The Flyer (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

The Latin master at Oundle was Mister Norris. He was a thin man with a nose like a blade, and small grey eyes which he would fix on his pupils with a withering, contemptuous stare if they displeased him in the slightest. The boys were all afraid of him.

Norris disliked being a schoolmaster, and disliked his pupils even more. In his youth he had studied classics and philosophy at Oxford, and dreamt of becoming a great poet. In his final year, however, his father died owing a great deal of money. Norris found himself without the means that he’d imagined would always allow him to live comfortably without the necessity of having to work for an income. He became a school master instead of a poet, briefly convincing himself of the worthiness of teaching the classics to boys who reminded him of a younger version of himself. But a failed romance and disillusionment with school life made him bitter. Instead of seeking some other means of making a living, he became increasingly resentful at the change in his circumstances, and as he became older whatever redeeming qualities he might once have had became atrophied. He hated the world.

As the first year boys filed silently into his class he stood beside his desk and regarded them with a cold glare. They kept their eyes lowered and walked briskly, but without hurrying, to their allotted desks. The last of them closed the door behind him and joined the others waiting for permission to sit down. Norris looked over them, ready to pounce on any boy who had dared come to his lesson improperly attired. His gaze lingered on William, who stood with his crutch at his side. That wretch, he thought! That he should be forced to endure a village dolt studying Horace and Virgil. It was an insult.

‘Sit,’ he commanded.

The boys obeyed, but the scraping of chairs against the floor irritated Norris intensely and he scowled at Yardley, who, it seemed to Norris, made more noise than was necessary. It gave him a small measure of satisfaction that the boy visibly paled and averted his eyes.

Norris went to the chalkboard and wrote a line from Horace’s Odes.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
. He turned to the boys who were now sitting with their hands clasped on their desks, looking at what he’d written. They were like statues, none of them moving so much as a muscle in case he should pick them out.

‘Reynolds,’ he said, ‘be so kind as to translate the phrase to English.’

William stared at the words on the board and desperately attempted to make sense of them from the rudiments of Latin grammar he’d managed to learn during his first weeks at Oundle.

‘I am waiting,’ Norris prompted impatiently.

But the little William had learned, fled from his mind. The complexities of noun declensions, verb conjugations, and of ablatives of means or manner or absolute, meant nothing to him.

‘What is the tense, boy?’ Norris demanded. ‘Surely even you can tell us that.’

‘The tense, sir?’

‘Yes the tense! You know what that is, don’t you? They must teach you something at a village school. There are only three possibilities for goodness sake.’

‘We wasn’t taught any Latin, sir,’ William mumbled.
We wasn’t tart any Latin, soir.

‘Weren’t, Reynolds! The subject is plural. Of course you weren’t taught Latin, you dolt! What on earth would a farm boy need with Latin? Unless, perhaps, you rear an extraordinarily educated breed of pig.’ Norris looked around at the other boys, wearing a thin, sarcastic smile, inviting them to enjoy his mockery. ‘I am referring to English grammar, boy.’ He fixed his eye on Yardley. ‘You boy, be so kind as to enlighten our ill-educated friend in the mysteries of tense.’

‘Sir?’

‘Tense, boy! For goodness sake, it is not a difficult question. There are three of them! What are they?’

‘Past, present and future, sir,’ Yardley stammered as understanding dawned.

‘Precisely. Now, Reynolds, surely even you can discern which of those applies in this case.’ Norris strode to the board and took up a short cane which he used to point at the fourth word. ‘What is this?’

‘Est,’ William said.
Ust
.

Norris rolled his eyes. ‘Est Reynolds! The word is est. You are not in the fields now, boy. And what does it mean?’

Silence. Norris advanced on him, his gown flapping like crows’ wings. He rapped his cane down hard on William’s desk, making him flinch.

‘Get up, boy! Get up and come here!’

William obeyed, limping on his crutch to the board, where Norris made him face the rest of the class.

‘The phrase translates as; “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country.” It is. Present tense. Repeat it, Reynolds.’

