‘Well, see what you can do, will you.’
‘I’m bringing the seniors’ bath night forward to Thursday,’ said Matron, with an air of great strategy.
‘Mm? Oh, I see, quite right,’ said the HM, frowning over a slight blush. He consulted his list. ‘Any other activities…? Now, I see I have the Museum.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Peter, surprised at how nervous the HM made him, the whole half-watchful, half-indifferent gathering of the staff. He looked across at John Dawes, the most avuncular of the masters, flicking his lighter for the third or fourth time over the bowl of his pipe; and Mike Rawlins beside him, deep in the systematic doodle with which each week he obliterated the roneoed order of business. They’d been sitting at these meetings for twenty years. ‘Yes, I think we’ll have something to show by Open Day. They’ve got some interesting things together, as well as some rather silly things. It won’t be, you know, the Ashmolean…’ – Peter grinned and looked down.
‘No, well,’ said the Headmaster, who resented his Oxford allusions.
‘I’m assuming the place is locked securely at night?’ said Colonel Sprague. ‘As I understand it, it contains various items lent by parents?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Peter. ‘Dupont is officially the curator, and he gets the key off me.’
‘We don’t want any trouble of that kind,’ said the Colonel.
‘I must try to get down and see it,’ said Dorothy Dawes, as if it would require a certain amount of planning. She taught the ‘Babies’ in the First Form, and seemed set apart from the rest of the school in a nest of knitting-wool and gummed paper. She was always equipped with two treats, Polos and Rolos, which she handed out liberally to reward and console. It wasn’t clear to Peter if the Daweses had had children of their own.
‘I’ve lent them a couple of things myself,’ said the Headmaster. ‘A portrait and a set of antlers. Just to get them started.’
‘No, much appreciated,’ said Peter solemnly. ‘And we’ve also got a few interesting items from the Valances’ days.’
‘Ah, yes…’ said the Headmaster, a wary look coming over him. ‘Now this leads me to a somewhat delicate matter, which I must ask you to keep very much to yourselves.’ Peter assumed they’d got to the sex part, and was suddenly doubting the witty remarks he’d been planning to make about Dr No and Ursula Andress’s bust. ‘Well, you know already, John, and… It’s to do with Mrs Keeping.’
There was obviously something thrilling about this, since Mrs Keeping was such a hard nut and not at all popular with the other staff; a ripely responsible look settled over them.
‘I’ve had a few, shall we say, comments before, but now Mrs Garfitt has written to complain. She claims Mrs Keeping has been hitting young Garfitt with a book, I’m not quite clear where, and also -’ the Headmaster peered at his notes, ‘ “flicking his ears as a punishment for playing wrong notes”.’
‘God, is that all,’ murmured John Dawes, and Matron gave a short illusionless laugh. ‘Not that it will do any good.’
‘I’ve told Mrs Garfitt that judicious corporal punishment is one of the things that keep a school like Corley Court ticking over. But I’m not quite happy about it, all the same.’
‘The trouble is she doesn’t consider herself to be a schoolteacher,’ said Mike Rawlins, without losing the track of his doodle.
‘No, well, she has no qualifications,’ said Dorothy, with a slightly shifty look.
‘Ah, well…’ said Mike, now with a very heavy face. As far as Peter could make out only he and the Headmaster could boast university degrees, the others having various antique diplomas and in one case a medal. Neil McAll was the most exotic, with his Dip. Phys. Ed. (Kuala Lumpur), on the strength of which he taught History and French.
‘Well, she is the daughter of Captain Sir Dudley Valance, Bart,’ said Colonel Sprague, humorously but with feeling. Sprague himself, though only the bursar, showed a keen consciousness of long-erased ranks and sometimes assumed quite imaginary superiority over Captain Dawes and of course over Mike and the HM, who had both been in the RAF.
‘Well, that can’t have made for an easy upbringing,’ said Mike.
‘Corley Court was her childhood home.’
‘I don’t know…’ said the Headmaster, with a deplorably tactical air of vagueness, his eye wandering round the table, ‘but I was wondering if you might not best be able to have a word with her about all this… um, Peter.’
Peter coloured and blinked, and said at once, ‘With respect, Headmaster, I don’t think I can start disciplining other members of staff, especially if they’re twice my age.’
‘Poor Peter!’ said Dorothy, rustling protectively. ‘He’s only just got here.’
‘No, no, not disciplining… obviously!’ said the HM, flushing too. ‘I was thinking more of a… a subtle chat, a roundabout sort of conversation, that might be more effective than a dressing-down from me. I believe you play duets with her, or…?’
‘Well…’ said Peter, almost guiltily startled that the Headmaster should know this. ‘Not really. We’re practising a couple of four-hand pieces we’re going to play for her mother’s seventieth birthday next week. I really don’t know her at all well.’
‘So it’s Lady Valance’s seventieth?’ said Colonel Sprague. ‘Pehaps the school should offer some form of congratulations.’
‘No, no, she’s not Lady Valance any more,’ said Peter quite sharply.
‘The present Lady Valance is about twenty-five, from the look of her,’ said Mike.
‘She was a model, wasn’t she,’ said Matron.
The fact was that Corinna Keeping frightened Peter, but he did feel he’d got somewhere with her. Some snobbish thing in her had picked him out, and believed it could impress him if not seduce him. He’d been to Oxford, loved music, had read her father’s books. Of course she played ten times as well as he did, but she never showed any desire to flick his ears. In fact she gave him cigarettes, and gossiped with him caustically about the running of the school. He probably was in a position to talk to her, but didn’t want to forgo her favour by doing so. He thought there would be interesting people at the party, and she had mentioned her clever son Julian, who had ‘gone off the rails’ in the Sixth Form at Oundle, and whom she too thought Peter might usefully have a chat with. ‘You probably are on the best footing with her,’ said John Dawes, with his air of drowsy impartiality. And Peter found himself saying,
‘Well, I’ll have a subtle chat, if you like.’
‘It would be best,’ said the Headmaster, stern now he’d won his point.
‘Though it may be far too subtle to do the trick,’ Peter said.
After this the talk moved to particular boys who were cause for comment of some kind, which passed Peter by as he dwelt regretfully on what he’d just agreed to. He started on a doodle of his own, in green ink, putting a pediment and pillars around the word Museum. It could be an Ashmolean after all. He wondered if Julian Keeping was attractive, and if there was anything queer about his going off the rails. In a public school the queer ones didn’t generally need to rebel, they fitted in beautifully; especially, of course, if they were beautiful themselves. He was surrounding the words Open Day in red stars when he heard the Headmaster say, ‘Now, Other Business, um, yes, now, Peter, all this pornography and what have you.’ In his slight confusion, Peter carried on doodling as he smiled and said,
‘I haven’t much to report, Headmaster.’ When he looked up he saw the strange preoccupied look around the table, a long slip of John Dawes’s pipe-smoke hanging and slowly dissolving between them.
‘Dorothy, I don’t know if you’d rather leave us?’
‘Good heavens, Headmaster’ – Dorothy shook her head, and then as if she’d forgotten something rummaged in her bag for a Polo.