Edmund Crispin - Love Lies Bleeding

‘In that case I shall come to the speeches. As you know, I avoid them as a rule.’

‘I only wish I could,’ said the headmaster. ‘Not in this particular instance, but in general…Well, well. I suppose these crosses helped to justify my three thousand a year.’

He showed Miss Parry out, and returned to the correspondence which lay on his desk. A Mrs Brodribb, it appeared, had much to say on the subject of Henry’s School Certificate results – a matter on which the headmaster himself was only imperfectly informed. There was to be a meeting of the Headmasters’ Conference in a fortnight’s time. Someone wished to endow a prize for the best yearly essay on The Future of the British Empire… The headmaster groaned aloud. There were far too many prizes already. The boys wasted too much of their time competing for them, and the masters wasted too much of their time setting and correcting them. Unluckily, the donor in this instance was too eminent to be offended; the only gleam of comfort was that with tact he might be induced to read the essays, and award the prize, himself.

The headmaster glanced rapidly at the remaining letters, and then put them aside. The problem of that lasciva puella , Brenda Boyce, had aroused in him a mild curiosity – and since the matter had to be dealt with, it might as well be dealt with now. He went to a dark green metal filing cabinet and investigated its contents; they revealed the fact that Mathieson was at present teaching English to the Modern Lower Fifth. The headmaster picked up his gown and mortarboard and, carrying them under his arm, made for the door.

‘For I have learned,’ said Simblefield, a small, spotty, cowardly boy, ‘to look on nature not as in the hour of thoughtless youth but hearing oftentimes the still sad music of humanity nor harsh nor grating though of ample power to chasten and subdue.’

He paused, and an expression of pleasure appeared on his unprepossessing features. Simblefield’s highest aim, in the recitation of poetry, was to get through his allotted portion without actually omitting any of the words; and this he had succeeded in doing. That there were subtleties of interpretation beyond and above this simple ambition he was, of course, vaguely aware, but in the flush of his present triumph he held them of no account.

In the silence which followed his breathless intoning, Mr Hargrave, the school’s most savage disciplinarian, could be heard in the next room booming Latin at his cowed and sycophantic form. Simblefield looked expectantly at Mr Mathieson, who was gazing with folded arms out of the classroom windows. Being an exceptionally naive and stupid boy, Simblefield supposed that Mr Mathieson was seeking for words adequate to commend his performance; but in this diagnosis Simblefield was mistaken, for in fact Mr Mathieson had fallen into a transient and inchoate daydream, and was momentarily unaware that Simblefield had finished. He was an untidy, heavily built man of middle age, clumsy in his movements; and he wore an ancient sports coat with leather pads sewn to the elbows, and a pair of baggy grey trousers.

The sound of fidgeting aroused him, and his reverie merged discouragingly into the austere reality of the classroom. It was a large, box-like place, the lower reaches of its walls liberally decorated with ink and fingermarks. The master’s desk, ponderous and antiquated, stood on a dais beside a pitted and pock-marked wall blackboard. There were a few cheerless pictures of indefinite rustic and classical scenes. A thin film of chalk covered everything. And some twenty boys sat behind wilfully collapsible desks, occupying their brief intermission in various more or less destructive and useless ways.

Mathieson observed that Simblefield was no longer giving tongue, but was, instead, gazing at him with much complacency.

‘Simblefield,’ he said, ‘have you any notion at all of the meaning of this poem?’

‘Oh, sir,’ said Simblefield feebly.

‘Just what is our attitude to nature in our thoughtless youth, Simblefield? You must be well qualified to answer that question.’

There was some laughter of a rather insincere kind. ‘Potty Simblefield,’ said someone.

‘Well, Simblefield? I’m waiting for an answer.’

‘Oh, sir, I don’t know, sir.’

‘Of course you must know. Think, boy. You don’t take much notice of nature, do you?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘No, you don’t, Simblefield. To you, it’s simply a background for your own personality.’

‘Yes, sir, I see, sir,’ said Simblefield rather too readily.

‘I have grave doubts, Simblefield, as to whether in fact you do see. But some of the others may.’

There was an instant clamour. ‘I understand, sir.’ ‘Only a fool like Simblefield wouldn’t understand.’ ‘Sir, it’s like when you go for a walk, sir, you don’t really notice the trees.’ ‘Sir, why do we have to read Wordsworth, sir?’

‘Quiet!’ said Mr Mathieson with determination. An uneasy hush ensued. ‘Now, that is precisely the way in which Wordsworth did not look at nature.’

‘Wordsworth was a daft fool,’ someone said sotto voce .

Mr Mathieson, after briefly considering tracing this remark to its source, and deciding against it, went on, ‘That is to say that for Wordsworth nature was more than a mere background.’

‘Sir!’

‘Well?’

‘Didn’t Wordsworth nearly have his head cut off in the French Revolution, sir?’

‘He was certainly in France shortly after the Revolution. As I was saying—’

‘Sir, why do they cut people’s heads off in France and hang them in England?’

‘And electrocute them in America, sir?’

‘And shoot them in Russia, sir?’

A further babel arose. ‘They don’t shoot them in Russia, you fool, they cut off their heads with an axe.’ ‘Sir, is it true that when they hang a man his heart goes on beating long after he’s dead?’ ‘Oh, Bagshaw, you idiot.’ ‘Yes, you fool, how could he be dead if his heart was beating?’

Mathieson banged on his desk.

‘If anyone speaks again without permission,’ he said, ‘I shall report him to his housemaster.’

This was at once effective – being, indeed, an infallible specific against any form of disorder. At Castrevenford, to be reported to one’s housemaster was a serious affair.

‘Now,’ said Mr Mathieson, ‘let us return to the subject in hand. What, Simblefield, do you suppose Wordsworth to mean by “the still, sad music of humanity”?’

‘Oh, sir.’ Simblefield was clearly dismayed at this further demand on his meagre intellectual resources. ‘Well, sir, I think it means…Look here, sir, suppose a mountain, or a bird, or something…’

Luckily for Simblefield, whose ability to camouflage his ignorance was held in well-justified contempt by the rest of the form, he was not required to finish; for it was at this moment that the headmaster entered the room.

The boys got hastily to their feet, amid a scraping of desks and banging of chairs. It was rare for the headmaster to visit a form room during school hours, and their curiosity was tempered by an apprehensive mental inventory of recent misdeeds.

‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ the headmaster remarked benignly. ‘Mr Mathieson, can you spare me a minute or two?’

‘Of course, headmaster,’ said Mathieson; and to the boys, ‘Go on reading until I come back.’

The two men went out into the corridor. It was bare, echoing, with uneven wooden boards; and owing to the fact that the teaching block had not been designed for its present purpose, being actually a converted lunatic asylum (a circumstance which regularly provoked a good deal of mediocre wit), the light was insufficient. At present, however, the corridor had the merit of being comparatively cool.