Gentlemen and Players

1

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

Monday, 6th September, Michaelmas Term

That’s ninety-nine by my reckoning, smelling of wood and old chalk dust and disinfectant and the incomprehensibly biscuity, hamsterish smell of boys. Ninety-nine terms strung across the years like dusty paper lanterns. Thirty-three years. It’s like a prison sentence. Reminds me of the old joke about the pensioner convicted of murder.

“Thirty years, Your Honor,” he protests. “It’s too much! I’ll never manage it!” And the judge says: “Well, just do as many as you can. . . .”

Come to think of it, that’s not funny. I’ll be sixty-five in November.

Not that it matters. There’s no compulsory retirement at St. Oswald’s. We follow our own rules. We always have. One more term, and I’ll have scored my Century. One for the Honors Board at last. I can see it now; in Gothic script: Roy Hubert Straitley (B.A.) Old Centurion of the School.

I have to laugh. I never imagined I’d end up here. I finished a ten-year stretch at St. Oswald’s in 1954, and the last thing I expected then was to find myself there again—a Master, of all things—keeping order, doling out lines and detentions. But to my surprise I found that those years had given me a sort of natural insight into the teaching business. By now there isn’t a trick I don’t know. After all, I’ve played most of them myself; man, boy, and somewhere in between. And here I am again, back at St. Oswald’s for another term. You’d think I couldn’t keep away.

I light a Gauloise; my one concession to the influence of the Modern Languages. Technically, of course, it’s not allowed; but today, in the privacy of my own form room, no one’s likely to pay very much attention. Today is traditionally free of boys and reserved for administrative matters; the counting of textbooks; allocation of stationery; last-minute revisions to the timetable; collection of form and set lists; induction of new staff; departmental meetings.

I am, of course, a department in myself. Once Head of Classics, in charge of a thriving section of respectful menials, now relegated to a dusty corner of the new Languages section, like a rather dull first edition no one quite dares to throw away.

All my rats have abandoned ship—apart from the boys, that is. I still teach a full timetable, to the bafflement of Mr. Strange—the Third Master, who considers Latin irrelevant—and to the covert embarrassment of the New Head. Still, the boys continue to opt for my irrelevant subject, and their results remain on the whole rather good. I like to think it’s my personal charisma that does it.

Not that I’m not very fond of my colleagues in Modern Languages, though I do have more in common with the subversive Gauls than with the humorless Teutons. There’s Pearman, the Head of French—round, cheery, occasionally brilliant, but hopelessly disorganized—and Kitty Teague, who sometimes shares her lunchtime biscuits with me over a cup of tea, and Eric Scoones, a sprightly half-Centurion (also an Old Boy) of sixty-two who, when the mood takes him, has an uncanny recollection for some of the more extreme exploits of my distant youth.

Then there’s Isabelle Tapi, decorative but rather useless in a leggy, Gallic sort of way, the subject of a good deal of admiring graffiti from the locker-room fantasy set. All in all a rather jolly department, whose members tolerate my eccentricities with commendable patience and good humor, and who seldom interfere with my unconventional methods.

The Germans are less congenial on the whole; Geoff and Penny (“League of”) Nations, a mixed double-act with designs on my form room; Gerry Grachvogel, a well-meaning ass with a predilection for flash cards, and finally, Dr. “Sourgrape” Devine, Head of the Department and a staunch believer in the further expansion of the Great Empire, who sees me as a subversive and a pupil poacher, has no interest in Classics, and who doubtless thinks carpe diem means “fish of the day.”

He has a habit of passing my room with feigned briskness whilst peering suspiciously through the glass, as if to check for signs of immoral conduct, and I know that today of all days it will only be a matter of time before I behold his joyless countenance looking in on me.

Ah. What did I tell you?

Right on cue.

“Morning, Devine!”

I suppressed the urge to salute, whilst concealing my half-smoked Gauloise under the desk, and gave him my broadest smile through the glass door. I noticed he was carrying a large cardboard box piled high with books and papers. He looked at me with what I later knew to be ill-concealed smugness, then moved on down the corridor with the air of one who has important matters to attend to.

Curiously, I got up and looked down the corridor after him, just in time to see Gerry Grachvogel and the League of Nations disappearing furtively in his wake, all carrying similar cartons.

Puzzled, I sat down at my old desk and surveyed my modest empire.

Room fifty-nine, my territory for the last thirty years. Oft disputed but never surrendered. Now only the Germans continue to try. It’s a large room, nice in its way, I suppose, though its elevated position in the Bell Tower gives me more stairs to climb than I would have chosen, and it lies about half a mile as the crow flies from my small office on the Upper Corridor.

You’ll have noticed that as over time dogs and their owners come to resemble each other, so it is with teachers and classrooms. Mine fits me like my old tweed jacket, and smells almost the same—a comforting compound of books, chalk, and illicit cigarettes. A large and venerable blackboard dominates the room—Dr. Devine’s endeavors to introduce the term “chalkboard” having, I’m happy to report, met with no success whatever. The desks are ancient and battle scarred, and I have resisted all attempts to have them replaced by the ubiquitous plastic tables.

If I get bored, I can always read the graffiti. A flattering amount of it concerns me. My current favorite is Hic magister podex est, written—by some boy or other—oh, more years ago than I like to remember. When I was a boy no one would have dared to refer to a Master as a podex. Disgraceful. And yet for some reason it never fails to make me smile.

My own desk is no less disgraceful; a huge time-blackened affair with fathomless drawers and multiple inscriptions. It sits on an elevated podium—originally built to allow a shorter Classics Master access to the blackboard—and from this quarterdeck I can look down benevolently upon my minions and work on the Times crossword without being noticed.

There are mice living behind the lockers. I know this because on Friday afternoons they troop out and sniff around under the radiator pipes while the boys do their weekly vocabulary test. I don’t complain; I rather like the mice. The Old Head once tried poison, but only once; the stench of dead mouse is far more noxious than anything living could ever hope to generate, and it endured for weeks until finally John Snyde, who was Head Porter at the time, had to be called in to tear out the skirting boards and remove the pungent dead.

Since then the mice and I have enjoyed a comfortable live-and-let-live approach. If only the Germans could do the same.

I looked up from my reverie to see Dr. Devine passing the room again, with his entourage. He tapped his wrist insistently, as if to indicate the time. Ten-thirty. Ah. Of course. Staff meeting. Reluctantly I conceded the point, flicked my cigarette stub into the wastepaper basket, and ambled off to the Common Room, pausing only to collect the battered gown hanging on a hook by the stock-cupboard door.

The Old Head always insisted on gowns for formal occasions. Nowadays I’m virtually the only one who still wears them to meetings, though most of us do on Speech Day. The parents like it. Gives them a sense of tradition. I like it because it provides good camouflage and saves on suits.

Gerry Grachvogel was locking his door as I came out. “Oh. Hello, Roy.” He gave me a more than usually nervous smile. He is a lanky young man, with good intentions and poor classroom control. As the door closed I saw a pile of flat-packed cardboard boxes propped up against the wall.

“Busy day today?” I asked him, indicating the boxes. “What is it? Invading Poland?”

Gerry twitched. “No, ah—just moving a few things around. Ah—to the new departmental office.”

I regarded him closely. There was an ominous ring to that phrase. “What new departmental office?”

“Ah—sorry. Must get along. Headmaster’s briefing. Can’t be late.”

That’s a joke. Gerry’s late to everything. “What new office? Has someone died?”

“Ah—sorry, Roy. Catch you later.” And he was off like a homing pigeon for the Common Room. I pulled on my gown and followed him at a more dignified pace, perplexed and heavy with foreboding.

I reached the Common Room just in time. The New Head was arriving, with Pat Bishop, the Second Master, and Bishop’s secretary, Marlene, an ex-parent who joined us when her son died. The New Head is brittle, elegant, and slightly sinister, like Christopher Lee in Dracula. The Old Head was foul-tempered, overbearing, rude, and opinionated; exactly what I enjoy most in a Headmaster. Fifteen years after his departure, I still miss him.

On my way to my seat I stopped to pour myself a mug of tea from the urn. I noticed with approval that although the Common Room was crowded and that some of the younger members of staff were standing, my own seat had not been taken. Third from the window, just under the clock. I balanced the mug on my knees as I sank into the cushions, noticing as I did that my chair seemed rather a tight fit.

I think I may have put on a few pounds during the holidays.

“Hem-hem.” A dry little cough from the New Head, which most of us ignored. Marlene—fiftyish, divorced, ice blond hair and Wagnerian presence—caught my eye and frowned. Sensing her disapproval, the Common Room settled down. It’s no secret, of course, that Marlene runs the place. The New Head is the only one who hasn’t noticed.

“Welcome back, all of you.” That was Pat Bishop, generally acknowledged to be the human face of the school. Big, cheery, still absurdly youthful at fifty-five, he retains the broken-nosed and ruddy charm of an oversized schoolboy. He’s a good man, though. Kind, hardworking, fiercely loyal to the school where he too was once a pupil—but not overly bright, in spite of his Oxford education. A man of action, our Pat, of compassion, not of intellect; better suited to classroom and rugby pitch than to management committee and governors’ meeting. We don’t hold that against him, however. There is more than enough intelligence in St. Oswald’s; what we really need is more of Bishop’s type of humanity.

“Hem-hem.” The Head again. It comes as no surprise that there is tension between them. Bishop, being Bishop, tries hard to ensure that this does not show. However, his popularity with both boys and staff has always been irksome to the New Head, whose social graces are less than obvious. “Hem-hem!”

Bishop’s color, always high, deepened a little. Marlene, who has been devoted to Pat (secretly, she thinks) for the past fifteen years, looked annoyed.

Oblivious, the Head stepped forward. “Item one: fund-raising for the new Games Pavilion. It has been decided to create a second administrative post to deal with the issue of fund-raising. The successful candidate will be chosen from a short list of six applicants and will be awarded the title of Executive Public Relations Officer in Charge of . . .”

I managed to tune out most of what followed, leaving the comforting drone of the New Head’s voice sermonizing in the background. The usual litany, I expect; lack of funds, the ritual postmortem of last summer’s results, the inevitable New Scheme for pupil recruitment, another attempt to impose computer literacy on all teaching staff, an optimistic-sounding proposal from the girls’ school for a joint venture, a proposed (and much-dreaded) school inspection in December, a brief indictment of government policy, a little moan about classroom discipline and personal appearance (at this point Sourgrape Devine gave me a sharp look), and the ongoing litigations (three to date, not bad for September).

