A Possible Life Read online

  ‘We’re down to five. And we only pay them pin money.’

  Mr Little drew in a mouthful of Sir Philip Sidney. ‘I must remember to invite the new superintendent of the asylum over one evening.’ He puffed thoughtfully. ‘I suppose what we really need is some sort of recruitment drive.’

  ‘You don’t mean advertising?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. But we need to put the word about. That Crampton Abbey is a first-rate school. Has Baxter come back yet?’

  ‘Yes, I saw him this afternoon.’

  ‘I had to cut his salary.’

  ‘Again, dear?’

  ‘As a warning. After the maids found all those gin bottles in his room.’

  ‘He’ll hardly have enough for beer and cigarettes.’

  ‘Good thing too. Anyway, I’m going out for my evening walk now. Come on, Heep. Come on.’

  The spaniel rose stiffly from the hearth rug and followed his master out into the corridor, through the green baize door and down the broad oak staircase, past the stone fireplace with the ceremonial sword above, out into the still-warm air of the Nottinghamshire evening. Habit had taught the dog that this unwanted exertion, which might involve a walk downhill to the village, would bring a scrap or treat of some kind in due course.

  Long John Little ignored the rose garden with its ornamental arch and the wooded park that lay behind it, turning instead towards the kitchen gardens with their sun-beaten brick walls on which espaliered trees were heavy with fruit. He glanced into the greenhouses, whose open doors gave a gust of tomatoes, while the gravel paths between the cold frames crunched beneath his feet. He calculated that he need serve only five more years before passing on the headmastership to his son, at that time a junior housemaster at a Midlands public school. His pension was not adequate to provide for himself and Mrs Little in retirement, but he hoped the governors might make special provision from one of their contingency funds. Otherwise he would be condemned to an old age in one of the unused wings of the house, whose heating bills he could conceivably repay with a few Latin verse lessons to the scholarship form.

  The back gate from the kitchen gardens led into the village churchyard, where Long John walked slowly among the gravestones and the heedless yews. On an impulse, he pushed open the side door of the church and went into the damp-smelling interior. The brass eagle on the lectern loomed wide-eyed and predatory over the pews with their dusty kneelers. The organ needed overhauling, but there was little chance of the village being able to raise the funds over the next few years; the steps up to the pulpit were also a hazard, though anything that might cut short the sermons of the local vicar, Mr Woolridge, was a blessing.

  It had always struck Long John Little as curious that empty churches seemed emptier than empty houses. A kitchen or a sitting room was still the same with no one in it; but the silent organ, the bright stained-glass windows above the altar with its rather showy little cross, the board by the pulpit announcing the numbers of the unsung hymns, seemed heavy with absence. His footsteps loud on the cracked tiles of the nave, he went and sat down at the end of one of the pews – roughly where an eleven-year-old would sit on Sunday morning, the boys being ranged from back to front in school order, determined by their performance in Latin.

  Little looked through his remaining eye at the memorial tablets on the damp walls. Most were for former vicars or village worthies, but two were for his own parents, his predecessors at Crampton Abbey. One was for R. M. Caird, 1885–1916, his school and university contemporary.

  Long John did not particularly like small boys, but he felt a moment of sympathy for what they were put through on a Sunday – the creaking organ, the collects and the canticles, then Woolridge in the pulpit, each windy commonplace stealing moments they might have spent with visiting parents afterwards.

  He sighed and looked over at his dog, who waited by the main door. Better to have died in Mesopotamia, Little thought, better a soldier’s death with Bobby Caird, the only human being he had ever cared about, than the half-life he had led, with Advent, Septuagesima, Trinity, ticked off in this empty building.

  Gerald Baxter had returned two days earlier from a holiday in South Wales with his sister. The boarding house they stayed in overlooked an esplanade and the landlady’s cooking – blancmange and bony fish – was dismal, but there was a sailing club that took in temporary members in the summer and whose bar, by a vagary of local licensing, was exempt from the hours imposed on the pubs. There was also a nine-hole golf course that took him fifty-odd strokes to go round – more than enough to build up a thirst.

