St Oswald’s is a Church school. They’re always collecting for some cause or other. If it’s not poppies, it’s flags, or buns. This lunchtime it was apples. Fivepence each, for charity, an apple and a sticker. Mr Clarke’s room was half-full of boys – plus me and Goldie and Poodle, of course – and this boy from the Lower School came in with a box full of apples.
No one seemed too keen at first. Fivepence for an apple. You could get a ton of sweets for that. But Mr Clarke – no, Harry – said: ‘Forbidden fruit. How can we resist?’
After that, everyone wanted one. So we went over to the teacher’s desk and handed over our money. Everyone was milling around, putting stickers on their heads, grabbing apples from the box. And then there was this ugly one. Not bad, but smaller than the rest, and with a funny-looking wart like something on a witch’s nose. And by the time we’d all chosen ours, there were only three apples left in the box: two good ones and the ugly one. And Harry chose the ugly one, and left the two good ones for someone else.
The boy who was selling the apples said: ‘Sir, that one’s manky.’
Harry smiled. I was standing next to him. And then he looked at me and said: ‘It’ll be fine on the inside. And that’s what matters, isn’t it? What it’s like on the inside?’
The boy went away, looking puzzled. But I knew at once what Harry meant. He’d chosen the apple that no one else would. The ugly apple. The odd one out. I’ve always been the odd one out. Even before Netherton Green, I was always the last to be chosen.
But Mr Clarke – Harry’s not like that. Harry sees my potential. Harry lent me Lord of the Flies – his copy, with his personal notes. Harry isn’t the kind of man to lend his books to just anyone. And now I go to Harry’s room every Break and lunchtime. I bring him tea in the mornings from the big urn in the kitchens. I water his plants. I tidy his bookshelves. I put his records into alphabetical order. I’ve always liked helping out at school, and there are so many ways to help.
Miss McDonald at Netherton Green called me her Special Little Helper. OK, so that’s really lame, and besides, it didn’t turn out that well, but with Harry, it’s different. For starters, I’m not eight any more. Harry and I have a more adult relationship. We can have conversations. We can talk about music and Life. I think he sees how mature I am, compared to the other boys in his class.
That’s part of My Condition, of course. I’ve seen more than some of those boys ever will. Harry understands that. He knows I’m an exceptional case. And I like to think I understand him too – at least, I do a little. I can tell how much he loves his job, but sometimes he looks tired. I wonder how he ended up here, instead of at a better school. I wonder why he’s still just a master, and not Head of Year or something. And I wonder why he’s not married. He’s clever, and kind of good-looking, and not too old for that kind of thing. Perhaps he’s like me, and doesn’t like to get too close to people. Perhaps, like me, he has a past and doesn’t like to discuss it.
I’ve thought of just asking him. But no. There’s an invisible chalk line that runs along the teacher’s desk. Even though he’s asked me to call him by his Christian name; even though he talks to me as if I were his equal. He’s still a master. I’m still a boy. There’s still a distance between us. But in a way, I respect him more, for keeping his private life private.
And I can wait. I’m good at that. I’m good at waiting, Mousey. I can be like other boys; at least I can on the outside. And one day, when I’m sure of him, then I’ll tell him everything – Bunny, Miss McDonald, the dog; the games down by the clay pits; even you. Because you were nothing, Mousey. You were nothing, compared to me. And Mr Clarke will understand—
Still, there’s lots of time for that.
After all, it’s only September.
6
September 7th, 2005
It was, I suppose, a testament to Harrington’s powers of fascination that no one noticed much at first about his two new deputies. I’d thought them just a couple of Suits, but as the New Head turned down the high beam of his boyish charm, I began to think I might have underestimated the level of menace they represent.
Men like Johnny Harrington never share the limelight. But behind every showman there has to be a couple of familiars – efficient, but not too flashy – to handle the technical side of the show.
He revealed them after the Bursar’s speech, with a careless flamboyance, much as Seuss’s Cat in the Hat unleashed his creatures, Thing One and Thing Two.
