he heard the words of the man towering over him after he’d felled Charlie with a punch, not a slap, Charlie was smiling inwardly, without really knowing why, as he heard Mr Davis as if in need of justifying his assault, saying over him,
“How dare you! How dare you speak to me — ME — like that!”
A knowing coming over Charlie then. A knowing.
Back confined to the Home whilst the school headmaster and a committee considered Charlie’s suspension. Twodays of being separated from the other at-home boys on cleaning duties, Charlie with the worst jobs: clearing out the grease traps back of the kitchen. Down inside the concrete hole up to his waist in stinking grease and slime, feeling with his unshod toes for the plug hole, then prodding it for ages with a special steel rod till it suddenly cleared with a galuuuuuump as a bubble shot to the surface and burst at his navel. And he watched as the grease-line fast disappeared down to his bare feet, left a boy as if he’d been dipped into a sewer. One down two to go. With the toilets to follow. And then every outside drainage sump. To remind a boy, so Mr Dekka kept reminding him, of who he was so he wouldn’t think he was something else.
The decision came back from Riverton Boys’ High in a written report giving the reasons why Charles Wilson’s suspension was now an expulsion. Not that Mr Davis showed the report to Charlie, he just had him summoned to his office, addressed him as if not only a stranger but an enemy, that he was to continue home confinement until further notice, and that “after considerable thought, to save other boys taking the wrong signals from your inexcusable behaviour, I’ve decided you are to be confined to the cellblock for a period of seven days. Furthermore, you shall be on reduced food rations, to be decided once you have been inspected by our visiting doctor, and upon his recommendations …” blah-blah-blah, Charlie just thinking of it, focusing it in his mind as: just a few more drops of blood. What matter.
The cell again. Hello cell. Walking straight up to the firstetching of the name GEORGE he could see and smiling at it. Hello, George. As he pondered next on what sharp object he could use to add his name to his best friend’s.
The end of a shoelace. He tried it on the paint, it made no impression. So he went under the bed, lay on his back and carved his name right beside yet another of George’s trademarks: AND CHARLIE. 26. 10.6 — The end splayed out uselessly before Charlie could add the 7. He did that with his other shoelace. So now he and George were, he felt, like blood brothers. Soul mates.
Pacing. Sitting on the bed edge. Pacing again. Trying to keep down the bitterness as more and more the pictures swarmed his mind; of being two lousy weeks at a school after the psychologist had told him his I.Q. test marks were remarkable and he could be proud of them, and he was, and Mr Davis next telling him he could be proud of himself for being only the second boy to be chosen for the highly regarded Riverton Boys’ High School, and so a boy hardly sleeping a wink for excitement — and pride — that night, as he dared to think he might just have some hope in this life after all. Trying to hold off the swarming of pictures, to shut down the pictures in his head, sounding as they looked, like angrily buzzing insects trying to invade him.
And then sweat broke out all over him, it fell in heavy drops on his knees where he was slumped, looking at the concrete floor, sat on his bed. A certain collapse coming as though right at the door in his mind, when he heard a key turning. So he jolted his head up. The door opened. It was Tommy with his food tray, and Charlie could see there wasn’t much. But he gained the tiniest ofhopes at Tommy winking at him. And Miss Eccles, too, giving him the saddest of smiles, her eyes filmy. Then they left. And he took up his plate about to eat when he saw the scrap of paper on the brown
“How dare you! How dare you speak to me — ME — like that!”
A knowing coming over Charlie then. A knowing.
Back confined to the Home whilst the school headmaster and a committee considered Charlie’s suspension. Twodays of being separated from the other at-home boys on cleaning duties, Charlie with the worst jobs: clearing out the grease traps back of the kitchen. Down inside the concrete hole up to his waist in stinking grease and slime, feeling with his unshod toes for the plug hole, then prodding it for ages with a special steel rod till it suddenly cleared with a galuuuuuump as a bubble shot to the surface and burst at his navel. And he watched as the grease-line fast disappeared down to his bare feet, left a boy as if he’d been dipped into a sewer. One down two to go. With the toilets to follow. And then every outside drainage sump. To remind a boy, so Mr Dekka kept reminding him, of who he was so he wouldn’t think he was something else.
The decision came back from Riverton Boys’ High in a written report giving the reasons why Charles Wilson’s suspension was now an expulsion. Not that Mr Davis showed the report to Charlie, he just had him summoned to his office, addressed him as if not only a stranger but an enemy, that he was to continue home confinement until further notice, and that “after considerable thought, to save other boys taking the wrong signals from your inexcusable behaviour, I’ve decided you are to be confined to the cellblock for a period of seven days. Furthermore, you shall be on reduced food rations, to be decided once you have been inspected by our visiting doctor, and upon his recommendations …” blah-blah-blah, Charlie just thinking of it, focusing it in his mind as: just a few more drops of blood. What matter.
The cell again. Hello cell. Walking straight up to the firstetching of the name GEORGE he could see and smiling at it. Hello, George. As he pondered next on what sharp object he could use to add his name to his best friend’s.
The end of a shoelace. He tried it on the paint, it made no impression. So he went under the bed, lay on his back and carved his name right beside yet another of George’s trademarks: AND CHARLIE. 26. 10.6 — The end splayed out uselessly before Charlie could add the 7. He did that with his other shoelace. So now he and George were, he felt, like blood brothers. Soul mates.
Pacing. Sitting on the bed edge. Pacing again. Trying to keep down the bitterness as more and more the pictures swarmed his mind; of being two lousy weeks at a school after the psychologist had told him his I.Q. test marks were remarkable and he could be proud of them, and he was, and Mr Davis next telling him he could be proud of himself for being only the second boy to be chosen for the highly regarded Riverton Boys’ High School, and so a boy hardly sleeping a wink for excitement — and pride — that night, as he dared to think he might just have some hope in this life after all. Trying to hold off the swarming of pictures, to shut down the pictures in his head, sounding as they looked, like angrily buzzing insects trying to invade him.
And then sweat broke out all over him, it fell in heavy drops on his knees where he was slumped, looking at the concrete floor, sat on his bed. A certain collapse coming as though right at the door in his mind, when he heard a key turning. So he jolted his head up. The door opened. It was Tommy with his food tray, and Charlie could see there wasn’t much. But he gained the tiniest ofhopes at Tommy winking at him. And Miss Eccles, too, giving him the saddest of smiles, her eyes filmy. Then they left. And he took up his plate about to eat when he saw the scrap of paper on the brown
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