Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

  Leon had laughed at that, and I did too, viciously, knowing that in another life it could have been me sitting there on the path, it could have been me yelling “Ah, come on, you buggers, you lousy bastards” through my tears as my gym shoes, tied by the laces, were flung into the highest branches of an old tree and my books fluttered their pages like confetti on the warm summer air.

  I’m sorry, Peggy. I nearly meant it too. She wasn’t the worst of them, not by a long way. But she was there, and she was disgusting—with her greasy hair and red angry face, she could almost have been my father’s child. And so I stomped her books; emptied her bags; scattered her PE kit (I can still see those navy blue knickers, baggy as my fabled Thunderpants) into the yellow dust.

  “Ozzie bastards!”

  Survival of the fittest, I replied silently, feeling angry for her, angry for myself, but fiercely elated, as if I’d passed a test; as if by so doing I had narrowed the gap still more between myself and St. Oswald’s, between who I was and who I meant to be.

  “Bastards.”

  The lights were green, but the queue ahead was too long to allow me to pass. A couple of boys saw the opportunity to cross—I recognized McNair, one of Straitley’s favorites, Jackson, the diminutive bully from the same form, and the sidling, crablike gait of Anderton-Pullitt—and just at that moment the traffic ahead of me began to move.

  Jackson crossed at a run. So did McNair. There was a space of fifty yards ahead of me, into which, if I was quick, I could pass. Otherwise the lights would change again and I would have to stand at the junction for another five minutes as the interminable traffic crawled by. But Anderton-Pullitt did not run. A heavy boy, already middle-aged at thirteen, he crossed in leisurely fashion, not looking at me even when I honked my horn, as if by ignoring me he might will me out of existence. Briefcase in one hand, lunch box in the other, walking fastidiously around the puddle in the middle of the road so that by the time he was out of my way, the lights had changed and I was forced to wait.

  Trivial, I know. But there’s an arrogance to it, a lazy contempt which is pure St. Oswald’s. I wondered what he would have done if I had simply driven at him—or over him, in fact. Would he have run? Or would he have stayed put, confident, stupid, mouthing to the last: You wouldn’t—you couldn’t—!

  Unfortunately, there was no question of my running down Anderton-Pullitt. For a start, I need the car, and the rental company might get suspicious if I brought it back with a ruined front end. Still, there are plenty of other means, I thought, and I owed myself a little celebration. I smiled as I waited at the frozen lights, and turned the radio on.

  I sat in room fifty-nine for the first half-hour of lunchtime. Thanks to Bob Strange, Straitley was out, either lurking in that Book Room of his, or patrolling the corridors on duty. The room was filled with boys. Some did their homework; some played chess or talked, occasionally chugging from cans of fizzy drink or eating crisps.

  All teachers hate rainy days; there is nowhere for the pupils to go but indoors, and they have to be supervised; it is muddy, and accidents happen; it is crowded and noisy; squabbles turn into fights. I intervened in one myself, between Jackson and Brasenose (a soft, fat boy who has not yet learned the trick of making his size work for him), supervised the tidying of the room, pointed out a spelling mistake in Tayler’s homework, accepted a Polo mint from Pink and a peanut from Knight, chatted for a few minutes to the boys eating their packed lunches on the back row, then, my task accomplished, I made once again for the Quiet Room, to await developments over a cup of murky tea.

  I do not, of course, have a form. None of the new staff has. It gives us free time and a broader perspective; I can watch from behind the lines, and I know the moments of weakness; the dangerous times; the unsupervised sections of the school; the vital minutes—the seconds—during which, if disaster were to strike, the giant’s underbelly would be at its most exposed.

  The after-lunch bell is one of these. Afternoon registration has not yet begun, although at this point, lunchtime is officially over. In theory, it is a five-minute warning, a changeover time during which staff still sitting in the Common Room make a move toward their classrooms, and staff members on lunchtime duties have a few minutes to collect their belongings (and maybe glance at a newspaper) before registration.

  In effect, however, it is a five-minute window of vulnerability in an otherwise smooth-running operation. No one is on duty; many staff—and sometimes pupils—are still moving from one place to another. Little surprise, then, that most mishaps occur at such a time; scuffles; thefts; petty vandalism; random pieces of misbehavior perpetrated in transit and under cover of the surge of activity that precedes the return to afternoon lessons. This is why it was five minutes before anyone really noticed that Anderton-Pullitt had collapsed.

