Four

The light was different from home and more stark and more white and I didn’t expect that and the sky was more blue and the sun itself looked hard and spiteful and full of needles. There were other colours, the green was greener, and flowers breaking out along the fence line were startling like everything was overfilled with the sharpest hardest colours and everything was super-defined. They would have looked amazing in Lilly’s hair but by the fence they were just lost hope. Even the concrete ground was cleaner and newer and harder and more concrete and it wasn’t cracked and lined with lichen and weeds and life. It was all too clean so I felt grubby and dull and greasy and oily.

I followed a big fat man as we filed towards the small airport building and I tried to stick my chin up and be brave and because I didn’t know what else to do I just followed the crowd. I dug the envelope out of my shirt and waved it to dry the sweat off it. I didn’t have inside pockets.

The airport was no bigger than a large house with a small coffee shop and a giant metal sculpture of a horse made entirely from rusty horseshoes. It was clever but weird and out of place because an airport should have had an eagle or something with wings and a horse sculpture belonged in a bus garage or rail station. There were maybe seventy people coming off the plane or waiting for a plane or meeting loved ones and I just let myself be swept along and followed people to where our bags were already arriving on two trailers pulled by a quad bike. I was no longer in my city and not any city and I had never been in a small town before and already it made me nervous. I had never seen a quad bike either.

The lady who met me at the airport was short, fat and very round. She had short red hair with purple streaks over auburn and black and mauve and orange and yellow clothes all flowing like a torn-up tent and from a distance she looked like she was a little fat fire ball, and I was the only kid there so she made a thundering beeline for me.

Her shoes were orange and her ankles flopped down over them, and over her knees was another fold of fat. Her dress was too short and low cut so when she walked or bent over I had to look away. She was wearing pink lipstick badly applied, so her lips looked really fat and round like a goldfish. Maybe she applied all her make-up with a baseball bat. Smear and whack. She was the extreme opposite end of the woman scale to my sister Lilly.

I prayed to sweet Jesus Christ, Don’t let me ever see her in shorts. If I see her in shorts I will be gay straight away. Please Sweet Jesus please don’t make me gay …

She was sweating and flustered and pale and pasty. Her skin was dimpled and a bit mauve like her clothes and hair and she was born angry and I could tell.

When I handed her the envelope I’d been given that morning she huffed and put it away with the small placard with my name on it. ‘You’re late!’ she barked and I said sorry like I was guilty and it was my fault and I could control the airline’s timing. She turned on her heel, a movement that almost made a hole in the polished concrete ground, flared her skirt, and walked too fast to the car park hurrying me along and making no allowance for the weight of my case which I was struggling with. Then she stopped and huffed at me again and took my bag without a word and just threw it in the back of her jeep like it was rubbish. I understood that she wasn’t into collecting me and I wasn’t welcome and it made me feel even worse that she had tossed my case into the car like it was weightless. It held everything I owned but she heaved it in next to old burger wrappers and an empty KFC family bucket. By the time she fired up her engine I guessed we weren’t going to be friends.

For the next twenty minutes she told me all about how busy she was and how little time she had to be picking up boys like me and how inconvenient it was that I was late and I didn’t say a word back and she said she taught maths when she had time which wasn’t often nowadays, and I hate maths with a headache.

She was a bad driver too and she should have been flogged for the way she missed chances to go or waited too long or went too soon. It didn’t seem possible that just a few hours on a slow twin-prop plane and the world could be so different.

The roads seemed wider and there was much less traffic and fewer people and more space. We drove past the football ground, its floodlights on even though it was still just daylight, and we passed a movie theatre with giant gold and black posters on the walls advertising Metropolis by Fritz Lang and Night of the Hunter and smaller colour posters on its windows advertising the movies showing and I was relieved then because they were the same ones showing at home and at least we were in the same century.

There was a Burger King and a surf shop and a KFC and holy Golden Arches and a shop called Gourmet Burger, and cafés and bars lining every clean road. We went all the way up a shopping street where every shop had hanging baskets full of flowers outside, which were being watered by some kind of automatic waterer and it was funny because people were having to dodge getting wet even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and I laughed and the purple lady almost laughed, too, but stopped herself just in time. People were drinking coffee and beer outside the pubs and bars and cafés and they looked like the people at home but richer and older and whiter.

There was a cathedral that the lady pointed to with pride and it had a stunted tower you could look right through like they hadn’t ever finished it and it looked like it had no soul and only a gutted skeleton and no magic. She told me a cathedral meant this was a true city and I thought maybe she could read my mind, but I knew it was just a small town, cathedral or not.

The trees were big and healthy and there was no graffiti and no litter and no beat-up cars and no boarded-up shops and it was unsettling and like nobody really lived there and it all looked shiny and all around were high forested hills. It was ‘pleasant’, and ‘pleasant’ isn’t good.

