The Flyer Read online

  Reynolds looked around for somebody to ask where William should go, and spoke to a boy of perhaps seventeen who appeared to be directing people.

  The boy consulted a list, and ignoring Reynolds said to William, ‘You must be a new boy. Let’s see… Reynolds, yes here you are. You’re in Lakston, first year dorm. It’s over there, the last building by the playing fields. Have your man take your trunk over there and get yourself settled in.’

  William realised that the boy thought his dad was a servant, but the boy strode off before William could correct his mistake.

  ‘Come on, Will,’ Reynolds said quietly.

  When they found Lakston house, the cart driver helped to carry William’s trunk to the dorm on the third floor where William would sleep. It was difficult to climb the stairs with his crutch, but eventually he managed. He passed other boys who looked at him curiously, but nobody spoke to him. The dorm was deserted. Each of the beds was surrounded by a curtain and wood panelling to form a small cubicle. Some had already been claimed. Trunks had been placed inside and in some cases partially unpacked. As Reynolds paid the cart driver, a boy of about eleven came in.

  ‘Hello, are you a first year too?’ he said to William. ‘I’m Thompson, how do you do?’

  William shook the proffered hand uncertainly.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘William Reynolds.’

  Thompson looked at him in puzzled surprise, and William knew it was because of the way he spoke.

  ‘We don’t know which bed he should have,’ Reynolds said, though it sounded much more like ‘We dunt know whuch bed he should ‘ave.’

  Without acknowledging Reynolds at all, Thompson addressed William directly. ‘I think you can take any one you like, so long as nobody has beaten you to it.’

  William decided on the one closest to the door, which appeared untouched, and his dad dragged over his chest.

  ‘I’ll help you get unpacked, Will.’

  ‘It’s alright, I can do it,’ William said, aware that Thompson was watching them curiously.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye here then shall I? So you don’t have to come down the stairs.’

  William nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. His throat felt tight and tears swam in his eyes. He wished more than anything in his life that his dad wouldn’t leave him there.

  ‘It will be alright, Will, you’ll see,’ Reynolds said. He would have liked to bend down and put his arms around his son and hold him tightly, but instead he held out his hand. ‘You won’t forget to write to me will you?’

  William shook his head.

  ‘I’ll see you in the holidays, then.’

  As soon as his dad was gone, William began to unpack his trunk. He didn’t want the other boy to see the tears that were blurring his eyes.

  After a minute or so, Thompson sauntered over. ‘I say, Reynolds?’

  He turned around. ‘Yes.’

  ‘That chap just then, who was he?’

  ‘My dad.’

  Thompson regarded him incredulously. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said at length.

  By the end of the afternoon the dormitory had filled with boys. Some were quiet and uncertain in their new surroundings, others took it in their stride and went around introducing themselves to one another. At five o clock an elder boy, who was their dormitory prefect, came to tell them they had to go to the hall for tea. Hundreds of boys of all ages arrived at about the same time, and there was a good deal of pushing and jostling. William self-consciously negotiated his way to his dorm table with the others, aware of the attention his crutch was attracting. He noticed that Thompson avoided sitting near him, and the place next to him was taken by a thin, nervous boy.

  ‘I’m Carmichael,’ the boy said. ‘What’s wrong with your leg?’

  ‘It were caught in a harvester.’

  ‘Why are you speaking like that?’ Carmichael demanded, looking puzzled.

  William didn’t know how to respond. He felt himself blush.

  ‘I saw his father earlier,’ Thompson said. ‘I thought he was a porter at first.’

  The boy next to him was intrigued. ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Reynolds here.’

  The boy, who was big for his age and had red hair, stared at William belligerently. ‘What are you doing here if your father’s a porter?’

  ‘He isn’t,’ William protested.

  ‘What is he then?’

  ‘He’s a blacksmith.’

  The boy, whose name was Yardley, addressed the table in a loud indignant voice. ‘I say, did you hear that? Reynolds here says his father is a blacksmith. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Is he pulling your leg?’ somebody said.

