The Dun Cow Rib

by John Lister-Kaye

  ‘Well, now, if it isn’t Master Jack. My! How you’ve growed.’

  ‘It’s GROWN, Nellie, not growed.’

  ‘Well, it’s growed to me and always will be. I never was much for schooling, not like you. Now I knowed you was coming so I’ve baked some scones for tea.’

  ‘It’s KNEW, Nellie, not knowed.’

  ‘Well, is that so? My! My! I never knewed that afore.’ It took me years to realise that she did it on purpose. Her scones were as soft as eiderdown and slightly salty, dripping with creamy butter from the farm dairy and her own strawberry jam.

  Two things stand out about that December visit. First, my Manor House bedroom was a former dressing-room off my parents’ room, connected by an adjoining door. My father habitually rose early to make tea, bringing it back to my mother on a tray. The next half hour would be spent talking. If the door was slightly ajar, I could hear most of their conversation, often mundane stuff about the abhorrent politics of the day. One morning I overheard my name and crept to the door. Over the next few minutes I gleaned sufficient to take in that my parents were worried. My first Junior School end of term report had arrived and evidently signalled alarm.

  My father kept all my school reports meticulously filed in an archive, so years afterwards I was able to revisit the precise text of their anxiety. From my housemaster:

  John is always in trouble . . . If there is a disturbance he is usually in the thick of it . . . His classwork is satisfactory but he needs to occupy his free time more constructively to avoid such bad marks.

  And an overview from the headmaster: ‘His aggregated score this term is a disgraceful minus six out of plus eight. This must improve.’

  ‘What does minus 6 mean?’ my mother asked, sounding worried.

  ‘It tells us he’s always in trouble.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘It doesn’t say. Perhaps you should speak to him.’

  It was typical of my father to duck this responsibility. He knew he wasn’t good with children and he had always deferred to her, as he did with any domestic situation. Mother, on the other hand, was utterly non-confrontational and always avoided awkward conversations with us. I suspect that she was so burdened by what she wrongly perceived to be her own health-imposed inadequacies that the last thing she wanted was to criticise her children. She never did raise it with me, but I logged it away as a gradually expanding cancerous hatred of Mr Bernard Forbes.

  The second distinction was the discovery of the Manor House cellars. Up to that point all my explorations had been above ground or outside. I knew of the existence of the cellars and knew that they were accessed by a locked door off the school room corridor.

  One breakfast at the kitchen table, while downing Nellie’s glutinous porridge made delectably stickier with honey and cream, she announced, ‘I got to get a bottle o’ port from the cellar cos Mrs Barnwell’s doin’ a jugged hare for your grandfather’s birthday dinner tomorrow. We got to steep it overnight. That’s ’ow he likes it, he does, but ooh, ’ow I hates goin’ down to that cellar.’ She wrung her hands on her pinny. ‘Will you come with me, Jack, case I falls?’ Sensing adventure, I agreed readily.

  A dank chill and the stale miasma of mould assaulted us as Nellie turned the key in the heavy door. A bare light bulb lit the fourteen steps down the side of a damp brick wall, down into the foundations of the oldest part of the Jacobean house. Wet cobwebs brushed our faces. At the bottom another bulb dimly lit a large room with a vaulted ceiling and an uneven brick floor. Rows of rusty iron, double-sided wine racks occupied the bulk of the cellar, most of them empty, but the one nearest the steps held a few cases of claret and port, some ancient brandy and a few of Champagne. Most of the paper labels had long since perished and a coating of slimy dust obliterated what was left. Only wired-on lead labels could identify the contents of each rack; the name and date in white wax crayon.

  ‘My ol’ dad used to keep all this,’ Nellie revealed, wistfully. ‘But no one comes down here now ’e’s gone on. Only me.’ She drew a bottle from the rack. ‘Come on, Jack, let’s go afore we catches our death.’

  ‘Wait a minute, Nellie, I’ve seen something.’ In the middle of the floor beside an open drain sat the most enormous toad I had ever seen. It was almost five inches across, cold and clammy, with warty bumps all over its ill-fitting skin – altogether gloriously ugly and wrinkled all over, like a toad should be. It eyed me from bulbous amber eyes with sinister black slanting pupils and made no attempt to move away. It just sat and let me pick it up. ‘Nellie, come and look at this, it’s amazing.’ I held it up to the light for her to see.

