by William Lane
‘It’s going! It’s going!’
Mace House was still perched on the slope above, yet at a queer angle, its rear jutting into the air. The school’s population had slithered and clambered up the western path to gather on the road above and look down on the doomed building: for a suppurating red gash had opened below Mace. The trees under which boys had once played or moped now lay like paddle pop sticks, each pointing to the creek. The water was rising even as they watched, and one at a time the trees were nudged, tugged, gripped, and plucked away. Those behind steadily fed the water.
Then the rear portion of Mace sagged, snapped, and broke away completely, sliding into the red. Everyone gasped. The last boards and struts were dunked underwater, to a general moan. The segment had taken any remaining trees with it: the way was now entirely cleared to the water.
8
The hospital was full that week. Some boys had been trampled in the rush to see Mace House fall. Mr C camped at the hospital, comforting, listening. The boys from Mace were distributed to the nine remaining boarding houses, some to Pike, a few to Lance, and so on. Already fully occupied, and finely attuned to the demands of their existing populations, the boarding houses groaned to accommodate these refugees. Of the Mace boys, ‘Martians’ as they were now called, the larger boys fared best. No one could quite take in what had happened. Yes it had rained a lot, more than anyone could remember. Yet how could a house slip away, how could this happen? There was a sense of communal injury, of injustice, of injustice bordering on outrage.
Perhaps the only person unaffected by the general turmoil was Steven, who had not even registered the Mace event, so concerned was he by being singled out in assembly. ‘Why me?’ he kept asking, still bewildered days later, ‘I wouldn’t graffiti anything. Everyone knows I’m not like that. Who’d want to set me up? Nobody, nobody – surely? I don’t understand it …’
Perhaps it was due to the unsettling event of the disappearing house, or perhaps it was one of those cyclical things, but during that unhappy week a surprising number of boys were kidnapped on nocturnal raids – boys from the houses on the west side of the creek sneaking off with captives from the east, and vice versa. The victims were hastened back in the night to the kidnappers’ boarding house, often tied over a donkey (not a horse, always a donkey, donkeys were humiliating). Then they were put in a corner somewhere and made to do those silly things boys do to other boys in their power, things designed to leave a mark. Not all houses harboured known kidnappers. Some pretended to kidnap, but didn’t – only boasted of it. In some houses the practice definitely had been stamped out, at least for the moment. It only needed a few stern words from the housemaster at a few consecutive house meetings and the practice would cease. But few masters felt the need to speak those few words, or most let it lapse. Then a general consensus would be reached between a sufficient number of boys, a ground-swelling would occur, and a kidnapping took place. Kidnap victims were allowed to return the next morning, limping across the school grounds in the dawn, perhaps naked, or smeared in something – a boy who, if not already a ‘turtle’, was branded one now. Boot polish applied to sensitive parts was so common there was talk of banning boot polish.
Kidnapping, like mustering runaway or wild horses, was known to be unofficially – yet somehow, ultimately, officially – smiled upon. If the truth be told, boys who organised successful kidnappings had really shown their mettle and were known to be first in line to be promoted as house captains or monitors.
Some houses began to leave lights on around their perimeters. Holstein House, which had particularly suffered, being the eastern house closest to the bridge over the creek, even erected a small fence about itself and electrified it. Holstein Rurals could rustle up an electric fence in their sleep.
More horses had escaped that week. Apparently some miscreant was releasing them. They joined the wild horses. These enlarged mobs had reportedly begun to attack the domestic animals.
The one bright spot in those dark days was the regatta. All students and masters were required to attend the regatta. The event was held on a Saturday, on the grounds of a Catholic school overlooking a swollen river. The long red Romanesque building of the boarding school ran along the crest of the hill, keeping watch over this stretch of the city’s waterways. David found Peter, the boy he had spiked, in the crowd on the river bank. They had become friends. Peter still wore a bandage about his head due to his infected head wound. Peter had been rather hard to find, as thousands of spectators from eight competing schools crammed the bank. Only several hundred metres long, the steep stretch was the sole viewing area for the regatta, so that by the time of the first race (the fourth four), the bank had already turned to mud.
