A brandy, I think. For Harry Clarke. And another for myself.
I don’t suppose I shall sleep tonight. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind, with the Honours Boards, and the pigeon-holes, and Gunderson, for whom I shall draft a letter – a sharply worded letter, I think, pointing out the fact that when parents are incapable of curbing their son’s bullying tendencies, we of the Old Guard are forced to invoke the time-honoured rule – in loco parentis. What happens in School should stay in School. Isn’t that what they pay us for?
And as for the Head – whose toxic interference in every aspect of School life has become far too disturbing to be dispelled by a podex joke, a Liquorice Allsort or a Gauloise – I find myself, for the first time, considering our erstwhile Mole with something approaching sympathy. The interloper within our walls knew how to bring down a citadel with nothing but guile and a handful of stones – and tonight, as I drink my brandy, I wonder where that Mole is now. Gone to ground? In prison? Dead? Watching our decline from afar?
This Head fails, the School goes down.
At least, the Chaplain thinks so. But Caesar was killed to save Rome from his monstrous ambition. And now, for the first time, I think I can see why a loyal son of St Oswald’s might contemplate that treachery, and I wondered if, in our Senate, there might perhaps be a Brutus to Johnny Harrington’s Caesar.
12
Michaelmas Term, 1981
Dear Mousey,
It’s been a week since Poodle confessed to me about his Condition. Since then, he hasn’t been looking too good. People have started to notice. In Poodle’s case, it didn’t take long for those telltale signs to reveal themselves. Besides, he has a history. And history always repeats itself.
No, not like my history. Something from his junior school, involving a local boy from the estate. Nothing much, just show-and-tell. But Poodle’s mother went crazy. Not so much because her boy was doing the dirty round the back of the bike sheds, but because of the other boy; a boy who wasn’t One of Us. That’s why his little secret could never stay a secret for long. And now this thing with the magazines and the hidey-hole by the clay pits, which everyone knows is a meeting place for perverts and drunks and scum of all kinds, as well as boys from Abbey Road, the technical school on the estate, which has bars on the windows and pebble-dashed mobile classrooms all around the central building, like calves around a concrete cow.
That’s why they sent Poodle to Middle School instead of starting St Oswald’s. They thought that the healing presence of girls would cure whatever was wrong with him. And of course they prayed – well, everyone prayed – so that when the trouble died down at last (or Poodle learnt to control himself), he could make a fresh start as a Seventh Term Boy, all neat and clean and virginal.
That was the idea, at least. But now, with the start of Advent, it’s open season on demons. We’ve had some new faces in Church recently, with lots of visiting speakers. Mr Speight is one of them. He’s very big on demons. He gave a talk on Dungeons & Dragons, that American role-playing game, and how it preys on the weak-minded and encourages boys to use magic and to conjure Satan in their hearts. Then there was the speaker who was cured of homosexual thoughts by fasting and electricity; a woman whose son was lured away from her by the gay community; and this Sunday, a preacher from one of our sister churches in America, who brought a ton of leaflets directing parents how to deal with sons who might be having gay thoughts, and who wore yellow cowboy boots and a T-shirt that said KICK OUT THE SIN, LET JESUS IN!
That was a good one, actually. We got chocolate brownies. And all the time, Poodle was looking at me, like I was the one who had done something wrong. Which is unfair, don’t you think? It’s not my fault he has gay thoughts. I’m not the one who should feel guilty.
Afterwards he came up to me. We were having brownies and squash. Goldie was talking to Mr Speight in the little chapel. ‘You told, didn’t you?’ he said, making sure no one else heard.
‘No I didn’t,’ I said (it was true).
‘So how come everyone’s suddenly talking about it?’ He glared at me. ‘Coincidence?’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t be paranoid. No one’s mentioned you – yet.’
Poodle pulled a face. ‘They will. My mum’s been going through my things. My dad’s been asking questions. It’s not like they’re subtle, or anything.’
