With scarcely a minute to spare the seven boys arrived at the Chapel precincts, passed the line of masters waiting to make an entrance from the cloisters, and took their places, all of them sitting together. That something was wrong this morning was at once apparent to their peers; curiosity was whetted as prayers were mumbled, and hymns sung with roistering enthusiasm. The grave-faced chaplain conducted the service, briefly touching upon the temptations in the wilderness, since it was the time of year to do so. His gravity was a familiar quality in him, in no way caused by what had occurred in the night, which he did not know about. ‘For it is written,’ he quoted, ‘He shall give his angels charge over thee.’ Tidily with that, he brought his exposition to an end. As boys and masters, all formally gowned, filed back into the fresh air, the organ voluntary was by Handel.
There was a general dispersal while, increasing in volume, talk began. Boys went several ways, to widely scattered classrooms, the masters in one direction only, to collect from their common-room what books were immediately needed. Hambrose and Accrington remained together, as did Macluse and Napier and Newcombe, all three of whom belonged in a cleverer set. Forrogale had a piano lesson; Olivier had been summoned by the Headmaster. Each of the seven had on his mind the outrage that had occurred, and neither resentment nor anger had receded.
Forrogale practised while he waited, since he had not practised much in the time that had passed since he and Mr Hancock last had met. In the Headmaster’s house the blue light above the drawing-room door was extinguished when the school butcher and handyman, Dynes, left the room. He winked at Olivier in a sinister manner, implying that he knew more than he did about Olivier’s summons. The winking went unacknowledged, since it was one of Dynes’s usual ploys. Olivier rapped lightly on a panel of the door and was told to come in.
‘I am disappointed,’ the Headmaster declared at once, leading the way from the fire against which he had been warming himself to a small adjoining room untidy with books and papers and confiscated objects. A burly, heavily made man, he sat down behind a desk while Olivier stood. ‘Disappointed to note,’ he went on, ‘that you have failed to come up to scratch in any one of the three scientific subjects. Yet it seems you yourself had chosen the scientific side of things.’ He broke off to peer at a piece of paper he had drawn towards him. ‘Your ambitions are in that direction?’
‘I was curious to know more about science, sir.’
‘Sit down, Olivier.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You say curious?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Now tell me why you are curious in that way. Remember I have a duty - and a conscience if I knowingly release upon the innocent world the ignorant and the inept. The fees at this school are high, Olivier. They are high because expectations are high. Your housemaster has said this to you. You are here this morning to be made aware of the seriousness we attach to it. When you went on to the scientific side you were not driven by vocation?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You indulged a curiosity. You indulged yourself: that can be dangerous. ’
Why did the man have to speak in that pompous, prissy way? Olivier asked himself. If it was self-indulgence simply to wish to learn more since he knew so little, then it was self-indulgence. In what way dangerous? he wondered, but did not ask. That he had failed to perform adequately in the laboratory had not surprised him, nor did it now.
He said he was sorry, and the Headmaster spoke of the school’s belief in tradition, which he did on all convenient occasions. What he extolled had little, if anything at all, to do with Olivier’s failure. That this was so was a tradition in itself, all deviations from required behaviour assumed to have a source in careless disregard of time-hardened precepts and mores. This Headmaster’s predecessors had in their day advocated such attention to the past, to the achievements of boys when they became men, to the debts they owed. In turn, Olivier’s predecessors had listened with the same degree of scepticism and disdain.
‘Shall we put it like this,’ the present Headmaster suggested, ‘that you promise me this morning to knuckle down? That we review the circumstances in, say, five weeks’ time?’
‘Or I could give up science, sir.’
‘Give up? I hardly like the sound of that.’
‘I made a mistake, sir.’
‘Do not compound it, Olivier. Failure is a punishment in itself. Perhaps you might dwell on that?’
