10

The rain cleared for one week that term, and then the stench of horse lingered on everything, even inside Gregory’s lodgings. Fresh horse droppings lay rain-pocked on the silver, waterlogged paths. With the lifting of the rain the school was presented anew to Gregory, altered from how he had first seen it. His knowledge of the place was still growing by fits and starts, and it was a puzzle-like place. Small things intrigued him. He was struck by the number of steps. Slight inclines were stepped for great distances. All the buildings had numerous stairwells and staircases leading to almost every door. Great care was taken to have steps swept and polished. Gregory’s legs were always sore, not only from walking the long distances between one building to the next, but from climbing so many steps.

He was also becoming more aware of the intense animal activity taking place in the school grounds. The school was a kind of game park. Several times he had seen wild pigs rooting by the fence in the morning rain, or wallabies nibbling, then hopping languidly on the wooded lawn in the evenings. At night he would be woken by the trampling of hooves shaking his bed. He heard other animals too: birds abounded, and dogs, apparently, as well as the ubiquitous possums and rats. The school had an ongoing vermin plague with so much horse feed being stored on site. Sometimes, at night, he heard what sounded like bands of running boys.

On one of the clear mornings, Gregory rose earlier than usual. He wanted to write to a friend who had been on the staff at his previous school; he stopped the letter after a few paragraphs, however, unable to capture how they once talked. He also found that he could not describe his new situation. Laying down the pen, Gregory felt alone, and realised he had wanted to confide in his old colleague about his teaching troubles, For his classes were not working, and he did not know why. He was even having difficulty remembering his students’ names, a problem he had never experienced before. Of course many boys wore helmets when not in class, and classes had been few and irregular. He had come to recognise five or six types of boys, but was constantly confusing individuals within those categories – the sandy-haired, freckled country boy who might be a Duncan or a Donald, or the blonde, smooth-skinned eastern suburbs type, who might be a Peter or a Paul. He had never taught in a boys school before: perhaps that was the problem, he told himself.

Or perhaps it was simply a matter of getting to know this place better. Putting aside the abandoned letter, he searched amongst his books for some old pamphlets and publications on the school. In the past weeks he had been confused by some of the insignia about the school. He had noticed different coloured horses, in different poses, on the back of some cars. Perhaps there was a code, that might be translated somewhere; if he better understood the symbols, perhaps he might begin to understand the place.

He soon gave up. There was no code, not in writing. No: what he needed was to remind himself of what he knew before he came to this place – remind himself of the person he had been. To this end Gregory took out his old teaching notes, then was surprised to find that Val had been mentioned in his lectures. His former self had even made notes from articles on education authored by Val.

Finally Gregory was left staring at his accreditations, at his excellent grades.

The next morning, the fog was so thick around his lodgings that he had to keep his eyes on the boggy red path just to find his way across the grounds. It was one of those woollen fogs, woolliest in the creek bed, rising to smother the boarding houses, clinging to the fields, burying the entire school right up to the front gate, where it abruptly ceased. Gregory moved slowly through the cloud, hearing only his feet upon the path. He was headachy, and his hand, still not healed, throbbed. Disoriented, isolated in the mist, he felt the earth begin to tremble. Then the sound of galloping came quickly upon him, and the horses were all around him, even above him. He threw himself on the path, his existence surrendered to the fog and mud, and utterly exposed to the hooves.

When they were gone he sat for some time, trembling. He returned slowly to his lodging to change again. His hand had been trodden on, the wound reopened, and the throbbing had increased.

Gregory did not mention the horses as he breakfasted with the other masters that morning. He was glad of the fog for having hidden his fall. The horses do not like me, he kept absurdly thinking, they want to get rid of me. And he kept ruminating on the moment Mr C berated him, when he had glanced back, and had seen the minister pulling at his own hair. But Gregory could now only think in a confused, haphazard way: the weeks of rain, this starchy food, his hot and sick hand, the pervasive stables stench, the trampling of the horses, that look on Mr C’s face – somehow related to him, Gregory – all were gumming together as he ate his porridge, all gluing up his thoughts.

Last night he had lain in a similar clouded state, feverish, listening to the occasional car passing beyond the school fence, measuring the silences between. Far away he thought he heard wailing, even keening from several boarding houses. He had remembered a confused horse that had appeared one morning on the parade ground. It trotted up just as The Whipper was barking at the boys to stand to attention. It was only a little horse, a pony, moving agitatedly down the rows of armour. Nobody had known what to do, so nobody did anything. They had simply marched past it, into the hall, while the pony paraded in its lost way up and down, sometimes dashing forward to try to break ranks, before baulking.

