The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) (4 page)

four

Slog-out
must be the best game ever invented.  It takes the basic principles of cricket
and removes all of the subtlety.  No point-scoring, no teams, no winners, no
losers.  The only object of the game is to perform with as much style as
possible.

The
bowler stands facing the Veranda at the rear of the school.  He has an old
tennis ball.  Around ten paces in front of the bowler stands the batsman,
preferably a right-hander and always a popular Senior, brandishing a tennis
racquet in both hands.  He is defending the set of stumps that has been drawn
with chalk on the wall behind him.  In the outfield to the batsman’s left wait
as many fielders as want to play, often more than forty boys.

The
bowler throws the ball towards the batsman at a gentle pace, underarm and just
above waist-height.  The bowler absolutely does not attempt to confound the
batsman with swingers, seamers, bouncers, beamers, flippers, floaters, googlies,
chinamen or pea-rollers. 

The
batsman then smashes the ball as hard as he can into the midst of the expectant
fielders.  The ideal outcome for the batsman is that the ball sails through the
air, clean over the heads of the admiring fielders, and lands, with a plop, in
the Swimming Pool about seventy yards to his left.  If he achieves this, he
will be celebrated as a hero and duly worshipped for the rest of the day.

The
aim for anyone in the field is to catch the ball on the full in the most
flamboyant manner possible, ideally sprinting fifteen yards, diving a further
five, plucking the ball one-handed out of the air, and completing the motion
with an elaborate commando-roll.  Additional praise is available for an
inch-perfect return-throw to the bowler and, most importantly, for displaying
absolutely no smugness.  Again, if any boy achieves all of this, he will
likewise be celebrated as a hero and duly worshipped for the rest of the day.

Freddie
and I were standing out in the field, waiting for the tennis ball to fly in our
direction.

“I
told
you Barrington didn’t see you in the Dungeon,” said Freddie.

“I’m
not so sure, Fred,” I replied.  Obviously I was extremely relieved that the
Colonel hadn’t said anything about it, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was just
impossible that he hadn’t seen me.  “He must be up to something,” I said.  “The
only reason I can think that he wouldn’t have punished me or reported me is
that he doesn’t want anyone knowing
he
was down there too.”

Freddie
shrugged.

“Anyway,”
he said, “I think we’d better keep clear of Vanderpump for a while.  He’ll be
after us.”

“We
don’t need to worry about him,” I lied.   

I
had always tried to pretend that it didn’t upset me when people talked the way
Vanderpump had about my father when we had been out in the Forest.  But it
did. 

My
mother always said that he would return, any moment.  I had worked out some
time ago that I had to try and convince myself that he was gone forever just so
that I could get on with things, but it’s impossible not to hope.  However much
time passed, I would always be sure that I would see him again.  My mother,
like most mothers of boys whose fathers had fallen in the War or had been taken
away during the Resistance, hardly ever spoke about him.  All she would tell
me, whenever I asked, was that he was a very brave man and that I was not to listen
to anything anyone said about him.  And that he would come back to us.

I
hated Vanderpump.  We were told that we were not supposed to speak about our
fathers, but Vanderpump didn’t care for that.  He had no shame at all.

“Anyway,”
I added, “he’s an idiot.  He’s bound to find someone else to get angry with
before the next time I see him.”

“Well,”
said Freddie, changing the subject, “when do you think we should look for this
book Mr. English told us about?  I
told
you there was a false book back
there somewhere.  What was it?  Al de Sucksley?”

“I
think he said “Huxley”.  But he was just recommending a book.  He can’t have
been helping us find a secret room.  Anyway, even if he was, there’s no way we
can look for it now.  Not after Barrington caught us.”

Archie
Bartholomew-Crump, known as “ABC”, the Head Boy, was swaggering into bat.  This
should be good.  He was the opening batsman for the 1
^st
XI and
captain of tennis.

“Tom,
look!”  Freddie was pointing over to our left where Barrington was strolling
over the gravel towards the 1
^st
XI pitch with Doctor Saracen. 

“Looks
like they’re having an argument,” I said. 

Colonel
Barrington was gesticulating dramatically, clearly trying to impress a point of
view upon Doctor Saracen.  From this distance, it was impossible to hear what
he was saying, but what was clear was that he was becoming very irate.  Saracen
then stopped walking and stood shaking his head and raising his hands in
impatient exasperation.  He then turned with a shrug of the shoulders and set
off back towards the school building.  The Colonel stood for a moment where he was
with his hands on his hips and then he hurried after Doctor Saracen.

But
nobody else seemed to have noticed because, just then, ABC had managed to hit
the ball so cleanly that it scudded miles up into the air, far over the heads
of all of the boys in the field.  It plummetted downwards like a Stuka Dive
Bomber towards the swimming pool, bounced off the diving board and disappeared
forever in a dense rhododendron. 

Everyone
was cheering, even some of the teachers who were admiring the game with pre-dinner
sherry from their vantage point on the terrace above the Veranda.  ABC, of
course, in the time-honoured spirit of slog-out, expressed no pride or pleasure
whatsoever, and handed the racquet modestly to the next batsman.

But
something else had caught Freddie’s attention. 

“Tom,
what’s that?” he asked, pointing to where Barrington and Doctor Saracen had
stopped during their altercation.

“What?” 
I was straining to see.

“Look. 
There’s something on the gravel there.”

I
still couldn’t see anything.

“Are
you blind?  Come on,” he said.  We started to run over just as the bell rang to
signal Tea.

“Here,”
he said, reaching down, “One of them has dropped his wallet.”

As
he opened it to look inside, a piece of paper fell out onto the gravel.

“Look,”
I said, bending down to pick it up.  “A photo.”  I peered at it closely.  “Who
do you reckon these people in it are?”

