Feather Boy Read online

  “If you can be sensible, Wesley. Can you be sensible, Wesley?”

  “Yes, Miss Raynham.”

  Wesley goes to the back of the class and collects some red, orange, yellow and black strips of paper.

  “Is yours a paving stone, too, Wesley?” asks Niker.

  “Nope. Mine’s a fire.” Wesley makes his way to the front and perches himself on the corner of Miss Simpson’s desk. “Gotta warm dat dere princie up. Dat’s what Dulcie and me reckons.”

  “Dulcie and I,” says Miss Raynham.

  “Dulcie and I,” repeats Wesley, “Dulcie and I have been discussing potatoes. Dulcie is seventy-six. When she was my age she used to come home from school at twelve o’clock, boil some potatoes, eat them and return to school by one-thirty.”

  “And what have you learnt from that, Wesley?”

  “That they didn’t have chips in those days, Miss Raynham. And,” he adds quickly as he sees her finger begin to wag, “that they had more responsibility.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. As well as lighting the gas, Dulcie got to peel the potatoes with a very sharp knife and drain boiling water. On top of that – it was her job to light the parlour fire every morning. Get the coal in, lay the fire and light it. Me – my mum doesn’t even let me have a match.”

  “Really,” says Miss Raynham.

  “So these are some flames Dulcie and I have painted. This one,” he indicates an orange strip, “this one says ‘we didn’t come to no harm’.”

  “Any harm,” says Miss Raynham.

  ‘“No harm’,” says Wesley. “That’s what Dulcie said.” He mimics: ‘“You lot is babied today. We didn’t come to no harm’.”

  “I see,” says Miss Raynham. “The verbatim report.”

  “What?”

  “Carry on, Wesley. You interest me.”

  “And this one,” Wesley waves a red flame, “says ‘No Irish. No Blacks’.” He grins.

  Did I mention that Wesley’s black? Or rather, he’s the colour of coffee with milk in, on account of his mum being black and his dad white. Miss Raynham is always trying to get Wesley to talk about What it Means to be Black in Today’s Society. And Wesley is always telling Miss Raynham that He Hasn’t the Faintest Idea.

  “That’s the good news,” continues Wesley.

  “The good news?” inquires Miss Raynham.

  “Yeah. In Dulcie’s day you see, they didn’t like renting to Irish people or blacks. So they stuck the ‘No Irish, No Blacks’ notice in the window of their houses. To save embarrassment.”

  “Right.”

  “But now,” says Wesley triumphantly, “it’s different. There’s progress. People rent to the Irish, don’t they?”

  “But not to black people, is that what you’re saying, Wesley?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, Miss Raynham.”

  “How does any of this help the Prince?” says Niker.

  “Knowledge,” says Wesley, tapping his nose, “is a very wonderful t’ing, Jonathan.”

  “Thank you very much, Wesley. I think we’ll move on now. Jonathan, how about you taking up the baton?”

  Niker collects what looks like two blank sheets of paper and makes his way to the front. He begins to talk, and as he talks he walks, pacing slowly in front of the desk, pausing occasionally for dramatic effect.

  “My Elder is called Mavis. I do not know how old she is because she does not know how old she is. As well as forgetting her birth date she seems to have forgotten almost every other thing that has ever happened to her. If you ask her about her past, she says ‘I’m going to Abingdon’. If you ask her about the future, she asks you when tea is. In fact, I think, ‘When’s tea?’ was the first sensible thing Mavis said to me. But after she’d said it six times in a row, it suddenly didn’t seem quite so sensible any more. In fact, it seemed mad. And…”

  “Is there a point to this, Jonathan?”

  “The point, Miss Raynham, is get on with your life while you can. That’s what I’d tell the Prince. Stop mucking about and get on with it. Before it’s too late.”

  “Oh,” says Miss Raynham, impressed despite herself. “Well – let’s see the pictures then.”

  Niker hold up the first piece of paper. It’s a pencil portrait of Mavis as a chicken. But it’s not a grotesque caricature, it’s a detailed, accurate and quite fond picture of Mavis. It shows her with her head on one side and a bewildered but charming chicken look in her eyes. On the second sheet of paper, he has drawn Mavis as an angel. In this picture she is much younger, in her twenties. The chicken wings are soft, downy, fledgling angel wings and her look is one of serenity and hope. Once again it is piercingly accurate.

