‘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.’
‘Maybe I’ll persuade my husband to let us have one for our own garden. I know just where I’d like it and we’ve got plenty of room.’
‘I’m sure about the pond and the fish, but I’m not too sure about the water-lilies,’ said Mr Ronsonby. ‘Don’t they need a lot of sunshine? With tall buildings all around, they may find themselves in the shade most of the time. On the other hand, the quad is a good size, so there may not be any problems. Oh, well, Filkins will know.’
Mr Ronsonby had had to inform the education committee of Pythias’s disappearance, and from them it had percolated to the governors. The first question the head-master was asked at the governors’ meeting was, ‘No news of Pythias, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid not, Sir Wilfred.’
‘I never liked the idea of appointing a foreigner,’ said another governor.
‘Nonsense, Manning,’ said the chairman. ‘The man was well qualified and spoke perfect English. Educated over here, as a matter of fact, wasn’t he, Ronsonby?’
‘Yes, Sir Wilfred, so far as his university training was concerned. He took a good degree in geology and metallurgy.’
‘Off on a toot looking for oil, and in
Mr Ronsonby’s suggestion that, if the governors were kind enough to make the school an opening-day present, a lily-pond would be most welcome was received with approval, especially by Mr Manning, whose brother-in-law was in landscape gardening with special interest in shrubs, greenhouses, garden chalets, paving slabs and garden pools.
Manning was not the most popular member of the governing body, for he seemed to regard himself in duty bound to carp and cavil at every suggestion put forward by his fellow-members, but on this occasion the governors realised that, so long as his brother-in-law was commissioned to supply and sink the pond and to establish the plinth of stone around the quad (this was not in the builder’s contract) they could count on some reduction in the price of their gift. As they themselves had no central fund on which to draw, the money for the pool and payment for the work involved would come out of individual pockets, so any lessening of that particular load was extremely welcome.
A week before term ended, all the actual construction work on the school building was finished. The interior decorators were still busy, but hoped to be able to report that another few days would, in the words of the foreman, ‘see us through’, and the contractors had already sent down their experts to pass judgement on what had been a vast and important project. The first floor was not a replica of the ground floor which housed the big school hall, the entrance vestibule, the cloakrooms and the secretary’s and the headmaster’s offices, but it covered the same amount of space and included the handsome library.
The second floor was a good deal smaller. The music room and the art room were up there so that the sounds of singing, instrumental discords and, from the art room, the thumping of wet clay and the general mayhem without which, it seemed, no art class could express itself, should not impinge upon the quieter, if more boring activities which were being carried out in the rest of the school. (The woodwork centre, like the gym, was a separate building, reached by a covered way and adjacent to the gym changing rooms.)
As breaking-up day drew nearer, Ronsonby said to Margaret Wirrell that he hoped he was going to muster a full staff at the beginning of the summer term.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We don’t want anybody else falling off the back of a lorry.’ Mr Ronsonby stared at her, but she merely picked up some lists he had given her to type out and went back to her own room.
On the following Tuesday, the caretaker brought the headmaster a report concerning two second-year boys named Travis and Maycock. The third year in any senior school is the acknowledged repository of nuisances, but the second years are still, so to speak, finding their feet, and these boys had been in no particular trouble before. Moreover, it transpired that they might be credited with praise rather than blame for their part in what had happened.
Assembly was over. Margaret Wirrell was in her office looking through the morning’s correspondence and Mr Ronsonby was in conference with the music master to make a final selection of the songs and orchestral pieces to be rendered on opening day, when there came a tap at the headmaster’s door.
‘Just see who that is,’ said the headmaster, ‘and, if it’s a boy, send him away.’
It was not a boy, but Sparshott. He closed the door behind him, advanced to the headmaster’s desk and said he had come to report another break-in.
‘Good gracious!’ said Mr Ronsonby. ‘Sorry, Phillips, but perhaps I had better look into this. Now that the buildings are finished we don’t want any vandalism.’ Mr Phillips removed himself and the headmaster turned to the caretaker. ‘Was it a nuisance break-in or was there intent to create damage or to steal?’ he asked.
‘It’s a kind of tricky story, Mr Ronsonby, sir, and I can’t do nothing but relate to you my end of it. I was having a bit of an early supper round about eight o’clock last night before making my last rounds of the premises before an early retirement, me having had a bit of a chill on the innards over the weekend with subsequent inconvenience and weakness, when there comes a knock at the front door.
‘ “See who that is, Ron,” I says to my boy, so he goes to the door and comes back to say as two boys named Travis and Maycock had come to report as somebody unauthorised was in the school. They reckoned they could hear him.
‘Well, sir, of course I goes to the front door myself to see what it’s all in aid of, but the two boys had scarpered. However, Ron had their names and said they was second years, but not knowed for any particular devilment and he reckoned they could be telling the truth, being as we had them other miscreants in the quad earlier on, so I takes him and the dog and we makes a recce and I opens up. Sure enough, there