‘So? You just deny it.’ I didn’t see why he needed to tell. He could have lied, even to me. But Poodle isn’t like that. He always ends up confessing things. So far, he hasn’t spoken out about his Condition to anyone else. But his complexion speaks for itself, as does his greasy hair and the fact that for the past few lunchtimes he’s been hiding out in the library and not eating anything—
He says it’s a stomach bug. I know it’s not. It’s a cancer, eating away at him. And he hates himself. The more he talks about it, the more you realize that. He thinks his Condition is something that he can put aside, not think about, not deal with. He thinks he deserves to be punished, and so he pinches and slaps himself. I’ve seen him doing it, when he thinks that nobody’s looking. And the other day in Games, there was a row of sticking plasters up his arm. Well, Mousey, you know what that means.
‘I think I can help,’ I told him.
He looked at me with hopeful-dog eyes.
‘But only if you want to be cured,’ I said. ‘I mean it. This is serious.’
Poodle nodded eagerly.
‘Plus you can’t tell anyone. Not your parents, or Straitley—’
‘I’d never talk to Straitley, Zig.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll give it a try. Meet at the clay pits this afternoon. Four o’clock. Tell Goldie to come. And tell him not to tell anyone.’
By four o’clock it was nearly dark. I’d been there for almost an hour. That’s how long it takes, realistically, for the rats to start to come out. There are rats by the clay pits. There’s always something to scavenge. Leftover sandwiches. Dead things. Stuff that people have dumped there. I’d brought some bait. Not cheese, though. That only works for cartoon mice. Rats like meat. I brought dog food. Dog food always worked before.
The trap was simple. I made it myself. Chicken wire on a frame, with a door that slides open and shut. You put the food inside. You loop a piece of fishing-line through the top of the door. You pull the door up, using the fishing-line. You practise pulling the door up, then letting it drop. You do it a few times, to get it right. Rats are pretty clever. If you miss, they’ll never come back. Then you run your piece of line somewhere quiet and out of the way. Like an old abandoned car. Then you wait for Ratty.
Ratty must have been hungry today. I got him in twenty minutes. Of course, rats get hungry in winter. Or maybe I’ve just had practice. Anyway, there he was in the cage, a young rat, brown, with long whiskers, sniffing anxiously at the food. You could tell he wanted to eat it. But he was worried about the cage, and the fact that the door was shut. I went to have a look at him. He looked back at me nervously. I could see him wringing his paws. Yes, I thought. He’d do nicely.
At four o’clock Goldie arrived, with Poodle trailing after him. I’d been sitting in Poodle’s den, wrapped in my duffel coat to keep warm. I’d brought my Bible and found the right place. I’d left the cage, with Ratty inside, at the back of the old car. When Poodle saw it, his eyes went round.
‘What’s that?’
‘What do you think?’
In his cage, Ratty was still wringing his paws and sniffing at the wire.
Goldie came closer. ‘Why’ve you got a rat?’ he said.
I said: ‘I’ll tell you later. First of all, Poodle’s got something to say.’
Poodle looked at me. ‘What?’ he said.
‘I promised I wouldn’t tell,’ I said. ‘But for us to help you, you have to come clean. It’s like what Mr Clarke says. All you need is courage.’
Poodle’s eyes went even rounder. He shook his head.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You want to be cured, don�
��t you?’
‘Ziggy, you’re crazy,’ said Poodle. ‘How’s a rat going to cure me?’
I opened my Bible and read from it. ‘And they came over to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ said Poodle.
I went on. ‘And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.’
‘It isn’t like that,’ said Poodle.
I looked at the flooded clay pits, the broken-down cars, the dead TVs and the hills of junk. ‘Isn’t this the wilderness?’ I said. ‘Isn’t this the mountains and the tombs?’
Poodle didn’t say anything. I told him, ‘Go on. Roll up your sleeves.’
He shook his head. I grabbed his arm. Pushed up the sleeve of his parka. There they were again, like I’d seen, the ladder of pink sticking plasters going up his wrist and arm all the way to the elbow.
I shrugged and looked at Goldie. ‘Well?’
