Gentlemen And Players Part 3

What she means is that Pearman overlooked them. I've seen his office - overflowing with neglected paperwork, important files drowning in a sea of unread memos, lost coursework, exercise books, old coffee cups, exam papers, photocopied notes and the intricate little doodles he makes when he's on the phone. My own office may look the same, but at least I know where everything is. Pearman would be completely at sea if Kitty wasn't there to cover up for him.

'How's the new girl?' I asked provocatively.

Sc.o.o.nes huffed. 'Too smart for her own b.l.o.o.d.y good.'

Kitty gave an apologetic smile. 'New ideas,' she explained. 'I'm sure she'll settle down.'

'Pearman thinks the world of her,' said Sc.o.o.nes with a sneer.

'He would.'

Pearman has a lively appreciation of feminine beauty. Rumour has it that Isabelle Tapi would never have been employed at St Oswald's but for the minidress she wore at interview.

Kitty shook her head. 'I'm sure she'll be fine. She's full of ideas.'

'I could tell you what she's full of,' muttered Sc.o.o.nes. 'But she's cheap, isn't she? Before we know it, they'll be replacing all of us with spotty-faced upstarts with ten-a penny degrees. Save a b.l.o.o.d.y fortune.'

I could see that Keane was listening to this; he was grinning as he made his notes. More material for the Great British Novel, I supposed. McDonaugh studied his demons. Robbie Roach nodded with sour approval.

Kitty was conciliatory, as ever. 'Well, we're all having to cut back,' she said. 'Even the textbook budget--'

'Tell me about it!' interrupted Roach. 'History's lost forty per cent, my form-room's a disgrace, there's water coming in through the ceiling, I'm working all hours and what do they do? Blow thirty grand on computers no one wants. What about fixing the roof? What about a paint job on the Middle Corridor? What about that DVD player I've been asking for since G.o.d knows when?'

McDonaugh grunted. 'Chapel needs work too,' he reminded us. 'Have to put school fees up again, that's all. No getting round it this time.'

'The fees won't go up,' said Sc.o.o.nes, forgetting his need for peace and quiet. 'We' d lose half the pupils if we did that. There's other grammar schools, you know. Better than this one, if truth be told.'

'There is a world elsewhere,' I quoted softly.

'I heard there's been some pressure to sell off some of the School's land,' said Roach, draining his coffee cup.

'What, the playing-fields?' Sc.o.o.nes, a staunch rugby man, was shocked.

'Not the rugby pitch,' explained Roach soothingly. 'Just the fields behind the tennis courts. No one uses them any more, except when boys want to sneak off for a f.a.g. They're useless for sports anyway -- always waterlogged. We'd be just as well selling them off for development, or something.'

Development. That sounded ominous. A Tesco's, perhaps, or a Superbowl where the Sunnybankers could go after school for their daily dose of beer and skittles.

'HM won't like that idea,' said McDonaugh drily. 'He doesn't want to go down in history as the man who sold St Oswald's.'

'Perhaps we'll go co-ed,' suggested Roach wistfully. 'Think of it... all those girls in uniform.'

Sc.o.o.nes shuddered. 'Ugh! I'd rather not.'

In the lull that followed, I suddenly became aware of a noise above my head; a stamping of feet, sc.r.a.ping of chairs and raised voices. I looked up.

That your form?'

I shook my head. 'That's the new Beard from Computer Studies. Meek, his name is.'

'Sounds like it,' said Sc.o.o.nes.

The banging and stamping continued, rising to a sudden crescendo, within which I thought I could just make out the dim bleating of Their Master's Voice.

'Perhaps I'd better have a look.'

It's always a bit embarra.s.sing to have to discipline another master's cla.s.s. I wouldn't do it normally - we tend to mind our own business at St Oswald's - but it was my room, and I felt obscurely responsible. I charged up the stairs to the Bell Tower -- not, I suspected, for the last time. Halfway up, I met Dr Devine. 'Is that your cla.s.s in there, making that frightful racket?'

I was offended. 'Of course not,' I huffed. 'That's the rabbit Meek. This is what happens when you try to bring Computer Studies to the ma.s.ses. Anorak frenzy.'

'Well, I hope you're going to deal with it,' said Sourgrape. 'I could hear the noise all the way from the Middle Corridor.'

