Hare Sitting Up Page 6

  ‘I imagine so.’ Judith Appleby sounded entirely unsurprised. ‘But just what’s the idea? A tardy thought at Scotland Yard about saving the taxpayer’s money?’

  Appleby laughed. ‘There’s that aspect to it, no doubt. But it’s not precisely what’s in my mind. Listen.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Judith said.

  3

  Judith Appleby, as it happened, had heard of Splaine Croft. Two of her friends had sent sons there, and had reported with satisfaction that it seemed a fairly civilized sort of place. It was funny how, as civilization seeped away, the idea of civilization became all the go. She rather distrusted it. People now said ‘a civilized chap’ where she herself would have been prompted to say ‘rather a smooth type’. Certainly to go looking for civilized boarding-schools for one’s young was dangerous, even if laudable. If what you insisted on were the old-fashioned desiderata: gravel soil, southern exposure, all-Oxford staff, toughening them up, licking them into shape, rubbing off the awkward corners – if you were after these and similar prescriptive futilities and iniquities, you were at least pretty sure of getting what you looked for; and, if you were eccentric enough to want something else, you kept the kids at home. But if you went round looking for civilization, you were only too likely to get heaven knew what…

  Still, reasonable friends had praised Splaine Croft. Judith therefore drove up to it in a mood of only modified prejudice. She was acquiescing in more or less orthodox education for her own young; and it couldn’t be said that they showed any marked ill-effects so far. But having herself been brought up at home, in a large house full of assorted relations who were mostly mad, and having found this interesting and entirely satisfactory, she was always ready to take a poor view of what she called institutions.

  Splaine Croft – she noted contentedly as she drew up the car – looked unappealing on a day of warm thundery summer rain. John had reported liking the place – but John was capable of liking anything that was really efficiently run. And no doubt Splaine Croft was that. The windows were clean; they were also blank and uncurtained and thus doubtless let in more light. There was a garden to one side, crammed with roses – but probably only the headmaster was allowed into it. Straight in front of the main entrance stood a flagstaff. Clearly the boys were paraded round it on appropriate occasions for the purpose of singing God Save the Queen. Hanging in the hall there would be a certificate praising the drains. And the headmaster’s study would be protected by a supernumerary green-baize door, to muffle the howling when the headmaster’s pupils were being caned. Upstairs in the dormitories the most prominent furnishing would be a profusion of rope-ladders designed to assuage the anxieties of prospective parents apprehensive of fire. But in term-time these would be firmly padlocked to the wall, since what the headmaster himself was apprehensive of was any too ready means to suicide. Yes – Judith said to herself firmly – I have been here before. I can smell the disinfectant. I can slip on the tiles. I can extract, from the pitch-pine panelling of the interior, small gouts of resinous substance that can be satisfactorily rolled between finger and thumb. And that is sometimes the only resource through long weary hours.

  ‘Can I help you to find anybody?’

  A small boy in a blue windcheater, running past in the rain, had wheeled and come politely to a halt by the open window of Judith’s car.

  One of the extra-unfortunates, Judith thought, who have to stay through the holidays as well. A dozen or so boys altogether, John said. Afterwards, I wonder, could I offer to take them all out to tea? Aloud she said – thereby beginning the course of duplicity she was much looking forward to – ‘Can you tell me if Mr Juniper is about?’

  ‘The Head’s had to go away to a funeral. Isn’t it a bore?’

  ‘Well, yes – I don’t suppose he finds it invigorating.’

  The small boy smiled charmingly at being trusted to understand this long word. ‘No, I don’t mean that. A bore that he isn’t here I mean. Of course, Pooh and Piglet are all right–’

  ‘Pooh and Piglet?’ The unfortunate waifs, Judith supposed, got through their weary days partly by a relapse upon nursery fantasy.

  ‘Oh, just a couple of undergraduates we have to cope with. They’re very decent really. Last night we absolutely soaked them with our water jugs, and they gave us a wonderful scragging afterwards. But, of course, doing nothing but larking around is rather a waste of time. The point about the Head – I expect you’ve heard – is his leg break. You see, he can teach it. He really can. If you’re prepared to work hard at it, that’s to say. And I think I really was getting it, and so were Alabaster Two and U-Tin, and now the Head’s gone off to this funeral, and it’s going to absorb him for days.’

