Sons of Fortune

by Malcolm Macdonald

  “Now,” he said. “I am your tutor. It is I who will write your end-of-term reports to your parents.” He drilled them again with those black eyes. “It is I whom you must satisfy of your progress here. But that progress, little fellows, is not in my hands. It is in yours. We do not molly-coddle young milkysops here. No hothouse here, sirs! You will do fifteen half hours of public school each week and the rest of the time at tutorial lectures and private study. Have you a mess in the town yet?”

  “At Mr. Oldroyd’s, master.”

  “Good. Good. You’ll do most of your private study there, of course, though I believe there are some old cupboards about the passages here where you may lock yourself away with a candle and a book.”

  “Do we study with each master, sir?” Caspar asked.

  “Indeed, young fellow.” Whymper’s friendly smile was more menacing, somehow, than his stern face. “With all four of us. And as there are four hundred and thirty-two boys all told, you may be sure that little learning is imparted in the hours of public school. You have the headmaster for divinity. Mr. Carter for unseen translation and construction. Mr. Cusack for Euclid and mathematics. And myself for composition—which is Latin elegiacs, Latin theme, Greek hexameter (all original, of course), Greek iambics from Shakespeare, Greek prose translation from Robertson, and Latin prose from Spectator. You have these books?”

  They nodded. The course here outlined by Mr. Whymper was a direct continuation of the one they had already begun at home under their own tutor, Mr. Morier-Watson. It held no unknown terrors for them.

  “It’s pretty sharp work,” Whymper went on. “But it’s too wide and general for mere talent to carry you. Only the true sap may triumph in the end. So take heart! The prize is for every boy here. Hard work can always snatch victory from under the nose of lazy brilliance.” He smiled benignly. “Good. I can see already that we shall rub along famously. Keep your ears clean. Keep your fingers—fingers! Show me your fingers.”

  Twenty clean fingers poked at him, feathering themselves prone and supine, gleaming an unnatural pink.

  “Good, good. Ears clean. Fingers clean. And boots clean. Work hard. Play the man. And you can be proud of yourselves and we can be proud of you.”

  ***

  “Do you know how he gets such hairy hands?” Causton asked. He was an unprepossessing boy of about Caspar’s age. He was watching Caspar unpack his things into an oak locker beside his bed. Each of the forty beds in the dorm was separated from its neighbour by such a locker.

  “How?” Caspar asked.

  “He fiends himself all the time. He’s always at it. It puts hair on your hands.”

  Caspar had no idea what Causton meant but he looked instinctively at the backs of his own hands to see if any hair grew there.

  “Yah!” Causton crowed. “Caught you! Caught you!”

  Caspar looked at him in puzzled surprise.

  “You fiend yourself, eh?” Causton taunted. “Caught you!”

  Caspar shrugged.

  “Made you look. You had to look.” Causton was disappointed in the response.

  Caspar unpacked his greatest treasure—the Dart, a toy steam locomotive with a brass chassis, copper boiler, and two oscillating cylinders. The dormitory was lit by a single gas jet high on the wall, but even in that uncertain light it gleamed.

  “I say!” Causton exclaimed. “That’s a beauty! May I?”

  Caspar handed it to him in a pantomine of caution; Causton took it as if it were made of crystal. He sniffed the firebox, spun the wheels, blew down the funnel, and nodded approvingly. But his tone was disparaging. “Oscillating cylinders,” he said. “Of course, you only get steam on one stroke.”

  “I’m saving for a slide-valve engine,” Caspar said.

  “I’m getting one for my birthday next month. Let’s race them!”

  Caspar nodded and put the engine away in the back of the drawer that pulled out from under the bed.

  “You’re a quiet ’un,” Causton said. “You won’t be so quiet after lockup. At your drumming-in.”

  Caspar did not reward him with any display of feeling. Causton seemed strangely torn between an impulse to friendship and the desire to crow over the tortures to come.

  Boy, unpacking on the far side of the dorm, beyond the long line of trunks and boxes down the middle of the room, heard Causton’s taunt and felt his own guts turn over. He wished someone would tell him what drumming-in meant, but he certainly wasn’t going to ask.

