I’d been wondering how we were all going to fit into Mr. England’s Mini. Four boys, and a matron, and Mr. England! Even when he’s in it by himself, Mr. England looks a bit funny. He’s very tall and skinny so his head nearly touches the ceiling, his knees poke up on either side of the steering wheel and his elbows are halfway out of the windows. It’s a funny sight really. There’s no room for anything in that car especially with all the mess in the back like records, essays for marking, and books about archaeology, music, and churches. He just loves churches; I know for a fact he’s got hundreds of books about them—and cathedrals and abbeys. That’s partly because he likes old buildings and the history of it all, and partly because, actually, he is really quite religious. He’s not at all stuffy about it, though. Last term I had a big row with Macer-Wright, our class monitor, after he said I’d been cheating in a history dates test, when in fact I never did. I got so angry I actually punched him in the chest—which is something I never do—and just as he punched me back, Mr. England came in and stopped it becoming a big fight. We both had to go and see him after prep that evening, and he made us apologise to each other. Macer-Wright said he was sorry he’d called me a cheat and said it was only teasing really, since everyone knows I’m good at history dates. I said I was sorry for punching him. I felt very ashamed about it all actually, because I’m really not a fighting person. Then Mr. England talked to us about forgiveness, which he says is just the most important thing ever and that if you’re truly sorry for something bad that you’ve done, you’ll always, always be forgiven. The next day after the lesson in Assembly, just when I was about to go upstairs to make my bed, he gave me a piece of folded paper.
‘This is from the Book of Common Prayer, Ben,’ he said. ‘Just say it to yourself under your breath when you’re sorry about something you think you’ve done wrong.’ I waited till I got upstairs and had made my bed, and then I sat down and read it. This is what it said: ‘Remember not the sins and offences of my youth; but according to thy mercy, think thou upon me, Oh Lord, for thy forgiveness…’
I folded it back up, and when I went downstairs I put it into the Bible that Granny gave me when I first came to Courtlands; I’m going to keep it there forever and ever.
I’ve been in his car once or twice before. Sometimes when we’ve gone to a concert and there weren’t enough of us for the school to order a minibus, we’ve been given lifts in the teachers’ cars. The last time was at the end of last term when we went to the Colston Hall in Bristol to see the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Three of us went in the Mini with Mr. England, and four others went with the Headmaster. It was quite a special occasion because the tickets were difficult to get, so only the boys who are the most interested in music were chosen to go. Not only was I one of the chosen ones, but Mr. England chose me to sit in the front with him. There was so much clutter in there that before I could get in, I had to take some stuff off the seat and put it on the floor. Then it was all in the way and my knee kept banging up against the gear stick, and I had to keep saying sorry because of it.
That was the day that my second secret started. And that’s why I was glad that we were going back to school from Chepstow Station in Mr. Burston’s dusty old Rover car, so I wouldn’t have to think about the nasty secret in Mr. England’s Mini.
We piled our luggage into the boot and then started to put more stuff on the back seats. I thought that even in a big car like that there might not be enough room. But then the four of us climbed in, all scrunched up together on the back seat while Miss Newman and Mr. England got in the front. Webster was still holding on tight to his bat, but I didn’t say anything about it although it really was rather in the way.
I was getting worried on the journey. It’s not a very long way, only about twenty minutes, and I just didn’t want it ever to end. Looking out of the window, I began to see things that meant we were getting closer and closer to school. Fisheye was sitting beside me, and of course, he read his book all the way. I think he was doing it to take his mind off the fact that it was the beginning of term. Perhaps if you’re always reading a book, you’re half in the real world and half in the book world, so then you’re only half upset. I wouldn’t be able to read in a car, though. It would make me feel sick very quickly.
There was a lumpy thing in my back, and when I put my hand round to see what it was I pulled out a baby’s bottle. Luckily it was empty. Mr. and Mrs. Burston have got a quite new baby called Mark who’s very cute, who’s just on the edge of learning how to walk.