  ‘That seems too bad.’

  ‘And, you see, all three of us are going to different public schools. U-Tin is going to Eton – everybody with a name like that does, you know – and I’m going to Radley, and Alabaster Two is going to Downside because he’s a Jew.’

  ‘A Jew?’ Judith asked doubtfully.

  ‘Or is it a Catholic? Anyway, the point is that we can all take the same leg break to different schools. You see? But I’m being a frightful bore. Can I find you somebody else? Pooh or Piglet? Piglet’s less shy, I’d say. Or there’s Miss Grimstone, the secretary. She’s not shy at all.’

  ‘I think Miss Grimstone will be best. You see’ – Judith looked with limpid candour at the small boy – ‘I’m thinking of sending my sons here. Kevin and Jerry.’

  ‘Can they swim?’

  ‘Yes, they swim quite well. For people’ – Judith added with proper humility – ‘still at baby school, that’s to say.’

  ‘Well, it’s really not bad.’ The small boy offered this as one who considers a large complexity of balanced factors. ‘Only get some of their friends – small boys they know quite well, and who won’t frighten them – to toss them in a blanket a bit before you send them. It makes the first night easier. All the chaps whose families are in the know about Splaine arrange for that.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Judith said. She was much encouraged by this glimpse of savagery. ‘And is your headmaster a really nice man?’

  The small boy frowned. He probably doubted this question’s being quite good form. Nevertheless he answered with continued frankness. ‘He’s terribly decent, really. Of course, he does seem a disappointed man. It makes him restless. We think he must have been frightfully ambitious. And, of course, it didn’t come off.’

  ‘Ambitious?’ Judith found this interesting.

  ‘He was a Rugger Cap, you know, which ought to satisfy any man. But, at the same time, he had this natural leg break. So he hoped to play for England as a cricketer too. It would have been unique, almost. But he just didn’t bring it off.’ Judith’s informant shook his head seriously. ‘We think that’s what messed him up.’

  ‘Messed–’ Judith checked herself as she saw the boy, for the first time, shift rather uneasily from one foot to the other. ‘But look, you’re getting frightfully wet. Do just take me in to Miss Grimstone.’

  Left in charge of Splaine Croft, Miss Grimstone received visitors in the drawing-room. Judith looked round it with interest. It was the sort of entirely feminine and decidedly old-fashioned apartment which some bachelors think proper to keep about the house in pious memory of a mother.

  But it was a pleasant room in itself – and no doubt there would be prospective parents over whom its selling-power could be considerable. Gentlefolk have to be on the job for a good many generations, Judith reflected, to build up just this sort of everything-good and everything-faded effect. The bits and pieces of French furniture had really come from France – and already long ago local carpenters had had to be called in to remedy unfortunate disintegrations. The few watercolours were really by Girtin and Paul Sandby and the elder and the younger Cozens, and they had been acquired by Junipers when such things cost a good deal less than they do now. The whole room was much of a piece – the only odd note being struck by a modern portrait-
bust in bronze. Judith, being a sculptor herself, saw at a glance who it was by. Fifteen hundred guineas, she said to herself. And then Miss Grimstone entered the room.

  Judith shook hands and then turned to the large bay window. It looked out on the rose garden. ‘Peace!’ she said enthusiastically.

  Miss Grimstone peered at her intently through thick lenses. ‘It is,’ she admitted, ‘a secluded situation.’

  ‘No – those roses. The large yellow ones with the faint pink flush. Peace. Such a beautiful name for a rose. Do you know’ – and Judith turned impulsively to Miss Grimstone – ‘I am quite, quite sure that Kevin and Jerry would be very, very happy here!’

  ‘And they might even learn something, if that is judged to be of any importance.’ Miss Grimstone, who regarded Splaine Croft not as a refuge from the miseries of the world but as a place at which there were standards to keep up, clearly had no scruple about snubbing gush. ‘And how curious, Lady Appleby, that your sons would appear to be named out of Finnegans Wake.’

  Judith felt a sinking sensation inside. She was the more disconcerted because Miss Grimstone had so unmistakably the appearance of one whose literary studies are unlikely to have proceeded beyond Eric, or Little by Little. Irresponsible humour, clearly, ought not to be cultivated by those who would assist Scotland Yard.

