6

Rain was still falling the next morning. Gregory closed his front door, pulled his scarf tighter, and put up his umbrella. He lived in an old stables not far from the school gate.

His infected hand was aching. It was oozing too. Yet despite his injury he was excited. He had decided to stage a play, a play for the boys. He’d show some initiative. That would impress Val. He looked about for Val as he entered the staffroom. There he was, beyond the diorama – but before they could talk, Cobblefield swung Gregory’s way, saying, ‘Congratulations, young Gregory, you’ve got the 13Gs.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You’re in charge of the 13Gs.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The football team, of course! You’ve got your own team.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not everyone gets their own team. You’ll be training on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, I believe, come rain, hail, or shine.’

‘I see.’

‘Now, you might be interested in my stone fund. We’ve got to pull together on this one to get it off the ground. I could do with a young chap like you. You look enthusiastic.’

‘Well, I am looking forward to starting teaching. When do classes start?’

‘Classes? Oh, I suppose it takes a long time to coordinate all the departments and so on. I believe Val started a class.’

‘Who’s in charge of drama? I’d be interested in getting involved in that. I’ve always loved drama.’

‘Drama? No, no, we don’t do that here. We haven’t put on a play for years. Let’s see, when was the last one, Mr C?’

‘Not in my time,’ said Mr C, coming up to them. ‘You’ll be pleased to know we do have an art department, Gregory.’

‘Oh, yes, we do have a part-time art master,’ said Cobblefield. He was looking at Mr C askance, and shifting his stance.

A silence set like concrete upon them.

Cobblefield abruptly retreated, with the peculiarly tight gait of the horseman, or a man with piles.

‘How are you finding things, Gregory?’ asked Mr C.

It was the man’s job to ask these things, after all. Yet Gregory found himself stifling an impulse to confide in the minister. Val was watching from the other side of the diorama.

‘I have noticed that there seem to be a lot of boys who stand back, or try to hide,’ ventured Gregory.

‘Turtles, they’re called. Every fifth or sixth boy becomes a turtle. It’s all too much for them. They retreat into themselves.’

Val began approaching, skirting the diorama.

‘There seemed to be a lot of boys crying when I was in the dormitory last night,’ said Gregory. He had been helping at night in one of the boarding houses, but the crying had occurred to him only now, a whimpering in his memory as he moved along the lights-out corridors.

‘Oh, that’s the beginning of term, I’m afraid,’ said Val, with them now. ‘They always miss home.’

‘The country boys stick together,’ Gregory offered tentatively, somewhere between Val and Mr C. ‘Is that right?’

‘Yes, certainly,’ said Mr C. ‘There are two groups of boys, you’ll find – the Rurals, and the Urbans. Those two groups are divided too. The Urbans are divided between the city boys, mostly from the eastern suburbs – Easterns – and the Parvenus, from other suburbs. Then there’s a division in the country boys between those boys who farm stock – cattle and sheep farmers – and grain farmers. Grain farmers, I’m afraid, are not quite so prestigious. Bewildering, I know. Apparently it’s acceptable to grow grain if you’re using it to feed your stock … but enough of that. I’ll let you discover the niceties for yourself.’

‘Oh, Val,’ said Gregory, ‘I wanted to get your advice. I want to begin auditions for a play. I’d like –’

‘I’d concentrate on the 13Gs first, Gregory. And your classes.’

‘But there are no classes.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. They could start at any time. Mine already have. Don’t go running off into a play.’

Parsons appeared in the doorway, rubbing his pate with his characteristic circular motion, looking puzzled. He made a long, inarticulate nasal sound, and announced, to no one in particular, ‘I can hear a plane that keeps flying overhead. I’m quite worried about it.’

Then he stepped nimbly into the staffroom, and shot towards a table covered with magazines and paperbacks. Cruising the table, he picked up a well-thumbed bestseller. The cover depicted a big breasted woman in ripped red clothes, straddling a horse.

All day rain pelted down, the drops cold and plump. Gregory watched from the door of the staffroom. The last bell had rung. He kept staring. He found he hadn’t given up on the idea of the play, even if it meant defying Val. Val was beginning to anger him. Yesterday, the older man had invited Gregory to stroke a black stallion, which stood in a yard they were passing. Gregory had not wanted to touch it. He instinctively avoided horses. It was not only that they bit and kicked; in the town where he had grown up, a horse meant poverty, it meant a person had not enough money to buy a car. And for as long as he could remember, he had always been repelled by the too-taut tendons and shivering skins of horses, their giant nakedness. The beasts seemed to know, and to want to press their advantage. So Gregory had felt no surprise when the stallion peeled back its lips, bared its yellow teeth, and nipped him precisely on his infected hand.

Val had laughed.

Yet now, when the older man appeared at his side in the doorway, and said, ‘Ready for training, Gregory?’ Gregory immediately smiled and replied yes, he was ready.

‘The boys will be waiting,’ said Val. ‘You need to watch me closely. You’ll be on your own after this with the 13Gs. Could we share an umbrella?’

They walked together, their clothes flapping in the wind. The umbrella strained up. Rain bounced and blew in sheets. Their elbows touched. Gregory felt resentment soften, then begin to dissolve as they strode in step towards the creek, both slipping in places in the gluey clay, leaving red gashes underfoot.

‘I hope the creek’s not going to flood!’ he shouted.

‘No chance of that!’ Val shouted back.

