Mr Campion's Fault Page 2

‘It was good of you to let him stay at the school tonight.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. The boy’s at that age when boys don’t need extra distractions, especially things like this …’

  ‘Like what, Mr Browne? What is it we just saw?’

  The woman, white-faced and wide-eyed, was suddenly a distraught stranger to Bertram Browne, a thin substitute for the competent and stoic Ada Braithwaite who had invited him into her home.

  ‘What do you think it was, Ada?’ he said more gently, answering one question with another – an almost unforgivable sin in a schoolmaster’s lexicon.

  ‘Ah knows what they’d say round here, reet enough,’ said Ada, her face set in Yorkshire granite. ‘They’d say it was my late husband Colin come back to haunt me.’

  Bertram considered draping a comforting arm around Ada’s shoulder, but he had lived in the West Riding long enough to know that would be an unacceptable, not to mention potentially dangerous, action. Instead, he smiled his most innocent smile.

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you, Ada?’

  ‘O’course not, Mr Browne. I may not have your learnin’ but I’m not daft.’

  Bertram Browne, MA (Cantab) felt that his education was distinctly lacking as he pulled up the collar of his coat and tightened his scarf against the cold night air on his walk back to Ash Grange School.

  Towards the end of the war he had, as a young, very green lieutenant of the Royal Engineers, played a small but terrifying part in the crossing of the Rhine, and a few weeks later he had found himself helping the walking dead survivors of Bergen–Belsen concentration camp, which was even more terrifying. With peacetime came Cambridge, where he suffered from an imagined inferiority complex caused by the ribbing from fellow undergraduates of his broad Yorkshire accent and the snobbery of dons who had grumpily put up with the influx of young ex-servicemen under edict from the government only on sufferance (there had, after all, been a war on). Any sniping, real or imagined, aimed at Bertram soon dissipated when it became clear that he was an above-average student and a more-than-adequate scrum half on the rugby field. Even the crustiest of the dons regarded ‘young Browne’ with new respect when, in his third year, he was seen ‘walking out’ with a frail Jewish girl, a trainee nurse at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, who spoke with a thick Hungarian accent and who bore a tattoo on her left forearm comprising the letter ‘A’ and a five-figure number.

  The couple – her name was Rebekka – seemed very much in love, but on the eve of marital bliss, which is always the time when fate strikes its cruellest blow, Rebekka, who had survived horrors unimaginable, was run over in a gruesomely mundane road accident within sight of the hospital where she worked. A distraught Bertram Browne resigned himself to bachelorhood, entered the teaching profession and returned to his native Yorkshire, one of the spikiest and meanest-spirited of his Cambridge tutors asking cruelly which of those three activities was supposed to be a penance.

  Yet nothing in his past life, or his present one as a senior master at Ash Grange, had prepared him for Ada Braithwaite’s appeal for help on that dark, wintry night.

  He had known Ada since she had come to work at the school. She had, in fact, ‘caught his eye’, being closer to his age than any other available female he regularly interacted with, and though no classical beauty she was far from unattractive. He also admired her spirit – that of a born survivor in the face of adversity – which perhaps reminded him of Rebekka, and when the widow Braithwaite’s fatherless son Roderick gained a place at Ash Grange as a scholarship day boy, he offered if not a protective wing to shelter under, then at least a watchful eye. Young Roderick was in no need of special treatment or favouritism as he proved a hard-working and responsive pupil in all his lessons, and not just those taught by Bertram Browne, in which he positively shined. Thus it was in Mr Browne that Roderick confided that there was ‘trouble at home’ with things going, literally, bump in the night and his mother ‘at her wits’ end’, though of course she would never admit that.

  The story of the haunting of 11, Oaker Hill came to his attention in an essay sheepishly handed in by Roderick as part of his regular homework. Mr Browne, noting the domestic detail in the essay, had the sensitivity to take the boy to one side rather than question him in class, and ask where Roderick’s inspiration had come from. The story, repeated twice for good measure, convinced Mr Browne that the lad was being brutally honest and sincere in relating what he had, or thought he had, seen.

