Vintage Stuff

Chapter 2

From this discovery that their son was not as other boys were, the Clyde-Brownes drew differing conclusions. Mrs Clyde-Browne stuck to her belief that Peregrine was a genius with all a genius's eccentricities, while her husband, more practically and with far less enthusiasm for the inconveniences caused by having a pubescent prodigy about the house, consulted the family doctor, then a child psychiatrist, a consultant on educational abnormalities and finally an expert in aptitude testing. Their findings were conflicting. The doctor expressed his personal sympathy; the psychiatrist cast some unpleasant aspersions on the Clyde-Brownes' sexual life, such as it was: and the educational consultant, a follower of Ivan Illich, found fault with Peregrine's schooling for placing any emphasis at all on learning. Only the expert in aptitude testing had the practical advice Mr Clyde-Browne was seeking, and gave it as his opinion that Peregrine's best future lay in the Army, where strict obedience to orders, however insane, was highly commended. With this in mind, Mr Clyde-Browne went on to arrange for Peregrine to go to any Public School that would have him.

Here again he had trouble. Mrs Clyde-Browne insisted that her little sweetie pie needed the very best tuition. Mr Clyde-Browne countered by pointing out that if the little moron was a genius, he didn't need any tuition at all. But the chief problem lay with the Public School headmasters, who evidently found Mr Clyde-Browne's desperation almost as alarming a deterrent as Peregrine's academic record. In the end, it was only thanks to a client guilty of embezzling a golf club's funds that Mr Clyde-Browne learnt about Groxbourne, and that by way of a plea in mitigation. Since Peregrine was already fifteen, Mr Clyde-Browne acted precipitately and drove up to the school during term time.

Situated in the rolling wooded hillside of South Salop, Groxbourne was virtually unknown in academic circles. Certainly Oxford and Cambridge claimed never to have heard of it, and what little reputation it had seemed to be limited to a few agricultural training colleges.

'But you do have a good Army entry?' Mr Clyde-Browne enquired eagerly of the retiring Headmaster who was prepared to accept Peregrine for his successor to cope with.

'The War Memorial in the Chapel must speak for our record,' said the Headmaster with mournful diffidence, and led the way there. Mr Clyde-Browne surveyed the terrible list and was impressed.

'Six hundred and thirty-three in the First War and three hundred and five in the Second,' said the Headmaster, 'I think there can be few schools in the country which have contributed their all so generously. I put our record down to our excellent sports facilities. The playing fields of Waterloo and all that.'

Mr Clyde-Browne nodded. His hopes for Peregrine's future had been vitiated by experience.

'And then again, we do have a special course for the Overactive Underachiever,' continued the Headmaster. 'Major Fetherington, M.C., runs it and we've found it a great help for the more practically endowed boy whose needs are not sufficiently met on the purely scholastic side. Naturally, it's an extra, but you might find your son benefited.'

Mr Clyde-Browne agreed privately. Whatever Peregrine's needs were, he was never going to benefit from a purely scholastic education.

They passed along the Chapel cloisters to the back of the squash court and were greeted by a volley of shots. A dozen boys with rifles were lying on the ground firing at targets in a small-bore rifle range.

'Ah, Major,' said the Headmaster to a dapper man who was slapping a swagger stick against highly polished riding boots, 'I'd like to introduce Mr Clyde-Browne whose son will be joining us next term.'

'Splendid, splendid,' said the Major, switching his swagger stick to his left arm and shaking Mr Clyde-Browne's hand while managing almost at the same time to order the boys to down rifles, unload, remove bolts and apply pull-throughs. 'Your boy a keen shot?'

'Very,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, remembering the incident with Mrs Worksop's cat. 'In fact, I think he's quite good.'

'Splendid. Having pulled-through, apply an oily rag.' The boys followed his instructions and oiled barrels.

'I'll leave the Major to show you round,' said the Headmaster and disappeared. Presently, when rifles had been inspected and the little column moved off to the Armoury, Mr Clyde-Browne found himself being taken on a conducted tour of the Assault Course. A high brick wall with ropes hanging down it was succeeded by a muddy ditch, more ropes suspended from trees across a gulley, a barbed-wire entanglement, a narrow tunnel half-filled with water, and finally, built on the edge of a quarry, a wooden tower from which a tight wire hawser slanted down to a stake some thirty yards away.

'Death Slide,' explained the Major, 'Put a toggle rope in water so it won't burn, loop it over the wire, grasp firmly with both hands and away you go.'

Mr Clyde-Browne peered nervously over the edge at the rocks some fifty feet below. He could see exactly why it was called a Death Slide. 'Don't you have a great many accidents?' he asked, 'I mean what happens when they hit that iron stake at the bottom?'

'Don't,' said the Major. 'Feet touch down first and they let go. Put them through parachute landing technique first. Keep knees supple and roll over on the left shoulder.'

'I see,' said Mr Clyde-Browne dubiously, and refused the Major's offer to try it himself.

