Only Time Will Tell (The Clifton Chronicles, #1)(76)

Ten days later, I received an I’m sorry to have to inform you letter from Eton. I had only managed 32 per cent. Percy scored 56 per cent and was offered a place for the Michaelmas term, which delighted his father and was met with incredulity by the Frob.

Everything would have worked out just fine, if Percy hadn’t told a friend how he’d managed to get into Eton. The friend told another friend, who told another friend, who told Percy’s father. The Earl of Bridport MC, being an honourable man, immediately informed the headmaster of Eton. This resulted in Percy being expelled before he’d even set foot in the place. If it hadn’t been for a personal intervention by the Frob, I might have suffered the same fate at Bristol Grammar.

My father tried to convince the headmaster of Eton that it was simply a clerical error, and that, as I’d actually scored 56 per cent in the exam, I should be reinstated in Bridport’s place. This piece of logic was rejected by return of post, as Eton wasn’t in need of a new cricket pavilion. I duly reported to Bristol Grammar School on the first day of term.





During my first year, I restored my reputation somewhat by scoring three centuries for the Colts and ended the season being awarded my colours. Harry played Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing, and Deakins was Deakins, so no one was surprised when he won the First Form prize.

During my second year, I became more aware of the financial constraints Harry’s mother must be experiencing when I noticed that he was wearing his shoes with the laces undone, and he admitted they were pinching because they were so tight.

So when Tilly’s was burnt to the ground only weeks before we were expected to enter the sixth form, I was not altogether surprised to learn that Harry thought he might not be able to stay on at the school. I thought about asking my father if he might be able to help, but Mama told me I would be wasting my time. That’s why I was so delighted when I saw him walking through the school gates on the first day of term.

He told me that his mother had begun a new job at the Royal Hotel, working nights, and it was proving to be far more lucrative than she had originally thought possible.

During the next summer hols I would, once again, have liked to invite Harry to join the family in Tuscany, but I knew my father would not consider the idea. But as the Arts Appreciation Society, of which Harry was now secretary, was planning a trip to Rome, we agreed to meet up there, even if it did mean I would have to visit the Villa Borghese.





Although we were living in a little bubble of our own down in the West Country, it would have been impossible not to be aware of what was taking place on the continent.

The rise of the Nazis in Germany, and the Fascists in Italy, didn’t seem to be affecting the average Englishman, who was still enjoying a pint of cider and a cheese sandwich at his local on a Saturday, before watching, or in my case playing, cricket on the village green in the afternoon. For years this blissful state of affairs had been able to continue because another war with Germany didn’t bear thinking about. Our fathers had fought in the war to end all wars, but now the unmentionable seemed to be on everyone’s lips.

Harry told me in no uncertain terms that if war was declared, he wouldn’t be going to university but would join up immediately, just as his father and uncle had done some twenty years before. My father had ‘missed out’, as he put it, because unfortunately he was colour-blind, and those in authority thought he’d serve the war effort better by remaining at his post, playing an important role in the docks. Though I’ve never been quite sure exactly what that important role was.





In our final year at BGS, both Harry and I decided to enter our names for Oxford; Deakins had already been offered an open scholarship to Balliol College. I wanted to go to the House, but was informed most politely by the entrance tutor that Christ Church rarely took grammar school boys, so I settled for Brasenose, which had once been described by Bertie Wooster as a college ‘where brains are neither here nor there’.

As Brasenose was also the college with the most cricket blues, and I had scored three centuries in my final year as captain of BGS, one of them at Lord’s for a Public Schools XI, I felt I must be in with a chance. In fact, my form master, Dr Paget, told me that when I went for my interview they would probably throw a cricket ball at me as I entered the room. If I caught it, I would be offered a place. If I caught it one-handed, a scholarship. This turned out to be apocryphal. However, I’m bound to admit that during drinks with the college principal, he asked me more questions about Hutton than Horace.

There were other highs and lows during my last two years at school: Jesse Owens winning four gold medals at the Olympic Games in Berlin, right under Hitler’s nose, was a definite high, while the abdication of Edward VIII because he wished to marry an American divorcee was an undoubted low.

The nation seemed to be divided on whether the King should have abdicated, as were Harry and I. I failed to understand how a man born to be King could be willing to sacrifice the throne to marry a divorced woman. Harry was far more sympathetic to the King’s plight, saying that we couldn’t begin to understand what the poor man was going through until we fell in love ourselves. I dismissed this as codswallop, until that trip to Rome that was to change both our lives.





36


IF GILES IMAGINED he’d worked hard during his final days at St Bede’s, in those last two years at Bristol Grammar School both he and Harry became acquainted with hours only Deakins was familiar with.