Tom Bedlam

by George Hagen

  Before Tom could reply, Mr. Bedlam continued: “You've a sensible head. Now it seems to me that the housekeeper is on some errand. If she don't show up in five minutes, it'll be ten—if not ten, then no more than an hour. The sensible thing would be to wait for her. What do you say, lad?”

  Tom didn't know what to say, but Bedlam took his silence as an assent. Within moments, the boy was perched on his trunk in the same way a sailor might be marooned on a rock at high tide while his vessel departed.

  Mr. Bedlam cried a farewell: “Tom, I shall expect reports of your successes, and you shall, of course, hear of mine!”

  BY EVENING, AN HOUR LATER, there was no sign of a soul, and Hammer Hall loomed over Tom Bedlam—dark, locked, and silent.

  As the last light faded, mist emerged and stole the clarity of what few shapes remained in his vision. He consoled himself by taking measure of his lot—he had an education promised to him, a life far from Todder-man's furnaces and the squalor of the tenement. Yet, as he considered the locked building, the dark sky, his distance from London and all friends, the truth occurred to him that he had been abandoned.

  Fear alone might not cause a fifteen-year-old boy to weep, but Tom was haunted by many other concerns: his father's breach of trust; the loss of his mother; his farewell to the Limpkins; the absence of all familiar streets and sounds. It seemed to him that he had only himself to blame, and no hope besides, and this provoked his tears.

  How long he wept, he didn't know, but he was interrupted by a voice that was as harsh as it was sudden: “Good heavens! Cease that sniveling this instant before my ears shatter! Stop, desist, quit, I say!”

  Tom opened his eyes and looked around with a start.

  A figure in a woolen cloak and carrying an old leather satchel held up a lantern, revealing a face, furious, wrinkled, topped by a head of hair as sparse as the strands upon a coconut shell.

  “What do you mean by such caterwauling? You're waking up the countryside!”

  MR. GRINDLE

  I'M ALL ALONE,” TOM REPLIED, WONDERING WHAT CREATURE HE MIGHT have disturbed.

  “Incorrect!” snapped Tom's inquisitor. “Clearly, you are speaking to me, which means that you are not alone, which based upon your premise, would be cause for silence! So, stop, I say, and explain your encampment on school grounds!”

  “Well… Mister—”

  “Sir will do.”

  Tom gave his name and explained his father's logic in leaving him at the door.

  “But there isn't any school for a week. It's the end of the summer holiday. What was the man thinking that he would leave a boy here?”

  “My father was told that a housekeeper would be about.”

  “But he did not find one, did he?”

  It seemed that Mr. Grindle had been teaching for such a long time that he led every dialogue as if he were leading a class.

  To his credit, Tom adapted to the ritual quickly. “No, sir.”

  “Then your father's assumption was erroneous.”

  “Erroneous?”

  “Flawed, fallacious, faulty … incorrect!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Grindle unlocked the door and led the boy down a corridor to the school kitchen, where he removed from his leather satchel a loaf of bread, a bunch of radishes, six potatoes, a slab of bacon, a hunk of salt beef, and six eggs wrapped in sacking. The walls were black with soot. A smell of rancid grease pervaded the chamber until the fire was lit and the comforting smell of burning wood, and its consequent glow, cheered the room. Mr. Grindle placed his food into a tin cabinet, remarking with some dismay, “This was to be a feast for a single man—my dinner for the next week. Apparently it shall now be our dinner, Tom Bedlam.”

  “I couldn't eat your dinner, sir,” Tom replied.

  “Then you shall starve, and I shall be responsible. Would you wish that upon me?”

  “No, sir!”

  In the severity of the man's eye, Tom recognized a shred of amusement. Mr. Grindle served him a chunk of the cold beef, added several radishes, a dash of mustard in which to dip them, a pinch of salt, and a narrow slice of bread. As they ate, Grindle asked about Tom's circumstances, his life in Vauxhall, his mother, and his father's line of business. After the dishes were cleared away, he helped him carry his trunk to the top floor, which was an attic with a sloping ceiling on both sides and many cots running along both walls. Tom took one near the stairs and proceeded to make his bed while Mr. Grindle waited with his lantern.

