Here Be Monsters

Waltham was rich, Elizabeth remembered. In fact, it was an envied by-word in the profession, both for its salaries and for its disdain of fund-raising appeals. 'Money, Mr Willis?'

'There is a charitable trust, Elizabeth. The school was founded in the nineteenth century -

Victorian buildings grafted on to the late Tudor mansion built with the stones of a Cistercian abbey. Added to in the thirties, rebuilt in the swinging sixties - and recently vastly extended to the design of Europe's most expensive architects' partnership, to win some international award or other. And all thanks - though not publicly - to PAM.'

Audley breathed in. 'PAM - Lord God!' he murmured. 'Of course!'

'Pan-African Minerals,' Mr Willis nodded. 'Just a few Victorian businessmen, with a little dummy2

venture capital, who speculated here and there - and elsewhere.' Mr Willis cocked an eye at Audley. 'Didn't they get into Mexican railways, too? And Malayan tin? And now they're into everything from hotels and holidays to car import franchises? They have certainly learned to speak Japanese. Because one of Waltham's old boys - old American boys - was on General MacArthur's staff, looking the place over before the Korean War. Isn't that so?'

Audley said nothing.

'Well, whatever… PAM is huge now, and it has always poured money into the school. Its background hardly matters: what matters is that Waltham hands out scholarships like no other school, although it has always been very secretive about it. Just… the awards committee goes walkabout every year, and back come the pupils. still mostly British…

including new British, black, brown and yellow, incidentally… but also from the old African connection, now Nigerian, and Zambian, and Zimbabwean, and all the rest… But also Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese - and Chinese before long, I'd guess, the way things are going… But only first-class material. You can't buy into Waltham, no matter who your father is - eh?'

He had stopped because he was aware that they were both staring fixedly at him. And when neither of them spoke he stirred uneasily.

'Yes… well, you'll soon find out more, no doubt. I only know about the school - and what I know is fairly out- of-date, too.'

'Go on, Willy,' said Audley mildly. 'This is all quite fascinating to non-educationists - eh, Elizabeth?'

Elizabeth didn't like his non-educational look, which was as though to rebuke her for not knowing any of this before, except that Waltham had seduced her scholarship girls into its sixth form.

But now Willy was getting the message too. 'Otherwise it's a normal school.' He shrugged to late. 'The pupils are uniformed - not in wing-collars of course, just jacket-and-tie'.

Uniform is only to keep the parents happy. In Britain good schools have uniform - go to France or Germany, and it doesn't matter, but people expect it here. And out of class they wear their own kit - that was a Haddock- innovation.'

He fell silent again, but they waited him out again.

'Academically… when I said 'first-class', I didn't quite mean that. The aim is to get the boys into good universities, but not just Oxbridge. It isn't a crammer's school, where the bright ones sit like cuckoos, with their mouths open, waiting to be fed. God knows, I've felt dummy2

like a thrush sometimes, trying to fill the greedy little buggers!' He shook his head.

'Waltham is said to go for character - the emphasis is on learning how to learn, and they pick for that ability.' He stopped abruptly, staring from one to the other of them. 'And, talking of cuckoos, I wish you wouldn't both sit there with your mouths open. Disagree -

or agree… Or say you believe in comprehensive education, and I'm an elitist-fascist - or knock over a glass, or something.'

Elizabeth looked at Audley, but didn't really need to: if Debrecen had ever been a place in which talent was processed early, then what about the actual talent-spotting, earlier than that? If Haddock Thomas had been a Debrecen-graduate, what better job could he have than talent-spotting? And in what better place than Waltham School? If the old Jesuit boast

- catch 'em young - had any force -

'But we are cuckoos, Willy,' said Audley smoothly. 'So feed us some more worms, there's a good chap.'

'Worms? Can of worms, more like!' Mr Willis looked around. 'Where is the dratted man?'

'Worms, Willy.' Audley pointed at his open mouth.

'Dear boy - ' The old man's voice belied his words ' - what else do you want? Religion?

Oddly enough, it's quite strong at Waltham in a real sense, because those who take part in it do so voluntarily. The school has a chaplain, but the Master isn't in orders. As a matter of fact, I believe he's a linguist with a Liverpool degree, if it's still the same man I met once.

But the staffs very varied, at all events - and very well paid. And the selection process matches the pay. There was a joke, a few years back, about Waltham staff recruitment, in some educational magazine - or it may even have been in the Times Ed Supp - to the effect that, if you were shortlisted, but didn't quite make it, you could always get a university fellowship or a job piloting the next American Moon-landing, as a consolation prize.'

'And Haddock would have a hand in that, I take it?'

'Oh yes - Second Master at Waltham was never a bottle-washer's job, so the Master could go off junketing. The Master always led the school from the front - the Liverpool man was highly visible in the life of the place. And there was a Third Master who handled the timetable and the donkey-work. Second Master was big time - I told you the Haddock was a grandee. In fact, he was really de facto chairman of the staff selection board and the scholarship panel, and took it in turns with the Master to go trawling in foreign parts dear to PAM, and keeping up University contacts. Sort of foreign secretary to the Master's prime minister, you