Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

  Heads nodded. Among the faces I saw Allen-Jones and McNair, Sutcliff, Jackson, and Anderton-Pullitt. Half my form. I shook my head in disgust. “I had thought better of you, 3S. I thought you were gentlemen.”

  “Sorry, sir,” muttered Allen-Jones, looking fixedly at his desktop.

  “I think it is Mr. Meek who should be receiving the apology,” I said.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Sir.”

  “Sir.”

  Meek was standing very straight on the podium. My overlarge desk made him seem even smaller and less significant. His doleful face looked to be all eyes and beard, not so much rabbit as capuchin monkey.

  “I—hm—thank you, Mr. Straitley. I—think I c-can—hm—m-manage from here now. Boys—ah, hm—”

  As I left the room I turned to close the glass-paneled door behind me. For a second I caught Meek watching me from his perch. He turned away almost instantly, but not soon enough for me to have missed the look on his face.

  No doubt about it—I made an enemy today. A quiet one, but an enemy nevertheless. Later he will come up to me in the Common Room and thank me for my intervention, but no amount of pretense from either of us can hide the fact that he has been humiliated in front of a class, and that I was the one to see it happen.

  Still, that look startled me. It was as if a secret face had opened up behind the comic little beard and bush baby eyes; a face of weak but implacable hatred.

  6

  I feel like a child in a sweetshop on pocket-money day. Where shall I start? Will it be Pearman, or Bishop, or Straitley, or Strange? Or should I begin lower down, with fat Fallow, who took my father’s place with such boneless arrogance? That stupid half-wit Jimmy? One of the newbies? The Head himself?

  I have to admit that I like the idea. But that would be too easy; besides, I want to strike at the heart of St. Oswald’s, not the Head. I want to bring it all down; simply knocking off a few gargoyles won’t do. Places like St. Oswald’s have a habit of coming back to life; wars pass; scandals fade; even murders are eventually forgotten.

  Awaiting inspiration I think I’ll bide my time. I find that I feel the same pleasure in being here that I experienced as a child: that feeling of delicious trespass. Very little has changed; the new computers sit uneasily on the new plastic desks whilst the names of Old Oswaldians glare down from the Honors Boards. The smell of the place is slightly different—less cabbage and more plastic, less dust and more deodorant—although the Bell Tower (thanks to Straitley) has retained the original formula of mice, chalk, and sun-warmed trainers.

  But the rooms themselves remain the same; and the platforms on which the Masters strode like buccaneers on their quarterdecks; and the wooden floors, inked purple with time and polished to a lethal gloss every Friday night. The Common Room is the same, with its dilapidated chairs; and the Hall; and the Bell Tower. It is a genteel decrepitude, which St. Oswald’s seems to relish—and, more importantly, whispers Tradition to the fee-paying parents.

  As a child I felt the weight of that tradition like a physical ache. St. Oswald’s was so different from Sunnybank Park with its bland classrooms and abrasive smell. I felt uneasy at Sunnybank; shunned by the other pupils; contemptuous of the teachers, who dressed in jeans and called us by our first names.

  I wanted them to call me Snyde, as they would have done at St. Oswald’s; I wanted to wear a uniform and call them sir. St. Oswald’s Masters still used the cane; by comparison my own school seemed soft and lax. My form teacher was a woman, Jenny McAuleigh. She was young, easygoing, and quite attractive (many of the boys had crushes on her), but all I felt was a deep resentment. There were no women teachers at St. Oswald’s. Yet again I had been given a second-rate substitute.

  Over months I was bullied; mocked; scorned by pupils as well as staff. My lunch money stolen; my clothes torn; my books thrown onto the floor. Very soon Sunnybank Park became unbearable. I had no need to feign illness; I had ‘flu more often during my first year than I’d ever had in my life before; I suffered from headaches; nightmares; every Monday morning brought an attack of sickness so violent that even my father began to notice.

