Wilberforce

by H. S. Cross

Had he won the encounter, or had he gone overboard as he seemed to do so much of the time? Wilberforce would probably deign to appear at batting practice that afternoon, but would he tolerate John’s talking to him? And what if he didn’t turn up? Would John be able to enforce such a penalty twice? He’d hoped that the theatrics with the exercise book—signifying who knew what?—might impress his will on the boy in some intangible fashion. He knew what Burton-Lee would say: Never threaten what you aren’t prepared to deliver. Make sure every gesture is crystal clear. If ever you allow ambiguity to stand, ensure that serves your aims. Never engage in slovenly discipline; it’s worse than no discipline at all. But Burton wasn’t there, not mentally and not, John noticed as he scanned the SCR, physically. He had no intention of discussing Wilberforce with Burton, but unfortunately he did need to discuss something else with the Headmaster as soon as possible: his lodgings, and the awkward fact that his landlady had raised the rent on his rooms in his absence. He’d procrastinated for a fortnight, and now the rent was due. Managing Wilberforce seemed like a float down the river compared to confronting his nemesis-cum-employer on a matter of finance. Still, what can’t be helped … He sidled up to the Eagle, who was locked in tense dialogue with REN.

  —Either of you know where I might find our esteemed Headmaster pro tem?

  A severe expression seized the Eagle’s face. John cursed himself for his graceless style of interruption.

  —He’s occupied, REN announced flintily.

  John left them before the Eagle decided never to speak to him again. The coffee was watery, the conversation in the room hushed. It occurred to him to wonder whether something unpleasant was afoot. Finding Clement asleep on the chesterfield, John took the coffeepot to Hazlehurst and refilled the man’s cup, his best stab at an overture.

  —Good chap, Hazlehurst murmured, clutching his forehead.

  John forcefully ignored the condescension, which was no different from usual, and sat down beside his colleague.

  —Bit of a morning?

  —Infernal hay fever, Hazlehurst moaned.

  —I meant Burton.

  Hazlehurst moaned again.

  —That. It’s not cricket, is it?

  —Isn’t it?

  Hazlehurst feebly sipped his coffee.

  —Board sending those swine in with their accountancy flunkies, harassing us when the term’s not a fortnight old.

  John felt he had to feign understanding to get a full report:

  —It’s a bit much.

  —And how was Burton supposed to know? If S-K’s records didn’t mention it, precisely how was he to guess we owed Stoakes … what was it?

  —Four hundred, the Eagle said.

  —Four thousand, REN corrected.

  —I’m sure it wasn’t as much as that.

  John still wasn’t following, but he was fairly sure Stoakes was the name of the Academy’s coal supplier. And if S-K owed Stoakes money, whom else might he have owed?

  John felt a wave of pity for Burton, followed by a crest of joy that he himself had not been saddled with any serious responsibility within the school.

  —It’s absolutely none of their affair, Hazlehurst declared. And I’ll tell you one thing!

  —Yes?

  —If a single one of those trade unionists tries to poke his red snout into my House, I’ll make sure he feels the jaws of the crocodile!

  John murmured appreciatively, dizzied by his colleague’s array of metaphor. He had never been fond of accountancy, and he felt thankful yet again that his responsibilities as undermaster included no such drudgery. The only numbers he needed to keep straight were the balance between his wages and his expenditures, which comprised the limited food items purchased outside the school, coins for his gas meter, any hot baths beyond once a week; stamps, stationery, books; birthday and Christmas gifts for the aunts and for Meg, Cordelia, and Owain; repairs as necessary to his bicycle; train fare to Saffron Walden and to the aunts as well for Christmas; that was about it. The tin in his rooms served perfectly well for collecting his funds and distributing them as needed. If he couldn’t escape the unpleasantness of money, what perks remained to his profession?

  The bell summoned them back to lessons, and although the skies promised fine cricket, the fact that he had not confronted Burton at break meant that he’d have to pursue the man after lunch. And given the intrusion of the Board’s accountants, or whoever they were, Burton was even less likely to take John’s raised rent in good humor. His stomach soured.