William did as he was told, though he didn’t sound anything like Norris.
‘Ut is sweet und becoming to doi fer one’s country,’
 

At the stifled sniggers from the other boys, William’s face burned with humiliation. Norris muttered furiously under his breath, as if to himself, though loudly enough for the entire class to hear.

‘Good Lord, listen to him. Am I meant to perform miracles?’ Out loud he said, ‘Do you understand what it means, Reynolds?’

But William didn’t. Tears pricked his eyes and his throat was tight, strangling his voice.

‘Horace is speaking of honour and duty to one’s country, noble sentiments that extend far beyond the notion of the individual. I don’t expect you to comprehend the subtle beauty of the idea, Reynolds, such things are beyond a person of your class. However it has fallen to me to drum into your cabbage-like brain some knowledge of the Latin language, though what good it will do you is beyond me. Hold out your hand.’

William obeyed, and Norris raised his cane and brought it down sharply three times, each stroke causing a vivid red welt to appear. It irritated him that William uttered no sound, even though Norris hit him harder with every stroke. Frustrated by his stubbornness, Norris ordered William to take a chair and sit in the corner with his back to the class. ‘And before you return to this classroom, you will write the phrase with its English translation a hundred times.’

With difficulty, William dragged his chair from his desk, and for the remainder of the lesson the room was silent except for the scratch of nibs against paper as the other boys faithfully copied down a translation of a passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.   

*****

During the week the boys attended chapel within the confines of the school, but on Sundays they went to morning services at St Peter’s church by the market square. The sonorous tones of Reverend Beamish filled the great empty space above the stone arches on either side of the nave. He was preaching a sermon, reminding the congregation of the love of Christ for mankind, and emphasising that it was the duty of all men to do unto others as they would have others do unto them. William had quickly realised that God and duty were themes that often cropped up at Oundle.

The masters sat apart from the boys, and as the Reverend’s sermon continued, William’s thoughts wandered. He found himself watching Mister Watson, who was the youngest master at the school. He taught English language and literature and came from Edinburgh, though you wouldn’t have guessed it from looking at him. Though he was British by birth it was rumoured that his father was Indian, from Calcutta. His skin was quite dark.

Mister Watson was unlike his fellow masters in ways other than his appearance. He was quietly spoken and seemed to enjoy teaching. During his classes he encouraged the boys to ask questions and was happy to wander from the text of whatever they were studying if a discussion arose, something Mister Norris would never have done. He told them that he wanted them to learn the skills required for intelligent debate, an idea which he had once joked was quite probably considered anathema to some people. William had looked up the word anathema in the dictionary later to see what it meant, and when he found it he wondered if Mister Watson might have been talking about Mister Norris.

William had noticed that Mister Watson was hardly ever seen with the other masters outside of the necessities of his school duties. He had the feeling that the other masters regarded Mister Watson with vague suspicion, as if he was a slightly exotic but unpredictable curiosity.

The sermon ended and the reverend announced that they would sing hymn number forty seven. The first dusty notes of Come All Ye Faithful wheezed from the organ, but as the congregation rose to their feet the boy next to William shoved him with his elbow so that William staggered and almost fell. As William steadied himself, Mister Norris glared at him, an angry flush rising in his cheeks.

After the service, the boys trooped outside into the cold. The masters stood with their wives, chatting pleasantly in small groups, though Mister Watson lingered on their periphery. As the boys filed past, Norris fixed his eye on William, limping along the path towards the gate. Norris waited until William had almost reached it before he called out to him.

‘Reynolds!’ he barked. ‘Come here, boy!’

Slowly, William limped the twenty yards back along the path, past the smirking grins of the other boys.

‘Why were you were playing the fool during the service,’ Norris demanded.

‘Excuse me, sir, but I weren’t playing the fool, sir,’ William replied.

‘Wasn’t, Reynolds! The subject is singular. Your grammatical butchering aside, however, you certainly were playing the fool. I saw you with my own eyes, or do you think I’m blind, you impudent oaf?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No sir, what?’

‘I don’t think you’re blind, sir.’

