Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  Sullen silence.

  ‘John, I am talking to you.’

  More sullen silence.

  ‘Well, what are you going to say to me?’

  Eventually he condescended to answer with a sulky mutter:, ‘Look, do we have to talk about this? I thought you said it was water under the bridge.’

  ‘Yes, John we do have to talk about it. I want you to promise me that you’ll never do a thing like that ever again.’

  (Have you any idea of what you’re asking for? All afternoon I’ve been thinking of Danny. Danny starkers. Danny’s bum. Can’t help it. It just happens… like spewing!)

  Eventually he managed a semi-audible mumble, ‘All right, I’ll try.’

  ‘Try isn’t good enough. I want a definite NO.’

  Suddenly his temper blazed out. ‘And if I am bad again, will YOU promise never to do what you did to me ever again? Never! Never! Ever!’

  Her turn to be silent.

  The dam broke. Out it all came. ‘Expelling me like that! It was heartless! Cruel! I thought you were a kind person who understood kids. But you were like an S.S. officer sending Jews to the gas chamber.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’

  ‘It was horrible being chucked out like that! If Bob Steadman hadn’t helped me… I might have killed myself!’

  ‘But you had been bad!’

  ‘But if you had been a proper mum who really liked me you’d have bollocked me. Sent me to Mekon for a walloping. Not that!’

  ‘We’re doing away with physical punishment at Beaconsfield. It’s old fashioned and barbaric.’

  ‘Not half as barbaric as what you did. That was sadistic. You shouldn’t do that sort of thing to kids – especially when they depend on you. I mean why didn’t you get Mekon to give me a walloping?’

  ‘That would have been degrading.’

  ‘You’ve got kids all wrong. We don’t mind being thumped. We do it to each other all the time. We expect it. What we hate is mean cold-bloodedness. You know, deliberate cold-blooded cruelty. I did something dirty on the spur of the moment – in a flash – but you planned your cruelty and that’s much worse.’

  Silence.

  Dorothy finally broke the impasse. ‘Look John, I know I made a mistake. Of course I’ll never chuck you out again, but you must do your bit. You must try to help me by not doing a thing like that ever again!’

  Peace treaty on offer. Remember which side of your bread the butter’s on: you need Dolly!

  ‘OK. I promise.’

  Big smiles all round. Big hug from Dolly.

  So back to normal? Not quite. Previous illusions of youthful innocence and adult omnipotence had been shattered. And for Dorothy there was another lingering doubt to nag away at her. ‘We don’t mind being thumped. We do it to each other all the time.’ Was it really so humane to abolish physical punishment for boys? They weren’t adults, they didn’t think like adults.

  A Convenient Rearrangement of Some Awkward Facts

  Just before the summer term began, something happened. John was at Gloucester Road sorting out his dirty washing for Mrs Coburn when Danny Fleetwood suddenly burst in, all smiles and matiness. Seeing him, John felt a warm, physical thrill flow through his body – a stirring which should not have happened – and, also, a profound sense of relief. Greeting him effusively, he babbled out the tale he had been so assiduously rehearsing.

  ‘Sorry about that business in the shower… but you know, I’d been hooked on those bums and tits on Page Three of the Sun and got myself so sexed up that… man… Any bum gave me a hard one, even yours! Well, you know, you just can’t help these things.’

  Danny grinned wickedly. ‘Yeah, I know. Mekon told us. Dirty Denby, that’s my lad!’

  ‘Well, a bloke’s gotta do what a bloke’s gotta do!’

  Explosion of dirty laughter. Fence mended. Ploy’s worked. Thank God Danny doesn’t have that much on the upper deck.

  Then Danny became serious:. ‘Look, there’s something we’ve got to discuss. It’s about my Dad.’

  Him? Enemy Number One who’d publicly demanded his expulsion and privately his castration? Oh hell!

  ‘You see, he’s in deep shit and you’re the one who can help him.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ Important fence to be mended here.

  ‘It’s all a bit difficult.’ Danny dropped his voice and became conspiratorial. ‘You know a girl called Tracy Bowers?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, she knows you.’

  ‘Oh? How so?’

