The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  The latest war was over, nothing but a skirmish in the desert at Suez, a squabble over a canal. Still, it had left all the men disgraced, nowhere to look for consolation but the fact that none of their sons might have to fight again. Once Jackdaw had crouched in front of weapons powerful enough to kill several men at a hundred paces, one squeeze of the trigger, spray it all around. But even he knew that war was a matter of atomics now, something nobody could stop with a machine gun and a tank.

  For Jackdaw this was meant to be a new beginning, too. A school for foundling boys, orphaned or abandoned. Or for those whose parents simply didn’t have the time. Sent up from London, not even sixty but already an old man, tired right through to the centre of his bones. When he’d arrived he had walked into the empty quad with its silent spear of stone, seen all the names. What was it, he had thought then, that made one go on in the face of disaster? This school was meant to be a safe berth for him, after another kind of disgrace. Yet somehow Jackdaw had known even then that his time was already long past, no chance of resurrection now.

  He peered down from his turret window towards the boys he was supposed to be supervising in the quad, a rabble seething and roaring, no scuffle worthy of his attention until it involved bruises on both sides. He watched as one of the older boys, stolid and unimaginative in his taunting, came to stand over a new arrival only appeared the night before. The new boy was a small thing wearing a school hand-me-down, much too large. He hunched on the steps of the memorial, picking at the names carved into the stone. Jackdaw had seen them come over the years and he had seen them go, boys of all descriptions trying to be men. But he knew the moment he saw this boy that he was different. A solemn little thing, barely grown yet, but already old inside.

  Down in the quad the older boy, Bothwell, plucked at the bottom of the new boy’s second-hand jumper, the pink V on the front practically to his knees.

  ‘Where d’you get this from?’ he said.

  ‘His mummy knitted it,’ another boy shouted.

  ‘Maybe he knitted it himself,’ Bothwell said.

  They all laughed.

  Bothwell began to tug at the jumper. ‘Let’s have a shot, then.’

  The new arrival squirmed as the two boys grabbed him, dragged the V-neck over his head, began to toss the borrowed jumper around. Bothwell threw it a few times, too, then dropped the bedraggled thing to the gravel, kicked it away.

  ‘What’s he got on underneath, d’you think?’ he said, pulling at the new arrival’s shirt, tiny buttons pinging across the gravel, one, two, three.

  They didn’t see him coming.

  ‘That’s enough!’

  Descending with his gown flapping like his namesake, warning them to scatter, which they did. Some laughing. Some cawing. Jackdaw didn’t know how, but they had his name already, flown from the metropolis as though on silent wings. He got in a slap or two before they vanished. One of the reasons he was persona non grata at the school he had just come from. Amongst other things.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Jackdaw lifted the jumper from the gravel, handed it to the new arrival. The boy was dirty about the knees, hair all mussed. Jackdaw frowned at something familiar in the child’s face, a fleeting glance. Then the boy took the jumper and pulled it over his head, got in a tangle. When he finally emerged, his face was tight with hot tears. They stood together in silence, one old man, one young, before the boy began again with his picking, scraping moss from the names of dead men on that old familiar plinth.

  ‘Old Mortality, eh,’ Jackdaw said.

  ‘Sir?’

  The boy knew how to be polite at least.

  ‘From the book. Walter Scott. He liked gravestones, too.’

  But the boy did not know his Scott. At least, not yet.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Jackdaw asked.

  ‘Solomon, sir.’

  ‘Solomon what?’

  ‘Farthing, sir, like the coin.’

  And Jackdaw knew at once what it meant. His captain returned to haunt him, for a debt that never could be paid.

  In the staff common room that afternoon, Jackdaw listened as the young male teachers whispered and laughed from behind their registers as the old matron, Miss Janie, began with her list. All the boys who were confined to the sick bay. All the boys who had been released. Miss Janie had been at the school since before the first war. Another relic, like him.

