A Few Old School Ties

11

A Few Old School Ties

September 5 Not. Yes well talking of the mundanity of Life As We Know It, two days later, the day we had to get down to Marbledown for Bean Minor’s Prizegiving, it poured, and a slight Contretemps arose.

    John had spent most of the previous day catching up on the sleep he’d been missing out on during his dashed mission, and in between sleeps encouraging me to pop into bed with him, and I’d managed to dash round to the little old grocer’s shop for some very free-range eggs and more sliced bacon, and the nice bread that he sold, even tho young Jason Prosser, who helpfully accompanied me, pointed out that his bread wasn’t the best bargain. Plus some marmalade that the little old man warmly recommended even tho Jason made a horrified hissing noise as he did so. I happened to know from having stayed in his cottage to look after him that time that it was the brand John liked, so I ignored him. Well pointing out that he was getting as ubiquitous as my dashed sibling, but otherwise it was ignore. So he just bought some eggs for his grandfather and of course some of the lovely sliced-on-the-spot bacon, and dragged me off the exotic-looking tins of fruit. But hang on, Jason, maybe John would like lychees or um, jackfruit and palm nuts? (Cor.)

    “Crap! No wonder yer always broke! Come on, ’e’ll be wondering what the Hell’s happened to yer!”

    Oh. So I thanked the little old grocer and off we went.

    In other words it had been just a peaceful day, really. Only the next day wasn’t.

    It started, more or less, with Bean peering disconsolately out of the sitting-room window around noon and announcing sourly: “It’s still bloody pouring.”

    “Maybe it’ll be fine down at Marbledown,” I said with super-optimism.

    “And maybe pigs’ll fly!”

    At this point John interjected with his usual mildness: “Cars are waterproof, aren’t they?”

    Bean glared. “Not if you mean that ruddy M.G. of yours, no!”

    “Er—no: it’s down at the cottage, old chap.”

    So I said: “Don’t worry, I can—”

    “You are NOT driving that heap of Mum’s!” my sibling shouted.

    “I’m a perfectly good dri—”

    “You ARE NOT! –Have you ever driven with her?” he demanded fiercely of poor John.

    “Uh—not been driven by her, no,” he replied cautiously.

    “Well she’s frightful: goes like a bat out of Hell. Added to which,” he did add, very nastily indeed, “she hasn’t dashed well got a licence!”

    “I have so!”

    “An ENGLISH licence, you idiot!”

    Er—oh. I sort of thought a licence was a licence. Didn’t say it, for some strange reason.

    John cleared his throat. “Well, perhaps you could drive Patrizia’s car, Michael.”

    At this there was a strange silence…

    And it dawned. “Hah, hah, hah! You haven’t got an English licence, either, have you?”

    “No! And don’t blame me for bloody Brexit!” he snarled.

    “I’m not. –Well, do you feel up to driving, John?” I asked.

    Another strange silence…

    “Um, look, sir, if you aren’t up to it we quite understand,” said the Bean quickly, going rather red.

    “Thanks, old man, but it’s not that. I do have a current licence, but, uh, not on me.”

    “That’s okay, we’ll grab le Jacques du Cousin Georges and he’ll tool us round to your flat in his taxi!”

    “Le Jacques—uh, let it pass,” he decided. “Slight snag, there: we’ll need the keys.”

    He was only in the big towelling thing, so Bean said: “What have you done with his clothes, Mel?”

    “I put them in the washing-machine—it’s one of those gigantic appliances in the kitchen, John, next to the dishwasher. There’s a dryer as well. They’ll be dry by now.”

    “And?” demanded the Bean.

    I looked at him blankly.

    “What did you do with the stuff in the pockets?”

    “What stuff?”

    “Um, sorry,” said John quickly. “Wasn’t carrying, um, anything.”

    “How the Hell did you manage on the plane?” my sibling croaked with, some would have said, justified amazement.

    “Yes: what about the one from Karachi?” I asked keenly.

    “Uh—no. Pilot was a chum of Ranjit’s,” he muttered.