'Then there's rock-climbing. We're very good there. Lead boy goes up first and fixes the guide rope and after they've had some training we can get a squad up in two minutes.'

'Amazing,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, 'And you've never had an accident?'

'Couple of broken legs once in a while but they'd get that anyway on the rugger field. In fact, I think it's fair to say that the boys taking this course are less likely to do themselves an injury than inflict some pretty nasty ones on other people.'

They went into the gym and watched a demonstration of unarmed combat. By the time it was over, Mr Clyde-Browne had made up his mind. Whatever else Groxbourne might fail to provide, it would guarantee Peregrine's entry into the Army. He returned to the Headmaster's study well content.

'Right, well I think we'll put him in Mr Glodstone's house,' said the Headmaster, as Mr Clyde-Browne took out his cheque-book 'Marvellous with boys, Glodstone. And as for fees...'

'I'll pay in advance for three years.'

The Headmaster looked at him quizzically. 'You wouldn't rather wait and see if he finds our atmosphere suits him?'

But Mr Clyde-Browne was adamant. Having got Peregrine into what approximated to a Public School, he had no intention of having him expelled. 'I've added a thousand pounds for the Chapel Restoration Fund,' he said, 'I noticed you're making an appeal.'

And having written out a cheque for ten thousand pounds, he left in an ebullient mood. He had been particularly heartened to learn that the Overactive Underachiever's Course extended into the summer holidays when Major Fetherington took the group to North Wales for 'a spot of mountaineering and cross-country compass marching'.

'It will give us a chance to get away on our own,' Mr Clyde-Browne thought happily as he drove South. But this was not the argument he used to persuade his wife, who had learned from a friend that Groxbourne was the last school she'd send her son to.

'Elspeth says it's a brutal place and the boys are nearly all farmers sons and the teaching is appalling.'

'It's either Groxbourne or the local Comprehensive.'

'But there must be other schools...'

'There are. A great many, but they won't take Peregrine. Now if you want your son to mix with a lot of teenage tarts at the Comprehensive, you've merely to say the word.'

Mrs Clyde-Browne didn't. It was one of her most ingrained beliefs that only the working class sent their children to Comprehensives and Peregrine must never be allowed to pick up their deplorable habits.

'It seems such a shame we can't afford a private tutor,' she whined, but Mr Clyde-Browne was not to be deflected.

'The boy has got to learn to stand on his own feet and face up to the realities of life. He won't do that by staying at home and being mollycoddled by you and some down-at-heel unemployable posing as a private tutor.' A remark which said as much for his own view of the world's awful reality as it did for his apparent conviction that Peregrine had spent the first fifteen years of his life standing on other people's two feet or perched on one of his own.

'Well, I like that,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne with some spirit.

'And I don't,' continued her husband, working himself up into a defensive fury. 'If it hadn't been for your insistence on bringing him up like a china doll, he wouldn't be the idiot he is now. But no, it had to be "Peregrine do this and Peregrine do that" and "Don't get your clothes dirty, Peregrine." Come to think of it, it's a wonder the boy has half a mind to call his own.'

In this he was being unfair. Peregrine's peculiarities owed as much of their bias to his father as to his mother. Mr Clyde-Browne's career as a solicitor with court experience disposed him to divide the world up into the entirely innocent and the wholly guilty, with no states of uncertainty in between. Peregrine had imbibed his rigid ideas of good and bad from his father and had had them reinforced by his mother. Mrs Clyde-Browne's social pretensions and her refusal to think the worst of anyone in their circle of acquaintances, all of whom must be nice because the Clyde-Brownes knew them, had limited the range of the entirely good to Virginia Water and the entirely bad to everywhere else. Television had done nothing to broaden his outlook. His parents had so severely censored his viewing to programmes that showed cowboys and policeman in the best light, while Redskins and suspects were shown in the worst, that Peregrine had been spared any uncertainties or moral doubts. To be brave, truthful, honest and ready to kill anyone who wasn't was to be good: to be anything less was to be bad.

It was with these impeccable prejudices that he was driven up to Groxbourne and handed over to Mr Glodstone by his parents who showed truly British stoicism in parting with their son. In Mr Clyde-Browne's case there was no need for self-control, but his wife's feelings expressed themselves as soon as they had left the school grounds. She had been particularly perturbed by the housemaster.

'Mr Glodstone looked such a peculiar man, she whimpered through her tears.

'Yes,' said Mr Clyde-Browne brusquely and refrained from pointing out that any man prepared to spend his life trying to combine the duties of a zoo-keeper, a prison warder and a teacher to half-wits could hardly be expected to look normal.

'I mean, why was he wearing a monocle in front of a glass eye?'

'Probably to save himself from seeing too clearly with the other one,' said Mr Clyde-Browne enigmatically and left her to puzzle over the remark until they got home.

'I just hope Peregrine is going to be happy,' she said as they turned into Pinetree Lane. 'If he isn't, I want you to promise me...'

'He'll go to the Comprehensive school,' said Mr Clyde-Browne, and put an end to the discussion.