  “I wish I could draw like that,” says Kate, voicing the class’s thought.

  Miss Raynham, who’s never seen Mavis so doesn’t know how accurate the representation is, nevertheless appreciates the quality of the drawing.

  “Jonathan,” she says sadly, “you’re a wasted talent.”

  “Thank you,” says Niker.

  Then it happens. Miss Raynham turns to me.

  “Robert,” she says, “if you’d do us the honour.”

  Niker resumes his seat. I don’t move from mine.

  “If you’d like to find the artwork…”

  But that’s the problem. Or one of them. While the other have been busy cutting and sticking I have been talking to people a lot madder than Mavis. I’ve been talking to a man who may or may not be married to a woman who may or may not remember some dreadful thing that happened to a boy who may or may not be her son. And instead of having a nice piece of paper with a drawing on, I have a cut on the inside of my cheek from eating gravel from a grave and the distinct taste of strawberry jam in my mouth when I think about star-shaped holes in windows.

  “Robert…” prompts Miss Raynham, “could you speed up a little, do you think?”

  Believe me, I’ve been thinking very fast the whole of this lesson. I have an impressive array of wisdoms to share with the class. I have prepared a speech about selective memory and about being able to do anything you want, if you want to enough (including flying) and about…

  “Robert!” yells Miss Raynham. “Front of the class. Now!”

  I get up. I go to the front of the class. I stand there. My mouth is opening and closing like a fish’s.

  “Yes, Robert. And?”

  “Sad,” says Niker.

  “Name?” says Miss Raynham.

  “Robert.”

  “Not your name, Robert. I am aware of your name. Robert. The name of your Elder.”

  “Miss Sorrel. Mrs Sorrel.”

  “Well, which?”

  “Edith.”

  “Right. Edith.”

  “I haven’t done a drawing.”

  “Well, don’t tell us what you haven’t done, Robert. Tell us what you have done.”

  “I’ve been to the Top Floor Flat, Chance House, twenty-six St Aubyns.”

  “Liar,” says Niker.

  “I had to go. She asked me.”

  “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Edith. She asked me. She said it was there. Her wisdom. But it isn’t. There’s nothing there. It’s derelict.”

  Miss Raynham walks to the front of the class and puts a sweaty hand on my forehead. Or maybe it’s my forehead that’s sweaty.

  “Are you still feeling sick?” she asks.

  “No. Yes.”

  Wesley swipes the desk. “These fleas,” he says.

  I cough. Miss Raynham delves into her pocket and produces a large, folded cotton handkerchief. I put it to my mouth.

  “Gross,” says Niker.

  He thinks I’m spitting and that gives me an idea. I chew the inside of my cheek and then I do spit. Blood goes on to the handkerchief. Feebly I present the bloodied rag to Miss Raynham.

  “Oh Robert, dear child. Come with me.” And this giant, suddenly motherly woman conducts me out of the Art Room and along the corridor, her arm around my shoulder, her
bosom wobbling against my face.

  “Temporary sick room,” she says, opening the door of the staff room. It smells of stale perfume and stale smoke.

  “Sit.” She indicates a green, soggy-looking armchair. “I’ll phone the nurse.”

  But I don’t want to sit. In fact I can’t sit. Because something inside me is heaving. I bend double, I convulse, then, without warning, my body straightens like a whip, and something red and evil vomits out of my throat. It lands on Miss Raynham’s large bosom. It spatters her. I think it’s sausage casserole.

  “Oh dear,” says Miss Raynham, rather mildly. “Oh dear, dear, dear.”

  9

  “Sick?” inquires my mother.

  As it is the end of the day, Miss Raynham has dispensed with the idea of the school nurse and phoned the hospital. She has extracted my mother from the ward of seriously sick patients she’s paid to care for and put me on the end of the line to explain myself.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “It’s nothing.”

  “I’ll come if you need me,” says Mum.

