The House Martin

by William Parker

  The picture I’m doing isn’t working. I’m trying to do a long street with some mountains at the end of it, but I’ve started it too low down, so now I’ve got far too much sky in it.

  I put up my hand up, and Mrs. Agnes looks at me over her spectacles and smiles because I’m one of her favourites.

  ‘Yes, Teasdale?’

  ‘Could I start again, please, Mrs. Agnes? This has gone all wrong.’

  Before she can say anything there’s a knock at the door, and it opens as she says, ‘Come in.’

  It’s Mr. Burston. ‘Ah, Mrs. Agnes. Sorry to interrupt all your little Michelangelos.’ He pauses and closes the door. He leans his back against it and uses his finger to count and check all the boys in the room, and then he says, ‘Do we have young Mr. Teasdale here?’

  I slowly put my hand up in the air and straightaway there’s wetness dribbling down onto my fingers because the paintbrush is still in my hand, and all at the same time my chest is going a bit funny like I’m wearing something that’s too tight.

  ‘There you are!’ he says, ‘Just the fellow I want to see,’ and then he’s properly pointing at me and smiling.

  We walk along the corridor towards his study, and his hand is on the back of my head, which I don’t like because it feels as though he’s pushing me along. He hasn’t said anything to me about why he’s come to take me out of the class, and I don’t want to ask him. When we get to the door of his study, his hand goes down to my shoulder, and I stand there as though I’m at attention while he opens it.

  There’s a man sitting behind Mr. Burston’s desk with his back to the window. At first I can’t see him very clearly because of the light coming through. The rest of the room is ever so dark.

  ‘Benjamin, this is Mr. Lightfoot. He wants to ask you one or two questions,’ says Mr. Burston.

  ‘What about, Sir? Have I done something wrong?’

  I didn’t want to say that. I really didn’t, but it just came out before I could stop myself.

  ‘Nothing at all, nothing at all,’ he says back to me.

  ‘Hello, Benny. How are you?’ the man says.

  That’s not my name. I hate it when people call me that. He smiles and waits for me to say something.

  ‘I’m very well, thank you.’ The man’s got long brown teeth and a big forehead with a few wisps of oily white hair all combed back and pressing against his scalp which looks pink and itchy.

  ‘Sit down, Benjamin,’ says Mr. Burston, and he pulls up a wicker chair the same as the one in sickbay. I do what he says and look at my hands on my lap, wondering what is going to happen and trying to think what the man might ask me, and what I might say. Then I wonder if I can do the same as I did to the doctor and just not say anything at all. But I’m not in sickbay now, and I might be in quite a lot of trouble if I don’t answer any questions.

  The man has a pair of glasses that he’s swinging in his fingers, and now and again he puts the bit that goes round his ear in his mouth. I can see even from here that it’s quite chewed up. Then he puts them on and turns the pages of a notebook, writing things down and ticking away as though he might be a teacher marking an essay.

  I wait for the questions to start, and nothing happens apart from the sound of the tick-tock of the clock on the mantlepiece and the creaking of the man’s chair, and the turning of the pages of his notebook while he’s writing his things down. It’s like when you go to the doctor for one of those great big injections that goes right into your arm, and you’ve been dreading it, and now here you are waiting just before he does it to you. And the thing I most hate in all the world is waiting.

  I look around the room and put an expression on my face to show that I don’t know what is going on, which is the truth because I really don’t know what is going to be asked. It might be about Mummy, and it might be about Mr. England. All the time I know they think I’ve done something wrong, and I haven’t.

