Rotherweird

by Andrew Caldecott

  The teacher, Miss Sine, a feisty middle-aged spinster, never put a question to Rodney. ‘Is xy a monomial, Collier?’

  Collier, the class’s slowest intellect, gaped.

  ‘Ferdy?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Correct. What happens if you multiply monomials?’

  Rodney felt it time to make a mark. ‘You get a polynomial, of course.’

  ‘Wrong. Ferdy?’

  ‘You get another monomial.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Why do you always ask her? I thought algebra was about balancing things.’ Rodney’s tone was surly, bordering on the aggressive.

  ‘Sorry you’re feeling out of it, Slickstone. Easily remedied – is 2x+5 a monomial or a polynomial?’

  ‘It’s eleven if x is 3.’

  The class tittered. Sine did not make concessions in matters of discipline. ‘We’re not in the nursery now, Slickstone. Do the work to catch up.’

  In the break Gwen Ferdy for once miscalculated. She approached Rodney in the Quad. ‘All this must seem very strange. I can help you—’

  ‘Where I come from, you give me respect.’ Rodney jabbed her hard, just below the throat, to make the point. ‘You countrysiders are the ones with learning to do.’

  Ned Guley came to the rescue. ‘Ease off,’ he said.

  The punch took Guley entirely by surprise, winding him. Slickstone strutted off to join Collier, a triumphant smirk on his face.

  Sir Veronal rebuked Rodney for such a crude display of aggression, promising a reckoning with the countrysiders when he took over governance of Rotherweird, but not before.

  Reluctantly, Rodney agreed to bide his time, but honour demanded revenge.

  *

  Roy Roc, Orelia’s great-grandfather, had won the 1894 Great Equinox Race single-handed. This year she felt a whimsical urge to emulate him. Behind a jumble of boxes, crates, unsold items and newspapers in the basement of Baubles & Relics, she found his coracle. It was a single, made of willow and tarred hide, as all Rotherweird coracles had to be. The skin remained sound, and so were the paddle and pole. In keeping with her life to date, she would be going it alone. She embarked on a haphazard programme of training and physical exercise, brave in the Spartan conditions of early spring, which turned more methodical as a mild flirtation with an idea became a dedicated goal. She watched others and proved a quick learner.

  To her surprise her aunt agreed to her participation without a quibble. Since the party she had been uncharacteristically subdued, forever muttering about its shameful conclusion. Orelia could not square Mrs Banter’s intense distress in the alley on the night of the party or this lingering malaise with their only apparent cause, Valourhand’s ill-mannered performance. She judged it best not to delve deeper, and Mrs Banter offered no detail.

  *

  Valourhand did not do communal events, and even less so now. She had sought celebrity, only to find herself cold-shouldered outside School society. She immersed herself in work and avoided Strimmer, their fragile intimacy finally ended by her demonstration, a defiant rebuttal of Strimmer’s desire for control. She knew that Gorhambury had been dismissed for a venal offence and wondered why Sir Veronal had adopted such a forgiving approach to her. She looked to the Lord of the Manor for the next move. The lightning still nagged away at her. In her rooms she tried to construct lightning machines, but with little success. Every Rotherweird pupil knew how to generate sparks and static electricity with a balloon and a spoon, but a full-scale lightning bolt?

  She did not like, or believe in, insoluble problems.

  *

  Oblong enjoyed a weekly drink at The Journeyman’s Gist with Fanguin. On this particular evening they were discussing possible subjects for the next term’s history curriculum when Fanguin polished his glasses, so heralding an announcement of moment.

  ‘I’ve reached a decision,’ he boomed, thumping the table. ‘This year, you, Jonah Oblong, are crewing my coracle!’

  Half the pub heard the news as the rosy colour that goes with Sturdy beer drained from Oblong’s cheeks.

  ‘It’ll be a riot. I’ve a new method – we can’t have Strimmer winning a third time. Up Form IV!’

  ‘Strimmer?’

  ‘Cocky bastard!’ Fanguin lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But they haven’t reckoned with the “Fanguin rotator”.’

  ‘I’m useless in a boat – I go round in circles.’

  ‘You sit in the stern, admire my technique and bale like a loony –

  piece of cake.’