The onlookers were divided into eight groups, each school’s colours running in bands from the top of the ridge down to the water. Blue and black, blue and white, maroon and yellow … David’s school wore gold, brown and black (palomino, chestnut, sable). If someone wearing one set of colours strayed into a different coloured mass they were asking for trouble, particularly if one was Catholic and the other Protestant.
David and Peter and their shadow, Steven, wormed their way down to the water’s edge. They had just found a perch upon a fig root when the fourth fours rounded the bend in the river, scything rhythmically out of a low cloud. With the kink in the waterway and the long, sweeping perspective, it took some time to establish who was in front and who was last. The last boat could actually appear first, causing great disappointment hard upon excitement. This did not stop every single spectator on the bank from bawling and bellowing (the men), screaming (the women), shouting (the schoolboys) and shrilling (attendant sisters, girl friends and assorted girls from aligned private schools).
The race over, the crowd subsided onto picnic blankets, releasing a slow descending confetti of impressions and emotions. Little groups of picnickers began unscrewing the Thermos, rummaging in the esky.
The three boys began climbing to an area staked out by Steven’s parents. The Lamberts were fully equipped with not one, but three Thermoses, as well as camping gear and several baskets of picnic food. As the boys passed through the gold, brown and black crowd, however, Steven was spotted by a band of first-formers. One little leader threw a can at Steven: others found missiles in the litter that even at this early hour covered the bank, and began showering them upon him. Perhaps the first-formers were angry because the school’s fourth four had pulled in a distant last. Steven shrank, and ducked, and weaved up the bank into the upper part of the crowd, where a higher percentage of spectators were parents. Some of them, hit by stray projectiles, glared at the first-formers, who dissolved back into the mass from which they had emerged.
‘Are you all right, darling?’ asked Steven’s mother. She had not seen, she had been busy unpacking the picnic morsels. His father had seen, though: he studied the empty river.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you fall over?’
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong, darling?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You’ve got blood on your lip.’
‘I’m fine!’ Steven cried, and turned from her; for now the third fours had appeared around the river bend, everyone could tell by the cheering at the water’s edge. One boat, then another, jaggedly started into view. Their crews bent and straightened, bent and straightened, while the oddly unmoving coxes, all borrowed authority, shrieked through megaphones at their boatload of captive brawn. The dart-like boats, so low to the water, shot forward in little spurts.
‘Whinny-whinny, neigh-neigh!’ chanted the boys in palomino, sable and chestnut. This was the school’s war-cry, heard at every sporting event. ‘Whinny-whinny, neigh-neigh!’
‘Faster, faster! Oh, why can’t they go faster?’ moaned Steven’s mother, jumping up and down on the spot, trying to see above the crowd.
‘No doubt they’re doing their best,’ said Mr Lambert, smiling at David.
The neighbouring section of cro
wd became jubilant after the race, singing and waving hands, blowing trumpets and kazoos, far too excited to sit. They threw streamers, crossing their colours. Those on either side, having fared less well, remained morosely seated, finding fault, and the rain began again.
At one point David passed Mr Parsons, who was looking in the general direction of the regatta while holding a transistor to his ear. Mr Parsons was listening to the horse races at Randwick. David knew, because his grandmother always did that too, at this hour, on this day of the week.
The rain was only sprinkling the next Monday morning. The light was bronze, coldly picking out the lines of the classrooms. Blades of grass stood up sharply, shining metallically. David arrived at the lockers, perplexed by this light.
Steven and Donald were waiting.
Steven relieved him of his raincoat as he turned to put his books in his locker.
‘I’m sorry,’ Steven said hurriedly, as David turned quickly, ‘I thought I’d help you.’
‘Please don’t keep doing that. I didn’t even feel you taking it off. Don’t creep up on me like that.’
‘You look tired, David,’ said Steven.