I passed the time looking around for new faces. I was expecting to see some this term; a few old lags finally threw in the towel last summer and I suppose they’ll have to be replaced. Kitty Teague gave me a wink as I caught her eye.

“Item eleven. Re-allocation of form rooms and offices. Due to the renumbering of rooms following the completion of the new Computer Science Suite . . .”

Ah-ha. A fresher. You can usually spot them, you know, by the way they stand. Rigidly to attention, like army cadets. And the suits of course, always newly pressed and virgin of chalk dust. Not that that lasts long; chalk dust is a perfidious substance, which persists even in those politically correct areas of the school where the blackboard—and his smug cousin, the chalkboard—have both been abolished.

The fresher was standing by the computer scientists. A bad sign. At St. Oswald’s all computer scientists are bearded; it’s the rule. Except for the Head of Section, Mr. Beard, who, in halfhearted defiance of convention, has only a small mustache.

“. . . As a result, rooms twenty-four to thirty-six will be renumbered as rooms one hundred fourteen to one hundred twenty-six inclusive, room fifty-nine will be known as room seventy-five, and room seventy-five, the defunct Classics office, will be re-allocated as the German Departmental Workroom.”

“What?” Another advantage of wearing gowns to staff meetings; the contents of a mug of tea, intemperately jerked across the lap, barely leave a mark. “Headmaster, I believe you may have misread that last item. The Classics office is still in use. It is most certainly not defunct. And neither am I,” I added sotto voce, with a glare at the Germans.

The New Head gave me his chilly glance. “Mr. Straitley,” he said, “all these administrative matters have already been discussed at last term’s staff meeting, and any points you wanted to make should have been raised then.”

I could see the Germans watching me. Gerry—a poor liar—had the grace to look sheepish.

I addressed Dr. Devine. “You know perfectly well I wasn’t at that meeting. I was supervising exams.”

Sourgrape smirked. “I e-mailed the minutes to you myself.”

“You know damn well I don’t do e-mail!”

The Head looked chillier than ever. He himself likes technology (or so he purports); prides himself on being up-to-date. I blame Bob Strange, the Third Master, who has made it clear that there is no room in today’s educational system for the computer illiterate, and Mr. Beard, who has helped him to create a system of internal communication of such intricacy and elegance that it has completely overridden the spoken word. Thus, anyone in any office may contact anyone else in any other office without all that unfortunate business of standing up, opening the door, walking down the corridor, and actually talking to somebody (such a perverse notion, with all the nasty human contact that implies).

Computer refuseniks like myself are a dying breed, and as far as the administration is concerned, deaf, dumb, and blind.

“Gentlemen!” snapped the Head. “This is not the appropriate moment to debate this. Mr. Straitley, I suggest you put any objections you may have in writing and e-mail them to Mr. Bishop. Now shall we continue?”

I sat down. “Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.”

“What was that, Mr. Straitley?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was the gentle crumbling of civilization’s last outpost that you heard, Headmaster.”

Not an auspicious start to the term. A reprimand from the New Head I could bear, but the thought that Sourgrape Devine had managed to steal my office right from under my nose was intolerable. In any case, I told myself, I would not go gently. I intended to make Occupation very, very difficult for the Germans.

“And now to welcome our new colleagues.” The Head allowed a fractional warmth to color his voice. “I hope that you will make them at home, and that they will prove to be as committed to St. Oswald’s as the rest of you.”

Committed? They should be locked up.

“Did you say something, Mr. Straitley?”

“An inarticulate sound of approval, Headmaster.”

“Hm.”

“Precisely.”

There were five freshers in all: one a computer scientist, as I had feared. I didn’t catch his name, but Beards are interchangeable, like Suits. Anyway, it’s a department into which, for obvious reasons, I seldom venture. A young woman to Modern Languages (dark hair, good teeth, quite promising so far); a Suit to Geography, who seem to have started a collection; a games teacher in a pair of loud and disquieting Lycra running shorts; plus a neat-looking young man for English who, for the moment, I have yet to categorize.

When you’ve seen as many Common Rooms as I have you begin to recognize the fauna that collect in such places. Each school has its own ecosystem and social mix, but the same species tend to predominate everywhere. Suits, of course (more and more of these since the arrival of the New Head—they hunt in packs), and their natural enemy, the Tweed Jacket. A solitary and territorial animal, the Tweed Jacket, though enjoying the occasional bout of revelry, tends not to pair up very often, which accounts for our dwindling numbers. Then there’s the Eager Beaver, of which my German colleagues Geoff and Penny Nation are typical specimens; the Jobsworth, who reads the Mirror during staff meetings, is rarely seen without a cup of coffee, and is always late to lessons; the Low-Fat Yogurt (invariably female, this beast, and much preoccupied with gossip and dieting); the Jackrabbit of either gender (who bolts down a hole at the first sign of trouble); plus any number of Dragons, Sweeties, Strange Birds, Old Boys, Young Guns, and eccentrics of all kinds.

I can usually fit any fresher into the appropriate category within a few minutes’ acquaintance. The geographer, Mr. Easy, is a typical Suit: smart, clean-cut, and built for paperwork. The Games man, Gods help us, is a classic Jobsworth. Mr. Meek, the computer man, is rabbity beneath his fluffy beard. The linguist, Miss Dare, might be a trainee Dragon if not for the humorous twist to her mouth; I must remember to try her out, see what she’s made of. The new English teacher—Mr. Keane—might not be as straightforward—not actually a Suit, not quite a Beaver, but far too young for the tweedy set.

The New Head makes much of this pursuit of young blood; the future of the profession, he says, lies with the influx of new ideas. Old lags like myself, of course, are not fooled. Young blood is cheaper.

I said as much to Pat Bishop later, after the meeting.

“Give them a chance,” he said. “At least let them settle in before you have a go.”

Pat likes young folk, of course; it’s part of his charm. The boys can sense it; it makes him accessible. It also makes him immensely gullible, however; and his inability to see the bad side of anyone has often caused annoyance in the past. “Jeff Light’s a good, straight sportsman,” he said. I thought of the Lycra-shorted Games teacher (a Jobsworth, if ever I saw one) and winced inwardly. “Chris Keane comes highly recommended.” That, I could more readily believe. “And the French teacher seems to have a lot of sense.”

Of course, I thought, Bishop would have interviewed everyone. “Well, let’s hope so,” I said, heading for the Bell Tower. Following that full-frontal attack by Dr. Devine, I didn’t want any more trouble than I had already.

2

You see; it was almost too simple. As soon as they saw my credentials they were hooked. It’s funny, how much trust some people lay in pieces of paper: certificates, diplomas, degrees, references. And at St. Oswald’s it’s worse than anywhere. After all, the whole machine runs on paperwork. Runs rather badly too, from what I gather, now that the essential lubricant is in such short supply. It’s money that greases the wheels, my father used to say; and he was right.

It hasn’t altered much since that first day. The playing fields are less open, now that the new housing developments have begun to spread; and there’s a high fence—wire on concrete posts—to reinforce the NO TRESPASSERS signs. But the essential St. Oswald’s is quite unchanged.

The right way to approach is from the front, of course. The facade, with its imposing driveway and wrought iron gates, is built to impress. And it does—to the tune of six thousand per pupil per year—that blend of old-style arrogance and conspicuous consumption never fails to bring in the punters.

St. Oswald’s continues to specialize in sententious titles. Here the Deputy Head is the Second Master; the staff room is the Masters’ Common Room; even the cleaners are traditionally called bedders, although St. Oswald’s has had no boarding pupils—and therefore no beds—since 1918. But the parents love this kind of thing; in Old Oswaldian (or Ozzie, as tradition has it), homework becomes prep; registration, appel; the ancient dining hall is still referred to as the New Refectory; and the buildings themselves—dilapidated as they remain—are subdivided into a multitude of whimsically named nooks and crannies: the Rotunda, the Buttery, the Master’s Lodge, the Portcullis, the Observatory, the Porte Cochère. Nowadays, of course, hardly anyone uses the official names—but they do look very nice on the brochures.

My father, to give him credit, was extraordinarily proud of his title of Head Porter. It was a caretaker’s job, pure and simple; but that title—with its implied authority—blinded him to most of the snubs and petty insults he was to receive during his first years at the school. He’d left school at sixteen, with no academic qualifications, and to him St. Oswald’s represented a pinnacle to which he dared not even aspire.

As a result, he regarded the gilded boys of St. Oswald’s with both admiration and contempt. Admiration for their physical excellence; their sporting prowess; their superior bone structure; their display of money. Contempt for their softness; their complacency; their sheltered existence. I knew he was comparing us, and as I grew older I became more and more conscious of my inadequacy in his eyes, and of his silent—but increasingly bitter—disappointment.

My father, you see, would have liked a son in his own image; a lad who shared his passion for football and scratch cards and fish and chips, his mistrust of women, his love of the outdoors. Failing that, a St. Oswald’s boy; a gentleman player, a cricket captain, a boy with the guts to transcend his class and make something of himself, even if it meant leaving his father behind.

Instead, he had me. Neither fish nor fowl; a useless daydreamer, a reader of books and watcher of B movies, a secretive, skinny, pallid, insipid child with no interest in sports and whose personality was as solitary as his own was gregarious.

He did his best, though. He tried, even when I did not. He took me to football matches, during which I was heartily bored. He bought me a bicycle, which I rode with dutiful regularity around the outer walls of the School. More significantly, for the first year of our life there he kept reasonably and dutifully sober. I should have been grateful, I suppose. But I was not. Just as he would have liked a son in his image, I longed desperately for a father in mine. I already had the template in my mind, culled from a hundred books and comics. Foremost he would be a man of authority, firm but fair. A man of physical courage and fierce intelligence. A reader, a scholar, an intellectual. A man who understood.

Oh, I looked for him in John Snyde. Once or twice I even thought I’d found him. The road to adulthood is filled with contradictions, and I was still young enough to half believe the lies with which that road is paved. Dad Knows Best. Leave It to Me. Elders and Betters. Do as You’re Told. But in my heart I could already see the widening gulf between us. For all my youth I had ambitions, while John Snyde, for all his experience, would never be anything but a Porter.

And yet I could see he was a good Porter. He performed his duties faithfully. He locked the gates at night, walked the grounds in the evening, watered plants, seeded cricket lawns, mowed grass, welcomed visitors, greeted staff, organized repairs, cleaned drains, reported damage, removed graffiti, shifted furniture, gave out locker keys, sorted post, and delivered messages. In exchange some of the staff called him John, and my father glowed with pride and gratitude.

