The Boy Who Was Afraid of Butterflies - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 Horizons stretch a little

I haven’t told you, have I, about the application that I brought home one November evening. It was just a circular from school, I thought, I gave it to my mother as an afterthought when I was finishing my homework. I hadn’t even read it properly; it was something to do with a scholarship to some boarding school I’d never heard of.

“Just leave it on the table, dear,” was all my mother answered from the kitchen. “Your father can have a look when he gets in.”

I didn’t give it another thought until it was time to go to bed. My dad was standing, back to the fire, waving the letter in one hand.

“What’s all this then, son? Didn’t they tell you anything about it at school? When did they give it to you? Applications have to be in tomorrow.”

“Mr Harris-Ide gave them out last week. I forgot about it, I didn’t think you’d be interested. It’s something about a boarding school.”

“Of course we’re interested. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for you; a scholarship to a famous school like that, why, you’ll never get a chance like that again!”

“But dad, it’s a boarding school. I wouldn’t want to go away from home. It never occurred to me you’d take it seriously.”

“David, lad, we want the best for you. Naturally it would be very different. In all probability you won’t be selected - many boys will apply and there are only three places available from all the schools in Surrey. But you must have a go!”

I look askance at my father, then turn questioningly to my mother. To my surprise, she nods in support.

“Of course, David, you must try for it. That is the least we can do.”

I didn’t know what to do or say. One moment I was preparing to go to bed at the end of another routine day; the next, I’m trying to cope with the threatened disintegration of my whole world in one earth-shattering minute.

“But you can’t mean it?” I implore, tears welling in my eyes. “I don’t want to go to a boarding school, I want to stay here with you and nanna and Dumpy.”

“Enough now, David. Don’t worry about it, you’re tired, it’ll seem more exciting in the morning. And as we said a few minutes ago, it’s only an application form. There are many hurdles to jump before this opportunity becomes a reality. Now go to bed, but don’t forget to hand in the application in the morning.”

“How could they?” I think to myself as I lay tossing in my bed. No-one I knew had ever left home to go to school. Once I had heard my dead grandmother gossiping with a neighbour about a youth who had had to go away, but that was because of something he’d done. I didn’t know what it was - grandma had been careful not to be too explicit - but from her inference it was something bad. And now they wanted to send me away; had I failed my parents somehow?

The initial shock had passed. The form had been duly handed in; over Christmas I’d forgotten all about it. Then one afternoon break, Mr Harris-Ide had asked me and a fellow classmate called Youlton to stay behind a moment. He handed both of us a buff coloured foolscap envelope.

“Don’t lose that,” he warned, “give it at once to your parents. It’s about your application for Charterhouse School. You will have to take the Public Schools Entrance Examination at the beginning of May. You’ll be fine in most of the subjects, but I’ll have to give both of you extra tuition in Latin. Are you free after school on Tuesday evenings? I would be happy to stay on for an hour or so, to help you up to the standard required.”

The shock came back. I nodded glumly but my form-master mistook my expression, grinned broadly and clapped me on the back.

“Fine, that’s the spirit. We’ll show those prep school boys that Grammar School lads like you can master in six lessons what they take two years to learn. Tell your parents though. I don’t want them complaining that I’m keeping you in after school for the wrong reasons.”

And so the shock becomes accepted. Weekly lessons - the Subjunctive pacified in one hour, all Gaul divided and conquered in the following week - turned the entrance exam into an academic challenge to be mastered. The consequences of success are still to be thought about.

My nightly ritual has undergone a change. I still glance at the curtains to ascertain that the right drape has overlaid the left; if, by some misadventure, the curtains lie in the wrong configuration, I will usually crawl reluctantly out of my warm bed and make the necessary adjustment. I don’t bother now, though, with my shoes; they are tossed under the bed any old how. And my prayers are perfunctory and back to childish incantation, though my freezing bedroom does not encourage dilatory behaviour. What I look forward to is snuggling down under the heaped up blankets on my bed, making myself a cocoon. And in this precursor to sleep, I conjure up the image of Topsy under my eyelids; her face is perfectly imagined, her grin like that of the Cheshire Cat, looks back at me enigmatically as if she’s asking me a question. The doubts and hesitations have, however, been stilled. I interpret her expression as goodwill, she is cosy and complicit with me. We have joint secrets which we share against the world. Sometimes, as I watch her legs idly swinging, I drop off to sleep lulled by her movement. At other times I wait, I can feel her soft arms encircling me; we curl up together for mutual comfort and I lie there savouring the delicious creation of my mind - willing sleep to hold back a moment until I relax too much and tiredness wreaks its natural revenge.

Above all, of course, I can keep Topsy here to myself. No-one will intrude, I can prevail against all-comers. There is no mocking spectre, no ribaldry, no threat. And I can make her do just what I desire; she will notice me, she will smile. She cannot roll her eyes or pull her wrist away from my grasp. And, in my imagination, she doesn’t want to escape. Watch me carefully in the darkness, when your eyes adjust. That is, if you can spot my tousled head peeping from under the coverlet. My brow, which used to be so furrowed, twitching in perpetual nightmare, is now bland in dreamless sleep. Life is perverse. For my conscious mind would welcome the prolonging of my daydreams into night. Goodnight Topsy; sleep tight!

