The Dreaming Suburb (24 page)

“I could do that. You just leave the bashing to me. We could sit one behind the other along the pipes, then you could whisper and pass notes. Old Chesty, him who takes 3-C, is half-blind anyway.” He swung his satchel like a flail. “I'd like to
see
anyone who stopped us getting those seats! I'd just like to
see
'em!”

Bernard could hardly keep the excitement out of his voice.

“We could do that, young Fraser, I reckon we could do that; but there's home-work. You get written subjects in 3-C,
and how are we going to help Boxer do
written
homework?”

Esme was now enjoying himself. He always enjoyed a Machiavellian role.

“We live next door to one another, don't we? I'll do his home-work, and he can copy it all out.”

And so it was arranged, and it amazed all three of them how smoothly it worked, right from the beginning.

Bernard and Esme remained in 3-B for less than a week. Their test-papers, turned in that first Saturday morning were so badly written, and so full of howlers, that Mr. Dodge—whose classroom irony had earned him the name of “Sarky” —was thankful to recommend their abrupt transfer to 3-C, where Boxer, already undisputed king of the Lower School, had no difficulty at all in persuading the two boys occupying the desks immediately behind him to abdicate in favour of Esme and Bernard.

They perfected their system throughout that first term, and by the end of the year it was very nearly foolproof. It was a simple but effective technique. Whenever Boxer was stumped by a question he simply leaned back, and waited for Esme's cautious prompt from the desk immediately behind. “Chesty”, the form-master, who took them for several subjects, was indeed short-sighted, and Esme soon acquired the prison knack of lipless conversation. In a very little while Boxer's ear became attuned to the pitch of Esme's controlled whisper and a stream of carefully sifted information moved up from his rear, like steady reinforcements trickling into a beleaguered saphead....
Edward the First, Conjunction, The Ten Commandments, le Cahier, fifty-seven, ten per cent, Joan of Arc, adjectival Clause
... day after day, week after week, the steady drip went on, until Boxer himself stood in more danger of moving into the “B” stream than either of his supporters.

“Chesty”, a benign, elderly man, was delighted. Boxer had been represented to him as a particularly stupid boy. He had obviously been maligned. He could only conclude that the boy had never been taught properly. Parker, of Form 2B, was notoriously impatient with what some teachers called the “garden-roller type”—the boy who needed a very strong push
to start him off, but who afterwards went rolling forward under his own momentum. “Chesty” even went out of his way to tell Parker as much, during an acrimonious coffee-break discussion in the masters' common-room.

The whispering served equally well for oral and class tests, but the written home-work called for more delicate handling. Esme enjoyed writing essays, and it was no hardship to him to write two compositions a week. The first time he wrote Boxer's essay, however, he was alarmed, and not a little annoyed, to discover that Boxer's work had earned him nine out of ten, while the author had collected a mere seven. Moreover, “Chesty” read Boxer's effort out loud, as an example of how promising an exercise it was, and it galled Esme to be in no position to claim the credit. He went into conference with Bernard on the subject.

“He'll smell a rat if I go on doing that, Carver Two! I'll have to make some spelling mistakes, and keep your brother down to about six or seven.”

Bernard agreed, and thereafter Boxer's work dropped off a little, not suddenly, but week by week, until it hovered about the average of six or seven. Esme also made a point of writing his own essay first, when he was fresh.

Outside the classroom Boxer took command. On the sports-field the other two acted as his trainer and second. They could be seen, almost any half-day, patting Boxer's huge calves, lacing his boots, holding his sweater, and giving him little pieces of advice, for all the world as though Boxer was a professional, and they each owned a piece of him.

In the field of mischief, carefully-prepared mischief, the balance of power shifted back to Esme, although the actual commission of a crime was generally assigned to Boxer. Thus it was Boxer who actually lit, and concealed, the cones of pungent-smelling French incense, that Esme purchased from Woolworth's and brought into class, Boxer who actually dropped the stink-bomb into the crevice between the master's dais and the wall, Boxer who gulped down a half-pint of ginger-beer that had been poured by Esme into a well-scoured sulphuric acid bottle on the laboratory shelves. It was this latter incident that caused Mr. Sisley, a young and pitifully earnest chemistry master, to faint on the spot, and
later abandon teaching for a snug roost as a manufacturing chemist, at Uxbridge.

