Key to the Door (17 page)

His tigerish walks were a nerve-wracking gamble for the class. Brian had a game. Listening to the soft padding of his footsteps approaching behind, he said to himself: Will he stop and hit me? I'll bet he does. I bet a bloody quid he does. There, what did I tell you? The bastard. That's a quid somebody owes me.

Even the teachers disliked him, Brian saw, always on the watch for him peering into the room, and when he did come in they immediately relinquished all power over the class and handed it to him—seemingly in the hope that something would go wrong. But nothing ever did that could not be solved by an erratic scattering of fists among the gangways.

Mr. Jones's mouth turned down at the edges, and it was agreed in the class that he could not have been a very pretty baby, some sixty-odd years ago. Brian tried to imagine him as a boy even younger than himself so that he could look back on the age and see him more clearly—to fix an image of a youngster in his mind, visualize him walking over a field with hands in pockets, whistling and heaving a stone now and again at birds. Impossible. Even as a boy Brian saw him a blank-faced nonentity, face gradually becoming more shrivelled until a moustache appeared and the mouth below bent at the side, and the short trousers turned into those of a blue pinstriped suit, and the head of fair hair burst through starkly into white, and the meadow across which he had been walking lost its greenness and became the polished wax-smelling floor of a classroom, and then there was the actual awful figure beside you and you knew that whatever Jones had been like as a little boy it didn't matter a bogger because Jones was what Jones was now and all you had to do was keep your eyes skinned for him and learn to bend your head right forward on feeling the first smack of his folded hand on your backbone.

Whenever Mr. Jones opened a book, either to ask questions or read a story, it seemed to Brian an unnatural combination. Books and Mr. Jones did not go together. The comfortable rustle of pages and the crack of his stick or fist did not belong in the same room, were disparate qualities that confused and annoyed him, and weren't calculated to bring out the best side of his uneven intelligence.

At home there were no books, but he found a store at the Nook, ancient dust-covered Sunday-school prizes with the names of his uncles and aunts inscribed in impeccable writing within the front covers. He took them from the shelf (“Don't destroy them, Brian, will you?” his grandmother said) and read their titles:
John Halifax, Gentleman, The Lamplighter, What Katy Did Next, The Gypsy;
opened them and smelt the mustiness from years of damp storage. A book was too strange an object to read, so he built them into a tower, watched it wobble, gave a push if his construction showed no sign of falling. He placed them in two piles, side by side so that they didn't fall, took one from the top and opened it. “Once upon a time there was a gypsy named Meg Merrilees.… Nowadays the gypsies.…”

Merton could not read, but liked someone to reel off the front page of the newspaper to him. “Come on then,” he said sharply to Brian, “read me what it says.”

“I don't know the first word.”

“Course yer do,” he said gruffly, thinking him obstinate. “Read the first bit on it.” Brian looked hard: “Art,” he said slowly. Merton waited for him to go on, demanded when he didn't: “Is that all? Art? That ain't a word.”

“No, there's a lot more yet. It's a big word I don't know.”

“Gerron wi' it then.”

“Tek yer sweat, I'm going as quick as I can. I'm building it up: ‘art-ill.'”

“You're a bloody slow-coach,” Merton scoffed. “‘Artill!' I never heard such a word.” He turned to everyone in the room: “What's ‘artill'? I don't know. I'm boggered if I do, do any of you lot?”

“It ain't finished yet,” Brian protested, lifting the paper again.

“Well, finish it, then, Nimrod. Come on, I want some news. What's ‘artill'? Is that the beginning o' t' word, or all on it?”

Brian was indignant: “I'll finish it if yer'll shurrup an' let me. ‘Artill-er.'”

“That ain't it, either.” Merton prodded him and winked at the others, who looked on. “I thought yer was a better scholar than this,” he said with disappointment. “There must be summat else besides ‘artill-er.'”

“There is,” Brian retorted, now seeing the joke Merton was having. “On'y a bit, though. Listen. I've got all on it now: ‘art-ill-er-y.'” Then slowly: “Artillery, that's what it is.”

“It's as bad as ever,” Merton pronounced, puzzled. He turned to Lydia: “What's … what was it, Nimrod?”

