To Serve them all my Days Part V

David is busy trying to modernise the school but without taking away its individualism. Now in the 1930s its getting harder and harder to attact pupils to a private fee paying school, and he has to work hard. Grace is growing up and going to school at a girls' school. David wonders if Christine will ever be willing to settle down in an isolated place like Devon when she is travelling in Europe and the US. Ian Howarth, still David's best friend, is getting older and has health problems, due to his heavy smoking. After Hitler takes over in Germany, Christine appears in Bamfylde with with a young Jewish German boy, whom she has adopted and asks David to taek him at the school. She is going to the US, and says that she hopes that mabye she can meet her husband who is now working in Canada... and get a divorce. David takes in the boy, and he becomes part of the school. Some time later, Christine comes back, and has discussions wiht the Labour party. However, she ends up almost splitting from them because many of her organisation refuse to believe that Hitler and Mussolini are a threat or dont want to rearm to fight them. She is disappointed that her fellow socialists are so unwilling to realise that they may have to go to war and she decides to give up politics for now. She tells David that she has managed to get a divorce from Roland, her husband and soon they will be free to get married and she' is willing to settle down in Devon. They get married and Christine tries to find a new life. She and David are happy but she realises that he has become more conservative, after many years of working in a private school, and she can't always get him to see that small schools like Bamfylde have to modernise and move with the times. David is happy and busy, but she is less so. Then, she becomes pregnant and looks forward to being a mother.. She gets a bit irriated by David's increased conservatism and his being absorbed in his work. Then, she has a miscarriage and is very depressed. After she recovers she drives off alone and very unhappy. He follows her and brings her home and she tells him that losing the baby is doubly bad because she has no work or role in Bamfylde. David suggests that she considers politics again but she is less keen on it since her disputes with the Labour party. Then Howarth suggests that since they dont have a good mistress for the junior form, and they sometimes get very young pupils, Christine could take up a teaching role. She does and finds it more interesting than she had expected, and she becomes pregnant again. Howarth's health has declined and he tells David that he has cancer and he is not going to live much longer, but he wants to die in the school, not a hospital. David agrees and Howarth moves back with a male nurse to care for him. He lives for 6 months, in his old familiar surroundings, and dies just when Chris has her baby, a son. THey call him Ian after Howarth.