The American Boy Page 4

  Then came another sound, a screech so sharp and hard and unexpected that I jerked myself away from the tree and almost choked on the smoke in my mouth. It came from the direction of the house. There was another, quieter noise, the scrape of metal against metal, followed by a smothered laugh.

  I crouched and knocked out the pipe on the soft, damp earth. I moved forward, my feet making little sound on the leaf mould and the husks of last year’s beech nuts. By now my eyes had grown accustomed to the near darkness. Something white was hanging from an attic window in the boys’ wing. The room behind it was in darkness. I veered aside into the slightly deeper darkness running along the line of a hedge.

  The attic was not in the same wing of the house as my own and Dansey’s. Most of the boys slept in dormitories, with ten or twelve of them crammed together in one of the larger rooms below. But in this part of the attic storey, two or three boys might share one of the smaller rooms if their parents were willing to pay extra for the privilege.

  Once again, I heard the gasp of laughter, snuffed out almost as soon as it began. Suddenly, and with an anger so sharp that it stabbed me like a knife, I knew what I had seen. I went quickly into the house, lit my candle and made my way to the stairs leading to the boys’ attics. I found myself in a narrow corridor. By the light of the candle I saw five doors, all closed.

  I tried the doors in turn until I found the one I wanted. I saw three truckle beds in the wavering glow of the candle flame. From two of them came the sound of loud, regular snoring. From the third came the broken breathing of a person trying not to cry. The window was closed.

  “Which boys are in this room?” I demanded, not troubling to lower my voice.

  One boy stopped snoring. To compensate, the other snored with redoubled force. The third boy, the one who had been trying not to cry, became completely silent.

  I pulled the blankets from the nearest bed and tossed them on the floor. Its occupant continued to snore. I held the candle close to his face.

  “Quird,” I said. “You will wait behind after morning school.”

  I stripped the covers from the next bed. Another boy stared up at me, making no pretence at sleep.

  “You will accompany him, Morley.”

  My foot caught on something on the floor. I bent down and made out a length of rope like a basking snake, most of it pushed beneath Morley’s bed.

  With a grunt of anger, I threw off the covers from the third bed. There was Charlie Frant, his nightshirt rucked up above his waist and a handkerchief tied round his mouth.

  I swore. I placed the candle on the windowsill, lifted the boy up and pulled down the nightshirt. He was trembling uncontrollably. I untied the handkerchief. The lad spat out a rag they had pushed inside his mouth. He retched once. Then, without a word, he fell back on the bed, turned away from me and buried his head in the pillow and began to sob.

  Morley and Quird had hung him out of the window. The older boys had lashed his ankles round the central mullion to prevent him from breaking his neck on the gravel walk below.

  “I will see you tomorrow,” I heard myself saying to them. “At present, I cannot see any reason why I should not flog you twice a day and every day until Christmas.”

  I wondered whether I should remove young Frant from his tormentors, but what would I do with him? The boy had to sleep somewhere. But the nub of the matter was that, sooner or later, by day or by night, young Frant would have to face up to Quird and Morley. Punishing them was one thing; but trying to shield him was another.

  I went back to my own room. I did not sleep until dawn. When I did, it seemed only moments before the bell rang for another day of hearing little savages construe Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

  9

  I watched Charlie Frant in morning school, both before breakfast and after it. The boy sat by himself at the back of the room. I doubted if he turned a page of his book or even saw what was written on the one in front of him. His coat was now too bedraggled to have a military air. He had tear tracks on his cheeks, and his nostrils were caked with blood and mucus. Smears on the sleeve showed where he had wiped his nose.

  At breakfast, I told Dansey what had happened in the night. The older man shrugged.

  “If the boy goes to Westminster School, he’ll get far worse than that.”

  “But we cannot let it pass.”

  “We cannot prevent it.”

  “If the older boys would but exert some authority over the younger ones –”

  Dansey shook his head. “This is not a public school. We do not have a tradition of self-governance by the boys.”

  “If I went to Mr Bransby, might he not expel them or at least discipline them – Quird and Morley, I mean?”

