Six

No one came to my bed right off and I almost got to be jealous of the boys with a bed buddy. They were younger than me though, so easier I guess, and they were prettier too.

It didn’t happen to everyone. Humphrey never had one, or the fat ginger. Then Johnny came and Johnny was a boss of the boys and he liked me and he was tall and lean and tanned brown and was a great shot with a rifle and he always looked good. He hunted wild pigs and deer and even giant Himalayan goats and boys said he could shoot better than perfect. Sometimes he brought his rifle and cleaned it then hid it in the back of his wardrobe behind his number ones where he had a hiding space. He had hunting knives too, a skinner and a sticker in old leather sheaths, and they were long as my forearm and sharp enough to cut the air. That’s what Johnny said.

First off he was nice to me and talked soft, using my name a lot, which startled me and felt good, and sometimes he came to the dorm during the evening when we were all in bed and lounging and waiting for lights out when it was still light because night hadn’t fully fallen and he’d playfully bash a few kids and eat some of their sweets and give me some. He would come into my cube and sit talking on my bed and leave again then one night he came and stayed and it was different. It was late in the evening and he sat into the dark and chatted like any other time and then he said he was cold and asked if he might just slip in beside me like a mate keeping warm, and I shoved over for him and as his cold body touched mine it was like I was alive again and it felt good to have a human being that close. He had a torch and we read a magazine about underwater diving and talked about nothing much that first night and the same for a lot of nights after that and Humphrey in the next bed would talk too and Johnny would tell him to shut the fuck up and laugh. It wasn’t like it was a secret and it wasn’t dirty or strange and everyone took no notice and everything just carried on, and when I looked again it was natural and normal and nice and right.

Sometimes the touch of another body saves your life and gets you through and it was just a cuddle for sharing warmth and company. We didn’t call it a cuddle though, and it wasn’t a golden wahine in a white bikini in the sun by a sparkling pool, but you can’t always be picky and everyone needs touching sometimes.

Johnny started to come when others were asleep and it was so dark I couldn’t even see him and we just kind of spooned and he would kiss the nape of my neck before I fell asleep and it wasn’t bad stuff and it wasn’t sissy. It was just a sleep buddy and a tender friend and when day came he was always gone and nobody ever mentioned it.

Sometimes he kissed my eyes and nose and he gave me cigarettes and sometimes a little weed and then he kissed my mouth and one time he showed me pictures of his girl naked and we jacked off together and it was messy and funny. Johnny challenged everyone to cock-fighting bouts and some boys went head to head with him like they were hung with blades, but he always won because he said he was blessed with a sabre and everyone else packed penknives and toothpicks and he was always hard. I never fought him nor anyone else that way. Just saying.

Humphrey told me the best technique to keep him away was to wet the bed, just a little bit, a squirt. Humphrey did it when he was a preppy and nobody wanted him as a bed buddy after that. Humphrey was looking out for me in his way but I told him it was just company, but I was lying because when I was in Johnny’s arms it was the only time I wasn’t afraid and I loved him in those nights.

Provided nobody told tales or made a fuss it was nothing to fuss about and no one was getting harmed and maybe someone was getting saved, and Fell House wrapped like a fortress around us and it was better than being diesel-pumped or bed-flipped. Boys who made a fuss or told tales got both and I see a kid getting diesel-pumped for telling and he got done in all quarters, which meant every limb. He was pinned down on his belly and had books and wooden blocks put behind his knees and in the crooks of his elbows, and boys pumped his ankles against his arse and the books behind his knees stretched him so his knee joints felt like they would burst open and all his ligaments stretched and that went on until he went through the laughing and into the crying then the screaming and the fainting. That boy had both elbows dislocated that night and put back by Big Ben and he walked OK a few days later but couldn’t run properly for a season and picking his nose was a problem for weeks and he didn’t even wank right that whole year, but his mind was subdued and his manners more compliant to the code.

Some nights boys got bed-flipped. They’d be asleep and someone would pin them by gently stretching their sheets and covers over them and tucking them in really firm and tight and suddenly a whole heap of boys would descend on them and flip their mattress up into the air and over like a pancake so they were underneath it and they would crash face down on the bed boards, then the boys would all pile on top of them and jump up and down. It was inherited and tradition and if you wanted to tell tales you could tell Big Ben and he would fix it, but never tell an outsider, and that was our code.

Occasionally someone would take a dump, a big steamy stinking pile of shit, and catch it on paper then put it outside Ms Russell’s door and decorate it with flower petals and berries. They’d smear shit on door handles they knew staff would use and they’d wait until they knew the staff were asleep and run through the house screaming so everyone woke up and came out bleary-eyed and put their hands in the shit.

One boy was famed for wanking eleven times a day and had a proper calloused cock and produced semen by the pint and pretty much had a production line going and every little swimmer went through a staff keyhole.

