‘He does not, too,’ Lumsden said. ‘He wis fuckin’ rude last time he spoke to us. And now he’s dropped out of the race, hiding in the bushes.’ His voice rose with fake self-righteousness.
Frank said desperately, ‘So have you, and you’re smoking.’
Lumsden leaned forward threateningly. ‘Are you trying to tell us off, you wee spastic?’
‘Sheer insolence,’ McTaggart said.
‘He’s a most cheeky wee lad.’ Lumsden folded hefty arms across his chest. He sounded like a teacher. He glanced down at Frank’s running shoes. A slow smile spread across his big round face. ‘I think he needs a few strokes of the tawse. This’ll do.’ He bent and picked up one of Frank’s shoes, running a big hand across the spikes.
McTaggart chuckled, but the third boy, a small stocky lad called Vine, looked worried. ‘What’re ye goin’ to do, Hector? We don’t want to get into trouble just over Monkey.’
‘We won’t,’ Lumsden said.
Frank scrambled up and tried to make a run for it, but it was hopeless; McTaggart and Vine grabbed him by the arms. He kicked out frantically but they threw him on the ground again. Lumsden leaned over him and grasped his chin, staring into his eyes. He said, quietly, ‘We’re going to give you the tawse, wee monkey man, just to teach you manners.’ There was a catch of pleasurable excitement in his voice. ‘When you get back, ye’re going to say you took your shoes off here, and when you got up again you fell onto one of them. See? If you don’t,’ he added, very slowly, ‘it’ll be your word against three of us, and next time, you wee cunt, we’ll kill you.’
Vine said, ‘Ye’re no going to hit him with the spikes, Hector?’
Lumsden turned on him threateningly. ‘Do you want some?’ Vine glanced at McTaggart. The dark-haired boy hesitated for a moment, then gave a quick, strange smile. ‘All right. It’ll just be a wee bit blood, won’t it?’
Frank screamed, ‘Please don’t, Lumsden, I just want to be left alone, please, don’t—’
‘Ye called me evil, you wee bastard!’ Lumsden pulled a dirty handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts and shoved it in Frank’s mouth. His cries turned to muffled squeals as Vine and McTaggart dragged him to his feet. Lumsden seized his right arm and yanked it forward. Instinctively Frank clenched his hand into a fist.
‘Open your hand,’ Lumsden snapped. ‘It’ll hurt more on the knuckles.’ He spoke sternly like a teacher, he was pretending to be a teacher.
McTaggart laughed. ‘Look at him with that snot-rag in his mouth.’
‘Hold him!’ Lumsden snapped. Vine held Frank round the waist and McTaggart held his arm out straight. Frank stared at Lumsden in horror as the big boy raised the running shoe, spikes down, shifting his balance to get the best aim. Frank closed his eyes as the shoe came down with all the force of Lumsden’s arm. The pain was terrible, sharp spikes cutting into his palm, and Frank gagged, almost choked. He opened his eyes. The blow had made several deep cuts, which were all bleeding heavily, but one spike had penetrated his wrist, and blood was spouting out of it like water from a pump.
‘Fuckin’ hell, Hector,’ McTaggart said quietly, dropping Frank’s arm. Pulling the handkerchief from his mouth, he pressed it to the pumping wrist. It turned bright red almost instantly. A stream of blood was running down Frank’s arm now. He began to moan.
‘Shit, Hector,’ Vine said. ‘How do we stop it bleeding?’
Lumsden had gone pale. ‘I don’t know. We’ve got to somehow, it’s a mile to the fuckin’ school.’
Frank slumped against the tree, clutching his arm as more blood flowed down onto his vest.
McTaggart said urgently, ‘We have to make a tourniquet.’
‘A what?’
‘My sister fell out a tree once and gashed her leg. My dad tied a hanky round it and told her to hold the leg up. Said it was what they did with injured men in the trenches.’
