Rousing himself with an effort from the torpor into which he had fallen after the interview with Mafferty, Cuthbertson decided to leave his office for one of his periodic tours – not of inspection, but of lonely communication with the spirit of the place. However, on opening his door, he found himself confronted by a tall thin figure in a cloth cap and white overalls holding something in its hand. His first reaction, as to anything unexpected these days, was a feeling of fear, intense enough to be momentarily disabling. But his senses cleared, and he made out pale features below the cap, saw it was a paint brush the person was holding, smelt fresh paint.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, in a passable imitation of his own voice. ‘Are you painting?’
He found himself being regarded by very pale, vacant eyes. The man was quite young, little more than a youth, in fact. He said nothing, but gestured towards the door with his brush. Cuthbertson turned and looked. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘You are going to give my door a new coat of paint.’ He looked for some moments longer at the gleaming, immaculate surface of his door. ‘I don’t think it needs one, actually,’ he said.
The youth shook his head. Reaching past Cuthbertson, he pointed to the word ‘Principal’ painted in small black capitals on the door. Then he raised the paint brush above his lowered left hand.
‘I see,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘You are going to make the letters bigger.’ An idea of Bishop’s, he thought immediately. He seemed to remember now having expressed in Bishop’s hearing the wish that the word could be more boldly, more prominently displayed. Bishop was full of little ideas like this, rather touching little gestures of consideration. Surprises. It would be better, though, if he notified one, Cuthbertson felt.
He surveyed the painter doubtfully. Why did he not speak? He might possibly be dumb of course. None the worse for that qua painter, but there was something in the vacant eye, the ill-nourished elongation of the features, the uncouth silence, which did not inspire confidence. He did not strike Cuthbertson as a craftsman of the highest quality. Still, he must have passed through an apprenticeship of some kind.
‘I suppose you’ve got stencils for the letters?’ he said. A watery smile came to the youth’s face, and he gestured again with the brush.
‘Well,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘I suppose you know your own business best.’ He moved past the youth and along the passage, still worried, however, at what he was leaving behind.
Distrust of the painter continued to nag him for some minutes longer as he moved around the School. He thought of checking with Bishop, then decided not to, on the principle of never appearing anything less than sanguine before subordinates – one of the cardinal rules of Leadership.
Gradually, as he proceeded, reaching out occasionally to touch with finger tips the smooth surface of wall or window sill, his qualms subsided, the familiar atmosphere of the School settled round him. He met no one in the corridors, as he padded noiselessly about. Everyone was in class at that hour of the morning.
He stood for some moments at a landing, looking out over the gardens behind the house, the neat lawns, trim alleys – that had been a marvellous idea, the intersecting box hedges, obliging the students to walk sedately during the breaks, precluding any possibility of horseplay … Order and method, he thought. System, symmetry. A voice within him eagerly asserted, Yes, Donald, yes. This started up a dialogue which proceeded at an accelerating speed. A place for everything, everything in its place, place was a wilderness when you first saw it an embarrassment to the estate agents I built it up with my own hands a wilderness you saw the possibilities a rat sat up a big brown fellow looked at you me …
Cuthbertson laid his forehead against the cool glass of the window. Words, voices receded. He rested thus for a while, then, when he felt calm again, continued on his way. Now and again he paused outside classroom doors, listening. Industrious silence, or the monologue of the teacher, came to him. The place was a regular hive, no other way of describing it. No small achievement, by one’s own unaided efforts, to have created this great corporate enterprise dedicated to self-improvement. Once again he was surprised, almost awed, at the diversity within monumental unity that he had created, all these people going in their various ways about life’s great business, the acquiring of qualifications … In classroom four, however, there seemed to be something of a rumpus going on. Voices were being raised in there.
