A Kestrel for a Knave

  ‘We might as well get rid of these chips, Floyd, it’s getting late now.’

  Floyd didn’t answer. Mary waited, watching him through the painted information, OPEN WED. DINNER, her eyes spectacled O P in the mirror.

  ‘Can I have some scraps missus?’

  Mary shovelled another dollop of chips into the bag, and topped it up, spilling them into the newspaper. Half a scoop of scraps, a tail end, and she had to use both hands to pass the big shuttlecock over the counter. Billy exchanged his half-crown, his eyes as grateful as the five thousand. A shake of salt, a shower of vinegar, and with his change in his pocket, he walked out with his portable feast.

  Round the corner past the Co-op, to GEORGE BEAL FAMILY BUTCHER.

  ‘A quarter o’ beef.’

  ‘By, them smell good.’

  ‘Want one?’

  Billy offered the packet over the counter. The Family Butcher squeezed a couple between his bloody fingers and gobbed them.

  ‘Lovely.’

  He turned to a side block, and with one stroke of the knife sliced a strip of beef clean off a joint.

  ‘You’ve still got that bird then?’

  He flopped the beef on to the scales and sucked his teeth while the pointer steadied. Billy felt for his money. George Beal wrapped the meat up and handed it over.

  ‘Here, tha can have that.’

  ‘For nowt?’

  ‘It’s only a scrap.’

  ‘Do you want another chip?’

  ‘No, I’ll be going for my dinner in a minute.’

  ‘Ta-ra.’

  ‘So long.’

  Billy dropped the meat into his inside pocket and walked along the shop fronts, looking into the windows: the fruiterers, apples wrapped in purple papers: the hairdressers, cardboard smilers newly permed; the HIGH CLASS GROCER at the end. He went in, ten Embassy and a box o’ matches, then strolled back to school, eating his dinner.

  He finished it just before he reached the gates.

  Afternoon quiet. Darkening sky. Cloud skittering low in thickening hues.

  The rooms along the front of the school were lighted: rooms 1 to 6, two bright blocks divided by foyer and offices. From the road, looking through the railings across the grass, silent pictures from room to room; same story, different players: the teacher at the front, the profiles of the window row. Rooms 6 and 5, teachers seated. 4, standing at the board. The Deputy’s office, the Deputy at his desk. Foyer dim, deserted, like the Headmaster’s room next to it. The secretary in her office, straight-backed, fingers dancing on the keys. Room 3, empty, lights left on. Room 2, Billy half-way down the row. Windows closed, top panes misting over.

  The class was quiet, working; the teacher reading, looking up each time he turned a page. The atmosphere was heavy. The air stunk of sour milk and sweat. Billy eased himself down in his chair and stretched his legs under the desk. He lay his left arm along the radiator and closed his eyes.

  The scuffle of a turning page. A shifting chair. A whisper. A giggle. And a cough. All isolated, exaggerated sounds.

  ‘Casper.’

  A voice from the gods.

  ‘Casper!’

  Billy sat up white-faced, staring like somebody laid too long. He stretched, fingers linked, joints going off like jumping crackers.

  ‘Get on with your work lad.’ Then back to his book.

  Billy dipped his pen and leaned over his book, shading his eyes with his left hand.

  Divide 42174 by 781.

  Pen poised, nib pointing at the page. The ink skin in the nib-hole burst, scattering spots between the turquoise lines. Billy’s eyelids began to droop. His elbow began to slide along the desk, his body after it, until the lip of the desk lid stopped his chest and made him open his eyes. He changed elbows, snuggled his shins up to the radiator and settled again, his glazed eyes fixed on the window. Clouding window. He raised his hand and drew his nib down through the cloud, scratching a course as clear as water. His hand stayed limp on the sill. The nib rusted, and the inkspots on his exercise book dried.

  Jud walked slowly past the school, looking through the railings at the flickering rooms. He completed the length of the building, then turned round and came back. When he reached the main gates he turned in and walked up the drive.

  Billy opened his eyes and stared at the window as though listening to it. The whole pane was obscure. He wiped a hole in the mist and peered through it. Nobody there. Just a passing car, the smudged glass blurring its outline and spangling its lamps like tears.