The nerve of the man. 'Just getting my breath back,' I said with dignity. Those stairs get steeper every year.

Devine sneered. 'If you didn't smoke as much, you'd be able to handle a few stairs.' Then he was off, brisk as ever.

My encounter with Sourgrape didn't do anything to improve my temper. I started on the cla.s.s at once, ignoring the poor rabbit at the master's desk, and was enraged to find some of my own pupils among their number. The floor was littered with paper aeroplanes. A desk had been toppled. Knight was standing by the window, apparently enacting some farce, because the rest of the cla.s.s was in paroxysms of laughter.

As I entered silence fell almost instantly -- I caught a hiss - Quaz! - and Knight attempted - too late - to pull off the gown he had been wearing.

Knight faced me and straightened up at once, looking frightened. As well he might. Caught wearing my gown, in my room, impersonating me -- for there was no doubt as to whom that simian expression and hobbling walk was supposed to represent - he must have been praying for the Underworld to swallow him up.

I have to say I was surprised at Knight - a sly, under confident boy, he was usually happy to let others take the lead while he enjoyed the show. The fact that even he had dared to misbehave said little for Meek's discipline.

'You. Out.' A percussive whisper in these cases is far more effective than a raised voice.

Knight hesitated briefly. 'Sir, it wasn't--'

'Out.'1 Knight fled. I turned on the rest of the group. For a moment I let the silence reverberate between us. No one caught my eye. 'As for the rest of you, if I ever have to come in like this again, if I hear as much as a raised voice coming from this room, I will put you all in after-school detention, culprits, a.s.sociates and tacit supporters alike. Is that clear?'

Heads nodded. Among the faces I saw Allen-Jones and McNair, Sutcliff, Jackson and Anderton-Pullitt. Half my form. I shook my head in disgust. 'I had thought better of you, 3S. I thought you were gentlemen.'

'Sorry, sir,' muttered Allen-Jones, looking fixedly at his desk lid.

'I think it is Mr Meek who should be receiving the apology,' I said.

'Sorry, sir.'

'Sir.'

'Sir.'

Meek was standing very straight on the podium. My over-large desk made him seem even smaller and less significant. His doleful face looked to be all eyes and beard, not so much rabbit as capuchin monkey.

'I - hm - thank you, Mr Straitley. I - think I c-can - hm - m-manage from here now. Boys - ah, hm--'

As I left the room I turned to close the gla.s.s-panelled door behind me. For a second I caught Meek watching me from his perch. He turned away almost instantly, but not soon enough for me to have missed the look on his face.

No doubt about it -- I made an enemy today. A quiet one, but an enemy nevertheless. Later he will come up to me in the Common Room and thank me for my intervention, but no amount of pretence from either of us can hide the fact that he has been humiliated in front of a cla.s.s, and that I was the one to see it happen.

Still, that look startled me. It was as if a secret face had opened up behind the comic little beard and bushbaby eyes; a face of weak but implacable hatred.

2.

I FEEL LIKE A CHILD IN A SWEETSHOP ON POCKET-MONEY DAY.

Where shall I start? Will it be Pearman, or Bishop, or Straitley, or Strange? Or should I begin lower down, with fat Fallow, who took my father's place with such boneless arrogance? That stupid half-wit Jimmy? One of the newbies? The Head himself?

I have to admit that I like the idea. But that would be too easy; besides, I want to strike at the heart of St Oswald's, not the Head. I want to bring it aU down; simply knocking off a few gargoyles won't do. Places like St Oswald's have a habit of coming back to life; wars pa.s.s; scandals fade; even murders are eventually forgotten.

Awaiting inspiration, I think I'll bide my time. I find that I feel the same pleasure in being here that I experienced as a child: that feeling of delicious trespa.s.s. Very little has changed; the new computers sit uneasily on the new plastic desks whilst the names of Old Oswaldians glare down from die Honours Boards. The smell of the place is slightly different - less cabbage and more plastic, less dust and more deodorant - although the Bell Tower (thanks to Straitley) has retained the original formula of mice, chalk and sun warmed trainers.