Then we were leaving town and driving away from the waterfront and already I was missing it because I was dreading the next bit. Back in the town there was a marina with yachts and I’d seen them as we came in to land and there were tourists and maybe there was hope, but as we went further from town it was all locals and they looked stern and jealous. They didn’t smile and didn’t ignore us either. They scrutinised and they judged.

The woman nodded to the right of the road we were travelling on and told me to keep away from that side of the road because over there led to the bad side of town. Lincoln Valley, Victory, and Terri Terri, and she said decent people called it the Bronx. I reckoned that’s where the kids like me would be if they were here at all and where I would find some friends and I made a note of the route.

‘Keep away from there, do you understand?’ I nodded and when she looked at me to make sure I understood, I nodded again more keenly. Her eyes were narrowed and mean and she didn’t believe me and I nodded harder because she wasn’t looking at the road and she really needed to be and she was proper scary and she liked scaring me and did it well.

We snaked a few left and rights, always too sharp and badly timed and fiercely braked and then we were alongside Cutter College and I knew it was Cutter College because a huge sign carved in stone shouted it out.

The fat purple lady told me several times that she was the Assistant Principle and Director of Boarding, which was why she couldn’t teach maths any more and some other stuff I just tuned out and I could tell she was real proud of her titles and maybe just a little surprised. Everything she said, even nice stuff, sounded like it was a threat. Her name was Ms Biggs. And she emphasised the Ms … MZZZ Biggs. Like it was important. It’s not important.

The college wasn’t a college, it was just a high school like any other and was a big creamy coloured building with a long set of steps up to a central tower with a clock over it and in front of it all was a football field with posts.

Mzzz Biggs swung the car up the driveway so we could get a better closer look. She pointed to the clock, beneath it were the words Tempus Fugit, which she told me means Time Flies. It doesn’t, it means Time Flees. I looked it up later. When you think about it, it’s quite different. Hamish Taunton knew that.

Behind the school were more high and well-wooded hills and it would have a been a good place for a fortress, and she gunned the jeep on lurching so I nearly hit the windscreen. The road narrowed and snaked and rose higher and higher and in time she did a hard right down a short steep lane and pulled up in a small carpark over-roofed with thin branches from webs of trees, and dark and mossy it was too.

There was a big oblong building made of concrete and steel sitting high on that hill in them tall trees and the day I first saw Feallan House I thought I’d fallen through a hole and landed straight in hell. Close up it was two oblong wings joined in the middle by a huge square block like a giant brutal khaki green butterfly.

Broken lettering on the wall hung and limped out the words FEALLAN HOUSE. Looking at them I could see they had been grand once and some had blue and maroon enamel still in blackening brass frames. The S in HOUSE was upside down, the U was also upside down. There was only four letters left in Feallan, spelling FELL but there was a black stain on the wall where the others had once been.

The building looked like a cross between a military bunker and a mental hospital. I’ve never seen either but if I had Feallan House would be like them. It was neglected but seemed to have embraced neglect and was proud of it and it had a presence like it was aware I was there and it was examining me, which kind of spooked me because concrete and steel can’t do that, only maybe it can and it does and on that day it did and I had a feeling the building was approving of me. It was broken down and unloved and defiant. We belonged together.

Ms Biggs turned off her engine and we sat as the metal sang a little and pinged as it cooled. She looked warily at the dark building and seemed to breathe deeply for a moment like she was composing herself.

‘Welcome to Feallan House.’ She smiled evil and sneering again and she was like a huge giant toad and I was a fly and she said it Fear-lan. ‘Get your case,’ she barked and she levered herself out of the jeep and it took her three goes to make it and I did as I was told and fast too and I made out not to notice her fatness. She watched me struggle with the case but didn’t help me then led me through a heavy half-glazed door and into a dark corridor.

Feallan House was dark and cool with the kind of air that sits right on you. It would be cold as the grave in winter and I could feel it. There was a deep red vinyl floor and it was dull where it could have been polished and shiny and the walls were lined with old black and white and yellowing photos of boys going right back in time, what looked like a hundred hundred years, all staring right at me and speaking in whispers. They looked as defiant as the house itself and they were asking me if I was defiant too.

There was a trophy cabinet and a dead solid door with a brass sign that read HOUSEMASTER.

Ms Biggs rang the bell and it was opened by a small pinched-up woman. Her hair was short and shapeless and dull blonde, cut like a boy, and she looked tired pale and mean. She didn’t smile. A couple of boys passed behind me but didn’t stop or even look my way and I only knew they were there because I sensed it and felt them pass. They could be living or dead, I couldn’t rightly tell.

Ms Biggs pushed me gently forward. ‘This is Mzzz Russell. She’s the housemaster here, and she’ll take care of you.’ Then she smiled at the pinched’up woman and said, ‘All yours.’

