A Kestrel for a Knave (7 page)

Billy closed his eyes and yawned down his nostrils into his chest.

‘Our Fa-ther which art in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name. He unlocked the shed door, slipped inside and closed it quietly behind him. The hawk was perched on a branch which had been wedged between the walls towards the back of the shed. The only other furniture in the shed were two shelves, one fixed behind the
bars of the door, the other high up on one wall. The walls and ceiling were whitewashed, and the floor had been sprinkled with a thick layer of dry sand, sprinkled thicker beneath the perch and the shelves. The shelf on the door was marked with two dried mutes, both thick and white, with a central deposit of faeces as crozzled and black as the burnt ends of matches.

Billy approached the hawk slowly, regarding it obliquely, clucking and chanting softly, ‘Kes Kes Kes.’ The hawk bobbed her head and shifted along the perch. Billy held out his gauntlet and offered her a scrap of beef. She reached forward and grasped it with her beak, and tried to pull it from his glove. Billy gripped the beef tightly between forefinger and thumb; and in order to obtain more leverage, the hawk stepped on to his fist. He allowed her to take the beef, then replaced her on the perch, touching the backs of her legs against the wood so that she stepped backwards on to it. He dipped into the leather satchel at his hip and offered her a fresh scrap; this time holding it just out of range of her reaching beak. She bobbed her head and tippled forward slightly, regained balance, then glanced about, uncertain, like someone up on the top board for the first time.

‘Come on, Kes. Come on then.’

He stood still. The hawk looked at the meat, then jumped on to the glove and took it. Billy smiled and replaced it with a tough strip of beef, and as the hawk busied herself with it, he attached a swivel to the ends of the jesses dangling from her legs, slipped the jesses between the first and second fingers of his glove, and felt into his bag for the leash. The hawk looked up from her feeding. Billy rubbed his finger and thumb to make the meat move between them, and as the hawk attended to it again, he threaded the leash
through the lower ring of the swivel and pulled it all the way through until the knot at the other end snagged on the ring. He completed the security by looping the leash twice round his glove and tying the end round his little finger.

He walked to the door and slowly pushed it open. The hawk looked up, and as he moved out into the full light, her eyes seemed to expand, her body contract as she flattened her feathers. She bobbed her head, once, twice, then bated, throwing herself sideways off his glove and hanging upside down, thrashing her wings and screaming. Billy waited for her to stop, then placed his hand gently under her breast and lifted her back on to the glove. She bated again; and again, and each time Billy lifted her carefully back up, until finally she stayed up, beak half open, panting, glaring round.

‘What’s up then? What’s a matter with you, Kes? Anybody’d think you’d never been out before.’

The hawk roused her feathers and bent to her meat, her misdemeanours apparently forgotten.

Billy walked her round the garden, speaking quietly to her all the time. Then he turned up the path at the side of the house and approached the front gate, watching the hawk for her reactions. A car approached. The hawk tensed, watched it pass, then resumed her meal as it sped away up the avenue. On the opposite pavement a little boy, pedalling a tricycle round in tight circles, looked up and saw them, immediately unwound and drove straight off the pavement, making the tin mudguards clank as the wheels jonked down into the gutter. Billy held the hawk away from him, anticipating a bate, but she scarcely glanced up at the sound, or at the boy as he cycled towards them and hutched his tricycle up on to the pavement.

‘Oo that’s a smasher. What is it?’

‘What tha think it is?’

‘Is it an owl?’

‘It’s a kestrel.’

‘Where you got it from?’

‘Found it.’

‘Is it tame?’

‘It’s trained. I’ve trained it.’

Billy pointed to himself, and smiled across at the hawk.

‘Don’t it look fierce?’

‘It is.’

‘Does it kill things and eat ’em?’

‘Course it does. It kills little kids on bikes.’

The boy laughed without smiling.

‘It don’t.’

‘What’s tha think that is it’s eating now then?’

‘It’s only a piece of meat.’

‘It’s a piece o’ leg off a kid it caught yesterday. When it catches ’em it sits on their handlebars and rips ’em to pieces. Eyes first.’

The boy looked down at the chrome handlebars and began to swing them from side to side, making the front wheel describe a steady arc like a windscreen wiper.

