Free Guy Renton by Alec Waugh

slight anxiety in his voice. Guy remembered what his mother had said about Franklin feeling himself neglected. Barbara was the one before whom he could cut a dash. He was indifferent about Margery. “I suppose she’s more or less neutral isn’t she?”
    â€œEntirely.”
    Franklin’s expression clouded; Guy had an impression that hehad not particularly relished, though he had invited, the use of the ‘entirely’. Franklin liked people to be either violently for or violently against him. Guy suspected that he was rather enjoying the whole business; the being in the centre of the stage.
    His mother he had left till last. “Is she very disturbed?” he asked.
    Guy nodded. “Naturally; but on your account. She’s wondering what you yourself feel about it all. What do you, by the way?
    It was the first direct question Guy had put to him. For the moment Franklin seemed surprised. He hedged. “What is there for me to feel? I was getting rather bored with school.”
    â€œYou mean that you’re quite glad to leave.”
    â€œWouldn’t you be in my position?”
    â€œI’m damned if I should.”
    He remembered his own disappointment in August 1914, at being robbed of his last year at school; the year that would have seen him captain of the House, the year for which his four previous years had been the prelude. He would have hated it if he’d been unable to join the army, if he’d had to stay at school with all his friends in khaki, but he’d have hated to have had to lose that year for any reason but a war; if his father for example had no longer been able to afford the fees.
    â€œYou’d have had a pretty good time you know. You’d have got into the Eleven next term; you might have been captain the year after.”
    Franklin shrugged. “That kind of thing never cut much ice with me. What does it matter in five years’ time whether you were captain of the school or not. Though I suppose it is a bit of a black mark against you if you are actually expelled.”
    â€œWhat was the trouble by the way?”
    â€œThere wasn’t any. They felt that I was more than they could cope with. What’s being planned for me, by the way? Father’s not going to refuse to send me up to Oxford is he, as a punishment?”
    â€œI heard no talk of that.”
    â€œThen why don’t I go up to Oxford a year earlier. I’ve taken my School Cert.”
    â€œI don’t see why not.”
    â€œIn that case the only point to be discussed is what I’m to do with myself this summer. I’d like to spend four months in Europe brushing up my French and Spanish. They’ll be useful to me when I join the firm.”
    It was the obvious solution, the one that had occurred to Guy.
    â€œWhy not try and argue it that way when you get back?”
    â€œI’ll do my best.”
    â€œGrand. And now won’t you give me a lecture on this wine we’re drinking. It seems quite good.”
    â€œYou’re wrong, it’s very good.”
    It was a burgundy, a Richebourg 1915. As he delivered a brief homily on burgundy in general, and the year 1915 in particular, Guy could not help feeling that the management of the occasion had been taken entirely into his young brother’s hands; that Franklin had treated him rather as royalty might receive the emissary of a republic.
    That evening Guy called on the headmaster; a new man since his day, and a very different one. His chief had been a canon, white-haired and scholarly, illustrating his points in conversation with a Latin or Greek quotation; the kind of man whom you could never have imagined playing football. The present incumbent was a layman, tall, spare, muscular, with a short dark moustache, looking like the colonel of a regiment, and talking like one. He quoted sparingly and when he did, he employed a cliché.
    â€œNo, I’ve nothing specific against the boy.