Dominion (26 page)

A red-and-white bus from Edinburgh ran past the school gates, bringing the day boys out from the city in the mornings and back in the afternoons. Its terminus was some way to the south, in the
foothills of the Pentland Hills. In the afternoons, once classes were over, Frank took to going out of the gates and catching the near-empty bus, riding to the terminus and back again. It took half
an hour or so each way. He would take a book and read. Sometimes he would make the return journey twice in one afternoon. The conductors gave him curious looks and once or twice asked why he kept
travelling to and fro. He said he just liked the ride. He always had his penny ready for the fare.

The terminus was a little lay-by, the hills all around. The bus waited for twenty minutes before turning back, the driver and conductor sitting in a little wooden shelter drinking tea from
Thermos flasks and smoking. Sometimes Frank would go for a little walk down a footpath, towards the hills. If it was one of those windy days when clouds scudded across the sky, the alternating
light and dark on the hills was beautiful. Sometimes he thought of just continuing to walk, on and on into the Pentlands, until eventually, sometime in the night, he would drop from exhaustion. But
as autumn turned to the early Scottish winter, and there were days of cold rain and sometimes streaks of snow high in the hills, he thought defiantly, why should I let the bastards make me go and
die out there in the cold?

At the last assembly before the Christmas holidays, the headmaster announced that cross-country runs would take place on Wednesday afternoons next term, unless there was heavy
snow. Over Christmas Frank’s mother had to buy him running shoes, complaining at the cost.

Frank hoped that snow might prevent the runs but when he returned to school in January the weather was mild and damp. And so, on the first Wednesday of term, Frank found himself in the big
changing room next to the gym that reeked of sweat and old socks. As he had feared, Lumsden was there with a couple of his friends; as he changed into his singlet and shorts Frank avoided their
eyes. He would try to stay near the teacher who was going with them.

They set off, a hundred boys trotting out of the school gates and into the hills. The gym teacher, an enormous former Scotland rugby player called Fraser, shouted to the boys to keep moving to
stay warm, set a good steady pace and they’d be fine.

Frank did his best to keep up with Fraser, but a life sitting in classrooms, on buses and hiding under the chairs meant he was unfit. The new running shoes were tight and soon began to pinch his
feet. The long line of boys became more strung out, the bigger and fitter ones at the front, laggards like Frank at the back. Mr Fraser ran near the front, looking behind him only occasionally, and
Frank fell further and further to the rear, though he was relieved to see that Lumsden and his two friends were well ahead.

As they ran up the first hill more and more boys fell behind. Mr Fraser didn’t realize, or didn’t care, that many of them couldn’t keep up the pace he set. By the time a
panting Frank reached the top of the first hill Mr Fraser and the leading boys at the front were out of sight over the crest of the next one. One boy just ahead collapsed onto the wet grass with a
groan, clutching a stitch in his side. A little afterwards two others, realizing the teacher was well out of sight, stopped running and sat down, too.

Frank pressed on, towards a clump of bushes and rowan trees nestling in the dip between the two hills. He was the last one now. He thought, I can hide in there. He felt a little dizzy, his heart
was racing and his feet were very sore. There was a narrow path through the trees and here, out of sight, he sat down with a gasp on a carpet of damp leaves, his back against the trunk of a rowan.
He pulled off the running shoes with relief, his feet throbbing, and closed his eyes. His breathing gradually returned to normal. He became conscious of the leaves under his bare legs, cold sweat
drying on his body. Then he smelt something, a familiar smell, rich but sharp. He sat up suddenly, heart pounding. Lumsden and his friends, each smoking a cigarette, were standing looking at him
from a few yards away, their arms and legs red and blotchy from the cold. Lumsden was smirking. His eyes, fixed on Frank’s, were coldly predatory, like a cat’s.

‘Look at this,’ he said. His voice was very sharp and clear. ‘The babe in the woods. The monkey, anyway.’ The three boys walked towards him. Frank scrambled up but
Lumsden gave him a heavy push that sent him staggering back against the tree.

‘We’ve no’ seen ye for a wee while, Monkey,’ said McTaggart, a tall, rangy boy with black hair. His tone was friendly, but with an edge of menace to it.

‘Uh-huh,’ the third boy agreed. ‘It’s as though he was avoiding us, ye’d think he didn’t like us.’