    “You’re not telling us you came all the way from Karachi with no papers?” croaked Bean. “That’s impossible! They’d never let you into the country!”

    “Yes: Army transport, y’see.”

    The Bean gaped from him to me.

    “Um, yes, that’s right, Bean,” I conceded. “From Aden. One of those huge planes where they all have to sit on the floor and when the red light goes on someone yells and they all have to jump only I don’t think these ones did actually ju—”

    “Shut UP, Mel! –What the Hell happened to your passport, John?”

    “Well uh, most of my stuff’s in at work—had to hand it in, y’see, old chap, before I, um, yes.”

    Bean took a deep breath. “Look, never mind the security of the realm or whatever you dashed Brits call it,”—ouch!—“just what’s in at work, John?”

    Making a face, he admitted there wasn’t just his passport, there were his keys—all of them, to his flat and the cottage and the M.G.—his driver’s licence, his credit cards, his mobile phone and his, er, ID. No-one asked what precisely he meant by this last.

    “And your will, I presume,” said the Bean nastily.

    “Mm. Just a precau— Damn. Did you have to, old man?” he sighed as I burst into tears like an idiot and rushed out.

    “Sorry,” I heard the Bean say glumly as I rushed through the kitchen and into my bedroom and threw myself on the bed.

    After moment John came in and sat down beside me, patting my back. “Cheer up, darling, it’s all over!”

    I just sobbed.

    I heard him sigh and go out so I cried harder than ever.

    “Sit up and drink this,” he said, approx. two mins. later. “I’m alive and kicking and I’ve given the damned hush-hush stuff away—and I can always hand in my papers if they try to force me to do another stint, y’know!”

    I sat up, sniffling. “You wouldn’t!”

    “Of course I would, cuckoo. Get this brandy down you and cheer up. –That’s better,” he said as I drank some. “Michael and I will pop round to work and grab my crap, okay? Then I’d better put on something presentable, I suppose, so we’ll go over to the flat. You change into something Tommy would approve of, darling, and we’ll pick you up and drive down to Brighton in time for an early dinner before the balloon goes up, okay?”

    “Um, okay,” I said dubiously, not asking drive in what. “Unless it’d be better to take the train to Brighton?”

    “No, you twit,” said my sibling from the doorway. “We’d never manage to get a taxi to take us all the way out to Marbledown, let alone to collect us afterwards.”

    “No,” John agreed. “We’ll book into a nice hotel there, darling, spend the night—or is it two until the end of term? Well whatever, and then collect Tommy and shake the dust, okay?”

    “Okay. I’d better put some clothes in a bag, then,” I said dazedly. “And some clean underwear.”

    “Yes. Have you got a brolly?”

    For a moment I was thrown by this strange Anglicism. “Oh! An umbrella! Yes, but it’s pink.”

    “And don’t ask which one of them bought it for her,” said Bean on a sour note.

    John patted him on the shoulder. “That’ll do, old man. We’re all human. You get into your glad rags, okay?”

    “Oh—yes. Right-ho!” And he hurried off to change.

    “Um, there is a hat I thought of wearing but it isn’t my best hat,” I said sadly to John.

    “No? Well it’s not precisely glorious summer out there, darling, and you don’t want to risk your best hat in the rain, do you? –No. Just wear something pretty, mm?”

    I gulped. As usual when John said Mm? in that mild way of his I felt really peculiar. Rather as if my heart had actually swelled up inside my chest. Which if one has never experienced the phenomenon may not sound believable, but it’s exactly it.

    “Okay, John,” I agreed.

September 8 Not. And that was that. Well Bean was slightly cheesed off, so to speak, because he wasn’t allowed to penetrate further into John’s place of work than the lobby (fancy that), but apart from that minor matter everything went swimmingly. We got down to Brighton in good time, the hotel was lovely, the dinner was fine, well slightly odd to see traditional English ingredients served in trendy gourmet piles, but as John said, mash was mash, however shaped. And let them call the gravy jus if they liked: it did the beef proud! Which it did. And we rolled up to Marbledown in plenty of time for the Prizegiving ceremony.