  Solomon Farthing turned out to be one of her latter charges, delivered to them overnight from London and deposited in the sick bay because there had been nowhere else for him to go. The headmaster was looking for a volunteer to take the boy into their house, but no one was offering. Solomon Farthing was asking to be preyed on. They could all see that.

  Jackdaw heard the men behind him start again with their whispers.

  ‘His father took a dive, that’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t bother to swim.’

  ‘He was a C.O., wasn’t he. Conscientious Objector. Wouldn’t go and fight.’

  ‘Bloody coward,’ one of the teachers muttered.

  ‘I heard he got sent to prison,’ said another.

  ‘Got what he deserved, then.’

  ‘Bloody conchies.’

  Jackdaw felt in his pocket for the small silver cap badge, put his fingers about it as though to keep it warm. He always had wondered if he would have the guts to do it himself – refuse to lift a gun if asked a second time, take the hard labour instead. Thank God he hadn’t been fit enough for the second war when it came, got through it all as a fire warden, nothing more dangerous than that. He’d become a vegetarian when he returned from the first, had damn near starved the first few winters. Nothing to eat but dried milk and turnips shrivelled on their stalks. Another reason for the younger generation to laugh behind his back. Still, Jackdaw never could forget the blood on Promise’s shirt, the way that chicken had danced across the mud.

  Now he pricked the silver pin against his thumb, once, twice, thought of all the things he had fought for once, all the things he had lost.

  ‘I’ll have him.’

  He hadn’t meant to say it. Had intended to keep his head down, listen to the boys sing in the chapel as he waited for retirement, nothing to do then but read poetry with his feet up by the fire. But life was life, wasn’t it. One more spin of the dice couldn’t hurt. Wasn’t that what Fortune always said?

  The staff room went quiet, all eyes turned to the old man at the back. The headmaster paused for a moment, as though uncertain whether to accept. But nobody else was offering so he bowed to the English teacher as though they were in some sort of court and Jackdaw was, for that moment, king.

  That night, Jackdaw could barely breathe as he paraded up one row of beds and down the other, boys stretched before him from the window in the gable, to the door at the far end. Once it had been the best part of his day, the evening after lights went out, strolling amongst his tiny flock, boys with hair like flax and burdock, their faces smoothed by dreams. It always reminded Jackdaw of Promise, asleep in the hayloft with his arm flung out, a boy all angles and shadows, the bloom of cold air pinking up his cheeks. Jackdaw remembered lying beside Promise. Shirt cuff to shirt cuff. Wrist bone to wrist bone. Hip next to hip. That one time when he had truly lived – with danger every single day.

  Now he felt suffocated by it – the stink of little boys. Filthy hair on lumpen pillows. The odour of unwashed bodies drenching the air like a terrible perfume. He smelled it in the night just before he woke, flailing beneath his blanket. Cordite. Then that lingering scent of lemon oil gone sour. Jackdaw could smell it again now as he moved towards the end of the dormitory, one boy’s fear rising from the bed sheets as he approached. He could hear the voices whispering in the dark, too. Little tongues darting like fish in a river, calling to the new boy across the gap between their beds.

  ‘Hey, you. Farthing. Where you from?’

  ‘Is your mother dead?’

  ‘What does y
our father do?’

  ‘Is he dead, too?’

  Jackdaw hoped that Farthing would stay silent, as the boy’s grandfather had done for all of these years. But when it came, Solomon Farthing’s voice was thin in the echo of the dormitory’s rafters.

  ‘My father was a soldier.’

  More than ten years since it had ended and still the stick by which they were all measured. The other boy made a strange noise in the darkness, half-laugh, half-disgust.

  ‘I heard he was a conchie.’

  Farthing’s voice was plaintive. ‘What’s a conchie?’

  ‘We’ll show you, if you like.’

  Jackdaw saw them then, two of the little bastards sliding from their beds, pyjamas pale in the darkness, hands already pulling the blanket from Solomon Farthing so as to leave him in the cold. Jackdaw moved quick, ready to intervene, smelled it before he got near. That burst of urine, hot on a small boy’s crotch. The others smelled it too.

