Hindsight

by Peter Dickinson

  Nobody imitated the Captain, though there was plenty of material there, in his deep almost chanting voice and flowery speech, his mincing walk, his stillness, his sudden dramatic gestures. He was too obviously dangerous to take risks with. He had no trouble keeping order but there was never a whisper of inattention in his classes, even on days when he came in, glared at the boys and said, ‘Read your books.’ That was what they did, sometimes for three-quarters of an hour, while he stared out of the window at the park, though he made no bones about his loathing of the countryside. On other days he would decide to talk, walking round the room, speaking as it were to the air. He might spend a lesson telling them about Belisarius defending Rome against the Goths by a series of cavalry sorties and then give every boy eight marks out often for work supposedly done on conditional sentences. When he got round to the drudgery of grammar he would enliven it by giving the boys absurdities to translate into Latin—‘They tell me your sister has two heads’ is a simple example. No one ever saw him smile or frown.

  Paul’s tutorial sessions with him, like those with Clumper Wither, took place in a small, dusty room down the left-hand corridor beyond Big Space. There were plenty of such half-used chambers at Paddery; even without the State Apartments the needs of eighty boys and twenty-odd staff did not fill it. Paul brought his Kennedy and his exercise book to his first Latin tutorial. He waited, and was just beginning to fret about having got the place or the time wrong when the Captain glided in, said ‘Good afternoon,’ picked up the exercise book and glanced through it.

  ‘Vile writing,’ he said.

  He turned a page, read a little, looked at two more, then stared for a while at Paul with his unsettling eyes, deep brown, outlined by thick and bloodshot rims. He spoke suddenly.

  ‘What kind of people do you imagine it must have been who felt so powerful a need to place the verb at the end of the sentence?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Imagine yourself in the House of Commons. You are listening to that eloquent ass, Sir Mark Cicero. He is just getting into his stride about the unspeakable behaviour of Mr Catiline. This villain, he tells you, nineteen virtuous matrons, more about their virtue all in the accusative so you know he’s done something to them but what, for heaven’s sake? Robbed them? Raped them? Taken them sailing? But, aha, here’s an adverb, whatever he’s done he’s done vilely, it looks as though we’re getting somewhere, but oh, no, here’s a quia and we’re plunging into the villain’s motives when we still don’t know whether the matrons are dead or alive … You follow me? What kind of a mentality can the Romans have had to regard such a sentence-structure as a vehicle of rational discourse? Do you mean to say that this is an enigma on which you have never meditated?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Mr Stock just said …’

  ‘Poh! I speak nine languages with fluency. I am wanted by the police of five of the countries in question, but let that pass. I have the credentials to insist that you will never speak or write a language to your own satisfaction until you have learnt to think that language, to breathe it and to sweat it, until you regard the only rational form of discourse as including the verb coming thumping in at the end of the sentence like the big bass drum behind the band. I notice that you have a penchant for the solecism known as active-for-passive.’

  ‘’Fraid so, sir.’

  ‘That is because you do not feel the activity of the active mood, the passivity of the passive, let alone the pregnant indeterminacy inherent in deponent verbs. You will now sit and think for five minutes about the verb sequi. At the end of that time you will tell me what kind of a mind the Roman must have had to believe that to follow was in some sense to have something done to him, rather than to be doing something.’

  Without waiting for response the Captain turned and stared out of the window at the vista of trees winding down West Drive. You could almost tell by the way he stood that he disliked what he saw.

  When Scammell explained praes’ privs to Paul he spent most of the time talking about things like remembering to take your hands out of your pockets if there was a master around. (Letting praes walk around with their hands in their pockets was The Man’s way of making sure no one else did.) Most of the privs were like that—useless, apart from conferring prestige. They weren’t what Paul was interested in. But it didn’t seem to occur to Scammell that a boy might actually want to go into class-rooms other than his own, or spend his spare time not playing some kind of semi-organised game. Even on walk-days he went off with the main school instead of taking the chance to explore on his own or with some other prae. So he just lumped all the privs Paul was interested in at the end, saying, ‘You can go into other classes if you want to, and you don’t have to stay inside Painted Trees. Don’t bother the deer. Anyway they’re supposed to be dangerous this term.’

