In the excitement of everything else, I had almost forgotten Mr. Bray. I no longer went to Games—had never shown aptitude in any case—and I had assumed that I was not missed. Even without him, Games had been a weekly torment: my clothes tossed into the shower; my sports kit hidden or stolen; my glasses broken; my lukewarm efforts to participate greeted with laughter and contempt.
Bray himself had been the principal instigator of these jeering sessions, repeatedly singling me out for “demonstrations” in which my every physical shortcoming was pointed out with relentless precision.
My legs were skinny, with prominent knees; and when I had to borrow games’ kit from school (mine had “disappeared” once too often and my father refused to buy a new set), Bray provided me with a giant pair of flannel shorts, which flapped ludicrously as I ran, earning me the nickname “Thunderpants.”
His admirers found this exquisitely amusing, and Thunderpants I remained. This had led to a general understanding among the other pupils that I had a flatulence problem; Speccy Snyde became Smelly Snyde; I was bombarded on a daily basis with jokes about baked beans, and in form matches (during which I was always last to be picked) Bray would cry to the other players: Watch out, team! Snyde’s been on the beans again!
As I said, I was no loss to the subject, or, I thought, to the teacher. But I had failed to take into account the man’s essential malice. It was not enough for him to hold court to his little clique of admirers and sycophants. It was not even enough to ogle the girls (and, on occasion, to dare a quick fumble under cover of a “demonstration”), or to humiliate the boys with his trollish humor. Every performer needs an audience; but Bray needed more. Bray needed a victim.
I had already missed four Games lessons. I imagined the comments:
Where’s Thunderpants, then, kids?
Dunno, sir. In the library, sir. Down the toilet, sir. Excused Games, sir. Asthma, sir.
Asshole, more like.
It would have been forgotten eventually. Bray would have found himself another target—there were plenty of them around. Fat Peggy Johnsen, or spotty Harold Mann, or muffin-faced Lucy Robbins, or Jeffrey Stuarts, who ran like a girl. In the end he would have turned his gaze on one of them—and they knew it, watching me with increasing hostility in class and Assembly, hating me for having escaped.
It was they, the losers, who would not let it go; who perpetuated the Thunderpants jokes; who harped incessantly on beans and asthma until every lesson without me seemed like a freak show without the freak, and at last Mr. Bray began to feel suspicious.
I’m not sure where he spotted me. Maybe he had me watched as I slipped away from the library. I had grown reckless; already Leon filled my life and Bray and his ilk were nothing but shadows in comparison. In any case he was waiting for me the next morning; I found out later that he had swapped supervision duties with another teacher to make sure he caught me.
“Well, well, you’re looking very full of beans for someone with such terrible asthma,” he said as I ran in through the late entrance.
I stared at him, half-paralyzed with fear. He was smiling viciously, like the bronzed totem of a sacrificial cult.
“Well? Cat got your tongue?”
“I’m late, sir,” I stammered, playing for time. “My dad was—”
I could feel his contempt as he towered over me. “Perhaps your dad could tell me more about this asthma of yours,” he said. “Caretaker, isn’t he, at the grammar school? Comes into our local from time to time.”
I could hardly breathe. For a second I almost believed that I did have asthma; that my lungs would burst with the terror of it. I hoped it would happen—at that time death seemed infinitely preferable to the possible alternatives.
Bray saw it, and his grin hardened. “See me in the changing rooms after school tonight,” he said. “And don’t be late.”
I went through the day in a haze of dread. My bowels loosened; I couldn’t concentrate; I went to the wrong classrooms; I couldn’t eat my lunch. At afternoon break I was in such a state of panic that Miss Potts, the teacher trainee, noticed and asked me about it.
“Nothing, miss,” I said, desperate to avoid further attention. “Just a bit of a headache.”
“More than a headache,” she said, coming closer. “You’re very pale—”
“It’s nothing, miss. Really.”
“I think maybe you should go home. You might be coming down with something.”
“No!” I could not prevent my voice from rising. That would make things infinitely worse; if I didn’t turn up, Bray would talk to my father; any chance I had of evading discovery would be lost.
Miss Potts frowned. “Look at me. Is anything wrong?”
Silently, I shook my head. Miss Potts was just a student teacher, not much older than my father’s girlfriend. She liked to be popular—to be important; a girl in my class, Wendy Lovell, had been making herself sick at lunchtimes, and when Miss Potts had found out about it, she had phoned the Eating Disorders Helpline.
She often talked about gender awareness; was an expert on racial discrimination; had attended courses on self-assertion and bullying and drugs. I sensed that Miss Potts was looking for a Cause, but knew that she would only be at school until the end of term, and that in a few weeks’ time, she would be gone.
“Please, miss,” I whispered.
“Come on, sweetheart,” said Miss Potts, wheedling. “Surely you can tell me.”
The secret was simple, like all secrets. Places like St. Oswald’s—and even to some extent, Sunnybank Park—have their own security systems, built, not on smoke detectors or hidden cameras, but on a thick stratum of bluff.
No one brings down a teacher—no one thinks to bring down a school. And why? The instinctive cringing in the face of authority—that fear that by far outstrips the fear of discovery. A master is always Sir to his pupils, however many years have passed; even in adulthood we find the old reflexes have not been lost but have only been subdued for a time, emerging unchanged at the right command. Who would dare call that giant bluff? Who would dare? It was inconceivable.
But I was desperate. On one side there was St. Oswald’s; Leon; everything I had longed for; everything I had built. On the other, Mr. Bray, poised over me like the word of God. Did I dare? Could I possibly carry it off?
“Come on, dear,” said Miss Potts gently, seeing her chance. “You can tell me—I won’t tell a soul.”
I pretended to hesitate. Then, in a low voice, I spoke. “It’s Mr. Bray,” I said, meeting her eyes. “Mr. Bray and Tracey Delacey.”
3
St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys
Friday, 10th September
It has been a long first week. It always is; but this year especially the silly season seems to have started early. Anderton-Pullitt is away today (one of his allergic reactions, says his mother), but Knight and Jackson are back in lessons, Jackson sporting an impressive black eye to go with his broken nose; McNair, Sutcliff, and Allen-Jones are on behavior report (Allen-Jones with a bruise to the side of his face which distinctly shows the marks of four fingers, and which he claims he got from playing football).
Meek has taken over the Geography Society, which, thanks to Bob Strange, now meets weekly in my room; Bishop has damaged an Achilles tendon in the course of an overenthusiastic running session; Isabelle Tapi has taken to hanging around the Games department in a series of increasingly daring skirts; Dr. Devine’s invasion of the Classics office has suffered a temporary setback following the discovery of a mouse’s nest behind the wainscoting; my coffee mug and register are still missing, which has earned me Marlene’s disapproval, and when I returned to my room after lunch on Thursday I discovered that my favorite pen—green casing, Parker, with a gold nib—had disappeared from my desk drawer.