Read Online An Awkward Lie by Michael Innes - Free Book Online Page B

creature, lingering out his broken career in a crazy school. But it wouldn’t matter. It was the fact that one was an artist that was the important thing. From these reflections – somewhat sentimental in character, and undeniably irrelevant to the design with which he had returned to Overcombe – Bobby managed to shake himself free.
    ‘I want to ask you something,’ he said firmly.
    ‘Really?’ It was with an air of surprise that Hartsilver said this. ‘I’m very seldom asked anything – except perhaps to give an extra hour to the most unteachable of the children, in order to iron out some difficulty in the timetable. Not that talent doesn’t lurk among the unteachable from time to time. Even through Free Expression occasionally.’
    Bobby remembered the Free Expression, and saw that it was still going on. The blackboards had become whiteboards, and the aerial dog-fights once crudely chalked on them had given way to spacecraft and extra-galactic monsters.
    ‘A boy called Beadon, for example,’ Hartsilver was saying. ‘He has a flair for caricature, and I fear his use of it at times inclines to impertinence. But I haven’t the heart to check him. On the board over there.’
    Bobby briefly inspected Beadon’s productions, since it would have been uncivil to neglect to do so. There was a passable representation of Onslow in a state of inebriety, and underneath it the words:
     
THE GRATE SOAK OF PETERBOROUGH
     
    Next to this was Hartsilver himself dressed in a juvenile sailor-suit and dancing a hornpipe; this was labelled:
     
PORTLAND BILL
     
    Finally there was Dr Gulliver, depicted in an attitude of weighty oratory which Bobby recalled clearly enough; he was described as:
     
THE SELEBRATED SEVERN BORE BORING
     
    ‘At least,’ Bobby said, ‘Beadon seems to be making progress with his Geography. He just has to catch up a little in Spelling, and he’ll be a credit to the school. But what I want to ask you is this: do you remember a man called Nauze?’
    ‘Nauze?’ For a moment it was almost as if Hartsilver had an impulse to shy away from the name. If this was so, however, he recovered himself. ‘Dear me, yes. He was here in your time, was he not? You had a nickname for him: Bleeding Nauze.’
    ‘Bloody Nauze.’
    ‘To be sure. He was a little too fond of telling boys to touch their toes.’
    ‘That’s right – but not in the least to any point of scandal. But was there a scandal? Connected, I mean, with his leaving Overcombe.’
    ‘I might have been the last to hear of anything of the sort. I am not a great frequenter of our staff common room. I do have an impression, however, that Nauze left rather abruptly.’ Hartsilver was looking at Bobby in some surprise, and perhaps not altogether without disapproval. This was fair enough, since there wasn’t much propriety in an Old Boy’s seeming attempt to get idle gossip going in this way. But at least Hartsilver now went on quite readily. ‘It must have been not long after you left Overcombe yourself, so Nauze might well have faded from my mind. As a matter of fact, however, I recall him fairly vividly.’
    ‘Do you remember something about one of his hands?’
    ‘He had a finger missing, of course. And that is perhaps a thing that a boy would be particularly likely to keep in mind. But he was notable for something quite other than any mere physical characteristic. Nauze was a remarkable man. I believe I’d call him a very remarkable man.’ Hartsilver paused. ‘His intellectual endowment was in some respects truly outstanding.’
    ‘Then why do you think he–’ Bobby broke off in some confusion, since he had been about to employ some such form of words as ‘came down to working in this cock-eyed school’. His discomfort was, if anything, increased by noticing that Hartsilver was smiling gently.
    ‘Perhaps, Bobby, the poor man had a past. How lucky one is oneself not have had that. It makes not having a future a good deal more bearable. I