by Clare Smith
The door on the other side of the room opened, breaking into his thoughts. “Danvers, the Deputy Head will see you now.”
He stood slowly and winced as the bruise on his ribs where Brandon had hit him pulled, and then followed the secretary into the office. It looked exactly the same as it had last week, even down to the stack of unmarked exercise books on the table. The only real difference was that the plant on the window sill had drooped even further, and the smell of stale smoke had been replaced with the unpleasant smell from the toilets next door.
“Sit, Danvers.”
For a moment he stayed where he was. He hated being spoken to like a dog with one word commands. Even worse was being called by the surname which wasn’t even his. If he did the same with the Deputy Head and called him Pollock or Pillock, which suited him better, he bet the man would go ballistic. As it was the man looked like he was going to spit nails, so he did as he was commanded and slouched down in the chair opposite.
“This is the second time in two weeks that you’ve been in front of me for fighting, Danvers. Would you care to tell me why?”
Tobrin just shrugged. He could tell the man but he didn’t think the Deputy Head was going to be that interested.
“You do know that fighting is forbidden, don’t you?”
“Yeh.” It wasn’t the answer he should have given and at his old school he would have received the sharp end of a master’s tongue for missing off the ‘sir’ but no one here seemed to care.
“Then why did you do it?”
“Dunno, it just happened.”
Mr Pollock gave a deep sigh, sat down at his desk and opened a brown file. “Your report from your previous school says that you are a likable and intelligent boy with real leadership qualities. Why then, in the two weeks you have been here, have you shown yourself to be rude, sullen and irresponsible?”
“I don’t know. It could be that this place is a dump.”
The Deputy Head took a deep breath and continued. “The report also says that you have an extraordinary gift for languages, as well as being an excellent tennis player and field athlete.”
It was true and therein lay the problem. He’d been head of tennis at his school, and was likely to be picked to represent Greater London in the county championships with the javelin. There were no sports facilities at this school apart from the public playing fields and two weed covered tennis courts.
“Yeh, I was house captain too.”
“So I see. It also says that you are taking A level Latin, Greek and Mandarin and have taught yourself German and Russian. That is quite impressive but an unfortunate choice, as the only languages we do here are French and Spanish.”
That was the other big problem, he’d set his heart on being an interpreter and travelling the world, but that had all gone down the drain along with everything else.
“If you are as gifted as your report suggests we could provide you with extra tuition after school, so you could probably catch up on the French before the exams, but that’s the best we could do.”
“Yeh, I know, I’ve already asked.”
The Deputy Head scowled. He could understand why the boy was feeling so unhappy, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. “The policy of this school is to suspend pupils who are involved in a fight on the second occasion. However, as you are new I will give you one last chance, but I will be writing to your father about your unacceptable behaviour.”
“Write away, I don’t care, he’s not my father. My dad was killed when the plane hit the two towers. He was an interpreter just like I wanted to be.”
He’d only been five at the time, but he still remembered it. His teacher in the kindergarten had come to tell him that his father had gone away and wouldn’t be coming back again, and had then left him in an office all by himself so his tears wouldn’t upset the other children. When evening came and no one had come to collect him, they took him to the local precinct like a lost dog, and he’d eventually ended up in a home for abandoned children. It had taken his mother nearly two weeks to get back into the country and rescue him. The memory of being alone and abandoned still haunted him.
“I’m sorry about that, I didn’t know, but that doesn’t change things. I will still write to Mr Danvers and you will lose your sports sessions, free periods and will do an hour’s detention after school for the next month, during which you will do extra French lessons.”
He didn’t mind doing the extra French, but the detention wasn’t going to work. “I can’t do the detention I will miss my bus.”
“That’s too bad, you should have thought about that before you broke Brandon’s nose. You are dismissed, Danvers.”
Tobrin glared at him and thought about arguing with him. He could tell Pollock there was no public transport out to where he lived and it would take him four hours to walk home in the dark, but there didn’t seem to be much point, the man wasn’t going to change his mind. Instead he stood and left the office without saying a word.
Outside the corridors were quiet, so he guessed that everyone had returned to classes after lunch. That would mean he would have to walk into a classroom with everyone smirking at him and he didn’t think he could take that. He looked at his watch and came to the conclusion that if he started walking now, he could be home by tea time.
*
“You did what?” shouted Richard Danvers.
“I broke a boy’s nose and walked out of school,” replied Tobrin, feeling not in the least bit contrite. He didn’t know what his father was shouting about; he bet the school had already phoned to tell him what he’d done.
“That was a damn stupid, foolish thing to do. What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that I didn’t want to be there.”
“Well you’ve got your wish. The school phoned a couple of hours ago and said that as you had started a fight and had walked out on your punishment, then they don’t want you back.”
