by H. S. Cross
The Dame had disappeared with Mrs. Fairclough, and Kemp presided over the changing of sides, giving the ball over to the tallest man on the other side, a wan boy who looked as though he needed to start eating breakfast on a regular basis. Kemp maintained his commentary as that boy, called Fetch, bowled. Unlike Kemp, Fetch’s bowling was erratic. Morgan feared for the safety of the batsmen, especially given the ill-fitting pads.
A timid boy with wild hair approached the crease and, cajoled by Kemp, faffed about with the pads. The boy did not look at Morgan, but Morgan sensed him wanting to look, as if he possessed a telegram but could not, for fear of interception, transmit it.
—Come on, Twist! Kemp said. Do you think Wilberforce has come all this way to watch you mess about?
Twist left one of the pads behind and took his place before the wicket. Fetch narrowed his eyes and bowled. The ball hit Twist on the unpadded leg; he stifled a yelp, and Kemp unleashed a string of abuse. Was Twist there to watch grass grow or to defend a wicket? He tried out other gems of sarcasm the other boys found witty, but which Morgan considered tedious in the extreme. He’d encountered plenty of domineering boys and bullies, which he had no doubt Kemp could be when he wasn’t trying to impress, but this was the first time Morgan had observed the condition in boys so much younger than himself, boys he could in fact influence.
—That’ll do, he said.
He approached Twist, affixed the missing pad, and arranged his body into a decent stance.
—Keep your eye on the ball, he said. Use your feet, and follow through there.
He guided the boy’s arms. They were small and thin enough to break.
—Good.
Twist blushed at his word. Embarrassed, Morgan left him and approached the bowler.
—Fetch, is it? Would you mind awfully?
The boy glanced to Kemp, but Kemp was busy repeating and mangling Morgan’s advice to Twist. Morgan took a gamble.
—Right, you lot! he called.
He jogged over to the batsmen. They gathered around him, eager yet wary, unsure of their allegiance.
—You can’t come in without getting ready.
They looked at him uncomprehending.
—A proper batsman never comes in unless he’s fully warmed up.
He demonstrated the stretches Mr. Grieves had assigned him. He told them to work on those, well away from the distractions of the crease, and he assigned Kemp to oversee them.
Back at the crease, he relieved Fetch of the ball and nodded to Twist. Then he took a light run-up and bowled the most direct ball he could. It bounced, Twist swung, and his bat connected, sending the ball past another of the little boys, who watched it go.
—Run! Morgan called.
Twist and the lackadaisical fielder ran.
* * *
Morgan bowled to the remaining batsmen and observed the fielding of the rest. They were small and untrained, but not entirely without hope. The biggest impediment to their development, Morgan thought, was Kemp’s tiresome combination of criticism and interference. Morgan had managed not to alienate Kemp, but it had taken every ounce of restraint, invention, and diplomacy that he possessed. How Grieves coped, particularly with one as obstreperous as himself, Morgan had no idea. It was no wonder he’d bowled hard enough to kill him.
The Dame called them in to their dinners, which the boys had brought from home in tins and cloths. Morgan, ravenous, wondered whether Mrs. Fairclough was going to take him somewhere and feed him, but before she had stopped chatting to the Dame, several of the boys, including Twist, dragged him to their tables and presented him with bits of their dinners. He straddled a bench and devoured sandwich squares, apple slices, biscuits, and pastry corners. They flooded him with questions about cricket, interrupting each other before he could answer. He cut through the hubbub and addressed his first protégé:
—You’re Twist, then?
—We only call him Twist.
—It isn’t his real name.
—Full of surprises, are you?
—Like Oliver Twist.
—Because he’s an orphan.
—Shut up, Brasenose.
—Shut up, Brasenose.
—Shut up, Brasenose.
—Well, he is.
—Half orphan.
—He’s from the orphan hospital.
—Shut up, Brasenose.
—Shut up, Brasenose.
Morgan regretted asking. He looked for Kemp, but Kemp had surrounded himself with a coterie of the older boys, presumably to make it plain that he hadn’t wanted to sit with Morgan in the first place. The boys around Morgan were still silencing the one they called Brasenose, and Twist was staring at the ground, his sandwich idle in his hand.
—I’m a half orphan, too, Morgan said.
Twist’s eyes remained downcast; his sandwich twitched.
—So am I! said another boy near him. But I don’t come from the hospital like he does.
—Shut up! several urged sotto voce.
—Boys, said the Dame, suddenly in their midst, we have spoken more than once, have we not, about that expression and how vulgar it is?
—Yes, miss, they murmured.
—What do we say when we wish someone to stop speaking?
—Be quiet, they murmured.
—That’s right. Or, if we feel particularly vexed, we might say, Hold your tongue.
—Yes, miss.
Morgan wondered idly if any of them knew how to swear.
—Now, I’m afraid that Wilberforce has to leave us for today—
Groans of disappointment erupted through the room.
—but perhaps if you are very lucky, he will agree to come back another day.
—Anytime, Morgan said.
The Dame looked pleasantly surprised.
—Well, she said, if you mean it.
—I always mean what I say.
