Gentlemen And Players Part 11

Well, you were wrong, Headmaster. I have no intention of going gently into retirement. And as for your written warning, pone ubi sol nan lucet. I'll score my Century, or die in the attempt. One for the Honours Board.

I was still in a martial frame of mind when I got home this evening, and the invisible finger was back, poking gently but persistently at my wishbone. I took two of the pills Bevans had prescribed, and washed them down with a small medicinal sherry before settling down to some fifth form marking. It was dark by the time I had finished. At seven I stood up to draw the curtains, when a movement from the garden caught my eye. I leaned closer to the window.

Mine is a long, narrow garden, a seeming throwback cb'ij the days of strip-farming, with a hedge on one side, a watts on the other and a variety of shrubs and vegetables growing; more or less at random in between. At the far end there is a big old horse-chestnut tree, overhanging Dog Lane, which is separated from the back garden by a fence. Under the tree is a patch of mossy gra.s.s on which I like to sit in summer (or did, before the process of getting up again became so c.u.mbersome) and a small and decrepit shed in which I keep a few things.

I have never actually been burgled. I don't suppose I have anything really worth stealing, unless you count books, which are generally held to be worthless by the criminal fraternity. But Dog Lane has a reputation: there is a pub at the corner, which generates noise; a fish and chip shop at the far end, which generates litter; and of course, Sunnybank Park Comprehensive close by, which generates almost anything you can think of, including noise, litter and a twice-daily stampede past my house that would put even the most unruly Ozzies to shame. I tend to be generally tolerant of this. I even turn a blind eye to the occasional intruder hopping over the fence during the conker season. A horse-chestnut tree in October belongs to everyone, Sunnybankers included.

But this was different. For a start, school was long past. It was dark and rather cold, and there was something unpleasantly furtive about the movement I had glimpsed.

Pressing my face to the window, I saw three or four shapes at the far end of the garden, not large enough to be adult. Boys, then; now I could hear their voices, very lly, through the gla.s.s.

That surprised me. Usually conker-hunters are quick and abtrusive. Most people on the lane know my profession, respect it; and the Sunnybankers to whom I have spoken about their littering habits have rarely, if ever, reoffended.

I rapped sharply on the gla.s.s. Now they would run, I thought; but instead the figures fell still, and a few seconds later I heard - unmistakably - jeering from under the horse-chestnut tree.

'That does it.' In four strides I was at the door. 'Oy!' I yelled in my best magisterial voice. 'What the h.e.l.l do you boys think you're doing!'

More laughter from the bottom of the garden. Two ran, I think - I saw their brief outline, etched in neon, as they climbed the fence. The other two remained, secure in the darkness and rea.s.sured by the length of the narrow path.

'I said "What are you doing?'" It was the first time in years that a boy - even a Sunnybanker - had defied me. I felt a surge of adrenalin and the invisible finger poked at me again. 'Come here at once!'

'Or what?' The voice was brash and youthful. 'Think you can take me, you fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d?'

'Like f.u.c.k he can, he's too old!'

Rage gave me speed; I set off down the path like a buffalo, but it was dark, the path was greasy, my foot in its leather-soled slipper shot to the side, taking me off balance.

I did not fall, but it was close. I wrenched my knee, and when I looked back the two remaining boys were climbing over the fence, in a clap and flutter of laughter, like ugly birds taking wing.

St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys Thursday, 14th October IT WAS A SMALL INCIDENT. A MINOR IRRITANT, THAT S ALL.

No damage was done. And yet-- There was a time when I would have caught those boys, whatever it took, and dragged them back by the ears. Not now, of course. Sunny bankers know their rights. Even so, it had been a long time since my authority had been so deliberately challenged. Boys scent weakness. They all do. And it had been a mistake to run like that, in the dark, especially after what Bevans had told me. It looked rushed, undignified. A student teacher's mistake. I should have crept out into Dog Lane and caught them as they climbed over the fence. They were only boys -- thirteen or fourteen, judging by their voices. Since when did Roy Straitley allow a few boys to defy him?

