One

Day 1

St Nicholas College

10.30 p.m. Sunday, 25th October 1965

Before him sixteen ornate lampposts bordered the paths of the quadrangle. Their yellow light pooled on the grass and the paved walkways. During the day the quadrangle he now looked down on was filled with young boys. His boys. He drew in the warm night air, filling his lungs and expanding his chest, and dropped his shirt on the end of the bed. Proud of his bare chest with its curling tangle of coarse hair, he spread his arms wide on his second storey windowsill and turned to the windows of the boarding house on his right. In the lit dormitories he could see, in all states of dress and undress, figures of boys chatting and chasing one another. He knew that if he, Captain Edmund, was among them the noise would cease and they would hide their eyes in modesty from his gaze. A flash, a reflection of light, caught his eye. It was gone when he looked back to the quadrangle.

The quadrangle was bordered on three sides by double-storey red brick buildings fashioned in English public school tradition: austere, stately, with broad windows and wide limestone archways. He loved the tradition, the stability and the superiority. He filled his lungs again and slowly released the air into the night, his night. Shortly, when all lights were out, his door would open and close quietly. He smiled. The boy would arrive mute and trembling.

Directly ahead of Captain Edmund was the fourth side of the quadrangle, the riverside. An impenetrable blackness concealed a row of river gums and an embankment sloping down to a limestone wall – the school boundary. Beyond the wall reeds and paperbarks filled the hundred yards to the Swan River, now black and soundless as it slipped by. Across the river was farmland from which the rifle retorts of kangaroo shooters occasionally burst into the night.

The hum of voices emanating from the boarding house was fading. One by one windows blackened.

A sudden chatter broke the night and alerted Captain Edmund to four boys commencing a casual stroll across one of the quadrangle’s diagonal paths.

‘Is that you, Parkinson?’ Captain Edmund called down to the boys.

The boys ceased their chatter, stood still and looked towards the window. ‘Yes, sir, Captain Edmund.’

‘Why aren’t you in your dormitories?’

‘Another ten minutes, sir.’

‘It will take you more than ten minutes to get ready for bed.’

‘Not if we hurry.’

‘Let me see you hurry then,’ Captain Edmund said.

‘Yes, sir.’ The boys continued to cross the quadrangle casually, now in silence.

‘Run!’ came the command. The boys jogged under an archway. The night settled and a few stars began to shine.

A crack like thunder echoed through the quadrangle. Captain Edmund disappeared from the window. A patchwork of lights turned on until the quadrangle glowed gold.

Dormitory windows crammed with eager, noisy boys, their excited voices chasing each other into the night.