The Elderbrook Brothers

by Gerald Bullet

  Standing at gaze in his garden, he was reminded that his peace was at an end. From beyond the high south wall, upon which the peach and the pear were blossoming, came from time to time the clatter of an arriving cab and the noise of excited young gentlemen returning to captivity. What extraordinary animals, he thought: nothing can quell them! Cane them, detain them, lecture and entreat them: they will submit, gracefully or sullenly: they will listen, willingly or woodenly. But they will not change themselves by one iota. He sighed, for the gentle stubbornness of children sometimes maddened him. The school entrance and the playground were not visible from the garden, but the boys’ voices reached him, loud and clear, across the distance that intervened, reminding him that he had other things to do than stare at his beloved salix babylonica, or weeping willow, ancient and benign umbrella of many a flattered senior class of boys. He must now go to his study and receive, one by one, any new boys who might be arriving this Easter term.

  The study, situated on the top floor of the headmaster’s private quarters, had for the school the effect of a tower-room, which the boys could approach only by way of an iron spiral stair running from the level of the playground up the outside wall of the house. It was an attractive ascent, with j ust enough suggestion of danger and desolation to tickle the fancy of an imaginative child: such as the slim, coltish, large-eared little boy who, under instructions from certain elders, came stamping his way up.

  ‘Come in,’ said Mr Williams.

  He sat at his desk, pen in hand, a number of open books spread out in front of him. The assault on the outer door was repeated. It was, he knew, a difficult door to open.

  ‘Come in, come in, come in!’ he cried impatiently. ‘Ah!’ he said, recovering his good humour; for someone had indeed come in. ‘A new boy, I think?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the new boy.

  Already he had heard the headmaster described, by a candid schoolfellow, as a funny little monster, and was prepared to see him so. But, in this moment of introduction, awe prevailed. Mr Williams was the shortest man Felix had ever seen, but because of their relative positions the most awe-inspiring. Here was wisdom and authority, the pride of knowledge and the majesty of punishment. Vast powers were concentrated for Felix in this short square figure, those darkly scrutinizing and heavily browed eyes, the broad hirsute nose, the round brownish face so copiously and vigorously whiskered. He had time to notice the ivory baldness of the pate, the almost monkeylike growth of strong dark hairs on the hands, and the crisp curling hair about the broad temples. He had time to notice these alarming and fascinating aspects of the man whose word was now his law, and he winced under the first impact of that unageing energy, that controlled authoritative voice. But his main preoccupation was still, as it had been all day, the resolve on no account to let anybody see his feelings.

  ‘And what is your name, my boy?’ said the Head kindly, yet speaking with what seemed to the child a quite enormous gravity.

  ‘Elderbrook, sir.’

  ‘Ah! Elderbrook!’ said Mr Williams. ‘Of course. I remember.’ Herein he lied, though with the best intentions. ‘Your father is, er, Mr Elderbrook, er, of …’

  If Joe Elderbrook had lived and died a thousand years ago, and had entertained heretical notions about the nature of the Incarnation or the precise constitution of the Holy Trinity, Mr Williams would have known all about him. But as things were he had to wait for Felix to supply him with the name of Upmarden.

  ‘Upmarden, yes,’ agreed the headmaster.

  He did in fact now remember Joe Elderbrook, remembered being impressed by the curious force and vigour of the man. No such qualities were to be discerned in the child, who resembled his father only, if at all, in his rustic speech.

  ‘Well, Elderbrook, I hope you’ve made up your mind to do your best in everything you undertake here. We have a high tradition to maintain at St Swithins, and if you play the man, as I ‘m sure you want to do, we may yet be as proud of you as we are of some illustrious figures in our past. Keep that thought with you, my boy …’

  But when he woke next morning, the first morning away from home in all his ten years, Felix found no such thought in his mind. For one astonished instant he wondered where he was, and before the details of yesterday came back to him, while he was still recalling his mother in the trap waiting to drive him to the station, his brothers and sisters watching with forced smiles from the gate, his father’s noisy farewell and abrupt disappearance, his tin trunk being lifted into the trap and made room for, the sparkle of the morning, the warm comfortable smell of harness and pony, the white cloud of the pony’s breath going before them, the clattering into the yard of Lutterthorpe station, the getting down, the saying goodbye, his mother’s last kisses, waving from the carriage window, the friendliness of the guard who was to ‘keep an eye on him’, the landscape flowing past (like time made visible)—while he was still piecing together these small treasures from his memory, the lordly languid voice of a young gentleman at the other end of the dormitory cut into his consciousness.