But the rooms themselves remain the same; and the platforms on which the masters strode like buccaneers on their quarterdecks; and the wooden floors, inked purple with time and polished to a lethal gloss every Friday night. The Common Room is the same with its dilapidated chairs; and the Hall; and the Bell Tower. It is a genteel decrepitude which St Oswald's seems to relish - and, more importantly, whispers tradition to the fee-paying parents.

As a child I felt the weight of that tradition like a physical ache. St Oswald's was so different from Sunnybank Park with its bland cla.s.srooms and abrasive smell. I felt uneasy at Sunnybank; shunned by the other pupils; contemptuous of the teachers, who dressed in jeans and called us by our first names.

I wanted them to call me Snyde as they would have done at St Oswald's; I wanted to wear a uniform and call them 'Sir'. St Oswald's masters still used the cane; by comparison my own school seemed soft and lax. My form-teacher was a woman, Jenny McCauleigh. She was young, easy-going and quite attractive (many of the boys had crushes on her), but all I felt was a deep resentment. There were no women teachers at St Oswald's. Yet again I had been given a second-rate subst.i.tute.

Over months I was bullied; mocked; scorned by staff as well as pupils. My lunch money stolen; my clothes torn; my books thrown on to the floor. Very soon Sunnybank Park became unbearable. I had no need to feign illness; I had flu more often during my first year than I'd ever had in my life before; I suffered from headaches; nightmares; every Monday morning brought an attack of sickness so violent that even my father began to notice.

Once, I remember, I tried to talk to him. It was a Friday night, and he'd decided to stay at home for a change. These evenings in were rare for him, but Pepsi had got a part-time job in a pub in town, I'd been ill with flu again for a while and he'd stayed in and made dinner - nothing special, just boil-in-the-bag and chips, but to me it showed he was making an effort. For once, too, he was mellow; the six-pack of lager half-finished at his side seemed to have taken some of the edge off his perpetual rage. The TV was on - an episode of The Professionals - and we were watching it in a silence that was for a change companionable rather than sullen. The weekend lay ahead - two whole days away from Sunnybank Park - and I too felt mellow, almost content. There were days like that as well, you know; days when I could have almost believed that to be a Snyde was not the end of the world, and when I thought I could see some kind of a light at the end of Sunnybank Park, a time when none of it would really matter. I looked across at my dad and saw him watching me with a curious expression, a bottle held between his thick fingers.

'Can I have some?' I said, emboldened.

He considered the bottle. 'All right,' he said, handing it over. 'No more, mind. I don't want you getting p.i.s.sed.'

I drank, relishing the bitter taste. I'd had lager before, of course; but never with my father's approval. I grinned at him, a nd to my surprise he grinned back, looking quite young for a change, I thought, almost like the boy he must have been once, when he and Mum first met. For the first time really, it crossed my mind that if I'd met him then, I might even have liked that boy as much as she had - that big, soft, skylarking boy - that he and I could perhaps have been friends.

'We do all right without her, kid, don't we?' said my father, and I felt a jolt of astonishment in the pit of my stomach. He'd read my mind.

'I know it's been tough,' he said. 'Your mum and all that - and now that new school. Bet it's taken some getting used to, eh, kid?'

I nodded, hardly daring to hope.

'Them headaches, and all that. Them sick notes. You been having trouble at school? Is that it? Other kids been messing you about?'

Once more I nodded. Now, I knew, he would turn away. My father despised cowards. Hit first and hit fast was his personal mantra, along with The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and Sticks and stones may break my bones. But this time he didn't turn away. Instead he looked straight at me and said, 'Don't worry, kid. I'll sort it. I promise.'

Now it bloomed, appalling, in my heart. The relief; the hope; the beginnings of joy. My father had guessed. My father had understood. He had promised to sort it. I had a sudden, astonishing vision of him striding up to the gates of Sunnybank Park, my father, eighteen feet tall and splendid in his rage and purpose. I saw him walking up to my princ.i.p.al tormentors and bashing their heads together; running up to Mr Bray, the Games teacher, and knocking him down; best and most delightful of all, facing up to Miss McCauleigh, my form-teacher, and saying, 'You can stuff yer b.l.o.o.d.y school, dearie -- we've found somewhere else.'

