Niall Williams - Boy in the World

‘Crooked and stooped,’ said Martin Collins from the back row.

‘Yes, crooked and stooped, in a place where nothing important could ever happen. Our roof is falling in. Our blackboard is grey from a hundred years of white chalk. From the skills of our footballers, some of our windows are cracked.’ At this there was murmuring and laughter. ‘But,’ continued the Master, ‘despite appearances, here something remarkable has happened. Here you have taken your first steps in becoming yourselves, in becoming who you are, and who you will be in the world.’

The Master had leaned back on the stool again and considered the faces gazing up at him. Some of the boys had begun to forget already the words he had just spoken and were restless for the bell when they could run out of the schoolyard for the last time. But not the boy. The boy thought about things deeply. This was his nature. Although he had once tried to join in and play games in the schoolyard he was not good at sports, and soon enough discovered both teams preferred it when he did not offer himself to be picked. Above all other things he enjoyed reading books. He was curious about everything in the world and had read through the small school library years before. He had read all the editions of the books of Charles Dickens there, of Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jules Verne. He had read the translations of great epic tales from Greece, of the stories of Ulysses and Odysseus, and the entire collection of slim books about the countries of the world. Although these were at least forty years out of date, some with their covers ripped off and pages marked and torn, from them he had tasted something of the places there were out there beyond the classroom. He was a boy who was interested in the how and why of all things, and whose understanding was far greater than others of his age. And this, rather than bringing him closer to adults or his contemporaries, had in fact created a distance between him and everyone else. In a row of lights strung out along a line he was a bulb too bright.

Knowing this, and considering how in the world of childhood he had had such difficulty, the boy had sat at his desk and for a moment let his eyes meet those of the Master. Who am I to become? In the grown-up world, who am I to be? Soundlessly he asked, and felt for the first time the burden of this question in his heart.

Now, in the bathroom before the mirror, he thought of all this again. He leaned against the sides of the sink and might have stayed longer if there hadn’t been a tapping on the door.

‘Nearly ready?’

‘Yes,’ he called back, ‘just coming.’

Quickly then, he put on the new grey trousers and the white shirt that was stiff about the collar. When he squeezed closed the top button the shirt was still loose around his neck. In the mirror he looked ridiculous, he thought. He took the comb and drew a parting in his black hair and smoothed the line, but after an instant shook his head until the hair had returned to its usual untidiness and then he opened the door.

‘Here you are.’ A small man past sixty with a kindly face crinkled like a favoured newspaper stood with the boy’s shoes freshly polished in his hand. His eyes did not move from the boy’s. They were the pale grey of a thumb smudged with newsprint. Although he was still the Master, he did not look like the Master now. Out of the schoolroom and his faithful old tweed jacket and in the blue suit and white shirt, he looked almost a different person altogether. He was shaven very cleanly. There were tiny red nicks cut in his throat and one high on his cheek. The unruly tuft of his hair had been flattened down with water and was momentarily under control.

‘Thanks,’ said the boy.

‘You’re more than welcome. You look … well, fine. Yes, absolutely fine.’

The boy took the shoes and sat in the kitchen to put them on while the Master lifted two kites that were lying by the couch and carried them out to the back hall. ‘Both of these are fine again,’ he said. ‘Maybe this evening, after the lot are gone, we might get a bit of breeze, take them out.’

‘Yes,’ the boy called after him. ‘Thanks for fixing them.’

‘No trouble. May evening, perfect for them.’

It was one of the things the Master and the boy liked best, to be standing below connected to the fluttering kite flying above.

When the boy stood up in the polished shoes the Master returned, holding out the tie.

‘A tie? Do I have to?’

‘Just for an hour. No more. Now, this is a tricky business,’ the old man said, reaching up slightly to loop it around the boy’s collar. ‘When I first learned I choked myself for weeks after.’ He raised his heavy eyebrows and made his eyes smile. ‘Like this, you see, then over here, then under and through. It may not seem much, but to me, when I was growing up, it was like a secret, like something you had to be a certain age to know how to do, the knot. And of course there were fellows with some fancy ones and showing off and … well.’

The old man stopped. It was as if just then there was an obstacle in his way. Only it was invisible. He stood looking at the boy, losing any words he could say.

The boy moved the knot at his throat. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s em, it’s …’

The clock on the wall ticked loudly. The boy watched the man as he watched a memory.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I …’ The Master had his lips pressed tightly together as though holding his feelings trapped there. Again the clock ticked, louder still, and the room seemed to tighten, as though a pressure had been put on the air. ‘When you get old you get foolish, that’s all,’ the Master said at last and shrugged as though attempting to escape, and raised the eyebrows again, but this time in his eyes there was no smile.

‘What is it? It’s something … something’s wrong,’ said the boy. ‘Tell me.’

And there was a moment, and then another. Briefly, everything was stopped, as if a hand reached out and paused the world in its turning. And inside that small cottage, in the kitchen stood a boy and an older man and the slow passing of a ghost, or maybe two. The Master saw them. One was his wife who had died when the boy was seven. She stood by the cooker now watching him, the pale blueberries of her eyes glinting with pride, her two hands brought up to her mouth the way she always did when she had feelings too large for words. The other ghost was the boy’s mother, Marie, the Master’s daughter who had died of cancer when the boy was two. She moved across the kitchen not a day older than the last time the Master had seen her, alive, her face pale, her auburn hair tied behind. She stood by her son and touched the side of his face, although the boy could not see or feel her.

‘Tell me,’ said the boy again. ‘What is wrong?’

The Master was not looking at him but watching the ghost of the boy’s mother and feeling all parts of himself singed with a sorrow he couldn’t speak.

‘Are you all right?’ The boy was nudging the old man’s shoulder.

‘Yes,’ said the Master, and again ‘yes,’ as though answering various questions from various speakers. He blinked and seemed to right himself.

‘What is it?’ asked the boy.

‘Hold on.’ The Master crossed the kitchen and went to a drawer in the dresser in which he kept a file of papers. The boy knew that in the wild jumble of things were kept documents of all kinds, in there were the instruction book-lets and guarantees on everything, their two passports for the trip the Master was always hoping they would take together. In the file the old man hunted hurriedly and then found a cream-coloured envelope. He closed the file and put it back in the drawer and came to the boy, the envelope in his hand. He blew on it and brushed it against his sleeve. When he went to speak the words got caught on the knot of his tie and he pulled it a little to the right. Then he held out the envelope.