  It’s hard to say, supposing Scammell had laid more emphasis on these last two sentences, whether Paul would have given up his idea of learning to know the park and its creatures so well that he would one day actually touch a deer. As it was, the only attention he paid was to decide that any deer-stalking would have to be done well out of sight of the school. This would mean exploring the remoter reaches of the park, which he wanted to do anyway.

  During the hols The Man had got a patch of grass mown up behind the stables, large enough for one football pitch. Almost everybody got one game a week, and on the other half hol they went on School Walk. So with luck Paul would get a whole afternoon once a week, another on Sundays, and about an hour on the days when he had to play football. There’d be breaks on the other days, but not long enough to get far from the school. His first chance came the Wednesday after the start of term.

  The park turned out to be even larger than he’d thought— Uncle Charles’s park, which was really only a big field with trees in it, would have gone into Paddery a hundred times over. West Drive was two miles long and East Drive half a mile. There were two whole woods and lots of copses. A stream too wide to jump fed the lake, but ran out underground towards the gardens. There were some odd buildings too—the Temple on the ridge between East Drive and the path to the gardens, a sort of dwarf pagoda, painted blue, in the middle of one of the woods, and a ruined chapel on a hillock near West Gate. In spite of these features it was surprisingly easy to get lost among the hummocky, bracken-mottled, oak-dotted hollows and rises, which gave the whole park a dream-like feeling—parts of it were so similar to other parts that you felt you had somehow slid back without noticing and were going through the same experience all over again.

  Around the perimeter, but outside the belt of trees which rimmed the southern and eastern edges, ran a ten-foot brick wall, which you seldom noticed because it was built in a kind of ditch, with the earth piled into a bank that ran parallel to the wall inside the park. You could say the ditch hid the bottom half of the wall and the bank the top half. The idea of course was to keep the deer in, and when Paul found it he saw that it might make his efforts to approach them enormously easier, either by allowing him somehow to corner a group, or else by enabling him to approach along the ditch and then sneak up on them over the bank.

  That first afternoon he was totally unsuccessful. There were plenty of deer about, in small groups, not just the hinds which he had mostly seen last term, but a number of stags with them, splendid shaggy animals with great branching antlers; they strutted to and fro and bellowed from time to time at stags in other groups. Paul remembered what Scammell said about their being dangerous this term, and decided it must be some kind of mating season. He had a vague idea it was called ‘the rut’. He had brought his gun from the hay-fort War with him to use as a staff, and he thought that if a stag saw him and charged he might be able to beat it off by using the gun as a quarter-staff. Or if he was near the wall he could climb to safety by wedging the gun against one of the buttresses and using it and the buttress-top as a step and handhold to allow him to reach the coping and pull himsel
f up. He experimented with this, to make sure he could do it quickly, and was surprised to find that the ground outside the wall was only six feet below him.

  His precautions turned out unnecessary. If the stags were dangerous, they were also incredibly shy. Before he got within a hundred yards of any group a head would come up, and then another. The big ears would twitch to and fro for a moment and then fix. Next thing the whole group would be moving away at a sort of half-run which looked quite easy for them but was much faster than Paul could have gone flat out.

  In a way Paul was happy to find them difficult quarry. Their wildness mattered, not just because it was a part of the game, but because he felt it was something he needed for them, almost as though when he at last reached out to lay his palm against the quivering haunch something would flow between him and it, some blood-brotherhood be established, allowing him to take part in the secrets of that wildness and freedom. He did not think of the wall and ditch as a prison, keeping the deer in; it was more like a fortification, keeping out the tame straight rows of turnip-tops that patterned the red fields outside. The deer had the run of the wild beautiful region between the tame farmland and the tame happenings inside the walls of the school.

