Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  He went into the spare room that Mrs Watson had given him as a bedroom and did his maths homework. Then he put on a video. Later Mrs Watson arrived, looked into the room to see that he was there, and went away without saying a word. She didn’t even cook supper for him; not, of course, that he felt like eating anything after the trauma in the shower. Still, it was a bit odd. Unsettling, even.

  Only One Answer

  The fact was, Dorothy didn’t know what to say to him. She, too, was in a daze. As a biology teacher she knew all about the testosterone surges that occurred in adolescents. She’d seen plenty of it at Greenhill: all those sex-crazed boys and girls copulating furiously in the toilets, cupboards and bicycle sheds. And girls, she knew, could be worse than boys, maturing earlier and, especially at Greenhill, turning into sex-obsessed maniacs. She’d had strong urges herself. Her affair with Lawrence had been a passionate and carnal one. Even now the embers of that lost love could flare up.

  All that was normal. Comprehensible. But homosexuality wasn’t. It was something outside her experience. Theoretically she knew about it: at best as an unpleasant disease, at worse as a deliberate and squalid self-indulgence. She was not a fundamentalist and Briggs’s simplistic dogmatism repelled and embarrassed her. But it wasn’t only the Old Testament fire-eaters who condemned homosexuality: Saint Paul did, too, and, as a committed Christian you had to take Saint Paul seriously.

  Besides, she had problems enough with the adolescent volcano that was her school without homosexuality entering the already deadly mix of inadequacy and incipient loutishness. Briggs had a point. If she allowed homosexuality to flourish unchecked it could run riot and bring all that she had so painfully achieved crashing down in ruin and ridicule. It definitely was no time to be weak or emotional. Yes, chuck out the bad apple before it could ruin the barrel.

  No problem if that bad apple had been Billy Nolan. How she would just love to be rid of that useless ducker and diver! But John! Her child, her protégé, her discovery who was sitting in her very own spare room and who was so positive and so full of the good qualities that the rest of her school lacked! That was something else.

  Two years ago she’d resolved all her doubts. John was a good-hearted and wholesome boy who needed her help and would richly reward her for it. A gift from God, indeed! But was he really what she fondly imagined him to be?

  The vision loomed up before her. A homosexual predator lurking in public lavatories and molesting small boys. Always in trouble with the police. Always in court. Getting into the newspapers. Dragging her down into the depths. Prison. Sordid repercussions. Aiding and abetting a child molester. Dolly, you fool!

  With it came another disturbing thought. Why had she been so fond of him? Not just because he was an orphan in need of help. Face it, Dolly old girl, it was because he was cute: that lovely smile, those big appealing eyes, that glorious mop of blonde hair. You’d let yourself fall for him! Soon he would mutate into a dangling and spotty adolescent. He would cease to be cute. Would you be so fond of him then? You’re just an Emotional Woman, aren’t you!

  All through the year there had been that drip, drip, drip from Briggs, making the hole in her confidence that little bit bigger. Now this bombshell. Briggs had openly accused her of being weak and emotional. That sealed it. She would have to prove once and for all that she was a strong and steely professional able to make tough decisions. There was only one answer.

  An Evil Germ

  The next morning John walked to school. He felt light-headed. He’d eaten nothing since lunchtime the previous day and he hadn’t spoken to Mrs Watson since that awkward meeting in her study. Things were certainly out of joint. But… well… with a bit of sense they would get back to normal again.

  As soon as he entered Assembly there was an ominous hush. The boys of Form Three immediately moved away from him, leaving him isolated as if he were radioactive. Whenever he approached anyone they backed off. Beaming and smiling, he greeted Danny. But, instead of smiling back, Danny screwed up his face and snarled, ‘Fuck off bender! I’m not standing next to you!’

  At that the senior boys started hissing like a heap of vipers. ‘Bender.’ ‘Hom.’ ‘Shit-stabber!’

  He was bewildered, dismayed, frightened. This was something new and alarming.

  As they waited outside the maths room for the first lesson, the whole class placed their backsides firmly against the wall. ‘Watch out, lads!’ cried Danny. ‘The bender’s here!’

