A Boy Called MOUSE

by Penny Dolan

  He tugged at the desk, and her basket tumbled down. Out spilled fragments of gnawed chicken bones and the rosebud bowl. He mounted the steps, moving hesitantly towards her. As he disturbed her fusty shawls, several empty bottles rolled out and shattered across the floor. Strong medicinal fumes rose in the air.

  Awkwardly, Bulloughby lifted her down until she rested in his two arms. That was when we knew that though Madam Claudine might be alive, she could no longer trouble us.

  Bulloughby fixed the class with a malevolent stare. ‘Outside!’ he ordered. ‘Do not come in until you are told, boys.’

  ‘The snow. . . ?’ someone bolder than I said.

  ‘Go!’ he ordered.

  I was the last one out. As the door slammed, I heard a desperate cry.

  ‘Mother!’

  Then a far more awful sound: Headmaster Bulloughby was weeping in huge, awful, painful sobs. I scurried out into the yard, thinking of my own lovely Ma, who was far, far away.

  As for Madam Claudine, a narrow carriage took her away, a grim-faced woman at her side, and we never saw her again.

  However, on that day we wandered round the yard, faces pinched and blue, trying to keep warm. Boys huddled in groups or sheltered in doorways, taking turns to face the wind.

  An old oak grew in the empty field beyond the yard, so Niddle and Pyeberry and I made for that trunk. We climbed inside the hollow bole, taking some younger boys with us. Clustered there like squirrels within a drey, we shivered together for warmth. Evening came. The oak swayed with the wind and creaked and sang.

  Pyeberry hummed along with the sound, trying to stop the younger ones grizzling.

  ‘Don’t like that noise much,’ Niddle muttered.

  ‘It’s what trees do,’ I said, thinking of the trees around Roseberry Farm. ‘It’s a good noise. Keep still, and listen.’

  It was dark when we heard a bell ringing. We entered the stony silence of Murkstone Hall and crept to the dormitory without anything in our bellies.

  The next morning, at breakfast, Grindle was not asked to take the pretty rosebud bowl anywhere, and Bulloughby’s face was grimmer than ever.

  With Madam Claudine gone, more changes came. Button brought Headmaster Bulloughby a new teacher.

  Mr Jarvey had seen trouble. His left leg dragged slightly, and the pearly line of an old scar marked one cheek, but he did not crouch in Madam Claudine’s carved nest, ready to prey on the class. Jarvey was a man who stood level with his pupils. He spoke to us face to face.

  It was not exactly a miracle, but it felt like it, though we knew he had not come to save us. The bitter cough that racked Jarvey’s chest meant that he was at Murkstone Hall because no other place would have him. We guessed, from Bulloughby’s passing sneers, that Jarvey was paid only a pittance, and Grindle spoke openly about the debtor’s prison.

  We did not care, for our Jarvey had a mischievous light in his eye, and a twisted, rebellious expression, even on the bad days when he used the back of a chair to help him stand upright.

  ‘Good morning,’ he began, giving a gently cynical smile. ‘I am here with you in this happy place, and I am most interested in everything you clever pupils have so far learned. Please, do instruct me in this matter, boys,’ he said, eyes twinkling.

  ‘A is for Armadillo, B is for Buffalo . . .’ Right away we started our usual chanting. Jarvey stared at us, his eyes widening as if he could not believe what he was hearing. We went on and on, desperate to show him all that Madam Claudine had taught us.

  ‘Stop!’ he shouted, raising a hand. ‘Stop, stop, stop!’

  We stopped, the room still echoing with our noise.

  Jarvey’s eyebrows were raised almost high enough to hide under his hair. ‘Boys, is this it? Is this all? Do you never read, write, listen to entire stories?’ While we shrugged, he paced about, perplexed. ‘Do you measure, weigh, puzzle?’ he tried. ‘Paint? Draw? Make?’

  ‘This is what we do, sir,’ said Niddle, and we all started up again.

  ‘Twelve times twelve . . .’ Our chanting resounded.

  Jarvey slapped his hands over his ears. ‘Enough. Stop, stop!’ he yelled. ‘Quiet, please! Quiet!’

