I think he had some idea that I must have a battered old teddy bear, or something similarly sentimental, secreted away that I treasured for the sake of, well, my Mum I suppose. Or possibly my Dad. One look at the scowl on my face disabused him of that idea.
I shrugged and went upstairs to the chaos that reigned in the room I shared with my brother. He had moved out a day or two earlier. That is, he hadn’t moved out exactly. He was just dropping his clothes and leaving milk in cereal bowls to congeal somewhere else. I picked up a couple of books, but they were library books, so I put them back down. It wasn’t that I cared about not returning them it was just that I didn’t want to turn up at this new place and be immediately labeled as the sort that went to the library. There was a favourite t-shirt that had been bright red but was now somewhat faded (by the sun, not by washing) with the wording ‘Canvey is cool’ emblazoned across the chest. I was rather fond of that but for no particular reason. Apart from that, there were a few fine cockle shells that I was loath to part with, my notebook with the rude and crude hand-drawn pictures of naked ladies vying for attention with interesting quotes from Voltaire, and a pair of sunglasses that, I thought, made me look like an American cop. I suppose you might think it was a little sad that nothing from my childhood had any particular hold on me, but I am not that different now. I was lingering thoughtfully over the small biscuit tin that held the clues from Mr. Freemans’ house when Dad came in. He kicked some clothing and a beer can that lay on the floor out of the way and stood over me.
“I’ve got a couple of things for you, Mikey,” he said offhandedly holding out a roll of money and a photograph. The photograph was a square colour Polaroid of my mother, taken a few years ago in Spain by the look of it. She was smiling very widely and did look pretty, but nowhere near as attractive and appealing as the small roll of fivers that accompanied the picture. “Put it somewhere safe. In case of emergency only mind. It’s not running away money.”
Now that sort of sentimentality I understood. I tipped the tin upside down so that the contents spilled onto the floor and put the money into it.
“What are you doin’ with this?” Dad asked stooping to pick up the matchbook, now denuded of matches. There was an edge of irritation in his voice. I had always hidden the fact that I smoked from him. To parade that sort of independence in front of my father would be asking for more trouble than I was prepared for.
“Found it,” I said, more intent on surreptitiously trying to work out the total value of the notes he had given me.
“Where?” He spoke sharply and had my full attention. The name Bernie was handwritten on the inside alongside a London telephone number. I’d noticed it after I had used a few of the matches and long after I had resolved to keep my mouth shut about everything that happened on the day that Peggy went missing.
“I dunno.”
“Mikey…”
“At Mr. Freeman’s. That day, you know.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“No…, well….” I remembered and stooped to pick up the broken arm of the pair of glasses and the sweet wrapper that I had found under the settee in Bert’s front room. “This and this.”
He glanced at them both and then patting me on the shoulder he slipped the matchbook into his trouser pocket.
“All over and done with now in any case,” he said, and the corners of his mouth twitched as if he were trying to smile. I felt truly miserable.
“Come on son, time to go.”
There was no one to wave goodbye to me as I left the house. My father followed us to the door and once we were outside I turned back to him. I think I was still looking for a last-minute reprieve, but it was not forthcoming. He nodded once at me, stepped back and closed the door. Mr. Baldy ushered me into the front seat of his smooth black Mercedes. I would have enjoyed that mightily if I hadn’t been so appallingly unhappy.
The only person to mark my departure from my home and the island that was such a part of me was the girl from the odd family who lived across the road. The dog wasn’t there, or he would have been barking but the girl with very long brown hair was coming back over the grassy bank as we drove by. She caught my eye and smiled as if she understood. Or maybe she was just glad to see the back of me.
