by William Lane
‘It’s traditional after a first fifteen win,’ said his guide, a boy a few years younger than David. David thought his name might be Damien.
‘I’ve never heard of this,’ said David.
‘We’ve revived the tradition.’
Another boy, looking up from the fire, added, ‘We don’t tell anyone. It’s not official.’
‘We keep a lookout posted,’ said Damien.
Little boys were throwing dead branches onto the fire.
David looked closer at the bonfire, and saw a sheet of corrugated tin had been laid in the midst of the flames. On it a very small horse roasted. Its legs had been tethered together. It was sizzling and bubbling on the tin sheet, slowly yet inevitably shrinking under the eyes fixed upon it. The tin and its burden were drawn off the fire, and the meat hacked away by boys displaying dexterity and authority. David had never seen them before. The other boys leaned forward on tiptoes. A piece of meat was handed to him. The texture of it sickened him, as did the memory of this happening before, but long, long ago, so long ago it must have happened in another life. How had the scene ended then? The meat was still on his lips when he realised it was Steven who had passed it: Steven, who had now assumed the bandy-legged gait of a Rural. The other boys wolfed down their meat, but Steven was watching him.
David returned his portion. Steven would not take it back. David flung it down, turned, and walked rapidly back through the trees. How far back the way seemed, and how lightly he had entered these trees. He broke into the clear, immediately feeling pain in the side of his head. How confusing to be in daylight, to find that people still milled about the oval.
It was another win for Val, and he was carried about on his boys’ shoulders, the crowd following. Streamers were thrown, hats hurled, car horns honked. Only the headmaster seemed curiously muted, Mistress Capon keeping close to him.
David stood rubbing his head, trying to think. A surge of sunlight picked out the wet cars, the long, shining and vacant seats of the stands. Then Val was carried to the top of one of the stands. Streamers still rained upon him. David’s team mates arranged themselves in ranks below their coach: cameras flashed.
David quickly showered and changed. When he reappeared the scene of triumph continued.
Mr C, standing apart, came up to him tentatively.
‘You’re going home now?’ the minister asked. ‘Not going to join in the celebrations?’
David smiled. ‘You’re not, sir.’
‘Come on, I’ll walk you up the hill.’
They walked slowly up the road, towards the school gate, through the empty grounds.
‘Someone said you were concussed,’ said Mr C.
‘I’m all right. In fact, I’ve never felt better.’ Not that the ache in his head had gone, and he remembered nothing of most of the game, except those beings he had spied in the sky, and those lower beings around the oval. Yet what he said was true, for he felt the emergence of an underlying clarity, a settling of muddied waters.
Near the top of the hill he halted to stare at the school gate, two heavy sandstone pillars silhouetted against storm clouds. A few horses grazed against the bars of the fence. The horses shifted in small clouds of flies, their hides shuddering.
‘You’ve got no one to take you home?’ Mr C was asking.
‘No. I live with my grandmother. She can’t drive in the wet.’ Actually, she could not afford a car.
‘You catch a bus to and from school every day?’
‘Yes. A few buses.’
‘How do you carry your armour to school every day? It’s ridiculous, if you ask me.’
David said nothing.
‘How’s Peter?’ he asked the minister at last.
‘I visited him earlier. His eye looks a real mess, I’m afraid. The infection’s flared up again. It’s not your fault, you know, David. It’s the horse manure on the ovals, it gets into everything. I’ve noticed your care in the past for Peter and Steven.’
‘Isn’t it natural?’
David looked at the sky, which was marbling and swirling, grey, black, a bruising chocolate. A luminous green light began undulating over the lawns.
‘Look, as it’s raining, I’ll drive you home,’ proposed Mr C. ‘Would that be all right?’
‘It would save me hours.’ And the fare.
Mr C’s car was dry. It was warm, protected. And so fast. Warm in his seat, flying through the rain, David felt his flesh transformed into something golden, even as Mr C was reminding him of his club, the Augustinians: was David going to attend? Yes, he said he might. He might, before he left.
