Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency

‘So that’s it, really,’ Malcolm said finally.

‘Yes, I see,’ Katherine said.

‘I don’t think there’s much point in going over and over it,’ Malcolm said.

‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘I’ll not be bringing it up, asking for details. We’ll just get on with it.’

‘Exactly,’ Malcolm said. ‘That’s the best thing, just get on with things, don’t go on about them.’

‘Yes,’ Katherine said. ‘The new people moved in over the road.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Malcolm said. ‘Nice, are they?’

‘They seem nice,’ Katherine said. ‘Why don’t you go and say goodnight to the children?’

‘Yes,’ Malcolm said. ‘I’ll do that. I suppose I could just tell them—’

‘No,’ Katherine said. ‘Just tell them you’re back. That’ll do.’

‘Probably best,’ Malcolm said. ‘All right, then.’

There seemed to be something more he wanted to say; perhaps he could see in her face that in the last few days something had changed for her as well. But what would he know? For Malcolm, nothing in the situation as he knew it had changed; Tim had not had a snake under his bed, and still did not have a snake under his bed; his wife’s concealments remained his wife’s concealments; and he was back where he had always been. In a few days’ time he would wander across the road, drop in on the Sellerses, ask them over for a drink, and they would come over, none of them mentioning at any point any of the things he had caused or missed, and everything would be quite all right. ‘Is there any supper left?’ Malcolm called from the stairs.

‘There’s a bit,’ Katherine called back, but her answer was lost as the doors upstairs started to open, and something like conversation began again, and even the children pretended that there was nothing so very extraordinary, as there indeed was not, in their father coming home in the evening, the only cause for comment a shirt not seen before, the only remarkable detail a man in a suit, and no tie, and no sign of a tie anywhere.

Afterwards he could never accurately reconstruct the rules of the game. The game and its rules had come from nowhere, like myth or tune. It disappeared afterwards, leaving no trace in memory, not even its name, perhaps still being played by generations of children who discovered it, just as Francis had in the autumn of 1974, in a playground and lost it again within the year. But preserved only in that way. What he had in his memory was the sense of a chase, a circle of tremulously linked limbs, some raucous and pungent chant, and, more, the ecstatic terror of wriggling as the quarry turned and buckled under the hand of the pursuer, the ecstasy whichever way the roles had fallen that day; above all, a thick, vivid rise in the chest at the promise or the enactment of violence which, years later, he identified with some shock as an adult sensation, the sensation of erotic desire on the brink of fulfilment. It had been some form of chase, that was all; surely it was the subsequent recognition of its banality that removed its exact excitements from the memory. But a game of chase alone could not have accounted for that speechless thrill, ending with the crack of bone against concrete, a stifled and jubilant cry. There must have been something else.

The school building was new. The school had been recently transferred from an old and blackened building further up the hill to something modern. The old school was a decorated stone edifice, conspicuous with Victorian aspiration and benevolence; with its two entrances, still inscribed BOYS and GIRLS, it looked very much like a school. The new one, oddly, did not. Built in yellow brick, a single storey, the whole shape of the building was difficult to construe as Francis and his mother had crossed the empty playground, that first morning. The building bulged out at either side of a wide external staircase, burst into angry and fanciful geometries of brick and glass, sagging unexpectedly on to rounded banks of grass and, already, well-trodden flowers. He held his mother’s hand tightly. An odd pair, given his height; but he held his mother’s hand tightly.

Inside the building, they made their way somehow to the headmaster’s office. He contributed nothing to this, allowing his mother to make the enquiries, follow the signs, and only when they were sitting on two out of the line of five chairs, the kind lady remaining behind her desk, did he realize that he could not rely on his mother to lead him round his new school from now on. But waiting there, his main concern was for her: in her clothes, the tight smile which was in her mouth but not her eyes, there was something he ought to be able to console. He wanted to tell her that it would be all right, not altogether knowing that himself. But now the headmaster himself was coming down the corridor, buoyant from his assembly; down there, a daunting flood of children, all of whom he would shortly have to come to terms with, all of whom knew exactly where they were going.

The headmaster was affable; the secretary on the way out smiled kindly; a kiss had come from nowhere; and suddenly he was walking by the side of a teacher who, apparently, he had been introduced to, who, apparently, was now his teacher. His mother was gone. It had been her kiss. Once, when he was much smaller, he had in a moment of confusion in a classroom said, ‘Mummy…’ before realizing that he was addressing his teacher. He went clammy, as if he had already done it again, as his first act in a new school.

‘Quiet, now,’ the teacher said, coming into a room. It was full of children; they fell silent and looked at him. It was a terrible moment. The teacher had an extraordinary voice. She talked, too, in that strange way, as she went on to explain who he was, where he came from – London, it produced giggles across the classroom – and assigned a boy to show him round; she talked in that way where ‘castle’ sounded like ‘cattle’, a blunt and, to Francis, not very friendly-sounding manner of speech. He was surprised and ashamed on her behalf: he had not thought that a teacher, a person in charge, would speak in the ordinary way everywhere.

The boy he was supposed to sit next to shoved up roughly, and turned his face deliberately away from Francis, placing his hand against it so that Francis could not see anything of him. He was a naughty boy, you could see that straight away; he started hissing and sniggering to two other boys, naughty boys too, across the aisle, who leant forward and examined Francis from a safe, contemptuous distance, their lips curling like crimped pastry. He thought about his friends; they might be sitting at this exact moment, hundreds of miles away, in that sensible classroom, not just-built but old and solid, and there might be – his heart leapt to think of it – an empty chair there now, and perhaps a new person, someone a little like him, being guided to it.

The lesson started, but no one had taken out any books: they were just sitting there. Francis had been dreading that; he thought that he might be the only one without the books, and though everyone would notice no one would help. He had imagined he would go through his whole life in this school without books and, which he had anticipated and accepted, without friends. But there were no books. He placed his pens and pencil, the ruler and rubber on the table; he had brought them with him. He could not understand what sort of lesson this was. The teacher was just talking, and in a moment he listened. It was a while before her words started to make sense. She was talking about the government. He did not know what sort of lesson that could be part of. From time to time she asked a question, and nobody put their hands up so she answered it herself. Some of those questions Francis knew the answers to, but he didn’t put his hand up. It was like a party you weren’t sure you were meant to be at and he kept quiet, though it was painful for him not to be able to put his hand up to answer a question he could answer. The boy next to him went on talking to the boys over the aisle, and there was a sort of malice in the hiss, which was directed at Francis.