  The nearest he came to any of them that first afternoon was by accident. He had made a wide circuit down to East Drive and was walking up towards the school when he passed the path that led to the Temple. He decided there was just time for a closer look at it before tea. The path looked almost new—it must have been re-gravelled just before the war with reddish chippings which crunched beneath his leather soles. The noise offended him after his efforts at stealth, so he deliberately picked his way up on the grass verge until he came to a small paved platform from which stone steps rose to the building. This stood on a small mound and was no more than a dome supported by eight pillars with a statue on a pedestal at the centre. As Paul was climbing the steps a stag roared close by. Thrilled by the nearness of the sound, he stole up the steps and under the dome, using the statue itself for cover. He peered carefully round the billowing marble drapery.

  He saw at once that the mound on which the Temple stood must have been artificial, made by scooping earth out from the southern slope of the ridge and piling it up here. It had been done that way on purpose so that immediately below the Temple there was now a small grassy arena in which some deer were grazing, about five hinds, some half-grown fawns, and a big stag which at the moment had its back to Paul and was bellowing its challenge down over the far rim of the arena. It was gloriously posed, with the lake beyond it. The slope below the temple was as steep as the roof of a house, impossible to sneak down unnoticed, but there was plenty of bracken on either side and it might have been possible to worm nearer by going back down the steps and making a flanking attack. No time for that before tea, though, so Paul simply stood and watched.

  He wasn’t aware of having made any sound or movement to attract the animal’s attention, but suddenly a head came up, and then another. The stag wheeled and stared. An instant later the whole troop was off over the rim, out of sight, crashing away through the bracken.

  Paul looked at the statue before he left. It was a woman, Diana, probably, because she had a bow and arrows slung at her back. In her left hand she was holding up a crescent moon. You couldn’t see whether she was beautiful because her face was so streaked with bird-droppings.

  Next Sunday Paul got involved in a game of Monopoly which went on so long that there was no time for exploration, and the Wednesday after he was in a football practice which didn’t end till the afternoon was half over. Still, there was time to have a go at the Temple deer again, so he took his gun, walked down East Drive and up beside the gravel path, as before. This time, however, instead of climbing the steps he turned off to the right. The bracken grew thickly here, but there were paths through it, made by the deer, probably. He picked his way along, crouching low and taking slow, small steps, crawled over the ridge, and then crept back along the other side towards the arena. Everything was quiet. The stag didn’t roar once. Paul was very patient. It must have taken him half an hour to do the circuit because whenever he made the slightest rustle he stood quite still and counted to a hundred before moving on again, but when at last, now worming his way forward on his stomach, he lifted his head to look down into the arena, it was empty.

  Disappointed but not unhappy, because he felt it had been a good practice stalk, he walked down the other path—a track, really, narrow and rough, without any gravel—towards the lake and then back along the lake path. He was just reaching the chestnut grove when he saw half a dozen deer coming along by the shore at a fastish trot. Quickly he slipped down through the trees and stopped behind one at the edge. Already he could hear the rapid soft tapping of hooves. He held his breath. The stag came past, only ten feet away, not looking particularly concerned. Presumably because Paul was standing still it did not seem to notice him, but trotted on without check. Five hinds followed in a close group, and the last of these seemed suddenly to recognise that the vertical object at the edge of the copse was not a tree-stump. Paul was convinced that he saw the glistening round eye change shape. He definitely felt the flash of terror, the spasm of released juices that triggered the muscles to send the animal springing forward in a huge leap. Next instant the deer had fled out of sight.

  As Paul was coming back up between the trees he saw that there were figures walking along the path from the boat-house, two women, Mad Molly and her friend. He realised that they must have been what disturbed the deer in the first place, and by concentrating their attention on the danger behind caused them not to notice Paul’s almost-ambush. There wasn’t anyone else around. He didn’t want to meet Mad Molly, not because he was really afraid of her, but because she was obviously a dotty old woman, likely to do or say something embarrassing. So he waited behind a large tree close by the path, preparing to edge round it as the women shuffled past.