It was almost a pity to be driving, he thought. He had been floating as they walked.
The way home passed in what Mr C might have imagined as unimpeded communion. The minister rather sullied it, however, at the last moment, by clutching at David’s hand as he got out of the car. David was sure there was nothing sinister in that action, nothing sordid. It just made him notice a fresh wound on his palm.
14
The council meeting held after the game began informally with handshakes and cheers and celebratory drinks. Capon proposed ways in which the council might reward Val, who had now won five victories ‘at a canter’. A pay rise perhaps. ‘No, really, I insist we drop it,’ said Val, taking a seat beside Black. ‘Let’s not mention it again.’
‘I insist, Val, I insist. I’ve been talking it over with Valerie, and she agrees with me –’
‘No, you mustn’t, Capon.’
‘Well, I might propose a little something later on in the meeting. Now, let’s start.’
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Butter-Finch, Thomas’s father, entered the room. He was one of those rural councillors who found it hard to attend meetings. He did make a point of attending at least once a year, at some sacrifice to his sheep. The sheep farmer, creased and thumbed, smelling of lanolin, removed his hat to reveal a crimped mat of woollen hair.
To Capon’s astonishment, Butter-Finch was followed by a personage wearing a trim grey suit with a clerical collar. Capon jumped to his feet, bowed, stammered, ‘I’m so sorry, Martin – I didn’t know – wasn’t informed – gentlemen, we have the bishop with us –’
‘No matter,’ said the bishop gruffly.
‘I would have met you, Martin.’
‘I didn’t want to be met. I just wanted to drop by, as they say, see how things were going.’
‘We’re honoured!’
The bishop snorted and sat, taking a seat at the head of the table vacated by Capon. During his time as headmaster Capon could recall only one visit from a bishop, a well-scripted affair. This, in short, was unprecedented – yet not altogether unreasonable, as the council was ultimately accountable to the bishop, and the two churchmen who regularly attended council meetings appeared as the bishop’s representatives.
Mr C quietly entered the room after the bishop, sitting on his right.
‘Well, proceed as if I was not present,’ said the bishop. ‘I don’t doubt you’ve got school business to attend to. Attend to it, then I’ll raise a matter of concern when it is appropriate.’
Capon settled slowly in the seat to the bishop’s left, next to Val. He spent some time arranging his robe and shuffling papers.
The secretary, Crib, holding the agenda, looked back and forth between Capon and the bishop.
‘Well, proceed!’ said Capon snappishly, ‘let’s have it.’
There was the matter of again buying more land adjacent to the school property. That was agreed upon. ‘We can always do with more land,’ said Tait. Then there was the matter of the women’s slacks. Some mothers had been appearing at sports events in slacks. It seemed slacks were all the fashion that season. Well, fashions came and went. The fact was a number of the masters and old boys had complained of the women wearing slacks. Slacks were provocative and slovenly. Letters of objection were produced and read, and it was agreed a note would be sent home requesting mothers – no, better still, any females attending school
functions – wear dresses, suits, or skirts of appropriate length, but not slacks. Next was the matter of the weight of the boys’ armour. Apparently some parents had complained about spinal curvature and various osteoarthritic conditions, induced, they claimed, by the long periods of wearing heavy metal armour.
‘Any medical certificates to support these claims?’ asked Black, his jaw on a sharp angle as he nibbled his pipe stem.
‘No mention was made of medical certificates,’ said Capon.
‘Shouldn’t need to worry about it then. They’ll never prove it.’
‘We’re not going to change the school uniform,’ said Tait.
‘That would be unthinkable,’ said Black.
‘No, I can’t imagine we need even canvas such a scenario,’ said Capon, shuddering at the thought.