  ‘He must be. My father wouldn’t be very pleased to know they were letting common boys come here now. How can he afford it anyway?’

  ‘It’s a damn cheek if you ask me.’ Yardley gave William a threatening look. ‘We’ll teach you a lesson later.’

  ‘Yes, we ought to thrash the blighter,’ agreed Thompson enthusiastically.

  William looked in alarm at the faces all turned towards him. Carmichael shifted further along the bench.

  ‘Do you know, I think he smells?’ he said and with a smug look turned to William. ‘Do you ever wash?’

  The others laughed, and before William could respond they were all joining in.

  ‘I bet he’s never seen soap, have you, Reynolds you dirty little rotter?’

  ‘His father certainly had a bit of an unpleasant whiff about him,’ Thompson said.

  ‘That’s what we’ll do then,’ Yardley announced with authority. ‘We’ll give him a thorough wash afterwards.’ He grinned malevolently, then picked up a slice of bread and butter and spat on it before putting it on William’s plate.

  William spent the rest of the meal in isolated silence. He was miserable, and felt desperately lonely. Wherever he looked he was met with sneers and hostility. Carmichael took to kicking him in the shins underneath the table, emboldened by the idea that by being cruel to William the others might not think of bullying him.

  After tea was over, the younger boys were allowed an hour to themselves before they had to go to bed. William spent it alone in the dorm. He was terrified of what would happen when the others returned. He washed and put on his pyjamas, then climbed into his bed and drew the curtains around his cubicle, hoping that they would forget about him. He heard their voices when they began to return, and then the dorm prefect came and told them to hurry up. Eventually the gas was turned off, and they were left in darkness with a threat from the prefect that he would return to beat anybody who made a noise.

  William lay in his bed listening to whispers in the dark. After a few minutes the curtain was pulled aside and Yardley came into his cubicle, followed by Thompson.

  ‘Let’s have a look at your leg,’ he demanded.

  Though Yardley was big, William had decided that he would not let himself be bullied. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘What a cheek!’ Thompson said indignantly.

  ‘I’ll soon show you some manners.’ Yardley grabbed William’s bedclothes to try and turf him out of bed, but as he leaned over, William hit him as hard as he possibly could on his nose, and Yardley stepped back with a yelp. Blood dripped onto the floor. For a moment he was too stunned to react, but then he leapt on William and began pummelling him furiously about the ears. Though William did what he could to protect himself, it was hopeless. He tried to get up, but Thompson pushed him down again. Suddenly a voice bellowed from the door.

  ‘What the devil is going on in here?’

  When the dorm prefect lit the gas light again he was confronted with the sight of Yardley with his pyjamas covered in blood.

  ‘What on earth happened to you?’

  ‘It was Reynolds. He punched me on the nose.’

  The prefect looked doubtfully at William.

  ‘It’s true,’ Thompson chimed in. ‘These common boys are all ruffians.’

  �
��Common? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Didn’t you know? His father’s a blacksmith. Ask him to say something if you don’t believe me.’

  The prefect clearly didn’t believe a word of it. ‘What have you got to say about this nonsense Reynolds?’

  William didn’t answer. He knew as soon as he opened his mouth he would be condemned, but his silence made the prefect angry.

  ‘I say, are you going to answer me, you insolent brat?’

  ‘I told you,’ Thompson said. ‘They don’t know how to behave. We’ve a stable boy at home who’s just as impudent.’

  ‘You’d better answer me, or it’ll be the worse for you,’ the prefect threatened. He pointed at Yardley. ‘Is it true that you gave this boy a bloody nose?’

  In the end William decided he had no choice. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I only did it because he tried to see my leg.’ I only did ut ‘cause ‘e troid to see my leg.

  The prefect regarded him with fascinated revulsion. ‘Good Lord.’ He fetched a stick from his room, and when he came back told William to get out of bed and bend over, but when he did, William’s disability became obvious and the prefect hesitated.