  ‘Any-thing to report, Casper?’

  Billy turned to the front.

  ‘Never mind what’s going off out there, get on with your work, lad.’

  Divide 42174 by 781.

  Billy looked at it, then nudged the boy beside him.

  ‘Hey up, did tha see somebody just come up t’drive?’

  He was too busy working. He shook his head. Billy prodded the boy in front.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Has tha seen anybody just come up t’drive?’

  ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t looking.’

  The boy behind. No.

  Then, from the corridor side, a distant clicking, building slowly to the ringing of steel-tipped heels, making everyone look and turn in anticipation towards the sound.

  Jud, looking in as he passed; out of sight, the sound dying down the corridor. The boys looked at Billy. The colour was draining from his face before their very eyes. Click Click Click Click, still audible, steady as a clock. Then stopping as suddenly; and returning. All eyes lifted to the corner by the door, watching as the sound came closer, closer, loud enough to justify an appearance many seconds before Jud’s upper body actually popped into view. Looking in the length of the room. A sitting duck along the top of the cupboards. Gone.

  ‘Wasn’t that your illustrious brother, Casper?’

  Billy was still staring at the corner where Jud had disappeared.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the type to pay his old school a visit.’

  He started to lower his eyes to his book, then glanced up again at Billy.

  ‘Are you all right, lad?’ Pause. ‘Casper. What’s the matter with you? Do you feel sick?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Are you sure? Do you want to go out for a drink of water or something?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘Open a window then, perhaps that’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘I’m all right, Sir.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Billy shielded his face from the rest of the class and pretended to work. Tears mingled with the sweat bobbles on the sides of his nose and sped down his cheeks. He licked them away and wiped his hand down his face.

  The bell rang.

  ‘Right, pass your books to the front. Front boy in each row bring them out.’

  Billy sat back and looked round. On every desk there was an exercise book and a text-book: seventy-two books to be closed and handed in. Two seconds later they were all closed, and the relaying from the back to the front had begun. Billy’s contribution was carried out in slow motion, but in spite of this, within twenty seconds of the teacher’s order, all the books had been stacked into neat piles at the front of each row. They were then carried out and stacked on the teacher’s desk in three piles of equal height: thirty-six exercise books in one pile, eighteen text-books in each of the other two. And the whole job completed in twenty-seven seconds.

  ‘Right, you can go.’

  Chairs were scraped back, the aisles filled up, and the class straggled out. Billy stayed put, and when the teacher made no move, he slid off his chair and fumbled about on the floor, occasionally glancing over the desk lid. The teacher closed his novel, placed it on top of the exercise books, and picked the pile up as he stood up.

  ‘What’s the matter, Casper, lost something?’

  He turned away and made for the door. Billy scrambled out of his place and cut across the rows, reaching him just as he entered the corridor. He tu
rned right. Billy’s class had gone left. The last boy was twenty yards away. A few yards further on Tibbut was talking to Jud, who had his back to the notice board and one boot up against the wall. When Billy appeared Tibbut pointed to him. Jud pushed himself up and took his hands out of his pockets. Billy caught up with his teacher and tracked him closely, looking round every few steps. They turned the corner. Through the windows across the quadrangle Jud could be seen following them. While Billy was watching him, the teacher entered a classroom and closed the door. Jud turned the corner. Billy looked at him, then sprinted, dodging and banging his way the full length of the corridor, past classrooms, cloakroom, and into the toilets. He leaned back on the door. It hurried to, then slowed abruptly. He shoved it with his legs, but the air brake refused to be hurried and the door squeezed shut at its own set pace. Ear to the door, listening, eyes starting to panic. He ran straight across the toilets and out of the side door. The yard was deserted. Across the field a crow flapped sideways into the air, flapped the length of the football pitch, and landed on the crossbar. Billy flattened himself to the wall.

