I piled blankets on and smoothed a clean tea towel on the pillow for him as matron had done once when I had a sweaty fever. I even tucked him in. Despite the state of him, he seemed bemused by this reversal of roles, though I doubt he had the strength to resent my ministrations. I placed the bowl containing the rest of the warm porridge on the bookcase near his head, poured a tall glass of water, and glanced at my watch.
‘OK.’ I was brisk, efficient. Florence Nightingale, this time, with the soldiers of the Crimea. ‘Anything else?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘A bowl, or…’
Of course! He wasn’t about to trek out in the cold to the privy. I fetched the bucket and placed it carefully by the bed. ‘That should keep you out of trouble.’
He didn’t smile.
The fire banked, the patient swaddled and fed, there was no more excuse for me to hang about. The risk of eternal hellfire and damnation at the hands of Clifton-Mogg grew as the sun dropped towards the horizon, so I said goodbye and promised to return. Finn’s eyes were closed and he seemed not to have heard.
The tide was lower now but not low enough to cross without the kayak. I hesitated, weighing up the various miseries that awaited me in my new role as hero (drowning, freezing, exposure to the elements and my schoolmasters), then decided to play safe by dragging the boat along. I was already criminally late, but it was better than swimming alone in the dark.
Adrenalin made me uncharacteristically strong and swift, and the journey went without incident, in record time. At the school gate, I encountered the music master, back from town with a parcel under one arm and a song, as usual, in his heart. He might not have noticed me (so absent was his mind from anything relating to the real world) if I hadn’t greeted him in my best false-jovial manner.
Confused and a bit blustery, he puffed up his feathers like a chicken. ‘Isn’t it rather late for you to be out and about?’ The way he asked the question made it clear he had no idea what the answer should be.
‘Afternoon exeat, sir.’ I reached into my pocket, pulled out my folded sick note, waved it vaguely in his direction, frowned a little, looked concerned. ‘Our year’s had them all term.’ Respect seasoned with a touch of self-righteousness.
‘Why yes, of course, fine,’ he murmured, and fluttered off into the darkness, humming, relieved to be free of any reminder that he taught school for a living.
My room-mates didn’t let me off so easily.
Barrett was first. Throwing himself over the edge of the partition wall, he gaped at me with mock horror. ‘Holy Jesus, you’ve been out all day? You’re a dead man. Exactly how much is my silence worth?’
But Barrett wasn’t low enough to turn me in, and in any case morality wasn’t his thing, extortion was. In minutes he was fixed up with his favourite dummy-substitute, exhaling slowly, pensively, filling the tiny room with smoke. Luckily there was no sign of Gibbon. Across the room, Reese stared at me with his creepy, knowing look. When I caught his eye, he actually winked. I felt sick.
‘Jesus, Barrett.’ Gibbon entered the room and I sighed, wearily prepared for battle. ‘At least open the bloody window before we choke to death.’ Barrett answered with a plume of smoke blown full into Gibbon’s face, at which Gibbon roared, picked up the nearest thing from the floor and hurled it at his adversary, scoring a bullseye to the left temple with Reese’s shoe. A blazing row broke out, ending with the door barricaded and Gibbon locked out. For once the gods were on my side.
I slipped into bed, pulled a pillow over my head and disappeared from the present. I had my work cut out for me on Sunday, and no idea how I was going to pull it off.
23
You’ll notice at this point that I hadn’t really focused on Finn’s being ill. There was something in me that refused to believe it was serious, was certain that when I showed up like the US cavalry, Finn would be up and going about his business, frowning and asking why I’d bothered to come. So secure was I in our relative roles.
I stumbled through the Saturday dress rehearsal, distracted and fidgety. Attendance at chapel the following morning was strictly enforced, and even if my housemaster hadn’t missed me, Reese was watching like a hawk.
