Free R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield by To Serve Them All My Days Page B

birds roosting about here. Besides, this is a job for a bachelor if you mean to make a go of it. Miserable pay, no real prospects unless you strike lucky, and a fresh family every four to five years. What woman in her senses would take that on?' He stood up, lighting another cigarette. 'What the devil are we doing, sitting here in the fog and talking drivel? Come up to my rooms and let's do our celebrating in the warm,' and without waiting for David's assent he stalked off, leading the way through the quadrangle arch and up the steep flight of slate steps to his quarters.
    That was the beginning of his tacit alliance with Howarth and he was to be grateful for it, for Howarth, by far the prickliest pear of the common room, was a counterpoise to Carter and one or two of the older men who had already begun to identify him as a radical. He had a conviction that this was not so much on account of his discussions with senior boys on the war, or his championship of a poet like Siegfried Sassoon, who had bravely challenged the establishment the previous year, but because they saw him as someone better qualified than they were to communicate with a generation that had moved into adolescence in the last four years. Howarth, for his part, recognised and accepted this, as indeed did Herries himself. Their patronage probably encouraged men like Carter to think of him as an interloper currying special privileges on the strength of his war record.
    Three other shifts in the pattern of his life at Bamfylde occurred before the anniversary of his arrival came round. One was distressing, one reassuring. The third was a compromise, made with the object of closing the breach between him and the commandant of the Officers' Training Corps.
    The compromise was proposed by Algy Herries, an admitted past master at reconciling extreme points of view. Hearing of David's uncompromising refusal to take part in military exercises, he buttonholed him outside the tuckshop between periods one December morning and said, gaily, 'You're a Welshman, Powlett-Jones, and all the Welsh are musical. How do you fancy yourself as a bandmaster?'
    'A bandmaster, Headmaster? You mean a stand-in for Pym, as orchestra leader?'
    'No, dear boy. As the organiser of a drum and fife band for the Corps. We've had a legacy. A consignment of instruments from an Old Boy, name ofCherriton. Before my time, but it seems he was a local Volunteer enthusiast up in Yorkshire, before the Volunteers were merged into the Territorials. They had a band and Cherriton stipulated in his will that the instruments should be sent on to us. They arrived yesterday, half a cartload of them. Do you play an instrument?'
    His relationship with Herries was sufficiently relaxed to encourage him to slip back into the familiar idiom and he replied, smiling, 'Play the piano by ear, I do, Mister Herries. Blew the cornet too, as a boy in Chappel now,' and Herries responded, 'You see, I have second sight. We're not hoping to qualify for tattoo status, at the Tidworth annual camps. All Carter wants is something to jolly the company along on route marches.' He glanced shrewdly at David under his tufted brows. 'You and Carter don't hit it off, do you?'
    'I wouldn't say that. He seems to resent my not taking an active part in the Corps but frankly, sir, I've had a bellyful of bullshine and brass. Did Carter actually propose me for bandmaster?'
    'No, he didn't. As a matter of fact he doesn't yet know we've got the instruments, but he's put in several requests to the Governors for a band allocation over the years. It's my idea. I'm not putting any pressure on you to join the Corps. It's run on a purely voluntary basis, even for the boys, and this job is unofficial. You wouldn't have to appear in uniform, or even turn up on parade. Just supervise the practices.'
    It was as close to an order as Algy Herries ever issued concerning extra-scholastic pursuits. Put like this David did not see how he could refuse without seeming