  He arrived back at Crampton Abbey in a good state of mind. His mood dipped when he found out that the Head had trimmed his salary yet again, but he knew that after the debacle of the gin bottles he was fortunate still to have a position. Once he had unpacked and put his laundry out for the maids, he looked over his timetable for the new term. He seemed to have acquired a junior French class, which – unlike geography – would be more than just a matter of staying one chapter ahead in the textbook.

  After a solitary tea in the dining hall, Baxter climbed the back stairs up past the new boys’ dormitory, past a floor with a passageway that led he knew not where, and arrived at last at the top floor where the sick bay, idle for eight weeks, met him with its perennial whiff of liniment and iodine.

  He walked a few paces down the corridor and knocked on a door.

  A voice answered from inside. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Baxter here. I wondered if you fancied a bracer at the Whitby?’

  The door opened. ‘Thank you,’ said Geoffrey Talbot. ‘Good idea.’

  In the rear saloon of the Whitby, Baxter stretched out his game leg on an empty chair as Geoffrey brought another half-pint back from the bar.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘after you’d escaped from this wretched PoW place, what happened then?’

  ‘It took me a long time to get back,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I was fortunate. Most of the escapers were caught in the vicinity and shot. A dozen of us made it to a railway and hid by a bridge. The first train was going east, towards Russia.’

  ‘How the hell did you get your bearings?’

  ‘The stars. Some men jumped on it just to get away from the dogs. Four of us waited for a westbound train. We jumped off at different times in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Eventually I got across the border into Germany beneath the tender of a locomotive.’

  ‘Sounds uncomfortable.’

  ‘It was a trick I’d learned in France. I ended up walking into Switzerland somewhere near Lake Constance.’

  ‘What happened to the others?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And your pal?’

  ‘Trembath? He died of bullet wounds in the camp. I found out later from the regiment. When we escaped, there was a riot. They managed to blow up a crematorium. Some of them rushed the guards. But not enough of them joined in.’

  ‘Poor chap,’ said Baxter.

  ‘No, he wanted to do something. It was a good way to go.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t miss much here. I could manage another half if you’re still in the chair.’

  Geoffrey stood at the bar, tapping a half-crown on the wooden surface. Nothing seemed to have changed at the Whitby Arms, or at Crampton. Mrs Little was a fraction frailer, the stout calves not quite what they had been; the fabric of the building seemed tattier and, outside, the grounds were a little overgrown. Otherwise, it was as Geoffrey had remembered, with a more or less full school and a complete football fixture list, home and away, against the old enemies.

  His way of managing what had happened to him was not to think about it. When he had returned to London from Geneva and filled in a number of forms, he was granted four weeks’ leave. Mr Green required him to see Dr Samuels for further assessment, but after an hour he was passed ‘fit for any disposition’.

  France was liberated and the possibility arose that Geoffrey might do useful work in Burma, though Mr Green eventually offered him a position on th
e staff in London. When the service was wound up, Geoffrey returned to the Musketeers, though they had little of interest to offer a lieutenant who still had a bad mark against his name. Heavy losses in the Italian campaign meant that Geoffrey was grudgingly promoted captain and sent to Syria to help quell a mutiny among French troops. For the rest of 1945 he was on ‘peacekeeping’ duties in the Middle East before being officially demobilised from Musketeer headquarters in Hampshire.

  He had spent a quiet summer with his parents and thought it better not to give them details of the ‘prisoner of war’ camp. Alone in his childhood bedroom, he tried to write some poems, but the things he now wanted to say seemed to be at odds with the words he knew for poetry. He played a few games of cricket for the local club, including one at the ground he had pictured at night in the wooden bunkhouse as the touchstone of a better life.

