Part 7 (2/2)

'Hey, Pinchbeck!' We were sitting in the Quad under the beech trees. The sun was hot, and John Snyde was mowing the lawn. I remember that smell, the smell of schooldays; of mown gra.s.s, dust and of things growing too fast and out of control. 'Looks like Big John's having a spot of bother.'

I looked. So he was; at the limit of the cricket lawn the Mean Machine had broken down again, and my father was trying to restart it, swearing and sweating, as he pulled at the sagging waistband of his jeans. The little boys had already begun to close in; a cordon of them, like pigmies around a wounded rhino.

John.1 Heji, John! I could hear them across the cricket lawn, budgie voices in the hazy heat. Darting in, darting out, daring each other to get a little closer every time.

'Geddout of it!' He waved his arms at them like a man scaring crows. His beery shout reached us a second later; high-pitched laughter followed. Squealing, they scattered; seconds later they were already creeping back, giggling like girls.

Leon grinned. 'Come on,' he said. 'We'll have a laugh.'

I followed him reluctantly, keeping back, removing the gla.s.ses that might have marked me. I needn't have bothered; my father was drunk. Drunk and furious, goaded by the heat and the juniors who wouldn't leave him alone.

'Excuse me, Mr Snyde, sir,' said Leon, behind him.

He turned, gaping - taken by surprise by that 'sir*.

Leon faced him, polite and smiling. 'Dr Tidy would like to see you in the Bursar's office,' he said. 'He says it's important.'

My father hated the Bursar - a clever man with a satiric tongue, who ran the School's finances from a spotless little office near the Porter's Lodge. It would have been hard to miss the hostility between them. Tidy was neat, obsessive, meticulous. He attended Chapel every morning; drank camomile tea to soothe his nerves; bred prizewinning orchids in the School conservatory. Everything about John Snyde seemed calculated to upset him; his slouch; his boorishness; the way his trousers came down well over the waistband of his yellowing underpants.

'Dr Tidy?' said my father, eyes narrowed.

'Yes, sir,' said Leon.

's.h.i.+t.' He slouched off, towards the office.

Leon grinned at me. 'I wonder what Tidy'll say when he smells that breath?' he said, running his fingers over the Mean Machine's battered flank. Then he turned, his eyes bright with malice. 'Hey, Pinchbeck. Want a ride?'

I shook my head, appalled - but excited, too.

'Come on, Pinchbeck. It's too good an opportunity to miss.' And with one light step he was on the machine, pressing the starter b.u.t.ton, revving her up-- 'Last chance, Pinchbeck.'

I could not refuse the challenge. I jumped up on to the wheel rim, balancing as the Mean Machine lurched into motion. The juniors scattered, squealing. Leon was laughing wildly; gra.s.s sprayed out from behind the wheels in a triumphant green spume and across the lawn John Snyde came running, too slow for it to matter but furious, feather spitting crazy with rage: 'You boys, there! You f.u.c.king boysl'

Leon looked at me. We were nearing the far end of the lawn now; the Mean Machine was making the most terrible noise; behind us we could see John Snyde, helplessly outdistanced, and behind him, Dr Tidy, his face a blur of outrage.

For a second joy transfixed me. We were magical; we were Butch and Sundance, leaping from the cliffs edge, leaping from the mower in a haze of gra.s.s and glory and running for it, running like h.e.l.l as the Mean Machine kept going in majestic, unstoppable slo-mo towards the trees.

We were never caught. The juniors never identified us, and the Bursar was so irate at my father's behaviour - at his foul language on School premises, even more than at his drunkenness or his dereliction of duty - that he omitted to follow up whatever leads he might have had. Mr Roach, who had been on duty, was given a ticking-off by the Head, and my father received an official warning and a bill for repairs.

None of this had any effect on me, however. Another line had been crossed, and I was elated. Even sticking it to that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Bray had never felt as good as this, and for days I walked on a rosy cloud, through which nothing but Leon could be seen, felt or heard.

I was in love.

At the time I dared not think so in as many words. Leon was my friend. That was all he ever could be. And yet that's what it was: blazing, purblind, triple-infatuated, sleepless, self-sacrificing love. Everything in my life was filtered through its hopeful lens; he was my first thought in the morning; my last at night. I was not quite besotted enough to believe that my feelings were in any way reciprocated; to him, I was just a first-year; amusing enough, but by far his inferior. Some days he would spend his lunch-break with me; at other times he might keep me waiting for the entire hour, completely unaware of the risks I ran daily for the chance of being with him.

Nevertheless, I was happy. I did not need Leon's constant presence for my happiness to flourish; for the time it was enough simply to know he was close by. I had to be clever, I told myself; I had to be patient. Above all I sensed that I must not become tiresome, and hid my feelings behind a barrier of facetiousness whilst evolving ever more ingenious ways to wors.h.i.+p him in secret.