I brooded on that for longer than it deserved. Perhaps that was why I slept so badly; perhaps the sherry; or perhaps I was still troubled by my conversation with Bishop. In any case I awoke unrefireshed; washed, dressed, made toast and drank a mug of tea as I waited for the postman. Sure enough, at seven thirty, the letter-box clattered, and sure enough, there was the typed sheet of St Oswald's notepaper, signed E. Gray, Headmaster, BA (Hons), and Dr B. D. Pooley, Chairman of Governors, the duplicate of which (it said) would be inserted into my personal record for a period of 12 (twelve) months, after which time it would be removed from file, on condition that no further complaint(s) had been lodged and at the discretion of the Governing Body, blah, blah, blah-dy b.l.o.o.d.y blah.

On a normal day, it would not have concerned me. Fatigue, however, made me vulnerable, and it was without enthusiasm - and a knee that still ached from the evening's misadventure - that I set off on foot to St Oswald's. Without quite knowing why, I made a short detour into Dog Lane, perhaps to check for signs of last night's intruders.

It was then that I saw it. I could hardly have missed it: a swastika, sketched on to the side of the fence in red marker pen, with the word 'HITLER' below it in exuberant letters. It was recent, then; almost certainly the work of last night's Sunnybankers -- if, indeed, they were Sunnybankers. But I had not forgotten the caricature tacked up on to the form noticeboard; the cartoon of myself as a fat little mortar boarded n.a.z.i, and my conviction at the time that Knight was behind it.

Could Knight have found out where I lived? It wouldn't I be hard; my address is in the School handbook, and dozens of boys must have seen me walking home. All the same I Couldn't believe that Knight - Knight, of all people - would dare to do something like this.

Teaching's a game of bluff, of course; but it would take a better player than Knight to check me. No, it had to be a coincidence, I thought; some marker-happy Sunnybank Parker slouching home to his fish and chips, who saw my nice clean fence and hated its unblemished surface.

At the weekend, I'll sand and repaint it with wipe-clean gloss. It needed doing anyway, and as any teacher knows, one piece of graffiti invites another. But I couldn't help feeling, as I walked to St Oswald's, that all the unpleasantness of the past few weeks -- Fallowgate, the Examiner campaign, last night's intrusion, Anderton-Pullitt's ridiculous peanut, even the Headmaster's prim little letter of this morning - were somehow - obscurely, irrationally, deliberately - related.

Schools, like s.h.i.+ps, are riddled with superst.i.tions, and St Oswald's more than most. The ghosts, perhaps; or the rituals and traditions that keep the old wheels creaking away. But this term has given us nothing but bad luck right from the beginning. There's a Jonah on board. If only I knew who it was.

When I entered the Common Room this morning, I found it suspiciously quiet. Word of my warning must have got around, because conversations fell silent throughout the day every time I entered a room, and there was a certain gleam in Sourgrape's eye that boded ill for someone.

The Nations avoided me; Grachvogel looked furtive; Sc.o.o.nes was at his most aloof; and even Pearman seemed most unlike his cheery self. Kitty, too, looked especially preoccupied - she barely acknowledged my greeting as I came in, and it bothered me rather; Kitty and I have always been chums, and I hoped nothing had happened to change that. I didn't think it had - after all, the little upsets of the past week hadn't touched her -- but there was definitely something in her face as she looked up and saw me. I sat beside her with my tea (the vanished Jubilee mug having been replaced by a plain brown one from home), but she seemed engrossed in her pile of books, and hardly said a word.

Lunch was a mournful affair of vegetables - thanks to the vindictive Bevans - followed by a sugarless cup of tea. I took the cup with me to room 59, though most of the boys were outside, except for Anderton-Pullitt, happily engrossed in his aeronautics book, and Waters, Pink and Lemon, who were quietly playing cards in one corner.

I had been marking for about ten minutes when I looked up and saw the rabbit Meek, standing beside the desk with a pink slip in his hand and a look of mingled hate and deference on his pale, bearded face.

'I got this slip this morning, sir,' he said, holding out the piece of paper. He has never forgiven me for my intervention in his lesson, or for the fact that I witnessed his humiliation in front of the boys. As a result he addresses me as 'sir', like a pupil, and his tone is flat and colourless, like Knight's.

'What is it?'

'a.s.sessment form, sir.'

'Oh, G.o.ds. I'd forgotten.' Of course, the staff appraisals are upon us; Heaven forbid that we should fail to complete all the necessary paperwork before December's official inspection. I supposed I had one too; the New Head has always been a great fan of internal appraisal - as introduced by Bob Strange, who also wants more in-service training, yearly management courses and performance-related pay. Can't see it myself -- your results are only as good as the boys you teach, after all - but it keeps Bob out of the cla.s.sroom, which is the essential thing.