The rest of the day was taken up with shopping, much of it done at a gentleman’s outfitter in Gerrard’s Cross, and all of it done without any enthusiasm on my part. I was fitted for three grey flannel jackets (why three?), several pairs of matching trousers, a dozen shirts, cricket whites (what?!), sports kit and swimming trunks, more underwear and then, as if to rub salt into the wound, three sets of striped pyjamas. I never wore pyjamas! Only wimps and middle-aged people wore pyjamas. I nearly made a run for it at that point but Baldy was ready for me and instead pulled me across the road, forced me into a barber’s chair and instructed the young man with flowing blonde locks to give me a short back and sides. I fought briefly but, discovering that my struggles caused the young hairdresser to assist Baldy in restraining me and that, in a bear hug, he smelt like an explosion in a perfume shop (the poncy hairdresser, not Baldy), I gave up and just glared my disgust. We had lunch at a coffee shop which was okay although Baldy wouldn’t let me squirt tomato sauce on my cheese sandwich. I don’t know why. The bottle was on the table, so the place wasn’t that posh. Dinner though was a trial as, for some reason that I couldn’t fathom then but which makes more sense to me now, he chose to take me to a nauseatingly expensive restaurant, to work his way through the entire seven-course menu and to instruct me on the basic points of etiquette by the way. Never having been in such a place I had absolutely no idea that such bizarre eating practices existed outside of Henry the Eighth’s court. I had been brought up on a diet that excluded foreign food, on the grounds that it was un-mistakenly inferior, highly suspicious and very disgusting. Instead, we embraced everything that was not green or nutritious. (Shellfish aside of course, although we did drench the winkles with salt and vinegar and eels weren’t worth eating unless they were jellied.) I had done very well on my staple diet of Rice Crispies, chips and the occasional anglicised burger from the Wimpy, thank you.
The cold green water masquerading as soup signalled the way that the rest of the meal was likely to go, and I was not surprised when at the end of the seven courses I was as hungry as I had been at the beginning, although I had grasped that you were not supposed to spit the more revolting elements of the meal into the path of passing waiters. This upset them, which was entertaining, but it also caused Baldy to slightly raise one refined eyebrow, which in turn caused a creeping and highly unpleasant sense of inferiority to steal over me. I began to feel that this was to be avoided, if at all possible. Even the chocolate pudding (sorry dessert) in which, as the unsatisfying and largely untouched courses trooped by, I had invested such hope, tasted foul and (oh, horror!) had fruit in it. With the sole exception of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, chocolate and fruit should never be mixed. Any kid can tell you that. However, I had sat through what turned out to be the first of many such meals and, although I always avoided them if I could, the basic experience stood me in good stead and meant that gauche and untutored as I was, I was not as completely ignorant and lost as I might otherwise have been.
So, began my education. After dinner, I was taken to one of the rooms in the hotel attached to the restaurant, given my school uniform for the morning and left to enjoy my first night ever in a hotel. It wasn’t all that exciting once I discovered that the mini-bar had been emptied and they wouldn’t serve me at the bar. I had some confused idea that the rules for the sale of alcohol were different in hotel bars but not, apparently, for nine-year-olds. The barman was outraged and got the manager to call Baldy to come and get me, but two amused businessmen bought me a coke and made all sorts of unfunny jokes until he appeared. I was duly marched back to my room where I watched television in bed. I’d never done that before so that was good.
T
he next morning, I was delivered to my new school scrubbed, shiny, newly suited and booted in my school uniform, and, if truth is to be told, terrified. Of course, I masked that with bravado although I found it difficult to strike the belligerent attitude I was so used to in grey flannel and a tie. I did my best though.
Baldy hadn’t said much to me the whole time I had been with him, apart from necessary instructions, and he didn’t say much more when, having marched me into the headmaster’s study and deposited me on a large, slippery walnut-coloured leather chair that made me feel small, he handed me over with an ill-disguised air of relief.
“You will be well looked after here Master Michael and you can profit by your good fortune if you have the sense to. If not, it will be your own loss.”
He ran one hand from the right-hand side of his bald pate to the crown as if smoothing down the wayward strands of absent tresses. “I have agreed with your father that at half term you will remain at school to catch up on your studies and we will discuss the summer holidays at a later date.” He nodded once at the headmaster behind the desk and then left the room without looking back. I was getting used to that.