  He was standing there, listening for the faint pad of footsteps but partly distracted by studying the pattern of deep, slanting grooves in the chestnut-bark, when a voice close behind his neck said, ‘Boo!’

  He leapt. There may not have been much outward movement, but his heart seemed to bound as the deer had, and he felt the same surge of panic-triggered energies. He managed to turn, cheeks hot, palms sweating. Mad Molly was smiling at him round the tree trunk. She had clear pale blue eyes which sparkled with the fun of it.

  ‘How did you know I was there?’ he said.

  ‘Witchcraft, of course.’

  ‘I’m allowed beyond Painted Trees. I’ve got praes’, er, privileges.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I’d much rather you’d been breaking a rule—so much more interesting. What’s your name?’

  ‘Rogers, ma’am.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re no more Rogers than I am ma’am. My name is Mary, but most of my friends call me Molly. Your name is …?’

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘That’s more like it. Come and meet my friend Daisy. She’s a bit sad today.’

  Trapped, Paul followed her out on to the path. The other woman was absorbedly moving a chestnut husk to and fro with her stick, but she looked up and stared at Paul.

  There was something awful about her. It wasn’t just that she was rather ugly, with a flat, pale crinkled face with hairs sticking out of it, and a podgy body dressed in a lot of different-coloured fringed shawls. Paul became used to her after that first meeting and ceased to notice the effect, but there in the chestnut grove he was immediately certain that he didn’t want to get any nearer.

  ‘His name’s Paul,’ said Mad Molly.

  ‘How old?’ said the Daisy-woman.

  ‘Twelve, ma’am,’ said Paul.

  ‘Twelve, ma’am,’ said Mad Molly. It might have been Paul’s own voice.

  ‘I’ll do that every time you use that stupid word,’ she went on. ‘I’ll come to church on Sunday, see i
f I don’t, and do it in front of your friends.’

  ‘Six years still,’ said the Daisy-woman.

  ‘Before you can fight in this stupid war, she means,’ said Mad Molly. ‘Daisy’s obsessed by the war. Don’t worry, darling. I expect Paul’s father is fighting away like a hero, winning a medal a week.’

  ‘My father’s dead,’ said Paul.

  ‘Dead in my war?’ said the Daisy-woman.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, darling,’ said Molly.

  ‘But he did fight in the Great War,’ said Paul. ‘He got the MC.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Daisy-woman.

  She took a pace forward and raised her arms as if she was going to hug Paul. He only just managed not to edge away. If he hadn’t already decided she was mad—madder if anything than Mad Molly—he would have thought she was drunk. Mrs Fison, who was married to Uncle Charles’s gamekeeper, sometimes got drunk and when she did had that kind of look, dazed, miserable, not quite sure whether she was dreaming or waking. Paul was concentrating on the Daisy-woman, apprehensive about the hug and puzzled by her behaving like Mrs Fison, so he didn’t notice when Mad Molly changed.

  ‘Look at me, Paul,’ she said.

  Her voice still had the bubble of amusement in it, but the note of mockery was gone, and a sort of excitement or happiness had come in. When he turned to face her she was bending forward, staring at him in a way that compelled him to stare back, to study her without shyness, just as she was studying him. She was not, he saw, terribly old—nothing­ like as old as the Grannies, for instance, no, only a few years older than Mummy. The reason he’d thought she was old was the way she usually held herself, very straight and proud, like a granny. But her hair wasn’t white, just pale blonde with a bit of grey. She wore a lot of powdery make-up but it wasn’t there to hide wrinkles. Her face was a bit like a cat’s with its small pointy chin and neat mouth, and then the wide, high cheek-bones and those round blue eyes …