Scholarship

by Ian John Copeland

  * * *

  Saturdays were very different to the rest of the week. The boys were allowed a half hour lie in before having to get up. Lessons took up the morning and then the afternoon was taken up with a Hares and Hound race around Trendrine for the Fifth and Sixth Form with Pip and Peter playing the hares. Hares and Hounds was something Pip enjoyed playing normally, but with Peter it was all hard work as they laid false trails and back tracked twice until finally, exhausted they ended the trail at Parson’s Leap.

  “You never said much about your kid brother before, did you?”

  “Oh Sacha? Well he was always kept at school in Hong Kong. He only came this term at the last minute. Our dad insisted.”

  “It must be funny having a brother so close in age. You must be like twins.”

  “We are absolutely not like twins. He’s different to me, completely different.”

  Pip looked at Peter. Something told him this was not a conversation to continue. Luckily voices in the distance told them that the ‘hounds’ were on their way.

  “Come on, let’s go, and just put the last of the trail down to Chapel Cove.”

  The two boys duly laid the trail and then made it back to the School before the others and grabbed the only two baths before the others arrived ten minutes later, led by the Johnson twins.

  That Saturday evening, as always, the boys were shown a film organised by Mr Wallace and Mr Durrant. Coming in late after an involved discussion with Clancy and Owen over Lord of the Flies, Pip found himself looking all around for Sacha. Finally he spied the younger boy at the front of the audience sitting on the floor, knees enclosed in his hands with some other Fifth Formers and not with the other older boys at the back. Sunday morning was a dreary time for Pip as it was taken up with the mandatory visit to the local church for the weekly service, followed by the weekly letter-writing period. Mrs Porter also gave a French conversation class to the Sixth Form, which kept them occupied until lunchtime.

  Of all the boys at school, only Jonathan was excused the church service. He went with Mrs Porter to the Catholic Church in St Ives where he was due to be confirmed later that year.

  After eating their traditional roast Sunday lunch in school the older boys were free to do what they wanted. Most Sunday afternoons the Fifth and Sixth Formers were let out in pairs or groups so long as they told the master on duty where they were going, what they were up to and when they were due back. The younger boys were supervised in the gym or on the playing fields with Mr Barnes sometimes taking a small group of strays to St Ives to wander the streets, feed the seagulls and generally forget that they had been ignored by their peers. Had he realised that Sacha was at a loose end, Mr Barnes would have taken Sacha as well. That Sunday, Pip had made plans to spend it with Clancy and Owen. However, that plan changed in an instant when he spied Sacha walking alone down towards the cliff top.

  For Sacha the first week at school had passed like a whirlwind, but now he was left to his own devices. He was at that awkward stage for new boys where he had acquaintances, but not yet friends who would go out of their way to spend time with him. Sacha himself had no clear plan in his mind other than to post a letter to his sister, which he held tightly in his hand.

  On seeing the opportunity to be with Sacha at last, Pip turned to his companions.

  “Oh look, I have forgotten something, you two go on ahead. I’ll look for you in St Ives.”

  “Are you sure? We can always wait.” Owen wanted to stay and wait. He always did.

  “No, no, you two go ahead.”

  Clancy was eager to get going. So Owen followed obediently, as Pip waited up in the dorm for a few seconds for his companions to leave the coast clear for him. Pip finally caught up with Sacha as he passed through the playing fields and out of the gate. After being hemmed in by other boys all week, Sacha was desperate for some time alone for once.

  “Hey, Sacha! You’re not supposed to go out by your self, even as a Fifth Former, you know.”

  Sacha emerged from his thoughts of life back home with a start. “Oh sorry, Pip. Should I go back then?”

  “No, that’s all right. You are with me now… that is if that is okay with you?”

  “Oh, okay, I suppose I would be in trouble otherwise?”

  “Oh yes, out on your own, big offence, you would be kept in next Sunday afternoon at the very least.”

  “Oh right.”