‘As you know,’ he said, ‘recent events have brought to the attention of the Governors a number of – areas of concern – in the running of the School, and the role of the Crisis Deputies – a purely temporary role, may I add – is to help maintain the staff status quo whilst facilitating the transition between the old ways and the new. Tradition and excellence should be our aim. Progress through tradition. Over the next few days, you’ll be seeing that phrase on a lot of our promotional material. As the Bursar has already explained, we need to bring customers back to the School, and that means building confidence. Together, we and the Crisis Team will build a new St Oswald’s; stronger than it was before, armed with the knowledge of the past, ready to face the future.’
He paused for effect, and then went on: ‘I give you Dr Marcus Blakely and Ms Rebecca Buckfast, my wonderful Crisis Deputies.’
Cue applause from the rest of the staff, led by the Head and Bob Strange, as Thing One and Thing Two took the stage. Like their Dr Seuss counterparts, they share a curious resemblance which – in the case of the Crisis Team – has little to do with their features and everything to do with a kind of corporate sameness, a suited homogeneity, as jarring as a pair of plastic chairs around a scarred oak school desk.
Thing One – Dr Blakely – forties; balding; not too tall, shaved with eye-watering closeness to a shiny plastic-pink finish. Thing Two – Ms Buckfast – a largish lady about the same age; round face; red hair in a bob; red slash of lipstick across the mouth. Both were wearing suits, of course – though not quite as stylish as Harrington’s – in matching shades of charcoal, with a gold silk tie for Thing One, and in the case of Thing Two, a silk scarf in an ethnic print artfully twisted around her neck.
Harrington explained that both were experts in their fields: fundraising; image; pastoral care; gender awareness; cultural sensitivity and learning difficulties. He explained that Ms Buckfast would be in charge of the ‘rebranding’ of the School, and that Dr Blakely had close links with the children’s charity Survivors, as well as being the creator of a national think-tank to discuss ‘abuse situations’, and was in the process of drafting a Zero Tolerance Policy to deal with all aspects of bullying.
‘Every school has its failures,’ he said. ‘We must face ours with humility. Only last year, St Oswald’s suffered the ultimate tragedy. We let down a troubled young man by the name of Colin Knight’ – at this I thought he glanced at me – ‘a young man who might still be with us today, if there had been a policy to deal with his situation.’
I suppressed an indignant oof. I’d like to see the policy that would have prevented what happened last year. Besides, in my experience, pastoral care and paperwork exist in inverse proportion to each other, like common sense and training.
However, once more, I forebore from comment. Suits and their policies come and go, rather like Headmasters. St Oswald’s has borne such attacks before, and survived; I expect it to do so again. Still, I suspect that this will mean a tedious round of training days, organized by Thing One and Thing Two, during which such as Yours Truly will have to demonstrate awareness of such practices as cyber-bullying and internet grooming, while performing role plays, building forts from furniture and generally indulging in the kind of party games favoured by the Drama Department.
Abuse guru. Ye gods.
Certain of my colleagues, of course, will respond to all this nonsense with the enthusiasm of a group of cub Scouts gambolling around their Akela. Geoff and Penny Nation, the husband-and-wife team currently attac
hed to the German Department, are both veterans of think-tanks and focus groups; besides which, Penny once went on a course entitled Kids in Counselling, which left her under the delusion that she is approachable and relates well to ‘youth issues’.
For his part, Bob Strange seems impressed by the fact that, under the new regime, all St Oswald’s current problems will be transferred to a series of policy documents, and will therefore completely cease to exist in the real world. As for Dr Devine, well. He must remember the Harry Clarke affair, but he never taught Johnny Harrington, or had much to do with him. Eric, too, is aware of it; but he was on the outside of events, and his involvement in that old tale is mostly mine to remember.
Still, transit umbra. I suspect the Crisis Team won’t be here long. Word in the Common Room last term was that Crisis Teams rarely stay out the year. Once the paperwork (sorry, computer-work) is done, they tend to migrate to pastures new, leaving us to demonstrate how little relevance real life has to the world of their fiction.
