“Before I invite you to put questions to members of our panel, a word of explanation to those boys—and I see there are one or two of them—who have not attended one of these little functions before. You may ask these good gentlemen anything you like, provided,”—Mr Clay paused portentously—”provided, I say, that the question is relevent to the matter of employment. What I do not want...NOT want to hear—and I assure you that Mr Booker will not want to hear them either—are questions of a fatuous or, ah, provocative nature. You know what I mean. And Mr Booker knows what I mean. Very well, then. First boy...”
And Mr Clay sat down.
Purbright, whose first visit to the school in an advisory capacity this was, tried to think what he might be asked.
“Please, sir, could the inspector tell us what his job is worth? Salary, I mean sir. And perks.”
The questioner was a grave-faced boy of fifteen. Purbright thought he looked about twenty-four.
Purbright said: “Well...” which seemed as good a beginning as any. Then he saw that the headmaster’s hand was raised.
“No, Rawlings. I do not think we should frame our questions in quite such a personal—directly personal— form. If, as you very reasonably might, you wish to learn the scale of emoluments in the Police Force, I feel sure that our good friend Mr O’Toole will be pleased to provide you with the appropriate literature. Oh, and Rawlings...I am confident that Inspector Purbright will not contradict me when I say that police officers in this country do not receive, ah, perquisites.”
The boy stared archly at Mr Clay. “I didn’t mean
“That will do, Rawlings,” Mr Clay resumed his seat with the uncomfortable suspicion that he had been manoeuvred into slandering somebody.
The ensuing silence was pierced by a thin, tinny sound. Music. Booker stiffened and looked towards the back rows of desks. The sound rose suddenly to a crescendo, then was cut off. Some of the boys at the back craned their necks at one another and shuffled to close ranks.
Booker left his seat and, crouching, crept silently up the side aisle. Those on the platform pretended not to notice.
“Next question,” called Mr Clay. He waited, rigidly facing front.
Booker eased his way along the back row as far as the fourth desk. He held out his hand. The plump, nervous boy who was vainly trying to conceal a transistor radio set between his knees gazed at the hand in mute disbelief, as though it were unattached and had arrived there of its own volition.
“Come along,” said Mr Booker, very quietly. The fingers of the hand curled, inviting sacrifice.
The boy swallowed. “But it’s not mine, sir. It’s Wagstaff’s. I was just looking at it.”
The hand remained. It was very still. It looked a strong and patient hand. Somewhere else in the room a question was being asked about saw-mills.
The plump boy surrendered the radio that was not his own and Mr Booker went creeping back to his seat. Purbright noticed that he was smiling.
“Please, sir, can Mr Scorpe tell us if soliciting is a good profession, sir?”
This was asked by a youth with an expression so innocent that Purbright guessed he had been coaxed or coerced by his fellows. The fact that he wore rather prominent glasses—in parody, as it were, of Mr Scorpe’s—could also have influenced his selection as spokesman.
If the insult had registered, the lawyer gave no sign. He nodded very solemnly, yo-yoed his Adam’s apple once or twice, and spoke.
“The question, as I understand it, is this. Does the calling of the solicitor” (he pronounced the -OR part most sonorously) “bring rewards consistent with his dignity? Financially, I regret to say, it does not...”
“Oh, Christ!” came distinctly from the direction of Mr O’Toole.
“By which I mean to say,” continued Mr Scorpe, “that his is a grossly undervalued profession, and that the public receive from him a service of immeasurably greater worth than his mere fee. It would, however, be invidious to pursue such a theme without pointing out...”
Mr Scorpe went on a lot longer and evinced many impressive arguments. What they boiled down to was that lawyers alone were penurious in a pampered world.
The boys were unsympathetic. What they had over-heard from parents in the matter of Mr Scorpe’s bills, particularly those relating to house purchase, had created the image of a licensed extortioner. Now he had simply made the impression worse by boring the pants off them.
The headmaster, too, had grown edgy. Time was running out and his capture of the evening, the illustrious Mr Hive, had not yet been given a cue. Mr Clay felt like an impressario whose leading tenor was being kept off the boards by lack of a work permit.
But Mr Scorpe’s tendentious recital rolled at last to an end. Before he could slip in an encore, a tall youth with an incipient moustache hastily expressed interest in auctioneering and Mr Hideaway took over. He told several stories of his trade in a fruity, quick-fire voice and with a wealth of market-place rhetoric. They were climaxed by a tale of a farm labourer from Gosby Vale who had bartered for a motorcycle his wife and five pounds of kidney beans.
To Purbright, the story was already familiar. He had heard it, indeed, as a complaint from the man who had parted with the motorcycle. “You’d think the mean bugger’d ’ve put ’em in a bag,” he had said of the beans.
The headmaster, who had made a mental note not to invite Mr Hideaway again, looked at his watch. It was ten past nine. He hoped no one would now ask anything about timber mills or accountancy: that Barnstaple person looked the sort to meander on for hours without getting a proper answer out. He stole a glance at his prize guest—