“Artillery.”

“Artillery,” Merton repeated.

“Nay,” Lydia said, “I don't know.”

“It's guns, ain't it, George?” Merton asked, half sure of himself.

“Yes,” he was answered.

“Go on then, Nimrod.”

Slowly he read: “Artillery preparations for the bombardment of Madrid.…”

He'd heard of scholarship papers that you took at eleven, but someone said you had to know Latin to pass. One weekend he sat in the Nook kitchen: “What people speak Latin, gra'ma?”

“I don't know, Brian.” So he turned to Merton: “Grandad?”

“What, Nimrod?”

“Who speaks Latin?” He was still plagued by the possibility that Merton, being a grandad, must know everything. “Nay,” came the answer, “I've no idea.”

“Do you know, Uncle George?”

“No, lad.” He went back to his book puzzled. Who spoke Latin? He'd asked Ted Hewton, and Ted Hewton didn't know. To ask Jones was inviting a crack on the tab for being so stupid as not to know a simple thing like that, even when no one else in the class knew, and it was better to stay ignorant than get a pasting, he felt. It was obvious that Spaniards spoke Spanish, French people French, and Germans German, but who spoke Latin, that puzzling language on the back of pennies? He copied it out:
GEORGIVS V DEI GRA
:
BRITT
:
OMN
:
REX FID
:
DEF
:
IND
:
IMP
—worse than Abyssinian it seemed. Mr. James told him, a quieter teacher who didn't hand out pastings when asked questions: “But it's dead now,” he added. “Nobody speaks it any more.” And that was that, all that fuss for nothing.

He stopped the playground flight of a paper aeroplane that, it turned out, was made from a French grammar. He unfolded the would-be bomber and tried to read its message: articles and nouns on one side, a picture-map of Paris on the other. He gave a dozen marbles for what was left of the book, then searched out Ted Hewton to show off his bargain.

Black-haired pallid Ted already knew how to count in French. “Our kid on the dole gets books from the library, and learns French because 'e ain't got nowt to do. So 'e learnt me to say some.” They sat in a corner reciting:
OON DER TWAR KAT SANK SEECE SET WEET NERF DEECE
.

“What's eleven?” Brian asked.

“I forgot,” Ted said. “I'll ask our kid and tell yer tomorrer.” The first ten were memorized in a few minutes, would stay in a pocket of the brain all his life, but eleven and up was another thing, like a row of strong bolts opening on to the unknown.

He turned the page of his grammar. “What's an article?”

“A thing,” Ted explained, “anybody knows that.”

“I know they do, but this article ain't a thing, it's a word, like ‘the,' for instance.”

“Don't be daft,” Ted scoffed. “How can ‘the' be an article? An article's a thing, I'm tellin' yer.” Brian pushed the book under his nose: “Look.
Le
is an article, it says, and it means ‘the.' So how can it be a bleddy thing?”

“It don't mek sense,” Ted remarked. “Maybe the book's out o' date.”

“It'd better not be,” Brian said savagely, “or I'll get my marbles back.” He flipped over more pages. “It's still a good book, because it's got lots o' words in it.
Maison, chemin, chapeau, main, doigt,”
he said slowly, following the mock-pronunciation beneath each. Ted grabbed the book for a second look, as if he did not believe all those words were in it. “Ay,” he said approvingly, “it's not a bad book at that.” He flipped through its wad of leaves to the back cover: “'Undred an' ninety it goes up to. It's long.”

“I gen twelve marbles for it,” Brian reminded him, snatching it back as the whistle blew for end-of-playtime.

Geography, history, and English: in each there was a possibility of learning about other countries and people. In
Lands and Life
were coloured pictures of camels by big ships on the Suez Canal, and snow-covered mountain tops on the Equator; and in
Foundations of History
he read how Greeks captured Troy by hiding in the belly of a wooden horse and being dragged inside by Trojans who thought the gods had sent it from heaven as a present (daft people who didn't know any better); and often for English Mr. James read
Coral Island
or
Ungava
. But geography won, meant notebooks with blank pages on which the teacher pressed a roller that left an outline map when he lifted it off, and set strange names on the blackboard that you copied against the map. Brian scoured the food cupboard for labels from foreign places, found pictures of other continents in magazines to stick on the blank pages in his geography notebook until it grew fat with insertions and notes.

