Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles, #3)(73)

Clifton, on the other hand, had been a problem from the moment he had walked through the school gates. The headmaster had tried to be understanding, in view of all that the boy’s mother and father had been through, but there was a limit to how much the school could be expected to tolerate. In fact, if Clifton hadn’t been likely to win that open scholarship to Cambridge, Dr Banks-Williams wouldn’t have hesitated to expel him some time ago. He was glad to have finally seen the back of him, and only hoped he wouldn’t join the Old Boys.

‘Old Boys,’ he said out loud, jogging his memory. He was due to address their annual dinner in London that evening, when he would present his end-of-term report; his last, after fifteen years as headmaster. He didn’t much care for the Welshman who had been chosen to succeed him; the sort of chap who didn’t tie his bow tie, and probably would have let Clifton off with a warning.

His secretary had typed up his speech and left a copy on his desk for him to go over in case he wanted to make some late changes. He would have liked to read it one more time, but having to deal with Clifton had made that impossible. Any last-minute emendations would have to be added by hand during the train journey up to London.

He checked his watch, placed the speech in his briefcase and headed upstairs to his private quarters. He was pleased to find that his wife had already packed his dinner jacket and trousers, a starched white shirt, a bow tie, a change of socks and a wash bag. He’d made it clear to the chairman of the Old Boys that he didn’t approve when they’d voted to stop wearing white tie and tails for the annual dinner.

His wife drove him to the station, and they arrived only minutes before the express to Paddington was due. He purchased a first-class return ticket and hurried across the bridge to the far platform, where an engine was just coming to a halt before disgorging its passengers. He stepped on to the platform and checked his watch again. Four minutes to spare. He nodded to the guard, who was exchanging a red flag for a green one.

‘All aboard,’ the guard shouted, as the headmaster headed for the first-class section at the front of the train.

He climbed into the carriage and sank back into a corner seat, only to be greeted by a cloud of smoke. A disgusting habit. He agreed with The Times’ correspondent who had recently suggested that the Great Western Railway should designate far more no-smoking carriages for first-class passengers.

The headmaster took the speech out of his briefcase and placed it on his lap. He looked up as the smoke cleared, and saw him sitting on the other side of the carriage.





29


SEBASTIAN STUBBED OUT his cigarette, leapt up, grabbed his suitcase from the rack above him and left the carriage without a word. He was painfully aware that although the headmaster said nothing, his eyes never left him.

He humped his suitcase through several carriages to the far end of the train, where he squeezed himself into an overcrowded third-class carriage. As he stared out of the window, he tried to think if there was any way out of his present predicament.

Perhaps he should return to first class and explain to the headmaster that he was going to spend a few days in London with his uncle, Sir Giles Barrington, MP? But why would he do that, when he’d been instructed to return to Bristol and hand Dr Banks-Williams’s letter to his father? The truth was that his parents were in Los Angeles attending a ceremony at which his mother was to be awarded her business degree, summa cum laude, and they wouldn’t be arriving back in England before the end of the week.

Then why didn’t you tell me that in the first place, he could hear the headmaster saying, and then your housemaster could have issued you with the correct ticket? Because he had intended to return to Bristol on the last day of term, so when they turned up on Saturday, they would be none the wiser. He might even have got away with it, if he hadn’t been in a first-class carriage, smoking. After all, he’d been warned what the consequences would be if he broke another school rule before the end of term. End of term. He’d broken three school rules within an hour of leaving the premises. But then, he never thought he’d see the headmaster again in his life.

He wanted to say, I’m an Old Boy now and I can do as I please, but he knew that wouldn’t work. And if he did decide to return to first class, there was a risk that the headmaster would discover he only had a third-class ticket; a wheeze he always tried on whenever he travelled to and from school at the beginning and end of term.

He would occupy the corner seat of a first-class carriage, making sure he had a clear view of the corridor. The moment the ticket collector entered the far end of the carriage, Sebastian would nip out and disappear into the nearest lavatory, not locking the door but leaving the vacant sign in place. Once the ticket collector had moved on to the next carriage, he would slip back into the first-class compartment for the rest of the journey. And as it was a non-stop service, the wheeze never failed. Well, it had nearly failed once, when a vigilant conductor had doubled back and caught him in the wrong carriage. He’d immediately burst into tears and apologized, explaining that his mother and father always travelled first class, and he didn’t even realize there was a third class. He had got away with it, but then he’d only been eleven at the time. Now he was seventeen, and it wouldn’t only be the ticket collector who didn’t believe him.

He dismissed any chance of a reprieve and, accepting that he wouldn’t be going up to Cambridge in September, Sebastian began to consider what he should do once the train pulled into Paddington.