‘Hello Miss,’ I said polite as you like and she twisted her mean little mouth and tilted her head.

‘Mzzzzzz.’

I nodded an apology.

Then Mz Russell made a silly I’m thrilled face and she and Mz Biggs walked out to the Jeep, speaking in whispers and leaving me alone with my bag in my hand. My fingers were going numb and I realised I was gripping way too hard, so I put the case down and was careful not to scuff the unpolished floor and I was reluctant to let it go because it had been my mum’s, and she never went anywhere with it but still it was something from home. I saw a boy halfway up the red stairs just sitting on a stair in the shadows with his knees under his chin and his elbows on his knees and he looked small and shifty like a criminal pixie. He was wearing glasses and they caught the light and reflected in two speckles like crescent moons each facing away from the other.

He knew I was seeing him and he smiled.

‘Good day to you,’ he whispered low so nobody would hear except me and with no sign of sarcasm. ‘Welcome to the Otherworld! I see you met the Mzzzes? Ms, when made into Mz is a lesbian thing. They’re lesbians. There’s a lot of them here at college. All fat too. Or real skinny like bones. Corpses.’

‘Hi,’ I nodded and my voice was croaky and then I was aware how dry my throat was and I couldn’t remember when I last had a drink of anything.

He stood up straight and fast like he was startled then sort of slimed and drifted and weasled down the stairs. He was so light and skinny he wouldn’t leave footprints on a beach. He held out his hand.

‘I’m Humphrey … Hummfree, not Hump-free. It’s got umphhh … in the middle … H.U.M.P.H.R.E.Y Hummfree. Can you spell? Don’t matter if you can’t, I can teach you. Grammar too. But you can call me Hummer if you want, for Humphrey. It’s pretentious. It’s my name though. It’s got umphhh … Call me Hummer?’

I nodded, I got it, I shook his hand. He gripped me firmly and his hand was cold and bony hard. ‘I’ll show you round, shall I?’

‘I think I have to wait for Ms, Mz Russell.’

‘They’ll be ages. They’re lesbians. They’re probably out there kissing and doing it … Do you want to watch? We can see from the laundry window.’

I didn’t want to watch.

‘She’s a science teacher …’ He nodded wisely as if that explained everything.

Mz Russell returned almost straight away and as she approached Humphrey whispered in my ear, ‘I bet she has lipstick smudged round her mouth from sucking Mz Biggs’ dick.’ And he slipped back into the shadows until all I could see was that pinprick of light in his glasses as he became still and silent again.

I didn’t want to look for smudged lipstick but I couldn’t help myself. There was no sign of any lipstick, her own or Mz Biggs’, and if they had kissed she would have been smeared for sure because Mz Biggs’ lipstick was just about molten. Mz Russell had thin hard lips, not lips at all really, just a mouth, and the more I looked the more pinched she was, like life was a bad smell and all the moisture had been sucked out of her. She wore a light blue shirt like a man, all buttoned up to the neck and straight black slacks. Her shoes were black and shiny with little bow tassels, proper girls shoes and they were the only sure sign she was a woman except her titties, which were real small and high up little golf balls. I reckoned she wasn’t nearly as old as she wanted to be but was born as old as she was right now.

Mz Russell looked closely at me like I was a specimen in her lab. She looked cold.

‘My name is Ms … Mzzz! Russell. SuZanne Russell. Not Susan, Su-Zanne. Emphasise the Z. Zzzanne. Make sure you get that right. It’s not Susan. OK? It’s got a loud firm solid Z in the middle. A big Z … It’s not common. Say it, no don’t bother. You’ll call me Mzzz Russell. Hump-free hiding up there will show you around and help you find a cube.’ She said his name the way he didn’t like. ‘Are you tired and hungry? I don’t care if you are … You must be tired and hungry. Dinner’s at six. There are sheets and blankets and a pillow waiting in your dorm. The other boys and Hump-free will show you the ropes. Any problems you may see the duty supervisor. Hump-free will introduce you … Once you’ve settled in we’ll talk.’

She stepped past me and pointed to a sheet of paper taped on the wall and traced the wording with her finger. I noticed her nail was bitten down low. ‘In the meantime …’ Then she read aloud as she traced the words as if I couldn’t read myself, ‘We care. We support you. You are safe. You are important and you are valued. All the boys in Fear-lan House are equal … That’s our charter.’ She said it all in the same tone and with the same gentleness that she might have said a pound of carrots and a turnip. Then she sighed, ‘Now don’t bother me and you might just survive the year. You will be homesick, it will pass, you will be afraid, it will pass. I am here for you, so if you need me any time knock, but if you knock you’d better be bloody dying because if you’re not, I will kill you.’ And she smiled and I think she made a joke but I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t smile back and she huffed, ‘If you break my rules or bother me, you won’t make it past a week and you won’t be going home, you’ll go somewhere else. Somewhere horrible and further away. You won’t like it. Which suits me just fine.’

