The Stranger’s Child

were still finding the place he launched out with enormous relish on the first verse: ‘Come all ye jolly sailors bold, Whose hearts are cast in honour’s mould, While English glory I unfold’ – head shaking with the jolliness and boldness, chin tucked in for the gravelly descent on ‘English glory’, the risk of comedy brazened out: ‘Hurrah for the Arethusa!’ He felt he could sing to them all day. A hand was up, the feeble Peebles, as Colonel Sprague called him, had no book. ‘Well, share with Ackerley, use your nous,’ and then they were off. There was something Peter was expecting to happen, and he thought he would listen out for it and wait. For the moment he corrected nothing, the thing was to get them moving: ‘Not a sheet or a tack or a brace did she slack…’ They had sung the song every week this term and could belt it out with their strange uncaring glee; it was he himself, frowning over the piano, who sometimes forgot where they were and joined in furiously with the wrong words. ‘And now we’ve driven the foe ashore, Never to fight with Britons more’ – a reckless boast, overtaken in a moment by an immense bass crack in the air above the roof of the house, far away and right on top of them, so that the room shook and the piano itself gave out a faint jangling thrum. They broke off raggedly, then rushed to the window, but the plane was so far beyond them and moving so fast that they saw nothing. The great scientific fact seemed all the more eloquent and exemplary for that. On the back-drive below, the Headmaster too was standing and gazing at the sky over the tree-tops, his upper lip raised rodent-like as he squinted into the blue. ‘Come on, back to your places,’ said Peter carryingly, before the HM himself could do so; but in fact in the presence, or rather the immediate absence, of this sublime phenomenon, a minute’s mutual wonder seemed to be allowed.

‘Did you see it, sir?’ Brookings called down. But the Headmaster shook his head, with a shifty smile, almost as if he’d missed it with his gun. Peter leant out above the three boys who were jammed in the open casement. Though he thought the HM was a fool, he didn’t want to be shown up by him, and the HM found fault in the most unaccountable things. He picked up fag-ends, he brooded ingeniously on things he had misheard. Peter was a young master, far closer in age to the boys than the HM was to him. There was sometimes an imputation in the older man’s tone that Peter himself must be kept in check. Now he said,

‘They’d let me know this might happen,’ something slightly absurd in half-shouting this at a first-floor window.

‘Had they, sir?’

‘Oh, yes: I’m in touch with the Commander at the Base. He keeps me in the picture.’

‘What was it, sir?’ said Brookings.

The Headmaster peered again at the sky, with a genially proprietary air. ‘Well, back to your lessons, come on!’ and nodding uncertainly at Peter he trudged on down the drive towards the garages.

‘Anyone know what it was?’ said Peter, as they took their places again; with their Airfix and their Biggles and their War Picture Libraries they lived a constant battle in the air.

‘Was it a Hustler, sir?’ said Sloane.

‘Why would a Hustler make that noise?’ said Peter, pretty sure he knew, but taking a donnish tone.

‘Sonic boom, sir!’ said several of the boys.

‘So when we speak of a Hustler, what do we mean?’ said Peter.

‘It’s a B-58 bomber, sir,’ said Sloane, and someone else made a stupid booming noise. ‘They can do Mach 2, and of course they carry a nuclear weapon, sir.’

‘I hope they don’t bomb us, sir,’ said Peebles, with that utter feebleness that only provoked the others.

‘I don’t think we’d know much about it, if they did,’ said Peter.

‘The Americans don’t just go round bombing people, you idiot,’ said Milsom 1, to Peebles, not to Peter, though there was a slight sense of things getting out of hand.

‘Right, where were we?’ said Peter, and with a sudden intense boredom, that seemed the natural counterpart of his desire to be thorough and exciting: ‘OK, I’ve had enough of the ruddy Arethusa, let’s do something else. “Cherry Ripe”, perhaps?’

‘Oh, no, sir…!’ There were sickened protests.

