The Fall of Chance

by McGowan, Terry

  Unt was a virgin. They were all supposed to be but he knew at least a quarter of the year were experienced. People might tell you not to do it but obeying a rule requires reasoning while obeying an urge is animal. Among a hundred and seventeen adolescents, animal instinct had to win out somewhere.

  The ones with experience might not be able to say it but they told you so in dozens of other little ways. They’d passed the final barrier into adulthood and their attitude to you changed, as though having done the deed somehow made you older and wiser.

  Unt wondered if Crystal was the same as him. She and Rob had been an item for a long time but had they done it? Maybe they’d been saving themselves, confident that they’d end up together. Maybe they’d changed their plans on one of the nights since the Fall.

  Or maybe they’d only gone so far. He could probably cope with that. They didn’t seem to carry themselves in that cocky way Unt had seen other kids use but then again, they’d always assumed an orbit so far above the others that maybe they didn’t feel the need.

  Unt didn’t know but he did worry. He worried that he wouldn’t be able to perform or if he could, that he wouldn’t be able to live up to Rob. If a bar had been set, how did he know how high it was? He dreaded going to bed with Crystal and her realising that she was doomed to disappointment.

  The only person Unt knew with experience whom he could talk to was Pearson. Pearson was more than ready to share any tips he could with Unt and he lavished techniques and anecdotes on him like a sexual philanthropist. Unt squirmed at the details of some of these stories and was left bewildered by the moves he heard described.

  He often wondered if Pearson was pulling his chain: some of the things didn’t seem possible or even pleasant. In the end, Unt had accumulated a treasury of information but not a shred of confidence he could apply any of it.

  “Look,” Pearson had said at their last lunch at the Bear, “the best way to learn is by doing. Why don’t we go over to the Clerks this afternoon and get you a sparring partner? Orla’s taken a shine to you or, if you’re after a real lesson, there’s always Necta. That girl will chew you up, spit you out and leave you reborn as a master of love-making. And if neither of them take your fancy, there’s sure to be a few fresh girls who’ll be impressed by a Councillor-in-waiting.”

  Pearson had been insistent but his boasts were so extravagant they were easy to resist. He could easily believe that Pearson could walk in, snap his fingers and somehow get a woman but if he thought of doing the same himself, it just seemed ridiculous.

  The voice of his conscience would not be ignored either. He might not be married yet but to go along with Pearson was a kind of pre-emptive infidelity. It might mean he’d go to Crystal with the confidence of experience but he’d be forever tainted by the touch of another woman. Crystal might have been with Rob - and probably had been - but he couldn’t act on the assumption that she wasn’t just the same as him.

  He spent the night sat there, mulling it over across the evening. Was everyone else having this same struggle between anticipation and doubt? It seemed to Unt they had to be - most people, at least. The ceremony would be followed by a great party but how could you have a party where the key people were consumed with thoughts of what was coming after?

  * * * *

  Before Unt went to bed, he wanted to make the house presentable but he was preoccupied with worry and couldn’t get motivated. When he did get moving, he carried his doubts around like an anchor and everything he did seemed to take forever. He went to bed late and when he woke in the morning, he’d slept in.

  Sometimes people wake and without seeing a clock, they already know they’re late. This was one of those times. Unt went out of his bedroom and looked at the walnut clock. The long wooden wand of the middle hand had just made its heavy action and was pointing severely up to mark the hour. It was ten o’clock. That meant he had ninety minutes to get ready and get to his wedding.

  Unt leapt into action. He’d meant to try out the suit but he’d have to put it on untested. Hopefully, he’d have time to iron it before it had to go on. If not, it had been carefully folded and the creasing didn’t look too bad.

  He quickly drew a bath. For once, there was hot water in the communal tank but fetching and carrying it was taking too long. The water was only four inches deep but he decided that he’d have to make do. The water was warm enough as he splashed it on his skin but it cooled almost instantly and he shivered his way through.