There’s a new porter now—a man called Fallow. He is heavy, discontented, lax. He listens to the radio in his lodge instead of watching the entrance. John Snyde would never have stood for that.

My own appointment was made St. Oswald–style, in isolation. I never met the other candidates. I was interviewed by the Head of Section, the Head, and both the Second and Third Masters.

I recognized them at once, of course. In fifteen years Pat Bishop has grown fatter and redder and cheerier, like a cartoon version of his earlier self, but Bob Strange looks just the same despite his thinning hair; a lean, sharp-featured man with dark eyes and a poor complexion. Of course back then he’d only been an ambitious young English master with a flair for administration. Now he is the School’s Eminence Grise; a master of the timetable; a practiced manipulator; a veteran of countless INSET days and training courses.

Needless to say, I recognized the Head. The New Head, he’d been in those days; late thirties, though prematurely graying even then, tall and stiff and dignified. He didn’t recognize me—after all, why should he?—but shook my hand in cool, limp fingers.

“I hope you have had time to look around the School to your satisfaction.” The capital letter was implicit in his voice.

I smiled. “Oh yes. It’s very impressive. The new IT department especially. Dynamic new tools in a traditional academic setting.”

The Head nodded. I saw him mentally filing away the phrase, maybe for next year’s prospectus. Behind him Pat Bishop made a sound that might have been derision or approval. Bob Strange just watched me.

“What struck me particularly—” I stopped. The door had opened and the secretary had walked in with a tea tray. It stalled me midphrase—the surprise of seeing her more than anything else, I suppose; I had no real fear she would recognize me—then I carried on: “What struck me particularly was the seamless way the modern has been grafted onto the old to create the best of both worlds. A school that isn’t afraid to give out the message that although it can afford the latest innovations, it hasn’t merely succumbed to popular fads but has used them to strengthen its tradition of academic excellence.”

The Head nodded again. The secretary—long legs, emerald ring, whiff of Chanel No. 5—poured tea. I thanked her in a voice that managed to be both distant and appreciative. My heart was beating faster; but in a way I was enjoying myself.

It was the first test, and I knew I had passed.

I sipped my tea, watching Bishop as the secretary removed the tray. “Thank you, Marlene.” He drinks his tea as my father did—three sugars, maybe four—and the silver tongs looked like tweezers in his big fingers. Strange said nothing. The Head waited, his eyes like pebbles.

“All right,” said Bishop, looking at me. “Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, shall we? We’ve heard you talk. We all know you can spout jargon at interview. My question is, what are you like in the classroom?”

Good old Bishop. My father liked him, you know; saw him as one of the lads, completely failing to see the man’s real cunning. Nitty-gritty. A typical Bishop expression. You can almost forget that there’s an Oxford degree (an upper second) behind the Yorkshire accent and the rugby player’s face. No. It doesn’t do to underestimate Bishop.

I smiled at him and put down my cup. “I have my own methods in the classroom, sir, as I’m sure you do. Outside it, I make it my business to know every bit of jargon that comes my way. It’s my belief that if you can do the talk, and you get the results, then whether or not you’ve been following the latest government guidelines becomes irrelevant. Most of the parents don’t know anything about teaching. All they want is to be sure they’re getting their money’s worth. Don’t you agree?”

Bishop grunted. Frankness—real or faked—is a currency he understands. I sensed a grudging admiration in his expression. Test two—I’d passed again.

“And where do you see yourself in five years’ time?” That was Strange, who had remained silent for most of the interview. An ambitious man, I knew, clever beneath his prissy exterior, eager to safeguard his little empire.

“In the classroom, sir,” I replied at once. “That’s where I belong. That’s what I enjoy.”

Strange’s expression did not alter, but he nodded, once, reassured that I was no usurper. Test three. Another pass.

There was no doubt in my mind that I was the best candidate. My qualifications were excellent: my references first-rate. They ought to be; I spent long enough forging them. The nicest touch was the name, carefully selected from one of the smaller Honors Boards on the Middle Corridor. I think it suits me, plus I’m sure my father would have been pleased that I’d re-created him as an Ozzie—an Old Boy of St. Oswald’s.

The John Snyde business was a long time ago; not even the oldsters like Roy Straitley or Hillary Monument are likely to remember much about it now. But for my father to have been an Old Boy accounts for my familiarity with the school; my affection for the place: my desire to teach there. Even more than the Cambridge first, the reassuring accent, and the discreetly expensive clothes, it makes me suitable.

I invented a few convincing details to carry the story—a Swiss mother, a childhood overseas. After such long practice I can visualize my father quite easily: a neat, precise man with musician’s hands and a love of travel. A brilliant scholar at Trinity—that’s where he met my mother, in fact—later to become one of the leading men of his profession. Both killed, tragically, in a cable car accident near Interlaken, last Christmas. I added a couple of siblings for good measure: a sister in Saint Moritz, a brother at university in Tokyo. I did my probationary year at Harwood’s Grammar School in Oxfordshire, before opting to move north into a more permanent post.

As I said, it was almost too easy. A few letters on impressive-looking headed paper, a colorful CV, an easy-to-fake reference or two. They didn’t even check the details—disappointing, as I had gone to such lengths to get them right. Even the name tallies with an equivalent degree given out the same year. Not to myself, of course. But these people are so easily blinded. Even greater than their stupidity, there’s the arrogance, the certainty that no one would cross the line.

Besides, it’s a game of bluff, isn’t it? It’s all to do with appearances. If I’d been a northern graduate with a common accent and a cheap suit, I could have had the best references in the world and never have stood a chance.

They phoned me the same evening.

I was in.

3

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

Monday, 6th September

The next thing I did after the meeting was to go looking for Pearman. I found him in his office, with the new linguist, Dianne Dare.

“Don’t mind Straitley,” Pearman told her cheerily as he introduced us. “He’s got a thing about names. He’ll have a field day with yours, I know he will.”

I ignored the unworthy comment. “You’re letting your department be overrun by women, Pearman,” I said severely. “Next you’ll be picking out chintz.”

Miss Dare gave me a satirical look. “I’ve heard all about you,” she said.

“All of it bad, I expect?”

“It wouldn’t be professional for me to comment.”

“Hm.” She is a slender girl, with intelligent brown eyes. “Well, it’s too late to back out now,” I said. “Once St. Oswald’s gets you, you’re here for life. It saps the spirit, you know. Look at Pearman, a shadow of his former self; he’s actually surrendered my office to the boche.”

Pearman sighed. “I thought you wouldn’t like that.”

“Oh, you did?”

“It was either that, Roy, or lose room fifty-nine. And since you never use your office—”

He was right, in a way, but I wasn’t going to say so. “What do you mean, lose room fifty-nine? That’s been my form room for thirty years. I’m virtually a part of it. You know what the boys call me? Quasimodo. Because I look like a gargoyle and I live in the Bell Tower.”

Miss Dare kept a straight face, but only just.

Pearman shook his head. “Look, take it up with Bob Strange if you like. But this was the best I could do. You get to keep room fifty-nine for most of the time, and there’s still the Quiet Room if someone else is teaching there and you want to do some marking.”

That sounded ominous. I always mark in my own room when I’m free. “Do you mean to say I’m going to be sharing room fifty-nine?”

Pearman looked apologetic. “Well, most people share,” he said. “We don’t have the space otherwise. Haven’t you seen your timetable?”

Well, of course I hadn’t. Everyone knows I never even look at it until I need to. Fuming, I rummaged through my pigeonhole and came up with a crumpled piece of computer paper and a memo from Danielle, Strange’s secretary. I braced myself for bad news.

“Four people? I’m sharing my room with four upstarts and a House Meeting?”

“It gets worse, I’m afraid,” said Miss Dare meekly. “One of the upstarts is me.”

It says a lot for Dianne Dare that she forgave me what I said then. Of course it was all in the heat of the moment: words spoken in haste, and all that. But anyone else—Isabelle Tapi, for instance—might have taken umbrage. I know; it’s happened before. Isabelle suffers from delicate nerves, and any claim—for emotional trauma, for instance—is taken very seriously by the Bursar’s office.

But Miss Dare held her ground. And to do her justice, she never left my room in disorder when she’d been teaching there, or rearranged my papers, or screamed at the mice, or commented on the bottle of medicinal sherry at the back of my cupboard, so I felt I’d probably got the best of a bad lot.

All the same, I did feel resentful of this attack on my small empire; and I had no doubt who had been behind it. Dr. Devine, Head of German and, perhaps more relevantly, Head of Amadeus House: which House was now scheduled, coincidentally, to meet in my form room every Thursday morning.

Let me explain. There are five Houses at St. Oswald’s. Amadeus, Parkinson, Birkby, Christchurch, and Stubbs. They deal principally with sporting fixtures, clubs, and chapel, so of course I don’t have much to do with them. A House system that runs principally on chapel and cold showers doesn’t have a lot going for it in my book. Still, on Thursday mornings these Houses meet in the largest rooms available to discuss the week’s events, and I was most annoyed at this choice of my room as their meeting place. Firstly, it meant that Sourgrape Devine would have the chance to poke around in all my desk drawers, and secondly, it meant hideous confusion as a hundred boys struggled to cram into a room designed for thirty.

I told myself mournfully that it was only once a week. Still, I felt uneasy. I didn’t like the speedy way Sourgrape had managed to get a foot in the door.

The other intruders, I have to say, concerned me less. Miss Dare I already knew. The other three were all freshers: Meek, Keane, and Easy. It isn’t unusual for a new staff member to teach in a dozen or more different rooms; there’s always been a shortage of space at St. Oswald’s, and this year the conversion of the new Computer Science suite had brought things to a crisis. Reluctantly I prepared to open my fortress to the public. I anticipated little difficulty from the new staff. Devine was the man to watch.

I spent the rest of the day in my sanctum, brooding over the paperwork. My timetable was a surprise—only twenty-eight teaching periods a week compared with thirty-four last year. My classes too seemed to have decreased in size. Less work for me, of course; but I didn’t doubt that I’d be on cover every day.

Several people called: Gerry Grachvogel put his head round the door and nearly lost it (he asked when I was planning to clear out my office); Fallow, the Porter, came to change the number on the door to 75; Hillary Monument, the Head of Maths, came to smoke a quiet cigarette out of the way of his disapproving deputies; Pearman to drop off some textbooks and to read me an obscene poem by Rimbaud; Marlene to bring my register; and Kitty Teague to ask how I was.

