David Storey - Saville

‘He’s got two daughters who’re worth looking at,’ Stafford added.

A bell rang. The games of football were broken up. The crowd of dark-blazered figures turned back towards the school.

‘Staying for lunch, then?’ Stafford said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘See you later, then.’

Stafford slapped his back and ran off, calling someone’s name, towards the steps.

The day passed slowly. He didn’t see Stafford at lunch. They ate in a narrow room converted from one half of the cloisters, rows of tables and wooden benches set out behind the windowed arches. Afterwards, in the field, he saw Connors playing football, jogging up and down, the tail of his shirt hanging out beneath his jacket. For a while he stood with several other boys at the edge of the field, avoiding going to the toilets as long as he could. Finally, when he went there he found them empty. There were the usual cubicles and a row of basins, but going by their colour they could never have been used.

The afternoon, like the morning, was divided into two. Lessons started. Hodges, deliberately or otherwise, had forgotten about the tables; he’d forgotten about the hymn as well. After dismissing them for lunch they only saw him briefly at the beginning of the afternoon when he came into the room to mark the register and to announce that lessons were to start forthwith. ‘Mr Platt, who is coming in shortly to take your English, makes me, gentlemen, sound like a veritable angel. I should pay the utmost heed to everything he says, and woe betide any boy who doesn’t do immediately everything he tells you.’

He went out quickly with a swirl of his gown, removing his glasses and brushing his hand across his head.

For a while the room was silent. Then one or two voices had murmured from the front. Someone laughed; they heard a surge of voices in the corridor outside; someone called; the voices died.

The murmuring in the room began again. Throughout the morning, when they’d finished writing out their time-table in the record books, or writing their names on the fronts of the exercise books, or inside the covers of the text-books, the heads of most of the boys had been turned towards the ceiling. Several heads were turned up now, the eyes held wide and vacant, the noses below the eyes distended, the lips below the noses moving.

A man had appeared at the back of the room. He was short and squat, with thick black hair. He wore glasses; the eyes behind them were invisible because of the reflection of the light. The lenses were thick, the features beneath the glasses heavy, the nose short like the man himself, the mouth full-lipped and broad, the jaw projecting sharply.

He waited until his presence had been acknowledged by the boys at the front. Then, in silence, he walked the length of the room, placed a pile of books on the teacher’s desk, cleared his throat, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, then, glancing round the room, sat down.

‘My name’, he said, ‘is Mr Platt.’

He continued his inspection of the class for several seconds.

‘Your names I don’t know but quite shortly,’ he said, ‘I suppose, I shall.’

He allowed the silence to continue a little longer.

‘You’ll have been given a green-backed text-book this morning with the title Principles of English Grammar . I’d like you when I give the order, quietly to take that green-backed text-book out. I’d also, when I give the order, like you to take out your bluecoloured exercise book, marked “English Grammar”.’ He paused. ‘Two books, a pen, a ruler. The ink, I believe, for those without fountain-pens, is already in the ink-wells. I give the order now: take out.’

Colin remembered little of the lesson. A drowsiness, induced by the heat of the room as well as by the smell of food still coming through the hole in the floor, caused him at one point to lean his head against the wall. He felt the coolness of the wood against his cheek, and was aware of little else until a bell rang to mark the end of the lesson.

There was no play-time in the afternoon: the black-robed figure of Mr Platt went out and was replaced a few moments later by a tall, fair-haired figure in a sports-coat and flannels who introduced himself as Mr Wells. He taught French. They recited vowels. Wells had a narrow mouth; his eyes were blue, his nose long and thin. He caused laughter round the class as he pronounced the vowels, pulling back his mouth to shape the e, elongating his face to shape the o, pouting his lips grotesquely to shape the u.

The class repeated the sounds together: they wrote down simple words. One or two stood up at Wells’s command and sounded the vowels singly: there was a suppressed air of laughter in the room of which Wells himself appeared to be unaware. He stood red-faced by the teacher’s desk almost as if he were alone, practising the sounds in front of a mirror. The lesson, like the one before it, had lasted three-quarters of an hour. A feeling of excitement crept over the room as the prospect of the bell grew near. When it actually sounded a murmur swept the class.

The lesson continued. The boys grew silent. They could hear shouts and cries from the corridor outside, the banging of doors, the shuffle of feet. Shouts came clearly from the street beyond.

Wells continued: words had been written on the board; they were copied down. Finally, looking up, the master turned his head to the noise outside.

‘Was that the bell?’ He gestured round.

‘Yes, sir,’ nearly everyone had said.

‘Homework,’ he said. ‘I take you, I believe, tomorrow morning.’

Instructions for learning certain words were given out.

Wells picked up his books; with the same absent-minded expression with which he’d entered the room he wandered out. Before he’d reached the door several boys had gone out before him.

He didn’t see Connors on the way to the stop; by the time he reached the bus he found a queue had formed. He stood for the first few miles. It was six o’clock by the time he got back home; he’d been away from the house for over ten hours.

His father came down; he sat at the table, listening, while his mother prepared his tea.

‘You’ve started work already, then?’

‘French,’ he said. He mentioned the English.

‘Have they set you homework?’

‘I’ve an hour to do tonight.’

‘Nay, tha mu’n better get started, then,’ his father said.

‘You’ll let him get his tea first. And have a rest,’ his mother said.

They watched him eat.

‘What are the teachers like?’ his father said.

‘They call them masters.’

‘Masters. Masters. What’re the masters like?’

‘They’re very strict.’

‘Nay, they’ll have to be, I suppose, to get things done.’

He took out his record book.

His father glanced through it; he flicked the pages.

‘What’re these for, then?’ he said.

‘Good work and bad work. They mark it down.’

‘I can see they believe in work,’ his father said.

‘That’s the motto. Work is pleasure.’ He pointed to the blazer.

His father laughed.

‘Sithee, not where I work, then,’ he said. ‘The one who wrote that has never been down yon.’

He read the time-table, stooping to the page.

‘Latin, I see. Chemistry. Physics. That’s a lot of work inside a week. Four mathematics. Four English. Five English,’ he added, running his finger across the page.

His father went to work a little later. He stood in the yard, fiddling with his saddle.

‘Thy football’s on tomorrow, then.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Give as good as you get,’ he added.

‘Yes,’ he said.

His father glanced across.

‘They’re not stuck up or ought, then, are they?’