  “You forget, my dear Shield: the true aim of this establishment is not an educational one. Considered properly, it is nothing but a machine for making money. That is why Mr Bransby has sunk his capital in it. That is why you and I are sitting here drinking weak coffee at Mr Bransby’s expense. Both Quird and Morley have younger brothers.” Dansey’s lips twisted into their Janus-like frowning smile. “Their fathers pay their bills.”

  “Then is there nothing to be done?”

  “You can beat the wretched boys so soundly that you reduce their ability to persecute their unfortunate friend. At least I can be of assistance in that respect.”

  At eleven o’clock, after the second session of morning school, I flogged Morley and Quird harder than I had ever flogged a boy before. They did not enjoy it but they did not complain. Custom blunts even pain.

  Later, I caught sight of Charlie Frant in the playground. Half a dozen boys had grouped around him in a ragged circle. They tossed the hat from one to the other, encouraging him to make ineffectual grabs for it. The hat had lost its tassel. Some wag had contrived to pin it on the back of the olive-green coat.

  “Donkey,” they chanted. “Who’s a little donkey? Bray, bray, bray.”

  When lessons resumed after dinner, Frant was not at his desk. He had hidden himself away to lick his wounds. I decided that if Lord Nelson could turn a blind eye to matters he did not wish to see, then so could I. I did not, however, turn a blind eye to either Quird or Morley. Their work, never distinguished, withered under the unremitting attention that I bestowed upon it. I gave them both the imposition of copying out ten pages of the geography textbook by the following morning.

  Towards the end of afternoon school, the manservant came from Mr Bransby’s part of the house and desired Dansey and myself to wait upon his master without delay. We found him in his study, pacing up and down behind his desk, his face dark with rage and a trail of spilt snuff cascading down his waistcoat.

  “Here’s a fine to-do,” he began without any preamble, before I had even closed the door. “That wretched boy Frant.”

  “He has absconded?” Dansey said.

  Bransby snorted.

  “Not worse, I hope?” There was the barest trace of amusement in Dansey’s voice, like an intellectual whisper pitched too low for Mr Bransby’s range of comprehension. “He has – harmed himself?”

  Bransby shook his head. “It appears that he strolled away, as cool as a cucumber, after the boys’ dinner. He walked a little way and then found a carrier willing to give him a ride to Holborn. I understand that Mrs Frant is away from home but the servants at once sent word to Mr Frant.” He waved a letter as though trying to swat a fly. “His stable boy brought this.”

  He took another turn in silence up and down the room. We watched him warily.

  “It is most vexing,” he continued at length, glowering at each of us in turn. “That it should concern Mr Frant – the very man we should study to please in every particular.”

  “Has he settled on withdrawing the boy?” Dansey asked.

  “We are spared that, at least. Mr Frant wishes his son to return to us. But he demands that the boy be suitably chastised for his transgression so that he apprehends that the discipline of the school is firmly allied to paternal authority.
Mr Frant desires me to send an under-master to collect his son, and he proposes that the under-master should flog the boy in his, that is to say Mr Frant’s, presence and in the boy’s own home. He suggests that in this way the boy will realise that he has no choice but to knuckle down to the discipline of the school and that by this he will learn a valuable lesson that will stand him in good stead in his later life.” Bransby’s heavy-lidded eyes swung towards me. “No doubt you were about to volunteer, Shield. Indeed, my choice would have fallen on you in any case. You are a younger man than Mr Dansey, and therefore have the stronger right arm. There is also the fact that I can spare you more easily than I can Mr Dansey.”

  “Sir,” I began, “is not such a course –?”

  Dansey, standing behind me and to the left, stabbed his finger into my back. “Such a course of action is indeed a trifle unusual,” he interrupted smoothly, “but in the circumstances I have no doubt that it will prove efficacious. Mr Frant’s paternal concern is laudable.”

  Bransby nodded. “Quite so.” He glanced at me. “The stable boy has ridden back to town with my answer. The chaise from the inn will be here in about half an hour. Be so good as to discuss with Mr Dansey how he should best discharge your evening duties as well as his own.”

