Into the River (10 page)

“Simmonds told you that all the juniors, you piglets that is, have a senior attached to them. In your case that’s me. He
mentioned
all the things that we are meant to expect from each other: loyalty, obedience, reliability, blah blah. Some seniors are really into this, it’s like their big reason for staying on. They wander around the place like squads of storm troopers. I’m not one of them. My reason for being here can be summarised in the words ‘the McLay Willis Scholarship’. Everything else is just detail. I’ll
be giving you guys jobs, checking your pen for tidiness, and you can come to me if you need help with something. Don’t overdo it; I’m pretty busy. I guess there are a few questions. Fire away.”

“I got a slap in the head down there in the common room. What’s that for?”

“That’s a bump,” Neeson said, smiling. “You were on a chair. Juniors don’t sit on chairs if a senior wants one, and if there is one thing that makes a senior want a chair, it’s seeing a piglet sitting on it.”

“I would’ve got off.”

“Hey, don’t take it personally. There’s no malice in it, it’s just a custom. All the little house rules are enforced by bumps. The seniors were all bumped when they were piglets. It’s just what happens, comes with the territory. I’m not into bumping, but some of those guys …” He glanced to one side, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “You watch out. Talking in the shower line? Bump. Grinning at a senior? Bump. Shirt hanging out? Bump.”

“So they can belt us whenever they like and there’s nothing we can do about it?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, there’s always a reason. There’s like this scale of punishments here. Bumps are allowed by the house staff but sometimes there are beatings. They happen after lights out. Some kid, usually a junior, needs sorting out. He gets pulled from his bed by a couple of seniors and held while he’s given a few well-aimed punches, right in the gut. This is what happens when a bump’s not enough. Believe me, bumps are okay. You get used to them.”

“Do you know who’s going into that bed?” Wade seemed eager to change the subject.

“There’s a rumour going round that the kid who was meant to be there died during the holidays, so they’re trying to find a replacement. There’ll be someone there in a day or two, don’t you worry. If there’s one thing Barwell’s can’t stand, it’s an empty bed.”

After Neeson left, the three boys climbed into their hard little
beds. Te Arepa looked across at the other two. Stephen, his hands behind his head and his knees up, was staring at the ceiling. Wade lay facing the wall. The regular movements of his back and shoulders showed he was crying silently, again. Immediately Te Arepa felt the grief and loneliness closing in on him. He clenched the muscles in his stomach, determined that he would not submit to tears.

Adam Neeson was right about the empty bed.

A couple of days later, Mitch appeared.

Mitch was a sportsman. He looked it too: the muscles on his legs and arms were already well formed, like those of an older boy. He was on a scholarship, like Te Arepa, but his was a sports scholarship. After a rugby league game, his father had been approached by a scout and offered Mitch a chance at Barwell’s. Providing he swapped codes. League was strictly for bogans.

“Hard choice?” Te Arepa asked.

Mitch shook his head. “The way I see it, the choice was coming here or going to the local school, carrying a blade.”

“Sounds terribly West Side Story.” Stephen’s remark was ignored.

“Survival, man. My dad drives a tow truck. Left school at fourteen. Booted out for assault. He always says, ‘Mitch …’” Mitch pretended to be smoking and drinking while he said this. “‘I was too smart to listen at school, so they sent me to Rock College. I got a diploma in car conversion, took a degree in B and E …’”

“What’s that?” asked Wade.

“Breaking and entering. ‘Now I’m looking at taking a course in GBH.’”

“GBH?”

“Grievous bodily harm. That’s when you leave a few marks.”

“So that’s why you came?” asked Te Arepa.

“Didn’t have any choice. Mum shot through with one of Dad’s mates. This dude doesn’t really want me around, cramp his style, eh? My real dad’s too busy dodging people he owes money to. He tries to be, you know, the dad-figure, but he’s crap at it. So I reckon it’s better here than in some dump run by CYPS.”

Te Arepa had no idea what ‘sips’ was but reckoned it had to be pretty bad. He liked Mitch: he was a straight arrow. The same as Wiremu. He just told you stuff, like his dad had been to jail. Like it was no big deal. Nothing bothered him.