‘I’ll bet I dare stroke it.’

‘Tha’d better not.’

‘I’ll bet I dare.’

‘It’ll have thi hand off if tha tries.’

The boy stood up, straddling the tricycle frame, and slowly lifted one hand towards the hawk. She mantled her wings over the meat, then struck out with her scaly yellow legs, screaming, and raking at the hand with her talons. The boy jerked his arm back with such force that its momentum carried his whole body over the tricycle and on
to the ground. He scrambled up, as wide-eyed as the hawk, mounted, and pedalled off down the pavement, his legs whirring like bees’ wings.

Billy watched him go, then opened the gate and walked up the avenue. He crossed at the top and walked down the other side to the cul-de-sac, round, and back up to his own house. And all the way round people stared, some crossing the avenue for a closer look, others glancing back. And the hawk, alert to every movement, returned their stares until they turned away and passed on.

‘Casper! Casper!’ Billy opened his eyes. The rest of the school were sitting on the floor, giggling up at him. Billy glanced about, then blushed and dropped down as quick as a house of cards.

‘Up, Casper! Up on your feet, lad!’

There was a moment’s pause, then Billy rose into view again, his reappearance producing a buzz of excitement.

‘
SILENCE
– unless some more of you want to stand up with him.’

Gryce let Billy stand there in the silence, head bowed, face burning on his chest.

‘And get your head up lad! Or you’ll be falling asleep again!’

Billy lifted his face. Beads of sweat were poised on his forehead and the sides of his nose.

‘You were asleep weren’t you?… Well? Speak up, lad!’

‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘Well I know. You were fast asleep on your feet. Weren’t you?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Fast asleep during the Lord’s Prayer! I’ll thrash you, you irreverent scoundrel!’

He demonstrated the act twice down the side of the lectern.

‘Were you tired, lad?’

‘I don’t know, Sir.’

‘Don’t know? You wouldn’t be tired if you’d get to bed at night instead of roaming the streets at all hours up to mischief!’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Or sitting up ’til dawn watching some tripe on television! Report to my room straight after assembly. You will be tired when I’ve finished with you, lad!’

Billy sat down, and Gryce pulled a thin wad of papers from between the pages of the Bible and placed them on top of it.

‘Now here are the announcements: – there will be a meeting of the Intermediate Football team in the gym at break this morning.’

He slid the top sheet down a step, on to the face of the lectern.

‘A reminder that the Youth Employment Officer will be in this afternoon to see the Easter leavers. They will be sent for from their respective classes, and should report to the medical room, where the interviews will take place. Your parents
SHOULD
have been told by this time, but if any boy
HAS
forgotten, and thinks that his parents may wish to attend his interview, then he can consult the list on the main notice board for approximate times.’

Securing the papers underneath with one hand, he pushed the notice away from him with the other. It caught the edge of the first sheet and shunted it off the lectern. Gryce grabbed at it, but the paper swooped away in a shallow glide, looped the loop, and slid into a perfect landing
face up on the platform. Gryce looked across at it, and at the rows of upturned faces, then beckoned the reader from the back of the platform to come forward and pick it up.

‘I would also like to see the three members of the smokers’ union whom I didn’t have time to deal with yesterday. They can pay their dues at my room straight after assembly. Right. Dismiss.’

The three smokers, MacDowall and Billy stood in a loose circle in the foyer outside Gryce’s room.

‘It wasn’t me that coughed tha knows. I’m goin’ to tell him so an’ all.’

‘It makes no difference whether tha tells him or not, he don’t listen.’

‘I’m bringing my father up if he giz me t’stick, anyroad.’

‘What tha allus bringin’ thi father up for? He never does owt when he comes. They say t’last time he came up, Gryce gave him t’stick an’ all.’

The three smokers fell away and leaned back on the half-tiled wall to observe.

‘At least I’ve got a father to bring up, that’s more than thar can say, Casper.’

‘Shut thi gob, MacDowall!’

‘Why, what thar goin’ to do about it, Casper?’

They closed up; chest to chest, eye to eye, fists ready at the hips.

‘Tha’d be surprised.’

‘Right then, I’ll see thi at break.’

‘Anytime tha wants.’