The general principle of appraisal is simple: each junior member of staff is individually observed and appraised in the cla.s.sroom by a senior master; each Head of Section by a Head of Year; each Head of Year by a Deputy, that is, Pat Bishop or Bob Strange. The Second and Third Masters are a.s.sessed by the Head himself (though in Strange's case, he spends so little time in the cla.s.sroom that you wonder why he bothers). The Head, being a geographer, does hardly any teaching at all, but spends much of his time on courses, lecturing teams of PGCE students on Racial Sensitivity or Drug Awareness.

'It says you'll be observing my lesson this afternoon,' said Meek. He didn't look too pleased about it. 'Third-form computer science.'

'Thank you, Mr Meek.' I wondered which joker had decided to put me in charge of computer science. As if I didn't know. And with Meek, of all people. Oh well, I thought. Bang goes my free period.

There are some days in a teaching career where everything goes wrong. I should know; I've seen a few -- days when the only sensible thing to do is to go home and back to bed. Today was one of them; an absurd parade of mishaps and annoyances, of litter and lost books and minor scuffles and unwelcome administrative tasks and extra duties and louche comments in the corridors.

A run-in with Eric Sc.o.o.nes over some misbehaviour of Sutcliff s; my register (still missing, and causing trouble with Marlene); wind (never welcome); a leak in the boys' toilets and the subsequent flooding of part of the Middle Corridor; Knight (unaccountably smug); Dr Devine (equally so); a number of annoying room changes due to the leak and e-mailed (ye G.o.ds!) to all staff workstations, with the result that I arrived late to my morning cover period - English, for the absent Roach.

There are many advantages to being a senior master. One is that having established a reputation as a disciplinarian, it is rarely necessary to enforce it. Word gets round -- Don't mess with Straitley - and a quiet life for all ensues. Today was different. Oh, it happens occasionally; and if it had happened on any other day I might not have reacted as I did then. But it was a large group, a lower third - thirty-five boys, and not a single Latinist among them. They knew me only by reputation - and I don't suppose the recent article in our local press had helped much.

I was ten minutes late, and the cla.s.s was already noisy. No work had been set, and as I walked in, expecting the boys to stand in silence, they simply glanced in my direction and went right on doing precisely what they'd been doing before. Games of cards; conversations; a rowdy discussion at the back with chairs kicked over and a powerful stench of chewing gum in the air.

It shouldn't have angered me. A good teacher knows that there is fake anger and real anger - the fake is fair game, part of the good teacher's armoury of bluff, but the real must be hidden at all costs, lest the boys - those master manipulators -- understand that they have scored a point.

But I was tired. The day had started badly, the boys didn't know me and I was still angry over the incident in my back garden the night before. Those high young voices - Like f.u.c.k he can, he's too old! - had sounded too familiar, too plausible to be easily dismissed. One boy looked up at me and turned to his desk-mate. I thought I heard the phrase Nuts to you, sir! - amidst a clap of ugly laughter.

And so I fell - like a novice, like a student teacher - for the oldest trick in the book. I lost my temper.

'Gentlemen, silence.' It usually works. This time it didn't; I could see a group of boys at the back laughing openly at the battered gown I had omitted to remove following my mid-morning Break duty. Nuts to you, sir, I heard (or thought), and it seemed to me that if anything, the volume increased.

'I said, "Silence!"' I roared -- an impressive sound in usual circ.u.mstances, but I'd forgotten Bevans and his advice to take it easy, and the invisible finger prodded me in the sternum mid-roar. The boys at the back sn.i.g.g.e.red, and irrationally I wondered if any of them had been there last night - Think you can take me, you fat b.a.s.t.a.r.d?

Well, in such a situation there are inevitably casualties. In this case, eight in lunch-time detention, which was perhaps a trifle excessive, but a teacher's discipline is his own, after all, and there was no reason for Strange to intervene. He did, however; walking past the room at just the wrong time, he happened to hear my voice and looked through the gla.s.s at precisely the moment that I turned one of the sn.i.g.g.e.ring boys around by the sleeve of his blazer.

'Mr Straitleyl' Of course nowadays, no one touches a pupil.

Silence fell; the boy's sleeve was torn at the armpit. 'You saw him, sir. He hit me.'