  He was supposed to be past this! He had not returned to the Academy to be oppressed by dread or to suffer chaos under different leadership. He greeted the Fifth tersely and then inflicted their first composition of the term. As they floundered before the question of geographical factors in the Industrial Revolution (hint, coal seams), John shored up his defenses against the unsavory developments in the SCR. Whatever was happening, surely Burton had the vigor and the bloody-mindedness to resolve it satisfactorily. Burton was not S-K.

  Incredibly, whispers persisted in the room despite the composition. He swept down the aisles and confiscated four scraps of paper, which he hurled unread into the wastepaper basket. The atmosphere quieted, but not entirely.

  He knew it was a mistake to dwell on the things Wilberforce had confessed to him, particularly in this new era and with the new Wilberforce sulking at the back of the room, but he couldn’t help it. Would the noxious weeds of last term really disappear because Burton declared them past? What about the present atmosphere? The Third were behaving too well to be trusted, and the Upper School were tense, resentful, withdrawn.

  There were times, and this was one, when John ardently wished he could unplug his cortex from the mains. Thinking was all very well, but not cogitation towards no end. It was a new era, days were getting longer, and the Academy was on the cusp of an entirely new existence. In the meantime, he was going to have to slog through thirty-two essays on coal. Why had he set this wretched composition, except to shield himself from having to interact meaningfully with Wilberforce and his cadre? Where, God, was the cord to his brain, and how could he pull it, if only for a spell?

  21

  John’s eyes were aching in the bright afternoon. He ought to have worn a hat. He made sure that Wilberforce caught sight of him, and then he set himself to observing the practice of Hazlehurst’s Upper School. Batting was not an exact science, and for the most part, if asked, John would have told them to carry on. The most essential factor in learning to do a thing well, he struggled to convince his pupils, was practicing the thing repeatedly over a long period. Youth was impatient and hungry for gratification, but if they weren’t prepared to hit fifty thousand balls, they would never get anywhere with a bat. Ditto with bowling and fielding.

  But batting practice at the Academy was an unserious affair, something they did amidst banal adolescent chatter. John watched from a distance and evaluated each boy’s stroke. A few attracted his attention for their obvious flaws. He took out a snub pencil and notebook and listed the boys whose batting needed adjustment sharpish; there were four in addition to Wilberforce. Beginning with the easiest, he sidled up to Colin Frick, who regarded him warily but appeared faintly intrigued by John’s suggestions. When Wilberforce finished, John cornered him out of earshot of the others.

  —Does your left shoulder still hurt?

  Wilberforce frowned:

  —It’s all right. Sir.

  —There’s a hiccup in your stroke.

  Wilberforce finished removing his pads. He looked as though he couldn’t decide if John’s remark was an embarrassment or an affront.

  —I’m here. Practicing. Sir. Isn’t that what you wanted?

  —Practice is all very well, John said, but if you’re practicing a poor move, it’s worse than no practice at all.

  Wilberforce stood still, tolerating him. Or perhaps he was using all of his energy to stop himself from uttering an impertinence.

  —It’s the follow-through, John continu
ed. It looks as though it hurts.

  —It doesn’t.

  —But?

  The boy crossed his arms.

  —Sometimes you think it’s going to?

  A blush answered the question. John took up Wilberforce’s bat and mimicked his stance. He tried to imitate Wilberforce’s stroke, slowing down to magnify the hesitation in the follow-through.

  —You’ve got to stop thinking about your shoulder. Instead of wondering whether it will hurt, imagine that the bat has a will of its own. Imagine it is pulling itself up, like this—

  John demonstrated.

  —and your arm is only along for the ride.

  —You mean some kind of mental mumbo jumbo, Wilberforce retorted.

  John handed him the bat. Wilberforce took it with a glare and practiced his drive. John stood behind him, and when the bat crossed his body, John called out:

  —Up! You hesitated again. Concentrate. The bat’s will.

  The second feint was better. John fetched a ball and bowled it gently to him. A quiet but firmly seated thwack announced success.

  —That … that worked, sir!

  —Right, John replied, same again fifty thousand times. Carry on, Wilberforce.

