Other voices took up a refrain.
‘Will the choir be needed and are the orchestra to take part?’
‘Does the head boy make a speech?’
‘There will have to be a bouquet for the mayoress and another for the wife of the chairman of governors, I suppose. A boy in my form has a father who is a florist.’
‘What about catering?’
‘The catering, yes,’ said Mr Ronsonby, seizing upon the most important item of the programme. ‘We shall have to send out invitations, of course, but we must assume, for practical purposes, that everybody will accept. All the council members will expect to come and so will the whole of the governing body. The secretary and treasurer of the parent-teacher association must be asked and so must the heads of all the neighbouring schools. Her Majesty’s Inspectors must be invited, although they probably won’t accept as that would establish a precedent, but our own education officer and a representative of the contractors will certainly turn up. Most of the men will be acompanied by wives and there are ourselves and our own wives. Perhaps, Margaret, you will do the necessary arithmetic later on and let me have an estimate of the probable numbers. I may have left out one or two people, but you will know and can fill them in.’
‘I suppose we let Bussell’s have the catering order,’ said Mr Burke. ‘They always cater for us at the swimming gala and on sports day.’
‘Oh, yes, we must support the local tradesmen when we can. When we know the numbers, perhaps you would see them, Burke. Take Margaret with you. Catering orders need a woman’s touch. I can give you carte blanche, more or less, as no doubt the parent-teacher association will fix up a whist drive or coffee parties or a fair, so there should be plenty of money for food and so on. After all, a school is only formally opened once in its lifetime, so we ought to make the occasion one which our guests will remember.’
‘What about the choir and the orchestra, Headmaster?’ persisted the teacher responsible for these amenities. ‘The songs will have to be chosen and rehearsed, and —’
‘Make out a list, Phillips, and bring it along to me. One thing, we have time in hand. The same goes for the orchestra. A list of possible works and, if a soloist can be found, all the better. The audience always likes to have a solo performance thrown in, whether instrumental or vocal.’
‘There is Fallon on the trumpet, Headmaster, and —’
‘Excellent. See to it and let me have the details. Now we come to another point, gentlemen. The governors want to make us a present to mark the official opening. They are prepared with some suggestions of their own if we have no special request, but would like to give us something we ourselves would prefer.’
Suggestions came readily and every suggestion had its detractors.
‘A small cricket pavilion, perhaps.’
‘Redundant. What’s wrong with the gym changing room?’
‘A piece of statuary.’ (This came from the art master, Mr Pybus, who was hoping for a commission.)
‘Some oaf would contrive to put graffiti on it,’ said a dissenting voice.
‘A memorial window.’
‘Too churchy. Besides, it would get broken.’
‘Heraldic lions on the front gates.’
‘They would be an Aunt Sally for the local toughs.’
‘To hark back a little,’ said the art master, ‘is the affair to be run on the lines of an open day? I mean, if so, there must be exhibitions of work. I have some very promising boys taking GCE in art, and —’
The headmaster sat back and let the tide of suggestions and argument surge round him. It ceased after a bit and then the deputy head, who had not joined in any arguments, said, ‘To get back to the point, I thought we were discussing the gift the governors have decided to donate to the school, were we not? I was wondering about a water-lily pond for the quad.’
‘The groundsman won’t grass-seed the quad until the autumn and then the grass has got to grow. We wouldn’t have the pond for goodness knows how long,’ said the master who ran the gardening club. ‘Otherwise I like that suggestion, but I’m sure the governors will want their present to be on view on opening day.’
‘And so it can be,’ said Mr Burke. ‘I suggest that we get the quad completely levelled and the pond sunk, before anything is done about grassing the rest of the area. There would be no point in digging up a lot of new turf to sink the pond. There is going to be a plinth of double paving-stones all round the quad and with that and a nice level surface and the pond there won’t be any eyesore and all the grassing can come later. We are making the quad strictly out of bounds to the boys, of course.’
‘If you have water-lilies you need goldfish,’ said young Mr Scaife.
‘If you have goldfish, a heron will get them,’ said Mr Phillips.
‘A heron won’t come down to a space which is entirely enclosed by high buildings,’ argued Scaife.
‘Why don’t we ask the boys for suggestions? Make a good subject for an essay,’ said the junior English master. ‘After all, the school is as much theirs as ours.’
‘Well, gentlemen,’ said Mr Ronsonby, ‘I don’t think this is a matter which can be settled out of hand. Perhaps you would all go away and give it your earnest consideration. I shall call another staff meeting at the end of next week and, if necessary, take a vote.’ He motioned Burke to stay behind as the others filed out. ‘I like the idea of that water-lily pond,’ he said.
‘Well, I can be sure of three votes in favour of it, my own, and those of Filkins and I think Scaife. Filkins can see his gardening club as honorary custodians of the pond. They’ll revel in doing the planting and he’ll see that they make a success of it. He’s got a very tidy little pool in his own back garden, so there’s nothing he doesn’t know about fish and water plants.’
The English master set his essay subject to the second, third and fourth years, as anybody higher up the school was not likely to stay long enough to receive much benefit from any amenity which the governors provided. This was pointed out by the senior English master, who added that, in any case, the fifth and sixth were far too busy with preparing for public examinations to be pestered with an essay which had nothing to do with their work.
The bulk of the middle school, it seemed, favoured a trampoline for the gymnasium or a school swimming-bath, or (a project which the music master had been fighting for years) the formation of a school pop group with instruments and a microphone, all to be provided by the governors.
The staff, meeting with Mr Ronsonby again on Friday afternoon, settled almost unanimously for the lily pond, and Margaret Wirrell was instructed to get leaflets from leading firms (not necessarily local ones this time) and submit them to Mr Filkins. When he had whittled the possible firms down to three or four, Mr Ronsonby promised to bring up the subject at the governors’ meeting on the following Wednesday ‘and see what they think,’ he said. ‘After that, if they agree to give us the pond, they may prefer to get estimates and tenders for themselves, so I shall make it clear that our list merely offers some suggestions. They will like to know that we have taken that amount of trouble over the matter, and that we are enthusiastically in favour of the pond.’
‘I hope the official opening won’t interfere with the school journey,’ said young Scaife in an aside to his friend Marmont.
‘There is no chance of that, Mr Scaife,’ said Burke. ‘The opening will be early enough in the term to avoid any clash. It is not ideal that the journey is to take place in school time, anyway.’ (Mr Scaife and the other masters who were going to Greece thought that it was.) ‘Unfortunately, to obtain the concession of cheap fares, Mr Pythias had to settle for June. Had it not been an outing of high educational value, Pythias would never have applied for school-time leave or had it granted.’