Saville (21 page)

When the day came his mother offered to go with him to the stop. It was barely seven o’clock; the streets of the village were still deserted. He stood at the door, conspicuous in his uniform, while his mother pulled on her coat.

‘I want to go on my own,’ he said.

‘What if Connors isn’t there?’ she said.

‘I’ll still catch the bus.’

‘And what happens at the other end?’

‘I can always ask the way.’

She stood in the door with her coat unbuttoned and watched him walk off along the street. When he reached the corner he didn’t wave; he glanced back, sharply, then went on towards the stop.

He was twenty minutes early. The stop was opposite a public house in the centre of the village. There was no one else about. He carried his raincoat over his arm, his satchel, an old one, over his shoulder. There was nothing in it. He’d thought of taking the football shirt and the pair of worn-down rugby-boots, but, despite his mother’s insistence, had decided finally he wouldn’t.

A lorry went past. Through the windows of the pub he could
see the vague shape of a clock set up against the wall. He couldn’t see its face.

A miner came down from the direction of the colliery and sat down in the gutter. He sat with his hands between his legs. Another came down; one or two other men appeared. Their voices came in a quiet murmur as he himself stood farther down the road against the window of a shop.

Finally, from the direction of the nearest houses, Connors and another boy appeared. Connors didn’t wear his cap; apart from a worn satchel which he carried beneath his arm, there was no indication that he was going to school at all. He wore long trousers; his school blazer, if he wore one, was concealed beneath a greyish raincoat.

He scarcely glanced up as he reached the stop; he nodded his head then went on talking to the other boy. They stood against the wall of the pub, between the miners, Connors kicking the wall behind him with his heel.

The other boy was older; he carried a small suitcase, dented and fastened by a leather strap. The cap of some other school was screwed up and set inside his jacket pocket.

Colin waited. One or two of the miners had looked across: they glanced at the brightness of the jacket, at the gold ribbon, which glistened in the sun, at the cap, at the new raincoat folded on his arm. One of them nodded to the others; there was a burst of laughter.

He glanced the other way. The stop was opposite the junction of the two roads that met at the centre of the village. The principal road swept through from east to west; the road from the south, and the station, crossed it, between halt signs, and continued past the Park and the manor, northwards, narrowing slightly as it crested the hill.

It was from this direction, careering downwards, that the bus would come. Twice he heard the roar of an engine, and twice a lorry appeared, rattling down the hill in a cloud of dust.

He heard a second burst of laughter; he glanced in the window of the shop behind – he could see his reflection, the high-peaked profile of his cap, the neat outline of the blazer. The shop was full of clothes – skirts, blouses, stockings, and women’s underwear. He studied the houses opposite, where the slope dipped
down from the shop-lined crossing. He thought of his mother at home, and Steve.

The bus appeared: it ran rattling down the hill, its windows glinting in the sun. It paused at the corner; the miners crouching against the wall stood up.

He waited for Connors. He and the other boy, still talking, leant against the wall.

Colin got on. He sat downstairs.

One or two other people appeared, a man in a raincoat, a woman with a basket. Their feet shuffled on the roof above his head; then, but for the murmur of the miners and the occasional slur of a match, the bus was silent.

Connors had taken out a book and was turning the pages; the other boy took the book from him and pushed back against the wall. The conductor came round. The driver got in. The engine started. Only when the conductor pressed the bell did Connors make a move: he closed the book in the other boy’s hand, put it in his satchel, made some remark to the boy, then, waving, stepped up on the platform. As the bus gathered speed he glanced over at Colin, nodded, and without making any remark went quickly up the stairs.

There were only two other people sitting downstairs, both miners, both black-faced and laughing as the conductor called out to them in recognition. He saw the redness of their lips, the white eyes and teeth, and smelled the dust from their clothes as the draught came back from the door.

He waited; there was no sound of Connors coming down again.

The conductor took his fare. He sat with his satchel across his knees, his raincoat laid on top.

