Opposite Sides (8 page)

Hans could not bring
himself to answer straight away and fidgeted by sliding his right
foot along the wood joint between the floorboards.

“
N . . . no,
sir.”

“
Then, I ask
you - were you responsible?”

Mr Bowes-Heath stepped
from behind and positioned himself like some huge, black raven
between Hans and Miss Turner.

“
I think I
am, sir.”

“
It is an
honourable thing to own up to your responsibilities, lad. You must
remember that and be prepared to take responsibility for your
actions. Miss Turner has something to say to you.”

Miss Turner drew in a
long, deep breath which sounded like the tide going out on a
beach.

“
For your
information, last night, Mister Resmel . . . yes, last night when
you were on ground patrol . . . my niece’s paperwork was blown
under a bush. She was trying to retrieve it when a large rock from
the wall on which you claim to have been on landed on her. Janine
was the victim of your foolhardy action. That rock broke her
leg!”

Hans hung his head and
screwed up his eyes to try and erase the picture that had formed in
his mind. The sound of Miss Turner’s voice bounced round and round
his skull and made his head ache. She leaned further towards him
over the desk. The headmaster moved closer and leaned forwards from
his toe tips. Hans could feel his hot breath funnelling out over
his copious moustache.

“
I . . . I .
. . ” The rest of the words would not come out.

The headmaster bowed down
even closer and looked Hans right in the eye.

“
Yes, Mr
Resmel? Remember
Veneratio est nostrum
rector
. What do you have to say for
yourself?”

“
I never
knew, sir, Miss Turner.” His voice was husky. “I am sorry. I
thought it was the thief.”

“
Good man,”
said the headmaster standing straight again. “I think you are sorry
for what you have done and I think you thought you were acting for
the benefit of the college. We’ve both been in this job long enough
to know of the stupidity of boys. But because you did not check
first, you must take the consequences of your misguided
actions.”

Mr Bowes-Heath let Miss
Turner speak again and she brushed aside a thin strand of her tight
hair that had come adrift. Then, she leaned back in her soft,
upholstered chair and addressed the visibly remorseful
youth

“
I should
like you to know that my niece will have to be in a wheelchair for
some time.” She looked at the headmaster, averting her eyes from
Hans. “What are we to do with him, Mr Bowes-Heath?” she
asked.

“
The cane’s
not the answer this time, Miss Turner,” he said wiping the corner
of his moustache. “May I suggest that he be responsible for pushing
your niece around during the remaining time left in this
term.”

“
That seems a
very sensible thing to do, Mr Bowes-Heath.” Miss Turner turned her
attention to Hans once more and as a judge to a criminal, she
pronounced his sentence. “Each day, young man, you will push Jan’s
wheelchair from my house to the school building. And every
afternoon, you will push her home.” She shook her finger at him to
make her point. “And, if you slacken in this duty, I have no
hesitation in forwarding a letter to your uncle. He will not be
pleased. And, young man, think yourself extremely lucky you haven’t
been dealt with more severely. Mr Bowles-Heath and I are prepared
to give you another chance. We know you’ve had a difficult time
settling in. I think you have ability to do well here so make good
use of your remaining time. You’re a young man and it’s time you
put such silly, childish behaviour behind you.”

She stiffened her back
and adjusted her position in the chair.

“
Young man,
you can report to Miss Turner during interval and she will provide
you with your instructions.” The headmaster walked towards the
door, placed his hand on its handle and turned slightly back
towards them. “I shall have those instructions typed out and sent
over to your office, Miss Turner. Good morning.”

“
Good
morning, Headmaster.”

The door opened. Mr
Bowes-Heath and his long, black cloak billowing out like a sail
swept round the door-frame and disappeared down the
corridor.

Hans had wanted so much
to impress everyone but somehow, this was not turning out as
expected. He did not know whether to leave or stay, so he remained
looking down at an ink stain splotched between two dark circles on
one of the wooden floorboards.

It was an awkward moment.
No one said a word. Hans shifted his weight uneasily from one foot
to the other. The watery lines between the boards began to move,
making patterns of waves. Finally, Miss Turners’ voice broke the
silence.

“
I can’t
understand why you should have done this. Do you?”

“
I am
sorry.”

“
Oh dear,
what am I to do with you?”

“
W
eiss n . . .
nicht
,” he stammered.

“
English,
Mister Resmel, please.”

“
Sorry.”

His voice box was
drowning in remorse. He swallowed heavily. His throat kept clogging
up with phlegm.

“
Nothing more
will be said of this unfortunate incident, Hans, if you carry out
your duty.” It was the first time she had addressed him by his
first name. “But, let this be a lesson to you: think carefully
before you try something again but remember that everything you do
has a consequence. Take my advice, Hans. Never, never act so
stupidly again. Brain first before action!”

“
Yes, Miss
Turner.”

“
Now, go
before I have second thoughts.” She indicated by a wave of her arm
that he should leave the office. As he reached the door, he
hesitated.

“
Excuse me,
Miss Turner. Is the . . . is your niece . . . with . . . um,
pain?”

“
She will
survive. You have much to be thankful for. I do not entirely blame
you for her accident for it appears you thought you were acting in
the best interests of the college and Janine should not have gone
off on her own like she did. Also, Janine asked me to be lenient on
you so let us leave it at that. Off you go or you will be late for
your next class.”