  ‘Bell’s gone. Get out, you little scuts!’

  Felix swung his legs over the side of the bed. It was a comparatively low bed and after dangling for half a second his groping feet found the cold shiny hardness of the oilcloth floor. The boy in the next bed sat bolt upright, rubbing his eyes. Having by this exercise restored his sight he gave his red head a brisk rubbing, and while so employed he caught Felix’s timid glance resting on him.

  ‘Hullo, worm! Who are you looking at?’

  Felix looked away in confusion, answering nothing. This was a bigger boy than he, and his look was ferocious. It was not, however, fear of any physical violence that made Felix mute: it was rather the absence of something, or someone. He wondered where he must go to wash, and seeing that a general exodus from the dormitory was beginning he voiced the question.

  ‘Where do we go to wash?’

  ‘We don’t wash,’ said Clifford, leaping from his bed. ‘We roll in the sandpit and then scrape ourselves with broken bottles. It’s a curious old custom, but you’ll soon get used to it,’ he added, in a kindlier tone. ‘And now—march!’

  He seized Felix by the nape of the neck and propelled him towards the door.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Felix asked.

  He had the gravest misgivings. A faceless future threatened him.

  ‘So you come of a washing family, do you?’ Clifford asked. ‘Does your father wash? Does your mother wash?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Felix.

  ‘And your brothers and your sisters, do they wash too, my little man?’ the sarcastic voice went on.

  Felix admitted that they did.

  ‘What a dirty lot they must be!’ said Clifford, in a tone of great disgust.

  ‘They’re not!’ Felix, near to tears, wriggled out of his grasp.

  ‘Then what do they wash for,’ said Clifford, ‘if they’re not dirty? Sucks to you, old boy.’

  Felix saw he had been scored off. He was glad it was no worse. He was specially glad that no insult against his home had been intended, being conscious of a new fierce loyalty to what he had always till now taken for granted. He was now lined up in a corridor with other nightshirted boys, each waiting his turn to use one of the five wash-basins round the corner; and the enigmatical Clifford was demanding to know his name.

  ‘F. Elderbrook. What’s yours?’

  ‘They call me Clifford,’ said Clifford. ‘You can’t blame them. It’s my name. And my father’s before me,’ he added, intoning.

  ‘Everybody’s is, isn’t it?’ said Felix.

  He had never come across anybody quite like this boy Clifford. Though no longer inclined to be afraid of him, he was puzzled. Clifford seemed to make a habit of saying entirely pointless things, yet Felix could not think him an entirely silly person.

  His ingenuous question went unregarded, for at that moment a diversion occurred in the neighbourhood of the wash-basins. Someone began forcibly feeding someone
else with pellets of soap. There were yells of protest; splutterings, scufflings, hootings; and much laughter.

  A commanding unknown voice suddenly made itself heard above the din. But it was not, alas, the voice of a master.

  ‘New boys, forward! Time for medicine!’

  Taking one thing with another, Felix wished he were home again.

  § 6

  GUY wished so too. Since the day when Felix first began to crawl these two had spent most of their time together. Together they explored and re-explored the fields and lanes of home, except when they were at school, or messing about in the yard, or rat-hunting in barn and granary, or bouncing a: rubber ball against the north-east wall of the farmhouse.’ And when they were doing none of these things they were leading horses, fetching the cows in, singling swedes, turning hay, counting sheep through a gate. They lived each moment as it came, never looking beyond tomorrow; and much of their life in common was lived against a background of agreed fantasy. But now Felix was gone. Those special private games were finished, the shared story in bed was a thing of the past, and Guy went to the village school alone.

