The House Martin

by William Parker

  He tells me I’m not to worry about it all, and everything’s going to be just fine. Mummy’s bound to be better and at home by the end of term, and everything will be back to normal. I wonder what normal would be like because Mummy’s been bad for a long time now. She can only be better if she’s not having so much sherry and starts to like tea again, and I honestly don’t think that will be able to happen.

  When my dad says he’s going, he gets up from the wicker chair and comes and sits on the bed with me for a bit and takes hold of my hand which is very odd. I can see that he’s not going to stop, so I don’t try to take it away.

  ‘I’ll phone Headmaster to see how you’re doing tomorrow, and I’m coming to take you away at half term. We’ll go to visit Granny, and then we’ll drive to the Brecon Beacons for the weekend. How would that be?’

  I say, ‘That would be great, Dad. Really great!’ with a big smile on my face, but really I’m thinking what will there be to talk about for a whole of a weekend without Mummy there, and that is something that I would be quite worried about in fact.

  Then he leans over and kisses my cheek, and that’s never happened before. He gets up and opens the door. When he’s halfway out he does his funny little wave and says ‘Bye, Ben. See you in two weeks’ time,’ and he closes the door ever so carefully so it doesn’t make a noise.

  Perhaps Granny’s car will be mended from her car crash by half term. I could write to her to say that if it’s possible, I’d like to stay with her for the whole of half term, and I’ll ask her to write to my dad to tell him not to bother about the Brecon Beacons.

  After he’s gone it’s dead quiet again. I try to read more of Peter the Whaler, but not the slightest bit of it is going into my head. All I’m thinking about is how unhappy Mummy is, and that she came to see me, and I didn’t want to go with her, and however horrible it was I was a bit pleased when the policemen came to take her away.

  I told her to go with them.

  Now she knows I didn’t want to go away with her, and I feel so sad that I didn’t pretend harder for her sake.

  My hands won’t keep still on my lap, and the book slides off the bed and whacks onto the floor so that I’ve lost my place. I open my little album again and stare at the pictures, trying to make them come alive so that Mummy might step out of the photographs, and I’ll hear her laughing and being happy again. But all I can see is her eyes from yesterday looking at me, with the blackness running down her cheeks. I close the album and stare at the blue cover and tell myself it’s the wide open sky, and I’m flying away. But it doesn’t work because there’s not the tiniest bit of room in my head which isn’t full of the pictures and the noise that Mummy was making when she was being taken away.

  Then I put my head under the blankets again, like when the doctor came, and try to make it as dark as I can so that I’m not in this bed in this room, and my name’s not Ben, but I’m somebody else. Then I pray and pray that I might fall asleep and just be somewhere else for a little while till the noise and the pictures have gone away.

  The door opens ever so gently, and Miss Carson says ‘Teasdale?’ I don’t say anything because I’m pretending to be asleep. I can hear the clinking of a glass against a plate like a tiny alarm bell. She’s got my lunch on a tray, but I just want to stay here in the dark, not eat anything and wait for the night to come and then the next day when I might feel not so bad.

  ‘Ben? You awake?’ I move a tiny bit when she says my proper name, and then I’m still again. There’s a tiny pause, and I can feel her looking at the back of my head. Then I hear the door closing again, and I pull the blanket closer to my face and scrunch up my eyes so tight that I see dark red flames and stars.

  ‘Ben? Hey, Ben, wake up!’ A hand pulls back the blanket from my face and suddenly there’s so much light it’s like an explosion. There’s breath on my cheek, and I see goofy teeth and a big clump of hair right up close. It’s Nick Gower. My heart is beating like mad because I was so fast asleep and don’t know where I am.

  ‘Hello, Nick. I was asleep, I think. What time is it?’

  ‘You lazy bum! It’s nearly five o’clock. Miss Carson’s sent me in to see you for a minute before High Tea.’ He’s looking at me with his face to one side. ‘You been ill, then?’

  ‘No, not really. I’m just under examination I think.’