  Once I remember I tried to talk to him. It was a Friday night, and for once he’d decided to stay at home. These evenings in were rare for him, but Pepsi had got a part-time job in a pub in town, I’d been ill with ‘flu again for a while, and he’d stayed in and made dinner—nothing special, just boil-in-the-bag and chips, but to me it showed he was making an effort. For once too he was mellow; the six-pack of lager half-finished at his side seemed to have taken some of the edge off his perpetual rage. The TV was on—an episode of The Professionals—and we were watching it in a silence that was companionable for a change rather than sullen. The weekend lay ahead—two whole days away from Sunnybank Park—and I too felt mellow, almost content. There were days like that as well, you know; days when I could have almost believed that to be a Snyde was not the end of the world, and when I thought I could see some kind of a light at the end of Sunnybank Park, a time when none of it would really matter. I looked across at my dad and saw him watching me with a curious expression, a bottle held between his thick fingers.

  “Can I have some?” I said, emboldened.

  He considered the bottle. “All right,” he said, handing it over. “No more, mind. I don’t want you getting pissed.”

  I drank, relishing the bitter taste. I’d had lager before, of course; but never with my father’s approval. I grinned at him, and to my surprise he grinned back, looking quite young for a change, I thought, almost like the boy he must have been once, when he and Mum first met. For the first time really, it crossed my mind that if I’d met him then, I might even have liked that boy as much as she had—that big, soft, skylarking boy—that he and I could perhaps have been friends.

  “We do all right without her, kid, don’t we?” said my father, and I felt a jolt of astonishment in the pit of my stomach. He’d read my mind.

  “I know it’s been tough,” he said. “Your mum and all that—and now that new school. Bet it’s taken some getting used to, eh, kid?”

  I nodded, hardly daring to hope.

  “Them headaches, and all that. Them sick notes. You been having trouble at school? Is that it? Other kids been messing you about?”

  Once more I nodded. Now, I knew, he would turn away. My father despised cowards. Hit first and hit fast was his personal mantra, along with The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and Sticks and stones may break my bones. But this time he didn’t turn away. Instead he looked straight at me and said, “Don’t worry, kid. I’ll sort it. I promise.”

  Now it bloomed, appalling, in my heart. The relief; the hope; the beginnings of joy. My father had guessed. My father had understood. He had promised to sort it. I had a sudden, astonishing vision of him striding up to the gates of Sunnybank Park, my father, eighteen feet tall and splendid in his rage and purpose. I saw him walking up to my principal tormentors and bashing their heads together; running up to Mr. Bray, the Games master, and knocking him down; best and most delightful of all, facing up to Miss McAuleigh, my form teacher, and saying “You can stuff yer bloody school, dearie—we’ve found somewhere else.”

  Dad was still watching me with that happy smile on his face. “You might not think it, kid, but I’ve been through it, just like you. Bullies, bigger lads, they’re always out there, always ready to give it a try. I wasn’t that big when I was a kid, either; I didn’t have many friends at first. Believe it or not, I know how you feel. And I know what to do about it, an‘ all.”

  I can still remember that moment now. That blissful feeling of confidence, of order reestablished. In that instant I was six years old again, a trusting child, secure in the knowledge that Dad Knows Best. “What?” I said, almost inaudibly.

  My father winked. “Karate lessons.”

  “Karate lessons?”

  “Right. Kung Fu, Bruce Lee, all that? I know a bloke, see him down the pub from time to time. Runs a class on Saturda
y mornings. Ah, come on, kid,” he said, seeing my expression. “Couple of weeks of karate lessons and you’ll be right as rain. Hit first and hit fast. Don’t take any shit from anyone.”

  I stared at him, unable to speak. I remember the bottle of beer in my hand, its cold sweat; on-screen, Bodie and Doyle were taking shit from no one. Opposite me on the sofa, John Snyde was still watching with gleeful anticipation, as if awaiting my inevitable reaction of pleasure and gratitude.

  So this was his wonderful solution, was it? Karate lessons. From a man down the pub. If my heart had not been breaking, I might have laughed aloud. I could see it now, that Saturday class; two dozen toughs from the council estate, weaned on Street Fighter and Kick Boxer II—with luck I might even run across a few of my principal tormentors from Sunnybank Park, give them the chance to beat me up in an entirely different environment.

