Prelude (11 page)

“No Sir,” Estelle replied.

“Shot down as he stormed a machine-gun post.” My father’s yellowing fingertips twitched for his cigarettes. “Man should get a VC.”

“No smoking in the rooms,” my stepmother said.

“Quite right,” he replied, returning his silver cigarette case to his coat pocket. “No pulling out now though. Not after what they’ve done to the Coventry and the Antelope. You see the pictures of the Sheffield?”

I nodded.

He sighed, looked almost maudlin. “What I’d give to be seventeen and with my whole army career ahead of me. Best career in the world.”

“Is it?”

His eyes narrowed and for a moment fell on the newspapers by the window. “Are you reading the bloody
Sun
?”

“Sometimes.”

“I hope I’m not paying for that rag.”

“Borrowed it from Jeremy.”

And it was just like it had always been, all my life. I’ve never seen anyone do instant rage quite like my father.

“It’s an unspeakable, unreadable piece of shit!” He looked at me, defying me to challenge him. “Surprised they allow it in the school.”

My heart drummed. At that moment I wasn’t even aware of Estelle or my stepmother in the room. All I could see was my father, white with rage, and yet again I reverted to a seven-year-old stripling, pissing my pants with fright in my father’s study as he hauled off his thick Sam Brown belt.

The blood pulsed in my ears as I stared at the floor.

My stepmother broke the moment. “I think we should see Kim’s tutor, darling.”

My father twitched and the red mist lifted. “We should.” The creased lines relaxed round his mouth and eyes.

I was shell-shocked, like a lone survivor after an earthquake.

I shrugged, kicked the floor after they’d gone. “Sorry about that,” I said.

“Forget it,” Estelle said.

“It’s not always that bad.”

Estelle stood in front of me. “You haven’t even met my parents.”

“You’re not saying they’re in the same league?” I slipped my hand round her waist. “They couldn’t be?”

Our lips locked against each other, tongues exploring. We broke off to gaze at each other. My eyes were drawn to her lips and it occurred to me that actually I’d much rather be kissing Estelle than looking at her. So that’s what we did for half-an-hour, without a break. What a carefree time in my life—when I could be sated by a kiss.

In sedate silence, my father drove us to Dutchman’s, one of Eton’s immense playing fields. Once he’d selected a spot under a horse chestnut, the picnic was laid out on the rug. Every piece of food had to be unwrapped before anything was allowed to pass our lips.

My father eased himself into a deckchair and surveyed the spread of gravad lax, thick white rolls, chutneys, cheeses and punnets of fresh-picked strawberries. “Very good,” he said. We were allowed to begin.

He poured me a glass of Bollinger. My hands shook as I drained it in one. It was like having dinner on the edge of a steaming volcano, always aware that an explosion might be just minutes away.

I forked up some salmon. My mouth was so dry I could hardly swallow. The fish stuck to the top of my palate. I coughed and helped myself to more champagne.

“Offer some to the ladies first,” my father reprimanded.

I would have done, but I was still coughing. I tried to swallow but the salmon was tight in my throat. I heaved, and plate, glass and cutlery tumbled to the ground.

“Watch out!” my father said. “For God’s sake!”

I clutched my hands to my throat, trying to catch a breath. My stepmother was behind me, thumping at my shoulder blades. A cough, another cough and a belch as a gobbet of pink flesh shot out of my mouth. It landed among the bread rolls.

“Jesus boy, can’t you control yourself?”

My stepmother stroked the back of my neck. Estelle offered a handkerchief.

“Don’t they teach you any manners here?”

I wiped the spittle from my mouth.

“Disgusting.” My father picked up the bread rolls and tossed them all, every single one, into the bin-bag. “What a shame.”

Oh, what a sad little picnic we were. All around us was good-natured hilarity, scores of Etonians soaking up the sun with their parents, and then the four of us, united by our edgy silence.

The strawberries lay untouched on my lap. I strived to make polite conversation. “So how are the boys?” I asked my father.

“Both of them boarding now,” my father said. “Tears before bedtime, all that sort of thing.”

My stepmother looked up. “Darling.”