Dad was still watching me with that happy smile on his face. 'You might not think it, kid, but I've been through it, just like you. Bullies, bigger lads, they're always out there, always ready to give it a try. I wasn't that big when I was a kid, either; I didn't have many friends at first. Believe it or not, I know how you feel. And I know what to do about it, an'all.'

I can still remember that moment now. That blissful feeling of confidence, of order re-established. In that instant I was six years old again, a trusting child, secure in the knowledge that Dad Knows Best. 'What?' I said, almost inaudibly.

My father winked. 'Karate lessons.'

'Karate lessons?'

'Right. Kung Fu, Bruce Lee, all that? I know a bloke, see him down the pub from time to time. Runs a cla.s.s on Sat.u.r.day mornings. Ah, come on kid,' he said, seeing my expression. 'Couple of weeks of karate lessons and you'll be right as rain. Hit first and hit fast. Don't take any s.h.i.t from anyone.'

I stared at him, unable to speak. I remember the bottle of beer in my hand, its cold sweat; on screen, Bodie and Doyle were taking s.h.i.t from no one. Opposite me on the sofa, John Snyde was still watching with gleeful antic.i.p.ation, as if awaiting my inevitable reaction of pleasure and grat.i.tude. So this was his wonderful solution, was it? Karate lessons. From a man down the pub. If my heart had not been breaking, I might have laughed aloud. I could see it now, that Sat.u.r.day cla.s.s; two dozen toughs from the council estate, weaned on Street Fighter and Kick Boxer 11 - with luck I might even run across a few of my princ.i.p.al tormentors from Sunnybank Park, give them the chance to beat me up in an entirely different environment.

'Well?' said my father. He was still grinning, and without much effort I could still see the boy he'd been; the slow learner; the bully-in-waiting. He was so absurdly pleased with himself, and so very far from the truth, that I felt, not contempt or anger as I'd expected, but a deep, unchildish sorrow.

'Yeah, OK,' I said at last.

'Told you I'd figure something out, didn't I, eh?'

I nodded, tasting bitterness.

'C'm'ere, kid, give yer old dad a hug.'

And I did, still with that taste at the back of my throat, smelling his cigarettes and his sweat and his beery breath and the mothball smell of his woolly jumper; and as I closed my eyes I thought to myself-- 1 am alone.

Surprisingly enough, it didn't hurt as much as I'd expected. We went back to The Professionals after that, and for a while I pretended to go to the karate lessons, at least until my father's attention turned elsewhere.

Months pa.s.sed, and my life at Sunnybank Park settled into a dismal routine. I coped with it as best I could -- mostly, increasingly, with avoidance. At lunch-times I would play truant and lurk in the grounds of St Oswald's. In the evenings I would run back to watch after-school games fixtures or to spy through the windows. Sometimes I even entered the buildings during school hours. I knew every hiding-place there was; I could always go unseen or, wearing a uniform pieced together from lost or pilfered items, in a corridor I could even pa.s.s for a pupil.

Over months I grew bolder. I joined the crowd at a school Sports Day, wearing an overlarge House singlet stolen from a locker on the Upper Corridor. I lost myself in the general mill and, emboldened by my success, even crashed a Lower School 800-metre race, presenting myself as a first-year from Amadeus House. I'll never forget how the boys cheered when I crossed the finishing-line, or the way the Duty Master -- it was Pat Bishop, younger then; athletic in his running shorts and school sweatshirt scruffed my cropped hair and said: Well done, lad, two House points and report for the Team on Monday!

Of course, I knew that there could be no question of my joining a team. I was tempted, but even I didn't dare go as far as that. My visits to St Oswald's were already as frequent as I could make them, and although my face was nondescript to the point of invisibility, I knew that if I wasn't careful I would one day be recognized.

But it was an addiction; as time pa.s.sed I ran greater risks. I went into School at Break and bought sweets from the tuck-shop. I watched football matches, waving my St Oswald's scarf against supporters of the rival school. I sat in the shadow of the cricket pavilion, a perpetual Twelfth Man. I even joined the yearly full-School photograph, tucking myself into a corner among the new first-years.

