Sons of Fortune (4 page)

“Brandy, m’m,” Caspar said. “We almost perished on the train.”

“Oh aye!” Her eyes raked the ceiling with weary, wifely asperity.

Purse came in with a box just as Boy went out with the blankets. “Brandy!” she snorted.

Purse winked at Boy and relieved him of the blankets.

When both boxes were in the spare room, Mrs. Oldroyd brought in a new candle. “See it lasts the week,” she said. “If ye want more, buy for yourselves.”

“Where’s the bed?” Caspar whispered to Boy as Purse came in.

“Where do we sleep?” Boy asked him.

“In Old School,” Purse said. “I told ye. They lock ye in come eight of the evening and ye stay locked in till half-past-six tomorn.”

“Then what do we want this room for?” Boy asked.

Purse laughed richly. “Oh, ye’ll want it right enough! Never fret. Every evening ye’ll hang in here until one minute of eight and then ye’ll streak like hares for that hell over the bog. Come here.” He beckoned them to the tiny window in the back wall. When he had scratched the frost off one of the panes they could see a number of lights, which could have been two hundred yards or ten miles away, mere pinholes in the black evening. “Yon’s the school,” he said. “And mark me now: Between there and here is four hundred acres of bog. Bottomless bog. Never, never, never be tempted to cross it. Even in summer when it looks dry enough. Always go by the causeway.”

“It can’t be bottomless, you know, Purse,” Caspar said. “The earth is round.”

Purse looked solemnly at him. “And it goes all the way through to Australia,” he said. “The only time it’s safe to cross the bog direct is when there’s that many dead kangaroos on the surface ye may step from one to t’other.”

They all laughed heartily at that.

“I take it ye’ve unpacked, then?” Mrs. Oldroyd shouted from the kitchen.

Purse put on a look of exaggerated guilt. “Take only your bed linen and one nightshirt each, and your books and toys. Ye may leave all else besides here.”

“And our money? Where will that be safe?”

“Nay, there’s savagery enough there, but honour with it. Brass is as safe there as here.”

“We’ll leave half and take half,” Caspar said. “Split the risk.”

Purse smiled at him appraisingly. He pointed to some pies and jars of jam. “Take them and all,” he advised. “Food fashions friends.”

While they unpacked all but the items Purse had mentioned, Mrs. Oldroyd spread a gorgeous feast of cold brawn, hot bread—great brown doorsteps of it—and mulled ale. The bread oozed with salted beef drippings and jelly.

“Don’t go thinking ye’ll do this well every day,” she said, looking her fiercest at them.

Purse winked.

Half an hour later, warm to the marrow, they put their lightened boxes back on the carriage and braved the last few hundred yards of blizzard that separated the Oldroyd paradise from the school. They were almost over the causeway before they became aware of the size of the place—a large, dark, angular group of buildings stretching both ways from the causeway head, it seemed for miles.

Small lights studded the large silhouette; they revealed nothing but minute details of brick and stone within eighteen inches of each flame. The blackness beyond was then made blacker still. Through tiny windows the two boys saw meaningless scraps of interior—the foot of a banister, part of a beam, the corner of a shield or picture.

Next year,
Boy thought,
all these bits will mean something.
He wondered what—joy or fear? He was surprised not to feel more afraid. Perhaps it was because the mulled ale had rekindled their tipsiness.

“You afraid?” he asked Caspar.

It was a silly question, with Purse there. Caspar merely sniffed.

“Nay, it’s naught so bad,” Purse said. He spat the phlegm from his frost-parched throat and added, “Leastwise, not once ye’ve been drummed in.”

The mysterious expression and his reassuring tone—his carefully reassuring tone—were as terrifying as anything their imaginations could serve up.

“Lorrimer,” Purse said, pointing at an older boy who stood in the centre of the arched gateway a dark shape in a pool of light. “He’ll likely show ye round.”

When he could see the carriage well enough to make out Purse and the two youngsters, Lorrimer turned on his heel and walked over the yard to shelter by the open door to one of the buildings. After their run over the snow-muffled causeway the clamour of their iron tyres was especially strident in the cobbled yard. It rang from the stone walls all around, making the new boys feel much too conspicuous.

“Master Lorrimer. The Honourable Patrick Lorrimer,” Purse said. He spoke so flatly it could only be meant ironically; it made them wonder if Lorrimer really was an honourable. Cleary Purse and he were no friends.