‘I’ve been up all night.’
‘Why?’
‘My grandmother wasn’t well.’
‘Steven’s been opening and shutting those lockers for an hour now,’ said Donald, ‘waiting for you. He’s counted them.’
‘There are nine hundred and forty-four altogether.’
‘There’s a little picture of hell for you. You’ll be numbering them next.’
‘What?’
‘Numbers are hell.’
‘Isn’t the light odd this morning?’ said David. ‘Kind of burnished.’
The other boys looked out into the rain, but registered no oddness, except in his remark.
Two big Rural boys passed, hands thrust down the front of their tight black pants, a strange custom of the Rurals. They dished out some obligatory abuse to Steven in passing.
‘Can you go away, Steven?’ said Donald. ‘I don’t like being near an object of such constant derision.’
‘Why? Why should I?’
‘I want to say something to David.’
‘Everyone hates me,’ said Steven, slamming a locker door. He walked quickly into the rain, drawing down his neck into his shoulders.
‘David, I’ve found it!’ hissed Donald in an animated and conspiratorial whisper, coming closer to David.
‘Did you have to say that to Steven?’
‘Hey? Oh. I wanted to show you what I’ve found, and Steven wouldn’t understand. His mind is small.’
‘Why be so mean to him?’
‘I’m ten times kinder to him than anyone else, and I have been for years. Does that make me mean? Now listen to this.’
Donald produced a slim volume of verse from inside his surcoat (when not in armour some boys wore surcoats, a kind of leather-padded under-armour), and loudly proclaimed, ‘“We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men –”’ Donald recited the entire poem (he waved the book about, not reading it, but using it as a prop), shifting his already old limbs in excitement. ‘That’s us, isn’t it, David? It describes us perfectly – not you, David, but me, and Steven, and us inmates of this school. “We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!” I was so happy when I found it, David. You know, I was in despair, then I picked up this little book. It’s amazing they haven’t banned these poems, burned this sort of stuff. Don’t you think it describes exactly what you find here? You know we are in hell?’
David took the book, read a few pages. The rain increased with an urgent, emptying-out sound, water pouring in ongoing sheets down the classrooms, which had started going green.
He handed back the book. ‘Hey, where were you at the regatta on the weekend, Donald?’
‘Miss me, did you?’
‘I thought you had to go. That’s the only reason I went.’
‘Well, I was reading this. Anyway, I’m past caring.’
In assembly that morning they were told how wonderfully, wonderfully well everyone had behaved at the regatta – so, so wonderfully. The school’s performance – not one place – was not to be dwelt upon: ‘Conduct and deportment are the main things, boys, conduct and deportment, and everyone was dressed very fetchingly and behaved to the very highest standard. Keep in mind, boys, that water sports have rarely been our forte – horse riding is more our thing: polo, foxing, gymkhana, rodeo, dressage, jousting; and our footballers are preparing to surprise us all this season, aren’t they, Mr Val?’ Capon here looked behind him at the phalanx of masters, who nodded. ‘Oh, Donald Rudderford, you were absent from the regatta. See me in my office at the end of school today. Yes, there will be classes today, I’ve been told,’ said Capon, adding, with a look behind him, ‘am I correct in saying that?’
David and his friends trudged towards their first class for the day. Again David noticed the odd light, pearly now, a light that seemed trapped and iridescent under low clouds. He felt he could almost touch the separate, atmospheric belt below the clouds.
Along the road ahead The Whipper was berating two boys under a tree, hitting them with his baton. Far-off yells reached them like speech bubbles. Two riders passed behind the little scene, the horses shorn of legs by a distant levee.
David and his classmates followed the path by an abandoned building, where huge murals of horses competing in a steeplechase had been painted on the walls. The murals were faded, and the bricks were crumbling in places, pocked, as if shot at. Boys now used the bits of scattered brick as slingshot ammunition. ‘Look, Martians,’ said Steven, as a band of boys appeared around the side of the building. The band was an unusual pack of first-, second- and third-formers, no doubt allied by their new circumstances. This group grew still, looking towards some first-formers stranded in the open space of the parade ground.