  “When will it be convenient for me to wait upon Mr Frant?”

  “As soon as possible. You will find him now at Russell-square.”

  A moment later, Dansey and I went through the door from the private part of the house to the school. A crowd of inky boys scattered as though we had the plague.

  “Did you ever hear of anything so unfeeling?” I burst out, keeping my voice low for fear of eavesdroppers. “It is barbaric.”

  “Are you alluding to the behaviour of Mr Frant or the behaviour of Mr Bransby?”

  “I – I meant Mr Frant. He wishes to make a spectacle of his own son.”

  “He is entirely within his rights to do so, is he not? You would not dispute a father’s right to exercise authority over his child, I take it? Whether directly or in a delegated form is surely immaterial.”

  “Of course not. By the by, I must thank you for your timely interruption. I own I was becoming a little heated.”

  “Mr Frant and his bank could purchase this entire establishment many times over,” Dansey observed. “And purchase Mr Quird and Mr Morley as well, for that matter. Mr Frant is a fashionable man, too, who moves in the best circles. If it is at all possible, Mr Bransby will do all in his power to indulge him. It is not to be wondered at.”

  “But it is hardly just. It is the boy’s tormentors who deserve chastisement.”

  “There is little point in railing against circumstances one cannot change. And remember that, by acting as Mr Bransby’s agent in this, you may to some degree be able to palliate the severity of the punishment.”

  We stopped at the foot of the stairs, Dansey about to go about his duties, I to fetch my hat, gloves and stick from my room. For a moment we looked at each other. Men are strange animals, myself included, riddled with inconsistencies. Now, in that moment at the foot of the stairs, the silence became almost oppressive with the weight of things unsaid. Then Dansey nodded, I bowed, and we went our separate ways.

  10

  I come now to an episode of great significance for this history, to the introduction of the Americans.

  Providence in the form of Mr Bransby decreed I should witness a scene of comings and goings in Russell-square. A man believes in Providence because to do otherwise would force him to see his life as an arbitrary affair, conducted by the freakish rules of chance, no more under his control than a roll of the dice or the composition of a hand of cards. So let us by all means believe in Providence. Providence arranged matters so that I should call at Mr Frant’s on the same afternoon as the Americans arrived.

  The shabby little chaise from the inn brought me to London. The vehicle creaked and groaned as though afflicted with arthritis. The seat was lumpy, the leather torn and stained. The interior smelt of old tobacco and unwashed bodies and vinegar. The ostler who was driving me swore at the horse, a steady stream of obscenity punctuated by the snapping of the whip. As we drove, the daylight drained away from the afternoon. By the time we reached Russell-square, the sky was heavy with dark, swirling clouds the colour of smudged ink.

  My knock was answered by a footman, who showed me into the dining room to wait. Because of the weather and the lateness of the afternoon, the room was in near darkness. I turned my back on the portrait. Rain was now falling on the square, fat drops of water that smacked on to the roadway and tapped like drumbeats on the roof of the carriages. I heard voices in the hall, and the slam of a door.

  A moment later the footman returned. “Mr Frant will see you now,” he said, and jerked his head for me to follow him.

  He led me across the marble chequerboard of the hall to a door which opened as we approached. The butler emerged.

  “You are to desire Master Charles to step this way,” he told the footman.

  The footman strode away. The butler took me into a small and square apartment, furnished as a book-room. Henry Frant was seated at a bureau, pen in hand, and did not look up. The shutters were up and candles burned in sconces above the fireplace and in a candelabrum on a table by the window.

  The nib scratched on the paper. The candlelight glinted on Frant’s signet ring and the touches of silver in his hair. At length he sat back, re-read what he had written, sanded the paper, and folded it. As he opened one of the drawers of the bureau, I noticed that he was missing the top joints of the forefinger on his left hand, a blemish on his perfection which pleased me. At least, I thought, I have something that you have not. He slipped the paper in the drawer.