“All right, I suppose,” I said glumly. “It isn’t even the Ides of March yet. God knows what’ll happen then.” I lit a Gauloise. I might as well do it while I still could, I told myself. There’d be precious little chance of a quiet smoke when Devine got in.

Kitty looked sympathetic. “Come down to Hall with me,” she suggested. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had a bite to eat.”

“What, and have Sourgrape leering at me over his lunch?” In fact I had been planning to pop over to the Thirsty Scholar for a pint, but I didn’t have the heart for it now.

“Do it,” urged Kitty, when I told her so. “You’ll feel better out of this place.”

The Scholar is, in theory at least, out of bounds. But it’s only half a mile up the road from St. Oswald’s, and you’d have to be a complete innocent to believe that half the sixth form don’t go there at lunchtimes. In spite of grim lectures from the Head, Pat Bishop, who enforces discipline, tends to ignore the infringement. So do I, as long as they take their ties and blazers off; that way both they and I can pretend I don’t recognize them.

It was quiet this lunchtime. There were only a few people in the bar. I caught sight of Fallow, the porter, with Mr. Roach—a historian who grows his hair long and likes the boys to call him Robbie—and Jimmy Watt, the school’s man-of-all-work, skillful with his hands, but not much of an intellect.

He beamed on seeing me. “Mr. Straitley! Good holiday!”

“Yes, thank you, Jimmy.” I have learned not to tax him with long words. Some people are not so kind; seeing his moon face and gaping mouth, it’s easy to forget his good nature. “What are you drinking?”

Jimmy beamed again. “Half a shandy, thanks, boss. Gotta get some wiring done this after.”

I carried his drink and my own to a free table. I noticed Easy, Meek, and Keane sitting together in the corner with Light, the new Games man, Isabelle Tapi, who always enjoys socializing with new staff, and Miss Dare, slightly aloof, a couple of tables away. I wasn’t surprised to see them together. There’s safety in numbers, and St. Oswald’s can be intimidating to the newcomer.

Putting Jimmy’s drink down, I ambled over to their table and introduced myself. “It looks as though some of you are going to be sharing my room,” I said. “Though I don’t see how you’re going to teach Computer Studies in it”—this was to the bearded Meek—“or is it just another stage in your plan to inherit the earth?”

Keane grinned. Light and Easy just looked puzzled.

“I—I’m a part-timer,” said Meek nervously. “I—t-teach m-maths on F-Fridays.”

Oh dear. If I frightened him, 5F on a Friday afternoon would eat him alive. I hated to think of the mess they would make in my room. I made a mental note to be on call if there were any signs of a riot.

“Bloody good place to have a pub, though,” said Light, gulping his pint. “I could get used to this at lunchtime.”

Easy raised an eyebrow. “Won’t you be training, or supervising extracurricular, or rugby, or something?”

“We’re all entitled to a lunch break, aren’t we?”

Not just a Jobsworth, but a Union man. Dear gods. That’s all we need.

“Oh. But the Headmaster was—I mean, I said I’d take charge of the Geography Society. I thought everyone was supposed to do extracurricular.”

Light shrugged. “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? I’m telling you, there’s no way I’m going to do after-school sports and weekend matches and give up my lunchtime pint as well. What is this, bloody Colditz?”

“Well, you don’t have lessons to prepare, or marking—” began Easy.

“Oh, that’s typical,” said Light, his face reddening. “Typical bloody academic. Unless you’ve got it on paper it doesn’t count, is that it? I’ll tell you this for free, those lads’ll get more from my lessons than they would learning the bloody capital of Khazistan, or whatever it is—”

Easy looked taken aback. Meek put his face into his lemonade and refused to come out. Miss Dare stared out of the window. Isabelle shot Light an admiring glance from beneath her smoky eyelashes.

Keane grinned. He seemed to be enjoying the fracas.

“What about you, then?” I said. “What do you think of St. Oswald’s?”

He looked at me. Mid to late twenties; slim; dark-haired, with a fringe; black T-shirt under a dark suit. He seemed very assured for such a young man, and his voice, though pleasant, had an edge of authority. “When I was a boy I lived near here for a while. Spent a year at the local comp. Sunnybank Park. Compared to that, St. Oswald’s is another world.”

Well, that didn’t surprise me much. Sunnybank Park eats kids alive, especially the bright ones. “Good thing you escaped,” I said.

“Yeah.” He grinned. “We moved down south, and I changed schools. I was lucky. Another year and that place would have finished me off. Still, move over Barry Hines; it’s all good material if I ever write a book.”

Oh dear, I thought. Not a Budding Author. You get them from time to time, especially among the English staff, and though not as awkward as Union men or Jobsworths, they rarely bring anything but trouble. Robbie Roach was a poet in the days of his youth. Even Eric Scoones once wrote a play. Neither has ever quite recovered.

“You’re a writer?” I said.

“Strictly a hobby,” said Keane.

“Yes, well—I understand the horror genre isn’t as lucrative as it used to be,” I said, with a glance at Light, who was demonstrating a biceps curl to Easy with the aid of his pint of beer.

I looked back at Keane, who had followed my gaze. At first sight, he showed potential. I hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be another Roach. English teachers so often have the fatal tendency; that thwarted ambition to be something more, something other than a simple schoolmaster. It usually ends in tears, of course; escape from Alcatraz looks positively childish in comparison with escape from teaching. I looked at Keane for signs of rot; I have to say that at first sight I didn’t notice any.

“I wrote a b-book once,” said Meek. “It was called Javascript and Other—”

“I read a book once,” said Light, smirking. “Didn’t think much of it, though.”

Easy laughed. He seemed to have got over his initial faux pas with Light. At the next table, Jimmy grinned and moved a little closer to the group, but Easy, face half-averted, managed to avoid eye contact.

“Now if you’d said the Internet”—Light moved his chair a few inches, blocking Jimmy, and reached for his half-finished beer—“plenty to read there—if you’re not afraid of going blind, know what I mean—”

Jimmy slurped his shandy, looking slightly crestfallen. He isn’t as slow as some people take him for, and besides, the snub was plain enough for anyone to see. I was suddenly reminded of Anderton-Pullitt, the loner of my form, eating his sandwiches alone in the classroom while the other boys played football in the Quad.

I shot a sideways glance at Keane, who was watching, neither approving nor disapproving, but with a gleam of appreciation in his gray eyes. He winked at me, and I smiled back, amused that the most promising of our freshers so far had turned out to be a Sunnybanker.

4

The first step is always the hardest. I made many more illicit forays into St. Oswald’s, gaining confidence, moving closer into the grounds, the courtyards, then at last the buildings themselves. Months passed; terms; and little by little my father’s vigilance was diminished.

Things had not turned out quite how he’d hoped. The teachers who called him John remained no less contemptuous than the boys who called him Snyde; the gatehouse was damp in winter, and between the beer and the football and his passion for scratch cards, there was never quite enough money. In spite of his great ideas, St. Oswald’s had turned out to be just another caretaker’s job, filled with daily humiliations. It took up all his life. There never was time for tea on the lawns, and Mum never did come home.

Instead, my father took up with a brassy nineteen-year-old called Pepsi, who ran a beauty parlor in town, wore too much lip gloss, and liked to party. She had her own place, but she often stayed at ours, and in the mornings my father was heavy-eyed and short-tempered, and the house smelled of cold pizza and beer. On those days—and others—I knew to keep out of his way.

Saturday nights were the worst. My father’s temper was exacerbated by beer, and pockets empty after a night on the tiles, he most often chose me as the butt of his resentment. “Yer little bastard,” he would slur at me through the bedroom door. “How do I know you’re mine, eh? How do I know you’re even mine?” And if I was foolish enough to open the door, then it would start; the pushing, the shouting, the swearing, and finally the big slow roundhouse punch that, nine times out of ten, would strike the wall and send the drunkard sprawling.

I wasn’t afraid of him. I had been once; but you can get used to anything in time, you know, and nowadays I paid as little attention to his rages as the inhabitants of Pompeü to the volcano that was one day to extinguish them. Most things, repeated often enough, can become routine; and mine was simply to lock the bedroom door, whatever came, and to keep well out of his way the morning after.

At first Pepsi tried to get me on her side. Sometimes she would bring me little presents, or try to make dinner, though she wasn’t a great cook. But I remained stubbornly aloof. It wasn’t that I disliked her—with her false nails and overplucked eyebrows, I considered her too stupid to dislike—or even that I resented her. No, it was her dreadful palliness which offended me; the implication that she and I could have something in common, that one day perhaps, we could be friends.

It was at this point that St. Oswald’s became my playground. It was still officially out of bounds, but by then my father had begun to lose his initial evangelism for the place, and he was happy to turn a blind eye to my occasional infringement of the rules, as long as I was discreet and drew no attention to myself.

Even so, as far as John Snyde was concerned, I only ever played in the grounds. But the Porter’s keys were carefully labeled, each in its place in the glass box behind the gatehouse door, and as my curiosity and my obsession grew I found it harder and harder to resist the challenge.

One small theft, and the school was mine. Now no door was closed to me; passkey in hand, I roamed the deserted buildings while my father watched TV, or went down the local with his mates. As a result, by my tenth birthday I knew the school better than any pupil, and I was able to pass—invisible and unheard—without so much as raising dust.

I knew the cupboards where the cleaning equipment was kept; the medical room; the electrical points; the Archives. I knew all the classrooms; the south-facing geography rooms, unbearably hot in summer; the cool, paneled science rooms; the creaking stairs; the odd-shaped rooms in the Bell Tower. I knew the pigeon loft, the Chapel, the Observatory with its round glass ceiling, the tiny studies with their rows of metal cabinets. I read ghost phrases from half-cleaned blackboards. I knew the staff—at least by reputation. I opened lockers with the master key. I smelled chalk and leather and cooking and wood polish. I tried on discarded games kit. I read forbidden books.

Better still, and more dangerous, I explored the roof. St. Oswald’s roof was a huge, sprawling thing, ridged like a brontosaurus in stony overlapping plates. It was a small city in itself, with towers and quads of its own that mirrored the towers and quads of the school below. Great chimneys, imperially crowned, soared above the crooked ridges; birds nested; rogue elders sank their roots into damp crevices and flourished improbably, dripping blossom into the cracks between the slates. There were channels and gullies and monkey-puzzle ledges leading over the rooftops; there were skylights and balconies, perilously accessible from high parapets.