  “A word of advice, Bedlam …”

  “Sir?”

  “You are entering a society no less harsh than the one you have come from. The factory and the farm are similar, my friend. The chicken that walks differently from its neighbors is pecked.”

  “Sir?”

  “Say nothing of your father's line of work, or your mother's. Your father is a crockery merchant, do you understand? Your mother tended you. You lived in a house in London, not a tenement building.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good,” said the master, who spun around and swiftly descended the stairs, taking the light with him.

  As Tom released his grip on consciousness, he noted that Mr. Grindle, while lacking any gentility or kind words, had fed him, sheltered him, and settled his fears. While he felt an uncommon gratitude to a man he barely knew, he puzzled over it. Was it fair to weigh the kindness and generosity of the schoolmaster against that of his own father?

  He decided to give it more thought tomorrow and promptly fell asleep.

  IN DAYLIGHT, MR. GRINDLE'S FACE was a weathered brown and his skin the texture of a walnut shell. It was impossible to tell his age, for his wrinkles vanished when he was in a good mood and multiplied when he wasn't. For three days, Mr. Grindle kept a simple routine in Tom's company. They shared breakfast every morning: boiled egg, rasher of bacon with a slice of bread fried in the grease. Mr. Grindle would retire to his books for several hours. They met again in the afternoon to take a walk in the hills above Hammer Hall, and on the way, Mr. Grindle would slice a cold boiled potato, share it with Tom, and they would eat and talk of Tom's education, such as it was, and such as he wished it to be.

  “What is it, then, that brings you here?” Mr. Grindle asked.

  “Why to be educated and become a gentleman, sir.”

  “A gentleman? Why, that is easily done, Tom Bedlam. Keep your word and you are a gentleman. Abide by your promises and never shirk your responsibilities. Can you do that?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  Mr. Grindle spread his palms. “Then you are a gentleman. Your mission is accomplished.” He narrowed his eyes at Tom. “Satisfied?”

  Tom was troubled. “I don't know, sir. If it is so simple, why am I here?”

  “Why indeed?” Amusement appeared in Grindle's wry features. “My dear boy you recall the pecking order I mentioned before?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, in adult society there is a pecking order too. Hammer Hall teaches its cockerels to strut!”

  Though this made no more sense than Mr. Grindle's last statement, Tom nodded because he feared the master's impatience.

  “Tom Bedlam, you will not learn to be a gentleman here. Hammer Hall will demand that you follow its rules. Mr. Goodkind will punish you when you do not.”

  “Mr. Goodkind?”

  “The headmaster.”

  “Then you are not the headmaster?” Tom replied with disappointment.

  “Good heavens, no!” Mr. Grindle sniffed with disgust. “I am a teacher ! Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the rules. Your peers will expect you to break them. Occasionally, you will choose your own path in spite of the rules and the influence of your fellow pupils. This is what I call learning”

  “And if I can't find my own path?”

  “Then you will be a dunce, and join all the other dunces out there in the world. You will find your future limited to two professions: your father's and the world of politics.”

  ON THE LAST DAY BEFORE t
he pupils were to return, the school's cook appeared as Mr. Grindle and Tom were having breakfast in the kitchen. Mrs. Brasier's meaty face and small eyes took immediate offense at the sight of the schoolmaster and the boy seated in her domain. A breathless woman with pursed lips and yellow sweat stains around her collar, she ordered them out, threw a shovelful of coal on the fire, and announced that dinner would be served at six.

  At that hour, Tom sat with Mr. Grindle in the dining hall—a dim chamber of narrow benches and warped tables. The surfaces were carved with boys' initials and rough with the grime and spillage of many past meals. Tom tried to picture the room crowded with boys, but his imagination failed him. A cloud of white smoke poured from the kitchen, and Mrs. Brasier emerged, panting and wheezing, her face shiny with sweat, carrying a tureen, from which she served a lumpy brown broth. The color reminded Tom of the Thames, and the objects that bobbed in the turbid river after a long rain.

  “Mrs. Brasier,” said Mr. Grindle as he sifted cautiously through the broth, “I am always astounded by what comes out of your kitchen.”

  The cook huffed and marched back to her domain.