  ‘Well, I suppose I can’t hit a cripple. You’d better do some extra work instead. Come and see me in the morning. The rest of you get back to bed immediately, and if I hear another sound I’ll punish you all.’

  As Yardley returned to his bed he scowled at William, furious that he had escaped a beating, and William knew that sooner or later Yardley would get his revenge. He spent the rest of the night unable to sleep, worried by the slightest sound. In the morning, when he got up and went to the bathroom, some of the other boys were waiting for him. Two of them seized his arms at once, and though he struggled and managed to kick one of them with his good leg he was easily overpowered, and they dragged him to the floor and pulled off his pyjama bottoms.

  ‘Look at his leg. That’s disgusting,’ Yardley said and all the boys crowded closer to examine the ridged and scarred tissue.

  ‘He’s a freak,’ Thompson declared.

  ‘He’s a dirty, common, freak,’ Yardley said. ‘Have you cleaned your teeth, Reynolds? I bet you haven’t. I expect you don’t even know what a toothbrush is, do you, you disgusting oaf.’

  From behind his back Yardley produced a toilet brush. He grinned as William began to struggle violently.

  ‘Hold him tight,’ he said, and grabbing William by his hair he thrust the brush at his face. William kept his mouth resolutely clamped shut and twisted his head from side even, though he could feel his hair being torn out by its roots.

  ‘Hold him still, damn it!’ Yardley said angrily, but it was no good. William bucked and twisted with all his might. Suddenly Yardley drew back his fist and thumped William hard on the side of his head. It felt like he’d been hit with a brick, and for a moment he saw specks of silver floating before his eyes, and his ears rang.

  ‘That’s better,’ Yardley said, then sat down on William’s chest and clamped his head between his knees and pinched his nose so that he couldn’t breathe. He felt like a sack of potatoes, and William was sure that he would suffocate and die. His heart pounded and blood pulsed in his temples.

  ‘Open up, you little peasant,’ Yardley demanded, waving the brush in front of William’s face.

  Still William refused. Yardley’s face swam and blurred before his eyes, but he decided he would rather die than surrender. But then, without even realising what he was doing, he gasped for breath, and straight away Yardley thrust the brush into his mouth and jerked it vigorously back and forth.

  ‘This is all you’re good for, Reynolds, eating a gentleman’s shit.’

  William gagged, and when they let him go he turned over and vomited onto the floor, crying tears of rage and utter humiliation. And while he lay there, beaten and helpless, one by one the boys all took turns to kick his bare, pale arse.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Latin master at Oundle was Mister Norris. He was a thin man with a nose like a blade, and small grey eyes which he would fix on his pupils with a withering, contemptuous stare if they displeased him in the slightest. The boys were all afraid of him.

  Norris disliked being a schoolmaster, and disliked his pupils even more. In his youth he had studied classics and philosophy at Oxford, and dreamt of becoming a great poet. In his final year, however, his father died owing a great deal of money. Norris found himself without the means that he’d imagined would always allow him to live comfortably without the necessity of having to work for an income. He became a school master instead of a poet, briefly convincing himself of the worthiness of teaching the classics to boys who reminded him of a younger version of himself. But a failed romance and disillusionment with school life made him bitter. Instead of seeking some other means of making a living, he became increasingly resentful at the change in his circumstances, and as he became older whatever redeeming qualities he might once have had became atrophied. He hated the world.

  As the first year boys filed silently into his class he stood beside his desk and regarded them with a cold glare. They kept their eyes lowered and walked briskly, but without hurrying, to their allotted desks. The last of them closed the door behind him and joined the others waiting for permission to sit down. Norris looked over them, ready to pounce on any boy who had dared come to his lesson improperly attired. His gaze lingered on William, who stood with his crutch at his side. That wretch, he thought! That he should be forced to endure a village dolt studying Horace and Virgil. It was an insult.

  ‘Sit,’ he commanded.