  “Come on, where’s the scoff?” de Lacy asked. Boy was going to sleep between him and another fellow called Carnforth.

  “Scoff?”

  “Grub. Tuck. Those pies you told Lorrimer about.”

  “We promised to share them with him.”

  “I’ll join you. I’m not fussy.”

  “Let’s eat them when he comes.” Boy wanted to keep his food as long as possible; he was still full of Mrs. Oldroyd’s good bread and brawn. Anyway, de Lacy was already friendly enough; no need to buy him with pies.

  De Lacy looked exasperated. “Carnforth and all the rest will be back from their messes, too, then. You won’t be so casual about food this time next week. Wait till you’ve endured four or five troughs!” He began to wheedle. “Come on—I can have my share now.”

  “I’d rather wait for Lorrimer. I did promise.”

  “Nyah, nyah!” de Lacy taunted. “Wait for Lorrimer! Lorrimer’s just a piece of shit. You needn’t worry about him.”

  “All the same…” Boy began. The look on de Lacy’s face halted him. The fellow was frozen, his face a mask of fear. Boy followed his gaze and saw Lorrimer, standing in the gloom by the end of the pile of boxes.

  “I was joking, man,” de Lacy said, attempting a laugh. “I knew you were there.”

  There was a long silence. “Right,” Lorrimer said at last and turned to go. Over his shoulder he added to Boy, “See, this is what I mean. In the old days I’d have thumped de Lacy for saying that.”

  At once de Lacy sprang to his feet and ran after him. “God, man, I was only joking. Honestly! You have my pie. I couldn’t eat it anyway. You have it.”

  Lorrimer watched him in disgust, saying nothing, not moving.

  “Not toe-taps! Please! Please, Lorrimer, don’t tell Blenkinsop. I can still hardly walk. Please not toe-taps!”

  Lorrimer turned and walked away, out into the gallery. A picture of despair, de Lacy scuffed his heels all the way back to Boy’s bed. “Fick, faec, fock, and fuck!” he said without heat. “God, I hate hate hate this place.”

  Boy did not risk a word.

  “You’ll hate it, too,” he said to Boy. “You’ll think drumming-in is bad enough. You wait until Blenkinsop comes with his toe-taps!”

  “What is drumming-in?” Boy asked.

  “You’ll see! Any minute now.”

  At that moment Lorrimer returned; de Lacy backed against the wall, shivering. Boy had never seen anyone in such a funk. He began to despise de Lacy and to wish he were next to someone else. It was an opinion he was quickly to revise.

  “I disagree with your description of me,” Lorrimer said casually, even pleasantly. “I have a little practical lesson for you.” He held out a crumpled sheet of paper. “Have a taste.”

  De Lacy took the paper and brought it near his lips; suddenly he dashed it to the ground.

  Lorrimer merely smiled—at least, his teeth gleamed like pebbles in the gloom. “Perhaps Blenkinsop can teach you.”

  De Lacy burst into tears but he bent with much greater speed than anyone expected and retrieved the paper. “You sod!” he said. “You utter sod!”

  “That’s better!” Lorrimer spoke gently as he sat down on Boy’s trunk and began to unlace his right boot.

  De Lacy, still sobbing, now obeyed Lorrimer’s original command. Then he hurled the paper to the floor once again. />
  “Now—just to ram home the difference,” Lorrimer said. He pulled off his sock with a smiling, theatrical flourish. “Lick here.” He pulled up his big toe.

  Utterly broken in will, de Lacy bent down, took Lorrimer’s foot in his hands, and gingerly licked a small streak of toe. Lorrimer stood up suddenly, forcing de Lacy to the floor, mashing his face with the naked foot.

  Boy could stand no more of it. Until then he had been at least in part on Lorrimer’s side—a diminishing part but enough to stop him from interfering. Now, thinking to do no more than lift Lorrimer’s foot off poor de Lacy’s face, he stooped, caught up Lorrimer’s ankle, and abruptly stood upright. He knew he was no kind of match for the older boy, but he was quite prepared to take the most fearsome lathering if only to prevent the total humiliation of de Lacy.