At first I was cautious, remembering my clumsiness in school gymnastics. But left to my own devices I gained in confidence; learned balance; taught myself to scramble silently over smooth slates and exposed girders; learned how to use a metal rail to vault from a high ledge onto a small balcony, and there down a thick, hairy elbow of creeper into a sallow-throated chimney of ivy and moss.

I loved the roof. I loved its peppery smell; its dankness in wet weather; the rosettes of yellow lichen that bloomed and spread across the stones. Here, at last, I was free to be myself. There were maintenance ladders leading out from various openings, but these were mostly in poor condition, some of them reduced to a lethal filigree of rust and metal, and I’d always scorned them, finding my own entrances to the rooftop kingdom, unblocking windows that had been painted shut decades before, looping pieces of rope around chimney stacks to aid ascent, exploring the wells and crawl spaces and the great leaded stone gutters. I had no fear of heights or falling. I found to my surprise that I was naturally agile; on the roof my light build was a real advantage, and up here there were no bullies to mock my skinny legs.

Of course I had long known that maintaining the roof was a job my father detested. He could just about cope with a broken slate (as long as it was accessible from a window), but the leadwork that sealed the gutters was quite another matter. To reach that, it was necessary to crawl down a slated incline toward the far edge of the roof, where there was a stone parapet that circled the gutter, and from there, to kneel, with three hundred feet of blue-green St. Oswald’s air between himself and the ground, to check the seal. He never did this necessary duty; gave a multitude of reasons for failing to do so, but after the excuses had run dry I finally, gleefully guessed the truth. John Snyde was afraid of heights.

Already, you see, secrets fascinated me. A bottle of sherry at the back of a stock cupboard, a packet of letters in a tin box behind a panel, some magazines in a locked filing cabinet, a list of names in an old accounts book. For me, no secret was mundane; no titbit too small to escape my interest. I knew who was cheating on his wife; who suffered from nerves; who was ambitious; who read romantic novels; who used the photocopier illicitly. If knowledge is power, I owned the place.

By then I was in my last term at Abbey Road Juniors. It had not been a success. I had worked hard, kept out of trouble, but had consistently failed to make any friends. In an effort to combat my father’s northern vowels I had tried—disastrously—to imitate the voices and mannerisms of the St. Oswald’s boys, thereby earning myself the nickname “Snobby Snyde.” Even some of the teachers used it; I’d heard them in their staff room, the heavy door swinging open into a fug of smoke and laughter. Snobby Snyde, pealed a woman’s voice. Oh, that’s priceless. Snobby Snyde.

I had no illusions that Sunnybank Park would be any better. Most of its intake was from the Abbey Road Estate, a depressing block of pebble-dashed council houses and cardboard flatblocks with washing at the balconies and dark stairwells that smelled of piss. I’d lived there myself. I knew what to expect. There was a sandbox filled with nuggets of dog shit; a playground with swings and a lethal scattering of broken glass; walls of graffiti; gangs of boys and girls with foul mouths and grubby, inbred faces.

Their fathers drank with my father down by the Engineers; their mothers had gone with Sharon Snyde to Cinderella’s Dance-a-rama on Saturday nights. “You want to make an effort, kid,” my father told me. “Give ’em a chance, and you’ll soon fit in.”

But I didn’t want to make the effort. I didn’t want to fit in at Sunnybank Park.

“Then what do you want?”

Ah. That was the question.

Alone in the echoing corridors of the school, I dreamed of having my name on the Honors Boards, of sharing jokes with the St. Oswald’s boys, of learning Latin and Greek instead of woodwork and technical drawing, of doing prep instead of homework at the big wooden desks. In eighteen months, my invisibility had changed from a talent to a curse; I longed to be seen; I strove to belong; I went out of my way to take ever greater risks in the hope that one day, perhaps, St. Oswald’s would recognize me and take me home.

So I carved my initials alongside those of generations of Old Oswaldians on the oak panels in the Refectory. I watched weekend sports fixtures from a hiding place at the back of the Games Pavilion. I struggled to the top of the sycamore tree in the center of the Quad and made faces at the gargoyles at the edge of the roof. After school I ran back as fast as I could to St. Oswald’s and watched the boys as they left; heard their laughter and their complaints, spied on their fights, breathed the exhaust fumes of their parents’ expensive cars as if it were incense. Our own school book-room was poorly stocked, mostly with paperbacks and comics, but in St. Oswald’s huge cloistered library I read avidly—Ivanhoe and Great Expectations and Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Gormenghast and The Arabian Nights and King Solomon’s Mines. Often I smuggled books home—some of them hadn’t been taken out of the library since the 1940s. My favorite was The Invisible Man. Walking along the corridors of St. Oswald’s at night, smelling the day’s chalk and the bland lingerings of the kitchen, hearing the dead echoes of happy voices and watching the shadows of the trees fall onto the newly polished floors, I knew exactly, and with a deep ache of longing, how he had felt.

All I wanted, you see, was to belong. Abbey Road Juniors had been shabby and run-down, a failing tribute to 1960s liberalism. But Sunnybank Park was infinitely worse. I took regular beatings for my leather briefcase (everyone that year was carrying Adidas bags); for my contempt of sports; for my smart mouth; for my love of books; for my clothes; and for the fact that my father worked at That Posh School (it didn’t seem to matter that he was only the caretaker). I learned to run fast and to keep my head down. I imagined myself an exile, set apart from the others, who would one day be called back to where I belonged. Deep down I thought that if I proved myself, somehow, if I could withstand the bullying and the petty humiliations, then St. Oswald’s would one day welcome me.

When I was eleven and the doctor decided I needed glasses, my father blamed my reading. But secretly I knew that I had reached another milestone on the way to St. Oswald’s, and although “Snobby Snyde” quickly became “Speccy Snyde,” still I was obscurely pleased. I scrutinized myself in the bathroom mirror and decided that I almost looked the part.

I still do; though the glasses have been replaced by contact lenses (just in case). My hair is a little darker than it was then, and better cut. My clothes too are well cut, but not too formal—I don’t want to look as if I’m trying too hard. I’m especially pleased with the voice; no trace of my father’s accent remains, but the fake refinement, which made Snobby Snyde such a dreadful little upstart, has vanished. My new persona is likeable without being intrusive; a good listener; precisely the qualities needed in a murderer and a spy.

All in all, I was pleased with my performance today. Perhaps some part of me still expects to be recognized, for the thrill of danger was vivid in me all day as I tried not to seem too familiar with the buildings, the rules, the people.

The teaching part, surprisingly, is the easiest. I have my subject’s lower sets throughout, thanks to Strange’s unique timetabling methods (senior staff invariably get the better classes, leaving the new appointees with the rabble), and this means that, although my timetable is full, it is not especially taxing. I know enough about my subject to fool the boys, at least; when in doubt I use the teachers’ books to help me.

It is enough for my purpose. No one suspects. I have no top sets or sixth-formers to challenge my superior knowledge. Nor do I anticipate any discipline problems. These boys are very different from the pupils of Sunnybank Park, and I have the whole disciplinary infrastructure of St. Oswald’s to reinforce my position, should I need it.

I sense that I will not, however. These boys are paying customers. They are used to obeying their teachers; their misbehavior is limited to the occasional missed prep, or whispering in the classroom. The cane is no longer used—it is no longer necessary in the face of the greater, unspecified threat. It’s rather comic, really. Comic and ridiculously simple. It’s a game, of course; a battle of wills between myself and the rabble. We all know that there is nothing I could do if they all decided to leave the room at once. We all know, but no one dares to call my bluff.

All the same, I must not be complacent. My cover is good, but even a small misstep at this stage might prove disastrous. That secretary, for instance. Not that her presence changes anything, but it just goes to show that you can’t anticipate every move.

I am wary too of Roy Straitley. Neither the Head, nor Bishop, nor Strange has spared me a second glance. But Straitley is different. His eyes are still as keen as they were fifteen years ago—and his brain too. The boys always respected him, even if his colleagues didn’t. Much of the gossip I overheard during those years at St. Oswald’s was in some way to do with him, and though his role in what happened was small, it was nevertheless significant.

He has aged, of course. He must be close to retirement now. But he hasn’t changed; still the same affectations, the gown, the tweed jacket, the Latin phrases. I felt almost fond of him today, as if he were an old uncle I hadn’t seen for years. But I can see him behind his disguise, even if he does not see me. I know my enemy.

I’d almost expected to hear of his retirement. In a way it would have made things easier. But after today, I’m glad he’s still here. It adds excitement to the situation. Besides, the day I bring St. Oswald’s down, I want Roy Straitley to be there.

5

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

Tuesday, 7th September

There’s always a special kind of chaos on the first day. Boys late, boys lost, books to be collected, stationery to be distributed. The classroom changes didn’t help; the new timetable had failed to take into account the renumbering of the rooms, and had to be followed by a memo that no one read. Several times I intercepted columns of boys marching toward the new German departmental office instead of toward the Bell Tower, and had to redirect them.

Dr. Devine was looking stressed. I had still not cleared out my old office, of course; all the filing cabinets were locked, and only I had the key. Then there were registers, holiday work to collect, fee checks to be sent to the Bursar’s office, locker keys to distribute, seating arrangements to be made, law to be enforced.

Luckily, I don’t have a new form this year. My boys—thirty-one of them in all—are old lags, and they know what to expect. They have got used to me, and I to them. There’s Pink, a quiet, quirky lad with a strangely adult sense of humor, and his friend Tayler; then there are my Brodie Boys, Allen-Jones and McNair, two extravagant jokers who earn themselves fewer detentions than they deserve because they make me laugh; then redheaded Sutcliff; then Niu, a Japanese boy, very active in the school orchestra; then Knight, whom I do not trust; little Jackson, who has to prove himself on a daily basis by picking fights; large Brasenose, who is easily bullied; and Anderton-Pullitt, a clever, solitary, ponderous boy who has many allergies including, if we are to believe him, a very special form of asthma which means that he should be excused from all kinds of sports, as well as maths, French, Religious Education, homework on Mondays, House Meetings, Assemblies, and Chapel. He also has a habit of following me around—which has caused Kitty Teague to make jokes at the expense of my Special Little Friend—and bending my ear about his various enthusiasms (First World War aircraft, computer games, the music of Gilbert and Sullivan). As a rule I don’t mind too much—he’s an odd boy, excluded by his peers, and I think he may be lonely—but on the other hand, I have work to do and no desire to spend what free time I have in socializing with Anderton-Pullitt.

