What would have happened to A. C. Swinburne had his mother lived became a matter for speculation, for she died when the child was thirteen and in his first term at his public school. After her death, Osbert discovered, to his dismay, that she had had but a life interest in her fortune and that her father, who had returned to America, had married for the second time and now had a son of his own. He had diverted his fortune to this child of his old age, leaving Alfrist with a small annuity payable when he attained his majority. Nothing whatever was willed to Osbert, who, for the first time in his life, was faced with the hideous prospect of having to earn a living for himself and his son.
The boy was taken away from his expensive public school and sent to a State school where he did well enough so far as work was concerned, but where he was never popular and soon became known as ‘teacher’s creep’.
That was by no means the worst of it. At his public school a waggish master had referred to him as Algernon Charles, to the mystification of the form. They were more familiar with Latin than with English verse. Questioned on the matter by his peers, Alfrist, who had no intention of disclosing the truly dreadful names bestowed on him by his American mother, had replied that he supposed the master had been trying to show what a funny swine he could be. As the master in question was known and despised for his untimely and unkind wit, this definition of his humour was accepted.
Unfortunately for Alfrist, his new comrades at the State school discovered, from the classroom anthology of English poetry which was supplied by a paternal government, exactly what the public school master had had in mind, although they knew nothing of the incident. Someone found that the book of poems included Swinburne’s Itylus, so the lad was set upon in the playground one dinner-time and, to joyous yells of ‘Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow’, a cake of soap from the washroom was forced chokingly into his mouth.
From that time on, Alfrist set himself two objectives: to change his name as soon as he could (but not, for he was an intelligent although hardly a likeable lad, until after he had made sure of the annuity he was to be given by his American grandfather) and to fit himself to take vengeance upon society. He reached neither of these goals while he was still at school, but kept them in the forefront of his mind against the time when he should attain his majority.
Having reached his sixteenth birthday and his O levels, he received, to his surprise and chagrin, the now very unwelcome news that his father proposed to take him away from school and put him to the task of beginning to make his own way in the world and pay for his keep.
‘But I can’t,’ he said blankly. ‘Not yet. I’ve got my A levels to do.’
‘I don’t earn enough to go on keeping both of us,’ said his father. This was at the end of the Easter term and for another three months Osbert allowed the subject to drop. He had no wish to try conclusions with his son too soon. The long summer holiday at the end of the following term would be a better time to elaborate his point of view, he thought.
He himself had tried one kind of unskilled employment after another, disliking each a little more than the last. He particularly objected to his present job although it brought in a little more money than any of the others he had tried. The work necessitated the wearing of overalls and sometimes breaking the nails of his so far fastidiously-kept hands. It also brought back unwelcome memories of his autocratic wife who, as time went on, had become more and more authoritative and exacting and (what in his opinion was worse) more and more inclined to hang on tightly to the purse-strings.
One of the economies on which she had insisted was that small adjustments, tunings and running repairs to the family car should be made cheaply at home instead of expensively at a garage. Osbert had attempted to rebel against this, but his bid for independence was soon quashed. In the course of the years, therefore, he had become a reasonably competent mechanic and when the time came for a show-down between himself and his son, he was in the employment of a garage proprietor who specialised in tarting up and reconditioning used cars and selling them at a reasonable profit.
One of the perquisites of this particular employment was that there were opportunities for the mechanic to go joy-riding in the repaired cars. When he did so he imagined himself to be the owner and the car a brand-new and expensive model. During the school holidays, he occasionally took Alfrist with him on these jaunts, but there was little fellow-feeling between them. Alfrist despised his father and when it became clear at the beginning of the summer vacation that, instead of joining the privileged Sixth Form to sit his A levels, he really was to be put out to work, he renewed his protests.
‘I want to go to University,’ he said. ‘You’ve only got to keep me another two years, father. I’ll get a student grant after that. Why can’t I stay on?’
‘Money. Do you realise what your clothes cost, let alone your food?’
‘Mr Churt says I’m a cert for my A levels. I got nine Os, father.’
‘Yes, I know you did and they ought to stand you in good stead. You could get a very decent job in a bank, I shouldn’t wonder. You wouldn’t want your poor old dad to go on keeping you for another five or six years, would you? Even with a grant you’d cost me a lot of money.’
‘I’m your son and I reckon it’s your job to see me through. Look, dad, I’m not a cretin. I get jolly good marks all the time at school. I’m worth being given my chance.’
‘If your mother had lived, everything would have been different, you see,’ said Osbert, with the resentment he always felt when he thought about his wife.
‘Well, she didn’t live, so now it’s up to you,’ said the youth realising, however, that he was fighting a losing battle.
‘I can’t manage it, son. My health isn’t good. Never has been. It’s time you took on some responsibility. What would you do if I pegged out as, with my heart condition and the sort of work I do, I easily might?’
This argument carried no weight with his unsentimental son, who treated it with the contempt he felt it deserved by saying:
‘Oh, if anything happened to you, I should go and live with my grandfather in America, I suppose.’
The school term ended in mid-July and, as had been the case for several years, Alfrist found himself at a loose end with six or seven weeks of summer holiday to get through as best he might. He had no friends with whom to spend his time. He was still only tolerated at school, not liked. There were no holiday outings for him, either, except an occasional drive with his father when Osbert was trying out one of the reconditioned cars.
He might have found himself temporary employment, as many of the other lads did, but he felt that this would be playing into his father’s hands. He also decided that the kind of job he could get was far beneath his notice, for, with his mother’s obstinacy and pertinacity, he had inherited her wealthy-woman’s snobbishness. In the hotels in a neighbouring seaside town there were vacancies for temporary waiters, kitchen hands and porters, but Alfrist did not think for a moment of applying for any of them.
The consequence was that he was restless and bored. He spent a certain amount of his time in the reading and reference rooms of the local public library, but also, less admirably, he became adept at shoplifting, first because he wanted sweets or fruit which he had no money to buy; then just for the thrill of seeing what he could get away with and still escape detection. Later, because he found that in the Saturday street-market it was possible to dispose of stolen goods without being asked too many questions about how he had come into possession of them, he became more daring, but knew he was living dangerously.