Classroom Four was the one in which Mafferty was conducting his Literary Appreciation Class. He had been so shaken by Cuthbertson’s threats of dismissal that he had gone over to the Black Lion immediately after the interview and had downed a couple of pints, much too quickly. Once in front of the class he had begun to feel the effects of this. Nevertheless, he had adhered to the hasty plan for the lesson, devised on the way back from the pub, and had written slowly and carefully on the blackboard:
O rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
This done, he surveyed the class with a sort of glassy benignity, encountering as he did so the stern gaze of Mustapha, the Turk, in his accustomed corner, and the clerkly gleam of Hans beside him. Across from them, in the next row, he saw the fuzzy hive of Abdu and the dark Semitic face below it. There was a new student beside him, an elderly grey-haired man with a hearing aid, who looked like a northern European. In rapid review Mafferty took in the others: round-faced, small-featured Henry from Derby and beside him the other Englishman, Mr Butler, who rarely spoke and whose reasons for being there were obscure; in the desk behind them the gentle smile and silky moustache of Taba, from Iran; in the front row as usual, Javier, the keen Mexican.
For a moment or two Mafferty considered them in silence. The fact that his students desired to be instructed always puzzled him a little, perplexed his cynicism: they should only have been interested in obtaining what they had paid for, the certificate, the document; yet here they were, wanting to learn something.
‘I want you,’ he said, ‘to read this short poem, and tell me what you think it means. It is a very well-known poem. I daresay you recognize it, Henry?’
Henry looked blinkingly at the board. His mental processes were very slow. ‘Seen it before somewhere,’ he said at last.
‘It is by William Blake.’ Mafferty arranged his face into an expression of academic shrewdness. ‘I have chosen it,’ he said, ‘because it does exemplify what I’ve been saying to you lately about meaning. What do we actually mean by meaning? In poetic terms of course.’
He saw a frown of mingled displeasure and incomprehension on the face of Mustapha, and went on hastily, before the Turk could intervene with a question.
‘This poem has a very, er, potent central symbol, one which we may disagree about, but I’m sure that whatever the disagreement in detail, what will finally emerge will … Well, perhaps you’d better all read it first.’
He sat down at his desk and rested his head in his hands. The room, which had originally been quite a large one, had been partitioned into two by Cuthbertson, in order to accommodate more students, and the material of the partitioning was not as soundproof as its designers had asserted. Beyond the partition Mr Binks was taking his Civics Class, a process which consisted in discussing some prominent feature of the day’s news. In this interval of silence they all heard Mr Binks’ high-pitched, deliberate voice through the partition, saying, ‘We shall take as our subject today this latest bomb outrage.’ There were some indeterminate sounds, feet moving, chairs scraping. Then Binks’ voice came through again. ‘No, I do not propose to discuss the arrangements for the Royal Wedding. Bombs are of more immediate concern than Royal Weddings.’
Mafferty looked up. He noticed at once with a preliminary, sinking feeling of boredom, that Taba, the most vocal member of the group, was regarding him with a sort of restrained, respectful eagerness. He delayed inviting Taba’s answer for some minutes more, while they all listened to Binks, who was obviously reading from a newspaper:
The bomb, containing at least ten pounds of explosive, went off without warning just inside the main door. The front of the building was ripped apart. The room immediately adjoining, where some twenty people were drinking, was reduced to a crumpled wreckage of shattered furniture, glass and rubble, amidst which fragments of human bodies –
‘Well, Taba?’
‘This poem is, in my own opinion, one of corruption in the core,’ Taba said, smiling gently. ‘The rose is representing the whole of human condition and all our life when we are in the innocent conditions. The worm, it is knowledge?’
‘Rubble?’ they heard Binks saying. ‘What means rubble? You should not say, “What means rubble?” You should say, “What does rubble mean?” ’
‘That is a very interesting interpretation,’ Mafferty said, ‘and one which – ’
‘The worm comes creeping and eats all up, so destroying the innocent conditions.’
‘Yes, as I say, that is a most – ’
‘Excuse me, please, is wrong,’ interjected Javier, moving his large head restlessly. He nearly always took issue with the Iranian; a sort of rivalry existed between them. ‘Is quite wrong,’ he said. ‘Is a poem about the materialized society. All we care for is the goods, the merchandises, and that is why the poet he says our life destroy. Is not knowledge, as says Taba. Is the philosophy of Gross National Product.’