‘He does not, too,’ Lumsden said. ‘He wis fuckin’ rude last time he spoke to us. And now he’s dropped out of the race, hiding in the bushes.’ His voice rose
with fake self-righteousness.

Frank said desperately, ‘So have you, and you’re smoking.’

Lumsden leaned forward threateningly. ‘Are you trying to tell us off, you wee spastic?’

‘Sheer insolence,’ McTaggart said.

‘He’s a most cheeky wee lad.’ Lumsden folded hefty arms across his chest. He sounded like a teacher. He glanced down at Frank’s running shoes. A slow smile spread across
his big round face. ‘I think he needs a few strokes of the tawse. This’ll do.’ He bent and picked up one of Frank’s shoes, running a big hand across the spikes.

McTaggart chuckled, but the third boy, a small stocky lad called Vine, looked worried. ‘What’re ye goin’ to do, Hector? We don’t want to get into trouble just over
Monkey.’

‘We won’t,’ Lumsden said.

Frank scrambled up and tried to make a run for it, but it was hopeless; McTaggart and Vine grabbed him by the arms. He kicked out frantically but they threw him on the ground again. Lumsden
leaned over him and grasped his chin, staring into his eyes. He said, quietly, ‘We’re going to give you the tawse, wee monkey man, just to teach you manners.’ There was a catch of
pleasurable excitement in his voice. ‘When you get back, ye’re going to say you took your shoes off here, and when you got up again you fell onto one of them. See? If you
don’t,’ he added, very slowly, ‘it’ll be your word against three of us, and next time, you wee cunt, we’ll kill you.’

Vine said, ‘Ye’re no going to hit him with the spikes, Hector?’

Lumsden turned on him threateningly. ‘Do you want some?’ Vine glanced at McTaggart. The dark-haired boy hesitated for a moment, then gave a quick, strange smile. ‘All right.
It’ll just be a wee bit blood, won’t it?’

Frank screamed, ‘Please don’t, Lumsden, I just want to be left alone, please, don’t—’

‘Ye called me evil, you wee bastard!’ Lumsden pulled a dirty handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts and shoved it in Frank’s mouth. His cries turned to muffled squeals as
Vine and McTaggart dragged him to his feet. Lumsden seized his right arm and yanked it forward. Instinctively Frank clenched his hand into a fist.

‘Open your hand,’ Lumsden snapped. ‘It’ll hurt more on the knuckles.’ He spoke sternly like a teacher, he was pretending to be a teacher.

McTaggart laughed. ‘Look at him with that snot-rag in his mouth.’

‘Hold him!’ Lumsden snapped. Vine held Frank round the waist and McTaggart held his arm out straight. Frank stared at Lumsden in horror as the big boy raised the running shoe, spikes
down, shifting his balance to get the best aim. Frank closed his eyes as the shoe came down with all the force of Lumsden’s arm. The pain was terrible, sharp spikes cutting into his palm, and
Frank gagged, almost choked. He opened his eyes. The blow had made several deep cuts, which were all bleeding heavily, but one spike had penetrated his wrist, and blood was spouting out of it like
water from a pump.

‘Fuckin’ hell, Hector,’ McTaggart said quietly, dropping Frank’s arm. Pulling the handkerchief from his mouth, he pressed it to the pumping wrist. It turned bright red
almost instantly. A stream of blood was running down Frank’s arm now. He began to moan.

‘Shit, Hector,’ Vine said. ‘How do we stop it bleeding?’

Lumsden had gone pale. ‘I don’t know. We’ve got to somehow, it’s a mile to the fuckin’ school.’

Frank slumped against the tree, clutching his arm as more blood flowed down onto his vest.

McTaggart said urgently, ‘We have to make a tourniquet.’

‘A what?’

‘My sister fell out a tree once and gashed her leg. My dad tied a hanky round it and told her to hold the leg up. Said it was what they did with injured men in the trenches.’

‘Well, do it!’ Lumsden shouted. ‘Do it, or we’re fucked.’

McTaggart went over to Frank, pulled away the bloodstained handkerchief and lifted his arm up. He tied the handkerchief tight, halfway down his skinny forearm. ‘Ye’ll be all right,
wee man,’ he said. His voice was suddenly, astonishingly, gentle. There was a sudden gush of blood from Frank’s wrist, making him cry out, but then the stream slowed to a trickle. His
arm began to go white.

‘You have to keep your arm up,’ McTaggart said. Frank just stared at him blankly so McTaggart lifted his arm and held it pointing upwards. The trickle of blood slowed further, though
it was still coming.