We would trigger the fire alarms and the horns would scream two-tone so loud it made you sick and dizzy and nobody could turn it off except the firemen. Those firemen arrived in a speeding truck and you could tell they were bored and desperate to save someone and they wanted us to burn just a little to justify their existence because in this town of Cutter nobody and nothing ever needed them.

I liked those men, they looked resigned and patient and they understood. I swore that someday I would get a proper blaze going just to give them something to fight because a man needs something to fight and I vowed that when it came it would be biblical and I made an oath.

If you hit the alarms a few nights running Ms Russell and the other staff just looked more and more ragged and exhausted and it was a joy to behold, just like Baby Jesus was to the shepherds.

The lead fireman was a nice old man and he would chastise us gently as we lined up on the quad in our pyjamas or wrapped in blankets in the dark all in our year groups and quiet and perfectly behaved. A few boys wore bunny rabbit onesies with big ears and a little white tail. An Asian kid was a tiny four-foot-nothing tiger.

I think that old man was so nice he would have died to save us but he was never going to have to do that because we could evacuate the whole house from sleep to year group lines in under two minutes. In fact one night we evacuated five minutes before the alarm even triggered and as we stood there in the dark, if Ms Russell stared at Johnny he would stare right back with his chin down a little and his eyes up, and always in boxers or a tiny towel that hardly made it round him and was always split from his navel down so you could accidentally see everything you shouldn’t and you couldn’t help but look. Sometimes he would get a hard-on and stand in front of her not talking or even looking at her, real proud and innocent like he didn’t know, and she would flush and blush and scuttle away. Johnny could get a hard-on at will, which was a rare and precious gift and it was always the fireman’s cue to leave and they left smiling and every year the boys sent them a crate of beer at Christmas.

Ms Russell liked Johnny despite herself and Ms Biggs liked an older boy called Leon and the women liked those boys even when they knew they shouldn’t and hated us more because of it and because they couldn’t help it. The boys joked that one day Leon would take one for the team by sleeping with Ms Biggs and it was money in the bank. He would need to take a miners’ lamp and sandwiches and someone would have to belay him in but he would do it for us and everyone said so.

Leon was made a bit like Johnny but older and madder and leaner and badder and calmer. He was pretty and well shaped and he hunted too and was better than Johnny because he had no sense of self-preservation, and he played football sometimes and was very good. He was angry with the whole wide world but he hid it down inside himself so he could seem cool like ice, but I knew underneath that ice was something real frightening and he and Johnny hung out together a lot and when they were together it was dangerous water and nobody was safe.

Whenever the mood took her Ms Biggs would get Leon to go to her house and move furniture and he would wear tiny shorts and a singlet and go quietly to his duties and some days when he was younger and just a cherry the headmaster would have stuff to move, too, but nobody joked about those days and nobody said a word.

The headmaster of Cutter skulked and sifted around the school grounds all day and half the night like he was looking for something but had forgotten what it was, and he wasn’t so old but wasn’t ageing well. He was a drunk and gouty man and he carried that lingering scent of alcohol on him and the cow-eyed look of someone who wanted you to know he was oh so tired and oh so committed.

Even though he had a name we just called him Sir, or Headmaster, and he liked that best of all. Behind his back we called him Jac, which stood for Just Another Cunt but he never knew and we didn’t tell. He limped because of his gout or because he thought it looked distinguished, and went to assemblies wearing a black robe like an old-time schoolmaster or demented vampire and he looked proud in that gown but he was Jac and that was all.

At special assemblies he wore medals won by someone else and he bought them in an antique shop and was known to swing both ways and have an inappropriately keen liking for thin boys from the Far East and they were real young and some boys said they had seen him.

Leon came to my bed one night and whispered in my ear that the headmaster had asked after me and Leon gave me a chocolate bar and told me if I was sent for I should smear it on my arse and legs and the headmaster would be disgusted then and send me away as dirty and he told me keep it under my sheets so if Swindell came to inspect me I could do the same. He said it was the way with new cherries even if I was a tad over-ripe and it felt good he was looking out for me.

Leon said the headmaster was just like all the teachers in Cutter and riding high on the crest of mediocrity and he said they all worked and lived with no fire or passion or soul about them. He said they had dead fire in their eyes and smelt of damp ashes.

I was nervous after that but the headmaster never did send for me and I didn’t eat that chocolate bar and kept it safe just like Leon said, for insurance.

Swindell came by the cubes most nights and just looked at us one by one like he was gauging our weight, but mostly he spent his time wrestling with kids younger than me and sometimes he sent one of them cherries for special tutoring with the headmaster and I was relieved he never picked me and grateful for that blessing and I was real glad I was over-ripe.