  “It’s OK. I said I’m fine.”

  “Love you,” Mum says.

  “Yes,” I reply and put the phone down.

  “Well?”

  “She can’t come.” Miss Raynham raises an eyebrow. “There’s been an emergency.”

  “I see,” says Miss Raynham. She pats her bosom. The fluffy grey sweater on which the sausage casserole landed has been tied into a plastic bag. The seepage on the red blouse beneath has been wiped with water and tissues. There are flecks of white on the damp stain. Miss Raynham rolls one under a nail. “Well, I suppose that’s that.”

  “Yes,” I say and try a smile.

  She opens her mouth, she’s about to begin again and then the bell goes. There’s an immediate and deafening end-of-day clamour. Feet skid, book bags flump, kids roar and holler.

  Miss Raynham opens the staff-room door. “A little less noise, there,” she says.

  I edge out behind her. “Can I go now? Please?”

  I start off down the corridor towards the cloakroom. She follows me.

  “A little less noise, there, I said,” she bawls.

  There’s a disgruntled, scuffling silence.

  “I think I ought to accompany you home,” Miss Raynham announces suddenly, in front of everyone.

  “No!” I cry. “Thank you. I’m fine now. I really am.”

  Now there’s a real silence.

  “I’ll go with him,” says a voice. “I live that way.”

  It’s Kate and she doesn’t. In fact, although we both live within five minutes’ walk of the school, her route home lies in precisely the opposite direction from mine.

  A dark head appears above the pegs to my right. “You heard him,” says Niker. “He doesn’t need the company. He’s fine. Really fine.”

  “A kind offer, nevertheless,” says Miss Raynham, briskly. “What do you say, Robert?”

  “Erm…” I could be feeling sick again. “Erm…”

  “That’s settled then. Thank you very much, Kate. Take a Good Conduct Plus.”

  “Thank you, Miss Raynham.”

  Miss Raynham leaves.

  “What’s happened to your own Mum, Norbie?” asks Niker. “She abandoned you as well, has she?”

  “Shut up, Niker.”

  “First your dad walks out. And now your mum’s…”

  “I said SHUT UP, Niker.”

  Niker smiles, pulls an empty crisp bag from his pocket and hands it to Kate.

  “What’s that for?” she asks.

  “Sick bag,” he says.

  “I told you,” I say, “I’m not going to be sick again.”

  “Yeah,” says Niker. “But Kate might be. After walking home with you.”

  Kate balls the crisp packet. “Come on,” she says to me. “Let’s go.”

  We go. I turn right out of the school gate.

  Kate pauses. “Isn’t it quicker that way?” she asks. “Through The Dog Leg?”

  “Uh – yes,” I say. “But I want to show you something. Do you mind?”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Just something,” I say. “Something I… found.”

  She looks at her watch.

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  “No,” she says. “S’pose not.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She shrugs.

  “No I mean it. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  And then she smiles and that dimple comes. Just for me. And of course I had no intention of showing her David Sorrel’s grave, no intention of going back to look at it myself. But that smile almost makes it seem like a good idea. A great idea.

  The graveyard is barely twenty-five metres from the school gate, just along past the fenced playing field, and then first right. Not much time to wind yourself into a frenzy but this is what happens: I wind myself into a frenzy. It’s all going too well, isn’t it? So suddenly I think there will be no white marble chippings, no fresh daffodils. No headstone of David Sorrel, aged 12. It will all have been my own sick (and I have been sick) imagination. And I’ll be left wandering round the graveyard showing Kate the pigeons.

  We arrive.

  “Yes?” says Kate.

  I scan the graves, take a breath, point.

  “A pigeon?” says Kate.

  There are about a hundred pigeons perched on gravestones. I lower my finger. Beneath a particularly fat white bird is the headstone of our beloved son, David Sorrel, aged 12.

  Kate follows the line of my finger. “Oh,” she says. And then again, as she gets closer, “Oh, oh Robert.” She squats by the grave, but quietly. The pigeon remains where he is, looking at her. She stretches out a hand, can’t stop herself touching the sharply indented number 12. Then her hand falls. “They’re fresh,” she says of the daffodils. “Somebody’s put fresh flowers here.”