Hans left the
office. He felt baffled and unsettled. Did Jan Turner really ask
her aunt to be lenient with him? He had been totally convinced that
her niece could not stomach him. Also, he had wanted to make a name
for himself at this school but not in this way. He could not think
why Miss Turner should have let him off so easily
.
Why had she called him Hans? Strange,
these English and their ways.

CHAPTER
3

Intricate
Shakes

Behind the main college
buildings stood the school house, a dull square Georgian house with
long thin windows and numerous tall chimneys. This is where Miss
Turner lived, together with her niece. The house could be seen in
the distance when the boys sneaked round to the rear gate to smoke,
some of them coughing out their lungs as they drew their first
breaths while the more proficient boys became bent double in fits
of laughter at the novices’ painful attempts. There was a loose
stone in the wall and if one of the masters happened to make an
appearance, the evidence of their secret habit could easily be
hidden without any trace. Hans pulled the heavy, iron gate open and
stepped into the large surrounding garden, full of mature trees and
thick plantings of shrubs. As he got closer to the house, he became
aware of a narrow, colourful flower bed which hugged the foot of
the house’s front wall.

He found the huge block
of grey granite cold and imposing, not at all like the picturesque
painted façades of the buildings in his own home town. He hated the
obliqueness of the house with its heavy stone columns imposing
themselves on the entranceway and it made him feel awkward. and
intimidated. The house and the matron seemed to go together:
unattractive, intimidating, yet at the same time, demanding
respect. To Hans, her niece was not dissimilar.

Miss Turner’s niece was
already waiting for him in the porch. She was sitting in one of
those wicker wheelchairs. A pile of books had been stacked on her
lap with her school hat on top. She had folded her arms so that her
hands held the brim of her hat. For the first time, Hans noticed
that her brown hair had not been plaited this time but pulled back
into a low, loose pony tail. Her chustnut-brown hair was thick and
wavy and not at all like the hair on her aunt's head. Jan looked
quite different today.

“
Looking for
me?”

“
Miss Janine
Turner.”

“
I know
you’re Hans Resmel. I have seen you around the grounds. I call
myself Jan. Everyone else does except my aunt. You may call me
that, too.”

“
Call
you?”

He stepped closer. She
placed her school hat over her hair and pulled it down firmly
against her ears.

“
Jan!”

She did not attempt to
smile but peered at him in earnest: two rimmed lenses peering at
him under the brim of her hat. She made it obvious that that was
what she wanted to be called.

“
You are
then, ready?”

“
Jan. Don’t
forget!”

Hans made up his mind not
to reply this time and, instead, leaned down and released the
brake. He began pushing her away from the house, bumping the wheels
of the chair over the uneven cobblestones. He was determined to say
as little as possible in the hope she would decide to use someone
else. But Jan Turner was as obstinate as he was and was prepared to
see his punishment through, however unpleasant she found it to
be.

“
Can’t you
push this thing a bit better,” she complained as he bumped the
wheels of the chair roughly up onto a bit of the grass. He said
nothing but steered the ungainly wheelchair back onto the stone
pathway. He found the going difficult and was working up a sweat,
with beads forming over his forehead and staring to trickle down
his nose. “Slow down! Slow down! I don’t want another
accident!”

“
Sorry,” he
mumbled but she did not seem to hear.

“
I hope
you’ll do better by the end of the day. My aunt wants my full
report. I’m going to write down every little detail, so watch
out!”

I bet you
will
, Hans thought.

He screwed his eyes into
slits and imagined her eyes wrapped in bandages and tape stuck over
her mouth. He began to think of all the bad things he could do to
this spiteful fourteen year old girl when, suddenly, they had
arrived at the entrance way to the girls’ section.

“
Don’t forget
me at the end of the day or I’ll tell my aunt you were absolutely
awful.”

She gave him a look that
could kill a man dead at a hundred paces so that when the time came
to pick her up at the end of the day, he hoped to make it out of
his last class in a hurry so that she would not give him that look
again. He had already decided that he had to act quickly and needed
time to race over to the Jan’s part of the building, collect her
and push her back to the Turner’s house before most of the boys had
a chance to see him. He knew that the ones who loved to tease him
crept round behind the back shed for a quick smoke before the
master on duty began his after-school inspection. Hans became
restless as the time for the final bell got closer and found that
the skin on his legs felt as though it were crawling with a
thousand small insects. His feet began to ache with anticipation
and he found he could no longer concentrate on his work.

Careful
.
Careful
,
he
kept telling himself as he slumped even more over the book on his
desk trying to become one with the desk top. His hand shook as he
tried to re-load his pen with ink from the ink-well and several
blobs dripped on the wood from the well to the edge of his exercise
book. His hand fumbled around in his jacket pocket until he
serendipitously drew out a piece of blotting paper to mop up the
offending ink. He was afraid to raise his head in case the master
sprang on him like a fox. Finally the bell sounded. Books shut with
a dull thuds around the room. The master gave his permission for
them to leave. Seats banged and scraped across the wooden
floorboards as boys straddled their bench seats, fumbling to get
books, pens and papers into their bags which had been stowed
underneath. Hans had already secretly stowed away his things,
except his writing book so that as soon as he heard the words to
go, he jumped back off the seat and rushed out of the room. He had
no wish for anyone to see that he was heading for the girl’s
section.

Jan was not in the hurry
Hans was. She had decided to keep her teacher in conversation at
the border between the two school areas so that Hans was forced to
wait. He was visibly irritated but that did not seem to impinge on
Jan. He chewed on his little finger, anxiously waiting for the
conversation to end, all the while dreading the possibility of
meeting one of the boys who still delighted in teasing
him.