Jeffrey Archer - Only Time Will Tell

During my second year, I became more aware of the financial constraints Harry’s mother must be experiencing when I noticed that he was wearing his shoes with the laces undone, and he admitted they were pinching because they were so tight.

So when Tilly’s was burnt to the ground only weeks before we were expected to enter the sixth form, I was not altogether surprised to learn that Harry thought he might not be able to stay on at the school. I thought about asking my father if he might be able to help, but Mama told me I would be wasting my time. That’s why I was so delighted when I saw him walking through the school gates on the first day of term.

He told me that his mother had begun a new job at the Royal Hotel, working nights, and it was proving to be far more lucrative than she had originally thought possible.

During the next summer hols I would, once again, have liked to invite Harry to join the family in Tuscany, but I knew my father would not consider the idea. But as the Arts Appreciation Society, of which Harry was now secretary, was planning a trip to Rome, we agreed to meet up there, even if it did mean I would have to visit the Villa Borghese.

Although we were living in a little bubble of our own down in the West Country, it would have been impossible not to be aware of what was taking place on the continent.

The rise of the Nazis in Germany, and the Fascists in Italy, didn’t seem to be affecting the average Englishman, who was still enjoying a pint of cider and a cheese sandwich at his local on a Saturday, before watching, or in my case playing, cricket on the village green in the afternoon. For years this blissful state of affairs had been able to continue because another war with Germany didn’t bear thinking about. Our fathers had fought in the war to end all wars, but now the unmentionable seemed to be on everyone’s lips.

Harry told me in no uncertain terms that if war was declared, he wouldn’t be going to university but would join up immediately, just as his father and uncle had done some twenty years before. My father had ‘missed out’, as he put it, because unfortunately he was colour-blind, and those in authority thought he’d serve the war effort better by remaining at his post, playing an important role in the docks. Though I’ve never been quite sure exactly what that important role was.

In our final year at BGS, both Harry and I decided to enter our names for Oxford; Deakins had already been offered an open scholarship to Balliol College. I wanted to go to the House, but was informed most politely by the entrance tutor that Christ Church rarely took grammar school boys, so I settled for Brasenose, which had once been described by Bertie Wooster as a college ‘where brains are neither here nor there’.

As Brasenose was also the college with the most cricket blues, and I had scored three centuries in my final year as captain of BGS, one of them at Lord’s for a Public Schools XI, I felt I must be in with a chance. In fact, my form master, Dr Paget, told me that when I went for my interview they would probably throw a cricket ball at me as I entered the room. If I caught it, I would be offered a place. If I caught it one-handed, a scholarship. This turned out to be apocryphal. However, I’m bound to admit that during drinks with the college principal, he asked me more questions about Hutton than Horace.

There were other highs and lows during my last two years at school: Jesse Owens winning four gold medals at the Olympic Games in Berlin, right under Hitler’s nose, was a definite high, while the abdication of Edward VIII because he wished to marry an American divorcee was an undoubted low.

The nation seemed to be divided on whether the King should have abdicated, as were Harry and I. I failed to understand how a man born to be King could be willing to sacrifice the throne to marry a divorced woman. Harry was far more sympathetic to the King’s plight, saying that we couldn’t begin to understand what the poor man was going through until we fell in love ourselves. I dismissed this as codswallop, until that trip to Rome that was to change both our lives.

IF GILES IMAGINED he’d worked hard during his final days at St Bede’s, in those last two years at Bristol Grammar School both he and Harry became acquainted with hours only Deakins was familiar with.

Dr Paget, their sixth-form master, told them in no uncertain terms that if they hoped to be offered a place at Oxford or Cambridge, they would have to forget any other activities, as they would need to spend every waking moment preparing for the entrance exams.

Giles was hoping to captain the school’s First XI in his final year, while Harry was keen to land the lead in the school play. Dr Paget raised an eyebrow when he heard this, even though Romeo and Juliet was the set text for Oxford that year. ‘Just be sure you don’t sign up for anything else,’ he said firmly.

Harry reluctantly resigned from the choir, which gave him two more free evenings a week to study. However, there was one activity no pupil could exempt himself from: every Tuesday and Thursday, at four o’clock, all the boys had to be standing to attention on the parade ground, fully kitted out and ready for inspection as members of the Combined Cadet Force.

‘Can’t allow the Hitler Youth to imagine that if Germany is foolish enough to declare war on us a second time, we won’t be ready for them,’ bellowed the RSM.

Every time ex-Regimental Sergeant Major Roberts delivered these words, it sent a shiver through the ranks of schoolboys, who realized as each day passed that it was becoming more and more likely they would be serving on the front line as junior officers in some foreign field, rather than going up to university as undergraduates.

Harry took the RSM’s words to heart and was quickly promoted to cadet officer. Giles took them less seriously, knowing that if he was called up, he could, like his father, take the easy way out and remind them of his colour-blindness to avoid coming face to face with the enemy.

Deakins showed little interest in the whole process, declaring with a certainty that brooked no argument, ‘You don’t need to know how to strip a bren gun when you’re in the intelligence corps.’

By the time the long summer nights began to draw to a close, they were all ready for a holiday before they would return for their final year, at the end of which they would have to face the examiners once again. Within a week of term ending, all three of them had left for their summer break: Giles to join his family at their villa in Tuscany, Harry to Rome with the school’s Arts Appreciation Society, while Deakins entombed himself in Bristol Central library, avoiding contact with any other human beings, despite the fact that he’d already been offered a place at Oxford.

Over the years, Giles had come to accept that if he wanted to see Harry during the holidays, he had to make sure his father didn’t find out what he was up to, otherwise the best-laid schemes of mice and… But in order to achieve this, he often had to get his sister Emma to join in the subterfuge, and she never failed to extract her pound of flesh before agreeing to become his accomplice.

‘If you take the lead over dinner tonight, I’ll follow up,’ said Giles once he’d outlined his latest scheme to her.

‘Sounds like the natural order of things,’ said Emma scornfully.

After the first course had been served, Emma innocently asked her mother if she could possibly take her to the Villa Borghese the following day, as it had been recommended as a must by her art mistress. She was well aware that Mama had already made other plans.