  ‘Blimey, hope it’s not infectious. If you’ve got mumps, they’ll send you home, you know. You’ll be put in quarantine.’ He quickly walks over to the wicker chair and sits down so that he’s not so close to me.

  ‘I’d love to be at home in quarantine doing just what I want all day long—but not with mumps,’ he says. ‘It makes your balls grow to five times their normal size, and it hurts like billy-oh. And after, when you grow up, it’s very difficult to have children, and if you do, sometimes they’re born inside out.’

  ‘I’ve definitely not got that, Nick. I’m better from whatever it was though. I’ll be back in class tomorrow. Doctor says I’m right as rain, actually.’

  And then he’s talking to me about what’s going on at school as though I’ve been up here for weeks and weeks instead of since yesterday afternoon. He tells me that the school tennis tournament is between Henry Pugh and Tom Whickham, just the same as the table tennis last term and that we’re all going to watch it on Sunday afternoon, and that Theo’s making a right pest of himself on the Graves Committee trying to get all his own way so that all the others are getting fed up with him. When he tells me that I realise I really just don’t care anymore. Then he sees the chocolate fingers on the table and asks if he can have one. When I say ‘yes’ he comes over and fetches them and goes back to the chair. He opens the packet very quickly without having to look what he’s doing and starts eating them two at a time so that he’s not talking so much, but I don’t mind because it might be that if he finishes them he’ll go away. Nick is my friend, but I’m not in the mood for seeing him today.

  ‘Ford’s house martin chick died in the night,’ he says with his mouth full, ‘so now there’s only Gilligan’s left. The only one of all those sixteen! What a shame. But guess what? He’s just about flying! He sits on Gilligan’s finger and buzzes his wings like a bumble bee, and this morning he did actually fly from Gilligan’s blazer pocket to halfway across the games room. That’s where he’s living now, in Gilligan’s blazer pocket. If he lives another day or two, he might just make it and fly away.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s going to live, Nick. Why just him when all the others are dead?’

  ‘Well Ford’s and Gilligan’s have lived much longer than all the others. There were four of them left the day of Mr. England’s crash, then two were dead the next day, and that’s a whole week ago. Two left up to last night and now just one. We’re all praying like mad for him—Tom Thumb. That’s what they’re calling him now. Tom Thumb.’

  Far away downstairs we can just about hear the sound of practise going on in the cricket nets and Theo playing the piano. The bell rings ever so faintly as though it comes from another world which means that Nick has to go for High Tea. When he gets to the door he suddenly stops and points towards my pillow. ‘What’s that?’ he says and he’s noticed Jollo who no one in the school has seen before because he lives in my bag. I turn red and say ‘I don’t know,’ which is dead silly really because he’s sitting up right next to me. Nick says ‘Creepy. Really creepy,’ in a deep slow voice and then, ‘See you tomorrow’ in a high voice with an American accent as he’s closing the door.

  Miss Carson comes in straight after he’s gone and asks me if I’ll have something for tea. I say I don’t want anything, and she says I must eat something to keep my strength up.

  ‘How about some nice tomato soup with bread and butter?’ she says. I don’t want it because I’m just not hungry but say ‘Thank you very much that would be lovely,’ and feel a bit embarrassed about her having to be so nice to me when I’m
not really ill.

  ‘Good, I’ll bring it up for you after High Tea.’

  Then there’s silence again because everyone’s in the dining room. I like it that I’m completely alone by myself right at the top of the school. I get out of the bed and look out of the window far across to the other side of the river. The tide’s so low you can see a great stretch of yellow sand. There’s a man walking alone along the shore. When I look really hard I can see he’s got a walking stick and is wearing Wellington boots. Perhaps he lives all by himself in a little cottage and though he’s not so very far away from me, it’s miles and miles to get to where he is because you’d have to travel such a long way to find a bridge that he might as well be living in another country. I want to be him. I want to go from here and be grown up and have a new life, miles away on the other side of the river.

