“Honestly, Jonah ought to be certified!” said Martin. “You never know what stupid trick he’ll get up to next. Did you hear what he did to one of Celia’s divers?”
“He shouldn’t be allowed at large,” said Lesley.
“He ought to be poisoned,” said Jerry.
“Well, don’t let the students hear you say so. There is more than one who might take the hint,” said Henry. “We’ve got quite a few nut cases here, you know.”
“I wish one of our psychopaths would lay him out,” said Lesley. “He came into my gym the other day and that silly little Carol took her eye off what she was doing and pulled a muscle because she didn’t make a proper landing. That’s the second one of my special squad he’s managed to lay out. He told Margot to rake the long-jump pit the other day, and she’s slipped a disc. This was before he managed to put Colin out of action. I was absolutely livid about it. ‘There goes the Chronos Vase, and it’s all your fault, you incompetent, poke-nosed, drunken idiot!’ I said to him. ‘Why on earth, if you had to interfere with the long-jump, couldn’t you get one of the men to rake the pit?’
“ ‘Oh, an osteopath will soon put the wench right,’ says Jonah, ‘or I’ll do a spot of manipulation on her myself, if you like.’ I was so furious with him that I picked up a jumping-rope and swung the leather-covered, sandbagged end of it at his head. He was actually grinning, you know, as though he’d said something clever. ‘I’d like to kill you!’ I said. ‘And I would kill you if I ever found you putting your filthy hands on one of the girls.’ What do you say?” she concluded, turning to Henry.
“Do your gym squad stand any chance of lifting the Chronos Vase?” asked Henry.
“Not now we’ve had these accidents.”
“Then I think,” said Henry, getting up from table, “that, if you do kill him, you are also entitled to dance on the remains.”
chapter
3
Blots on a Copybook
« ^ »
Joynings had been established originally by a syndicate of do-gooders who had bought the house and its grounds and had drawn up the College constitution. Gascoigne Medlar was not, in actuality, its first Warden, although he boasted that the College was his own foundation. The first Warden had been appointed by the syndicate. He was a clergyman and a well-meaning idealist, unfitted by nature, upbringing and education to cope with the type of delinquent for whom the original Joynings had been planned. He lasted for nearly a year, but resigned when he had recovered in hospital from an attack by a homicidal member of the junior common room who had disliked his sermons on brotherly love.
Gascoigne Medlar had not been appointed to take his place. Instead, he had bought the house and grounds when the syndicate, acknowledging failure, had put the property up for sale, had retained such parts of the constitution as appeared advantageous, and had jettisoned the rest. The original students, boys from broken homes for the most part, had been admitted without charge. Gascoigne changed that. He was not interested in delinquents as such, but only in the delinquent but athletic children of wealthy parents. He advertised widely at first, and, when the response came, he charged high fees, having spent much of his own money on improvements. He also paid very high salaries in order to attract a first-class staff. If they turned out to be less than first-class, they went. There was only one exception. Jones, his relative by marriage, Jonah though he turned out to be, was allowed to stay on in spite of his misdemeanours. Staff and students complained, but Gascoigne Medlar was adamant.
“He is my dear wife’s only living relative,” he would explain. “She would return and haunt me if I ever turned poor Davy adrift. He has nobody in the world but me.”
“Doesn’t seem in character, old Gasbag taking a stand like that,” said Jerry to Hamish when he was discussing Jones’s latest misadventures. “You’d think, if only for his own sake and the reputation of the College, that he’d cut out the sentimental angle and get rid of the fellow. He’s been nothing but a trouble-maker and a nuisance ever since he’s been here. He spends a third of his time half-bottled, another third chasing the women—Ma Yale has complained more than once on behalf of the girls here—and the rest of his life laying out the best of our athletes through sheer damn interfering idiocy.”
“Perhaps Gassie feels that Jonah is the victim of his own weaknesses with regard to A and B,” said Martin, who was with them, “and that, so far as C is concerned, Jonah may be misguided but well-meaning.”
“I doubt whether Barry would support that view,” said Hamish. “The unfortunate old thing will be thirsting for Jonah’s blood over that long-jump accident to Colin. He’ll be very, very angry indeed when he comes back from leave and finds that the lad has been laid out with a couple of broken shins.”
“He knows about it already. Henry has written to him. Lesley isn’t feeling very sweetly disposed towards Jonah, cither,” said Jerry, “although, personally, I think she overplayed her hand when she went with a mouthful of curses to plague the Old Man about that idiotic girl of hers. After all, to do blighted Jonah justice, he swears he hadn’t asked the wretched kid to rake the pit, and if Lesley had taught her how to use her muscles correctly, she wouldn’t have dislocated a chunk of her silly little spine, would she?”
“Well, one might perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt there,” admitted Martin, “but he’s a menace and a misfit, all the same, and, whether he’s Gassie’s relative by marriage or not, I think he ought to be driven out into the wilderness to fend for himself and not live here in the lap of luxury. Why, his quarters are as good as those of Gassie himself, and what does he do to deserve them? He’s supposed to be in charge of the men’s gym, but how much time does he ever spend there? Instead of getting on with his own job, he’s making a thorough pest of himself, one way or another, on the field and the track, or else he’s propping up the bar in the Bricklayers’ Arms. It isn’t good enough, especially in a place like this.”
The opinion expressed by Martin had been endorsed by Henry, and on more than one occasion. Hamish often thought that Henry was like a small, alert sheepdog, chivvying, but never biting, the lost lambs who formed the bulk of Gascoigne Medlar’s flock. Henry brought to his work a monkish singleness of purpose which was remarkable even among his gifted and dedicated companions. These employed their various talents honestly, cheerfully and without stint. They could not be said to love their charges, but they did well by them. Henry was unique at Joynings in that, with him, it was possible not only to hate the sin but to love the sinner. Except for Gascoigne himself, he was the only member of staff ever to have been married. He had lost his wife under tragic circumstances and had found at Joynings a kind of anodyne. Under him, the College had been transformed from a private, although luxurious, prison into a sought-after and surprisingly successful reformatory.
Some credit for this success was also due to the Warden and some to the students themselves. The majority of them— the men in particular—had been worsted in their fight against authority when they were—so to speak—in the outside world, and were relieved, if not openly thankful, to be put out to grass for a bit in the easy-going, safe (although fenced-in) pastures of Joynings. They were lost lambs, not black sheep; weak, rather than wicked; ridiculous and sometimes vicious children, but not unprincipled, criminally-minded adults. For one thing, they had been carefully selected and vetted and were not a representative cross-section of the misguided, delinquent young, and the fact that they were athletes and swimmers meant that they were misfits who had a saving grace.