David Storey - Saville

‘May’st we, thy humble admirers, scattered round, take this, thy creation, as a suitable text on which to vent our appreciation, then?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. He nodded his head.

‘“And in the summer,”’ he read again, ‘“when bees haunt flowers.” Do bees haunt flowers in summer, Walker?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Walker said, then added, ‘No, sir.’

‘They might invade flowers. They might pollinate flowers, Walker. They might enter flowers, Stephens. They might visit flowers. They might hover over flowers or descend towards them; I sincerely doubt that bees could be said, in all their stinging reality, actually to haunt .’ He replaced his glasses, glanced at the paper, and, reading once again, added, ‘“When scents and blossoms have been distilled into one heady draught for the reeling senses.” My goodness, Bard Colin, you’ll have the breweries after thee if they hear on this. Whence brew’st thou this heady concoction, lad, and more important, hast thou a licence?’

The boys leaned back in their desks to laugh; several at the front turned round; those adjacent to him glanced across, while the expressions of those behind he could readily imagine.

The windows of the room were open; the feet of figures passing in the drive had paused and, from the top of the stone retaining wall, small, inverted heads peered down.

‘“The winter’s tale of woe and drudgery, and broken pledges.” Dare’st we assume, Bard Colin, a broken heart? Dare’st we assume some dalliance with the opposite sex from which thou emergest a little wiser?’ He glanced round at the class again, adjusted his glasses and, peering down at the sheet, he added, ‘“A summer’s glow of health and smiles.” Indeed, now, we’ve something here to look forward to. That dark and rather sombre expression, habitually worn by our deep-feeling friend, is, if I read his promise rightly, going to be lightened over the summer months by a brighter complexion and even, he actually threatens us, with a smile .’

The laughter, suddenly, had broken out again; other, larger heads peered down from the top of the window; one or two boys had banged their desks.

Mr Platt put down the paper.

‘As you see, Saville, when I give the papers out, your mark is considerably lower than it might have been had you answered the question with a reasonable degree of modesty and care, not to mention’, he added, ‘with some intelligence.’

He began to give the papers out. They were passed from hand to hand across the desks, or, if the boys were sufficiently near, handed impatiently across a ducking row of heads.

‘Patterson, Jackson, Swale, Bembridge, Berresford, Clarke… Saville.’

The paper was handed back along the row of desks; at each one it was glanced at, briefly examined, then, with a ducking motion, handed on.

‘Rothery, Gill, Fenchurch, Madely, Kent.’

A faint murmur had erupted round the room; the papers were examined, turned over, examined again. He saw his own mark, the red line drawn down the page at the side of the poem, the corrections made to the other questions, then he put the paper down and folded his arms.

Mr Platt had waited for several seconds; the last of the papers gone he sat down behind the desk, tapping his teeth, thoughtfully, with a piece of chalk. ‘Some of us may be bad poets, but even more of you’, he added, ‘are chronic spellers.’

Colin pressed his arms in against his chest; other phrases were read out from other papers, figures standing uncertainly then sinking down; words were scrawled across the blackboard.

‘Coming back to you,’ Platt said, and added, calling, ‘Art ’ware I’m talking to thee, lad?’

A burst of laughter rose quickly from the class.

‘How spellst thou comprehensive, Bard?’

He stood up, mechanically, to a second burst of laughter; he heard the question repeated and began to spell it slowly, getting lost finally in the middle of the word, and sitting down when Platt had called, ‘Gill Gill, as a mere mathematician, can you spell it for him?’

The letters came down, quickly, from the back of the class.

‘Dost yon muse visit thee, then, Bard; in class, I mean, as well as out?’

He got up slowly from his seat again.

‘For homework, Bard, wouldst thou answer the question thou refrainest from answering in the examination, and bring it to me for marking tomorrow morn. Hast thou that clear within thine head?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘Sir.’

‘Not in rhymed couplets, blank verse, or any variation of the same, I would ask thee, Bard. But in simple English prose for which thou wast requested in the first place, lad.’

‘Yes,’ he said again and, after waiting to see if any other demand were forthcoming, sank down in his seat again.

‘Methinks I hear the bell, summoning me to my morning cup of coffee, lads.’ Platt raised a small, thick hand to one of his ears as the bell clanged out, distantly, in the corridor above. ‘Methinks it summoneth thee to break, and Saville in particular to some clandestine meeting with his muse, perchance in the cloisters, lads, or, verily, in the field itself. Dost hear, then, Bard? Or has the light of common day, the everyday demands of English Lit., driven it to some dark and dingy hole from which thou and thou alone willst rescueth it?’

Colin got up from his desk as the other boys rose. The laughter, which had died down earlier, had risen again.

‘Inclineth thine ear to what thy masters tell thee, lad,’ Platt said as, his books beneath his arm, he moved over to the door. ‘Remembereth they liveth many more years than thou, and no doubt strove mightily in their youth to emulate the Bard. Nevertheless, they end up, twenty years later, behind a classroom desk which, Fate being all-provident, they might have arrived at quicker if they hadn’t have wasted their time writing imitations the like of which we have heard today. Verily, verily…’ He held up his hand, stopping the crowd of boys inside the door. ‘Thy master hath spoken, lads: pin back thy lug-holes, then, and hear.’

Colin wandered out to the cloisters, got his bottle of milk, and stood against the wall; masters passed through, either singly or in groups, to the dining-room where they had their coffee. Gannen went past, his gown pulled tightly round his waist, Miss Woodson, short-sighted, tugging at her glasses, Hodges, stroking down his hair which stood up in two white fangs at the back.

‘They always pick on somebody,’ Stephens said. His back stooping more pronouncedly as he drank from his bottle, he came to stand beside him at the wall.

‘I suppose if they don’t, there’s not much left to teach,’ he said, finishing his milk and moving to the crates. ‘I suppose it makes it entertaining.’

‘Entertaining for some,’ Stephens said and left his milk unfinished. He followed him out to the field. Figures ran past and for a moment dragged Stephens with them. ‘I thought it sounded pretty good, in any case,’ he added as he caught him up. ‘Better than anything Platt could do.’

‘Yes,’ he said, standing at the edge of one of the spaces cleared for a football match. Figures in shirt-sleeves darted to and fro between the piled-up jackets.

‘Have you written any more, then?’ Stephens said.

‘No,’ he said and shook his head.

‘I suppose he gave you a low mark as well,’ he added.

‘Pretty low,’ he said.

‘Would you like to buy a fountain-pen? I can let you have one cheap, then,’ Stephens said.

He drew open his jacket and showed him the tops of several pens clipped to his inside pocket.

‘They’re worth two or three pounds in a shop,’ he said.

‘Where did you get them from?’ he said.

‘In town,’ Stephens said. ‘I’ll let you have this big ’un, if you like,’ he added. ‘You can write any number of poems with that.’