I exchanged school sweaters with him and for a week I wore his around my neck. In the evenings I opened his locker with my father's master key and went through Leon's things, reading his cla.s.s notes, his books, looking at the cartoon doodles he drew when he was bored, practising his signature. Outside of my role as a St Oswald's pupil I watched him from afar, sometimes pa.s.sing by his house in the hope of catching a glimpse of him - or even his sister, whom I wors.h.i.+pped by a.s.sociation. I memorized the number plate on his mother's car. I fed his dog in secret. I combed my lank brown hair so that I fancied it looked like his, cultivated his expressions and his tastes. I had known him for just over six weeks.

I antic.i.p.ated the approaching summer holidays at the same time as a relief and a further source of anxiety. Relief, because the effort of attending two schools - albeit erratically - was beginning to take its toll. Miss McCauleigh had complained about missing homework and frequent absences, and although I had become skilled at forging my father's signature, there was always the danger that someone might meet him b y chance and blow my cover. Anxiety, because although I would soon be free to meet Leon as often as I wished, it meant running even more risks, as I continued my imposture as a civilian.

Fortunately, I had already completed the spadework within the School itself. The rest was a question of timing, location and a few well-chosen props, mainly costumes, which would establish me as the well-off, middle-cla.s.s individual I pretended to be.

I stole a pair of expensive trainers from a sports shop in town, and a new racing bike (my own would have been quite impossible) from outside a nice house a comfortable distance away. I repainted it, just to be sure, and sold my own on the Sat.u.r.day market. If my father had noticed, I would have told him I had traded in my old bike for a second-hand model because it was getting too small for me. It was a good story, and would probably have worked, but by then, with the end of term, my father was at last beginning to unravel, and he never noticed anything any more.

Fallow has his place now. Fat Fallow, with his loose lips and ancient donkey-jacket. He has my father's slouch, too, from years of driving the ride-on mower, and, like my father's, his gut spills out obscenely from over his narrow, s.h.i.+ny belt. There is a tradition that all School Porters are called John, and this is true of Fallow, too, though the boys do not call after him and bait him as they did my father. I'm glad; I might have to intervene if they did, and I do not want to make myself conspicuous at this stage.

But Fallow offends me. He has hairy ears and reads the News of the World in his little Lodge, wearing ancient slippers on his bare feet, drinking milky tea and ignoring what happens around him. Halfwit Jimmy does the real work; the building, the woodwork, the wiring, the drains. Fallow takes the phone calls. He enjoys making the callers wait -- anxious mothers asking after their sick sons, rich fathers detained at a last-minute meeting with the directors - sometimes for minutes on end, as he finishes his tea and scrawls the message on a piece of yellow paper. He likes to travel, and sometimes goes on day-trips to France, organized by his local working men's club, during which he goes to the supermarket, eats chips by the side of the tour bus and complains about the locals.

At work he is by turns rude and deferential, depending on the status of his visitor; he charges boys a pound for opening their locker with the master key; he gloats at the legs of female teachers as they walk up the stairs. With lesser staff he is pompous and opinionated; says Know what I mean? and I'll tell you this for nothing, mate.

With the higher echelons he is obsequious; with veterans, nauseatingly pally; with juniors like myself, brusque and busy, with no time to waste on chat. He goes up to the Computer Science Suite on Fridays after school, ostensibly to turn off the machines, but actually to surf internet p.o.r.n sites after hours, while outside in the corridor, Jimmy uses the floor polisher, pa.s.sing it slowly across the boards, bringing the old wood to a mellow s.h.i.+ne.

It takes less than a minute to obliterate an hour's work. By eight thirty on Monday morning the floors will be as dusty and scuffed as if Jimmy had never been there at all. Fallow knows this; and though he does not perform these cleaning duties himself, he nevertheless feels an obscure resentment, as if staff and boys were an impediment to the smooth running of things.

As a result, his life consists of small and spiteful revenges. No one really observes him -- a Porter lives below the salt, and so may take such liberties with the system that remain unnoticed. Members of staff are mostly unaware of this, but I have been watching. From my position in the Bell Tower I can see his little Lodge; I can observe the comings and goings without being seen.

There is an ice-cream van parked outside the School gates. My father would never have allowed that, but Fallow tolerates it, and there is often a queue of boys there after school or at lunch-time. Some buy ice-cream there; others return with bulging pockets and the furtive grin of one who has balked the system. Officially, junior boys are not supposed to leave the School grounds, but the van is only a few yards away, and Pat Bishop accepts it as long as no one crosses the busy road. Besides, he likes ice-cream, and I've seen him several times, munching on a cone as he supervises the boys in the yard.