  ‘Finnegans Wake!’ she said, perplexed. ‘Is that quite a nice book?’

  ‘Since it is largely unintelligible, the point is hard to determine. No doubt the matter of your children’s names is coincidental.’

  ‘Of course,’ Judith said, ‘my husband’s family are Irish.’

  ‘Indeed? You surprise me, Lady Appleby. To my mind, the name has Yorkshire associations.’

  ‘Quite so. The Cromwellian Settlement, you know, Miss Grimstone. How useful history is! Kevin and Jerry both adore it.’

  Miss Grimstone, although receiving this last assertion with undisguised scepticism, was obviously impressed by the suggestion of Applebys busy in a territorial way in the seventeenth century. ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that Mr Juniper would wish me to tell you that the prospect of any vacancies in the near future is very small. We are almost fully booked up for some years ahead. Most boys who come to Splaine are either sons of old Splaine boys or have had elder brothers at the school. A certain priority has to be accorded to applications in which there are circumstances of that kind. But I am sure that Mr Juniper would do his best. Would your husband have been born in Kilkenny?’

  ‘No, not Kilkenny.’ Judith, who knew very well that John had been born at Kirkby Overblow, was disconcerted by this. ‘In Wicklow. But Appleby House is now a ruin, unfortunately. It was burnt down in the troubles.’

  ‘How very shocking.’ Miss Grimstone was again discernibly impressed. ‘I ask simply because we have a closed scholarship for boys coming from Kilkenny. Wicklow, I’m afraid, wouldn’t count. And now, I think you may care to look over part of the school? Both matron and housekeeper are unfortunately on holiday, but I think I can tell you enough, perhaps, about the domestic side.’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much.’ Judith felt it was now incumbent upon her to think up the sort of questions and attitudes proper in one who has married into the Irish landed gentry. ‘You have your own green vegetables, I suppose?’

  ‘Most certainly. Everything of that sort is grown within the grounds.’

  ‘And cows?’

  ‘Of course. We have’ – Miss Grimstone spoke without a flicker – ‘special cows, suitable for invalids, infants, and young and tender stomachs in general.’

  ‘That is most satisfactory.’ Judith had an uneasy feeling that Miss Grimstone, too, was capable of indulging obscure and unseasonable humour. ‘And now I would certainly like to see over the school.’

  ‘The house is a large and rambling one, as you will have noticed, Lady Appleby. But I can certainly show you over the greater part of the boys’ quarters. And the kitchens – which are, of course, most important.’

  Judith had certainly noticed the size of the house. John had given her a decidedly tall order. Wondering what was to be done about it, she let her glance stray once more round the drawing-room. It came to rest on the bronze bust.

  ‘Is that,’ she asked suddenly, ‘a bust of Mr Juniper’s famous brother?’

  Miss Grimstone didn’t take this inquiry very well. ‘The bust,’ she said severely, ‘is of Mr Juniper himself.’

  ‘Oh, I see! Commissioned, no doubt, by old pupils of the school.’

  ‘I think not.’ Miss Grimstone, although disapproving this curiosity, was allowing herself a tone that was faintly dry. ‘If you are interested in contemporary art, Lady Appleby, I must show you the Augustus John in the dining-room.’

  ‘Of Mr Juniper again? Not delivering his celebrated leg break?’

  ‘I think,’ Miss Grimstone said, ‘we might begin with the chapel. It is all that remains of the house formerly standing on the site. We are very proud of it. There is some fine modern glass. Which was presented by old boys.’

  I must take it for granted – Judith said to herself as she went peering here and there in the interest of the mythical Kevin and Jerry – that the missing scientist is on the premises. He has committed a crime, he has done something disgraceful, he has gone harmlessly off his head. Anything that would prompt his schoolmastering brother to say, ‘Very well, lie low here for a time.’ That is the situation, and when John popped up here the other day the unfortunate schoolmaster was taken completely by surprise, and could do nothing but acquiesce in his plan. Alternatively, what is lurking here now is not Professor Howard Juniper living but Professor Howard Juniper dead. His brother has done him in. An affair of passion connected, no doubt, with Miss Grimstone. And my dear husband has pleasantly given me the task of finding the body. A policeman’s wife is not a happy one.

