Morgan’s Run (10 page)

His lessons took place in a vast room inhabited by the junior 100 of Colston’s pupils; several masters drifted from one group to another, or hectored one group without regard for the welfare of other groups. It was therefore of great advantage to William Henry Morgan that his grandfather, not busy enough in these hard times, had taught him to count, to know his ABC, and even to do a few simple sums. Otherwise he might have been overwhelmed.

Though the Reverend Prichard hovered, he did not take lessons. That duty for William Henry’s group rested with a Mr. Simpson, and it soon became apparent that Mr. Simpson had pronounced likes and dislikes when it came to his charges. Since he was willowy, sallow-skinned and looked to be in constant danger of vomiting, it was not surprising that he disliked the boys who snuffled with sickening gusto, or picked their noses, or displayed the sticky brown fingers which betrayed that they used them to wipe their dirty bottoms.

It was no torment for William Henry to do as he was told and—sit still!—don’t fidget!—don’t kick the bench!—don’t pick your nose!—don’t snuffle!—and
don’t
talk! Therefore Mr. Simpson appeared not to notice him beyond asking him his name and informing him that since there were already two Morgans at Colston’s, he would be known as “Morgan Tertius.” Another boy, asked the same question and giving a similar kind of reply, was foolish enough to protest that he did not want to be known as “Carter Minor.” Which earned him four vicious lashes with the cane, one for not saying “sir,” one for being presumptuous, and two for good luck.

The cane was a frightful instrument, one William Henry had no experience of whatsoever. In fact, he had lived for seven years without so much as being smacked. Therefore, he vowed, he would give no master at Colston’s any excuse for caning him. For by the time that eleven o’clock came and the entire school sat upon benches down either side of long tables in the refectory, William Henry had worked out who got the cane. The talkers, the nose pickers, the fidgeters, the snufflers, the dullards, the cheeky, and a small number of boys who could not seem to help getting up to mischief.

He did not care much for either of his closest companions in both classroom and refectory, but did like the look of the boy who sat next-but-one from him; cheerful, yet not quite perky enough to have gotten the cane. William Henry glanced at him and essayed a smile which caused one of the masters at the Head’s table to draw in a breath and stiffen.

The moment he received the smile, the boy somehow ejected the obstacle between them, who fell on the floor with a clatter and was hauled away by one ear to the Head’s table on a dais at the front of the enormous, echoing room.

“Monkton Minor,” said the newcomer, grinning to reveal a missing tooth. “Been here since February.”

“Morgan Tertius, started today,” whispered William Henry.

“It is allowed to talk quietly once Grace has been said. You must have a rich father, Morgan Tertius.”

William Henry eyed Monkton Minor’s blue coat and looked wistful. “I do not think so, Monkton Minor. Not terribly rich, anyway. He went here, and he wore the blue coat.”

“Oh.” Monkton Minor thought about that, then nodded. “Is your father still alive?”

“Yes. Is yours?”

“No. Nor is my mother. I am an orphan.” Monkton Minor leaned his head closer, his bright blue eyes sparkling. “What is your Christian name, Morgan Tertius?”

“I have two. William Henry. What is yours?”

“Johnny.” The look became conspiratorial. “I will call you William Henry and you will call me Johnny—but only if no one can hear us.”

“Is it a sin?” asked William Henry, who still catalogued wrongs in that light.

“No, just not good form. But I
hate
being a Minor!”

“And I a Tertius.” William Henry removed his gaze from his new friend and glanced guiltily toward the Head’s table on high, where the ejected benchmate was receiving what William Henry had already learned was a jawing—far worse than a few licks of the cane because it took so much longer and one had to stand absolutely still until it was over or else teeter on a stool for the rest of the day. Encountering the stare of a master beside Mr. Simpson, he blinked and looked away immediately, quite why he did not know. “Who is that, Johnny?”

“Next to the Head? Old Doom and Froom.” Mr. Prichard.

“No, one down. Next to the Simp.”

“Mr. Parfrey. He teaches Latin.”

“Does he have a nickname too?”

Monkton Minor managed to touch the tip of his snub nose with his pursed lips. “If he does, us juniors don’t know it. Latin is for the seniors.”

While the two boys discussed them, Mr. Parfrey and Mr. Simpson were busy discussing William Henry.

“I see, Ned, that ye have a Ganymede amongst your swine.”

Mr. Edward Simpson understood this without further elucidation. “Morgan Tertius? You should see his eyes!”

“I must make sure I do. But even viewed from afar, Ned, he is ravishing. Truly a Ganymede—ah, to be a Zeus!”

“As well then, George, that by the time he starts amo-ing and amas-ing, he will be two years older and probably as snotty as all the rest,” said Mr. Simpson, picking diffidently at his food, though a great deal more palatable than that served to the boys; disease ran in his family, notoriously short-lived.

Their casual exchange was not evidence of prurient intentions; it was merely a symptom of their unenviable lot. George Parfrey had longed to be a Zeus, but he might as easily and as fruitlessly have longed to be a Robert Nugent, now Earl Nugent. Schoolmasters were inevitably genteely impoverished. For Mr. Simpson and Mr. Parfrey, Colston’s represented a kind of zenith; they were paid £1 per week—but only when school was up—and had their board and lodging all year round as part of the job. As Colston’s ran to very good food (the Head was a famous Epicure) and its masters each had a roomlet to himself, there was very little reason to leave unless one were tapped for Eton, Harrow or Bristol Grammar School. Marriage made things more difficult, of course, and was out of the question until one either took Orders or received a hefty promotion; not that marriage was forbidden, rather that housing a wife and offspring in a roomlet was a daunting prospect. Besides which, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Parfrey were not tempted by the Other Sex. They preferred to make do with their own, and in particular with each other. The love, however, was purely on poor Ned Simpson’s side. George Parfrey owned himself completely.

