Warlight(4)

In mid-September we arrived at our respective schools. Having been day students so far, we were unaccustomed to boardingschool life, whereas everyone there already knew they had been essentially abandoned. We could not stand it and within a day of our arrival wrote to our parents care of a mailbox address in Singapore, pleading to be released. I worked out that our letter would travel in a van to the Southampton docks, then make its way by ship, reaching and then leaving distant ports without any sense of urgency. At that distance and after six weeks I already knew our list of complaints would appear meaningless. For instance, the fact that I had to walk down three flights of stairs in darkness in order to find a bathroom at night. Most of the regular boarders usually pissed into one selected sink on our floor, beside the one where you brushed your teeth. This had been the custom at the school for generations—and decades of urine had worn a clear path in the one enamel basin used for this activity. But one night while I was drowsily relieving myself into the sink, the Housemaster strolled past and witnessed what I was doing. At assembly the next morning he made an outraged speech about the despicable act he had stumbled upon, going on to claim that even during the four years he had fought in the war he had never witnessed anything so obscene. The shocked silence among the boys in the hall was in fact disbelief that the Housemaster was unaware of a tradition that had been in existence when Shackleton and P. G. Wodehouse had been great men at the school (although one of them was rumoured to have been expelled, and the other knighted only after much disagreement). I too hoped to be expelled but was simply beaten by a prefect, who could not stop laughing. In any case, I did not expect a considered reply from my parents, even after including the postscript of my crime in a quickly written second letter. I clung to the hope that becoming a boarder at school had been our father’s idea more than our mother’s, so she might be our chance of release.

Our schools were half a mile away from each other and the only communication possible between us was to borrow a bicycle and meet on the Common. Rachel and I decided that whatever we did we would do together. So in the midst of the second week, before our pleading letters had even reached Europe, we slipped away with the day students after the last class, hung around Victoria Station till evening, when we were sure The Moth would be home to let us in, and returned to Ruvigny Gardens. We both knew The Moth was the one adult who seemed to have our mother’s ear.

“Ah, you could not wait for the weekend, is that it?” was all he said. There was a thin man sitting in the armchair my father always sat in.

“This is Mr. Norman Marshall. He used to be the best welterweight north of the river, known as ‘The Pimlico Darter.’ You may have heard of him?”

We shook our heads. We were more concerned that The Moth had invited someone we did not know into our parents’ home. We’d never considered such a possibility. We were also nervous about our escape from the school and how it would be taken by our untested guardian. But for some reason our midweek escape did not concern The Moth.

“You must be hungry. I’ll warm up some baked beans. How did you get here?”

“The train. Then the bus.”

“Good.” And with that he walked into the kitchen, leaving us with The Pimlico Darter.

“Are you his friend?” Rachel asked.

“Not at all.”

“Then why are you here?”

“That’s my father’s chair,” I said.

He ignored me and turned towards Rachel. “He wished me to come here, sweetheart. He’s considering a dog at Whitechapel this weekend. Ever been there?”

Rachel was silent, as if she had not been spoken to. He was not even a friend of our lodger. “Cat got your tongue?” he inquired of her, then turned his pale blue eyes towards me. “Been to a dog race?” I shook my head, and then The Moth returned.

“Here you are. Two plates of beans.”

“They’ve never been to a dog race, Walter.”

Walter?

“I should bring them this Saturday. What time’s your race?”

“The O’Meara Cup is always three p.m.”

“These kids sometimes can get out on weekends, if I write a note.”

“Actually…” Rachel said. The Moth turned towards her and waited for her to continue.

“We don’t want to go back.”

“Walter, I’m off. Looks like you’ve got a complication.”

“Oh, no complication,” said The Moth breezily. “We can sort it out. Don’t forget the signal. I don’t want my coins put on a useless dog.”

“Right. Right…” The Darter rose, put a reassuring hand rather strangely on my sister’s shoulder and left the three of us alone.

We ate the beans and our guardian watched us without any sense of judgement.

“I’ll ring the school and tell them not to worry. They’re no doubt shitting a brick or two right now.”

“I’m supposed to have a maths test first thing tomorrow,” I said, coming clean.

“He was nearly expelled for urinating in a sink!” Rachel said.

Whatever authority The Moth had he used with quick diplomacy, accompanying us back to school early the next morning and speaking for thirty minutes to the Master, a short, terrifying man who always moved silently down the halls in crepe-soled shoes. It shocked me that the man who usually ate street meals on Bigg’s Row had this authority. In any case, I went back into my class that morning as a day boy, and The Moth took Rachel down the road to her school to negotiate the other half of the problem. So in our second week we became day students again. We did not even consider how our parents were going to feel about this radical resettlement of our lives.