What a hero I was. Chapel first, then life and death. A few lusty verses of ‘And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times’ followed by ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’, or perhaps, in my case, not be. I made a quick calculation as to how long it would take to detour into town (ages), and what would be open (nothing), and decided on a raid of the house kitchen as the softer option. We’d all done it, you just had to get your timing right, coordinate breaking and entering with cook’s breakfast, act quickly and without fear. In the meantime I shoved a few vital supplies into the pocket of my satchel (five bottles of pills), for once grateful that Reese was the floor’s biggest hypochondriac. I didn’t bother worrying which pill did what; I could sort that out later. I also packed a pair of warm socks and a knitted hot-water bottle cover from Barrett’s mum.
The door by the kitchen rubbish bins was always unlocked, which made the whole operation a bit like storming a church crèche. Look left, look right, stroll in. The kitchen was deserted except for Young Sammy, who had what nowadays are called Learning Difficulties, but what we called ‘not all there’. He was chopping onions in the corner, looking cheerful despite the tears running down his face. I waved and he waved back. On the stone worktop, a heap of fatty pork awaited destruction by overcooking. I grabbed a couple of streaky slabs, enough for two or three meals at least, and shovelled them into my satchel. Nothing like books that stink of pork blood. Next stop was the larder, where a round Victoria sponge beckoned. I grabbed it, a second later adding another. They crumbled as I shoved them into my bag with the pork.
Footsteps. Ducking under the table, I folded myself in behind two rough wooden crates of veg and waited for the sound to pass, so bold I didn’t bother to shiver in fearful silence, but reached in and continued stuffing my bag, with potatoes now, silently of course, as I could actually see Billy the Cook’s legs from my hiding place. Night-time was better for raids, he was nearly always drunk and didn’t care so much about his precious stockpiles, but I relied on the fact that his hearing wasn’t much good any more thanks to five decades of shouting at Young Sammy, who must have been sixty by now. Billy lit a cigarette, tossed the flaming match on to the floor more or less by my feet, and left the kitchens grumbling his usual stream of discontent. The match continued to burn as I waited to make sure he hadn’t changed his mind, perhaps begun (uncharacteristically) to worry about burning the school kitchens down. I wriggled out of my hiding place, crushing the tiny flame with my foot. Reluctantly, I admit. Every schoolboy dreams of conflagration.
What else? A handful of hard white sugar lumps from the supply for the master’s table. Sugar and cake and blood and pork. That’s what little boys are made of.
Oh, Christ, bread. Delivery didn’t come till Monday morning, but there were a few leftover brown rolls in the bread bin.
I humped the satchel strap up across my chest, waved to Sammy and set off. Wished I’d had a balaclava and black leather gloves. I rather fancied myself in spy mode, what boy wouldn’t?
Almost forgot the reason for my mission.
24
Finn was a little better. I arrived desperate for signs of Wellness, desperate for any indication that he’d improved; that his fever had broken. It happened all the time, in old films – the patient sweating and pale, the distraught wife, cut to the night sky, the clouds break, the sky clears, the eyes of the patient open and a tearful voice murmurs, ‘He’s going to live!’
In my mediocre documentary, the patient just lay there looking pale, sweating and shifting his limbs constantly, as if moving this way or that would stop the ache in them.
‘How are you?’ I asked, unnecessarily.
His response was raspy. ‘Fine.’
‘You look lousy. Remember I told you about glandular fever at school? I think that’s what you’ve got.’ I didn’t add t
hat if it was, it was I who had infected him. He was probably bright enough to have reasoned that one out himself.
He looked at me dully and pointed to the glass of water I’d left him. It was empty. The bucket had been used. Not elegantly, I might add, I smelled urine when I entered the hut, and found it splashed on the floor.
There is great comfort to be had in an orderly sequence of chores. Fire. Water. Food. Medicine. I attacked each job with complete absorption, as if each were the beginning and end of my responsibilities on earth.
Despite the gloominess of my tasks, outside was cool and clear and the room streamed with sunlight. I banked up the fire and returned to Finn, propped him up with a folded blanket and handed him a glass of water, holding it for him between sips.