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘He’s peed!’

  ‘Dirty bugger.’

  And Jackdaw felt the shock of it again – that slur to which he had become accustomed, normally aimed at him. He could hear Farthing crying as the other boys scuttled back to their own beds, sheets warm and dry. He hesitated for a moment, before he retreated, too.

  Two weeks later and the older pupils were practising for the pageant in the chapel, some sort of summer ritual that required one to be voted the prince of them all. The person who was chosen had to strip and drape himself in a cloth, while all around him boys who were fully clothed processed with fronds of greenery as they sang. No one ever admitted that he wanted to be the one to disrobe. But every boy desired to be chosen. That was just the way of things.

  Jackdaw found Solomon Farthing sitting on one of the wooden benches at the back, scratching at the underside of the pew in front. He stopped when Jackdaw approached, folded his fingers over whatever was in his hand.

  ‘Do you like it?’ said Jackdaw, indicating the boys at the front.

  ‘I like the singing.’

  ‘An endless picture-show,’ Jackdaw murmured.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Solomon Farthing was too young for Sassoon, Jackdaw thought, wouldn’t understand. He glanced at the bruises on the boy’s legs, saw how he drew them away from the teacher’s gaze beneath the pew, turning something in his hand so that it caught and glittered in the candlelight. A thruppenny bit for tuck, given to the boys who had nothing, so they would not feel left out. Solomon Farthing had polished it on his short trousers. Jackdaw smiled. He, too, liked shiny things.

  ‘Not want to play with the others?’ he asked. ‘They’re out in the yard now.’

  Farthing dipped his head.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Want to see something special instead?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The boys were singing:

  The Lord’s my shepherd . . .

  As Jackdaw placed his hand on Solomon’s shoulder, felt the warmth of young skin beneath the boy’s shirt, took it away again. The boy’s hair was as fair as the sun on the hayfield as Jackdaw walked Solomon away. Just like the old man’s was grey.

  Up, up and up again they went, all the way to the top of the turret, towards a square room with a solid wooden door. Inside the room was hazy with evening light filtering in east, west, north and south. Farthing exclaimed, ran to one of the windows, knelt on a big oak chest to see. Jackdaw grinned, came to stand beside him.

  ‘There’s the field,’ he said. ‘Two kinds of clover if you search for them. And beyond that the river, buttercups all along the bank.’

  ‘We’re not allowed by the river, sir.’

  ‘Who says.’ It wasn’t a question. Jackdaw shrugged as the boy glanced at him. ‘We’ve all got to live.’

  He moved towards the desk with its drawers and its green leather inlay, the carpet beneath starting to get worn at its centre, the stuffed armchair in the corner taking all the room.

  ‘Want to see my treasure trove?’ he said.

  Solomon Farthing turned from his perch by the window. ‘Yes, please, sir.’

  ‘Over here, then.’

  Jackdaw gestured towards the desk, pulled out the top drawer for the boy to see. Together they peered inside at a few shiny plaques on colourful ribbons. Jackdaw’s campaign medals, Pip, Squeak and Wilfred. Also a cross in cloudy, tarnished silver, crowns on its tips east, west, south, north.

  A Military Cross.

  For Gallantry.

  Or something like that. The boy’s eyes shone in the low summer light as he stared at the treasure. Solomon Farthing had probably never known a hero, thought Jackdaw. A man who fought his way through the worst of it all and came home with a medal on his chest to cover the hole.

  ‘Is this yours, sir?’ Solomon asked, pointing to the cross on its purple and white striped ribbon.

  Jackdaw shook his head. ‘It belonged to an old boy, I think. Found it in one of the drawers downstairs, in the library.’

  ‘What did he do for it, sir?’

  ‘What all men do in war,’ said Jackdaw. ‘They fight.’

  Solomon was silent for a moment. ‘Can I hold it?’

  ‘Don’t see why not.’

