The Big Day Page 5

  ‘You don’t know which group he’s in? Good God, man!’

  ‘Well,’ Bishop said hastily, ‘he was in one group you know, and then he was transferred to another, and so he is still associated in my mind with that group.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘The one he was in before.’

  ‘Yes, but which one was – ‘

  ‘He was unsuitable,’ Bishop said. He had broken out into a slight sweat again. ‘We put these people into groups,’ he said. ‘It is a great responsibility, don’t you think so, Donald? That is another idea I’d like to see you play around with one day. I’d like to roll it down to you, and see you toy with it.’

  ‘What idea?’

  ‘How many degrees of remoteness before it becomes acceptable?’

  ‘That varies,’ Cuthbertson said, bluffing. The frequency with which he these days failed to understand his Senior Tutor was one of his numerous worries. ‘It varies from person to person,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been a great believer in it, myself.’

  ‘Have you?’ Bishop too had rather lost the thread. ‘You might press the button,’ he said. ‘But would you use the knife?’

  ‘That is the great question,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Did he actually use that word himself?’

  ‘Who, Mafferty?’

  ‘No, Taba. Did he use the word “incoherent” himself?’

  ‘Good Lord, no.’ Bishop guffawed. ‘You know what their English is like, some of ’em. No, that was his gist.’

  Cuthbertson brooded a moment. ‘Would you say he was going downhill?’ he said.

  ‘Taba?’

  ‘No, Mafferty.’

  Bishop pursed his lips. ‘I should say he is deteriorating, yes,’ he said.

  ‘Going to pieces,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Well, I shall be seeing him in the course of the morning. Anything to report on your side, by the way?’

  ‘I shall have to give this fellow Said a talking to. He had been harassing the typing class, passing notes to the girls, couched in language more than affectionate, apparently, and offering costly gifts. Miss Tynsely intercepted one of them, which she describes as obscene. I haven’t read it myself.’

  Miss Tynsely rented a room on the top floor, in which she taught secretarial skills to small classes of girls. She wore high-necked dresses and brushed her hair right off her forehead.

  ‘Well, keep me posted, won’t you? I shall be seeing Mafferty this morning. I shall be ready for him, whatever line he takes.’

  ‘Praemonitus, praemunitus,’ Bishop said, and he returned smiling to his own office, pleased on the whole with the way the interview had gone. There had been one or two sticky moments, when he had thought he was in for a dressing-down, but he had managed, he thought, to interest the chief in wider issues, just at the right moment.

  When the door had closed behind the Administrative Officer, Cuthbertson sat for some minutes in a relaxed position. Then he took a key from a small drawer in front of him, and used it to unlock another drawer, low down on his right. From this he took a folder, dark red in colour, unmarked on the outside. Slipping a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket, he produced a thick black fountain pen. Then, unhurriedly, and with a sense of mastery, he turned to a fresh page and wrote along the top, ‘Thought for the Day.’ Below this, with barely a moment’s pause, he wrote:

  Team Spirit, pulling together in a common cause, is of first importance in any enterprise involving collective effort, i.e. human beings working together to one end.

  He left a space of one line, then wrote:

  Question: How can this spirit be actively fostered?

  Answer: The Principal, by unremitting attention to detail, can promote the correct attitudes. i.e. Principal leaves no stone unturned.

  He paused for a moment, pen poised. No more words came to him, though it was obvious that the Thought would have to be rounded off. In the stress of composition, he glanced down at the still-open drawer from which he had taken the folder. With a sickening shock of surprise he saw the little gold locket which he had bought for Lavinia lying there. It must have been under the folder. Some of the panic he had felt on not finding it in his dressing-gown pocket returned to him now. Could the mere intention of putting it in his pocket have grown confused with the action itself? Or could putting it in one receptacle, i.e. the drawer, have done service for putting it in another? But in that case… My God, he thought, where is certitude to be found? The thing gleamed up at him palely. Hastily he closed the drawer on it.

  Into his mind, like a saving vision, sprang the memory of his Senior Tutor’s smart turnout that morning.

