Remind me: why are you going to this school reunion?” Thomas’s wife asked as he carried his suitcase downstairs. “You hated Overbury. You told me you were always getting into trouble there.”
“I didn’t hate it,” Thomas answered. “I just found it stuffy. But what with Brexit and everything, this might be my last chance to go. I want to see what’s happened to everyone and how they’ve changed.”
“People don’t change as they get older. They just get weirder,” she said.
Thomas was heading back to Overbury for the first time. It was one of those schools the English like to call “public”, though they are, in fact, expensively private. As the plane from Rome landed at Heathrow, he remembered the feeling of dread he’d always had when his parents sent him there each term, and this feeling grew as he drove from London to Overbury. Interesting, he thought. That hadn’t changed then.
It was about six o’clock in the evening when he parked outside the main gates of the school, which looked something like a French chateau. It had been built in the 19th century and, for 100 years, it had churned out colonial administrators. When the British Empire faded, it produced members of the establishment instead: judges, generals and members of parliament.
“But not me,” thought Thomas as he went looking for the old assembly room, where they were supposed to meet. “The head of a language school is not part of the establishment.”
Not that he was complaining. After university, he’d worked as a teacher in London, but the language school he now ran was in the centre of Rome. Every day, as he drank his coffee with the morning sun on his face, he thought how lucky he was. He never regretted exchanging the smelly London Underground, with its grey, depressed commuters, for the little bar he now visited on his way to work, surrounded by elegant Romans.
He found the assembly room, and it gradually filled with other men of his age. At first, everybody was a little shy, but as the food and wine took effect, conversations started, old stories were retold and laughter spread. Thomas found some of his contemporaries and saw his wife had been right. The same people he liked as a boy, he liked as an adult. Those he had disliked then were even worse now.
"It was a strange custom of the English, sending their children to boarding school"
They all listened politely as the present headmaster told them about a new computer centre and sports hall and asked whether they would consider giving money to the school development fund. Then, gradually, they said their goodbyes, promising to stay in touch and sometimes even meaning it.
After he left the room, Thomas wandered alone through the corridors and courtyards, remembering. It was a strange custom of the English, he thought, sending their children to boarding school. He’d never wanted to send his children away — not that they could ever have afforded it. He paused for a moment outside the Reading Room. It had been a large, comfortable room in his time, filled with leather chairs and sofas, where the daily papers were laid out on tables, like a gentlemen’s club in London. Preparing us for our future, Thomas thought. All part of the plan.
Inside, it hadn’t changed. The same smell, and the walls covered in boards with the names of the dead from two world wars. The list after list of lives destroyed.
“Excellent men, weren’t they, Tom?” said a voice, making him jump. Sitting in the dark behind him was a shape.
“Hello,” he said uncertainly. “Who’s that?”
A man stood up with difficulty. “Christopher Sharp. Remember me?”
Oh, yes, thought Thomas. I remember you.
Christopher had not been popular. The lonely son of an army officer, he’d seemed rigid and old-fashioned, even at a school like Overbury. He’d gone into the army and then politics — as a Conservative MP, naturally. Over the past few years, he’d made a name for himself as a vehement Brexiteer.
“I always come in here when I visit,” Christopher continued, “to honour them.”
Thomas saw that the man was drunk and groaned inwardly. He didn’t want to stand in the dark talking to a sentimental drunk.
“Really? Well, Chris, nice to see you, but I really have to go.”
“Their sacrifice wasn’t in vain. I have kept my promise.”
“Promise?”
“To get England out of Europe, of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“Europe was poisoning us, Tom — making us weak, comfortable … vegetarian. But in a few years’ time, when we’ve had a bit of austerity, we’ll stand up straight again.”
For a moment, Thomas thought of walking away; arguing with a drunk was senseless. But then he was flooded with anger at the stupidity of what Christopher had said. He’d also sensed it a couple of times that evening when he told people what he did and where he lived, but now he was confronted with the full idiocy of English nostalgia for the empire.
“Is that the message you take from these names?” Thomas asked, pointing at the boards. “And all the French, German and Italian ones, too? All those lives unlived? Don’t you think they’d have given anything to have had the chances we’ve had? In a peaceful Europe?”
“Ah, you're one of those European surrender monkeys. Well…”
Then Thomas punched him.
The fight didn’t last long, but they made a lot of noise and had to be separated by the headmaster and one of the teachers. At first, Christopher wanted to call the police, but the headmaster said the scandal would not be good for anybody, and the episode was closed.
Thomas flew back to Rome the next day.
“Wow,” said his wife when she saw his black eye, “that was some reunion! Will you go again?”
“No,” he answered. “It’s like you said: the people haven’t changed — they’ve just got weirder.”