They passed the end of the lane leading to the pit; he could see the roof of the school across the yard and nearer the plume of smoke and steam from the colliery engine. A miner was running down the lane; he waved his arm, but the bus passed on.

From where he was sitting, leaning backwards, he could see the last houses of the village as they disappeared. Soon all that was visible behind were the hedged fields, the top of the pit chimney, and the outline of the colliery stack.

Another boy, wearing a new uniform like himself, got on; he was accompanied by his mother.

They passed a large stone mansion, set back beyond a line of trees; the bus swept over a hump-backed bridge; he glimpsed a lily-padded lake. Beyond, the road rose steeply to a row of houses; a group of girls got on. They wore light-blue dresses and yellow straw hats: he could hear Connors’s voice as they climbed upstairs. The bus was full: at the crest of a rise he caught a distant glimpse of the town, a silhouette of towers and the single steeple.

They emerged finally beside the river: barges were moored above a concrete weir. The single spire and the towers of the town were visible once more above stone-slabbed roofs. A hill appeared: the bus shuddered slowly to its summit.

‘All off. All change,’ the conductor called.

The walls of the cathedral were visible across the road.

Colin caught a glimpse of Connors as he came off the bus – talking to the girls in the yellow straw hats, he set off in the direction of the city centre.

There were other groups descending from the crowded buses at the top of the slope. He followed the largest group, which made its way through the narrow, cobbled alley into the thoroughfare of shops beyond.

It was half-past eight. Other groups joined those emerging from the alley: a mass of dark-blue figures moved slowly along each pavement.

The doors to the school itself were closed. A flight of stone steps led down to a field. Blazered figures walked to and fro. Immediately behind the building itself a wooden fence divided the field from a pebbled yard.

A bell was rung: the mass of uniformed figures divided into two and moved off towards either end of the dark stone building.

He went back up the steps. Boys with tasselled caps were standing at the door. They called out to the boys as they rushed inside.

Connors was standing immediately inside.

‘I wondered where you’d got to,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking in the field.’

He took his arm.

‘Have you got your health certificate?’ he added.

He took out the piece of paper he’d been given before he left. It had been signed at the bottom, first by his mother and then, after an argument, by his father.

‘Three A. You’ll have old Hodges,’ Connors said.

‘When do they do the ducking?’ he said.

‘Haven’t they collared you already?’

He shook his head. He wondered if he’d been abandoned because of his build, or overlooked.

‘They’ll probably have you in at break, then,’ Connors said. He released his arm. ‘If you have any trouble I’ll see you around.’

The corridor itself was full of figures; the walls were lined by framed photographs of football teams. Stone steps went up to the floor above.

Connors had left him at a panelled door. The room inside was tall: so high, in fact that the ceiling went up into the roof of the building. The windows, mullioned, with diamond panes, took up the greater part of the outside wall. The other three walls were completely bare. The desks themselves were large and stood in four rows the length of the room. The spaces between the rows were full of boys – mostly like himself, in new blazers, some still wearing caps, they stood gazing up at the ceiling, at the height of the windows, at the massive, square-shaped desks and the empty walls.

A man came in. He wore the white collar of a clergyman. His clothes were dark, his face red, a line of white hair receding across his scalp and growing out in two broad tufts at the back of his head.

‘Caps off! Caps off! Do you wear caps inside a building? What manners have you been taught? Caps off, caps off inside a building.’

The few caps still on were taken off.

‘Sit down. Don’t stand around,’ the man had said.

He went to a large desk at the end of the room.

‘What are you doing, boy?’ he shouted.

Several of the boys, following his command, were already sitting.

‘Do you sit down before a master?’

‘No, sir,’ one of the boys had said.

‘Wait till I’m seated.’ He raised his head. ‘Then you sit down, when I’m sat down.’

The boys got up. The master sat down. He wore a long black gown over his dark-blue suit.

‘Now please be seated, gentlemen,’ he said.

Colin found a chair at the back of the room. Most of the desks were already taken.

‘First things first,’ the master said. ‘I’ll call your names. Have you got that clear?’

