Nicholas Dane

by Melvin Burgess

  He looked at his watch. Two o’clock. There were a few more files on his desk he could profitably look through, but they could wait. Or his deputy, Tony Creal, would deal with them for him.

  He squeezed himself out of his chair and walked the short distance back to the headmaster’s residence. He tried to stay optimistic about his work here at Meadow Hill, but it was hard, not least because he knew that he had failed in what he’d set out to do when he first arrived twenty-five years ago as a young headmaster - one of the youngest in the country - from his previous place in a children’s home in Northumberland. He and Janice had worked wonders there, everyone agreed. Feted, admired, promoted. His glory days. A faraway young and slim Bill James had transformed the lives of a number of boys. He had taken in the wretched and sent them away full of hope. Kindness, firmness, a good teaching staff, respect - it had worked wonders.

  But not here. Meadow Hill was a mire. The boys in Manchester seemed so much worse. Nothing he did made any difference. The badness was so ingrained into them that sometimes he almost believed that the fighting, the lies, the vandalism, the violence, the stealing, the dirt, the sheer lack of manners and self-respect in these boys went all the way back, not just for hundreds but for millions of years. They had evolved like that, from lying, stealing little fish, into lying, stealing little frogs, to lying stealing little rats and finally into the lying, stealing little bastards that they now were - a loathsome, criminal underclass, bred to torment him.

  But that was depression speaking. They were just boys

  - there was good in all of them, if only it could be reached, and it was Mr James’s personal failure that he failed to do so. The fact was, shortly after they had moved here, his best friend and ally, his inspiration and right hand, his partner in optimism, had fallen foul of misery herself. Janice had become depressed. A series of miscarriages had started it. Lost babies - she hadn’t been able to bear it. Only to be expected, a dip - but it went on and on and on and on and on. That which had once been so bright had been darkened, he thought.

  Truth be known, Mr James was not far behind his wife. Most of his time these days was spent caring for her. If it wasn’t for his deputy, Tony Creal, he would certainly have had to leave.

  Not for the first time, Mr James blessed his good friend. The man was an inspiration, tireless in his optimism. He could still see the good, even though Mr James had lost his own vision somewhere down the long years of trying to raise his darling Janice from the twilight of the soul she had sunk into.

  Mr James swayed through the garden gate and disappeared from sight of the rest of Meadow Hill behind the high privet hedge that girdled his house. Inside he closed the front door quietly.

  ‘Janice? You all right?’ he asked.

  A muffled voice drifted down from upstairs. It sounded like it was saying OK, but he knew it wasn’t true. Still in bed. He sighed. Another bad day.

  Ponderously he made his way upstairs and opened the door to a darkened room. A sad-looking little heap stirred under the duvet.

  ‘Have you had any breakfast, my love?’ he asked.

  ‘Not hungry,’ croaked a flat voice. His heart sank. He walked to the wardrobe, opened it and took out a bottle of pills.

  ‘A pillular breakfast this morning?’ he suggested, with a wan smile.

  Janice’s head appeared and nodded. Thank God for Valium. He was always trying to get her off it, but whenever he did, she only got worse. Once, after three days off the stuff, she had actually left the house and wandered around the grounds in her dressing gown, looking, apparently, for the way out. The boys had had a field day.

  She would already have taken her prescription, but on days like this, it wasn’t enough. Fortunately, he had a private supply.

  Janice popped her little helpers. He bent down to kiss her - his love had never wavered, even though his care had become so perfectly poisonous. Depressed Janice James certainly was, but worse than that, she was a Valium addict. Her husband’s constant attempts to take her off it produced alarming withdrawal symptoms, which resulted in him over-prescribing, which, in turn made it worse. Unknowingly, he kept her in a constant state of depression and anxiety, from which she would have recovered all on her own years ago, if simply left alone.

  Bill James swallowed a few pills himself and took off his trousers - what a relief! The belt hidden under his pullover dug in. Then he went downstairs to cook lunch. Sausages. There was a good butcher in Northenden where he always bought them - he got through several pounds a week. He always did enough for Janice, even though on days like this she rarely ate more than one or two. He’d probably end up finishing them himself.

