Читать книгу The War of Jenkins' Ear - Michael Morpurgo - Страница 9

MAJOR BAGLEY TAUGHT LATIN. HE WAS HARMLESS enough, unless you caught him in a bad moment and then he could be quite unpredictable. The trouble was that he drank too much. Everyone knew it, and indeed he made little attempt to hide it. Latin lessons that ended at break always finished with the same flourish. He would close his battered Latin grammar book –Kennedy’s Latin Primer – take his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, flick it open with his finger-nail and announce: ‘Time for my tipple and time for your milk.’

Milk, like everything at Redlands, was administered with military efficiency. Miss Whitland, the thin-lipped Assistant Matron, stood stiff and unsmiling, arms crossed above her blue canvas belt. Her job was to make sure that every boy drank his bottle of milk. You filed by under the archway, picked up your bottle, a straw through the silver top, and drank it leaning up against the archway wall. It was always cold, even in summer, and Toby drank it fast to get it over with. He didn’t like cold milk because, like ice cream, it gave him a headache. Miss Whitland knew Toby of old and kept her eye on him making sure the bottle was empty before he returned it to the crate and threw his straw in the bin. Only after you had drunk your milk were you free for break. There often wasn’t time in morning-break to go down to the park, and anyway that first morning of term no one would have wanted to. There was too much to talk about. Christopher’s escape. Christopher and the slippering of the night before. Christopher and the rice-pudding incident. Rudolph glowering in morning assembly. The boys gathered in little groups in the quad and talked of little else.

Toby found himself subjected to a barrage of questions. Surrounded by a crowd of straw-sucking boys he told them all he knew about Christopher, and that wasn’t much. It seemed that Simpson had put it about that he was bosom friends with Christopher. It wasn’t true of course, he’d only spoken to him a few times. He told them that, but they didn’t want to believe him. ‘Did you see him go?’ ‘Did you try to stop him?’ ‘What was he like?’ Unused to all this attention and uncomfortable with it, Toby made himself scarce at the first opportunity.

He was walking past the kitchen door, past the line of dustbins, when Wanda came out shrugging her coat over her apron. ‘Here,’ she called, and she beckoned him over. Toby hesitated, looking around him to be sure it was him she was calling. It had to be him, there was no one else about. She was taller than he thought and even more beautiful. Her hair was a sunburst of curls around her face. Toby found it difficult not to stare at her. He had to force himself to look down at her hands. She bit her nails, but then so did Toby. It only made him like her more. ‘Here, aren’t you the one in the kitchen yesterday?’ Toby nodded. ‘You heard about that boy have you? You ask me,’ she went on, ‘you ask me, I’d run away and all, like he did. What are you all doing here anyway? Don’t your mum want you home? Don’t she love you?’

‘Course she does.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’

It was the talk of home and his mother that choked Toby’s voice. He turned away to hide it, but it was too late. She came after him. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean nothing. Here.’ She took him by the shoulder and turned him round to face her. She was holding out a bar of chocolate. ‘Go on,’ she said, and then conspiratorially: ‘I filched it. Cooking chocolate from the kitchen. Good though.’

‘Thanks,’ said Toby, and when he took it their hands touched for just a moment.

‘See you,’ she said and she was gone, running off up the drive, her coat flapping behind her.

‘Who’s that?’ Toby turned. It was Hunter. Hunter was king of the castle at Redlands, Captain of School and Captain of just about everything else too. He played every sport there was and played them better than anyone else. He always went home at the end of each term with armfuls of cups and prizes. He threw a javelin further than anyone else of his age in the country. He was national champion. Tall, lithe, a crown of close-cropped dark hair, he looked like a Greek warrior out of the history books.

Toby admired him only from a distance and was flattered whenever he spoke to him, which wasn’t often. Hunter was flanked now by Porter and Runcy, both prefects and both sporting heroes, but Toby had never much liked either of them. They could be vindictive. It was best to steer clear.

‘That girl,’ said Porter, ‘who was she?’

Toby was reluctant to tell them anything but he knew he had to. ‘She works in the kitchen,’ said Toby. ‘Mrs Woolland’s daughter.’

