Mr. King, in the meantime, got ready to receive him in the little flat he and his family occupied in the former servants’ quarters of the day school building. Originally a country house of some distinction that had proved too expensive for its widowed owner to maintain, the school building had lent itself naturally to conversion to a boys’ private preparatory school for children of the uneasy middle class of moderate means anxious to secure entry for their sons to a suitable Public School, that misnomer in those days for the golden key to social mobility for the aspirant classes. At the age of thirteen, candidates for admission to these private schools for the moneyed elite had to pass the national Common Entrance examination held every year. While the boys dreaded the exams, most of their parents dreaded the writing of the impressive cheques that would keep them there once they passed. Some eighty boys were currently preparing for this eventuality at Foxe Hall Preparatory Day School, with a further one hundred and twenty enrolled in the larger boarding school nearby. Upstairs, six bedrooms made six classrooms of various sizes. The impressive study hall with its marble fireplace had once been a ballroom-sized reception room. Morning prayers were held in the entrance hall below the panelled staircase, and the servants’ quarters were easily adapted for the King family’s use. Baby Malcolm King was asleep in his cot, while Anna and her mother were shopping in London and due to arrive by the 5:15 pm train. Mr. King had promised to pick them up in the family’s elderly Ford Anglia. Prep began at 4:15 and ended at 5 o’clock, which gave him adequate time to help Colin. He chose a passage on Aeneas and Dido from the primer, as this tended to give boys confidence to tackle the inevitable drudgery of conjugating and declining. Besides, it told a story. He stroked the family tabby Cleopatra absently with his free hand. All was in order.
As he waited for Colin to return, he reflected on his career in schoolmastering. His parents had hoped he would become a banker like his brothers, but he had chosen the path less travelled by. Had it made any difference? At thirty-two, married, and with ten years’ exemplary service to Foxe Hall, and the only Oxford graduate on staff, he was the likely successor to the departing Head, who was returning to the family farm in Norfolk. The school was prospering. It had even had to turn away prospective pupils last term– ‘oversubscribed’ was the Head’s word for such a happy state of affairs. Mr. King chuckled at the memory of his brother’s foolish prediction that Latin was a doomed school subject. Sebastian had advised him to ‘invest in Science.’ What nonsense! The Empire and Commonwealth had been built by administrators who had all, like himself, studied classical Greek and Latin at Oxford. What better preparation could one have for all the vicissitudes of modern life? Yes, all was very much in order.