‘Right then.’

‘Right.’

They stepped apart at footsteps approaching down the corridor. A boy came round the corner and knocked on Gryce’s door.

‘He’s not in.’

The smoker at the front of the queue jerked his head towards the back.

‘If tha’s come for t’stick tha’d better get to t’back o’ t’queue, he’s not come back from assembly yet.’

‘I’ve not come for the stick. Crossley’s sent me with a message.’

Billy took his place in the line against the wall.

‘It’s his favourite trick, this. He likes to keep you waiting, he thinks it makes it worse.’

The second smoker spat between his teeth and spread it with the sole of one shoe, making the red vinyl tile shiny.

‘It don’t bother me if he keeps us standing here ’til four. I’d sooner have t’stick anyday than do lessons.’

He began to feel in his pockets, collecting together in one palm a bunch of tab ends and a lighter without a cap. He offered them to the messenger.

‘Here, tha’d better save us these ’til after. Cos if he searches us he’ll only take ’em off us an’ gi’ us another two strokes.’

The messenger looked down at the hand without taking its contents. The other two smokers were busy in their own pockets.

‘I’m not having ’em, you’re not getting me into trouble as well.’

‘Who’s getting thi into trouble? Tha can gi’ us ’em straight back after.’

The messenger shook his head.

‘I don’t want ’em.’

‘Does tha want some fist instead?’

The smokers surrounded him, all three holding out their smoking equipment. The messenger took it. Billy, looking across the foyer and through the wired glass doors into the hall, stood up off the wall.

‘Hey up, he’s here; Gryce pudding.’

They formed up as neatly as a hand of cards being knocked together. Gryce strode past them and entered his room as though they weren’t there. But he left the door open, and a moment later issued his usual invitation to enter:

‘Come in, you reprobates!’

He was standing with his back to the electric fire, his stick tucked under his buttocks like a trapeze bar.

The boys lined up in front of the window and faced him across the carpet. Gryce surveyed them in turn, shaking his head at each face as though he was being forced to choose from a range of shoddy goods.

‘The same old faces. Why is it always the same old faces?’

The messenger stepped forward and raised one hand.

‘Please, Sir.’

‘Don’t interrupt, boy, when I’m speaking.’

He stepped back and filled the gap in the line.

‘I’m sick of you boys, you’ll be the death of me. Not a day goes by without me having to deal with a line of boys. I can’t remember a day, not one day, in all the years I’ve been in this school, and how long’s that?… ten years, and the school’s no better now than it was on the day that it opened. I can’t understand it. I can’t understand it at all.’

The boys couldn’t understand it either, and they dropped their eyes as he searched for an answer in their faces. Failing
to find one there, he stared past them out of the window.

The lawn stretching down to the front railings was studded with worm casts, and badly in need of its Spring growth. The border separating the lawn from the drive was turned earth, and in the centre of the lawn stood a silver birch tree in a little round bed. Its trunk cut a segment out of a house across the road, and out of the merging grey and black of the sky above it, and although the branches were still bare, the white of the trunk against the dull green, and red and greys, hinted of Spring, and provided the only clean feature of the whole picture.

‘I’ve taught in this City for over thirty-five years now; many of your parents were pupils under me in the old City schools before this estate was built; and I’m certain that in all those years I’ve never encountered a generation as difficult to handle as this one. I thought I understood young people, I should be able to with all my experience, yet there’s something happening today that’s frightening, that makes me feel that it’s all been a waste of time…. Like it’s a waste of time standing here talking to you boys, because you won’t take a blind bit of notice what I’m saying. I know what you’re thinking now, you’re thinking, why doesn’t he get on with it and let us go, instead of standing there babbling on? That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it? Isn’t it, MacDowall?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘O yes it is. I can see it in your eyes, lad, they’re glazed over. You’re not interested. Nobody can tell you anything, can they, MacDowall? You know it all, you young people, you think you’re so sophisticated with all your
gear
and your music. But the trouble is, it’s only superficial, just a sheen with nothing worthwhile or solid underneath. As far
as I can see there’s been no advance at all in discipline, decency, manners or morals. And do you know how I know this? Well, I’ll tell you. Because I still have to use this every day.’