If only it were true.
—In that case, she said, it would seem that you are the answer to our prayers. Isn’t that right, boys?
Apparently, it was right. They all began again to speak at once. Morgan discerned the words match, Croffs, and parish day. The Dame eventually made them speak one at a time, guiding them in sketching for Morgan their circumstances:
There was an important cricket match on a day known as Parish Day, in a fortnight’s time. This year, they would be playing against the boys of Croffs School, who were very good indeed. Last year had been the first time they’d played against another school, and the match had gone poorly. With Morgan’s help, they might have a chance this year to play with honor. Furthermore, some of them had the idea that important personages might attend Parish Day, and if they acquitted themselves well, they thought it not beyond the realm of possibility that these personages might find it in their hearts to be beneficent.
Then Mrs. Fairclough was extracting him from the schoolroom and promising to bring him again tomorrow at the same time, and Morgan was waving goodbye to the swarm of them. He felt warm in his chest, in an agreeable way, for the first time since he could recall.
50
After feeding him at her home with her two eldest children, who had recovered sufficiently from the croup, Mrs. Fairclough drove Morgan back to the Rectory. Mrs. Hallows reported that the doctor had been and gone, and that the Bishop was resting. He would rest the remainder of the afternoon, and he left instructions for Wilberforce to take himself for a run and then to retire to the library for letter writing. Tea would be served in the conservatory at six.
—Thank you, Morgan said to Mrs. Fairclough. For …
—Don’t mention it. Well done today.
He was immeasurably embarrassed and felt he would prefer her ear-boxing, but Mrs. Hallows rescued him and conducted him upstairs. His things had been relocated, she informed him. She led him to a door at the far end of the passage.
The room was small, containing a single bed, a bedside table, and a straight-backed chair. His trunk occupied the floor by the wardrobe, and a narro
w stand held basin and jug.
—You know where to find the bath.
She pointed out the towels hung on a rail behind the door and then left him.
Above the bed hung a cross. Plain, dark wood, like the one downstairs but smaller. The bedside table contained a single book. Above the washbasin he made out an etching of a man writing and a winged lion curled at his feet like a dog.
He sank down on the bed facing the chair, window on his left, headboard on his left, cross on his left. An inexplicable sense of discipline surrounded him, but not a petty, oppressive regime; rather, something like the containment and longing he had felt in Grieves’s rooms that night. The object over his bed—and he already thought of the bed as his—ought to irritate him, but it didn’t. It hung there as an unabashed declaration, of what he wasn’t sure. As his breath came suddenly jagged, he was seized with a mysterious combination of restriction and safety. Here nothing could get at him. The only authority hung over his bed, silent and alluringly austere.
The chamber was cramped and dim, the bed narrow, the decor monastic. It was not by any stretch of the imagination a room for someone like him. The hunger everywhere in his body had never been so keen, or so nearly fed.
* * *
—So, the Bishop said after greeting him and pronouncing grace, how are the letters coming along?
He didn’t ask about the outing. He didn’t ask about the new bedroom. He didn’t ask about the run, or anything else in Morgan’s day. He asked about the one thing Morgan did not wish to discuss.
—They aren’t, he admitted.
The Bishop tsked.
—I tried, Morgan said, but whatever I put sounded wrong.
—To whom did you attempt to write?
He had tried first to write his father, but the experience had been so unbearable that he had turned instead to Laurie and Nathan in an effort to regain his composure. This had proved disastrous since he had been unable even to begin relating what had happened, never mind why, and when it came to explaining Alex to them, Morgan had actually grown short of breath at the recognition of … He might as well have gone at their study with a hatchet.
Only one letter had not been consigned to the wastepaper basket, but Morgan knew very well it would shortly go there once the Bishop learned its addressee. The Bishop looked expectantly. Morgan sighed in his best aggrieved fashion and confessed that the letter was for Polly. He removed it from his jacket and surrendered it to the Bishop, who regarded it disinterestedly.
—Do you require a stamp?
Morgan gaped.
—Ah, I see I’ve disappointed you again, but I’m afraid I can’t object to your writing this girl.
—I haven’t sealed it, Morgan said, showing him the flap.
—That’s unwise.
—But, you’ll want to read it.
—Only if you require assistance with spelling.
—At school they always look over your letters.
—This isn’t school. As previously discussed.
Strangely defeated, Morgan took back the letter. It wouldn’t put anything right with her, but at least it would end his barbarous silence.
The Bishop served a leek pie and then broke his custom and conducted conversation as they ate. He inquired into Morgan’s outing and listened attentively to Morgan’s descriptions of the boys, their cricket, their sorry equipment, and the subtly fraught relations among them. The Bishop let him witter on, but when Morgan realized he had eaten nothing while the Bishop had finished, he pulled himself together.
—I’ve talked too much. I’m sorry.
—Nonsense.
Morgan paused long enough to shovel the pie into his mouth, but then at the Bishop’s urging embarked on his impressions of the Fairclough household and of the Bishop’s granddaughters. Morgan hadn’t spent enough time with them to form any firm judgment, but his off-the-cuff descriptions appeared to amuse the Bishop and to vindicate some private theories he seemed to have held.
