by William Lane
‘I’ve never really talked to him,’ said Gregory. ‘Not beyond pleasantries.’
‘Come on, I’ll walk you to the staffroom,’ said Val.
They moved fitfully, Val frequently stopping to emphasise a point. Gregory hugged himself in the cold. He was shaking, whether from the cold or his fever, he was not sure. His infection was worse than ever.
Rain started pattering around them.
‘You know, believing deeply in something is lonely,’ Gregory heard Val say, ‘I need help. I need your help. I know you’re growing very close to some of the boys. They really respect you. David’s terrifically excited by the play. I need you to have a quiet word in his ear about Mr C. Just a quiet warning.’
‘About what?’
‘Why, about the enervating effect of embracing some wretched doctrine. It’s horrible to watch, when they give themselves over to it. They lose their edge, become soft, become cut off somehow – Thomas has had some road-to-Damascus conversion, did you know? The captain of my first fifteen! It was so painful to me. A betrayal. I’ve dropped him.’ Then, as they were climbing the steps from the parade ground to the classrooms, Val said quietly but distinctly, ‘Sometimes I wonder if we’re really serving the boys as well as we might in this place, Gregory. Do you think they’re in an environment conducive to excellence?’
‘Well, I’ve never seen such a well-resourced school –’
‘I’m not talking about resources, Gregory, you know that. Come on. Your real opinion now.’
Gregory squirmed. His hand was throbbing. Val grabbed it.
‘So you agree with me, Gregory? I can see you do. You have real doubts about this place, don’t you?’
‘No institution is perfect –’
‘You don’t trust me with your opinion.’
‘No, Val, I’m still forming my opinion.’
The rain became a deep beating upon the roofs of the classrooms about them. It drummed and clattered. The lawn turned from deep green to silver, unable to absorb any further moisture. Gregory took back his arm, but again Val put out his hand, detaining him on the staffroom steps. ‘He hasn’t been pestering you, has he, Gregory?’
‘Who?’
‘That minister of religion. He hasn’t been attempting to influence you, has he? He will try to turn you against me, you know. He hates me. I’m the devil incarnate.’
‘I’ve hardly spoken to him, Val. I told you.’
Val searched the younger man’s face in the rain.
‘He wouldn’t make an impression on you, would he?’
Val’s hand slid down to Gregory’s wound.
‘I don’t know him!’ Gregory cried.
‘My two wet dovelings!’ cooed a voice above them. The sound of the rain increased, but no longer fell on them. An enormous lemon parasol had been lowered over their heads.
‘Mistress Capon!’ cried Val. Yes, it was Mistress Capon. She had ventured forth from the staffroom, mincing down the steps unseen.
‘Now, let me look at that darling hand of yours,’ said the lady, negotiating the last step to lightly take up Gregory’s fingers. ‘Oh, dear me, not yet healed. What an ugly wound. I’d kiss it if I thought it would help.’ She couldn’t help running her hand up his arm, even patting his hair. The two men were each aware of the other smelling her perfume, warmly enveloping in the downpour. ‘You must come in out of the rain, right this minute,’ cried Mistress Capon. Still her hand lingered on Gregory, like a mouse on a sideboard. ‘You bring out something strange in me, Gregory,’ she breathed. The rain pattered on the parasol.
‘Oh, don’t mind me!’ cried Val. And he bounded up the steps away from them, leaving Gregory with a wave of his small, capable hand.
13
Late on a Saturday morning, midwinter, David arrived at the school gate, holding a bag containing his football uniform and boots. He paused, looking down at the looming goalposts and the white picket fence of the oval. Rows of cars surrounded the playing field in rings, their noses pointed inward to the oval of mud. Here and there the circle was broken by a low concrete building or a wooden stand, rising from the slurry. On the far side of the oval, down a dip and across a road, nestled the two-storey school gymnasium with its celebrated Olympic-sized swimming pool … David could also see the creek, running high behind the gymnasium. Aspects of the eastern houses glittered through the trees – Dartmoor, Oldenburgh, Barb; Holstein and Carthusian sat deeper in the foliage. Facing these buildings were the western houses – the exposed, roped-off foundations of Mace, then Pike, Trident, Bombardier and, poking up in the distance, Lance.