  ‘An important aspect of this corporate identity is dress,’ he wrote eagerly; ‘i.e. a decent uniformity is goal.’

  His fear was forgotten. The pen between his fingers had become an instrument of power, its ink the irrevocable streaming of his authority. At top speed he wrote:

  Teachers must be encouraged by all means to hand to adopt a uniform style of clothing suggested clothing for teachers white shirt plain dark blue tie navy blue blazer fawn slacks chukka or desert boots in dark brown suede.

  3

  Lavinia’s mood of romantic languor, induced by the hot bath and Mario Lanza, was routed completely by the appalling nature of the nine-o’clock news. In tones of polite exuberance, the announcer spoke of economic crisis at home and famine abroad, strikes and the threat of strikes, bomb outrages in various cities, moves to arm the police against rioters. A pitched battle had taken place at Guildford Station between irate commuters and station staff in which two West Indian porters, a ticket clerk, and two members of the public had been injured. A retired colonel, opening a letter, had had his hand blown off. A woman of seventy-eight had been knocked over and trampled upon in a scramble for baked beans at a supermarket. The Prime Minister had been pelted with tomatoes by students in Aberdeen, where he had gone to receive an honorary degree. One had struck him in the face and made it impossible for him to go on with his speech. He was to make a statement, later today – not about that, but about the economic crisis.

  Oppressed, Lavinia switched off the set, wishing very much that she had done so earlier. She tried to think of pleasant things, gladioli, pearl earrings, summer dresses. Always, when she was made aware of threats to peace and order, her instinct was to retreat into some safe place, find something nice to think about. This took her usually to what was now inviolable – the past, her childhood. She felt the same alarm now as she had when a girl, when anything threatened to invade her own warm, self-regarding world. The world outside, public events, these were as unreal to her now as they had been then, abstract and meaningless except when they assumed this looming, threatening character. She had no concept of the life of society. Life was a certain acreage, time passing. Life was what she had, at forty.

  She soothed herself to some extent with various unguents, talcs, and scents. Then, dressed in a dark-red woollen dress, she went down for her bacon and eggs.

  After breakfast, however, she changed her mind about the woollen dress, and changed into a cotton one with little pink flowers on it, because it was turning out such a warm morning. They had got to the middle of May without much warm weather at all, but today it was quite summery. With a white cardigan over her shoulders and a large-brimmed hat with a band of pink ribbon, she set off for town. It was only half a mile or so to the Home, so she decided to walk, and after a few minutes found that she was enjoying it. The warmth of the day, her own gentle motion, lulled her; she relapsed into certain favoured thoughts. She walked in the centre of the pavement, with a sort of deliberate grace, setting one foot very nearly exactly in front of the other. Her head was slightly lowered beneath the wide brim of her hat and her eyes in this partial concealment were hooded and dreaming, not noticing really the laburnum and lilac and mock-orange leaning over the garden fences. Their scents, and the trickling songs of birds in the gardens, not consciously registered, quickened her mood of pleasurable nostalgia.

  She was thin
king in this dreaming way, musings flecked with sunlight, of freckled, long-lashed Walter, who had once been their gardener, until he had gone away to join the army; the milky skin below the vee of his open-necked shirt; the slightly rougher, slightly redder line of his collar bone; the insolent vacancy of his regard, which hadn’t changed much even when … The first time, she always thought of the first time with Walter, up against the back of the garden shed, in the midst of a conversation about lupins – she had gone on talking about lupins as long as possible, in an effort to preserve the illusion that what they were doing was in some way related to gardening. Then there was that other time, that hot Saturday. Sunbathing. I went through the trees in my bikini…

  Mr Honeyball was different, so thin and shy; the fountain-pen clipped in his top pocket; his narrow, shiny shoes. He was pale-skinned, he had that in common with Walter. She hoped they’d have other things in common too – Walter had been in a more or less permanent state of readiness. Mr Honeyball’s occupation was more sedentary, of course … The sort of skin that one thinks direct sunlight would harm, almost. What would he come as? He would look good as an officer in the Indian Army, when India was under the British, in one of those scarlet tunics. Not the drab khaki they wore now, so utterly unpleasing to the eye …

