Breaking and Entering (41 page)

Was that a warning, Daniel wondered, in case he himself might be planning petty larceny? He remembered school assemblies when the Head would make an accusation: ‘somebody (and that boy knows who he is)' was guilty of ‘removing' a brand new leather sports bag from the junior locker-room. Invariably he would blush to his ears, feeling the finger of suspicion pointing to his own squirming form. He had never actually stolen so much as a toffee or a ruler, but the more scarlet and contorted his face, the more conclusive was his guilt.

Even now, he knew he was flushed, though as much from heat and fear as guilt. Major Potts, in contrast, appeared enviably cool. Despite the sultry weather, he was wearing a three-piece suit with a stiff white shirt and formal tie. Yet he betrayed no hint bf discomfort; his clothes immaculate, his face imperturbably pale.

‘I'll leave these keys with you, Mr Hughson. Can you please be sure to lock the door behind you, then drop them back to my office? And I'd appreciate it if you could return by half past five. I have to get off prompt today.'

‘Y … yes, of course,' Daniel stuttered, adding a belated ‘Sir', and realizing to his discomfiture that he should have called him ‘Sir' throughout the interview. More black marks – this time for disrespect. Yet, as he watched the lordly figure stride back across the quad, he was almost sorry to see him disappear. Now he was on his own, with no distraction from his fear. Yet how shameful to be frightened of walking into a perfectly ordinary building, which didn't even look as big as he remembered it, and by no means as oppressive. Raleigh House had been built on a less daunting scale than the main school buildings and the seven Senior Houses, and was definitely less bleak inside. Yes, here was the small entrance-hall, with the staircase leading off it, and the Day Room and the classrooms at the back. He paused to get his bearings, noting the new lino and the almost-cheerful orange walls. The huge noticeboard which covered one side-wall displayed nothing more alarming than games fixtures and duty-rosters, lists of dormitory monitors and details of various school activities and clubs. A portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh, with high-domed forehead and pointed beard, hung on the opposite wall. That was a new acquisition, as was the table-tennis table in the large though shabby Day Room, the television set, and the squashy vinyl chairs in a shade of ardent marigold, which seemed blasphemous in their hedonistic brilliance. Changes for the better, as Major Potts had said.

Further such changes awaited him upstairs: duvets on the beds instead of scrawny blankets; even a cuddly toy, for heaven's sake – a goggle-eyed giraffe which must have been left behind by its owner. He remembered some godforsaken new bug turning up, aged seven, with his teddy bear. The bear had lasted half an hour before being ceremoniously dismembered and drowned in the school pond. When the bereaved child howled his protest, he was threatened with a similar fate. But perhaps nowadays it was no longer
de rigueur
for the under-nines to put away all childish things.

Blast! His nose was running again. He dived into the washroom to fetch a length of toilet paper. The place had been modernized almost beyond recognition – no longer the cesspit he remembered, with its growling water-pipes and total lack of privacy, but a pleasant blue-tiled shower-room which would do justice to a leisure centre.

He walked on to the end of the passage to search out his own dormitory – the one he'd been allocated at the start of his first term, when he, too, was only seven. He stood in the doorway, hardly seeing the brightly patterned duvet-covers, or the prints of ships around the walls. This room could never be brightened, never modernized. The pain and grief it contained would seep through any whitewash like fungus on damp stone. He had realized on his first night here that his life was over. Officially, he had eleven more years – an eternity of wretchedness which would be impossible to endure. He had lain awake, considering how to end it all: he could starve himself to death, or take some sort of poison, or jump from a top-floor window. But all such things were against the rules. You had to eat up every scrap of every meal; all medicines, let alone poisons, were kept strictly under lock and key, and all top windows barred. But although he himself had lived, hope had died within him, and from that day on he had walked around weighed down by its corpse.

God – what pretentious rubbish! He turned on his heel and marched back down the stairs. Children as young as seven didn't harbour thoughts of suicide. He was merely indulging in self-pity again. Perhaps that was the reason JB had brought him here – to make him see that he'd got the whole thing out of proportion, blown up a few privations into a reign of unadulterated terror.