“Oh.” On the long walk home he’d come to the conclusion that what he’d done hadn’t been the most sensible of things and that he’d probably end up with a month’s suspension. He hadn’t considered that he might be banned altogether. “Can they do that?”
“Of course they can. You’re over school leaving age and a trouble maker, so they can refuse to have you.”
“I’ll go somewhere else then.”
“You’ve no understanding of what you’ve done, have you boy? There won’t be a school anywhere which will take you, not with that black mark on your report card.”
“I could go back to London,” he said cautiously.
Richard sighed in exasperation and sat in the armchair by the fire. It was an old, worn out thing which had come with the rented cottage, and was the exact opposite to the beautiful leather suit that he’d owned only weeks ago. That and everything else had been sold to the foreign business man who was in urgent need of a house in London but didn’t have time to furnish it.
“I’m sorry, son. I know you didn’t want to leave London, none of us did, but we couldn’t afford to stay there anymore.”
“We could have done if you hadn’t cheated and taken those bribes,” snapped Tobrin and then instantly regretted what he’d said.
His father glared at him, white with anger. “You’ve no idea have you? Where do you think the money came from to keep you in that posh school after your mother became ill? How do you think we paid for your tennis lessons and your private tutor and your trip to Russia when your mother couldn’t work anymore? Every penny I took and every corrupt contract I signed I did for you. I did it to give you the best of everything, and now you just throw it back into my face.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” He watched as his father put his head in his hands and for a moment he thought he was crying. That made him feel even more uncomfortable than finding out the truth.
Richard looked up and gave him a hard look. “Now that you are no longer a school boy you can go out and find yourself a bloody job, so that
you can pay back some of the money which has been spent on you.” He stood, strode across the room and left, slamming the door behind him.
For a moment he considered going after his father and apologising again, but then decided he was probably best left alone with his anger. In any case, he wasn’t quite sure what he was apologising for. How was he to know that his school and all the things he did cost so much when no one ever told him? It wasn’t his fault either. He’d never asked to go to that school and the trip to Russia, and the extra tuition in Mandarin, had been the school’s idea not his. In fact he’d been unfairly treated by his father who was just trying to pass the blame onto him.
He stood, feeling almost as angry as when Brandon had called him names and stomped out of the room. Taking the stairs two at a time he stopped outside the second door on the landing and went to bang on the door, and then thought better of it. If his mother was inside she might be asleep and he didn’t want to wake her, so he tapped quietly on the door panel instead. A quiet voice called for him to enter, so he stepped into his mother’s room and went to sit on the bed beside her.
His mother looked tired and pale now, but he could remember her when she was bright and full of energy. She’d taught him to play tennis until he’d become too good for her, and had been as proud as anything when he’d won his first competition. He knew she would have liked him to be a professional tennis player, but had never complained when he’d turned all his attention towards learning languages.
Once his mother had a great job and had travelled the world just as he wanted to do. She would always bring him something from where she’d been, and he had very special memories of her homecomings and them spending time together. That had been before she had been diagnosed with ME. Now she spent most of her time in bed or sitting in the chair by the fire, but he still loved her just the same.
“I thought I heard raised voices. You weren’t arguing with Richard again were you?”
“Yeh, I’m sorry about that, I hope it didn’t wake you.”
She shook her head. “What were you arguing about this time?”
“Oh, just this and that, you know how it is.”
Sarah put her hand over his and gave it a gentle squeeze. Aren’t you going to tell me the truth?”
He sighed. Richard had obviously already told her what he’d done. “I’ve done something daft. I got into a fight and walked out of school, but I think it was for the best. It’s about time I went out to work and earned my keep, particularly now as things are so difficult.”
He’d hoped that his mother would protest and come up with a brilliant idea so he could finish his studies and then go to university as they had planned, but she didn’t.
Instead she just shook her head and sighed. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know, I’m not really good at anything except tennis and throwing a javelin, and I don’t think there’s much demand for that around here. I suppose I could give some language tuition; there might be someone who wants to learn German, although it is unlikely that there will be any interest in Latin, Greek or Mandarin.”
“Mrs Jackson came by today to drop off my pills. She said someone has just moved into Charnel House and they are looking for a gardener.”
“Come off it, Mum. What do I know about gardening?”
“What is there to know? If it flowers you leave it and if it doesn’t you pull it up. If it’s brown you dig it over and if it’s green you mow it or prune it.” Tobrin raised his eyebrows and gave her a very old fashioned look. “Your father is going to take some eggs up there tomorrow to see if he can get some regular sales, so why don’t you go instead and make some enquiries? If they are looking for someone with more experience then you haven’t lost anything, and it will at least show Richard that you’re trying to make amends.”
Tobrin thought about it for a moment. He didn’t fancy gardening, but it might be all right until something better came along, and it would keep his father off his back. “Okay then, I’ll give it a try.”