From day one I tried to be as unpleasant as possible to everyone and I am entirely sure that I succeeded, at least for the first few months. After that, the relentless niceness of the other boys started to wear away at me somewhat. When I say they were nice I must qualify that sweeping statement. Of course, they were all snobs. Of course, they looked down on me as someone who was lesser than they were, intellectually, socially and in every other possible way. Of course, they tried to bully me, but after my ready fists had bloodied several noses it was difficult for the boys to look down on me from quite the same confident height. They were boys after all and even their hothouse breeding had not quite quelled a natural boyish compulsion towards brutality and the admiration of it in others. When it really came down to it there were only two classes at that school anyway, as indeed there is in the rest of the world; the confident and the terrified. I was determined not to be in the latter group.
There was also a code amongst them that protected me from the worst repercussions of my actions. You didn’t welch on fellow pupils. Bloodied noses and black eyes were blamed on falls and cricket balls when teachers questioned their origin. An exception to this rule became apparent when I had been at the school for about eight weeks. On that occasion I was ‘taught a lesson’ by the school’s most revered bully, who, quite sensibly I thought, followed the militaristic strategy of strength in numbers and recruited three other boys to assist in shaming me. This was not considered to be acceptable behavior by one of their class, (leave gang culture to the lower echelons of society). A staff member was subtly steered towards the scene and I was dragged, spitting, kicking, biting and enjoying myself mightily from the melee before permanent damage was done. Seth Seymour-Haggard, later a particular chum of mine, and his cohorts were roundly punished whilst I was bandaged. The staff, concluding, quite rightly, that I was the divisive element, lobbied the headmaster for my immediate removal from their hallowed halls. I believe the headmaster tried very hard to comply with this demand, but he was no match for Baldy. Short of committing murder I think I could have done anything and still been immured within those walls. Baldy might even have got me off a murder charge. I wouldn’t have put it past him. I was probably punished but I really don’t remember how so it can’t have had the required effect.
As far as academia went I simply decided that, as some sort of protest, I just wouldn’t do anything. I would never have admitted that I was wounded and would not have known why even if I recognised the fact that I was, but this stubborn rebellion was a salve of sorts. They couldn’t make me learn if I didn’t want to. So, I attended the classes I had to and did the barest minimum of homework and prep. Unfortunately for me, I had a good memory and the stirrings of an insatiable curiosity. I found myself absorbing Latin vocabulary without meaning to and being moved before I knew it to look up the life cycle of a newt in the library. The teachers (they called them Masters, there were no women apart from the two matrons) started by treating me pityingly. They didn’t know my background. Baldy would have seen to that. They knew or thought they knew, that I had money but that I had not been brought up ‘properly’ or educated to an acceptable standard. Acceptable as far as they were concerned of course. The pity soon turned to frustration when they saw that their altruistic efforts to sow the seeds of knowledge in me appeared to be cast on stony ground. Frustration, in turn, degenerated into acceptance and so they ignored me for two or three terms. After that it began to dawn on them, and on me, that despite my minimal effort and the fact that I spent most of the time in class doodling, staring out of the window or fighting, I had actually absorbed pretty much everything they had said and that, still being a secret and voracious reader and able to appropriate (steal) books at will, I was learning much more than they were teaching. One or two made the mistake of congratulating me on my progress and were treated to sullenness and a sudden increase in truancy from their classes. In the end, they all decided just to ignore me. Any praise for achievement in a test or exam would ensure that the next paper would be incomplete, spoiled or nonsensical. I don’t know why I did this. Perhaps it was because I understood the position of the underdog. I knew how it felt to be regarded as a lesser being, as degraded. I was comfortable in that skin. The potential of a new Mikey, one who dressed nicely, didn’t swear every other word, who was intelligent (clever was all right but well-educated was not) and who had the potential for academic success, terrified me. Who would that be? It was, to me, more Frankenstein than Pygmalion.
But I am getting a little ahead of myself again.