Hadn’t he seen boys throwing stones at the pony, later, in the gloom of evening, catching it in a corner of a yard? Hadn’t he heard the skitter-skatter of its upended hooves? Perhaps that had been a nightmare from another night?

And three times the day before he had tried to ride an old nag that ‘had never bucked anybody’: yet she bucked him. Why must he remember that now, while in full view of the boys? Three overly-helpful lads had led the horse to him, and as they did he remembered bridles rubbed and straps greased in the shadows of some stables in his early childhood. His father had taken him to that place, he remembered now. Maybe it was the day the horse had kicked him … yes, he felt sure it was. Yesterday’s horse had sized him up with a knowing eye, even as the little boys lauded her docility. After his third fall, Gregory had steadily pulled the bit tighter, and tighter; he felt the little horse grow still, as she considered the pain in her mouth, and her body began to recall what this might mean. So deep inside, after all, he did know how to ride.

Reaching for the sugar, Gregory decided he would seek out Mr C that day.

‘Aren’t there classes this morning?’ he asked Val. The masters were loitering outside the hall after the assembly, another assembly so late and long that the morning was already almost gone.

‘No. Cancelled. There’s a working bee to finish digging the trenches around the houses.’ (Many of the houses were being surrounded by trenches, ostensibly to drain away the rain, which everyone was convinced would return.) ‘And it’s a hunt day today.’

‘A hunt?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s that?’

‘We all go hunting, of course. Happens once a term, or whenever there’s a consensus that the boys need to let off a bit of steam. Never hurts.’ Gregory watched Val rolling some black gloves down over his little fingers. ‘It’s a school tradition. You can come with me, if you want. I’m riding with some of the boys.’ Val suddenly smiled at him, and he began feeling a bit better. ‘Everyone’s expected to catch something. All the boys are. It’s left to their ingenuity how they do it. As long as they get something. There’s a reward for the biggest catch.’

‘What do they catch?’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised. It’s remarkable what they come up with.’ Val began making towards the staffroom, drawing Gregory after him.

‘How are you finding your lodgings, Gregory?’ asked Val. ‘You’re not lonely?’

‘No.’

‘You’re welcome to visit me whenever you wish. I hope I don’t have to keep telling you.’

‘Thank you, one day I will.’

‘Or come at night. Come and have a chat one evening. It’s not all work and no play around here, you know. What’s your poison?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Wine, spirits, beer?’

‘Oh, I don’t drink much.’

‘I don’t think you’re the type to complain, Gregory. Your hand’s badly infected, yet you’ve still been helping with digging trenches after classes. And you haven’t shirked your coaching or teaching. On top of that you’ve started riding and you’ve been helping out in your capacity as assistant housemaster. These things get noticed. And yet I haven’t heard a whimper about that hand of yours. I do believe you’re a Stoic, Gregory. I saw it in you the moment we met. That’s one of the reasons why I recommended you to the rest of the panel.’

‘I do like to throw myself into work,’ said Gregory. ‘I’m rather intrigued by this place; getting involved helps me to understand –’

‘Ah! Curiosity, you have great curiosity. A gift, a great Greek gift. Gregory, in you I see something of myself. A lot of myself. Humble beginnings, right? A lot of hard work to get where you’ve got, am I right?’

‘Yes, Val. A lot of hard work.’

‘Little encouragement; armed only with your will and your energy, with only your drive. And a vision, a sense of something better, an intimation of something higher. Am I right?’

‘Something like that. I love learning.’

‘And so do I. You have great opportunity here, Gregory.’ Val gestured to the empty buildings about them. ‘Great opportunity. Don’t waste it. If you play your cards right, you’ll go a long way. Don’t be distracted by some of the silliness that goes on. You know, most of the masters here are fools – Parsons, Gribble, Festus, Cobblefield, Carp, Boyle, Hart, Pike – fools, the lot of them. Mostly harmless, mind you, but absolute dullards. And Capon – how many more of those wretched addresses must we sit through? Compassion, Grace, Forgiveness, Sacrifice – the very words make me shudder! And what does he know of them? He’s a failed churchman, and those are vanity sermons. They always follow the same structure, always have the same tone, his language is repetitive and barren, dead with stock phrases: “And in conclusion”, “Let me begin by saying”, “Allow me to illustrate my point”, “And so on and so forth”. Wretched, absolutely wretched speechifying. Turns the mind to jelly. It’s my penance to have to sit and listen to him. And God knows the damage it’s inflicting upon the boys – especially as those trite Pollyanna addresses bear so little resemblance to their pretty harsh reality. In the end it’s the boys who suffer. The hypocrisy of it, that’s what the boys should not have to suffer.’

‘Well, it’s interesting you should say that. I had noticed a lot of the boys seem rather un–’

‘Then there’s the more subtle darkness spread by Mr C, the darkness that calls itself light.’

