Sons of Fortune (8 page)

Boy blinked, unable to keep his eyes open. The words and the darkness spun around him.

“How dare you?” the senior repeated. “You needn’t think that we’ve forgotten the way you tried to blacken poor Lorrimer’s name. A man slips and falls and you, trying to make yourself out no end the hero, you accuse him of ‘unspeakable things.’ Well, we’ve had quite enough of your heroics. We’ll just see how heroic you are.”

Boy was not jolted fully awake until Blenkinsop, swift as a snake, darted a hand under the blankets, grabbed the nearest ankle and jerked the foot—Boy’s left foot—out over the side of the bed. In the same quick move he pirouetted round and sat down on the leg, imprisoning it. Boy’s foot now lay pinioned, toes up, between Blenkinsop’s knees. A great knobbly hand held it painfully bunched and vulnerable. The toes already wept and smarted where the skin had rubbed away on the gallery floorboards.

He saw Blenkinsop’s other hand, its fist in clenched silhouette against the gaslight, rise above the dark cliff of the shoulder. It floated in an unreal space, remote from him. It fell.

The world exploded in a riot of pain; his foot became a gulf that swallowed everything. He vanished, dissolving into that vast, molten anguish where his toes had been. He could see nothing in the sudden, searing light.

There was a thud. A voice, de Lacy’s, said, “You utter sod!” Blenkinsop’s weight vanished. De Lacy had clouted him with a boot swung by its laces.

The dorm began to return. The pain was still excruciating but no longer all-embracing. He was somewhat separate again from his agonizing toes. There was an argument going on. De Lacy was saying, “No you’re not! Swift’s chucked you out. You’re just an ordinary buck now. This isn’t the old days. If you lay a finger on any one of us again, we’ll go straight to Swift and you’ll get a house beating. And shan’t we just gloat!”

“You’ll be sorry you said that, de Lollipop,” Blenkinsop threatened. “I’ll be King o’ the Barn again yet. Then I’ll show you what toe-taps can really do!”

But at least twelve boys stood around him, all holding impromptu weapons. Through the pain Boy found time to wonder that de Lacy, who had been so petrified of Blenkinsop as King o’ the Barn, now stood up to him so calmly when the title was stripped away. Then he fell back to sleep.

In games of cruelty nature holds all the trumps. Her gift of oblivion allowed Boy to awaken not knowing he was at Fiennes, not remembering the savageries of the previous evening, his conscience wonderfully clear of all the uncertainties about Lorrimer’s death or survival. For several seconds the blissful state persisted. It was odd, because he had not awakened spontaneously. The cries of the pharaohs still rang around the room: “Come on everywhere! Stiffen up! Out o’ those chariots!” It was half-past six and dark as midnight inside the almost windowless dorm.

One pharaoh, Malaby, the one who had tied the rope around him last night, gave Boy’s toes a friendly tweak. “You, too, Stevenson ma.”

The pain, sudden and fierce, brought back all the rest: Blenkinsop, the beam,
drum-drum-drum…
and Lorrimer. What was the fate of boys who killed boys? Or even half-killed them?

“We’re all going for a little run.”

It was a new tradition at Fiennes that all the boys, from the meanest roe to the pharaohs, as well as the two younger masters, Mr. Cusack and Dr. Brockman (the bringer of this new tradition and its staunchest proponent), ran up the winding sheep paths to a cairn placed exactly one thousand feet above the school and a mere three hundred and twenty feet below the summit of Whernside; only on Sunday were the celebrants of Holy Communion excused—which went far to account for the school’s reputation for piety.

“Go in your vest and trousers,” de Lacy advised.

Boy hobbled painfully downstairs in the general crush from junior dorm. Nobody said that dreadful punishments awaited the last man back from the run but he had already been at Fiennes long enough not to need telling that sort of thing.

Going down the stairs, where the windows were at eye level, he saw that the dawn was, in fact, well advanced. Caspar joined him in the passageway that led to the yard—the old cloisters.

“How’s the foot?” he asked.

Boy shrugged. “It will heal.”

“I’d love the chance to hurt Blenkinsop. My toes are raw.”

“Did he do the same to you, before me?”

“No.” Caspar coloured. “He keeps trying to tickle my wetty. I hate him. His breath smells.”

“What’s going to happen about Lorrimer, I wonder.”

“It depends on how idiotic you are,” Caspar said, thinking that Boy was merely asking about which story they should all tell.

The sun was just rising as they came out into the yard. They could not yet see the globe itself but it struck a pink sheen across the cold, lichen-eaten stones of the school buildings. The sky was a russet grey, hovering between the purple of night and the red of sunrise. Not a cloud was in sight. It was very cold and still. Everything, even little pebbles that normally would have kicked loosely away or wobbled underfoot, seemed to have been cast in a single block of iron and painted to resemble a frozen world. The exit from the schoolyard onto the moor lay through an arch flanked by four giant stone troughs, filled with water and capped with thick sheets of ice.

