Fireside Gothic. Andrew Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ wall cupboard. I glimpsed two rows of hooks within, holding keys of various sizes.

      ‘Enjoy your supper,’ he told us, and went into the kitchen, where we heard him talking to his wife.

      Faraday rose from his chair, crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door.

      ‘Dozens of keys,’ he whispered. ‘And all with labels. It’s the keys for everywhere.’

      I pretended not to be interested. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Or he’ll catch you.’

      That night I heard Faraday crying.

      I remember in my first term at school I would lie in bed, listening for other boys crying and stuffing my handkerchief in my own mouth in an attempt to muffle my tears. There were about twenty of us huddled under thin blankets in a high-ceilinged dormitory, the windows wide open winter or summer. Sometimes one of the older boys would round on one of the weeping children.

      ‘Bloody blubber,’ he would whisper, and the rest of us would repeat the words over and over again, like an incantation, lest we be accused of blubbing as well. Little savages.

      But that had been years ago. I wasn’t a kid any more and nor was Faraday.

      ‘Faraday?’ I murmured.

      There was instant silence.

      ‘Are you crying?’

      ‘I’ve got a cold.’

      It was the usual excuse, transparently false.

      ‘What is it?’ I said. And waited.

      ‘Everything. Bloody everything.’

      We lay there without speaking. The room was not quite dark – the curtains were thin and the light from a High Street lamp leaked into the room.

      ‘But it’s my bloody voice really,’ he went on. ‘Everything would have been all right if it hadn’t been for that.’

      ‘That’s rot,’ I said, with the loftiness of fourteen to thirteen. ‘Everyone’s voice has to break sometime, unless you’re a girl. You don’t want to be a girl, do you?’

      This was an attempt at comfort but it seemed only to make Faraday start crying again.

      ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You can’t just blub.’

      ‘You don’t understand. I was going to sing the Christmas anthem. There’s a solo, you see, and it’s usually the head chorister that does it, and the Bishop gives him a special present afterwards. Some money.’

      ‘How much?’ I said.

      ‘Five pounds.’

      I whistled. ‘For a bit of singing? That’s stupid.’

      ‘No, it’s not.’ Faraday’s voice rose in volume and, suddenly, in pitch. ‘It’s a tradition. They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. Some old bishop left money in his will for it. And now Hampson will do it instead.’

      ‘Don’t talk so loud. The Rat will hear you.’

      ‘It’s lovely, too,’ Faraday whispered.

      Lovely was not a word we used much. ‘What is?’

      ‘The anthem. It’s for Christmas Day. It’s called “Jubilate Deo”, and we only sing it on Christmas morning.’

      Rejoice to God. Both of us had enough Latin to translate that.

      ‘All right,’ I said. ‘It’s beastly to lose five quid. But is it that bad? I mean, it was never yours in the first place.’

      Faraday started crying again. I was spending Christmas with a cry-baby. I curled myself into a ball to conserve heat and thought how perfectly miserable everything was. Or rather, how perfectly miserable I was. Boys are selfish little brutes. While I was wallowing in self-pity, however, my curiosity was still stirring.

      ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘I can see it’s a shame your voice is broken and all that. But why are you like this about it? And why are you here?’

      The snuffling continued. It was getting on my nerves.

      ‘Why aren’t you still at the Choir House? Or why didn’t Dr Atkinson send you home to your people?’

      ‘My parents are dead,’ Faraday said, and the waterworks increased in force.

      That jolted me out of my own misery. I knew what it was to miss your parents, you see, and even I could imagine how infinitely worse it would be if you could never, ever see them again. Or not until after you died and went to heaven, assuming heaven was real, which in those days I still considered to be a sporting possibility.

      ‘So where do you go in the holidays?’

      ‘To my guardian’s, in Wales. But this year he’s had to go away. So I was going to stay with the Atkinsons until he comes back.’

      This deepened the mystery. ‘Then why aren’t you there now?’

      ‘It’s because of Hampson Minor. Bloody Hampson.’

      ‘Yes, you said – he’ll get the five quid because he’s going to sing the anthem, and I suppose he’s the new head of the choir, too.’

      Faraday’s bed creaked. ‘It’s not that. He had a postal order from his uncle. Ten bob.’

      I whistled softly in the darkness. Not in the same league as the Bishop’s five pounds, but still pretty decent. I wished my aunt would give me ten shillings sometimes.

      ‘He was swanking about it all the time. The postal order and being head of the choir and the Bishop’s money. He just went on and on and everyone was sucking up to him. He said he was going to buy a big cake from Fowler’s for everyone. I just wanted to kick him. You know what he’s like.’

      I only knew Hampson Minor by sight. He was a fat, pink-faced boy with small delicate features and prominent lips. When he sang, he made his lips into a perfect O.

      ‘He left the postal order on the floor. It must have fallen – it was with his exercise book. So I – I picked it up and put it in my pocket.’

      ‘You stole it?’

      ‘No,’ Faraday wailed. ‘I was just going to keep it for a bit, until he found he had lost it, and then give it back. To teach him a lesson. That’s all. Honestly.’

      I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.

      ‘But he told Dr Atkinson it was gone, and Dr Atkinson made us all empty our pockets and open our boxes.’ Faraday paused for a long moment. ‘And they found it.’

      I didn’t know what to say. Stealing was a sackable offence at the King’s School.

      ‘I was going to give it back, I swear it. I didn’t know he’d tell old Atky straight away. СКАЧАТЬ