Sons of Fortune (5 page)

The news appeared to alarm the master. “Not
comfortably
warm, I trust?” he asked sharply.

Both boys shook their heads vigorously.
Certainly not,
they implied.

“A comfortable warmth is very enervating,” he said. His own pupil room was as hot as a linen cupboard. “Er—to a boy’s frame,” he added. He poured them each a sherry, large for himself, small for Boy, and very small for Caspar. “As with all unseasoned timber,” he explained, “warmth sweats up a lot of sticky nastiness in a boy. A lot of wet sullenness. D’ye take my meaning?” He looked hard at Boy, who, filled with ignorance, looked uncomfortably away. “I see you do, sir. I see you do. Well, none of that here, sir. We’ll cool it out of ye.” He looked at Caspar. “You, too, in time. No warmth here.”

There was a long silence. The fire crackled merrily. The sherry slipped down with a pleasant, sweet afterburn.

“Are your ears clean, sir?” he suddenly asked Caspar.

“I’ve washed them, master,” Caspar said.

“Show!” Whymper looked into them critically and grunted, satisfied. “Too young for much nastiness yet,” he said. Then he turned to Boy, who sensed he had been kept until last. “But you, sir. Show me!” He gripped the proffered ear and peered into it with fanatic interest. “An amazing organ, the ear, young man. All the good that’ll ever get into a boy goes in by the ear; all the bad in him comes out that way. Wash them well, I say. Twice a day is not too much. Twice a day. Twice a day. You’ll see the filth pour out and you’ll feel the good of it. Do you know you’re full of filth? Look at those pimples! It’s bursting from you.”

“I washed them as well as…”

“Answer the question, damn ye! Do you know you’re full of filth?”

“Yes, sir—er—master.” What else could Boy say?

“Good!” Whymper’s satisfaction seemed abnormal. “Then ye know the problem. And until you know the problem, you can’t begin the cure. What money have you?”

They handed over their official money: five pounds for contingencies and their train fare home; and a florin each to be doled out at threepence a week for the remaining eight weeks of term.

“No more?”

“No, master.” Both boys were shiftily effusive. The master looked at them, they at him. A thrill stole over both of them simultaneously as they realized not only that they were going to get away with the lie but that the master knew they were lying and didn’t care. Even more than that, he expected them to lie—was almost glad they had lied.

It was their first step toward understanding that they were now entering a system where the pretence that a certain form was being followed was vastly more important than the reality. It had been an initiation test and they had passed it.

“Now,” he said. “I am your tutor. It is I who will write your end-of-term reports to your parents.” He drilled them again with those black eyes. “It is I whom you must satisfy of your progress here. But that progress, little fellows, is not in my hands. It is in yours. We do not molly-coddle young milkysops here. No hothouse here, sirs! You will do fifteen half hours of public school each week and the rest of the time at tutorial lectures and private study. Have you a mess in the town yet?”

“At Mr. Oldroyd’s, master.”

“Good. Good. You’ll do most of your private study there, of course, though I believe there are some old cupboards about the passages here where you may lock yourself away with a candle and a book.”

“Do we study with each master, sir?” Caspar asked.

“Indeed, young fellow.” Whymper’s friendly smile was more menacing, somehow, than his stern face. “With all four of us. And as there are four hundred and thirty-two boys all told, you may be sure that little learning is imparted in the hours of public school. You have the headmaster for divinity. Mr. Carter for unseen translation and construction. Mr. Cusack for Euclid and mathematics. And myself for composition—which is Latin elegiacs, Latin theme, Greek hexameter (all original, of course), Greek iambics from Shakespeare, Greek prose translation from Robertson, and Latin prose from
Spectator
. You have these books?”

They nodded. The course here outlined by Mr. Whymper was a direct continuation of the one they had already begun at home under their own tutor, Mr. Morier-Watson. It held no unknown terrors for them.

“It’s pretty sharp work,” Whymper went on. “But it’s too wide and general for mere talent to carry you. Only the true sap may triumph in the end. So take heart! The prize is for every boy here. Hard work can always snatch victory from under the nose of lazy brilliance.” He smiled benignly. “Good. I can see already that we shall rub along famously. Keep your ears clean. Keep your fingers—
fingers!
Show me your fingers.”

Twenty clean fingers poked at him, feathering themselves prone and supine, gleaming an unnatural pink.