—Sir, Morgan said at last, what’s to become of me?
The Bishop still looked amused:
—I’m sure I’ve no idea.
Morgan suppressed his irritation at being taken lightly.
—I mean, the woman at that school asked me to come back tomorrow. They’ve got an important match in a fortnight, and they’re in a desperate state.
—Would you like to do that?
—I wouldn’t mind. I don’t know the first thing about training little boys, but their play is rather dire.
—That takes care of your mornings.
—But what else am I meant to be doing here?
The Bishop looked impassively:
—What do you think?
—Sir, has anyone ever told you you’ve an infuriating line in sphinxes?
The Bishop unleashed a belly laugh but said nothing.
—Dr. Sebastian brought me here hoping you could sort me out.
—Yes, but that was only the instigation. As I recall, you subsequently put yourself in my hands.
—Exactly. So how will we know when I’ve been sorted out? What will it involve, and how long will it take?
—You speak as if it’s a mechanical procedure, like building a canal boat.
—Why can’t you answer a simple question? Morgan snapped. You and your offspring seem to get a perverse delight in hoarding information. It’s mean!
The Bishop put his hands on the table. Morgan started to backpedal, but the Bishop held up a finger.
—I’m sorry, he said. You are doubtless correct in your analysis of my family, as you’ve been correct in your other analyses this evening.
Morgan wondered if the Bishop had just paid him a compliment.
—But, the Bishop continued, I’m afraid I can’t be as definitive as you’d like. Before you get angry again, I’ll go over things so far, shall I? You said you felt you’d gone wrong in some way. Last night during a long and rather harrowing interview, we began to chart the territory.
Morgan was annoyed to find himself blushing again.
—In the course of this expedition, we seem to have disturbed something, which proceeded to pursue you even into your dreams.
The chill returned, goose pimples on his neck.
—Have I covered everything?
Morgan could only nod.
—So, with your consent, I propose to continue until the terrain becomes clear.
—Do you mean I’m going to have to make revolting confessions like that every day?
—Possibly.
—Then I do not consent.
The Bishop sat back in his chair.
—That’s your prerogative, of course. Perhaps you’ve some ideas of your own as to how we might sort you out?
—I’ve told you everything. Why can’t you deal with it and have done?
—And how do you propose I deal with it, presuming we can even agree what it is?
—The way people always deal with it! How many kinds of punishment are there?
—A good deal more than you’ve imagined, the Bishop replied.
—Frightening me won’t work. Whatever punishments you’ve got in mind, I’d be much obliged if we could get on with them.
—I see, the Bishop mused. You think I’m trying to frighten you?
—Of course you are.
—I’ve not the slightest need to frighten you. You’re scared stiff already.
Morgan realized he was going to have to cede ground.
—I was last night, I’ll admit, but I’m not a child. I’m not going to quake in my boots at the threat of whacking.
—Corporal punishment doesn’t intimidate you?
—It certainly doesn’t. Of course it hurts, and I’d just as soon avoid it if possible, but I’m not a coward.
—That’s the last insult I’d level at you.
Morgan wondered again if he’d just received a compliment.
—Look, obviously I’ve done some rotten things, so I don’t see what we’re waiting for. Punish
me and have done with it!
The Bishop poured out the rest of the tea and rang for Mrs. Hallows.
—I’m not impressed, the Bishop replied, with your memory. It seems that whenever you leave my presence, a type of oblivion comes over you, necessitating a tiresome review of what has passed between us. Therefore, I would appreciate it if you made a particular effort to listen to what I’m about to say, to hear, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it.
The Magnetron again.
—First, you have put yourself in my hands, which means I will decide when to punish you, how to punish you, and indeed whether to punish you.
Morgan swallowed, feeling empty and full at the same time, as he had felt in the little bedroom, but more ticklish.
—Second, before anything of that kind can occur, we must complete our excavation so that we have a clear picture of the truth, as much as it can be known. The truth of Morgan Wilberforce.
Was it possible to grow allergic to one’s own name?
—Third, I’m forming the impression that you, Morgan, are far too fond of physical punishment. You can take that expression off your face; I don’t mean after the manner of your Etoniensis. Oh, you didn’t detect that about him?
Morgan, appalled, could not even swallow.
—I mean you’ve come to rely on it as a cheap settler of accounts, a way to pay your debts without having to undergo repentance. It gives you the satisfaction of having been courageous, but it fails to touch you where it counts.
Morgan was so furious that he was afraid he might start swearing.
—Finally—and I’ve lost count of what number we’re on—I should make it clear that I’ve no intention of punishing you, physically or otherwise, until you display a rudimentary understanding of what punishment is for.
—I know what punishment is for, Morgan snapped.
—Oh, yes?
—It’s to discourage you from doing whatever it was you oughtn’t to have done; it’s to discourage other people from trying it on; and it’s to clear the air. Unless idiots are giving it, in which case it’s to advertise their dazzling power over everyone.
—Yes, yes, the Bishop said airily. That’s all very well for school, but it’s nothing to do with penitential suffering.
Morgan’s ears went hot.