“I can hardly contain my excitement,” I said.
I had told Norton all about events at the TA centre and he agreed with me that Mac was becoming a serious problem. If it had only been Mac then we might have used our guns to drive him out, or worse. But now he had a new gang of acolytes it was going to be much harder to unseat him. We would have to be cunning, bide our time, wait for the right moment, recruit other boys who would help us when the time came.
“Wylie is the biggest problem right now,” said Norton. “He’s taken a fancy to Unwin’s little sister and he’s not taking no for an answer. There’ve been a few slanging matches, but so far he’s not threatened Unwin with his gun, but I reckon it’s only a matter of time.” He paused and looked at me worriedly. “She’s 13, Lee.”
“And what’s Mac’s reaction to this?”
“Seems to think it’s funny.”
“Look, do you think you’d be comfortable carrying a gun yourself?”
Norton looked surprised. “Me? Yeah, I suppose.”
“Good, then find a way of carrying one of the Brownings with you, out of sight, and keep an eye on Unwin and his sister. You may have to intervene if things get nasty. But listen — only if there’s no-one else around. If you can get away with doing something then do it, but if you run the risk of getting caught then do nothing.”
I was appalled at what I was saying, but if Norton was shocked by the suggestion he didn’t show it. Maybe the desperation of our situation hadn’t quite sunk in yet, or maybe he was just a cooler customer than I had realised.
“God knows what Mac’d do to you if he found you threatening one of his officers,” I went on, “and we have to keep an eye on the big picture here. Mac’s our prime target, we can’t do anything that jeopardises our plans to take him down.”
“We have plans?”
“Um, no, not yet. But we will have. Wait and see. Big, clever plans. Schemes, maybe even plots.”
“I like a good plot.”
“There you go then.”
As Norton and I cemented our friendship with conspiracy, Matron and I also grew closer. I would sit in the San with her as she did her morning surgeries, and she began teaching me the rudiments of first aid and medicine.
We hadn’t only found weapons at the TA HQ. On the trip to collect the remaining ammunition Bates had ordered a full sweep of the facility and had found a well stocked medical centre, the contents of which had been brought back and given to Matron. She was ecstatic that now she had some proper painkillers, antibiotics, dressings and stuff. It wouldn’t last long, but it provided temporary relief at least.
So in the afternoons I helped her catalogue the haul and she talked me through each drug and what it did. I carefully noted any drugs that could be used as sedatives or stimulants, just in case.
And as we did this she talked to me about books, films and music. She never mentioned her family or her life outside the school, but then I’d never known her to leave the grounds, even on her days off. Maybe she didn’t have a life outside the school.
Somehow we managed to do a lot of laughing.
MR HAMMOND HAD been a popular teacher. He expected the class to rise to their feet when he entered the room, wore a long black gown to teach lessons, and you got the sense that there were times he longed to pull a boy up to the front of the class by their sideburns and give them six of the best like he was allowed to do when he was a younger man. But we respected and liked him because you always knew where you stood with him. The rules of his classroom were clear and simple, he never lost his temper, and never gave out punishments just because he was having a bad day — if you did cop it from him he always made sure you knew why.
His lessons were interesting if not exactly thrilling, and his obsessive passion for all things Modern in art meant that anyone seeking enlightenment about mundane stuff like life drawing or sculpture could feel his frustration at having to teach what he considered backward and irrelevant skills. Cubism and Henry Moore’s abstracts were all he lived for. I thought it was all meaningless, pretentious crap, if I’m honest, but it’s hard not to warm to someone who’s so genuinely enthusiastic.
He studied here as a boy and had returned to teach here immediately he qualified, so apart from his first five years, and three years at art college, he’d been ensconced in Castle for his entire life. He was an old man who should have retired years ago but he was such a fixture of the place that no-one could imagine him leaving. At the age of seventy-five he was still teaching art and had looked likely to do so until he dropped.
Although he was the senior master there had never been any question of his challenging Bates’ authority, he just wasn’t the type. Teaching lessons in post-apocalyptic survivalism sounded like just the kind of thing he’d come up with, and I wished I could have sat in on just one. Norton told me that there were a large group of younger boys who adored him utterly. He was playing granddad to them and they were lapping it up. After all, Mac wasn’t exactly the approachable type, and Bates, despite his initial rapport with the younger boys, was increasingly isolated and distant.
In some ways you could say that, in a very short time, Hammond had cemented himself into the position he had held for so many decades before The Cull — the heart of the school, its conscience and kindness.
And of course, there was no room for such things in our brave new world.
THE FIRST SNOW of the winter fell the night before the great unveiling ceremony, making the school and its grounds shine and glitter. Norton turned up to collect me in his CCF uniform, which was unusual, but I didn’t say anything. He and Matron lifted me out of my bed and into a wheelchair. My leg was in constant pain, a low dull throb that flared into sharp agony with the slightest movement, but in the absence of the proper hospital kit some of the boys had used cushions and planks to rig up a horizontal shelf for my leg to rest on, so once I was safely aboard I could be wheeled about without screaming all the time. Which was a plus.
With Norton as my driver we crunched through the snow to the front lawn where the school had assembled. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Instead of the rag-tag gaggle of boys in what remained of their uniforms, I was confronted by fifty or so boys of all ages in full army kit. On the younger boys it looked comically large, but their trousers had been turned up and the huge jumpers tied with belts. Obviously the berets were a problem, so the younger boys either went bareheaded or wore baseball caps that had been painted green.
Not only were they dressed like soldiers, they were standing at ease in a nice square little cadre. And — my already cold blood ran ice — all of them held SA80s.
“What the fuck is this?” I whispered to Norton.
“I was going to warn you, but I figured you needed to see it for yourself. I can see it and I still don’t believe it.”
“So he actually did it, all the kids are in the army now?”
“Uh huh. As of this afternoon there’s going to be compulsory drill and weapons training for all boys, as well as lessons on tactics, camouflage, all that shit. They’ve even tapped me to teach martial arts.”
In front of the assembled troops was an object, about head height, draped in a sheet. Bates and Hammond stood either side of it, with Matron and the four remaining grown-ups — an old aunt and three grandparents — sitting on a row of chairs to the left; Green, his arm still in a sling, sat with them. To the right stood the remaining officers in two rows, like an honour guard, all holding .303 rifles.