“Good, good. Ears clean. Fingers clean. And boots clean. Work hard. Play the man. And you can be proud of yourselves and we can be proud of you.”

***

“Do you know how he gets such hairy hands?” Causton asked. He was an unprepossessing boy of about Caspar’s age. He was watching Caspar unpack his things into an oak locker beside his bed. Each of the forty beds in the dorm was separated from its neighbour by such a locker.

“How?” Caspar asked.

“He fiends himself all the time. He’s always at it. It puts hair on your hands.”

Caspar had no idea what Causton meant but he looked instinctively at the backs of his own hands to see if any hair grew there.

“Yah!” Causton crowed. “Caught you! Caught you!”

Caspar looked at him in puzzled surprise.

“You fiend yourself, eh?” Causton taunted. “Caught you!”

Caspar shrugged.

“Made you look. You had to look.” Causton was disappointed in the response.

Caspar unpacked his greatest treasure—the Dart, a toy steam locomotive with a brass chassis, copper boiler, and two oscillating cylinders. The dormitory was lit by a single gas jet high on the wall, but even in that uncertain light it gleamed.

“I say!” Causton exclaimed. “That’s a beauty! May I?”

Caspar handed it to him in a pantomine of caution; Causton took it as if it were made of crystal. He sniffed the firebox, spun the wheels, blew down the funnel, and nodded approvingly. But his tone was disparaging. “Oscillating cylinders,” he said. “Of course, you only get steam on one stroke.”

“I’m saving for a slide-valve engine,” Caspar said.

“I’m getting one for my birthday next month. Let’s race them!”

Caspar nodded and put the engine away in the back of the drawer that pulled out from under the bed.

“You’re a quiet ’un,” Causton said. “You won’t be so quiet after lockup. At your drumming-in.”

Caspar did not reward him with any display of feeling. Causton seemed strangely torn between an impulse to friendship and the desire to crow over the tortures to come.

Boy, unpacking on the far side of the dorm, beyond the long line of trunks and boxes down the middle of the room, heard Causton’s taunt and felt his own guts turn over. He wished someone would tell him what drumming-in meant, but he certainly wasn’t going to ask.

“Come on, where’s the scoff?” de Lacy asked. Boy was going to sleep between him and another fellow called Carnforth.

“Scoff?”

“Grub. Tuck. Those pies you told Lorrimer about.”

“We promised to share them with
him
.”

“I’ll join you. I’m not fussy.”

“Let’s eat them when he comes.” Boy wanted to keep his food as long as possible; he was still full of Mrs. Oldroyd’s good bread and brawn. Anyway, de Lacy was already friendly enough; no need to buy him with pies.

De Lacy looked exasperated. “Carnforth and all the rest will be back from their messes, too, then. You won’t be so casual about food this time next week. Wait till you’ve endured four or five troughs!” He began to wheedle. “Come on—I can have my share now.”

“I’d rather wait for Lorrimer. I did promise.”

“Nyah, nyah!” de Lacy taunted. “Wait for Lorrimer! Lorrimer’s just a piece of shit. You needn’t worry about him.”

“All the same…” Boy began. The look on de Lacy’s face halted him. The fellow was frozen, his face a mask of fear. Boy followed his gaze and saw Lorrimer, standing in the gloom by the end of the pile of boxes.

“I was joking, man,” de Lacy said, attempting a laugh. “I knew you were there.”

There was a long silence. “Right,” Lorrimer said at last and turned to go. Over his shoulder he added to Boy, “See, this is what I mean. In the old days I’d have thumped de Lacy for saying that.”

At once de Lacy sprang to his feet and ran after him. “God, man, I was only joking. Honestly! You have my pie. I couldn’t eat it anyway. You have it.”

Lorrimer watched him in disgust, saying nothing, not moving.

“Not toe-taps! Please! Please, Lorrimer, don’t tell Blenkinsop. I can still hardly walk. Please not toe-taps!”

Lorrimer turned and walked away, out into the gallery. A picture of despair, de Lacy scuffed his heels all the way back to Boy’s bed. “Fick, faec, fock, and fuck!” he said without heat. “God, I hate hate
hate
this place.”

Boy did not risk a word.

“You’ll hate it, too,” he said to Boy. “You’ll think drumming-in is bad enough. You wait until Blenkinsop comes with his toe-taps!”

“What is drumming-in?” Boy asked.

“You’ll see! Any minute now.”