‘An oik then is she? You got your eye on her have you?’ Porter smiled his sideways smile.

Toby denied it hotly and began to walk away before they could ask any more questions.

‘Jinks.’ Hunter never lifted his voice – he never needed to. Toby stopped and faced them again. ‘What’s her name?’ said Hunter.

‘Wanda, I think.’ Toby tried to sound casual. Hunter came over to him and looked down at him from the clouds.

‘You’re on my side this afternoon, scrum-half. You any good?’

‘Think so,’ said Toby. ‘I was in the Second Fifteen last year.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Hunter. Toby watched him as he walked away, hands deep in his pockets. (Only prefects were allowed hands in their pockets.) The idea of having to tackle someone that big was not at all appealing. He was just glad that, this afternoon at least, Hunter would be on his side.

Toby liked rugby. At school there was little he really liked, just singing in the choir and rugby. That was all he was good at. He’d found out, almost by accident, that if you were small and you wriggled and side-stepped and jinked you could run past, run through or round much bigger boys; and there was no feeling in the world he liked better than to dive over the line to touch the ball down for a try. After he’d scored a try he could face even Mr Cramer for a double-maths period and not worry about it. Every try you scored meant you were instantly popular, temporarily maybe, but temporarily was better than not at all.

That afternoon, on a hard pitch freshly mowed, freshly marked out, Toby slipped in for two tries from the base of the scrum. He tackled ferociously and threw Hunter long and accurate passes. He grazed his knee in the process and had his knuckles hacked by Runcy, deliberately he thought. But as he trotted back across the gravel drive from the playing-fields in his new boots, Hunter came up alongside him.

‘You were all right,’ he said. ‘You go on like that and you could make the First Fifteen.’ Toby glowed inside. He knew that there was little enough hope of that. Hetherington was faster than he was and tougher. He was off-games at the moment. He’d been in the team the year before and he was bound to be first choice again for scrum-half. Still, Toby could hope. He knew how pleased his father would be if he could get in the first team, even get his colours. He wanted so very much to make his father proud of him, but he rarely managed it. Maybe if he could get into the First Fifteen and even get his rugby colours. He could dream.

He was still dreaming when he heard the sound of a car slowing outside the school gates and turning in on to the gravel. Mr Price – Pricey, the referee and rugby coach, pink-kneed in his long white shorts, shouted to everyone to stand back. A large black car came crunching slowly down the drive, past the rhododendrons. Everyone strained to see who it was. Toby heard before he could see for himself. ‘It’s that new boy,’ said Hunter.

The car came to a stop outside the front door and Christopher got out pulling his suitcase behind him and shut the door. His mother – Toby imagined she must be his mother – was being greeted by Rudolph and Cruella at the front door. She beckoned Christopher towards her, but Christopher was looking at the crowd of boys now gathered on the edge of the playing-field. ‘Simon!’ Toby could hear the anger in his mother’s voice. Christopher’s eyes lingered on the boys for a moment or two. Toby felt a flicker of recognition and half lifted his hand in welcome, in sympathy. Christopher didn’t seem to notice that. He walked around the front of the car and followed his mother indoors, Cruella leading the way.

‘Right,’ said Pricey, slapping the rugby ball. ‘Enough gawping. Bath, and hang your kit up, properly mind.’ He could turn his Welsh accent on like a tap.