Of course, schoolboy crushes are a fact of teaching, with which we learn to deal as best we can. We’ve all been on the receiving end at some time or another—even people like Hillary Monument and myself, who, let’s face it, are about as unsightly a pair as you’re likely to find out of captivity. We all have our ways of dealing with it, though I believe Isabelle Tapi actually encourages the boys—certainly, she has any number of Special Little Friends, as do Robbie Roach and Penny Nation. As for myself, I find that a brisk manner and a policy of benevolent neglect usually discourage overfamiliarity in the Anderton-Pullitts of this world.

Still, all in all, not a bad lot, 3S. They have grown over the holidays; some look almost adult. That ought to make me feel old, but it does not; instead I feel a kind of reluctant pride. I like to think that I treat all the boys equally, but I have developed an especial fondness for this form, which has been with me for the past two years. I like to think we understand each other.

“Oh, sü-üür!” There were moans as I handed out Latin tests to everyone.

“It’s the first day, sir!”

“Can’t we have a quiz, sir?”

“Can we do hangman in Latin?”

“When I have taught you everything I know, Mr. Allen-Jones, then perhaps we may find time to indulge in trivial pursuits.”

Allen-Jones grinned, and I saw that in the space marked FORM ROOM on the cover of his Latin book, he had written Room formerly known as 59.

There was a knock, and Dr. Devine put his head around the door.

“Mr. Straitley?”

“Quid agis, Medice?”

The class sniggered. Sourgrape, who never did Classics, looked annoyed. “I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr. Straitley. Could I have a quick word, please?”

We went out into the corridor while I kept watch on the boys through the panel in the door. McNair was already beginning to write something on his desk, and I gave the glass a warning tap.

Sourgrape eyed me disapprovingly. “I was really hoping to reorganize the departmental workroom this morning,” he said. “Your filing cabinets—”

“Oh, I’ll deal with those,” I replied. “Just leave it all to me.”

“Then there’s the desk—and the books—not to mention all those enormous plants—”

“Just make yourself at home,” I said in an airy tone. “Don’t mind my stuff at all.” There was thirty years of assorted paperwork in that desk. “Perhaps you’d like to transfer some of the files to the Archives, if you’re free,” I suggested helpfully.

“I would not,” snapped Sourgrape. “And while we’re at it, perhaps you can tell me who has removed the new number fifty-nine from the door of the departmental workroom and replaced it by this?” He handed me a piece of card, upon which someone had written: Room formerly known as 75 in an exuberant (and rather familiar) young scrawl.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Devine. I don’t have the slightest idea.”

“Well, it’s nothing more than theft. Those door plaques cost four pounds each. That comes to a hundred and thirteen pounds in all for twenty-eight rooms, and six of them are gone already. I don’t know what you’re grinning at, Straitley, but—”

“Grinning, did you say? Not at all. Tampering with room numbers? Deplorable.” This time I managed to keep a straight face, though Sourgrape seemed unconvinced.

“Well, I shall be making enquiries, and I’d be grateful if you could keep an eye out for the culprit. We can’t have this kind of thing happening. It’s disgraceful. This school’s security has been a shambles for years.”

Dr. Devine wants surveillance cameras on the Middle Corridor—ostensibly for security, but actually because he wants to be able to watch what everyone gets up to: who lets the boys watch test cricket instead of doing exam revision; who does the crossword during reading comprehensions; who is always twenty minutes late; who nips out for a cup of coffee; who allows indiscipline; who prepares his work materials in advance, who makes it up as he goes along.

Oh, he’d love to have all those things on camera; to possess hard evidence of our little failures, our little incompetencies. To be able to demonstrate (during a school inspection, for instance) that Isabelle is often late to lessons; that Pearman sometimes forgets to arrive at all. That Eric Scoones loses his temper and occasionally cuffs a boy across the head, that I rarely use visual aids, and that Grachvogel, in spite of his modern methods, has difficulty controlling his class. I know all those things, of course. Devine merely suspects.

I also know that Eric’s mother has Alzheimer’s disease, and that he is fighting to keep her at home; that Pearman’s wife has cancer; and that Grachvogel is homosexual, and afraid. Sourgrape has no idea of these things, closeted as he is in his ivory tower in the old Classics office. Furthermore, he does not care. Information, not understanding, is the name of his game.

After the lesson I discreetly used the master key to get into Allen-Jones’s locker. Sure enough, the six door plaques were there, along with a set of small screwdrivers and the discarded screws, all of which I removed. I would ask Jimmy to replace the plaques at lunchtime. Fallow would have asked questions and might even have reported back to Dr. Devine.

There seemed no point in taking further action. If Allen-Jones had any sense, he wouldn’t mention the matter either. As I closed the locker I caught sight of a packet of cigarettes and a lighter concealed behind a copy of Julius Caesar but decided not to notice them.

I was free for most of the afternoon. I would have liked to stay in my room, but Meek was in there with a third-year maths class, so I retreated to the Quiet Room (sadly a no-smoking area) for a comfortable chat with any colleagues who happened to be available.

The Quiet Room is, of course, a misnomer. A kind of communal office with desks in the middle and lockers around the edges, it is here that the staff grapevine has its roots. Here, under the pretext of marking, news is disseminated, rumors spread. It has the added advantage of being precisely underneath my room, and this lucky coincidence means that if required, I can leave a class to work in silence while I have a cup of tea or read the Times in congenial surroundings. Any sound from above is distinctly audible, including individual voices, and it is the work of an instant for me to rise, apprehend, and swiftly punish any boy who creates a disturbance. In this way I have acquired a reputation for omniscience, which serves me well.

In the Quiet Room I found Chris Keane, Kitty Teague, Robbie Roach, Eric Scoones, and Paddy McDonaugh, the RE master. Keane was reading, occasionally making notes in a red-bound notebook. Kitty and Scoones were going through departmental report cards. McDonaugh was drinking tea whilst flicking through the pages of The Encyclopaedia of Demons and Demonology. Sometimes I think that man takes his job a little too seriously.

Roach was engrossed in the Mirror. “Thirty-seven to go,” he said.

There was a silence. When no one questioned his statement he elaborated. “Thirty-seven working days,” he said. “Till half-term.”

McDonaugh snorted. “Since when did you ever do any work?” he said.

“I’ve already done my share,” said Roach, turning a page. “Don’t forget I’ve been at camp since August.” Summer camp is Robbie’s contribution to the school’s extracurricular program: for three weeks a year he goes to Wales with a minibus of boys to lead walking expeditions, canoeing, paintballing, and go-karting. It’s what he enjoys; he gets to wear jeans every day and have the boys call him by his first name, but still he maintains that it is a great sacrifice, and claims his right to take it easy for the rest of the year.

“Camp,” scoffed McDonaugh.

Scoones eyed them with disapproval. “I thought this was supposed to be the Quiet Room,” he pointed out in chilling tones, before returning to his report cards.

There was silence for a moment. Eric’s a good chap, but moody; on another day he might be full of gossip himself; today he looked glum. It was probably the new addition to the French department, I thought to myself. Miss Dare is young, ambitious, and bright—one more person to beware of. Plus, she’s a woman, and an old-timer like Scoones doesn’t like working alongside a woman thirty years younger than he is. He has been expecting promotion at any time these past fifteen years, but he won’t get it now. He’s too old—and not half conciliatory enough. Everybody knows it but Scoones himself, and any change to the departmental lineup only serves to remind him that he isn’t getting any younger.

Kitty gave me a humorous look, which confirmed my suspicions. “Lots of admin to catch up on,” she whispered. “There was a bit of a mix-up last term, and for some reason, these records got overlooked.”

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 course work, 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.

Scoones huffed. “Too smart for her own bloody good.”

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

“Pearman thinks the world of her,” said Scoones with a sneer.

“He would.”

Pearman has a lively appreciation of feminine beauty. Rumor 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 Scoones. “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 bloody 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 conciliating, 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 percent, 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 God 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 Scoones, 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?” Scoones, a staunch rugby man, was shocked.

“Not the rugby pitch,” explained Roach soothingly. “Just the fields behind the tennis courts. No one uses them anymore, except when boys want to sneak off for a fag. 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, perhaps, or a Superbowl where the Sunnybankers could go after school for their daily dose of beer and skittles.

“H.M. 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 coed,” suggested Roach wistfully. “Think of it . . . all those girls in uniform.”

Scoones 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, scraping 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 Scoones.

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 embarrassing to have to discipline another Master’s class. 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 class 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 masses. 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 so 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 class 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 airplanes. A desk had been toppled. Knight was standing by the window, apparently enacting some farce, because the rest of the class were 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, underconfident 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!”

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, associates, 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 desktop.

“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 overlarge 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 glass-paneled 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 pretense from either of us can hide the fact that he has been humiliated in front of a class, 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 bush baby eyes; a face of weak but implacable hatred.

6

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 all down; simply knocking off a few gargoyles won’t do. Places like St. Oswald’s have a habit of coming back to life; wars pass; 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 trespass. Very little has changed; the new computers sit uneasily on the new plastic desks whilst the names of Old Oswaldians glare down from the Honors 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 classrooms 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 McAuleigh. She was young, easygoing, 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 substitute.

Over months I was bullied; mocked; scorned by pupils as well as staff. My lunch money stolen; my clothes torn; my books thrown onto 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 for once he’d decided to stay at home. 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 companionable for a change 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 pissed.”

I drank, relishing the bitter taste. I’d had lager before, of course; but never with my father’s approval. I grinned at him, and 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 principal tormentors and bashing their heads together; running up to Mr. Bray, the Games master, and knocking him down; best and most delightful of all, facing up to Miss McAuleigh, my form teacher, and saying “You can stuff yer bloody 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 reestablished. 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 class on Saturday 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 shit 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 shit from no one. Opposite me on the sofa, John Snyde was still watching with gleeful anticipation, as if awaiting my inevitable reaction of pleasure and gratitude.

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 Saturday class; two dozen toughs from the council estate, weaned on Street Fighter and Kick Boxer II—with luck I might even run across a few of my principal 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, okay,” I said at last.