At that moment Lorrimer returned; de Lacy backed against the wall, shivering. Boy had never seen anyone in such a funk. He began to despise de Lacy and to wish he were next to someone else. It was an opinion he was quickly to revise.

“I disagree with your description of me,” Lorrimer said casually, even pleasantly. “I have a little practical lesson for you.” He held out a crumpled sheet of paper. “Have a taste.”

De Lacy took the paper and brought it near his lips; suddenly he dashed it to the ground.

Lorrimer merely smiled—at least, his teeth gleamed like pebbles in the gloom. “Perhaps Blenkinsop can teach you.”

De Lacy burst into tears but he bent with much greater speed than anyone expected and retrieved the paper. “You sod!” he said. “You utter sod!”

“That’s better!” Lorrimer spoke gently as he sat down on Boy’s trunk and began to unlace his right boot.

De Lacy, still sobbing, now obeyed Lorrimer’s original command. Then he hurled the paper to the floor once again.

“Now—just to ram home the difference,” Lorrimer said. He pulled off his sock with a smiling, theatrical flourish. “Lick here.” He pulled up his big toe.

Utterly broken in will, de Lacy bent down, took Lorrimer’s foot in his hands, and gingerly licked a small streak of toe. Lorrimer stood up suddenly, forcing de Lacy to the floor, mashing his face with the naked foot.

Boy could stand no more of it. Until then he had been at least in part on Lorrimer’s side—a diminishing part but enough to stop him from interfering. Now, thinking to do no more than lift Lorrimer’s foot off poor de Lacy’s face, he stooped, caught up Lorrimer’s ankle, and abruptly stood upright. He knew he was no kind of match for the older boy, but he was quite prepared to take the most fearsome lathering if only to prevent the total humiliation of de Lacy.

But Lorrimer was taken completely off balance. He fell back like a statue, stiff with the surprise. His eyes were wide as his head struck the brass corner of Boy’s trunk. Pupils and iris vanished in those final inches to the floor. Then the eyes closed. He lay, awkwardly cramped and very still, between the chest and the bed.

Boy’s first thought was for de Lacy. Shock had stifled the sobbing at once, its place taken by a wide-eyed admiration tinged with fear.

“God, he’ll kill you,” he said to Boy as he got up.

Causton, followed by Caspar, ran around the boxes and stood aghast over the unconscious body.

“You cut along,” Boy told de Lacy. “I’ll stay and face him.” It seemed an easy boast to make, with Lorrimer so still; certainly he would be in no state to fight.

“Is he breathing actually?” Caspar asked.

They all stared down, not daring to touch someone so dangerous.

“He isn’t breathing,” Causton said. His quivering tone almost began a panic.

Boy knelt down and listened at Lorrimer’s open mouth; he touched the unmoving chest; he felt for a pulse; then he looked up at the others.
I think he’s dead,
he thought; he could not utter the words.

“We must all say he slipped,” Caspar said. He turned to Boy’s box and picked up a bar of soap. The others, unwilling to follow the implications of Boy’s silence, watched dumbly.

Caspar looked at the body and the chest, put the soap on the floor at a carefully chosen spot, stood on it, and did a half-skating movement but leaning back so that the soap skittered away from under his foot and spun against the next bed, bouncing off and finishing, still spinning, against the wall. The motion was so violent that Caspar only just prevented himself from falling on top of Lorrimer.

Causton giggled nervously. “Yes!” he said. “That’s what happened. We’ll tell them that and show them the soap.” He dashed forward to pick up the bar.

But Caspar was quicker. He darted forward, putting himself between Causton and the soap. “Leave it,” he said. “Let them find it.”

Causton looked at him blankly for a moment, then grinned. De Lacy was quite open in his admiration. “By God, young ’un—you’ve a head and no mistake!”

But Caspar was not flattered. “That?” he asked contemptuously, looking at the soap. “What else could we say?”

“We can tell the truth,” Boy said. “We must all tell the truth.”

But de Lacy shook his head vigorously. “Won’t do,” he said. He repeated the words several times, as if allowing himself time to think. “If he is dead, you’d blacken him forever. His people are ever so up, you know.”

“No one would thank you for the truth,” Caspar said.

“Yes, you couldn’t do that to his memory,” de Lacy confirmed.

But Boy was unshaken. “We are not in this world to get thanked. Nor to tell lies. We are here to do our duty and tell the truth.” It was a decoction of many hundred sermons but he made it sound from the heart.