Except for Medlar himself, the only other man on the staff was Jones. The men’s gymnasium was his province, but he had a rooted dislike of hard work and had formed a habit of leaving his charges to amuse themselves while he himself came out on to the field or the running track and watched other people’s efforts, particularly where the women students were at practice. These loathed him; the men students, on the whole, despised him.
There were only eighteen women students while Hamish was at the College and their guardian was the redoubtable Miss Yale. She also helped with athletics coaching, and in addition to her there was a full-time instructor for dancing and gymnastics (an extremely beautiful young woman named Lesley), and a part-time coach for diving. This was a bouncing, enthusiastic girl named Celia, who spent three days a week at Joynings and the rest of her time as a swimming-instructor at the public baths in the nearest town.
After his first full house, Hamish began to find his lectures less and less well-attended until, by the third week, his regular audience was reduced to four. It consisted of the burly Richard and three girls. Richard remained faithful, not because he wished or intended to receive instruction in the tongue of Racine, but in the interests, as he saw them, of propriety.
Asked one day by Hamish, towards whom, since their scrap in the gymnasium, he had assumed the attitude of a protective father-figure, why he bothered himself to attend classes in which, it was clear, he took no interest whatsoever, the hulking youth replied, “You’re not safe with those types who sit in at your lectures, Jimmy-boy. Straight off the streets, those beazels.”
“Only two of them,” Hamish said gravely. “The other one wants to learn French.”
Apart from a growing and satisfying friendship with Martin, Hamish followed popular custom at the College and fell in love with Lesley. His liking for Henry, whose singleness of purpose he admired, increased as the days and then the weeks went by, but his curiosity was aroused and maintained in respect of Miss Yale. A woman of, undoubtedly, strong personality, she seemed to be the only member of the senior common room, so far as Hamish could discover, who maintained discipline as of right, instead of depending, as the others did, solely upon the goodwill of the students. Unlike everybody else, first names being the rule of the College, she always insisted upon being called Miss Yale (at least to her face) and even the men students seemed to be in awe of her. The girls were openly afraid of her and betrayed it by the unwilling respect they shewed when they had to face her and by their glares of black hatred and their muttered threats behind her square-shouldered, uncompromising back when they left her presence.
“Why do you stay here?” Hamish asked her, when their acquaintanceship was almost a month old. “You’re not solely an athlete, unless the College prospectus lies. Haven’t you got a pretty respectable degree? Couldn’t you be bossing some vast comprehensive school, or a college of education, or be a top brass in the Civil Service or something?”
“I like it here,” Miss Yale replied. “I get a kick out of making these little dopers and thieves and street-walkers toe the line.”
“It doesn’t seem much of a life for a woman of parts, if I may say so.”
“Suits me, that’s all. By the way, Barry goes on furlough next week.”
“Yes, it’s on the notice board.”
“Has he asked you to take over the jumps while he’s away?”
“No. Is he likely to?”
“Heard him mention it to Henry.”
“I’ve a fair amount to do in the pool, you know. We’ve that triangular swim against Swordfish and Triton the week after next, and their sprint times are pretty ominous compared with anything we can clock up at present, although our longer-distance men are doing well.”
Barry approached Hamish after tea that afternoon.
“Jimmy lad,” he said, “I know you’re pretty full up, but could you give an occasional eye to the long-jump fellows while I’m away? The triple jump doesn’t matter. We haven’t a bird who can beat forty feet, and our high-jump performers are nothing special, either. Jerry and Lesley will take a look at them occasionally, and that will do. As soon as we can get the proper landing-area—I want a Nissen ‘poly-pit’ if Gassie will run to it—there’s that young chap Kenneth who’s going to try the Fosbury Flop, but we daren’t risk him breaking his neck on our present equipment, so he’ll have to stick to the straddle for the time being. No, it’s the inter-college long-jump record I’m after. Colin can manage twenty-three feet and over when he meets the board right, and I believe he’s got the potential for twenty-four feet if he sticks to it. He wants more flight, that’s all. His take-off is too low. If only he can get height and perhaps use the mid-air kick instead of the hang, I believe we’ve got a real prospect in our stable.”
“I’ll do what I can,” promised Hamish, “but, as you know, I spend most of my time at the pool. I’ve got a prospect there, too. It’s Paul-Pierre, that misfit from Nantes who was chucked out of Rendlesbury for knifing the science master. He’s clocking just under eighteen minutes for the fifteen hundred metres free-style. He could get into the next Olympics if he sweats at it.”
“Yes, for France, though, not for us.”
“Come, come!” said Hamish. “Think European! What about the Common Market? Besides, I believe I’ve got a second string who is coming along very nicely, or will be, once I can get through to him. Patriotism, although still, in some of its aspects, a dirty word, retains a certain amount of influence on my mind, same as on yours, and this young fellow is a Scot. It took me some little time to spot him. He’s a dour, black-browed character with a chip on his shoulder because he thinks he was unfairly expelled from school. He trains without help and spends most of his time churning out length after length with no regard for speed, style or fatigue, but I believe he’s got what it takes.”
The youth’s name was Neil. He had no intimates, let alone friends, and, when spoken to, would reply either in the briefest possible manner or not at all.
“A difficult bloke,” continued Hamish, “but—and this is where patriotism rears its bloody but still unbowed although diminished head—he is a fellow Scot, as I say. Wonder what his surname is?”
This turned out, upon friendly enquiry, to be Menzies.
“My mother’s maiden name,” said Hamish, delighted by this coincidence.
“Aye,” said the scowling youth. “I’ll tell ye this, mon,” he continued, “I could beat yon Froggie over the fifteen hundred.”
“Paul-Pierre?”
“Aye.”
“Well, let’s ask him whether he’d like to try you out. He’ll be Olympic class if he keeps up his training, though, and you’ve never actually timed yourself over the distance, have you?”
“I can swim his bluidy head off.”
The match was arranged and Paul-Pierre won it, but so narrowly that Henry, who was watching, was astounded. Paul-Pierre swaggered.
“I was not really trying, me,” he said. Neil turned and clouted him.
“We’ll dae it again, when ye are trying,” he said, when the Frenchman scrambled out of the water into which he had been knocked. Paul-Pierre scowled and muttered, and, after that, Hamish arranged so that their training-times did not coincide. Neil, he decided, might be content to say it with fists, but Paul-Pierre’s proved handiness with a knife was not a matter he intended should be displayed in any circumstance over which he himself had control.
A fortnight later Neil approached him.
“Gin I apologized to yon Frog for belting him into the water, think you he’d swim me again?”
“Well, it’s a handsome, manly offer, Neil. I’ll ask him. But it’s to be a proper apology, mind. None of our backhanded Hieland insults.”