Fiction? Well, you can’t build a School on theories and think-tanks. A good schoolmaster knows that, and cuts his cloth accordingly. In the old days, we knew how to deal with the baser element. We didn’t need a policy to tell us bullying was wrong, or that boys should be polite, and try to behave like gentlemen. There were no charters, no workshops, and certainly no abuse gurus – just a single Latin phrase that covered all eventualities.
In loco parentis. It used to mean ‘act as a reasonable parent does’. Now hardly anyone knows what it means. And besides, most parents nowadays are anything but reasonable. Instead they are litigious, entitled, gullible, defensive, rude and obsessed with getting their money’s worth. As the new Headmaster says: no longer parents, but customers.
Most St Oswald’s customers will love the New Head for all the reasons I do not – his charm, his youth, his oratory, his effortless use of jargon. For myself, I’d like to see him deal with a riotous fifth-form class last thing on a Friday afternoon, but I doubt I ever will. Men like Johnny Harrington never have to roll up their sleeves or get chalk dust on their hands. Men like Harrington sit and make plans while others follow orders. And men like Harrington know how to set other men in motion; winding the mechanism, pulling the strings, setting them off in directions they think they have chosen for themselves—
At long last, the Briefing was over. The Head and his Crisis Deputies went off to discuss the master plan over tea and biscuits in the Head’s inner sanctum. I know that sanctum very well; the last Head left it exactly as old Shitter Shakeshafte did, except that the smell of cheese has been replaced by the scent of floral air-freshener. Bob Strange followed them like an expectant basset hound, leaving the rest of us to compare notes around the tea urn. Kitty Teague passed me a biscuit.
‘So. What do you think?’ I said.
Kitty gave me the kind of smile she reserves for her slowest pupils. ‘He seems very pro-active,’ she said. ‘I think he’ll be good for St Oswald’s. We needed a bit of a shake-up after everything that happened last year.’
‘Pro-active. Isn’t that a kind of yoghurt?’
She said: ‘You don’t sound very convinced.’
‘I don’t think he’s the man for the job.’
‘Why? Because he’s too young? Or because he’s not from a teaching background?’
Well, come to think of it, those are both excellent reasons for mistrust. St Oswald’s is an old ship, requiring careful handling. One does not put an old ship in the hands of the cabin boy. Besides, although I have no doubt as to Harrington’s competence in the field of Public Relations, a real Headmaster comes from the ranks; he serves his time at the chalk-face; he learns from ugly experience; he gets blisters on his hands. This new generation of Headmaster is a different class; computer-literate; personable, politically correct and in touch with the new methodologies – but unless he has taught, how can he expect to understand what we do here? How can he understand the boys? How can he understand the staff?
‘I don’t know about that,’ Kitty said. ‘Everything’s moving so fast now. We need someone to take control, to help us compete in a changing market. I think he’ll be good for all of us, Roy. St Oswald’s needs a human face.’
A human face? Johnny Harrington? Gods, am I the only one he hasn’t managed to seduce?
I noticed Kitty was wearing a suit for the first time since I’ve known her. That’s what promotion does, I suppose. I shouldn’t hold it against her. Kitty, at thirty-five, is still young, with a promising future ahead. Chances are she knows nothing of what happened here twenty-four years ago. Dr Devine is different. I expected more of him. And Eric – he was there from the first, much as he would like to forget, and those who will not remember the past must be condemned to repeat it.
But maybe I shouldn’t be too harsh on my colleagues, or on myself. None of us saw the crisis approaching, back in that autumn of ’81. None of us guessed how everything would spring from that first, improbable seed, like a chain of paper flowers pulled from a circus-master’s hat and blooming gaudily over the years to flower again on a dead man’s grave . . .