  The student and the master regarded their food hesitantly and looked at each other, acknowledging that the meals had been more palatable before the cook's arrival.

  “Come, I believe I may have saved some beef for just such an outcome,” said Mr. Grindle.

  They shared the rest of Mr. Grindle's beef as they walked the cart road that rose into the hills above Hammer Hall. It was a moody terrain. Mist lurked in the lower parts of the valley, and the only point of brilliance was the window of the school kitchen, where Mrs. Brasier, even from half a mile away, could be seen engaged in open warfare with her fireplace. Flames swelled from the hearth while smoke billowed. Tom thought the small plume produced by Mrs. Brasier was touchingly reminiscent of the output of Todderman's great smokestacks.

  During the stroll, Mr. Grindle brought up a matter of some concern. “Tom Bedlam, one thing that has puzzled me is your name. Your father gave it to you?”

  “It's the only thing he has ever given me, sir.”

  “You know, of course, that it is the common name for a madman? What kind of father names his son after a madman?”

  Tom explained his father's affection for King Lear and suggested that the name sprang into his mind for that reason.

  “Tom Bedlam is not a kind name,” Mr. Grindle replied. “I advise you to change it when you've the opportunity.”

  Tom thanked the schoolmaster and considered the virtues of Grindle as a surname.

  The schoolmaster then reminded him that the other masters would return tomorrow and that Hammer Hall would be at full capacity by the evening. “Bedlam, I cannot be the companion to you that I have been these past days, but I can promise you guidance when you require it. It will not be easy to act the gentleman in the company of hooligans, my boy. Do your very best,” he said.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Mrs. Brasier proved herself as incapable of cooking breakfast as she was dinner. The porridge served to them had such a peculiar smell to it that Mr. Grindle dispensed with veiled complaints.

  “Mrs. Brasier,” he said at the threshold of the kitchen (it was impossible to enter farther because of the pots, crates, and litter of vegetables spread across the floor). “I detected the odor of tobacco in the porridge. How in God's name is that possible?”

  Tom peered over the master's shoulder to see that Mrs. Brasier looked different: her jowled face was flushed, her nose blistered, and her eyelashes were missing. The fringe on her apron was burned brown, and her woolen dress bore scorch marks.

  “Good gracious, Mr. Grindle!” she cried. “Don't I 'ave enough to cope with with 'undreds of mouths to feed and me alone, at the mercy of the fire and the elements?”

  Unimpressed, Mr. Grindle replied, “Madam, unless I am mistaken, you cooked for three people this morning. Yet there was tobacco in the porridge.”

  Mrs. Brasier began to weep, threw a few lumps of coal onto the kitchen fire, and proceeded to pump the bellows, causing the fire to swell into an inferno, which licked at the fringe of her dress. She groaned. “Ungrateful! That's what I call it, when I risk life and limb to feed the public!”

  Exasperated, the schoolmaster gave up and coughed his way out of the room. He gave Tom a parting warning: “Always sift through the broth for nails and other foreign items before eating, lad. The keys to the school were once found in Mrs. Brasier's lamb stew, a sock in the mashed potatoes, and a baited mousetrap in the Christmas pudding!”

  BY NOON, THREE COACHES had arrived bearing several schoolmasters and a few boys. No sooner had one left than another would pull up, followed by donkey carts, carriages, and dogcarts, until a great dust rose in the courtyard.

  The halls bustled with activity as a line of boys, punctuated by wooden crates and trunks, heaving and shoving, made their way up the winding stairs to the attic dormitory. Tom watched from his bed as the boys at the head of the line reached the summit, staked their claims, and argued over proximity to friends and foes. It seemed that his early arrival had saved him some trouble, since the arguments over beds came to blows.

  Two fellows, Mansworth and Privot, seemed to be the poles about which the others clustered. Privot, a brutish fellow, took the bed farthest from the stairs, then tossed his belongings onto the four beds nearest him. “Them's taken!” he roared in a gravelly voice as the other boys entered. He greeted his lieutenants by punching them in the chest and assigned beds in the same way, with belligerent humor and much shoving and slapping.