  He stood in front of the stove, a fat man with no trousers on, cooking sausages on the hob. He climbed the stairs slowly carrying a tray with tea and the sausages on it; she managed a couple and he finished the last himself before getting into bed with his beloved. He cuddled her from behind. Her hand crept round to hold his. Embracing like this, front to back, still in love despite all the pills, all the disappointments and all the years, they both drifted off to sleep.

  As the headmaster was making his way towards his house, the blond boy led Nick across the worn grass towards a square brick building a hundred metres away from the old house, hidden behind the trees. Nick was a good head taller than the younger boy, who bobbed along in front of him, his blond hair bouncing in the breeze, like a fluffy seed head being blown across the ground.

  ‘What you here for, then?’ Nick asked him.

  ‘Crap mother,’ said Oliver. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Dead mother,’ said Nick. Oliver flashed Nick a sideways look. Nick snorted, the blond lad giggled and suddenly they were both laughing. Nick would have liked to stop to talk, but the other lad carried on and he had no choice but to follow.

  ‘Someone’s always watching,’ explained Oliver.

  ‘How come you’re not at school?’ asked Nick. Oliver flashed him another sideways glance. ‘I get let off,’ he said.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I run errands for Mr Creal.’

  ‘That’s good, then.’

  Oliver didn’t reply. ‘What’s it like here?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Bloody awful.’

  Nick started to laugh again, and the boy shrugged and smiled wanly. ‘Just do what you’re told and it won’t be too bad,’ he said.

  Nick pulled a face. He’d never been very good at doing what he was told.

  The boys drew up to the front door of a smaller brick building built on to the side of the main one. Oliver paused at the door. ‘They beat you up like a man,’ he explained. He looked at Nick for a moment, then turned and knocked.

  There was a long, long pause before it was opened by a balding man, short enough to be looking them straight in the eye but powerfully built. He stood there with a bottle of milk in his hand, watching them.

  ‘New boy, Sir,’ said Oliver.

  The short man looked at Nick and lifted his chin.

  ‘Nicholas Dane,’ said Nick, supposing that was what the man wanted to know.

  A look of immense surprise spread over the short man’s face. ‘Oh! We’re friends, are we? Already? How nice for me. Do you want to come in and watch telly, Nick? Fancy a beer later on, do you, mate?’ He smiled mirthlessly and thrust his face right up to Nick’s. ‘What do you think my name is, Dane?’

  ‘Sir,’ guessed Nick.

  The short man nodded. ‘And don’t forget it. Take him round to Mrs Stanton, get him kitted out, Brown,’ he said, still staring hard at Nick but obviously talking to Oliver. ‘Show him what’s what.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Mr Toms nodded and strolled back into the house. Nick realised he’d been holding his breath, and let it out in a rush.

  ‘Jesus. What’s up with him?’

  ‘He’s always like that,’ Oliver said. ‘Must be constipated,’ he added as an afterthought. Nick stared at him in surprise and laughed. Oliver had a sense of humour - maybe he was going to
like him.

  Nick followed Oliver around into the main body of the brick building.

  Downstairs was one big room divided into two by a folding partition wall. Each side housed fifteen boys; here, they ate, watched TV, cleaned their shoes, played games, and spent their free time. On special occasions the partition was pushed back, so the whole hall could be used. Behind a door at the back of the building was a stairway leading up to a single, long corridor that ran the length of the building. There were two bathrooms, one at each side, with three baths in each, and separate lavatories. The dorms were behind doors off on either side of the corridor, a series of rooms each housing five or six beds. The whole floor smelt of pee and disinfectant.

  The boys on each side of the partition were each governed by separate house parents, who lived in flats built on to each side of the building; it was Nick’s luck to have Mr and Mrs Toms. Their job was to look after the boys outside of school hours - organise their activities, discipline them, tend to their problems and general care. Behind the building was another built-on flat, where the house wardens lived, another married couple whose job it was to take care of the building and look after such stuff as laundry and the various physical needs of the boys who lived there.

