Will You Surrender? Page 6

  "Over what, Dad?"

  "Whatever it is you're thinking, Geraldine."

  When she did not answer, he said gently, "Don't go getting wrong ideas, my darling. Elliott's not special, and, even if he were, there is not one among us who is so special that he cannot be touched."

  Gerry would have liked to have argued, but at times there was something about her father that was as final and definite as Damien Manning.

  She went dubiously out to find Miss Bullen from the village awaiting her. Miss Bullen came up twice a week to give music lessons to any of the boys who took that "extra". She had brought a memo book and a pencil and together they went through the names.

  "I've lost Garry Wilson. He's in his final year and his parents thought it might take up too much of his study period."

  "A pity," said Geraldine, "he had a nice touch."

  "A pleasing approach to Brahms," nodded Miss Bullen. She was a good teacher. But for the fact that concern for her ageing parents had brought her to their home in Breffny Inlet, she still would have been a member of the Sydney Orchestra, and not squandering her gifts like pearls before nice-enough but mostly unappreciative little boy pigs.

  "Apart from Garry," she sighed, " the only other possible is Peter Fuller. I might do something with him."

  "Mrs. Moffat has written, Miss Bullen. She received your letter but is still emphatic that the twins continue with their music. She says she and Mr. Moffat are very satisfied with their results."

  "They couldn't be," said Miss Bullen, agonized.

  Gerry had to laugh. "Really, Miss Bullen, why quibble over easy money? The Moffats are pleased, and when it comes to worldly goods they certainly have enough."

  "Easy—yes, I suppose so, Geraldine. But Timothy has been on `Winter Sleigh Ride' for nine months, and Terence is rising ten on `Moon Moths'. That's their sum total. What is more, that is all they'll ever know."

  Miss Bullen inscribed their names, adding, "So next time you hear `Winter Sleigh Ride' you can say, 'Timothy Moffat,' and then `Terence Moffat' when you hear `Moon Moths'."

  "Mrs. Russell is continuing with Roger."

  Miss Bullen said dismally, "I feared as much."

  "More `Moon Moths'?"

  "No, 'Humoresque'. He only started it at the end of last term, though, so there's still faint hope."

  "He's quite good," commented Gerry, surprised. "I was listening to someone practising the 'Humoresque' this morning."

  "Only Roger is learning it," said Miss Bullen, equally surprised, "and he's certainly vile."

  They finished the list and made appointments for the lessons. Miss Bullen gave directions as to amount of practice, and left.

  When classes were over Gerry called the junior school music students and allotted them their practice periods.

  There were groans of dismay, but Roger Russell, first on the list, took his medicine with a grin.

  "Right, Miss Prosset, straight away, Miss Prosset."

  In a few minutes the Meadow House was filled with the dulcet strains of the "Humoresque".

  Damien Manning, crossing from the master house to have a word with the Professor, caught the sweet clarity of each note, listened intently, then hastened his steps.

  There was another way to the music-room besides down the hall and through the door.

  Manning went softly round the verandah and stepped through the french window.

  The piano was playing—but it was playing unaided. A roll was spinning round and round, and from the instrument was issuing a perfect impression of someone else's impression of the "Humoresque".

  There had been three masters since the Prossets had lived in the Meadow House. Somewhere along the line a piano had been changed for a pianola—and Gerry had not known. But a small boy had found out, a boy called Roger Russell. To his delight, among the discarded rolls was a battered but still operative one of the "Humoresque".

  Roger was not even sitting at the piano. He was lounging back in the easy chair with the foot-rest reserved for Miss Bullen, legs up, cushion at head, and reading a highly-coloured comic.

  So absorbed he was that the first he knew of the collapse of his scheme for easier living was Manning's thumb and finger heaving him up by the ear while the other hand cut dead the strains of the "Humoresque".

  Gerry, out in the garden, heard the sudden screech of the roll at the same time as a squeal of pain and sorrow.

  She ran to the french window and stood aghast.