  ‘Bale?’

  ‘What else are buckets for? Just remember, the long scoop beats the quick dip every time.’ Fanguin’s blue-grey eyes had the glint of a fanatic as he delivered a dramatic monologue on the Great Equinox Race, its rules, the thrills and spills, the dress code (only requirement: bizarre) and his own near-misses with the winner’s podium.

  Oblong felt a sense of impending doom, deepened by Aggs’ delivery of a grasshopper costume – green tails, a green and yellow top hat complete with antennae, green and yellow striped trousers supported by black braces and a pair of ancient plimsolls painted –

  no surprise here – green and yellow.

  Had Oblong been more observant, he would have been less astonished. Rotherweird’s most outré clothes shop, Ragamuffin in Grove Lane, had for a month been plying a roaring trade in finished costumes for the well-off and in do-it-yourself components for the mean or impoverished, including feathers, ribbons, plastic wings, false noses and beaks and foam-rubber claws.

  Orelia Roc invested in feathers and wings to mimic her namesake.

  Strimmer declined to expand his wardrobe, settling for the guise of a wasp, as in his winning performance of the previous year.

  Gregorius Jones entrusted his costume to his class; he found their choice pleasingly exotic, and the fashionistas of Form VIb did not disappoint in its execution. He would be hard to miss from the towpath.

  Miss Trimble’s Viking dress, based on a Victorian novel from Baubles & Relics, boasted a horned helmet and silver lamé chainmail.

  *

  Oblong agreed to meet Fanguin in The Journeyman’s Gist for a final briefing on strategy. The pub heaved with patrons discussing how the Rother would behave this year; whether better to draw the western or eastern circuit; the betting; new technology, and, inevitably, the weather.

  Oblong found two stools in the garden and waited. To his dismay Strimmer arrived first.

  ‘Stool,’ barked Strimmer, pointing at the spare seat.

  ‘I’m keeping it for a friend.’

  ‘I don’t care who you’re keeping it for. I’m here; and he’s not. And I’m from this town and you’re an outsider.’

  Fanguin arrived in the nick of time. ‘Ah, Strimmer, having a history lesson? Or is it manners?’

  ‘He’s hogging the seats.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  Fanguin placed his ample behind on the stool.

  ‘I hear you two are in the same boat,’ smirked Strimmer, ‘up the creek without a paddle.’

  ‘Youth and Beauty,’ said Fanguin pleasantly.

  ‘You’re all wind and no trousers,’ said Strimmer, ‘and your crew looks ready to wet himself.’ He guffawed at his own joke before moving to the bar.

  ‘Right – strategy lesson!’ The crazed glint had returned. Fanguin took out a chart. ‘Here is the start – at dawn.’ He pointed north of the town. ‘Every entrant draws east or west and has to follow his drawn direction when the river divides. The finish is here.’ He pointed two hundred yards below the southern bridge. ‘But here’s the catch: Rotherweird has a bore, and I don’t mean Gorhambury –

  it’s an underground tidal freak that delivers a surge, always at dawn at the Spring Equinox. It can knock out half the field. That’s where craftsmanship comes in.’

  ‘Don’t we practise?’

  Fanguin slumped in mock outrage. ‘Practise? We’re amateurs, Oblong – Olympians, the last of a dying bre
ed! Now, attend to your Skipper. Poles propel, but also attack. They have squidgy balls on the end—’

  Oblong had an instant vision of Strimmer tilting him overboard.

  ‘Cheer up! You try poling people in a coracle – fraught with peril. Now look at this . . .’ Fanguin’s voice sunk to a conspiratorial whisper as he flourished a piece of paper crisscrossed with sums, formulae and diagrams. ‘The “Fanguin rotator”! Spin like a beetle, sting like a bee.’ He downed his pint of Sturdy before adding, ‘Uniform – I trust you have suitably exotic plumage?’

  ‘Idiotic.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Fanguin, heading off for his early bed.

  Jovial banter with the landlord was standard fare at The Journeyman’s Gist, so customers assumed there must be good cause for Bill Ferdy’s silence over the last two weeks and respected it. Ferdy had placed the Town Hall’s letter under the lip of the bar in the hope it would disappear. Tonight, on the eve of one of the pub’s busiest days, the aftermath of the Great Equinox Race, the notice period expired, and Slickstone had retaliated with perfect timing.