  It might have been less if he had been popular. But he was not: sitting slightly away from the others, eating his sandwiches (Marmite and cream cheese on wheat-free bread, always the same) with slow, laborious bites, he looked more like a tortoise than a thirteen-year-old boy. There is one of his kind in every year; precocious, bespectacled, hypochondriac, shunned even beyond bullying, he seems impervious to insults or rejection; cultivates an old man’s pedantic speech, which gives him a reputation for cleverness; is polite to teachers, which makes him a favorite.

  Straitley finds him amusing—but then he would; as a boy, he was probably just the same. I find him annoying; in Straitley’s absence he follows me around when I’m on duty in the yard and subjects me to ponderous lectures on his various enthusiasms (science fiction, computers, First World War aircraft) and his ailments real and imagined (asthma, food intolerances, agoraphobia, allergies, anxiety, warts).

  As I sat now in the Quiet Room, I amused myself in trying to determine from the sounds that came from above my head, whether or not Anderton-Pullitt had a genuine ailment.

  No one else noticed; no one else was listening. Robbie Roach, who was free next period and has no form either (too many extracurricular commitments), was rootling through his locker. I noticed a pack of French cigarettes in there (a present from Fallow), which he quickly hid behind a pile of books. Isabelle Tapi, who teaches part-time and therefore has no form either, was drinking from a bottle of Evian water and reading a paperback.

  I heard the five-minute bell followed by a hubbub; the unchained melody of unsupervised boys; the sound of something (a chair?) falling over. Then, raised voices—Jackson and Brasenose resuming their fight—another chair falling, then silence. I assumed Straitley had come in. Sure enough, there came the sound of his voice—a subdued murmur from the boys, then the domestic cadences of registration, familiar as those of the football scores on Saturday afternoons.

  —Adamczyk?

  Sir.

  —Almond?

  Sir.

  —Allen-Jones?

  Yes, sir.

  —Anderton-Pullitt?

  Beat.

  —Anderton-Pullitt?

  2

  St. Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysWednesday, 29th September

  Still no news from the Anderton-Pullitts. I take this as a good sign—I’m told that in extreme cases the reaction can prove fatal within seconds—but even so, the thought that one of my boys might have died—actually died—in my room, under my supervision—makes my heart stutter and my palms sweat.

  In all my years of teaching, I have known three of my boys die. Their faces look out at me every day from the class photographs along the Middle Corridor: Hewitt, who died of meningitis in the Christmas holidays of 1972; and Constable, 1986, run over by a car in his own street as he ran to retrieve a lost football; and of course, Mitchell, 1989—Mitchell, whose case has never ceased to trouble me. All outside of school hours; and yet in every instance (but especially in his) I feel to blame, as if I should have been watching out for them.

  Then there are the Old Boys. Jamestone, cancer at thirty-two; Deakin, brain tumor; Stanley, car crash; Poulson, killed himself, no one knows w
hy, two years ago, leaving a wife and an eight-year-old Down syndrome daughter. Still my boys, all of them, and still I feel an emptiness and a grief when I think of them, mingled with that strange, aching inexplicable feeling that I should have been there.

  I thought at first he was faking. Spirits were high; Jackson was fighting with someone in a corner; I was in a hurry. Perhaps he had been unconscious when I entered; precious seconds passed as I quietened the form; found my pen. Anaphylactic shock, they call it—heaven knows I’d heard enough about it from the boy himself, though I’d always assumed his ailments were more to do with his overprotective mother than his actual physical condition.

  It was all in his file, as I discovered too late; along with the many recommendations she had sent us concerning his diet, exercise, uniform requirements (man-made fabrics gave him a rash), phobias, antibiotics, religious instruction, and social integration. Under allergies: wheat (mild intolerance); and, in capital letters marked with an asterisk and several exclamation marks, NUTS!!