  During a free period early one afternoon, Bertram had managed to get Ada alone in the school kitchen, told her what Roderick had told him and offered to help in any way he could.

  The widow Braithwaite had reacted with suspicion at first, then with an involuntary spark of anger (soon quenched) that her son should be discussing ‘her business’ with others. Knowing he would get such a reaction, for he was a Yorkshireman after all, Bertram Browne stressed that it was important that the matter be kept very much to themselves and not provide entertainment for idle gossip-mongers.

  Reassured, Ada had said she would be grateful if Mr Browne would give his opinion on things, but she had one question: ‘What’s a poltergeist?’

  ‘It’s from the German and means “noisy spirit”. Supposedly it’s some sort of psychic manifestation which disrupts things, throws things about, smashes your best china, that sort of thing.’

  The widow Braithwaite had nibbled at her lower lip and nodded sagely. ‘That sounds like what we’ve got, all right,’ she’d said calmly.

  And having seen what he had seen that evening, Bertram Browne had to agree.

  But what exactly had he seen, felt and heard?

  Not being superstitious in the slightest way and not religious ‘so you’d notice’, as the residents of Denby Ash would say, Mr Browne had dismissed any supernatural influence almost immediately but he could offer Ada no alternative, rational explanation. Instead, he had hinted that he had a colleague at the school whom he thought could help and he would consult him the next day. Until she heard from him, he said, it would be best if they did not discuss the events of that night with anyone.

  ‘You know what they’re like round here, Mr Browne,’ Ada had said. ‘I’ve no intention of telling them my business. Oh, tongues will wag – they always do – but not with any help from me. And you’d better go now, Mr Browne. It’s getting late.’

  ‘At least let me help you clear up some of this mess,’ Bertram had offered and had seen Ada’s sinews stiffen even before his lips stopped moving.

  ‘When I need a man’s help to tidy my own house, then I’ll put an advert in the Huddersfield Examiner, thank you very much.’

  At the top of Oaker Hill, his breath steaming and the night carrying the promise of a frost before dawn, Bertram Browne quickened his pace. The sodium street lamps of Denby Ash ended on Oaker Hill by the village’s branch of the Co-Operative. From here on, Bertram’s walk back to the school would be in darkness, for the only other source of light, the Sun Inn, was already, thanks to a conscientious – some would say pernickerty – landlord, empty of customers, closed for business and thoroughly blacked-out as if expecting an air raid.

  Technically, the Sun Inn was the last inhabited dwelling in Denby Ash proper. Beyond it there was the short, narrow bridge over the Oaker Beck (known locally as the ‘Okker Dyke’) and then the Huddersfield road and, half a mile down it on the right, the playing fields and buildings of Ash Grange School.

  Although he could not see it, Bertram knew what lay in the darkness away to his left. Everyone did, for the recently decommissioned Grange Ash colliery, or rather, its enormous spoil heap, dominated the daylight landscape and was almost as well-known a landmark as the towering Emley Moor television transmitter mast had become before its dramatic collapse earlier in the year.

  There was little moonlight available through the cloud cover but Bertram had no fear of the dark, nor of wandering off course. As long as his shoes continued to clatter on tarmac, the road would take him to the main gat
e and driveway of Ash Grange School. It was a walk he could do safely virtually blindfolded. The road ahead was, if not quite Roman, relatively straight, headlights could be seen a good way off and the night was still – an indicator of snow perhaps? – which meant any vehicle would probably be heard before seen.

  And yet he was taken completely by surprise when a form travelling at speed loomed out of the darkness.

  His initial thought was that he was confronting a large and aggressive rat with red coals for eyes; and a rat which was scuttling directly towards him in menacing silence.

  Only when it was far, far too late for him to do anything to avoid the inevitable did Bertram Browne realize that bearing down on him was a very metallic freewheeling vehicle, not a fleshy rodent, and that what he had taken to be burning demonic eyes were in fact the glowing ends of cigarettes being smoked by the driver and a passenger.

  Then there was only brief pain and longer, total darkness.