Lumsden stepped forward. ‘We’ll get you back to school,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll say we found you here and brought you back. Ye’ll tell them you fell on the
spikes, right?’ Frank just stared at him, his face blank. His teeth began to chatter. Lumsden said, louder, panic in his voice, ‘Say ye’ll tell them that, Muncaster, or
we’ll bloody leave you here!’

Frank’s eyes focused on Lumsden’s red, frightened face. He nodded.

‘Swear on the Bible?’

Frank nodded again.

‘Say it! I swear on the Bible!’

‘I swear,’ Frank whispered. ‘On the Bible.’

‘Come on then, keep that arm up. Here, I’ll hold it.’

They took Frank and helped him get his shoes back on, helped him out of the dell, telling him to watch his feet as he stumbled over a fallen branch. It was strange how they were aiding him now,
as though they were his rescuers.

Halfway to the school, Frank fainted dead away.

He woke in a hospital bed. All around him men, mostly old, lay sleeping or reading. His right arm lay on the counterpane, swathed in bandages almost to the elbow. He tried to
move his fingers and pain coursed through his arm. A nurse appeared, a stout woman in a blue uniform and large white cap. She leaned over him. ‘Hello, you’re awake then?’

‘Where am I?’ Frank croaked.

‘Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. The school brought you in earlier. We did an operation on your hand, you’ll be a bit groggy for a while from the anaesthetic.’ She put cool fingers
on his uninjured hand and took his pulse.

‘Will – will my hand be all right?’

The nurse smiled at him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said evasively.

After that Frank slept again for a while. He was gently shaken awake by another nurse. There was a doctor with her, a thin, grey-haired man in glasses and a white coat, a
stethoscope round his neck. He smiled at Frank. ‘How are you feeling now, son?’

‘My hand. If I move it, it hurts. But I can’t feel it properly.’ Tears came to Frank’s eyes. The doctor pulled up a chair and sat beside him. He said, quietly,
‘I’m afraid we think you’ve damaged the nerves in your wrist. We’ll see how it goes, but you may have problems with some of the fingers.’ He smiled. ‘But your
thumb and forefinger should be all right, you should be able to write.’ He paused. ‘The school said there was a cross-country run, and you took your shoes off, then fell over on the
spikes. Is that right, son?’

Frank hesitated, then said, ‘Yes.’

‘Only you must’ve landed on that shoe with all the weight of your body.’

‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

‘Odd way to land.’

‘Is it?’

‘Lucky those boys were just behind you, lucky they found you.’

The doctor looked at him quizzically. Frank thought, if I tell the truth, maybe I’ll never have to go back. But then the doctor smiled and said, ‘Strangmans was my old school.
It’s a fine place. Those boys who found you showed real presence of mind making a tourniquet like that. Otherwise, you could have bled to death, you know.’

Frank closed his eyes.

Next day his mother came to visit. She wept at the sight of his bandaged hand, shook her head and asked how Frank could have been so careless, so stupid. He asked if he could come back home but
she said she couldn’t cope; after what had happened she was sure he needed to stay at the school, be properly taken care of. She told him this was what his father had told her from the other
side, through Mrs Baker.

Back at school, the other boys left him strictly alone now. Lumsden and his friends kept well out of his way. Teachers treated him more gently. From the way they looked at him
sometimes Frank guessed the authorities knew or suspected what had really happened, but it was always spoken of as a dreadful, careless accident. Lumsden left at the end of the term, to go to
another school. Frank, relieved, wondered if Strangmans had asked him to go. His English teacher, who had formerly mocked him for his lack of interest in anything but science fiction, was now
patient and careful in helping him learn to write again. He continued to work and work, hardly speaking to the other boys at all. He would listen to their conversations though, and had a dim
awareness that life was passing him by, leaving him behind. He didn’t even understand some of the slang they used nowadays.

One day in the spring the science teacher, Mr McKendrick, asked him to stay behind after class. He was a large, middle-aged man, the suit under his black gown always shabby. He had a gentle,
enthusiastic air, unusual among the crusty Strangmans masters. He sat at his desk on its dais, looking down at Frank.

‘How’s the hand?’ he asked in a friendly way.

‘All right, sir.’ It wasn’t, it tingled and hurt a lot of the time, but the doctor said there was nothing more to be done.

‘You’re a clever boy, Frank, you know that.’