‘Gross National Product?’ Hans said, turning to the others in his stiff, courtly way. ‘The Gross National Product does not mean nossing to William Blake.’
‘You think I don’ know heem, William Blake?’ Javier demanded indignantly. ‘I know heem.’
A doctor who lives only a few hundred yards from the scene of the explosion …
‘You take the social and economic aspects,’ Mafferty said, soothingly, ‘as opposed to the moral. Well, it is a tenable point of view.’ He glanced down at his watch. Still half an hour to go. He paused, wondering who to ask next.
…. most horrific sight of my life and I’ve seen a few in the past few years. Four of the people who had been flung out on to the pavement were clearly dead. One of them was just a torso …
‘Well, Abdu?’
‘Excuse please.’ Mustapha raised a hand. ‘What means “torso”?’
‘You mean, “What does ‘torso’ mean?” ’
‘That is what I am asking you.’ Mustapha said, with dignity.
‘It is this part of the body,’ Mafferty said, indicating. ‘Now could we get back to the poem? What do you think, Abdu?’
‘It is the Imperialist State,’ the Libyan said, in his hoarse voice. Then he paused, looking round at the class, as if inviting approval, or exacting complete attentiveness before resuming.
‘Yes, that’s right, it is the trunk of the body. T-r-u-n-k, yes, that’s it … No, I don’t think we can call it a torso if there are arms and legs attached, certainly not if there are legs, no, the presence of legs would disqualify it from being a torso. As to arms …’
Hans sat up straight in his desk. ‘I do not understand this word “torso”,’ he said. ‘Is it including the head?’
‘I think we should try not to listen to Mr Binks,’ Mafferty said. ‘It is this part of the body.’ He again indicated. ‘You have to be more specific if you want to include the head. You have to say “head and torso”, but in this case, apparently, there was only the torso … What do you mean, exactly?’ he said to the Libyan.
‘The rose is imperialism,’ Abdu said. ‘And that is all corrupted by worms, the worms is the corrupting in the Imperialist State, which is a decadent one, because of exploiting the oil producers, for example. “Rose thou art sick” means England is sick because of exploitings going rotten now that the producers can put all their heads together and fix the prices. England is a decadent flower. Also, she is too much civilize.’
He glanced round again, his mass of tightly curly hair rising above the general level like a small dome on the skyline.
‘… can’t have a head,’ Mr Binks said from the next room. ‘No, definitely excludes the idea of a head …’
‘That is basically what I would call a political – ’
‘Blake was interested in nature, wasn’t he?’
‘Well, Henry, all poets, practically all poets – ’
‘I don’t mean only plants and that, but wild animals.’
‘The area of a poet’s likes is a pretty broad spectrum,’ Mafferty said. ‘But why “invisible”?’ he said to Abdu, ‘Why “invisible worm”?’ He set his finger tips together in unconscious parody of Cuthbertson, and looked at his students over the bridge so formed.
I attended the wounded as best I could for an hour. It was difficult to know where to start. There were pieces and fragments of bodies …
Abdu shook his fuzzy head. ‘Corrupting from the insides,’ he said. ‘Hopelessly roddled.’
‘Riddled,’ Mafferty said. ‘Well, all these remarks have been very interesting and I think illuminating in certain respects – ’
‘It is a girl,’ Mustapha said suddenly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘ “Riddled”?’ they heard Mr Binks say querulously. ‘What means “riddled”? It means shot through with holes. Please try to ignore the sounds from Mr Mafferty’s classroom.’
‘I am in agreement with Abdu. It is a beautiful girl. Rose is the name of her.’
‘He didn’t quite say that, did he?’
‘Your English rose, no?’
‘Well,’ Mafferty said doubtfully, ‘I’m not sure whether that is really the interpretation I would have – ’
‘Excuse please, I am not saying that,’ Abdu said, turning to look indignantly at Mustapha.