Mr. England and Miss Newman were talking away. They were both at Oxford University, though not at quite the same time. Miss Newman isn’t a real full time matron; she’s just doing it for a bit to help out before she looks for a better job at the end of term. She was studying Russian at her college, and I think she’s probably nearly as clever as Mr. England, who did classics. They’ve got a lot in common. Miss Newman had just been to see a show in the West End of London with her sister. It was called Cabaret and was made out of a book written by one of Mr. England’s favourite authors. Then they were having a laugh about a new show that’s opening right now in New York called Hair where everybody takes their clothes off and stands on the stage completely naked. Can you imagine how embarrassing that is—standing in front of all those people and singing songs without even your underpants on? They were talking about it rather quietly, and I don’t think we were meant to completely hear, but I managed to catch all of it. After they finished on the naked people, they talked very seriously about a Cardinal Newman who lived in the last century and might have been a relation of Miss Newman’s but probably wasn’t.
Then we were there, outside the big green double front doors of the school. I was at the moment I’d been most worried about. It was horrid to be back, just as it always is. It’s like you have to jump into a freezing swimming pool, so you take a big breath and just get on with it.
There was a bit of a queue of cars with parents bringing boys back and unloading bags and tennis rackets and things. The street outside school is very narrow, but Mr. England went past the other cars and up onto the pavement opposite. It felt like we’d jumped the queue, but we were with a teacher and matron after all, so it was a bit like being slightly more important than the other boys.
We went into the front hall, which was dark after the sunshine outside, and Miss Carson was there in her shiny white matron’s coat waiting for us. A whole line of parents waited to say hello to her with a terrible din of mothers talking too loudly, and it all echoed round the hall. Webster was in front of me with his boater on—he didn’t know yet about not wearing it, of course—and loaded down with his bag and the big white bat.
‘Hello, Webster. I’m Miss Carson, the Matron…’ She held her hand out to him and for a little while he stood there not knowing what to do because his hands were full. Then he dropped his bat, which made an awful clatter on the wooden floor, and shook Miss Carson’s hand.
‘My name’s Giles, in fact…’ he said in a very quiet voice.
‘That may well be, but at school we use surnames, so you’ll be known as Webster by everyone here. Teasdale, I believe you’re going to be looking after this young chap? He’s in Surrey dorm, and his trunk’s on his bed. I’d be grateful if you’d help him unpack, please.’
‘Yes, Miss Carson.’
‘…and you’re on the top floor, in Dorset dorm. I’m glad to say that this term your trunk has arrived before you and is on your bed waiting for you.’
‘Thank you, Miss Carson.’
Then I heard Smythson giggling and pointing to Webster’s bat on the floor. He’s famous in the school for being so good at batting. Last summer term Mr. Burston took him to Gloucester and bought him a cricket bat as a special prize. One day he might be the head boy on account of being so good at cricket, which I think is very stupid because he’s not particularly good at anything else, and actually, isn’t a very nice person. I could see that the te
asing was going to start on Webster already.
Smythson said ‘Bat boy!’ in a loud voice and pointed at Webster. Then Hapgood, who was standing next to him, started to laugh.
‘Oh give him a break, Smythers, you spastic,’ Nick Gower said from behind me. That’s typical of Nick. Smythson’s bigger than him, and he’s got his silly little gang of people who suck up to him. He thinks he’s the most popular boy in the school, but Nick just ignores all that. That’s probably why it’s not possible to bully him. He just doesn’t care.
There wasn’t tea and cakes in the hall like they do at the beginning of the winter term for all the new boys and their parents. Webster was the only new boy this term. I can remember my very first day here with Mummy and my dad. The window shutters in the hall were wide open, and the sun was coming in. There was a table with a white cloth on it with loads of chocolate biscuits, and cakes, and orange squash for boys, and tea for the grown-ups. It looked really lovely and homely. I was still too young to know what homesickness was, and I just thought I was on a big adventure. It’s funny when I think back to that now, because it seems like it was a different room then, not this dark hall we all hate because it’s where the term starts.
