Gentlemen & Players Read Online Free PDF Page B

He’ll have a field day with yours, I know he will.”
    I ignored the unworthy comment. “You’re letting your department be overrun by women, Pearman,” I said severely. “Next you’ll be picking out chintz.”
    Miss Dare gave me a satirical look. “I’ve heard all about you,” she said.
    “All of it bad, I expect?”
    “It wouldn’t be professional for me to comment.”
    “Hm.” She is a slender girl, with intelligent brown eyes. “Well, it’s too late to back out now,” I said. “Once St. Oswald’s gets you, you’re here for life. It saps the spirit, you know. Look at Pearman, a shadow of his former self; he’s actually surrendered my office to the boche .”
    Pearman sighed. “I thought you wouldn’t like that.”
    “Oh, you did?”
    “It was either that, Roy, or lose room fifty-nine. And since you never use your office—”
    He was right, in a way, but I wasn’t going to say so. “What do you mean, lose room fifty-nine? That’s been my form room for thirty years. I’m virtually a part of it. You know what the boys call me? Quasimodo. Because I look like a gargoyle and I live in the Bell Tower.”
    Miss Dare kept a straight face, but only just.
    Pearman shook his head. “Look, take it up with Bob Strange if you like. But this was the best I could do. You get to keep room fifty-nine for most of the time, and there’s still the Quiet Room if someone else is teaching there and you want to do some marking.”
    That sounded ominous. I always mark in my own room when I’m free. “Do you mean to say I’m going to be sharing room fifty-nine?”
    Pearman looked apologetic. “Well, most people share,” he said. “We don’t have the space otherwise. Haven’t you seen your timetable?”
    Well, of course I hadn’t. Everyone knows I never even look at it until I need to. Fuming, I rummaged through my pigeonhole and came up with a crumpled piece of computer paper and a memo from Danielle, Strange’s secretary. I braced myself for bad news.
    “Four people? I’m sharing my room with four upstarts and a House Meeting?”
    “It gets worse, I’m afraid,” said Miss Dare meekly. “One of the upstarts is me.”
    It says a lot for Dianne Dare that she forgave me what I said then. Of course it was all in the heat of the moment: words spoken in haste, and all that. But anyone else—Isabelle Tapi, for instance—might have taken umbrage. I know; it’s happened before. Isabelle suffers from delicate nerves, and any claim—for emotional trauma, for instance—is taken very seriously by the Bursar’s office.
    But Miss Dare held her ground. And to do her justice, she never left my room in disorder when she’d been teaching there, or rearranged my papers, or screamed at the mice, or commented on the bottle of medicinal sherry at the back of my cupboard, so I felt I’d probably got the best of a bad lot.
    All the same, I did feel resentful of this attack on my small empire; and I had no doubt who had been behind it. Dr. Devine, Head of German and, perhaps more relevantly, Head of Amadeus House: which House was now scheduled, coincidentally, to meet in my form room every Thursday morning.
    Let me explain. There are five Houses at St. Oswald’s. Amadeus, Parkinson, Birkby, Christchurch, and Stubbs. They deal principally with sporting fixtures, clubs, and chapel, so of course I don’t have much to do with them. A House system that runs principally on chapel and cold showers doesn’t have a lot going for it in my book. Still, on Thursday mornings these Houses meet in the largest rooms available to discuss the week’s events, and I was most annoyed at this choice of my room as their meeting place. Firstly, it meant that Sourgrape Devine would have the chance to poke around in all my desk drawers, and secondly, it meant hideous confusion as a hundred boys struggled to cram into a room designed for thirty.
    I told myself mournfully that it was only once a week. Still, I felt uneasy. I didn’t like the