The car stayed parked outside the front door all that afternoon. There was only one way Toby was going to find out what was going on and he was determined to try. His classroom opened into the oak-panelled hall that was the heart of the school. It served variously as an assembly hall every morning, a cinema on Sunday evenings, and a library. The wide steps that led from the hall were known as the Bloody Steps. Carpeted in deep crimson, with polished brass stair rods, they led to Rudolph’s apartment, Rudolph’s study. To be summoned up those dreaded steps meant only one thing – the cane. Everyone knew that if you stood at the bottom of the Bloody Steps, by the bookcases, and pretended to be looking for a book, you could often hear what was going on inside the study. But how was he going to manage to bluff his way into the hall in the first place? Mr Cramer may have looked doddery but he was wily, and you didn’t get out of his maths class that easily. He wasn’t going to be fooled by the usual lame excuses – they might prove effective with the younger, greener teachers, especially with the French mistress, Madame Lafayette who taught art too and who wore sandals and long flowery skirts. Either she believed anything she was told or she didn’t mind half the class being absent at the same time. Mr Cramer wasn’t like that. ‘Can I go down, sir?’ meant you needed a short trip to the lavatory and were expected back soon. ‘Can I go down successful?’ implied a need for a longer absence in the same place. Both had been tried already on Mr Cramer that lesson, and both had failed. Toby wasn’t the only one who wanted to find out what was going on. Greater ingenuity was needed. It took Toby half an hour to think up his scheme. It had risks but it was worth it. He would try it. He put up his hand.

‘Please, sir,’ he coughed and sniffed as best he could. ‘Please, sir, it’s my hayfever.’

‘I didn’t know you had hayfever, Jenkins.’

‘Only sometimes, sir. Matron says that if I feel it coming on I’ve got to take my tablets.’ He hoped he didn’t need to say any more. Matron was the key that opened most doors with most of the teachers. Just the mention of her name was often enough, and so it proved this time.

‘Very well, Jenkins. Two minutes.’

Toby closed the classroom door behind him and found himself alone in the hall. He was quite confident that Mr Cramer wouldn’t check his story with Matron. He could already hear voices from inside the study but could not make out what they were saying. He stole across the polished floor, unable to stop his sandals squeaking as he went. He peered round the corner. Christopher was sitting outside the study on the settle, motionless, his hands on his knees like the statue of an Egyptian pharaoh. The study door opened suddenly and Christopher’s mother was coming out. Toby had just enough time to back out of sight along the bookcase. He felt the piano behind him, crouched down and crawled under, backwards. There was nowhere else to hide. ‘One thing I’m sure of, Headmaster,’ he heard Christopher’s mother say, ‘is that once he has made a promise he keeps it. He has promised me and he has promised you that he will never again try to run away. Isn’t that right dear?’

‘Yes, Mother.’ Christopher’s voice was quite calm.

‘Don’t you worry, he’ll be all right now, won’t you, Christopher?’ It was Cruella, but Christopher did not reply. Christopher’s mother came down the steps. ‘I’ll see you at half term then,’ she said without even a glance at Christopher.

Rudolph and Cruella, only feet away from Toby’s hiding-place now, walked across the hall on either side of her and Christopher followed along behind them, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘I’m sure we shall all get along splendidly,’ Rudolph was saying. ‘Redlands is a friendly sort of place. Everyone gets on here. He’ll find that out soon enough.’

‘I’m sure he will,’ said Christopher’s mother, and then they were out of sight, down the hallway towards the porch and the front door. Toby heard the front door open and was debating whether he should make a dash for the classroom now or wait until Rudolph and Cruella had gone back into the study. He never had the time to make up his mind.

He heard a cough from behind him. There were two sturdy legs in dark stockings and flat shoes and one of the feet was tapping. Only Matron wore shoes like the police. ‘Jenkins,’ she said. ‘If I was a boy here that is probably exactly where I should spend as much time as I could, under the piano; but I am not a boy, I am Matron. Crawl out Jenkins, crawl out.’ Toby stood up before he should have done and banged his head on the piano. The strings reverberated. Matron smiled at him. ‘Well, that’ll knock some sense into you, won’t it?’

‘Yes, Matron.’ He was still rubbing his head and about to go back into the classroom when he heard Rudolph’s voice from across the hall. ‘Jenkins, what do you think you are doing out of class?’ Christopher was there with him.

‘He has a headache, Headmaster,’ said Matron. ‘I’ve given him something. It’s better now, isn’t it, Jenkins?’ She turned her attention to Christopher. ‘Back again then are we?’ Christopher nodded. ‘Staying this time are we?’ Toby never quite knew when Matron was being serious and when she wasn’t.