There is a quiet reserved boy called Marsh in my class. He is softly spoken, serious, the sort of lad who does his best without a fuss, does not push himself into the limelight. No-one bullies him, but he too is solitary. There is no prestige in being seen with him, or known as his friend. Very diffidently, one afternoon as the school class is dispersing, he sidles up to me and holds out a small white envelope.

“Would you come to my home for tea tomorrow, Maidment?” Simple, direct, shyly waiting for a response. I struggle with myself for a moment, then, seeing I am unobserved, relax and give my consent. I feel at home in Marsh’s house. There are guinea pigs and an old tabby who rubs around my legs. We listen to ‘Children’s Hour’ on the wireless. Neither of us has to disguise to the other our enjoyment of the serial, though both of us would be teased in class if the others were aware of our taste. We sit cross-legged on the floor and play draughts and neither of us seems unduly worried about who wins, although we apply ourselves with enthusiasm. I do not see his father. He is still at work. And there are no brothers or sisters. Mrs Marsh presides, a large greying comfortable woman in her late forties. She serves chocolate marshmallows and other favourites without insisting on bread and butter first. And she watches with satisfaction from her corner chair, as she knits some interminable navy blue garment for one of her menfolk.

As I button up my mackintosh to go, Mrs Marsh shakes my hand gravely and says, in all sincerity:

“Come and see us again, David. We’ve loved having you.”

And I really did, at that moment, mean to take up the invitation. It is not my fault that fate decreed otherwise.

It is only a week later that I receive another invitation, this time from a most unlikely source.

“My, you are leading a social whirl,” exclaims my mother, suppressing her relief and pleasure that, at long last, I am feeling accepted, am enjoying the company of my own group. “Have you got a note?”

“No, mum. Goode just asked me after school. Just said, would I go home with him after lessons tomorrow.” Goode is one of the boys who exists on the fringe of the set that tease and bully me.

“Well, I hope his parents are expecting you. I dare say it’s alright.”

I worry whether Goode’s invitation is a trick and that I will find myself delivered into the hands of my enemy. But we travel alone in a ‘Ladies Only’ compartment to the next station up the line and meander through rows of identical semis in quiet, if disjointed, conversation. When we reach Goode’s home, he pushes open the sidegate and leads me up to the back door and through the kitchen. He hardly stops to greet the woman at the sink - I presume it is his mother - and she takes no notice of either of us.

“Come upstairs,” says Goode, and he echoes upwards on the uncarpeted stairways, banging his knuckles against the banisters. The house seems deserted, despite the woman in the kitchen. The boy pushes open a door on the landing and I follow him inside, wordlessly. There is a bed, a battered dressing table, an empty chair, a frayed carpet, and little else. I look round for toys or books. What are we going to do?

“Sit on the bed. Want an ice-cream?”

I nod in relief.

“Hang on a sec.”

Goode slips out of the door and I’m left to contemplate the barren room. Still I wonder, what are we going to do? Did Goode’s mother expect me? Was my own mother right in asking me whether the invitation had been made with the permission of the boy’s family?

Goode reappears with two cornets.

“I’ve filched these from the fridge. Don’t spill any on the carpet or the bed - or say if she asks you, or I’ll get it in the neck. They’re intended for Sunday lunch.”

I’m shocked and embarrassed. I hold the cone as if it’s red hot, and hardly dare to put it to my lips.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like it?”

“I don’t want to get you into trouble; I didn’t mean you to steal it for me.”

“Don’t be such a prig! I’d have had some anyway, even if you’d not been here. I can’t take it back now, so you’ll have to eat it.”

I eat the ice-cream, miserably, my conscience working overtime.

“What are we going to do? Have you any games?”

Goode wipes his fingers with a grubby handkerchief and goes over to the door, listens carefully and locks it with the big key that was resting in the lock.

“She’ll be gone for the groceries a long time yet. Have a look at these!”

The boy lifts up one corner of the faded carpet and prises up a loose floorboard. I peer over his shoulder and see that he is scrabbling at a heavy bundle of magazines covered with a yellowing newspaper. He heaves them to the bed and plonks them down, and the shiny periodicals gush and slither over the dark green eiderdown, displaying to my eyes myriads of big-busted semi-naked females.

“Take one of them and have a good peek. They won’t bite you!”

I pick up one between my fingertips with distaste and flick idly through it just to humour Goode.

“They’re all naked. And fat and horrible!”

“That’s big boobs, you silly. Haven’t you ever seen them before? My mum flaunts them round after a bath - she never ties her dressing gown. And Lomax’s sister showed us hers once, only they weren’t as big as that.”

I don’t know what to say. I’m embarrassed at the way events have turned but equally I don’t want to offend this peace-offering from my erstwhile enemy. I turn the pages over without really looking, for as long as I think Goode expects it of me. Then I hand the magazine back.