Word of these incidents reached Mr. Silverton from time to time, and occasionally he administered justice on the taut trousers of the chief offenders. He hit hard, and accurately, but without malice. On no occasion, when they were sent in to him for punishment, did he comment on the cause of their being there. He caned them absent-mindedly, as though he was filling in a form, or putting coal on the fire, and the twins loved him for his silences. They were broadminded boys, and regarded Longjohn's cane as his legitimate means of defence against them, but they resented lectures and pi-jaw, for such talk embarrassed them.

Esme sometimes wondered at the Head's silences on these occasions. It passed through his mind that there was something sinister about them, and it sometimes seemed to him that Longjohn laid into him with a vigour, and a purposeful-ness, that were lacking in his address to the twins. It was not until the faintly ridiculous “Miss Reid row”, however, that he was fully confirmed in his suspicions, indeed, it was not until that incident had been cleared up that he came to know Longjohn at all.

Up to that time Longjohn had never been a human being, just “The Head”—to whose study one went for a hiding, a lean, scarred man in a neat grey suit, who read prayers at assembly, and was occasionally seen wandering about the corridors.

The “Miss Reid affair” was rather more than a classroom frolic. Miss Reid was the headmistress of the Girls' Grammar School, housed in adjacent buildings, and separated from the boys' school by an eight-foot brick wall, surmounted by embedded glass and three strands of barbed wire.

Miss Reid distrusted men and loathed boys. For years she had carried on a guerilla war against the boys' school, claiming the use of the communal playing-field at short notice, insisting that the boys' time of dismissal should be put back to 4.30, in order to give the girls time to get clear, and discourage association—pinpricks inflicted by a steady stream of memos, recommendations, and suggestions, aimed at segregation, that sometimes caused Mr. Silverton's cheeks to twitch
with maddening persistence. The feud between the two staffs was common knowledge among the rank and file of both schools, and the pupils naturally did all they could to exacerbate the situation. One of the boys' counterattacks was their time-honoured method of reclaiming lost balls.

Miss Reid's precise instructions regarding the reclamation of balls that went over the wall were carried out with ironic punctiliousness. Almost every day a boy wearing an expression about half-way between meekness and idiocy would present himself at Miss Reid's study, touch his cap, and ask for permission to reclaim a ball.

There came a day, however, when a football, driven hard and high by the size-nine boot of Boxer Carver, soared over the wall, and bounced on to the roof of the girls' toilets, rolling thence into the gutter, and remaining wedged there.

Impatient for the continuance of the game Boxer waived the customary procedure.

“Aw—give me a hunk up, Berni, and I'll get it without going round.”

In the event it was the lighter Bernard who retrieved it, after first climbing on Boxer's shoulders, and then on Esme's. He threw down the ball, and was preparing to scramble back to the wall when Miss Reid herself emerged from the washroom, immediately below. Seeing a boy climbing nimbly over the lavatory roof towards the dividing wall, she squealed with rage.

“Name, boy! Name!” she shouted, spreading her arms in order to prevent girls behind her from emerging into the open.

Bernard, who seldom made a joke, decided to make one now.

“I'm Dan, Dan, the Lavatory Man!” he replied, very pleasantly, and leaping on to the wall, rejoined his brother and Esme in the boys' yard.

He found Boxer, who had overheard the quip, almost hysterical with laughter. Unable to resist an active part in such a gallant demonstration, he ran along to a buttress, clawed his way to the top of the wall, thrust his head between the strands of wire, and shouted: “And I'm his twin-brother, mother!”

Miss Reid came round before afternoon assembly, and the trio owned up before the inevitable identity parade could be organised.

“I demand that the boys be expelled,” said Miss Reid, as the Head escorted her into the vestibule; “this is intolerable—quite intolerable!”

“Indeed, it is,” was all Mr. Silverton would reply, “and you may rely upon me to deal with it at once, Miss Reid. Thank you for reporting the matter.”

Deal with it he did, that same afternoon, and at first Esme had no reason to suppose his method would differ from that employed on previous occasions. He caned the twins first, and dismissed them, breathing hard, and clutching fistfuls of buttock, into the hall, where they were told to remain until supplied with a quire of paper on which to write:
“Ribald remarks seldom fall into the category of humour”
one thousand times.

“And if I detect the work of sympathisers on any of the pages handed in, you can assure them in advance that they'll write their own lines standing up!” was Longjohn's parting shot.