  ‘Don’t you know? She’s Sam Hawthorne’s bit. She’s the one who brought him round to Dolly’s Christmas party two years ago. Remember?’

  John did remember. The beaky-nosed creature who’d debagged him in that alley next to Gloucester Road! God, how had that got out? Now the whole world knew of his shame and degradation! Doom! All lost! He went white and felt physically sick. All he could do was grunt and stare at the floor.

  ‘Well she’s the local bike,’ continued Danny. ‘Everybody rides her. My Dad did. You see, he didn’t know she was under age when he picked her up at the Rose and Crown. She looks so grown up. Well, now she’s preggers – you know, a bun in the oven – and she says it was him. She’s going to get the law onto him. And, if she does, he’ll get done.’

  ‘Done?’

  ‘Yes, the nick.’

  ‘But what can I do?’

  ‘Say it was you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. She says you had her, too! She’s always going on about it. Posh git, Denby. Couldn’t even do it in bed. Had to do it in the street, didn’t he? Is it true what she says?’

  Quick thinking required here! There’s a lifeline dangling in front of you. Grab it while you still can!

  He blushed bright red. The whole business had been so excruciatingly degrading! Eventually he managed to nod his head and mumble an embarrassed, ‘Yes.’

  A long pause.

  ‘OK,’ he finally said. ‘I’ll say it was me if that gets your Dad out of the shit.’

  Thoughts whirled round in his head. A wholly unexpected vista was opening up. But if that particular version of events suited everybody, well, let it be ‘The Truth’!

  Danny’s face broke into a wide, radiant smile, a wonderful smile that sent a tingling thrill through the less mentionable parts of John’s body. ‘Great! Wicked! You’re a real lad! Dirty Denby! Had it off in the street! Even Billy Nolan hasn’t gone that far! Yes, I knew you weren’t a bender.’

  In the event the whole thing fizzled out. Closely questioned by her probation officer with a view to bringing charges, Tracy proved incapable of remembering the simplest facts, let alone times and dates. Drugs, alcohol, glue, they had all reduced what mind she had (and that wasn’t much) to a hopelessly confused blur. When she had a miscarriage the matter was quietly dropped.

  A Lucky ‘Eruption’

  As a reward, Old Man Fleetwood invited John round to his house to watch a blue movie. John found the whole thing quite excruciatingly embarrassing and repulsive, but for the sake of his new-found reputation, he had to pretend to enjoy it.

  However, once again, luck was on his side. Danny was having a bath when the show began. ‘Howay Danny lad!’ his father bawled along the passage, ‘You’re missing the best bit!’

  A semi-dried Danny bounced into the room stark naked and lay down on the rug in front of John. Everything he’d ever wanted was on display. By surreptitiously eyeing those treasures, he was able to perform at the right moment – and what a performance it was, too!

  ‘I can see that you know what’s best in life!’ chortled Fleetwood Senior, slapping him heartily on the back when the show ended.

  A lucky chance, and, no, you couldn’t honestly say that God had laid this one on.

  That evening, as he walked back through th
e purple gloaming to Dolly’s place, he reflected on the whole crazy saga that had begun on that fateful Wednesday back in March. All might have come out right in the end, but it had given him a nasty fright. It had shown him just how precarious his position was. It could all so easily have ended in disaster. Still, there was one lesson he had learned – and not for the first time, either! Be careful, watch your step, keep certain things well under the wraps. Absolute truth is a luxury few people can afford. You certainly can’t.

  Onwards and Upwards, Again

  The summer term began. It was back to normal again. Back to an enhanced normality, in fact. He loooked forward to the high summer with its long days, its leafy trees and its liberating forays into the shimmering world beyond.

  John found that his reputation had soared. Among the older boys he was ‘Dirty D’ who’d had it of in a back alley and had been so sexed-up by Page Three of the Sun that he’d gone and shafted Danny Fleetwood by mistake. And, having been invited to attend one of Old Man Fleetwood’s porno shows, he’d achieved a rare social distinction.

  Among the younger boys he was the ‘boy hero’, who’d saved the Bishop’s life, won a Merit Award for his bravery, and actually appeared on television.