‘Yes, yes,’ Mustapha said, ‘I am saying the same as you. She is the English rose that has got clapped. Else why it say about bed and secret love?’
In the weighty pause that followed upon this, they all heard Mr Binks say, ‘ “Clapped?” what means “clapped”? You mean, What does “clapped” mean? Or alternatively, what is the meaning of “clapped”. It means “applauded”. Now could we get back to – ’
‘Clapped?’ Mafferty said. ‘I don’t quite see – ’
‘He said the same thing.’ Mustapha pointed at Abdu. ‘He said too much syphilis. That is the age-old problem of unlawful fornications.’
‘It is not really a problem in this country,’ Mafferty said. ‘Actually. Very unpleasant of course, and all that, but with these new wonder drugs it is not the disaster it used to be.’
‘Too much civilize,’ Abdu said to Mustapha.
‘What you say?’
‘I did not say what you say, I say – ’
‘Excuse me please, what means “wonder drugs”?’ Javier said, pencil poised between thick eager fingers.
‘Penicillin, stuff like that,’ Henry said.
‘Antibiotics,’ said Mr Butler, suddenly and loudly. ‘The marvels of modern medical science.’
Perhaps because Mr Butler spoke so seldom, there was a little silence after this, during which they all heard Mr Binks saying, ‘… face blown off. Maimed? No, I don’t think we can call having the face blown off the same as being maimed. I would call that disfigured rather than maimed. I would reserve the word maimed for – I beg your pardon? Mutilated? That is a good idea, Costas, yes, but wait a minute now, if you say mutilated, are you not implying that the surface of the face still remains, though badly damaged of course, whereas according to the newspaper account, this person had his face blown off. You must give due weight to the preposition …’
‘In which this country has led the field,’ Mr Butler said, as if there had been no pause whatever. ‘You would still be biting on bullets and getting blotto on raki if it hadn’t been for us,’ he said looking across at Mustapha, who did not, however, pay him much attention, being still too occupied with his own interpretation of the poem.
‘Not at the same time, surely,’ Mafferty said.
‘They sit here running us down,’ Mr Butler said. ‘This country has led the world in relieving pain and prolonging life.’
‘Excuse please, what means “mutilated”?’
‘They speak of beds and of dark love. Why they do that? That is not imperialism or society corrupting. That is extra-marital.’
‘What means “maimed”?’
‘It all demonstrates what we were saying last week,’ Mafferty said, raising his voice, ‘that a good poem, and it is possibly the test of a good poem, can be read on a number of different levels.’ His head had begun to ache slightly. ‘We can disagree as to detail,’ he said, ‘and yet we can be fully agreed as to the inherent, er, and that is possibly the real test of – ’
‘Civilize,’ Abdu said, glaring at Mustapha.
Javier said slowly, ‘It is a microcosmos of what is going on, you have not to see it only in the physical side.’
‘Good point,’ Mafferty said. ‘Excellent point.’ He glanced at his watch. Only three minutes to go. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘we could end by copying the poem, and then at home you could write a paragraph or so outlining your views on the meaning of it all…’
The yough engaged in painting Cuthbertson’s door did not seem to have had any lunch break. When Cuthbertson returned, after his own modest sandwich, he was still at it, shoulders hunched forward in commendable concentration, brush held like a pen.
Cuthbertson paused benevolently. He was going through a phase of optimism and had quite forgotten his former distrust of the painter. The words, ‘Ah, still at it?’ were on his lips, to be delivered in a genial manner, when he noticed something terribly wrong with the lettering of ‘Principal’. A disproportionately wide gap had been left between the ‘r’ and the ‘i’, and again between this and the following ‘n’. Moreover, it was obvious to any impartial scrutiny that not enough space had been left for the ‘pal’ part, which the youth was embarking on now. The end of the word was thus certain to be marked by an undignified congestion. In short, it would have been difficult to imagine how anyone could have made a worse job of the lettering. This incompetent oaf had obviously failed to take into account the lesser bulk of the letter ‘i’. He had allotted too much space to it, then tried to put the matter right by leaving an equivalent space after it, with the result that the letter was isolated from the others, and stood out with an unnatural boldness. The word, and with it the concept, was made totally ridiculous by this loss of symmetry.
