What I Was Read online

  ‘You might get lucky, Kipper.’ Gibbon, ever the optimist. ‘Might see deer fucking.’

  I ignored him. ‘Come on then. It’s going to be a lovely sunset.’

  Gibbon erupted with laughter, prancing around the room cooing, ‘A lovely sunset! A lovely sunset!’ while Reese joined in nervously, not entirely sure whose side he was on. In the end, he chose the unambiguously heterosexual majority, as I knew he would. He had his own secrets, did Reese.

  As I left the room, I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head.

  14

  ‘So, what do you know about the Dark Ages?’

  I’d been nervous. About returning to the hut, about seeing Finn. Even remembering our afternoon at the cave made me nervous. The longing to see him did not diminish with the passing days, nor did the feelings sort themselves into tidy strands of information in the way of geography or English grammar. None of what I felt could be explained by what I generally understood about sex. The ceaseless tangle of emotions confused me, forced me to wonder what I was. There was no one to ask.

  But I couldn’t stay away. And so, on a cold afternoon in early February I lay, one leg propped on the bookshelves at the bottom of my narrow bench, the other hanging over the side, asking about the Dark Ages while the fire in the stove crackled and Finn hunched over tiny scraps of feather, metallic foil from cigarette packets, and steel fish hooks, wrapping them securely with cotton to make lures. His cat glared and hissed at me whenever Finn wasn’t looking, and when he chirped to it and stroked it absently, I could swear it sneered.

  Finn answered after the usual pause. ‘What do you know already?’

  I told him my version of the first millennium and he snorted and shook his head in disbelief. ‘How much does your education cost? You could save everyone a fortune by reading a book once in a while.’

  I ignored him, reached out to the cat and received an ugly scratch for my pains. I took a swipe at the beast but it was already comfortably out of reach, grinning back over its shoulder.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I didn’t exactly choose to be sent to the back of beyond to be bullied and buggered and starved.’

  He appraised me. ‘You don’t look starved.’

  I thought of the disgusting sausages filled with gristle and glue, the tasteless suet puddings, the stinking vats of boiled cabbage.

  Finn walked over to the bookcase and pulled out an old-fashioned leather-bound book entitled A Short History of Britain. It smelled strongly of damp and must have had nine hundred pages. I groaned. ‘Really. I don’t need to know all that. Ten pages would be more than enough.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ he said, dropping the huge book in my lap. ‘You’re amazingly ignorant. Especially with all your advantages.’

  ‘Advantages?’

  ‘A proper education is a privilege,’ he said, a touch primly.

  I laughed my best sardonic laugh and Finn looked at me sideways. ‘You’re actually quite proud of having failed so often, aren’t you?’ He turned away and behind his back I pulled a face.

  This line of discourse infuriated me. For one thing, his imaginary version of school life bore no relation to reality, and he resolutely denied all my attempts to impart the truth. He imagined a world of frock coats and good manners, a respect for intellect and the individual, the mature exchange of ideas seasoned with healthy outdoor pursuits. I don’t know how or where he came by this vision (it sounded like something out of ancient Greece to me), but he clung to it in the face of all evidence to the contrary, perhaps charmed by the idea of the social and economic gap between us. He was, after all, a boy who lived in a hut by the sea, while my parents holidayed in France and Spain, employed a cook and a part-time gardener, bought a new car every four years and had the means to purchase for their only son a dubious education that would (at the very least) guarantee entrance to adulthood with an ability to decline Latin verbs with a recognizably expensive accent.

  Finn, in contrast, had nothing. Only a romantic past, floating present, and lack of future, any of which I would have sold my soul to possess.

  With a sigh, I picked up the history book and began to read, of chaos and bloodshed, and gold coins bearing the heads of Kings Offa and Horsa, of cakes and ale and vast feasts of oxen and honey and geese.

  I liked how wild they were and yet how domestic, the extreme possibilities of so much land changing hands with such frequency and violence, and in between, peaceful farmers tending crops and carving fine sewing needles out of bone.

  ‘What about St Oswald?’