In a jolly-hockey-sticks voice that I’m sure I’d only ever heard in Carry On films, I began to unpack my stolen booty, uttering the occasional ‘look what we have here!’ in what I imagined was a cheering tone. But Finn’s eyes were mostly closed, and after a few embarrassing moments I took my travelling show off to the kitchen and busied myself out of his line of sight, putting the water on for tea while I considered what to do with the pork.
I couldn’t believe Finn wasn’t hungry; I guessed he hadn’t eaten properly in days. I watched as he tried to drink, his shoulders hunched and tense. After a few sips, he shook his head, pushed the glass away, and the only thing I could get him to consider were Reese’s pills. I sifted through them, reading the long names and indications on the labels with interest: For diarrhoea. For constipation. For swelling. Three times a day. After meals. One at night as necessary. One small bottle looked promising and I held it up for him to read: Twice daily for pain (may cause drowsiness). They were tiny, so I made him swallow two to be safe, and sure enough within twenty minutes he was asleep, a look of almost angelic repose on his face.
I didn’t have much clue how to cook the pork, but I did have a vague idea about broth. So before anything else, I covered the slabs with water and put them on to boil. It took a long time for the water to heat up, and when it did, the surface quickly filled with a foul-smelling greyish scum that I tried to scrape off with a spoon. I stuck a couple of rolls on the top of the woodstove, placed the less ruined of the two sponges on a plate and tried to rinse the blood out of the sugar lumps.
With everything more or less in order, I sat down next to Finn and watched him sleep. His features looked even more delicate than usual, his eyelids violet and nearly translucent. He had long lashes, like a girl’s, and I couldn’t help wondering how he’d manage with my sort of life. With his looks, his skill as an athlete, and his natural reserve, he might inadvertently end up top of the heap at St Oswald’s, despite lacking all the requisite social guile. For some reason this thought annoyed me.
After an hour, the broth began to smell less disgusting. I boiled it further, added salt, took one of the partially burnt rolls off the stove, ladled the soup into a teacup and brought it to Finn. He was half-awake now, but didn’t seem keen on eating, so I goaded and joked until he gave in, probably just for a bit of peace and quiet. Fire, water, food. The soup was fatty and rich, with bits of meat floating in it, a real Anglo-Saxon repast. He sipped slowly, shaking his head ‘no’ when I produced the bread roll. So I crumbled it up and added it to the soup, where it turned soggy and soft and went down more easily. Soon his eyes began to roll back, he pushed the cup away and in seconds had drifted back to sleep.
I opened a window to let in some fresh air. It was the ultimate luxury after a long winter of huddling and shivering. The smell of the sea sweetened the atmosphere in the hut and made me feel more optimistic. There wasn’t much else I could do about the smell of urine.
It was early afternoon when Finn awoke, his throat dry and painful. ‘Time for your tablets,’ I sang like an idiot, but when I approached with the cup, he turned away from me. I prodded him gently. ‘Come on, it’ll help you feel better, there’s a good boy.’ For an answer he flung out one arm and knocked the cup out of my hand and across the room, where it narrowly missed the window, smashing against the wooden frame with a report like a rifle.
All the tension of the past few days exploded. ‘What the hell are you doing? You think I’m here for the fun of it?’
‘Well, go then! Who asked you to come here?’ His voice was a furious croak and I wondered at the pain it cost him to shout at me. For an instant before he turned away again, I caught a glimpse of his face and it looked frightened.
I mopped up the soup, swept the pieces of china off the floor, and filled a new cup, finishing my chores silently with an air of dignified reproach. He could treat me as he liked; I wasn’t going to give up on him. On the other hand, I felt no obligation to relinquish the moral high ground by telling him when I’d be back. It was cruel of me, but I gained a peculiar satisfaction from it. For the briefest of moments in our history together, I realized I was more important to him than he was to me.
