To Serve Them All My Days - Week 7

[Hugh]

This week's section covers the rest of part VI (Chapters 2 to 4).

[Brian E]

TO SERVE THEM ALL MY DAYS – 7th Week - PART VI, Chapters 2-4
I will put the summary in spoilers. (view spoiler)[
PART VI – CUT AND COME AGAIN
CHAPTER 2
SubCh.1 – Christine and David’s idyllic vacation is disrupted when Christine, upon hearing news that the Labour PM has sold out to the Tories to retain some authority, runs back to her constituency. As she leaves, Christine promises David they will marry someday and replies to his request to phone her, ‘Phone every night if you can afford it.”
SubCh.2 – Brigadier Cooper informs David the Board meets with both David and Alcock the next day. His assessment is that it “Might go any way.” David meets with the Board and the session was brief with Alderman Blunt as questioning as expected. It left David “baffled and irritated.” That night, while David is up unable to get to sleep, Grace wakes him with news that Towser in breathing is labored. David lets Grace sit up with Towser and while he’s making tea around midnight, Alcock’s butler Old Rigby knocks on the door with concerns that Alcock was locked in his lit study something he never does that late. Rigby craftily opens the door and David goes in alone to find Alcock slumped over his desk in the midst of writing a resignation letter, although he died before he could write the word ‘resignation.’ David has Rigby call Dr. Willoughby, carries Alcock’s body to his bedroom and pockets the letter. Willoughby shows up diagnoses it as angina caused and David hands him pills that Rigby had found and the letter.
CHAPTER 3
SubCh.1 – Alcock had been seeing a London heart specialist who gave him the pills and had left South Africa due to his health, matter he had kept concealed from the Board. He was cremated and his ashes sent to Cape Town. He left two grown sons. Algy gets appointed acting headmaster and David avoids any talk of applying for the position. Some students craft a wooden headstone for Towser and they, Grace and David place it on his grave.
SubCh.2 – David goes to be with Christine before her election. Christine endures hecklers and interruptions during her speech on-stage at the evening meeting and leaves it in tears. She invites David up but, as her status as a married women means their relationship endangers both in her electoral prospects and his headmaster prospects, she thinks they should call it off. David decides this is not the time and place to argue with her so he stays with her but plans to leave before daylight
SubCh.3 – David gets up at 5 a.m. to depart leaving a note telling her that no matter how the election goes, love is all that matters.
SubCh.4 – Back at Bamfylde, Barnaby shows David a copy of the Saturday Times with a rave review of his book The Royal Tigress as a “highly readable account of the War of the Roses.” Copies of his book arrive and David’s signing copies for student Heffling, Barnaby, Howarth and his mom when Chris calls. Chris is thrilled with David’s book reception and reads him one other over the phone when David suggests he could be a full-time writer. Chris says that wouldn’t make him happy and ends the call.
CHAPTER 4
SubCh.1 – The Labour party suffers losses in the election but Chris makes a strong showing in a losing effort, maintaining hopes for future candidacies. The rest of the term passes smoothly with Algy getting Bamfylde back on course. Sir Rufus shows up and Algy tells David that Sir Rufus wants a word with him. Sir Rufus shares a Burmese cheroot, discusses David’s previous application for headmaster, reveals Alcock’s dying almost-resignation letter and offers David the position of acting headmaster until the next Board meeting’s vote to confirm David in that position, which he asserts is “a near certainty.” Fourteen years after he first sat in the room, David accepts Sir Rufus’s ‘unofficial’ offer. When asked for his conditions, David asks to be able to at least teach a class and be his own man in politics, conditions which Sir Rufus accepts with the proviso that David pledge not to embarrass the school on home ground.
SubCh.2 – David meets Chris outside Piccadilly Underground for Christmas Eve dinner. Grace, at 11 years 8 months, was at Grannie Marwood’s for the holiday. Chris tells David her plan to take an offer of a year at Montreal University where she can get a Canadian degree in a year. She thinks it is great for her politically, giving her an edge on most candidates, and good for them both personally to put their relationship on hiatus for a year so he can immerse himself in his job and not have to worry about a public scandal. They say goodbye.
David returns to immerse himself in the winter term at Bamfylde. David has plans. He ponders having student discipline determined by a Council of Peers, tapping Old Boys’ funds to build a gymnasium. He meets with the Bursar who backs his suggestion of a much-needed fee increase. He meets with the new music master Renshaw-Smith who whole-heartedly backs his proposal to revive the Choral Society and the annual Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He convinces Howarth to be Old Boys secretary. Howarth tells him how Willoughby and Algy gave Sir Rufus the Alcock letter and plied him with port while convincing him of David’s worth. David calls expelled student Hislop’s mother and pleases her with an offer to accept her son’s return to Bamfylde.
Students arrive for the winter term. David tells Grace she’ll have to expand and hold a school-wide new boys tea. (hide spoiler)]

[Nidhi]

At this stage the book is poised for a nice classic happy ending. Apart from the personal relationship of Davis and Christine, every problem has been solved. Christine has succeed and David is now a principal.

I can't fathom any permanent solution to David's relation with Christine, even if she gets a divorce, she has dismissed school as spartan, it is definitely not a place of action for a budding politician.