‘Well, do it!’ Lumsden shouted. ‘Do it, or we’re fucked.’
McTaggart went over to Frank, pulled away the bloodstained handkerchief and lifted his arm up. He tied the handkerchief tight, halfway down his skinny forearm. ‘Ye’ll be all right, wee man,’ he said. His voice was suddenly, astonishingly, gentle. There was a sudden gush of blood from Frank’s wrist, making him cry out, but then the stream slowed to a trickle. His arm began to go white.
‘You have to keep your arm up,’ McTaggart said. Frank just stared at him blankly so McTaggart lifted his arm and held it pointing upwards. The trickle of blood slowed further, though it was still coming.
Lumsden stepped forward. ‘We’ll get you back to school,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll say we found you here and brought you back. Ye’ll tell them you fell on the spikes, right?’ Frank just stared at him, his face blank. His teeth began to chatter. Lumsden said, louder, panic in his voice, ‘Say ye’ll tell them that, Muncaster, or we’ll bloody leave you here!’
Frank’s eyes focused on Lumsden’s red, frightened face. He nodded.
‘Swear on the Bible?’
Frank nodded again.
‘Say it! I swear on the Bible!’
‘I swear,’ Frank whispered. ‘On the Bible.’
‘Come on then, keep that arm up. Here, I’ll hold it.’
They took Frank and helped him get his shoes back on, helped him out of the dell, telling him to watch his feet as he stumbled over a fallen branch. It was strange how they were aiding him now, as though they were his rescuers.
Halfway to the school, Frank fainted dead away.
He woke in a hospital bed. All around him men, mostly old, lay sleeping or reading. His right arm lay on the counterpane, swathed in bandages almost to the elbow. He tried to move his fingers and pain coursed through his arm. A nurse appeared, a stout woman in a blue uniform and large white cap. She leaned over him. ‘Hello, you’re awake then?’
‘Where am I?’ Frank croaked.
‘Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. The school brought you in earlier. We did an operation on your hand, you’ll be a bit groggy for a while from the anaesthetic.’ She put cool fingers on his uninjured hand and took his pulse.
‘Will – will my hand be all right?’
The nurse smiled at him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said evasively.
After that Frank slept again for a while. He was gently shaken awake by another nurse. There was a doctor with her, a thin, grey-haired man in glasses and a white coat, a stethoscope round his neck. He smiled at Frank. ‘How are you feeling now, son?’
‘My hand. If I move it, it hurts. But I can’t feel it properly.’ Tears came to Frank’s eyes. The doctor pulled up a chair and sat beside him. He said, quietly, ‘I’m afraid we think you’ve damaged the nerves in your wrist. We’ll see how it goes, but you may have problems with some of the fingers.’ He smiled. ‘But your thumb and forefinger should be all right, you should be able to write.’ He paused. ‘The school said there was a cross-country run, and you took your shoes off, then fell over on the spikes. Is that right, son?’
Frank hesitated, then said, ‘Yes.’
‘Only you must’ve landed on that shoe with all the weight of your body.’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
‘Odd way to land.’
‘Is it?’
‘Lucky those boys were just behind you, lucky they found you.’
The doctor looked at him quizzically. Frank thought, if I tell the truth, maybe I’ll never have to go back. But then the doctor smiled and said, ‘Strangmans was my old school. It’s a fine place. Those boys who found you showed real presence of mind making a tourniquet like that. Otherwise, you could have bled to death, you know.’
Frank closed his eyes.
Next day his mother came to visit. She wept at the sight of his bandaged hand, shook her head and asked how Frank could have been so careless, so stupid. He asked if he could come back home but she said she couldn’t cope; after what had happened she was sure he needed to stay at the school, be properly taken care of. She told him this was what his father had told her from the other side, through Mrs Baker.
Back at school, the other boys left him strictly alone now. Lumsden and his friends kept well out of his way. Teachers treated him more gently. From the way they looked at him sometimes Frank guessed the authorities knew