Cuthbertson stood still for a moment longer, jaws clenched. It was the arbitrary, absurd look of the word on the door, his door, his identity, that finally drove him, after this rigid pause, to furious utterance. He felt his face suffuse with blood. His eyes grew humid.
‘What the devil,’ he said, very loudly, ‘do you think you are up to?’
These words, uttered with such angry emphasis, and from such close quarters had an electrifying effect on the painter, who did not seem to have been aware of Cuthbertson’s presence until this moment. He started violently and turned, holding the brush breast high. His eyes stared wildly and a commotion set up in his adam’s apple communicated to the corners of his mouth a series of twitches. He regarded Cuthbertson for some moments in this shocked goggling manner.
‘I knew you would make a mess of it,’ Cuthbertson said loudly. ‘And do you know how I knew?’
The youth essayed a reply, but all that emerged was a series of gutterals interspersed with loud clicking noises.
‘It was the arrogant way you reacted to my remarks about stencils.’ Cuthbertson spoke more quietly, perceiving that the other had a speech defect. It was occurring to him, in any case, that this person was too poorly endowed all round to be a proper recipient for his wrath. Bishop, Bishop was the man. At this moment, as if called forth by the very urgency of his rage, Bishop appeared, hurrying towards them along the passage.
‘I’ve just had the reply about Mafferty,’ he said. ‘He hasn’t – ’
‘Never mind that,’ Cuthbertson said in low, vibrant tones. ‘Never mind that.’
‘Is there anything wrong?’ Bishop looked from Cuthbertson to the goggling painter. ‘I thought I heard shouting,’ he said.
Cuthbertson’s cheeks began to tremble. At the sight of Bishop’s face and the sound of his voice, an appalling rage began to possess him. His vision was clouded, and he felt a dry constriction in the throat. The rage was like an ordeal, the effort to control it was an effort to survive.
‘Have you seen this?’ he said. ‘Have you seen it?’
Bishop craned awkwardly, stretching his short neck to get a sight of the door, and this awkwardness of posture, so typical of him at any time, now acted as an extra irritant on Cuthbertson, who saw in his subordinate’s ungainliness a sort of living proof of his ineptitude.
‘Would you call that symmetrical?’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Would you call those letters evenly spaced?’ Distinctly audible during the latter part of this question was the dry clicking of Cuthbertson’s tongue against his rage-parched palate, a most unnerving sound, the more so as it reproduced on a smaller scale the characteristic effects of the painter’s impediment, making this seem somehow infectious.
Bishop blinked at the door a moment longer. Then, perhaps to postpone meeting Cuthbertson’s regard, he addressed himself to the painter. ‘What’s all this?’ he said sternly. ‘Is this the best you can do?’
The painter had not yet quite recovered from the shock Cuthbertson had given him. His eyes still had a wild look, and his mouth, though firmer now, stretched convulsively at the edges from time to time. He stared at them for a few moments, then uttered some words.
‘What’s that, what’s that?’ Bishop said, leaning forward in severe interrogation.
The youth spoke again.
‘What does he say?’ Cuthbertson demanded, licking dry lips. ‘I can’t make it out. The accent, I mean. Apart from anything else. He must be from another part of the country. Are – you – from – another – part – of – the – country?’ he said to the youth, spacing the words out menacingly.
‘What’s that?’ Bishop leaned forward again. ‘Glamorganshire? He comes from Glamorganshire, Donald.’
‘Ask him what he said before,’ Cuthbertson said.
‘Glamorganshire eh?’ Bishop said. ‘What did you say before? Before he asked you where you came from? What? No, before that, before Mr Cuthbertson asked you – ’
‘I cannot stand much more of this,’ Cuthbertson said.
