It's Murder at St. Basket's (2 page)

“It's because he's black,” Leslie said. “Didn't you know that?”

“Black?” I said. “In the first place he's not black, he's a Pakistani.”

“In England that's what we call black,” he said.

“In the States we don't,” I said. “In the States we call Negroes black. I mean people from Africa.”

“We call them black, too,” Leslie said. “We use the same word for anybody who isn't white.”

I didn't like the way it sounded very much—it sounded like prejudice to me. “And you mean that they won't let David room with us because he's black?”

“That's it,” Leslie said.

“Is it that way in all English schools?”

“Oh no,” Leslie said. “It just happens that the Grimes hate blacks. That's all.”

“Then why do they have him in school?”

Leslie shrugged. “His father's rich.”

“Would you mind if David moved in with us?”

“Of course not, you don't think I'm as bad as the Grimes, do you?”

I thought about it. It made me feel bad that David was supposed to be inferior to us and kept segregated in his own room. It wasn't my fault, it was something the Grimes were responsible for, but still I felt wrong about it; I felt that if David was supposed to be my friend I had to do something about it.

I told Leslie we should ask Miss Grime to let David come down and room with us.

“What will you do if she says no?”

“Why should she say no?” I said.

He shrugged. “I think it might be rather embarrassing for David.”

“I guess so,” I said. “But it's too late for that. I already told David I was going to ask Miss Grime to let him room with us.”

“Oh,” Leslie said. “Well, I guess we'd better do it, then.”

It made us nervous to think about asking; and I think we would have probably stalled it
off
for a while, except that about an hour later Miss Grime came up to our room with Shrimpton and accidentally brought up the subject herself.

We were fooling around with a soccer football, trying to dribble past each other, but luckily we heard them come clomping up the stairs in time and we shot over to our desks and pretended that we were studying. When they walked in we stood up—you always had to stand up when Miss Grime came around.

“Good evening, boys,” she said. She's sort of scary, because she's big although kind of fat, and she has this big, booming voice that practically can knock you down. “Don't let us disturb you, get on with your studies.” We sat down again at our desks, but with that kind of a voice there wasn't any way she couldn't disturb us, and we didn't even bother to pretend to work, but just sat there listening to her jabber at Shrimpton. “You see, Mr. Shrimpton,” she boomed out, “I was right. There
is
an empty bed here.”

“So I see,” Shrimpton said. “I thought we'd taken it down.”

“We can use it elsewhere,” she said. “I suppose that bureau's empty, too?”

Shrimpton went over to it and began opening the drawers. “Yes, empty,” he said.

I knew it was my best chance. “M'am,” I said, standing up again.

She stared at me. “Yes, Quincy?”

“We were wondering if David Choudhry could come down and room with us.”

She went on staring at me for a moment. “Unusual request,” she said. “Don't you think so, Mr. Shrimpton?”

“Mmmumph,” Shrimpton said, trying to get out of answering.

“We usually don't permit the darkies to live with our own boys,” she said. “Of course, you Americans have some rather odd ideas on that subject. I remember talking to one chap once who actually favored blacks and whites marrying. I've got nothing against them myself, they can't help having colored skin, of course, but still, I don't believe in this mingling.”

It really shocked me to hear her talk like that. I'd never heard anybody say those kinds of things before. I mean you read about stuff like that in the newspapers sometimes, but I'd never heard anybody actually say them straight out. But I was too chicken to come out and criticize her, and besides that wouldn't help to get David into our room. So I said, “Well, the thing is, M'am, Leslie and I discussed it, and we'd like to.”

She looked at Shrimpton. “What do you think, Mr. Shrimpton? I hate to let all barriers
fall.”

Shrimpton shrugged. “I don't see any harm in it, Miss Grime. It's done most places nowadays.”

She sighed. “I suppose it is,” she boomed out. “All right, boys, if you like.” And that was that.

Of course we didn't tell David any of the things Miss Grime said. We just helped him move his stuff down. He was pretty glad to have somebody to live with, instead of being stuck off in that little room all by himself.

So that helped to make us special friends: he knew it was me, not Plainfìeld, who'd got him moved in with us, and of course that made us both feel more together about things, that we could trust each other to help each other out.

Then along came another thing. Most of the time we were supposed to stay in school, but on Sunday afternoons we were allowed out for a couple of hours. There usually wasn't much to do but walk around on Hampstead Heath, which is this big park right behind the school. There's a big hill there called Parliament Hill. From the top of it you can see almost all of London—St. Paul's Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament and the Post Office Tower and a lot of other things. I was just sort of standing up there looking around at the view, when I noticed some kids staring at me. I didn't like their looks too much. They were what the English called “bovver” boys—sort of tough kids who go around ganging up on other kids. They wear these heavy shoes for their trademark, sometimes with metal in the toes, so when they kick you they really can break your leg or something. It made me kind of nervous to have them staring at me, but I wasn't going to be chicken and run; still, these guys made me pretty nervous.

Then they began walking up to me. There were six of them, all wearing those heavy boots. But I didn't run; besides, there were a lot of people around looking at the view, and I didn't think they'd really start something in public.

They got up to me and stood sort of in a semicircle in front of me. The leader stood in the middle smoking a cigarette and acting tough. “Got any fags?” he said.

“I don't have any,” I said.

He recognized my voice. “Bloody Yank, innit?” “Innit” is what a lot of English people who don't speak well say for “isn't it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“
Bloody rotten country, the States is.”

“Have you ever been there?” I shot back.

They all laughed. “Who'd want ter go there? You might get murdered.”

“That's baloney,” I said.

