by Mann, W. E.
It was here that legend had it that the ghost of the Wandering Monk was to be seen meandering among the trees, hovering a foot above the ground, cowled and cloaked so that his hands, feet and face were invisible, hunting eternally for his old companion, the ghost of the dog buried here. Every twitch in the undergrowth and rustle in the breeze seemed to sound like his whispered prayers.
“But Fred,” I said. “What was this Doctor Boateng doing with Barrington and... and where even were they? It looked like they were behind the Library, next to the Maths rooms. Is there even a room there?”
“Actually, do you know what?” said Freddie, rubbing his chin in thought. “About a year ago, I remember some Seniors at breakfast saying that before they left the school, they were determined to find out how to get to the room behind the false bookcase. I’ve no idea whether or not they managed to. But maybe that’s where they were. I guess it is rather odd. Hey, maybe we should...”
I raised my hand to hush him. I was sure I had heard something nearby. We waited alertly for a few moments, trying to discern some sound in the silence.
Then there was a sudden shuffling, followed by a startled squirrel darting out from a bush.
“Hey, Tom, look,” said Freddie after a few silent moments. “If you look between the trees, you can see St. Kats on the other side of the mustard field.”
I tried to see where he was pointing, but the leaves were far too thick. I couldn’t even see the mustard field. St. Kats was St. Katherine’s Ladies’ Academy, where some of my friends’ sisters were sent to learn how to cook, sing and raise children.
“Rubbish!” I said. “It’s much too far away.”
“No, look!” he replied. “If you squint and cock your head to one side...”
“Oh, very funny!” I chuckled. “You know, we’re going to start having Germanic Studies with them next term.”
“How could I not know that?” he replied excitedly.
“They won’t be interested, you know,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Pontevecchio told me that girls our age are only interested in boys in the Fifth Form. It’s just the way it is, so...”
Suddenly footsteps were crunching towards us. There was hushed talking. Seniors were here.
Freddie looked at me urgently, beckoning towards him. He was clutching the rope that Milo, he and I had last week rigged up to one of the tree’s furthest branches. My heart leapt with fearful excitement. I had half hoped that Seniors would find us just so that I could see our plan in action.
I crept slowly along the branch towards Freddie and took a firm grip on the rope.
The footsteps stopped abruptly. I could hear one of them clearly now:
“Oy, what’s this? Looks like someone’s come this way... Right. You two, go that way, quick as you can. Circle round and I’ll see you back here in five minutes.”
I recognised the abrasive, hoarse tone. It was Hector Vanderpump, next year’s Crusaders’ house captain. He was a swarthy, hulking lad; England schoolboys’ boxing champion with a right-hook that could floor an ox. He was also one of those infuriating boys who would suck up to mothers and teachers, but, as soon as their backs were turned, he was a swaggering brute who would sooner give you a beating than a Detention.
I didn’t like Vanderpump at all and I knew that he despised me. I supposed it was because his parents were rich, and so he looked down upon boys from more humble families. I was one of those boys. Apparently the fact that my father had been a solicitor in a nearby town meant that I was, according to Vanderpump, a “nasty little plebeian” and that I should “crawl back to the gutter I came from” so that I don’t “infect decent Aryans with rancid poverty” (it was a woeful day when Vanderpump first got his hands on a thesaurus). What was worse was that, as far as many of the Masters were concerned, he could do no wrong because his father worked for Von Ribbentrop and the Duke of Windsor in Buckingham Palace.
We waited, not moving, while footsteps crunched off back towards the direction of the school. Freddie hesitantly peered around as silence descended. He drew a breath as if he was about to say something, but the voice we heard was much deeper.
“Well, well! A pair of parasites up a tree!” Vanderpump was grinning up at us menacingly and slapping a hefty stick against his left hand. “So are you going to make me come up there or are you going climb down and take your punishment like men?”
Neither of us spoke as Vanderpump stared up at us, becoming redder and redder with anger.
“Well?” he shouted.
We continued to stare.