  “Well?” said my father. He was still grinning, and without much effort I could still see the boy he’d been; the slow learner; the bully-in-waiting. He was so absurdly pleased with himself, and so very far from the truth, that I felt, not contempt or anger as I’d expected, but a deep, unchildish sorrow.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said at last.

  “Told you I’d figure something, didn’t I, eh?”

  I nodded, tasting bitterness.

  “C’m‘ere, kid, give yer old dad a hug.”

  And I did, still with that taste at the back of my throat, smelling his cigarettes and his sweat and his beery breath and the mothball smell of his woolly sweater; and as I closed my eyes I thought to myself—I am alone.

  Surprisingly enough, it didn’t hurt as much as I’d expected. We went back to The Professionals after that, and for a while I pretended to go to the karate lessons, at least until my father’s attention turned elsewhere.

  Months passed, and my life at Sunnybank Park settled into a dismal routine. I coped with it as best I could—mostly, increasingly, with avoidance. At lunchtimes I would play truant and lurk in the grounds of St. Oswald’s. In the evenings I would run back to watch after-school games fixtures or to spy through the windows. Sometimes I even entered the buildings during school hours. I knew every hiding place there was; I could always go unseen or, wearing a uniform pieced together from lost or pilfered items, in a corridor I could even pass for a pupil.

  Over months I grew bolder. I joined the crowd at a school Sports Day, wearing an overlarge House singlet stolen from a locker on the Upper Corridor. I lost myself in the general mill and, emboldened by my success, even crashed a Lower School 800-meter race, presenting myself as a first-year from Amadeus House. I’ll never forget how the boys cheered when I crossed the finishing line, or the way the Duty Master—it was Pat Bishop, younger then; athletic in his running shorts and school sweatshirt—scruffed my cropped hair and said, Well done, lad, two House points and report for the team on Monday!

  Of course, I knew that there could be no question of my joining a team. I was tempted, but even I didn’t dare go as far as that. My visits to St. Oswald’s were already as frequent as I dared make them, and although my face was nondescript to the point of invisibility, I knew that if I wasn’t careful I would one day be recognized.

  But it was an addiction; as time passed I ran greater risks. I went into school at break and bought sweets from the tuck shop. I watched football matches, waving my St. Oswald’s scarf against supporters of the rival school. I sat in the shadow of the cricket pavilion, a perpetual twelfth man. I even joined the yearly full-school photograph, tucking myself into a corner among the new first-years.

  In my second year I found a way to visit the school during lesson time, missing my own Games period to do so. It was easy; on Monday afternoons we always had a five-mile cross-country run, which took us right around St. Oswald’s playing fields and back in a wide loop to our own school. The other pupils hated it. It was as if the grounds themselves were an insult to them, provoking jeers and catcalls. Sometimes graffiti appeared on the brick walls of the perimeter after their passage, and I felt a fierce and penetrating shame that anyone watching us might imagine that I had been among those responsible. Then I discovered that if I hid behind a bush until the others had passed I could quite easily double back across the fields, thereby giving myself an entire free afternoon at St. Oswald’s.

  At first I was careful; I hid in the grounds and timed the arrival of the Games class. I planned things meticulously. I had a good two hours before most of the runners arrived back at the school gates. It would be easy enough to change back into my Games kit and rejoin the tail of the group unnoticed.

  Two teachers accompanied us—one in front, one at the back. Mr. Bray was a failed sportsman of colossal vanity and bludgeoning wit, who favored athletic boys and pretty girls and held everyone else in utter contempt. Miss Potts was a student teacher, usually to be found at the tail of the group, holding court—she called it “counseling”—to a little clique of admiring girls. Neither paid much attention to me; neither would notice my absence.

  I hid my stolen St. Oswald’s uniform—gray sweater, gray trousers, school tie, navy blazer (with the school crest and the motto—Audere, agere, auferre—stitched across the pocket in gold)—under the steps of the Games Pavilion and changed there. No one saw me—St. Oswald’s Games afternoons were on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so I would not be disturbed. And as long as I was back for the end of my own school day, my absence would remain unnoticed.