  It’s a horrid, gloomy unfriendly room this, half empty with nearly everything in it dark brown. Dark brown walls, dark brown leather chairs, and a dark brown rug on the dark brown wooden floor—even the pictures and the books on the shelves are dark brown. There would never be flowers in here like there are in Mr. England’s room, not in a million years. We only ever come in here if we’re in trouble, and now that I’ve got used to the light I can see the plimsol and the cane in the book cabinet next to the desk. It’s as though they’re waiting patiently for boys to come in, and actually, they never have to wait too long because Mr. Burston’s always taking them out of the cabinet. Henry Pugh says he loves using them. He says he’s a sadist, and if you look up what that means in the dictionary it says ‘deriving pleasure from cruelty’. So that means there might be a properly nasty side to Mr. Burston. Nixon in 5b says he’s more than a sadist. He says he’s a member of the living dead, and that’s why his study is so dark, and if the sunlight came in and touched him, he’d wither away to dust. He’s sitting in the armchair underneath the cabinet. It’s strange to see him actually in it because that chair is usually only used for caning people. Apparently, he makes you bend over it and hold onto one of the arms and then says ‘Ready?’ before whacking you as hard as hard can be.

  After a long time the man, who’s still writing things down, says, ‘Benny, I want to ask you some questions about Mr. England.’ Then he puts his pen down, folds his arms on the desk and leans forward. Now he’s properly looking at me. ‘Is that alright?’

  So that’s it. He’s here to ask me questions about what I saw in the car. He’s not going to ask me about Mummy. It’s all about Mr. England. I look at Mr. Burston. He’s sitting in the armchair crossing and uncrossing his legs and moving his arms into different positions. He nods at me to show that I should answer.

  ‘Are you a policeman?’ I ask the man.

  The man chuckles a bit. ‘Not really, Benny, no…’ He’s got a big Adam’s apple, and there are some white hairs around it that move when he speaks, and I try not to stare because it’s rude. Just then the door to the study opens, and when I turn round for a look, Mrs. Burston’s standing there with baby Mark in her arms.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’, she says, ‘I thought you were doing this in the staff room.’ She’s really embarrassed, and baby Mark says ‘Dada’ when he sees Mr. Burston. She quickly goes out. There’s a silence again, and I wonder if I’m meant to be the first one to say something.

  It’s the man that talks first, though. ‘Now, Benny, I want to ask you just one or two questions about what happened the other night when you went to Mr. England’s room.’

  ‘About what happened, Sir? Nothing happened.’

  And then he’s asking me all sorts of questions like did Mr. England say to take off my dressing gown, and where was he sitting, and how far away from me was he, and when I say I was on the bed he asks me why, and I’m telling him that it was the cosiest place to be. He asks me why Mr. England said I was to go to his room, and I tell him ‘It was just to listen to music, Sir. Just for music—that’s all.’

  ‘You like music, do you, Benny? That’s nice. That’s very nice…’ He’s writing, and then when he puts his pen down, looks at me again and smiles. I don’t like it when this man smiles. It’s like he’s not smiling at all, but instead he’s thinking that I’m lying which I’m not.

  ‘What sort of music do you like to listen to then?’ He’s not looking at me when he asks me the question—just turning the pages of his copybook and moving his head from side to side as he reads things on different pages.

  ‘All sorts, really…’ He picks up the pen again and scribbles away, and I know he’s not listening when I tell him about the Brahms and the Beethoven.

  ‘Uh-huh… Good, good. That’s very nice, isn’t it…?’ Then he lets the pen drop out of his fingers, and it plops onto the page. He stares hard at me again. ‘Did Mr. England put his hand inside your pajama bottoms when you we
re on the bed?’

  Q

  Monday is a games afternoon, but I’ve been left behind because the man’s questions went on for such a long time that they’ve all gone to the playing field without me. When the man finished, Mr. Burston put his hand on my head again to lead me out of the room like I was a dog or something. When he opened the door he said, ‘You’re too late for games now. Get on with some revision instead—in the fresh air though. You can sit on a bench outside.’

  I don’t know what sort of revision I’m meant to be doing. There’s no exams at the moment. There probably wasn’t a spare member of staff to take me along the main road to the playing field, so he didn’t really know what to do about me. He must think I’m the worst nuisance in the whole school what with the bed wetting, the trouble with Mummy, and then me being in the sickbay. And now all these questions about what I was doing in Mr. England’s room. When the man was asking the questions, I kept looking at Mr. Burston in case I was able to see how to answer, but he was always just looking somewhere else. The only time I did catch his eye, he quickly looked out of the window. He’s very fed up with me and all the trouble I’m causing.