“Right. Enough. You’re for it now,” he shouted, hauling himself up onto the lower branches.
“Let’s go,” whispered Freddie.
“Wait,” I replied.
Freddie looked at me urgently as Vanderpump climbed closer and closer towards us.
“Hang on...” I whispered.
Vanderpump was right beneath us now, almost within grabbing distance of my ankles. He looked up at us, snarling. “You two are going to regret making me come up here. Accidents can happen in the Forest and nobody can hear you...”
“Now!” I shouted, just as Vanderpump was about to take a swipe with his stick.
Freddie and I launched ourselves off of the branch, clinging to the rope for our lives. And then we were in thin air, with the ground plunging towards us. It was only then that I realised, forty feet up, that we had never tried out the rope with two of us at the same time. I looked up in an instant. It was still slack above us, arcing outwards like a bullwhip. And we were still falling, crashing through the leaves and branches, straight towards the ground.
Then, mercifully, the rope jolted and we were swinging in an exhilarating blur across a clearing and away from Vanderpump and the Black Dog’s Grave. The air whistled through my ears and brought water streaming from my eyes as the Forest lurched sickeningly past us. But suddenly something wasn’t right: Where was Freddie?
The rope slowed and, just before I started to rise too high at the far side of the clearing, I let go. I tried to effect a smooth landing, but the momentum hurled me like a rag-doll into the bushy undergrowth, where I eventually tripped over a log and sprawled heavily into a patch of stinging nettles.
I sat dazed for a moment before the pain set in: grazed knees, a throbbing ankle, and angry red blotches appearing all over my arms. Maybe a beating from Vanderpump would have been a better option, but there was no way I would want him to have the satisfaction.
Then I heard his voice.
“Thought you could get away from me, did you, Strange? Not your lucky day, eh?”
There was a muffled moan. I turned on my hands and knees and crawled forwards to peer out from the bracken. Freddie was there, lying on the ground in the middle of the clearing and I could see that he had caught his shoelace on a protruding tree-root. Vanderpump was standing over Freddie with his back to me, still brandishing the stick, which looked about the size of a cricket bat.
Just as Freddie reached out to release his shoelace, Vanderpump kicked him brutally in the ribs. Freddie cried out, his back arched in pain.
“You’re howling like a woman,” mocked Vanderpump. “And where’s your little friend, Turnpike, eh? Turncoat, more like!” He was pleased with this. “Turned tail and left you like the coward he is, I shouldn’t wonder. What would you expect from the son of a traitor?”
This last word he spat as if it tasted foul in his mouth. I was used to hearing things like this about my father and I didn’t care a jot. It was only ever from the boys whose fathers were active Party members. I tended not to like them much anyway.
Vanderpump then raised his makeshift club above his head, ready to bludgeon Freddie’s legs. I scrabbled around in the mud for something to throw at him and my hand fell upon something hard and jagged. A hefty lump of flint.
I stood awkwardly. “Oy, Vanderpump!” I shouted. He turned briefly and snorted indignantly as Freddie continued to struggle with his bootlace.
Then, just as Freddie had freed his foot and Vanderpump turned back to bring his cudgel down on him, I launched the stone as hard as I could.
I was a terrible shot, always had been, and this rock could really have ended up anywhere. But incredibly, amazingly, it made such sweet and heavy, thudding contact with the back of Vanderpump’s head that he stumbled forwards, tripped over Freddie, who was now struggling to his feet, and landed on his face in the dirt, dazed and bloody.
“Come on, Fred,” I shouted. “This way.”
Vanderpump would be after us with a vengeance and there was nowhere left to hide. But we had one trick left.
The bell started to toll in the distance, but that would not stop him. Freddie and I ran as quickly as we could, forgetting our injuries in the excitement, along a narrow deer-track towards the London Ride, the main path that led back to the school.
Vanderpump was bawling after us now. “You two are dead! Dead!” His heavy footfalls were bearing down upon us.