‘Fine, fine… Fine, what about “Hearts of Oak”.’

‘Mm, all right, sir,’ said Sloane, who was still exhilarated by the magic eruption of the sonic boom, and seemed to have promoted himself to class leader, or bargainer.

‘ “Hearts of Oak” is a fine old song,’ said Peter. ‘Come, cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer!’ And a minute later he had them all at it.

Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,

We always are ready – Steady, boys, steady!

and he joined them to stiffen up the sinew: ‘We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again!’ There was undoubtedly something wrong, but he got them into the next verse and shouting ‘Keep going!’ he left the piano and walked along just in front of the front row and then behind the back row, pausing and leaning in as if to share a confidence with each child. There was a standard place for giggles in this song, as reliable as some old music-hall gag, and Peter hardened his face against it:

But should their flat bottoms in darkness get o’er

Still Britons they’ll find to receive them on shore.

‘Yes, thank you very much, Prowse 2,’ said Peter. ‘Sing on, sing on!’ As a master, one could make the boys laugh, but one couldn’t be made to laugh by them – in class it meant a notable loss of authority, and out of class it was oddly too intimate. Even so, the sheer idiocy of their jokes could be hard to resist.

‘Aha!’ he said, ‘yes, I thought as much.’ He sounded much more bad-tempered than he really meant. Poor Dupont coloured up and dried up too, but Peter had got the proof he needed. The singing trailed off at the promise of an incident, less exciting than a sonic boom but with a human interest that had them all peering round in happy relief that someone else was in trouble. It had happened before – in the first week of term red-headed Macpherson had been sent out smirking and shrugging into his new freedom. ‘Just give me the first verse,’ said Peter. Dupont stared at him with a mixture of anxiety and indignation he hadn’t seen before; cleared his throat; and then started singing, very quietly, ‘Come, cheer up, my lads…’ in a voice that wouldn’t obey him. There were sniggers from along the row, and Peter supported him, nodding firmly, holding his eye – ‘’Tis to glory we steer, To add something more to this wonderful year…’ – Dupont burning red and looking away as the tune cracked and lurched out of control – ‘Ah well – I’m sorry,’ said Peter, and pursed his lips in friendly regret. In the front row Morgan-Williams uttered a croaky warble. Peter ignored the laughter that followed. ‘It will happen to you too,’ he said, ‘we’ll all enjoy laughing at you then.’ He went back to the piano. But he sensed something more was in the air. When he sat down, and turned to look at them, Dupont was still hovering at the end of the row. Peter smiled at him, to say goodbye, a little flash of favouritism after all – in a way it was cause for congratulation, like being confirmed. He would soon settle down, in the Sixth Form next term, long trousers, a teenage voice, he could hear him already. Milsom 1 was looking with furrowed interest at his friend. Sloane said, ‘You’re meant to go, Dupe.’ Dupont’s mortification made Peter himself feel uncomfortable. This clever and unusual child felt for the first time like a figure of fun, perhaps, or of superstition, sent out awkwardly into the future on the other boys’ behalf. ‘You can go and read in the library, if you like,’ said Peter, which properly was a Sixth Form privilege. Still, there was a crackle of mockery as Dupont went smiling through his blushes to the door.

3

Paul leant forward, raised the brass bolt, and opened the little doors of his position. In less than a minute the bank itself would open; through the frosted glass in the lower half of the windows the grey shapes of three or four waiting customers could be seen outside, blurred and overlapping. But for now the Public Space was deserted, its dark linoleum unscuffed, the ashtrays sparkling, the ink-wells full, The Times and the Financial Times untouched on the table. There was something beautiful in the sheer old-fashioned dullness of the place. On the notice-board above the table were advertisements for 5% Defence Bonds and Premium Savings Bonds, and under a bold sans-serif heading a statement on ‘BANK RAIDS’ which lent the Public Space its one note of possible excitement.

Already he and Geoff had emptied the Night Deposit Safe, and spent a friendly ten minutes checking the