Esme stood by. He had taken no actual part in the incident, and was already beginning to regret the impulse of quixotic loyalty that had prompted him to join the twins in confession. A dabbing like that!
AND
a thousand lines!

But Longjohn only tossed his cane into a cupboard, and Esme noticed that his cheek was twitching more violently than ever.

“Sit down, Fraser,” he said shortly; “it's time you and I had our first intelligent conversation. How old are you now?”

Esme sat, relieved, but uncertain.

“Fifteen, sir,” he said, and suddenly realised that he was blushing.

Longjohn took out a pipe and slowly stuffed its bowl.

“Fifteen,” he mused, and his face ceased to twitch.
“When
were you fifteen?”

“In February, sir.”

Longjohn finished filling his pipe. There was a long silence, during which Esme could hear his heart-beats very distinctly. Presently Longjohn said:

“I've known all about your arrangements with the Carvers for some time past, Fraser. I tell you this straight away so that we can start on open ground. What I
am
anxious to know is how long do you intend to keep it up? Until you leave? Until you've failed School Cert., and thrown away every opportunity you ever had of learning
how
to learn?”

Esme shuffled his feet. He discovered, to his secret chagrin, that he was unable to meet Longjohn's eye. The man's friendliness and reasonableness were agonising. He wished now with all his heart that the Head would reach for his cane and give him the same ration as he had dealt out to the twins. Then he realised that this was all part of Longjohn's treatment. He was deliberately setting out to make him feel small, and mean, and cheap.

“They're my friends,” was all he could mumble.

Longjohn lit his pipe, and blew out a cloud of acrid smoke.

“I don't think they are—not really, Fraser,” he said. “They have each other, and I don't think you have ever really belonged there, have you?”

Esme felt sick. He saw Longjohn through a haze of smoke, and scalding tears that would not be held back. Then, quite suddenly, the Head was standing beside him, and smiling down at him.

“This had to come, Fraser. You know that, I believe. You see, Fraser, old chap, you have to look at this my way, and Carver One's way: You haven't done him much of a good turn—not really. He would never have learned much, one way or the other, but what you and his brother have done is to take away what little chance he ever had of learning. That's what your sort of cribbing is—a steady knocking-away of footholds from the chap you think you're helping. It's been going on for hundreds of years, and it's always disguised as comradeship. All his life now Carver One will have to rely on somebody else. That isn't your fault, not in the main, and it is difficult to blame his brother either, but it's still a fact, and not a very pleasant one, is it?”

“No, sir,” Esme managed, hoarsely; and then, more in an eifort to convince himself than any hope of convincing the Head: “They're... they're decent chaps, sir.”

Longjohn moved away, and stared out of the tall window. The asphalt yard, on which the window looked, was wide and empty. Every boy in the school was in class, all except the twins, slowly massaging their behinds in the hall, and Esme, here in the study, facing the second big crisis in his life.

Longjohn gave the boy a moment or two to collect himself. Then he went on: “It's like this, Fraser, the chaps here fall mainly into two streams, those who are going to have to earn a living with their hands—and I include among those all the fellows who will go out of here into offices, and banks, and shops—and the chaps who are able to
create
something out of themselves, chaps who can do something without big organisations, and lots of apparatus behind them. You're one of that minority. You might not know it yourself yet, but you are, most definitely. In other words, you've got a spark, and all the time you've been here you've been doing your best to stamp it out. Do you follow me?”

“Yes, sir,” said Esme, almost inaudibly.

“You've been tagging along with the Carvers because you were scared of being lonely. People like you—and like me, for that matter—will always be lonely, but being lonely is a dam' sight better than playing second-fiddle to people mentally inferior to you, isn't it? You'll find that out in due course. It's part of my job to see that you find it out as soon as possible, soon enough to do something about it. I'm going to put you into 5A. You'll start in there now, this afternoon. But I don't want you to leave here with the impression that I'm doing this solely because I want you to swot, and stuff your head with all the facts and figures you will find in your text-books. That isn't education—the stuffiest intelligence can absorb facts and figures at your age, and still spend a working life cooped up in an artificially-lit concrete box. I want you to do something better than that. I want you to learn
how
to learn, how to select
what
to remember, and what to discard. A mind is much like a body, Fraser. It's got to be trained, and flexed, and kept in condition. You're fond of English and History, aren't you?”