“There it is,” I puffed to Freddie, pointing a few yards ahead of me to a particular patch of mud and scrub on the track. We leapt over it, one after the other, hoping that Vanderpump, in his anger, would not notice. We kept running, but, just before we reached the London Ride, Freddie grabbed me by the arm. We stopped and turned to watch.
Vanderpump was careering down the path after us. “That’s right,” he shouted, waiving his bludgeon in the air. “You won’t get away from me, and when I get you, I’m going to...”
The rest of his threat was swallowed in an instant. That certain patch of mud and scrub, which Freddie, Milo and I had prepared a week ago to cover a thin layer of sticks and twigs, cracked and buckled under Vanderpump’s enormous weight. And the expression of dramatic bewilderment upon his face as he plummetted into the hole that had taken us a full afternoon to dig, just as he completely disappeared from view, was perfectly hilarious.
Freddie looked at me with blood crusting under his nose, and then burst out laughing.
“Come on,” I sniggered. “Let’s get back.”
three
Freddie was vexed.
“Pathetic! I can’t believe all four of the boys who got caught are Crusaders. The Colonel’s going to be seriously angry.”
I sniggered. Freddie was a Crusader, Barrington was his Housemaster and always took the Flucht very seriously. My Housemaster, Caratacus, on the other hand, had been delirious all afternoon; the Crusaders had won the House Competition three years running, but now the house-points table showed that my house, the Swallows, had just nosed ahead.
“Well,” Freddie continued, “at least the Colonel wasn’t there to see it.”
It was sunny in the late afternoon and that meant that all of the Juniors had to be outside during the free time before Tea. But Freddie was determined to show me that there must be a false bookcase leading to the secret room where I had seen Barrington and the mysterious Doctor Boateng.
“If someone catches us,” he said as we hurried through the corridor, “well, we’ll be in the Library, won’t we? What could be more innocent than browsing for books? The perfect crime!”
The Library was a grand, dusty hall with ancient wooden tables and benches which must have been sat upon by thousands of boys who had left the school, grown old and died long ago. Creaking bookcases clad every wall, stretching right up to a frescoed ceiling of angelic babies with orchestral instruments and wings surely too petite to carry their chubby limbs.
The Library stretched from the door to Caratacus’ Latin classroom at this end down to the Maths Classrooms through a door at the opposite end on the left.
Freddie pointed. “It’s that bookcase down there. There's a false book and if you pull it, the bookcase swings open and there’s another room behind...”
“And you expect me to believe that?” I shook my head.
“It’s true!” he insisted.
“And how do you know?”
“Because... well it must be. You said that’s where you saw the Colonel with Doctor Boateng, so it must be back there somewhere. Anyway, have you got anything better to do?”
I shrugged. “I suppose not.” There was just no point in ever arguing with Freddie Strange. “Come on then.”
I looked around. The only person here was our English teacher, Mr. English, who was, in fact, Irish. He was crouching down to stick little gold stars on certain books in the shelves by the door to the Latin classroom. He was one of my favourite teachers. He probably would have been my favourite, above even Mr. Caratacus, if he did not have such a volatile temper. He wore a tweed suit and had a head exactly the shape of an egg. It was bald on top, but he combed every strand of hair from one side of his head to the other in a hopeless attempt to give the impression of having a full head of hair. Sometimes, in a strong breeze when he wasn’t wearing his mortar board, his hair would blow out to the side and make him look like an angry palm tree in a hurricane.
“Hulloo, fellas,” he called out in his lilting accent, peering over his thick, round spectacles.
“Hello, Sir,” we replied.
“Master Strange, fancy seeing you in a Library! What would you be after then? A bit of Robert Louis Stevenson perhaps?”
“Actually, Sir,” said Freddie, “we were just, um... browsing, weren’t we, Tom?”
“Well suit yourself, Strange. I will cultivate you yet.” He stuck a finger in his right ear and wiggled it frenetically, with his eyes screwed up. It was a weird-looking habit which he said was to ease the discomfort of a piece of shrapnel that had been lodged there since the War.
