This brought back the missing Pythias to everybody’s mind. His absence by this time had been taken as a matter of course by the rest of the staff, although they had not ceased to speculate about it, but now that his name had cropped up again in this public way, Scaife asked, ‘I suppose there’s no news of him, Headmaster?’
‘If there were, Mr Scaife, the staff would be the first people to know.’
The masters dispersed to dismiss their classes. Mr Ronsonby never held staff meetings outside school hours. There were more reasons for this than mere consideration for the staff. The school was rich in out-of-school activities and the various clubs were held directly school was finished on a Friday afternoon. Friday was the day for the choir with or without the orchestra. The poultry club (with arrangements for weekend feeding) had chosen Friday and so had the chess club and other out-of-school societies. Mr Ronsonby was known to be greatly in favour of the clubs and to look very kindly upon those who gave up their time to run them. He knew, however, that to keep his staff after school hours merely to attend a staff meeting would not only breed resentment among the teachers, but would result in the winding-up of the clubs, for no boy, however keen, would be willing to hang about for half an hour or more, even if the staff themselves would be prepared to carry on the clubs so much later than usual.
‘I shall need to give up my Monday evenings as well,’ said Mr Phillips, attempting a martyred air as he left with Mr Filkins. ‘If choir and orchestra are to be involved, they will need rehearsing more than once a week. When it gets nearer the date of the opening, I may need to ask for some school time as well.’
‘You’ll be quite popular so long as you ask for last lesson on a Friday afternoon,’ said Mr Filkins. ‘Nobody does any work after break on a Friday. It’s simply a matter of keeping sufficient order to ensure that somebody doesn’t actually burn the school down. Jodley, in my form, is a member of your orchestra. You are welcome to him any time you like.’
‘He is our tympanist.’
‘I’ll bet he is. Has he busted a drum or the cymbals yet?’
‘You know,’ said the junior English master to his senior colleague, ‘when we have the next staff meeting I’d like to suggest to the Old Man that we include some verse speaking in the opening-day programme.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Well, the school is named after Sir George Etherege. Wouldn’t it be a thought if we had some of Sir George’s verses spoken?’
‘Such as what?’
‘Well, I thought of getting the verse-speaking choir to make a rather theatrical bow to the mayoress and the wife of the chairman of the governors — they are bound to be sitting together — and give them the first stanza of “Ladies, though to — ” ’
‘Though to what?’ asked his senior sardonically. ‘A poem written by a man who was alive throughout the reign of Charles Two is hardly — never mind. Spit it out. I’ve forgotten it.’
‘Ladies, though to your conquering eyes
Love owes his chiefest victories,
And borrows those bright arms from you
With which he does the world subdue,
Yet you yourselves are not above
The empire nor the griefs of love.’
‘Have you forgotten, or didn’t you know, that the town clerk’s wife is staying with friends because the chairman of the governors —’
‘Oh, Lord! I’d forgotten that!’
‘Forget the verse speaking, too.’
‘I don’t see why the choir and the orchestra should have it all their own way. Then there’s Pybus. He will make the art room a showplace not only with the boys’ work, but with his own.’
‘Pybus can’t draw, paint or sculpt.’
‘The boys turn out some good stuff.’
‘Oh, yes, he’s a good teacher, but he can’t produce the goods himself. I’ll tell you who ought to have gone in for art in a big way and that’s Pythias. Did he ever show you any of his work?’
‘No, not that I remember. I wonder where he’s got to?’
‘Don’t we all. Anyway, if you’d seen what Pythias can do, you’d remember all right. He showed some of us one or two pictures, but Pybus wouldn’t have been over-enthusiastic about them, I daresay. There’s a lot in that gag — Shaw’s, was it? — he who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.’
‘Aimed at the literary critics, I suppose, but unfair, if so. Many of them are very good writers themselves. But this showmanship business. Filkins wants to stage an exhibition of cut flowers and garden produce. There might be promotion for anybody whose work catches the governors’ eyes. I don’t want to be left out of the running.’
‘Filkins has his uses. At least he got his boys to clear up that mess in the quad.’
‘He says he didn’t. Carpenter wants to fix up a cricket match on opening day — fathers and older brothers against the school. It looks as though everybody is aiming at a place in the sun except you and me.’
‘Not to worry, my poor ambitious lad. I certainly don’t.’
‘It will be a damn good thing when the whole business is over. Failing anything by Sir George Etherege — God! How we could have spread ourselves if only we’d been named after Tennyson or Matthew Arnold! Oh, what do you think about Kipling’s If? Always goes down well with the older generation.’
‘Yes, but most of them have given up the struggle to live by its precepts.’
‘If they ever tried them out! Then, of course, there’s Rabbi ben Ezra. Strange to say, most boys like that rather sickening piece.’
‘If you’re going all out for the tried and trite, what’s the matter with Gunga Din? I’d abandon the whole verse speaking idea, if I were you,’ said Burke, when, unable to obtain consolation from his senior colleague, the young man canvassed his views.
‘English is a major school subject, far more important than music and art and cricket matches and flowers and mixed veg.’
‘So is maths, but it’s not a show-off subject.’
‘I happen to know that Gibbs is going to exhibit a working model of Stephenson’s Rocket that his lower-fifth history class have made. A perishing waste of time I call it. That’s not history teaching,’ said the junior English master, who was still racking his brains to think of something to put on show, to young Mr Scaife, the next confidant.
‘It keeps his lads happy. They’re all on the fidget just waiting to leave. I call them the factory-hands-and-union-block-vote brigade,’ said Scaife.
‘Well,’ said Mr Burke, who overheard all this, ‘anything is preferable to school, I expect, for some of them. The growing boy can’t wait to burst the bonds of the prison house. Has it ever struck you that school is purgatory to a dull boy?’
‘Well, he retaliates by making it purgatory for the likes of us,’ said the senior English master. ‘Anyway, when I think of myself I think of the Apocrypha: “And some there be that have no memorial”, so cheer up, laddie. Those words will apply to most of us, no doubt, in time.’
‘Then I propose,’ said Mr Scaife, ‘that we have the names of the staff inscribed with a sculptor’s chisel on the surround of the governors’ lily pond.’
8
Digging Up the Past
« ^ »
Margaret Wirrell, who had gone out with the others from another staff meeting, followed the headmaster to his room.
‘I’ve looked up those garden-pond people,’ she said, ‘but don’t you think it might seem a bit like forcing the governors’ hands if we give them a list of possible firms who would do the job?’
‘Yes, I think it might. I do not intend to confront them with a list, but only to hold it in reserve in case they ask me whether I have any ideas. I do hope they will agree to the pond. I like the thought of it very much. It will be ornamental and also out of reach of the boys. I imagine, too, that these pools come within a fairly wide price range, always an advantage when you have no idea of how much the donor is prepared to spend.’