There was something else about Mitch. This became clear on his first day when one of the seniors decided to give him the bump in the dinner line. There was this unwritten rule that seniors could push in at the front no matter how late they came. Mitch and Te Arepa were almost at the front and getting hungry, even though the meal was only some dark, slimy stew. Graeme Hartnell aka Eyebrows, appeared beside them with his tray, waiting for them to step back and let him in. He fixed them with his bushy brows for a moment, waiting, but nothing happened.

“Hey you, I’m in here,” he said to Mitch.

“I don’t think so,” said Mitch. “You’re over there.”

“Getting smart?” Hartnell aimed a half-hearted slap at the side of Mitch’s head.

Mitch’s arm came up instantly and bounced the slap away with his fend. The two stood there staring at each other. Suddenly the whole dining room went quiet; there was an acute radar for this sort of thing.

“Make some room, man, seniors go first,” Hartnell said, a bit diffidently this time.

This was greeted by Mitch’s expressionless and unblinking stare. He wasn’t moving and he sure as hell wasn’t intimidated. Hartnell looked around nervously as if to say the whole thing was a joke; they were mates really.

This was an unheard of back-down. The consequences were unthinkable. The age-old hierarchy was being challenged. Then,
to the relief of everyone except Mitch, Mr Ansell, a young English tutor on his gap year, shepherded Hartnell into the line farther back. It was a victory of sorts, but whose exactly was hard to tell. One thing was clear: Mitch was labelled fearless.

When the older boys came through the pens throwing their weight around, he stood his ground. After a while they tended to avoid Mitch. He was an unknown quantity so the older boys treated him a bit differently. With a grudging respect.

The first few weeks flew by because they seemed to be scrambling back and forth just trying to get on top of the routines. Every minute of their day was organised to keep them busy. It started at six-thirty in the morning when they were shaken awake for their run by the duty senior. They pulled on shorts and T-shirts, then blundered out down the school drive, back through the stand of native bush, then past the chapel and on to a couple of laps of the playing fields.

Mitch and Wade would shoot off out the door, trying to be first back. Mitch bolted because he didn’t like the idea of being beaten at any physical contest, and Wade because he had a farm dog’s eagerness to please. Te Arepa soon discovered that Stephen, like himself, had an aversion to compulsory exercise, although in Stephen’s case, it was to all other forms of exercise too.

“Enforced physical exercise, especially first thing in the morning, is for race horses or Jack Russell terriers. I am neither of those lowly beasts,” he proclaimed.

Te Arepa supported him, so they would complete their laps at a quick walk.

The assistant housemaster, Mr Faul (or Farty, as he was universally called), was a PE teacher in training. He had two goals in life. One was to show others the beauty of a life shared with Jesus, and the other was to get every boy fit. He was a good-natured,
gentle man, who saw Te Arepa and Stephen as a challenge to his ministry. Sometimes he ran alongside them, barking encouragement all the way. Other times he had them out on the playing field doing stretches. The squatting exercises inevitably made him fart: hence, Farty.

“Like this boys … down to the count of five. One … two … three … four … five (fart) and up.” His facial expression stayed blank: there was no acknowledgement of the arse trumpet, as some of the boys called it. Stephen and Te Arepa found it hard not to laugh. At this point he would get grumpy and start shouting, and not long after that he’d give up in exasperation and focus on the more motivated boys.

Back at the shower block the speedsters were already lathered up and enjoying an extended spell in the hot water. It was a big booth that did six boys at a time. No privacy, no secrets here. It was strip … wash … dress. The rest of them would all loiter in towels, waiting for one of the tutors to arrive and clear the stalls so they could run in. They were meant to take a maximum of three minutes, with Mr Simmonds or some substitute looking in from time to time to check that they were washing properly.

What Te Arepa found worse, though, was that there were no doors on the toilets. Everything was done in full view of
everybody
else.

“No chance to indulge in self-pleasure,” as Mr Simmonds put it when he explained this architectural oversight to Stephen during the first week.

