No Winding-Sheet

“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

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Margaret Wirrell, who had gone out with the others from another staff meeting, followed the headmaster to his room.