Bishop brought his face quite close to Cuthbertson’s and said in low tones, ‘He has a speech impediment.’
‘Good God,’ Cuthbertson said violently. ‘Do you think – ’ He was interrupted by a further series of sounds from the painter.
‘He says it looks all right to him,’ Bishop said, and stood alertly, waiting to relay a message back.
‘Looks all right to him?’ Looks all right to him? Ask him if he considers the word he has written on my door to be symmetrical, will you? Just ask him that simple question.’
‘I doubt if the word is within his range,’ Bishop said, ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Never mind,’ Cuthbertson said loudly. ‘It’s no good blaming him.’ The absurdity of the intermediary, interpretative role which Bishop was adopting added fuel to his rage.
‘You have let the side down,’ Bishop said to the painter. It was obvious that he was keen to stay on the side of outraged authority as long as possible. ‘You have made a very serious blunder,’ he said.
‘No good blaming him,’ repeated Cuthbertson, very loudly. ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire. I blame you, Bishop. I hold you entirely responsible.’ He was not aware of having chosen to speak so loudly. The volume of his voice seemed curiously arbitrary, as if decisions about it were being made elsewhere.
Bishop glanced around. Even at this moment of pressure, under fire as it were, he was concerned to protect the chief from the consequence of being overheard, the consequences of some student or member of staff seeing Mr Cuthbertson out of control like this.
Cuthbertson noticed the glance and understood it. He paused, breathing heavily. Then he said, ‘We’d better go inside my office.’ To the youth he said coldly, ‘Just paint it over, will you? If that will not be taxing your skills too much.’
‘I ought to have known,’ he said, when they were inside the office. ‘I ought to have known that something would go wrong with the enterprise.’ He felt himself trembling in various parts of his anatomy, mainly in the area round his mouth, and behind his knees. ‘I built this place up with my own hands,’ he said.
‘I know you did, Donald.’
‘I saw the possibilities. I rose to the challenge.’
‘Donald,’ Bishop said, ‘you are not looking at all well. Don’t you think you ought to take one of those pills?’
Some weeks previously, when Cuthbertson’s tensions had started to become severe, Bishop had persuaded him to go and see a doctor, who had prescribed tranquillizing tablets.
‘Now?’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Barely two hours from the Degree Ceremony? With the Briefing Session to conduct before that? You know perfectly well that those pills have a stupefying effect on me.’
‘I thought – ’
‘That is the trouble with you,’ Cuthbertson said. The trembling behind his knees was increasing. He went round behind his desk and sat down. ‘You never think things through,’ he said. The ordeal of his rage had left him weak, not far from tears.
‘By the way,’ Bishop said, hoping by his news to avert further reproof, ‘Mafferty – ’
‘That is all right, I have spoken to Mafferty. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble on that score. No, you mean well, but you have a propensity to make a hash of things.’
Bishop stood in a position of respectful immobility, holding his hands at his sides. He seemed to be waiting, after this reprimand, for some N.C.O. to march him out.
‘You were at a good school,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘You became a prefect in due course, or so at least you told me when applying for this post. You taught for some years at a prep school before coming here. You were in the Territorial Army.’
‘Right on every count,’ Bishop said, full of admiration at the Chief’s grasp of detail.
‘Such a course of life should have made you a shrewd judge of men, and I had always considered you in this light. A man used to appraising his fellows, making swift assessments of their worth and so forth. Yet you engage an obvious imbecile to paint my door, and to do that delicate and crucial lettering job.’
‘He assured me he was up to it.’
‘How could he possibly assure you of anything, with a delivery like that?’
‘I think you may have startled him, Donald.’
‘I hope you are not seeking to shift the blame?’
Bishop squared his shoulders and met his superior’s gaze firmly. ‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘I accept full responsibility.’
