was having a bad day – if you did cop it from him he always made sure you knew why.
His lessons were interesting if not exactly thrilling, and his obsessive passion for all things Modern in art meant that anyone seeking enlightenment about mundane stuff like life drawing or sculpture could feel his frustration at having to teach what he considered backward and irrelevant skills. Cubism and Henry Moore's abstracts were all he lived for. I thought it was all meaningless, pretentious crap, if I'm honest, but it's hard not to warm to someone who's so genuinely enthusiastic.
He studied here as a boy and had returned to teach here immediately he qualified, so apart from his first five years, and three years at art college, he'd been ensconced in Castle for his entire life. He was an old man who should have retired years ago but he was such a fixture of the place that no-one could imagine him leaving. At the age of seventy-five he was still teaching art and had looked likely to do so until he dropped.
Although he was the senior master there had never been any question of his challenging Bates' authority, he just wasn't the type. Teaching lessons in post-apocalyptic survivalism sounded like just the kind of thing he'd come up with, and I wished I could have sat in on just one. Norton told me that there were a large group of younger boys who adored him utterly. He was playing granddad to them and they were lapping it up. After all, Mac wasn't exactly the approachable type, and Bates, despite his initial rapport with the younger boys, was increasingly isolated and distant.
In some ways you could say that, in a very short time, Hammond had cemented himself into the position he had held for so many decades before The Cull – the heart of the school, its conscience and kindness.
And of course, there was no room for such things in our brave new world.
The first snow of the winter fell the night before the great unveiling ceremony, making the school and its grounds shine and glitter. Norton turned up to collect me in his CCF uniform, which was unusual, but I didn't say anything. He and Matron lifted me out of my bed and into a wheelchair. My leg was in constant pain, a low dull throb that flared into sharp agony with the slightest movement, but in the absence of the proper hospital kit some of the boys had used cushions and planks to rig up a horizontal shelf for my leg to rest on, so once I was safely aboard I could be wheeled about without screaming all the time. Which was a plus.
With Norton as my driver we crunched through the snow to the front lawn where the school had assembled. I couldn't believe my eyes. Instead of the rag-tag gaggle of boys in what remained of their uniforms, I was confronted by fifty or so boys of all ages in full army kit. On the younger boys it looked comically large, but their trousers had been turned up and the huge jumpers tied with belts. Obviously the berets were a problem, so the younger boys either went bareheaded or wore baseball caps that had been painted green.
Not only were they dressed like soldiers, they were standing at ease in a nice square little cadre. And – my already cold blood ran ice – all of them held SA80s.
'What the fuck is this?' I whispered to Norton.
'I was going to warn you, but I figured you needed to see it for yourself. I can see it and I still don't believe it.'
'So he actually did it, all the kids are in the army now?'
'Uh huh. As of this afternoon there's going to be compulsory drill and weapons training for all boys, as well as lessons on tactics, camouflage, all that shit. They've even tapped me to teach martial arts.'
In front of the assembled troops was an object, about head height, draped in a sheet. Bates and Hammond stood either side of it, with Matron and the five remaining grown-ups – an old aunt and three grandparents – sitting on a row of chairs to the left; Green, his arm still in a sling, sat with them. To the right stood the remaining officers in two rows, like an honour guard, all holding. 303 rifles.
Norton wheeled me up the row of chairs and positioned me on the end, next to Green. He then marched to the ranks and took up his position in the troops. As he stood at ease he winked at me and gave the smallest of shrugs as if to say 'I know, what a farce'.
Once Norton was in place, Bates stood. He looked even worse than he had when I'd last seen him. Although he was clean shaven his face was a mess of red spots and slashes where he'd cut himself. It wasn't hard to see why – his hands, which gripped a swagger stick behind his back so hard that his knuckles had turned white, were shaking. His eyes lacked focus; as he spoke he never seemed to be looking directly at anything or anyone, but to a point slightly to their left or right, or somewhere through and behind them.