Freddie and I headed over to the bookcases by the door that lead to the Maths rooms to begin our search. We began by running our hands along the shelves that we could reach.
“There must be a latch around here somewhere,” said Freddie. “If there’s a door, there must be a handle or some hinges somewhere. You look here around D and E, and I’ll go over to H, I and J.”
I continued to scour the shelves for a switch or a lever, but with no success. I took a couple of paces back so that I could look higher up.
“There’s really nothing here,” I said. “Come on, let’s get outside.”
“It is here somewhere, “Freddie insisted. “I’m telling you!”
He tugged on a handful of books, stepping back expectantly, hoping that the bookcase would yawn open and reveal the secret chamber.
“Turnpike! Strange!” a voice shouted sharply. “What on Earth do you think you’re doing indoors?”
Barrington. And he was with Doctor Saracen. Whilst Saracen loomed quiet and still, Barrington was agitated and ran a hand shakily through his hair. He looked at the bookcases behind us and then fixed a piercing gaze upon me. He must have realised why we were here. I felt so afraid, I didn’t know where to look. The last time he had seen me, and he must have seen me, was when we were down in the Dungeon. This was it, I thought. He’s here to give me my punishment.
Freddie always grovelled pathetically when he felt trouble coming. “Sir, we’re terribly sorry,” he mewed, staring at the ground. “We just wanted to find... um...”
“Turnpike,” blurted Barrington, glowering at me. “I suppose you think that surviving the Flucht entitles you to a flagrant disregard for the school rules. Do you, boy?”
“No, I don’t,” I replied, looking directly up at him and with perhaps a little too much defiance.
He didn’t like this. He glared at me, exhaling loudly from his nostrils, jaw clenching. “Well,” he said slowly and darkly, “I strongly suggest ...”
“I say, Colonel Barrington!” interrupted Mr. English calmly, shuffling over. “I do hope you don’t object, but I told these young fellas that they could spend a few minutes choosing a novel each before they go outside.”
Barrington paused, checking his wristwatch. He looked at Freddie and me with his mouth open as if he was about to say something. “Very well then, Mr. English,” he said. Then he turned and stalked out of the room. Doctor Saracen lingered briefl
y, studying us both. His eyebrows met in the middle, giving his stare a dark, menacing quality. Then, after a moment, he turned and followed Barrington.
Freddie and I looked up at Mr. English. “Thank you very much, Sir,” said Freddie.
“Now, look here, young fellas. I think you’d better get yourselves outside before I go upsetting any other Masters.”
We turned to leave, but, just as we got to the door, Mr. English stopped us. “Oh and boys,” he called, not looking up from his work, “It occurs to me now that the book that would suit you both is by Huxley, Aldous Huxley”. He then looked over the rims of his spectacles and nodded towards the bookcase which Freddie had been searching and gave us a conspiratorial wink.
four
Slog-out must be the best game ever invented. It takes the basic principles of cricket and removes all of the subtlety. No point-scoring, no teams, no winners, no losers. The only object of the game is to perform with as much style as possible.
The bowler stands facing the Veranda at the rear of the school. He has an old tennis ball. Around ten paces in front of the bowler stands the batsman, preferably a right-hander and always a popular Senior, brandishing a tennis racquet in both hands. He is defending the set of stumps that has been drawn with chalk on the wall behind him. In the outfield to the batsman’s left wait as many fielders as want to play, often more than forty boys.
The bowler throws the ball towards the batsman at a gentle pace, underarm and just above waist-height. The bowler absolutely does not attempt to confound the batsman with swingers, seamers, bouncers, beamers, flippers, floaters, googlies, chinamen or pea-rollers.
The batsman then smashes the ball as hard as he can into the midst of the expectant fielders. The ideal outcome for the batsman is that the ball sails through the air, clean over the heads of the admiring fielders, and lands, with a plop, in the Swimming Pool about seventy yards to his left. If he achieves this, he will be celebrated as a hero and duly worshipped for the rest of the day.