“Best thing for them.” My father shrugged, indifferent. “Learn more about life in one year at a boarding school than you would in ten at a Comprehensive.” He looked at me, eyes crinkling at the side. “Isn’t that right boy?”

“How should I know?” I pushed the strawberries round the plate. “I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been at boarding school.”

My father sniffed. “Thought about which regiment you’re going to join yet?”

My hands twitched. “Possibly the Green Jackets.”

“The Green Jackets?” he blasted. “Is that the best you can come up with?”

“Maybe the Lifeguards?”

“Better. A bit.” He flicked out his cigarette case and mechanically tapped out a cigarette before flicking his Dunhill lighter. He leaned back in his deckchair and exhaled. “That Colonel Jones. God, I’d have been proud to have known him.”

I was shrivelling up inside. But I had never known anything else with my father. With his sons and with his underlings, he adopted a scorched earth policy. I glanced at Estelle. She, in her turn, was being interrogated by my stepmother.

My father looked at me again, the smoke streaming out of his nostrils in twin jets. He sucked once more, greedily, before stubbing the cigarette out under his feet. “Damn proud.”

WE PACKED UP and meandered over to the Thames to watch one of Eton’s grandest spectacles, the Procession of Boats.

What an extraordinary relief it was to watch my parents march off to see some army friends. I had Estelle all to myself.

But I didn’t enjoy it for long, for there was another clunky note, as if I had been playing Bach’s First Prelude and botched the final chord.

And this was because Estelle knew
all
about the Procession. Knew exactly how all Eton’s rowers would be dressed up in their finery. Knew how the crews would row past the galleries and stand up till all nine of them were at attention with their oars vertically in front. And she knew too how the rowers would doff their boaters and wave to the crowds.

Oh yes, she knew everything.

We found a place next to the elite enclosure for the Headman and his selected guests. The riverbank was lined with hundreds of spectators, and it is regrettable but true that the vast majority of us were praying for the crews to get the wobbles so they’d be pitched headlong into the river.

How we longed for it. We were like a baying mob at the Roman circus, on the edge of our seats as we waited for the Christians to get butchered.

About five or six of the crews had already rowed past. They made a splendid sight, sweeping round the bend before getting to their feet. They’d laced their boaters with flowers and, when the hats came off, the garlands would be strewn across the water.

We were watching the ten-oared Monarch, packed with Eton’s most prestigious boys, and there in the middle of the boat was Savage. Even from a hundred yards away, I could recognise him. They wore white trousers, navy blue monkey jackets and floral boaters. The cox, minute in comparison to the rowers, was in a full admiral’s uniform with a fore and aft hat.

The Monarch gave one final hard pull and from the middle they started to stand up. Savage and the number five lifted their oars clear out of the water and hoisted them vertically into the air. Then, hand-over-hand, they crept up their oars until each was standing as erect as a guard’s officer.

The two rowers on either side of Savage then crept to their feet, the next two and the next.

There was an eerie hush as the boat meandered down the river. The stroke and bow lifted their oars from the water. The pair of them, along with the cox, tried to stand up.

Now was the time of maximum vulnerability. Nothing to stabilise the boat and with over half-a-ton of crew above the waterline.

The stroke, bow and cox had doubtless practised the manoeuvre scores of times. But the stakes are so much higher when you’re performing in front of more than a thousand spectators and every one of them hoping in their dark hearts that you will fail.

The cox was slightly beyond a crouch when the boat started to rock. You could see it first in the oars as they tilted like poplars in the wind.

Estelle clutched tight onto my hand. An expectant murmur thrilled through the crowd as we realised that the cream of Eton’s rowers were in trouble. The boat was rocking wildly. We could see the heavyweights twitching from side-to-side, over-correcting as they tried to keep her steady.

They might have held it but they must have sensed the animal hum from the bank. A cacophony of shrill cat-calls started up.

A magical moment as the Monarch teetered onto its edge. The oars now pointing this way and that.

Estelle let out a visceral moan. I was keening like a Zulu warrior at the charge.