Goldie looked uncertain.
‘Look, it’s in the Bible,’ I said. ‘The wages of sin is death. Right?’
Goldie nodded. Poodle, too.
‘And being queer is a sin. Right?’
Poodle made a strangled sound.
‘That’s why we need a sacrifice. To wash the sin away,’ I said. ‘It’s all in the Bible. The blood of the Lamb. He gave his life, that we might live.’
I ended up doing most of the work. Goldie said the words, though; I wasn’t going to let him off without even a speaking part. Poodle cried a bit when I made him put his hand in the cage, but as I explained, we needed him to make contact. And Goldie was always a talker; just like his preacher father, in fact: and once I’d explained what was needed, he managed to come up with the goods.
‘This man has been infected with the demon of homosexuality. Get thee hence, foul demon; enter into the soul of this rat and leave Thy humble servant alone.’
By then, Poodle was crying a lot. I guessed it must be the demons. Or maybe it was just relief; the relief of sharing the burden; of having someone take it away. I know what that feels like, Mousey. Don’t you? It’s good to confess to someone, even if they’re already dead. Especially if they’re already dead – that way, no one gets to tell tales.
Then I drowned the rat in its cage.
Well, it worked for the Gadarene.
PART THREE
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
(VEGETIUS)
1
September 15th, 2005
A term at St Oswald’s, like a good book, takes some time to reach full velocity. Like the Juggernaut, it rolls; slowly at first, but inexorably over the days and weeks of the year, usually reaching cruising speed at around the third week of the Michaelmas term, when the terrain starts to get rocky.
I suspect that this term, that moment has arrived sooner than usual. Already, the New Head has introduced certain elements that may prove most disruptive to me – not least, the arrival yesterday of the first of my Mulberry girls.
I am fortunate, I suppose. I have only a handful of girls, all of them Sixth-Form students. They arrived in room 59 just before the beginning of Period 2, accompanied by Miss Lambert, the Headmistress of Mulberry House, and a strong scent of something both musky and sugary, like civet cats in a sweet shop.
Providentially, I was free during Period 1 that day. I dread to think of the disruptive effect on a class of Middle School boys of the arrival of a phalanx of Mulberry girls – out of uniform, of course (their Sixth Form doesn’t have one), and exhibiting all the sartorial subtlety of an evening in Bangkok. Miss Lambert herself – a blonde, by choice – was wearing a shocking-pink tweed ensemble with a very short skirt and very high heels, plus an Aztec abundance of jewellery.
‘Girls, this is Roy Straitley,’ she said, as if introducing some interesting museum exhibit, previously encountered only in books.
Then, turning to me, she said: ‘I thought I’d introduce the girls myself. They’re such fun, aren’t you, girls? This is Frankie, Helena, Chanelle, Angelina, Paris and Ben. Ben’s real name is Benedicta, but she’d rather be called Ben, wouldn’t you, dear?’ She gave me a smile, half-lipstick, half-teeth. ‘All my girls use given names as soon as they enter the Sixth Form. It gives them a sense of community. And they call me Jo, don’t you, girls?’
The girls acquiesced, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Miss Lambert sets the house style among the girls of Mulberry House. A Mulberry girl, as she often says, is confident; ambitious; up-to-date and popular. From what I could see, they were also rather on the flashy side, long-legged and short-skirted, with the exception of the one she’d called Ben, a small-featured, vaguely mousey girl, who looked embarrassed to be there.
‘Now I’ll leave you in Roy’s capable hands,’ announced Miss Lambert to the girls. ‘The rest of the class should be here before long. Now remember what I said. Know your place. Which is, of course, at the top of the class, looking down at all those boys.’
At which she made her exit, amid sycophantic laughter from the girls (except for the one she’d called Ben, whom I was rather beginning to like), leaving me to explain to them that while I occupy the Bell Tower, I shall remain Mr Straitley, regardless of how forbidding that seems to girls who call their Headmistress Jo.
