Читать книгу Housemaster - Major General John Hay Beith - Страница 11

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THE duet on the first-floor landing died away, and the dining-room door below opened cautiously. Button emerged, with her usual economy of elbow-room, masticating her last mouthful of plum cake, and crossed the hall into the study, closing the door behind her. Like many other eminent explorers, she liked to play a lone hand.

Releasing the doorhandle gently, she turned, and uttered a startled exclamation in colloquial French. A small boy in white shorts and a red blazer had just entered by the baize door.

Button surveyed him for a moment, then screamed:—

“Bimbo! Angel!”

“Oh Lord—Button!” Bimbo’s response was a blend of incredulity and concern. “All right,” he continued, vainly endeavouring to free himself from a tempestuous and adhesive embrace, “you needn’t choke me! What are you doing here, anyhow?”

“We have come to live with you and Charles.”

“How long for?”

“For life, my child.”

“Oh gosh! All of you?”

“Yes. What’s the matter?”

Apparently a good deal was the matter, as Bimbo proceeded to explain. To possess sisters at all, he pointed out in a moving passage, was a kind of stigma in itself: to have these perpetually upon the premises, and to be compelled to endure their demonstrative presence coram populo amounted practically to social extinction.

“Lord, what a fool I shall look!” he wailed. “You’ll keep out of the way as much as possible, won’t you? I expect the Moke’ll see to that, though; but if he doesn’t, hold yourselves in, do! The fellows here are rather particular in their ideas about young girls; so no chasing me about and kissing me before a crowd of people, and all that sort of bilge!”

“Of course, my sweet!” said Button soothingly. This was not the first time she had been made aware of Bimbo’s rigid sense of propriety where the domestic affections were concerned. “What are all these silver cups and things, along this bookcase?”

“They’re the Moke’s prizes—for tricycling and chess. Do you know where he is, by the way?”

“Do you want him?”

“Of course I want him! Do you think any one has the nerve to put his nose inside this room if they don’t?”

“Sorry, sorry! What do you want him for?”

“I want to have a shot at getting leave off Physical Jerks next hour. He tanned me this morning, and I’m not in the mood for any flying-trapeze stuff.”

Button was all maternal concern at once.

“Oh, darling!” she cried, embracing her resisting coeval anew. “Did it hurt?”

“Of course it hurt! Do you think the Moke doesn’t know his job?”

“Any marks?”

“Five—and you can’t see them!”

“Poor angel! Have some chocolate.”

“Have you got any?”

“Yes. Imported from Paris direct.”

“And sat on most of the way, I bet.”

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s gone a bit gooey,” admitted Button, as she produced from the top of a long stocking something wrapped in tarnished silver paper. “It always seems to slip round behind.”

“Never mind,” said Bimbo amiably. “You can have a bit yourself if you like.” He twisted off a corner of the warm and glutinous delicacy, and bestowed it upon his sister.

“Thank you, dear. What did the Moke beat you for?”

“Going into Culver’s Coppice—out of bounds.”

“Then why did you go, you poor chump?”

“There’s a lovely magpie’s nest in one of the trees.”

Button was interested at once.

“Hoo!” she said. “Did you get an egg?”

“No. I got spotted, by the Egg himself.”

“Egg? Magpie’s egg?” enquired Button, not unreasonably puzzled.

“No, you silly kid: the Egg’s the Head. A complete smear, and full of Medes and Persians. He reported me to the Moke, and the Moke had to tan me, though I could see he didn’t half like doing it. He wouldn’t grudge a man an egg or two.”

“No, I’m sure he wouldn’t: I adore him already.” Button was off on another of her Alsatian excursions. “Like to see your half-term report, darling?”

“Is it here?”

“They’re all here, on this desk. Here’s yours. Come and have a dekko.”

The pair squeezed amicably into Mr. Donkin’s swivel chair, and jointly perused Bimbo’s history sheet. It was not a flattering document.

“Can’t you tear it up?” suggested Button resourcefully.

“No good. They’d only write a worse one.”

Button ran a slim and sticky finger down the column in which Bimbo’s traducers had penned their initials.

“Who are all these people?” she asked.

“Oh, various Ephesian beasts.”

“Who’s W A D?”

“Dexter, my form-master. Hated by all. One of those comic swine.”

“A singularly versatile pupil,” read Button. “He can translate English into a Greek not spoken in Greece, and Greek into an English not spoken anywhere, with equal facility. That’s not too bad, if you read it quickly. Rather complimentary, in a way.”

“It’ll get past Dad, anyhow,” said Bimbo, taking another mouthful of chocolate.

“Who’s F H?”

“You ought to know that—Uncle Frank. He’s a sarcastic old bargee if you like. Habitually gravitates to the bottom! As a matter of fact, that’s an absolute lie: I’ve only been at the bottom since another fellow went to the San a week ago.”

“Who’s P de P?”

“The Junior Stinks Beak. He calls himself de Pourville, or something. We call him Peter Poop. We rag his soul out.”