  Aghast at Roger's deceit. Aghast at her own credulity. Aghast at the deliberate and thorough ruination on the part of the headmaster of some past junior master's choice in musical rolls.

  On top of her other disgrace it was just too much to face. She turned and, like Roger as soon as his ear had been released, fled.

  At last the month of probation was up. Home leave, where practicable, was permitted. Visitors were allowed. Encountering Gerry one day, Damien said drily, "You can purchase lemonade and buns again, Miss Prosset," and she said coldly, "Perhaps—" but at the first opportunity she did.

  She invited the furthest from home—the smallest----the more unsettled. The Professor attended and they had a pleasant afternoon.

  Young Warren Phillips made a bee-line for the whatnot with the little figurines, just as she had anticipated a child would.

  He examined them, rearranged them, said a little wistfully, "My mother's got things like this in a china cabinet," and brooded sadly, so Gerry guessed, on the strictly mili-

  tary atmosphere of boys' dormitories with their towels in place, their permitted one photograph, their strictly toe-totoe shoes and boots.

  James Semple, a superior junior who, Gerry could see now, could have done without a cheer-up session, announced, "My parents consider such junk as this a step back to the Victorian era."

  Gerry explained patiently to James that the mahogany furniture was a little ponderous and needed brightening up.

  "Why did you not express a wish for contemporary?" asked James, and Gerry started a rather confused story that was not helped out at all by the Professor's gleeful wink.

  "I like the furniture," declared Brett Fordham piously. "It reminds me of church."

  "Do you like church, Brett?" asked Gerry, glad to get out of James's clutches, and Brett said reluctantly, "Ye-s."

  However, they all liked buns—even young Mr. Semple. He ate more daintily, more fastidiously, but he still ate as much.

  At last it was over, the first cheer-up session of the new quarter—and though she would not have admitted it Gerry knew that on this occasion the boys had not needed cheering up nearly so much.

  . So Damien Manning was right in that, as he was right, it seemed, in everything.

  Gerry shook the afternoon tea-cloth over the verandah rail and watched a small foraging black ant.

  It was hard, she thought, to work under such a paragon.

  When the Professor remarked on the obvious success of Manning's hardening-up process with the new boys, Gerry, like Brett Fordham, answered a reluctant, "Ye-s."

  CHAPTER VIII

  THEY were well into term now. Everything was organized.

  The old boys were older still, the new boys were settled,

  classes had found routine, Neville, under Manning's super-

  vision, had put more emphasis on the water side of phys. ed.

  Any boy who could not swim, and there were a few for some came from far western towns where the only watercourse was a dry creek bed, was marched into Breffny twice a week for tuition at the baths.

  Only when they mastered the art were they allowed to use Galdang's own surfing beach, and here, Gerry learned, regimentation had also found its way.

  Where before the lads could run down the track and choose any portion of their particular strip of coast, except, of course, the out-of-bounds section beyond the rocks at the northern end, now they were required to surf between two flags erected by the "lifesavers"—twenty senior boys, efficient swimmers, cautious, the possessors, it w
as expected, of foresight and good sense.

  Gerry thought it was putting a lot of responsibility on the twenty. She also thought the scheme "curbing". When, to her indignation, she herself was also "curbed" by Ian MacPhail, directing good-humouredly but none the less definitely, "Sorry, Miss Prosset, but you have to bathe with the rest between the flags," she called the whole idea "Gestapo". She announced to her father that Manning was making himself absurd.

  "Why, Geraldine?" The Professor was looking at her shrewdly.

  "When people who know nothing about a subject form rules concerning it they immediately make themselves absurd."

  "You think the H.M. knows nothing?"

  "I'm sure of it. He is an Englishman and the English have so little opportunity. Besides, have you ever seen him surf?"

  The Professor had. Very early in the morning. Instead of telling his daughter, he said, "Have you?"

  "No," said Gerry, "so it's all ridiculous. Sheer Gestapo, as I said."