He seated himself in the Day Room on one of the orange vinyl chairs and looked out at the lawn, parched and brown in patches, but as meticulously clipped as the Major's iron-grey hair. Beyond it stretched the games fields – rugger and cricket pitches, tennis courts, athletics track. Despite his effusions to the Major, he had never excelled at any sport, except long-distance running, which had given him a welcome chance of being on his own. He gazed beyond the grounds to the surrounding countryside, trying to remember exactly where he had run, but recalling only the tight bursting feeling in his chest as he pounded up a hill or through a wood. The horizon was a blur of bluish-grey; clouds beginning to build; the week of sultry weather threatening to explode in rain. He closed his eyes, feeling utterly wrung out. The strain of being here at all had left him like a rag doll, spineless-limp.

He slumped back in his chair, half-drifting into sleep; memories and images floating through his mind, forming and reforming like the fractured shifting colours in a kaleidoscope. Except the colours were all grey – the grey of ash, of rain. He could hear rain drumming softly in his head, then – suddenly – a different sound: muffled shouts outside the window from the rugger match in progress. He fumbled in his pocket for another square of toilet-paper, mopped his sore red nose. He had been let off games this afternoon on account of his bad cold, and was making the most of being on his own, allowed to sit and read without the usual tormentors snatching his book and calling him ‘Snot-nose'. It was far too wet for games – a drizzly February day with a cutting wind and a dank greyness in the air, making him feel that the English sun (which had scarcely put in an appearance all the term) had now gone for good and been buried in its grave.

He rubbed the misted pane and peered up at the clouds – big bulging mounds of them, like the mounds of stodgy dumplings which sat heavy on the stew each Tuesday, and were covered with a greasy scum. Despite the winter, he wasn't cold at all today, but boiling trembly hot, as if he'd been simmering in the stew himself, trapped beneath the dumplings. His clammy hands were sticking to the book and little prickles of sweat were making his nylon shirt feel horribly slimy. Perhaps he had a temperature, or maybe the radiators were turned too high (although usually they were only lukewarm). Anyway, the room was stifling – but you weren't allowed to open windows, not without permission.

He moved closer to the window, laid his forehead against the cooling glass. He was surprised at the power of the rain – not so much today, when it was only really spitting, but other days when it wham-slammed down, flooding drains, overflowing gutters, transforming dull slate roofs to glistening black. He liked to watch the puddles in the quad: fresh rain lashing into them in frenzied hissing circles; puddle merging with puddle like amoeba under the microscope, until tarmac changed to lake. And of course
every-one
was off games then, a whole herd of them imprisoned, becoming ratty and impatient as rain steamed all the windows, built up a cocooning fug.

He turned another page of his book, a really super story about two boys called Tim and Kipper who lived in the wilds and dressed in animal skins. He glanced down at his own grey-clad legs. Thank goodness he had gone into long trousers. That had happened last September, when he was eleven and three-quarters. Shorts were fine in Zambia, but not here in Wales, where winter ran its icy hands up and down your bare legs.

He skipped a boring passage of description, to get to the exciting bit where Kipper had to fight a wolf single-handed. He continued reading, pausing now and then to blow his nose, but only looking up when an extra loud cheer erupted from the rugger game outside. Then, suddenly, behind him, he heard the door-knob turning and footsteps coming in – the sort of slow and scary footsteps only grown-ups had. A low voice spoke his name.

He sprang to his feet, wondering what new crime he had committed. Perhaps he shouldn't be reading, or shouldn't be alone, but Mr Baines had said particularly that he was
allowed
to read in here, and that he needn't go to the Sick Room unless Matron decided otherwise. So why had Mr Sayers come to find him? He didn't like the new chaplain, though he wasn't half as strict as Hammy-Webb (who had left last year to be a missionary in Borneo). In fact, Sayers tried to be matey and made God sound like a nice kind Uncle who was always shelling out pocket money and ordering ice-creams all round. But since you never saw the ices or the cash, it was all a bit of a chizz, and he almost preferred Hammy's tight-fisted God. Where Hammy-Webb was beaky-thin, Sayers was flabby-fat, with a loose and jowly neck, and a paunch pushing out the waistcoat of his baggy old tweed suit (which was a nasty dirty-green colour like the mould you got on bread). His voice was flabby, too – a mixture of slugs and hymns – and the hair around his bald patch was straggly-grey and stained yellow at the ends.

