His voice was dry and slightly high. His bony hands, on the desk between himself and Marshalsea, had minute fingernails.
‘Because DEF –’
‘Because the triangle DEF, Marshalsea.’
‘Because the triangle DEF –’
‘Yes, Marshalsea?’
‘Because the triangle DEF has the two angles at the base and two sides equal to the two angles at the base and two sides of the triangle ABC –’
‘You’re talking bloody nonsense,’ said Digby-Hunter quietly. ‘Think about it, boy.’
He rose from his position behind his desk and crossed the room to the window. He moved quietly, a man with a slight stoop because of his height, a man who went well with the room he occupied, with shelves of textbooks, and an empty mantelpiece, and bare, pale walls. It was simple sense, as he often pointed out to parents, that in rooms where teaching took place there should be no diversions for the roving eyes of students.
Glancing from the window, Digby-Hunter observed his wife in her deck-chair beneath the beeches. He reflected that in their seventeen years at Milton Grange she had become expert at making shepherd’s pie. Her bridge, on the other hand, had not improved and she still made tiresome remarks to parents. Once, briefly, he had loved her, a love that had begun to die in a bedroom in a Welsh hotel, on the night of their wedding-day. Her nakedness, which he had daily imagined in lush anticipation, had strangely repelled him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d murmured, and had slipped into the other twin bed, knowing then that this side of marriage was something he was not going to be able to manage. She had not said anything, and between them the matter had never been mentioned again.
It was extraordinary, he thought now, watching her in the garden, that she should lie in a deck-chair like that, unfastidiously asleep. Once at a dinner-party she had described a dream she’d had, and afterwards, in the car on the way back to Milton Grange, he’d had to tell her that no one had been interested in her dream. People had quietly sighed, he’d had to say, because that was the truth.
There was a knock on the door and Digby-Hunter moved from the window and called out peremptorily. A youth with spectacles and long, uncared-for hair entered the sombre room. He was thin, with a slight, thin mouth and a fragile nose; his eyes, magnified behind the tortoiseshell-rimmed discs, were palely nondescript, the colour of water in which vegetables have been boiled. His lengthy hair was lustreless.
‘Wraggett,’ said Digby-Hunter at once, as though challenging the youth to disclaim this title.
‘Sir,’ replied Wraggett.
‘Why are you moving your head about like that?’ Digby-Hunter demanded.
He turned to the other boy. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘If the two angles at the base of DEF,’ said Marshalsea, ‘are equal to the two angles at the base of –’
‘Open the book,’ said Digby-Hunter. ‘Learn it.’
He left the window and returned to his desk. He sat down. ‘What d’you want, Wraggett?’ he said.
‘I think I’d better go to bed, sir.’
‘Bed? What’s the matter with you?’
‘There’s a pain in my neck, sir. At the back, sir. I can’t seem to see properly.’
Digby-Hunter regarded Wraggett with irritation and dislike. He made a noise with his lips. He stared at Wraggett. He said:
‘So you have lost your sight, Wraggett?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Why the damn hell are you bellyaching, then?’
‘I keep seeing double, sir. I feel a bit sick, sir.’
‘Are you malingering, Wraggett?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then why are you saying you can’t see?’
‘Sir –’
‘If you’re not malingering, get on with the work you’ve been set, boy. The French verb to drink, the future conditional tense?’
‘You’re a cretin,’ shouted Digby-Hunter. ‘Get out of here at once.’
‘I’ve a pain, sir –’
‘Take your pain out with you, for God’s sake. Get down to some honest work, Wraggett. Marshalsea?’
‘If the two angles at the base of DEF,’ said Marshalsea, ‘are equal to the two angles at the base of ABC it means that the sides opposite the angles –’
His voice ceased abruptly. He closed his eyes. He felt the small fingers of Digby-Hunter briefly on his scalp before they grasped a clump of hair.
‘Open your eyes,’ said Digby-Hunter.