“Good. Now go and give your father a hand with feeding the chickens and getting the dinner ready and let me get some sleep.” She closed her eyes and didn’t open them again until her son had left the room.
*
He felt an idiot walking along with two dozen eggs clutched in his hands, but he supposed that if you lived in the country it would be a common enough sight. Of course it would have been better if he’d been a girl, then he could have put the eggs in a basket over his arm instead of carrying them in some tatty old egg boxes, one of which was threatening to break apart. He just hoped that whoever had moved into Charnel house wanted the eggs, as he didn’t fancy carrying them back home again.
Charnel House was such an odd name to call a place. He’d looked it up in the dictionary and found that it was a place where dead bodies and old bones were kept, which didn’t sound very promising. There had also been a brief reference to the place in an old book he’d found in the attic, about the local area, although it hadn’t told him very much.
The house, which was very old, had once belonged to a minor nobleman who lost his head in the civil war, after which it had become a monastery. Later it was converted into a country home for a colonel who had returned from India after some big battle in the uprising. He wasn’t certain which uprising the book was referring to, and couldn’t look it up because they couldn’t afford the cost to be connected to the internet.
The old house was even more isolated than the small holding, standing in its own grounds at the top of a hill surrounded by a crumbling brick wall. He’d never actually been past it before as it was down a private road, but he’d seen it in the distance when he was walking to catch the school bus. From a mile away it looked like a collection of stone towers with pointed roofs, but close up it looked like something out of the Adams Family, only much larger and much more sinister.
Tobrin stood outside the high metal gates and wondered if he really wanted to go inside. The place looked deserted, but it clearly wasn’t as a black Porsche stood outside the stone steps which led up to a large front door framed by pillars on either side. A white truck with a cement mixer, ladders and other building equipment stood to one side of the steps, and next to it was a white van that belonged to a local domestic cleaning company.
There were a few people coming and going which he was glad about. The place looked really creepy, and if the old colonel had brought back a tiger with him from India, it could easily be hiding in the long grass and tangled shrubs. Being careful to balance the cartons of eggs so they wouldn’t slip out of his hand, he pulled back the gate’s rusty bolt, pushed the gate open with his shoulder and stepped through.
As he walked up the driveway he began to realise just what a state the garden was in. It wasn’t just the lawn which was overgrown, but every tree and shrub that surrounded the garden and house. Whoever it was who lived here, they didn’t just need a gardener, they needed an expert in jungle warfare.
When he reached the white van he stopped and asked a man with a bucket and a window cleaning blade on a long pole where the owner was. The man pointed vaguely in the direction of the house and told him that Mr Carter was in the practice room. It wasn’t the most helpful of directions, but at least he knew the owner’s name, and with any luck he would hear some music coming from the practice room and could follow the sound.
He climbed the steps, rang the doorbell for good measure and pushed the front door open. Inside there was a huge entrance hall with a flight of broad stairs at the far end leading up to the second level. There was no one about so he called out the owners name whilst taking in the unusual scene around him. Most houses had furniture inside, but this place was full of packing crates, which covered all of the floor space in the hall and were stacked three high.
In between the crates there were some rather grand wooden doors, and as no one had responded to his call and he couldn’t hear any music, he thought he’d better go and look for Mr Carter. The first room he went
into had heavy curtains drawn across the windows making it dark and gloomy. This too was full of crates which made him wonder why the owner had so many boxes and so little furniture.
Certain that there was no one inside, he moved to the next room and stopped in the doorway not believing what he was looking at. The room was an arsenal of some sort, but instead of there being guns the room was full of ancient weapons. He put the eggs on the floor by the door and stepped inside to have a closer look.
He’d always been interested in old weapons and had once been on a school trip to the Armouries in Leeds, but they had nothing like this. At least half the room was taken up with suits of armour. Some were made of metal, but many more were made of studded leather or thick, padded fabric. Some stood on stands whilst others were draped over boxes. There was even a dummy sitting on a model horse wearing armour which could have come from China or Japan.
Along one wall there were stacks of swords of every size and shape, and along the other side, rows of wooden stands with spears stacked against them. Amongst them were some shorter pieces, which reminded him of the javelins he had once thrown. He hadn’t lifted a javelin since he’d left London, and the sight of them brought back yesterday’s pangs of homesickness.
Unable to resist the temptation, he crossed to where they were and picked one up. It was very different to the ones he’d been used to as it was heavier and less springy, but it felt good to be holding it in his hand. Ignoring the label which dangled from it, he lifted it into a throwing position to test its balance.
“Would you mind putting that down, it’s rather old and fragile and quite valuable.”
The man’s voice made him jump and he quickly replaced the javelin feeling guilty that he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do any harm.”
“No, I’m sure you didn’t. Now what are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Mr Carter.”
“Well you’ve found him, so what can I do for you?”