So much to learn about all these new people!
Caspar thought.

“Hold your tongue, you scabby grunt!” Lorrimer said, without humour. “I hope he’s given you two no lip. You’re the Stevensons, major and minor. No minimus?”

“Still at home,” Boy said. He held out his hand.

Lorrimer took it awkwardly. “After I’ve shown you around, things’ll be a bit stiffer. I’m a buck and you’ll both be roes. We’ve got till lockup. Did you bring any fodder?”

“Some pies and a cake,” Caspar said.

“That’ll do. What you get at trough isn’t fit for pigs. Come on.”

“Our trunks?”

“That fat grunt will see to them. About the only bloody work he does.”

Purse pretended to laugh—a bit edgily, Caspar thought.

“I expect you both feel pretty shent. Where’ve you come from?”

“London. But we didn’t know it was going to snow. We travelled third from Leeds.”

“To save the clink? We all do that—you won’t be sorry. Food is an enthusiasm here, you’ll find. You’ll never get enough. Nor warmth.”

He led them down some worn stone steps into a sub-basement. Corridors ran to their right and left and straight ahead, visible only by the single oil lamps that flickered at the end of each. The place smelled of badly trimmed wicks and coal smoke. Lorrimer hesitated. “All right, you can come this way just for once. After drumming in you’ll have to go around by those outer corridors. This shortcut is just for bucks.” He led them along the corridor that ran straight ahead. “The two side corridors meet up again at the end here,” he explained.

Boy almost burst with questions: What was behind the doors on each side? What was a “buck”? What did “drumming in” mean? And where could he have a pee? He’d forgotten that at Purse’s. He thought it best to ask nothing—keep the head down.

Caspar was slightly less inhibited. “Do we get studies?” he asked.

Lorrimer grinned. “Not in Old School,” he said. “We’re the last of the old order. There’s cupboards down those side passages, which go by seniority. You can hire them from some of the bucks.”

At the end of the passage he pointed to a clock set in the wall. On one side, carved in the stone, was the legend
UT HORA
,
on the other
SIC VITA.

“What’s that say?” he asked.

“As the hours pass, so passeth life,” Caspar translated.

Lorrimer winked at Boy. “Oh, no, it don’t,” he said. “Here it means ‘I’m sick of this life, bring out the whores.’” The two older boys laughed.

“Who has those studies we’ve just passed?” Caspar asked.

“The pharaohs and the King o’ the Barn. And some of the sixth. They’re the gods around here.”

“I suppose we shall fag for them,” Boy said.

“Roe,” Lorrimer corrected. “We don’t call them fags here; we call them roes. You’ll both be roes until some more new ’uns come and relieve you. The pharaohs are your masters.”

“Teachers?” Caspar asked.

“No. The teachers are ‘beaks.’ There’s only four of them. You call them ‘sir’ except your tutor, whom you call ‘master.’ Our tutor here is Whymper. I’ll take you to meet him before lockup.”

He saw the strain on their faces as they tried to memorize all this. He laughed. “We’re all confused,” he said. “Don’t worry. Before Brockman came the whole place was like Old School. Just anarchy. Now he’s started these new houses and he’s trying to ‘army-ize’ us. In the old days anyone could whack anyone if he was strong enough, and any young ’un had to roe for any buck. Now Brockman’s brought in these Houses and appoints the pharaohs to lead them and all the beatings go down in a book and only pharaohs can beat, anyway—except that here we have the King o’ the Barn, too. He couldn’t get rid of that. Brockman thinks it’s a great improvement but no one else agrees. We’re still pretty anarchic here, you’ll find. The pharaoh system only works where there’s a beak living in. There’s no beak lives in Old School. Come on, the Barn’s up here.”

To one side of the clock there was a narrow, winding stone stair, dangerously worn. It led up into a large hall, dimly lit with flaring fishtails of gas. “Everyone’s in public school,” Lorrimer explained the apparent desertion of the place. “This is the Barn. It used to be
the
school in monastic days—I suppose you know we’re a monastic foundation?”

They nodded.

The air was thick with smoke from the fire. It made their eyes water.

“We three-quarters bunged up the chimneys,” Lorrimer explained. “Otherwise the draught makes it hells cold, especially in the passages. The boot room over there is the old monks’ washroom. The initials over the door”—he pointed to some crudely carved letters: WIGG—“mean Wash In God’s Grace. They were not carved by Wigg, who’s a buck in this house at the moment. Carving anything is a school-beating offence; we’re not barbarians like at Eton and other places. Anyway, you’d better know the pharaohs’ names. There’s Swift, who’s head of pharaohs. The pharaohs are Deakin, Malaby, and Shortiss. And Blenkinsop is King o’ the Barn. Each of them has two roes—one for boots and one for clean collars.”