  He got out and used a damp, day-old towel to dab himself dry. There were fresh ones but he was saving them to make an impression on Crystal. As he struggled to dry himself he realised he hadn’t shaved. He cursed at having broken his golden rule, abandoned drying and set to it in tepid water. Sure enough, in his hurry, he got a few nicks and the last one went properly deep. Blood poured down his wet skin, diluted orange and dripped onto the floor.

  He swore again but there was no time to try and stem the flow. He’d have to let it run its course and clean up as best he could after. So, he moved on to his hair. It styled well enough but a stubborn tuft at the crown refused to sit down. He tried soap to coax it down but in the end, he drowned it with water.

  He dabbed at himself with the towel some more as he went to the bedroom to get fresh underwear. A big mirror above the chest of drawers was eye-level and he automatically leaned in to inspect his face.

  Unt didn’t suffer acne as bad as a lot of boys but there were two spots right there with white beads on them. He popped them then used his wet thumb to wipe away the bits that spattered the glass. Now there were more spots of blood on his face but he’d clear them up with the shaving cuts later.

  On top of the drawers was a bottle of aftershave. He didn’t use the stuff often - the town’s only perfumery seemed to make every scent the same so there was little sense in wearing it to stand out. This, though, was a special occasion and it seemed only right to use a little bit. He splashed some on his hands, slapped it on his face and winced at the pain. He didn’t mind that so much as the fact that each pat of his hand reopened the wounds that had just begun to heal.

  In the reflection, he saw the towel strewn roughly on the badly-made bed, Normally, when he rose in the morning, he reformed his sheets in something close to neatness. In honour of his new wife, he’d intended to put new sheets on but time for that had gone. Now he had to settle for at least making it properly.

  When he’d done, he grabbed the towel that had fallen to the floor and went back to the bathroom, collecting the clothes he’d discarded there. He rammed the pile into his too-full laundry basket, squashing them down enough so that the lid closed neatly.

  He went and checked the clock and saw that since he’d first looked, three quarters of an hour had passed. It was time to confront the ironing. He got out his board, went over to the coffee table and stared down at the suit. It looked like a man had layed himself down on the table while wearing the suit and evaporated.

  It was no good, he admitted to himself. It wasn’t badly creased but it was creased nonetheless and he’d have to iron it. He fired up the small stove in the kitchen and was waiting for the iron to heat when there was a knock at the door.

  It was Bull. Bull never knocked. He never looked smart either but he did today. One glance told Unt he needed to up his game and be quick about it.

  “Hell, boy, you not ready?” Bull bluntly reinforced his analysis.

  “I know, I know,” said Unt, thinking it was easy to be on time when you had your mum to do your ironing for you.

  Luckily for Unt, he’d grown up doing his own laundry and he quickly got the suit into shape. In a few minutes, he was going back to the bathroom, buttoning his shirt as he walked. Bull was rifling through the kitchen, apparently thinking Unt might have refilled his cupboards overnight. Scavenging food was like an instinct with him.

  Unt carefully blotted at the bloody marks on his face and breathed a sigh of relief as they washed down to unnoticeable specks. Bull was calling on him
to hurry up but Unt ignored him. He took a minute to make adjustments to his hair and then he went back to his friend.

  Down Bull’s forearms, Unt noticed a string of tiny yellow flowers set out like buttons. A red leather cord was tied around his neck. He checked the remains of his package and saw he had these items too. There was also a pair of polished black shoes.

  The shoes went on quickly, the cord took a minute to get right and the flowers took much longer to decipher but at last, he was done.

  “About time,” said Bull, “Come on, let’s go.” And they set about marching.

  Unt didn’t see the need to hurry: they had a good quarter-hour to spare and it wasn’t like they needed to get there early to claim the best seats. The whole thing was going to be carefully choreographed and their places would be waiting for them. He was more worried about each footstep that caused the mud to squelch up the sides of his bright shoes.