“We dip in those on our way back,” de Lacy said. “It’s best to work up a good lather coming down, then you can be in and out without cooling off much. If you go in cold, you’ll stay cold all morning.”

Boy wondered how they were to dry off. No one had brought towels and none were to be seen around the place. He and Caspar joined the scattered throng of more than a hundred boys in every variety of dress, trotting through the arch. He found a way of running that did not hurt his toes too much.

“There’s chief,” de Lacy said. “With Agincourt today.” He pointed to a crowd of about forty boys running toward them over the moor; in the thick of them was a tall, chunky, well-built man with curly blond hair. “Agincourt’s his own House,” de Lacy added.

The whole world was white. Bog, marsh, moor, pasture, and scree were reduced to one appearance. Only the forms of the dalesides provided any relief; they were like pictures of the tops of clouds as sketched by balloonists; above them towered two giant masses: Whernside—a daunting climb even from here, halfway up its side—and Ingleborough, several miles down the valley.

On its way to Ingleborough the moor rose gently to a broad crest that obscured any view of the coastal lowlands beyond; it exactly symbolized the remote, own-worldliness of Fiennes.

Both Boy and Caspar, in imitation of their father, loved to look at landscapes and talk with knowing superiority of the geological forces that had shaped them.

“Glacial,” Caspar said.

“It’s colder at the top,” de Lacy told him.

The two Stevensons exchanged amused glances. “Until it carved its way out through that limestone ridge the water must have formed quite a lake here,” Boy said.

“The bog must be the remnant,” Caspar replied in bursts of breath. The hill was growing steeper and talk less easy. The weaker runners were dropping into a plodding walk until the chief or some senior fellow would shout, “Brace up!” and then the walk would take on the veriest tinge of a trot. At the steepest places these fainthearts made parallelograms of muscle, hands pushing on knees to make the climb tolerable.

The higher they went the more dales came into view—it was surprising what a difference even a few feet could make: Cam Fell, Oughtershaw, Foxup Moor, Fountains Fell, and more distant humps rolled in folds under the pale blue snows. Here and there the black, yet-to-be-frozen waters of upland tarns mottled the otherwise unbroken surface.

“Gordale Scar is about twenty miles that way,” de Lacy said. “It’s really sublime.”

Another boy, overhearing, turned round and mocked: “Sublime! Oooh hooo!”

“Pox your bum, Randall, you fiend,” de Lacy said evenly.

Very few boys were talking.

“In milder weather you can stay asleep from your bed to the top and all the way down again,” de Lacy said.

No one lingered at the top. De Lacy had been right: It was much colder there, on the ridge, where the lightest breeze from any direction was whipped around the breastlike pinnacle of the summit. Running down was easier but less comfortable, especially for Boy, who had to try to run on the side of the foot Blenkinsop had mashed.

“I’d really like to hurt Blenkinsop,” Caspar said again. He felt he owed Boy something for that offer to walk the beam twice last night.

By the time they were halfway down, Boy had drawn well ahead. Caspar then found a way of catching up by sliding down the steepest bits on one boot.

“You’ll wear out your boots that way,” Boy told him. “Mother will know it couldn’t be normal wear and she’ll be mad!”

Caspar pulled a face but did not repeat the trick.

Chief was first into the trough, after a furious sprint against several pharaohs for the privilege of breaking the ice. For a while they larked about in the water, catching up the ice fragments and dashing them against the walls, where they shattered in tinkling sherds, leaving scintillating white blisters adhering to the stone. They ducked each other, too, with great bull roars while the younger lads laughed and cheered in piping treble around them.

Chief pulled his trousers on before he left the yard. Once he and Cusack had gone the atmosphere changed. The ostentatious manliness vanished and four hundred naked boys piled through the stone troughs as quickly as muscle could carry them. Boys who had pubic hair and lived in the Houses (where there were female domestics) were obliged to pull on cotton drawers; but everyone else, including boys of all ages in Old School (where one ill-paid old man was supposed to do all the domestic work), simply picked up his own clothes and ran hell for leather back to the dorms.

As de Lacy had said, if you went in hot, you came out at least warm; and if the run to the dorm didn’t dry you off, there was something odd about you. In that brief, naked run back to the dorm, Boy and Caspar saw hardly one backside that did not bear the mark of the cane or the slipper.

Despite the horror of the icy water, Boy had to admit that he felt splendid by the time he slipped on his clothes; they had a strange new silken texture. But there was no time to luxuriate in the sensation. It was fifteen minutes to first trough and in that time they had to clean a pharaoh’s boots, lay out his clothes, and tidy his study. Caspar was boot roe to Deakin; Boy was clean-collar roe to Malaby. They would remain so until released by a fresh crop of newcomers. The pharaohs all went back to bed until five minutes before trough. Then, in one frantic rush, each aided by his two roes, they got up, washed, shaved, and dressed, ready to file into the Barn looking as if they had been up for hours. God help the roe who crumpled or dirtied anything or presented it the wrong way around or fumbled too long with a button.