  Inner door opening. Footsteps. Silence. Door clicking shut. Footsteps approaching. He got ready to run, then BANG, BANG, BANG, as the cubicle doors were kicked back against the walls. He ducked down and raced little-man up the side of the school under the classroom windows. ‘Therefore AB must equal AC… five fives are twenty-five, six fives are thir-ty!… Like a wall of green glass topped with snow. The ship…’ In through the side door, pausing and peeping up and down the corridor. Empty. He walked down past the classrooms he had just passed on the outside. Mr Farthing, book before him, class intent…. The six times table muffled through the glass…. Mr Crossley at the board, pointing to a triangle inside a circle…. Billy dodged into the cloakroom and ran down a corridor of coats to the far end. He listened for a minute, then unhooked a collection of raincoats, overcoats and dufflecoats, and humped them on top of each other on adjoining end pegs, forming a bulk like a tree trunk, which he disappeared into and parted slightly to spy out into the main corridor. A boy passed, picking his nose, oblivious. Billy sat on his haunches, waiting.

  Waiting. No one appeared, so he emerged from his hideout, stepped down off the foot-bench and ran the few yards up to the corridor. Nobody there; just an electric buzz and an echo permeating the atmosphere. He went into the toilets next door: empty, the cubicle doors ajar at different angles. He ran across to the outer door, and pressed a cheek to the meshed glass, trying to squint along the outside walls. His view was obstructed by jutting brick, so he stepped back and glanced out across the fields. The crow had flown from the crossbar. The goals ran parallel, horizontally and vertically, to the mesh pattern in the glass, and the posts filled the width of one mesh square exactly.

  He yanked the door open and rushed out into the yard, looking back over his shoulders at the walls. Blank. He cut back into the wall, sneaked down to the corner and peeped round the back of the school. Just the cycle shed, a cluster of bins and a blunt heap of coke. He sprinted across to the cycle shed and glanced inside. Cycles. Crept down the side and peeped round the corner, along the back and up the far side. Then a look across the front of the shed to his starting point, and a wipe of his brow on his sleeve.

  Somewhere in school a class was singing. They would sing a verse then break it down: every few bars the piano would stop, and the hoo-haa-hee of voices would tail away, dragging the tune down with it. The same snatch would be repeated, and repeated; until finally the whole verse would be allowed again, the new version sounding exactly the same as the original.

  Billy ran back across the asphalt and tried the boiler room door. It opened. Hot air rushed past him out of the darkness. The light switch was on the wall to his left. He felt sideways for it and clicked it on. A yard inside the door the floor fell away in a ten foot cliff. Across a chasm, at the same height as Billy’s feet, was the top of the boiler. A good long-jumper could have run from the cycle shed, straight in, and jumped on top of it. From the boiler, pipes bent up the walls and disappeared through the ceiling like branches of the beanstalk. The whitewashed walls were grey with dust, and a thickness of dust lay like fur around the shoulder of the bulb, which was suspended on a long flex from the ceiling.

  Billy stepped to the cliff edge, turned around and descended the iron ladder. The edges of the rungs were rusty. The centres were hollowed and silver with wear.

  In the well bottom, the boiler occupied most of the floor space. Billy flicked his fingers at the insulating coat surrounding it, tigging it as though expecting it to be red hot. It was warm, a pleasant heat, like a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel. He walked down one side. At the back, between the boiler and the wall, was a yard gap, spanned in the centre by a thick pipe at ground level. He skiddled back up the side of the boiler, back up the ladder, and shut himself in. Clicked the light off, then stood still, waiting for the black shapes to come out and establish themselves in the darkness. Then back down the ladder to the space behind the boiler, where he sat down and rested his head against the pipe; as snug as a bug, as warm as toast, as safe as houses; enclosed on two sides, with the darkness before him and the thick pipe behind. He began to nod.

  When he woke up the light was on, and somebody was moving about close by. He sat still, staring down at his pumps which were sticking out in the shadow of the boiler. Holding his breath he flexed his knees and withdrew them, replacing them close to his buttocks. Then, pushing himself up on his finger tips, he transferred his weight forward from his heels to his toes, and rocked over to a cat-landing on all fours. A pause for listening, then he peeped round the corner of the boiler. The caretaker was feeling into a jacket hanging on a nail in the wall. He found a twenty cigarette packet, shook it, and turned away. As he ascended the ladder the studs in his boots made music on the metal. He clicked the light off and swung the door to. The band of sky in the doorway narrowed rapidly, and on the walls, darkness slid across the panels of light like a curtain.