They knew he hadn't. Even Strange knew, though his face was impa.s.sive. The invisible finger gave another push. The boy - Pooley, his name was - held up his torn blazer for inspection. 'That was brand-new!'

It wasn't; anyone could see that. The fabric was s.h.i.+ny with age; the sleeve itself a little short. Last year's blazer, due for replacement. But I'd gone too far; I could see it now. 'Perhaps you can tell Mr Strange all about it,' I suggested, turning back to the now-silent cla.s.s.

The Third Master gave me a reptilian look.

'Oh, and when you've finished with Mr Pooley, do please send him back,' I said. 'I need to arrange his detention.'

There was nothing for Strange to do then but to leave, taking Pooley with him. I don't suppose he enjoyed being dismissed by a colleague -- but then, he shouldn't have interfered, should he? Still, I had a feeling he would not let the matter go. It was too good an opportunity - and, as I recalled (though a little late), young Pooley was the eldest son of Dr B. D. Pooley, Chairman of Governors, whose name I had most recently encountered on a formal written warning.

Well, after that I was so rattled that I went to the wrong room for Meek's appraisal, and arrived twenty minutes into the lesson. Everyone turned round to look at me, Meek excepted; his pallid face wooden with disapproval.

I sat down at the back; someone had1 set out a chair for me, with the pink appraisal form on it. I scanned the sheet. It was the usual box-ticking format: planning, delivery, stimulus, enthusiasm, cla.s.s control. Marks out of five, plus a s.p.a.ce for a comment, like a hotel questionnaire.

I wondered what sort of an opinion I was supposed to have; still, the cla.s.s was quiet, barring a couple of nudgers at the back; Meek's voice was reedy and penetrating; the computer screens behaved themselves, creating the migraine-inducing patterns which apparently const.i.tuted the object of the exercise. All in all, satisfactory enough, I supposed; I smiled encouragingly at the hapless Meek; left early in the hope of a quick cup of tea before the start of the next period; and stuck the pink slip into the Third Master's pigeonhole.

As I did, I noticed something lying on the floor at my feet. It was a little notebook, pocket-sized, bound in red. Opening it briefly I saw it half-filled with spindly writing; on the flyleaf I read the name C. KEANE.

Ah, Keane. I looked around the Common Room, but the new English teacher was not there. And so I pocketed the notebook, meaning to give it back to Keane later. Rather a mistake, or so it turned out. Still, you know what they say about listening at doors.

Every teacher keeps them. Notes on boys; notes of lists and duties; notes of grudges small and large. You can tell almost as much about a colleague by his notebook as by his mug Grachvogel's is a neat and colour-coded plea for order; Kitty's a no-nonsense pocket diary; Devine's an impressive black tome with little inside. Sc.o.o.nes uses the same green accountS'books he has been using since 1961; the Nations have charity planners from Christian Aid; Pearman a stack of odd papers, Post-It notes and used envelopes.

Now, having opened the thing, I couldn't resist a glance at young Keane's notebook; and by the time I realized that I shouldn't be reading it, I was hooked, lined and sinkered.

Of course I already knew the man was a writer. And he has that look; the slight complacency of the casual observer, content to enjoy the view because he knows he won't be staying long. What I hadn't guessed was how much he'd already seen; the tiffs, the rivalries, the little secrets of the Common Room dynamic. There were pages of it; closely written in handwriting so small that it was scarcely legible; character studies, sketches, overheard remarks, gossip, history; news.

I scanned the pages, straining my eyes to decipher the minuscule script. Fallowgate was mentioned; and Peanuts; and Favourites. There was a little of our School history -- I law the names Snyde, Pinchbeck and Mitch.e.l.l alongside a folded newspaper cutting of that sad old tale. Next to that, a photocopied snippet from a St Oswald's official School photograph, a colour snapshot of another school's Sports Day - boys and girls sitting cross-legged on the gra.s.s - and a bad portrait of John Snyde, looking criminal, as most men do when seen on the front page of a newspaper. Several more pages, I saw, were given over to cartoons, caricatures for the most part. Here was the Head, rigid and glacial, the Don Quixote to Bishop's Sancho. There was Bob Strange, a hybrid half-human wired into his computer terminal. My own Anderton-Pullitt was there in goggles and flying helmet; Knight's schoolboy crush on a new teacher was mercilessly exposed; Miss Dare portrayed as a bespectacled, bestockinged schoolmarm with Sc.o.o.nes as her growling Rottweiler. Even 1 was included, hunchbacked and black-robed, swinging from the Bell Tower with Kitty, a plumpish Esmerelda, under my arm.

