protect his sisters, and his mother also, because they were not to blame. And in a way he had even wanted to protect his father because he didn't know enough, because he blustered and was oppressive, and went about things stupidly.

'Well, I'd best get on, old chap,' his father said, applying himself once more to the sheets of paper that constituted the summer time-tables. The balding head was bent again. Smoke eddied about it com- placently.

Jonathan went away, softly closing the study door behind him. He ran through the empty corridors of the school, and down the hydrangea drive. He ran along the sea-front, looking for his sisters.

(7) William Trevor, 1988