Tom Brown's Body

'Oh, Micklethwaite!' said Skene. 'He'll get a Balliol. Everybody thinks so.'

'More likely to get a brick in his ribs,' said the vengeful sufferer from Micklethwaite's virtuosity. 'Anyway, I'm about fed up with this place, and I'm going to do something about it. I've jolly well made up my mind.'

'There's not much you can do,' said Skene, 'without getting gated or lammed.'

'I'd just like to show them!' said Merrys, who was seriously annoyed with Mr Conway. 'Fancy shoving me in D when I was down for my turn of the Roman Bath!'

'Hard cheese, of course,' admitted his friend, realizing that the core of the grievance had been reached. 'Let's go and have a look at it,' he added, 'and bung a brick at Micklethwaite. He's always there! Nancy gets him extra turns, I think.'

'Nancy's a – !' stated Merrys. 'Come on, then, if you want to fag over there. But we mustn't be late for tea!'

They strolled off towards the far end of Deep Field, to where the ground dropped to what had once been a little stream.

Here there was a high board fence reinforced at every fifth yard by a post made of concrete. Behind the fence the scene changed. A great rectangular hollow had been delved from an outflanking spur of the moor, and within the hollow was the Roman Bath referred to in bitter tones by Merrys.

All of it was under cover. Inside the Bath were frescoes copied faithfully by a famous modern cartoonist from Roman models; was a beautiful piece of tessellated pavement, modern, but so skilfully copied from the one discovered on a Roman site not very far from the school that even experts looked at it twice before they realized that it was not the original; was a Latin inscription inviting the rich, the virtuous, and the learned to bathe in the health-giving waters blessed by Priapus (a strange god to introduce into a world of boys, some thought), and dedicated to the gentler Glaucus.

Beyond the Roman Bath was the School boundary, and, beyond that again, a moorland road which led ultimately to the village of Spey and on to the town.

The Roman Bath was the apple of Mr Loveday's eye, and in his House Merrys and Skene had been nurtured for the past two years. Unlike most such loves, this one happened to appeal as strongly to the public as to its originator. Good boys – that is to say, boys who had not been detected in wrong-doing – were always put on a rota by Mr Loveday at the beginning of the Christmas Half, and, whilst the river was too cold for comfort, these good or – it cannot be overemphasized – undetected boys had a turn in the warmed Roman Bath, and regarded this as a privilege not to be despised, particularly as it was restricted to the members of Loveday's House.

The building had been constructed under the fanatically zealous eye of Mr Loveday, partly by professionals and partly by means of forced labour recruited amongst his boys. The plans and blue-prints he had made for himself one winter after he had visited Pompeii and Herculaneum.

He had employed workmen to instal the heating system, but even this, his chief pride, was on the Roman model, and the completed building included a caldarium, a tepidarium, and all such other adjuncts as archaeology and the Latin authors suggested. Mr Loveday had had the most enormous fun over his Bath, and had spent some years on the plans and in saving money to carry them out. The Roman Bath had become one of the show-pieces of the School, and rivalled the Chapel and the Headmaster's garden in interest and importance.

The names of naughty boys, unwashed boys, late boys, and lazy boys were sternly removed from the rota by the august hand of Mr Loveday himself, and were only reinserted after a period of penitence and atonement.

Due for their turn, therefore – and not more than five of them were ever allowed to use the Roman Bath at one time, and that time was from four o'clock until five on first Thursdays – boys were apt to slink about doing evil with much more circumspection than usual, or even, to the irritation of boys in other Houses but in the same form, to eschew evil together for a season. Merrys, therefore, whose piety had become lately a matter of fury to his co- mates and brothers in exile, was naturally more than incensed at the mean trick played by fate and his form-master Mr Conway in doing him out of his turn. Fate was in baulk, but upon Mr Conway he desired vengeance.

'Of course, you can rag in form, and take it out of Conway that way,' said Skene, when they had satisfied themselves that the place was locked and that the virtuous, favoured, and erudite Micklethwaite was nowhere to be seen. 'But what can I do? I can't rag Cartaris. I'd only get my bottom tanned, and there isn't much future in that.'

'There isn't much point in ragging Conway, either,' said Merrys. 'He'd only shove me in D again. No, we've got to do something to sort of give ourselves uplift. You know – rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things, and at the same time, get our revenge. That's what we've got to do. The thing is – how?'

Skene, a pale-skinned, hazel-eyed, reddish-haired, chunky boy – one of the more easily-recognizable Scottish types – looked at his friend with anxiety.

'You're nuts,' he said.

'No, I'm not. I read about it in the hols,' explained Merrys. 'You sublimate things. For instance, if you get tanned, you think of being an early Christian martyr, and decide to live a good life – well, you might do that in any case, but, well, you know the sort of thing; or – well, it's not easy to explain, but – oh, well, we've got to do something. We've got to get on top again, and atone to ourselves for this bally sucks about the Bath, and you, I suppose, about getting shoved into House Third instead of House Second – although, if you ask my opinion –'

'Well, I don't!' said Skene, giving his friend a vicious and indignant kick.

'All right! All right!' said Merrys, rubbing his ankle. 'What I was saying was to buck ourselves up, and look the whole world in the face, for we owe not any man because we've got our own back on Fate and what-not, if you can get that idea into your fat head.'

'Yes, I see that, all right. But what can we do?'

'It's got to be something that hasn't been done before,' said Merrys solemnly. 'Otherwise it isn't much good.'

'Don't be a silly owl. Everything worth doing has been done before.'

'Not quite everything,' said Merrys, mysteriously, glancing round the rapidly-emptying field, as boys began going in to tea.

'What do you mean?' demanded his practical friend.

'Swear you'll come in with me if I tell you?'

'Well, all right, then. But I don't believe – anyway, spit it out pronto, or we'll be late in, and all the potted meat will be gone.'

'Look here, then. We'll go to the Dogs.'

'Go to – Oh, but we'd never be able to sneak out of footer to do that! It's always House Practice on Wednesdays.'

'I'm not talking about the afternoon Dogs, chump. I'm talking about the evening Dogs. They don't start until eight, and it's dark by the time Prep's over. We could easily –'

'What about Call-Over and supper?'

'We can manage those. We'd better not miss supper. After that, well, Albert-Edward's got a bike, and it's got a step. We could take turns at riding the bike and standing on the step. We could get to the place by nine, see two or three dog-races, nip back again on the bike, and so home by about eleven.'

'And suppose we get nabbed? We'd be sacked at once.'

'You can't be sacked unless you're out after midnight. I know that for a cast-iron fact. Besides, we shan't be nabbed. How can we be? Who's to nab us?'

'Things might go wrong. Besides, the bike! Think of the frightful row there'd be if Albert-Edward knew we'd pinched his bike! He may be an ass, but he is a Housemaster.'

'Oh, rot! He never even looks at the bike. He only had the thing for the war when he was in the Home Guard. It's just shoved inside that little place by Jack the Ripper's toolshed. I expect Albert-Edward's forgotten he's got it by now. Beaks are always absent-minded about property.'

'The tyres'll be flat.'

'Oh, well, it's sure to have a pump on it. Tell you what! Let's get Jack the Ripper to pump it up, and tell him to see that the lamps are O.K. He'll do it for a bob, and once he's taken the bob he'll have to keep his mouth shut for his own sake. What do you say?'

'We'll have to go out past Spivvy's cottage, remember.'