  When Miss Carson brings the soup, I have it although I’m not the least bit hungry. I wipe the plate clean with the bread and butter so that she’ll be pleased with me. When she comes back to get my tray she draws the curtains. As she’s going out of the door, she tells me to have a good night’s rest in a strict sort of voice, but I know she means it kindly. I lie back on the pillow for a while getting used to the darkness. Then I get up and tiptoe to the window and draw the curtain back to look out to see if the man with the Wellingtons is still there, but he’s gone of course, and the sun’s going down on the other side of the school. There’s the shadow of the great big chimneys that are at either end of the building, stretching right across the cricket nets and the tennis court and touching the river like the fingers of a long ghostly hand. The colour of the sand on the far away side has changed from yellow to dark brown. I go back to bed and think about the long evening because I’m so far away from being sleepy. The pictures of Mummy and the noise she was making come back into my head, and I remember that I was dreaming about her when Nick woke me up.

  It was a nightmare, really. I was in my bed at home in the middle of the night and heard a noise. When I looked out of the window, I saw Mummy in a white nightdress on the lawn in the moonlight. She was crying and saying that she had lost something and was sure she’d never be able to find it again and I must help her look, and so I went downstairs to cheer her up. I don’t know where my dad was in the dream—probably on one of his foreign trips. When I asked her what we were looking for, she was crying so much that I wasn’t able to understand her properly. But we looked anyway. We emptied all the drawers in her bedroom, and then we went through my dad’s wardrobe looking in all the pockets in his jackets and trousers and leaving them all piled up in a mess on the bed. Then we went to the downstairs cloakroom and took the lid off the lavatory cistern to have a look in there, and we checked inside the oven and the ice compartment in the fridge with Mummy still crying but more softly now. She kept saying ‘I must find it, I must find it,’ over and over again. We let down the ladder that goes up into the attic where we keep my trunk when I’m on holiday, and Mummy climbed up while I held her waist to make sure she didn’t fall down. She shone a torch around, and still she was saying ‘I must find it, I must find it,’ and I think that’s when Nick came in and woke me up.

  Q

  ‘Pop your dressing gown and slippers on. We don’t want you getting splinters from those stairs, do we?’

  It’s Mr. England. I’m not nearly asleep when he comes in. I’d just been thinking about trying to listen to Radio Luxembourg, but then I thought it really wasn’t a very good idea because I don’t want to be found out when everyone has been so nice to me. There was just a little knock on the door and then a pause so I knew it wasn’t Miss Carson because she just comes straight in, and it wasn’t going to be any of the boys because it’s already after lights out.

  ‘Special treat, Ben,’ he says, ‘Matron says you can come to my room and listen to some music for half an hour. Would you like that?’

  It feels like I’m going on an adventure in the middle of the night, a bit like having a midnight feast.

  I’ve been in his room before to listen to music, and it’s really the most special treat. Last term when it snowed for a whole week and rugby was cancelled I went in there twice on games afternoons. The first time was with Theo and Glossop from the fifth form who’s learning to play the violin and is probably going to be a musician. Theo probably won’t ever be invited again, though, on account of falling asleep during the Vienna Boys’ Choir. The next time it was me and Ford, who’s the head boy, and another prefect called Johnson who goes to every single concert there is and has his own portable record player that the teachers let him have because he only ever plays classical music. So that’s me in Mr. England’s room with two prefects, and I’m just a third former!

  To get to his room, you open a tiny door just outside surgery and then straight in front there are stairs that go steeply upwards almost like being on a ladder. You have to be quite careful not to bang your head, and it’s a bit like climbing a tower in a medieval castle. I really don’t know how Mr. England manages to get up and down, because it’s difficult enough even for boys let alone when you’re as tall as he is. When you reach the very last step, there’s a door and that’s where his room is. If you were inside and didn’t know about the stairs, you’d open it and fall straight down to the bottom. ‘Careful now, Ben,’ he keeps saying. ‘Watch where you’re going. Sorry about the lack of light.’