7
Michaelmas Term, 1981
Dear Mousey,
It wasn’t always like this, you know. I didn’t always have to pretend. My dad wasn’t always this pompous, and sometimes my mother used to smile. But then we had Tribulation. That’s what they call it, Mousey, with the capital letter. Tribulation is what God sends when He thinks you’re not paying attention. It can be cancer; or locusts; or boils. It can be an accident. Or he can take something away. A precious possession; the use of a limb; even, in some cases, a life.
What God took was my brother.
His name was Edward, but Mum and Dad always called him Bunny. I was seven years old when he died. In fact, he was the reason I got sent to school in the first place. Till then, Mum had looked after me at home, but after my brother was born, she decided that she couldn’t look after two children at once. And so I was sent to Netherton Green, while Mum looked after Bunny.
I didn’t want to go to school. Netherton Green was noisy, and big, and filled with other children. I didn’t like other children much. They frightened me a little. So when I arrived, I didn’t speak. I barked like a dog for the first three days. I figured people liked dogs. I thought it would make them like me. Turns out it made me a weirdo. I’ve been a weirdo ever since.
They never told me exactly what happened to Bunny. Perhaps they thought I was too young. All they said was: God took him. Other people told me the rest. Bunny had been having his bath. My mother had gone to answer the phone. She’d only been gone a minute. Bunny was nearly two by then. He drowned in six inches of water.
I think that’s when I first started to really be afraid of God. If He could take Bunny, then He could take me. And worse, my parents talked about it like it was a kind of treat, like maybe going to Disneyland. Except that sometimes, I could hear Mum crying in her room, and at Church I heard Mrs Plum say to Mrs Constable that Mum was no better than she should be, and that maybe now she’d understand that God doesn’t play favourites.
Mrs Constable didn’t like my parents, because Dad had told some people at Church that Mrs Constable’s daughter was living in sin with a woman in Leeds. After that, Mrs Constable didn’t talk to my parents at all, and Mr Constable started a Gay Families Support Group, which Dad said was a gateway to approving immorality. I was a bit young to understand, but Dad explained that being gay was wrong; that it was in the Bible. Of course, that was in the olden days. Now it’s not even illegal. How can that be? Did the rules change? And if they did, what happened to the people who went to Hell for being gay? Do they get a free pardon? Or do they just have to stay there?
At lunchtime today the three of us went up to Mr Clarke’s room again. Mr Clarke – Harry! – was marking books. That’s what he does most lunchtimes. The boys in his form either go to lunch, or play football in the Quad, or go to the fifth-form Common Room, or stay in and eat their sandwiches, listen
ing to records. Sometimes Harry lets you choose. Sometimes he chooses something himself.
At first I wanted Animals. Goldie was already eating his lunch. Poodle didn’t say anything, but just gave him his usual look, like a dog expecting a biscuit.
Harry looked at me, then took a record sleeve from the box and said: ‘I thought I’d play you a classic today. Something tells me you’ll like it.’
The album was called The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It was by David Bowie. I didn’t know much about him, though I’d seen his pictures in magazines. He’s the kind of singer that my dad despises most of all, and that Mr Speight thinks is the devil incarnate. Hair like a girl. Face like a girl. Eyes like a kind of demon. Of course, my dad makes Mr Speight look sane when it comes to demons. He’s like a sniffer dog that can sense evil. Or so he thinks. If only he knew what demons were here, hidden away right under his nose.
I wanted to look at the album sleeve, but Harry had put it aside. He dusted the record with a cloth, then checked the record player. He’s always very careful like that, making sure it’s on the right speed and the needle’s free of dust.
I sat down next to the teacher’s desk. Goldie and Poodle sat next to me. The others opened their lunch boxes. I’d swapped one of my sandwiches for Goldie’s chocolate biscuit, and my Wagon Wheel for Poodle’s pork pie. But somehow it didn’t seem right to eat while Harry was playing his music. Harry had chosen that record for me. I owed it to him to listen. And then the music started, and I mostly forgot about eating. All I could think of was the way the music seemed to fold around me like a hand and finger its way into my heart.