That made me smile; but there was some unease in it, too. I suppose I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Kitty Teague. All above board, of course, you know - I just never realized it was so d.a.m.ned obvious. I wondered, too, whether Kitty had seen it.

d.a.m.n the man; I thought to myself. Hadn't I known from the first that he was an upstart? And yet I'd liked him. Like him still, if truth be told.

R. Straitley: Latin. Devoted Old Boy of St Oswald's. Sixties; smoker; overweight; cuts his own hair. Wears the same brown tweed jacket with elbow'patches every day (well, that's a lie, smarty-pants; I wear a blue suit to Speech Days and funerals); hobbies include baiting the management and flirting with the French teacher. Boys hold him in unexpected affection (you're forgetting Colin Knight); albatross around B. Strange's neck. Harmless.

Well, I like that. Harmless, forsooth!

Still, it could be worse; under Penny Nation's entry I read poisonous do-gooder, and under Isabelle Tapi, French tart. You can't deny the man has a turn of phrase. I would have read on; but at that moment the bell for registration went, and I put the notebook in my desk drawer, with some reluctance, hoping to finish it at leisure.

I never did. Returning to my desk at the end of school I found the drawer empty and the notebook gone; at the time I a.s.sumed that Keane, who, like Dianne, occasionally shares my room, had found it and taken it back. I never asked him, for obvious reasons; and it was only later, when the scandals began to erupt one after the other, that I thought to make the connection between that little red notebook and the ubiquitous Mole, who knew the School so well, and who seemed to have so many insights into our harmless little ways.

Friday, 15 th October ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL WEEK, I THINK. NOT LEAST WAS MY discovery of that notebook, with its incriminating contents. I believe Straitley may have read some of it, though probably not all. The handwriting is too spindly for his old eyes, and besides, if he had drawn any suspicious conclusions, I would have seen it in his manner before now. Still, it would have been unwise to keep the book. I see that; and I burnt the offending item - not without a pang before it could fall under hostile scrutiny. I may yet have to revisit the problem - but not today. Today I have other concerns to attend to.

The October half-term is upon us already, and I mean to be very busy (I'm not just talking about marking books). No, next week I shall be in School almost every day. I have cleared it with Pat Bishop, who also finds it hard to keep away, and with Mr Beard, the Head of IT, with whom I have an unofficial arrangement.

All perfectly innocent - after all, my interest in technology is nothing new, and I know from experience that I am best hidden when I am in the open. Bishop approves, of course; he doesn't really know much about computers, but supervises me in his avuncular way, popping out of his office every once in a while to see if I need help.

I am not a brilliant student. A couple of elementary faux pas have established me as willing, if not especially able, which allows Bishop to feel superior whilst giving me extra cover, should I ever need it. I doubt I shall; if my presence is ever questioned at a later date, I know I can rely on Pat to say that I simply didn't have the expertise.

Every member of St Oswald's staff has an e-mail address. This consists of their first two or three initials followed by the address of the School website. In theory, every member of staff should check his e-mail twice a day, in case of an urgent memo from Bob Strange, but in practice, some never do. Roy Straitley and Eric Sc.o.o.nes are among these; many more use the system but have neglected to personalize their mailboxes, and have kept the default pa.s.sword (Pa.s.sWORD) to access their mail. Even the ones, like Bishop, who imagine themselves to be more computer-literate, are predictable enough: Bishop himself uses the name of his favourite sportsman and even Strange, who should know better, has a series of easy-to-guess codes (his wife's maiden name, his date of birth and so on).

Not that I ever had to do much guessing. Fallow, who used the facilities every night, kept a list of user codes in a notebook In the Porter's Lodge, along with a box of disks (material downloaded from the internet) that no one had bothered to Investigate. By retracing his steps (under a different user ident.i.ty) I managed to lay quite a convincing trail. Better still, by disabling the firewall on the School's computer network for a few minutes, and then sending a carefully prepared file attachment to , from one of my hotmail addresses, I was able to introduce a simple virus designed to lie dormant in the system before awakening into dramatic action a couple of weeks later.