‘I should think so,’ Cuthbertson said. This staunchness, which he thought of as truly British, was having its due effect. He was feeling steadier now, the trembling had passed. After some moments of uncertainty he suddenly experienced the triumphant sense of being about to embark on a speech. He placed his finger tips together, forming a bridge.
‘It’s not only that,’ he said, ‘but the slight to me, my authority. Think of it that way. There is more than just personalities at stake here. I am a symbol. I am both base and apex. I don’t suppose you can readily conceive that, can you?’
‘Well,’ Bishop began, dutifully making the attempt, ‘let me see now …’ He made a line in the air with his forefinger and then with a prodding motion indicated a point above it. ‘It is a spatio-temporal concept, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘You cannot conceive it,’ Cuthbertson said firmly, ‘because it is inconceivable. Like alpha and omega, you know. Everthing depends on me. The whole structure of this small community of ours, this world in miniature, this little world of school. And there must be due order and proper government in every part, just as there must be in the world at large. I am the visible symbol of that order and government. I must be beyond repoach. I must be seamless. The smallest flaw in the design, the smallest suspicion that this or that was inadvertent, unforeseen, slipping out of control, this throws into discredit the whole structure, our world collapses. And the barbarian is always at the gate, never forget that.’
‘Some of them have got in,’ Bishop said, feeling bold enough now to venture a more joking tone, in spite of the Chief’s strictures. He had, in any case, something in reserve, if things got sticky again, this bombshell about Mafferty – a sure way, whenever he chose to trot it out, of diverting the Chief’s displeasure.
‘Some of them are in our midst,’ he said. ‘Judging by the faces I see. There’s a chap in Group Three who looks as if he’d be more at home with an assegai than a writing implement.’
‘They need discipline,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘They need a touch of the spur, some of them. That is my whole point. Everything must seem to be intended. There is an overall design here. Everything has been foreseen, everything has been taken into account, from the interveiw procedures on the student’s first arrival, to his graduation and translation to higher things twelve weeks later. Now if a student with some query not covered in the brochure and not dealt with in any of the various notices appearing on the notice board, if such a one – and he would already be a disaffected, potentially subversive person, since all possible queries are anticipated in one or the other of the ways I have mentioned – if he should find himself applying to my door and if the word ‘Principal’ on that door were grotesquely unsymmetrical…’
Cuthbertson paused and gave his Senior Tutor a meaning look.
‘It might set him off on dangerous courses,’ Bishop said.
‘Exactly.’
‘It might lead him to question our authority.’
‘Quite so.’
Bishop felt he had hit a winning streak. ‘It might – ’ he began eagerly, but Cuthbertson had raised a hand.
‘I see you have followed my reasoning,’ he said. ‘I realize you erred out of zeal. You must not think your devotion to the School goes unnoticed.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Bishop felt a slight lump in his throat.
‘Was it you, by the way, that put the flowers in here?’
‘It was, yes.’
‘Nice thought,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Appreciate it. Had to get rid of them, though. They … distracted me.’
There was silence for a while, then Cuthbertson said slowly, ‘I was perhaps a little hard on you, but I have had to be hard on myself lately.’
‘How do you mean?’ Bishop said, with immediate concern.
‘Well, I have been a good deal troubled of late by doubts of various kinds.’
‘Doubts?’
‘Not, I hasten to add, doubts as to the value of what we are doing here.’ Cuthbertson paused, looked in a cautious, almost stealthy way at the clumsy attentiveness of Bishop’s posture, the bemused loyalty of that florid face. The body of his Senior Tutor seemed to fall naturally into ungainliness. It was as if there were some private horror in Bishop at the implications of physical grace or elegance. However, he did not dwell on this thought, as it took him too close to Bishop’s psyche, where he had no wish to be.
‘I have never faltered in that,’ he said. ‘Never once. Not from the moment that big insolent brown fellow sat up and looked at me.’
‘Big insolent brown fellow? Do you mean that chap from Haiti? What was his name now? Used to wear an earring, just one earring, in his – ’
‘I am referring to the rat,’ Cuthbertson said, rather coldly.