  So it went on all morning. Nobody would sit near him. Even Mekon seemed oddly cold and distant. A black doom fell on him. It was Greenhill again: no longer a big, bold lad, but back to being an evil germ. Mad. Everything had gone mad!

  Out on the field during lunch break a mob gathered round him. As at Greenhill, he was trapped. A swaggering and swashbuckling Billy Nolan approached him.

  ‘Denby, we don’t like poofters here, do we lads?’

  A roar of approval went up from the mob.

  ‘And we don’t like suction pumps what smarms up to teechas, neither!’

  Another roar of approval from the mob.

  This was terrifying. The whole school was against him. It had obviously been planned. He’d always thought he was popular. He’d no idea that his success could have stoked up this venomous resentment. With Army Barmy Martin, yes, but not with people like Michael and Fred. A ghastly revelation.

  ‘Right, Billy, lad, let him ’ave it!’

  Billy brandished his fists. This was Billy’s big day. Briggs had been telling him that, after his near expulsion, he ought to show his gratitude by doing something positive for the school for a change. So when a deputation had come to him asking him to ‘sort out Bender Denby’, he had seized the opportunity – with relish! Here was his chance to finally get even with the little snob. Alone, and without his gang to help him, he would be easy meat. And what could be more positive than bashing up a shit-stabber? After all, Briggsy had told him shit-stabbers were vermin, hadn’t he? By kicking Denby in good and proper, he would be a good lad for once!

  John was cornered. The trapped rat. The fox before the slobbering hounds. But never again crumple up as you did at Greenhill! These are human beings: they bleed. Billy Nolan is a big, cowardly, bullying slob who picks on weaker people. Go for him. Either smash him or go down fighting.

  A savage punch straight onto Billy’s big, flat nose. Blood flowing. Another punch on the mouth. Another in the stomach. Enemy reeling from the unexpected ferocity of the attack. Billy down. Kick him savagely with all the frenzy of accumulated hatred. No Geneva Convention stuff in this war.

  ‘Ow! Help! Lay off yer bender!’

  Crowd cowed. See Michael Connolly jeering. Smash him in the face. More blood. Tears, too.

  Then Briggs blew the whistle for the start of afternoon school. As the crowd trooped in, John noticed a change in the atmosphere. He was no longer the complete pariah.

  ‘Well done, John,’ whispered Fred. ‘You put up a great fight. You’re not a poofter, are you?’

  He’d won a battle, and in schoolboy eyes a fight had all the aura of a medieval trial by combat. Those who won were right… just like Greenhill! There was a glimmer of hope. It had been terrifying to discover how suddenly you could become an outcast, but now the worst of the storm seemed to be blowing over.

  ‘Not you, Denby,’ said Briggs as they filed along the corridor. ‘You’re to go to Mrs Watson’s study.’

  That was a further reassurance. A talk with Mrs Watson. His Mum. The bedrock of sense in this crazy world. She’d straighten things out. Suddenly he felt like a little boy. God, he actually wanted a cuddle from his Mum; that reassurance that the world really was sane after all.

  ‘No School can Survive with People Like You In It’

  But as soon as Briggs ushered him into the study, he got a shock. It wasn’t his smiling, cuddly, shaggy sheepdog of a Mum who faced him. It was
Mrs Watson, Headmistress of Beaconsfield School, seated behind her desk, glaring at him with her Medusa eyes. Briggs sat down on her left, and with Mekon sitting on her right, he was facing a hostile interrogation group. No hugs or cuddles here. An image from the war stories he’d read flitted through his mind: the Gestapo grilling a British pilot shot down over Germany. It was like having a bucket of icy water tipped over you.

  ‘John Denby,’ said Mrs Watson in a cold, hard voice, ‘this is a most unpleasant thing that I now have to do, especially after all the progress that I thought you were making. But, in view of what Mr Briggs has told me about you, and particularly after what you did to Danny Fleetwood in the shower yesterday, we cannot keep you at Beaconsfield School any longer. Neither can I have you in my house. You are to go back to your home in Gloucester Road. I will contact your father and he will find you another school.’

