His legs ached; his knuckles burned.
Before him, vividly, was the image of what he had seen beneath the desk, a vertical incision distorted by the grip of Maureen’s hands.
He shifted his feet.
‘Keep still.’
A figure passed in the corridor outside; its feet echoed: a door closed, reopened, and the feet came back.
Outside the door of the classroom the footsteps paused; the handle was shaken, the glass vibrated: he had to step back to avoid the door and in doing so was brought face to face with Mr Swan: or, rather, he gazed at the button of the headmaster’s jacket.
‘Is this boy in trouble, Miss Featherstone?’
‘He is, Mr Swan.’
A hand came down to indicate the corridor outside.
‘Anyone else?’
‘No, Mr Swan.’
The broad-shouldered figure remianed with its back to the door. After a pause, it turned and came out, closing the door behind it.
The glass rattled.
Without glancing at Bryan, Mr Swan strode off.
Bryan followed, watching the headmaster’s gigantic hands with their thick, square-ended fingers clenching and unclenching, and observed the brief ducking down of the bulbous, close-cropped head as he passed each classroom: at one of the doors the headmaster paused, his features inflamed, waited, gazing in then, as the murmur of voices subsided inside, passed quickly on.
At the door to his study the headmaster paused. ‘Stand by my desk.’ He waited for Bryan to go in before him.
Bryan placed his hands behind his back.
The headmaster sat down; his fists were laid across his blotter.
‘Bryan, is it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
In a glassed-in cabinet to the side of the desk were several books and, fastened on hooks, horizontally, across the back of the cabinet, were several canes, the thinnest at the top, the thickest, bound with cord, at the bottom.
‘Your brother was always in trouble.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Look where he is now.’
‘Yes.’
Mr Swan stood up; his chair creaked: his shirt inside his jacket rustled.
‘He’s in the Seniors, when he might have gone to the Grammar.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know why that happened?’
‘No, sir.’
‘He was fooling around. He failed his exam. He might have made something of himself. Now he’ll make nothing.’
Tears came to Bryan’s eyes; the thought of Alan oppressed him; and the thought of Alan, whom he loved, coming to nothing, oppressed him further: Mr Swan was disparaging someone closer to Bryan than he imagined.
‘Do you want to make nothing of yourself?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You want to make something?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He added, ‘My brother won’t make nothing of himself.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mr Swan’s boots creaked; his shadow loomed across the room.
‘He’ll make something of himself.’
‘In the Seniors he’ll make nothing. He’ll end up with a pick and shovel.’
The thought of Alan, with all his qualities, making nothing of himself was a thought that Bryan couldn’t countenance.
‘He’ll make nothing, because he has made nothing. He even fools about where he is at present.’ He gestured off to the opposite end of the building where, across an asphalt yard, stood the wing occupied by the Seniors. ‘I’ve had reports of his fooling around already.’
He got up from the desk, inserted a key in the glass-panelled door of the cabinet and pulled it back.
‘Why were you in the corner?’
‘Someone was talking.’
‘Was it you?’.
‘No, sir.’
‘Do you always tell lies?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Miss Featherstone would not have called you out unless she was sure.’
He took out a cane, lifting it from the hooks.
‘I don’t like liars. Your brother was a liar.’ He paused; the cabinet door swung to: the keys rattled against the glass. ‘I don’t like people who cry before their punishiment. Your brother never cried. He took his punishment like a man.’
Bryan examined the figure before him; all he saw, distorted, were disparate elements of the face itself, a glaring eye, a massive nose, a red-flecked cheek, a protruding lip.
‘Hold out your hand.’
The tears, redoubled, obscured his view of the room.
‘You’re nothing but a whiner. You get up to mischief, cause trouble, say you never did it, then whine. Do you still say you were doing nothing in Miss Featherstone’s class?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re telling lies.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Half the battle is won with liars if they admit they are telling lies.’
‘I’m not, sir.’
‘Hold out your hand.’
He held it up.
‘Higher.’
He felt the fingers of the headmaster flatten his palm.
The cane descended.
He gave a cry.
‘I don’t like cry-babies, either.’
He grasped Bryan’s wrist.
‘What’s this?’
He looked at the back of his hand.
‘Have you been caned by Miss Featherstone already?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you have come to my room to be caned again?’
He looked at the back of his other hand.
‘Was that a ruler?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I hope,’ the headmaster said, ‘you have learned your lesson.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did Miss Featherstone call you out for?’
‘She said I was talking.’
‘Were you?’
‘No.’
‘If you weren’t, why should she think you were?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That is the point at which you begin to tell lies.’
He laid the cane down.
‘I can tell when a boy is lying. I haven’t taught all these years without knowing when someone is not telling the truth.’ He thrust his head towards him. ‘Who sits in the desk beside you?’
‘Maureen.’
‘Does she do any talking?’
‘No.’
He gazed at the button in the centre of the jacket.
