“And we’ll finish the second half on Thursday,” Mr Firmin was saying, rubbing his gnarly hands in a knot.
Sam opened his eyes and quickly, self-consciously, wiped up the drool which had escaped and stained the arm of the old sofa. Beside him Walt Schulberg was stretching and blinking in the light as the wooden shutters were folded over and bright, sunny daylight streamed into the common room.
“Sir, can we stay here now instead of going back to class?” one of the girl boarders asked.
“If you’ve brought your books and all your kit with you, I don’t see why not.”
“Lunch,” Walt sniffed. “Perfect. I’m starving.”
“I just had the weirdest dream,” Sam murmured, but no one was listening. He wasn’t sure if he was happy to be back at school or sad because the girl he’d dreamed of was just that: a figment of his imagination.
“Sir, next week can we see Macbeth II?”
“I didn’t even see this one.”
“Go on!” Mr Firmin cried, pretending to try to kick one of the boys on the behind. “Move it, you horrible lot.”
Out in the creaking corridor the boys tried to catch a glimpse into the girl’s boarding house but the only thing they saw was the housemistress scowling back at them from behind the wire of the fire door. Miss Bainbridge had an unlit cigarette hanging from her mouth. “Scoot!” she mouthed as the boys watched.
The class clumped down the old wooden staircase and fell into a reverent silence as they came to the first landing. At the other end of the well-trodden lime-green carpet they were walking across lay the Headmistress’s office. Two glum boys stood with their hands in their pockets outside the closed door and both turned and pretended to look at the aerial photographs of the school on the walls as the class filed by.
“Straight in to lunch?” asked Walt as they came down into the fire-lit main hall.
Sam nodded. “Definitely.” But his eyes were drawn up to the list of names of Head Boys and Head Girls running around the boards under the high ceiling. One stood out, immediately catching his eye: WATERS, ENID, 1941–42.
Before Sam could read any more, or stop to think about what he’d seen, Firmin was at their backs hurrying them along. The class broke out through the back doors and merged into the queuing throngs impatiently waiting to be admitted to the dining room.
Lunch was dull but Mr Grey’s geography class, which followed, was even worse.
It was a blustery October day and Sam’s world was a miserable place. One of the heaters in the classroom wasn’t working and a kind of creeping cold sneaked its way into Sam’s bones as he sat trying to concentrate on coastal erosion in Lanark. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the girl’s face imprinted on the darkness in his mind and he couldn’t help thinking: Will I ever see her again? She had seemed so very real.
The last class of the day was a grim, gruelling double dose of physics. Although he’d managed to somehow wangle his way into the top group in maths and English, in each of the sciences Sam was in the lower group, which meant two hours of staring out at the drizzle whilst listening to the teacher becoming increasingly frazzled by the refusal of half the class to be quiet and listen.
In the top groups most of the students were like Sam. They were fairly well behaved, ultimately afraid of their parents and interested enough to try to do well in the subjects they studied. Here in the lower groups there were a few lost souls like Sam trying to make the best of things but there was also a hardcore group of boys and girls for whom everything was a joke. Some of them, as the teachers never tired of telling them, were clever enough to get away with this kind of behaviour and still pass their exams, but the majority, they never tired of warning them, would suffer as a result of such behaviour and spoil their chances of success in life.
These laughing, unafraid, rebellious students had fascinated Sam from the first day he’d arrived at the school. The boys had a strange hairstyle all of their own, a kind of crash helmet design, long at the sides and short at the back. It was ugly and dumb-looking but they wore it with a defiance that made it threatening and cool. The girls wore their hair however they wanted but signalled membership of the tribe through their make-up. Mascara patterns swirled off the corners of their eyes and swooped and looped in paisley patterns across the bare skin towards their hair. The most intricate designs stretched right up to their ear lobes.
To these people, Sam was invisible. He watched them and was impressed by them but they were like ants going about their business while he stood staring. Like ants, they had no idea he was even there. Sam, ultimately, was what they might call a “square”. He was quiet while they were loud. He was shy while they were proud. Sometimes he felt like he was watching life slip by while those people, dumb as they were, seemed to be actually living it.
That night in Prep he tried to draw pictures of the girl he’d dreamed about because he was starting to worry that he was forgetting what she looked like. When he closed his eyes he could see something, someone, but he wasn’t sure if it was her anymore or just an idea he had of her; the her he thought he could remember. A bald, dome-headed teacher in a scarf and hat knocked on the window and Sam looked up. Mr Larkin pointed at Sam’s drawing and shook his head, wagging a finger. Sam nodded. Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.
Everyone in the room turned to look at him. It was dark outside and the window reflected the buzzing classroom strip lights. The wind, when it came, rattled the old wooden panes. The sixth former sitting at the front desk was glad to not have been caught playing with her phone. “Back to work everyone.” She yawned.
Sam waited a few minutes before stretching up to peep out through the window again. On the other side of the foggy Quad he could see Mr Larkin peering into a different glowing window. Sam opened his notebook and began sketching again.
What if I dream of her tonight? It’s been two nights now.
Yes. That’s what’ll happen. I’ll dream of her again tonight! I’m going to see her again!
By the time he finally got back to St Nick’s Sam was ready to get into his pyjamas and turn the lights out right then and there. He hadn’t been as excited about going to bed since Christmas Eve as a kid. He queued for toast and watched television with one eye on the clock. Finally, when the duty HP came into the common room to give them their five-minute warning, Sam could hardly contain his impatience and excitement.
See you soon. See you soon.
In bed he lay listening to the seemingly interminable racket of creaking springs and chattering voices until, finally, painfully late on, the quiet of night descended.
The tawny owl in the oak whose branches spread high over the House roof hooted from its secret perch. From time to time rogue gusts of wind made the great trunk creak and buffeted the prefabricated walls.
It took Sam a long time to fall asleep. He heard coughing. He heard snoring and muttering and teeth grinding. One boy in Dorm Three sat up and began screaming in Hindi. Sam’s arms hurt from lying on them. He needed to go to the toilet but knew he couldn’t. Finally he went, hating the walk there and back. He lay on his back. He thought of nothing. He thought of home. He thought of schoolwork.
But the magic happened, as it always did, when he wasn’t expecting it.