Not the most exciting kind of spadework, I know. All the same, I enjoyed it. This evening I thought I might allow myself a little celebration; a night off, a couple of drinks at the Thirsty Scholar. That turned out to be a mistake; I hadn't realized how many colleagues - and pupils -- frequented the place. 1 was only halfway through my first drink when I spotted a little group of them -- 1 recognized Jeff Light, Gerry Grachvogel and Robbie Roach, the long-haired geographer, with a couple of seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds who might have been St Oswald's sixthformers. I shouldn't have been surprised - it's no secret that Roach likes to hang out with the boys. Light, too. Grachvogel, on the other hand, looked slightly furtive, but then he always does, and he at least has the sense to know (as Straitley puts it) that no good ever comes of getting over-friendly with the troops.

I was tempted to stay. There was no reason to be shy; but the thought of socializing with them, of letting my hair down, as the ghastly Light would have put it, and having a couple of bevvies, was distinctly unpleasant. Thankfully, I was sitting by the door and was able to make my exit, quick and un.o.bserved.

I recognized Light's car, a black Probe, in the alley beside the pub, and toyed with the idea of putting its side window through; but there might be security cameras in the street, I thought, and it would be pointless to risk exposure on a stupid whim. Instead I walked the long way home -- the night was mild, and besides, I'd promised myself another look at Roy Straitley's fence.

He had already removed the graffiti. I wasn't surprised; even though he couldn't actually see it from his h ouse, its simple presence must have irked him, just as it irked him that the boys who had invaded his garden might return. Perhaps I'll arrange it - just to see his face - but not tonight. Tonight I deserved better.

And so I went home to my chintz-hung room, opened my second bottle of champagne (I have a case of six, and I mean to see them all empty by Christmas), caught up with a little essential correspondence, then went down to the payphone outside and made a quick call to the local police, reporting a black Probe (registration LIT 3) driving erratically in the vicinity of the Thirsty Scholar.

It's the sort of behaviour my therapist tends to discourage nowadays. I'm too impulsive, or so she says; too judgemental. I don't always consider the feelings of others as I should. But there was no risk to me; I did not give my name, and in any case - you know he deserved it. Like Mr Bray, Light is a braggart; a bully; a natural rule-breaker; a man who genuinely believes that a few pints under his belt make him a better driver. Predictable. They're all so predictable. That's their weakness. The Oswaldians'. Light, of course, is a complacent fool; but even Straitley, who is not, shares the same foolish complacency. Who would dare to attack me? To attack St Oswald's?

Well, gentlemen. I would.

CHECK.

THE SUMMER OF MY FATHER S BREAKDOWN WAS THE HOTTEST in remembered history. At first it cheered him, as if this were a return to the legendary summers of his childhood, during which, if I was to believe him, he spent the happiest days of his life. Then, as the sun continued remorseless and the gra.s.s on St Oswald's lawns veered from yellow to brown, he soured and began to fret.

The lawns were his responsibility, of course; and it was one of his duties to maintain them. He set up sprinklers to water the gra.s.s, but the area to be covered was too large to be dealt with in this way, and he was obliged to restrict his attentions to the cricket pitch only, while the remainder of the lawns grew bald under the sun's hot and lidless eye. But that was only one of my father's concerns. The graffiti artist had struck again, this time in technicolour; a mural, fully six foot square, on the side of the Games Pavilion.

My father spent two days scrubbing it off, then another week repainting the Pavilion, and swore that next time, he'd give the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d the thras.h.i.+ng of his life. Still the culprit eluded him; twice more, spray-paintings appealed in and around St Oswald's, crudely colourful, artistic in their way, both of them featuring caricatures of masters. My father began to watch the school at night, lying in wait behind the Pavilion with a twelve-pack of beer, but still there was no sign of the guilty party, although how he managed to avoid detection was a mystery to John Snyde.

Then there were the mice. Every large building has vermin -- St Oswald's more than most - but since the end of the summer term, mice had infested the corridors in unusually large numbers. Even I saw them occasionally, especially around the Bell Tower, and I knew that their breeding would have to be checked; poison laid down and the dead mice removed before the new term began and the parents had a chance to complain.

It incensed my father. He was convinced that boys had left food in their lockers; blamed the carelessness of the School cleaners; spent days opening and checking every locker in the School with mounting rage - but no success.