  * * *

  In Chemistry, Morgan’s shoulder was tired and stiff. Grieves had lurked like some dark agent, intruded into his batting, and then had the nerve to offer advice that actually improved his drive. This after treating him in the most abominable manner over the godforsaken lines. As far as the lines were concerned, Morgan hoped his composition on the Industrial Revolution would provide ample revenge. At any rate, he had amused himself writing it, and with the current state of affairs, if he could amuse himself now and again, he was doing better than average.

  The new timetable was another objectionable development. Very little free time appeared in it. Even Prep, which had long been de facto free time for the Upper School, had been curtailed on several evenings in the interests of cricket. Morgan liked cricket, but to have to spend an hour and a half after tea playing it or watching others play it when he might be absconding to the Keys simply turned a good thing into a burden. Besides which, having to retrain his stroke by overcoming instinct fifty thousand times (according to Grieves’s arithmetic) promised no joy whatsoever. On top of that, to have to endure Alex’s not-very-subtle schemes running bets and extorting cash from his brother and who knew how many others, not to mention the fags’ blatant conceit and everyone else’s unspoken but obvious sense of tragedy about matters that were nothing to do with them—his father had been mistaken, utterly mistaken, to send him back to the Academy.

  As REN droned on about acids and bases and various words Morgan couldn’t spell, Morgan’s mind slipped back to the Hermes Balcony, to its promise and its miraculous reprieve, to its green-and-brown—to—to London, its foggy air and foggier parties, its crush of people, its brash independence …

  He couldn’t have said when they appeared to him exactly, but at some point, there the two boys were. At his right elbow, a suave-seeming, knowledgeable boy. Frequenter perhaps of sensational London parties, the kind Morgan had found so taxing. This boy seemed the type to get effortlessly on with bright people. He could flirt without thinking and see everything in its correct proportion. The little man wittering at the front of the room ought to be pitied, the boy told him, not resented. Even more dismal was the earnest character who had sued for Morgan’s attention on the cricket pitch just now. That person had relinquished self-respect and had, inexplicably but wretchedly, chained himself to a cabal of old men whose sad lives were devoid of novelty, dynamism, and zing.

  Morgan was bigger than this, declared the boy on his right, toying with his exercise book by folding its pages into cunning little figures. He’d be much the better off when he could face reality face on—in the face. Romantic instincts were all very diverting, but only reality was real. And reality was this: He, Morgan Wilberforce, was no longer a boy. His mother was gone. Childhood home, gone. Other frail attachments had likewise passed away. He was a man. He stood six feet tall and was still growing. He possessed comfortable accommodation in a glittering metropolis and was under no compulsion to waste his time in this prison. Whatever he imagined he would miss by leaving the Academy, in reality he would not miss it. The world was far more entrancing.

  Morgan could think of no objections. Indeed, he longed to stand up, now, in the middle of REN’s lesson, to leave the room, walk out the gates of the Academy, and board a train to London.

  He did not move. Perhaps this boy, smooth and attractive in modern-cut suit, was not endowed with power beyond the mental realm. Or perhaps it was the other phantom, the second boy, who had sat silently through the first’s manifesto. Morgan could not see the second boy quite as clearly since he took care to remain near the edge of Morgan’s vision, but he could tell the boy wore school uniform. He was younger than the first, Morgan thought, younger than he was himself. Yet, this wasn’t a past version of himself. This seemed another boy entirely, old enough to attend St. Stephen’s Academy and to grasp what it was about. This boy ignored REN’s lecture as thoroughly as the boy on Morgan’s right, but not out of derision; he ignored it because something more important commanded his attention, something to do with Morgan.

  REN pulled down a squeaking blackboard and instructed them to copy the revealed pane into their exercise books. The boy on Morgan’s right unfurled an amused lip. They both of them knew—Right and Morgan—that REN’s command was nothing more than menial labor for villeins to undertake whilst REN contemplated his newspaper. There were a thousand and one ways to pass an April afternoon without wearing out their hands, or indeed their shoulders, with futile exercise. Right put his feet on the table and began to speak to Morgan of Polly.