  He looked across at Bull and thought how he looked polished too. The buttoned shirt seemed to be a bit tight around his neck: his face was flushed pink, giving him a ruddy sheen. His yellow hair was thick with some lotion that made it bright as fresh-cut straw.

  He was the image of harvest-time, just ready for picking.

  Unt felt pale by comparison but the day was glorious and with every step, he felt warmer and more alive.

  They made their way past the Square and Fate Hall, all the way over to the far side of town. They were headed to the Parade Lawn, or, to begin with, the school building that looked on to it.

  The Parade Lawn was in the mirror-opposite position of Unt’s own house. It perched on the very edge of a slope that ran down into the valley, just as there was on his side of town. It was the only large area of grass on the town’s plateau and it was always lovingly tended. All the grass on that regular rectangle was shaved to a uniform height and it was always bordered by arrow-straight rows of whatever flowers were in season.

  The lawn was surrounded on three sides by three large buildings. Along the long, western edge ran the hospital with its red-stone façade and many white-edged windows. The eastern edge that crested the slope lay open so that a person could stand on the lawn and look out into infinity. To the north was the Festive Hall, the indoor centre for communal gatherings and opposite this, to the south, was the school. Right now, the girls would be assembling in the Festive Hall while the boys gathered inside the school.

  Unt knew the scene from the memory of many years’ schooling but for now, he saw it only in his imagination. Everyone was forbidden from entering the area around the lawn before the ceremony. This was so that neither side would see the other before the wedding started. It didn’t stop them from running into each other on the way over but somehow, that didn’t happen.

  “We’re late,” said Bull, panting.

  “They can’t start without us,” said Unt.

  They approached the school by the back-alleys and saw no-one until they reached its rear entrance. There, Mr Day, deputy master of the school, was waiting to usher them in. He was a small, cross little man who was rapidly overshot by all his pupils but he loved his work and had been a good teacher. Everyone looked up to him, even as they looked down on him. The dice had done well there.

  “Come on boys, you’re almost the last to arrive,” he said, his neat brown moustache wobbling. On the day of their Fall, Unt and Bull had moved out from under his authority but the instinct obey remained.

  “See? We’re late,” hissed Bull.

  “But we’re not last, are we?” said Unt, “Therefore we’re not delaying anything.” He was enjoying being the casual one, for once.

  They made their way quickly down the old familiar corridors with their lime-covered walls and lime-coloured floor. It was like going back to a house that was no longer your own.

  Through a pair of double doors, they entered the assembly hall with its bare wooden flooring that served the school for all mass-activities. Right then, it was filled with black-suited, red-shirted youths, evenly spaced in neat ranks and files.

  This too, was very familiar. Over the past few months, Unt’s year had practised the drill for the ceremony over and over so that come the day, it would all be second-nature and flow smoothly.

  Each boy had their name on a piece of paper on the floor. They were to find their place and stand there until the ceremony started. That was an advantage of coming late: it was easy to spot your place when there were only a handful left.

  In their practises, the boys had been given a mock Order to stand among. The Orders snaked in rows from the top-left of the room, down, up and down again and the idea was you found your Order, then your place within it. Today was different: the boys’ Orders were their real ones but the arrangement of the Orders was the same as it had been in practice. The idea of keeping the same arrangement was that the boys would know where to find their Orders and even though he was in one on his own, Unt soon found his.

  He found his scrap of paper muddied and creased where passing shoes had stepped on it. In the rectangular assembly hall, Unt found himself slightly left and slightly forward of centre. Looking around, he saw Bull take up a position several ranks back in the file on his right.

  “Good luck, buddy,” hissed Bull in his shout-like whisper. A few of the boys around them frowned in annoyance. Bull was oblivious but Unt kept his response down to a silent thumbs-up. The junior Educators, pressed into service as marshals for the day, were walking up and down the lines, severe in their robes of midnight blue. As one came close, Unt faced front and put Bull behind him. Now he would wait.