Then there were the dogs. The hot weather affected them as it did my father, making them lethargic by day and aggressive in the evenings. By night their owners - who had usually omitted to walk them in the sweltering daytime -- now loosed them on the wasteground at the back of St Oswald's, and they ran in packs there, barking and tearing up the gra.s.s. They had no respect for boundaries; despite my father's attempts to keep them out, they would squeeze through the fence into St Oswald's playing-fields and s.h.i.+t the newly sprinkled cricket pitch. They seemed to have instinct for choosing the spot that would annoy my ther most; and in the mornings he would have to drag Itllmself around the fields with his p.o.o.per-scooper, arguing f furiously with himself and chugging at a can of flat beer.

Infatuated as I was with Leon, it took me some time to understand - and even longer to care - that John Snyde was losing his mind. I had never been very close to my father, nor had I ever found him easy to read. Now his face was a perpetual slab, its most common expression one of bewildered rage. Once, perhaps, I had expected something more. But this was the man who had thought to solve my social problems with karate lessons. Faced with this infinitely more delicate situation, what could I possibly hope from him now?

Dad, I'm in love with a boy called Leon. I didn't think so.

All the same, I tried. He'd been young once, I told myself. He'd been in love, in l.u.s.t, whatever. I brought him beer from the fridge; made tea; sat for hours in front of his favourite TV shows (Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazzard) in the hope of something other than blankness. But John Snyde was sinking fast. Depression enfolded him like a crazy quilt; his eyes reflected nothing but the colours from the screen. Like the rest of them, he barely saw me; at home, as at St Oswald's, I had become the Invisible Man.

Then, two weeks into that hot summer holiday, a double catastrophe struck. The first was my own fault: opening a window on to the roof of the School I managed to trip the '; burglar alarm and it sounded. My father reacted with un- expected speed, and I was nearly caught in the act. As it was, I got back to the house and was just about to replace the pa.s.skeys, when along came my father, and saw me with the keys in my hand.

I tried to bluff my way out of it. I'd heard the alarm, I said; and noticing that he had forgotten the keys, had been on my way to deliver them. He didn't believe me. He had been jumpy that day, and he'd already suspected the keys were missing. I had no doubt I was in for it now. There was no way out of the house except past my father, and from the expression on his face, I knew I didn't have a chance.

It wasn't the first time he'd hit me, of course. John Snyde was the champion of the roundhouse punch, a blow which connected maybe three times out of ten and which felt like being hit with a petrified log. Usually I dodged, and by the time he saw me again he had sobered up, or forgotten why I had angered him in the first place.

This time was different. First, he was sober. Second, I had committed the unforgivable offence, a trespa.s.s against St Oswald's; an open challenge to the Head Porter. For a moment I saw it in his eyes; his trapped rage; his frustration: it was the dogs, the graffiti, the bald patches on the lawn; it was the kids who pointed at him and called him names; it was the monkey-faced boy; it was the unspoken contempt of people like the Bursar and the New Head. I don't know how many times he punched me, but by the end of it my nose was bleeding, my face was bruised, I was crouching in a corner with my arms over my head and he was standing over me with a dazed expression on his big face, his hands outspread like a stage murderer's.

'My G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d. Oh my G.o.d.'

He was talking to himself, and I was too preoccupied with my busted nose to care, but at last I finally dared to lower my arms. My stomach hurt, and I felt as if I was about to be sick, but I managed to keep the feeling at bay.

My father had moved away and was sitting at the table, his head in his hands. 'Oh G.o.d. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,' he repeated, though whether this was addressed to me or to the Almighty, I could not tell. He did not look at me as I slowly stood up. Instead he spoke into his hands, and although I kept my distance, knowing how volatile he could be, I sensed that something had broken in him.

'I'm sorry,' he said, now shaken by sobs. 'I can't take it, kid. I just can't - f.u.c.king - take it.' And with that he finally brought it out, the last and most terrible blow of that miserable afternoon, and as I listened, first in astonishment, then in growing horror, I realized that I was going to be sick after all, and rushed out into the sunlight, where St Oswald's marched interminably across the blue horizon and the sun trepanned my forehead and the scorched gra.s.s smelt like Cinnabar and all the time the stupid birds sang and sang and would not stop singing.

I SUPPOSE I SHOULD HAVE GUESSED. IT WAS MY MOTHER.

Three months ago she had begun to write to him again, in vague terms at first, then in more and more detail. My father had not told me of her letters, but in retrospect, their arrival must have coincided more or less with my first meeting with Leon and the beginning of my father's decline.