  Only that she was wise enough to realize that disobedience to Ian would have been a bad example to the boys and might have ended in some unfortunate disaster, Gerry would have plunged anywhere but between those two fluttering flags, bearing proudly Galdang's colours of green and red.

  She spoke bitterly to Neville Carter about the "regimentation", but to her surprise and chagrin, he brushed aside her objections.

  "Nonsense, Gerry, it's a fine move on the Head's part. The brats love it. You should see their march-past team. There's not one of them who has not undergone his resuscitation test, and besides the chosen twenty there's another twenty boys who know the routine and can man a belt."

  Only Elliott decried the scheme, Elliott, the individualist. A deliberate individualist, as the Professor had said? Gerry did not know, but her peeved heart went out to the boy when he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the entire school bathing between the flags, then decided to go rock-climbing instead.

  Manning was on the beach—in tweeds, as usual, not bathing trunks.

  "Bethel's becoming ingrown," he remarked to Gerry.

  "It's a pose, of course. He's too proud of his `difference'." "It needn't be a pose. Elliott has always been sensitive." He was looking at her keenly. "You encourage it?" he

  probed.

  "Of course not."

  "Just as well for you. That's one thing I would not countenance. I had an idea you might be lending a sympathetic ear. The boy has a certain look about him—and I've seen him crossing often to the Meadow House."

  "That's to see Father." Geraldine spoke too hastily to be convincing. "He is very fond of the Professor," she finished lamely.

  "And the Professor's daughter?"

  As she flushed angrily, he resumed coolly, "Come now, Miss Prosset, don't be so outraged. That sort of thing does happen. Recall Young Woodley?"

  "I think you're disgusting."

  "I think I am near the truth. You have been proposed to several times, I hear."

  Gerry bit her lip. What had possessed Dad to confide so much in a man like Damien Manning? Yet right from the beginning, she thought, the two had been instinctive friends.

  "The boys had left school," she said shortly.

  "But there were proposals?"

  "They were mere children. They did not know what they were doing."

  "Surely not children, Miss Prosset, they were as old as you. Even Elliott is only a little younger."

  "Then not such a great age, surely, as even I am treated as a child of immature years."

  "You're quite wrong. Were you of immature years I'd treat you very differently. I almost did once. I often think that not concluding that episode was a mistake."

  "A mistake?"

  "My mistake. I am growing weary of your petty rebellions. How long are you intending storming Barbary, Miss Prosset? When will you give in?"

  "Will you surrender, will you surrender?" chanted a voice within Gerry.

  Without a word she picked up her towel and left.

  The pre-preparatory was going along at a fine rate. Again the paragon had done everything perfectly. Geraldine could not find a fault with the new building. It was spacious, airy, well insulated, perfectly daylit. The patio was almost completed. There now remained only the finishing touches and the paint.

  True to his promise Damien referred to the future mistress for a choice of colours.

  "Subject to my approval, of course," he said.

  "Then that doesn't give me any scope." "Why?"

  "Whatever I submit will be unsuitable."

  "You are unfair, Miss Prosset. Anyone would think I dogged you at every turn."

  "You never agree with me."

  "Wrong again, it's you who never will agree with me. Like Bethel's, your disagreement is deliberate. You are determined to be different, to rebel."

  "The Barbary theme again, I suppose," said Gerry contemptuously. She wished she had never sung the wretched song. She turned her attention to the chart of colours.

  "I don't want red," she said.

  "We are agreed. I don't either."

  "I'd like one wall buttercup yellow for sunlight and laughter, one a smiling blue and two grey."

  "You wouldn't deem grey too dismal for small fry?" "A soft grey, a soothing grey."

  "Do little boys need soothing? I have been told they need buns and love, but do they need soothing besides?"

  "Then furniture," said Gerry desperately, "in a rather bold tangerine—the one splash of definite colour."

  "For courage," nodded Damien. "I could do with that as well."

  She threw down the chart. "Must you always jeer at me? If you find my methods and my choice so impossible why did you engage me at the start?"

