Читать книгу Sorrell and Son - Warwick Deeping - Страница 28

During the next seven days Sorrell and Christopher began to know Winstonbury very thoroughly. They had a feeling that it belonged to them, that it was theirs, with the wise old Pelican keeping watch upon it. They explored every corner of the town. It was a place of pleasant sounding old names, richly English and romantic. It smelt of history, and of the old life before commercialism invented galvanized iron and gas-works. The names of the streets fascinated Christopher: Green End, Lombard Street, Baileygate, Golden Hill, the Tything, Market Row, Vine Court, Barbican, Angel Alley.

On the second day Sorrell walked into Mr. Bloxom's shop in Lombard Street, and was measured for his Pelican uniform, a neat dark blue jacket with light blue lapels and brass buttons, and dark blue trousers. Mr. Bloxom was polite to Sorrell. A porter at a prosperous hotel was a person to be considered.

"Your Mr. Roland is going to make the Pelican hum, I hear?"

Sorrell did not know the exact noise that a pelican made, but he did not think that it was a humming bird.

"Mr. Roland's a man of ideas."

"Ha!" said Mr. Bloxom, "we are rather conservative down this way. How will that feel under the arms? Don't want it too tight, do you, for handling luggage and things."

"I think this coat of mine is about right."

He found Mr. Bloxom examining the tailor's mark inside the collar of his blue serge coat. That suit had been a post-war extravagance.

"Ponds. H'm, good people. I suppose–"

Mr. Bloxom did not complete the sentence–but Sorrell read what was in his mind. He supposed that Sorrell had been a valet or porter at some flats, and that the suit had been passed on to him by some member of the aristocracy, moneyed or otherwise.

The castle mound became a favourite haunt of the Sorrells. There were seats under the beech trees, but Kit and his father preferred the turf. Winstonbury lay below them in crowded picturesqueness, and Kit played a game of his own with the town, treating it as a sort of jig-saw puzzle. He began to know all the more prominent buildings and he could tell exactly where Vine Court lay beyond the little grey bell-turret of the Grammar School.

Castle Hill was more than a view point. It formed a height from which the two Sorrells looked out and down upon the immediate future, Kit's future. There was the problem of his schooling. Was it to be the old Grammar School of Henry the Eighth's founding, planted in an old house of the Carmelites, or the town school, visible from Castle Hill, and lying near the gas-works, an ugly barrack of a place built of yellow brick, surrounded by an asphalted playground and iron railings?

"No humbug, Kit," said his father; "there is going to be no humbug between us. Firstly, it's a question of money. I dare say I shall be able to afford the fees later on. At the Grammar School you would find yourself with the sons of local tradesmen, clerks and farmers. You would learn a little Latin, some mathematics, less history, and perhaps a smattering of science. Not much real use in life. You would get games. Now, at the town school,–a lot of cheap rubbish–. It's a bit of a problem."

Christopher betrayed a preference for the Grammar School. It was a question of aesthetics, of boyish fastidiousness, for at the Grammar School you had a beautiful old building, the boys looked clean and wore a neat apple-green school cap. Kit did not want to go to school near the gas-works, and play hobbledehoy games in an asphalted yard.

"I'd get cricket, pater, and footer."

"You would. But there is one thing that we must face. You would be the son of a porter at the Pelican. They might refuse to take you. That's my fault, not yours."

Kit was silent.

"And boys can be terrible snobs. I shouldn't like to think–"

"It seems rather silly, pater, that a chap should be obliged to go to school."

"Compulsory stuffing."

"Most chaps don't want to be stuffed. A fellow is ready enough for his grub,–but when it comes to lessons–. Seems to me there is something wrong, pater."

"How?"

"Well,–if the stuff they taught you at school was like your dinner–. So that you wanted to swallow it–hungry for it. There are all sorts of things to interest a fellow,–but you don't get them at school. It's such tosh, pater."

"I suppose it is. I was six years at a public school, and I don't think I learnt anything that was of much use to me afterwards. They call it 'forming your mind'–character building."

"But couldn't one's mind grow, pater, of itself? Scrambling about among interesting things?"

"What interests you, Kit?"

"O,–birds, and the country, and cricket, and all that."

"Not books? Be honest."

"Not school books, pater."

Sorrell felt challenged. He knew that he had loathed school books just as Kit loathed them, but then the conventions of civilization demanded that a boy should be stuffed with facts that bored him.

"Well, if you are not keen, what is the use?–Still, you have got to learn to hold your own with other chaps. And some day, my son, you will have to make up your mind what you want to be. And most things that are worth doing mean education–of a kind."

"I shall work, pater."

"But why–?"

"Because–you will be paying."

Sorrell clasped him across the shoulders.

"A sense of duty? Is that it?"

"No,–something more, pater. Because I know you are keen for me to learn–. O, you know why."

"I think I do, my son."

They had many more talks on the same subject, and Sorrell confessed that his own particular ambition was to send Kit to a good preparatory school, and after that to a public one. At least–that was his plan for the moment. He might change it. All academic education had its disadvantages. He explained them to Kit.

Also, there would have to be an element of concealment. It could not be known that Sorrell was the son of an hotel porter.

"You would have to apologize for your father, Kit. Or–if it were found out they might ask me to remove you. Well, we'll see. I'll ask Mr. Roland about it."

But the decision was taken by Christopher himself. He announced it after three days of solemn heart searchings.

"I'll go to the town school, pater."

"Why?"

"Must I tell you?"

"Not if you don't want to."

"I'm not going to a place–where–."

He flushed and grew suddenly inarticulate, and Sorrell understood. It was not that Kit was ashamed of his father,–but he was not going to apologize for him to other boys, or to join in a concealment. That would be humbug.

"I shouldn't have to stay there–very long. I'm nearly twelve pater. And then–after that–I should be free to learn what I wanted to learn."

"I'm not sure that you haven't got it," said his father.