‘Oh?’

‘I don’t mind him soothing the boys, cheering them up – that’s his job, and it keeps the boys quiet. As long as his ideas don’t stir up the boys, then he acts as a kind of pressure valve. He’s a band-aid man. Do you see? He has his function, yet it actually contributes to the brutality of this place in the end. Mr C doesn’t see that. He keeps oiling the little cogs, and the big machinery keeps turning. We’d be better off without him. Don’t you agree?’

Gregory considered the ground.

‘Well, you know where I stand with him and his lot,’ said Val. ‘Superstition and fear, that’s all his religion is. Darkness. Darkness poured into young minds, which should be filled with light.’

After lunch Gregory accompanied Val to the stables. Clouds were massing in a rosy light above the horse yards. Electricity gathered in stillness. Blue shadows ran deep. Horses were fetched for Val and Gregory. The masters gathered boys as they advanced up the slope towards the playing fields. The light played upon the boys’ armour, bringing out the deep curves of their breastplates. It was a light that made the horses even larger against the landscape, more rounded; their chests especially became deeper and wider. Gregory’s dappled mare and Val’s black stallion almost glowed as they trotted across the playing fields. Here groups of boys loaded crossbows, whittled spears, made ingenious traps. Cymbals and drums could be heard in the surrounding trees. Panic-stricken game broke into the open. Groups of boys crashed out of the foliage after them. It became clear that small bewildered animals were running everywhere in the half light, low to the grass, flushed out of the trees. Captured game was already strung up in long lines about the playing fields: pheasants with stretched necks, a small inverted fox, a gutted pig flanked by the little pegs of rabbits – all at full stretch, long mortal wounds fly-speckled. Dark clots of boys stood about the skinned and butchered game. Even though it was winter, flies hovered in clouds across the fields.

A group of blonde boys in black waited for Val by a path into the trees. A few larger boys were mounted, but the majority milled about on foot. All wore the black capes and insignia of the eastern houses. A small pack of the specially bred school hounds accompanied the group. The hounds were whippet-like creatures, with arched spines, and emaciated bodies, spidery and shaky on their legs. Most were a dark chocolate, a few sporting ginger snouts and brandy socks. They defecated, urinated, yapped and squirmed, turning and colliding in excitement.

Val and the leading boys cantered down the path into the trees. Gregory could feel his horse contemplating turning about. It kept favouring the right, knowing his left hand hurt. Gregory heard more horns in the distance, and confused, criss-crossing shouts. Every now and then a terrified animal bolted across their path, but the dogs were not distracted. They were focused on some particular, bigger quarry, and now led the riders. Behind streamed the little boys. They travelled deeper into the bush, into the sound of the horses’ hooves, flying over dark pools on the path. Those on foot cried out, falling further behind. Then the hounds were really onto something, and the entire entourage bounded forward at even greater speed, the dogs yelping, the boys yelling.

Gregory was still having trouble with his horse. With the wound on his hand opening up, he began falling behind. He could see the hunt snaking around a bend in the path before him, flitting in procession through the trees. Soon he could only hear them. Then he was entirely alone, left only with his recalcitrant mount – except for a jet, ascending high above. He managed, with a little savagery, to persuade the horse forward to a fork in the path. When he took the left fork, his horse immediately became relaxed, relieved even, and trotted briskly down this more level, sunlit path. Having given up on the group, Gregory found himself singing as he rode, permeated with a happiness, a forgetfulness, unlike anything he had felt since coming to this place. This was something he might write in his letter to his friend …

He pulled up. In a clearing, beyond the thinning trees, he had seen two, then four, five horses. He saw parts of others – a head stretching down from behind a tree to tear at the grass, a tail swishing a rump. He became conscious of a much bigger group of horses, grazing in the trees beyond, beasts larger than any horse he had ever seen. Then a long, perhaps human wail was extending through the trees, and the horses’ heads went up, ears pricked, muscles bunched. The stallion was first off, the others almost instantly following, gone in a scattering of earth and a trampling of undergrowth.

Gregory heard cheers and trumpets from the way he had come. He let the horse trot back to meet the jubilant procession. Four of the biggest boys on foot bore a long stake on their shoulders, a pig slung beneath.

‘You mean that’s been running around in the bush!?’ shouted Gregory with a smile.

But Val rode up grim. Blood flecked his boots.

Gregory eagerly told Val about the horses.

‘You must have ridden off school property,’ replied the older man distractedly, his eyes glassy. He had turned cold again, with one of those swings of mood that no longer surprised Gregory, yet still wrong-footed him.