  TWO

  Situation(s) Suddenly Vacant

  Ash Grange School for Boys

  Denby Ash,

  Nr Wakefield,

  West Riding,

  Yorkshire.

  [Head: A.J.B. Armitage, MA(Cantab)]

  xiv.xi.MCMLXIX

  My Dear Perdita,

  I realize that I have been very lax in my duties as godfather; duties which I do not recognize as ending with the marriage of a godchild although I may have inadvertently given that impression by not having been in touch since your wedding to Rupert, who I am sure is proving a fine husband as he comes from a very fine family. Please, once again, accept my apologies for not attending the wedding itself, which unfortunately clashed with an unavoidable meeting of the Headmasters’ Conference. I hope my gift arrived in time and that it will be appreciated in the future. (My wife insists that a case of port wine is a most unsuitable wedding present, but I maintain that anyone who has a case of the ’63 will have ‘a wine for life’ as the poet – though I’m not sure which one – would have said.)

  Pleasantries aside – and you know we waste as little time as possible on pleasantries here in Yorkshire – there is a reason I am writing to you now; a selfish reason, I admit. I am well aware that convention rules that godparents do what they can to assist the prosperity and health of both the body and soul of the godchild, with nary a thought for the time and cost involved. However, I now find myself in the position of a godparent requiring assistance from their spiritual ward.

  I doubt if the press down south has carried reports of the tragedy which has affected us at Ash Grange, but up here it made something of a splash, meriting a paragraph in the Yorkshire Post, though hardly the sort of publicity we would seek. I refer to the tragic road accident which resulted in the death of our senior English master Bertram Browne. It has proved a double blow for the school as it has left us short-staffed and Gabbitas and Thring are unable to supply a suitable replacement until next term.

  With that we must and can cope, but Bertram’s death has left us with a more pressing problem as he was involved in – nay, he was the originator, producer and director of – a musical version of Doctor Faustus which is to be the centrepiece of our Speech Day celebration at the end of this term. (And lest you discard this letter at this point, let me assure you that I was never totally convinced about Bertram’s musical adaption of Marlowe, but he was set on it and we are now committed to it, the programmes having been printed and paid for.)

  In short, as we like to be in Yorkshire, where fair words often cost money, Bertram’s death has left our nascent musical production without a guiding hand on the tiller, so to speak. To be blunt, as we also like to be in Yorkshire, I am at a loss when it comes to things thespian, or I was until I remembered my goddaughter. I am also aware that unemployment in the acting profession is rife and therefore it is statistically possible, if not probable, given the rather cruel reviews of the musical show Lucky Strike which I read in the Daily Telegraph earlier this term, that you may be in need of a theatrical challenge on the getting-back-on-the-bicycle-after-falling-off principle.

  And whilst I appreciate that two performances of a syncopated Doctor Faustus in the School Hall here at Ash Grange (one for the staff and pupils, one for parents and visitors) hardly reeks of greasepaint and West End crowds, a ‘producer/director credit’ as I believe it is called, for an original (nay, experimental) dramatic production would surely fit well on to one’s curriculum vitae. There would, of course, be a small stipend with the post, which will be called Assistant Drama Teacher and which will run until the Christmas holidays.

  Although our pupils are all boys, we have several female members of staff and accommodation and board would be provided in the Headmaster’s Lodge as guests of my wife and myself.

  I do hope you will feel able to ride to our rescue on the flimsiest of obligations to a most recalcitrant godfather. Please convey to your husband both my best wishes and the enclosed note for his attention.

  In order to further save the school unnecessary postage, would you please also deliver the enclosed letter to your mother-in-law, Lady Amanda?

  Warmest regards,

  Brigham Armitage

  Post Scriptum:

  I hope it is clear from the desperate tone of this request that the vacant positions in question require filling immediately.

  ‘For a man who believes words are not cheap and should not be wasted, he doesn’t half go on,’ said Rupert Campion across the breakfast table. ‘Do you actually know this character?’

  ‘He’s my godfather,’ said his wife casually.

  ‘But do you actually know him? I’m sure I’ve got several godmothers whom I wouldn’t know from Adam and certainly not Eve.’

