The Merciless Ladies Read Free Page B

the drawing of Miss Atkins and the other two ladies. And that, is altogether more serious.’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜You appreciate that?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Dr Marshall took out a large grey handkerchief – grey perhaps from blackboards – and wiped his moustache.
    â€˜If you go on to an art school – and this would seem the obvious course – you will no doubt come to paint the nude figure many times. All artists do. All great artists have. It is their prerogative, and as an art form it is not considered to transgress the limits of decency. Nor perhaps would I have taken great exception to nude figures in your sketch-book had the faces been merely – figurative. But as it is, drawn with the faces of ladies known to us all, and all recent additions to our staff, it becomes grossly obscene. For that expulsion seems the natural punishment.’
    There was a very long silence, during which the school clock chimed something.
    Dr Marshall said: ‘I am reluctant to do that for two reasons. First that the sketch-book-was essentially private and there is no actual evidence that you intended to show it to others – though the fact that you had it in the classroom suggests otherwise. The second is that, in this holocaust we are now enduring, the minor indecencies of growing boys are dwarfed by the sacrifices they may shortly be expected to make for their king and country. That giant shadow falls over us all … So I shall cane you, Stafford, and for the moment leave it at that. But I have to warn you that if Miss Atkins or either of the other ladies should learn of this matter I may still have to dismiss you at a later date … Now as to you, Grant …’
IV
    Thereafter Paul Stafford was a more amenable pupil. If he could never be talented at the more conventional subjects, he was at least no longer idle. His inability to grasp simple principles of learning seemed less evident. I was surprised. I hadn’t thought a mere caning would wreak such a change. It was some months before I learned that Dr Marshall, in the absence of anyone capable of teaching art in the school, was himself taking Paul for two hours a week. It made all the difference.
    I got to know this after Christmas when Paul told me he had been to London and had had an interview with a M. Becker who was the principal of the Grasse School, and that he had the half promise of a place when he was seventeen. When I speculated as to what Mr Stafford thought, Paul said: ‘ Father doesn’t like it. He thinks I’ll end up in the gutter where I came from. But old Marshall has persuaded him to go along with the idea.’ He turned and stared at me with his pale long-lashed eyes. ‘It’s not going to be easy, Bill. But once I’m away from these patronizing louts …’
    â€˜They’re not really so bad’, I said. ‘ It comes natural to some people to poke fun at what they don’t understand. That’s all there is to it.’
    â€˜Which is enough’, he said. ‘Which is enough. Well … Marshall’s shown me a way, and I shall take it. I’m told there’s money in commercial art. Maybe that’s the way I’ll go about it. Become the success that Father so earnestly desires. Who knows? Anyway, I’m not going to let anything or anyone stand in my way now.’
    I looked at him and with the confidence of youth believed him. I sensed great purpose in him. It didn’t then seem to me at all a peculiar attitude of mind – an ‘I’ll show them’ attitude – with which to approach a vocation.
V
    As the war advanced my summer stays with the Lynns became longer. Their company, abnormal on first encounter, became, by failing to change, more normal in an atmosphere of bloodshed and hysteria. The war was scarcely ever mentioned except as a passing inconvenience, a world aberration that even if it could not be avoided was best