‘We only did it the one night.’ Nat looked cheated. ‘Just before I got clapped up in here again. She told me when she came to visit.’
The officer puffed thoughtfully, filling the boiler room with the smell of golden shag tobacco. ‘So that’s what she wanted the other week.’
‘If I’d found out sooner I would’ve had more time to swot for those exams.’
Chipchase jabbed at Nat with the pipestem. ‘Don’t you dare go blaming me for not letting her in!’
‘I’m not, I’m just saying—’
‘No! You’re trying to shift the blame again! You’ll never accept responsibility for what you’ve done, will you?’ Chipchase felt like slapping the youth. ‘You’re like every other boy in here, blaming your parents, your teacher and every other Tom, Dick and Harry – oh, yes you do! And while I concede that some of you might have been badly let down there comes a time when you’re old enough to be responsible for your own actions, and your time has just come!’
He watched Nat sag into despondency. ‘Oh God, what a mess. Has she told her family yet? No, she can’t have done or we’d have had them hammering at the door after your blood.’
‘She wants me to marry her,’ muttered Nat.
‘How can you marry her, you’re only fifteen! How old is she by the way? As if it makes a difference.’
‘She’ll be sixteen in September.’ Nat picked at a scab on the back of his wrist. The area was covered in scars from past assaults.
The officer watched unmoved. Almost every youth in the school had self-inflicted disfigurements like this. ‘And when does she have the baby?’
‘She doesn’t know.’
Chipchase’s pipe belched out smoke like a demented steam engine. ‘Of course, we’re overlooking something here. I suppose you are sure you’re the father? If she’s that sort of girl she could have gone with anyone.’
Nat pondered on that night. He hadn’t really forced himself on her had he? She could’ve stopped him if she’d wanted to. All she had to do was say no. There was nothing for him to feel guilty about. No, he could not do it. Much as he wanted to escape he could not blacken the character of his only friend. ‘She’s not like that, Mr Chipchase. It was my fault.’
‘Hallelujah! The lad’s admitted to something at last, not that it’ll do you much good.’ The officer heaved and shook his head. For a time he was silent, the low growl of the boiler matching his mood.
Having succeeded in making himself bleed, Nat stopped picking and watched the badness ooze out of his flesh. ‘I was hoping to start a new life.’ His voice was hollow.
Chipchase studied him. ‘In Canada? Would you seriously? Or would you let everybody down as you’ve done time and time again?’
Nat sensed a weakening of the officer’s anger, knew that Chipchase was his only avenue of escape. If it meant crawling, he would. ‘I swear I was going to try if I’d been chosen, Mr Chipchase. Bowman got me to realize…’
‘Who the devil’s Bowman?’ Chipchase was confused.
‘You know, number eight! He got me to realize where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since he came.’ The youth bent his head but glanced at the officer from beneath a dark wave of hair. ‘If I could just get on that list…’
Chipchase knew when he was being manipulated. ‘And how do you propose I wangle that? I don’t pick who goes! If they keep adding a name here and a name there we’ll shortly find we’re sending the entire school – and good riddance, some might say.’
‘Some of ’em don’t deserve to go as much as I do. Look at Pugh – fifty-five – he’s always busting tools and things.’
‘Clumsy he might be, but to my knowledge fifty-five hasn’t yet put somebody up the stick! There’s no way you can go to Canada, twenty-seven, especially if the superintendent were to find out about this.’
Disappointed, Nat fell back on Bowman. ‘Maybe the Navy…’
‘Or the Foreign Legion!’ Chipchase sighed heavily again. ‘What are we going to do with you?’ He cupped one elbow and chewed on his pipestem, envisaging the scene when the girl’s father discovered her condition. ‘When are you sixteen?’
‘January.’
‘The baby would be more than six months old before you could marry her.’ He saw Nat’s face. ‘Always assuming you want to, and you don’t, do you?’
Nat had to play this carefully. ‘I want to do what’s right.’