And without a smile or a blink she went back into the room with HOUSEMASTER in brass on a plaque and slammed the door. I relaxed and breathed, but just into that breath as suddenly as she slammed the door she jerked it back open and made me jump and stiffen and from the corner of my eye I saw Humphrey had started to rise and then dropped again like he had been shot. ‘And whether I am or am not in fact a lesbian, is none of your business,’ she said, and she was gone in a crashing of the heavy door into its heavy jamb. Then again she jerked it open. ‘And lesbians don’t have dicks. As a matter of fact, neither does Hump-free. Nor balls.’ And she was gone again.

Humphrey smiled and re-emerged from the shadows. ‘Bloody lesbo witch! Hysterical. She likes you. Looks like you’re all mine for now, New Blood!’

‘Don’t call me new blood …’ I sounded meaner than I meant to.

‘Sorry … Be friends?’

Humphrey took me upstairs to find a bed and stow my clothes, and the stairs were wide and long, turning on each level and on each level was a doorway to the dorms. Humphrey said boys could sleep wherever they chose so long as there was space but most boys our age were on the top floor, so we kept going up and on the next flight up Humphrey took my case without asking and carried it easy and he surprised me. At the very top of the stairs a fat puffy round man with a clipboard and half-rim eye glasses stood watching us come and he never said a word and sloped away before I got to say hello.

Humphrey watched him warily and whispered, ‘I’ll introduce you to Big Ben. He’s head boy of the whole house. He’s been Year 13 twice, he’s very nearly nineteen years old. And he isn’t very, well, smart, but he’s OK. A good sort. He’ll look out for you right … that was Mr Swindell.’

The windows were big and wide open but everything seemed dark like all the light was somehow soaked up and couldn’t get free, and I wasn’t even making a shadow.

Old paintings hung on walls covered in dust and along the tops were cobwebs. They were boring and faded and clumsy save one and that one painting was deep red like blood with a kind of cross like Jesus died on just off-centre and the words Non illegitimus carborundum painted across the bottom.

I stopped in front of it and searched inside my pockets for the bag of sweets, then I read the note, comparing the words and they were the same. Hamish Taunton knew this place.

Humphrey was staring hard at the bag of sweets, ‘Rhubarb and Custards?’ He was almost drooling. I offered him the bag and he took one, and one for later, and one for the morning, and I let him.

I asked him but he didn’t know what the words meant. The painting was old he said and as far as he knew it had always been right where it was like it grew there on its own accord, then he led me through a heavy timbered fire door with a small wired glass window set so high that I couldn’t see through it unless I was on tiptoes. The door closed itself behind us and we turned into a small sitting area. On a vinyl bench seat was a folded sheet and a duvet and pillow and pillow case, and Humphrey told me to pick it up because it was mine.

On each dorm there were half a dozen rooms for Year 13 boys. ‘They all have their own doors ’cos big boys have privileges, you’ll have privileges one day. You see,’ Humphrey said proudly. ‘We all will.’

The dorm was long and narrow and dark with cubicles off left and right and each cube was tight and had a curtained window and two beds and they were poor and neglected and rotten and stank even though every window was open wide. The beds were a mess and every mattress I could see exposed by dishevelled sheets was sagging and torn open. Curtains were hanging unevenly at the windows and some windows had no curtains at all, other windows had curtains drawn closed, and it made me sad because closed curtains on a sunny day means someone died.

Humphrey told me to pick a cube and that any bed without blankets and sheets on was free to use and he recommended a couple and told me the names of the boys I’d be sharing with as if I’d know them already. There wasn’t much choice because most cubes were fully occupied and between each cube was a partition that didn’t quite reach the ceiling and the ceiling was dull grey and covered in flaking paint and there was mould and strip lights and half of those had no bulbs. Over each bed was a square reading light fixed into the wall, and this was a poor poor place boys were making home, like little mice in cozy little mouse holes.

At the far end of the dorm was a cube with a spare bed and clean and tidy it was too, but sitting on that spare bed were four marionettes and I had never seen marionettes before and one of them was white-faced and black-haired and he wore a three-piece suit and he was smiling, but as I stepped into the cube he looked up at me and shook his head slowly and I knew not to sleep in that cube for sure and I stepped out again and Humphrey didn’t even see it move.

Halfway up the length of the dorm on the other side and buried in the gloom was another cube with a single made bed and it was tidy and unnaturally clean and there was a teddy bear on the pillow and copies of story books on the single shelf over the bed. I said I would make up the other mattress and Humphrey looked proud as punch and said it was his cube and he would certainly be very proud to have me as a roomie and it was clean and homely and with story books and a teddy bear and that was all. Humphrey was all lit up and proud and ran to find Big Ben.