Blackstone's pursuits

In which the Old School Archives gives us an answer we don’t fancy … not one bit

Daniel Stewart’s and Melville College, to give it its full, lengthy title, was formed by the amalgamation of two smaller Merchant Company schools, when economies of scale began to mean something even in the select world of Edinburgh private education.

It’s housed in a fine old building on the Queensferry Road, a rectangle with copper-domed towers on each comer. As we reached it, the mothers of its primary school children were just beginning to gather in their second-hand Volvo estates. For some of them, picking up Junior and chewing the fat with the other Mums was probably the highlight of the day. There were so many of them gathered there that we had to park illicitly in the Tourist Board Headquarters and walk back.

The School Office was a slightly chaotic room. That meant that it was like all the school offices I’ve ever seen, only the accents were more refined, and the weans were better dressed … more uniformly, you might say.

The junior secretary was a friendly girl. ‘How can I help you?’ she said, and we both knew that she meant it, relieved to be dealing with people from the outside world.

Prim looked at me. I looked at Prim. In the same instant we realised we’d gone barrelling in there without a cover story. ‘No, you go on,’ said my partner, dropping me in it. Fortunately, my natural glibness, formed out of years spent trying to chat girls just like this one out of their knickers, came surging to the surface. I gave her my best pre-coital smile, the one that says, ‘Would you be interested in what I’ve got here!’

‘My friend and I are researching for a magazine article,’ I said, inspirationally. ‘We have a commission from the Sunday Times supplement for a piece which takes the attitudes of senior-school pupils from the mid-70s and compares them with today’s generation.

‘We’re asking a few schools if they can put us in touch with their head boys and head girls from those times, so that we can set up interviews. We’ve just seen the head girl of 1975 at Mary Erskine, and she suggested that we should look up her opposite number here.

‘Is there any possibility that you could give us his name?’

The girl smiled at me. I could tell that I’d have been in with a chance there.

She put a hand to her chin, as if she was thinking about it, but I knew the answer already. ‘I’m sure that I can lay hands on the School Yearbook for 1975,’ she said. ‘Wait a minute.’ She hurried off.

‘Smooth-talking bastard,’ Prim muttered under her breath as the girl disappeared.

It was only a minute, too. She came rushing back, pink-cheeked and triumphant. ‘I knew we had one left. It is only one, though. I can’t let you take it away, but I can photocopy pages if you’d like.’

She handed it across the wooden counter. I took it, and noticed that my hand was shaking, very slightly. I held it out so that Prim could see and flicked through the pages until I found the index. ‘Captains Courageous’ began on page twenty, after the Rector’s report on the year.

Naturally, the Head Boy was the first entry. The outstanding chap of the year, beyond a doubt. Captain of Rugby, Captain of Cricket, Captain of Squash, School Athletics Champion, Leader of the Debating team, an all-rounder of the sort in which schools like Stewart’s-Melville rejoice. A veritable hero, in fact.

There was a photograph too. He stood there in blazer, decorated with his many sporting colours, slim, squared-jawed, clear-eyed, a man-boy on the verge of a career of leadership in whatever profession he chose. And below the photograph, in rich italics, a caption.

‘Head of School, 1974-75. Richard Ross.’

Prim gasped and looked up at me. ‘That’s Superintendent …’

I closed the book. ‘Yes, partner. I was afraid it would be him. That’s who’s got Mike Dylan shitting himself trying to find that fiver. And that’s who’s been crumpling the sheets with Linda Kane, just like they did twenty years ago.’

We had our backs to the girl, so she couldn’t hear us. ‘Our FP club keeps very good records,’ she said. ‘I’m sure they could help you find him.’ Helpful to the end.

I handed her back the yearbook. ‘That’s all right, dear,’ I gave her a ‘goodnight’ smile. ‘Right now, I’m more worried about this chap finding us.’ I could feel her eyes in my back, wrinkling with bewilderment, as Prim and I hurried away.