  There were three such houses in the grounds, plus the big house, where another group of boys lived, and which also housed the administration block and the flat belonging to the deputy, Mr Creal. Also on the site was the school, a small building kept solely for the children of Meadow Hill.

  Oliver led Nick round to the back of the building where the Stantons, the house wardens, lived. Mrs Stanton issued him with his school uniform, school shoes, and bedding.

  ‘Are you a bed wetter?’ she wanted to know.

  Nick stared. ‘I'm fourteen,’ he said.

  Mrs Stanton looked tiredly at him. ‘You’d better say now if you are. You’ll have Mr Toms to see to you if you wet the mattress.’ Nick just gaped at her. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you’d be amazed at how many of them do,’ she said. Nick shook his head and remembered the smell of pee and disinfectant that had filled the top floor.

  ‘It’s all out in the open in a place like this,’ she said, shutting the cupboard doors. ‘Now then - anything else you need?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Something to eat?’ said Nick immediately.

  Mrs Stanton looked surprised, but she went inside and came out shortly with a couple of sandwiches. ‘It’s jam,’ she said, giving one to each of them. ‘Dinner’s not for another hour, it’s out of my own stores.’

  Nick thanked her. She stood and watched them eat for a moment, then asked Oliver, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Inside, waiting for the others.’

  ‘Go on then,’ she said. Oliver led the way back to the main building, and they stood in the doorway, eating their sandwiches. When he’d done, Nick was still ravenous. He felt in his pocket, where he still had a pound left from the money he’d taken from Jenny’s windowsill.

  ‘Any shops?’ he asked.

  Oliver stared at him and shook his head.

  ‘We’re not allowed off the grounds,’ he said.

  ‘No one’ll spot us,’ said Nick. Oliver lifted his hands in a gesture that indicated that only a madman would do anything like that. Nick shrugged. He was thinking that despite his sense of humour, Oliver was a bit of a wimp. Instead, they went upstairs, where Oliver showed him the bathroom and the dorms, and the lockers at the top of the stairs for him to stash the uniform and other stuff in. ‘Why’s it not in our bedrooms?’ asked Nick.

  ‘So’s people don’t wander around getting their things out at night,’ said Oliver.

  ‘It’s like a bloody dogs’ home,’ said Nick. ‘How often do they take us for walks?’

  ‘They don’t let us out,’ replied Oliver. Nick looked closely at him; Oliver looked back. Nick was just beginning on a very steep learning curve.

  They hung around a bit, not really knowing what to do. There was an enormous TV in the big room on the ground floor, but apparently it wasn’t turned on until after school. Nick wanted Oliver to show him around outside, but Oliver wouldn’t go.

  ‘Not allowed in the grounds without a prefect about,’ he explained.

  Instead, Oliver led him downstairs and they sneaked out behind the house and hid among some elder trees and shrubs growing out of a neglected flowerbed. Oliver went off with his odd, fluttery run, leaving Nick crouching uncomfortably among the trees. He reappeared quickly enough, and led the way deeper into the thicket, where there were a couple of old buckets turned upside down to sit on. Oliver produced from his pockets a bag of wine gums, two Mars Bars, a packet of ciggies, a box of matches, a pack of cards and, tucked down the back of his trousers, a magazine.

  ‘Tit mag,’ he hissed, dropping it on the floor.

  Nick seized the magazine and flicked through. It was wall-to-wall girls - some of them very naked indeed. He didn’t know much about life at Meadow Hill but he could already guess that this was treasure indeed.

  ‘Where’d you get this lot from?’ he asked. ‘Not your mum,’ he guessed.

  Oliver hushed him. ‘Whisper,’ he said. He ripped open a Mars Bar. ‘Haven’t seen her for years,’ he said.

  ‘Mate?’

  ‘Friend of mine, yeah,’ said Oliver.

  They sat quietly for a while, eating the sweets. Then they lit up the cigarettes and sat there smoking.

  ‘You’ve got it really sorted here, haven’t you?’ said Nick. ‘How long you been in for?’