  Outside, it was still raining dismally, and thunder was rumbling in the distance. And everything was planned for outside at this time of the year, so that there was a feeling abroad that the day was running drearily down. In one empty classroom the boy who had chattered so cheerfully to Judith on her arrival was now forlornly engaged in sticking together the parts of a model aeroplane which obviously bored him extremely. U-Tin – it was easy to identify U-Tin – was in a corner of the boys’ day-room, addressing himself with equal lack of conviction to a chess problem. Alabaster Two – since he was in blue corduroy he was presumably Alabaster Two – was in another corner, playing ludo with a conscientiously interested young man who must be either Pooh or Piglet. The holiday boarders ran about uncertainly; and Piglet (if the ludo-player was Pooh) kept on rounding them up and making suggestions of which they didn’t think too well.

  Judith, conscious of this state of affairs as Miss Grimstone marched her around, found herself suddenly in the possession of a plan. It would be exhausting, but it might work very well. Unfortunately there was one serious difficulty in the way of putting it into operation. She herself hadn’t arrived at Splaine as quite the right person. Gushing and enthusiastic, yes. But not quite jolly enough. That was it… Judith, as Miss Grimstone showed her the kitchens and the up-to-date refrigeration, set herself to modulate, unobtrusively but rapidly, into a very jolly person indeed. An admiral’s daughter, she said to herself. A Betjeman girl. Or a matron from Eliot’s land of lobelias and tennis flannels. Slap Miss Grimstone on the back? Well, not quite. It was important to be asked to stay to tea.

  A bell clanged out somewhere above the domestic offices. It was a cracked bell, Judith noted, of the kind with which the sombre imagination of Graham Greene regularly provides schools in the distressful memories of his male characters. But at Splaine Croft this horror of the ringing bell (John Donne, Judith told herself, being thus launched upon literary references) appeared to be rather cheerfully received. Perhaps it was because it did, on this occasion, mean tea. There was a general stampede to the dining hall.

  ‘Are they to have tea?’ Judith asked – enthusiastic and oh so jolly. ‘But I must see them
! May I just peep?’

  ‘During the holidays I myself take tea with the school.’ Miss Grimstone glanced at Judith with what could not be other than naked suspicion. ‘I hope you have time to take a cup yourself? It is far from elegant, of course. But thoroughly wholesome. Each boy has half a pint of milk from the special cows.’

  Judith found herself wondering what this formidable old person really believed about her. That she was some brazen woman from a magazine, perhaps, preparing a colourful feature on the education of the surtax-paying classes. Still, here she was safely in the dining hall, where Pooh and Piglet were being introduced to her under perfectly commonplace names that she didn’t catch. At school, of course, small boys are not introduced. But Judith, considering it to be all in her part, shook hands with them all vigorously. They stared at her, polite but round-eyed. She acknowledged in herself a flickering suspicion that she was not a terribly good actress. Everybody sat down at a single long table at one end of the room. The panelling, she noticed, wasn’t pitch pine, but some really gloomy high-class stuff. A city gent’s house, once upon a time, Splaine Croft must have been.

  In the absence of the school matron, Miss Grimstone poised the beautiful Georgian teapot from which the grown-ups were to recruit themselves. Her aged features took on an inquiring expression, so that Judith supposed she was about to say, ‘Sugar and cream?’

  ‘I didn’t gather’ – this was what Miss Grimstone actually asked – ‘whether Kevin and Jerry are twins?’

  ‘Well, almost twins.’

  There was a pained silence. Pooh and Piglet gave each other a quick apprehensive glance, as if doubting the propriety rather than the credibility of this obscure obstetrical intelligence. Judith improved the occasion by a large jolly laugh. Miss Grimstone refrained from further interrogation. U-Tin, who was presumably some sort of prince, made a few polite remarks in an English that was faultless but perhaps a little too formal for his years. The other boys ate mostly in silence; the rain still streaming down outside the windows made them glum. Judith, thus left with a clear field, offered the company a breezy account of her childhood. Her father, although perpetually afloat as admirals always are, had kept his family in the heart of the countryside. A large family, Judith explained, in a large rambling house. Really very like Splaine Croft.