“Told you I’d figure something, 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 sweater; and as I closed my eyes I thought to myself—I 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 passed, and my life at Sunnybank Park settled into a dismal routine. I coped with it as best I could—mostly, increasingly, with avoidance. At lunchtimes 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 pass 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-meter 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 dared 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 passed 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 passage, 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 passed 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 class. 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 Games 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 favored 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 “counseling”—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—gray sweater, gray trousers, school tie, navy blazer (with the school crest and the motto—Audere, agere, auferre—stitched 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 classes were uproarious. Others were eerily silent. I peered through glass panels at heads bent over their desks; at paper darts thrown surreptitiously behind a Master’s back; at notes passed in secret. I put my ear to closed doors and locked studies.

But my favorite haunt was the Bell Tower. A warren of little rooms, most rarely used—box rooms, pigeon lofts, storage cupboards—with two teaching rooms, one large, one small, both belonging to the Classics Department, and a rickety stone balcony from which I 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 pigeonhole (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 passion 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 class 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.

I was so absorbed by my thoughts that as I rounded the bend into the Upper Corridor I almost bumped into a boy who was standing, hands in pockets, face to the wall, beneath an Honors Board. He was a couple of years older than I was—I guessed fourteen—with a sharp, clever face and bright gray eyes. His brown hair, I noticed, was rather long for St. Oswald’s, and the end of his tie, which was hanging disreputably out of his sweater, had been scissored off. I gathered—with some admiration—that I was looking at a rebel.

“Watch where you’re going,” said the boy.

It was the first time any St. Oswald’s boy had bothered to speak to me directly. I stared at him, fascinated.

“What are you here for?” I knew that the room at the end of the Upper Corridor was a Master’s study. I’d even been in it once or twice; a small airless place, knee-deep in papers, with several huge and indestructible plants sprawling ominously from a high and narrow window.

The boy grinned. “Quaz sent me. I’ll get off with a caution, or DT. Quaz never canes anyone.”

“Quaz?” I was familiar with the name; overheard in after-school conversations between boys. I knew it was a nickname and could not put a face to it.

“Lives in the Bell Tower? Looks like a gargoyle?” The boy grinned again. “Bit of a podex, but he’s all right really. I’ll talk him round.”

I stared at the boy with growing awe. His confidence fascinated me. The way he spoke of a Master—not as a creature of terrifying authority, but as a figure of fun—made me inarticulate with admiration. Better still, this boy—this rebel who dared to flout St. Oswald’s—was talking to me as an equal, and he didn’t have the slightest idea who I was!

I had never until then imagined that I might find an ally there. My visits to St. Oswald’s were painfully private. I had no school friends to tell; confiding in my father or Pepsi would have been unthinkable. But this boy—

At last I found my voice. “What’s a podex?”

The boy’s name was Leon Mitchell. I gave my own as Julian Pinchbeck, and told him I was a first year. I was rather small for my age, and I thought it would be easier for me to pass as a member of another year group. That way Leon would not question my absence from year Assemblies or Games.

I felt almost faint at the enormity of my bluff, but I was elated too. It was really so easy. If one boy could be convinced, then why not others—maybe even Masters?

I suddenly imagined myself joining clubs, teams, openly attending lessons. Why not? I knew the school better than any of the pupils. I wore the uniform. Why should anyone question me? There must have been a thousand boys at the school. No one—not even the Head—could be expected to know them all. Better still, I had all the precious tradition of St. Oswald’s on my side; no one had ever heard of such a deception as mine. No one would ever suspect such an outrageous thing.

“Don’t you have a lesson to go to?” There was a malicious gleam in the boy’s gray eyes. “You’ll get bollocked if you’re late.”

I sensed this was a challenge. “I don’t care,” I said. “Mr. Bishop sent me with a message for the office. I can say the secretary was on the phone, and I had to wait.”

“Not bad. I’ll have to remember that one.”

Leon’s approval made me reckless. “I bunk off all the time,” I told him. “No one’s ever caught me.”

He nodded, grinning. “So what is it today?”

I almost said Games but stopped myself just in time. “RE.”

Leon pulled a face. “Vae! Don’t blame you. Give me the pagans any day. At least they were allowed to have sex.”

I sniggered. “Who’s your form teacher?” I asked. If I knew that, I could find out for sure what year he was in.

“Slimy Strange. English. A real cimex. What about yours?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell Leon anything that could too easily be disproved. But before I could answer there was a sudden shuffle of footsteps in the corridor behind us. Someone was approaching.

Leon straightened up immediately. “It’s Quaz,” he advised in a quick undertone. “Better scat.”

I turned toward the approaching footsteps, torn between relief at not having to answer the form-master question and disappointment that our conversation had been so short. I tried to imprint Leon’s face into my memory; the lock of hair falling casually across his forehead; the light eyes; the ironic mouth. Ridiculous to imagine that I would ever see him again. Dangerous even to try.

I kept my expression neutral as the Master entered the Upper Corridor.

I knew Roy Straitley by his voice alone. I’d followed his classes, laughed at his jokes, but only at a distance had I ever glimpsed his face. Now I saw him; a hunched silhouette in a battered gown and slip-on leather shoes. I ducked my head as he approached, but I must have looked guilty, because he stopped and looked at me sharply. “You, boy. What are you doing here out of lessons?”

I mumbled something about Mr. Bishop, and a message.

Mr. Straitley didn’t seem convinced. “The office is on the Lower Corridor. You’re miles away!”

“Yes, sir. Had to go to my locker, sir.”

“What, during lessons?”

“Sir.”

I could tell he didn’t believe me. My heart raced. I dared a glance and saw Straitley’s face, his ugly, clever, good-natured face frowning down at me. I was afraid, but behind my apprehension lay something else; an irrational, breath-taking sense of hope. Had he seen me? Had someone finally seen me?

“What’s your name, son?”

“Pinchbeck, sir.”

“Pinchbeck, eh?”

I could tell he was thinking what to do. Whether to question me further, as instinct dictated, or simply to let it go and deal with his own pupil. He studied me for a few seconds more—his eyes were the faded yellow-blue of dirty denim—and then I felt the weight of his scrutiny drop. I was not important enough, he’d decided. A Lower School boy, out of lessons without permission; no threat; somebody else’s problem. For a second my anger eclipsed my natural caution. No threat, was I? Not worth the effort? Or had I, in all these years of hiding and skulking, at last become completely and irrevocably invisible?

“All right, son. Don’t let me see you here again. Now scat.”

And I did, shaking now with relief. As I ran I distinctly heard Leon’s voice behind me, whispering: “Hey, Pinchbeck! After school. Okay?”

I turned, and saw him wink at me.

7

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

Wednesday, 8th September

Drama belowdecks; the great blundering frigate which is St. Oswald’s has hit the reef early this year. Firstly, the date of the imminent school inspection has been announced for December 6th. This always causes disruption on a massive scale, especially among the higher echelons of the administrative staff. Secondly—and from my point of view, much more disruptive—next term’s unusual fee increases were announced this morning by second-class post, causing consternation at breakfast tables throughout the county.

Our captain continues to maintain that this is perfectly normal and all in keeping with the rate of inflation, though he remains at present unavailable for comment. Some reprobates have been heard to mumble that if we, the staff, had been informed of the prospective increase, then perhaps we would not have been taken so much by surprise by this morning’s influx of angry phone calls.

Bishop, when questioned, supports the Head. He is a poor liar, however. Rather than face the Common Room this morning, he ran laps around the athletics track until assembly, claiming that he felt unfit and needed the exercise. No one believed this, but as I walked up the steps to room fifty-nine I saw him through the Bell Tower window, still running and dwarfed to forlorn proportions by the elevated perspective.

My form received the news of the fee increase with the usual healthy cynicism. “Sir, does this mean we get a proper teacher this year?” Allen-Jones appeared unmoved by either the room-numbering incident or my own dire threats of the previous day.

“No, it just means a better-stocked drinks cabinet in the Head’s secret study.”

Sniggers from the form. Only Knight looked sullen. Following yesterday’s unpleasantness, this would be his second day of punishment duty, and he had already been the object of ridicule as he paced the grounds in a bright orange jumpsuit, picking up discarded papers and stuffing them into an enormous plastic sack. Twenty years ago it would have been the cane and the respect of his peers; it goes to show that not all innovations are bad.

“My mum says it’s a disgrace,” said Sutcliff. “There’s other schools out there, you know.”

“Yes, but any zoo would be happy to take you,” I said vaguely, searching in my desk for the register. “Dammit, where’s the register? I know it was here.”

I always keep the register in my top drawer. I may look disorganized, but I usually know where everything is.

“When will your salary go up, sir?” That was Jackson.

Sutcliff: “He’s a millionaire already!”

Allen-Jones: “That’s because he never wastes money on clothes.”

Knight, in a low voice: “Or soap.”

I straightened up and looked at Knight. Somehow his expression managed to be insolent and cringing at the same time. “How did you enjoy your litter round yesterday?” I said. “Would you like to volunteer for another week?”

“You didn’t say that to the others,” muttered Knight.

“That’s because the others know the line between humor and insolence.”

“You pick on me.” Knight’s voice was lower than ever. His eyes did not meet mine.

“What?” I was genuinely amazed.

“You pick on me, sir. You pick on me because—”

“Because what?” I snapped.

“Because I’m Jewish, sir.”

“What?” I was annoyed with myself. I’d been so preoccupied with the missing register that I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, and allowed a pupil to draw me into a public confrontation.

The rest of the class was silent, watching us both expectantly.

I regained my composure. “Rubbish. I don’t pick on you because you’re Jewish. I pick on you because you can never keep your trap shut and you’ve got stercus for brains.”

McNair, Sutcliff, or Allen-Jones would have laughed at that, and things would have been all right. Even Tayler would have laughed, and he wears a yarmulke in class.

But Knight’s expression did not change. Instead I saw something there that I had never noticed before; a new kind of stubbornness. For the first time, Knight held my gaze. For a second I thought he was going to say something more, then he dropped his eyes in the old familiar way and muttered something inaudible under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, sir.”

“Good.”

I turned back to my desk. The register might have gone astray, but I know all my boys; I would have known the moment I entered the room if one of them were missing. I intoned the list anyway—the schoolmaster’s mantra—it never fails to calm them down.

Afterward I glanced at Knight, but his face was lowered, and there was nothing about his sullen expression that suggested revolt. Normality had been resumed, I decided. The small crisis was over.