  Of course, Anderton-Pullitt doesn’t eat nuts. He consumes only food that has been declared risk-free by his mother and which, furthermore, corresponds to his own rather limited idea of what is acceptable. Every day the contents of his lunch box consist of exactly the same things: two cream cheese and Marmite sandwiches on wheat-free bread, cut into four; one tomato; one banana; a packet of Maynards Wine Gums (of which he discards all but the red and black sweets); and a can of Fanta. As it is, it takes him all lunchtime to consume this meal; he never goes to the tuck shop; never accepts food from any other boy.

  Don’t ask me how I managed to carry him downstairs. It was an effort; boys milled uselessly around me in excitement or confusion; I called for help, but no one came except for Gerry Grachvogel next door, who looked close to fainting and gasped “oh dear, oh dear,” wringing his little rabbity hands and glancing nervously from side to side.

  “Gerry, get help,” I ordered, balancing Anderton-Pullitt on one shoulder. “Call an ambulance. Modo fac.”

  Grachvogel just gaped at me. It was Allen-Jones who responded, running down the stairs two at a time, almost knocking over Isabelle Tapi, who was coming up. McNair raced off in the direction of Pat Bishop’s office, and Pink and Tayler helped me support the unconscious boy. By the time we reached the Lower Corridor I felt as if my lungs were filled with hot lead, and it was with real gratitude that I passed on my burden to Bishop, who seemed cheered to have something physical to do, and who picked up Anderton-Pullitt as if he were a baby.

  Behind me, I was vaguely aware that Sutcliff had finished taking the register. Allen-Jones was on the phone to the hospital—“They say it’ll be quicker if you drive him to Casualty yourself, sir!”—Grachvogel was trying to retrieve his form, who had followed en masse to see what was happening, and now the New Head emerged from his office, looking aghast, with Pat Bishop at his side and Marlene peering anxiously from over his shoulder.

  “Mr. Straitley!” Even in such an emergency as this, he retains a certain curious stiffness, as if constructed from some other medium—plaster, maybe whalebone—than flesh. “Could you perhaps please explain to me—” But the world had become full of noises, among which my heartbeat was the most compelling; I was reminded of the old jungle epics of my childhood, in which adventurers scaled volcanoes to the sinister cacophony of native drums.

  I leaned against the wall of the Lower Corridor, as my legs suddenly effected a transformation from bone, vein, sinew, to something more akin to jelly. My lungs hurt; there was a spot, somewhere in the region of my top waistcoat button, which felt as if someone very large were poking it repeatedly with an outstretched forefinger, as if to emphasize some kind of point. I looked round for a chair to sit upon, but it was too late; the world tilted, and I began to slide down the wall.

  “Mr. Straitley!” From the upside-down perspective, the Head looked more sinister than ever. A shrunken Head, I thought vaguely, just the thing to placate the Volcano God—and in spite of the pain in my chest I could not quite prevent myself from laughing. “Mr. Straitley! Mr. Bishop! Can someone please tell me what is going on here?”

  The invisible finger poked me again, and I sat down on the floor. Marlene, ever efficient, reacted first; she knelt down beside me without hesitation and pulled open my jacket to feel my heart. The drums pulsed; now I could sense rather than feel the movement around me.

  “Mr. Straitley, hang on!” She smelled of something flowery and feminine; I felt I should make some witty remark but couldn’t think of anything to say. My chest hurt; my eardrums roared; I tried to get up but could not. I slumped a little farther, glimpsed the Powerpuff Girls on Allen-Jones’s socks, and began to laugh.

  The last thing I remember was the New Head’s face looming into my field of vision and myself saying, “Bwana, the natives, they will not enter the Forbidden City,” before I passed out.

  I awoke in the hospital. I had been lucky, the doctor told me; there had been what he called a minor cardiac incident, brought on by anxiety and overexertion. I wanted to get up immediately, but he refused to allow it, saying that I was to remain under supervision for at least three or four days.

  A middle-aged nurse with pink hair and a kindergarten manner then asked me questions, the answers to which she wrote down with an expression of mild disapproval, as if I were a child who persisted in wetting the bed. “Now, Mr. Straitley, how many cigarettes do we smoke a week?”

  “I couldn’t say, ma’am. I’m not sufficiently intimate with your smoking habits.” The nurse looked flustered. “Oh, you were talking to me,” I said. “I’m sorry, I thought perhaps you were a member of the royal family.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Mr. Straitley, I have a job to do.”