16
The first thing we do,
let’s kill all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare (Henry VI.)
I had been at the school for just one term. And then the fourth thing happened.
It had been nearly three months since I had seen my home. The manicured lawns, lowering leafiness and enclosing walls of the school had been no substitute for the scrubby wasteland of Canvey, and even regular fights with my fellow prisoners could not dull the pain of homesickness. Summer holidays arrived, and boys erupted pell-mell from the school to scatter to the four corners of the world. Antigua, Delhi, Cairo, Corfu, Bloemfontein – they were all on their way somewhere. To long lazy days on the beach or to family homes in far-flung places for all or part of the holidays. I sat in a corner of the library and read the bit in A Christmas Carol where all the boys go off from school for their Christmas holidays. Mind you, I didn’t really see myself as the young Ebenezer, and Nell when she appeared, appeared in the shape of the girl with the nice legs from Baldy’s office.
“Hello, Michael,” she said, framed in the old wood door of the library. Her glossy black hair was loose and plentiful, and she was wearing a skirt and light suit jacket with a cinched in waist that emphasised her curves more than anything skin tight would have done. And her legs, well, they were as smooth and brown and as spectacular as ever.
“’Lo,” I glowered back, whilst calculating how I could ensure that as many of those boys who were still waiting to be collected saw me with her.
“I’ve come to collect you.”
It was better than I thought. I stood up and revised my plans as to how I could get as many people as possible to the front of the school in time to see me drive off with her. I needn’t have worried. It was a school full of boys after all and even those who weren’t interested in those of the opposite sex, (and there were quite a few) were still anxious to seem as if they were. Even one or two of the married teachers appeared, though having glimpsed their wives I can’t say I was particularly surprised about that. She waited downstairs whilst I rocketed upstairs to fling a few things into a suitcase.
“Hey Knuckles!” (Did I mention that my nickname was Knuckles?) yelled Seth Seymour-Haggard from the doorway of the dorm as I contin
ued throwing clothes willy-nilly into a suitcase. “Who’s the looker?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I said airily because I didn’t know what answer to give and because I wanted to preserve an air of mystery about my origins.
“Well, she can’t be your sister, she’s far too good looking.”
“She’s not my sister,” I snarled, knowing that Sarah would never have created such a furor. “She ain’t no relation. She’s a…friend,” I added boldly.
“Really?” said Seth trying not to look impressed. “All right. Where are you going?”
“I dunno yet.” That was true.
“Okay, see you in September then.”
I pushed past him dragging my suitcase with me and, after traversing a couple of corridors started to make my descent down the wide staircase that led to the impressive vestibule.
“Ah, here he is now.” The headmaster, slightly flustered, stepped away from the pretty girl with nice legs and looked up at me. She, with a very clear idea of her effect on the old man, smiled sweetly and deliberately brushed past him as she came to meet me.
“Have you got everything, Mikey? Then we had better get going.”
She flashed a brilliant smile at the head and swept through the wide doors and down the stone steps. I distinctly heard the resounding thud of a body hitting the gravel and I saw chubby Christopher Tomkins sprawled on the ground where he had fallen after overbalancing whilst trying to look up her skirt with a mirror. He was all of eleven and old enough to know how to manage the operation better. I resolved to give him some pointers when I came back in the autumn. If I came back.
Oh, joy! The girl was driving a soft top Mercedes and, as the weather was balmy, she had decided to take full advantage of it. I stowed my suitcase in the tiny boot and clambered into the front seat. I couldn’t quite stop a broad grin from creeping across my face. She pushed a tape into the machine. Unfortunately, it was the Bee Gees, but you had to forgive her the occasional small fault when you considered her other attributes, and she did play it very loudly which I thought showed a fine and laudable disregard for the conventions. She put her shapely foot down hard and spitting gravel we exited in fine style leaving several parent-bound youths looking enviously after us. All told it was very satisfactory and would do my reputation amongst the other boys no end of good.
A Patient Man Page 14
