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CHAPTER IV

They found Ockley in his room hard at work on some lobster salad. Ockley's room had been commandeered for the mess as it was the largest of the four. When the iron bedstead was up against the wall, decently veiled by a curtain, there was plenty of room for the table and four chairs. An inkstained bureau, known as a" burry," a folding washstand and an ottoman, completed the standard furniture. In the ottoman were crumpled shirts, rowing zephyrs damp with sweat, and grey flannels ; muddy stockings, fives shoes and old scug caps, the blue and black striped cap, which everyone without a colour wore, when in change. There were thick woollen sweaters, one or two golf balls, and, concealed at the bottom, a packet of Abdullas.
Ockley's room had six pictures ; Wren's house group 1918, Wren's house group I 1919, Lady Periton in court dress, Lord Periton in knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket, " Here they Come "-a highly coloured print, which showed bullet-like grouse hurtling towards their doom, and " Good Dawg," of the same series, in which a faithful retriever was about to deposit a pheasant at its master's feet.
The house groups at a casual glance were identical. Wren's arms were always crossed on his bony knees, his head held erect above the points of his stick-up collar, and alone in the group he looked the camera squarely in the lens. On each side of his boots were strewn the smallest boys in jackets and Eton collars. They sat Chinese fashion on their haunches, in attitudes of shy truculence or impudent youth. Watching over them sat the ten top boys in the house, their expressions twisted into brief dignity ; and above them stood the rank and file of Wren's. There were spotty-faced boys and fat pimply boys and sallow lean boys. There were overgrown youths of sixteen and undergrown boys of seventeen or eighteen. Their shoulders rubbed and overlapped at every angle, and their mouths ill controlled inaudible petty jests and innuendos passed on the rest of the house.