Free Fall

  “—thought I could trust you. And so I can, most of you. But there is one boy who cannot be trusted. He uses a lesson—not even an ordinary lesson——”

  “But, miss! Please, miss——”

  Miss Pringle had me standing up where she wanted me. If I did not understand the enormity of my offence, if I was still acquainted with innocence and held the belief that there was room for me somewhere in the scheme of things, nevertheless Miss Pringle felt herself able to undermine me and dedicated herself to that end.

  “Come out here in front of the class.”

  There was a strange obedience about my two hands that grasped the sides of the seat and helped to lift me. My feet trod obediently and deeper into the dark. She had implied so much in one sentence. By an inflection, a quiver of the topaz she had lifted this episode now above laughing so that the rest of the class had to readjust to seriousness. Miss Pringle had enough showmanship to know that she must not run away from her audience. She gave them time to settle into the new mood by looking so long and searchingly into my face that my blush burned and their silence began to fill with excitement.

  “That’s what you think the Bible is for then. Oh, no, Mountjoy, don’t start to deny it. Do you suppose that I really don’t know what you’re like? We all know where you come from, Mountjoy, and we were willing to regard it as your misfortune.”

  I saw her brown leather shoes that were polished like chestnuts take a little step back.

  “But you have brought the place with you. Money has been spent on you, Mountjoy. You have been given a great opportunity. But instead of profiting by it, instead of being grateful, you use your time here, searching through the Bible with a snigger, searching for—for——”

  She paused and the silence was deeper still. They all knew what little boys searched the Bible for, because most of them did it. Perhaps that was why my crime—but what was it, I thought?—my crime seemed monstrous to them, too. I thought then, that the trouble was my lack of ability to explain myself. I had a hazy feeling that if only I could find the right words, Miss Pringle would understand and the whole business be disposed of. But I know now that she would not have accepted even the most elaborately accurate explanation. She would have dodged it with furious agility and put me back in the wrong. She was clever and perceptive and compelled and cruel.

  “Look at me. I said, ‘Look at me!’”

  “Miss.”

  “And then—then! To have the insolence—there is no other word for it—to have the insolence to throw your nastiness in my face!”

  She had both white hands up and away. They were cleaning their own fingers as if they would never be clean. The cascade of lace was moving quickly in and out. Now the class understood that this was to be execution in form, public and long drawn out.

  Miss Pringle proceeded to the next step. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. She required evidence of misdoing more than my unfortunate slip in theology. Of course there was one sure way of getting that. Most of the masters and mistresses in that school did not care enough about us to be cruel. They even recognized our right to separate existence and this recognition took a pleasant shape. We were made to keep our exercise-books very clean and neat; but we had rough work books, too; and by custom, unspoken, undefined, these books were private. So long as you did not defile them too openly or be outrageously wasteful, they were as private to us as his study to the scholar.

  Had she convinced herself? Did she believe by now that I regularly searched the Bible for smut? Did she not understand that we were two of a kind, the earnest metaphysical boy and the tormented spinster, or did she know that and get an added kick from hatred of her own image? Did she really think she would find smut in my rough book; or was she willing to take anything legally wrong if she could find it?

  “Get your rough work book.”

  I went back to my desk underground. The silence vibrated and Johnny would not meet my eye. One of my stockings was down round my ankle. My right ankle. There was no cover on the rough work book. The first four pages were crumpled and then the pages got flatter and cleaner. Since the first page now did duty for the cover most of my drawing there had worn away.

  “Ugh!”

  Miss Pringle refused my offer.

  “I am not going to touch it, Mountjoy. Put it on the desk. Now. Turn over the pages. Well? What do you say?”

  “Miss.”

  I began to turn the pages and the class watched eagerly.