  Things developed. At last he was old enough to join Major Allen’s Army Cadet Force contingent. He was enrolled in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and began to work towards his Bronze Medal. He was duly confirmed as a Christian in the cathedral- quivering with scarcely concealed alarm as the Bishop laid his massive hairy hands on him. Was he going to suddenly pick him up bodily and fling him, Cedric-style, into the transept? Quite possible, knowing that humanoid gorilla! At weekends he created friezes and collages for Isabel, which were displayed before admiring audiences in church halls. Onwards and upwards.

  ‘One Day it will All Fall Apart, Won’t it?’

  But the Demon was still lurking inside him. However hard he tried to be normal, he still continued to dream about boys and to be infatuated with Danny’s nether regions. Nightly prayers and supplications made no difference. God just wasn’t listening… or, ghastly thought, God just didn’t exist at all. And behind it all was the nagging anxiety about the future. Should he go and have another ‘accident’, he would not be so easily forgiven a second time. He had to tread very carefully.

  Especially with Briggs. He’d always found hatred difficult and it took a great deal of provocation for him to find enough energy to sustain it. He desperately wanted to end the vendetta; indeed, that was what Steadman and the Bishop had told him was the proper Christian response. Yet, try as he might, nothing seemed to work. Big ingratiating smiles, ostentatious keenness in the P.E lessons, spontaneous offers to help clear away the hurdles and high jump equipment; it was all greeted with the same monosyllabic dismissal. ‘Cor, he really has got it in for you!’ sighed Fred after one especially brusque rebuff.

  At the end of that summer term Briggs left Beaconsfield. Glowing testimonials from Meakin and Dorothy had finally secured him a post in a nearby comprehensive: a proper school, a real school, etc, etc., etc. A great weight slid off his shoulders. At long last he would be able to attend the annual students’ reunion at St Martin’s. For how could he possibly have admitted to his old tutor that he was at a private school, let alone told his former classmates?

  On the last day of term John made one last try at reconciliation, bouncing up to him, all beaming smiles: ‘Goodbye, sir, and thank you for all you’ve done.’

  Briggs eyed him coldly: ‘Don’t try to soft soap me, Denby. You should know by now that it doesn’t work.’

  ‘Sorry, I er…’

  ‘I read you like a book,’ he added vehemently, positively spitting the words out. ‘You’re not what you pretend to be. You’re a fraud, and I think you know it. One day it will all fall apart, won’t it?’

  That hurt.

  Living a Lie

  But it was no use getting angry about it. Briggs has spoken the truth – and didn’t he just know it! ‘Dirty D’, who’d had it off with a girl in a back alley? Crap. He’d cried like a baby when they’d ripped his pants off. ‘Boy hero’ who’d saved the Bishop’s life? Also crap. Isabel had set the whole thing up for her own devious purposes. He’s been a pathetic wimp who’d been so terrified that he’d gone and shat himself like a little kid. And, what was more, Isabel knew it.

  He was living a lie all the time. When he’d joined the cadets he’d sworn a solemn oath before ‘Almighty God’ (no less!) that he would ‘live a clean, upright and wholesome life’ and reject ‘all impurity, most especially homosexuality in all its forms’. Even as he had been speaking those very words he had been casting longing eyes on the slender winsome boy standing next to him. If Major Allen had known…! God, however, knew. ‘You’re not what you pretend to be.’ You could say that again.

  Even so, he was still the bright and creative lad who soared to the top of his class in all subjects. Not even Briggs could deny that.

  A Pet Guinea Pig in a Lovely Cage

  Yet even that came unstuck. That summer he attended the annual Cadet Camp at a place called Wasgill up in the Pennines. Contingents from all over the north of England were there, and as a deliberate policy they were all mixed up. For the first few days things went brilliantly. He quickly mastered the intricacies of the cadet rifle, he did well on the rifle range and he soon had a firm grasp of the arcane complexities of section attacks.

  The climax of the week was a two-day exercise involving a night operation. As a mark of distinction he was given the light machine gun, a much-coveted assignment, which had caused a certain amount of muttering among the older cadets who resented being upstaged by a newcomer.