  The boys obeyed, but the scraping of chairs against the floor irritated Norris intensely and he scowled at Yardley, who, it seemed to Norris, made more noise than was necessary. It gave him a small measure of satisfaction that the boy visibly paled and averted his eyes.

  Norris went to the chalkboard and wrote a line from Horace’s Odes. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. He turned to the boys who were now sitting with their hands clasped on their desks, looking at what he’d written. They were like statues, none of them moving so much as a muscle in case he should pick them out.

  ‘Reynolds,’ he said, ‘be so kind as to translate the phrase to English.’

  William stared at the words on the board and desperately attempted to make sense of them from the rudiments of Latin grammar he’d managed to learn during his first weeks at Oundle.

  ‘I am waiting,’ Norris prompted impatiently.

  But the little William had learned, fled from his mind. The complexities of noun declensions, verb conjugations, and of ablatives of means or manner or absolute, meant nothing to him.

  ‘What is the tense, boy?’ Norris demanded. ‘Surely even you can tell us that.’

  ‘The tense, sir?’

  ‘Yes the tense! You know what that is, don’t you? They must teach you something at a village school. There are only three possibilities for goodness sake.’

  ‘We wasn’t taught any Latin, sir,’ William mumbled. We wasn’t tart any Latin, soir.

  ‘Weren’t, Reynolds! The subject is plural. Of course you weren’t taught Latin, you dolt! What on earth would a farm boy need with Latin? Unless, perhaps, you rear an extraordinarily educated breed of pig.’ Norris looked around at the other boys, wearing a thin, sarcastic smile, inviting them to enjoy his mockery. ‘I am referring to English grammar, boy.’ He fixed his eye on Yardley. ‘You boy, be so kind as to enlighten our ill-educated friend in the mysteries of tense.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Tense, boy! For goodness sake, it is not a difficult question. There are three of them! What are they?’

  ‘Past, present and future, sir,’ Yardley stammered as understanding dawned.

  ‘Precisely. Now, Reynolds, surely even you can discern which of those applies in this case.’ Norris strode to the board and took up a short cane which he used to point at the fourth word. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Est,’ William said. Ust.

  Norris rolled his
eyes. ‘Est Reynolds! The word is est. You are not in the fields now, boy. And what does it mean?’

  Silence. Norris advanced on him, his gown flapping like crows’ wings. He rapped his cane down hard on William’s desk, making him flinch.

  ‘Get up, boy! Get up and come here!’

  William obeyed, limping on his crutch to the board, where Norris made him face the rest of the class.

  ‘The phrase translates as; “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country.” It is. Present tense. Repeat it, Reynolds.’

  William did as he was told, though he didn’t sound anything like Norris. ‘Ut is sweet und becoming to doi fer one’s country,’

  At the stifled sniggers from the other boys, William’s face burned with humiliation. Norris muttered furiously under his breath, as if to himself, though loudly enough for the entire class to hear.

  ‘Good Lord, listen to him. Am I meant to perform miracles?’ Out loud he said, ‘Do you understand what it means, Reynolds?’

  But William didn’t. Tears pricked his eyes and his throat was tight, strangling his voice.

  ‘Horace is speaking of honour and duty to one’s country, noble sentiments that extend far beyond the notion of the individual. I don’t expect you to comprehend the subtle beauty of the idea, Reynolds, such things are beyond a person of your class. However it has fallen to me to drum into your cabbage-like brain some knowledge of the Latin language, though what good it will do you is beyond me. Hold out your hand.’

  William obeyed, and Norris raised his cane and brought it down sharply three times, each stroke causing a vivid red welt to appear. It irritated him that William uttered no sound, even though Norris hit him harder with every stroke. Frustrated by his stubbornness, Norris ordered William to take a chair and sit in the corner with his back to the class. ‘And before you return to this classroom, you will write the phrase with its English translation a hundred times.’

  With difficulty, William dragged his chair from his desk, and for the remainder of the lesson the room was silent except for the scratch of nibs against paper as the other boys faithfully copied down a translation of a passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.