Eight

Leading up to Athletics Day we were up before dawn every day to get some running practice in, racing round town in little mobs and with mini races taking place all the time and the sports captains had note pads and started to decide who would do what events.

I was chosen to swim the fifty-metre crawl. The other boys were not great at swimming so it made me look awesome and they were proud of me and I puffed out my chest and pretended my dad could see me training and I heard him say I was doing real well and he told me to go hard, and I pretended my mum was sitting watching and smiling and nodding to me. Johnny patted me on the back when I was getting dry one day. ‘Make us proud,’ was all he said but it made me feel ten foot tall and I was back at the lido and my dad was watching and he was proud and I could smell him and feel his warmth like sunshine came right out of him, and he was smiling.

The pool was on the other side of the school grounds and every day I went there to practise and the water was cold and green and filthy and not like any pool should be and the first wetting always took my breath away and I trained so hard I got up a sweat despite the cold. I climbed the fence and hammered out lengths three or four mornings a week and some evenings too. I’d swim a width, jump out, do ten press-ups and dive back in and swim a width, jump out and do ten press-ups, and back in and sprint and out and press-ups and in and sprint, and do the whole thing again and again until I was near sick and always my dad urged me on.

Other boys came with me and made me the swim captain and coach and we’d skulk through the grounds in silence and slip over the fence like ghosts in the dark, proud and determined and slight as shadows in the night, and by the big day we were ready like marlins.

It was tradition for Fell boys to shave their heads for Athletics Day, not an all-over cut but in patches and parts and varying lengths. There were boys with half their heads shaved, some with extreme mullets, some with cheques and squares and others with bald pates like monks. One or two just had clumps missing like they were afflicted by some awful disease. All morning before sunrise the shavers were going like a prison barber shop. They shaved a boy called Tommy with the most carefully cut giant F. Tommy was the best guitar player in the house and he could have been the best in the world but couldn’t play an F. He could play as well as a professional if the song didn’t have an F and he was sensitive about that and didn’t like to talk about it. He wrote most of his own music and it was pretty good but kind of missing something, and after Tommy they turned their eyes and razors on Humphrey. He made out to try to run away and shinned up a tree but he enjoyed us shaking him down even though the fall made him limp a while. When the barbers were done he looked like a skinny kid from a work camp. They left one clump of hair randomly on the back of his head and dressed him in stripy pyjamas and called him Rabbi.

As the sun rose we face- and body-painted ourselves in deep red, like blood, and black and white which were our house colours, and we helped each other do it and some boys took a lot of care and some were striped and some were spotted and some were dark and some light. Some were more red and some more black and some were exactly half and half but everyone was painted and there was a kind of symmetry and sense to it and we all looked different but we all looked alike. We were a wild tribe straight from the darkest lost forest and we banged drums and upturned bins and one boy played bagpipes and I never was so proud before.

Moby destroyed them hurdles and on the day he did it in ladies’ underwear but halfway he tore off his bra and went ‘au naturale’. We pelted him with prawns and he knocked down every hurdle in his lane and the lane beside it and face-planted on the second last, got up, stumbled across two lanes and crashed their hurdles too and finished the race a full minute behind the next slowest, and went back on his hands and knees to collect up them prawns and became an even bigger legend. We all ran to him and cheered and mobbed him chanting ‘Well done Fell!’ over and over and he danced until he dropped sweaty and heaving for breath like an asthmatic albino seal on a parched and scorched icy beach and an ambulance took him away. A song was made up for Moby and sung by us all that day.

Halfway through the day we all went to the pool and the water had been transformed into perfect sparkling blue and the chlorine was so strong it made spectators cry and eye glasses melt. The crowd packed onto the concrete and we smashed everyone and won everything. I won my race and didn’t take a breath the whole way, but the teachers with the timer watches said it was too close to call and they gave it a draw and my dad nodded from that crowd and he looked proud and we both knew I won fair and square. In under an hour we were back on the sports field with trophies and bragging rights and I felt like a champion and was treated like one. A champion amongst men.

I saw the headmaster standing alone at the college doors and he looked down from the top steps and even at long distance I could see he looked wistful and sad and jealous and I knew in that moment that he would have to destroy us because he couldn’t be us and couldn’t control us and in the end he would do anything to end us because his big swollen drunken head couldn’t abide not being part of us and we had what he never had, which was belonging and brothers and potential and renown.

We beat the field that day and carried each other shoulder high all the way back to the house just as the sun started to drop and the air filled with pollen and bugs and the cicadas were calling our names in perfect choirs.

I was itching from all the hard sharp grass and the long ears we had been resting on in the shade and my nose was sunburned and lips dry and throat raw but none of it mattered. We were tired and hungry and thirsty more by emotion and victory than exercise or effort and it was a day to remember for all my days.

We snaked up through the trees singing and laughing and we saw Ms Biggs, Swindell and Ms Russell had beat us to it.

The doors were locked and bolted and the good day when we were normal noisy kids was over and in that instant we remembered we were not normal noisy kids and all our actions through the day would be repaid.

They made us wait outside until they were ready and Ms Biggs was inside smiling out through the glass looking sweaty and tired and flustered and dimpled like half-set jelly.

They made us hose each other off and as we stripped down Swindell called out of the upper windows making comments to the younger boys about their dicks while the women watched. Then Johnny started washing boys real seductively and the adults were disgusted and looked away. Big Ben and Leon didn’t wash or strip and they just sat on a bench and looked up at the windows and the adults let them be.

When they finally let us in we rushed up the stairs noisy and dripping wet to get towels and get dry so we could get back down to a dinner we were starving for but when we reached the dorms boys stood in silence looking at a huge and terrible mess. Russell and Biggs and Swindell had been in every room and searched everything and tipped out everything and turned over everything and taken down and ripped up every photo and tossed every item of clothing into a heap, and they made us put everything back except the photos and used a ruler and a tape and made us do it military style and they stood over us like fascists and made us know this place was not for ever and it was not ours and they had the power and we shouldn’t ever forget it and our dinner was cold now and the night dark. Only Big Ben and Leon’s rooms were spared and Big Ben had nothing anyway and Leons dog photo was left intact, but in silence he took it and down and ripped it up so he would be like us and he dropped the rippings on the fat lady’s fat feet and she didn’t even look down.

Then in the middle of our desolation and loss Moby returned from hospital looking tired and pale and everyone cheered him and Moby rose to the chant and clapped his hands two times and sang out, ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,’ Clap clap, ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!’ Clap clap, and he stripped off his clothes and marched naked through the dorms repeating it over and over until a hundred boys marched behind him and everyone joined in and we clapped and sang and rose up our noise and we were raucous and stole back the night and we went to dinner and ate big and feasted like kings and warriors and champions and we didn’t care one bit if the food was all gone cold.