On David’s first day at the school he had seen a frog being stoned. Some childish first-formers had found it waiting on a rock above the creek. They pelted it with pebbles, until it turned on its back. Then it was jolted about the bank with each fresh hit, and its innards came out in a bright mound, and the boys cheered. David was remembering this little scene as he came upon Steven, perched on a low wall beside the long, straight path from the parade ground to the dining hall. Everything was shivering in anticipation of a coming storm, and Steven was strumming a mandolin.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Steven, cradling his instrument.

‘There’s nothing to do. Everyone’s on the hunt. But I don’t want to go hunting.’

‘Me neither,’ admitted Steven.

‘Truth is, I can’t ride.’

‘Me neither.’

David realised he had never seen Steven by himself like this. He habitually kept close to someone, followed someone.

‘Everyone’s gone, isn’t it fantastic?’ said Steven, in a new, dreamy voice. ‘They’re all in the bush. I could actually like this place if there were no people here.’

David could see distant riders on the slope above the oval, galloping towards the tree line. The riders were pursuing prey too small to make out. The light was low, in the premature darkness before the storm. Garishly red geraniums trembled by the path. Behind the wall where Steven sat, where the bank fell away, squirrel-like animals scampered over a muddy expanse, and tried to climb the trees. They leapt, but bounced off the trunks.

Steven put aside his mandolin, balancing it with a hollow sound.

‘Do you know that Jesus died for your sins, David?’ His eyes were full of the music he had been trying to sing.

A rustling made David turn around. A pack of first-formers had formed across the road. The ones in front stared stonily at Steven.

‘You’re the only unsaved person who talks to me,’ droned Steven, ‘I don’t know why you’re not saved. Why do you bother with me?’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘How can you be friends with me, and not love the Lord?’ persisted Steven. ‘For I am nothing.’

‘Where’s Donald?’

‘He’s going missing all the time. He’s writing poetry.’

Horses with riders were approaching over the sunken ground behind Steven. They halted in a line, the horses calm. Braces of ducks, hares and rabbits hung from the riders’ saddles.

Steven was peering at the little boys across the road, as if he had just seen them. They were stooping to pick up stones.

Steven took up the mandolin, and started playing, singing prayerfully and off-key, craning his neck. A stone pinged the instrument. A second must have hit him on the hand, for he stopped playing to wring his fingers, and gasp.

Masters walked up the road from the dining hall, leisurely, decked out in long black capes with red trimming. Lunch had been a tremendous feast of fresh game, and now they were chatting amongst themselves happily, discussing some of that day’s greater catches – two fawns and two pigs had been caught; indeed, even now they could point to a pig dashing for its life along the distant boundary fence, two groups of boys converging on it. The masters, cheerful, replete, passed slowly between Steven and David and those waiting about. Steven abandoned his place on the wall and started after them. The masters did not seem to notice the pack of first-formers by the road. They waved at the horsemen gathered behind the wall.

Steven had followed the masters only a few steps before he came to a confused halt, and turned one way, then the other. The masters were disappearing now, up over the parade ground, up the steps towards the classrooms. Steven wrung his hands. David heard one, two, three stones clatter into the mandolin, which ripely split, springing its strings. Soon parts of the mandolin lay scattered over the path. The group of horsemen moved closer, bringing their faces, framed in helmets, level with the wall. David remembered those faces crowding the pages of The Other’s art books.

Through a break in the clouds, a shaft of light fell on Steven, turning him to brass. He gave one last look over his shoulder. The masters were ascending ever-more distant steps. Now Steven’s assailants felt free to turn from the mandolin to the player. Steven looked to David, gesturing to him. Pebbles thudded, sticks glanced. The boy fell to his knees.

‘What are you doing? Hell, what are you doing?’ cried David, running towards the boys, sweeping his arms back and forth.

‘He swore, he swore!’ laughed the little boys, falling back. The clouds closed, the light about Steven was snatched back, and he fell forward. All the little boys were pelting him now, advancing as they did so, hailing stones upon him.

‘Thomas, call them off!’ cried David, crying to the highest horseman. ‘They’re killing him!’

At this the little boys protested. They began appealing to the riders, who were still peering over the wall, over the pricked ears of their horses.

Rain began falling. The tops of the trees tilted with the wind, the flowers freshly trembled.

‘Lay off him,’ called Thomas. He gave the command distantly, his eyes fixed above the fallen figure.

‘I said lay off!’ Thomas yelled with sudden power. The little boys hesitated.

‘He’s not worth it,’ said Bishop Gray, bringing his horse alongside Thomas, before spurring his steed and wheeling about. ‘Let’s hunt real game!’

The little boys had lost their rhythm. Their intent faltered. They began dropping their stones. Reluctantly at first, then quickly. Already recounting their exploit, they departed into the wind.