Futuretrack 5 (3 page)

Rog and Alec and I didn’t budge. We’d spoil their rotten fun if we died for it. Roger grinned at Alec and me; a grey grin out of hell.

“Cheer up—
you’ve
passed. Have a fag.”

“No, thanks,” said Alec. “I’ll wait till it’s over, now. In another ten seconds,
they’ll
be late.” Voice calm, but his scalp twitching, making his pillbox tassel bob up and down.

The college clock chimed, its mechanism audible. The college doors opened. Miss Beswick, college secretary, tweed skirt, twinset, and pearls emerged, long white paper in her hand. Four school sergeants with her. Ex-coppers, huge in white caps. Laughing loudly, loving it all.

“Stand back, lads. Only a routine notice.”

“Mind
the lady. We’ll need her next year.”

Last year, things had got out of hand. Miss Beswick had been on crutches till September. She unlocked the notice board, with maddening, trembling slowness.

On the fringes, Bairstow fainted.

They left him lying.

The glass doors swung open, winking hugely red. Miss Beswick pulled out four drawing pins, put three between her pale, prim lips. Was she being slow on
purpose?

The sergeants, red-faced and straining, had linked arms to protect her. One drawing pin went home, two, three, four. The notice board winked redly shut. She relocked it precisely and the sergeants got her away by main force. Just in time. One sergeant was doubled up with pain, another nursing his wrist, as civilisation collapsed into a heaving, straining, rugby scrum.

Pillbox hats falling in showers, crunching underfoot. A blazer ripped, in the savage panting, struggling silence. Then, with a crash and squeal, the glass of the notice board broke. I hoped it wasn’t somebody’s face; people had lost eyes. I’d suggested to the Head a perspex notice board, padded with sorbo-rubber. But tradition said glass, replaced every year.

We looked up at the staff leaning out, open-mouthed, drooling.

“Revolting,” said Alec.

“Pigs at a feeding trough,” said Roger; but his big fists were clenched white.

No news emerged. People who knew their results couldn’t get out for those pushing behind. Then Fatty Jobling crawled out through the forest of legs, bent spectacles hanging around his jaw and one ear bleeding. He raised his arms, eyes still shut, still on his knees.

“I’ve passed, I’ve
passed.”
Then he burst into tears.

Other battered figures crawled out. But, in the main ruck, kicking and punching. The notice board, wrenched from its moorings, reared up, wobbled, then dropped down out of sight. Splintering of cracking wood.

“Oh, my ribs, my ribs.”

Feeling our eyes on him, Fatty stood up, recovered his glasses, pulled the rags of his blazer round him, and staggered across. He embraced Alec.

“You’ve passed. You’re
top!”

Alec freed himself with a fastidious shrug; but color was flooding back into his face. “Any other results?” he asked casually. Only he could ask.

Fatty’s eyes skated over Rog and me, dropped. “I only noticed you, because you’re top.” Liar; he couldn’t get away fast enough. We stared at each other, helpless. Till the end, we’d hoped for Rog.

“Go on, off to the flagpole then,” said Rog savagely to Alec. It was tradition that those who passed stood by the flagpole. Those who failed waited outside the gate.

Alec opened his mouth three times to say something, then walked away.

“Seeya,” said Rog abruptly. Walked out through the gate, stood staring across the Solent.

“You might have waited,” I shouted. “I might have failed too.”

“Pigs might fly,” he shouted without turning. “Better go and see, hadn’t you?”

The scrum was thinning rapidly. Lads passed me, heads down, not looking, going to join Rog. Others clustered round the flagpole, jumping up and down and shouting. Then silent suddenly, as they remembered the gate group.

The pass list flapped out through the broken, bloodied glass. I bent to read it, sick for Rog. Ran my eye down the list, peeved I wasn’t top.

My eyes ran further and further. Panic gripped my guts. My name wasn’t above the pass line. I checked again. A third time. It was insane…

My eye dived gingerly below the pass line. Deeper and deeper, through kids I could’ve eaten for breakfast, three at a time.

My name wasn’t below the pass line either. I went on reading, above, below, above, below. Nothing. A computer hiccup. I’d have somebody’s guts for garters…

Then I saw at the bottom: “Kitson unclassified. Report to Headmaster at nine.”