  Billy stood up and stretched. He padded up the ladder, felt for the door sneck and pulled. Stuck. Pulled and rattled. Locked.

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  He dabbed for the lock, grabbed it, felt it with his finger tips, and smiled. Yale.

  The wind had dropped. It was starting to rain. Big spots dotted the asphalt like pennies from heaven. On top of the cycle shed a black cat froze in mid-stride and stared down at him. When he shut the door the noise and movement sent it silently down the grain of the tin and out of sight down the back of the shed.

  It was quiet without the wind. No birds sang, and the singing had stopped in school. There was no sound from the school. Billy stood back in the doorway listening, and watching the back corner of the shed. Nothing happened. So he ran across and had a look. The cat had gone. On the roof of the shed the raindrops were quickening like a heartbeat. The sound developed into a solo, and water began to trickle down the tin, bringing up the rust, copper and orange. Billy turned round and sprinted. Round the corner of the building, straight in through the toilets and into the corridor. Empty. The first classroom he looked into was empty. The second was occupied. He stared in until he attracted everyone’s attention, and the teacher came rushing to the door.

  ‘What’s the matter, Casper? What are you looking at?’

  ‘What time is it, Sir?’

  ‘Time! Never mind the time lad! What do you want?’

  He stepped down the corridor. Billy stepped back.

  ‘Is this 3B, Sir?’

  ‘No it isn’t 3B, why?’

  ‘I thought it wa’. I’ve got a message for ’em.’

  ‘Well get to the office then.’

  ‘Why, are they in there, Sir?’

  ‘No, to find out where they are, you fool! Ask the secretary to look at the timetable.’

  ‘Yes, Sir. I forgot.’

  ‘You will forget, lad, if you come disturbing me again like that.’

  He banged the door and frowned his way across to his des
k. He was still frowning when he resumed the lesson, two vertical frowns between his eyes. Billy walked slowly by and looked into the next room. A class was working. He dodged back out of sight and stood between the two rooms with his back to the radiator, glancing continually right and left, up and down the corridor.

  The bell rang, and before the ringing had stopped doors opened and boys came out into the corridor. For the first few seconds there were wide spaces between them, but these spaces diminished rapidly as the rooms emptied and whole classes merged, shouting and jostling, and pursuing their various destinations. Billy shouted and jostled with them. ‘Seen 4C? Hey up! Seen our class?’ Jumping up to see over heads; failing, and mounting boys’ backs to gain a momentary vantage point. They tried to wrestle and thump him off, but he was too quick, and he jumped down and dodged away while they were still bent forward.

  He found them and rushed amongst them, smiling and rubbing shoulders. ‘Where’s tha been, Casper?’ Billy just smiled and mingled, and moved alongside Tibbut.

  ‘Seen our Jud?’

  ‘Hey up, where’s tha been? They’ve been looking all over for thee.’

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘Gryce pudding and everybody.’

  ‘What for? I haven’t done owt.’

  ‘Youth Employment. Tha should have gone for thi interview last lesson.’

  ‘Seen our Jud?’

  ‘I saw him earlier on, why?’

  ‘Did he say owt?’

  ‘Just asked where tha wa’ that’s all. What did tha run away for when tha saw him?’

  ‘Seen him since?’

  ‘What’s up, is he after thi for summat?’

  When they reached their classroom Gryce was standing at the door. When he saw Billy he batted him twice about the ears, forehand left ear, backhand right.

  ‘And where do you think you’ve been, lad?’

  Billy muffed his ears with his hands.

  ‘Nowhere, Sir,’ shouting like someone deaf.

  ‘Nowhere! Don’t talk ridiculous lad! Who are you, the invisible man?’

  Billy backed into the empty room as Gryce came for him again.

  ‘I felt sick, Sir. I went to the toilet.’