  Arithmetic and a horse pulling the roller over the town cricket pitch. Some wrongly spelt French verbs, repeated. A cart on the weighing machine outside the town hall. Lines. I must not pass notes in class. I must not—the old DH coming round a tower of clouds. Answers to grammar questions. Arithmetic. Latin. Some profiles. A landscape, not drawn, so much as noted down and then elaborated in my own private notation. For how could a pencil convey the peculiar attraction of a white chalk road seen from miles away as it wound up the side of the downs? In the middle distance was a complication of trees and hillocks into which the eye was drawn and into which the troubled spectator could vanish. This was not sketched but put down meticulously. This was so much my own private property that I turned a page hurriedly.

  “Wait! Turn back.”

  Miss Pringle looked from me to the landscape, then back again.

  “Why do you hurry over that page, Mountjoy? Is there something there that you don’t want me to see?”

  Silence.

  Miss Pringle examined my landscape inch by inch. I could feel the excitement of my fellows, now transformed to bloodhounds on the trail and hot on the back of my neck.

  Miss Pringle extended a white finger and began to give the edge of the rough work book little taps so that it moved round and presented my hillocks, my scalloped downs and deep woodlands to her, upright. Her hand clenched and whipped away. She drew a shuddering breath. She spoke and her voice was deep with awe and passionate anger, with outrage and condemnation.

  “Now, I see!”

  She turned to the class.

  “I had a little garden, children, full of lovely flowers. I was glad to work in my little garden because the flowers were so gay and lovely. But I did not know that there were weeds and slugs and snails and hideous slimy, crawling things——”

  Then she turned on me and tore a vivid gash through my soul with the raw edge of a suddenly savage voice.

  “I shall see that the rector knows about this, Mountjoy, and I’m going to take you to the headmaster now!”

  I waited outside the door with my book while she went into the headmaster’s study. I heard their voices and the interview was short. She came out and swept past me and then the headmaster told me, sternly, to come in.

  “Give me the book.”

  He was angry, there was no doubt about that. I suppose she had pointed out what was unnecessary—that we were a mixed school and this sort of thing must be stamped on immediately. I think perhaps he was resigned to having an expulsion on his hands.

  He thumbed through the whole book, paused and then thumbed through it again. When he spoke next, the gruffness had gone from his voice—or rather was modified as though he knew that he must retain some outrage for the sake of appearances.

  “Well, Mountjoy. Which page does Miss Pringle object to?”

  She seemed to object to all of them. I was confused by events and unable to answer.

  He thumbed through again. His voice became testy.

  “Now listen, Mountjoy. Which page is it? Did you tear it out while you were waiting outside?”

  I shook my head. He examined the sewn centre of the book, saw that there was no odd page. He looked back at me.

  “Well?”

  I found my voice.

  “It was that one, sir, there.”

  The headmaster bent over the book. He examined my landscape. I saw that the complex centre trapped his sight, too. His eye went forward, plunged through the paper among hillocks and trees. He withdrew from
it and his forehead was puzzled. He glanced down at me, then back at the paper. Suddenly he did what Miss Pringle had done—turned the book so that my lovely curved downs were upright, the patch of intricate woodland projecting from them.

  We entered a place then which I should now call chaos. I did not know what was the matter, I felt nothing but pain and astonishment. But he, the adult, the headmaster, he did not know anything either. He had taken a pace forward and the ground had disappeared. He had realized something in a flash and the knowledge had presented him at once with a number of insoluble problems. But he was a wise man and he did what is always best in such circumstances; that is, nothing. He allowed me to watch his face on which so much became visible. I saw the results of his knowledge even though I could not share it. I saw an appalled realization, I saw impotence to cope, I saw even the beginning of wild laughter.

  Then he went and looked out of the window for a little.

  “You know, Mountjoy, we don’t give you a rough work book to draw in, do we?”

  “Sir.”

  “Miss Pringle objects to your wasting so much time with a pencil.”

  There was nothing to be said to this. I waited.

  “These pages——”

  He turned round then and opened the book to show me, but caught sight of something. It was a page where I had drawn as many of the form as I could. Some of them had defeated me; but for one or two I had drawn face after face, elaborating then simplifying so that the final result gave me a deep satisfaction as I sent the passionate message down the pencil. He pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and held the page close.

