Here Be Monsters

Uniform is only to keep the parents happy. In Britain good schools have uniform - go to France or Germany, and it doesn't matter, but people expect it here. And out of class they wear their own kit - that was a Haddock-innovation.'

He fell silent again, but they waited him out again.

'Academically… when I said "first-class", I didn't quite mean that. The aim is to get the boys into good universities, but not just Oxbridge. It isn't a crammer's school, where the bright ones sit like cuckoos, with their mouths open, waiting to be fed. God knows, I've felt dummy2

like a thrush sometimes, trying to fill the greedy little buggers!' He shook his head.

'Waltham is said to go for character - the emphasis is on learning how to learn, and they pick for that ability.' He stopped abruptly, staring from one to the other of them. 'And, talking of cuckoos, I wish you wouldn't both sit there with your mouths open. Disagree -

or agree… Or say you believe in comprehensive education, and I'm an elitist-fascist - or knock over a glass, or something.'

Elizabeth looked at Audley, but didn't really need to: if Debrecen had ever been a place in which talent was processed early, then what about the actual talent-spotting, earlier than that? If Haddock Thomas had been a Debrecen-graduate, what better job could he have than talent-spotting? And in what better place than Waltham School? If the old Jesuit boast

- catch 'em young - had any force -

'But we are cuckoos, Willy,' said Audley smoothly. 'So feed us some more worms, there's a good chap.'

'Worms? Can of worms, more like!' Mr Willis looked around. 'Where is the dratted man?'

'Worms, Willy.' Audley pointed at his open mouth.

'Dear boy - ' The old man's voice belied his words ' - what else do you want? Religion?

Oddly enough, it's quite strong at Waltham in a real sense, because those who take part in it do so voluntarily. The school has a chaplain, but the Master isn't in orders. As a matter of fact, I believe he's a linguist with a Liverpool degree, if it's still the same man I met once.

But the staffs very varied, at all events - and very well paid. And the selection process matches the pay. There was a joke, a few years back, about Waltham staff recruitment, in some educational magazine - or it may even have been in the Times Ed Supp - to the effect that, if you were shortlisted, but didn't quite make it, you could always get a university fellowship or a job piloting the next American Moon-landing, as a consolation prize.'

'And Haddock would have a hand in that, I take it?'

'Oh yes - Second Master at Waltham was never a bottle-washer's job, so the Master could go off junketing. The Master always led the school from the front - the Liverpool man was highly visible in the life of the place. And there was a Third Master who handled the timetable and the donkey-work. Second Master was big time - I told you the Haddock was a grandee. In fact, he was really de facto chairman of the staff selection board and the scholarship panel, and took it in turns with the Master to go trawling in foreign parts dear to PAM, and keeping up University contacts. Sort of foreign secretary to the Master's prime minister, you could say - ' The old man caught himself in the mid-flow of his eloquence as he happened to glance from Audley to Elizabeth ' - hmmm!'

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'Go on, Willy.' Audley had more successfully assumed an expression of guileless interest.

'Worms, did you say?' Mr Willis fixed his gaze on her. 'And I said cuckoos. But snakes is what I'm thinking now! Or wolves - wolves pulling down old bulls for sport, maybe.'

Elizabeth cursed her inexperience. 'Nobody's pulling anyone down for sport, Mr Willis. I told you the way things were - and how they are. We are not concerned to establish anything other than the truth.'

'The truth? Only the truth?' He dropped her almost contemptuously. 'What I do not understand, David, is why you are wasting your time on Haddock, believing as you do.

Could you not be better employed?'

'I could indeed, Willy,' agreed Audley. 'I have much better things to do - much better, and probably more pressing, and certainly more important things. From which I have been untimely ripp'd, Willy. However… as I was at pains to explain in words of one syllable… I think I am being set up, one way or another. And I think the basis for that setting-up may be some error I once made - not in regard to the snow-white Haddock - or in regard to his former friend. But I'm certainly not going to wait around for the trap to close. And Haddock is the only clue I've got at the moment.'

'But he's no traitor, dear boy - not in a thousand years!'

'So he's been set up too, then.' Audley's voice lifted defiantly. 'And so clearing him -

clearing him for the third time, Willy - could be reckoned as much my job now as it ever was, as well as saving my own valuable skin. Remember those rules you made? Bloody impossible rules - when I saw you after old Fred had recruited me in '57 - remember?'

What rules? wondered Elizabeth, altogether frozen out of the exchange. And, when it came to the crunch, David Audley was a notorious rule-breaker.

But now there came another crunch, of tyres on the track on the other side of the privet hedge, accompanied by the opulent engine-noise of a much larger car than hers.

Audley stood up. 'A Jaguar, Willy. Is this deer coming to your singing?'

'Ah!' The old man eased himself out of his deck-chair. 'He took his time, but he is here at last.' He peered over the hedge, but then looked down at Elizabeth suddenly, smiling his old-ferrety-smile. 'A character-witness, I think you might call him. But then, if a man is innocent… A very tricky thing, innocence. Guilt is much more easily provable.'

She watched him round the side of the cottage, and then turned to Audley. 'I'm sorry, dummy2

David.'

'Sorry?' He wasn't listening to her.

'Haddock Thomas may be innocent. But he fits the Debrecen specification just as well at Waltham School as in the Civil Service. Maybe even better.' She mistrusted them both - the godson and the godfather. 'Much more ingeniously, anyway.'

'Yes.' He was listening to her now. 'Yes, he does.'

It wasn't the answer she was expecting - so much so that it shut her mouth.

'Yes.' When he smiled this dangerously sweet smile of his, he wasn't ugly. 'You've done well, Elizabeth. I certainly wouldn't like to be caught between two such dreadful old men!

But you did well.'

'I did?' She hated the way he seemed able to read her, too.

'But you're quite wrong.' The smile vanished. 'The monsters on the Other Side are smart.

But they're not that smart.' He shook his head. 'I made no mistake about Haddock Thomas and Peter Barrie. Not then and not now - may I swing for it if I'm wrong!'

Someone was coming. 'So long as I don't swing with you, David.' She observed him look past her, his face rearranging itself into its more usual expression of brutal neutrality.

The newcomer was a tall bespectacled young man, with fair hair and a ruddy complexion ravaged by acne. He took in Audley with a single glance, then his eyes focused on her legs for an instant before travelling inexorably upwards towards disappointment. It was a progression she had encountered many times before, to which she knew she ought to be inured.

'My dear Gavin - let me introduce you - ' Mr Willis managed an extraordinary octogenarian skip round the young man ' - Miss Elizabeth Loftus, daughter - only daugher, if my memory serves me right - of the late Captain-Loftus VC, the distinguished naval historian.'

'Miss Loftus.' The young man hastened too late, as they all did, to take her hand. To cover up that disappointment he would treat her sympathetically, if he ran to form.

'Mr Gavin.'