To Serve them all my Days III

David then gets a letter from Julia, who tells him that she's going to America to marry her boss, a wealthy American businessman. She tells him that he is meant to be a schoolmaster and he should stick to that. He is upset but tries to concentrate on his application for the headship. He feels that if Carter became head he and the science master would clash and he'd have to leave. Carter wanted to modernise the school, spend more money on science and get rid of the old fashioned image and the tolerance of different sorts of people. David goes for his interview but neither he nor Carter get the job. It goes to an older man, who has worked for a long time in South Africa. Herries tells him he's not sure about Alcock the new man but that he is not that young and probably wont stay more than a few years. As David is young for a headship that will give him time to gain more experience in his job. Alcock seems very dry and not a warm human good natured man like Herries and David becomes uneasy that the man seems incapable of humour or emotion. He soon finds that he's right, Alcock does improve the fabric of the school but he is narrow minded, and spends his time either making up new rules or severely enforcing the existing ones. He expels a pupil for gambling, and makes a public exhibtion of another one for smoking because he has a fanatical aversion to it. He seems to have no personal life, and he starts to make life difficult for the masters who do. David has always been sympathetic to the Labour movement, as the son of a miner, and he goes to a meeting when at home in Wales, where he meets a young woman from a well to do Yorkshire family who has turned to the Left and is running as a socialist candidate. He gets on with her but is disappointed to find that she is married, though separated from her husband. David is finding life at Bamfylde increasingly unhappy and is tempted to leave when Carter who has become friendly with him suggests they leave and start a new school together. He and Alcock are at loggerheads and he wonders if he could give up teaching and go into politics or support himself by writing history books.