Val sat thinking about the incident concerning Oscar Newbold’s article, and the attendant helicopter visit … it would be odd if the matter had not been slated to appear on the agenda … then he was thinking about the last ten minutes of the game, when Bishop Gray went over for the winning try …
‘Did you hear the bishop, Val?’
Capon was staring at him. A strange look had come over the headmaster’s face, a flushing of the wattles and comb; he might be about to peck Val.
‘I’m sorry, you’ve lost me,’ said Val, leaning forward.
The bishop said, for the second or third time, apparently, ‘Would you please leave the room.’
Val, having made a point of ignoring the bishop upon his entrance, now looked at the man closely. He appeared inscrutable, more flint than flesh, a chess-piece bishop.
Then Val looked across the table at Mr C. But Mr C was looking at the whisky decanter. Finally Val took in Butter-Finch. Butter-Finch projected a pre-cancerous lower lip, while polishing the grain of the old cedar table with a sandpaper palm.
Too late, Val realised. He had been distracted. And Capon’s sweet talk had disarmed him. Val had not seen this coming. Unlike me.
He had to leave – as a matter of protocol? He did not think so.
He left.
‘What I am about to raise is not an easy matter to broach,’ began the bishop, waiting for the door to close behind Val.
‘Is it about that infernal newspaper article?’ asked Capon. ‘Because if it is, Newbold –’
‘No, it’s not about that, although that will have to be addressed, sooner rather than later. No. Let’s begin by saying this: I hear, Capon, that two masters have recently tendered their resignations from the staff – Mr Bowen, a highly respected master, for one.’
‘That’s correct,’ said Capon. ‘I received his resignation only yesterday.’
‘And two weeks ago, Mr Dalrymple, one of the school’s most well-loved masters, told you he was leaving.’
‘Yes. He wished to bring forward his retirement.’
‘Did he say so in his letter?’
‘No, not in the letter as such –’
‘Both men are staunch Christians,’ said the bishop.
‘Yes,’ said Capon, eyebrows shooting up. ‘Yes, come to think of it, they have that in common.’
‘Pity, to lose two men of faith.’
‘Yes. Well –’
‘Pity to lose men of faith when there are fewer and fewer upon the staff.’
‘We’ve plenty of good Christian men, Martin.’
‘And both these departing masters voiced concerns regarding Mr Val, I believe. They said they could no longer work with him.’
Capon chose his words carefully. ‘There was a “personality clash” between those two individuals and Mr Val, yes. Unfortunate affairs. It happens not infrequently in a staffroom, and it’s –’
‘And now we have kept Mr Val, and lost two of our finest masters.’
‘I don’t see it quite like that, Martin.’
‘How do you see it?’
Capon stared.
‘Let’s approach it from another angle, Capon,’ said the bishop. ‘What has been done to further Christ’s message in the school this year?’
‘Look, what is this?’ cried Black, unstopping his pipe from his mouth.
Tait chipped in: ‘Val’s a good fellow.’
Crib kept out of it.
‘No, no,’ said Capon, ‘we must answer the bishop’s question. As you know, we have chapel every morning as part of assembly, Martin. Mr C’s Christian boys’ group, the Augustinians, is thriving. Mr C can tell you so himself. And Mr C has been organising a confirmation camp, haven’t you, Mr C?’
‘And having some trouble raising funds, I believe,’ said the bishop.
‘Is that what this is about?’ asked Capon.
‘Partly and indirectly.’
‘I wish you’d said so first up, Martin. I assure you, Martin, the camp will happen. And as to furthering Christ’s message, I know you’ve been very active in your pastoral work this year, Mr C, haven’t you?’
Now Mr C’s eyebrows rose. ‘Well, a deep need has been expressed by many of the boys. That’s kept me busy – active, if you want to put it like that.’
‘Look, are you carrying out some kind of vendetta against Val?’ demanded Black, looking at the minister fiercely. ‘That’s what I want to know. Let’s be up front here.’