  Mr Cowlin, the schoolmaster, was a grey, lean man, with the face of a not unamiable wolf. The skin of his sunken cheeks, which had once been plump, hung slackly upon his bones, like leather purses empty of coin. If he had ever had any enthusiasm for teaching young children, it was so long ago that his mind held no memory of it; and if his heart had ever entertained vanity, which is the lesser part of ambition, the only trace of it left to him now, at the age of fifty-four, was to be found in the curious pretence, to which he secretly and precariously clung, that he could have been, had it pleased him to take the necessary trouble, a person of some little consequence in the world. In his leisure hours, which were all too numerous, he dabbled very gently and idly in the history of the parish and sometimes toyed with the idea of writing a book on it. He had once or twice thought he would marry, but the project had always died of indecision. He was never noticeably drunk, but as he grew older he became more and more dependent on little nips.

  A day or two after the beginning of term Mr Cowlin turned suddenly from the blackboard, chalk in hand, to discover that of the boys, Guy Elderbrook, was conspicuously not attending.

  ‘A-a-a-ah!’

  Having uttered a strange noise, half bleat, half battle-cry, he twisted his face into a shape of great ferocity, lifted a long arm, and hurled his chalk across the schoolroom: and with so vile an aim that it struck the forehead of a little girl sitting a yard and a half to the right of the offender. The stricken child promptly set up a wailing.

  ‘For pity’s sake hold your noise!’ Mr Cowlin entreated. ‘And you, G. Elderbrook, pay attention to the blackboard or I’ll dust the seat of your breeks!’

  The threat lacked conviction. Mr Cowlin possessed a cane, and often used it: but seldom on the persons of his pupils, preferring to strike his desk with it at unexpected moments, or to brandish it eloquently in the air, as a symbol of the wrath to come.

  ‘What do you suppose I’m doing at this blackboard, eh?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Guy.

  ‘I’m writing upon it, am I not? Do I do that for my own pleasure, think you?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘For my own pleasure or for your instruction, boy? Which is it, I wonder?’

  Answering at random Guy said again: ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘You don’t know, sir. You don’t know, sir. Then what in the wide world do you know, sir?’ cried Mr Cowlin, in accents of affected wonder.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ said Guy.

  ‘Here’s a boy——’ cried Mr Cowlin. He began to feel happier. Without malice, but rather to distract attention from his own foolishness, which had lost him a piece of chalk and given Florrie Binstead a grievance of which she evidently intended to make full use, he flung up his hands, exhibiting Guy to the world as a most curious, a perhaps unique specimen of juvenile turpitude. ‘Here’s a boy who knows nothing. He admits it. He’s proud of it. What are we to do with him?’

  The exordium was cut short by renewed wailing from Florrie Binstead. Injured severely in her self-esteem, she would no longer suffer herself to be ignored.

  The harassed schoolmaster turned to her almost entreatingly. ‘Come now, you’ve had your nice cry, Florrie. It didn’t hurt so much. Show me the place. Very well—don’t then! See to her, some of you. And gimme my chalk, d’ you hear?’

  Being now the centre of attention, Florrie gradually allowed her sobs to subside. Presently the writing on the blackboard was resumed, and the children, though wishing the excitement had lasted longer, exchanged bright glances of satisfaction in the knowledge that it had carried them at least a few minutes nearer to the ten-minute break.

  One child alone paid no heed to that glittering prospect. He was a boy who knew nothing. He had been called so, in the presence of his giggling schoolfellows. The unwanted middle one, not big enough to work with his brother Matthew on the farm, and not clever enough to go to the grammar school with his young brother Felix, he sat in proud isolation, dumb and desolate, meditating a formless revenge.

  § 7

  CATCHING sight of himself in the looking-glass Felix had the queerest sensation, as though some other self, a self he had left behind at Upmarden, were closely watching him in this new place: this new place which was new no longer, which had once seemed unreal, like something happening to someone else, but was now, with his first term drawing to an end, the place one woke up in each morning without surprise, with scarcely a backward glance at home, the place where in spite of those first fears, now all but forgotten with new ones looming ahead, one already had the trick of knowing how to avoid hurt, how to manage the tumult of authority, how to seem unafraid, how to stare down the aggressor, how to bend and not break under the pressure of these other wills, and when to resist, when to elude, when to feign surrender while still secure and impregnable in the secret of oneself.

