For Love or Money by Tim Jeal Read Free Book Online Page A

getting up to go. Perhaps a word of encouragement would strike the right note.
    ‘I think you have read this book most sensitively, yes, most sensitively,’ Andrew said, smiling.
    ‘Thank you.’
    That blush again, but was there, too, a half-unconscious slyness, almost a smirk of pleasure? What guilelessness to betray feelings so natural, so evidently. On the whole Andrew was relieved to see this look. During much of the lesson David’s face had worn an expression of reproachful melancholy. Those dark, dark eyes … Andrew watched helplessly as the door shut. How could anybody think of talking to this boy of unity of minds overriding sexual considerations , or of the more athletic angle of men striving together in body and mind? He envisaged a relationship of platonic beauty, where words would be almost irrelevant in their perfect and silent understanding. He looked up at the overflowing cornucopia and the cherubs. Ah, help me, my horn of plenty, to be strong; the flesh is weak, so weak, he sighed.
    Certainly the schoolmaster in love with his pupil was an obvious situation to be in, but couldn’t there be a tragic pathos in this obviousness, a fundamental simplicity, in this recurring pattern? A mixture of sublime, grotesque andtragic in this unacceptable position? ‘Public School Master in Squalid Case!’ He spirited away this sudden apparition, this foul judgement of an alien and insensitive society. Nothing would stop him. Yes, he would take David out into the country for a cream tea in a couple of weeks. He would look at him against a backcloth of frozen branches and the countryside. Andrew had seen a convenient-looking place when he had driven to the school the week before: The Woodpecker Tea-Room at Coombe Bassett. Quiet, intimate, and remote. As it happened this was not to take place till almost a month later. Before that a ’flu epidemic of unusually vicious proportions disrupted the ordered life of Greville. Amongst its first victims was David Lifton.
    Unaware of this future postponement of his plans, Andrew thought expectantly of Coombe Bassett. He went over to an arm-chair and sat down. A knock at the door heralded the arrival of Chadwick.
    The following day David and Chadwick were sitting in their study. In the third arm-chair sprawled a larger boy in football clothes. His knees were caked with mud and the room had already started to smell of sweat. This boy’s name was Hotson.
    ‘If you have to be in the Second Eleven there is still no reason for you to come in here and make the place muddy and smelling like a stables‚’ said Chadwick slowly, stressing each word.
    ‘This happens to be my room as well as yours.’
    ‘Yes, and it is mine too, and if David could be bothered to express an opinion I think he’d agree that you might change before coming up here…. I sit here peacefully read ing the papers and suddenly in comes bleeding Hercules …’
    David was looking at the carpet as though the grease stains had just acquired a new significance. His head had been throbbing most of the afternoon and he felt cold and shivery.
    ‘Well then, this being a great democracy, let’s put it to the vote. Those who want to see Hotson steaming like an overworked bull raise both their hands; those who do not raise their right hand.’
    ‘Very funny, can’t you even let a fellow rest before he has a shower?’
    ‘Raise your right hand you idiot‚’ said Chadwick in a menacing stage whisper to David.
    ‘Children, I’m just going‚’ said Hotson benignly.
    David already felt too ill to take any interest in either of them.
    ‘I wish you’d all shut up‚’ he said quietly.
    Chadwick got up and walked out.
    ‘Now that was foolish, very foolish‚’ Hotson was annoyed now for the first time. ‘We’ll have sour-face at it now for the next week. You have no feeling for psychology, Lifton, none at all.’ He sighed with long-suffering exasperation. ‘He’s already cross at having a queer for a classics