R.A.J. Fisher, on the other hand, sank into greater gloom. Arrowsmith remained elusive, mockingly faithful to Sainsbury Major, haughty when Fisher glanced pleadingly, ignoring all his letters. Fisher developed a look of introspective misery. The notes that Arrowsmith delightedly showed around were full of longing, increasingly tinged with desperation. The following term, unexpectedly, Fisher did not return to the school.
There was a famous Assembly at the beginning of that term, with much speculation beforehand as to the trouble in the air. Rumour had it that once and for all an attempt was to be made to stamp out the smiles and the glances in the dining-hall, the whole business of bijoux and protectors, even the faithless behaviour of the Honourable Anthony Swain. The school waited and then the gowned staff arrived in the Assembly Hall and waited also, in grim anticipation on a raised dais. Public beatings for past offenders were scheduled, it was whispered: the Sergeant-major –the school’s boxing instructor, who had himself told tales of public, beatings in the past –would inflict the punishment at the headmaster’s bidding. But that did not happen. Stout and pompous and red-skinned, the headmaster marched to the dais unaccompanied by the Sergeant-major. Twitching with anger that many afterwards declared had been simulated, he spoke at great length of the school’s traditions. He stated that for fourteen years he had been proud to be its headmaster. He spoke of decency, and then of his own dismay. The school had been dishonoured; he would wish certain practices to cease. ‘I stand before you ashamed,’ he added, and paused for a moment. ‘Let all this cease,’ he commanded. He marched away, tugging at his gown in a familiar manner.
No one understood why the Assembly had taken place at that particular time, on the first day of a summer term. Only the masters looked knowing, as though labouring beneath some secret, but pressed and pleaded with they refused to reveal anything. Even Old Frosty, usually a most reliable source on such occasions, remained awesomely tight-lipped.
But the pronounced dismay and shame of the headmaster changed nothing. That term progressed and the world of bijoux and their protectors continued as before, the glances, the meetings, cigarettes and romance in the hillside huts. R.A.J. Fisher was soon forgotten, having never made much of a mark. But the story of his error in placing a note under Torridge’s pillow passed into legend, as did the encounter by the electricity plant and Torridge’s deprivation of a relationship. The story was repeated as further terms passed by; new boys heard it and viewed Torridge with greater interest, imagining what R.A.J. Fisher had been like. The liaisons of Wiltshire with Good, Mace-Hamilton with Webb, and Arrowsmith with Sainsbury Major continued until the three senior boys left the school. Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith found fresh protectors then, and later these new liaisons came to an end in a similar manner. Later still, Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith ceased to be bijoux and became protectors themselves.
Torridge pursued the religious side of things. He continued to be a frequent partaker of God Harvey’s biscuits and spiritual uplift, and a useful presence among the chapel pews, where he voluntarily dusted, cleaned brass and kept the hymn-books in a state of repair with Sellotape. Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith continued to circulate stories about him which were not true: that he was the product of virgin birth, that he possessed the gift of tongues but did not care to employ it, that he had three kidneys. In the end there emanated from them the claim that a liaison existed between Torridge and God Harvey. ‘Love and the holy spirit’, Wiltshire pronounced, suggesting an ambience of chapel fustiness and God Harvey’s grey boniness. The swish of his cassock took on a new significance, as did his thin, dry fingers. In a holy way the fingers pressed themselves on to Torridge, and then their holiness became a passion that could not be imagined. It was all a joke because Torridge was Torridge, but the laughter it caused wasn’t malicious because no one hated him. He was a figure of fun; no one sought his downfall because there was no downfall to seek.
The friendship between Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith continued after they left the school, after all three had married and had families. Once a year they received the Old Boys’ magazine, which told of the achievements of themselves and the more successful of their schoolfellows. There were Old Boys’ cocktail parties and Old Boys’ Day at the school every June and the Old Boys’ cricket match. Some of these occasions, from time to time, they attended. Every so often they received the latest rebuilding programme, with the suggestion that they might like to contribute to the rebuilding fund. Occasionally they did.
As middle age closed in, the three friends met less often. Arrowsmith was an executive with Shell and stationed for longish periods in different countries abroad. Once every two years he brought his family back to England, which provided an opportunity for the three friends to meet. The wives met on these occasions also, and over the years the children. Often the men’s distant schooldays were referred to, Buller Yeats and Old Frosty and the Sergeant-major, the stout headmaster, and above all Torridge. Within the three families, in fact, Torridge had become a myth. The joke that had begun when they were all new boys together continued, as if driven by its own impetus. In the minds of the wives and children the innocence of Torridge, his true happiness in the face of mockery and his fondness for the religious side of life all lived on. With some exactitude a physical image of the boy he’d been took root; his neatly knotted maroon House tie, his polished shoes, the hair that resembled a mouse’s fur, the pudding face with two small eyes in it. ‘My dad’s in the button business,’ Arrowsmith had only to say to cause instant laughter. ‘Torridge’s, you know.’ The way Torridge ate, the way he ran, the way he smiled back at Buller Yeats, the rumour that he’d been dropped on his head as a baby, that he had three kidneys: all this was considerably appreciated, because Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith related it well.
What was not related was R.A.J. Fisher’s error in placing a note beneath Torridge’s pillow, or the story that had laughingly been spread about concerning Torridge’s relationship with God Harvey. This would have meant revelations that weren’t seemly in family circles, the explanation of the world of bijou and protector, the romance and cigarettes in the hillside huts, the entangling of hearts. The subject had been touched upon among the three husbands and their wives in the normal course of private conversation, although not everything had been quite recalled. Listening, the wives had formed the impression that the relationships between older and younger boys at their husbands’ school were similar to the platonic admiration a junior girl had so often harboured for a senior girl at their own schools. And so the subject had been left.
One evening in June, 1976, Wiltshire and Mace-Hamilton met in a bar called the Vine, in Piccadilly Place. They hadn’t seen one another since the summer of 1974, the last time Arrowsmith and his family had been in England. Tonight they were to meet the Arrowsmiths again, for a family dinner in the Woodlands Hotel, Richmond. On the last occasion the three families had celebrated their reunion at the Wiltshires’ house in Cobham and the time before with the Mace-Hamiltons in Ealing. Arrowsmith insisted that it was a question of turn and turn about and every third time he arranged for the family dinner to be held at his expense at the Woodlands. It was convenient because, although the Arrowsmiths spent the greater part of each biennial leave with Mrs Arrowsmith’s parents in Somerset, they always stayed for a week at the Woodlands in order to see a bit of London life.