“Bob” has become “Mr. Strange.” For the first time in his career, Straitley has adopted a work-to-rule attitude to his duties; insists on being informed no later than eight-thirty the same morning if he is to lose a free period, which, though correct according to regulations, forces Strange to arrive at work more than twenty minutes earlier than he would in normal circumstances. As a result, Straitley gets more than his fair share of rainy-day break duties and Friday afternoon cover sessions, which does nothing to ease the tension between them.
Still, amusing though it may be, this remains a small diversion. St. Oswald’s has withstood a thousand petty dramas of the same ilk. My second week has passed; I am more than comfortable in my role; and although I am tempted to enjoy my newfound situation for a little longer, I know that there will be no better time to strike. But where?
Not Bishop; not the Head. Straitley? It’s tempting, and he’ll have to go sooner or later; but I’m enjoying the game too much to lose him so soon. No. There’s really only one place to start. The Porter.
That had been a bad summer for John Snyde. He had been drinking more than ever before, and at last it was beginning to show. Always a big man, he had thickened gradually and almost imperceptibly over the years, and now, quite suddenly, it seemed, he was fat.
For the first time I was conscious of it; conscious of the St. Oswald’s boys passing the gates; conscious of my father’s slowness, of his bloodshot eyes, of his bearish, sullen temper. Though it rarely came out in work hours, I knew it was there, like an underground wasps’ nest waiting for something to disturb it.
Dr. Tidy, the Bursar, had commented on it, although so far my father had avoided an official reprimand. The boys knew it too, especially the little ones; over that summer they baited him mercilessly, shouting, John! Hey John! in their girlish voices, following him in groups as he attended to his duties, running after the ride-on lawn mower as he drove it methodically around the cricket fields and football pitches, his big bear’s rump hanging off either side of the narrow seat.
He had a multitude of nicknames: Johnny Fatso; Baldy John (he had become sensitive about the thinning patch on top of his head, which he tried to camouflage by greasing a long strip of hair to his crown); Doughball Joe; Big John the Chip-Fat Don. The ride-on lawn mower was a perpetual source of merriment; they called it the Mean Machine or John’s Jalopy; it was continually breaking down; rumor had it that it ran off the chip fat that John used to grease his hair; that he drove it because it was faster than his own car. A few times, boys had noticed a beery, stale smell on my father’s breath in the mornings, and since then there had been numerous halitosis jokes; boys pretending to become inebriated on the fumes from the caretaker’s breath; boys asking how far over the limit he was, and whether he was legal to drive the Mean Machine.
Needless to say I usually kept my distance from these boys during my forays into school; for although I was certain my father never even saw beyond the St. Oswald’s uniform to the individuals beneath, his proximity made me uneasy and ashamed. It seemed at these times that I had never really seen my father before; and when, goaded finally into undignified response, he lashed out—first with his voice, and then with his fists—I writhed with embarrassment, shame, and self-loathing.
Much of this was the direct result of my friendship with Leon. A rebel he might have been, with his long hair and his shoplifting forays, but in spite of all that, Leon remained very much a product of his background, speaking with contempt of what he called “the proles” and “the mundanes,” mocking my Sunnybank Park contemporaries with vicious and relentless accuracy.
For my own part, I joined in the mockery without reserve. I had always loathed Sunnybank Park; I felt no loyalty to the pupils there and embraced the cause of St. Oswald’s without hesitation. That was where I belonged, and I made certain that everything about me—hair, voice, manners—reflected that allegiance. At that time I wished more than ever for my fiction to be true, longed for the police-inspector father of my imagination and hated more than words could say the fat, sullen caretaker with his foul mouth and thick, beery gut. With me he had grown increasingly irritable; the failure of the karate lessons had compounded his disappointment, and on several occasions I found him watching me with frank and open dislike.
Still, once or twice, he made a feeble, halfhearted effort. Asked me to a football match; gave me money for the pictures. Most of the time, however, he did not. I watched him sink deeper every day into his routine of television, beer, takeaways, and fumbling, noisy (and increasingly unsuccessful) sex. After a while even that stopped, and Pepsi’s visits grew less and less frequent. I saw her in town a couple of times, and once in the park with a young man. He was wearing a leather jacket and had one of his hands up Pepsi’s pink angora sweater. After that she hardly came to see us at all.
It was ironic that the one thing that saved my father during those weeks was the thing he was growing to hate. St. Oswald’s had been his life, his hope, his pride; now it seemed to taunt him with his own inadequacy. Even so, he endured it; performed his duties faithfully, if without love; squared his stubborn back to the boys who taunted him and sang rude little chants about him in the playground. For me, he endured it; for me, he held out almost to the last. I know that, now that it’s too late; but at twelve so many things are hidden; so many things still to be discovered.
“Hey, Pinchbeck!” We were sitting in the Quad under the beech trees. The sun was hot, and John Snyde was mowing the lawn. I remember that smell, the smell of school days; of mown grass, dust, and of things growing too fast and out of control. “Looks like Big John’s having a spot of bother.”
I looked. So he was; at the limit of the cricket lawn the Mean Machine had broken down again, and my father was trying to restart it, swearing and sweating as he pulled at the sagging waistband of his jeans. The little boys had already begun to close in; a cordon of them, like Pygmies around a wounded rhino.
John! Hey, John! I could hear them across the cricket lawn, budgie voices in the hazy heat. Darting in, darting out, daring one another to get a little closer every time.
“Geddout of it!” He waved his arms at them like a man scaring crows. His beery shout reached us a second later; high-pitched laughter followed. Squealing, they scattered; seconds later they were already creeping back, giggling like girls.
Leon grinned. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll have a laugh.”
I followed him reluctantly, keeping back, removing the glasses that might have marked me. I needn’t have bothered; my father was drunk. Drunk and furious, goaded by the heat and the juniors who wouldn’t leave him alone.
“Excuse me, Mr. Snyde, sir,” said Leon, behind him.
He turned, gaping—taken by surprise by that “sir.”
Leon faced him, polite and smiling. “Dr. Tidy would like to see you in the Bursar’s office,” he said. “He says it’s important.”
My father hated the Bursar—a clever man with a satiric tongue, who ran the school’s finances from a spotless little office near the Porter’s Lodge. It would have been hard to miss the hostility between them. Tidy was neat, obsessive, meticulous. He attended Chapel every morning; drank chamomile tea to soothe his nerves; bred prize-winning orchids in the school conservatory. Everything about John Snyde seemed calculated to upset him: his slouch; his boorishness; the way his trousers came down well over the waistband of his yellowing underpants.
“Dr. Tidy?” said my father, eyes narrowed.