Free Lord Dismiss Us by Michael Campbell Page B

felt that the place was existing without him, and in ways unknown to him. He had made no decisions. He was set apart here, in this House. If he invaded their indoor world, silence fell; all motion ceased; eyes stared at him; questions received that dreadful, chilling reply – ‘Yes, Sir.’
    His prep schools had been small, friendly places. He had never been set apart.
    And what was going on? Outdoors, it was bewildering enough. He was haunted by a curiously disturbing little scene. On the very first day he had taken a stick and gone for a walk in the wood, and come suddenly on two boys in a clearing. They were wearing bathing-togs and lying on a ridiculously wintry bearskin rug. The older boy – who looked much the older – was attending to the other’s arm. A thorn or some such thing. He released it on Mr Crabtree’s appearance.
    ‘The weather is giving us a good start, eh?’
    ‘Yes, Sir.’
    ‘We must enjoy it while we can.’
    ‘Yes, Sir. That’s what we thought, Sir.’
    It had developed that this boy was a Prefect, and the other one had only come the previous Term.
    If there was anything of the sort that he suspected, he intended to destroy it instantly. It gave him a peculiar sense of horror.
    There seemed to be no one to turn to. The Staff was no less remote. Ashley had been excessively rude. The Chaplain, whom one should have been able to consult about moral conduct, was unapproachable. He had accompanied the Head to the Chapel and explained the seating arrangements, in an aloof manner. A comment from Crabtree about the beauty of the stained-glass had been greeted with a disagreeable smile and no response.
    Nevertheless, the Head was noted for optimism, as well as for certainty. In the approaching ceremony they would kneel as one. The Captain and crew would be together – at the turning of the tide.
    He realised that it mattered little which suit he selected: it would be almost entirely hidden by his gown.
    He felt that in the old days he would have thought of that at the beginning.

    Carleton and a boy from another House named Naylor had been made the two Chapel Prefects, because the Chaplain had determined them to be the least religious of the available twelve. They were very nearly atheists. He had a theory that preoccupation with the objects of ritual, from altar-cloth to bellrope, would effect a slow conversion. He was mildly amused to find himself wrong. They continued as stage directors with an interest in the performance, but little or none in the play itself.
    The boy, Carleton . . . brown, wavy hair and those wide-apart eyes, but oh dear, a player of games, a taker of showers . . . had been guilty of another deception two years previously. A declaration of the wish to be baptised at the age of sixteen, contrary to the viewpoint of parents who had deemed it unnecessary, had aroused the Chaplain’s sense of drama, not to mention his genuine pleasure at admitting one who was lost into the fold. He had enacted a remarkable scena by night, in secret, in the Chapel, to avoid the child embarrassment and mockery. Carleton had asked to leave the room, in the course of Prep in the Big Schoolroom, and come to the Chapel where the Reverend Cyril Starr and his attendants were gathered together under a spotlight around a vast soup tureen, like so many witches about a cauldron.
    Resplendent in white lace, the Chaplain had placed himself between the Matron and Dr Rowles, who were standing in, so to speak, as godmother and godfather, and murmured incantations over the tureen and its glittering water. After much of this, he suddenly halted, fixed Carleton with piercing eyes, and inquired of the boy whether he renounced the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, and the carnal desires of the flesh.
    ‘I renounce them all,’ Carleton declared; not with the sweeping bravado that the words seemed to imply, but in a quavering voice, having no option.
    There were more inquiries, more