    And for Bean Minor to shake John’s hand hard and thank him fervently for coming.

    “Well,” he said with a laugh, “Mel’ll probably tell you it was a dashed close-run thing! But I made it.”

    “In the clothes he stood up in, yes,” I noted.

    A vaguely puzzled expression came over the minor sibling’s physiog., but he let it pass. He looked me sternly up and down and said: “At least you look presentable, Mel. Good.”

   —Actually I was looking très BCBG in a rather new pale grey outfit which I’d bought because I was jealous of that lovely pale grey one of Mireille’s, but this was not a Need-to-K. of the male side, was it? Partly why my bank account was currently somewhat denuded. Not a Need-to-K., either.

    So my darling John gave a protesting laugh and said: “Come on, Tommy! She looks adorable!”

    “One’s female Belongings are never allowed to be that when one’s at School,” drawled the Bean, looking down his nose at the minor one—slightly difficult, they were now the same height, tho Bean Minor was decidedly more… Well the best English word would be “willowy” if that hadn’t acquired the wrong connotations since Bertie W.’s time. More slender, or is it slenderer? I never know, English isn’t logical.

    “You look jolly nice, Mel!” put in good old Trelawney, rather hoarsely.

    Er—one could only hope this was not going to develop into a Crush, Pash, or Schwärm, the more so as the chum was slated to come down to spend the summer with Bean Minor at the Ovenden Stables. With the promise that the said Bean Minor would put him up for membership of the Junior Drones.

    However, I thanked him nicely and then it was time to take our seats. Mercifully at Marbledown P.-giving Boys are all herded together while Belongings sit in another block. Which allows one to comment, so to speak, at liberty.

    Well any human being who’s ever been forced to attend a Prizegiving will know exactly what it was like. A couple of hours of solid boredom, tho the young ones getting their prizes, their ears and cheeks very pink, were adorable. But of course interminable sports awards, yawn. Fortunately from where he was sitting up at the back with the other Seniors the minor sibling couldn’t see whether I was clapping such luminaries as Best All-Rounder (Junior Cricket) or Senior Sculls Champion, or not. But at last came the long-awaited moment. Senior French Scholar: Thomas Fullarton-Browne. And up he went—it’s quite a trek from the back of the Marbledown hall to the stage.

    Silently John passed me his pristine ironed handkerchief. What— Oh. I dried my eyes and clapped very hard.

    “I know,” he said in my ear. “So young and vulnerable, with everything ahead of him. Does make one want to bawl.”

    “Yes.” Oh dear. “Has Bean told you about Australia?” I whispered, as the rather flushed Bean Minor retreated with his dashed book.

    “Er—no,” he replied, looking startled.

    Bother. My big mouth. There was no hope he wouldn’t ask me later, his is the sort of brain that takes everything in.

    Up on the stage an August Personage was now about to present, thank God, the very last prize: the Dux of the School award. This accolade, in the form of a medal which those who had been exposed to Stinks at the scholastic establishment in Q. had long since informed me was base metal, gilded, went to a short, stocky boy with very large ears. Everybody duly clapped, under cover of which I hissed: “In Uncle Flossie’s dad’s time the medal was real gold and a chum of his pawned his one!”

    “Jolly good!” John hissed back, grinning.

    Yes well. That’s my Colonel for you! Stiff Upper Lip, certainly; and Women and Children First, undoubtedly; not to say the Security of the Realm; but he’s no worshipper of dashed shibboleths or sacred cows.

September 10 Not. We wouldn’t be able to reclaim Bean Minor until the day after next, as the following day was supposed to be spent packing, with Seniors’ Farewell Lunch and the unofficial but extremely traditional “Most Popular” awards at it. Tho sadly there wasn’t going to be an award for one, Bridlington Major, who had achieved the heroic feat of actually blowing up one of the Stinks labs! Rather fortunately for his future career, without anyone in it: he’d left something on his bench in the period before lunch, and— Quite. Various joyless persons such as Housemasters had informed his well-wishers that any attempt towards any sort of presentation would result in Dire Consequences. However, his Form had clubbed together in secret and awarded him a jolly great box of chocs! Er—yes. There is an English expression… Indian givers! Oh well, one’s only a boy once, after all.

