did Dr Gulliver. A dozen years ago the black stuff gown perpetually worn by Dr Gulliver was green with age, and it was green with age still. Only, Bobby was now able to identify it as an Oxford MA gown. He wondered – as he had certainly never done as a small boy – whether Dr Gulliver was really a Doctor of anything, or whether, as a headmaster, he was ‘Doctor’ merely in a courtesy or Dickensian sense. It had always been understood, of course, that Dr Gulliver was immensely learned. It was on this that he had, so to speak, run; and it had never occurred to anybody to reflect that unfathomable erudition is neither necessary nor customary in the proprietor – or co-proprietor – of a private school.
It had sometimes come to Bobby to wonder why on earth he had been sent to Overcombe; or how, once there, he had ever managed to progress, through a respectable showing in Common Entrance, to a decent public school. Perhaps the flair of Bloody Nauze for driving home the Latin language with a gym-shoe was the answer. Not that there had been anything much wrong with Overcombe, apart from the mere fact that a species of total chaos reigned there from the beginning of term to the end. It had probably been different in the days of his mother’s great-uncles. They had been to Overcombe, and had all become luminaries of the Victorian Age. That , no doubt, was why Bobby had arrived there what he thought of as about a century later. That was how parents chose schools for children. They didn’t specifically hunt around for an establishment where there were people like Dr Gulliver and Mr Onslow and Mr Nauze; they just recalled how happy some aged relation of their own had been rumoured to be at Overcombe or whatever.
‘Appleby?’ said Dr Gulliver. ‘ Appleby ?’ Dr Gulliver twitched his gown – and with his old nervous haste, so that it was incomprehensible that the decayed garment didn’t at once disintegrate under his finger and thumb. ‘But – to be sure – Appleby! You made some slight progress in the end towards a grasp of the Punic Wars. I trust, Appleby, that you still keep to your book.’
The Punic Wars. The Pubic Wars . Bobby had been among the small number of precocious infants at Overcombe who could make jokes like that. The ability was gained through the pertinacious frequentation of a dictionary. Womb, Concubine, Harlot, Semen . Briefly, Bobby marvelled over his own dead life.
‘Are you still in partnership with Mr Onslow, sir?’ Bobby asked respectfully.
‘Ah – F L! Onslow is always called F L by the young rascals. Do you know what the initials F L stand for?’
‘I’ve no idea, I’m afraid.’
‘The jest must have been invented since your time. Festina lente , Appleby. It is the motto of Mr Onslow’s – um – somewhat remote kinsmen. Construe, my dear lad.’
‘Would it be something like “More haste, less speed”, sir?’
‘A most licentious translation.’ Dr Gulliver had frowned majestically. ‘We will say, if you please, “Hasten slowly”.’
‘I see, sir. It’s a terribly good joke. Mr Onslow being F L, I mean.’
‘Onslow is still with us, I am happy to say. The – um – athletic side continues in his charge, and we must not minimize its importance. Mens sana , Apppleby, in corpore sano. ’
‘Is that Latin, sir?’ Entirely to his own horror, the obligation to ‘cheek’ Dr Gulliver had reared itself suddenly and irresistibly out of Bobby’s past.
‘It is a sufficiently well-known apothegm, I should have supposed.’ Dr Gulliver had frowned in displeasure. ‘Though not, indeed from an author who is to be commended to the young. The aphorism comes from Juvenal’s Tenth Satire.’
‘By Jove, sir – so it does. Fortem posce animum mortis terrore carentem – would that be right? – Qui spatium vitae extremum inter munera ponat Naturae –’ Bobby broke off, not because he had forgotten Juvenal’s prayer, but because he remembered he hadn’t come back to