  When there was silence once more, Jarvey gave a deep and mighty sigh. ‘Then it is high time that you boys knew rather more.’

  From that day, Jarvey started to give us a proper education. He talked about inventions and discoveries, globes and lands and languages and all sorts of new and wondrous things. He took down Madam Claudine’s Exhortations. Instead, with his voice, he unwrapped a host of heroes and villains and myths and legends and spread them before us.

  Such fine stories, such stunning adventures, such words! Each night these tales wound themselves around in my head, and each morning they sprang up like pictures in my imagination.

  It was as if all the windows had been cleaned – though they had not, of course – and we could now see a world outside, away from the drudgery of Murkstone Hall. Not everyone thought that things were better, for now we had to use our brains, and ask and answer real questions, but I did and Pyeberry did, and probably Niddle did too.

  It was strange. We had almost forgotten there could be bright times. Does everyone meet someone like our Jarvey, someone who makes the world a better place, who makes the dull days exciting? Someone who changes lists of facts into living ideas? I hope so.

  Headmaster Bulloughby made good use of Button’s gift. As Murkstone Hall had been given this new teacher, every boy had to go to Jarvey’s lessons. Though our room was cramped before, now we were packed tighter than the creatures within old Noah’s ark.

  The youngest boys squatted on the floor, at the front. My friends and I, now we were older, squashed into the middle benches. Finally Grindle’s gang joined us, glowering from the back rows, flicking pellets at our heads, sticking us with pen nibs and reminding us that they were the secret lords of the class.

  Most of these fellows had lived in freedom before, learning little except how to play cards and race red-eyed rats. At first they lounged about, trying to ignore Jarvey but without success.

  Jarvey advanced upon them, demanding they think, asking them to learn. Whatever had befallen him before, Jarvey had been to places, had done things, knew things. Gradually these boys could not help being interested, for his tales stood against the everlasting grimness of Murkstone Hall. In some ways, it was an easy contest for Jarvey.

  Still Grindle did not want to listen. He shrank down, afraid of more than Jarvey’s twisted smile and thin cough. He was afraid of his own ignorance. Each day he sat, scratching his name on the desks with a pocketknife, looking for trouble, looking for a way of making up for his missing card games and his lost idleness. And he found it.

  .

  CHAPTER 13

  A HIGH POINT

  I was climbing around in the branches of the old oak tree when I saw Grindle waiting below. The moment I reached the ground, he clamped his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Right, Vermin, I’ve got a good idea,’ he said, squeezing tighter. ‘A very good idea.’

  I tried to get free, sure that this would not be a good idea for me, but Grindle pointed up at Murkstone Hall itself and the dark forbidding stonework.

  His finger traced where a narrow ledge ran across the side of the building, almost parallel with the upper windows. A curtain of thick ivy grew up one side, and some half-dead creeper had tangled itself around the opposite corner.

  ‘See that ledge up there? I bet a measly scrap of vermin like you could climb from one side to the other.’

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t ’spect I can,’ I muttered.

  He squeezed even tighter. ‘I said, I bet you can climb along that ledge, Vermin.’

  ‘What if I don’t, Grindle?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, if you do, I win several b
ets, and that will be most useful to me, won’t it? Clinkety-clink and all that. Not everybody wants to be as piss-poor as you, young Vermin.’ Rubbing his palms together gleefully, Grindle added, ‘And if you don’t, or won’t, your friend Niddle will get more than a gift from me.’ He clenched his fist and grinned, his yellow teeth bared. ‘Understand?’

  I should have told on him, as anyone should do who meets a Grindle. I should have run and told Jarvey, because Jarvey was someone who would listen, but life’s not exactly simple. Some days Jarvey was stretched out in his room, coughing and sleeping, and then we were left to run wild. It was on such a day that Grindle made his request.

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon, right?’ Grindle told me. I agreed, because I had no choice.

  The boys gathered in the yard to watch.

  ‘Don’t do it, Mouse,’ begged Niddle, tugging at my sleeve. ‘It’s not safe, you know. You don’t have to do this for Grindle.’

  ‘I do, Niddle. Now don’t worry.’

