'I'm going to Washington to stay with my father and his girl friend,' Wanderby announced brashly. Mr Slymne was delighted and used the statement in the Common Room that evening to good advantage.
'I must say we have some pretty peculiar parents,' he said loudly, 'I was discussing time zones with 2B this morning and that American boy, Wanderbury, suddenly said his father's got a mistress in Washington.'
Glodstone stopped sucking his pipe. 'Can't you even remember the names of the boys you teach?' he asked angrily. 'It's Wanderby. And what's all this about his father having a mistress?'
Slymne appeared to notice Glodstone for the first time. 'In your house, isn't he? Typical product of a broken home. Anyway, I'm merely repeating what he said.'
'Do you make a habit of poking your nose into the boy's family affairs in your lessons?'
'Certainly not. As I said, I was discussing time zones and jet-lag and Wandleby '
'Wanderby, for God's sake,' snapped Glodstone.
' volunteered the information that he was going to Washington at the end of term and that his father '
'All right, we heard you the first time,' said Glodstone and finished his coffee hurriedly and left the room. Later that evening as he crossed the quad, Slymne was pleased to notice Glodstone sitting at his desk by the window with a cigar box beside him. The crack about the broken home and Wanderby's father having a mistress would enhance Glodstone's romantic image of La Comtesse. That night, Slymne completed the task of writing out her instructions and locked the letter away in his filing cabinet.
It was to remain there for another five weeks. The summer term dragged on. Sports Day came and went, cricket matches were won or lost and Glodstone's melancholy grew darker with the fine weather and the liveliness of youth around him. He took to polishing the Bentley more frequently and it was there in the old coach-house one evening that he asked Peregrine what he was going to do when he left.
'Father's got me down for the Army. But now I've got O-levels, he's talking about my going into a bank in the City.'
'Not your sort of life I would have thought. Dashed dull.'
'Well, it's on account of my maths,' said Peregrine. 'That and Mother. She's all against my going into the Army. Anyway, I've got a month free first because I'm going on the Major's course in Wales. It's jolly good fun doing those night marches and sleeping out in the open.'
Glodstone sighed at the remembrance of his youth and came to sudden decision. 'Damn the Head,' he muttered, 'let's take the old girl out for a spin. After all, it is your last term and you've done more than your fair whack in keeping her shipshape and Bristol fashion. You go off down to the school gates and I'll pick you u there in ten minutes.'
And so for an hour they bowled along country lanes with the wind in their faces and the great exhaust murmuring gently behind them.
'You drive jolly well,' said Peregrine, as they swung round corner and headed through an overhang of oaks, 'and she goes like a dream.'
Beside him, Glodstone smiled. 'This is the life, eh. Can't beat vintage Bentley. She's a warhorse just raring to go.'
They came to a village and on the same impulse that had carried him so far, Glodstone stopped outside a pub. 'Two pints of you best bitter, landlord,' said Glodstone loudly, provoking the man into enquiring if Peregrine was eighteen.
'No...' said Peregrine but his answer was drowned by the boom of Glodstone's voice.
'Of course he is. Damnation, man, you don't imagine I'd bring an under-age drinker into your place?'
'I've known it happen,' said the barman, 'so I'll make it on bitter and a lemonade shandy and you can take your glass outside to a table.'
