The Boy Who Was Afraid of Butterflies - Chapter 11

Chapter 11 Isolation

Ever since I had been ambushed on the path from the school to the station, I had sprinted out of school and got down to the relative safety of the platforms where I mingle with other passengers. Now I have rejected the overtures of Goode, I feel even more insecure, fearful of a new bout of ridicule. I find I’m spending the majority of my time, while waiting for my train, skulking behind advertisement hoardings or awning pillars, darting into the waiting room when it is occupied by adults and peering through the steamed up windows at the now silenced pounding locomotives. I miss the spectacle of watching the swaying approaching monster, hearing its accelerating roar. I am tense, lest an intervening electric train obscures my vision of a steam express on the centre lines.

As winter draws into spring and the evening light grows stronger, I find a new hiding place. At the London end of Surbiton station is a pedestrian overbridge that leads to the other platforms across the lines. Next to it, and ordinarily barred to passengers, is a similar overhead passageway which is used by post office staff to wheel their barrows of letter and parcel mail from the sorting office to the London trains. It’s always deserted at four o’clock in the afternoon - the first postman trundles his load across after five o’clock. I find that I can slip unnoticed into this passageway and, by stretching on my toes, can just see out of the high dirty windows overlooking the lines in the London direction. I can easily see the smoke billowing under the bridge opposite my school and prise myself aloft to drink in the spectacle; however, I have a problem with the up trains. The first I’d know of their presence is when they burst under my vantage point and if I’m not alert, the train will be lost to me in a haze of brown smoke before I can decipher the engine’s number.

I am so nervous of my classmates, though, that I put up with this inconvenience all the way through my last term at this school. I am tense, driven to my actions in desperation. I would like to walk down to the station with Miller and Uttley, but I’m frightened that they will betray me to Lomax and his crowd if they are threatened.

Now I look back on this episode from many years hence, I surmise that my tormentors had lost interest in me; it was not beyond their capabilities to have followed me and discovered my hideaway, where I would have been more vulnerable than ever. In fact, they are not bothered. It amuses them that I am excluding myself from all normal intercourse. They let me do their own dirty work.

When I’m at home, I am an increasing worry to my parents in that I never let up from teasing my younger sister. Every evening our raised quarrelling voices can be heard, we will be warned; then renewed whining irritates my mother. She is exasperated, having to interfere, stop me tormenting Jill from the moment I enter the door in the afternoon.

“It’s her fault. At least, it’s not always me that starts it,“ I grumble when I’m told off for the third time one evening.

“He always touches me first. Why can’t he keep his hands to himself? He won’t stop tickling me, I can’t do anything.”

“For goodness sake, leave her alone, David. Haven’t you anything better to do? What about your homework?”

My mother turns her back on the pair of us, leaving us on the landing and running downstairs because she can hear something boiling over in the kitchen. As soon as she is out of sight, Jill turns to me and sticks her tongue out in a gesture of supremacy at having got her way. This infuriates me. I lose my temper completely, grab her by both wrists and swing her to the top of the stairs. The girl struggles furiously and begins to kick my shins. I yelp and shake her, then push her away from me with all my might. She topples backwards and I watch in horror as she somersaults in slow motion, over and over again, bouncing on the stairs, barging into the banisters as she goes. She lies huddled on the linoleum by the front door, screeching in an unearthly voice. Even as I stand mesmerised on the landing, my mother appears, alarmed at the sudden noise. She runs to Jill, bends over her and tries to quell her hysterical crying, while running her hands quickly over her limbs to see if anything is broken. I descend the stairs in trepidation, white-faced. I hover over my mother and my foetal sister.

“Is she alright, I didn’t mean to…..”

“I don’t know, David. Get out of my way, I need to see. Go and get me a damp flannel.”

I shoot off, only too anxious to get away from the frightening scene. When I return, Jill is sitting up, crying on her mother’s shoulder. When she sees me, she grows angry between her sobs, choking out:

“He’s a monster, as soon as you went he hit me and pushed me down the stairs.” Then she turns full face to me and yells:

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” And she sticks out her tongue at me again.

“Is this true, David? Did you push her?”

“I didn’t mean to, mum, honestly I didn’t….”

