Rupert Thomson: Divided Kingdom

As the weeks went by, I noticed that the number of boys being billeted at Thorpe Hall was gradually decreasing. By the end of February only thirty-six of us remained. Slowly but surely the authorities were finding us new families, new places to live. You never knew who was going to be taken next, though, or whether you would ever see each other again. In this uncertain climate, our friendships deepened and became invested with an air of desperation and romance. We started making rash promises, secret pacts. We’ll remain in contact, no matter what. We’ll seek each other out. We’ll never forget. Some boys cut the palms of their hands or the tips of their fingers and then mixed their blood together, swearing that they would be brothers for fifty years, a century — for all eternity. Others went further.

In early March Cody and Maclean got married. The wedding was held in a bathroom on the top floor after lights-out. Cody improvised a bridal veil out of a pair of net curtains which he had pilfered from a little-used passageway behind the kitchen. Maclean wore a crocus in the top buttonhole of his pyjama jacket. Their rings were identical — chunky, dull-silver, hexagonal in shape (Maclean had crept out of the house one evening and unscrewed two nuts from the back wheel of Mr Reek’s car). I can still see Cody’s eyes glittering behind his veil as he walked along the moonlit landing, the rest of us singing ‘Here Comes the Bride’ in a harsh whisper, and I can see Maclean too, waiting patiently beside the bath with his hands clasped in front of him and his chin almost touching his collarbone. After the ceremony the happy couple slept in the same bed, arms wrapped around each other, rings wedged firmly on to the middle fingers of their left hands. A few days later Mr Reek had a crash. I imagined one of his wheels bowling away along the road, merry, almost carefree, like a race-horse that has unseated its rider, while the car slewed sideways, the exposed hub and axle spitting sparks.

It was during this time that I became friends with Jones, the boy who had won first prize in the flag-drawing competition. He was one of those who felt threatened by the idea of being moved, of being placed once again among people he didn’t know, and there came a point in our friendship when he would talk of nothing else.

‘But what if I don’t like them?’ he would say. ‘What if they’re cruel to me?’

‘You’ll be all right,’ I would tell him.

‘I don’t know. I can’t sleep.’

‘Stop worrying so much,’ I would say. ‘You’ll be fine.’

He would shake his head and stare at the ground, his eyes watery and anxious.

One day I found him in a shabby, cheerless corridor towards the rear of the house. He was standing on one leg, like a stork. Thinking he was playing a trick on me, I laughed and pushed him on the shoulder. He hopped sideways, but managed to steady himself by putting a hand against the wall, and once he had regained his balance he continued to stand on one leg, as before. He didn’t speak at all. Behind him, at the far end of the passage, the door had been left half-open, revealing an upright section of the garden — sun falling across a gravel path, a canopy of leaves. I walked round and stood in front of him.

‘Jones?’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’

The look in his eyes was so blank that I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I had never seen such an absence of expression, such utter emptiness. My first impression was that he was staring at an object or a surface only inches from his face but there was nothing there, of course. Later, I thought it was more as if some vital component had gone missing, the part of him that made him who he was. The thin strip of illuminated gravel at the end of the corridor had the brightness of another world, a world that lay beyond this one — a world Jones might already have entered. I think I shivered as I stood in front of him that morning. He didn’t seem to see me, though. He didn’t even appear to be aware of me.

At first nobody noticed, but Jones carried on, day after day. He would stand on one leg for hours at a time, and always in that same gloomy passageway. Other boys jeered at him and called him names, but he never once reacted. If they pushed him over, he simply picked himself up again and went on standing as before. His expression never altered. After a while the boys lost interest and more or less ignored him. ‘There’s Pegleg,’ they would say. Or, ‘Hello, Stork.’

In the end, someone must have alerted the authorities, I suppose, because Jones was removed. I had been sent out to the vegetable patch that day to plant onions with Maclean and several others, and I didn’t realise Jones had left until we sat down to supper in the evening. I assumed a home had been found for him, and I hoped his new parents would treat him well. I was sorry not to have been able to say goodbye.

Curiously enough, the corridor he had occupied didn’t seem empty after he had gone. It was as though he had left something of himself behind, a kind of imprint on the air, as though, by standing there like that, he had changed that part of the house for ever. Perhaps that’s what is meant by the word ‘haunted’. In any case, I never felt comfortable in that corridor again and avoided it whenever I could.

It must have been spring when I was summoned to Mr Reek’s office because I remember looking through the window and seeing daffodils beside the moat, their yellow trumpets nodding and dipping in the wind.

Reek stood in front of me, a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘your name will be Thomas Parry.’ He laid down the sheet of paper, then took off his spectacles and stared intently at the far wall. ‘Thomas Parry,’ he said. ‘A good solid name. You could be anything with a name like that. Anything at all.’ He brought his eyes back into focus and peered down at me. ‘Do you realise what an opportunity this is?’ His voice shook ever so slightly, as if he suspected I didn’t appreciate what was being done for me. ‘Just think of it. A completely fresh start. A new beginning.’

He must have made dozens of such speeches.

‘There’s something I want you to bear in mind.’ He had walked to the bright window, and was gazing out in the direction of the woods. I had found a bird’s skull in there, bleached white, light as air. ‘If you should see any behaviour,’ he said, ‘which doesn’t fit in with your notion of the sanguine disposition, it’s your duty — your duty — to report it to the authorities.’ He looked at me over his shoulder, a shaft of sun picking out a tuft of ginger hair in his right ear. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

He studied me for a long moment. ‘All right, my boy. You may go.’ He stood there in the sunlight, waiting for me to leave the room.

‘I’ve been worried about Jones,’ I said.

‘Jones?’ The skin on the bridge of Reek’s nose knotted momentarily. ‘Ah yes. Jones. He’s been’ — and he paused — ‘well, he’s been transferred.’

‘Where to?’

‘I’m afraid that’s confidential,’ Reek said. ‘I can’t tell you that.’ He came and squinted down at me, his mouth crumpling in an attempt at a kindly smile. ‘There’s nothing else, is there?’

A few days later I was put on a train. A woman travelled with me, I’ve forgotten her name. She had been given the task of introducing me to my new family, overseeing what must, in many cases, have been an extremely awkward transition. During the journey I got my first glimpse of how the country had been divided up. Towards lunchtime, in the middle of nowhere, the train slowed down and stopped. I could see no sign of a station, only an embankment bristling with spear-shaped purple flowers.