‘Any of those little first-formers easterners?’ asked Peter. ‘They’ll get it if they are.’ (A rumour was rife that boys from the eastern side of the creek had ‘sappered’ the ruined Mace, undermining the western boarding house.)
‘They’re not,’ said Steven. ‘But they’ll get it anyway. Like Newbold got it.’
‘So what has actually happened to Oscar?’ asked David.
‘They told us he’s been sent home.’
‘Stop talking about it!’ yelled Donald, hanging about in earshot, but refusing to join them. He had been morose and silent since being called out at assembly.
They wandered on towards the remote and isolated art building. In the last art lesson they had been told they were to learn how to paint horses. One way or another, every subject came back to horses. David did not mind. He enjoyed finding out about horses. In Biology they had learnt some curious things – that the Arab horse had one less vertebra than other horses, hence its high tail; that the rare and ancient Przewalski’s horse had sixty-six chromosomes as opposed to the standard equine sixty-four; that the horse’s hoof was one of evolution’s greatest miracles, an extraordinary extended middle toe forever poised for flight. This meant a horse always stood on tip-toe. They had learned about the Caspian Miniature Horse, the Basuto, the Batak, the Falabella, the Fell, and the Galiceño. They were told that surviving archaic breeds, Przewalski’s horse and the Polish Tarpan, sometimes showed zebra-like markings on their rump and rear legs … and in Biology they sliced up horses’ eyes. History too, was all about the horse, apparently. If one rode, one conquered. That was history’s lesson. ‘“For once man mounted a horse, he loomed eight feet tall and could outrun or strike down all his ancient enemies”,’ read the history master. History was not so much about the weapon, but the delivery system, and that meant the horse. Think of the Spaniards in the New World, who overcame millions of bloodthirsty Mexicans with twenty-six horses. Hannibal’s elephants were best viewed as super horses. And where would the squatter stock that nourished their very institution be without the horse?
; David saw Thomas and Bishop, his team-mates from the first fifteen, about to approach him. They saw him talking with the Christians, Peter and Steven, and halted. Peter noticed, and walked ahead with Steven. Thomas and Bishop then joined David, and they talked football. (Peter had initially been in their team, but Val had dropped him, not one, but two teams, to the third fifteen.)
Eventually they arrived at their next class. It usually took about ten or fifteen minutes to get from place to place around the school. David removed himself from any group, and sat alone at the front. The art teacher had a floppy body and a limp moustache. Everyone called him The Other. The Other taught in an exhausted, throwaway manner, a manner which seemed to say his time here now was short, and there was nothing he could do about it. Over the years his art department had been shifted from building to building about the school, always losing space and convenience. Now art classes had been more or less abolished altogether, except when they formed an adjunct to another subject. At least The Other’s art room, despite being small and dark, had all the latest resources and equipment – the best crayons, pencils, paints, Stanley knives, squares of linoleum, screen-printing machines, canvases, chisels, awls, easels, cameras. These resources protruded from boxes half unpacked … or were they being packed up?
The Other’s classes had been whittled down to him holding forth, and he held forth with only the outcrops of an eroded enthusiasm. Sometimes he remembered to connect his ideas with images from the most expensive art books, which he held up. So, while most boys threw objects and rioted at the back of the room, David and a few others listened. ‘Oh, horses, they want me to talk to you about horses again, don’t they,’ said The Other, after a rambling introduction, ‘well they would, horses, horses. Boys! Quiet up there! Careful with those awls! Well, here they are, the great horse painters. Look at these prints: Gozzoli, Uccello, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Géricault, Goya, Delacroix, George Stubbs, Degas, and I’ll throw in Jack Yeats; there we have the great, the wonderful, the revered lineage of equine artists. Note how Degas liked painting horses’ bums. Well, I’ve done my bit. I’d prefer a bull any day. Give me one of Goya’s bulls.’