All this flashed through my mind—I remember now—but it was soon gone. For the fact is that my head was awash in other thoughts, thoughts I had had the night before, again in the car on the way to Middle Hill, and again in the church. Sam Ross was taller than I had imagined and she also had a figure that Wilhelm’s photo—a portrait only—had not even hinted at. But most of all there had been her manner, when stooping, admonishing the child. It was an amalgam of firmness and tenderness, tempered and graceful—here was a young woman of considerable presence. Her movements matched her beauty. I could easily understand what Wilhelm had seen in her.
For all these reasons and, I told myself, because she was so obviously on “playground duty,” I didn’t approach her there and then. Instead, I walked on and reached the Lamb. It had opened at noon. There weren’t many in the pub and they all fell silent when I entered. It was an appreciative silence, though, not hostile. In fact, after I had ordered a pint of bitter, the barman told me that the first drink was on the house and this, I later discovered, was not unusual for war veterans. (He actually said, “The Kaiser’s paying,” and grinned.) I thanked him, raised my glass to the others, and then retreated to a table in an alcove to consider what I was going to do. I took out Wilhelm’s photo one more time, and then put it away again.
While I was sipping my bitter two things happened that affected my plan. First, I gathered from the general conversation in the bar that a couple of people were billeted in the pub, helping to build an airfield near Wellesbourne, the construction site I had seen on my way there. Then an older man came in. The barman poured him a pint and took from behind the bar a plate with a chunk of bread and some cheese on it. The older man accepted all this and sat near me, reading that day’s newspaper. He nodded to me affably and bit into his cheese.
Later, when the cheese and bread were finished, the barman came across to take away the empty plate.
“When’s the hearing?” the barman said.
“A month from now,” replied the older man.
“And who comprises the jury?”
“The board, you mean? It’s not a jury, strictly speaking. It comprises me, as headmaster, one of the teachers, elected by the staff, two school governors, and a school inspector from Coventry—five in all.”
“And what are her chances?”
At this, the older man drew a finger across his throat.
The barman disappeared and the headmaster went back to his paper.
Later, I asked the barman for a sandwich but he didn’t have any. The headmaster, he said, had a special arrangement. So I ordered a half pint of bitter and sat on, thinking, long after the headmaster had gone back to school for the afternoon lessons.
Eventually, an hour or so later, I drove back to my parents’ house. I didn’t wait for school to finish, as had been my original intention, and I didn’t approach Sam Ross with Wilhelm’s photograph.
When I got back to Edgewater, the first thing I did was to buy a secondhand motorcycle going cheaply in the village garage and which my father paid to have renovated (fortunately, the kick-start was on the right side, the side of my good leg). Then, a couple of days later—in what I thought was my niftiest move—I said good-bye to my parents, rode the bike to Middle Hill, and rented a room in the Lamb. They seemed happy to have me, the food could have been worse, there was a garage for my bike, and I could run up a tab at the bar. My course at Stratford was forty minutes away.
It took only a day or so to put my half-formed plan into operation. One evening, when he came in for a late-night whisky, I engaged the headmaster in conversation. He was avid for news, as everyone was, as to what the Front was actually like. He came into the pub most nights and, in less than a week, he had done what I hoped he would do—he invited me to give a short talk at the school, about life at the Front. I said I would be delighted.
And so, the following week the whole school was collected together in the gymnasium, which doubled up when needed as a school hall. The