‘Oh, he’ll be staying, Matron,’ said Rudolph, ‘you can be quite sure of that. And I want no special treatment either. He’s in your class, Jenkins. Take him along. Matron, may I have a word?’ And the two boys were left alone in the hall.

‘This school, it smells of cabbage and polish,’ Christopher said sniffing. Toby had always noticed that too, particularly at the beginning of term.

‘I’m glad you’re back,’ Toby said as they walked towards the classroom, and he meant it. He didn’t know what else to say, but he thought he had to say something.

‘I’m not,’ Christopher said, and they went in together.

‘Now there’s a thing. You would have thought it a mathematical impossibility,’ said Mr Cramer, peering at them over the rim of his glasses. ‘One goes out, two come back.’ He pointed to the empty desk beside Toby’s. ‘Your desk I believe, Christopher. Sit down.’ Every eye in the room followed Christopher to his seat. ‘We are doing long division. Have you ever done long division?’

‘No, sir,’ said Christopher, ‘but I’ll learn. I learn very quickly.’

To everyone’s surprise – boys and staff alike – Christopher did learn very quickly. At his Council school he had never before done French or history or geography or Latin – a fact which amazed everyone at Redlands – but it seemed to make no difference whatsoever. Within a few days he appeared to have mastered what had taken Toby several long years of grinding learning. He could decline the first and second declensions in Latin and he already knew his way around at least a dozen French irregular verbs – all the tenses, even the subjunctive. He knew almost every capital on the globe, and had learnt by heart the names and dates of all the Plantagenet kings. He had, or so it seemed, a photographic memory. He could learn a poem on reading it and recite it without hesitation in class the next morning.

Yet in spite of all this brilliance, or perhaps because of it, Christopher had made no lasting friends or admirers except Toby. Brought up as they were to be wary of intelligent eccentrics, the boys kept their distance. Even the teachers were only grudgingly impressed. Toby overheard them once when he was waiting outside the staff-room door. Madame Lafayette was proclaiming enthusiastically that she had never had such a brilliant student, either in France or in England. ‘It’s just like as if ’e ’as the French blood in ’im,’ she said. ‘You say a word just once and ’e pronounces it like a French person. Mind you ’e can’t paint for toffee.’

‘Bright boy, maybe the brightest we’ve ever had, but surly,’ said Major Bagley.

‘If you ask me, he asks too many questions,’ Mr Cramer said. ‘Can’t stand boys who ask too many questions.’

And that was the main problem. He unnerved everyone by asking too many penetrating and unexpected questions. Bare facts seemed unimportant to him, uninteresting. He always had to know the whys and wherefores. For instance, it wasn’t enough for him just to know the date of the South Sea Bubble or the Treaty of Utrecht or the Bill of Rights or the War of Jenkins’ Ear, he would go on questioning until either the teacher became irritated or until he was satisfied. As a result he would never write the regulation five lines on anything. His account of the Wars of the Roses covered two sides of paper and yet he seemed to do it in the same time it took Toby and the others to write their five lines. The teachers put it down to inexperience, to lack of early training at his Council school. He would catch up, in time.

But in divinity it was quite evident that he had no catching up to do at all. The local vicar, the Reverend Jolyon – ‘Holy Jo’ the boys called him – came in every Friday and Tuesday morning to teach divinity. Always nervous and uneasy in front of the boys, they knew it and ragged him mercilessly, even calling him ‘Holy Jo’ to his face. In all the time Toby had known him he had never once lost his temper and Toby admired him for that. But now with Christopher in the class Holy Jo became a changed man, for it was soon clear to him and to everyone else that Christopher knew his Bible through and through. He knew all the parables and what’s more he understood what they meant. He could quote the prophecies of Isaiah and many of the Proverbs. He knew Psalm 23 and the Sermon on the Mount by heart. Holy Jo grew visibly happier and more relaxed as each lesson demonstrated yet greater depths of Christopher’s knowledge and understanding.

Toby was there when Holy Jo called Christopher to his desk after the lesson was over. ‘Christopher,’ he said, ‘is your father a vicar by any chance?’

‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘He’s a carpenter, makes doors, windows and things.’