It was hard not to walk round in circles. It was hard not to scream. I was
nothing.
I had nowhere to stand. Nobody had ever been unclassified before.

The group round the flagpole stared at me, baffled; then wouldn’t look at me at all. Neither would the group outside the gate. The two groups shouted jokes and rude remarks to each other, but the flow soon dried up, and they turned their backs on each other.

Silence again. It was unbearable to be alone.

For a fleeting bitter second I even wanted to join the mob outside the gate.

But the Unnem van was mercifully quick; they don’t hang about. It pulled up, grey and battered, heavy mesh over its windows. It looked like people had been throwing bricks at it all its life. A Paramil opened the rear doors and silently threw out some bales of blue cloth. Silently, the new Unnems stripped off torn blazers and dropped them in the road. We’d all been trained to get changed quickly. Within two minutes they were wearing faded thin denims, heavy-studded unpolished black boots.

The Paramil gestured with his blaster. They got aboard silently, without looking back. The van did a U-turn across the discarded blazers and drove off. I couldn’t see through the heavy mesh if they waved or not. Then there was only their clothes in the road, looking like a bloodless massacre.

Once the van had gone, the new Ests cheered up quickly—like after a funeral. The teachers came out and started slapping them on the back. The new Ests began calling the teachers by their Christian names, telling them what bloody awful teachers they’d been and what they’d hated most about their lessons. The teachers took it jolly well, laughing loudly and heartily. Quite a party, except when they caught sight of me. Then they stopped laughing, like I was a blockage in the drains, or a rain cloud on sports day. Finally, they turned their backs and kept them turned.

Then the Head bustled up and led them off, tattered and bloody, for celebration champagne. Later, when they’d washed the glass splinters out of their hair, they’d be going to a dance at the Ladies’ College. Now Ests were truly Est, courtship rituals could begin. Staff would not be patrolling the shrubberies.

Trouble was, to get to the Head’s house, they had to pass me. The Head swept past, marble-blue eyes tilted well above my head, looking at the last of the sunset. Like newly born goslings following a gander, nearly all the new Ests did exactly the same. I wanted to laugh,

they looked so smug and pseud. A few still looked me in the eye, twisting mouths or raising eyebrows to show how upset they were. Only Alec looked really miserable. I was left alone to wander. A blackbird sang from the shrubbery, not caring
what
I was. The corner flags for next season’s rugby threw long shadows as they fluttered. Far above, Concorde flew its monthly ceremonial flight. It flew high enough to leave a vapour trail, and I wondered which of its hundred fully trained Est pilots was actually getting a chance to fly it.

I entered the college lobby, prompt on nine. Shaking with rage, jumping at shadows.

Footsteps. Angry, sharp, limping footsteps coming up the parquet corridor. Major Arnold, deputy head. Limping from a wound he got in Northern Ireland, before the first psychopters finished off the IRA. Thin, upright, dark moustache, white streaks in his Brylcreamed hair. He had his hair cut weekly, short-back-and-sides, so the skin showed through pale, in contrast with his sunburned face. Very fit for his age; played squash. Even climbed the masts with us, chewing his moustache savagely with sweat running down his face. It cost him.

A bitter man. Full of rage held down to heel like a snarling dog. Whether it was caused by the pain of his leg or something else, we never knew. We adored him, because when you asked him embarrassing questions, he always gave you straight answers. He might think for minutes on end, head bowed, till you thought he’d gone to sleep. Then he’d look up and give you the truth, like water spurting from a boiling kettle.

“No, Kitson, the Battle of Belfast wasn’t a famous victory. The IRA stood no chance… nowhere left to hide, once the psychopters located them. We had fifty times their firepower. We stood well back and took no chances. We had two men slightly injured.”

He was angry now. “Kitson! Come!” He started back up the corridor. Clumsy and skidding with fear, I fell in behind.

“What happened, sir? What did I do wrong?” I was wailing like a first-year.

“I
warned
you, Kitson.”

“What,
sir?”

“What was the last thing I said to you, before the exam?

“You told me not to score a hundred percent, sir.”

“Well, that’s what you did wrong.”

“I thought you were joking, sir.”

“Well, I wasn’t. You scored a hundred percent and they’ll
never
forgive you.”

“What’s going to happen to me, sir?”