“I can’t believe it, David, how could you have done? You might have killed her. Luckily for you she seems unhurt, only bruised and frightened. Go to your room and stay there. And don’t think you’re getting any tea tonight.”

I still hover, trying to protest my innocence or claim some mitigating factor.

“Do as you’re told, David. Don’t try my patience any longer.”

“But….”

“There are no ‘buts’ about it. There can be no excuse for what you did. I’ll come and deal with you later, when I’ve made sure Jill is alright.”

I slink into my room and bury my face in the pillow, shaking with shock. I become cold and wrap myself in the eiderdown, but even then I cannot stop my teeth chattering. Ages later there is a tap on my door.

“David, can you hear me?”

I grunt something indistinctly. My mother takes it as an acknowledgement.

“If you come down and apologise to Jill, I’ll think about getting you something to eat.”

There is a long silence.

“David, did you hear me? Do you understand what I said?”

“Yes.”

I lie there for a long time wrestling with my pride, but refuse to acknowledge that my sister has triumphed. I stay on my bed.

When my father gets in from work, he tries to talk some sense into me, but gets nowhere.

“We just can’t leave him there without food. You’ll have to go to him and talk him down.”

“Let him stew in his own juice. He’s got to face up to what he’s done in his own time. Leave him alone. He’ll come down when he’s hungry enough.”

But I didn’t. My bedroom light stays obstinately on. When I’ve cried myself out, I put another pullover on and get out my homework books. After I’ve done the minimum necessary to pass any tests next day, I turn the light out and crawl miserably into bed. When my mother calls out to me on her way to bed, I pretend to be asleep.

A week later I’m sitting at my desk in class when a boy sticks his head round the door and gives a white envelope to Mr Harris-Ide.

“Maidment!”

I look up in surprise.

“Maidment, you’re to go and see the Headmaster. Now,” he adds as I look startled.
My classmates look up with curiosity and interest. No-one is usually sent for by the Headmaster unless they’re in real trouble. There are one or two smans and a lot of whispering.

“Quiet, all of you. Get on with your work. And you’d better be going, Maidment. Don’t keep the Head waiting.”

Across the empty playground I hurry, my heart pumping. What have I done? I can’t think of anything. People who get called to the Headmaster’s study usually get caned. I break out into a cold sweat. Then I think, perhaps something has come through about my application to Charterhouse. And by the time I reach the main school building I have persuaded myself that this would be the case.

As I tap at the dark-panelled door, all my nervousness floods back. I must have appeared petrified, because the Head looks at me from behind his desk and waves me to a chair.

“Come in, Maidment. Don’t be so anxious. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

I gulp in relief and sit down, bolt upright, still on guard.

“I’m afraid we have some nasty bullying at the school. I’d like to ask you to help me to get to the bottom of it. Will you do that?”

Relief floods over me. At last, someone has found out, things are going to be put right.

“You travel home by train to Hampton Court, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Perhaps you see some incidents of bullying. Do you know a boy called Allen?”

I’m nonplussed. Who is Allen? There is a boy of my age in the other second year class of that name, but I don’t know him very well.

“I think so, sir.”

“Does he travel with you on your train?”

“Not with me, no sir.”

“You’ve never seen him on your train?”

“No. sir.”

“Oh, perhaps you can’t help after all. However, Perry said you travelled with him.”

“Perry, sir?”

“Yes, Perry, in the first year.”

“I know him. He is a friend I know from church. He lives near me.”

“Do you travel home with him?”

“Sometimes, sir.”

“Ah, perhaps you can help after all.”

“Why, what has he done?”

“Nothing, boy. But his parents have written to me complaining that he is being bullied. His clothes are being torn, his books molested. Last week, apparently, his school cap was thrown out of the train window. These things are expensive.”

“Oh.”

“Have you ever seen Perry being bullied?”

“Well sometimes people have a scrap and things get thrown around.”

“Do people pick on Perry?”

“Well, he does tend to get into fights. He asks for it really. He calls us names and things, then we have a bit of an argument.”

“You said, ‘we’.”

I’m confused that I appear to have admitted siding with the bullies. I try to retract, flustered.

“No, I don’t mean…..I mean….”