‘Well I’m amazed,’ said Holy Jo, shaking his head. ‘Utterly amazed. We must talk more, we must talk more.’

Rugby was every afternoon, whatever the weather, except Sundays and Tuesdays. Tuesday was cross-country running. Christopher’s trunk hadn’t arrived until the second week of term and when he first turned out on the rugby pitch he looked very fragile in his shorts. Toby saw him wandering on to the pitch and he seemed to be in a world of his own. Pricey asked him if he’d ever played rugby before and he shook his head. ‘I’ve played football,’ he said. ‘What do you have to do?’ Everyone laughed at that.

‘Well it’s quite simple really,’ said Pricey. ‘You just pick up the ball and run with it. You run all the way down the pitch and you touch it down over the line. And anyone on the other side – you’ve got a blue shirt on, so that means the reds – anyone in a red shirt will try to tackle you and if you see anyone in a red shirt with the ball then you tackle him. We’ll show him Hunter, shall we?’ Hunter threw the ball to Porter, who tried half-heartedly to run past him. No one runs past Hunter. The tackle came in hard and low and Porter was lifted into the air before he crashed to the ground, the breath knocked out of him. ‘See?’ Pricey laughed. ‘Like that.’

But Christopher seemed already to have lost interest.

Pricey put him on the right wing for that first game so he wouldn’t get hurt and he had a quiet word with the reds to take it easy. ‘Let him in gently,’ he said, which of course was not at all what the reds had in mind.

Whenever Toby looked up from the base of his scrum Christopher was standing, hands behind his back, often facing the wrong way, often offside. Toby told him time and again that he had to keep behind the ball, but Christopher was not listening. He kept gazing up at the clouds, as if he was looking for a plane, Toby thought. Then Runcy sliced a kick and the ball bounced across the field and came to rest at Christopher’s feet. He looked down at it as if it was some kind of intrusion. Pricey shouted at him. They all shouted. ‘Pick it up! Pick it up!’ Christopher bent down and picked up the ball in both hands. ‘Run, run!’ Toby shouted. He seemed not to know which way to run. ‘That way!’ Toby cried, haring across the pitch towards him and pointing to the goal posts. For a moment Christopher stood looking at the red shirts as they came at him. Then he started running slowly, tentatively, sideways across the field. They were screaming at him to pass it. If he heard them, he didn’t appear to understand. Hunter was running alongside him. ‘Here, here! Pass it!’ And then Christopher stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face the pack of converging red shirts.

Toby expected, and everyone expected, that he would just throw the ball in the air or drop it. He did neither. Instead he tucked the ball under his arm and ran at them. He sliced his way through them, going like the wind for the corner flag. When the cover came across to tackle him he simply bounced off his outside foot and wrong-footed them all, including Porter who was left floundering by the touch-line. Christopher touched the ball down between the posts and stood wiping the mud off his hands. There was no whistle. Pricey was so stunned he had forgotten to blow it. The boys stood gaping and silent except for Toby who ran up and clapped him on the shoulder. He felt suddenly very proud of Christopher and very fond too. ‘Well done!’ he said, picking up the ball. He noticed that Christopher was hardly breathing. He’d just run fifty yards and he was hardly breathing.

In the communal bath afterwards Toby and Christopher sat side by side, chest deep in hot brown water, scrubbing the mud off their knees. The bath was the size of a small swimming-pool. From the other end Porter was glaring at them. ‘Hey you! New bug!’ The bath fell silent.

Christopher was splashing water over his face. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. I was watching you. You never tackled, not once. Anyone can run.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Christopher, stepping out of the bath and picking up his towel.

‘Bit of a coward then, are you?’ Porter had his blood up. Toby knew how it would end. He got out too and tried to lead Christopher away. But Christopher would not leave.

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not that. I just don’t want to tackle, that’s all. There’s no point in hurting someone, not if you don’t have to. Doesn’t help.’

‘Doesn’t help what?’ Porter was out of the bath now and advancing towards Christopher, flicking his towel at him.

‘Leave him be,’ said Toby, surprised at his sudden surge of courage, ‘he hasn’t done anything.’