  "The Board wanted to retain your father; the Board wanted a pre-preparatory. You were the only answer. You were also very convenient. Now, what were those colours again?"

  She told him, then murmured rather apologetically—asking for anything that cost money had always made Gerry feel humble and apologetic—"I'm afraid I must have equipment, too, Headmaster."

  "Don't grovel for it, Kindergarten Mistress. It's down on the agenda. A hundred pounds has been set aside, in fact."

  "A hundred pounds!" Gerry's eyes widened. "That will make a good pre-prep," she said.

  "What else did you expect of Galdang? A few sleeping mats and a blackboard?"

  When she did not answer he went on, "The hundred's apart from the outside play equipment, which will comprise seesaws, monkey puzzles and the rest. I propose to drive you down to Sydney to select what you think is necessary. Make your list and be ready to leave at six."

  "Six—you mean six in the morning?"

  "Six tomorrow morning, unless"—with a quizzical glance —"you'd sooner make it six p.m. In that case, however, we'd have to put up at some overnight lodging. Hardly the thing with a child only a couple of years older than young Bethel."

  "I should think youth would make it more possible," flung Gerry, then wished immediately she could bite back the words.

  "So the child is a woman after all! She has heard of the proprieties, she realizes the obligations of society. Six a.m. tomorrow, Miss Prosset. And I am not kept waiting."

  Gerry was ready before he was. She had been determined on that count. Up at five o'clock, she had grabbed a cup of coffee, and now she stood on the verandah trim

  and neat in a pink linen suit and a pink cardigan thrown over her shoulders. It was grey and cool now, even though by nine o'clock it would be golden and warm.

  If he was disappointed at not being obliged to toot the horn imperiously he did not betray it. Neither did he betray any satisfaction that she was up, fresh, impeccably "town dressed".

  They swung out of the Galdang gates, followed the sea to Breffny, then turned west to Marlborough, then south down the Pacific Road.

  At such an early hour there was no traffic. On the long stretching miles of the highway there was no one but themselves.

  It was an inspiring ride. Gerry had always loved it
. Sometimes they rimmed sands yellow as ripe cornfields; sometimes they rimmed paddocks with farms peeping behind their shelters of green hillocks; sometimes they rimmed the bush.

  At nine o'clock, the day golden and hot as Gerry had anticipated, Manning drew the car up at a small roadhouse set in a tapestry of trees.

  "You'll like this place. I always stop here."

  Gerry said, "I did breakfast," but not very emphatically. There was an appetizing smell of sizzling bacon in the air. She was glad when Damien ignored her words.

  He ordered, then suggested they go and view the farm's garden thicket with the treasured rowan tree. "They are quite proud of this rowan, and rightly, too. It must be one of very few in Australia and the only specimen this far up the coast."

  As they stood beneath it, he told her, "The rowan, of course, is a weapon against witchcraft. By any chance, Miss Prosset, are you a witch?"

  She laughed, and he said, "I see you don't believe these sayings. But I do. My mother always advised, 'Take a heavy heart to a garden,' and your heart, I would dare to say, is lighter already."

  "Was it heavy?" she answered.

  He shrugged carelessly. "It was not as mad as a spring hat."

  She had to laugh again. "I have no mad spring hat." "Why should you with hair the colour of a polished acorn?"

  "Have I?" She looked at him in surprise. She had always put herself down dispiritedly as mouse.

  The woman waved an empty cup through the window of the house and they crossed to the table set on the small verandah, striped red cloth, a large jug of orange juice (for this was the citrus country), eggs and bacon, toast and marmalade, the time-honoured big brown pot.

  At eleven they were on the outskirts of Sydney. The big capital sprawled untidily, its growing pains still making it stretch its legs.

  Manning parked the car as near as he could to the metropolis and together they walked to the showroom where Gerry was to choose the equipment.

  It took till one o'clock, there was so much to consider. Manning was surprisingly helpful; he was surprisingly conformable to her choice of goods.