‘Yes, sir,’ some of the boys had said.

‘When I call your name you come up here, hand me your certificate, your
health
certificate, and go back to your place.’

He waited for an answer.

‘Yes, sir,’ most of the boys had said.

‘Sit up straight. I want no loafers in 3A.’

The names were called. The master ticked them off inside a register.

‘Not here. Not here,’ he began to shout at one point. ‘You’re in 3 Upper, boy, not here. In with the brainy lot, not these first-year duffers.’

The boy went out.

Colin went up when his name was called. He gave in the certificate: it was opened out, straightened, put on the pile, and he went back to his chair.

‘All present. All correct,’ the master said. He screwed back the top of his pen, took off the pair of glasses he’d put on to mark the register, and glanced slowly round the room. The murmur of voices faded.

‘My name is Hodges,’ he said. ‘Not Bodges. Or Codges. Or even Dodges.
Mister Hodges
.’ He gazed round at them again for several seconds. ‘I’ll be your form-master for the whole of the year. And woe betide’, he added, ‘any boy who gets himself into any trouble. I don’t like trouble. I have an aversion to trouble. Trouble and I have never got on well together. You’ll see that now by the colour of my face. You’ll see it going slightly red. It gets even redder when trouble actually appears. It becomes positively scarlet, and woe betide anyone who comes in front of me when my face is scarlet. I do all sorts of unimaginable and horrible things when my face is scarlet. I do pretty terrible
things when it’s even red; but when it’s scarlet I can’t tell you the things I’m capable of. So trouble is something I don’t wish to hear even mentioned in this room: not in my own classes, that is, or anyone else’s.’

He waited for the colour to subside.

‘Now there’s a lot to do today. At times, to some of you, it may seem extremely tedious. Whenever it does I want you to gaze, not at me, nor at your neighbour, nor at the floor, nor at your desk, but at the ceiling. If you gaze at the ceiling it’s my opinion you won’t come to any harm. I want you, whenever you feel boredom coming on, to gaze in a vertical direction and silently, so no one anywhere can possibly hear, recite to yourself your multiplication tables. I want you to recite the two times, the three times, right through to your twelve times. I shall test you on those tables at the end of the morning and woe betide anyone who gets one wrong. I have a strong aversion to boys who get things wrong, particularly to boys who’ve had all morning to get things right.’ He waited. ‘You, boy:
what’s twelve times seven
?’

A boy near the front put up his hand.

One or two other hands went up.

The boy who had been asked had gone bright red.

‘Twelve times seven.’ He waited. ‘You’ll be one of the boys whose head I’ll expect to see gazing for quite lengthy intervals in a vertical direction. What is it? What is it? What is it, boy?’

‘Seventy-two, sir,’ one of the boys had said.

‘Seventy
what
?’

‘Eighty-four!’ several boys called out.

‘My goodness. The procedure for admitting boys to this school deteriorates visibly every year. I expect a seven-year-old boy to tell me that. How old are you?’

The boy with the red face had murmured his age.

‘What? What? What’s that?’

‘Twelve, sir.’

‘Twelve? Twelve what? Weeks? Months? Hours?
Rabbits?
’

‘Years, sir.’

‘Years.’

He waited, nodding.

‘I can see we’ve got a great deal of work before us here. A great deal.’

He waited once again, still looking round.

‘I was going to add, if there are any clever-dicks here who think they know their tables backwards I would like them by a similar process – namely, the head inclined in a respectful manner towards the ceiling – to memorize and familiarize themselves with a favourite hymn. It may be a Jewish hymn, a Catholic hymn, a Methodist hymn, or an Anglican hymn, or, indeed, a Buddhist hymn if they so desire. But whatever its source, a paean of praise directed to the Divine Presence who overlooks us all. Has that been understood?’

He waited.

‘I shall, after the multiplication tables have been thoroughly tested, turn to the hymns and call forth from amongst you, ad hoc … what does ad hoc mean, boy?’

Another boy’s face turned red.

He waited.

No one, however, had raised their hands.