  “Open the cupboard on the left of the fireplace,” he said without looking at me. “Below the shelves. You will find a stick in the right-hand corner.”

  I obeyed him. It was a walking-stick, a stout malacca cane with a silver handle and a brass-shod point.

  “Twelve good hard strokes, I think,” Mr Frant observed. He indicated a low stool with his pen. “Mount him over that, with his face towards me.”

  “Sir, the stick is too heavy for the purpose.”

  “You will find it answers admirably. Use it with the full force of your arm. I desire to teach the boy a lesson.”

  “Two older boys set on him at school,” I said. “That is why he ran away.”

  “He ran away because he is weak. I do not say he is a coward, not yet; but he might become one if indulged. Pray make it clear to Mr Bransby that I do not expect the school to indulge his weaknesses any more than I do.” There was a knock on the door. He raised his voice. “Come in.”

  The butler opened the door. The boy edged into the room.

  “Sir,” he began in a small, high voice. “I hope I find you in good health, and –”

  “Be silent,” Frant said. “Wait until you are spoken to.”

  The butler stood in the doorway, as if waiting for orders. In the hall behind were the footman and the little Negro pageboy. I glimpsed Mrs Kerridge on the stairs.

  Frant looked beyond his son and saw the servants. “Well?” he snapped. “What are you gaping at? Do you not have work to do? Be off with you.”

  At that moment the doorbell rang. The servants jerked towards it, as though attached to the sound by a set of strings. There was another ring, followed immediately by knocking. The footman glanced over his shoulder at the butler, who looked at Mr Frant, who squeezed his lips together in a tight, horizontal line and nodded. The footman scurried to the front door.

  Mrs Frant slipped into the hall before the door was more than a foot or two ajar. A maid followed her in. Mrs Frant’s colour was high as if she had been running, and she clutched her cloak to her throat. She darted across the squares of marble to the door of the book-room, where she stopped suddenly on the threshold, as though confronted by an invisible barrier. For a moment nobody spoke. Mrs Frant’s grey travelling cloak slipped from her shoulders
to the floor.

  “Madam,” Frant said, standing up and bowing. “I’m rejoiced to see you.”

  Mrs Frant looked up at her husband but said nothing. He was a tall, broad man and beside him she looked as defenceless as a child.

  “Allow me to name Mr Shield, one of Mr Bransby’s under-masters.”

  I bowed; she inclined her head.

  Frant said, “You are come from Albemarle-street? I hope I should not infer from this unexpected visit that Mr Wavenhoe has taken a turn for the worse?”

  She glanced wildly at him. “No – that is to say, yes, in that he is no worse and may even be slightly better.”

  “What gratifying intelligence. Now, Mrs Frant, I do not know whether you are aware that your son has chosen to pay us an unauthorised visit from his school. He is about to pay the penalty for this, and then Mr Shield will convey him back to Stoke Newington.”

  Mrs Frant glanced at me, and saw the malacca cane in my hand. I looked at the boy, who was shaking like a shirt on a washing line.

  “May I speak with you, sir?” she said. “A word in private?”

  “I am afraid that at present I am not at leisure. Pray allow me to wait on you in the drawing room when Mr Shield and Charles have left us.”

  “No,” Mrs Frant said so softly that I could hardly hear her. “I must ask you –”

  There came another ring on the doorbell.

  “Confound it,” Frant said. “Mr Shield, would you excuse us for a moment? Frederick will show you into the dining room. Close the door of this room, Loomis. Then see who that is. Neither Mrs Frant nor I are at home.”

  I propped the cane against a bookcase and went into the hall. Mrs Kerridge moved towards the back of the house, shooing the maid before her. Loomis pulled open the front door. I glanced over his shoulder.

  For an instant, I thought it was much later than it really was. Rain was now falling heavily over the square from a sky as black as coal. Through the doorway came the smell of freshly watered dust, and the hissing and pattering of the rain. The brief illusion of night was reinforced by an enormous umbrella stretching across the width of the doorway. Below it I glimpsed a small, grey man in a snuff-coloured coat.