  ‘Ooh, I don’t like they,’ she cried, recoiling. ‘Take it away.’

  I had every intention of taking it away. I wanted it for a pet. We stumbled back up the steps, she with her bottle and I with my precious, magnificent toad. I kept it in a box in the game larder until the end of the holidays, when I returned it to its drain. I fed it on cockroaches caught in my hands behind the scullery sinks and little brown slugs from the kitchen garden. I knew enough about toads to be sure that because of its great size it was bound to be female, but I named it Bernie.

  12

  The pain of injustice

  Butterworth had been given a Parker 61 for Christmas: the smart fountain pen of the moment, sleek and glossy with a shiny gold nib and a ‘no mess’ capillary filling system – and very expensive. No other boy in our class possessed such an icon of opulence and Butterworth made the most of it. The rest of us were stuck with traditional dip pens and blue-black ink from inkwells in our desks. As if to press home this superiority, Butterworth insisted that he had to use royal blue Parker Quink and that the school ink – a powder mix – wouldn’t work in his precious pen.

  Our teachers seemed to tolerate this precociousness, but we wigged him mercilessly, dubbing him ‘Penny’ and ‘Parkerworth’. In truth we were deeply envious – but damned if we were going to admit it. The pen lived in his desk in its velvet-lined box with a sprung lid. At the beginning of every lesson he brought it out and provocatively arrayed it for us all to see. The box snapped shut with a loud ‘clop!’ He did this over and over again, as if to rub in the emergence of this irritating prop to his vanity, the bottle of Quink very obviously displayed on the desk.

  In the petty way that school children fall in and out of favour with each other, at that juncture I didn’t like Butterworth and he didn’t like me. I thought he was an odious, spoilt child. I have long since forgotten why, but I think it must have been something to do with the small clique of boys I had made good friends with. If he had friends of his own, I can’t remember them. He was short, slightly tubby and an only child, unkindly said to be a ‘mummy’s boy’. Most of us were good at games; he was not. Butterworth’s parents were perceived to be very well off and probably were.

  Children seem to have a pack mentality at school, an apparently natural behavioural division into groups and types based on many differing and usually illogical criteria: age, abilities, interests, looks, accents, backgrounds, whether perceived or actual. Snobbery is as fickle as fashion; it waxes and wanes. We excelled at it.

  While parental cars such as Jaguar, Humber, Hillman, Rover, Austin, Morris, Riley and Wolseley were common enough, Butterworth’s father drove a very expensive, hand-built Bristol 405, a four-door sports saloon in glossy maroon with a long, sleek bonnet and an oval radiator vent like a goldfish mouth. It was the talk of the whole school, divided into those who thought Bristols and their owners were amazing, and those who were snobbishly jealous and dismissed them as ‘flashy’.

  My father had always driven good solid British marques such as Riley and Rover, but secretly I thought the Bristol 405 to be both beautiful and alluring. I was envious – no question – but because my clique of friends fell resolutely into the flashy camp, writing off both the Parker 61 and the Bristol 405 as ostentatious extremes of conspicuous consumption (although we would never have heard of that epithet nor had a clue
what it meant), and despising the wretched Butterworth for it, I kept my envy to myself. In an attempt to curry favour and win me round, one Sunday after chapel he asked me out to lunch with his parents. I knew it would mean a ride in the beautiful Bristol. I longed to go, but to my shame – and I blush to record this – I declined purely on the grounds of snobbery and because I knew my friends would jeer. He was affronted by this unmerited slight and never forgave me for it.

  One morning at the beginning of a maths lesson he opened the box and removed the Parker pen. A howl of anguish broke from his lips. Someone had stabbed the elegant nib into something hard, cruelly crumpling it beyond repair. The maths master, a stern but respected Mr Dennis, inevitably known as ‘The Menace’, demanded to know what the fuss was about. Tearfully, Butterworth showed him the pen. A row ensued and it was reported to Bernie. At assembly he threatened detention for the whole school unless someone owned up. No one did.