  But Lorrimer was taken completely off balance. He fell back like a statue, stiff with the surprise. His eyes were wide as his head struck the brass corner of Boy’s trunk. Pupils and iris vanished in those final inches to the floor. Then the eyes closed. He lay, awkwardly cramped and very still, between the chest and the bed.

  Boy’s first thought was for de Lacy. Shock had stifled the sobbing at once, its place taken by a wide-eyed admiration tinged with fear.

  “God, he’ll kill you,” he said to Boy as he got up.

  Causton, followed by Caspar, ran around the boxes and stood aghast over the unconscious body.

  “You cut along,” Boy told de Lacy. “I’ll stay and face him.” It seemed an easy boast to make, with Lorrimer so still; certainly he would be in no state to fight.

  “Is he breathing actually?” Caspar asked.

  They all stared down, not daring to touch someone so dangerous.

  “He isn’t breathing,” Causton said. His quivering tone almost began a panic.

  Boy knelt down and listened at Lorrimer’s open mouth; he touched the unmoving chest; he felt for a pulse; then he looked up at the others. I think he’s dead, he thought; he could not utter the words.

  “We must all say he slipped,” Caspar said. He turned to Boy’s box and picked up a bar of soap. The others, unwilling to follow the implications of Boy’s silence, watched dumbly.

  Caspar looked at the body and the chest, put the soap on the floor at a carefully chosen spot, stood on it, and did a half-skating movement but leaning back so that the soap skittered away from under his foot and spun against the next bed, bouncing off and finishing, still spinning, against the wall. The motion was so violent that Caspar only just prevented himself from falling on top of Lorrimer.

  Causton giggled nervously. “Yes!” he said. “That’s what happened. We’ll tell them that and show them the soap.” He dashed forward to pick up the bar.

  But Caspar was quicker. He darted forward, putting himself between Causton and the soap. “Leave it,” he said. “Let them find it.”

  Causton looked at him blankly for a moment, then grinned. De Lacy was quite open in his admiration. “By God, young ’un—you’ve a head and no mistake!”

  But Caspar was not flattered. “That?” he asked contemptuously, looking at the soap. “What else could we say?”

  “We can tell the truth,” Boy said. “We must all tell the truth.”

  But de Lacy shook his head vigorously. “Won’t do,” he said. He repeated the words several times, as if allowing himself time to think. “If he is dead, you’d blacken him forever. His people are ever so up, you know.”

  “No one would thank you for the truth,” Caspar said.

  “Yes, you couldn’t do that to his memory,” de Lacy confirmed.

  But Boy was unshaken. “We are not in this world to get thanked. Nor to tell lies. We are here to do our duty and tell the truth.” It was a decoction of many hundred sermons but he made it sound from the heart.

  “I won’t support you,” de Lacy said.

  Boy looked at him until his eyes fell. “I still won’t support you,” de Lacy repeated stubbornly.

  A tall, thin boy, no more than a knobbly silhouette, stood at the doorway. “Brace up!” he shouted. He was about seventeen, almost a man to the youngsters in the dorm.

  “Blenkinsop!” de Lacy called. “There’s been an accident. Lorrimer’s beastly quiet here.”

  No one else breathed. The silence and de Lacy’s urgency communicated their terror to Blenkinsop. He breezed into the room and scrambled over the boxes, a house-beating offence unless you were a pharaoh or the King o’ the Barn. He looked at Lorrimer’s body, then at the solemn faces all round. “Christ!” he said.

  He bent down and repeated all the tests Boy had made. “For Christ’s sake!” He looked up. “He’s dead!”

  “It was an accident, Blenkinsop,” Causton said.

  “I did it,” Boy said. “It was not an accident.”

  Caspar looked at de Lacy; neither said a word.

  Blenkinsop looked from one to the other, too worried even to think of throwing his weight around. He stood up. “I’m going for the master before lockup.” At the door he paused. “Don’t touch Lorrimer.”

  Boy looked down at the sprawled body. Lorrimer, who had shown them around—only moments ago, it seemed—who joked about whores, told them the slang, invited himself to a share in their pie…dead! Lorrimer, who had been so beastly, so bestial, to de Lacy, so fierce and terrifying…dead! One minute there, more frightening than anything; next moment, because of one slip, one chance, one too-violent meeting of brass and bone, gone. Gone where? What had happened to all the busy-ness that had been Lorrimer?

