Free Lord Dismiss Us by Michael Campbell

boys and Staff, were on view; the boys in white surplices; all washed, brushed and on display. Psalms and hymns, and the controlling presence of the mesmeric and incomprehensible Chaplain, completed the feeling of Theatre. They sat poker-faced, one and all – and especially the Staff – but emotions were intensified, as the sentimental melodies swelled from the organ, and love, hope, sin, misery, glory and Salvation, were proclaimed in profusion within the space of an hour.
    Chapel on Sunday nights was compulsory; except for poor Jacobs, a Jew, who wandered the Quad, kicking a tennis-ball and listening to everybody else singing together within. Attendance was also required at a quarter to seven every evening before Tea, but this was only a fifteen-minute affair, with no singing and no dressing-up, and only the Master on Duty, apart from the Chaplain, was obliged to be present.
    Early on Sunday morning the Chaplain sang Holy Communion on one trumpeting, relentlessly sustained note. Failure to attend was no offence, but many likely lie-abeds were tempted out because attendance, and no other excuse, freed one from the morning service at ten.
    The latter was, therefore, a rather deserted and pale affair; and there was no sermon.
    No, nothing was to be compared with Sunday Night.
    Even the devout would have agreed to this, in terms of its especial pleasures; for there was a silent brotherhood of the devout; small but persistent, as the notable quantity of Reverends and Bishops in the Old Weatherhillian Magazine testified. They could be identified by their presence at Holy Communion on Wednesdays and Saints Days. Attendance was not obligatory, and it took some courage for a junior boy, however devout, to rise early in his dormitory and go to the Chapel.
    As for the baser ‘Hearties’, even they positively liked Sunday Night: it was the end-of-the-week sing song, and in between the singing the opportunities for whispered ribaldry, about the Staff, all present and asking for it, were manifold.
    The only variant in the performance, the only likely flaw, was the Sermon. Visiting clergy, in a rota so little changing as to afford almost word for word imitation in advance, came and bored the congregation close to hysterics. It was only the unusual vicar who believed that one could communicate with God by wireless waves who gave any satisfaction whatsoever.
    But the perfection of this first Sunday – as of the last – was that on these two nights the Reverend Cyril Starr himself spoke. And while these polemics were also known in advance, they were a ceaseless delight.
    Even New Boys, who were still losing hope after the first week, suddenly found themselves cast into a region of storm and tempest in which they belonged just as much as everyone else. Many had gone to bed on the first Sunday Night released, as by an explosion, from alienation and homesickness.
    For them, it was a surprise. But the rest knew that the Chaplain was going to give them . . . must give them, could not fail them by not giving them . . . the burning fire .

    Mrs Crabtree, like her husband, was new and not aware of this. Steele might have given warning, but it was not the sort of thing that occurred to his military mind. She did foresee the significance of the entire Community in assembly, and she also foresaw the dominance which the Reverend Cyril Starr must inevitably exert over the proceedings. She had often wished that her husband was a clergyman, like her father, but never more so than now. She was deeply interested in the Church, as well as being an intense believer in its doctrines. She felt a pang of annoyance that it was not the Headmaster but the Chaplain who, as she was going up to change, came rustling past her on the stairs in a white cloud of ecclesiastical garments. His black eyes twinkled wickedly, and ‘played about his lips’ was exactly right for his disturbing smile. She had the unpleasant impression that she was the object of amusement;