‘Stand up, boy, and show us how you would salute the Kaiser!’
Matthew remained rigid. She fastened her finger and thumb on his ear digging her nails into his flesh and slowly hauled him to his feet. He scrabbled with his hands first on the seat and then on the lid of the desk to take the weight of his body away from his ear, to keep his balance.
‘Salute the Kaiser!’ she screamed at him. ‘Show us all what it would be like!’ And she pushed her face, close to his, where it seemed to expand until it filled all his perception of the world. He felt that like a huge pillow it would engulf and suffocate him.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No! No! No!’ He clawed upwards, grabbed one of the medals and raked it down her cheek. She lunged backwards, hand to her bleeding face.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘I have a farthing. I have.’ He snatched it from his pocket and threw it at the box. ‘I have got a farthing.’
Sobbing he scrambled across his seat into the aisle. Isolated in a field of terrified faces he felt loose, dangling, as unprotected as a scarecrow. He fled, down the aisle between the desks, out the door, along the echoing corridor, through the entrance doors, across the bitumen and into the street.
The world halted him. It was too big, too bright. Images unfolded upon each other like stage sets retreating into endless vistas of illusion. The sun blazed from a pallid sky. He felt like a nocturnal animal emerging mistakenly into the midday glare. He was thirsty. Wandering, he found a hydrant with its bent tin cup chained to it. He rinsed the cup, wiping his wet fingers around the brim, then filled it. The metal, chilled from the water, cooled his hands as he drank, dribbled down his chin onto his shirt. He refilled the cup and drank again. The world came into focus.
A woman in a lemon cambric blouse and a jaunty straw hat walked her baby in a large-wheeled perambulator. A horse pulling a bread cart clomped past. He sniffed the warm, sweet, steamy smell of fresh manure. In his imagination it mingled with the rich yeasty odour of fresh bread. He yearned for the soft innards of a doughy loaf newly made. Gran’s bread was never quite the same as bought. It lasted longer but lacked the initial sweet succulence. With a regretful sigh he replaced the cup.
‘Not at school today? Not playing the truant I hope.’ The tone was jocular but its underlying assumption that Matthew was doing wrong frightened him. The speaker lounged, one hand resting on the hydrant head, so close that Matthew needed to retreat to look up into his face. He wore a suit of cigar brown with matching shoes, white spats and a brown bowler hat. Although most businessmen abroad in the city were formally dressed, this man’s attire seemed particularly heavy, particularly oppressive. His coat was tight buttoned and his stiff white collar manacled his throat. His clothes seemed too tight to contain all of him. Yet he didn’t look hot and for some reason Matthew didn’t expect it of him. In not expecting it he grew even more frightened.
‘I have a message for Gran,’ he lied. ‘Mother’s sick.’
‘Oh, yes, the pretty young widow who has lots of admirers.’
‘Admirers?’
‘Men who visit and … admire.’
‘I don’t know.’ Matthew retreated a little further. He didn’t know all the men who joined parties his mother gave. The man might know her. Was he a friend? He supposed he might be.
‘Edward Kingsley, for instance, a handsome fellow. Wouldn’t he be an admirer?’
‘Edward? He’s Gran’s friend—and mine.’
‘Not Mother’s?’
‘No. Yes … I suppose.’
‘He likes older women perhaps?’ The words fell on him like bird droppings, obscenely sticky. He needed to wipe them away, to restore his sense of cleanliness.
‘He likes Gran. They talk.’
‘Ah, yes, they talk. Of course they would talk. Now what would they talk about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t know or don’t understand?’ The man laughed, a small laugh. Matthew thought it was probably so small because it couldn’t get up from his stomach through that tight collar. He had a vision of a man hanging by the neck trying to laugh. It would be horrible—very small—just like this.
Edward always laughed from his stomach, a great gust of pleasure that burst upon the air and reverberated like cymbal clashes unrestrained. When he was walking with Edward and Edward laughed, people nearby smiled. Even when he stopped laughing the smile stayed and passersby responded to that with a smile as well.
‘Tell your pretty mother I’ll be visiting again.’ And this time he closed an eyelid at Matthew and held out a penny. The bread cart was only a short distance down the street. A penny would buy that loaf.
‘No, thank you,’ Matthew responded, and backed away. ‘No, thank you.’
Then he turned and ran.
Matthew knew he could not go home. There would be too many questions. He didn’t want to tell anyone about the incident. He felt ashamed, not of his behaviour but of what had been done to him. He felt guilty. Not for his own actions but because of his teacher’s violence. He did not know why the anger and malice of others made him feel guilty, but they did. So he would tell no one.
He had many refuges. There was the river with its secret recesses of banks and fallen logs. Or the reed beds where he collected cigarette boxes and their silken cards thrown from the passing trams. There was the roofless, windowless house in the dunes. Sand had half-filled its empty rooms and he could lie there for hours sheltered from the sea winds, basking behind walls open to the shining mask of