    So we had a whole day to fill in. Bean thought he’d try the second-hand bookshops: after all, Bean Minor had found those old PGWs here, hadn’t he?

    “Wasn’t that a junk shop, not a dashed antiquarian book emporium?”

    “Okay, them as well.”

    As I had incautiously mentioned to John that it was Miss Pinkerton’s very last term at Merrifield—one of those emails of dashed Babs Rowntree’s had got through—he thought that perhaps I ought to pop over to wish her well, mm? Well without the “mm?” I might have been able to dig my heels in but of course I was immediately softened, and agreed. So I resignedly got back into the BCBG grey outfit which I had happily rejected in favour of my Junior Drones cream bags, a warm coral-coloured thin-knit jumper of Mum’s (it was distinctly chilly out there, tho the sun was now out) and my Worcester (Oxon.) Rowing Eight blazer, black with bright pink trims, it looked really jolly with the coral aforesaid! Oh well: it wouldn’t have done: on the historic occasion on which I’d worn it at School in prep. for a sanctioned visit to a Marbledown Event (the two schools being quite close to one another) the poor woman had recognised it for what it was, and almost passed out in sheer horror. Never mind, John hugged me and said consolingly that I looked yummy in anything.

    So we duly rolled up to the Alma Mater. Ugh. “My stomach feels queasy,” I whined.

    “Rats. Hop out,” was the hard-hearted reply.

    So I hopped—well dragged myself.

    John thought firmly that we should use the front door, so we did. The front hall was not a hive of activity, merely one Junior stationed there to grab Parents who had rolled up on the wrong day to remove a Gel, or such-like.

    She squeaked: “Good morning. Can I help you?” So I returned sternly: “Shouldn’t that be ‘May I help you?’ in Standard English? –Don’t bother, I know the way to the Brain’s study.”

    “Um, I’m afraid Miss Swayne has someone with her!” she squeaked.

    “In that case I’m sure the Secretary will ask us to wait. –Excuse my mentioning such an indelicate point, but your socks seem to be descending.”—It was Summer Uniform, of course, and the poor kids had to wear daft long white socks with the Merrifield dark blue stripe round their tops. What sadists dream up these ideas?—So she gave a dismayed squeak and diverted her attention to the lower limbs and I led John past her and down the corridor to the Sacred Study, or lair.

    “Your middle name always was No Quarter, Mel, wasn’t it?” he sighed.

    “True, but better me than others. I’m sure this year’s lot have their quota of Hearties and Busybodies, and what’s the betting a Babs Rowntree clone would have descended upon her and given her ten demerits for Letting the School Down, not to say the socks, in a public area likely to be infested with Parents?”

    “I think I see,” he sighed.

    I hugged his arm. “You sure? I could run it by you aga—”

    “Shut up!” he gasped, going into a muffled sniggering fit.

    And we proceeded to the lair arm-in-arm, in a state of perfect amity.

    We only had a ten mins.’ wait until the door to the Inner Sanctum opened and the Brain appeared, smilingly ushering out a pair of cowed Parents with the assurance that Matron would have seen that Imogen was packed, and of course she (the Brain) quite understood. Good morning! They muttered in response and slunk out. Yes well: that’d larn them for daring to remove their offspring before the Witching Hour.

    “My dear Melly-sand,” she said without preamble. “How very nice to see you. Please, do come in.”

    Well I managed to stumble in and I managed to introduce John, noting that of course they had met before but— She remembered: my last Easter Break, hadn’t it been? I was forced to admit, more or less, what I’d been doing since, but with a considerable amount of bowdlerising and a terrific lot of lacunae I more or less got through it and then explained that I thought I’d drop in on Miss Pinkerton since it was her last term.