  Mansworth, by contrast, acknowledged his acolytes with a glance. He ruled with folded arms and a brooding stare. His curly brown hair was parted in the center and fell to his shoulders like a magistrate's horsehair wig. He never raised his voice, but exerted his authority with wry scorn. “Lopping,” he warned one boy “if you hope to sleep peacefully, I advise you to take the one five beds down.”

  By the end of the process, Privot commanded the row of cots on the north side of the room, while Mansworth had the south side, ending with Tom's, nearest the stairs. When only the cot opposite Tom's remained unoccupied, Mansworth ventured down the aisle and sat upon Tom's trunk.

  “You're the new boy” he said. “Bedlam, is it?”

  Tom admitted this, and Mansworth introduced himself.

  “My father's a member of Parliament. What does your father do?”

  Following Grindle's advice, Tom replied, “A trade merchant.”

  “London or elsewhere?”

  “London,” Tom replied.

  This seemed to be the right answer. Mansworth nodded. “You're on my side of the room, Bedlam, so you'll be eating on my side too.”

  “Side?” Tom replied.

  Mansworth nodded. “Privot's got the other side. You're better off with me.” After this remark, he introduced Tom to some of the other boys, each time exaggerating Tom's father's standing.

  “Winesap, this is Bedlam. His father's a prominent merchant.”

  “Perhaps you've heard of Bedlam's father, Cooper, he's a London tycoon.”

  As each boy insisted to Mansworth that he knew of Tom's father, Tom realized the extent of his patron's influence. He also noted Mansworth's eccentricities—flicking his hair aside but letting one lock fall across his face and wearing his Hammer Hall royal blue school jacket with the shirtsleeves turned out at his wrists. His features were soft, his mouth petulant. By contrast, Privot was all muscle, with a firm jaw and a shock of hair that stood on end. Privot's father, Tom learned, was from the north, a distiller, and most of the boys on Privot's side were northerners. Mansworth reminded everyone that his father had a dozen factories in London and “a seat in Parliament,” by which he meant the House of Commons. Hammer Hall was not a school for the offspring of peers. These boys were the sons of businessmen—the newly rich who wished their sons to speak like lords, even if they worked for a living.

  Mansworth greeted his rival with an imperceptible nod. “Evenin
g, Privot. Good summer?”

  “Can't complain. So, Bedlam's yours, then?”

  “Yes. You'll have the next,” said Mansworth, indicating the cot facing Tom's.

  BY SUPPER, THE HALL was full of boys. The sea of faces and the din stunned Tom. He briefly considered seeking solace in the kitchen when Mansworth called to him. “Bedlam, over here!”

  Tom complied, taking his place opposite Mansworth, who then introduced him around the table. “This is Bedlam. His father has vast holdings overseas. You've heard of him, of course.”

  Several boys nodded and eagerly shook Tom's hand, then quickly told him about their masters and the virtues of life at Hammer Hall. These young men, Tom thought, couldn't be the hooligans to whom Mr. Grindle had referred.

  The masters sat at a table at the head of the room. They might have been patients in an infirmary for the hacking coughs, bent backs, and accoutrements they carried—canes, spectacles, and ear trumpets. All were far beyond the prime of their lives. Ironically, Mr. Grindle was the most youthful of the bunch. Tom met his guardian's eye, but the master merely raised his eyebrow in acknowledgment.

  The headmaster, Mr. Goodkind, gazed at his pupils with a robust smile. He was a tall man, soft-spoken, and when the room would not quieten for his opening remarks, his deputy, Mr. Phibbs, a small, stout man with a black scowl and cheeks shiny with sweat, pounded his staff on the floor.

  Reading his remarks from a piece of paper, Headmaster Goodkind welcomed the boys to the new term. Then he consulted the paper and addressed the new boys by name. “You arrive here with an abundance of innocence, a youthful spirit—a blank slate unfettered by age, corruption, or prejudice! But when you leave, my lads, you shall bear the stamp of Hammer Hall!”

  The masters interrupted him with a coughing contest. Phibbs beat his staff against the floor for order again. From the kitchen, Mrs. Brasier wheeled in an empty trolley and proceeded to clear away the plates from the faculty table, including Mr. Goodkind's, yet untouched.