In the version of the story being played out at Vulcan School, Dido was triumphant. Dido won. She detained him on his way to where he was meant to go. She would want children, she would want a home. Marion Willis was keening from the other corner of the triangle, voicing all the spectral sorrow of a city that would not now be founded, the lasting utopia where the disabled and able-bodied would find common ground, and where Miss Willis would wake up next to Alan Raeburn, kiss him and hand him his canes.
A house of divorce
Superficially the school kept running as before, but everything beneath the surface was different. If it was true that Marion and Alan were the mum and dad of the school, then beyond a certain point we were all living in a house of divorce. Raeburn and Willis were our Shiva and Parvati, and now there was grief in Heaven.
The finances of Vulcan had always been precarious, but by this time they were becoming desperate. The governors began to realise that even an extra ten boys or another appeal (rather soon after the last one) wouldn’t be enough to resolve the difficulties. They began to look into the possibility of setting the school up on a different basis. One idea was that the Department of Education and Science, which had declared the school an invaluable asset, might step in with a grant. This turned out to be wishful thinking. There was no precedent for making such a grant to a school outside the state system. Nor would the department take over the running of the school, turning it into a national resource and funding it out of national taxation.
This would have been the fairest and most logical way of proceeding, but again unprecedented. Instead the department brought pressure to bear on the County of Berkshire, successfully in the end, to take over a school which drew most of its pupils from outside the county. A price was agreed that would enable the school to pay off its debts.
Alan Raeburn opposed all the suggested alternatives. He would have preferred the school to close down rather than lose its independence. He felt particularly betrayed that Marion took another point of view. He fought a long rearguard action against the changes. First he resigned as co-principal, leaving Marion in sole charge. He was the only governor to vote against the proposed take-over by the County of Berkshire, and when — eventually — the motion was passed he resigned from the committee, severing his connection with the school. After that he and Millicent moved north.
It’s hard not to side with Marion Willis on the level of economic realism. Closing the school would deprive future pupils of the closest approach to mainstream education they were likely to get, quite apart from throwing the present school population back into a system with a marked tendency to let them down — which was why the school had been founded in the first place. There were personal consequences, too, attached to the defiant line Raeburn was advocating. Alan and Marion would have been left with huge personal debts, and the whole little army of sponsors and patrons would have been badly let down.
It’s easy to imagine that her emotions were involved, all the same, in the decision to take the school in a direction that Alan would never have been able to accept. I don’t mean that she was motivated by revenge, to pay back one betrayal with another. She was different after the engagement party, that’s all. Once upon a time she would have voted with Alan without question, and to hell with the consequences. Bankruptcy wouldn’t have frightened her from his side. Now Millicent was by his side instead, and he couldn’t count on Marion’s loyalty in the old way. They had been more than friends once, and much more than allies, but he had re-drawn those lines in a way which excluded her. It wasn’t Alan and Marion against the world any more, and it could never be the same way again.
The secret marriage between Alan and Marion was real, as was proved by the wounds it left, the pain of its ending. He came to regard her as a traitor who had allowed his dreams to be sold off, and she saw him as a sort of bigamist even though their association had been purely professional. He had made her no promise.
The magnetic hill
I tried to avoid Luke Squires after the week at Woodlarks camp, an adventure which had been mainly a disappointment. He wasn’t easily avoided if he wanted to see you, though, any more than he could be found if he had decided to disappear. I was leaving the new toilet block one day when he appeared before me. He swerved his wheelchair to a halt in front of mine, as if it was a police car smoothly intercepting a car making its get-away after a bank robbery.
‘This is the third week of term,’ he said lazily. ‘And we’ve hardly had a chance to see each other … There are lots of things we have to catch up on …’
Even now I don’t know why he was pursuing me. Perhaps he was so unused to anyone saying no to him that it piqued an interest which would otherwise have died down.
‘What catching up is there to do?’ I asked, rather lamely.
‘Well, there’s the problem of my German,’ he drawled carelessly. ‘Miss Willis likes me a lot — you know it, I know it, the whole school knows it. But she says the days are long gone when you could get good marks just because a teacher likes you. She says that I must stop being so lazy, and get down and do some work.’ His hand played over his knee and thigh, coming to rest on the magnetic hill between his legs. ‘But it’s a tough language, you know. The way all those words keep changing depending on what they are doing or what is being done to them. It’s very confusing …’ His prehensile wrist — hand complex gave two or three thoughtful squeezes to his crotch, while I tried to keep my eyes on his face.
‘Then Miss Willis had a brain-wave. She said, “I don’t know why you don’t get more pally with John Cromer. He’s easily the best student of German we have and I’m sure you would both benefit from chumming up together”…’
I was impressed all over again by Luke’s shamelessness. If this didn’t take the Peek Frean! He had recruited poor trusting Marion into his scheme. Miss Willis had the saving grace of many autocrats — she was quite unable to tell the difference between like-minded lieutenants and charmers who would tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. She was supremely vulnerable to double agents.
Now Luke began to imitate Miss Willis’s speech, just as I had the first night I became aware of him. ‘… “I know it’s a little hard, my dear…”’, he said, ‘“no boy ever likes to receive help from a boy junior to himself …”’ He squeezed his crotch again, so that it swelled by a good half-inch. ‘… “But in this day and age there comes a time for everyone when they have to bow to someone younger than themselves. Besides, I think that you two would be very good for each other. John has a keen brain, but he doesn’t make friends easily. You on the other hand are strong and frightened of no one, but a little mental sharpening would do you no harm at all …”’
Luke was a brilliant instinctive strategist. There he was, acting out the part of Miss Willis and speaking perfectly loudly, not caring if anyone heard. He knew exactly what he could get away with. He was parroting educational platitudes all the time he was arranging an assignation with me, while pretending to be carrying out the sole principal’s wishes!
I felt his charm but fought its pull. What was it about me, really, that he wanted so much?
‘Well,’ I said, trying not to let my voice shake. ‘If you really feel I could be of any use to you, I’ll gladly help you with your German. When shall we start?’
‘Well, I’m a bit tied up tomorrow,’ he said, still in a Willis tone of voice, ‘but I’ve plenty of time for the day after. Check and see if you’ve some time then. Tell you what, go for a pee about fifteen minutes before the end of class on Thursday. I’ll do the same, and we can meet up in the toilet and make a study schedule … I’d better get back to my class,’ he went on, rather as if he was teaching it.