The
photo had obviously been taken a long time ago because it had faded somewhat. 
It was of two people: a blonde woman in a floral dress and a tall man,
athletically built and wearing a light-coloured suit, both shading their eyes
from the sun.  It was impossible to make out anything in the background, but,
wherever they were, it looked hot and bright.

“Surely
that can’t be Barrington, can it?”  I said in amazement, pointing at the tall,
dashing young man with jet black hair on the left of the photo. 

“Blimey!”
exclaimed Freddie.  “Definitely.  But he looks so...
happy
!  And look
there: he has his arm around that woman.  I never knew Barrington was married.”

“Nor
did I,” I said.  In spite of the fact that the photo had bleached, it was
obvious that this lady was very beautiful indeed.  She gazed proudly up at this
other Barrington, who struck a pioneering pose, perhaps in jest.

“Anyway,
we’d better get back in,” I said.  One or two stragglers were heading indoors. 
“Let’s hand this in at the Under-Secretary’s office.”

***

The
Third Form prep-room was also Mrs. Stowaway’s History classroom.  My desk was
at the back.  Directly in front of me was the back of Peregrine’s head.  In
front of him was the back of Freddie’s.

The
day had become no cooler and it was now an uncomfortably warm evening.  A fly pestered
my ear as I shifted in my seat.

Anders
Pontevecchio checked his watch.  He was the prefect monitoring Form Three that
evening.  He was sat at Stowaway’s desk.

Pontevecchio
was head of Swallows, 1
^st
XI wicketkeeper, 1
^st
XI centre-forward
and first violin.  He was the sort of sickeningly brilliant all-rounder that
his peers would probably want to despise, if only he wasn’t such a nice guy. 
He was every Junior’s favourite prefect.  Professor Ludendorff referred to him
as the school’s
Übermensch or Superman, something
which Pontevecchio always seemed to find very embarrassing.

“Right,
chaps,” he announced, “prep’s over and Mr. Furlong’s taking a swim if any of
you are keen”.

This
brought about some stilted cheering, the slamming of desk-lids, and a swift
exodus from the classroom.  Freddie stayed where he was, though, and called me
over to his desk.

“Not
swimming, you two?” inquired Pontevecchio.

“Actually,”
said Freddie, “Turnpike was going to give me a bit of help with these
equations.” 

I
looked at Freddie in puzzlement, trying to work out what he was up to.

“Ah! 
Good man, Turnpike!” Pontevecchio hooted.  He had a preposterously posh accent
and peppered his conversations with turns of phrase that are really better
suited to elderly naval officers.  Expressions such as “splendid”, “good egg”,
“not half bad”, and “I say!”.

 “Ponters,”
Freddie began, “about Barrington... Well, I was wondering, I don’t suppose you
know if he has ever been married, do you?”

Pontevecchio
hesitated for a moment.  “What makes you ask, Strange?”

“Oh
nothing really,” said Freddie, feigning disinterest.  “We just found his wallet
earlier and it had a photograph of him with a lady.”

Pontevecchio
ran his hand through his hair, deciding whether or not to tell us something. 

“Look
here,” he said, staring intently at Freddie, “you cannot repeat any of what I
am about to tell you to anyone.  Anyone at all.  Okay?” 

“I
certainly won’t,” vowed Freddie.

“Good. 
Well,” his voice dropped to a conspiratorial volume and, looking over his shoulder,
he sat down at desk in front of us, “it’s rather an interesting story actually,
which I was told by some chaps who left the school a couple of years ago. 
Nobody knows exactly what happened and, of course, I can only tell you what
I’ve heard.”

I
sat down. 

“It
was out in the Gold Coast, in Africa, just after the Surrender,” began Pontevecchio. 
“Barrington had served out in Africa, you see, with Doctor Boateng, and after
the Axis Victory, the two of them set up a school for war-orphans and children
whose parents had been put in prison.”

“Gosh!”
said Freddie, “It’s hard to imagine someone like Barrington being interested in
doing something to help other people, especially children.”

“Well,
Colonel Barrington was a very different man back in those days, you see,”
Pontevecchio said.  I thought of the fresh-faced young man with the jet black
hair in the photo.

“Anyway,”
continued Pontevecchio...

***

There
was an occasion after the Colonel had been out there for a year or two when
there was an outbreak of malaria at the school.  Sadly this was not unusual,
but this time it was fateful for Barrington.  Two of the children were so ill
one night that they needed to be rushed to the nearest hospital for immediate
treatment. 

The
hospital was, of course, in reality, a series of makeshift shelters, sheets of
corrugated iron slung hastily over wooden supports, rows of deflated mattresses
on concrete floors, fatigued doctors rushing pell-mell from one clammy,
anguished patient to another, administering dwindling remedies in strict order
of likelihood of survival.

But
there, amid the pandemic, Barrington encountered a young and beautiful English nurse,
working as a volunteer.  Her patients believed that her blonde hair gave her a
divine ability to cure them.  So they called her “the Angel of Accra”.   

The
Colonel, seasoned officer of the British army, was disarmed.  On seeing her, it
was as if someone had applied a defibrillator to his chest, issuing a monstrous
jolt from which his heart could never recover.  The panic of urgent medical
activity, cries of desperate relatives, all echoed distantly around him.

They
fell adventurously in love. 

They
married on New Year’s Day with promises to spend the rest of their life in
Africa, growing old and adopting orphaned children.

***

Freddie
shook his head.  “I still find it hard to believe you are talking about the
same person,” he said.

“Well,”
said Pontevecchio, his voice darkening, “the next part of the story will
explain that.  But this is where it all gets a bit uncertain.  Nobody, not even
Barrington himself, knows what happened next.  But one of the chaps who told me
about it, his father worked for the Kommissar out there at around that time...”