  I’m lying on the grass on the other side of the tennis court. We’re absolutely forbidden on the river side of the tennis court fence, but nobody can see where I am from the school. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around anyway because everyone’s at the playing field. I’m by myself again. Completely by myself, and I wish it was always like this. I’ve got my history copybook with me, but I’ve not opened it once, and I’m not going to. I’m just looking straight up at the sky, just like I do when I’m deeply fine leg. The house martins are flying so high up they’re just tiny dots. One of them is Tom Thumb. He only left yesterday, but I bet to him it feels like ages ago, a whole lifetime already. Now he’s doing exactly what he wants, and I’m doing what I want, too. It feels like a new private place I’ve found here with bushes all around so I can’t see the school. I’m going to come here again another time to get away and have some quietness—it’s going to be my secret place.

  The man in the Headmaster’s study thinks I did something wrong with Mr. England. He doesn’t believe me when I say that nothing happened. I said again and again it was just music and some cocoa and biscuits, but I know he doesn’t believe me. That’s why he said he might be coming back to ask me more questions. But it won’t be more questions. It will be the same questions, and I’ll have to give him the same answers—that is that nothing happened. The police must be asking Mr. England the same things, and I bet they don’t believe him either.

  The man never asked me anything about the blue folder. What would I have said about it if they’d asked me? What will I say about it when they come back? I don’t want to get Mr. England into trouble and at the same time, I don’t want to tell lies. Actually, I think that is the reason that they’re asking these questions in the first place. Somebody at the repair garage has found something in the car, and that’s made them wonder about lots of things to do with Mr. England. That’s what I think.

  The thing is that I knew about it and kept it a secret. Maybe that’s a crime, and everyday I don’t say something about it, the crime gets worse. If they discover it, I might be sent to a borstal—that’s where there are truly horrible boys who are all delinquents growing up to be convicts. You get the cane there every single day, and I don’t think I would be able to bear it. But I’m still not going to say—I just can’t, because Mr. England is my friend, he’s done nothing to hurt me, and he’s always tried to look after me better than anyone else. Besides, I’m not at all sure that he knew anything about the blue folder himself. I really don’t think he’d have something like that in his car on purpose. So it really does have to stay a complete secret.

  I wish I’d never seen it. It was only by accident that I did, after all.

  It was the day of the Vienna Boys’ Choir concert last term. Mr. England was in the queue for all of our tickets, and he suddenly remembered that his ticket wasn’t at the box office because it had been sent to him separately a long time before. He’d left it in the car. There wasn’t very much time before we had to go inside the theatre, and he didn’t want to lose his place.

  ‘I’ll go and get it, Sir—I know exactly where the car is!’ I said. I wanted to show him how quick I could be.

  ‘Can you really remember where it is, Ben?’

  ‘Yes, it’s at the very bottom of the hill, and there’s a full up rubbish bin right beside it.’

  ‘Okay, good boy. Quick as you can, though. We haven’t much time before the performance starts. The ticket’s in my blue folder on the front seat. Bring the whole thing if you’re in any doubt.’

  The next thing I’m running down the stairs out of the theatre, and he’s calling me back because I haven’t got the keys to the car. I said ‘Silly me!’ as he threw them in the air. I smiled when I caught them because I’m not usually very good at that.

  I couldn’t find it when I got there though. It wasn’t on the front seat, of course, because I’d had to move everything onto the floor to make a space to sit down for the journey to Bristol. So I unlocked the boot and eventually found it right at the bottom of a whole load of books. The very last thing under a great pile of stuff.

  But then I realised it wasn’t the right blue folder almost as soon as I picked it up. I just hadn’t looked properly at the front where Mr. England said it was. It was because I was in a muddle and a hurry to get back; I could just about imagine all the others getting to their seats except for Mr. England who’d be waiting by the programme seller with his arms folded and wiggling his fingers, which is a thing he does when things aren’t quite right or time is running out. It made me clumsy; I wasn’t holding the folder properly, and then suddenly everything inside came spilling out before I could stop it.

