Here Be Monsters Read online

  Audley had finished grinding his teeth. ‘You were talking about money, Willy, I thought?’

  ‘Money and the classics, dear boy.’ Mr Willis was unabashed. ‘And eventually the Haddock.’

  Waltham was rich, Elizabeth remembered. In fact, it was an envied by-word in the profession, both for its salaries and for its disdain of fund-raising appeals. ‘Money, Mr Willis?’

  ‘There is a charitable trust, Elizabeth. The school was founded in the nineteenth century—Victorian buildings grafted on to the late Tudor mansion built with the stones of a Cistercian abbey. Added to in the thirties, rebuilt in the swinging sixties—and recently vastly extended to the design of Europe’s most expensive architects’ partnership, to win some international award or other. And all thanks—though not publicly—to PAM.’

  Audley breathed in. ‘PAM—Lord God!’ he murmured. ‘Of course!’

  ‘Pan-African Minerals,’ Mr Willis nodded. ‘Just a few Victorian businessmen, with a little venture capital, who speculated here and there—and elsewhere.’ Mr Willis cocked an eye at Audley. ‘Didn’t they get into Mexican railways, too? And Malayan tin? And now they’re into everything from hotels and holidays to car import franchises? They have certainly learned to speak Japanese. Because one of Waltham’s old boys—old American boys—was on General MacArthur’s staff, looking the place over before the Korean War. Isn’t that so?’

  Audley said nothing.

  ‘Well, whatever … PAM is huge now, and it has always poured money into the school. Its background hardly matters: what matters is that Waltham hands out scholarships like no other school, although it has always been very secretive about it. Just … the awards committee goes walkabout every year, and back come the pupils. still mostly British … including new British, black, brown and yellow, incidentally … but also from the old African connection, now Nigerian, and Zambian, and Zimbabwean, and all the rest … But also Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese—and Chinese before long, I’d guess, the way things are going … But only first-class material. You can’t buy into Waltham, no matter who your father is—eh?’

  He had stopped because he was aware that they were both staring fixedly at him. And when neither of them spoke he stirred uneasily.

  ‘Yes … well, you’ll soon find out more, no doubt. I only know about the school—and what I know is fairly out-of-date, too.’

  ‘Go on, Willy,’ said Audley mildly. ‘This is all quite fascinating to non-educationists—eh, Elizabeth?’

  Elizabeth didn’t like his non-educational look, which was as though to rebuke her for not knowing any of this before, except that Waltham had seduced her scholarship girls into its sixth form.

  But now Willy was getting the message too. ‘Otherwise it’s a normal school.’ He shrugged to late. ‘The pupils are uniformed—not in wing-collars of course, just jacket-and-tie”. 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 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!’

  ‘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 lar
ger 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, 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.’

  ‘Thatcher, actually, Miss Loftus—Gavin Thatcher.’ The ruined cheeks creased into a shy grin.

  ‘But no relation to our other Sovereign Lady,’ said the old man. ‘That splendid woman!’

  ‘Wimpy—you’re a trouble-maker.’ The young man looked at Audley. ‘And you’re the godson, sir? He’s told me about you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Audley pretended to know an ally when he saw one as he extended his hand. ‘And you’re from the Cambridge Science Park?’

  ‘Watch yourself, Gavin!’ snapped Mr Willis. ‘He’s tricky.’

  Elizabeth stirred herself to intervene while she was still in credit. ‘Mr Thatcher—‘

  ‘Doctor Thatcher,’ Mr Willis corrected her. ‘And she’s tricky too, Gavin. The female of the species, in fact.’

  For a moment the young man didn’t know what to say, but could only blink at her. ‘Is that your car out there, Miss Loftus? The green Morgan?’ He touched Audley with another look, but rejected him on the grounds of age and size. ‘How long did you have to wait for it?’

  ‘I bought it second-hand.’ What was he after?

  He frowned. ‘This year’s model—the registration?’

  ‘I bought it from an American serviceman, Dr Thatcher.’

  ‘With a right-hand drive?’

  He was damnably observant, for a very young Jaguar driver. ‘He was posted unexpectedly to a place where there are no cars—left or right.’ She smiled at him. ‘I was lucky.’ She didn’t want to antagonize him, but the old man had left her little to lose. ‘Were you one of Dr Thomas’s pupils, Dr Gavin?’

  Mr Willis sighed theatrically, and then circled round them to pick up the tray on which Audley had brought the drinks. ‘Hock or beer, Gavin?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’ Dr Thatcher stared at her. ‘Why do you want to know, Miss Loftus?’

  Mr Willis straightened up. ‘Gavin was the top classical scholar of his year. And a double-first thereafter … Compared with him you are an historical plumber, David—a hewer-of-wood and drawer-of-water, intellectually speaking. His involvement with the so-called high technology of the computer age stems purely from the Haddock’s advice, allied to his latent skills. It seems that some classicists are quite surprisingly competent in computer skills—rather the same way some mathematicians are allegedly muscial, if you scratch them sufficiently. Is that not all common knowledge in high places?’ He looked questioningly at Audley.