  But it’s lovely inside the room when you get here, as cosy as anything. You can’t get farther up than this. It’s like it’s nothing to do with the school, because everywhere else has bare floorboards and hardly any furniture and that horrid schooley smell of mouldy old games kit, dubbin and floor polish, and cooking smells from the kitchen. But Mr. England’s room smells of his clean shirt for the morning that’s hanging on a hook behind his door and of something nice that he puts on his face probably after he has his shave.

  The ceiling slopes down on both sides, right from the very top to the bottom, like a triangle. There are two high up windows and a cosy gas fire at one end, which makes the room warm as toast in the winter with shelves on either side of it that he’s made himself from bricks which are holding up planks of wood with rows and rows of records and books on them. The weight of it all is making them sag, and right in the middle of the bendiest bit, he’s got his record player. One day I should think they’re all going to fall down. His bed’s very low down, behind the door with a tartan rug on it just like we have in our dorms. ‘I’ve kept it since I was at school,’ he told me when I saw it the first time, ‘I’m very attached to it still.’ Next to it, there’s a big armchair—all sagging in the middle, like the shelves, and there’s another rug thrown over it, and he’s got a swivelly chair and a small desk with an electric typewriter on it. Next to the typewriter he’s put a bunch of yellow roses which are getting old now, and some of the petals are falling onto the floor. Above the bed there’s a huge picture of a sad looking clown and also a smaller one, which is a photograph of somewhere called King’s College Cambridge where they have one of the very best choirs in all the world. He’s got records of them singing that I’ve heard. He hasn’t got the big light from the ceiling switched on, just two teeny lamps—one on his little bedside table and one on the floor by the fire.

  It’s very tidy, this room. Absolutely full up of things, but very tidy. It’s not at all like his chaotic car.

  I don’t think the blue folder’s in here. I wouldn’t be able to see it even if it was, but I just don’t think it’s here. And it’s probably not left in his crashed up car either, because he must have gone to get all the stuff out by now. I hope he’s thrown it away. I really do, because I’m sure he knows it’s not alright to have something like that in your car or in this nice room. Anyway, I’m not going to worry about it anymore. I’m just going to pretend that I never ever saw it. Whatever was in his blooming old car, Mr. England’s still the best master in the school as far as I’m concerned. In fact, I just think it’
s possible that it wasn’t anything to do with him in the first place, and he might not have known about it anyway.

  He puts a pan of milk on the tiny gas stove and makes us a mug of cocoa. I’m sitting cross-legged on the bed holding it with both hands. There’s a plate of digestive biscuits on the floor in front of me, and for the first time today I feel a bit hungry, but I’m being polite and trying not to eat them all in too much of a hurry.

  ‘Listen to this, Ben…’ He goes over to the saggy shelves and chooses a record, which he takes out of the cover ever so carefully, so he’s just touching the edges. He breathes onto it as though it’s a mirror, wipes it with a little yellow cloth and bends down to put it on the record player. Then he turns up the volume as he puts the needle on and just for a second there’s a noisy silence before the music starts.

  It’s a cello and a piano and nothing else, and the sound of it fills up every bit of the room. The cello is terribly sad, and then the piano talks ever so gently back as though he’s trying to cheer it up. I know that Mr. England has chosen it specially. Whenever he does that it’s always something that I like, and this is one of the most beautiful pieces of music that I’ve ever heard. While it’s playing, Mr. England sits in the big chair with his legs crossed and his hands tucked between his knees which is his usual position for listening to very lovely music. His eyes are closed. When the music finishes it’s like he’s been asleep, but then he’s quickly wide awake and gets up to lift the needle off just as another piece is starting.

  ‘What was that, Sir?’

  ‘Brahms. The adagio affetuoso from his Cello Sonata No. 2. Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes, I did, Sir, very much. I think he must have written it when he was feeling very sad about something.’

  ‘Yes, and the thing is that bad, sad things happen to all of us now and again, and I think that the music is saying that it’s alright to express those things, don’t you think?’