  With an hour to closing time Bill Ferdy rang the old sailor’s bell, with which he had called ‘time’ for decades, and announced that drinks were on the house. The more sensitive present detected a troubling air of finality in the gesture.

  2

  A Most Unexpected Result

  Oblong and Orelia greeted the morning of the Spring Equinox in contrasting moods. Oblong was not one of Nature’s early risers; Orelia was. He peered in horror at the mirror; she looked with amusement in hers, looking absurd with ill-matched plumes in unexpected places and a bright orange cardboard beak. Oblong barely made it out of the door; Orelia bounded down the steps.

  Meanwhile, Gorhambury arrived in the courtyard of The Polk Land & Water Company. Facing him stood the Polks’ house, five-sixths occupied by Bert and his ever-growing family; a vertical sliver by bachelor Boris. On every side sprawled outhouses and sheds storing various vehicles and workshops. The charabanc had already left, laden with coracle repair materials, as well as the Polks’ bizarre costume, but his own vehicle, the Umpire’s chair, had been left for him, the brass stair rail polished to a shine, the telescope fixed to the left of the single elevated seat, the lectern to the right for the Rulebooks. Snorkel had forgotten to cancel an appointment that had, as tradition dictated, been awarded to the incumbent Town Clerk at the beginning of the year, and Gorhambury had no intention of surrendering this privilege.

  He pressed the starting piston, clambered up the steps of the tallest vehicle in town, switched on the fog-lamps and set off for the towpath. The early mist promised a fine morning. His last Equinox Race would, he hoped, be special.

  *

  On the towpath at quarter to five in the morning chill steamed the breath of competitors under a clear, lightening sky. Cheered to discover that others were dressed in costumes no less ludicrous than his own, Oblong’s step lightened. Spectators headed north to the start, south to the finish, or to a betting tent.

  He could make out many school staff, none of whom had made any effort to preserve their self-respect. An attractive if dishevelled parrot came alongside, spinning a single coracle with aplomb.

  ‘It’s our resident historian,’ she said.

  ‘Oblong.’

  ‘We met – remember?’

  Oblong remembered his inept response to her cheerful welcome at the party. He mustered a nervous grin.

  ‘Nice costume – suits you. Double or single?’

  ‘I’m in a double with Mr Fanguin.’

  ‘So you seek the rapids and the crocodile!’

  Oblong gulped.

  ‘Good God!’ giggled Orelia.

  A dodo strode towards them with a familiar bouncing gait, paddle, pole and a small bucket in one hand, a coracle bowling along under the other.

  ‘Fanguin!’ cheered Orelia. ‘I thought you were extinct!’

  ‘Only a question of time,’ replied Fanguin, turning like a model on a catwalk, the effect marred by an over-mobile beak.

  ‘Where’s my—? Ah, Oblong, me ol’ hearty . . . Crew, take the accessories!’

  Mr Oblong was thrown the pole with its squidgy boxing glove at the end, and, ominously, the bucket.

  ‘Perfect conditions,’ added Fanguin, looking skywards. The mad glint in his eye was back.

  *

  Behind an arras of willows a cryptic conversation unfolded in whispers. On the ground a tan-coloured costume lay open, two foam-rubber protuberances on the back. Beside it stood a coracle with four shoes fixed to the floor.

  ‘Gyroscopes connect to the soles – they tilt as the river tilts, so compensating for our limited vision. They come with a foolproof guarantee!’

  ‘In this suit, Boris?’

  ‘Bert, we are pioneers.’

  Encouraged by their own rhetoric, the twins clambered into their single costume.

  *

  At the start a menagerie of lost species milled around the towpath – birds, insects, exotic animals, even the occasional dinosaur. Between a wooden rostrum on either bank hung a golden ribbon. Between the start and the walls of the town, the water meadows teemed with spectators and bicycles.

  ‘You get the pole-flag, Oblong, and let’s hope for beginner’s luck!’

  ‘Pole-flag?’

  ‘Over there, over there!’

