Different Class (8 page)

It’s funny, since I arrived here, lots of things have been different. At home, I’m the same as I ever was. Mum and Dad aren’t fans of change. They only ever notice I’m there when something awful happens. At Church, I’m patient and polite. At meetings, I try to co-operate. Sometimes I bring up sins to confess. Little sins. The rest stay put. No one wants to hear about
those
.

I’ve been thinking a lot about
Animals
. I’ve copied all the lyrics down in the back of my Prep journal. One of them uses the F-word. Harry doesn’t even mind. But there’s no point in me trying to buy anything like that for myself. My dad would never allow it. Quite apart from the F-word, he’d just take one look at the picture of the band and decide what kind of people they were.
Perverts
, he’d call them.
Degenerates
. To Dad, any man with long hair has to be one or the other. I sometimes wish I had long hair. When I escape, I’ll give it a try. That’s how I think of it nowadays. As an
escape
, Mousey.

Only five more years to go. Till then, I’m going to have to pretend.
Beg. Fetch. Roll over
. I
look
like one of the other dogs, even though I’m a wolf in disguise. No one (except maybe Harry) suspects I might be faking it.

Of all the staff in St Oswald’s, there’s only Harry who’s OK. Mr Straitley we know about. Mr Scoones is always going on about visiting Paris, and Jacques Tati, and rotten old French films. Then there’s Mr Speight, RE, who goes to the same Church as we do. In fact, I think he was the reason my parents chose St Oswald’s – because they knew that Mr Speight would be there to keep an eye on me. My parents think the world of him. Mr Speight believes in happy, healthy, God-fearing boys. Of course, Mr Speight also believes in demons, that yoga and vegetarianism are ‘soft gateways into the occult’, and that rock music, comics and horror novels contain Satanic messages that can brainwash young people into selling their souls to Lucifer. It’s pretty funny, actually.

Still, I’ve managed to settle in here. I think I’ll be OK – except perhaps in English, where I have to sit and listen to goaty Mr Fabricant, when right above us Harry is teaching
his
group English. His lessons are fun, too. Sometimes, on a nice day, when the windows are open, I can hear the sound of his voice. Sometimes he plays music. Sometimes, they laugh. I can hear them. Once, they all laughed so loudly that Mr Fabricant closed the window.

I wish I was in Harry’s class. Even their books are better than ours. They’re reading
Lord of the Flies
, and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
, and
Julius Caesar
. Ours are all rubbish, but I bet if he was teaching us, we’d enjoy them anyway. I’ve started reading
Lord of the Flies
. I borrowed Harry’s copy. It’s full of little written notes, all in Harry’s handwriting. I like that. It’s almost like he’s teaching me in secret. As if he’s sharing his thoughts with me, like a secret journal.

Mr Straitley’s still being a pain. I’ll never be one of his favourites. The two other New Boys don’t like him either. Goldie watches him like he’s something the cat dragged in, and Poodle spends his time in class drawing in his Latin book. Neither has settled in properly yet. Neither has proved to be popular. Poodle’s a bit of a freak, and Goldie’s a bit too full of himself to ever be one of the cool kids.

Well, we have that in common, I guess. I’ve never been popular. I don’t run with the rest of the pack. I’m a different species. But in view of My Condition, it’s not good to be seen as a loner. And, not being quite an Alpha Dog, I can’t afford to pick and choose. Still, none of that matters now. Today, something happened, Mousey. Something really important. A door has opened. A page has turned. And it all began with an apple.

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 attached 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.