Mac stood to attention in front of the troops, facing Bates. He stared straight into Bates' eyes, unwavering. Bates never met his gaze.
The boys stood to shambolic attention at Mac's instruction, and Bates began to speak.
'At ease, men. Stand easy.' The boys, many unsure what this meant, shuffled nervously in the cold. 'When I was a boy my grandfather used to tell me tales of the Second World War. Stories of heroes and derring-do, secret missions, cunning generals, evil Nazis. It all seemed so simple. Good against bad, good wins, bad loses, everyone's happy…'
He lapsed into silence and stared off into space. As the seconds ticked past it became clear that this was more than just a dramatic pause. It soon became a very awkward silence, and then people started looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes and grimacing. Embarrassment set in, and then genuine discomfort. It must have been about a minute before he started again and everyone's shoulders relaxed.
'But the world isn't like that, is it men?' His voice was harder now, more assured. He started to increase his volume until he was on the verge of shouting. 'Now it's just survival. Kill or be killed. It's hard and cruel and violent and wrong, but it's the world we have to live in and we have to be as hard as it is if we're to survive.
'We've all lost people, I know that. But they won't be forgotten. As we build our perfect home here in the grounds of our beloved school we carry with us the memories of those who have fallen before us, to the plague or the madness that followed it.'
He paused again but this time, thank God, it was a dramatic flourish.
'My colleague Mr Hammond, who has given his life to this school, has constructed a monument to our fallen dead. Mr Hammond…' He gestured for Hammond to take his place, and sat down.
Hammond rose and walked to the same spot Bates had spoken from.
'Um, thanks Bates.' He paused a second to collect his thoughts and then, to my surprise, he looked up at the crowd with a strong, clear gaze. There was a sense of purpose in his eyes and his jaw was set with determination. The feeble pensioner we'd rescued on the driveway had been replaced by the firm disciplinarian of old. 'But I'm afraid I can't agree with your sentiments.
'You see, I remember the war. I was only a boy at school but even I could see that it wasn't glorious. When my parents were burned alive in their house they weren't heroes, they were victims of indiscriminate slaughter. Hundreds of thousands of people died in England during the Blitz, died in their beds, died at their breakfast tables, died on their way to work or in the pub or in the arms of their lovers. And that was hard and cruel and violent and wrong. But do you know how we fought it, hmm? By rising above it! We chose decency and kindness and community, we cared for each other. We refused to become the thing we were fighting and that's why we triumphed.'
This was rousing stuff. Blitz Spirit! Triumph through adversity! Battle of Britain! Never in the field, etc. I was sitting there thinking of all the bombs we dropped on German cities – what can I say, I'm a cynical sod sometimes – but I was more interested in the reaction of Bates and Mac to this diatribe. Mac's face gave nothing away, but Bates' eyes were finally focused, and he looked furious.
'But you, Bates, what are you offering these children in the face of all this horror? More death! You can't meet violence with violence; you can't fight plague, fear, panic and desperation with a gun! If you want to build an army you need to arm them with knowledge that can help them rebuild, that can help them to help others to rebuild. Then maybe you can hold back the tide. But what you're offering us here, with your uniforms, guns and marching is nothing but an opportunity to die for no reason when we should be looking for a way to live!
'And that's why I made this.'
He turned and pulled the sheet off the sculpture to reveal a figure made of white plaster that shone in the reflected snowlight. It was a boy of about twelve, dressed in school uniform. Under one arm he carried a pile of books, and in the other hand he held a satchel with a vivid red cross on it. Beneath the figure was a plinth bearing the inscription 'Through wisdom and compassion, out of the darkness', and underneath that a list of the dead.
We all stared at this gleaming statue, amazed. It was beautiful and awful. I didn't think Hammond had it in him to produce something so good. And judging by the expressions on everyone's faces, nobody else did either.