  The Headmaster’s wife, Silvia Smith, a pleasant-looking lady with well-groomed chestnut hair, stood by the rostrum dispensing large envelopes, each containing sets of four cards, marked W for west or E for east, and a unique number. The cards had adhesive sides and, once drawn, were attached to the coracle pole, the side of the vessel and the costumes of the crew. Oblong drew W4 and an encouraging smile from the Headmaster’s wife.

  Strimmer passed by, twirling his pole with the flag E7. The black and yellow stripes gave him an air of menace. Even the diaphanous wings looked more in keeping than absurd.

  ‘Damn,’ said Fanguin on hearing the news, ‘he’s on the other side. We won’t know what he’s up to. Worse, nor will Gorhambury. The Umpire always takes the western station.’ He pointed to the Umpire’s chair.

  Gorhambury sat aloft, dressed in an ill-fitting blazer and baggy cream-coloured flannel trousers, attention forever shifting from his megaphone to the Rulebook. From his vantage point Gorhambury felt uncomfortable. Everyone knew of his dismissal, and he had garnered few of the usual greetings. He suppressed the urge to explain so as not to expose Mrs Banter, but as the frenzy of gathering racers and supporters intensified, the melodrama of the event dispelled his angst. He had too many rules to apply to be distracted by his personal tragedy.

  The parrot waved and waggled her orange beak. ‘Have a whale of a time, Jonah.’

  ‘Watch out for the Rocs,’ retaliated Oblong.

  ‘Stop chatting up the opposition,’ yelled Fanguin.

  A peacock in full plumage strutted past, spinning a single with the tips of his fingers, the vigour of the stride a give-away. Gregorius Jones had drawn E33. His tail sporadically fanned and contracted, obeying a device fixed to the small of Jones’ back by the fashionistas of Form VIB.

  Fanguin was unimpressed. ‘He always leads, but never wins. Only question is, who’s the lucky damsel this year?’

  Spectators waved poles with puppet-style mascots on the end, imitating in miniature the costume worn by the entrant they supported. Oblong spotted Bomber, waving a cutout Dodo, and Aggs, brandishing a grasshopper. W4 had at least two supporters.

  Betting tents on either shore listed the current odds on large blackboards with costume names and real identities in parenthesis: Dodo/Grasshopper (Fanguin/Oblong).

  Loudspeakers would provide a running – and falling – commentary. Betting slips bore the words: The Rotherweird Betting Company: Proprietor: S. Snorkel. Near the finish, south of the town, close to the riverbank, The Polk Land & Water Company had a large tent emblazoned with the legend Coracle Casualties. The untenanted charabanc stood on
the towpath ready to transport damaged coracles from higher up the course to their place of surgery. Of the Polk brothers there was no sign.

  Angela Trimble, who’d drawn E37, stood motionless, a Viking, pole held upright like a spear, her flaxen hair platted down her back. Maroon ribbons crisscrossed her legs from knee to ankle. She shut out the human sound and concentrated on the river. Somewhere upstream, deep and out of sight, the swell would be building.

  From the Umpire’s chair Gorhambury’s reedy voice delivered a stream of reminders to the gathering fleet: ‘Downed oarsmen may return to their own coracles, but nobody else’s – Rule 16(4)(b). A double coracle may finish with a single crewman – Rule 17.’

  ‘Wake up!’ yelled Fanguin.

  Chastened, Oblong leapt into the coracle and almost fell out the opposite end. It was so light.

  ‘In the back,’ screamed Fanguin, getting more and more excited.

  Oblong held the view that an open circular boat had no such thing. ‘Where’s the back?’

  ‘I’m the front, idiot.’

  The coracle rocked alarmingly as Oblong installed himself behind Fanguin.

  ‘Tactic number one – we go back to go forward.’

  This further confused Oblong, until he noted that the Umpire’s chair and a good third of the flotilla – about forty coracles – were heading gently upstream away from the start, before heading back to the line.

  ‘Hit the road running,’ explained Fanguin. ‘First up, you paddle and I pole. I shall ward off pirates.’

  As they turned, the deep cobalt blue to the east turned silver. Nearby, Gorhambury issued his final warning: ‘Rule 13(c) – All coracles must be within twenty yards of the starting ribbon at the start. Penalty –