‘No, certainly not,’ answered Mr C. ‘There is no vendetta, Mr Black, not on my part. I have been accused by some of waging a crusade – astonishing, really, in what is supposed to be an Anglican school, substantially dependent on church funding. But no, I am not waging a crusade. I am simply meeting a need. The boys are crying out for ministry, for God’s Word. So many are lonely and confused, I’ve never seen anything like it. They are desperately trying to make sense of an increasingly hostile environment.’
‘“Increasingly”?’ said Tait. ‘“Hostile”?’
‘What’s so hostile about the school?’ exclaimed Black. ‘The boys have everything.’
‘And there’s an insinuation in what’s been said so far,’ said Tait, ‘that the more zealous Christian members of the school community are being persecuted. Is this the thrust of tonight’s conversation?’
‘I see Mr Val has many converts here,’ said the bishop.
‘With all respect, we speak for ourselves,’ said Black, and Tait nodded.
Crib kept his eyes on the minutes.
‘The treatment of avowedly Christian boys in the school is not the central issue tonight – not tonight at least,’ said the bishop. ‘Let me raise my most immediate concerns to you all now. You must be wondering why I came tonight. I came about a matter concerning Mr Val. I will start by saying I have had a string of letters and telephone calls from concerned parents and members of staff in regard to Mr Val.’
The bishop paused.
‘We know he’s controversial,’ said Black.
‘But he gets results,’ said Tait. ‘Five wins for the football team on the trot –’
‘That may well be. However, many, many parents have expressed genuine concern and anger to me regarding Mr Val,’ continued the bishop. ‘An extraordinary level of concern and anger, to be frank.’
Again he paused as a flustered-looking maid entered, stoked the flames, replaced the tongs, and waddled out, still looking agitated.
‘All this trouble started with the Newbold affair,’ muttered Black, ‘and ever since this day boy was let into our ranks – what’s his name again?’
‘On the contrary, Mr Black,’ said the bishop, ‘I think the trouble I talk of started with the employment of Mr Val. There is a common theme to all these – what will I call them, complaints? Alarms? The theme is this, that Mr Val is divisive. Now, the reasons for and the means of this divisiveness vary, but everyone I have spoken to agrees on one thing: Mr Val is divisive. And I have seen it for myself here tonight.’
The whisky began being passed. Everyone watched it go around. Capon drank his quickly. A pause was being observed by unuttered common consensus, wits were being gathered, lines drawn. Butter-Finch kept looking a
t the table, which he tapped with the stubs of several sacrificed digits. Cato Butter-Finch, his name was.
‘I do wish you had let me know about these complaints previously, Martin,’ said Capon. ‘We could have talked about this.’
‘We have already spoken about the matter, twice, if I’m correct. Don’t you recall?’
‘Well, it was last year, perhaps.’
‘Yes. I can see Mr Val’s star has been allowed to rise since then. But I can sit back and watch that happen no longer.’
The fire flickered. A clock ticked.
‘Shouldn’t we be saying these things in front of Val?’ said Black. ‘I propose we invite him back in.’
‘Why?’ said the bishop. ‘He’s not a member of the council. I don’t understand why he was even at a council meeting in the first place.’
‘Oh, that damn fire!’ cried Capon, ‘it will keep smoking!’ He tinkled the bell furiously. After a curious delay the maid, flushed now, appeared with a bustle, poked and jabbed the burning logs, and left, darkly muttering. Val could be seen sitting in a chair in the hall, head down, hands between his knees. They heard thunder, and the door closed.
The bishop looked at the door before continuing. ‘It appears Mr Val is very ambitious, and that he turns on anyone who disagrees with him, or is perceived to be standing in his way. I’m only repeating what I’ve been told, Capon. Now, we have a situation where two of our finest Christian masters are leaving, and they have told me personally that the reason they have decided to leave is that they can no longer work in the poisoned atmosphere this man, Mr Val, has created. It seems no one is untouched by him. He is the sort of person you must be for or against – and he must either hate you or have you in return.’