Mr Swan reached down and grasped his wrist.
‘Come with me.’
He opened the door and, still holding the wrist, led him back to the classroom.
Miss Featherstone, interrupted in mid-sentence, glanced up from her desk.
‘Go back to your place.’
Bryan walked through the class to his seat.
‘Maureen.’
The figure quivered on the bench beside him.
‘Come to my room. Miss Featherstone, perhaps you would like to come with her.’
Instructions were given to the class, then Maureen, followed by Miss Featherstone, walked quickly to the door.
The clipping of their heels came from the corridor outside.
The door of the classroom had been left ajar.
‘What did he do?’ a figure asked from the desk in front.
‘One on one hand.’
‘Did it hurt?’
‘Not much.’
‘What about Maureen?’
He shook his head.
Some time later Maureen came back; she walked quickly to her desk.
‘What did he say, Maureen?’ someone asked.
‘I haven’t to talk to him,’ she said.
‘Did he hit you?’
She picked up her pen and bowed her head, and didn’t look up when, a few minutes later, Miss Featherstone came in the room and closed the door.
‘I’ll be moving Bryan,’ she said.
She indicated a desk adjacent to her own
.
‘If there is any more trouble, you know what the consequences are,’ she added.
In the playground, Maureen said, ‘Why won’t you show me yours if I showed you mine?’
He felt the force of her fist at the back of his neck.
‘Are you arguing again, Maureen?’ the teacher on duty said.
‘No, Miss.’
‘Why don’t you run along and play with the girls?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
Maureen ran off; Bryan stood by the railings: he gazed off to where the fields began, sweeping down towards Spinney Beck.
In the adjoining playground his brother was running along in a crowd of boys; his life was simpler than his own, uncomplicated by anything that had gone before – a facing out of events, encountering each one for the very first time.
He glanced back at Maureen’s figure, attracted by her raucous voice: she was gazing in his direction and shaking her fist.
‘We wondered if you were coming,’ Mrs Spencer said.
The dogs circled the interior behind her and, as Bryan entered, returned to the rug in front of the fire. The smell of baking came from the ovens and on the table, set on a wire mat, stood several loaves of bread. ‘Not puffed?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘It’s a long way on your bike.’ She ran her hand across his head.
‘It’s not too far,’ he said.
‘I think Margaret would find it far enough.’ She called through to the wood-floored room beyond. ‘Your friend has arrived.’ To Bryan, she added, ‘There are some slippers she’s left out.’
He stooped in the door; a pair of woollen slippers had been left at the point where the stone paving of the kitchen gave way to the hall.
‘We thought you were never coming.’
‘I was late coming out of Sunday School,’ he said.
Conscious of his darned stockings, he took his shoes off quickly.
‘You hear that?’ Mrs Spencer called into the hall and, from a door opposite, came the sound of Margaret’s voice. ‘She doesn’t go, though we’ve often asked her.’
The door to the room opened and Margaret appeared; over a blue-checked dress she wore an apron.
Her hair was swept back and secured, as it had been before, in two ribboned plaits.
‘I don’t have to go,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Mrs Spencer said. ‘However, if you did, it would give you something to do on Sunday.’
‘I have something to do on Sunday,’ Margaret said.
‘Not much.’
‘All that I want to.’
‘That’s not what she tells me,’ Mrs Spencer said, nodding at Bryan. ‘You should hear her complaints.’ To Margaret, she added, ‘Will you be staying in, or going out?’
‘Staying in.’
Margaret turned back inside the room; she held the door, formally, for Bryan to enter and as her mother called, ‘Tea soon,’ she closed it behind him.
‘She’s always having quarrels.’ She indicated a table which occupied the centre of the room: a fire burned in a yellow-fronted grate. Chairs were set around the table; the firelight glowed from the polished wood.
Across the room, whose floor was relieved by a patterned carpet, two curtained windows looked out to the front of the house; flower beds had been dug and, between the beds, a lawn ran down to a low stone wall: beyond the wall a grassy slope descended to a stream which, below the house, had been dammed to form a pond: geese and ducks swam up and down and hens ran to and fro across the slope above it.
Beyond the stream the ground rose to a wood; cows grazed in a pasture.
The table had been covered by a cloth, one half turned down and covered, in turn, by a sheet of paper. A pair of scissors and a pot of glue were laid beside a grey-papered book.
‘Do you want to cut out?’
‘I don’t mind,’ he said.
He pulled out a chair.
From the kitchen, once more, came the barking of the dogs followed by the slamming of the outer door.
‘She’s always having arguments she can never finish.’
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because she’s silly.’
He watched her tongue protrude as she applied the scissors to a magazine.
‘Have you always gone to Sunday School?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘I thought it dull.’
She glanced across.
‘You can cut that out if you like,’ she added. ‘Do you go to the pictures much?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘I go every Wednesday. Daddy comes up to town and meets me after school.’