  ‘Since I was about five,’ said Oliver. ‘In and out of care,’ he said, repeating a phrase he’d heard social workers say so many times in his presence.

  They exchanged stories, although Oliver hadn’t got much to say, except that his mother hadn’t wanted him, and that she’d stopped even coming to see him some years ago. Nick, now that it came down to it, didn’t want to say much about his story either.

  They flicked through the mag together, read each other particularly funny sections out of the readers’ letters section, and then turned to cards.

  ‘Do you know snap?’ asked Oliver.

  Nick was surprised at his choice of game, but said yes. They played a few hands then turned to other games, and in this way passed a pleasant hour. At that point, someone blew a whistle and soon after, they heard a man shouting instructions.

  ‘That’s school done,’ said Oliver. ‘We’d better get back before we’re missed.’

  Oliver was in the same building as Nick, but on the other side of the partition. He didn’t want to come in, but stepped just inside the door so he could point out the prefects who kept order in the place when Toms wasn’t about.

  It was like being plunged back into the past. Inside there were fifteen boys kneeling in a row polishing their shoes on newspapers spread out on the floor. They were all really going for it - scrubbing with a brush, even spitting to help bring out a shine. Nick couldn’t believe it. He’d had to wear black shoes at school, but they never got polished from one term to the next. The boys turned their heads to look at him, but no one stopped polishing.

  ‘That’s Andrews, with the black hair,’ whispered Oliver, pointing out a tall, rangy boy glaring at them. The other prefect was a burly lad with a soft, red rubble of acne all over his cheeks called Julian.

  Oliver fled, leaving Nick to his own devices. He stood there uncertainly for a moment, unsure. The boys were all watching him out of the corner of their eyes, so he walked self-consciously across to the dark lad Oliver had pointed out.

  ‘I'm to see you,' he began.

  ‘New boy,' stated Andrews, getting to his feet. He nodded down to Nick’s feet, clad in his old trainers. ‘Have they given you your gear?’

  ‘Yeah, upstairs,’ said Nick.

  ‘Get your shoes down and clean ’em up, then,’ said Andrews. ‘Get on with it, we’re half done down here.’ He knelt back down to his work, leaving Nick to find his way upstairs to his locker. By the time he got down, the rest of the bo
ys had finished and he had to stand aside on the stairs as they made their way up in their socks, to stow their school things in their lockers and bring down their day clothes. Downstairs, Andrews made Nick polish his shoes till the wrinkled old leather shone before he was allowed to go back up and change back into his trainers. Downstairs the TV was turned on for half an hour, at which point Mr Toms himself appeared, and got the boys busy putting up the trestle tables they were to eat their dinners on.

  Nick was grateful for the food, but it was pretty grim - pasty fish fingers, lumpy mash and peas the colour of cheap green paint. It was eaten in a lively chatter, with Toms waiting impatiently for them to finish, walking up and down and nagging the boys to get a move on.

  The plates were cleared and carried through to the laundry behind the building, where a group of boys washed them up. The tables were folded up and put back against the wall. Then it was time for sports, two hours of it. Nick had an hour on the football pitch, and then another hour in the gym.

  Nick liked his sports and he was happy enough for a while, running about and not thinking. After sports it was showers, and then the TV was turned on again. By then, Nick was too tired and disorientated to do anything but sit in a corner and stare until bedtime. They were all under the covers by half past nine, in a draughty, narrow, uncarpeted dorm with a full size snooker table at one end, and a row of beds down each side. There were sniffles and tears among the coughs as the boys, aged from thirteen to sixteen, settled down, and not all from the smallest ones, either. Nick noticed none of it. He lay down on the narrow little bed, closed his eyes and was asleep before they’d even turned the lights off.

  Nick hadn’t just lost his mother. He’d lost his entire life. Music, books, videos, his clothes, even, except for what he arrived in, had all been left behind, like dreams that vanish in the morning. His friends, the people who had made his life worth living, Simon and Jeremy and Amanda and the people he’d known at school. All gone.