  The windows of the room were positioned high-up so that the children had no distractions but that meant there were no distractions for Unt either. He was glad they hadn’t come early.

  He fixed his eyes on the heavy iron clock that was set in the wall ahead of him. That clock had always been a countdown toward home-time and freedom. Today it was a countdown to a binary thrill and dread.

  It moved slowly, inching to the allocated time and beyond, yet still the stragglers didn’t appear. The sun was shining in on the two left-hand files and Unt felt sorry for them as they stood there, baking.

  His own chief discomfort was a bright, iridescent fly that had landed on the back of the boy in front of him. As it sat there, round, plump and glittering, he had the rising urge to squash it but clearly, he couldn’t. All his impotence was captured in that urge. All he could do was stand and watch it insolently crawl around.

  A passing marshal stopped beside him, looked down and whispered, “Shoes”. Unt looked down and saw the mud on them. It seemed worse now that they were off the street. The marshal offered him a neatly-folded handkerchief which he gratefully used to wipe them clean. He whispered his thanks and passed it back.

  A few seconds later, there was a brief commotion and two boys clattered into the hall. Unt had a sidelong glimpse of scraggy hair, crumpled suit and red face of one of the lads. Their appearance prompted a buzz of activity among the marshals who rushed to try and knock the latecomers into shape.

  When they were done, as the marshals backed away, Unt became aware of a new presence at the front of the hall. It was the grey-bearded apparition of the school’s master, Mr Whistler.

  Whistler had always been an object of fear for the children. His pale face and pale choice of clothing made him ghost-like, as though he’d had a run-in with a sack of flour. That paleness gave the creases in his face and the dark sockets of his eyes a depth of menace that had kept them all in check.

  Today though, he seemed a different man. He seemed bright, energised and even his skin had some colour, even if it was a kind of dusty yellow.

  “At last, we’re all here,” he said in a voice that had commanded ten thousand assemblies. “As I look out upon you today I am filled with pride that we have raised so many fine young men. For most of you, this will be the last time our paths will cross until you have children of your own. And so I say, go with fortune, all of you. May you and your new brides know not
hing but happiness. Now, step to it!”

  One of the marshals opened the door in front of the first boy. It let in a strong, white light, like a beacon. Without any outward motion, the marshal seemed to beckon the boy on. He stepped out into the light and the wedding ceremony had begun.

  As the left-hand file marched out the open door, the line beside it about-faced and curled round after the last boy. Unt’s file was next and when the second file started moving, his soon followed. They first went up the hall, then down and then forward once more, on toward the door.

  Unt followed through after the boy in front. The fly had now gone from his suit. They marched in regular step down a short corridor, their feet assuming an automatic rhythm, a march without design. They went on past a few empty classrooms and then took a smart left-turn to the exit.

  The sun hit Unt like a round of applause. It was echoed by a very real cheer from the six-deep crowd that lined the hospital-edge of the lawn. Unt looked into that crowd, not really sure who he was looking for but was unable to make out any faces anyway.

  The boys marched up the lawn. Whatever phenomenon made Unt’s street perpetually muddy, it didn’t affect the Parade Lawn. Seventy pairs of feet marched over each bit of their route but the lawn withstood the impact like it was invulnerable.

  Up they marched, then down again, repeating a reverse of the snake by which they’d left the school. When it was time for Unt to stop marching, he found himself a little further back and right of centre.

  The cheering which had greeted them continued as they marched and it diminished with every boy who stopped in his assigned place. By the time the last boy took up his position the sound had dropped to an expectant silence.

  All eyes rested on the decorative front of the Festive Hall. Unt’s pulse marked out a beat that sounded in his ears and strummed the jaw muscles underneath.

  As he waited, Unt recalled the many times he’d stood in place in rehearsals, waiting to see who his mock partner would be. Often and again, he’d fantasised that it would be Crystal who would approach him and he’d trembled to imagine the brush of her hand on his. That fantasy had never come about but now it was inches from becoming reality.