The Shadow and the Peak Page 4

  “I’m sorry,” Douglas said. “There wasn’t time to let you know. I thought I’d better get to the aircraft as quickly as possible.”

  “Very right of you,” Pawley said. “I’m not finding fault with you, of course.” He still managed to sound a bit pained about it, all the same. He was good at that sort of thing. “And I hear you were able to make yourself useful.”

  “Joe was the hero,” Douglas said. “He discovered the survivors first.”

  “Good—I’m delighted to hear it,” Pawley said vaguely, obviously not interested in the crash. He returned to the puzzling incident. “Anyhow, I don’t think your absence was the cause of Silvia’s behaviour.”

  “She’s usually on her best behaviour when I’m away,” Douglas said. “So far most of her misdeeds have been to demonstrate her contempt for my authority as her tutor.”

  “She was apparently making use of Joe’s absence,” Pawley said. “After he’d gone off with you, there was nobody to keep an eye on the lighting plant. Silvia took the opportunity of nipping down there.”

  “To smash it up?”

  “Fortunately she stopped short of that,” Pawley said. “She seemed satisfied with putting water into the petrol in the spare cans.”

  Douglas laughed. “I’m glad you caught her before we had to spend a night in the dark.”

  “We didn’t catch her—that’s the extraordinary thing.” He paused, stroking his beard. He always left significant pauses when he was talking. He found them rather effective, and was too busy appreciating them to notice that other people found them irritating. His eyes goggled at you in what was meant to be a tantalizing way. Presently he went on, “Alice came down to tell me about it.” He paused again. “I suppose you find that rather extraordinary, too?”

  “Most extraordinary,” Douglas said. “I thought Alice was much too timid to tell tales about anybody. Least of all about Silvia.”

  “Exactly. That was what I thought. I naturally asked her why she was doing it. She was in a highly nervous state, and I had some difficulty in making her talk.” His eyes tantalized again. “Then she explained that Silvia herself had told her what she’d been up to—and forced her to come down and report it.”

  “I suppose Silvia had told her to pretend she was reporting it off her own bat?”

  “Yes, she had,” Pawley said. “And not only that. After I’d seen Silvia about it, she accused Alice in front of the other children of sneaking to the headmaster about her practical joke. She started hitting Alice. There was quite a scrap. Fortunately the other children stood up for Alice. I heard about it later.” He spread out his hands and beamed. “Well, Lockwood, she’s your pupil. What do you make of it?”

  “I find it all rather typical,” Douglas said. “She’s spent a fortnight trying to get me to punish her, and hasn’t succeeded. Now I suppose she’s hoping for better luck with you. I take it you didn’t punish her?”

  “My dear chap . . . !” He looked rather hurt. Then he decided to make a joke of it, and grinned. “Naturally I gave her a thousand lines to do before supper.” In case Douglas had taken this seriously, he added, “No, Lockwood, I only told her I’d speak to you about it. I didn’t make this an occasion to break our record.” The record, of course, was that nobody had been punished in the two years of the school’s existence.

  “A thousand lines would have delighted her,” Douglas said.

  “I should have hardly said that . . .”

  “I think it would. She’s dying to be punished.”

  “In that case she must have been extraordinarily happy at her last school,” Pawley grinned. “I understand they expelled her because they couldn’t devise any more punishments to give her.” He always liked joking about the barbarism of other schools.

  “I’ve no doubt she derived a great deal of satisfaction from it,” Douglas said. “It gave her the nice cosy feeling of being a martyr.” Pawley ought to have known all about that nice cosy feeling, if only he’d been able to recognize it.

  “She’s not going to feel like that here,” Pawley said. “She’s bound to get a much more healthy outlook.”

  “I can’t see her being done out of her martyrdom without a fight,” Douglas said. “Ever since she’s been here she’s been working overtime to make it perfectly clear that she’s a rebel. She can’t make out why we’re not exchanging hostilities. She’d regard it as a terrific triumph if she could make us lose our tempers and punish her. It would do her pride no end of good. Personally I think that before she gets the healthy outlook, she’ll redouble her efforts at rebellion and try to make things jolly uncomfortable for us!”

  Pawley looked thoughtful for a minute. He removed his glasses and started to polish them with his handkerchief. His eyes were even queerer when they were deprived of the lenses. They looked out of their element, like fishes on a slab. Presently he said:

  “Look here, Lockwood, I want your honest opinion. Do you think we’d be unwise to keep Silvia at the school? It wouldn’t be too difficult at this early stage to say we can’t handle her. We could point out that we ought to have started with her when she was younger.”

  “Why shouldn’t we keep her?” Douglas said. He hadn’t been expecting this.

  Pawley replaced the spectacles slowly.

  “We must think of our reputation,” he said. “An incident like yesterday’s doesn’t seem awfully important to us, but the parents may feel differently about it. We don’t censor the children’s letters—as you know, that sort of thing runs entirely against the grain with me—and Alice is certainly going to write home and say what Silvia did to her. It’ll be talked about widely. We don’t want to give the impression that we’re prepared to tolerate behaviour of that sort.”