“Stop a moment, boy, and think. I am not trying to trick you. No-one has accused you of bullying.” The Head smiles at the thought - I am actually smaller than the first former who has made the complaint.

“I am with my friends, sir. They sometimes scrap with Perry.”

“I see. And who are your friends?”

“Miller and Uttley, sir.”

“And they travel with you and Perry on the Hampton Court train?”

“Oh, no sir. Miller goes to Esher. Uttley travels with me.”

“Then who else is with you on your train?”

“Winters and Allen. And Barnes-Fletcher, sir.” I am floundering, searching; anything that will terminate this interview.

“Ah, Allen. You admit he travels with you?”

“I have seen him, sir, but I don’t travel with him very often.”

“And that is Allen in form 2B?”

“Yes, I think so, sir.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, sir, I am sure.” But I wasn’t.

“But you have not seen Allen bullying him?”

“No, I don’t think so, sir.”

“That is all, Maidment. You can go now.”

I scuttle out of the room, flushed and trembling. Have I said too much? Have I betrayed someone who is innocent? The whole conversation seemed weird; I hadn’t known what the Headmaster was talking about. I tackle Perry about it at the first break.

“You chump. Of course it’s not Allen in 2B. I don’t even know him. It’s a fourth former, you know, Allen who lives in the pre-fabs in West Molesey.”

I look blank. I haven’t the remotest idea to whom Perry is referring.

I wait in some trepidation for something to happen. Will I be summoned to the Head’s presence to retract my statement? Will the other Allen accuse me of treachery? Will Perry tell the others of my stupidity?

But the whole incident peters out. Apparently the Headmaster got to the bottom of things through other channels. He thinks I knew nothing or was too frightened to say anything.

Early in the Spring Term, Rodney Marsh is absent for a couple of days. He returns with the customary note, but when he gives it to Mr Harris-Ide, the two of them have a whispered conversation. I don’t think any more about it. As the bell goes for morning break and everyone is putting their books away in their desks, Marsh leans across to me and says:

“Maidment, can you wait a minute. There’s something I want to tell you.”

When the others have trooped out, and we are alone, Marsh, tall and serious, looks me straight between the eyes and says softly:

“Maidment, my mother has died.” Just like that.

I don’t grasp what he has said at first. Then I look at his face, see his glistening eyes and flinch.

“Oh.”

I don’t even say I’m sorry. I don’t know in fact what to say. I am dumbfounded. I struggle, I look everywhere except at the boy’s face. I can’t bear to look. Marsh tries to reassure me.

“It’s alright, you know, we knew…. It was cancer. My father and I ….”

His voice trails away. Of all things as I look back over my life, this is one of the occasions of which I feel most ashamed. I gave him nothing.

I don’t remember if I said anything more. All day I am in shock. I avoid Marsh at lunch time, but I can’t take my eyes off him in class. He looks so normal, head down, scribbling in his rough book.

I want to tell my mother when I get home. Perhaps she’ll give me the right words to say. She might suggest that I invite Marsh to my house, but I don’t think of that. In the end, I say nothing. I put it off until my father should have been home from work, and then, when he does not come, another worry preoccupies my mind. Six o’clock comes and goes; my eyes go from the clock to the empty path. My ears strain for the noise of the bicycle being wheeled down the alleyway, the gate banging shut. My mother tries to reassure me, but she is anxious too, I can sense that. Another half an hour and I begin to sweat and panic. Only last week I heard my father talk to mother about the funeral of a work colleague - only twenty nine he said - who’d ridden his bicycle under a lorry. It’s a coincidence. That, and today, Marsh’s mother. I am being prepared for worse news. I go to the bathroom again. I take my homework out, lay it on the table and stare at it, seeing nothing except the clock, ticking inexorably onwards.

Suddenly, just when I least expect it, I hear the click of the gate and see my father striding up the garden path.

I hear him greet mum in the kitchen, casually remarking:

“Farmsworth was away again. I had to complete his report for tomorrow’s committee.”

My relief is overwhelming. I feel tears pricking at the back of my eyes and have to escape to my bedroom to blow my nose and rub my lids, before I feel able to appear nonchalant.

“Hallo David. Busy with your homework, eh? Had a good day at school?”

“Yes, dad.”