    Miss Swayne was pleased to approve. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Melly-sand. I believe Barbara Rowntree did circulate your Form with the news she was leaving, but I’m afraid she hasn’t heard from any of the others.”

    No well: from a lot of self-centred bimbos? But I could at least let Alysse off the hook, so I explained that she was buried in her Ph.D. swot and into the bargain had set her computer to send anything from Babs to spam.

    “Yes well between us she is rather tiresome, but she means well,” she said on a tired note.

    “Mm. Um, she seems to have got hold of a lot of Old Girls’ email addresses, not just our Form’s,” I said uneasily. “I met a pleasant woman who was here round about the time of Miss Johnstone’s last year and she keeps, um, getting them. I thought I’d better tell you.”

    “Thank you. I am aware of the problem, but I’m afraid the damage is done. Tho I think I can promise you it won’t happen again.”

    Uh-huh. Was it merely a coincidence that she had a new Secretary? The previous one had been the sort of Keen Type, all teeth, who approved of Hearties full of School Spirit and had clearly been one herself in her day. Ten to one Babs had got round her.

    “Good,” I said weakly.

    And with that the Brain graciously phoned through to Miss Pinkerton, who was thrilled, it came right through the receiver, and evidently had a panic at the state her room was in with her packing, and agreed to meet us in the Brain’s private sitting-room, to which we were shown with due ceremony.

    Well the poor old dear was overcome, and thrilled, unquote, to meet John, and asked eagerly after my brothers, and it had been so exciting to receive my lovely postcard from France with the picture of the Château itself! Gulp. That one that Mireille and I had sent more or less tongue-in-cheek? And of course the lovely photo of me taken during the vintage! Double gulp: the one of me holding up a bunch of grapes as the most unlikely picker ever to have trodden the soil of Bourgogne? That had definitely been a joke. Oh dear.

    “John,” I said, as we eventually retreated in a duly chastened mood, “if ever I give any indication of wanting to take up school-teaching, shoot me.”

    “Mm,” he agreed, holding my hand very tight. “Was, rather, wasn’t it?”

    And we got into the car and drove off without saying anything else for quite a while.

September 13 Not. I thought ten ack emma might be too early to rescue the minor sibling from incarceration, after all the official End of Term was 12 noon, but the two males cheerfully rubbished that and off we went. Bean in the back seat, his nose buried in a Find from one of the junk shops: a new author, who was rather PGW! John had choked at the word “new”, so I’d investigated. Oh—first published 1932, tho the battered Penguin itself seemed to date from the late 1960s. (Crumbs: 1932? That was ninety years ago!) He reported that there was this chap in it, y’see, well he was a toff, definitely, but he came out with some jolly good lines, and he had a gentleman’s gentleman just like Jeeves! And—impressively—he’d found this frightful scene where this female, y’see, she discovered a chap with his throat cut from ear to ear with the blood dripping! (Ugh!) So he’d thought it would be worth trying.

    After a bit John asked: “How’s the book, Bean?”

    To which the sibling replied in slightly puzzled tones: “Well actually it’s frightfully literate and all that, but, um… Well there’s this female, y’see. Must’ve been an earlier book, she seems to have been tried for murder but she didn’t do it. –I think. Well she got off. Think it was maybe this Bertie-ish chap that got her off. Anyway at the moment she seems to be pottering along the coast somewhere. Um, well to the west of us, I think… But I expect she’ll come across the body soon!” he added on a hopeful note. Ugh!

    John was shaking, rather, and the hire car described a somewhat circuitous route along the next few mètres of road. Luckily devoid of oncoming traffic. So I said: “John, it sounds horrifying. What’s the joke?”

    Weakly he replied: “He’s got hold of a D.L. Sayers, darling. One of the great classic mystery writers of the first half of the twentieth century. Er—tho I grant you the hero does have a rather Bertie-ish manner. More so in the earlier tales, I think. But I’ll give him the M.G. if he gets the solution before she reveals it.”

    “Crumbs, it is that clever?”

    “Mm-hm. Well all her books are; dashed well researched, too. And ‘literate’ is the word!”

