Jane Gardam - Old Filth

“Sir’s gone to America.”

This made them unhappy.

They were lying between damp grey blankets, among rows of other boys in the school’s underground shelters, water running in rills down the walls. Far away a never-ending thunder meant that somewhere was being flattened again. York? Liverpool? Even as far away as Coventry.

The same week, on a night when there had been no air-raid siren, a drenching cold and moonless night and the boys asleep in their dormitories, every alarm bell in the school had begun to ring, followed by hooters, whistles and military cries. The dormitory doors were flung open and every boy ordered to dress immediately and gather by his House front door.

“And uniform, please, if you are in the Corps.”

“What — puttees, sir?”

“Puttees, Ingoldby.”

“They take a good five minutes, sir.”

“Then die, Ingoldby. Or get moving.”

Out from all the seven Houses of the school streamed boys of several ages in various attire. Each one was handed a rifle, Officers’ Training Corps or not, and five rounds of ammunition.

“Invasion. Get on there. It’s the Invasion. Go!” and five hundred boys, some trailing khaki bandages on their legs, some in their pyjamas and without their dressing-gowns (“ dressing -gowns”), were quickly lost in the midnight fields and ditches of the North Midlands. Somebody cried “Hark!” and some of them heard the death knell: the cry of the bells from all the muffled steeples. This was later denied.

“Oh,” said Pat, still purring from the Cambridge grown-up claret, “invasion. Five rounds. Bang, bang, bang, bang, finish. Farewell the red, white and blue.”

Those who knew how, loaded their rifles. Those who didn’t, dropped their cartridges in the mud. There was occasional unfortunate friendly fire (though the phrase had not then been invented and the one used was balls-up) and a few disagreeable misfortunes with bayonets. There was the occasional, but not serious, scream.

Then, the silence. Darkness and rain settled over the North’s infant infantry who did not trouble the landscape or the night, which passed with very few prayers and still fewer orgasms or unexpected desire. Little poetry was engendered. After several hours some word of command must have been passed and the great old school found itself staggering from the ditches, crossing the sodden ugly fields, falling into bed again at 4 a.m.

But at 6.15 A.M. it was pre-breakfast Prep, as usual.

It had been a false alarm.

“We’re going to lose this war,” said Eddie. “Am I right, Pat?”

“Can’t speak,” said Ingoldby. His hair looked like black lacquer which someone had painted on his head. His face was carmine. Under the bedclothes in the dormitory he was wearing last night’s Army uniform sopped through and caked with mud. At the end of his bed, purple feet stuck out. Above them, his semi-putteed legs.

“You know the whole bloody issue was nothing?” someone was saying. “A barrage-balloon come loose over the Vale of York, for God’s sake. Trailed its cable over the electric pylon and blacked out the North. Invasion, my foot!”

“Invasion, my feet,” shuddered Ingoldby, looking with interest down his body under the blankets at them. “Sometimes there are two of them, s-s-sometimes — oh God! S-s-sometimes four.”

He was found to have pneumonia and put in the school San. There, he was scooped from all friends, and therefore of course from Eddie, and absorbed into the antiseptic of the nutcracker-faced Matron in charge. Days passed.

On one of them, in a free-period, Eddie on his ostrich legs went walking to the San and found this woman seated just inside the door knitting an immense scarf in khaki wool that curled inwards down the sides like a tube.

“May I go and see Ingoldby, Matron?”

“Certainly not. You know the rules.”

“How is he?”

“That’s my business.”

“Would you give him a message?”

“You know that’s not allowed, neither.”

“I’ll ask Oils, then.”

“Ask away.”

Eddie knocked on Mr. Oilseed’s door and found Oils, his Housemaster, late of Ypres, France, sitting one-eyed and holding a little glass weight at the end of a silver chain, swinging the chain gently over a desk covered with mountains of unmarked essays.

“Matron says I can ask to visit Ingoldby, sir.”

“Now — where is Ingoldby? I forget.”

“He’s in the San, sir. As a result of The Fiasco. The other night.”

“Fiasco? Oh, I don’t think we should assume that. It was a valuable exercise.”

“It’s said that Ingoldby has pneumonia.”

“‘It is said,’” said Oils, “is not a phrase I ever recommend. It does not commend itself. Ingoldby’s parents are coming later today.”

“But, sir. . I’m pretty well part of that family, you know. Since I was eight.”

Oils let the fine chain ripple and fall into a heap upon the green baize of the desk. (What was he doing? Sexing a child?) He continued to stare at it.

“Feathers,” he said, “the times are moving on, but very slowly.”

“Yes, sir?”

“There is something today that is a wonder in the school. This Victorian and bourgeois school. This is that the unnatural closeness between you and Ingoldby has not been terminated. There are certain explanatory circumstances but, as we who were in the trenches know, emotions have to be contained. This, like your Prep school, is a school in which we endure.”

“I loved our Prep school, sir.”

“I suggest that you go back to your study and read Kipling.”

“Kipling’s childhood was very like mine and he was queer. I should like to appeal.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I have the right of appeal here.”

“To whom, may I ask?”

“To the Headmaster first, sir. Then to the Board of Governors. Finally in the correspondence columns of the Times .”

“On what grounds?”

“Slander, sir. And antediluvianism.”

He left Oils’ study and made for the Headmaster’s House where no foot trod unbidden except those of the old spider himself and his paddly housekeeper. Eddie stood outside, and turned the great iron ring on the tall gate. The flagstones were slimy, the windows glimpsed through tangled plants.

“Come round the side,” said a threadbare voice from behind a pane. “Kitchen.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Head after blinking at the daylight Eddie brought in with him, “Tussock, isn’t it?”

“ Tussock , sir? I’m Feathers.”

“Ah, Feathers, Feathers. ‘The life of man is plumed with death.’ It’s part of a plea of mercy by a seaman to Queen Elizabeth the First.”

“I know, sir.”

“Do you? We aren’t told whether it was successful. I knew your father, Feathers. He was a boy here when I was. How is he?”

“I never see him. He’s in South-East Asia. I think he’s gone to Singapore now.”

“Yes. Of course. And that’s what we must talk about. I’ve been pondering the matter all week, Tussock. But first — what?”

“I want to visit my friend, Ingoldby, in the San, sir. I am told by Mr. Oilseed that it is an unholy desire.”

“Yes, yes. You would be.”

“It’s obscene of him, sir, to say a thing like that.”

“Yes. But it’s an old obscenity. Very primitive. Age gives these flabby ideas weight. Oh yes — and parents . No, the reason for isolation of patients in the San is the possibility of infection.”

“But, it’s pneumonia. Caught in the performance—”

“—ah, yes. The invasion by barrage-balloon. I slept through it.”

“All I want is to wish him well. Put my head round the door. You’d allow me if he were my brother. Wouldn’t you, Headmaster?”