‘Ah, Hughson, there you are! You're off games, today, I gather. I thought we could take the opportunity to go through your Divinity prep. You did jolly well, by the way, but there are just one or two points I'd like to go over in more detail.'

Daniel shut his book. Shouldn't he have known that being allowed to read in peace was too good to be true? The last thing he wanted was to talk about Saint Paul and his crummy Missionary Journeys, which he'd heard more than enough of in class. Saint Paul had been born round about AD 5, which was such yonks and yonks ago, it was hard to get worked up about him. And, anyway, he seemed rather a crotchety person (like most of the masters here), who would insist on going to places which were impossible to spell – Laodicea, Bithynia, Beroea – where all the e's and a's and o's got muddled up.

‘Fetch your coat, Hughson, and we'll go up to my study. How are you feeling, by the way?'

‘Fine, sir.'

‘Well, you look rather flushed to me. Has Matron taken your temperature?'

‘Yes, sir. And she's going to take it again this evening, sir.'

‘Good, good.
She'll
sort you out. Now, do up your coat – we don't want you getting wet. I think we'd better make a run for it.'

He dashed across the quad, the chaplain lumbering beside him, out of breath and wheezing. Daniel shook the rain off his hair as they entered the main building, noting how the chaplain's suit was flecked with little damp spots. His clothes all looked grubby anyway, as if he dribbled down his front. His spittle was probably yellow from his pipe. He had fourteen pipes in all. He'd told Blake Major so, in confirmation class. Daniel wasn't sure what confirmation had to do with pipes, but he had decided he'd never smoke himself, because it turned your fingers yellow, and your hair and eyes and spit, and probably your insides as well.

Blake called Sayers ‘St Bruno', after his tobacco, which came in small cream tins that were awfully hard to open. Yet shreds of the tobacco seemed to be constantly escaping, and would scatter on his books and clothes, or get caught in his moustache. The moustache was two-tone grey and yellow, like his hair, with the same sad straggly ends.

‘Buck up, Hughson! You're walking in a dream, boy.'

‘Sorry, sir.' Daniel trotted to catch up, following the chaplain up the staircase. It was deserted at this time of day – everyone was either out on the games field, or still in class, waiting for the bell.

‘Right, shut the door and I'll fetch your book. I was very pleased with your piece, Hughson. You're showing great promise in Divinity, you know.'

Daniel squirmed with embarrassment. He wasn't used to praise. He was also having trouble with the door – or rather doors. The chaplain's study had an outer and an inner door, both difficult to close. On Mr Sayers's first day at the school, a boy called Mycroft, a famous practical joker, had placed a long-dead bird in the gap between the two. The chaplain had tripped over its rotting smelly carcass and banged his head badly on the door-frame. (Mycroft was expelled.)

‘Is that door playing up again? It never seems to shut properly. Hold on, I'll turn the key. We don't want you sitting in a draught, with that bad cold of yours. Right – take a pew by the fire, and let's have a look at what you've written.' The chaplain eased his bulk into a shabby leather armchair, drew it up beside Daniel's chair, opened the small blue exercise book and gestured with his pipe to the page.

‘This Second Missionary Journey needs a bit more detail. You wrote quite a lot on the first and third, but tended to skimp on the second. That's the one where Saint Paul had an important dream, remember, instructing him to cross to Macedonia?'

Daniel nodded. He never had dreams like that himself, where God told him what to do or where to go. He only wished He would – instruct him to leave for Zambia right now; not even pause to pack his trunk or return his library books. It would be warm and bright in Lusaka and he wouldn't have a cold, and perhaps he'd go for a swim in the dam with the geese and cranes and heron, and float on his back and look up at the huge shining space above him – sky and sky and sky.

‘Hughson, are you listening?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Well, what did I just say?'

‘The dream, sir. I think you said in class last week that Saint Paul called it a vision.'