8

I debated for a long time before keeping Leon’s appointment. I wanted to meet him—more than anything, I wanted to be his friend—though this was a line I had never crossed before, and on this occasion, there was more at stake than ever. But I liked Leon—had liked him from the first—and that made me reckless. At my own school, anyone who spoke to me risked persecution from my school yard tormentors. Leon was from another world. Despite his long hair and mutilated tie, he was an insider.

I did not rejoin the cross-country group. The next day, I would forge a letter from my father, saying that I’d had an asthma attack during the run, and forbidding me to take part again.

I had no regrets. I hated Games. I especially hated Mr. Bray with his fake tan and his gold neck-chain, flaunting his Neanderthal humor to that little circle of sycophants at the expense of the weak; the clumsy; the inarticulate; the losers like me. And so I hid behind the Games Pavilion, still dressed in my St. Oswald’s clothes, and waited, with some apprehension, for the end-of-school bell.

No one spared me a look; no one questioned my right to be there. All around me, boys—some in blazers or shirt sleeves, some still in their sports’ kit—jumped into cars; tripped over cricket bats; exchanged jokes, books, prep notes. A bulky, boisterous-looking man took charge of the bus queue—it was Mr. Bishop, the Second Master—while an older man in a black and red gown stood at the Chapel gates.

This, I knew, was Dr. Shakeshafte, the Head. My father spoke of him with respect and some awe—after all, he had given him his job. One of the old school, my father would say with approval: tough but fair. Let’s hope the new man’s half as good.

Officially, of course, I knew nothing of the events that had led to the New Head’s appointment. My father could be oddly puritanical about some things, and I suppose he felt it was disloyal to St. Oswald’s to discuss the matter with me. Already, however, some of the local papers had caught the scent, and I had heard the rest from overheard remarks between my father and Pepsi: to avoid adverse publicity, the Old Head was to remain until the end of term—ostensibly to induct the new man and to help him settle in—after which he would leave on a comfortable pension provided by the trust. St. Oswald’s looks after its own: and there would be a generous out-of-court settlement for the injured parties—on the understanding, of course, that no mention was made of the circumstances.

As a result, I observed Dr. Shakeshafte with some curiosity from my position at the school gates. A craggy-faced man of about sixty, not as bulky as Bishop, but with the same ex-rugbyman’s build, he loomed over the boys like a gargoyle. A cane evangelist, I gathered from my father—good thing too, teach these boys some discipline. At my own school, the cane had already been outlawed for years. Instead, such people as Miss Potts and Miss McAuleigh favored the empathic approach, whereby bullies and thugs were invited to discuss their feelings before being let off with a caution.

Mr. Bray, himself a veteran bully, preferred the direct approach, so like my father’s, in which the complainant was advised to stop whingeing to me and fight your own battles, for Christ’s sake. I pondered the exact nature of the battle that had resulted in the Head’s involuntary retirement and wondered how it had been fought. I was still wondering when, ten minutes later, Leon arrived.

“Hey, Pinchbeck.” He was carrying his blazer over one shoulder, and his shirt was hanging out. The scissored tie poked impudently from his collar like a tongue. “What’re you doing?”

I swallowed, trying to look casual. “Nothing much. How did it go with Quaz?”

“Pactum factum,” said Leon, grinning. “DT on Friday, as predicted.”

“Bad luck.” I shook my head. “So what did you do?”

He made a dismissive gesture. “Ah, nothing,” he said. “Bit of basic self-expression on my desk lid. Want to go into town?”

I made a quick mental calculation. I could afford to be an hour late; my father had his rounds to do—doors to lock, keys to collect—and would not be home before five. Pepsi, if she was there at all, would be watching TV, or maybe cooking dinner. She had long since stopped trying to befriend me; I was free.

Try to imagine that hour, if you can. Leon had some money, and we had coffee and doughnuts in the little tea shop by the railway station, then we went around the record shops, where Leon dismissed my musical tastes as “banal” and expressed a preference in such bands as the Stranglers and the Squeeze. I had a bad moment when we passed a group of girls from my own school, and a worse one when Mr. Bray’s white Capri stopped at some lights as we were crossing the road, but I soon realized that in my St. Oswald’s uniform, I might as well really have been invisible.

For a few seconds Mr. Bray and I were close enough to touch. I wondered what would happen if I tapped at the window and said, “You are a complete and utter podex, sir.”

The thought made me laugh so much and so suddenly that I could hardly breathe.

“Who’s that?” said Leon, noticing me noticing.

“No one,” I said hastily. “Some bloke.”

“The girl, you prat.”

“Oh.” She was sitting in the passenger seat, turned slightly toward him. I recognized her: Tracey Delacey, a couple of years older than I was, the current fourth-form pinup. She was wearing a tennis skirt and sat with her legs crossed very high.

“Banal,” I said, using Leon’s word.

“I’d give her one,” said Leon, grinning.

“You would?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

I thought of Tracey, with her teased hair and lingering smell of Juicy Fruit gum. “Uh. Maybe,” I said, without enthusiasm.

Leon grinned as the little car pulled away.

My new friend was in Amadeus House. His parents—a university P.A. and a civil servant—were divorced (“but that’s okay, I get double the pocket money”). He had a younger sister, Charlotte; a dog called Captain Sensible; a personal therapist; an electric guitar; and, it seemed to me, limitless freedom.

“Mum says I need to experience learning beyond the confines of the patriarchal Judaeo-Christian system. She doesn’t really approve of St. Oz—but Dad’s the one who foots the bill. He was at Eton. Thinks day-schoolers are proles.”

“Right.” I tried to think of something honest to say about my own parents, but could not; in less than an hour’s acquaintance I already sensed that this boy held more of a place in my heart than John or Sharon Snyde ever had.

Ruthlessly, then, I reinvented them. My mother was dead; my father was a police inspector (the most important-sounding job I could think of at the time). I lived with my father for part of the year, and for the rest of the time with my uncle in town. “I had to come to St. Oswald’s midterm,” I explained. “I’ve not been here long.”

Leon nodded. “That right? I thought you might be a newbie. What happened with the other place? D’you get expelled?”

The suggestion rather pleased me. “It was a dump. My dad pulled me out.”

“I got thrown out of my last school,” said Leon. “Dad was livid. Three grand a year, they were getting, and they chucked me out on a first offense. Talk about banal. You’d think they’d make more of an effort, wouldn’t you? Anyway, we could do worse than St. Oz. Specially now Shakeshafte’s leaving, the old bugger—”

I saw my chance. “Why’s he going, anyhow?”

Leon’s eyes widened humorously. “You really are a newbie, aren’t you?” He lowered his voice. “Let me put it this way; I heard he was doing a bit more than just shaking his shaft . . .”

Things have changed since then, even at St. Oswald’s. In those days you could throw money at a scandal and it would go away. All that’s changed now. We are no longer overawed by the burnished spires: we can see the corruption beneath the shine. And it is fragile; a well-placed stone might bring it down. A stone, or something else.

I can identify with a boy like Knight. Small, lank, inarticulate, an obvious outsider. Shunned by his classmates, not for any question of religion, but for a more basic reason. It isn’t anything he can alter; it’s in the contours of his face, the no-color of his limp hair, the length of his bones. His family may have money now, but generations of poverty lie bone deep in him. I know. St. Oswald’s accepts his kind with reluctance in a time of financial crisis, but a boy like Knight will never fit in. His name will never appear on the Honor Boards. Masters will persistently forget his name. He will never be chosen for teams. His attempts to gain acceptance will always end in disaster. There is a look in his eyes that I recognize too well; the wary, resentful look of a boy who has long since stopped trying for acceptance. All he can do is hate.

Of course I heard about the scene with Straitley almost at once. The St. Oswald’s grapevine runs fast; any incident is reported within the day. Today had been a particularly bad one for Colin Knight. At registration, the spat with Straitley; at break, an incident with Robbie Roach over missing homework; at lunchtime, a flare-up with Jackson—also of 3S—which resulted in Jackson being sent home with a broken nose and Knight suspended for the week.

I was on duty in the grounds when it happened. I could see Knight in his protective overalls, gloomily picking up litter from the rose beds. A clever, cruel punishment; far more humiliating than lines or detention. As far as I know, only Roy Straitley uses it. It’s the same kind of overall my father used to wear and which the half-wit Jimmy wears now: large, bright orange and visible from right across the playing fields. Anyone who wears it is fair game.

Knight had tried unsuccessfully to hide behind an angle of the building. A knot of smaller boys had gathered there and were making fun of him, pointing out scraps of litter he had missed. Jackson, a small, aggressive boy who knows that only the presence of a loser like Knight prevents him from being bullied, was hanging around close by with a couple of other third-years. Pat Bishop was on duty, but out of earshot, surrounded by boys, on the other side of the cricket pitch. Roach, the history teacher, was on duty too but seemed more interested in talking to a group of fifth-formers than sorting out discipline.

I went up to Knight. “That can’t be much fun.”

Knight shook his head sullenly. His face was pale and sallow, except for a red spot on each cheekbone. Jackson, who had been observing me, broke away from the little group and edged warily closer. I could see him measuring me with his eyes, as if to determine the threat I represented. Jackals do much the same thing when circling a dying animal.

“Want to join him?” I said sharply, and Jackson scuttled back to his group, startled.

Knight gave me a look of furtive gratitude. “It’s not fair,” he said in a low voice. “They’re always picking on me.”

I nodded sympathetically. “I know.”

“You know?”

“Oh yes,” I said quietly. “I’ve been watching.”

Knight looked at me. His eyes were hot and dark and absurdly hopeful.

“Listen to me, Colin. Isn’t that your name?”

He nodded.

“You have to learn to fight back, Colin,” I said. “Don’t be a victim. Make them pay.”

“Pay?” Knight looked startled.

“Why not?”

“I’d get into trouble.”

“Aren’t you already?”

He looked at me.

“Then what’s to lose?”

The end-of-break bell went then, and I had no time to say anything else, but in any case I didn’t have to; the seeds were sown. Knight’s hopeful gaze followed me across the school yard, and by lunchtime, the deed was done; Jackson was on the ground with Knight on top of him and Roach running toward them with his whistle bouncing against his chest and the others standing by in slack-jawed amazement at the victim who finally decided to fight back.

I need allies, you see. Not among my colleagues, but further down in the substrata of St. Oswald’s. Strike at the base, and the head will finally topple. I felt a fleeting stab of pity for the unsuspecting Knight, who will be my sacrifice, but I have to remind myself that in any war there must be casualties, and that if things go according to plan there will have to be many more before St. Oswald’s founders in a crash of broken idols and shattered dreams.