The gruff voice of Mr Spencer could be heard a moment later coming from the kitchen, and shortly after that a door was opened.
‘Have you seen The Ghost Train?’
‘No,’ Bryan said.
‘The Thirty-nine Steps?’
Bryan shook his head.
‘The Love Match?’
He shook his head again.
‘What do you do at night?’
‘Play out.’
‘There’s no one to play with round here.’
She leant back in the chair; its legs creaked: she turned her head to gaze out of the window, past the low stone wall with its wicket gate, to where the ducks quacked, the geese honked and the hens ran up and down. From the left of the grassy slope a pig appeared, its nose to the ground.
‘What school do you go to?’
‘Stainforth.’
‘I go to one in town. St Margaret’s. It’s got my name.’
She pressed down the page.
Bryan handed over his cut-out shape.
‘You haven’t cut it very well.’
‘It slipped.’
‘That’s the only one I have of Ronald Colman.’
‘I can cut out the bit I missed and stick it together.’
‘It won’t look the same.’
She trimmed the edge of the shape herself.
‘Do you like his moustache?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She laid the photograph flat on her hand, stooped, and kissed the area of it which was characterized principally by the thin moustache. She closed her eyes.
‘I think he’s whoozy.’
‘What are you two doing?’
Bryan looked up to find the figure of Mr Spencer standing in the door: the farmer was wearing a dark-blue suit, the jacket of which was open; on his feet were a pair of slippers.
‘Not kissing these cart ’osses, is she?’ he added to Bryan.
‘I’m loving Ronald Colman, Father,’ Margaret said.
‘I’m glad he doesn’t know about it,’ Mr Spencer said, glancing once again at Bryan. ‘Got you at it, has she?’
‘Bryan hardly ever goes to the pictures,’ Margaret said.
‘He’s got more common sense,’ the farmer said. ‘And has a better way to spend his money.’
‘I don’t ask to go,’ she said.
‘Not half,’ the farmer said. ‘“Aren’t we going to the Regal, Daddy?”’ He mimicked his daughter’s voice.
A flush of colour came to her cheeks and, after laying the photograph down, she began to cut round another figure.
‘She’ll have you as daft as she is,’ the farmer said, coming into the room and gazing over Bryan’s shoulder. ‘How about the cowshed having a scrub?’
‘We’ll leave that to you,’ the daughter said.
‘Anything that involves a bit o’ work.’
‘Haven’t you anything to do?’ she asked.
‘I’d better go and do it,’ the farmer said and clasping Bryan’s shoulder, added, ‘Your bike still ‘o’ding together, is it?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘There’s tea ready,’ he said, ‘in one or two minutes.’
He closed the door.
‘Do you want to cut out Laurel and Hardy?’ Margaret indicated their figures on a page torn from the magazine before her.
‘Do
you like them?’ Bryan asked.
‘Not as much as Ronald Colman.’
‘Or Charlie Chaplin.’
‘I don’t like Charlie Chaplin,’ Margaret said.
Bryan cut round the fat figure, had difficulty with the hat, then cut round the thin figure, removing the brim of its bowler and, he noticed, having released it from the paper, the toe of one of its shoes.
‘You’re not very good at it,’ she said, taking it from him.
‘What names are your dogs?’ he said.
‘Roger, Dodger and Sammy.’ She leant forward on the table. ‘My mother doesn’t like them.’
‘Why do you have so many?’
‘You need them,’ she said, ‘on a farm like this.’
Bryan examined her more closely; she was glueing down a shape: her tongue protruded, her eyes expanded: she pressed the shape down with the edge of her hand.
‘Do you believe in God?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘What about the Devil?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded.
‘Have they taught you that at Sunday School?’
‘Yes.’
He gazed out of the window; he gazed beyond the rutting pig and the honking geese to the herd of cows across the stream: it was like gazing out from the walls of a castle.
‘Is God in everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘How about the Devil?’
‘He’s in everything, too.’
The clamour of the geese penetrated to the room and a flutter of wings sent up a column of spray on the pond. The pig, which had been joined by several others, nosed against the wicket gate, then, having pushed against it for several seconds, its bright eyes gleaming, it turned away.
‘There doesn’t seem any point in it.’
‘Why not?’
‘What’s the point, if they’re both in everything, in doing anything? It’s all decided.’
He examined the face beside him more intently: the snub-looking nose, the broad cheeks, the wide mouth, which was framed at either end by tiny dimples, the declivity of the chin, the smoothly drawn-back strands of hair which, framing the skull, ran back to the neatly threaded plaits: he gazed to the view beyond the window and, back from the view, once more, to the room.
‘We’ve been give the freedom of choice,’ he said.
‘Why? Why does there have to be a choice?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘It’s pointless,’ she concluded.
‘Don’t you enjoy cutting out these pictures?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What about now?’
A Prodigal Child Page 9