  Jackdaw slipped the cross from its case, handed it to the boy, warm in his hand. Solomon Farthing held the medal for a moment. Then he asked. ‘What’s a conchie, sir?’

  Jackdaw sighed, took the cross and replaced it in its little box, closed the drawer again.

  ‘A man who doesn’t do his duty,’ he said.

  A man who would not even pick up a stick, let alone a gun.

  ‘Did you fight in the war, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jackdaw. ‘The first one.’

  ‘Did they give you a medal?’

  The old man’s face changed then. ‘No, not like this. But my friend had one. Would you like to see?’

  In the common room the next day he heard the headmaster discussing Solomon Farthing’s fate with the other young men, a boy who wet the bed almost every night, shunned by the other boys, constantly being called to the laundry to wash out his sheet.

  ‘He seems to attract trouble,’ said the headmaster.

  ‘The boys know that he’s weak –’ one of the younger teachers stirred his tea – ‘they take advantage.’

  ‘We’ll have to beef him up, then. See what he can do.’

  ‘He won’t do well here,’ said the games teacher. ‘Does he not have any family to take him?’

  ‘Not that we know of.’

  A true Oliver Twist.

  He would not survive. That was what Jackdaw thought. All of Solomon Farthing’s soft edges sharpened, or worse. Until there was nothing left of the boy he was now – a child who liked shiny things, who wanted to play amongst the flowers on the riverbank and listen to other boys sing. If he stayed here, Jackdaw knew that Solomon Farthing would become a man just like him. A husk of a thing, always ready with a slap or a caustic remark, someone who had learned to hide from the vicissitudes of life beneath a brittle exterior, spent his whole existence pretending he was something he was not.

  Jackdaw thought of the bird’s nest Promise had found when the end was near, a perfect thing bound together with moss and straw, long since abandoned in the hedgerow. The new recruit had showed them where to look, lifting it from the thorns to place in Promise’s hands. Inside the remains of the nest there had been the remains of an egg, one life inside another, broken apart now. But Promise had lifted the pieces out as though they were the most important treasure. A young man playing in the back field as though he was a boy again, nothing to do in life but that.

  Jackdaw tipped a spoon of sugar into his tea, then another, thought of the things he could do for Solomon Farthing. Show him how to punch. Show him how to scratch. How to dig the weapon in. Or return him to the family he had lost somewhere along the line, make his life anew. He turned from the trolley of tea things, cups, saucers and spoons, realized th
e other teachers were discussing him now, their voices low as though he might not hear.

  ‘He’s friendly with the new boy. I saw them together in the chapel.’

  ‘What do you mean, friendly?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s had him in his room, though.’

  ‘You know he’s one of them, right?’

  Dirty bugger.

  ‘What was it about last time? At the school he came from, I mean.’

  Another nest, Jackdaw thought then. Of vipers and intrigue. Whispering behind their registers, watching him always. Jackdaw hated bullies, would bring them down if he could.

  ‘I know someone who might take him.’

  Jackdaw’s voice was louder than he had intended. He watched them turn in surprise towards where he stood alone by the tea trolley.

  ‘Who’s that, then?’ asked the headmaster.

  Jackdaw circled the spoon once in his teacup, heard the scrape of sugar on china.

  ‘His grandfather,’ he said.

  Solomon had made it to the river at last, escaped from lessons and left to play on his own, no other boys to spoil his fun. He stood on the small crescent of shingle, staring at the thick current of water before him where it ran and glittered in the sun. All along the bank buttercups were just beginning to unfold their petals to the sun, butter beneath his chin. Soon it would be summer. Who knew what that might bring?

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Solomon turned and squinted towards the bank where a boy had suddenly appeared, older, flesh thick about his waist. Bothwell, come to play his games. Bothwell leered at Solomon.

  ‘Are you playing with yourself?’

  Solomon flushed, took his hands from his pockets. ‘No.’

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Bothwell came sliding down the bank, grit on his sandals. ‘Come on, conchie. Let’s see.’

  ‘No.’