  At first the novelty of being in the school during lesson time was enough. Unquestioned, I walked down the corridors. Some classes were uproarious. Others were eerily silent. I peered through glass panels at heads bent over their desks; at paper darts thrown surreptitiously behind a Master’s back; at notes passed in secret. I put my ear to closed doors and locked studies.

  But my favorite haunt was the Bell Tower. A warren of little rooms, most rarely used—box rooms, pigeon lofts, storage cupboards—with two teaching rooms, one large, one small, both belonging to the Classics Department, and a rickety stone balcony from which I could gain access to the roof and lie there unseen on the warm slates, listening to the drone of voices from the open windows along the Middle Corridor and making notes in my stolen exercise books. In that way I furtively followed a number of Mr. Straitley’s first-year Latin lessons; Mr. Bishop’s second-form Physics; Mr. Langdon’s History of Art. I read Lord of the Flies with Bob Strange’s third form and even handed in a couple of essays to his Middle Corridor pigeonhole (I collected them in secret the next day from Strange’s locker, marked, graded, and with the word NAME?? scrawled across the top in red pen). At last, I thought, I’d found my place. It was a lonely place, but that didn’t matter. St. Oswald’s—and all its treasures—were at my disposal. What else could I want?

  Then I met Leon. And everything changed.

  It was a dreamy, sunny late spring day—one of those days when I loved St. Oswald’s with a violent passion no mere pupil could have hoped to duplicate—and I was feeling unusually bold. Since our first encounter, my one-sided war against the school had gone through many stages. Hatred; admiration; anger; pursuit. That spring, though, we had reached a kind of truce. As I rejected Sunnybank Park I had begun to feel that St. Oswald’s was coming to accept me, slowly; my movement through its veins no longer that of an invader, but almost a friend—like an inoculation of some apparently toxic material that later turns out to be of use.

  Of course I was still angry at the unfairness of it; at the fees that my father could never have afforded; at the fact that, fees or not, I could never hope to be accepted. But in spite of that, we had a relationship. A benign symbiosis, perhaps, like the shark and the lamprey. I began to understand that I need not be a parasite; I could let St. Oswald’s use me as I used it. Lately I had begun to keep records of things to be done around the school; cracked panes, loose tiles, damaged desks. I copied the details into the repairs book in the Porter’s Lodge, signing them with the initials of various teachers to avoid suspicion. Dutifully, my father dealt with the
m; and I felt proud that in a small way I too had made a difference; St. Oswald’s thanked me; I was approved.

  It was a Monday. I had been wandering along the Middle Corridor, listening at doors. My afternoon Latin class was over and I was considering going to the library, or the art block, and mingling with the study-period boys there. Or perhaps I could go to the Refectory—the kitchen staff would have gone by then—and sneak some of the biscuits left out for the teachers’ after-school meeting.

  I was so absorbed by my thoughts that as I rounded the bend into the Upper Corridor I almost bumped into a boy who was standing, hands in pockets, face to the wall, beneath an Honors Board. He was a couple of years older than I was—I guessed fourteen—with a sharp, clever face and bright gray eyes. His brown hair, I noticed, was rather long for St. Oswald’s, and the end of his tie, which was hanging disreputably out of his sweater, had been scissored off. I gathered—with some admiration—that I was looking at a rebel.

  “Watch where you’re going,” said the boy.

  It was the first time any St. Oswald’s boy had bothered to speak to me directly. I stared at him, fascinated.

  “What are you here for?” I knew that the room at the end of the Upper Corridor was a Master’s study. I’d even been in it once or twice; a small airless place, knee-deep in papers, with several huge and indestructible plants sprawling ominously from a high and narrow window.

  The boy grinned. “Quaz sent me. I’ll get off with a caution, or DT. Quaz never canes anyone.”

  “Quaz?” I was familiar with the name; overheard in after-school conversations between boys. I knew it was a nickname and could not put a face to it.

  “Lives in the Bell Tower? Looks like a gargoyle?” The boy grinned again. “Bit of a podex, but he’s all right really. I’ll talk him round.”