  The weather was grey and overcast; there were only a handful of spectators, restless in the chilly afternoon. The captain was unaware of Geoffrey’s ability and when asked where he would like to bat Geoffrey had replied, ‘Anywhere you need me.’ He found himself at number eight – he who had faced the Kent and Yorkshire opening bowlers. By the time he reached the wicket his side had already made a large score and the opposition, exhausted by its efforts, had put a small boy on to bowl. In an effort not to demoralise the youngster, Geoffrey checked an off-drive halfway through the shot and saw the ball caught by a surprised mid-off as it cannoned into his belly. He had made two. In the field, he wandered from third man to mid-on and back, feeling the grass through the studs of his boots, glancing towards the low hedge at midwicket and the Friesians at pasture. They were, in a way, as he remembered, but some force or light seemed to have gone from them.

  He tried to feel that this world was his to share and know; that it was more enduring than flash-memories of pine logs and opportunely revving lorries. But when the opposition captain, going for a big hit over the pavilion, caught a leading edge and caused the ball to sky, then fall exactly where Geoffrey was standing at long on, he dropped it.

  ‘You look miles away, Talbot,’ said Baxter, offering him a cigarette.

  ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about … Cricket.’

  ‘Cricket?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not just cricket. What it means. Or what it meant. To me.’

  ‘Sorry, old chap. You’re not making much sense. Shall I get some more beer? My turn, I think. Or if you wouldn’t mind. Here’s a bob. I’ll just rest the old leg.’

  When Geoffrey brought the glasses back to the table, Baxter said, ‘Of course, I was never much of a player myself. But the Sandpipers put out a decent team. The 2nd Battalion won the divisional cup in 1921.’

  ‘Yes, I heard they were pretty good.’

  Geoffrey could feel his hand shaking and was reluctant to pick up his drink in case Baxter should see. There was a strange tightness in his jaw and in his larynx. There was a pressure behind his eyes and he felt as though he might faint.

  ‘There was not much left of the Fusiliers, I can tell you,’ Baxter was saying. ‘Not by the time the Sandpipers had done with them.’

  It had become a matter of urgency to Geoffrey that he should pass this first test of his resumed life. If he could not endure a friendly hour of beer and cigarettes with Baxter, what chance did he have of teaching a class or reading the New Testament lesson in church?

  ‘So then our chaps set them an improbable total,’ Baxter was saying. ‘And we had this ferocious fast bowler who … I say, are you all right, Talbot?’ Baxter was suddenly sitting forward in his chair.

  Geoffrey looked at a coloured photograph of a vintage car above the horse brasses by the mantelpiece, then bent his mind to the job of answering Baxter. He summoned as much determination as he had used to get through any task in Poland; but however hard he tried, no word seemed to come. He merely nodded his head and gave what he could manage of a smile.

  ‘Are you quite sure you’re all right?’

  There was silence for a few moments. Then the battle within Geoffrey began to resolve itself. He found a word. ‘Yes,’ he said; then after another pause: ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good,’ said Baxter, sitting back in his chair. ‘So. Do you think we’ll beat Bearwood Hall this year?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey, slowly at first, then growing in confidence. ‘I see no reason why not.’

  So he managed his return, a little at a time. The slow weeks of the endless autumn term consumed him: the seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, the eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, the Sunday next before Advent … It was a month of Sundays, a season, then a year of Sundays, with Geoffrey counting each week a small victory in his re-inhabitation of his old life. In the evenings he sat in his armchair and read detective stories before going down to the small masters’ common room for a bowl of corn flakes at ten.

  At the beginning of the next year he was made master in charge of dormitories, in place of Baxter, whose gin breath had been the subject of complaint. The breaking point had come when he signalled lights-out by shooting through a 40-watt bulb with an air pistol. The new duty brought no increase in pay, but it gave Geoffrey something to do, as he strolled the upper corridor, where half a dozen rooms held nine or ten iron beds in rows. He would occasionally sit on the end of one of them and talk to its small occupant, though he could see that the child did not feel entertained, but merely singled out. When he left the dormitory he could hear giggling, as the boy in question was teased about the special attention that had been paid him.