“He says,” read Button, with studied incredulity, “that you have a quick and intelligent mind, and are a very pleasant boy to work with. He must be potty.”

“No, that’s just funk. He daren’t give anybody a bad report. We’d kill him if he did.”

“I like his name, all the same. de Pourville! He sounds like a Crusader, or something. What is he like?”

“Like a fourpenny rabbit, and blubs if you look at him. Well”—as the mausoleum on the bookcase struck three-quarters—“I can’t sit here talking to kids all day: I must biff off to Gym. So long.”

Bimbo abandoned his half of the chair and made for the baize door.

“Can I come with you?”

“No, you can not come with me, anywhere at any time. Get that idea firmly fixed right off.”

“Very well, dear: you know about these things. I suppose I can go outside and breathe the fresh air of heaven occasionally, so long as I don’t do it in your company.”

Bimbo shot a suspicious glance at Button’s deferential face.

“Yes—in reason. But don’t start trying to get off with any of the fellows. They don’t understand Paris ways here.”

“No, dear. What’s through this green door?”

“Our House. Keep out. This means You.”

“Can’t I even go in with you, darling? Just once—to peep?”

Bimbo considered.

“Everybody’s up in school. All right, you can look round now, quickly. Otherwise I suppose you’ll burst with curiosity; and we can’t have any messiness of that kind. Come along in—and it’s for the last time!”

They passed through the baize door, and through another, much stouter, immediately beyond, into the so-called Reading Room, a large and dingy apartment frequented by those members of the Red House who had not yet attained the dignity of a private study of their own. Round the green-distempered walls, upon varnished panels, were emblazoned the names of those who in their own brief day had done the Red House some service, whether of mind or matter. There was no other attempt at decoration and none at all at comfort. The furniture consisted of inkstained tables and upright wooden chairs. The day’s Times, clamped to a large sloping reading-stand in one of the windows, a locked bookcase containing the House Library, and a number of tattered magazines mostly lying on the floor, served to justify the room’s literary pretensions.

Herein a full fifty per cent. of the Red House spent most of their indoor leisure—reading, writing, playing ping-pong and small cricket, or simply bear-fighting, as nature directed. Probably an inmate of Borstal, transferred to such surroundings, would have caused a question to be asked in the House of Commons about it. But the Red House found no fault: what had been good enough for the names emblazoned upon the panels was good enough for them.

Bimbo next conducted his guest to the Prep Room—furnished with desks and benches this time—then to the dining-room, own brother to the Reading Room, except for some House Groups upon the walls and a permanent smell of gravy. An aged cottage piano cowered in one corner.

After that the pair proceeded down a linoleumed passage to a long, low room with tiled walls. A row of white shorts and red blazers hung along one wall; washhand basins and shower-baths occupied the other.

“This is the changing-room,” said Bimbo. “Where we change,” he added luminously.

“Haven’t you got any bedrooms to do it in?”

“If you mean dormitories, they’re upstairs, and nobody’s allowed there in the daytime at all, except The Hag and her gang.”

“Sorry again. Which is your peg?”

“Number 49—at the far end. I’m next to Rumford tertius.”

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, all right—except for his face, of course. Now come along and I’ll show you a study or two. There’s just time.”

Bimbo led the way down another passage, and stopped at the last door.

“This is Travers’ study,” he said. “I’m his fag.”

He opened the door with a proprietorial flourish, and displayed to Button’s gaze an apartment about eight feet square, which smelt strongly of bat-oil. The bat itself was leaning against the table, with its end in a saucer of the oil in question. A pair of white cricket boots and pads, newly pipe-clayed by Bimbo himself, lay on the floor. The walls were decorated with the usual portrait groups of Fifteens and Elevens. The little mantelpiece was adorned by a portrait of Travers’ mother, in a tarnished silver frame, and three picture-postcards of Miss Ginger Rogers.

“Of course this study is bigger than the others,” said Bimbo. “Travers is Head of the House—Captain of the Eleven, too. He’s leaving at the end of term: his farewell grub to his fags ought to be a real binge. I’ll just show you one other study—Goat Hicks’s. He’s not a prefect, but about the biggest swell in the House. No, I can’t: there’s the bell for twelve o’clock school. You can walk up towards the Gym with me for about a hundred yards, if you like. Then you must scram, or somebody might see us.”

They emerged from the side-door and proceeded towards the Gymnasium, Bimbo still pointing out objects of local interest.

“That’s the Green House over there, past the laurel bushes,” he said—“Uncle Frank’s. A complete zoo. Do you see those tall trees over on the left, beyond all the Houses and everything? That’s Culver’s Coppice, where the Egg nobbled me yesterday. It was mouldy luck: I was within a yard of the nest. And of course I simply can’t risk going again.”

“No, you can’t,” replied Button thoughtfully. “How big is Rumford tertius?”

“About my size. Why?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Well, don’t ask drivelling questions.”

“No, darling,” said Button meekly. “I suppose I’d better leave you now,” she added. “Good-bye!”

She turned on her heel and retraced her steps towards the Red House, with docility in her mien and silent purpose in her eye.