Hunter tried to restrain Porter from behind but Porter shook him off. They were nose to nose now, Runcy egging Porter on. ‘Fight! Fight!’ The cry went up from all around the changing-rooms and the wash-room filled with boys, silent with eager anticipation. Christopher stood, his towel around his waist and looked back at Porter, unflinching.

‘It’s always the same with your kind,’ Porter sneered. ‘You’re an oik, aren’t you?’ and he pushed Christopher in the chest. ‘Come from an oik’s school, didn’t you?’

‘Using force is a sign of weakness,’ Christopher replied coolly. ‘Think about it. Just because you knock someone down, doesn’t make you right, does it? You can hit me if you like. Whatever you do I won’t hit you back, so there really isn’t any point in starting anything, is there?’ And he walked away.

Porter blurted a few words of vicious invective, stabbing his finger at the departing Christopher. ‘Next time, oik!’ he bellowed. ‘Just you wait. Next time!’

Toby followed Christopher out. ‘Jesus,’ Toby said, whistling through his teeth. ‘You got lucky.’

Christopher stopped suddenly and turned on him. ‘Please don’t blaspheme,’ he said quietly. ‘And understand this, Toby, with me nothing is lucky, nothing is unlucky. Everything is meant.’

Each day at school was a ritual of meals and lessons and games and more lessons and more meals and prep and bed. Toby dreaded them all. But of all of them Tuesday was the day Toby dreaded most. And he wasn’t alone. The Tuesday run was compulsory, like most things at Redlands, unless you were off-games. Matron’s surgery was always unusually busy on Tuesday mornings. It took place rain or shine, snow, ice or fog. It was three miles up around the village running the gauntlet of the village boys, the ‘oiks’ as they called them, dodging their insults and sometimes their stones. It took you past the village school, past Mr Woolland’s farm and back through the school park. You weren’t allowed to stop, even on the hills – there was always a master about to ensure that. Anyone caught trying to take a shortcut had to repeat the whole run escorted by a master on a bike. But much as Toby hated the pain in his legs and the stitch in his stomach, this term he had something to look forward to, something to take his mind off it. There was always a chance that he might catch a glimpse of Wanda in her garden. If she was there she would wave to him and he would wave back. It was a moment worth any amount of suffering.

Sunday was the only day Toby really looked forward to. There would be no lessons to survive and no prep he couldn’t do. There was chapel in the morning, of course, but Toby sang in the choir and liked the hymns and the anthems and wearing a surplice. It made him feel good. In chapel you could think your own thoughts and be alone, even with everyone sitting around you. There was letter writing after that and then lunch – Sunday roast, with apple or rhubarb crumble afterwards, and custard with lots of brown sugar. But best of all was the long afternoon in the park below the school. The boys shared it with Mr Woolland’s cows and sheep. There were rabbits and slow-worms and even the occasional roedeer. It was their paradise. There’d be blackberries to plunder, forests of oak and elm to explore, trees to climb and conkers to collect. In the evening there’d be a film in the hall, cartoons, Tom and Jerry or Popeye, followed by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Then storytime with Matron or Miss Whitland in the dormitory and then sleep. The only trouble with Sundays was that they ended and they were followed by Mondays. But they came round again, so Toby always had something to look forward to.

Two Sundays into the term and Christopher had volunteered for the choir. Toby found himself sitting next to him in the choir-stalls, not by arrangement. They just liked being together, content if silent, in each other’s company. Christopher seemed to know all the hymns and followed the service avidly in his prayer book. He prayed properly – with his eyes closed, Toby noticed – as if he was really praying. Toby envied him that. He could never finish a prayer without his mind wandering off long before the Amen.

Toby’s letter home that Sunday was typical. You had to write one side at least neatly, and have it read by the master-on-duty, Pricey it was this Sunday. Toby wrote it in large handwriting, you covered the paper more quickly that way. He could never remember what he’d written the week before. His mother often said he told them the same news again and again.