  “Ernest Sorrel,” I say.

  She turns a quizzical face upwards.

  “Mrs Sorrel’s husband. It can’t be Edith herself. She’s too ill to leave the Home.”

  “Are you sure this really is – was – their child?”

  I want to shrug, I want not to know. But I say: “Yes. Sure.”

  Kate stands up. “He’d have been old now. Over forty.”

  “And have children of his own maybe. Grandchildren for Mrs Sorrel.”

  Standing, Kate and I are about the same height. Her eyes level with mine. “Did Mrs Sorrel really ask you to go to Chance House?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I went.”

  “O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!” An apparition erupts from behind the tomb of Claude Mosen, aged 86. It grins insanely. It waves its arms. Pigeons scatter. “I am the ghost of Claudie Mosen! Come from the foul and fetid beyond to warn of the fell fibs of Norbert No-Brain, otherwise known as Norbert No-Bottle, No-Chance, No—”

  “Don’t you ever give up?” says Kate.

  Niker vaults over the tomb and lands like a cat at her feet.

  “Never,” he says, straightening up and grinning. “First rule of chivalry – a man of honour is duty-bound to challenge a lie. To listen to a lie and remain silent is, my lady, tantamount to—”

  “Yes, yes,” says Kate. “Whatever.”

  “OK,” says Niker. “Have it your way. Norbert No-Bottle could no more find the courage to go to the top of Chance House than he could be relied on to jump out of the window when he got there.” He laughs. “More’s the pity.” Then he turns to me. “Am I right or am I right?”

  “You’re wrong,” I say. And even though it’s the truth it frightens me to say it. I have never challenged Niker so directly before. And certainly not in front of someone else.

  “I see.” Niker’s not laughing now. He’s by my side, jerking his face into mine. “Prove it,” he says. “Chum.”

  “The window of the top room’s broken,” I say quickly. “In the shape of a star.”

  “The room that looks over the
back garden, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brilliant.” Niker relaxes. “Take top grades in sleuthing, Norbie.”

  “What?” says Kate.

  “Well, your honour,” says Niker. “The defendant, Mr N for Norbert No-Brain, asserts he’s been to the top of Chance House. The rather more intelligent prosecuting counsel – Mr J for Jugular Niker – submits that Norbert’s been into the garden, looked up at the Top Floor Flat, noticed – from the outside – the broken window – and bingo! Two plus two equals three.”

  “There’s wallpaper,” I say.

  “Really,” says Niker. “And a floor, no doubt.”

  “It’s got ducks on.”

  “Would that be the wallpaper or the floor, Norbie?”

  “The wallpaper! A mother duck and her three ducklings.”

  “Not flying pigs then?”

  “Ducks.”

  “Flying ducks?”

  I turn to Kate. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  Kate’s head swings slowly between me and Niker.

  “A contest,” says Niker, delighted. “The goddess chooses. A flower for the hero who’s telling the truth.” He whips a daffodil from the vase on David Sorrel’s grave.

  “You can’t do that,” says Kate.

  “I just have,” says Niker.

  “It’s sacrilege,” says Kate.

  “It’s a daffodil,” says Niker.

  Kate snatches the flower from him and jams it back into the pot, breaking its stem.

  “Choose,” says Niker. “Choose!”

  “This is stupid.”

  “Choose. You have to choose!”

  “Right,” says Kate, furiously. “Here’s the plan. You go to that room, Johnny, and you check it out. Go right to the top and then you’ll see for yourself if there are or aren’t any ducks, won’t you!”

  “Ha,” says Niker. “Queen Solomon herself.” He gives me a sidelong glance. “I think I will go. In fact I think I’ll take a sleeping bag and spend the night there. All in the dark, Norbie. Whoo… Whoo…” He makes ghost noises. “Only,” he contrives to look confused, “only how will you know I’ve really done it? How could I proo-ove it to you, Norbie? Mm. Tricky.” He sucks the tips of his fingers. “I know.” He grabs me round the neck. “You’ll have to come too. You and me alone in the Top Floor Flat, Chance House. How about it, Norbie?”