The next morning when Duncan woke up, he reflected on the events of the night before, the disastrous midnight feast and the conversation he’d overheard between Sparrow and Thornberry hatching a plot against old Mr Petrie.
He recalled when he first met Mr Petrie. It was in the master’s home on the edge of the school grounds three years earlier. He realised now that both he and his grandfather had his best interests at heart and, despite the best efforts of Thornberry and Sparrow, he regretted not one day he’d spent at Sweetheart.
Duncan was staring at the ceiling when he narrowly avoided being hit by a wet flannel. “Hey, get up. No time for daydreaming in Sweat Shop Abbey,” exclaimed Ninian Swithers. “Double maths to kick off Friday,” he said with an exaggerated groan.
The prospect of double maths was seen as more of a treat by Duncan than a hardship, something which was not lost on Professor McIntosh. As the session that morning drew to a close, he told Dewar to stay behind.
Thornberry and Sparrow sniggered as they pushed past Duncan who was on his feet. One of them hissed: “Looks like the freebie’s in trouble. Oh, what a joy!” While their reaction was entirely predictable, Duncan was mystified by the professor’s request. He thought that he’d been given a free pass after being caught in the broom cupboard after Ninian’s party.
He walked nervously from his desk at the rear of the classroom towards the teacher who was tidying his desk. McIntosh looked up, smiling and enquired: “So Dewar, how are you enjoying life in the third year at Sweetheart?”
Looking slightly puzzled, he responded slowly: “Yes sir, very much.”
Nodding and smiling, the master announced: “I have a special project and I’d like to involve you but it will mean lots of extra work and little reward. You have a passion for maths, Dewar, and I want to encourage it. What you say?”
There was only one answer he knew he could give, and so he nodded and said: “Yes.” The maths professor told him the special project would involve giving up his Thursday evenings and sacrificing Saturday mornings if they were to achieve their goal. He wanted to enter him in a national schools’ competition which would bring kudos and prestige on the school if he won.
“So there’s no pressure, Dewar, is there? After all, it’s next year you are going to have to focus hard for your exams whereas this year you have plenty of time for the competition. So you are sure you are up for it?” Duncan nodded and the professor smiled and told him he could go.
As Duncan walked to the door and reached for the handle, the professor raised his voice and added: “You know I don’t like losing, don’t you, Dewar?” The boy turned around to look at the master but by then he was dusting down the blackboard, so he just pursed his lips and shrugged.
As he walked down the corridor towards Plato, Ninian jumped out and said: “So what did he want? Are you in trouble?” Duncan didn’t mention the competition but he said that the master thought he would benefit from extra tuition.
“Blimey, Duncs. This is payback time for the midnight feast!” declared Ninian as they walked across the courtyard. "I thought McIntosh was okay, but this is punishment above and beyond. One night a week and your Saturday morning?
“That will exclude you from rugby for the entire term. Tell him to get knotted,” he advised his roommate. The truth is Duncan was secretly pleased to be getting extra tutoring in maths from the professor and the more his free time was occupied, the less chance he had of bumping in to Sweetheart’s dreadful duo, Thornberry and Sparrow.
Forfeiting Saturday’s rugby was no hardship either as he disliked the sport and certainly wasn’t combative enough to survive the rigours of the rugby pitch. He seemed to spend most of his time running away from Thornberry and Sparrow who would try and punch, kick and knock him whenever the rugby master Jon Swain was distracted.
If anything, he was truly delighted, although he feigned dismay followed by a resigned sigh but as soon as Swithers left his side to relay the news to others, he clenched his fists and whispered ‘yes’ as though he’d just won a game of bools.
For the rest of the day, as news filtered out about his ‘punishment’, various pupils came over to offer their commiserations, making him feel unusually popular; boys he’d never spoken to patted him on the back as though he was some sort of hero who had sacrificed himself to keep everyone else safe. The story of Duncan’s refusal to name names from the midnight feast was exaggerated with each telling.
He enjoyed his newfound popularity for the rest of the day and not even a chastising from Mr Petrie could deflate him. “Dewar, remove that silly grin from your face, lad. Give me the full names and titles of Brewster, Bruce, Buchanan and Burns in order of their dates of birth.”
Starting off confidently with Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland born 1274, he moved to historian and scholar George Buchanan born in 1506, but then put the scientist and inventor Sir David Brewster, born in 1781, ahead of poet Robert Burn born in 1759.
“You’ve just earned yourself detention. See me after your final lesson and let’s see if we can sharpen that lazy mind of yours,” scolded Mr Petrie. As the clock struck 5 pm, Duncan Dewar tried to stifle a yawn but as he attempted desperately to keep a straight face, it was not lost on the sharp-eyed Mr Petrie.