‘Well, you haven’t made a very good start at it.’ In the strained hiatus, Chipchase thought of his own marriage. There was no comparison with number twenty-seven’s situation, both he and his wife had been virgins when they had wed in their late twenties and no one had forced them into it. It was never a grand passion but they had been loving companions and had two fine legitimate children. There was no parallel with this incident – except for one thing: Chipchase knew what it felt like to be trapped and unhappy. Two years into his marriage he had realized he had made a dreadful mistake, which was by then too late to rectify. If he, who had gone into it with open eyes, could feel trapped how would twenty-seven feel being bullied into a lifelong commitment? He himself could escape to his workshop and gain fulfilment in his craft, but twenty-seven had no skill, no escape. Not unless someone were to help him.
Chipchase took a last few puffs of tobacco, then moved up the steps towards the light. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll think on it and see if I can come up with anything.’ He sighed, pocketed his pipe and ushered Nat from the boiler room. ‘You’d better go to bed now – and try not to worry.’
What a daft thing to say to the boy, he thought later when lying sleepless beside the wife he no longer loved. Of course twenty-seven would worry; he himself was worried. How was he going to get twenty-seven included on that list? For there was no other answer, Nat must get completely away. But who says it has to be you who helps him? Why should you care? You’re only here to keep the lad on the straight and narrow and little thanks you’ve had for your pains from twenty-seven. Why should he inspire pity when thousands had not? What about the girl? You’re not thinking much about her, are you? What must she be going through? Mrs Chipchase started an irritating snore. Her husband compressed his lips. It’s her own fault, she shouldn’t have let him. She’ll have enough people to worry about her, just you concentrate on getting twenty-seven out of here. But why? I have absolutely no idea, Chipchase told himself.
He dallied with the idea of creeping into the superintendent’s office and adding twenty-seven’s number to the list, hoping no one would do a re-count, but if they did then twenty-seven would be even more cruelly disappointed and he himself would have to answer the charge of fraudulence. No, he would have to arrange it so that one of the numbers was deleted and twenty-seven entered in its stead. How? Chipchase sighed, turned over and after a violent nudge of his wife to curtail her snores, fell asleep.
* * *
The morning before the voyage the fifty successful boys were assembled to receive instructions apropos of their emigration. In the afternoon it was work as usual, though the buzz of excitement persisted in the labour rooms. A troubled Nat was labouring in the carpentry department, collecting stray nails off the floor to be used again, his mind on a more important assignment. It was obvious at this late hour that Chipchase had been unable to get him onto the list. Nothing of pertinence had occurred between them since the eve of Nat’s confession. As ever, he was on his own. With the cache that lay hidden under the Maguires’ floorboards he could have made his escape and got far away, but he could hardly ask Bright to fetch it for him. Without money escape was impossible. At least she had not told her parents, for there had been no trouble from that quarter, nor from the superintendent. Chipchase had obviously kept the matter to himself even if he had failed in his vow to help. But truth would out, and in the interim Nat was frantically racking his brains for an answer.
There came a loud rebuke. Officer Chipchase was holding up a fret-saw blade minus its handle. ‘Who did this? You, boy! Fifty-five!’
He glared at the assumed culprit, Pugh, his anger not solely for the crime but at his own inability to find a key to Nat’s problem, which had been plaguing his mind all week.
‘Sorry, Mr Chipchase.’ Pugh looked dumbfounded at the outburst; the officer was usually very tolerant. ‘I didn’t mean to, it just came off in me hand.’
‘Well, if that’s your best excuse I should be most careful when applying hands to parts of your anatomy!’
Pugh chanced a sideways glance at another boy.
‘Stop smirking!’ commanded Chipchase. ‘If you didn’t go at your work like a native wielding a machete you might find your tools lasted a bit longer. Every week you manage to sabotage one thing or another. Why did you just leave it lying there? Did you expect it to mend itself?’
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’
Pugh did not appear chastened enough for the officer who, disliking the youth at the best of times, prolonged his verbal assault. ‘And what do you think you’re doing with that band-saw?’
Pugh gawped at the machine in question. ‘I were just going to cut—’
‘And where’s the guard?’
Pugh looked guilty. ‘It’s there, sir.’