  Sacha buried his nose inside his duffel coat to try and keep it out of the wind that swept the North Coast at this time of year. The boys walked together down to the coast path, a much-frequented route. Sacha would not have been in much trouble coming down here. Mr Wallace would have just ticked him off. He rarely sent boys he liked to Captain Porter if he felt he could handle it himself.

  “Thanks, I just wanted to get away. There are too many boys around sometimes. I can’t think in school.”

  “It’s not much of a place for peace and solitude, particularly when it is wet.”

  Pip realised he had a chance to have Sacha for company. In truth he was feeling a bit lonely now that he could not go off with Jonathan any more like they used to.

  “Fancy a walk down to St Ives then?”

  The question was pitched in a manner that invited acceptance, but would not cause undue offence if Sacha decided against it and went back to school. Sacha stopped and thought for a second. “Oh, but I don’t have any money or anything. Just this letter to post.”

  It was a reasoned response and one that Pip knew could go either way. He thought about it. You didn’t need money when in school so it was quite likely that Sacha, being a new boy just hadn’t thought to ask for his weekly allowance from Mr Barnes on Saturday. Still, Pip decided, this was too good an opportunity to miss. He did some calculations based on the money in his pocket.

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t proposing anything more than a walk and possibly a Mars bar. I am sure I could spare you a bite of that.”

  “Oh okay, thanks, I will. That will be nice.”

  Sacha was grateful. He was feeling a bit left out on his own. Any reasonable company was welcome and Pip seemed friendly enough. The two boys walked off together. Shortly Pip diverted and took a route that would avoid most of the other boys passing inland along what was known as the Coffin Path. It alternated open fields with little patches of path hemmed in by walls or hedging. Few used it. It was the route he sometimes took with Jonathan. Then he and Jonathan had been partners in crime always looking for the opportunity to sneak into the woods when no one else was around, Jonathan normally inventing some activity out of sight of the school to keep them both amused.

  Pip was more cautious now. He did not want tongues wagging. He knew that seeing him with a Fifth Former like Sacha might appear ‘odd’ to some. Pip was careful to keep to a route that although visible all the way to St Ives was not popular with the other boys as it was inland. Not that Sacha would know that.

  The town of St Ives was deep in its winter shut down. For the most part the locals were content to wait for the summer trade. However, even in the depths of winter there was still some trade to be had from local day-trippers escaping the deeper gloom elsewhere, enough to keep a couple of the shops open, the main galleries and some of the tea rooms and cafés.

  After a blustery walk along the top Pip and Sacha walked down the steep hill and into the town itself, pausing to post Sacha’s letter. Pip spent their walk selecting a venue, not his favourite haunt, a café overlooking the raw seascape where they might bump into any number of other Sixth Formers huddled around the pinball machines or hoping for a chat with the local girls who used the café. Instead Pip led Sacha to a small café cum gallery just round the corner up a small lane where he hoped they would be unobserved. After carefully consulting his coins, Pip decided that they could sit down to two mugs of cocoa. That was all he could afford. The Mars bars would have to wait for another occasion.

  “It’s cold. I’ll t
reat us to a cocoa each, okay?”

  “Cocoa?”

  “Like hot chocolate.”

  “Oh”

  Pip looked around. Although the café was almost busy. The boys found a corner to themselves. Two small duffel coated figures in jeans and shirts clearly from The Rocks thawing out against the January cold outside.

  “Sit over there. I’ll get the cocoas.”

  Pip returned from the counter with two steaming mugs. Sacha sipped his cocoa cautiously; it was not a drink he was used to. Following Pip’s example he added sugar to make the drink sweet enough to swallow. In the initial silence whilst both boys sipped their over hot drinks, Pip observed Sacha again. The boy’s hair was windswept, his cheeks reddened by the wind, his nose runny and his lips chapped with cold.

  “So why did you come to The Rocks this term? I mean, Peter came the same time as me, and you should have come a year later, surely?”