  The High Street was crowded. The warmth of the morning, the first real warmth of the year, had brought people out in lighter colours. She thought she saw Mr Mafferty across the street, looking unusually smart in a grey suit. He did not see her. On his way to the School, she thought. He was going to be late, if he was teaching the first hour. There had been trouble with him lately, she suddenly recalled. Donald had made disparaging references. But he was a good-looking man, and very affable in manner. He had a way of looking into your eyes. His own were frequently bloodshot. A drinking man, Donald had said. He was coming to her party too, all the staff had been invited … As she drew near the Home, Lavinia began that last-minute resettling of herself which all imminent social occasions required.

  Mafferty in fact was not teaching in the earlier part of the morning. He arrived at school some twenty minutes before the mid-morning break, which enabled him to secure the most comfortable chair in the staff-room, have his coffee as strong as he liked it, and make sure of the remaining shortbread biscuits. Even when teaching he was generally able to achieve all these objectives, as he was always out ahead of the others: when the bell went, he stopped at once, often in mid-sentence, and made for the door, defeating by superior footwork any student attempting to waylay him.

  Today however, he had a particular sense of leisure and elegance. On this morning of his crucial interview with Cuthbertson, being dressed more scrupulously than usual, he felt more like a distinguished visitor than one of the teachers. Brushing biscuit crumbs from his best grey suiting, an inch or two of white cuff showing, hair long but scholarly, he hoped to dispel whatever prejudice had accumulated in Cuthbertson’s mind against him.

  From where he was sitting he could see a portion of the drive leading up to the house, a section of the nearer privet hedge, trimmed and clipped with an almost swooning perfection and immaculateness, in exactly spaced, shallow waves, the very buds and sproutings of nature, Mafferty thought, obedient to Cuthbertson’s fanatical sense of order. Farther along, out of sight, but present to his mind, those same hedges culminated in ball shapes and bird shapes, and then the wrought-iron gates and the austerely printed sign, Regional School of Further Studies. Principal: D. Cuthbertson Ph.D, D.Litt.

  Bit of a misnomer that, old boyo, he imagined himself saying to Cuthbertson, in a natural, unaffected manner. School for Mugs and Crooks would be nearer the mark, eh, what? Offering Cuthbertson a cigar. They both pay the same fee, that’s the main point. Well, maybe my turn is coming sooner than you suspect. Old boyo. He thought again of the evening that was coming, his appointment with Weekes at the Metropole. Weekes might have news. They were going into partnership, starting their own School, as soon as they could find suitable premises. You didn’t seriously imagine, Cuthbertson, that I would go on indefinitely, putting money into your pockets? Urbanely lighting his cigar for him …

  He glanced through the window again at the gravel forecourt raked to an almost baffling evenness of surface, the large stone urns of classical shape round the perimeter, containing fuchsias and geraniums. It was speckless. Like a very well-kept cemetery, he thought. But it was the fee-payers, the acquirers of degrees, who were being hallowed here, not the dead. And what is a fellow like Cuthbertson doing, with all that money he had in the bank, what is he doing, spending his days here, hanging about in business suits, like the manager of a hotel, when he could be up and away to Morocco or somewhere? His employer was a mystery to him. If it was me, he thought, and some day it will be, I’d sell up and be off on my travels.

  He was in the midst of this transaction, equable but ruthless, when he heard the bell go, and a minute or two later Binks entered the room, looking harassed, which was his usual expression. They exchanged the grimaces of fellow-sufferers without saying anything. Binks went over to get his coffee. His entrance, however, had broken Mafferty’s mood. His thoughts became more mundane and more immediate, distaste for his present situation in space and time combining with an irrepressible uneasiness at the coming interview with Cuthbertson.