‘It’s there, sir!’ Chipchase mimicked the youth’s drawl. ‘I know it sounds like an innovatory idea, fifty-five, but don’t you think it would be more effective as a guard if it was fixed over the blade?’
Nat proceeded to gather up nails, but now his mind was working more efficiently. Chipchase had provided food for thought.
‘I couldn’t give a fig if your gross negligence results in your decapitation. It’s simply that this happens to be the most expensive piece of equipment in the room and if you put it out of action the superintendent will be rather cross.’
Pugh apologized again.
‘Delinquent! You’ll be maiming someone with your carelessness.’ Chipchase terminated his diatribe to prowl around the room. Heads bent, the boys continued with their work.
A period of industry followed, during which Nat shuffled through a bunch of possible solutions to remove number fifty-five from the list of emigrants. He envisaged throwing a handful of nails into the machinery on which Pugh laboured, hoping that at least one of them might ricochet, leap into Pugh’s eye and blind him. Or when Pugh turned away Nat could surreptitiously remove the guard in the hope that the blade would amputate Pugh’s arm. Nat mulled over many dark scenarios during the following hour, but found them all wanting. It was impossible to act without being caught. Towards the end of the afternoon, when tools were being packed away, he had grown resigned to the fact that Pugh was going to Canada and he himself was not.
‘By, old Chippy was in a mood today, wasn’t he?’ said another inmate as much later a group of them went upstairs to carry down the emigrants’ luggage to the hall – the final insult to Nat.
‘I heard that, forty-nine!’ Unseen, Mr Chipchase had ascended behind them. ‘And you boys, stop playing around on the staircase! Fifty-five, haven’t you been in enough trouble today? Any more and you’re for it.’
‘Ooh, I’m trembling,’ smirked Pugh when the officer had shoved past and proceeded upstairs.
It was as the group neared the top of the staircase that Nat was granted a last ditch attempt. Excitement started to churn his stomach. Whilst others hefted luggage back down to the hall he held back, his eye fixed on Pugh. There were others who could just as well be victim, but none so good a choice as the one disliked by both officer and inmate alike. Bit by bit the luggage was removed; there were now only a few boys left in the dormitory under Mr Chipchase’s supervision.
‘Come on, get your backs into it!’ Mr Chipchase still wore his frown. ‘What are you playing at, twenty-seven?’
‘I can’t lift this on my own, sir!’ Nat grunted and heaved at the trunk. ‘Pugh, come and help me!’
‘Weakling!’ The bigger youth swaggered over, toting a haversack on his shoulder and made a grab for one of the handles on the trunk.
Nat grasped the other and tried to lift it. ‘Aagh, me back!’ He dropped his end of the trunk.
Mr Chipchase looked round briefly, sighed, then left the dormitory. ‘Come on, stop acting the goat!’
With himself and Pugh at the rear, Nat suddenly found the strength to lift the trunk and the pair carried it from the dormitory. ‘I’ll go first,’ volunteered Pugh as they reached the top of the stairs. Nat could not have wished for a better invitation. As Pugh made his descent he himself affected to flounder and in doing so hooked a toe around Pugh’s ankle. The youth tripped. With a yell, both he and the trunk clattered to the lower floor, leaving Nat hanging onto a banister. Whilst others rushed to the victim’s aid an astonished Officer Chipchase stared up at Nat as if in disbelief.
Nat’s flesh crawled at the realization that his act had been witnessed. Hardly daring to breathe, he waited to see how the officer would react.
‘Sir, I think he’s dead!’
Chipchase was roused from his shock and rushed to examine Pugh’s lifeless form. ‘No, no he’s still breathing!’ There was relief in his tone. ‘He’s badly hurt, though – we need the doctor!’ A boy was despatched to fetch medical aid. In the shocked interval, Mr Chipchase once again raised his eyes to look at Nat. But Nat was gone.
When the headmaster was informed by Matron as to the gravity of Pugh’s injury – a fractured skull – he had no option but to delete him from the list. ‘A great shame,’ he told his wife, ‘but we cannot delay the voyage for one boy. Would you be so kind as to unpack number fifty-five’s belongings. And please send Mr Chipchase to see me.’