  Later that afternoon I was summoned to Bernie’s study for the second time. The light was green and I knocked timidly. I had no idea why I had been summoned. The Menace and an angry, red-faced Bernie stood together at the fireplace. In full dragon pose, Bernie fired first: ‘I am led to believe you were responsible for breaking Butterworth’s pen.’

  ‘No, sir. It wasn’t me.’ I shook my head vigorously.

  ‘Are you lying to me, boy?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why do you think we believe it to be you?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you why. You don’t like Butterworth, do you?’ I hesitated, but only for a split second.

  Then Mr Dennis spoke. ‘Isn’t it true that Butterworth kindly asked you out to Sunday lunch last week?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘And you declined?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Why did you refuse his offer of friendship?’ I was stuck. I didn’t have an answer. I looked at the floor, tugged at my sleeve, shuffled my feet. I had been snared.

  Bernie lunged. ‘I think you are lying. I believe that for some silly reason, probably jealousy, you don’t like Butterworth, so you decided to break his Parker pen.’

  ‘No, sir. I didn’t.’

  ‘And now you are trying to lie your way out of it.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  A long silence ensued while he glared at me as though by doing so he could dissolve me, break me down. Time folded into itself in an ugly, strained vacuum. At last he spoke. ‘Are you going to own up, or aren’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t do it, sir.’ Another gruelling pause while both men stared at me. I looked down.

  ‘You may well hang your head,’ Bernie sneered scornfully. I shook my head again. ‘Look at me, boy. Look me in the eyes and tell me you did not break Butterworth’s pen.’ He amplified his formidable voice and marshalled the full force of his pulpit authority.

  Emotions swirled and fizzed inside my skull, confusing me. My head was spinning into a morass of helpless unknowing. I was frightened. I had winced at the sight of other boys’ buttocks bruised to the colour of plums, far worse than anything Twig’s gym shoe had delivered. I did not want to be caned. I was certain Bernie didn’t like me and I was equally convinced that he longed to vent his wrath upon me. As the Bible says, I was ‘sore afraid’, but the gods of fairness and justice had deserted me, vanished behind a glowering cloud. I felt trapped. Terror clutched at my bowels and fear tramped painfully through the landscape of my mind, all paths to propitiation fenced and overgrown.

  I had no idea why I was being blamed for this; I hadn’t lied and I was affronted that Butterworth or someone else had named me as the culprit. Taut with antipathy, the room spun. I felt sodden and heavy, everything a child feels when angry and silenced by authority; the whole world an overpowering insult. I wanted to cry out, to shout and stamp my feet. I wanted to run at Bernie, punch him and kick him. I hated him – but I couldn’t do any of those things. I was trapped between powerlessness and something akin to rage that crouched inside me like a wildcat ready to spring. While it lasts, rage is intoxicating, blocking fear and freeing up otherwise padlocked inhibitions, releasing an uncertain, rain-washed calm. Marshalling powers known only to my instincts, I did what I now realise must have been total abhorrence to him – the proverbial red rag. I took the only escape route open to me, the last resort of the angry, humiliated child. I confronted him. Slowly I raised my face and looked him straight in the eyes. I glowered with silent, sullen resentment.

  He pressed again: ‘Well? Are you going to own up?’

  Factual and defiant in the teeth of woe, I spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘No, Mr Forbes. I did not do it. I had nothing to do with it and I think it is very unfair that you think it was me.’

  A kind of furious darkness gathered in his face. His lips tightened into a thin line and I could see his jaw knotting and flexing while he struggled to contain his composure. I felt sure he was going to cane me anyway. The Menace looked embarrassed and shuffled his feet, but I was glad he was there. Seconds ticked by. At length Bernie spoke again: ‘Very well, but if I find that you have lied to me and Mr Dennis, I will give you an immediate minus eight and you may be sure I will speak to your parents about this. Now get out of my sight.’

  I turned on my heel and left. I walked stiffly away from the study and broke into a run down the main corridor. I burst through the swing doors and out into the quadrangle. I ran down the drive, down the long avenue of pines and up the rise to Hampton House. I ran in through the side door and bounded up the stairs to Mrs Warmley’s room. I thumped on her door with my fist. The door opened. ‘John! Whatever are you doing?’ I opened my mouth to speak but no words came. A dam burst into unstoppable tears.

