Reviews –
Five characters in search of their author’s alma mater David Warnes reviews… Cradle of Writers by Patrick Humphries, Dulwich College Quatercentenary, London, 2019. ISBN 978-0-9539493-6-6. Our School Stories, by multiple authors, Dulwich College Quatercentenary, London, 2019. ISBN 978-0-9539493-5-9. I always leave the reception-room unlocked. In case I have a client. That morning I had four. Which was four more than in the last month. Four clients and a hangover that had me feeling a small rodent had settled down in my mouth and died happy. The red settee and the two armchairs were occupied, leaving one client standing by the library table. He was tall, stiff and thin, like one of those well-pruned cypress trees they have in tubs on the sidewalk on Sunset Boulevard. Brown hair, greying at the temples and receding faster than the tide on Hermosa Beach. He was wearing an old-fashioned naval uniform. A Hollywood bit player, I guessed. He’d picked up a well-thumbed of the New Yorker and had the puzzled look of a man whose expectation of entertainment has been disappointed. So, not a regular reader of the New Yorker. The sofa was accommodating a woman. It had the capacity to accommodate a man as well, but none of the three had chanced it. She was wearing a lovat tweed skirt, and shoes so sensible they looked as though they’d rather be in Boston. Her expression, hawk-nosed and hard-eyed under a floss of grey hair, suggested that she and the shoes were in full agreement. At least she wasn’t in costume, unlike the sailor and the two characters who had opted for the armchairs. One had come in a scarlet military uniform. He had the muscles to fill it, but his long legs were shifting uneasily across my carpet.
54
Autumn 2019
His dark hair didn’t match an unconvincing blonde moustache, but at this distance there was no way of telling whether the moustache was a home-grown mistake or the work of a less than competent make-up girl at MGM. The other guy – I guessed it was a guy on the basis of his bulk, his costume being the biggest attempt at a cover-up since Teapot Dome – was wearing clovenfooted leather boots, a hairy body suit and a goatish face mask with curly horns. “Did you come together?” I asked. They nodded. “So, what is this? A class action against Warner Brothers?” They shook their heads. “Some beef with Central Casting?” They shook their heads a second time. About as communicative as Trappists in Lent. “OK. Let’s start with names.” I pointed at the navy guy. “Captain Horatio Hornblower”. “And you, lady?” “Agatha Gregson, Bertram’s Aunt Agatha”. Said in a voice that was all sour and no whisky. Bertram had my sympathy, whoever he was. I turned towards the one in regimentals. “Lieutenant Harry Feversham”. The goat needed no prompting. “Our name is Legion”. “So, what brings you here?” “We have but one shared interest” said Aunt Agatha. “Our writers were all educated at Dulwich College.” Of all the shamuses in all the towns in all the world, there had to be a reason they picked me. “That figures” I said, “I guess it’s the one thing we all have in common.” There can be few schools which have shaped such diverse creative talents as C.S. Forester, P.G. Wodehouse, A.E.W. Mason, Dennis Wheatley and Raymond Chandler, a truth entertainingly explored in Cradle of Writers by Patrick Humphries, one of a number of volumes published by the College to mark its Quatercentenary in 2019. More recently, the far from mean streets of SE21 have seen writers as diverse