The rain had thinned to a spit, and feeble light filtered through the clouds, enough to brighten the mud. Now the oval appeared as a large reflecting pond. Spectators were throwing tartan rugs over the bonnets of their cars, unpacking picnic baskets. Making his way down from the gate, David was again struck by the altered light, a pearliness that contained the oval and its surrounds, as if here was a world in a globe, unwitting of any other sphere. Inside this world he began to make out a surprising number of people moving about – boys running up and down beside the fence, queues outside the tuck-shops, groups of children playing along the sidelines. Well-dressed women. On the slopes leading up to the road, small bands of figures moved into the trees.
Threading between the parked cars, David saw that most cars had a prancing stallion on their back windscreen, a transfer of the school badge. Behind the cars, children threw a large limp doll up in the air on a blanket. The doll flopped and twisted, then got swallowed in the blanket. This same game was being repeated by several other groups, receding into the distance. Boys covered in mud and consumed with hilarity attempted to walk on stilts. Still others were bashing plaster donkeys which hung from the thin trees, scattering the innards of the effigies. David saw one donkey suddenly disgorge hundreds of bright plastic horses. The children set upon them, picking them out of the mud. There were other games too, games of blind man’s buff and piggy-in-the-middle, and restricted children being led about by ropes.
The third fifteens were welcomed onto the oval with sporadic clapping. The loudspeaker blurted. Some of the children on the bank paused in their games. The older, aspiring boys on the stands cheered their team, or heckled the opposition. ‘Whinny-whinny, neigh-neigh!’ Parents in polo necks and Driza-Bones propped themselves against the bonnets of cars, or craned over the pickets.
David changed into the school tracksuit. He saw Steven’s mother frantically waving at him as he came out of the change sheds. The Lamberts had arrived hours ago, Mrs Lambert told him, to secure a position immediately by the oval fence. The car bonnet was covered with the obligatory rug, picnic cutlery, binoculars, Thermos, camera, wine cask. Steven was in the lowest football team, and was probably at this moment playing on one of the smaller fields beyond the horse yards. Perhaps that was where his father was, thought David, and his mother had been left here to guard their space. But no, there was Mr Lambert, returning from the Gents with the bandy-legged, rolling gait of the horseman, outfitted with riding boots, broad-brimmed hat, blue working shirt and moleskin trousers. (He was a Macquarie Street doctor.)
‘We’re very worried about Steven,’ confessed Steven’s mother, twirling her necklace. ‘What do you think, David?’
‘About Steven?’
‘Yes. He looks up to you so much. He never stops talking about you. Do you think he’s well? Is he fitting in? He won’t tell us, you know. But we do worry. Has he said anything to you?’
‘About school?’
‘He thinks you’re so wonderful. And you’ve been doing so well this season, winning all your games. He’ll be here soon to watch you play. Oh, you’d better go, I can see Val’s assembling the team. Isn’t Val wonderful? Four victories on the trot. We’re going to take some photos of you. We always do.’
David joined the team. After a quick reminder of tactics and a few stretches, Val told the boys to have a light lunch and to regroup at one o’clock.
A
fter dismissing the team, Val wandered down to the oval. He made a show of enjoying the carnival atmosphere, laughing with young boys, scuffing up their hair, punting back a stray and soggy football. ‘We look forward to another great triumph, Val,’ said Black, as Val passed the councillor by the fence. Val lingered. He had noticed Black had been warming to him over the last few football games, addressing him more frequently and at greater length with each new victory.
‘Difficult conditions,’ said Val.
‘Slippery ball.’
‘The boys are used to it. I’ve trained them in the wet.’
‘I used to enjoy a good mud bath,’ Black reminisced.
The forwards on the near twenty-two line were facing off one another, before packing down with grunts and yells. Completely smeared in mud, the boys and referee were indistinguishable. The clean silver sound of the whistle blew, separating the mud men.
Now Tait was approaching, looking drained as usual, the skin pleated under his eyes.
‘Oh, Tait,’ hailed Val, ‘I’m glad to find you here. I wanted a quick word with you and Black about that book list issue we’ve been discussing at the last few council meetings.’
Tait and Black exchanged glances.
‘I know you think I’m like a dog with a bone about this. But it was proselytising stuff that the minister was pushing. I wasn’t exaggerating. You didn’t think I was exaggerating, did you?’
