Philip Hensher - The Northern Clemency

‘Michael,’ the teacher said abruptly. That was the boy’s name, which Francis hadn’t taken in, and the boy straightened up, lowered his hand from his face, and gave Francis a poisonous look, as if he had betrayed him. There was a smell as if of boiled peas from the boy; it was shocking, he was sitting next to a bad boy who wasn’t even clean. ‘Do you want to tell the class the name of the prime minister?’

‘Don’t know,’ Michael said eventually, full of scorn at being asked something so stupid.

‘Perhaps our new boy knows,’ the teacher said, quite gently.

‘It’s Mr Wilson,’ Francis said. He hardly knew how to pretend not to know.

‘Very good,’ the teacher said, enunciating with surprise in her voice, as if talking to an idiot. Francis felt himself getting a little cross. ‘And how long has he been prime minister?’

‘He was prime minister before,’ Francis said. ‘But there was a general election this year and he became it again. He’s Labour. I thought the Conservatives were going to come first, but they didn’t.’

‘Very good,’ the teacher said, now really surprised. ‘Quite a lot of people thought, like – like our new friend from London here’ – a wave, a giggle, but why? – ‘that the Conservatives were going to win. Now, who can explain to me what a general election is?’

The lesson went on, but Francis felt he shouldn’t have said anything, should have said, ‘Don’t know, Miss,’ and swapped what he possessed for something he might have, popularity and the quality of being ordinary. Once the attention of the teacher went elsewhere, the naughty boys on the other side of the aisle said, ‘Kick him,’ quite loudly, and Michael, the boy he was sitting next to, gave him a hard angry shove. Francis did not know how to respond, and blushingly rearranged his pens and pencils, his ruler and rubber. In time, the lesson came to an end; it was interrupted – and it had only really been a speech by the teacher, diversifying into reminiscence of a life led partly, it seemed, in Africa – by a bell that, so unexpectedly, was exactly the same as the bells in the school in London. The class got up, their chairs screeching on the floor, and the teacher, too, screeching for them to sit down until they were given permission to go. But half the class were already through the door, and she only wanted to say one more sentence before they were dismissed.

It was playtime. The boy he had been assigned to had disappeared and, anyway, Francis would not follow that boy: he knew well what would happen if he tried to make friends, having said in clear London tones who the prime minister now was. He didn’t know what to do or where to go, but he followed them anyway, and was soon in the playground. It was already full, and excited with noise.

All of a sudden, a boy was by his side, addressing him.

‘Do you see that girl?’ the boy said. Francis recognized him slowly. He must be in his class, he supposed; but there was some familiarity apart from that.

‘Yes,’ he said, though he did not know which girl the boy meant.

‘I think she’s so beautiful,’ the boy said. He was a strange boy: his voice was not ecstatic but robotic, as if he was producing an interesting fact. ‘Venus was the Roman goddess of beauty so I call her Venus.’

Francis did not know what to say to this. The boy was looking away from him across the playground. It seemed that he hadn’t actually been talking to Francis at all, not specifically. His buck-toothed face was flushed, his hair stuck down against his pink forehead. He called out, ‘Venus, Venus, my love, my love,’ and ran away towards the girls. At this they scattered, giving little screams, running off in twos and threes, severally. Francis was alone again; he stared at the concrete in furious amazement. He was alone again.

Francis concentrated very hard on walking round the complete edge of the playground. He pretended that the narrow stone edging to the asphalt square was a tightrope, suspended hundreds of feet above the ground, and he balanced on it carefully, placing one foot in front of another. That was a game you could play on your own and, after a few moments, he forgot almost everything. With arms spread out like wings, he really was walking a tightrope, forgetting whether it was a good game or just something to make yourself look occupied. He was three-quarters of the way round the square when he hit a flight of steps, interrupting its clear progress. On it there was a group of boys and girls mixed up together. He dropped his arms.

‘Were you talking to that Timothy?’ a boy said, addressing Francis.

‘He just came up to me,’ Francis said. ‘He said he was in love with a girl called Venus and then he ran off again.’

‘He calls me that,’ a girl said. Francis wouldn’t have recognized her: she seemed ordinary, not an object of devotion. ‘I wish he’d stop, it’s stupid, I hate him, he’s mental.’

‘Where do you come from?’ one of the girls said. ‘You’re in our class.’

She rhymed it with ‘lass’, but it wasn’t unfriendly, her tone. ‘I come from London,’ Francis said.

‘She’s thick, that Barker,’ another girl said. ‘You’ve got put in the worst class you could be put in. They put people there for punishment, she’s that boring.’

‘“When I was in Africa,”’ a boy said. ‘She should talk to that Timothy, he’s always on about snakes when he’s not calling you Venus.’

‘I’m called Andrea, really,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t know where he got Venus from. I’m going to tell my mum if he carries on.’

‘She’s always saying that,’ the boy said. He raised his voice into a dull shriek. ‘“When I was in Africa.”’

‘Aye,’ they chorused appreciatively. It was a party trick of this boy’s, you could see, the shrieking imitation of, who?, Miss Barker’s voice and her usual sentence. ‘“When I was in Africa.” What’s London like?’

‘It’s all right,’ Francis said. ‘We lived outside London, really.’

‘I’ve been to London,’ a girl said.

‘You never,’ one of the boys said. ‘You’re a right liar, you.’

The consensus of the group was that it was obviously a lie, to claim to have been to London. But Francis was surprised: he thought everyone, always, had been to London. It wasn’t anything to lie about.

‘You don’t want to sit with that Michael,’ a boy said.

‘He smells a bit,’ Francis said.

They all laughed; one of the boys clutched his sides, and pretended to roll about on the ground. ‘You’re a right one,’ a girl said. ‘But it’s true, he’s got a right pong. Miss Barker, she always puts people next to him who can’t refuse, it’s like a punishment, and you have to sit next to him for an hour. She doesn’t mind people who pong. It comes of living in Africa. “When I was in Africa—”’

‘Well, you’ve only had the miserable torment of sitting next to Smelly Michael for an hour,’ a sensible-looking boy, in neatly pressed trousers and a short-sleeved grey shirt with a sleeveless home-knitted sweater, said. ‘You can come and sit next to me, if you like. I’ve not got anyone sitting next to me because Neil Thwaite’s in hospital. He’s got something wrong with his blood.’

‘I heard he’s going to die,’ a girl said.

‘No, he’s not,’ the boy said. ‘I saw him in the hospital, he’s bored. But he’s in hospital a while, so you can sit next to me.’

‘She told me to sit next to that smelly boy,’ Francis said. ‘At my school in London, you had to sit where you were told and then you stayed there all year. I didn’t mind. I was next to Robert who was my friend. But won’t I get in trouble if I move?’

‘No, no,’ they shouted.