  Sometimes, after lights out in the dormitory, he floated away to sleep on a tide of random thoughts told in fancy to his mother, or Faith, or Nancy, or that second self to whom one could tell everything. It was a long rambling letter that would never be written. Dear Mum, O the poor rabbit, it was horrible, he looked so sort of loving and saying something: he wasn’t like the ones we get at home, harvest-time: he was special. When he was looking at me it was like me looking. In our wood it was, next to the playing-fields, and Jerry Cockle hit him: it was horrible because I was just thinking, oh I don’t know, feeling he was only little, and then Jerry Cockle did that. With a cricket-stump he did. Him and me are chums but he’s funny that way, and I don’t think I shall like him any more. The way it dropped down, and blood running out, it was the same as being killed yourself, nearly: but he’s funny that way, when we find a nest he takes all the eggs, not like you told us leaving some for the mother. It’s nice in the wood but sometimes I don’t like it so much: not when it’s getting later and the trees seem to stand very close up to you and listen to everything you’re thinking: I don’t much like it then, but it’s nice thinking about it afterwards. Even being afraid is quite interesting afterwards. When other boys are there it’s all right but not the same, because you play games then, desert islands or something, or shout and muck about. Its name is Longbarrow Wood and they say it had a madman living in it once, but Mr Lamble says it was only an old tramp who didn’t know any better. I don’t know what he meant by knowing better. I’m glad I’m in Mr Lamble’s form: he’s quite strict but not sarcastic like Mr Fletton: when I was lined up getting books Mr Fletton said seniores priores and made me wait till the next man had got his books, though I was in front of him and I don’t believe he was any older than me, but old Fletton said: He’s in the Fourth, my boy: you’re not. I’ve got to learn Latin here, everybody does, I don’t like it much but it’s not as bad as Algebra. Do you know Latin, Mum? Mensa mensam, that’s Latin for table, they say it a lot of different ways. Clifford, who�
�s next to me in the dorm, he’s in the Fourth too, quite high up, and he says the boy Mr Fletton gave the books to first when he made me wait is a beastly little swot, Prynne his name is, a lot younger than the others and no one likes him much except old Fletton. Dear Mum, how do you like this poem? When the woods are dark and you’re all by yourself, You listen and hark and afraid to go home. I shan’t tell it to anybody else.

  Clifford is quite a decent sport: he comes and talks to me and Abbott sometimes in the playground, though he’s a senior the same as Prynne. Hollis is another chap I know. He has a baby sister but no father. His mother has been very ill. Hollis and Abbott and me are The Three Highwaymen, but we don’t tell anybody. When anybody attacks us, such as archers in the New Forest, we shout A moi which is French and a sort of war-cry that people used to have in the Middle Ages or sometime, and then we all help each other and take them prisoners. Dear Mum, I wish Cockle wasn’t like he is. He’s only a day boy so perhaps that’s why. It was last Saturday we went to the wood: if we hadn’t have gone nothing would have happened. Is there a place where things like that go to when they’re dead? I should think there must be, wouldn’t you, because of how they look at you, like a person. I wish he could be alive again, that one: it wasn’t a bit like on the farm, at reaping, when they run out of the corn. There was only us three and it was nice till Jerry did that. He called me a blub but I didn’t care. Abbott is a decent chap, he taught me the half-nelson in the coach-house. There’s nothing in it but old harness, but Abbott said Mr Williams would have gone pop if he’d seen us there. I’m lucky, I haven’t had a caning yet. Most people catch it their first term, Abbott says. Jerry Cockle has been caned a lot: he says old Fletton’s the worst, he make you bend over. We have prayers and roll call every morning in Big School, and one boy used to pinch me to try to make me squeal. I’m glad I shan’t be a new boy next term….