‘Indeed?’ Norris said scathingly. ‘Then you think I’m a fool?’

‘No, sir.’

‘But you must think I’m a fool if you believe you can deceive me when I clearly saw you larking about with my own eyes.’

William felt trapped, certain that whatever he said would be twisted and used against him.

‘Answer me, boy! Do you think me a fool?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then you are calling me a liar!’ Norris declared with glittering malice. ‘But I suppose we should expect no better from you. It seems to me that we cannot make a gentleman out of a turnip. Nevertheless, we must do our best. You will translate the first one hundred lines from book one of Virgil’s Aeneid by tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes, sir,’ William replied with his eyes downcast.

As Norris returned to join his fellow masters, William followed the other boys back to the school. He knew he was incapable of carrying out the task he’d been set, though he would spend the only free day of the week trying, and in the morning his failure would earn him six strokes of the cane. He had almost reached the school gates when somebody called his name.

‘Reynolds!’

He turned around to see that Mister Watson was behind him. ‘Yes, sir?’

‘I wondered where you’re off to.’

‘The library, sir.’

Watson smiled as he fell into step beside him. ‘I see. To translate from Virgil for Mister Norris I expect?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I think I’ve something that might help you with that in my rooms. There’s a fire lit so it should be warm, and I daresay I could manage a cup of tea if you’d like?’

William wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly. ‘Sir?’

‘I’m offering to help you, Reynolds,’ Watson said kindly. ‘But of course the decision is entirely yours. I shan’t be offended if you prefer to decline. What do you say?’

‘Thank you, sir,’ William managed to say. ‘I mean, I’d like it if you could help me.’

‘Good. Come along then.’

Like most of the masters, Mister Watson lived on the school grounds. When they reached his rooms, he invited William to have a seat beside the fire. ‘Mrs Hedges usually looks after me, but I have to fend for myself on Sundays I’m afraid. Still, I think I can manage a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits.’

He left William, alone promising to return in a few minutes. While he was gone, William looked at the paintings that hung on the walls. There were several Scottish landscapes done in watercolour, the empty hills purple with heather. There were also numerous paintings of different types of birds. He got up and looked closer at one of a kingfisher. Every feather on its back seemed to have been individually painted, the colours delicately bleeding from slate grey to turquoise, the eyes bright and sharp with life. He wandered about the room looking at Mister Watson’s things. There were shelves full of books, many of them ornithological, but there were also novels and poetry in English, and others in Greek and Latin.

‘Do you enjoy reading, William?’ Watson said as he returned with a tray which he put down on a small table.

‘I used to, sir.’

‘You mean you don’t anymore. Why not?’

‘There’s no time to read, sir.’

‘Surely you have time to yourself after you’ve done your prep?’

‘It takes me longer than the other boys,’ William said. ‘There’s lots they didn’t teach us at my other school.’

‘Ah, yes, I see. Like Latin you mean?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sit down and have your tea.’ Watson offered a plate of biscuits, and told William to help himself. He took down a leather bound book from a shelf. ‘This is The Aeneid,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it contains both the original Latin version of Virgil’s epic, and also John Dryden’s English translation. ‘The first one hundred lines, I believe Mister Norris said.’ He put the book down on the table and winked. ‘I think you’ll find this useful.’

William looked through the pages, both pleased and astonished.

‘I think,’ Mister Watson added, ‘that it might be wise to make one or two deliberate errors. Just so that you don’t arouse Mister Norris’s suspicion. You can stay here and copy it out this afternoon if you like. It will be quite peaceful as I usually go for a walk on Sunday afternoons. Have you ever been to Fotheringhay?’

‘No, sir.’

‘It’s a village about four miles from here. There used to be a castle there, though now there’s only a mound left where it stood. A pair of hobbies were nesting in a hollow tree by the river during the summer.’ Watson fetched a watercolour he’d done of a pair of the little falcons. ‘I’m something of a birdwatcher in my spare time as you can see. There’s a path that follows the river, you know. It’s quite a pleasant walk if you ever feel like doing it.’