  Gavin Thatcher shook his head. That’s rubbish, of course, Dr Audley.’

  ‘Rubbish that the Haddock didn’t steer you to Business School after Cambridge?’ Mr Willis’s voice was almost old-maidish. ‘Rubbish that he didn’t then tell you about—who’s that young fellow you introduced me to, your partner-in-crime—? The ex-IBM Old Walthamite who had the idea for those esoteric devices you are presently selling to the Americans?’

  Gavin Thatcher shook his head again. ‘Who exactly do you work for, Dr Audley? May one ask?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Audley jerked his head towards the old man. ‘If we’re vouched for, does it matter?’

  That wasn’t the way to handle the top classical scholar of his year, decided Elizabeth. ‘We work for the Government, Dr Thatcher. In an indirect sort of way, which we can’t explain. But we’re also working for you. And I hope we’re working for Dr Thomas most of all, as it happens.’ She risked a glance at Mr Willis. ‘True, Mr Willis?’

  ‘Good God, young woman—don’t ask me!’ Put on the spot, Mr Willis squirmed uncomfortably. ‘I’m just a silly old bugger!’

  ‘Oh?’ It wasn’t what she’d hoped for. But she still had something in the bank with this young man. ‘But you summoned Dr Thatcher to talk to us—about Dr Thomas, surely?’ She looked at the young man.

  ‘Somewhat equivocally, Miss Loftus. If not mysteriously.’ Because she was plain he didn’t want to be cruel to her. ‘I was planning to return to Cambridge this evening. But he insisted that I must delay my departure, because of an urgent matter involving Dr Thomas. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Dr Thomas was the Second Master?’ What did she want to know, that he could tell her?

  ‘Yes.’ Doubt began to overlay his surrender.

  ‘I’ve never met him, you see.’ She must not give him time to think. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Like?’ He seemed momentarily astonished at her ignorance, to the extent that he flicked a glance at Mr Willis. ‘Well … tall, thin, eloquent and short-sighted—you mean, what’s he like—?’

  ‘He played rugger rather well when he was young,’ murmured Mr Willis.

  ‘Not in my time. He just taught the theory of the game.’

  ‘And the classics,’ murmured Audley, in a tone matching Mr Willis’s.

  ‘Yes—‘ Gavin Thatcher could sell his esoteric devices to the Americans, but he couldn’t play Audley and Mr Willis and Miss Loftus simultaneously.

  ‘Yes?’ Elizabeth gave him the rest of her capital. ‘Greek and Latin? Tell me about that.’

  ‘Yes.’ He relaxed perceptibly: whatever doubts he still had, he couldn’t relate them to Virgil’s verse or Caesar’s prose. ‘ “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes Ires’—or “Hell! said the duchess”—that’s as near as damn-it what he said, in his first lesson, on my second day at Waltham. And he said all the best Latin was exact, and compact, and elegant, and Caesar’s was as good as any, so we’d begin with him. And all we had to remember was that the Gallic Wars were like Cowboys and Indians—“How the West was won�
�.’

  He stopped, and Elizabeth hoped against hope that neither Audley nor Mr Willis, who both liked to hear the sound of their own voices, would say anything. They didn’t say anything.

  Gavin Thatcher drew a deep breath. ‘I remember … “ Thus with the years seasons return, but not to me returns day or the sweet approach of ev’n or morn”—with the emphasis on day … and “Me only cruel immortality preserves”—emphasis on me only because the order of words is one of the glories of Latin verse, of course. Although Latin isn’t in the same class as Greek.’

  Elizabeth didn’t dare look at either of them: Gavin Thatcher was already out of her class, in that other world of gold, at which lesser mortals might just guess, but in which they could never travel.

  ‘I remember quoting Catullus at him—“Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus advenio”—which we hadn’t been told to read … And he gave me hell after that: he damn well concentrated on me!’

  He wasn’t trying to be arrogant, Elizabeth cautioned herself: he was only treating them as equals, after Mr Willis had dismissed Audley as a mere historical plumber—and David in his time had been a scholar!

  This time there was no danger of them speaking. ‘In Greek we read Xenophon—“The Sea! The Sea!” -and the Gospel according to St Mark, and the Odyssey. Greek was the real thing, of course—the big thing. Not just the language, which is more fun than Latin—more intricate—but the ideas, do you see?’ He paused.

  ‘The Gospel according to Haddock,’ Audley whispered to himself.

  ‘The Gospel according to anyone worth his salt,’ murmured Mr Willis. ‘All the rest of history is a postscript, a mere postscript.’ He smiled at Audley. ‘You were wasting your time, dear boy. I told you so all those years ago, but you wouldn’t listen.’ Then he sighed. ‘But the greatest wonder of all, to me, was that they actually paid me for teaching this glorious stuff!’