The Honours Board – Pamela Hansford Johnson (1970)

Pamela Hansford Johnson was such a gifted, prolific writer, The Honours Board comes something like two thirds of the way through her writing life. Not quite as compelling as the novels of The Helena trilogy – the third of which I have still to read, but she recreates this small, vanished world with absolute authenticity. A boarding school is such a great setting for a novel, and here in this ordered, closed little world, Pamela Hansford Johnson, shows us the lives of the men and women who work and live there. The boys themselves are rather secondary to the narrative, and we only get to know one boy well.

Downs Park is an English, boys preparatory school not too far away from Eastbourne. A school for boys expected to move on to several years at a traditional public school. Ably and sensitively run by owner/headmaster Mr Annick, loyally assisted by his wife Grace, Downs Park retains the ethos that Annick has created during his years at the school. However, the school has been losing money, and the honours board doesn’t show any scholarships to the very great English public schools. Deep down Annick knows that the school is ripe for takeover – but he is resisting. He doesn’t want to see his beloved Downs Park change at all.

“English turf, barbered, emerald, springy, diamond-chipped with dew, is difficult to maintain: but Annick had put in a good many years on his. At the end of September the weather was still dry, and all the sprinklers were playing over the grass. These were just another of the multiple reasons why the school did not pay its way but he couldn’t see how they could be dispensed with.
He looked across the three conjoined houses rosy in the evening light. How much longer could these schools exist economically, or be regarded still as social and academic necessities?”

Annick’s second master – Rupert Massinger is a different kind of man; younger, wealthy, sexually manipulative and a little predatory, he is also ambitious and longs to takeover Downs Park. Massinger lives in a cottage in the grounds with his active, bouncy wife Blossom, who assists with teaching games. There is a great and polite pretence kept up between these two couples, that they are friends, and enjoy spending time together. The Annick’s however, rather dislike the Massingers, the harried Headmaster fearing what would happen to his beloved Downs Park under Massinger’s control.

There are a host of well-drawn peripheral characters; including the rather tragic, lonely Mrs Murray, shocked when she begins to have unrequited feelings for the school’s lesbian teacher Betty Cope. Secretary, Helen Queen is unwillingly drawn into an affair with Massinger, who doesn’t pretend he is using her for anything other than sex. Annick’s adult widowed daughter Penelope, comes to stay for a while, and becomes involved with science master Leo Canning.

Suddenly, the Massingers leave Downs Park, taking up residence in a flat in the nearby seaside town of Eastbourne. They keep in regular touch with various members of the school community, Rupert just waiting for the right time to make his move, he wants to know exactly how things stand, with the finances.

In their place come Norman and Delia Pool, Norman is enchanted by Downs Park, and wants nothing more than to be allowed to stay for years. Norman, however is a sad, troubled man, forever watchful of his pretty younger wife, around whom there seems to be a secret, he is terrified she will spoil it all for him, yet his love for his wife means he only wants to protect her – largely from herself.

Headmaster Cyril Annick puts his faith in a couple of clever boys, who should he feels, get scholarships. One boy in particular; Peter Quillan becomes important to the Annicks. When Peter first starts at Downs Park, he is about eight years old, as the novel closes he is thirteen, and it’s time to sit the scholarship exams. Annick is not the kind of headmaster to put his academic ambitions ahead of the welfare of his boys, he runs his school with both intelligence and love, and the boys and the staff hold him high esteem.

Peter is quickly identified as a very clever boy, and Mr Annick so longs to see the name of a great public school listed on the honours board, and Peter might just be the boy to do it. So, Mr Annick is concerned when Peter’s parents say they shall take him away with them to America. Mr Annick persuades them to let Peter stay, promising that he and Grace will care for Peter during the holidays, and take him away with them on their summer travels. The arrangement works admirably, and Peter is happy with the Annicks and although the formality between them is never done away with, Peter does enjoy something of a privileged position, while remaining popular with his school fellows. As Peter grows up he develops a great fondness for the headmaster and his wife and wants badly to repay their faith in him. Peter and Annick travel to perhaps the greatest of all those public schools for Peter to sit the scholarship exams, Annick is touchingly nervous for his favourite pupil.

“When they had unpacked, Peter and Annick went for a stroll through Eton. It was a little after six o’clock and a fair evening. Penguin boys in black tail and white ties were hurrying back from class through the pastel High Street, young ankle bones protruding from trousers too short, faces burnished by the rose of the sun, The Chestnut trees were in flower, pink and white on red brick. ‘It’s the uniforms that make it really.’ Said Peter, ‘it would be a pity to change.’ My mother says a picture’s made effective by its use of blacks and whites. She says Boudin shows how. My aunt’s got a Boudin, a real one.’
Annick sick with nervousness, longed to get back to the hotel for a drink, but Peter was pleasantly lingering. They went into School Yard, and stood before the green statue of Henry VI.”

Pamela Hansford Johnson ably weaves together the stories of her various characters, their preoccupations, relationships and ambitions, against a backdrop of a traditional, though minor preparatory school. During these years, there is sexual intrigue, petty theft, suicide, and drunkenness at Downs Park. All of which makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read, which has reminded me I must get back to that Helena trilogy, the first two books of which were utterly superb.