  “His foot just twitched,” Causton said.

  “It did not,” Caspar replied, equally certain.

  “It did.”

  “It was a trick of the gaslight.”

  “Chickens do that,” de Lacy said.

  “Do what?”

  “Twitch. After they’ve had their heads chopped off. They run around, too.”

  “Have you seen it?” Boy asked. He was watching Lorrimer’s foot, hoping it would twitch again—if indeed, it had twitched.

  “Bet you’ve never seen it,” Causton said.

  “Not actually seen it. But all the servants’ll tell you.”

  “Servants’ll tell you anything,” Caspar said.

  “I saw it,” Causton repeated.

  “A chicken running around with no head?” Caspar asked.

  “No! His foot. It definitely twitched.”

  Boy watched dumbly and wished he could have the last ten minutes over again. He looked around the cold, barely lit room, at the forty identical beds like lidless coffins, at the ancient limestone walls, at the miserable faces of the others, and thought I will always remember this. Whatever happens next, I will always remember this.

  By that mysterious, wordless telegraph which galvanizes all human communities, the rumour of Lorrimer’s death spread through the Old School. In dribs and drabs, by ones and by twos, they slipped through the door and collected silently around the body. If they spoke at all it was to ask the same repeated questions—is he dead? what happened?—hardly expecting more answer than a shrug from de Lacy or a raised eyebrow from Causton. In fascination they stared at the two new boys, one of whom had already made such a monstrous mark upon the school.

  One, more adventurous, stooped and touched Lorrimer. “Not cold,” he said. “Warmer than me.”

  “It’s warmer still where he’s going,” someone else said.

  No one laughed; they steeled themselves not to turn and look at this wit. The embarrassment grew acute.

  “Couldn’t we cover him with…something?” one lad asked.

  Boy plucked a sheet from his bed and covered the body. It was an awesomely final act. He felt himself about to burst into tears. Would the others grudge him that luxury?

  “Out!” The shout came from behind them. They all turned to see a stocky, curly-haired
figure in a tail coat, arms akimbo, framed in the doorway.

  “Swift,” de Lacy whispered to Boy. “Head of pharaohs.”

  Everyone shuffled mutely out, except the original four.

  “Well?” Swift shouted. He still had not moved from the door; everyone had had to squeeze past him, squirming and apologizing, and confirming his authority.

  “We were here when it happened, Swift,” de Lacy said.

  “When what happened?” He came around, not over, the boxes. “He slipped and struck his head, you see,” de Lacy said.

  “Just there.” Causton pointed superfluously to the shrouded body.

  “I pushed him,” Boy said. “Why try to pretend? I did it.”

  Swift looked quickly at the three who had spoken, then at Caspar. “One more to vote,” he said.

  “He fell,” Caspar said, looking steadily at Boy.

  “That’s what I want to hear,” Swift said, also looking at Boy. “Let’s just have one simple story.”

  “He was…doing unspeakable things to de Lacy, and I pushed him away,” Boy insisted.

  Caspar made a disgusted noise, threw up his hands, and turned his back.

  Swift looked from one to the other. “You’re the new roes. Stevenson ma and mi.” It was not a question but both nodded. “The word of one Stevenson will be enough, I think. You can vanish.” He nodded at Boy.

  Just then Lorrimer’s foot twitched. They all saw it.

  “See!” Causton said triumphantly. “I told you.”

  Boy’s relief was overwhelming. “God!” he said leaning over and pulling the sheet off Lorrimer’s face. He grinned sheepishly. “God be praised!” But Lorrimer was still apparently without breath. Boy was just about to straddle the body and apply the resuscitative massage he had once seen his father do to a seemingly dead navvy overcome by bad air when Swift kicked his backside lightly.

  “Stow the gratitude, young ’un,” he said. “If he’s alive there’s nothing to stop the drumming-in. And look…” His sharp eyes beckoned them all into a conspiracy. “Since he is alive, I think we’d all prefer to understand he slipped rather than”—he frowned at Boy—“whatever you were hinting at.”