However, water was covering the stepping stones. In places the creek ran almost to their knees. Val went ahead, leaving the umbrella to Gregory, so that Val was completely soaked by the time he reached the other side. They mounted the bank side by side again, their clothes heavy now. The wind was flailing the trees, revealing then concealing the five western boarding houses strung along the creek – Mace, Bombardier, Trident, Pike and Lance.

The waiting boys were milling about in the open. It was growing dark. Val sent them off on a run. Left alone, Gregory found he was more feverish than ever. His teeth were chattering, and spasms of shivering ran through his body. Down came fresh sheets of rain. The ground was covered in what looked like bubbling brown paint, pockmarked, dancing.

Soon forty boys reassembled before them, jogging on the spot – big, hulking, puffed up boys, the self-conscious talent pool of the first and second fifteens.

‘Listen up, boys. In this training session as in any other I want one hundred per cent effort from each and every one of you. I know what you’re capable of. I know each of you very well. I’ll know if you’re slacking. You can’t fool me. So it’s raining cats and dogs. Who cares? And you can put the holidays out of your minds – put home and the horses out of your minds. Focus! Yes, it’s cold, yes, it’s wet. Get used to it! Perfect conditions to develop discipline. In these conditions the most disciplined unit wins out. Your opponents will be inside on a day like this, you can bet your bottom dollar. They wouldn’t even consider training in such weather. They won’t be out training, but we are!’

The boys grinned, chewed their mouth-guards, strained to hear in the rain.

‘Discipline is what we’re focusing on today. Inner discipline, your discipline. Now, before I go further, I want to say this: I’m not after miracles. I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t require what you can’t give. Understand? Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir!’

‘What I do require, lads, is this: your personal best. Personal best. You know what? I don’t really care if you stuff up. I don’t. Learn from failure, yes! You can quote me on that! You will, won’t you, some of you will, won’t you!’

‘Yes sir! Yes sir!’

‘As long as you give your personal best, I’ll be happy. Understand?’

‘Yes sir!’

‘David, set up the balls.’ David ran off to do this. Everyone knew the little task was a sign he was the one currently uppermost in Val’s esteem. ‘Backs on field thirteen, forwards on fourteen, off we go –’

Under the low sky the boys trained. The backs staggered over the quagmire, passing waterlogged balls that thumped dully into hands or slithered away to curses. The forwards trained with brutish intensity on the adjacent ground, one pack set on another pack. At one point the two scrumming machines facing one another came loose from the marshy ground. Propelled gracefully and swiftly over the sheet of water covering the field, they collided. The breakaways on each side popped outwards. The twelve youths stuck in the scrum writhed, necks jolted, shoulders jarred. But Val got them up again in no time, everyone now completely slimed in mud and the manure used as a field dressing. Val was in his element.

It was then something odd occurred, something that became like a dream in Gregory’s memory. A hot-air balloon appeared over the trees. It loomed through a small break in the clouds. The balloon was surprisingly large, and low, seemingly borne by the sky, a monstrous, bulbous thing, a living thing, with its sinewy ropes and dangling basket. A flame roared and hissed up into its brown bladder. At first the boys simply stopped training and twisted their necks to look. Val was yelling at them, ‘Why are you stopping, why are you stopping?’ Last to see the balloon, he became silent, frozen in a position of readiness, as if facing an opponent. It was apparent the balloon was old, weathered, deflating, too heavy, too sodden. It was something damaged, something, perhaps, escaped from a museum. And it seemed cries of help came from it. Certainly it audibly hissed, and groaned, and creaked, and the basket surely swung no higher than the treetops. Yes, the wicker was bouncing on the treetops, crashing through limbs. It approached them, and silenced them, and swooped overhead. All the boys turned and began running after the balloon. But the balloon was being swept along much faster than anyone calculated. The boys raced one another to see who might catch it. ‘Come back!’ shouted Val, strutting after the boys now, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Come back – Bishop Gray! Thomas! David!’ But the boys kept running.

‘Outrageous,’ growled Val, ‘so much for discipline! They’ll pay for this.’

‘Is the balloon about to crash?’ wondered Gregory. ‘I think it’s getting lower.’

‘It can go to hell for all I care,’ seethed Val.

They followed it across the expanse of the fields, the boys running, the masters striding. A little yellow dog led them all, trailing a lead, yapping ecstatically. The dog disappeared down the slope above the horse yards, where the balloon was grazing the stables and fences. Then the boys plunged down after the bouncing and the sailing, and teemed through the maze. The horses had been standing in wind shelters; now they were galloping away, away from the balloon, racing in mad circles about the yards, neighing, rearing, crashing into palings – except for one white mule, which continued drooping where it always drooped, ears forlorn, tail limp, nose in the mud.

The balloon gained height and disappeared in a cloud.

‘Damn thing!’ yelled Val, shaking his fist.

The scattered followers slowly realised the balloon had gone: what they had been chasing was no longer there.

The few boys left in earshot were told to fetch and retrieve the others. Eventually about a third returned, ashamed. Val drilled them for an extra thirty minutes in the dark, ‘Only the start!’ Despite all his efforts the boys remained distracted. They forgot his instructions, muddled the sequences of moves, played ‘without focus’. No matter what Val did or said, somehow they could no longer take him seriously. Not that day.

‘No, go away, get out of my sight,’ he barked at last, hoarse. ‘All of you. Just go. You’re hopeless. Useless. Go. Unprecedented.’

It was nearly six o’clock and long dark, and the boys were encased in slime. They had suffered Val’s wrath. Yet their step was light.

Gregory could not help feeling a little smug himself, he was not sure why, and he let Val strut away alone.