  “Oh, Mum and Dad decided to keep me in Hong Kong. Mum is a bit of a fusspot. She said I wasn’t ready to go to boarding school in England. So I went to a school in Hong Kong, jolly nice one too, and mixed. But I am supposed to spend at least two years here to do scholarship exams for my public school next year. There were big rows about it; my dad insisted that I had to come last term, but Mum said no. She wanted me to stay at home until Sam was settled at university in Bristol. That sort of thing.”

  Sacha was happy to open up a bit to Pip, alone, just the two of them. Sacha gave a glimpse into a home life with parents concerned with the common theme of getting the best for the children. Pip emphasised the similarity.

  “Oh, like me then, only I am doing my scholarship this year. Two more terms and I am off. But why did they keep you in Hong Kong until you were eleven, but send Peter here when he was eight?”

  Sacha pointed at the fading purple around his eye and then rolled up his sleeve and pointed at a bruise on his arm normally hidden under his shirt.

  “Who do you think gave me these?”

  Pip was taken aback; he didn’t have any brothers and so he had no one to fight with at home, only older sisters who teased him, which was worse in his eyes.

  “Peter? He hasn’t done anything like that here, well not recently, although he does have a bit of a temper sometimes.”

  Sacha gently touched the bruise under his eye; he flinched as if it was still tender.

  “We are always fighting, or so Mum and Dad say. That was the real reason I didn’t come last term. I broke Peter’s wrist last summer.”

  “Goodness!”

  Sacha felt he should explain. “He was chasing me, I climbed up a tree, he came up after me, I kicked out and he fell. It was an accident really. It wasn’t deliberate, but well, you can imagine the fuss.”

  Pip imagined cold scenes of Peter leaping on his brother out of the blue and beating him up in revenge for the broken arm. The truth was different to that. In Hong Kong the roles of the two brothers were often reversed. Peter was the quieter one, often subdued into humiliated silence by his younger brother’s lightening fast uptake and his ease with others his own age. Hurt, Peter retreated into his own world, safe with drawing, painting and sport, the three areas where he outdistanced Sacha. Only when Sacha goaded him beyond humiliation did he react and then it was with blind, frightening violence. Painful for Sacha, terrifying for Peter who could not understand the anger within him nor his reasons for inflicting pain on the younger brother he loved most of the time despite the accident. Sacha put down his mug and wiped the cocoa from his face carefully with a paper napkin.

  “I think it was because of our not getting on sometimes, occasionally fighting. It was decided we should be sent to separate schools, him to boarding school here and I was kept at St Christopher’s in Honkers.”

  This was a half-truth. Sacha had been kept behind because his mother could not bear an empty house. There was also the fear that without their parents, the two brothers might fight even more than they did at home, disrupting both their lives. In the end it was decided that the rough and tumble of a British boarding school half a world away from what he considered home was not right for Sacha until he was a bit older. Sacha would stay in Hong Kong for now and go to England when he was a bit older. The incident, which resulted in Peter breaking his wrist, had delayed things for another term. This time both parents agreed that the dust needed to settle until Peter recovered his pride. So Sacha stayed behind for one extra term.

  “Honkers?”

  “Hong Kong.”

  Sacha was short on words again. He wanted to talk about something else. The black veil of homesickness was beginning to descend on him. Memories of Sundays at the club playing tennis, perhaps a visit to the cinema followed by a meal out at one of the innumerable Chinese restaurants the family frequented. Then later at home listening to the World Service snuggled up on the sofa or playing cards with his parents.

  “What do you fight about?”

  “Anything, that’s the trouble. Anything sets it off. These…” Sacha indicated his still visible wounds, “these were over a game of football in the playground near where we live on the Peak.”

  Pip tried to imagine a fight over a game of football and failed. Immediately he was jealous. Sacha having other friends, perhaps they were close friends? The thought of Sacha having other friends disturbed Pip; he wanted to be Sacha’s friend, Sacha’s only friend.

  “Football?”