“What’s ‘roe’ mean?” Caspar asked.

Lorrimer chuckled as if he had hoped to be asked. “Less than nothing,” he said. “It comes from ‘zero’—half of zero: roe, d’you see? And believe me, it’s right. Less than nothing.”

One end of the Barn was crammed with old refectory tables of solid oak. When they drew close the boys noticed that the tops, which were a good six inches thick, had bowl shapes scooped out of them.

“Do we eat out of those?” Boy asked.

“We don’t say ‘eat’ here, not for school meals. We say ‘trough.’ We
trough
the school grub—all it’s fit for. We
eat
the fodder from home. And at mess in Langstroth.” He pointed to the hollows in the oak. “Those are the troughs.”

There was a noise from above. They turned and looked up, realizing that the hall had two galleries running its full length. Three doors let off each gallery into rooms beyond—rooms that had no windows between them and the gallery. The noise was made by Purse, carrying their trunks along the upper gallery. He was puffing and groaning.

“Less noise, you stupid grunt!” Lorrimer called.

Purse, who gave no sign of having heard, disappeared through the central door. “Those are the two dorms,” Lorrimer said. “You’re in the junior dorm, which is called ‘Squint.’”

He saw Caspar looking at the ancient roof timbers. “You admire the hammerbeam roof?” he asked.

Caspar looked at him. “Not hammerbeam,” he said. “It’s stiffened collarbeam.”

“Caspar!” Boy said sharply.

But Lorrimer laughed a long time, as if Caspar’s correction had been exquisitely funny. “I’ll tell you some more language,” he said when his laughter died. “Grunts are college servants. In the Houses they call them ‘churls.’ A villain is anybody outside the school or not connected with it; even the lord lieutenant is a villain. The masters are called ‘beaks.’ I told you that. We call the head man ‘chief,’ but not to his face, naturally. The bursar is called ‘Bully’—he used to do most of the school beating, because the chief before Brockman hadn’t stomach for it. He didn’t last long!” He studied their reaction closely. “Of course, a school beating is rarer than a house beating.”

They took the good news in glum silence.

“A Barn beating is commonest of all,” Lorrimer added. “Or perhaps a dorm beating. You lose count. It depends on the whim of the pharaohs and the King o’ the Barn. Blenkinsop, now, is hells fierce. By the way, you shouldn’t do up the bottom button of your waistcoat—very bad form. It’s worth a Barn beating.”

He spoke to Caspar, but both boys hastily loosened the offending buttons. Lorrimer, encouraged, began to look them over more critically. “Your bootlaces,” he said, “should be crisscrossed, like mine. Only pharaohs can wear them ladder-fashioned. And your boots look bloody shent; you’d better give them a good blacking before you go and see the master. Whymper’s an uncommon enthusiast for boots, fingernails, and earholes. I hope you realize how kind I’m being to you two.”

“Indeed we do, Lorrimer. Thank you most dreadfully,” the boys said.

“That’s all right. You can share your pies with me later,” Lorrimer said.

“What’s drumming-in?” Caspar asked.

Lorrimer grinned a secretive grin. “It’s after lockup, when the master’s gone for the night.”

He would tell them no more. “Public school ends soon,” he said. “Time to go and see old Whym.” He pointed to the boot room.

“Where’s the boghouse?” Boy asked. “I’m pretty tight for a pee.”

“Me, too,” Caspar said.

They were both quite, quite sober again.

***

Algernon Whymper was a tall, elderly man with a shock of black hair, just turning grey at the sides. From his ears dark hair shot stiffly, like a childish linedrawing of an explosion; it straggled in wiry curls along the line of his eyebrows; it peeped from his flaring nostrils like twin black caterpillars in sanctuary; it stuck out at his collar and cuffs like straw from a hastily assembled scarecrow; it carpeted the backs of his hands and the stretches of skin between his knuckles. The boys’ alternative name for him was Esau.

He was a man of large, impressive menace; even his friendliness was menacing as he swayed above the two Stevenson boys, drilling them through with his eyes. He inquired about their journey. Boy told him they had grown very cold but were now warmed through again.