  “That’s young Spragg!”

  At that the chaos came out of my eyes. It was wet and warm and I could not stop.

  “Oh, now, look here!”

  I felt round me for a handkerchief but, of course, I had none. I took out my bright school cap and used it instead. When I could see again the headmaster was stroking his moustache and looking defeated. He gave himself another breather out of the window. Gradually I dried up.

  “Well, there you are then. Keep your drawing within bounds. I think perhaps I’d better keep this rough work book. And try to——”

  He paused for a long time.

  “Try to understand that Miss Pringle cares deeply about you all. See if you can please her. Well?”

  “Sir.”

  “And tell Miss Pringle that I—should be glad to have a word with her in break. Right?”

  “Sir.”

  “You’d better go and—no. Go now. Straight back to the class as you are. I’ll see that you get a new rough work book.”

  I went back to the class with my stained face and gave her the headmaster’s message. She ignored me save for one imperious sweep of the hand and a pointing finger. I saw why. In my absence she had had my desk moved out of the body of the class. It rested now against the wall right out in front where I should not contaminate the others by my presence. I sank into the seat and was alone. Here I was, with the waves of public disapprobation beating on the back of my neck. I have never minded them since. There I remained for the rest of that term. Sitting alone, I was introduced to the Stuarts. Sitting alone I followed Miss Pringle forward from Gethsemane.

  Nowadays I can understand a great deal about Miss Pringle. The male priest at the altar might have taken a comely and pious woman to his bosom; but he chose to withdraw into the fortress of his rectory and have to live with him a slum child, a child whose mother was hardly human. I understand how I must have taxed her, first with my presence, then with my innocence and finally with my talent. But how could she crucify a small boy, tell him that he sat out away from the others because he was not fit to be with them and then tell the story of that other crucifixion with every evidence in her voice of sorrow for human cruelty and wickedness? I can understand how she hated, but not how she kept on such apparent terms of intimacy with heaven.

  *

  But now, on that first ignorant and chaotic day we were still with Moses. The harrow had been over my soul and I cared a little less about him.

  “And so as a sign to Moses that the Lord was present, the bush burned with fire but was not consumed away.”

  High in the belfry, relief sounded. We piled out of the room, I uncertain of my reception after my crucifixion and went straight into the lecture-room for general elementary science.

  Mr. Shales, Nick Shales, Old Nick was there, waiting for us. He was impatient to begin. The light shone from his enormous bald head and his thick glasses. He had cleaned the board with the tail of his gown and a pillar of white dust hung in the air round him. There was bent glass on the demonstration bench and he stood, leaning his weight on his knuckles, and watching us as we clambered up the steps between the ranged forms.

  Nick was the best teacher I ever knew. He had no particular method and he gave no particular picture of brilliance; it was just that he had a vision of nature and a passionate desire to communicate it. He respected children too. This was not a verbal respect for children’s rights because it never occurred to Nick that they had any. They were just human beings and he treated each one with serious attention indistinguishable from courtesy. He kept discipline by ignoring the need to enforce it. See him now, waiting impatiently for us all, he included, to examine some fascination of fact, some absorbing reality which never could fail to astonish——

  “Better take this down in your books because we are going to try and disprove it. Ready? Here you are then. ‘Matter can neither be destroyed nor created’.”

  Obediently we wrote. Nick began to talk. He was imploring us to find a case where matter was either destroyed or created.

  “In a shell.”

  “A candle burning——”

  “Eating.”

  “When a chicken comes out——”

  Eagerly we gave him examples. Sagely he nodded and disposed of each.

  Yet not one of us thought of Miss Pringle next door and her lessons. We might have shouted together that a burning bush that burned and was not consumed away surely violated the scheme of Nick’s rational universe as he unfolded it to us. But no one said a word about her. We crossed from one universe into another when we came out of her door and went into his. We held both universes in our heads effortlessly because by the nature of the human being, neither of them was real. Both systems were coherent—was it some deep instinct that told us the universe does not come so readily to heel and kept us from inhabiting either? For all Miss Pringle’s vivid descriptions that world existed over there, not here.

