Years of Plenty

by Ivor John Carnegie Brown

IX

In the Michaelmas term Martin became a house prefect. He was glad to obtain the position, not only because authority has always some attraction, but also because it brought with it some definite and desirable privileges. No longer need he observe hated bounds, no longer was he obliged to turn up at games if he felt disinclined. Martin now became a person to be consulted, an organiser with a voice in the affairs of a community. Though he was not, like many of Mr Foskett's disciples, fired with a passion for 'running things' indiscriminately and irresponsibly, he quite realised that bossing has its pleasures and possibilities. It was typical of the new situation that he was able to give up playing forward for the house and to obtain a trial as wing three-quarter. He had pace and managed to score in the first game: soon he improved wonderfully and settled down in his position. It struck him that there was a great deal to be said for playing football, even regular, incessant football, when you could choose your own position in the field and play without fear of being sworn at.

Naturally his duties brought him into closer contact with his housemaster and he became intimate with the methodical ways of Mr Berney and the efficient management and culture of his wife. In the evenings he received frequent invitations to the drawing-room, where he would talk about Florence and Botticelli, Oxford and Matthew Arnold. In his younger days he had worshipped Mrs Berney with a flaming devotion. Now he was more critical, but, while he understood the limitations of her culture and suspected her of attending University Extension Lectures in order to be told about the poets, he did not cease to like her. At any rate she did not bubble over with unconvincing enthusiasm, like Mrs Foskett, and she did care in a rather ignorant, muddle-headed, but thoroughly genuine way for the things of art. Martin had of course outdistanced many of her tastes and they would have great arguments about Tennyson and Browning and Swinburne. Mrs Berney, who was deeply religious, could never forgive Swinburne. It seemed strange to Martin that so persistent and so sincere an affection for poetry should be so limited. What did it matter, he asked himself, whether Swinburne liked God or whether he didn't? The point was to him that Swinburne had a great, angry soul and could let himself go. But Mrs Berney insisted that that had nothing to do with it: poetry was the making of a beautiful thing and Swinburne had tried to make ugly things beautiful. Of course Martin urged that poetry consisted in pouring a true thing out of yourself, and then he shocked her by saying he hated the word "beautiful." And so they would be carried away with long arguments on æsthetics, sometimes childish and always futile, for neither realised when they had reached an ultimate or what exactly they were trying to prove. Yet both enjoyed the conversation: Martin was intellectually isolated since Gregson had gone to Oxford, and Mrs Berney always welcomed the appearance of intellectual tastes in the house. Besides, she had sense enough to understand that Martin had made some good suggestions and was armed with a consistent principle of criticism.

The actual work of office was not so pleasing. Heseltine had gone on to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would be taken in hand, and Rayner was head of the house. Rayner was bigger, stronger, and more reliable than ever and he could keep order successfully without a constant use of penalties: Martin admired him, in spite of his intellectual limitations, and aspired to a similar method of government which should be at once peaceful and efficient. It had occurred that, without becoming 'the boy among boys' or 'the workroom pet' or anything horrible of that sort, it might be possible to avoid irresponsible tyranny. Mainly owing to the influence of his social and political views he had bullied himself into the belief that the workroom would be much better if left alone. What the younger members of the house needed was to be trusted, not beaten. They only fell from virtue's path because so many people were engaged in the task of keeping them straight with whips and scorpions. He had been sickened by the stupid despotism of athletes which had often culminated in acts of cruelty and injustice and he wanted to bring to his work a finer attitude and endeavour. And so it was with the crude, untested idealism of a seventeen-year-old humanist that he approached the formidable task of subduing a fifteen-year-old mob.

The beginning was not auspicious. The trouble began, as trouble always began, with Master J. R. F. Gransby-Williams, a rotund youth with a genius for keeping within the letter of the law. His chief aim in life was to rag, and he worked hard to attain it; but there was a subsidiary ambition to be a nut. Consequently he was very scrupulous about his ties and socks and handkerchiefs; his hair he kept very long and parted with miraculous precision.

During Martin's first prep Granny (for so he was called) showed signs of a cold. He blew his nose perpetually and with skill: the noise was as the blare of trumpets.

"Would you mind moderating your efforts?" suggested Martin from his chair.

"Certainly not," said Granny with supreme urbanity.

It was cheek, and a titter ran round the workroom. Martin had been gifted by nature with an unfortunate capacity for blushing, and he blushed now.

"Don't give me any of that lip or you'll get into trouble," he said without conviction.

"That was not my intention," answered Granny, urbane as ever. "I'm very sorry."

Again there was a titter. Martin blushed and swore inwardly: he knew that he was not beginning well.

A few minutes later one Dickinson said: "Please can we have the window open: there's an awful frowst."

"I suppose so," answered Martin. "It does seem a bit thick in here."

Here was Granny's chance. He sneezed magnificently. "May I go and fetch my overcoat?" he asked mildly.

"Shut up," said Martin.

Granny turned up his collar, blew his nose with gentle persistence, and started to shiver. Others followed his example, and the room began to resound with the chattering of teeth.

Martin felt desperate. What exactly was the right way to deal with this kind of ragging? What would Rayner do? That was where the difficulty lay: the workroom never tried this game with Rayner, so that it was impossible to say what Rayner would have done. Swearing at them wouldn't do: he couldn't swipe the whole company. Besides, there were his ideals. Foolishly he determined to try and work in his idealism under the pretext of a joke: it was a cowardly compromise and it deserved to fail.

"I suppose," he said, "we might take a vote about the window."