  “Oh, we always play football with friends when Peter is home, but Peter doesn’t like losing, especially to me. I was in goal. I stopped a penalty and then threw the ball back at him and then he threw himself on top of me, throttling me and punched me in the face. It took two other boys to separate us. Mind you, I got him where it hurts.”

  Pip looked at Sacha for clues as to where ‘it’ was. Sacha blushed. He had wandered into an area where his social skills failed him and his natural inhibitions took over.

  “Oh, you know – down there.”

  Sacha indicated downwards quickly, hoping to move on.

  “Oh, you mean you got him in the nuts. No wonder he tried to kill you!”

  Sacha blushed.

  “Can’t you say it? Nuts, balls?”

  “Oh no, not really. I mean it’s not supposed to be nice is it?” Sacha was awkward now. His deep-set eyes averted downwards, a blush rising on his cheeks. A blush of unexpected innocence and immaturity appeared.

  “You’re kidding me!” Pip looked over at Sacha. He clearly wasn’t kidding. The blushes on his companion deepened. Sacha was embarrassed into silence.

  “Oh sorry. Really it doesn’t matter.”

  Pip tried to ease his companion’s embarrassment. The boy clearly had been brought up not to say anything dirty, not that that seemed to stop Peter from joining many of the older boys in muttering the occasional ‘fuck’ out of hearing of the teachers.

  “Oh don’t worry about it. I am not going to tell.”

  Sensing his companion’s embarrassment, Pip decided it was time to pay and went up to the counter and put two shillings down. He put tuppence on the table as they were leaving. Pip had been taught to tip.

  The boys walked back to school along the coast path, now judged to be clear of boys in the rapidly dimming light. Sacha was silent to start with. His embarrassment had risen and now, like a storm, it began to subside as they closed on the school. Pip detoured to Parson’s Leap. He almost always did.

  “It’s nice down here in the summer, all sorts of small beaches, but we mainly use Chapel Cove. The school has that to itself. I think we must be about the only school in the country with its own private beach.”

  “Can’t anyone use it?”

  “No, the coast path passes a bit inland here. To get to the beach you have to go through that gate by the chapel ruin. That’s on school land. The previous owner built his own steps down the cliff there and so only we can use it. The public use the other beach closer to St Ives, Wicca Co
ve. It’s not nearly as nice as it faces north east and has no sand just pebbles.” The boys stood close together in companionship and looked out to sea. “Down over there you can dive straight into the water. It is quite a drop.”

  They had gone through the gate by the dovecote and detoured to the end of the small headland in front of the school. Sacha went right up to the edge, knelt down and looked over the edge. The wind, incessant at this time of year, swept his fringe this way and that.

  “Why can’t you dive here, at this spot?”

  Sacha had to shout in Pip’s ear; he reached up to do so, holding Pip’s shoulder as he did so.

  “You’re not serious! We are practically in orbit we are so high up. This is far too high and you would have to go some way out, as there are rocks below. Definitely not allowed. Don’t worry. I am sure we will get the chance to dive from the rocks by Chapel Cove in the summer.”

  “I am not sure. I am not a very good swimmer.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. Mr Wallace will not let you swim in the sea in a hurry unless he is sure you won’t drown.”

  “Oh, I can swim. I am just not very fast that’s all.”

  An early childhood incident when he had got into difficulties in a hotel swimming pool meant that Sacha was still nervous of water, something Peter used against him on occasions. Pip and Sacha returned through the gate leading back up to school. The Sunday was nearly over. Tea, evening prayers and then free time in their dormitories beckoned. Sacha would have to go his own way now.

  As the boys parted, Sacha turned to Pip.

  “Thanks, we must do that again sometime. I mean I owe you for the cocoa.”

  “Oh, that was nothing, but yes, I know a number of places to go, even at this time of year. Wait until the summer term, though. Then we can go to the beach.”

  “Won’t the water be cold?”

  “A bit, but you soon get used to it. We swim in the sea from Easter up until the end of October sometimes.”

  “Swimming in cold water, I am not looking forward to that bit at all.”

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