when, angered by defeat, he accuses the sports master of being a bloody pansy and, not for the first time in his life, is escorted from the field. Outside the school's walls the Swinging Sixties are in full cry, but inside them the band of Empire plays on. Twice-daily chapel services praise the school's war dead to the detriment of its living, value the white man above lesser breeds, and preach chastity to boys who can find sexual stimulation in a _Times__ editorial.
Yet while the oppression Mundy suffers at the hands of his jailers entrenches his loathing of them, he cannot dodge the curse of their acceptance. His real enemy is his own good-heartedness and his inextinguishable need to belong. Perhaps only those who have had no mother can understand the emptiness he has to fill. The change in the official attitude is subtle and insidious. One by one, his gestures of insubordination pass unnoticed. He smokes cigarettes in the most perilous places but nobody catches him at it or notices his breath. He reads the lesson in chapel while drunk on a pint of beer gulped down at the back door of a nearby pub, yet instead of the mandatory flogging he has the rank of prefect thrust on him with the assurance that the post of head boy is within his grasp. There is worse to come. Despite his ungainliness he is capped for rugby, promoted to the school cricket team as a fast bowler, and appointed the unlikely hero of the hour. Overnight his heathen practices and subversive tendencies are forgotten. In a dreary production of _Everyman__ he is given the title role. He leaves school covered in unwanted glory and, thanks to Dr. Mandelbaum, with an Exhibition in Modern Languages to Oxford.
"Dear boy."
"Father."
Mundy allows time for the Major to muster his thoughts. They are seated in the conservatory of the Surrey villa and as usual it is raining. Rain shades the blue pines in the neglected garden, seeps down the rusted frames of the French windows and pings onto the cracked tile floor. Flighty Mrs. McKechnie is on home leave in Aberdeen. It is midafternoon and the Major is enjoying an interval of lucidity between the last of the lunch hour and the first of the evening. A scrofulous retriever farts and mutters in a basket at his feet. Panes of glass are missing from the conservatory, but this is all to the good since the Major has developed a horror of enclosure. In accordance with new regimental orders no doors or windows to the house may be locked. If the bastards want him, he likes to insist to his diminished audience at the Golden Swan, they know where they can find him; and he indicates the cherrywood walking stick which is now his constant companion.
"You're set on it, are you, boy? This German thing you're up to?"--drawing shrewdly on his Burma.
"I think so, thank you, sir."
Major and retriever reflect on this. It's the Major who speaks first.
"Still some decent regiments out there, you know. Not everything's gone to the devil."
"All the same, sir."
Another prolonged delay.
"Reckon the Hun will come at us again, do you? Twenty years since the last show. Twenty years since the show before that. They're about due for another, I grant you."
A further period of rumination follows, until the Major suddenly brightens.
"Well, there we are then, boy. Blame your mother."
Not for the first time in recent months, Mundy fears for his father's sanity. My dead mother responsible for the next war with the Germans? How can this be, sir?
"That woman could pick up languages the way you and I pick up this glass. Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Telegu, Tamil, German."
Mundy is astonished. "German?"
"And French. Wrote it, spoke it, sang it. Mynah bird ear. All the Stanhopes had it."
Mundy is gratified to hear this. Thanks to Dr. Mandelbaum, he has for some while been privy to the classified information that the German language has beauty, poetry, music, logic and unlikely humor, as well as a romantic soul incomprehensible to anyone who can't decode it.
Yet while the oppression Mundy suffers at the hands of his jailers entrenches his loathing of them, he cannot dodge the curse of their acceptance. His real enemy is his own good-heartedness and his inextinguishable need to belong. Perhaps only those who have had no mother can understand the emptiness he has to fill. The change in the official attitude is subtle and insidious. One by one, his gestures of insubordination pass unnoticed. He smokes cigarettes in the most perilous places but nobody catches him at it or notices his breath. He reads the lesson in chapel while drunk on a pint of beer gulped down at the back door of a nearby pub, yet instead of the mandatory flogging he has the rank of prefect thrust on him with the assurance that the post of head boy is within his grasp. There is worse to come. Despite his ungainliness he is capped for rugby, promoted to the school cricket team as a fast bowler, and appointed the unlikely hero of the hour. Overnight his heathen practices and subversive tendencies are forgotten. In a dreary production of _Everyman__ he is given the title role. He leaves school covered in unwanted glory and, thanks to Dr. Mandelbaum, with an Exhibition in Modern Languages to Oxford.
"Dear boy."
"Father."
Mundy allows time for the Major to muster his thoughts. They are seated in the conservatory of the Surrey villa and as usual it is raining. Rain shades the blue pines in the neglected garden, seeps down the rusted frames of the French windows and pings onto the cracked tile floor. Flighty Mrs. McKechnie is on home leave in Aberdeen. It is midafternoon and the Major is enjoying an interval of lucidity between the last of the lunch hour and the first of the evening. A scrofulous retriever farts and mutters in a basket at his feet. Panes of glass are missing from the conservatory, but this is all to the good since the Major has developed a horror of enclosure. In accordance with new regimental orders no doors or windows to the house may be locked. If the bastards want him, he likes to insist to his diminished audience at the Golden Swan, they know where they can find him; and he indicates the cherrywood walking stick which is now his constant companion.
"You're set on it, are you, boy? This German thing you're up to?"--drawing shrewdly on his Burma.
"I think so, thank you, sir."
Major and retriever reflect on this. It's the Major who speaks first.
"Still some decent regiments out there, you know. Not everything's gone to the devil."
"All the same, sir."
Another prolonged delay.
"Reckon the Hun will come at us again, do you? Twenty years since the last show. Twenty years since the show before that. They're about due for another, I grant you."
A further period of rumination follows, until the Major suddenly brightens.
"Well, there we are then, boy. Blame your mother."
Not for the first time in recent months, Mundy fears for his father's sanity. My dead mother responsible for the next war with the Germans? How can this be, sir?
"That woman could pick up languages the way you and I pick up this glass. Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Telegu, Tamil, German."
Mundy is astonished. "German?"
"And French. Wrote it, spoke it, sang it. Mynah bird ear. All the Stanhopes had it."
Mundy is gratified to hear this. Thanks to Dr. Mandelbaum, he has for some while been privy to the classified information that the German language has beauty, poetry, music, logic and unlikely humor, as well as a romantic soul incomprehensible to anyone who can't decode it.
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