The matron replied that Mr Chipchase was already waiting outside his office. The superintendent asked her to send the officer in and was deleting number fifty-five from the list when Chipchase entered. ‘Ah, Mr Chipchase! I was about to send for you. I believe you were present at the time of the incident in which fifty-five was injured?’
‘Yes, Mr Raskelf, a very unfortunate accident, especially at such a time.’
‘So it was an accident?’ At the other officer’s frown Raskelf hurried to add, ‘I cast no aspersions on your supervision, Mr Chipchase, it is simply that a boy has been hurt and I have to answer to the powers that be.’
‘As far as I am aware it was a complete accident,’ replied Chipchase. ‘Although I had previously had to warn fifty-five about acting the goat on the staircase.’
‘Yes, he is rather an idiot.’ The superintendent nodded and sighed. ‘Ah well, fifty-five has paid dearly for his tomfoolery.’
‘Yes, a great shame,’ agreed Chipchase, ‘but then his misfortune is another boy’s luck – you will be finding a replacement, superintendent?’
‘Oh… why yes, naturally.’ The superintendent lowered his eyes back to the list. ‘Let us see who narrowly missed being selected the first time. Ah,’ a note of doubt entered his voice, ‘I see it is our recalcitrant, thirty-four. Well, we cannot send him.’
‘If I may say so, Mr Raskelf, this is just the sort of opportunity that boy needs to show him that hard work can be rewarded. He never had much cause to trust us in the past, did he?’
‘Nor we him,’ Raskelf looked sour. ‘I hardly consider thirty-four to be a suitable ambassador of this establishment.’
‘And Pugh was?’ Chipchase raised a cynical eyebrow, then continued to press his argument. ‘I know for a fact that twenty-seven—’ he sighed at his own error; these stupid blasted numbers! ‘I meant to say that thirty-four has studied extremely hard and has made great strides…’
‘It would take little effort to improve upon his results of last year.’ Raskelf was half-amused. ‘He could hardly have had poorer marks.’
‘I don’t wish to contradict, sir, but if I recall, when you announced the results at assembly you yourself commented on how well he had done.’
‘I believe I said he had made some progress, Mr Chipchase.’
‘Then should we not consolidate that progress by granting him this opportunity? I wish you could have witness
ed the boy’s face when he learned that he had just missed being selected. The disappointment…’ Chipchase shook his head. ‘I beg you to grant him this chance, superintendent. Let him see that effort can be rewarded. I am convinced that, if thirty-four is allowed to go it will be a turning point in his life.’
Raskelf sat back in his chair and laced his hands over his waistcoat. ‘You seem to have become something of a champion for number thirty-four, Mr Chipchase.’
‘No more than any other boy who deserves a chance.’
‘I beg to differ that thirty-four deserves a chance, but that is by the by. Much more interesting is why you continue to show such faith in him.’
Chipchase made a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’ll be honest, Mr Raskelf, if the boy were to remain here I’d have no faith in him at all. He would probably end up in prison and be a burden on society for the rest of his life. That’s my main reason for wanting him to go to Canada. In such a big country there’ll be so many more roads open to him than that of crime.’
‘Much as I might be glad to be rid of him the authorities there would not thank me for inflicting such a liability. He has no trade to offer,’ countered Raskelf.
‘No, but a good labourer is always an asset – and fifty-five was hardly a skilled craftsman.’
The superintendent retained an air of reluctance, but by and by after long consideration he came to the decision that the school would do well to be rid of thirty-four, and he gave up the argument. ‘Very well. Send him to me.’
Mr Chipchase had some difficulty in finding Nat, who had been lying low since the incident. Acting on past experience, the officer went to the boiler room and without seeing anyone, shouted into the darkness, ‘Twenty – tut! Thirty-four! Mr Raskelf wants to see you immediately.’
Nat emerged like a worm from its hole and peered up at Mr Chipchase, trying to gauge his mood. With the officer’s apparent qualm at meeting his eye, Nat feared the worst. Therefore, his relief and astonishment was all the greater when he slouched along to Raskelf’s office and was ordered to pack his belongings immediately. He was going to Canada in the morning.
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