  I rubbed my palms dry on my breeches, then grabbed hold of the gnarled stems of ivy. The first part of the ascent was easy, although the branches shifted and sagged and smaller stems pulled away, releasing showers of grit from the wall.

  Up I went, higher and higher, the boys cheering as I reached the top. Then it was time to cross the side of the building.

  Were Grindle’s palms sweating like mine? I wondered. Coins clinked and Grindle’s voice rumbled somewhere down below.

  I paused, rubbed my hands one at a time against my jacket again. Then I stretched myself thin, and edged my way out across the ledge. Moss had smeared the stone with damp dripping patches. My face and clothes were soon green with slime.

  Carefully, carefully. My palms squelched across bird-painted sills, and my fingernails tore on the rough stone ridges. Rooks swooped down from their nests in the nearby trees and swirled around the building as if they thought I might suddenly fly.

  ‘Come on, you rooks! Get him! Peck out his eyes!’ yelled Grindle, suddenly more amused by this thought than by winning his bet.

  Halfway along, a lead waterspout stuck out from the roof, crowned with a curling fern that dripped thick tears of watery mould on to the wall. This was a section that needed some careful footwork.

  ‘For Niddle,’ I muttered grimly, up where nobody could hear me. ‘For Niddle.’

  Slowly, hand over hand, foot after foot, I clambered across the side of the house, grasping at the guttering, and grabbed, at last, at the thickened stems of the creeper. Down I went, though sharp pointed twigs hid under the crumpled leaves, and dropped the last foot to the ground.

  Such cheers! Such triumph! Satisfied, Grindle palmed his winnings. I was just glad that my dare was over.

  I did not realise that this was only the beginning of Grindle’s entertainment. Over the next months, whenever he felt more than usually bored, he sent me scrambling up the walls of Murkstone Hall. In between, he amused himself by thinking up ways of making the route of the climb a little harder and longer.

  I could have protested. After that first time I could have spoken to Jarvey, but – I admit it – I had my own secret. Though I was terrified each time, once I had reached a certain point high on the wall of Murkstone Hall, a strange emotion filled me, a feeling that was nothing to do with Grindle’s bullying. Once I had begun climbing, going higher and higher, all my life suddenly seemed calm. When I hung there, clutching at the stems, or edging along with my nose close to the crumbling stone, I reached a magical space. Up there, I forgot Bulloughby and Button and how much I was missing Ma and Isaac. All I held in my mind was my next step, my next handhold. Grindle didn’t know that his threats became almost a pleasure to me. Up there, I was as free as I could be. I was proudly me, myself, and for that short while I could imagine I was escaping everything that weighed me down.

  Did my secret joy stop me thinking ahead? I am sure someone else would have seen what was coming, but I did not.

  A day came when I could not do the climb. I was shivering in my bunk, spitting and coughing. I felt unable to stand or stagger across the room, let alone climb anywhere. All the same, Grindle’s familiar request arrived, delivered by my friend Pyeberry.

  ‘Tell Grindle I’m not coming,’ I groaned, curling up under my blanket, and drifting off into the swirling fever that thickened my brain.

  ‘Mouse?’ Pyeberry’s voice came from a long way off.

  ‘Go! Tell Grindle that I just don’t care,’ I sobbed, and dropped into an aching sleep.

  I must have been dreaming about my climb, for I imagined I was reaching for cobwebbed ivy and crumbling ledges and worn sills. I woke with a start and clutched at the bedpost, afraid that I might fall to the ground.

  But I was not balanced on the ledge, even though I could hear the boys cheering as usual, hear the urgent rhythm of their calls.

  ‘Go, go! Higher, higher!’ they chanted.

  Groggily, as I turned over, I wondered who was climbing, if it wasn’t me. An awful thought clanged in my echoing head, and I heard the name they shouted.

  ‘Pyeberry! Pyeberry!’ the boys called.

  ‘Stupid, stupid!’ I whimpered, and dropped to the floor. Trailing my blanket behind me, I struggled desperately across the room, toppled down the stairs, and made my way out into the yard.

  The bright light burned into my aching eyes, but I saw a shadow moving across the wall of Murkstone Hall. It was Pyeberry, climbing my climb. He had reached the very critical place, where the ledge was worn and could only bear weight for a moment. I was small and light, nothing but a Mouse, but my amiable friend was not so slight.