There was a genial roar of acclamation.

"Those in favour of keeping it open," he went on} "shove up your hands."

There was much talking and throwing of paper balls. Hoarse whispers such as, 'Jones, you stinker, put your hand down or I'll kill you afterwards,' came to his ears. The counting was complicated by the necessity of disqualifying all those who held up both hands with a view to fraud. When the oppositions were being numbered there were murmurs of: 'Lowsy swine,' 'Frowsters,' and so on. The affair was soundly managed by the mob and a tie resulted, so that Martin had to give a casting vote. Imploring faces were turned towards him: the opening of the window was plainly a matter of life and death to that valetudinarian assembly.

"Keep it open," said Martin, determined to abide by his first order.

There were subdued cheers and moans, nasal snufflings and raucous coughs. Above it all the voice of Granny was heard.

"May I borrow some quinine?" he demanded.

Martin now saw the folly of his actions. The matter had gone too far, he had lost grip, and a tremendous rag was imminent.

"Shut up," he roared with all the authority he could command.

And just then Rayner came in to take his spell of prep. There was an immediate silence. Martin left the room in an agony of despair. What the deuce would Rayner think?

As he sat in his study pretending to read Tacitus the prospect of failure and misery became cruelly imminent. He couldn't make out why the workroom people would shut up for Rayner. Rayner wasn't noted for his severity and didn't make half as much use of the Iron Heel as some of his predecessors in Berney's or contemporaries in other houses. Martin was faced with the eternal paradox of government, that those who can govern do not need to punish, while those who punish do not thereby govern. He had always suspected the common talk about personalities and strong men: but now he began to wonder whether there wasn't something in it after all. Anyhow it seemed that by one action of hesitation he had lost his chance: his prestige was going, and if he once gained a reputation for 'raggability' there would be no more peace. The memory of Barmy Walters and the sordid tumult of his classroom came to him with a new piquancy.

"My God!" he said, "it sha'n't be that." He would have to go for Granny. But how did one go for such a creature? Granny always kept to the letter of the law and protested that he had meant nothing: was one simply to disregard his assertions, to call him a liar? How did Rayner manage? And there were the ideals. Would this method be consonant with the humanism of the new prefecture? It was all immensely difficult.

Later in the evening Rayner came to his study: he was very nice about it.

"I say, old man," he said kindly, "that wasn't a good beginning."

"It certainly wasn't," admitted Martin.

"Granny, I suppose?" asked the other.

"Yes, mainly."

"Well there's only one thing for Master Gransby-Williams. Damp the little beast."

"It's not so easy. He's always on the safe side of the fence. If he swears that he didn't mean what you think he meant, you can't very well do anything."

Rayner smiled.

"Can't you?" he said.

"Well, can you?"

"You jolly well must. Otherwise there'll be no end to it."

"All right, I'll try. But it seems rather rotten."

"Doesn't it strike you as rotten to be ragged by a tick like Granny?"

Martin had to admit that it was.

Three nights later Martin interviewed Granny after prayers. There had been a rag in the prep. A mouse had escaped from Granny's desk and had been the target of many marksmen. The air had been positively black with hurtling dictionaries. The mouse of course escaped and the missiles struck human flesh, compelling recrimination and redress.

"The mouse came out of your desk," said Martin.

"Please, I didn't put it there," whined Granny.

"I don't care. You must have known it was there when you got your books out."

"It may have been asleep," suggested Granny with sudden brilliance.

"Rot!"

"Well, I read in a book that mice sleep fourteen hours out of twenty-four. Anyhow I didn't notice it. It's got to put in its fourteen hours some time."

"The fact remains," said Martin, "that you're responsible for the contents of your desk."

"If another chap puts a mouse in your desk, I don't see——"

Martin was tired of the squalid haggling. But what was he to do? On his own theories, he ought to give Granny the benefit of the doubt and let him go. That was plainly the idealist's course. But there was Rayner's advice: should he yield to the claim of expediency and try it? Suddenly the impudent whine of Granny's voice became intolerable and he determined to be stern.

But the subsequent swiping was, as Granny told the workroom, sketchy and amateurish.

Presently Dickinson knocked at Martin's study.

"Please," he said, "I put that mouse in Gransby-Williams' desk."

Martin, who was just beginning to repent of his fall from idealism, turned upon him in despair. "Why the deuce didn't you own up at once?" he demanded.

"You never asked who did it."

"I did."

"Well, I couldn't hear. There was such a row going on."

That was a stinging retort for Martin: he was certainly getting the worst of it. And Granny was in a strong position, a painfully strong position. Fortunately, however, Martin acted wisely: he was faithful to the new policy, forswore his ideals, and swiped Dickinson. Moreover, his second effort was more thorough, and Dickinson sorrowfully maintained that this talk about sketchy and amateurish methods was a delusion: the blighter, he said, was an artist.

On the next day Granny, the martyr, organised a meeting of protest. Rayner, hearing of it, asked Martin for an explanation.

"That's capital," he said when he had heard the story. "You've been thoroughly unjust, and now you can go on damping Granny with a free conscience. In for a penny, in for a pound."

"I'm sick of the whole business," said Martin.

"Don't be an ass," answered Rayner, and that evening he spoke firmly to Granny. Somehow or other the combined effect of Martin's treatment of Dickinson and Rayner's conversation with Granny led to a change of policy in the workroom.

That night Martin again took prep. As he sat on his dais regarding the victims of his wrath, he was haunted for a moment by the ghost of his murdered ideals; but only for a moment.

And he sat in peace.