Val looked back and forth between the two moleskinned councillors, who chewed their lips, rolled their shoulders, adjusted their stances.
‘And now,’ said Val, ‘there’s this confirmation camp business. Do you really believe school funds should be put towards that?’
Val appealed first to one man, then the other. Tait clapped a tackle.
‘Big changes are afoot in this school, believe me,’ continued Val, now taking Tait’s arm, and drawing Black closer as well. ‘Because I’m present on a day-to-day basis I can sense the shift in mood. The minister is recruiting boys to his brand of Christianity. Extreme religious elements are trying to gain a foothold amongst us. They’re on the move, I can feel it. Do you want to see that happen?’
The two councillors grunted, which Val took as a sign of encouragement. ‘You won’t recognise this school, I assure you, if the likes of that Mr C get their way. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve nothing against the man personally. He’s only doing his job. It’s what he stands for.’
‘As to the issue of religion,’ said Tait, loudly clapping a good punt that got the home team out of trouble, ‘I approve of the formalities of course. But, like you, Val, I cannot countenance the thought of a dogmatic religious element gaining a controlling hand in the school.’
Jock Gray, Bishop’s father, joined them, walking in a bowlegged, crab-like way; a horseman through and through. ‘What is this rubbish I’ve been hearing about a confirmation camp?’ he barked without preliminaries. ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘It’s divisive too,’ said Val, ‘because some boys get to go, and some don’t. He’s saying some boys are special, Jock. A kind of spiritual élite. That’s wrong.’
Black and Tait nodded at this. Positions hardened around Jock Gray: folks talked tougher. Gray wore his trousers very low over a tumescent belly that his belt sliced clean under. He exuded the tang of malt whenever he shifted.
‘The school’s lost a house,’ said Val, ‘the school community’s divided enough at the moment. Now’s the time to pull together. We can’t be asking for money for some camp that this boy gets to go on, and that boy doesn’t. What do you reckon, Jock?’
‘Should never have happened,’ confirmed Gray.
‘Point taken,’ said Black.
And the referee’s whistle only underscored it. When the men talked again, it was in the banter that follows an issue settled.
‘How about our Val’s record coaching the first fifteen, Jock?’ said Tait, nudging the country man. ‘Four wins at a gallop. Eh?’
‘My wife thinks he’s the ants’ pants, this Val,’ Gray wheezed. ‘She never stops going on about him. It’s the same with my boy. He’s taken a shine to you, Val. You’ve become the centre of the family!’
Val looked abashed, but pleased.
‘And your boy’s been playing the best rugby I’ve seen from a schoolboy,’ said Tait, grasping Gray’s arm. Although a suburban accountant, and thus clearly a Parvenu, Tait prided himself on knowing how to knock about with Rurals. Black, an eastern suburbs lawyer from a family of eastern suburbs lawyers, grew stiff and distant around Rurals.
The four men, perhaps suddenly aware of being an odd crew, watched the boys through a concrete silence, fastsetting.
David found himself alone as he headed towards the dining hall for lunch. He had hailed his team mates, but they did not seem to hear, and they had gone on ahead, or drifted away from him. He shrugged off this apparent shunning. He was last to join the team lunching on the podium high above the other diners. He saw Steven eating below. When their eyes met, Steven did not smile or acknowledge him. The half-grown boy continued chewing his food.
After lunch David returned to the oval to watch the second fifteen. Some boys ran about with strapped knees, others strapped elbows. Some wore leather skull-caps, others had tape around their heads. Some noses bled. All the boys masticated on mouth guards at breaks in play, the plastic protruding and dribbling as they stood gasping, hands on hips. They spat great gobs of froth. Their flesh thumped with each tackle, the bloated ball thudded into their arms, and sometimes slithered on, to a chorus of groans. When one boy got taken off on a stretcher, David felt a slight turning in his stomach, the first worm of fear.
‘Whinny-whinny, neigh-neigh, whinny-whinny, neigh-neigh!’
Time for the final warm-up. The first fifteen chanted the school song together, listened to Val’s final message, then ran onto the churned-up oval through columns of boys trailing streamers in the school colours.
‘Whinny-whinny, neigh-neigh!’