  ‘Given your family’s peculiarities that should be counted as a blessing,’ Perdita said without lifting her eyes from the letter she held in one hand as if balancing it against the triangle of toast in the other. ‘My parents were less conspicuous consumers of godparents and appointed only one from each sex. My godmother, being an actress, naturally abdicated all responsibility as soon as her agent offered her a spear-carrying role in some overblown medieval epic being filmed in Spain by Italians. She put her dogs – ghastly little chow things – into Battersea, gave her clothes to Oxfam, her furniture to the local church and jumped on the first plane heading for sun, Spain and fame. The last I heard, she’d married a bullfighter, but that was probably wishful thinking on her part.’

  Rupert watched his wife’s prim baby face as her large, round blue eyes followed the paragraphs of the letter again as she spoke, and not for the first time wondered how such a perfect young mouth could produce, when required, the voice of a middle-aged governess.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since my christening, if indeed she was there,’ continued Perdita, ‘but dear old Brigham was always good for a card and a postal order on birthdays and Christmas when I was a kid. He was an old army chum of daddy’s and turned up to the funeral in a slightly mothy uniform and brown shoes so highly polished they glowed like amber.’

  There was a slight catch in her throat at the memory, which Rupert knew wasn’t acting.

  ‘I haven’t seen him since and only invited him to the wedding to make up the paltry numbers on my side of things, but as he says, he couldn’t make it.’

  ‘He seems to have followed your career with interest, though.’

  ‘Humpf!’ Perdita made a most un-governess-like noise as she bit into thickly marmaladed toast. ‘Not much of a career to follow so far! And trust him to see the really bad reviews.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault that Lucky Strike was a pig-in-a-poke, darling.’

  ‘Pig-in-a-poke? It was an absolute stinker! Book and lyrics by an unrepentant Marxist, which I could forgive had he not also been an illiterate, unrepentant Marxist with music by a tone-deaf, shovel-fisted pub pianist who would be defenestrated by an angry mob if he tried any of his tunes in an East End gin palace on a Saturday night. As for our so-called director – well, we soon discover
ed he couldn’t direct the crowd singing “Abide With Me” at the FA Cup Final, or not without giving all of them individual nit-picking notes.’

  Rupert, who had witnessed this sore inflamed on several occasions, wisely changed the subject. ‘Your godfather sounds a bit of a rum cove, but headmasters are supposed to be odd, aren’t they? “Facts, facts, facts!” and all that sort of thing.’

  ‘That’s Charles Dickens in Hard Times,’ said Perdita primly, ‘and I don’t think Brigham is a Mr Gradgrind. I remember him as a bit of a softy, but his letter is a bit odd. I mean, this reference to Gabbitas and Thring. Isn’t that a joke from those wonderful Molesworth books where two Victorian undertakers go out at night and kidnap unsuspecting young men off the street, dragging them away to force them to become teachers?’

  ‘I bow to you on the Dickens, darling,’ said Rupert, pouring milk on to a bowl of very noisy cereal, ‘but Gabbitas and Thring are not fictional. At my school they were known as “Rabbitarse and String”, which I think was coined by W.H. Auden. They’re an employment agency for teachers at all the best schools.’

  ‘You mean at socially divisive schools.’

  ‘Steady on, dear. Bolshevism at the breakfast table does not become you.’

  Perdita snorted in half-hearted disgust, which Rupert only found charming.

  ‘Typically, you regard the move to Comprehensive education as Bolshevism.’

  ‘No, I do not; and in any case, I bet Godfather Brigham’s establishment is fee-paying and exclusive.’

  ‘Not as exclusive as your old school.’

  ‘As Pop would say, it flipping well should be exclusive, the fees they charged.’

  Perdita smiled. ‘I had forgotten that you were only following the family tradition and your father certainly turned out all right. You’d better read your letter.’ She launched a folded sheet of paper in the general direction of her husband, who rescued it before it crash-landed in the butter dish.

  ‘Your godfather certainly believes in saving on postage,’ observed Rupert. ‘Did you say there was another letter somewhere for Mother?’