And the boat was gone. A great shriek of delight went up from the bank. It heeled over to the side, and crew, cox, oars and all plunged into the river. Savage, I’ll say this for him, looked elegant to the end. He was the last to go and managed a farewell wave of his boater before he too thrashed into the water.

Bedlam. I have never heard a sound like it, have never experienced such universal happiness at other humans’ misfortune. There was something almost dirty about the noise, the air of deep satisfaction that there might have been after the execution of Charles I.

The river was a mass of oars and paddling rowers and lost boaters and, in the middle of it all, the capsized Monarch sailed serenely on.

Animal excitement was etched into Estelle’s face. She was panting with exhilaration. And when she caught my eye, she hugged me for the sheer mayhem of it all. Hugged me, laughed and kissed me once, twice, three times.

I screeched out a great wolf-howl of delight. I was effervescing with joy. For being there with Estelle and for having witnessed this age-old ritual go so spectacularly wrong.

Then Estelle whispered something in my ear.

I couldn’t hear her for the shouting, but the hairs on the back of my neck instinctively started to bristle when I finally made her words out.

She said it once more, this time louder: “I love it when that happens.”

It took but a moment to pick up the inference—that not only had she been to Eton before, but that she’d been to the Fourth. It was unavoidable. No one could miss it.

On the outside I was still letting out great whoops of delight. But on the inside, my guts turned to ice.

Now it seems so petty, to be getting so uptight about a girlfriend’s possible dalliances in the past. Now it seems as if everyone comes with history, has had a dozen lovers at the very minimum.

How true, but this was the first time that I had ever been on the verge of falling in love and this was the first time I had ever experienced the raw stab of jealousy. What an emotion it was. Instantly I had pieced the story together, could envisage Estelle attending the previous year’s Fourth of June. Could see her exactly as she clung onto the arm of some other louche Etonian. She’d probably been wearing the same outfit.

Jealousy can cast such a horrible shadow over your life. Even in the happiest times, it can still come up and bite you. And, in my case, I was mesmerised by pictures of Estelle kissing another Etonian. I could picture it all. It almost made me feel sick.

I put on a brave face, of course I did, pretended that we were having the most fantastic time on this most fantastic of days. But, inside, it was turmoil. Estelle sensed it immediately, could feel the way that I no longer wanted to hold her hand. Even to this day I’m still not sure if she knew exactly why, though part of me thinks that she wouldn’t have dropped such a loaded comment into the conversation unless she had deliberately wanted me to find out.

We mooched back to the house. I made Estelle and my parents some tea and toast. I was still putting on a good front; even then I was quite the expert at putting on a veneer of imperturbability. No one could have guessed the dark thoughts that were scuttling through my imagination.

I left them all in my room for 15 minutes while I went off to the School Yard for Absence. Almost the whole school congregates for one final roll-call before they are officially freed for half-term, and never in your life have you seen such an array of black tailcoats. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all flocking in little colonies around the green statue of Henry VI.

I barely gave the boys a thought as my mind was being put through the mill. On the one hand, longing to kiss Estelle again, to feel the touch of her hand; on the other, consumed by the most raging jealousy. And the most wretched thing of all about this jealousy was that it felt like a righteous emotion, as if it was me on the moral high ground, as if I had a perfect right to feel angry at Estelle. It felt as if that very afternoon she had cuckolded me.

I was so far away it took a few moments to realise that India was standing in front of me.

She was by herself, wearing a silk floral dress and cream cardigan, a rug tucked under her arm, and a little leather satchel on her back.

“Hello, Kim.” As she spoke, she wiped the fringe of brown hair from her forehead and swept it over her shoulders.

“Hello.” I beamed with pleasure. All thought of my other love evaporated from my mind.

“Thought I’d come and see one of Eton’s most venerable customs.”

I don’t know whether the champagne had belatedly given me a second wind, but I felt suddenly playful. I no longer had this awful weight over my head as if my every word with India was being monitored and evaluated. “You ought to try taking part—now that really is fun.”

“Do you think they might be able to hold an Absence for the teachers?”

“I think that could be arranged, Miss James.” I was dancing, a cherry blossom on the wind.