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Part Two, Chapter Three

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« on: August 03, 2023, 08:01:55 am »

ON the notice board appeared several elaborately-ruled sheets, prepared by Mr. Norfolk, inviting entries for the Annual Sports Day, to be held in mid-term. All those who showed any athletic promise began to be rounded up by Birnie for half an hour’s pre-breakfast training. At that hour, the wind from the sea was still cold: jogging round the playing field one’s unwashed sleep-puffed face and tousled hair seemed to be petrifying into some uncomfortable gargoyle shape. But later, splashing about righteously in the dormitory basins while less athletic figures slowly roused themselves from sleep, one seemed possessed with a vast potentiality for achievement and enjoyment, and even the knowledge that it was herring morning could not take away one’s keen anticipation of breakfast.

At the other end of the day the warmth and prolonged twilight acted in the dormitories like caffeine. Gerald acquired the habit, once the duty master had closed the door, of taking his pillow to the salt-whitened window and lying with his book held to the light so that he could read until the last possible moment. In the mild atmosphere Matley’s religion flourished. He had come back this term with a new dressing-gown, long, hairy, dark brown, and fastened with a rather rope-like cord. Attired thus he evidently imagined---and quite rightly---that he had a monkish air, an effect contributed to by his walking about in bare feet and parting his hair nearer the middle so that it could hang over his temples in two locks. In this guise he now said his prayers, and disconcertingly for Gerald the action no longer represented courage and piety but a contribution to the evidence of Matley’s general folly. On Sunday night Matley brought up to the dormitory a Bible and a prayer book and, quickly changing into the ecclesiastical dressing-gown, he reverently placed them on his bed and later, kneeling down, read several passages from them in a voice irritatingly hovering on the edge of audibility. Some pointedly ignored this ceremony, others watched it in a baffled way, as if waiting for Matley to make some error of sacerdotal procedure before being able derisively to unfrock him.

Gerald, still lolling by the window though it had become too dark to read, was startled by the sudden opening of the dormitory door. He sprang to his feet and feigned to be opening a window. But the intruder proved to be a boy from the dormitory across the landing who said: “She’s there.” The boy then disappeared.

Everyone knew the significance of this gnomic remark: from the other dormitory it was possible to see across to a short arm of the House where the maids slept. The occupants of this dormitory had alleged that a new maid called Helen sometimes came to one of the bedrooms before the others and undressed without drawing the curtains. Howarth had extracted a promise from them that his own dormitory should be given notice of the next occurrence of this unbelievable event.

Howarth now tipped down his throat the last of the bag of potato crisps he had been eating and leapt from his bed. “Come on, Bracher,” he said, stopping by the door.

“I’m not being caught out of my dormitory,” said Gerald stiltedly.

“Oh, ballocks,” said Howarth and disappeared after the others.

Gerald found himself left with Matley, who said: “Filthy pigs!”

“Shut up, Matley,” said Gerald, looking out at the far stars above the hump-back trees that fringed the playing fields. A terrible anxiety filled his stomach as though he had temporarily alighted from a train at a station to perform some necessary procrastinating errand. He strolled with deliberate leisureliness to his bed and fumbled under his pillow for a bag of sweets, as though these actions could in some way prevent time from passing---time that contained the revelation of astonishing and infinitely desirable events which for reasons he could not define he had shut out from his apprehension. But it was true that he was motivated in not following the others by his disinclination to break the rule which forbade visits to another dormitory, though he could see that this, like the refusal of a second helping by one who fears he will be embarrassed by the subsequent discovery that in actuality there is no food left, had been given undue strength by his conviction that it was impossible for him to see what was promised.

Nevertheless, he found himself slowly drawn out of the dormitory. He went to the door, opened it and looked out as though keeping cave. “Filthy pigs,” Matley said again.

In the opposite dormitory pyjama-clad figures blocked the view out of the window. “There,” Snape major was saying excitedly. “Can’t you see, you fool?”

Gerald thrust his head among the other heads: outside, all appeared to be pitch-dark. “Where is she?” he asked, abandonedly. No one replied, and suddenly the group seemed to melt away. Gerald turned and saw quite clearly in the glow from the dormitory pilot light that Cropper was standing near him---an impossible state of affairs, since Cropper came neither from this nor Gerald’s own dormitory.

“What are you doing here, Bracher?” Cropper asked.

Gerald was conscious of the listening ears of those who had sneaked back to bed, the younger members of this dormitory. “Just going back,” said Gerald, making for the door.

“Don’t give cheek, Bracher,” said Cropper, moving to cut him off. “I want to know what’s going on.”

“You’re not a House Prefect,” said Gerald, in a voice he tried to keep from trembling.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Cropper. “I’m a good deal senior to you.”

“Buzz off, Cropper,” said Gerald and immediately after felt Cropper’s open hand deal him an enormous blow across the cheek. He could see the nostrils of Cropper’s long nose terribly dilated and knew what a harvest of hatred his long sarcasm had reaped. “Thank you,” he said, marvelling that he could still speak out of his numb face. “Thank you very much.” It did not strike him that the words were stupid: on the contrary they seemed precisely to express his contempt and uncrushed spirit.

He marched back to his own dormitory. Now his face began so to burn that he feared some frightful disfigurement.

“What did that shit Cropper say?” called Howarth from the safety and comfort of his bed. “Didn’t you notice him come in?”

“You’re a nice lot,” said Gerald, and then stopped, feeling his voice thicken with self-pity.

“He’ll not report you,” said Howarth, comfortingly.

“I saw her, you know,” said Stink-Bomb Billy.

“You saw her, my cock,” said Howarth. “It was a wash-out, as I said it would be all along.”

Gerald curled up in bed, miserably conscious of a powerful enemy and his own lack of virtue.

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