‘Rat?’ Bishop raised a hand and laid it across the top of his head. His mind was a complete blank. Now was the time, he thought, to launch the bombshell about Mafferty, ‘Speaking of rats – ’ he began.
‘Never mind, never mind.’ Cuthbertson said. ‘All I mean is, that it is not the value and importance of our work that I am doubting, but whether our standards are going to prevail. Some kind of element is creeping in, Bishop. There is a spirit abroad which I don’t like.’
‘Do you mean in the School?’
‘I see it in the School. I see it in the world at large. A principle of disorder. An active principle. I am not talking about disorder by default or neglect. I am referring to the ancient evil of anarchy.’
‘We must fight it,’ Bishop said.
Cuthbertson’s head had begun to ache again, rather badly. ‘I don’t know what to do about it,’ he said. ‘My mind seems to get very clouded these days. Personal issues seem to intrude. The past, matters from the past, come into my mind in the most extraordinary way. I don’t quite know how to describe it–they seem to take up all the space. Lately it has been some daffodils I once gave to my wife.’
‘Daffodils? You need a rest, Donald. It is a very long time since you had a holiday.’
‘H’m, yes.’ Cuthbertson nodded, cunningly pretending to believe that the School could function in his absence. There were some things too burdensome for Bishop to know.
‘I don’t want to add to your troubles,’ Bishop said. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve had a negative response to our enquiries about Mafferty.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Trinity College, Cambridge, have no record of any such person.’
‘You mean he has no degree from there?’
‘He does not seem to have ever been a member of the student body.’
‘My God,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘He has been deceiving us all this time. He has been posing as a graduate. Why wasn’t this known before? I remember quite distinctly sending you a memo on the subject.’
‘It took them some time to go through their records,’ Bishop said, glancing down at his feet. He would not for worlds have told the Principal that his handwriting had been deteriorating for weeks, was now so illegible that no one any longer made any serious attempt to read it. He himself did his best to interecept as many of Cuthbertson’s notes and memoranda as possible, in an effort to keep the knowledge of this deterioration from spreading.
‘My God,’ Cuthbertson said again. ‘The deceit of it. The sheer, barefaced deceit of it.’ He was much too disturbed by the news to go further into the reasons for the delay. ‘I think we both need a drink,’ he said.
He opened a drawer low down in his desk, took out a half bottle of brandy and two glasses. ‘For medicinal purposes,’ he said, pouring out.
‘Here’s to the School,’ Bishop said. ‘Semper floreat.’ He felt the need for a drink after this monumental wigging he had received from the chief. He had really been hauled over the carpet. He had deserved it too, no doubt about that. Richly. He opened his mouth to let the fiery breath emerge.
‘I knew all the time there was something wrong with that fellow,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘I’ve got a shrewd instinct in these matters. No dedication, no idealism. That was my diagnosis. I made allowances, on the grounds that a chap with a degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, can’t be all bad. Now I find there is not even this to be urged in mitigation. For two months he has been standing before our students, without a qualification. Think of the harm he may have done.’
‘I could boot the fellow all round the garden,’ Bishop said. ‘Gladly. It’s times like this that I really feel sorry we don’t have conscription any more. Six weeks square-bashing would do fellows like that a world of good.’
‘Think of the sheer moral baseness of it,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Claiming to have a degree and not in fact having one. He didn’t even follow a course there, which makes the whole thing more heinous.’
‘The fellow’s a real anguis in herba, no doubt about that,’ Bishop said.
‘He’ll have to go, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘The sooner the better. I’ll speak to him after the Briefing Session.’
‘Are you going to let him attend the Degree Ceremony?’ ‘Well, I don’t want to be too hard on him,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘After all, it will be his last. And who knows, perhaps he will realize, even at this late stage, as he sees the students going proudly up to receive the degrees they have earned, perhaps he will finally understand that there are no short cuts in this life, you get nowhere without hard work and self-discipline.’