  John gaped in utter bewilderment. Death sentence? He couldn’t have heard properly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. We can no longer have you at Beaconsfield School.’

  The death sentence was repeated.

  Silence.

  Slowly the realisation burrowed through the layers of John’s disbelief. Then the awful truth dawned on him. The black pit beneath him was revealed. The abyss. What he had always secretly dreaded had happened. Assaulted by those he confidently believed were his protectors. Like that time in the London police station when they’d told him that Mrs Bowles wasn’t at Oaktree Gardens any more and that they didn’t want him back at Rickerby Hall. His life shattered. That avalanche of icy boulders crashing onto him just as it had done when his grandparents had been killed.

  Involuntarily, the tears started to trickle. Despite himself he became a snivelling little infant. ‘Oh God! Oh God! Please, no! I was so happy here. What will happen to me?’

  While Briggs’s face wore an expression of righteous triumphalism, Mrs Watson and Mekon sat in embarrassed silence.

  Suddenly John’s temper blazed out. ‘I thought you were my Mum who liked me!’ he yelled at Mrs Watson. ‘Now you’re chucking me out for no reason! I mean, what have I done? It was all a silly accident!’

  ‘Just a silly accident? Is that how describe it?’ said Briggs in a cool, confident voice. ‘I’ve been watching you closely. Don’t try to tell me that you hadn’t planned this whole thing out very carefully. You have calmly and quite deliberately committed a dirty and depraved act. For your own gratification you have sexually abused a fellow pupil and, just because you were John Denby from Rickerby Hall prep school, you thought you could get away with it. Well, you can’t.’

  A pause followed while John gaped in bewilderment. What the hell had Rickerby Hall got to do with it?

  Briggs continued, ‘You’re bad, Denby, bad. No school can survive with people like you in it.’

  ‘But —’ This was mad.

  ‘But nothing. You’ve planted the seed of sodomy, which is a disease. If unchecked it will contaminate the whole school and destroy it. You’re a sodomite. You know what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah? Read your Bible. Leviticus, Chapter Eighteen, Verse Twenty-Two. “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination.” You are an abomination, Denby.’

  ‘All right, Jamie,’ sighed Meakin, looking uncomfortable. ‘We can do without a sermon.’

  ‘John Denby,’ declared Mrs Watson, ‘You’re to go back to Gloucester Road. We’ll get your things sent on from Fern Avenue.’

  The Only Lifeline

  Shell-shocked and with tears running down his cheeks, John stumbled out of the room. Mercifully, all the boys were in lessons so there was nobody to jeer at him in his degradation. He was able to slip unmolested into the street.

  It was one of those balmy days which are not yet spring, but which promise a recovery from the long, wasting disease of winter. The warm, friendly sunshine and the soft, mellow brick of the comfortable old buildings seemed to mock him.

  Now what? A burst of wild anger was followed by a feeling of helpless despair. The plug had been pulled and his whole world was spiralling down the drain. He’d been a good and promising lad. Now he was bad; worse than bad – evil. ‘No school can survive with people like you in it.’ Worse even than Hitler. Why? Mad. Crazy.

  He desperately wanted to talk to somebody who was sane. But who? Who was sane in this great big loony bin? Then he remembered Bob Steadman. He was always kind and friendly and, unlike Briggs, he was a proper vicar. He’d always got on well with him. But then he’d thought he got on well with Mrs Watson and look what had happened! What if even Bob wouldn’t listen to him? A vague notion of suicide, misty as yet, began to form in the depths of his mind.

  It wasn’t far to Bob’s place in Queen’s Road. He’d been there several times before and he knew the way. As he walked briskly through the red brick streets, the calm, watery sunshine and the soft blue sky seemed to reassure him. Maybe the world wasn’t completely mad after all.

  Soon he was in the street of tall Edwardian houses. Built to house lower-middle-class clerks and petty shopkeepers at the turn of the century, there were no trees or gardens, just harsh red brick and front doors that opened directly onto the pavement. With the sandstone mullioned windows and the ornate lintels, the street lacked the naked cut-price utilitarianism of Gloucester Road, but it was definitely a step down from the leafy opulence of Fern Avenue where Beacobsfield School was.