Q
Mummy’s going to be ever so late; I know she is. She’s never on time for anything, and she’s getting worse and worse. I’ll still be sitting here when they all come out of lunch, and the other boys will laugh at me. Then Miss Newman and Miss Carson will give each other looks and start feeling sorry for me. I don’t want them to feel sorry for me, and I don’t want them talking about Mummy.
Perhaps they’ll forget that I’m here. They can’t see me round the corner from the corridor, after all. When they come out of lunch I’ll hold my breath so they can’t hear the slightest bit of me. But then I might be here right until teatime, unless baby Mark crawls along the corridor. If he sees me he’ll want to get up on my lap. He always does, because whenever I see him I like to have a bit of a play with him, and so he knows me better than all the other boys. When Mrs. Burston comes looking for him and finds him with me, I’ll have to tell her that I’ve been waiting all this time, and she’ll start to feel sorry for me.
The clock says nearly half past twelve. I’ve heard some cars go by, and I keep thinking it must be her in the taxi, but I can’t see the road out of the windows because the bottom part of the shutters is closed. Any minute, lessons are going to finish, and everyone will be assembling in school hall waiting to go into lunch. Any minute now.
Suppose that Mummy doesn’t come by herself? Suppose she comes with one of her new drinking friends from the pub? She might bring Trotsky John with her. She might come with Anna Maria. What would I do if the people from school saw her? She looks so horrible. She’ll be wearing her black coat even though it’s the summer. It’s got a fur collar that’s greasy from her hair which is all matted with white bits on her skull because she hasn’t remembered to dye it. She’s got horrid tiny brown teeth and purple lips with white hairs at the side, and when she comes near me I try to be breathing out in case a bit of her breath goes inside me. I hate her more than all the others. She smells. I don’t know why Mummy likes her so much. She hardly speaks at all—especially to me—and when she does she’s got a foreign accent though she’s been here for thirty years. It’s quite difficult to understand her, actually. Mummy says she feels sorry for her because she had to run away from General Franco, who killed all her relatives and still hasn’t been punished for it. She used to be a nurse at St. James Hospital until there was some mistake about the key to the cupboard where they keep the drugs that she was in charge of. Mummy told me that ‘Very unfairly, they had to let her go…’ If I was sick in hospital and she was my nurse, I’d climb out of the window in the middle of the night and run away.
Sometimes during the holidays when I’ve been to the library on the bus to look at the new Gibbons stamp catalogue, I’ve seen her with some of the other people who like to have a drink, sitting on the steps of the War Memorial with her dirty white tights all wrinkled round her knees and a bottle wrapped in a white napkin poking out of her black bag. Please let it be that Mummy doesn’t come with Anna Maria…
I can hear them all getting ready to go into lunch now, and here I am still. The talking’s getting louder and louder, and Mrs. Marston’s telling everyone to be quiet and get into line.
Oh heck! I was chosen to say grace today, but I’m not going to be in the dining room. Perhaps they’ll come out and get me.
Now the gong’s gone, and they’re walking along the corridor in silence. It’s one of the strictest school rules to go into lunch in complete silence. If you’re caught talking on the way in, or before grace is said, you’re sure to get the slipper. I’m pushing myself back into the chair to make myself as invisible as possible, but really I’m quite safe from being seen. It seems like they’re taking an awfully long time to get there, as though there’s more boys than there actually are.
Now in the dining room, there’s an awfully long silence. I think everyone is wondering who’s going to say grace. It has to be said when the clock strikes one. That’s another thing that is a very strict rule. Grace when the clock strikes one. I don’t want to be fetched to do it and then have to come back to the hall to carry on waiting with everyone knowing that Mummy’s not arrived yet. Please make it that someone else says grace.
There goes the clock. It’s one o’clock. They’ve all gone quiet. And now there’s lots of noise so someone else must have said grace, thank goodness, and everyone has sat down for their lunch. That means that everybody thinks that I’ve gone out.
I wonder what’s for lunch. It’s Wednesday, so it will be mince. Horrid watery mince; I don’t mind missing that. If Mummy does come, I’ll be having lunch with her, anyway.