“That I’m not allowed to say. The Head …”

We walked as in a nightmare up that endless oak-panelled corridor, hung with silver cups and shields, rowing pennants, team photographs. A nasty thought struck me. I remembered Madden, Head Boy in my first-year. I’d been Madden’s fag. He was kind; I hero-worshipped him, drooling over his face in the team photographs. Then, one Parents’ Day, Madden vanished through the Wire. The following term, heartbroken, I looked for his face in the team photographs; it was no longer there.

Some bastard had taken each photo from its frame and cut Madden’s head out. Replaced it with a smug, smiling Est’s face…

“Will they cut me out of the team photographs, sir?”

“That’s the least of your worries, now.”

He stopped at the Head’s door. Pondered, then decided to shake me by the hand. It made me feel like a leper he was doing good to.

“You won’t like where you’re going, Kitson. But I hope you’ll display your usual guts.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, stupidly. But he was gone. I knocked on the Head’s door.

“Come.” The Head was signing papers. Pink, manicured hands, below white shirt cuffs, moved each paper with distaste, then slashed it with a ballpoint. Like a gentleman-farmer wringing chicken’s necks with his gloves on. He paused, giving me enough time to read a typed name, upside down. Roger’s. He was consigning the new Unnems through the Wire.

He was also trying to needle me. I studied at leisure his white, newly washed hair. The heavy tweed suit, creamy like oatmeal. The red-veined cheeks, like a healthy, elderly farmer’s. The polished old brogues sticking through the desk, shiny as conkers. I’d never realised how much I’d hated him.

He glanced up suddenly and caught my look; returned it with interest.

“Hundred percent, Kitson. Well, you’ve done it at last.”

“Done what, sir?”

“Don’t you think it rather
vulgar
to score a hundred percent?”

“I only wanted to get things right.”

“And be damned to the feelings of everybody else?

You think we’re all mediocrities here, don’t you, Kitson? Boys and staff?”

“Yes.” What was the point of lying now?

“It never occurred to you that the essence of being an Est is
team
spirit,
team
achievement? Unless
you
were running the team, of course?”

“You
made me Head Boy.”

“I gave you enough rope and you hanged yourself. Nothing was ever right for you, was it? Can’t we modernize this, improve this? Is there any member of staff you haven’t mimicked and mocked in front of younger boys?”

“Major Arnold. He’s honest.”

That hurt; I was glad. The hate of years boiled up in me; all the layers of tact and sham peeling off… Better than being afraid.

“Why are you so angry, Kitson?”

“You made arse holes of the lot of them… round the Results Board… fighting like pigs round a trough …”

“Most of them seem to have forgiven me; they’re drinking enough of my champagne.”

“Maybe they’re thirsty from licking your arse. And what about the ones who aren’t drinking champagne? Like Roger?” I was screaming by this time, totally out of control for the first time in years. But I no longer cared.

“Are you questioning the state’s right to put unwanted people through the Wire?”

“Yes, I am.”

He leaned back with a satisfied smile. “I suppose you realise that what you’ve just said is high treason… and I had a tape recorder running. …”

I glanced desperately round his desk. Where was the tape recorder? Under his blotter? In the antique brass inkwell? They’re so small now it could be anywhere…

“I’ve been telling the governors for years that we’ve been harbouring a viper in our bosom. Perhaps they’ll believe me, now… even your father’s considerable influence won’t save you this time. …”

“From what… the lobo-farm?”

“So you know about the lobo-farm? I wonder who told you?”

“We all know about it.” The lobo-farm was the ultimate nightmare; the one that wakened you screaming. The lobo-farm, where they strapped you down and gave you a frontal lobotomy. They didn’t have to open your skull anymore; they simply passed your head under a tiny laser beam. Which did you no damage at all, except it cut off the frontal lobes from the rest of your brain. You could walk away within two minutes of the operation. Trouble was, you no longer knew where you wanted to walk to. You were practically down to sheep or cow level; walked about smiling and whistling without a care in the world. Given simple instructions, you simply carried them out. Provided it wasn’t more than sawing logs or rough-digging. International terrorists went into the lobo-farm and came out fit to be trained as housemaids. Top people liked having them around, particularly if they’d been
famous
international terrorists. They made a good talking point at sherry parties. Guests found their unfailing, cheerful willingness totally unnerving.