  Faced with the doorbell marked ‘Steadman’, he had a moment of panic. What was he to say to him? With Bob Steadman he’d always been the big, tough lad: last summer it had been he who’d forged the way up through the crags that encircled the lordly summit of Sgurr na Ciche at the far end of lonely and roadless Loch Nevis: and how Bob had praised him for it! But now he had been reduced to a squalid little retard. Worse even, a dirty little shit-stabber. It was as bad as going up to a teacher and telling him that you’d messed your pants. What would Bob think of him?

  Eventually he managed to press the bell and the buzzer sounding as the door unlocked indicated that Bob was in. Now for it! He opened the door and clambered up the white-painted and carpetless staircase to the bachelor den on the top floor under the roof. The fresh-faced, bushy eyebrowed young vicar opened the door and, beaming as always with bonhomie, effusively welcomed him.

  ‘Ah, John! Great to see you! Now what can I do for you?’

  The words just wouldn’t come.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school? You’ve been crying. What’s happened?’

  No reply. Just trickling tears.

  ‘Well, come in and tell me about it.’

  Just a Dirty Little Bender

  Steadman’s den, never noted for its orderliness, was more than usually untidy. Papers and books were strewn over the armchair and settee and covered the floor like the results of a tornado. In one corner stood an easel with a half-finished oil painting on it – a wild mountain landscape, probably a derivation of Loch Nevis – and, beside it, an old chair adorned with a sticky, multicoloured palette, a pile of half-squeezed tubes of oil paint and several jars containing paint brushes of varying shapes and sizes. The whole room reeked of turpentine. All of it was a visible sign of Steadman’s frustrated creative impulses. It was some time before he managed to clear a big enough space on the settee for John to sit on.

  He’d never seen the kid in this state before. He felt encouraged, even a little excited. Here, at last, was a chance to use those ‘counselling skills’ he’d so assiduously acquired on one of his many ‘social awareness’ courses.

  John sat down timorously.

  ‘Well, what’s it all about?’

  But John just sat there. Still the words wouldn’t come. To his intense embarrassment the trickle of tears became a stream.

  Faced with a brick wall, Steadman slipped into his bedroom and phoned Beaconsfield. He got Miss Curry, the reclusive school secretary who inhabited a
little den next to Mrs Watson’s study. It was a secret room, a sanctum unknown to the boys of Beaconsfield. Out of charity, Mrs Watson had employed her, but due to financial constraints, only part-time. This, old Curry resented, and by way of revenge she refused to have anything to do with the staff or pupils of the school. She was gruff and surly as she answered the phone.

  ‘I’ve got young Denby round here. He’s in a real state. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘He’s been expelled.’

  ‘Good lord! Can you tell my why?’

  ‘No I can’t. It’s not in my remit.’

  With that she put the phone down.

  Expelled from a place like Beaconsfield? That took some doing. And the prize pupil, too. Steadman felt excited. Young Denby must have done something pretty gruesome. Drugs? Grevious Bodily Harm? Murder even? This was going to be interesting.

  He returned eagerly to the sitting room, shoved some papers off the armchair and sat down opposite John.

  He spoke calmly and gently. ‘So you have been expelled from Beaconsfield. What have you done?’

  There was no reply. The boy turned away and looked at the floor. The big teardrops made a puddle on the carpet.

  Steadman had always liked this skinny, goggle-eyed little thirteen-year-old with his mop of white hair, so full of life, so creative, so appreciative. He had to stop himself favouring him too much. Now that he so obviously needed his help, he felt flattered and paternal. But in situations like these you got nowhere with direct questions; he’d learnt that much.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll get you a cup of cocoa and, when you’re ready, you can tell me all about it. Sugar and milk?’

  A vague nod.

  Steadman disappeared into the grubby chaos of his small kitchen and busied himself with filling his electric kettle and rinsing out some dirty mugs that had sat in the sink for the past four days.