  There was a similar layout of dormitories on the first floor, though the windows were taller. When the clocks went back again, the grey dusk seemed to hang in the corners of these sleeping rooms; the rough red blankets on the beds brought a touch of colour, though it seemed to Geoffrey it was that of the field hospital.

  After the evening lesson in Scripture or Latin verses, the boys went on alternate nights across a chilly yard in their dressing gowns to the bathhouse. They were allowed nine inches of hot water in the bath and one such filling was supposed to be enough to wash three boys. Back in bed, they were allowed to talk until Geoffrey went round, one room after another, opening tall windows a few inches on to the night with the help of a boat hook, despite the pleas of the boys for warmth, then turning off the lights with what he hoped was a paternal ‘goodnight’. The penalty for talking after this time was a beating; Geoffrey was licensed to use the slipper, though managed not to find it necessary.

  In the summer term of 1949, Crampton Abbey chased the total of 128 set by Bearwood Hall, and thanks to some dropped catches and an innings of 54 not out by the Crampton wicketkeeper, a twelve-year-old called Cheeseman who played horribly across the line, they made it with three minutes to spare. Long John granted the school a half-holiday on the following Tuesday and presented Geoffrey with a three-guinea book token. Cheeseman, known to the boys as ‘Cheddar’ or ‘Ched’ for short, became a hero to his teammates but received corrective coaching from Geoffrey in keeping his left elbow up.

  In 1951, Long John and Mrs Little retired to a remote wing of the abbey, and their son, a lanky and narrow-eyed man of about forty, known to the boys as ‘Big’ Little, took over the running of the school. He persuaded the governors to raise the fees to seventy-five pounds a year and sacked Gerald Baxter. He told Geoffrey he was on probation, as there were some keen young masters at Repton who would like his position if he didn’t care for it.

  The years of rationing eventually ended, though their spirit was retained at Crampton Abbey, where the restriction on hot water remained, along with the daily dose of Radio Malt. Geoffrey’s mother died of a stroke, leaving his father to dispose of a number of dachshunds. The decade was like a tundra, to be crossed with collar turned up, eyes averted, pushing on and adding up the days till it was over. Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity: Geoffrey’s footsteps on the tiled floor of the nave as he went to read the Gospel, now his weekly task; twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity: blowing his nose on his handkerchief
as he approached the eagle lectern, his college gown billowing behind him …

  There came news of change from the big cities: music, loud and raucous, imported from America then refashioned with jangling guitars and crazy haircuts, re-exported, booming. It was too late for Geoffrey Talbot, now aged forty-six, to whom the sounds he could pick up on the staffroom radio sounded simply barbarous. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ sang the boys, as they ran down the corridors. He put his hands over his ears.

  The nursing sister, a woman called Miss Callander, asked him to go to tea with her in town on their afternoon off. They had poached eggs with anchovy essence under, then chocolate cake and strong Indian tea. They split the bill and enjoyed it well enough to make the afternoon a regular date. On one occasion they went to the pictures, though this involved a lengthy bus journey and the possibility of being late back for dormitory duty; the prospect so distressed Geoffrey that Miss Callander, despite loving Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, whom she slightly resembled, did not press for a repeat.

  One day in the tea room, she said, ‘Geoffrey, I’ve been thinking. I’m thirty-seven years old and I know how old you are. I don’t want to seem forward or anything, but we do get on pretty well. You’re a handsome chap and I’m a pretty well-organised girl. Do you think that together we might make more than the sum of our parts?’

  ‘Mary, are you proposing to me?’

  ‘Isn’t it a leap year?’

  Geoffrey looked down at his tea. ‘I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There are things about me you don’t know.’

  ‘What things? Don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud.’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘I have no money. Just an ancient mother who lives in Rye. But it’s nice there, by the sea. For our holidays. There’s a wonderful golf course nearby. I could look after you pretty well, Geoffrey.’

  Geoffrey sighed. ‘I can’t explain. You’re far too nice. Too good for me. I’m better as I am. As a lone wolf.’

  ‘If you change your mind …’