  ‘What about him?’ Finn came through, sat down very close to me, took the book from my hands and began flipping pages. ‘There were two Oswalds, actually. Look: “Archbishop of York – served at Ely Cathedral, tenth century.” The other was King of Northumbria, seventh century. Boy warrior, on a mission to spread Christianity and reunite the four kingdoms. He was hacked to death in battle, torn limb from limb in Somerset.’ He found what he was looking for, a black-and-white photograph of the head of a young man, a relief carving in stone. ‘Here. Oswald the King with his raven.’

  I peered at it closely. The boy king was handsome, beardless, dressed in flowing robes. The caption on the picture read Oswald of Northumbria, AD 642. I nodded, struck by the features of the young king, by the strong lines of the profile, the finely wrought mouth. In an instant I knew for certain that the other Oswald, the archbishop, did not – could not possibly – figure in my story.

  I turned back to Finn, met his large dark eyes, and didn’t turn away. When he passed the book back to me his hand was steady and the expression on his face unreadable.

  ‘It’s all in there.’

  I looked at the book, then at Finn. In our dance of friendship he led and I followed. At moments of intimacy it was always he who pulled me close and I who drew breath and trembled. It was always he who pulled away, as well.

  ‘I can’t possibly read all this.’

  He knew everything, of course he did. He knew all about both Oswalds and all about me. I wanted to beg him to drag one of the painted chairs in from the kitchen, to sit down and tell me everything he knew about history. I wanted to hear him speak softly, to say with fond contempt that I understood nothing, to protest that he’d have to start from the beginning, that it could take all night to make me understand. I wanted him to lean in towards me. I wanted to feel the warmth of his skin, breathe the warm salt smell of him.

  ‘It’ll take hours to get through.’

  That infernal half-smile.

  ‘Then you’d better get started,’ he said, and left the room.

  15

  One of the last acts of the dying Roman Empire was to build a series of forts along the east coast of Britain to hold off the barbarian hordes. The forts, though mighty, didn’t work as planned, and Germanic and Viking tribes soon overran the land.

  The fort just up the coast from St Oswald’s ended its life underwater in a great fourteenth-century storm during which an entire port and half a mile of coastal farmland disappeared under the sea, along with most of the town’s inhabitants, its famous churches, and two hundred head of cattle. I had read in the local paper about unsuccessful attempts to explore the site. Underwater visibility in the area was always poor, and when it wasn’t poor, it was abysmal. Even on the clearest day, a diver fitted with a lamp would be unable to read his own compass.

  In Finn’s history book, I found a footnote referring to an eighth-century monastery built within the walls of the fort, consecrated by Oswald the King. As I read, I experienced a genuine thrill as the scraps of history came together. Despite the fact that everything written so far had located him primarily in Northumberland near the borders of Scotland, here was written evidence locating Oswald on our coast. He must have travelled south to cement ties with the lower kingdoms of Wessex and East Anglia, establishing a monastery, and causing a huge heavy stone to be carved with a likeness and transported south from Holy Island to commemorate the event.

&nb
sp; The face on the stele disturbed me. The boy king had been a great warrior, had died a hideous and dramatic death. He was larger than life, a gigantic presence from the past. But thirteen hundred years later he still looked like someone I knew, or would like to have known.

  ‘Let’s explore the fort.’

  Finn sat opposite me, his brow furrowed with concentration as he wrapped his lure slowly and methodically with fine brown string. He didn’t change expression and I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.

  When finally he looked up, he said, ‘Can you empty the traps today?’

  I sighed. The short answer was no, but honour required me to act. So I went to fetch the kayak. And in my thoroughly non-sectarian way, I prayed to whichever of the Oswalds happened to be listening.

  Dear saint, dear saint, dear saint. Please St Oswald, let me manage this task. Please O Powerful One, deliver me from capsizing, from humiliation and death by drowning. If there is such a thing as a bloody buggering saint, be one and watch over me now. Amen.

  If I’d been a better Christian I might have asked for a miracle. Instead, I gritted my teeth and half-carried, half-dragged the kayak down to the water’s edge, stepped into it carefully and, legs extended, settled myself in the cockpit as I’d watched Finn do. My weight instantly displaced the few inches of water underneath us, beaching the boat firmly against sand and stones. Too late, I remembered the paddle and nearly flipped over in an attempt to retrieve it from the beach. I hoped Finn couldn’t hear the horrible scraping noise the boat made as I jerked and shoved it out of the shallows.