“Perhaps we could go to the Hotwells after Church on Sunday?” Mr. Simpson asked hopefully. “The waters seem to do me good.”

“Provided you allow me the indulgence of my watercolors,” said Mr. Parfrey, still gazing at William Henry Morgan, who was growing more animated—and more beautiful—with every passing moment. He pulled a face. “I fail to understand how anyone can feel better after drinking the Avon’s leavings, but if you are happy to grant me a peaceful interlude by St. Vincent’s Rocks, then I will come.” A sigh emerged. “Oh, how much I would love to paint that divine child!”

Richard arrived
to collect William Henry dry mouthed. What if he were greeted by a distraught little boy begging not to have to return to school tomorrow?

Needless fears. His eyes located his son careering headlong around the yard, laughing as he dodged the sallies of a blue-coated little fellow his own age, tow-headed and painfully thin.

“Dadda!” Up he scampered, his playmate close behind. “Dadda, this is Monkton Minor, but I call him Johnny when no one can hear us. He is a norphan.”

“How d’ye do, Monkton Minor?” asked Richard, his own days at Colston’s rushing back. He had been Morgan Minor, had graduated to Morgan Major after he turned eleven. And only his best friend had called him Richard. “I shall ask the Reverend Prichard if ye may come to dinner with us after Church next Sunday.”

He felt as if he shepherded a stranger, he reflected as he bore William Henry off; a William Henry who did not walk sedately at his side but skipped and hopped, hummed under his breath.

“I take it that you like school,” he said, smiling.

“It is splendid, Dadda! I can run and shout.”

The tears came; Richard blinked them away. “But not in the classroom, I trust.”

William Henry gave him a withering look. “Dadda, I am an angel in the classroom! I did not get the cane once. A lot of the boys got it a lot, and one boy fainted when he got thirty. Thirty is a walloping lot. But I worked out how not to get caned.”

“Did you? How?”

“I keep quiet and do my writing and my sums tidily.”

“Yes, William Henry, I know that technique well. Did the big boys make you cry when you were let out to play?”

“You mean when they lined all of us up in the privies?”

“They still do that, do they?”

“Well, they did to us. But I just wrote on the privy wall with the big piece of pooh Jones Major did on my hand—most of it missed—and then they left me alone. Johnny says it is the best way. They pick on the boys who howl and carry on.” He gave a particularly high skip. “I wiped my fingers on my coat. See?”

Mouth rigid, Richard eyed the brown smear across the skirt of William Henry’s brand-new, mushroom-colored coat and swallowed convulsively several times. Do not laugh, Richard, for Christ’s
sake
do not laugh! “If I were you,” he said when he was able, “I would not mention the pooh incident to Mama. Or show her where you wiped it off. I will ask Grandmama to clean the mark.”

So Richard ushered his son into the Cooper’s Arms with an air of triumph only his father noticed. Peg squealed and scooped the hitherto tractable William Henry into her arms to cover his face with kisses, and was pushed away.

“Mama, do not do that! I am a big boy now! Grandpapa, I had such a good time today! I ran ten times around the yard, I fell over and hurt my knee, I made a whole row of a’s on my slate, and Mr. Simpson says I am so advanced for my age that he is going to put me up into the next class. Except that that don’t make sense. He teaches the next class too, and in the same place. Mama, my knee is a
badge!
Do not fuss so!”

Richard filled in the rest of his afternoon by nailing up some planks to make William Henry his own cubicle at the far side of the bedroom; he slept in a bed these days anyway. The activity was as soothing as it was removed from the turmoil downstairs, from whence he could hear William Henry regaling every newcomer with a censored version of his day at school. Talk! He had not shut up—William Henry, who never said more than two words together!

For Peg, Richard felt an enormous pity tempered by the icy wind of his own common sense. William Henry had flown from the nest, and could never be confined again. But how much of what he had displayed in the stunning space of one small day had he harbored through the years? One day could not possibly have produced so many new thoughts, for all that it had endowed him with a new code of behavior. William Henry is not the saint I deemed him after all. William Henry, God bless him, is an ordinary little boy.

And so he tried to tell Peg, but without success. No matter how he attacked her, Peg refused to accept the fact that her son was alive and well and hugely enjoying a brand-new world. She sought refuge in tears and suffered such black depressions that Richard despaired, tired of her waterworks and having no idea of the depth of her guilt, her consciousness that she had failed in the only task a woman truly had: to give birth to children. His patience with her never diminished, but on the day that he caught her drinking a mug of rum it was sorely tried.

“This is no place for you,” he said kindly. “Let me buy that house in Clifton, Peg, please.”

“No, no, no!” she screamed.

“My love, we have been married for fourteen years and ye’ve been my friend as well as my wife, but this is too much. I do not know what ails your heart, but rum is no cure for it.”

“Leave me alone!”

“I cannot, Peg. Father is growing annoyed, but that is not the worst of it. William Henry is old enough to notice that his mama is behaving strangely. Please, try to be good for his sake.”

“William Henry does not care about me, why should I try for his sake?” she demanded.

“Oh, Peg, that is not true!”

Round and round in circles, that was how it seemed to be; not sweet reason nor Richard’s patience nor Dick’s irritation served to help placate whatever monsters chewed at her mind, though she did abandon the rum when William Henry asked her outright why she was falling-down drunk. The directness of his question appalled her.

“Though why I do not know,” said Dick to Richard later that day. “William Henry is a tavern-keeper’s child.”