I like autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves. A dangerous time; of violent rages and deceptive calm; of fireworks in the pockets and conkers in the fist. It is the season in which I feel closest to the boy I was, and at the same time closest to death. [p. 210]
Set at a fictional boys' school, St Oswalds, Gentlemen and Players has two narrators, their voices not always entirely distinctive but their respective chapters headed by the image of a black pawn or a white king. The pawn is 'Mole', whose objective is to bring down the school: the king is Straitley, the Classics master, who's survived 99 terms at St Oswalds and is determined to make the century. Straitley's narrative is a classic tale of an old-fashioned teacher left high and dry by modern technology, Health and Safety regulations ('a man who will stoop to the Health and Safety manoeuvre will stop at nothing'), and the general decline of standards. He's popular with the boys, but in constant conflict with his colleagues over room reassignments and the local paper's exclusive features on the school, published under the byline 'Mole'.
Mole's narrative is much twistier: growing up in the Porter's house, sneaking into the school when nobody's around, envying the boys and their seemingly idyllic lives, hating the local comprehensive where children get beaten up for doing homework or carrying books, eventually stealing uniform from lost property and adopting the persona of 'Julian Pinchbeck' in order to become just another first-year. Julian finds a friend, Leon, and the two get up to various harmless, and not so harmless, shenanigans. Then: tragedy. Now 'Julian' has returned as one of the new intake of teachers, bright and affable on the outside, but secretly set on sabotage. Mole's 'antisocial engineering' is clever, precise and appallingly effective. But why is Straitley being left 'til last?
I have several other novels by Harris: I always forget, after not having read one for a while, how much I admire her writing. Gentlemen and Players is a thoroughly enjoyable, well-paced and serpentine novel, with plenty of misdirection and a twist which is only subtly foreshadowed. I was not expecting that twist and shall not reveal it here, but I found it both credible and in-character. There are some interesting games with nominative determinism (among the teachers we find Meek, Easy, Dare, Monument ...) and a portrait of sociopathy as compelling as Highsmith's Ripley.
And it opens with an epigram from Geoffrey Willans' Down with Skool: 'Any skool is a bit of a shambles'. (There's also a reference to Ronald Searle's illustrations of gerunds in their natural habitat.) Cheers cheers!
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