  To allay this, he took from his brief-case the batch of essays handed in by his English Composition class. The subject they had been given was ‘Divorce’. Mafferty took out his red ballpoint pen and settled down to correct the first one. With pen poised, he began to read the first paragraph:

  The cause is: a man’s ristriction in a bad way towards a woman. As it has been to my personal intrepidity, divorce is, and is to be one of the most delusive actions in the political phenomena. There is no sophism to anger me so much rather than putting it henceforward and to clarify my opinion that divorce –

  He looked up dazed, from this to see Binks sit down at some distance and begin to look closely at a small pocket-book, in which after a moment he began to make notes. Calculating his hire-purchase commitments, Mafferty thought. Binks was a great customer of manufactured goods. Both he and his strapping, square-faced wife were almost uncontrollably acquisitive of articles of furniture and household goods, and spent a good deal of their time negotiating deferred credit purchases, or contriving to postpone payment. In Binks, who was dry and grudging in manner, with a pedantically deliberate mode of speech, this constant feathering of the nest seemed like a secret vice.

  ‘Listen to this,’ Mafferty said. He began to read aloud from the essay:

  Acts of prostitution, barrenness, quarrels, and impecunious depressments would be of less importance if a man is firm …

  ‘What on earth is all that about?’ Binks said, forming his words carefully.

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ Mafferty said.

  At this point Beazely entered, his long sparse hair in prophetic disarray, a distant smile on his face. He had been giving his lesson on British Life and Institutions.

  ‘I have just been telling them that the British people live under a dictatorship,’ he said. ‘It took them completely by surprise.’ He advanced into the room with his curiously ungainly, high-stepping walk, and came to rest midway between Binks and Mafferty. ‘They weren’t prepared for it,’ he said.

  Mafferty, infusing his tone with irony, said, Our parliament is freely elected. Those gentlemen and others at Westminster are making a balls of things by popular consent, yours and mine.’

  ‘Not mine,’ Beazely said. ‘I never vote.’

  Binks looked up from his pocket-book. ‘You never vote?’ he said.

  ‘Never,’ Beazely said. ‘It only encourages them.’

  ‘I regard that as irresponsible,’ Binks said. The shabby neatness of his suit, his clean-shaved, underfed face – there was never anything left over for personal adornment or indulgence–seemed to offer witness against Beazely. We live in a Democracy, he seemed to be asserting; only in a Democra
cy do you find people free to run budget accounts, acquire debts. ‘Dictatorship indeed!’ he said. ‘How do you make that out?’

  Beazely smiled. He was a tall, very thin man, ungainly of movement, as if he had more than the usual number of joints in his legs. His smiles had a way of disappearing self-approvingly into the folds at the sides of his mouth.

  ‘As an anarchist,’ he began and then stopped, as if listening to something outside.

  ‘Dictatorship!’ Binks said, looking incredulously at Mafferty.

  Beazely smiled again. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘decisions affecting us closely and made on our behalf by those in authority without our knowledge and consent. Now in a free society – ’

  Mafferty, who had heard this before, resumed his reading of the essay before him:

  Now let us talk over and in shifting towards some less provocative principal and to forget man’s propensities at the moment but how to protrude.

  ‘How to protrude,’ he said, looking up again. ‘How to protrude, that is the great issue of our times.’

  ‘We put them there, didn’t we?’ Binks said.

  ‘That only means that persons in authority are put there by us.’

  ‘That is what I am saying.’ Binks looked triumphantly at Mafferty.

  ‘That is what he is saying,’ Mafferty said. ‘I say, just listen to this.’

  Beazely raised one hand. ‘Put there by us, to do things for us,’ he said. He turned abruptly, stalked towards an armchair and sat down. Binks watched him with narrowed eyes, clearly puzzled.

  ‘But if we put them there …’ he said.

  ‘My dear fellow they have to be there before they can be discussed at all. If they were not there we would not be discussing them. Your argument is completely circular.’

  Let us have no idea, Mafferty read, of molesting indignation, and treachery towards a woman but to correct. Of course we have made young girls and women to imrpove in prostitution, and to become wild …