  Douglas said, “Presumably if we accept a girl who’s been expelled from another school, we must be prepared to tolerate a good deal more than that. In any case, I thought that toleration was part of the system.”

  Pawley goggled patiently.

  “I don’t think you’ve quite got my point,” he said. “I only want to make sure that our system isn’t jeopardized by Silvia. Our position’s very delicate, you know.”

  “In what way?”

  He toyed with a pencil, smiling vaguely as if Douglas ought to have known that the position was too delicate to explain. Then he said, “We must still look upon our system as experimental out here. We can’t afford any failures. We literally can’t afford them, Lockwood. I believe you know we’re still losing money on the school?” He looked at Douglas to make sure that he did know.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Not that we aren’t glad to do it,” he smiled quickly. “Both my wife and I feel that we oughtn’t to bother how much we’re out of pocket—not while there’s a single child in Jamaica that we can help.”

  “I should have thought Silvia was the one child we could help,” Douglas said.

  Pawley looked as though he was going to be frank, and said, “Frankly—I’m disappointed she isn’t making better progress.”

  “I don’t see how we can expect to see any progress in a fortnight,” Douglas said.

  “You mustn’t think I’m making any criticism of the way you’re handling her.” He beamed. “Veiled or otherwise.”

  “I know,” Douglas said. “But I still think we’ll be lucky if we see any signs of improvement this term at all.”

  “You do feel that?” Pawley said.

  “Yes, I do. You don’t tame an animal overnight. You’ve got to go on holding the sugar out and getting your hand bitten off for weeks before it really believes that you haven’t got a whip hidden behind your back. But I’m sure we can do something with Silvia eventually.”

  Pawley looked as though he was allowing himself to be humoured. He spread out his hands.

  “Very well, if you feel you have the patience . . .”

  “It’s
not only a question of my patience,” Douglas said. “I can manage that. I don’t mind watching her chop up school desks all day, if that’s how she feels like expressing herself. I don’t have to pay for the desks. But it’s no use if you’re worrying what the parents are thinking.”

  “You’re rather inclined to exaggerate everything, Lockwood,” Pawley said good-naturedly. “I’m not worrying­ but it’s just as well to bear these things in mind.”

  “All the same, if you think it’s too much of a responsibility to keep Silvia on . . .”

  “I didn’t say that,” Pawley said. He smiled disarmingly. “I only raised it as a point of discussion. I’m delighted to hear that you feel we can help Silvia. Well, let’s both do our best, shall we?”

  It was always like that. Pawley put up an objection and you knocked it down, and then he behaved as though he’d never made it. The trouble was that he left you feeling that so far as he was concerned you hadn’t knocked it down at all, you were merely being allowed to have your own way.

  Douglas rose. As he did so, Pawley felt in his pocket and pulled out his pipe and tobacco pouch.

  “By the way, Lockwood—” He leant his elbows on the desk and started filling the pipe, goggling rather awkwardly. Then he looked up and said chattily, “Sit down a minute, won’t you?”

  Douglas sat down. Perhaps there’d been a letter about the brothel after all.

  Pawley took about a minute to stuff the tobacco into his pipe. The pipe had an S-shaped stem. Probably he felt this gave him character, like the beard. He started lighting it, looking at Douglas over the match flame. Then he puffed out a lot of smoke, and blew out the match and said cheerfully:

  “Don’t look so gloomy, old chap. It’s nothing serious. I only wanted to tell you that I think you’re doing a very fine job of work here.”

  He was rotten at this sort of thing. The cheeriness always sounded so put-on.

  “Thank you,” Douglas said.

  Pawley made a movement of settling himself comfortably.

  “I sometimes feel, after our little discussions, that you think I’m pulling you to bits. I’m not, you know. I start you arguing on purpose.” He beamed complicitly. He was the conjurer letting the audience into the secret of his tricks. “I find it’s the best way of getting you to express your opinions.”

  “I’m afraid I’m inclined to do that a bit dogmatically,” Douglas said.

  “I like people to hold strong opinions.” He was like that himself. “I don’t think you’ve any need to worry that you’re not going to make a good teacher. I’ve been most impressed by the quality of your work.”

  Douglas fidgeted a bit. Pawley sucked contemplatively at his pipe, and then went on:

  “I don’t mind telling you that when I first considered your application for the vacancy, I was in two minds about accepting it. There were two things against you—your lack of experience and your divorce.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and looked questioningly at Douglas. “You don’t mind my speaking frankly, do you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t.” He put the pipe back. “Whatever our own opinions, we must realize that there’s a marked prejudice against a divorced man in the scholastic profession. I need hardly mention that my own views are broader than the average” —he smiled modestly at the euphemism—“but of course I had to take that into consideration. After all, you can’t run a school without pupils. And you can’t get pupils unless you inspire parents with sufficient confidence to entrust you with their children.”

  “Naturally not.”

  “Anyhow, I talked it over with my wife, and decided to take the risk.” He paused, while you appreciated what a great risk it was. Then he enlightened Douglas about the outcome. “I’ve not had any cause to regret it. On the contrary.”