  Darkness found him in an ‘ambush group’, crouching in a ditch. It was wildly exciting: lying there, snuggled into the black depths of the wood, wearing a real soldier’s uniform, clutching a real live machine gun, adrenaline pumping, all senses screwed up to red alert, waiting for the faint crunch of broken twigs that would herald the approach of the enemy. Above him, erratically glimpsed through the ragged canopy of the trees, was a mass of glittering stars, and all around him the rich smell of damp earth.

  Lying next to him was a tall, gangling youth who had been appointed as his ‘buddy’. They began a whispered conversation.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘The Stirling Academy.’

  ‘Is that a comprehensive?’

  ‘Of course not! It’s a proper grammar school!’ A put-down in an unpleasantly supercilious voice, lazy and drawling.

  Silence followed.

  ‘And you?’ the youth eventually condescended to say.

  ‘I’m from Beaconsfield.’

  ‘You’re not are you? I didn’t think they allowed people like you into the A.C.F.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It’s a simple matter of intelligence, isn’t it? Only the head cases and dimwits go to Beaconsfield. It’s the local dustbin. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘But I’m not a head case or a dimwit!’

  ‘That’s what you think.’

  Another brittle silence.

  Suddenly the youth grabbed the machine gun. ‘I’d better take charge of this. We can’t have an Educationally Subnormal like you handling a dangerous weapon. You’d go and kill yourself. And me, which is more to the point.’

  Rather than start a noisy fight John let him get away with it.

  That little midnight contretemps clouded the remaining two days of the camp. Word got around quickly and he found himself cold-shouldered: ‘Do we have to have him in our section? He’s too thick.’

  Deeply wounding. But it was probably the truth. Youngsters were more direct than adults. They didn’t feel the need to spare your feelings. They spoke the unvarnished truth, however painful it might be.

  So what was left of the once dashing condottiere? Not a lot. He felt like a pet guinea pig i
n a lovely cage, cherished by its owner, cosseted, fed, lovingly nurtured and carefully shielded from the realities of the outside world.

  A Sheepdog on a Leash

  What he needed was some big achievement, solid and rock hard, and which nobody could gainsay. There were the exams he would take when he was sixteen; Dolly and Meakin had hinted at several O Levels as well as the usual C.S.E.s. But they were a long way off and, anyway, would he actually be able to pass them? He needed something more immediate. Also bigger. Bigger and more dramatic than the things most people did.

  He thought of the Ruwenzori Range. He remembered those glorious slides that Dolly had shown him. Go off to the Ruwenzori and make the first ascent of an unknown peak: that really would be something solid.

  But how would he ever get there? He couldn’t do it on his own. He’d need an adult to go with him. But who? Who would take him of all people, thickoid and shit-stabber Denby?

  In August Dolly and Meakin took a group of them to the mountains of Torridon in the north of Scotland. He warmed to those ancient peaks, bold, upstanding and wreathed in shifting clouds, and he longed to go off and explore the hidden fastness of misty, rain-sodden glens that stretched away behind their rocky ramparts. But he was constantly restrained. ‘We’ll have to go down. Simon’s tired and Barry’s getting cold. John, can you be back marker and see that we don’t lose anybody.’ He felt like a sheepdog on a leash.

  ‘What’s your Score?’

  The following year passed without any disasters. But as time wore on the ‘Dirty D’ act became increasingly difficult to sustain.

  Danny continually paraded his girlfriends to the world, smooching openly with them in the street outside the school and holding hands as they walked into town on Saturday mornings. ‘Scored again!’ he would say as he erupted into school on Monday mornings. ‘How about you, John? What’s your score?’

  What indeed? John didn’t even have a girlfriend, let alone a ‘score’. Never had. Never would. So he made up a story about being madly in live with a girl ‘down in London’ who was ‘so fucking pure’ that she wouldn’t do it. ‘It’s a real challenge, I can tell you, but I’m working on her. God, she’s so horny.’ It wasn’t very convincing, but at least Danny swallowed it. But for how long? That was the nagging question.