Five of the forwards of the first fifteen – the solid, bovine forwards – were Rurals. Five of the backline – the sleek, slippery, sidesteppers – were Easterns. Parvenu boys occupied those positions most appropriate for adaptable characters, the breakaways, the lock, the five-eighth, the fullback. As the game started parents patrolled the sideline, some hammering fists in the air, others screaming with unsheathed abandon. A line judge had to prevent one father from rushing into the fray and deciding some long-suspended contest of adolescence. Val paced a small stretch by the middle of the field, neither speaking nor grimacing when the opponents scored first, but sending discrete hand signals to his boys. Parsons shadowed him, emitting nasal sounds, scratching his head until it bled. Throughout the half, David placed himself adroitly, crying out for possession, yet time after time no one passed to him. His team mates put a distance between themselves and him. Or was he imagining it? Was he moving away from them? Were they responding to some new distance opening up in him?
At half-time Val summed up the areas in which the team needed improving. ‘Do your personal best, boys,’ he concluded, ‘that’s all I ask, all I ask. All I want to see is one hundred per cent effort. I’ll be satisfied with that. One more thing: David must be feeling left out. You’re not using him, he’s been all over the field like a ferret, and you’ve ignored him.’ He looked at David. ‘Are you feeling left out?’
The clouds were a nasty purple as the boys, strapped, taped, stretched and massaged, squelched back onto the oval. The light was so poor some spectators complained that they could not make out one end of the field from the other. It was early in the half that David went down in a ruck, a mass of spiked boots frenetically raked over him, and finally, inevitably, he absorbed a blow that might have been a hammer on a coconut.
So the ruck had cleared. The referee was standing over him. He was happy to keep lying there. Under the orbiting lights.
‘Whinny-whinny, neigh –’
‘What? No, I’m fine – I – no, I’l
l play on.’
‘– neigh!’
He could stand, yes, he could. He did stand. The game was restarted. But he found he could only look up, to where the clouds were steepling, from low in the sky to high in the heavens, massing, solidifying, gathering form. Up there David discerned a massive, bearded head, attached by heavy rooted muscles to a back of celestial proportions. The clouds shifted and some dissolved, and the monster threw a punch into obscured space. The crowd moaned. The giant was pummelling the clouds – and rain fell. The crowd was screaming. Another punch, and the rain came down in curtains. Angry shrieks made David look down for a moment, to find the ball sitting like a giant shining egg at his feet. But again he was distracted, this time by movements on the long banks above the oval. Up there he detected the frantic movements of beings, transparent, bladder-like creatures scrambling over the grass, gleaming like frogs in outline. Suddenly the ball hit him in the stomach, and he buckled over. ‘He’s out of it!’ cried someone. ‘Get him off!’ cried others. Now he was being led off, into a gust of wind blowing debris across the mud, paper plates, cans, wrappers, hats, streamers, scarves, words from severed sentences: ‘They run quicker because they’re so used to wearing heavy armour,’ he heard some authoritative male voice intone, ‘they feel incredibly light without it.’
David was placed on a bench. He was being spoken to. ‘You’re concussed,’ a voice said, ‘can you look at me?’
He threw away his mouth guard, threw it into an ice cream container with all those shucked out orange quarters. Then he leaned forward and vomited between his boots. Being part of this ever again – he could not imagine it.
David felt his hand taken, and he was led by a boy he scarcely knew, up the hill, past the little chapel that stood locked up and dark, and into the trees behind. It was almost lightless in the trees. He listened to the sucking sounds of his guide’s feet in the wet grass, and smelt resin, then wood smoke, and meat cooking. His guide clambered over a ditch, passing a boy staring back the way they had come. They stepped over a pyramidal heap of football jerseys, discarded tape, unwound bandages. David saw figures illuminated in the gloom ahead. A bonfire was burning low. Boys were squatting about the flames. They did not acknowledge him. Then he saw a slit carcass hanging from a thick branch. Because of the sheer size of the thing, he did not immediately recognise it. Several boys, naked to the waist, were stretching up and going at the carcass with long knives. The multi-ribbed meat glistened in runs of cream and blotches of crimson. David now saw it was the remains of a horse, of what must have been a big horse. He looked again at the circle of faces. All the boys were strangers. Or not quite: familiar faces were amongst them, yet it was as if they wore masks made in the image of their faces. Something from within masked them.