  “I’m very glad,” Douglas said fatuously.

  “I just thought I’d let you know. I like to give credit where it’s due.” He leant forward and began to straighten the papers on his desk. “Well, that’s all, thanks, Lockwood. The chair seems to have stood up to your weight all right, doesn’t it?” He goggled playfully. “I thought it probably would, you know.”

  There was ten minutes before his French class, so he went upstairs to the surgery. Mrs. Morgan was pottering about in her matron’s uniform. Her sleeves were rolled up and her arms looked like sausage balloons. He asked her if he could see the patients.

  “You’d better not, Mr. Lockwood. The doctor only left them a quarter of an hour ago. He said they’d both got to rest.”

  “But they’re all right?”

  “Oh yes, it’s a wonder. I’m awfully sorry about Mr. Taylor, though. That’s the name of the gentleman. His wife and daughter were with him on the aeroplane.” Her pock-marked face sagged with distress. “They were on their way back to England after a holiday. The daughter was only seven.”

  “How damn wicked,” Douglas said.

  “There isn’t any justice in it, is there? It makes you wonder what it’s all about. It really does.”

  “And the girl?”

  Mrs. Morgan looked non-committal.

  “She doesn’t seem a bit worried or upset,” she said. “She behaves as if she thought the crash was something funny. It’s queer, isn’t it? You’d think she’d feel it badly, seeing that the friend who worked with her was killed. I can’t make her out.” She thought for a minute, and then said more charitably, “Still, you never can tell with people, can you, Mr. Lockwood? You can’t judge by appearances. It’s often the laughing ones who are suffering the most.”

  He put off seeing Silvia until the afternoon. Throughout his class she had sat in silence, adopting the contemptuous manner that was designed to suggest the lesson was beneath her. When the bell rang at four o’clock, he called her over. He asked her to come down to his bungalow for a chat.

  “I don’t mind,” she said condescendingly. “I want to put my books away first, though.”

  “Don’t be too long if you want any tea,” he said.

  “I don’t care about tea.”

  She went off with a studied effort to appear unhurried. Douglas walked down to his bungalow and sat on the verandah. Presently Ivy came with the tray, and placed it on the table beside him. He waited five or ten minutes and then poured out a cup. Silvia’s delay was typical. It was a point of pride to show her independence—a routine gesture of rebelry. But he was confident she would turn up sooner or later, if only out of curiosity. It was no fun being a rebel unless you knew what people thought of your rebellion.

  He was not looking forward to the interview—he still hadn’t made up his mind what he was going to say to her—and while he was waiting he suddenly started wishing that all he had to do was to lecture her and administer a punishment selected from a catalogue. He remembered the catalogue of punishments at a school he had been to in England. The punishments were graded according to severity. The mildest was four runs round the cricket field before breakfast; the most severe was a beating from the house­ master. The runs scored one point against you and the beatings ten. If you attained an aggregate of thirty points in a term, the headmaster called you up for a soul-shaking jaw; or if the jaw didn’t seem to shake your soul, a briefer and sharper pronouncement on your unprotected behind. Life for the masters must have been free from worry, once they had digested the principles of crime assessment. They must have enjoyed themselves—unless, of course, it had upset them to think they might just as well have been policemen or sergeant-majors.

  Twenty minutes later Silvia came. She stood at the bottom of the verandah steps.

  “Do you want me?” she said. It was as if she couldn’t quite remember whether he’d asked her down or not.

  “Yes,” he said. “If you want some tea, there’s a cup on the table inside.”

  “I don’t want any tea.”

  “Then
come and sit down.”

  She came up the steps, trying to look perfectly at ease. She was only twelve, but she looked much older than most girls of that age in England. She was a white Jamaican. She had dark, bobbed hair, and a pale little face that happiness might have made pretty. But her expression was always strained and unnatural. She liked to give the impression, with her superior airs, that she was already a woman.

  She sat down, crossing her arms with careless resignation, inviting Douglas to say his piece and have done with it.

  He said, “I’m always hearing from other people how you’re getting along, but you never come and tell me yourself. I’d much rather hear from you.”

  “I suppose Mr. Pawley told you about the petrol,” she said, with a thin, supercilious smile. “I don’t care—he can believe Alice if he wants.” She stared at him flatly, as if she was not looking at him at all, but only presenting the surface of her eyes to him to make what she said more convincing. “It doesn’t interest me in the least. The other girls can do what they like. I don’t care about any of them.”

  “You can’t have much fun here if you feel like that,” he said.

  She shrugged. “They’re all jealous of me, like they were at my last school.”

  “Were you happy at your last school?”

  “I hate school,” she said.

  “So do heaps of people. I did myself. At least, I hated my first school, and then I went to one that I liked.”

  “I hate all schools,” she said airily.

  “What do you like, then? Being at home?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What do you like most of all?”

  “Doing what I want.”

  “What’s that?”

  She gave another shrug. “Oh . . . going to the cinema. Going out. I hate Jamaica, though. I want to live in America.”

  “Have you ever been to America?”

  She turned the flat stare on him.

  “Of course I have.”