  Pyeberry hesitated, then tried to reach out for safety, but I saw he had misjudged the stretch, and the timing. He missed, did my friend Pyeberry. Like a shot bird, he plunged down, down, to the clump of bushes below, and bounced on the ground.

  The boys rushed forward. Pyeberry’s face was blue-grey, his eyelids fluttering and his fingers twitching. I pushed through, wrapping my blanket around him and shouting his name. Niddle was holding the others back, telling them to give Pyeberry some air.

  Somehow I stumbled back indoors. My fists thundered on Jarvey’s door until he appeared, his own cheeks blotched with scarlet, and I told him what had happened.

  Jarvey placed a hand on Pyeberry’s forehead, gazing at him intently. ‘He must be kept warm,’ he said, covering Pyeberry with his own jacket, ‘and don’t try to move him yet.’

  Coughing, Jarvey loped to Bulloughby’s study, leaving every door wide open. Jarvey’s reasonable, insistent voice rose against our headmaster’s reluctant growl. Then, with a roar, Bulloughby stormed out to see the fallen boy. Angrily, he ordered some older pupils to carry Pyeberry inside the school. Jarvey went with them.

  ‘The rest of you – wait here!’ Bulloughby ordered, his eyes blazing.

  It was dusk before we were let back inside. For the next three days we waited for Pyeberry to return to us, but he did not.

  ‘There’s news,’ Jarvey told Niddle and me at last. ‘Your young friend Pyeberry’s been sent home.’

  So Pyeberry was a Returnable, though to what we did not know. I suspected that Jarvey had something to do with this choice, and I hoped that Pyeberry was now happy. Poor Niddle grew anxious and quiet, as if he feared he might be next in Grindle’s line of victims.

  Not long after Pyeberry had gone, Grindle started up again. He shoved me across the yard.

  ‘Up, up, up!’ he shouted, his gang stamping their feet as my hands clutched at the ivy. Then, when I was almost at the top, the uproar stopped. There was silence, except for the cawing of the crows. Had I gone suddenly deaf?

  Bulloughby was holding Grindle tight by the nose. ‘Enough!’ he yelled. ‘Down, Vermin, down now. There is to be no more of this clambering, do you hear? Don’t hang there blinking like a fool, boy. Get down!’

/>   Why had Mr Bulloughby come to my aid? Why, despite everything, did he choose to take some care of me? Was I wanted for someone or for some purpose?

  Back then I didn’t know the answers and I didn’t care, because from that day on the climbing task was at an end.

  .

  CHAPTER 14

  MEANWHILE, REVENGE

  Scrope gnawed away at his fingernails, but many other things gnawed away at him these days. Time had not eased his mind.

  Always he nursed the knowledge that Adeline – the dear, drowned soul – had chosen his brother, Albert. Always he nursed the knowledge that if he, Scrope, had been the first son, Adeline might have chosen him instead.

  Always there was – Scrope shook his head fretfully – the knowledge of that child, Mouse. Though the wretched boy was far away, Scrope had no peace. At night, dreams snatched at him, dreams of a half-seen face, and he woke unable to tell whether it was his lost Adeline or that boy – her son – he had seen.

  Moreover, Scrope could feel his own good fortune failing, and he found it hard to fix his attention on the cards. His spinning golden guinea had fallen and revealed itself as a dented copper penny. Mr Button had, as ever, been helpful about extending his loans, but Scrope had seen a greedier glint in that man’s eyes.

  Maybe, thought Scrope, if the matter of the Epsilon inheritance was clearer, Lady Fortune might smile on him more sweetly. Perhaps this was the right time to get a new will signed. Helpful lawyers could be found later. It was certainly worth a try.

  Scrope chose a pleasant, mellow afternoon, when the sun shone like gold through the drawing-room windows, and the scent of full-blown roses wafted in from the gardens.

  ‘Father?’

  Scrope slid the prepared document on to the table, in front of the old man. The names of Albert and Adeline had disappeared. Now it was the boy’s name that stood at the top of the list, though Scrope’s own name nudged neatly up against it. Scrope, the heir-almost-in-waiting.