  Just for a little my eyes got stuck on what I was seeing. Then I knew I had to do something about it before anyone was able to notice, so I started jamming the things back into the folder but they were just coming straight back out again because photography paper is so slippery. I just wanted to run away before anyone noticed. I felt I’d done something horribly wrong like I’d broken a jar and let a truly evil spirit loose. Most of the stuff had fallen back into the boot but some of it fell outside the car, and the next thing I knew I was scrabbling around underneath the wheels to gather it all back together. It was like collecting up shitty lavatory paper. It was dirty and poisonous, and I couldn’t bear to touch it. But I had to. Every time I did my best to get it all back in, it would suddenly come gushing out again, so after a bit I told myself it would only stay in the folder if I did it more carefully. I started doing big breaths like I’ve been taught because of my asthma, and then I was able to put it all back in. I was a bit shaky but managed to lift all the heavy books and stuff with one hand while I was holding the folder tight closed in the other. Then I pushed it right down to the bottom, rearranged lots of things on top of it, and slammed down the boot as hard as I could. I turned the key so hard that it got stuck, and for a while I couldn’t get it out.

  I must have looked in the front again after that, but I don’t remember it so clearly. I found the right folder in there anyway, and ran back to the theatre and up the stairs two at a time to where Mr. England was waiting for me alone with his arms crossed and his fingers going. All the audience had already gone in for the performance.

  ‘Hurry, Ben. You’re just in time! Well done.’ I gave him the folder, and straightaway he opened it to find his ticket for the usher.

  The lights were slowly being turned off when we walked down the aisle to our seats, and everything was going quiet, ready for the curtain to go up.

  ‘Everything alright, Ben?’ he whispered to me as we sat down, ‘You look upset. Do you need your puffer?’

  ‘I’m fine thank you, Sir,’ I said, but I didn’t look at his face when I said it.

  Q

&nb
sp; He never put his hand inside my pajama bottoms. When the man asked me that question, I looked at Mr. Burston and for a bit I didn’t understand what he could be meaning because it was such a terrible thing to say. Mr. Burston just looked away as though he wasn’t listening, making sure not to catch my eye.

  ‘What do you mean, Sir?’ I said to the man. And then he asked me the same question again very slowly and firmly. The man was leaning right across the table, and his breath was blowing all over me, smelling of fruit pastels, which is a strange thing to be eating if you’re a detective. I was getting angry and frightened all at the same time and was thinking how unfair it was that he thought I’d done that thing when I truly hadn’t.

  ‘He never did, Sir,’ I said to Mr. Burston when he was closing the door of the study as I was going out.

  ‘Who never did what, Teasdale?’

  ‘Mr. England. He never did what that man said, Sir. It’s the truth, Sir, I promise.’

  They think that Mr. England’s the same as Mr. Clarendon. He was Mrs. Burston’s uncle who was the carpentry master up until last summer term, and he was definitely putting his hand in people’s pajama bottoms.

  Sometimes Miss Carson used to wake me up early to take Uncle Clary—that’s what he told everyone to call him—a cup of tea in the morning just before the bell went. He always had boys in his room who had got up early, with some of them actually in the bed with him. He was giving them Maltesers and tickling them and stuff like that. But then it all stopped because the seniors who were leaving at the end of term had the pep talk from the Headmaster that he always gives to boys going to their new schools about not letting older boys do sex things to them. Right in the middle of it, they realised that Uncle Clary was doing the very same things that Mr. Burston was talking about, and they absolutely knew that he shouldn’t be. Halford, who was my dorm prefect, decided to go and tell on him, which must have been very embarrassing seeing that Uncle Clary was Mrs. Burston’s actual real-life uncle. I think it was a very grown-up thing to do, but Mr. Burston got really angry and said ‘what a ludicrous and filthy little story’ to him. But anyway, when we all came back to school for the winter term, and I went past Uncle Clary’s room on the way to the dorm, I could see that it was completely empty with the wardrobe doors open. It was announced at the first Morning Assembly that he’d made the decision over the long holiday to retire from being the carpentry master and wasn’t coming back. I’m sure it was on account of the Malteezer chocolates and the boys in his bed, though.