The seniors, whom Mr Simmonds called the ‘old hands’, wandered around the bathroom, nude and hairy, chatting away as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Any attempt by a junior to cover his cock was met with scorn. “What’ve you got to hide?” “Do ya think that’s worth hiding?” Sometimes this was
emphasised
with a flick of a wet towel that bit at the cold flesh and left a red mark that took ages to fade away.

Wade copped more than his share. It was as though there was an understanding that if anyone had time on their hands it was a duty to flick, punch or trip him. He made out it was a game, that he was somehow “okay” with this, but in the showers Te Arepa saw him crying, face raised to the water so that no one would notice.

From that first day, and for many days after that, they were instructed on conduct and routines. Every last detail was covered by a myriad of rules. There was an impossible number of them.

What items they were allowed on the top of their cabinets.

The order and positions of clothes inside it.

How the clothes were to be folded.

Bathing, when and how often.

The food.

Table manners.

Terms of address.

Mr Simmonds seemed to have made the teaching of these rules his life’s work. Even something that appeared to be straightforward was embedded in a complex schedule.

“Can we go to the dairy?”

“Let me see,” he would say, slowing the whole thing down. “Juniors are allowed between three-thirty and four. The As to Fs are Monday; you, Santos, and the other denizens of Sector C, from L to S, will need to wait until Wednesday. If it’s urgent you can trade with one of the others, but remember, you are only allowed two of these trades per term and they should be recorded in the trades book.”

Another of his specialties was the organisation of personal property. His own desk was an example of this. It showed three personal items, in his case photos of his two children (a pair of freckly girls) and his wife (a freckly middle-aged woman). His diary was central, opened at the correct page. To the left were the duty roster sheets. To the right the accounts. The lockable money box which contained phone cards and petty cash waited
temptingly
on the corner nearest the door. It was like a moral challenge, “something to test their mettle,” Simmonds claimed.

Like most of the masters, he had a pet, or in this case, a clone. Peter Newell. Newell was a third former who had become obsessed with Mr Simmonds. He believed that Mr Simmonds was the pathway to a brilliant life and modelled himself on him in every way. This included not only keeping two pens in the chest pocket of his shirt at all times, but even imitating Simmonds’ backward leaning handwriting. This last piece of imitation was particularly difficult because Simmonds was left-handed and the style came naturally. Whenever Simmonds was wandering around the boarding house doing his rounds, you could be certain that Newell was following him, waiting to do whatever needed to be done; straighten a bed, remove some extra item off a work desk.

To Te Arepa, who had never expected to enjoy them, the lessons were a revelation. At his little school back at Whareiti there seemed to be only three subjects: reading, writing and maths. Now subjects multiplied and became much more difficult. The work was harder, but at least in 3B he didn’t have the geniuses to deal with.

The subject he liked most was Latin; in particular, reading and translating. The Punic Wars totally consumed him. They made sense of things. It was as though he had been waiting for this all his life. Slowly translating the texts was an experience more powerful than reading; it was like being in someone’s head … seeing the world through their eyes. Caesar’s eyes. He loved the Caesars. He understood them. There was a cold logic to everything they did. His favourite was Augustus. He flew high above everyone else, like an eagle. Moving troops like chess men, outsmarting his opponents. He had held the world in the palm of his hand.

Then there were the Carthaginians. The underdogs. Hannibal,
and his father Hamilcar. Defiant in the face of impossible odds. Contemptuous of their destiny. Outflanked, outnumbered, poorly armed but triumphing through bravery, audacity and imagination. Finally there was the tragedy of their eventual and inevitable defeat. It all made sense. They were the Maori.

His other subjects were like school anywhere, except that work was piled on from the first day. Mitch and Wade both struggled, so Stephen and Te Arepa usually helped them. Seniors were allowed to study upstairs in their rooms; juniors had to sit together below in shared prep areas for the compulsory quiet hours in the evening. These were supposedly supervised by an older boy or a prefect, but usually the only checks were in the form of a tutor or duty senior strolling by to see how things were going. The lazy ones didn’t even do this. They just bugged the room by reversing the intercom and never came down at all. After this was free time until lights out.