Marshalsea did so and saw pleasure in Digby-Hunter’s face.
‘You haven’t listened,’ said Digby-Hunter. His left hand pulled the hair, causing the boy to rise from his seat. His right hand moved slowly and then suddenly shot out, completing its journey, striking at Marshalsea’s jaw-bone. Digby-Hunter always used the side of his hand, Mr Beade the ball of the thumb.
‘Take two triangles, ABC and DEF,’ said Digby-Hunter. Again the edge of his right hand struck Marshalsea’s face and then, clenched into a fist, the hand struck repeatedly at Marshalsea’s stomach.
‘Take two triangles,’ whispered Marshalsea, ‘ABC and DEF.’
‘In which the angle ABC equals the angle DEF.’
‘In which the angle ABC equals the angle DEF.’
In her sleep Mrs Digby-Hunter heard a voice. She opened her eyes and saw a figure that might have been part of a dream. She closed her eyes again.
‘Mrs Digby-Hunter.’
A boy whose name escaped her stood looking down at her. There were so many boys coming and going for a term or two, then passing on: this one was thin and tall, with spectacles. He had an unhealthy look, she thought, and then she remembered his mother, who had an unhealthy look also, a Mrs Wraggett.
‘Mrs Digby-Hunter, I have a pain at the back of my neck.’
She blinked, looking at the boy. They’d do anything, her husband often said, in order to escape their studies, and although she sometimes felt sorry for them she quite understood that their studies must be completed since that was reason for their presence at Milton Grange. Still, the amount of work they had to do and their excessively long hours, half past eight until seven at night, caused her just occasionally to consider that she herself had been lucky to escape such pressures in her childhood. Every afternoon, immediately after lunch, all the boys set out with Mr Beade for a brisk walk, which was meant to be, in her husband’s parlance, twenty minutes of freshening up. There was naturally no time for games.
‘Mrs Digby-Hunter.’
The boy’s head was moving about in an eccentric manner. She tried to remember if she had noticed it doing that before, and decided she hadn’t. She’d have certainly noticed, for the movement made her dizzy. She reached beneath the deck-chair for the box of All Gold. She smiled at the boy. She said:
‘Would you like a chocolate, Wraggett?’
‘I feel sick, Mrs Digby-Hunter. I keep seeing double. I can’t seem to keep my head steady.’
‘You’d better tell the headmaster, old chap.’
He wasn’t a boy she’d ever cared for, any more than she’d ever cared for his mother. She smiled at him again, trying to make up for being unable to like either himself or his mother. Again she pushed the box of chocolates at him, nudging a coconut caramel out of its rectangular bed. She always left the coconut caramels and the blackcurrant boats: the boy was more than welcome to them.
‘I’ve told the headmaster, Mrs Digby-Hunter.’
‘Have you been studying too hard?’
‘No, Mrs Digby-Hunter.’
She withdrew her offer of chocolates, wondering how long he’d stand there waggling his head in the sunshine. He’d get into trouble if the loitering went on too long. She could say that she’d made him remain with her in order to hear further details about his pain, but there was naturally a limit to the amount of time he could hope to waste. She said:
‘I think, you know, you should buzz along now, Wraggett –’
‘Mrs Digby-Hunter –’
‘There’s a rule, you know: the headmaster must be informed when a boy is feeling under the weather. The headmaster comes to his own conclusions about who’s malingering and who’s not. When I was in charge of that side of things, Wraggett, the boys used to pull the wool over my eyes like nobody’s business. Well, I didn’t blame them, I’d have done the same myself. But the headmaster took another point of view. With a school like Milton Grange, every single second has a value of its own. Naturally, time can’t be wasted.’
‘They pull the hair out of your head,’ Wraggett cried, his voice suddenly shrill. ‘They hit you in a special way, so that it doesn’t bruise you. They drive their fists into your stomach.’
‘I think you should return to your classroom –’
‘They enjoy it,’ shouted Wraggett.
‘Go along now, old chap.’
‘Your husband half murdered me, Mrs Digby-Hunter.’
‘Now that simply isn’t true, Wraggett.’
‘Mr Beade hit Mitchell in the groin. With a ruler. He poked the end of the ruler –’
‘Be quiet, Wraggett.’
‘Mrs Digby-Hunter –’
‘Go along now, Wraggett.’ She spoke for the first time sharply, but when the boy began to move she changed her mind about her command and called him back. He and all the other boys, she explained with less sharpness in her voice, were at Milton Grange for a purpose. They came because they had idled at their preparatory schools, playing noughts and crosses in the back row of a classroom, giggling and disturbing everyone. They came to Milton Grange so that, after the skilled teaching of the headmaster and Mr Beade, they might succeed at an examination that would lead them to one of England’s great public schools. Corporal punishment was part of the curriculum at Milton Grange, and all parents were apprised of that fact. If boys continued to idle as they had idled in the past they would suffer corporal punishment so that, beneath its influence, they might reconsider their behaviour. ‘You understand, Wraggett?’ said Mrs Digby-Hunter in the end.