    We had heard the Bean flipping over pages during this speech, and now he spluttered: “I’ll say! I’ve just found a bit of bally Greek!”

    “Don’t worry, old man, it won’t be germane to the plot.”

    “Oh won’t it? Good show,” he said vaguely.

    John patted my knee. “It’s a really good read, darling, if you can overlook the gore—which is only a short passage. Um, tho there is—er—a bit of cryptography, of sorts.”

    What? “Look, if the thing’s full of dashed schoolboy puns like those blasted crosswords in your Observers—”

    “And The Times!” he choked. “No, wrong end of the stick, Mel. Code.”

    “Really?” gasped the Bean from behind us.

    “Yes. Well she shows you exactly how the noble hero, Bertie witticisms an’ all, works it out, but I must say it’s a hard slog. Tho one or two of the chaps at work appreciated it,” he added thoughtfully.

    What? It couldn’t be anything like a PGW epic. I mean to say—!

    However Bean remained immersed in it for the rest of the trip.

    On arriving we found why the roads had been relatively clear: the blighters were all parked here! Rows and rows of Beamers, Mercs, and that huge thing was a Bentley tho true, more like an armoured whale, as the Bean, coming to, pointed out. John shrugged and double-parked behind a greenish Merc with an intriguing disk-thing on its nether end. Um… Well nothing European, I was pretty sure. Um…

    “Mel! Wake up, darling!”

    “Oh—sorry. I was just wondering what that funny disk-thing on that greenish car is.”

    Cursory glance. “Saudi Arabia. Come on!”

    Gulp. Marbledown was going up in the world!

    Well as might have been expected—tho John and I didn’t, and Bean was not going to be off the hook for some considerable time—both Bean Minor and Trelawney had masses of luggage that would not fit in the car, given that the sacred Cricket Gear had to be lovingly stowed in the boot.

    John scratched his head.

    “We’ll get them to forward it!” said Bean Minor cheerfully.

    “Where to?” I retorted immediately. “If you send it to Mum’s and she’s back she won’t accept it, disclaiming all knowledge is her specialty, remember?”

    “Send it to my dump!” said John cheerily.

    “John, you’re about to be sent to America!” I shouted.

    “Er—not within the next month, sweetheart: I think it’ll be okay.”

    Trelawney by this time was standing on one leg, giving the appearance of a skinny stork in jeans and School blazer. “Um, Mum and Dad have given up the flat, actually: Dad worked out what it was costing to keep it on while they were abroad and blew his top.”

    That was okay, he could send his to John’s dump, too!

    And then do what? Crawl to John’s bloody bosses for a key when he needed to reclaim it after he’d finally found somewhere to live and the owner of said dump was Abroad again? Oh well, sufficient unto the day. And as the lads knew the correct or at least the failsafe thing to do was to get the caretaker onto it, they duly found him, got the stuff labelled under his supervision, and that was that.

    They then crammed into the back with Bean, and off we went. Well modern cars are not designed to take that many long, thin legs as rear-seat passengers, and they looked like a trio of doubled-up frogs or possibly grasshoppers, but never mind!

    And that, as Bean Minor declared with evil glee, was the last of the bally place forever!

    “Abso-bally-lutely!” Bean agreed. “All vote Aye?”

    The Ayes had it.

    And as no-one was voting for the delights of Brighthelmstone-on-Sea we headed for London and a very belated but welcome lunch of real genuine London fish and chips from the nearest good chippy, highly recommended by Mr Prosser.

    … “I was thinking,” John admitted very much later that evening, “of decamping to my dump and leaving them to it, but on the whole I suppose we’d better not.”

    “’Fraid so!” I agreed with a rueful laugh.

    Well as I may have remarked, Life is Like That. A cosy little love nest to ourselves would have been nice but never mind, before long the lads would all be down with Egg, and John and I could escape to his cottage.

    Lovely, yes, had it not been for the thought that before long he would vanish in the direction of Washington, D.C. …

    Oh well.

Next chapter:

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