Fallow, too, visits the ice-cream van. He does it in the morning, when lessons have already begun, making sure to circle the buildings clockwise and thereby avoid pa.s.sing under the Common Room window. Sometimes he has a plastic bag with him - it is not heavy, but quite bulky which he leaves under the counter. Sometimes he returns with a cone, sometimes not.

In fifteen years, many of the School's pa.s.skeys have been changed. It was to be expected - St Oswald's has always been a target, and security must be maintained - but the Porter's Lodge, among others, is one of the exceptions. After all, why would anyone want to break into a Porter's Lodge? There's nothing there except an old armchair, a gas heater, a kettle, a phone and a few girlie magazines hidden under the counter. There's another hiding-place, too, a rather more sophisticated one, behind the hollow panel which masks the ventilation system, though this is a secret pa.s.sed on jealously from one Porter to another. It is not very large, but will easily take a couple of six-packs, as my father discovered, and as he told me then, the bosses don't always have to know everything.

I was feeling good today as I drove home. Summer is almost at an end, and there is a yellowness and a grainy texture to the light which reminds me of the television shows of my adolescence. The nights are getting cold; in my rented flat, six miles from the city centre, I will soon have to light the gas fire. The flat is not an especially attractive place - one room, a kitchen annexe and a tiny bathroom -- but it's the cheapest I could find, and, of course, I do not mean to stay for long.

It is virtually unfurnished. I have a sofa-bed; a desk; a light; a computer and modem. I shall probably leave them all behind when I go. The computer is clean -- or will be, when I have wiped the incriminating stuff from its hard drive. The car is rented, and will also have been thoroughly cleaned by the rental firm by the time the police trace it back to me.

My elderly landlady is a gossip. She wonders why a nice, clean, professional person such as myself should choose to stay in a low-rent flatblock filled with druggies and ex convicts and people on the dole. I've told her that I am a sales coordinator for a large international software company; that my firm has agreed to provide me with a house, but that the contractors have let them down. She shakes her head at this, bemoaning the inept.i.tude of builders everywhere, and hopes I'll be in my new home by Christmas.

'Because it must be miserable, mustn't it, love, not having your own place? And especially at Christmas--' Her weak eyes mist over sentimentally. I consider telling her that most deaths among old people occur during the winter months; that three-quarters of would-be suicides will take the plunge during the festive season. But I must maintain the pretence for the moment; so I answer her questions as best I can; I listen to her reminiscences; I am beyond reproach. In grat.i.tude, my landlady has decorated my little room with chintz curtains and a vase of dusty paper flowers. 'Think of it as your little home away from home,' she tells me. 'And if you need anything, I'm always here.'

St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys Thursday, 23rd September THE TROUBLE BEGAN ON MONDAY, AND I KNEW SOMETHING had happened when I saw the cars. Pat Bishop's Volvo was there, as usual - always first in, he even spends the night in his office at busy times - but it was almost unheard of to see Bob Strange's car there before eight o'clock, and there was the Head's Audi, too, and the Chaplain's Jag, and half a dozen others, including a black-and-white police car, all parked in the staff car-park outside the Porter's Lodge.

For myself, I prefer the bus. In heavy traffic it's quicker, and in any case, I never need to go more than a few miles to work or to the shops. Besides, I have my bus pa.s.s now, and though I can't help thinking that there must be some mistake (sixty-four - how can I be sixty-four, by all the G.o.ds?), it does save money.

I walked up the long drive to St Oswald's. The lindens are on the turn, gilded with the approach of autumn, and there were little columns of white vapour rising from the dewy gra.s.s. I looked into the Porter's Lodge as I walked by. Fallow wasn't there.

No one in the Common Room seemed to know exactly what was going on. Strange and Bishop were in the Head's office with Dr Tidy and Sergeant Ellis, the liaison officer. Still Fallow was nowhere to be seen.

I wondered if there had been a break-in. It happens occasionally, though for the most part Fallow does a reasonable job of looking after the place. A bit of a crawler with the management, and of course he's been on the take for years. Small things - a bag of coal, a packet of biscuits from the kitchens, plus his pound-a-go racket for opening lockers - but he's loyal enough, and when you consider that he earns about a tenth of even a junior master's salary, you learn to turn a blind eye. I hoped there was nothing the matter with Fallow.

As always, the boys knew it first. Rumours had been flying wildly throughout the morning; Fallow had had a heart attack; Fallow had threatened the Head; Fallow had been suspended. But it was Sutcliff, McNair and Allen Jones who foun d me at Break and asked me, with that cheery, disingenuous air they adopt when they know someone else is in trouble, whether it was true that Fallow had been arrested.

'Who told you that?' I said with a smile of deliberate ambiguity.

'Oh, I heard someone say something.' Secrets are currency in any school, and I hadn't expected McNair to reveal his informant, but obviously, some sources are more reliable than others. From the boy's expression I gathered that this had come from somewhere near the top.

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