“Go on, take another, we’ve got plenty of time.”

“I don’t think I really want to, thank you. They’re not very interesting.”

“Oh, don’t you think so? I thought everyone was interested in girls.”

I try to be noncommittal, giving nothing away. I think of my Sunday School class, the embarrassing strictures from self-conscious teachers with innuendoes about the nature of sin.

“You’re a real prude, aren’t you! Packman used to be like you. Then we got him interested in sex and now he thinks and talks smut all the time. Come on, I’ll show you. If you join in with the others, laugh at their jokes, pass round the magazines, they’ll stop getting at you. It’s only because you stick out like a sore thumb. Be like everyone else. Here, jump up on the bed, I’ll show you.”

Goode swings his legs up over the counterpane and makes room for me to lie down beside him.

“Come on, don’t be bashful. You’ll like it. Like this!”

Almost before I’ve done as ordered, Goode is unbuttoning his shorts, raises himself on his haunches and pushes them down to his knees. He sticks his hand in his pants and draws out his flaccid penis and begins to squeeze and massage it until it grows, swollen and pink.

“Here, have a feel.”

He seizes my hand and makes me touch the loathsome object. I flinch in disgust and withdraw my hand as quickly as I dare.

“Let me do it to you. Lie still,” he adds as I automatically begin to roll out of his reach. I freeze as fingers find my fly buttons and clumsily undo a couple. I feel a hand slip inside and poke around searching for the opening in my pants.

“Don’t fidget such a lot. I can’t find your willy. For God’s sake, let’s get your pants out of the way,” and he thrusts his hand up to the wrist inside my trousers and yanks my undergarment down to my crumpled crotch, while his other hand is pulling my shirt-tails our from my waist. “That’s better, now I can get to work on you.”

I lie there miserably like a dummy while Goode handles my limp tiny penis, trying to force it to stiffen like his own. For a while he soldiers on, but I lie passive and totally unresponsive, until Goode suddenly gives up in frustration and disgust.

“Maidment, you’re hopeless. It’s all been a total waste of time. You’d better go.”

At that moment I hear the downstairs door slam and footsteps climbing up the bare stairs. I jump off the bed in fright and try to adjust my clothing without removing my shorts. However, in my panic I’m all thumbs and I just get hopelessly tangled. Goode’s mother is now trying the door and finding it locked, calls out:

“What are you two up to in there? I’ve bought some cakes if you want one.”

I had finished by dropping my trousers in order to pull up my pants and thrust my shirt back in a tidy fashion while the other boy is scooping the magazines back under the floorboards. But the danger passes as quickly as it had come. The woman had been incurious, had stomped away downstairs leaving them to their own devices.

My face is now aflame and I can’t look at the other fellow. As soon as the door is unlocked, I grab my mackintosh and blazer, and mutter excuses, stumble down the stairs. Goode doesn’t even bother to follow me or try to stop me.

“Oh, aren’t you staying?” calls out the woman disinterestedly as I dash through the kitchen and out of the house, and run a hundred yards or so down the street before slowing to a saunter.

Now what shall I do? Even as I breathe in relief at my escape, I see that it is barely five o’clock and I am not expected home much before eight. I toy with the idea of going home immediately and making some excuse that it was inconvenient, I was not expected, but then my mother would say, I told you to check; and I am obstinate, I don’t like to be proved wrong. I drag out the walk to the station for as long as I can and manage to just miss a train, so that I have another twenty minutes to wait. I have to change at the junction, so I while away some more time trainspotting, though without my usual enthusiasm. I am too upset and churned up to enjoy it.

I realise I am hungry. My mother is expecting me to have tea with my friend, so nothing will be prepared for me at home. I have no money, so I can’t even buy a bar of chocolate at the station. My mind whirs trying to think of a solution but I come up with nothing. At six o’clock I decide to catch a mainline train to the next station past the junction which will give me a three mile walk home and fill out some more time, because I’m getting very cold hanging about the dark and draughty station.

At a quarter past seven I walk into my own house, my stomach aching, my hunger ravenous.

“Oh, you’re home early, Joseph. Was everything alright?”

“Yes”, I mutter.

“Have you had a good tea?”

“Yes”, I say again even before I realise it. Why, why, do I say that? I cannot admit the fiasco, I don’t want to lose face before my mother, I don’t want to say anything that will give her the slightest opportunity to guess what has befallen me. I feel righteous, I have repelled temptation and now I’m suffering in a good cause. There is almost a glow of satisfaction that makes me take pride in my obstinacy.

“Yes, I had a marvellous tea, lots of sandwiches, cakes - and I had an ice-cream at the end,” I say, salvaging my conscience.

“Oh, good. I thought you would want some more after your journey home. It sounds as though you don’t need anything before supper. Go and do your homework then, before bedtime.”

I can’t think what else to say. I’ve burned my boats, cut off my retreat; I can’t admit now that I’m hungry. And so I get my books out and stare into space, gnawing the end of my pencil.