‘Dear Mum and Dad and Charley and Gran, I am well. How are you? I am in Four A this term and my desk is near the window. I am in The Pit and a new boy called Christopher is next to me. Matron says can I have cod-liver oil and malt again? So can I? And can you send me more name-tapes she says. And Mr Cramer says I must have extra maths again, so can I? I played rugby yesterday and scored a try. That’s four in all I’ve scored this term so far. Hunter says that maybe I’ll be in the First Fifteen. I hope so, but there’s another boy and he’s very good so I probably won’t. I hope Gran is better and that there’s no more greenfly on Dad’s roses. I hope Charley’s been good. I’ve eaten all my tuck-box biscuits so could you send me some more? Squashed fly are my best. I’ve got a new friend, he’s called Christopher. He’s the one that sleeps next to me in The Pit. Lots of love. Toby’

The letter passed Pricey’s inspection and he was free. That afternoon found him showing Christopher the park. Dressed in regulation blue boilersuits and wellies he took Christopher through the spinney, down Woody Hill to the river that ran along the bottom of the park. From there you could look back and just see the chimneys and castellated walls of the school and the bell tower with the weather-vane stuck pointing North. Turn around and on the other side of the river, up across three fields and on the far side of a heart-shaped wood – Innocents’ Copse they called it – there was the village. It was just a few houses, a pub, a church and a chapel.

‘That’s Ickham,’ Toby said. ‘You see the grey-roofed farmhouse below the church? That’s Mrs Woolland’s house and Wanda’s.’ He hadn’t meant to mention her – it had just slipped out.

‘Wanda?’ said Christopher.

‘You know, the girl in the kitchen.’ He was as nonchalant as he could manage. ‘Her father farms most of the land over there, and our park. They’re his cows. We go beagling with him sometimes, in the winter, after hares. That’s his hay-barn, just across the river.’

Later they found a slow-worm basking on a stone behind the swimming-pool hut. ‘Runcy killed one last term,’ Toby told him, ‘bashed it over the head. Said he thought it was a baby adder, but he knew it wasn’t. He just wanted to kill it, that’s all.’ Christopher crouched down, picked it up gently and let it curl around his wrist.

‘We’ll hide it then,’ he said. They made sure no one was around and then released it into a bank of long grass and dusty nettles, and watched it disappear. A red admiral caught Toby’s eye as it sunned itself on a bramblebush nearby.

‘You like blackberries?’ he said.

They picked from the long low bushes beyond Willow Copse. They weren’t the best blackberries in the park, but Toby knew the best had already been picked clean. They were shrivelled with autumn and pippy but that mattered to neither of them. They gorged themselves until there was none left worth eating. Suddenly Christopher was coughing and laughing, his eyes watery. ‘I swallowed a fly,’ he gasped.

‘I don’t know why you swallowed a fly,’ Toby quipped. ‘Perhaps you’ll die.’ And he banged Christopher on the back until the coughing and spluttering subsided. They had had enough of blackberries.

They reached the rhododendron forest at the top of Woody Hill, and Toby decided to show him his camp, long since abandoned. Toby pulled aside the branches that had grown across the opening and crawled in.

‘We make camps sometimes, in the summer mostly. There’s lots of them like this. We have wars.’

‘What for?’ Christopher asked.

‘Well, fun I suppose,’ Toby said. Sometimes Christopher’s questions made him feel uncomfortable. He never said what you expected him to say. Toby was standing in the middle of the camp now looking up at the canopy of rhododendron branches and leaves. It was so thick you could scarcely see the sky beyond.

‘There’s a nest up there,’ Toby said pointing. ‘Blackbird I think. See it?’ Christopher didn’t reply, and when Toby turned round he saw Christopher stagger and fall.

‘God, dear God,’ he cried, and fell forward on to his face, his arms outstretched in front of him. Toby ran to him and turned him over. Christopher was unconscious, his hair matted with earth, leaves clinging to his face. There was blood trickling from his nose. Toby brushed away the earth and leaves and shook him.

‘Christopher? Wake up! Wake up!’ Christopher lay still. Toby put his ear to his chest and then to his mouth. Christopher was not breathing.