But she’s meant to be here by now. She said between twelve and one o’clock so that means from now on she’s properly late. I’m getting more and more worried.
Q
That first day of term we had lots of time before high tea for unpacking, so before I did mine, I took Giles Webster up to Surrey dorm and unpacked his stuff for him. I was trying to tell him all the things that he needs to remember, like where the Matron’s surgery is, where the big wardrobes for all the pants, and vests, and socks, and pajamas are, which washstand and jug he was going to have to use, and where to keep his wash bag. But he was just sitting on the chair next to his bed staring out of the window, and I could see he wasn’t paying any attention to what I was saying. He’s such a small boy that his feet weren’t even touching the ground. He was holding a teddy bear in one hand and the silly big bat in the other.
‘You don’t have to hold onto it all the time, you know, Webster.’ It was beginning to annoy me, especially since he wasn’t listening to what I was trying to teach him. Then his face slowly started to go all crumply, and I could see he was going to cry. He said something in that very very quiet voice he’s got.
‘What did you say?’
‘I want my Mummy…’ Then I felt really horrible because there was no point getting angry with such a new boy who was feeling so homesick. There wasn’t anybody else in the dorm to see so I put my arm round him and said, ‘It’s alright, Giles. You’ll be seeing her again very soon, and you’ll soon get used to all these new things. Everything will be fine in one or two days when you’ve made some friends…’
Surrey dorm is for the youngest boys, so it’s right next to Matron’s surgery. There are quite a lot of teddy bears and stuff on the beds. Sometimes when the fifth form and seniors go in there they have a bit of a laugh about it all. Perrington has eleven teddy bears, all with different names, and once I heard Miss Carson saying in the staff room that she often heard him talking to them all under the covers when she was doing her last round in the middle of the night. I don’t think she tells him to stop talking to them, even when it’s very late. That’s quite a nice thing about her, actually.
I bet Perrington doesn’t ever do homesickness though, because all of his friends come with him to school in his trunk!
It’s a funny thing, but when I was unpacking for Webster and trying to cheer him up, I forgot that I was homesick too. The feeling of it all came back once we went into high tea, though. It was sardines, and there’s nothing I hate more in the whole world than sardines, apart from kippers. I hate those even more, and everyone knows how much they make me feel sick. Once at breakfast when I wasn’t looking, Smythson took the eyes out of his kipper and put them in my tea, and I drank them down and nearly choked. He had a big laugh about that. When no one’s looking, I try to give my kipper to Nick if he’s on my table, because he loves them. But if he’s not, they make me stay in the dining room and eat the horrid thing after everyone has gone up to make their beds and get ready for classes. Sometimes Worgan is there with me. If Mrs. Ridgeley isn’t the cook for the day, the assistant cook does the porridge. She makes it lumpy, and he can’t eat lumpy porridge. So I’m sitting there staring out of the window at the river, and he’s there rubbing his knee with one hand and his throat with the other, trying to make the porridge go down. I just hate it that the kipper still has its head on and its eyes in. Sometimes I’ve been at the table right up to the start of Assembly before Miss Carson has come in and said, ‘Okay, Teasdale, you can leave it this once…’
What a terrible start to the term. Sardines for high tea, with their innards still in and everything!
Afterwards, just before the bell rang for bedtime, everyone was outside enjoying a bit of the sunshine. That’s one good thing about the summer term. We can play around for a bit outside after prep before we go upstairs. Clarkson was showing off his new model aeroplane that he got for his birthday. It has a proper engine and can really fly. He was putting some petrol in it and trying to start it up, but it would go for a few seconds and then stop. I thought that when he did get it to work it would probably fly straight into the river, and that would just serve him right for being a show-off about his present. I would really love to see it going, though. The engine makes a terrible noise, and I knew that as soon as Mr. Tulley, who’s the science master, saw it, he would stop him from having a go with it, because what with the petrol and it being big and heavy, it’s most probably quite dangerous. That’s exactly what’s happened, of course. It’s confiscated till the end of term on account of being ‘highly inflammable’.
The House Martin Page 6