  For several minutes she held me in her arms, my head cradled against the cushion of her matronly bosom. ‘There, there,’ she cooed as she hugged me. ‘Come and sit down and tell me all about it.’ With an irony neither sought nor understood, I could feel the cool shaft of a fountain pen against my cheek, issuing a strange and naked peace.

  * * *

  An hour later I was walking back to school greatly cheered by that generous-spirited, compassionate woman whom I had embraced as my surrogate mother figure and always secretly adored. For three years of my short, bewildering school life, without ever evincing any outward sign of affection toward me, in my head Marion Warmley had fulfilled the dual roles of Nellie and my mother, filled the absence of both with an unspoken loving kindness that was an essential quality of the person she was. I didn’t know that she intensely disliked Bernard Forbes and had been openly critical of his headmastership. Nor, of course, had I any idea that I had just compromised her.

  Weeks passed and the Easter holidays approached. My weekly marks worsened and had stuck resolutely at minus seven, however hard I tried to improve them. I just always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  One of the ongoing competitions among the boys was the search for brightly coloured peacock feathers. There were only five or six cock birds strutting the lawns displaying their ludicrously extravagant tail fans and brilliant green-blue iridescent necks and breasts. All birds moult their feathers. Some do it all together, like wildfowl, becoming flightless for a few weeks while they grow new ones, and others, such as peacocks, moult theirs one by one, usually after the principal mating period each summer. We all kept an eye out for these beautiful feathers because they had become a school currency.

  A fine long ‘eye’ tail feather commanded a price of sixpence, as long as it was unbroken and in reasonable condition. Broken tail feathers were thruppence and neck or breast feathers fringed with glossy irridescence were tuppence each. We all watched out for them all the time. I made a point of nipping out early in the mornings and running round the main building, scouring the lawns for these valuable pickings. I had built a reputation for finding them and selling them on.

  One day a senior boy cornered me in the quad. ‘I say, Liss, my sister would really love one of thos
e long peacock feathers. She’ll pay a shilling for a good one.’ This above-market offer played on my mind. At night the peacocks were housed in a fox-proof shed in a corner of Bernie’s private garden, strictly out of bounds. I eyed it from the distance and wondered if it contained any feathers. I felt sure it should. I knew from my pigeons that birds preened themselves extensively, often before roosting at night. The pigeon loft floor was always littered with white feathers. I decided to mount a night raid.

  A soft spring dusk settled over the school. The bell to end prep sounded at eight and we had to be ready for bed by nine. I had an hour in which to effect my plan. The night was deep and moonless. I had a pen torch my mother had given me and, carefully sneaking round the outlying buildings, I took a circuitous route to the smartly mown lawn in front of the house. Bernie’s quarters were a blaze of lights. I stood in the shadow of a large laurel. The whole building seemed to loom and sway as though I were watching a film. Somewhere far away the fading two-tone whistle of a train echoed out of the darkness. I saw Mrs Forbes draw some upstairs curtains and I caught a glimpse of Bernie crossing from his study, through their front hall and on into their sitting room in the front of the house.

  I was on an adrenaline high. Excitement rimmed with the fear of being caught, made more exciting by the overpowering sense of reparation – that I was somehow striking back at Bernie. It must be like this to be a poacher or a burglar, I thought. The stealth appealed hugely. The realisation that I was invisible but could observe the Forbeses’ every move fired me with a fierce and brooding sense of power.

  I could see the back of Bernie’s head as he settled into reading a newspaper. Mrs Forbes came in and joined him. This was thrilling. The school clock struck eight-thirty with a single ponderous chime. Half an hour left. Satisfied that the Forbeses were settled, I nipped across the lawn to the shed on the far side. I eased the bolt back and slipped inside. The peacocks were lined up on a perch four feet off the ground, breasts settled down onto their feet, with their long tails cascading down behind them, just clear of the ground. They didn’t move. I flicked the torch beam around the floor. No feathers. Not one, not even a broken one. I was gutted. I slunk out and carefully closed the door behind me.