They laughed again. “‘E's a hoot,” one of them said.

Just at that moment I noticed David Choudhry coming up the hill. He waved to me, and I kind of gestured him back, but it was too late, because the bovver boys had already seen him. “‘E yer friend, the Paki?”

“He's Pakistani.”

“‘E's Paki to me, myte.” “Myte” is how he said “mate.”

Just then David got up to me; and suddenly he realized what was going on. David isn't very big, and he isn't very athletic, and I knew that the bovver boys were going to pick on him because of his size. The leader turned around to the rest. “‘Oo do you want, the Yank or the Paki, lads?”

I was scared but I was mad. “Is that how brave you are?” I shouted. “You're going to fight us, six guys to two?”

“The Paki, ‘e hardly counts for one.”

And then the amazing thing was, as little as David Choudhry was, he jumped on the guy. He just jumped up on him, got his arms around his neck, and down they went on the ground. David wouldn't ever have had a chance, except that he took the bovver boy by surprise; and it didn't last long anyhow, because in about a minute David was on the bottom and the other kid was on top, and David was shouting out that nobody was going to call him Paki, and the guy was hitting David in the face—not too hard, but hitting him. So I jumped on him, and knocked him off David, and somebody came down on top of me, and just at that moment there was a police whistle. The bovver boys just ran, and that was the end of it. The bobby sort of checked us over to see if we were all right, and find out where we belonged, and then he took us back to school to clean up. Luckily Miss Grime wasn't around, and we managed to slip in and shower before anyone noticed that we'd been fighting. Fighting was against the rules, even though it wasn't our fault.

So that was another reason why David and I felt we had to help each other out. We were strangers; we were kind of outsiders, and if we didn't look after each other, nobody would. And
so
you can see, in the end, why it didn't matter much about discussing to see who would talk to Miss Grime about David being hurt: it was really up to me, anyway.

“All right,” I said. “I'll do it.”

CHAPTER
2

T
HE NAME OF
the school was St. Basket's. Actually it had a much longer name: The College of St. Basket Over-Woods, Beyond-the-Gates. I never did find out what all that meant. They had it written up in a pamphlet they had printed to impress the parents, but frankly it was too boring to read and I never finished it. All I know is that it had something to do with Henry the Eighth, who was the fat king who had all those wives, and that it wasn't a college. In England they call some of the high schools colleges. What you go to after high school is university. Not
the
university or
a
university, but just university. The English have a short way of talking, with a lot of the words left out. You just have to get used to it.

The reason why I happened to be getting used to it was, my father has a thing about England. He's always going on about how some ancestor of his was the ninth cousin of an earl, and if forty or fifty dukes and earls and so forth happened to get killed in an airplane crash or something, he'd become the Prince of Wales or the President of Scotland or something. I forget what. Actually it's a crock, and I could tell him so, only I hate to ruin his dreams. The way the English think Americans stink, they would no more let my father be Prince of Wales or whatever it is than a pig. In fact they'd
rather
have a pig than my father, if they were sure it was an English pig, without a trace of American blood.

Anyway, because of this idea of being related to a duke who's never even heard of him, my father always buys English clothes and stuff, and a special kind of English gin, and when he has a couple of these gins he's likely to go striding around the apartment saying, “Cheers,” and “Jolly good,” and all that. So you can imagine how he felt when his company decided to send him to England to be head of their London office. If you want to know the truth, I think he told them he'd work for nothing or something. My mother was pretty excited by the idea, too, and for about three months it was all they'd talk about. They began getting English newspapers to read the ads for apartments, and maps for trips they planned to take and all that, and of course they wrote away to get me and my sister into St. Basket's. You never saw such an uproar when we got the letter saying we'd got accepted. You'd have thought it was a letter from St. Peter saying we'd go into Heaven.

I was suspicious about it right from the start, because while I'm not exactly stupid, I get a
lot
of B's and C s. My sister isn't much better, either, so I know there wasn't any reason for St. Basket's to be desperately begging us to rush over and join their school. But my father and mother were all excited, and they used it as an excuse to have a couple of English gins.

All it did was make me and my sister nervous, though. We didn't know anything about what the English were like, and we didn't see how we could manage to be polite day after day. We didn't want to go. We wanted to stay home with our friends and our usual school and our regular way of doing things. Of course, the idea that I was going to an English school made me a little proud, and I showed off a little in front of my friends; but actually I wished I weren't going.

And then somebody in my father's company died and they decided they couldn't send him after all. They said he was too valuable—at least that's what he told me. It really upset him, and my mother too. My father got a promotion and a raise, but it didn't help much—although he figured they would be able to go in two or three years anyway. It didn't upset me, though, because I figured I was safe for now and who knows what could happen in two or three years?

But I should have known my father better. He'd got his son into St. Basket's College and he wasn't going to waste the opportunity. One morning at breakfast he said, “We simply can't pass up a chance like this, Chris—a classical English education. You'll be miles ahead of everybody when you come back.”

“I don't want to be miles ahead of everybody,” I said.

“Latin and Greek, and cricket and you'll learn to ride. They must have extensive stables at St. Basket's.”

“How come Mary doesn't have to go?”

“She's too young. Oh, it'll be terrific, Chris, two thousand years of history underneath your feet.”

“I don't want to—”

“Can't you manage to be a little enthusiastic, Chris?”

So in August the whole family came over for three weeks, and hung around London boring ourselves to death, and then they took me up to St. Basket's and left me to my fate and all went back to New York. If my father had known about kids being belted by field hockey sticks he might have taken me home too, although I guess probably he'd never have believed it. Having one of the masters break a boy's leg is pretty unbelievable.