The tide was high, and the sea surged against the foundation of the hut. I thought of ancient civilizations lying underwater, or stacked below the hut in uneven layers, the long-forgotten lives of fishermen, weavers, farmers. Finn’s place in the universe was so fluid, he might have belonged to any one of those civilizations, any century leading up to this one. If I closed my eyes for a moment I could even imagine that he had come here through a blip in the universe, that while I was gone he would return (silently, gracefully) to his daub-and-wattle hut and slide easily back into an earlier, more savage world. That would suit him best of all, I thought. He didn’t belong to an age of Disney and motor cars and compulsory education.
I didn’t speak a word to him as I left.
25
On Monday, the day of the opening of our play, the weather turned glorious. All around, schoolboys emerged like tortoises from deep down in their coats, at first naked and pale and a little dazed, then leaping and running with the sheer exuberance of feeling sun on their skin.
I had lessons all day Monday, and a last-minute run through before dinner. The play went on at seven, and was considered a success despite a number of conspicuous prop failures: my portrait fell off the wall halfway through Act Three and Lady Bracknell’s bosom broke free of its harness in the final scene, requiring poor Aitken to speak his final scenes with both hands supporting his cleavage. The effect was most unladylike, but with encouragement from the front rows, Aitken bounced his rubber assets so energetically that by the time the curtain came down, audience and cast had collapsed in joyous anarchy.
With the play on all week and a history essay to write, there was no possibility of escape before late afternoon on Wednesday, and even that meant skipping a meeting with my housemaster. There was nothing for it but to go to Finn and afterwards tell old Clifton-Mogg that I was ill, had forgotten, become so absorbed in medieval England that the hours had simply flown past.
I’d been stealing food from meals to avoid the necessity of another full-fledged kitchen raid, and had filled my satchel with apples, oranges, stale rolls, butter, half a ginger cake, four greasy sausages and a handful of teabags. I half expected to be followed around school by a line of rats.
The late afternoon shimmered with sunshine and for the first time I noticed that the hawthorn hedges were in bloom. The pungent combination of brine and warm soil filled my nostrils, and at one point I heard the whoosh whoosh whoosh of heavy wings and looked up in time to see a trio of giant white swans flying just above my head. Under other circumstances the vision would have filled me with joy.
Finn lay exactly where I’d left him seventy-two hours earlier, and whatever shreds of optimism I’d preserved turned to fear at the smell that hit me when I came through the door. I called his name but there was no answer. Oh, Lord, I thought, what if he’s dead? But there was no one to appeal to for help so I approached the bed, trying not to breathe through my nose, and crouched next to him. His eyes flickered open.
‘You scared me for a minute there.’ I smiled encouragement, felt his h
ead (which was hot), and retreated to build up the fire. The nights were windy and damp, and despite the sunny day, the hut felt uncomfortably cool without a fire. Once it was crackling away, I tapped out two more pain tablets, meaning to dissolve them in a little hot broth, but there was a thick layer of yellow fat in the large saucepan, so I gave them to him with cold water instead. He still hadn’t spoken, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that glandular fever made its victims painfully ill, but wasn’t the sort of disease that killed you if left untreated.
And the smell? I kicked myself for not having thought of the stack of blue-and-white enamelled bedpans in the San. But it was too late for that.
I approached the bed again, silently lifting a corner of the pile of blankets. My stomach lurched, I could taste vomit at the back of my throat, but I only had a second to see that the bedclothes were soaked and filthy before he struck out at me with what little strength he still possessed. I made a soothing noise and looked at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes, and I wondered whether his lack of response had as much to do with embarrassment as anything else.
‘Never mind,’ I told him. ‘You can have a bath when the water heats up.’ It must have been awful for him, lying there in the bed full of shit and piss, but until the stove did its job, I wasn’t going to touch him. I passed the time fetching coal from the bunker and stacking wood from the woodshed behind the hut. His cat, yowling, followed me around until I fed it a few small pieces of fatty pork. Take it or leave it, I sneered, in honour of old wounds.
The soup warmed up eventually and he managed to drink most of what was in the teacup. I left him to it and set about dumping saucepans filled with hot water into the tin washtub he used as a bath. It nearly emptied his water store and took forever to heat enough for a decent bath. My arms ached. We didn’t speak; the excuse of his bad throat a relief.