  Polly, Right said, was looking extraordinarily fine. Morgan could not disagree, but he recalled her new chilliness and her refusal to meet his eye. Right lowered his head as if he might expire with disappointment. Surely Morgan had understood the thrust of her behavior? Morgan had assumed that she was tired of him. Right sighed with the pain of a martyred saint and resumed his handicraft with Morgan’s copy paper, fashioning crane, toad, vase, tarantula. Morgan really had to learn to use the brain he was born with, Right complained. It was perfectly obvious that Polly fancied the trousers off him. Why else would a girl avoid his eye? Why else, Right argued, would she dress so fetchingly to work the pumps at her father’s public house? This theory sounded dubious to Morgan. What, he wondered, made Right so sure Polly wasn’t besotted with Nathan or with Laurie? Right begged him not to be funny. Nathan was attractive (as they both knew), but his inveterate puritanism and dour conduct could hold no interest for a girl such as Polly, who yearned for someone scintillating to brighten her horizons. As for Laurie, he had many charms, but he was still a boy, interested in little besides the foul (and delicious) texts his Uncle Anton sent him. Oh, had Morgan not realized that had continued? What did Morgan imagine Laurie was reading so intently just now (yes, across the aisle under REN’s nose) if not the latest installment of Etoniensis or Lady Pokingham? If Morgan doubted Right, he could just consult Lydon’s trousers (not intimately, external ocular inspection would suffice, young wag) and tell Right if he was mistaken. Morgan could not, after consultation, tell him any such thing.

  So, Right concluded, Polly fancied him. She was surely expecting him to return to the Keys on his own as soon as possible. In all likelihood she had plunged into dejection as a result of Morgan’s nonappearance this afternoon. Morgan asked hotly what Right expected him to do about it with Grieves badgering him in the most boring fashion imaginable. Right refused to respond, the answer beneath his dignity.

  The second boy had listened silently to the conversation. Morgan asked him what he was about. The day was difficult enough without having to endure two phantoms in one lesson. The second boy swallowed and rubbed one of his palms, which was raw in a way that indicated vigorous cricket.

  Morgan was hard and his mouth water
ed. He almost fancied he could smell something—was it leaves strewn across the cloisters? the bite of floor polish? the deepness of the chapel?—something earlier, something previous to the Academy, previous even to the life he could remember, almost like a whiff of life as it had been when S-K founded the Academy and built it up, with the aid of men such as Clement, Burton-Lee, and the heroic, doomed Gallowhill.

  REN’s classroom adjoined the cloisters, and his windows, high on the wall, revealed a limited but bright square of sky. The late-afternoon sun had turned the tiles of Burton-Lee’s House a fiery hue, and in the moment Morgan gazed at it, the light intensified, as if someone had turned on another bulb, or as if a cloud had passed away from the source, allowing this brighter, redder sun to burn across the roof, emblazoning it like the banner of St. George, the sign of diverging paths.

  The second boy was looking where Morgan was looking but still said nothing. Morgan felt himself losing patience with this mute apparition. Who was he to sit there stirring sentimental quasi-yearnings?

  Indeed, Right rejoined. And honestly, how long did Morgan intend to fester in this moldy den, gazing at rooftops? The next thing they knew, Morgan would be attributing portents to the designs of sunbeams, followed shortly by the contemplation of horoscopes and entrails.

  The clock above REN’s head promised only five more minutes of limbo. Morgan slouched across the table and assured Right that a fleeting moment of aesthetic appreciation did not equate to taking leave of reason. Right was glad to hear it but cautioned Morgan not to put too high a value on the aesthetic. It was deceiving. Morgan did not disagree. For example, Right replied, if Morgan insisted upon gazing at x’s out the window, just what did he intend to do at this crossroads? Would he seize his reason, discard his prehistoric mind and his feeble inhibition before the crusty carapaces of authority, and proceed into an amusing and stimulating future? Morgan thought that sounded desirable. Well, then? Right demanded. Well, Morgan replied, he would do just that. He would, for starters, eschew Prep and proceed to the Keys after tea to turn his energies towards the seduction of Polly. Polly was more than fetching. The past had passed, along with juvenile hopes. Now was the age of men.