  Neither was this world of Nick’s a real thing. It was not enveloping; each small experimental result was not multiplied out to fill the universe. If he did the multiplication we watched and marvelled. Nick would paint a picture of the stars in their courses as a consequence of his demonstrations of captive gravity. Then not science but poetry filled him and us. His deductions stood on tiptoe reaching out to the great arithmetical and stellar dance; but neither he nor we looked at the sky. A generation was to pass before I myself saw the difference between the imaginary concept and the spread picture overhead. Nick thought he spoke of real things.

  A candle burnt under a bell-jar. Water rose and filled the space once occupied by oxygen. The candle went out but not before it had lighted up a universe of such orderliness and sanity that one must perforce cry; the solution to all problems is here! If there were problems, nevertheless they must contain their own solution. It would not be a rational universe in which problems were insoluble.

  What men believe is a function of what they are; and what they are is in part what has happened to them. And yet here and there in all that riot of compulsion comes the clear taste of potatoes, element so rare the isotope of uranium is abundant by comparison. Surely Nick was familiar with that taste for he was a selfless man. He was born of poor parents and had nearly killed himself working his way up. Knowledge, therefore, was most precious to him. He had no money for apparatus and made things work from tin and bent glas
s and vulcanite. His mirror galvanometer was a wonder of delicacy; and once he produced the aurora borealis for us, captive like a rare butterfly, in a length of glass tubing. He did not care to make technicians of us, he wanted us to understand the world around us. There was no place for spirit in his cosmos and consequently the cosmos played a huge practical joke on him. It gave Nick a love of people, a selflessness, a kindness and justice that made him a homeland for all people; and at the same time it allowed him to preach the gospel of a most drearily rationalistic universe that the children hardly noticed at all. At the beginning of break he could not get away to the staffroom for the crowd of children round his dirty gown who were questioning, watching, or just illogically and irrationally wanting to be near. He would answer patiently, would say when he did not know the answer, would receive the creature before him openly as of equal stature and importance. Nick had come out of a slum as I had, but by his own brains and will. He was not lifted; he lifted himself and his short body was the legacy of semi-starvation and years of overwork. He was a socialist and had been one in the heat of the day; but his socialism was like his natural philosophy; logical and kind and of astonishing beauty. He saw a new earth, not one in which he himself would have more money and do less work for it, but one in which we country children would have schools as good as Eton. He wanted the whole bounty of the earth for us and for all people. Sometimes now that the British Empire has been dissolved and I meet natives of one hot land or another who are triumphant in their claims to have freed themselves, I think of Nick; Nick who would have freed them sixty years ago to his own cost. Yet he had no possessions himself; he neither drank nor smoked nor had a car. He had nothing that I saw except an old blue serge suit and a black gown gnawed into a net by acid. He denied the spirit behind creation; for what is nearest the eye is hardest to see.

  These two people, Nick Shales and Rowena Pringle, loom larger behind me as I get older. Mine is the responsibility but they are part reasons for my shape, they had and have a finger in my pie. I cannot understand myself without understanding them. Because I have pondered them both so deeply I know now things about them which I did not know then. I always knew that Miss Pringle hated Nick Shales; and now, because I am so much like her, I know why. She hated him because he found it easy to be good. The so-respectable school marm with her clean fingers was eaten up with secret desires and passions. No matter how she built up the dam on this and that, the unruly and bilious flood of her nature burst forth. May she not have tortured herself in despair and self-loathing, every time she tortured me? And how she must have writhed, to see Nick, the rationalist, followed by children as if he were a saint! No one liked her, except a succession of dim and sycophantic girls, a line of acolytes not worth having. Perhaps she half understood how flimsy a virtue her accidental virginity was, perhaps sometimes in a grey light before the first bird she saw herself as in a mirror and knew she was powerless to alter. But to Nick the rationalist, the atheist, all things were possible.