First trough was at half-past seven. At twenty-five-past the grunts began ladling out glasses of thin beer and setting them on the four tables. At twenty-seven minutes past they started to dole out a glutinous mess of shredded flannel and bobbin grease called “porridge and treacle.” The roes took turns to run a shuttle service of intelligence between the Barn and the pharaohs’ corridor; so Boy and Caspar found themselves running and shouting things like “twenty-six and a half minutes past, beer on three tables…twenty-seven past, porridge on one…twenty-eight and a quarter past, porridge on half the top table…twenty-nine past, the master’s egg’s in…bell in twenty seconds…” and so on, right up to the bell.

On a good day the shirts went on, the collars and cuffs were studded, the ties knotted, and the boots laced, each exactly as the beer or porridge reached its appointed tide mark in that inexorable filling of tables. On a bad day, each piece of intelligence brought fresh oaths from the pharaohs and the blows would rain down on the heads of the luckless roes.

Today, it seemed, was a good day. They filed into the Barn in perfect order—roes, bucks, Trench (the new King o’ the Barn), and the four pharaohs. Then the master, bursting with hair at every orifice.

“
Benedictus benedicat
,”
Whymper almost sang.

Everyone could smell the master’s egg, a strong, rich note over the insipid steam that rose from the “porridge.” In three minutes the porridge was gone. In four minutes the egg, too, was gone, its delicious aroma already a fading memory. All stood. There was a fart from third table. Some boys giggled, some cried with overloaded disgust. There was a scuffle, silenced by imperious looks and shushes from top table.

“
Benedicto benedicata
,”
Whymper almost sang.

Then they filed out again, pharaohs first this time. All the boys carried glasses of milk, which were set out, one to each boy, during the meal. At the door they each collected three twisted cones of paper containing tea, sugar, and cocoa—the complete ration for the day’s brews.

“Time for a brew before chapel,” de Lacy said. “Stevenson mi can come too, as long as you’ve got those pies.”

The coal fire in the Barn and the four gas burners in the outer corridors were all occupied by the time they got there, so they had to kindle an impromptu fire of sticks and a broken packing case in a corner of the corridor. This made them late for chapel. And, in any case, the pies were much too delicious simply to gobble down; neither Boy nor Caspar could remember any food half so tasty coming from the kitchens at home before.

Fortunately, a large number of boys were late that day, enough to form a battering legion and charge their way through the pathetic rank of three beaks trying to block the entry. Only one latecomer in ten got marked down, neither Boy nor Caspar among them.

As they trotted back from chapel to house—everyone trotted at Fiennes until the end of school at half-past three—Boy began to feel that life wasn’t going to be so bad. This mood was shattered when Malaby called Boy into his study, just before school was due to begin. He pointed at the floor. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Your carpet,” Boy said, wondering what was wrong with it. He had brushed it furiously and was certain that not a speck of dirt was left upon it.

“Oh, is it! Then why the hell don’t you treat it like a carpet? I thought it was some old rag you’d found, you’ve thrown it down so carelessly.”

Boy stared down again in bewilderment; not a crease or fold was there in it.

“Do you live in these conditions at home? What is your guv’nor—some sort of tradesman, is he not?”

Boy stayed silent, knowing he could not say the words that sprang into his mind. But even his silence felt like a betrayal of his father.

“Do you tolerate servants who chuck carpets down like that?”

This time Malaby obviously expected an answer.

Boy coughed up a pleading little laugh. “Honestly, Malaby, I see nothing wrong with it.”

“Nothing wrong! My dear young fellow, they’ve obviously sent you to a decent school in the nick of time. Down on your knees, please!”

His heavy cajolery, delivered in the lightest tone, filled Boy with foreboding as he obeyed.

“Oblige me,” Malaby went on, “by drawing your finger along the line of the floorboards.” Boy did so. “Good. Now, while you try to hold the memory of that line in your tiny little brain, kindly trace out the line formed by the edge of the carpet.”

Again Boy obeyed. Malaby’s drift began to reach him: The two lines were not precisely parallel!

Malaby saw the understanding as it dawned in Boy’s eyes. “Oh yes! Horror of horrors! Not parallel, as old Euclid so quaintly phrases it. Those two lines don’t meet in the hereafter; they meet somewhere in this bloody room! They subtend an angle greater than zero—are you familiar with these mathematical arcana in your tradesman’s palace?”

Boy nodded miserably.

“Because if not, I’ll teach you. I can already see I’m going to have to teach you quite a bit. You obviously strolled in here thinking you needn’t give a hoot about old Malaby’s comfort, you can sling his rug down any old how.”

Boy, who had slaved extra hard, he thought, to make the study pleasant, felt the injustice of Malaby’s scorn fiercely; but again he held his tongue.

“You’ve just earned a Barn beating. Now get out!”

“What’s a Barn beating?” Boy asked de Lacy.

“Oh, Malaby’s always in a wax when he’s behind with his prep…” de Lacy began; but he had no time to explain a Barn beating because at that moment a buck poked his head into the passage, nodded at Boy, and said, “Whym wants you. Five minutes ago.”