  “So do I,” I said. “Third-form Latin, set two, period five.”

  “I’m sure they can do without you for a little while,” said the nurse. “No one’s indispensable.”

  A melancholy thought. “I thought you were supposed to make me feel better.”

  “And so I shall,” she said, “as soon as we’ve finished with this little bit of paperwork.”

  Well, within thirty minutes Roy Hubert Straitley (B.A.) was summarized in what looked very like a school register—cryptic abbreviations and ticks in boxes—and the nurse was looking suitably smug. I have to say it didn’t look good: age, sixty-four; sedentary job; moderate smoker; alcohol units per week, fair to sprightly; weight, somewhere between mild embonpoint and genuine avoirdupois.

  The doctor read it all with an expression of grim satisfaction. It was a warning, he concluded: a sign from the gods. “You’re not twenty-one, you know,” he told me. “There are some things you just can’t do anymore.”

  It’s an old drill, and I’d heard it before. “I know, I know. No smoking, no drinking, no fish and chips, no hundred-yard dash, no fancy women, no—”

  He interrupted. “I’ve been speaking to your GP. A Dr. Bevans?”

  “Bevans. I know him well—1975 to 1979. Bright lad. Got an A in Latin. Read medicine at Durham.”

  “Quite.” The syllable spoke volumes in disapproval. “He tells me he’s been concerned about you for some time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Drat it. That’s what comes of giving boys a Classical education. They turn against you, the little swine, they turn against you, and before you know what’s happening, you’re on a fat-free diet, wearing sweatpants, and checking out the old peoples’ homes.

  “So, tell me the worst. What does the little upstart recommend this time? Hot ale? Magnetism? Leeches? I remember when he was in my form, little round boy, always in trouble. And now he’s telling me what to do?”

  “He’s very fond of you, Mr. Straitley.”

  Here it comes, I thought.

  “But you’re sixty-five years old—”

  “Sixty-four. My birthday’s on November fifth. Bonfire Night.”

  He dismissed Bonfire Night with a shake of his head. “And you seem to t
hink you can go on forever as you always have—”

  “What’s the alternative? Exposure on a rocky crag?”

  The doctor sighed. “I’m sure an educated man like yourself could find retirement both rewarding and stimulating. You could take up a hobby—”

  A hobby, forsooth! “I’m not retiring.”

  “Be reasonable, Mr. Straitley—”

  St. Oswald’s has been my world for over thirty years. What else is there? I sat up on the trolley bed and swung my legs over the side. “I feel fine.”

  3

  Thursday, 30th September

  Poor old Straitley. I went to see him, you know, as soon as school finished, and found that he’d already checked himself out of the cardiac ward, to the disapproval of the staff. But his address was in the St. Oswald’s handbook, so I went there instead, bringing with me a little pot plant I had bought at the hospital shop.

  I’d never seen him out of character before. An old man, I realized, with an old man’s white stubble under his chin and an old man’s bony white feet in battered leather slippers. He seemed almost touchingly pleased to see me. “But you needn’t have worried,” he declared, “I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “Really? So soon?” I almost loved him for it; but I was concerned too. I’m enjoying our game too much to let him slip away on a stupid principle. “Shouldn’t you rest, at least for a day or two?”

  “Don’t you start,” he said. “I’ve had enough of that from the hospital. Take up a hobby, he says—something quiet like taxidermy or macramé—Gods, why doesn’t he just hand me the hemlock bowl and have done with it?”

  I thought he was overdramatizing, and said so.

  “Well,” said Straitley, pulling a face. “It’s what I’m good at.”

  His house is a tiny two-up, two-down midterrace about ten minutes’ walk from St. Oswald’s. The hallway is stacked high with books—some on shelves, others not—so that the original color of the wallpaper is almost impossible to detect. The carpets are worn right down to the weft, except in the parlor, where lurks the ghost of a brown Axminster. It smells of dust and polish and the dog that died five years ago; a big school radiator in the hallway throws out an unforgiving blast of heat; there is a tiny kitchen with a floor of mosaic tiles; and, covering every scrap of uncluttered wall, a multitude of class photographs.