“Bored, Dewar?” thundered the old history master. “Let’s see how much has really sunk in to that numbskull head of yours. Before you give me a song of Burns, I want to know the context of Scots Wha Hae,” he said in reference to the anthem widely regarded, alongside ‘Scotland, the Brave’ and ‘Flower of Scotland’ as the nearest thing Scotland has to a national song.
Nervously Duncan Dewar rose to his feet, initially stumbling over his words as he said: "Please sir, the year, the year was…erm…1793 and Rab, erm… Robert Burns was living in Dumfries. He had incurred the wrath of his employers, His Majesty’s Customs and Excise, after a government spy reported that he was the head of a group of Jacobin sympathisers. He was put on a sort of trial when it was reported he had been singing the French revolutionary anthem Ça ira in a Dumfries theatre, rather than ‘God, Save the King’.
"This was a huge blow because he faced losing his livelihood, and all of this at a time when he had a family to support, so he denied all the charges in order to keep his job. However in the same year, he continued writing in support of the revolution and that’s when he wrote Scots Wha Hae, although it was published anonymously.
“It all coincided with the trial of Thomas Muir who was regarded as the most prominent Scottish champion of the French Revolution. Apparently Bruce’s army marched to the tune while on its way to Bannockburn, or so Burns believed. His lyrics resemble a speech given by Robert the Bruce, before the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. His words are an attack on tyrants and despots, and a call for liberty.”
After an initial silence, Mr Petrie brought his fist down on his table, shouting: “Enough! Now give me a Burns’ song and not Scots Wha Hae. Let’s have ‘A Man’s a Man’, Dewar.” And so without a note of music, the boy performed Acapello with a gusto and passion that brought water to the rims of Petrie’s eyes:
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave – we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hidden grey, an’ a’ that;
Give fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that:
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that:
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.
A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s abon his might,
Gude faith, he manna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that;
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that),
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That Man to Man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
“You never fail in your endeavours, do you, Duncan Dewar? I’ll make a Scotsman of you yet…may be even one day we will call you a Caledonian. Run along now. It’s been a long day,” said the master.
As Dewar grabbed his books and rucksack, he heaved a sigh of relief and hurried towards the classroom door without looking back. If he had, he would have seen a smile break out over Petrie’s face and, as the door closed, he sighed, adding in a low whisper: “Well done, well done, laddie. You have the voice of an angel.”
“I agree, Mr Petrie. That was quite a performance.” The old master swung around, slightly startled by this unexpected interruption as a familiar figure moved from the shadows. The Welsh choirmaster Dr Geraint Jones gushed enthusiastically: "I was quite mesmerised when I heard the boy’s voice drift down the corridor, so I just gravitated towards the melancholy sounds and discovered they came from this room.
“You know I’m always looking for new talent to join the ranks of my choir and I am desperately seeking a treble. Why Mr Petrie, thanks to you my quest may finally be over. What’s his name and whose house is he in?”
By now Mr Petrie was highly irritated at this unwelcome interest in his protégé. Reluctantly, he said: “He’s one of the Plato boys, but Dewar is very unreliable and his voice will probably break any day now. I doubt he’s worthy of your attention, Dr Jones.”
Jones, a thickset man in his 40s with a full main of shiny black hair defined by a large widow’s peak, looked at Mr Petrie in a slightly bemused way. Tilting his head to one side, he said slowly and deliberately in his Caernarfonshire accent: “Allow me to be the judge of that. I’ll bid you goodnight.”
Mr Petrie angrily picked up his books and notes placing them in to his briefcase. He began cursing and speaking to himself, expressing his frustration and anger. “That bloody choirmaster never misses a trick. Him and his damned choir, stalking the corridors like someone with a knife and fork looking for a piece of rump steak! The man is a flaming nuisance, a pest.”
Like a few of the masters, Mr Petrie lived in the school grounds but while the majority had private bachelor quarters in the main stone building. He had his own quaint little cottage on the edge of the deciduous forest surrounding the school.
After leaving the classroom, he walked briskly over the gravel drive and down a side path towards his home. The architecture was gothic and with the many scary looking gargoyles and other mythical stone creations staring back at anyone who caught their chilling gaze, there was nothing cosy looking about the exterior of Dulce Cor. Someone once remarked it looked as though it could have come straight from the pages of a storybook written by the Brothers Grimm.
The exterior of the home invoked a feeling of unease, something unnerving, causing most passers-by to quicken their pace on observing its cold, grey stone architecture. However it only ever induced a feeling of contentment as Petrie opened the squeaky sage green picket gate to his home, the only home he had ever really known and it was here that his whole life revolved where treasured memories and secrets were jealously guarded.
It had been raining earlier and the last dribbles of water were spat from the mouths of the grotesques’ spouts, making the gargoyles look even more demonic and wretched.
***