In my second year I found a way to visit the School during lesson-time, missing my own Games period to do so. It was easy; on Monday afternoons we always had a five mile cross-country run, which took us right around St Oswald's playing-fields and back in a wide loop to our own school. The other pupils hated it. It was as if the grounds themselves were an insult to them, provoking jeers and catcalls. Sometimes graffiti appeared on the brick walls of the perimeter after their pa.s.sage, and I felt a fierce and penetrating shame that anyone watching us might imagine that I had been among those responsible. Then I discovered that if I hid behind a bush until the others had pa.s.sed I could quite easily double back across the fields, thereby giving myself an entire free afternoon at St Oswald's.

At first I was careful; I hid in the grounds and timed the arrival of the Games cla.s.s. I planned things meticulously. I had a good two hours before most of the runners arrived back at the school gates. It would be easy enough to change back into my kit and rejoin the tail of the group unnoticed.

Two teachers accompanied us -- one in front, one at the back. Mr Bray was a failed sportsman of colossal vanity and bludgeoning wit, who favoured athletic boys and pretty girls and held everyone else in utter contempt. Miss Potts was a student teacher, usually to be found at the tail of the group, holding court -- she called it 'counselling' -- to a little clique of admiring girls. Neither paid much attention to me; neither would notice my absence.

I hid my stolen St Oswald's uniform - grey jumper, grey trousers, school tie, navy blazer (with the School crest and the motto -- Audere, agere, auferre -- st.i.tched across the pocket in gold) - under the steps of the Games Pavilion and changed there. No one saw me - St Oswald's Games afternoons were on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so I would not be disturbed. And as long as I was back for the end of my own school day, my absence would remain unnoticed.

At first the novelty of being in the School during lesson time was enough. Unquestioned, I walked down the corridors. Some cla.s.ses were uproarious. Others were eerily silent. I peered through gla.s.s panels at heads bent over their desks; at paper darts thrown surrept.i.tiously behind a master's back; at notes pa.s.sed in secret. I put my ear to closed doors and locked studies.

But my favourite haunt was the Bell Tower. A warren of little rooms, most rarely used - boxrooms, pigeon lofts, storage cupboards - with two teaching rooms, one large, one small, both belonging to the Cla.s.sics department, and a rickety stone balcony from which 1 could gain access to the roof and lie there unseen on the warm slates, listening to the drone of voices from the open windows along the Middle Corridor and making notes in my stolen exercise books. In that way I furtively followed a number of Mr Straitley's first-year Latin lessons; Mr Bishop's second-form Physics; Mr Langdon's History of Art. I read Lord of the Flies with Bob Strange's third form and even handed in a couple of essays to his Middle Corridor pigeon-hole (I collected them in secret the next day from Strange's locker, marked, graded, and with the word NAME?? scrawled across the top in red pen). At last, I thought, I'd found my place. It was a lonely place, but that didn't matter. St Oswald's - and all its treasures - were at my disposal. What else could I want?

Then I met Leon. And everything changed.

It was a dreamy, sunny late spring day - one of those days when I loved St Oswald's with a violent pa.s.sion no mere pupil could have hoped to duplicate -- and I was feeling unusually bold. Since our first encounter, my one-sided war against the School had gone through many stages. Hatred; admiration; anger; pursuit. That spring, though, we had reached a kind of truce. As I rejected Sunnybank Park I had begun to feel that St Oswald's was coming to accept me, slowly; my movement through its veins no longer that of an invader, but almost a friend -- like an inoculation of some apparently toxic material that later turns out to be of use.

Of course I was still angry at the unfairness of it; at the fees that my father could never have afforded; at the fact that, fees or not, I could never hope to be accepted. But in spite of that, we had a relationship. A benign symbiosis, perhaps, like the shark and the lamprey. I began to understand that I need not be a parasite; I could let St Oswald's use me as I used it. Lately I had begun to keep records of things to be done around the School; cracked panes, loose tiles, damaged desks. I copied the details into the Repairs Book in the Porter's Lodge, signing them with the initials of various teachers to avoid suspicion. Dutifully, my father dealt with them; and I felt proud that in a small way I too had made a difference; St Oswald's thanked me; I was approved.

It was a Monday. I had been wandering along the Middle Corridor, listening at doors. My afternoon Latin cla.s.s was over and I was considering going to the library, or the art block, and mingling with the study-period boys there. Or perhaps I could go to the Refectory - the kitchen staff would have gone by then -- and sneak some of the biscuits left out for the teachers' after-school meeting.