Six columns formed up to be marched in by the prefects. The asphalt yard sloped down to lavatories, and along the wall of the infants' and junior girls' departments was written in large white letters:
CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS
—by order of Mr. Jones, who called in a man to repaint the letters so that on the first few days of each term they shone and glittered with reproach at the yardful of ragged-arsed, down-at-heel, and often unwashed kids.

Black clouds gathered across shining roof slates, and cold rain blew as they marched inside. Any inside was good in weather like this, and Brian felt happy that an English lesson was on the timetable. His belly was full from a meal at the dinner-centre, and he anticipated a ha'penny from his father when he got home, it being Thursday, dole-day.

Mixed telegraph messages of clacking desk-lids and stamping feet filled the teacherless room. Rain streamed down the window-panes and, as no one had been told to switch on the lights, the gloom that lay about needed much noise to dispel it. Brian made for the steampipes with Ted and Jim Skelton, and they watched two bodies rolling and pitching in a gangway fight. A smell of damp coats and trousers mingled with breath and polish smells, and a further violent surcharge of rain against the outside glass increased the recklessness within.

A sly face rose slowly above the door panel, stayed still for a few moments. “Get back to your desks,” Brian hissed. A phenomenon detached from the turmoil, the livid vivid face of Mr. Jones turned this way and that to take in everything before entering the room. Seconds went by like minutes, and Brian looked away from the face at the window to meet the equally distrusted visage of the Laughing Cavalier on the opposite wall, then turned with a half laugh to the front and stared at nothing.

After the crash of the door and the sight of eyes hollow with rage, the only sound left came from tangible rain outside. Mr. Jones grabbed four boys who had been fighting and hauled them one by one to the front, a few well-placed punches getting them into line.

“What were you fighting about?” he roared, shaking the nearest boy. The noise of rain flowered like a burst dam, for everyone in the room except the frantic expostulating Jones seemed to have stopped breathing. The life had gone out of them, but for hatred and fear. The boy could not answer, and the sound of flesh meeting flesh at great speed jerked silence out of the room. “What were you fighting for, you lout?” Mr. Jones shouted again, into the ear he had just hit.

“Nothing,” the boy blubbered.

“Nothing?” he bawled. “Nothing what, you jackanapes?”

“Nothing, sir,” came between the sobs. With a faintly sarcastic smile he lifted the desk-lid and took out a stick. His body doubled with spite as he leapt at the culprits: “You don't fight for nothing, you idiot,” he yelled, hitting the nearest boy furiously across the back and shoulders. “You don't fight for nothing, do you? Do you? Eh? If you want to fight,” whack, whack, whack, “then fight me. Come on, fight me,” whack, whack, “fight me, you nincompoop.”

He's barmy, Brian thought. He'll go into a fit one of these days and wain't be able to come out of it. I'm sure he will, as sure as I sit here. Either that, or somebody's dad'll come up and knock him for six.

“Get back to your seats,” he gasped, straightening his royal-blue tie. “And come out the monitors.” Four boys, a piece of yellow ribbon pinned to each lapel, walked to the front. “In that cupboard you'll find two stacks of books called
Treasure Island
. Give one to each boy.”

They went to their tasks with avidity. “I'm taking you for English literature during the next few weeks,” Jones went on, “and I'm going to start reading
Treasure Island
to you, by Robert Louis Stevenson.” A hum of excitement was permitted. Treasure Island. Brian had heard of it: pirates and ships and other-world adventure, a cinematic hit-and-run battle among blue waves and palm-trees taking place a million miles away yet just above his head, as if he could reach up and touch cutlass and cannon and tree branch to heave himself into hiding.

“And”—the plangent voice of Mr. Jones made an unwelcome return—“every other Thursday I'm going to ask you questions on what I've been reading”—his grey eyes glared, eyes empty if you dared but look at them, which wasn't so dangerous as it seemed because they stared back at nothing when he wasn't inclined to bully—“and woe betide anyone who hasn't been paying attention,” he concluded ominously, opening the teacher's clean copy the monitor laid before him.