The rest of the lesson, I’m afraid, was spent in trying to reconcile my own methodology (tried and tested over thirty-four years at St Oswald’s) with that of girls who, since their first year at Mulberry House, have been trained to believe that Latin is fun, and should include as little actual work (such as grammar, prose translation or literature) as possible. The three boys in my Lower Sixth who have opted for Latin this year were rendered speechless by the fact that the Mulberry girls had spent most of last year watching films, rather than learning the language. I myself have grave doubts as to the historical authenticity of such cinematic treats as Gladiator, but apparently the mistress hitherto responsible for teaching Classics at Mulberry House is in fact a history specialist – with the result that Classics became Classical Studies, a combination subject in the form of coursework modules, chosen by the girls themselves.
Most of them seem to have chosen some aspect of Roman fashion, with the exception of the girl Benedicta, who – rather defiantly, it seems – decided to study Cicero.
In other news, Devine’s new man, Markowicz, has finally arrived. A Suit, as I’d expected. Apparently he wasn’t here at the very beginning of term because he was teaching some kind of course on new methods of using IT in Languages. A sandy individual with eyes of a curious, grapey green, he wears the same silk ties as Devine, drinks from the School china like Devine and speaks the same language as Devine – that is, the dialect of bureaucracy, customer satisfaction and general smugness.
Devine is delighted, of course. It’s like having a bonsai version of himself.
‘I thought it was supposed to be bad luck to meet your Doppelgänger,’ I said.
‘You mean young Markowicz?’ He smiled. ‘I think he’ll shape up perfectly.’ He glanced through the frosted glass of the door right opposite his office, where Markowicz happened to be teaching a class of first-years. I’m not sure what was happening in there, but whatever it was, it was noisy. I said as much to Dr Devine, who just smiled again in that supercilious way and said:
‘Yes, a refreshingly modern approach. I wouldn’t expect you to know anything about that, Straitley.’
‘Stercus accidit, Devine,’ I said, without much enthusiasm. Since Devine revealed his secret knowledge of my saltier Latin phrases, insulting him has become less amusing.
I retreated to room 59, that bastion of civilization. Even so, I could still hear Markowicz and his German class, apparently re-enacting the rise and fall of the Third Reich.
I took a Liquorice Allsort and tried not to care about the noise. Discipline within the German Departme
nt falls to Devine to enforce. Whatever the provocation, I knew that I could not intervene, not without breaching etiquette. Still, if the new man can’t handle a first-form German class without having to resort to glove puppets and juggling, just think what he’ll be like with my 4S.
As for the two new additions to the French staff – only time will tell, I suspect. Miss Smiley, a wispy blonde, seems to have only Lower School boys, which accounts for her nursery manner in class – I’ve heard her bleating through the wall. Miss Malone is more of a foghorn, better suited to cutting through the riotous Friday afternoons, but I’m beginning to suspect that she may be all noise and no substance. In any case, the Foghorn was ringing out all today from various parts of the Upper Corridor, and by the end of School she seemed all too eager to leave the premises. The fact is that, although our boys are generally sound, they are also unusually spirited. Their values – such as they are – instilled by many years of rebelling against the management, are more on the lines of questioning authority than submitting to the yoke. This is why St Oswald’s boys go on to achieve so many diverse and impressive things, but to teachers like the Foghorn they do present a challenge. From this afternoon’s performance, I suspect that my 4S have found themselves a new toy.
As for Johnny Harrington—
I never liked him as a boy, and as an adult, even less. But I never imagined that even he could be as callous as to deny Harry Clarke his dying wish – to rest in peace in the place he’d loved most—
The Chaplain had warned me to let it go. To rake up that old business again would only harm St Oswald’s. I knew that, of course. I knew he was right. And yet I couldn’t take his advice. I couldn’t let Harrington win again. Harry deserved better than that. And so, at the end of School today, I went to see the Headmaster.
I found his office door shut, in spite of his having promised us that it would always be open. Danielle, who forms the first line of defence between the Headmaster and the outside world, looked at me with sympathy.
Different Class Page 13