  Please God.

  I hit the small choppy waves side-on – my next mistake – and took on water trying to nose out across them at a forty-five degree angle the way I’d seen Finn do. It was not gratifying to learn how much harder it was than it looked. I struggled to keep the boat steady, but my stability was compromised by sloshing and inadequate paddle rotation. I managed one good strong stroke on the left but inevitably followed up with a completely ineffective slice on the right.

  Out of the corner of one eye I could see that Finn had descended to the edge of the water to watch my performance. By now I was drenched in sweat as well. If I capsized in this sea, I was finished. Drowning would be the best possible outcome, for my pride at least.

  A few effective strokes managed to steady the little boat and I aimed for one of the buoys, steering as straight a path as possible but aware nonetheless of my zigzag wake. The waves rocked but didn’t tip me over, and I remembered to twist the paddle with every stroke.

  I can do this.

  I could do it. I could, that is, until I got within two or three feet of the red buoy, which floated above the trap. The current kept pushing me away so it took four different attempts at an approach before I managed to run over the damn thing, and in a death-defying turn based on Russian Cossack horseriders I’d seen in a newsreel, I reached under the kayak to grab the rope. Panting with exertion and fear, I laid the paddle flat in front of me across the deck, but instead of affording greater stability it slipped sideways with every swell, catching the little white crests of waves and flipping a bucket of seawater into my already half-submerged cockpit.

  I was beginning to feel beleaguered.

  Clinging to the buoy for dear life, I tried not to think of Finn (graceful and calm) as the sea spun me around and tried to wrench my arms from their sockets. Hand over hand, slowly, agonizingly, I hauled the rope up until the heavy wooden trap hung just below the surface. It teemed with crabs all piled together round the fish-head bait, groping and plucking at it with their heavy claws as I struggled to hang on to the canvas bag and trip the latch on the trap. Eventually, triumphantly, I did it – tipping a dozen of the lucky bastards back into the sea. Perhaps a giant crab would rise up on some future dark and stormy night and grant me three wishes.

  The few that were left I picked up gingerly. They were too big to lift the way Finn had taught me with sand crabs, so I grabbed them wherever I could and screamed quietly when they latched, with surprising force, on to my fingers. Eventually I managed to shove a few into the sack, secure the opening, and kick the whole thing deep up under the bow. I didn’t want it or its fiendish contents touching any part of my anatomy.

  One down; four to go. The wind off the beach had picked up and I suddenly felt the futility of the exercise. Forget the rest of the traps. I’d be lucky to get myself, the boat, and my few thrashing passengers back alive.

  And so I headed in, too tired to worry about the correct way to paddle a tiny boat in a dangerous sea; my every fibre straining to remain upright and alive. Finn shouted orders from the shore but eventually collapsed in mock-despair on the beach, head in his hands, unable to observe further calamity. The wind tried to prevent my approach, but the tide was coming in, and once I caught the waves, they carried me (gracelessly, side-on) towards the beach. Scraping bottom once more, I scrambled out, catching my foot under the seat to ensure the final humiliation: me, face down in three inches of water, and the kayak (specially built for stability and easy handling in rough waters) swamped. Finn looked simultaneously amused and appalled and I wondered if I were flattering his prowess by playing the clown. Surely I couldn’t be this clumsy.

  ‘Go and dry off,’ he said, one eyebrow raised, and I trotted off in disgrace while he pulled the boat up on to the beach, tipped it on its side to let the water run out, and set it afloat once more.

  Wrapped in a blanket (how many times had I found myself in this position?), I squinted through the window of the hut and watched from afar as he emptied and rebaited the remaining traps. He swung the kayak a hundred-and-eighty degrees with a quick dip of the paddle and if there was a wind and a current to drag and moan and toss him off course, he seemed oblivious.

  So there he was, my boy-king, out and back in half an hour with a good haul of nearly three-dozen crabs. Most of them were destined for the local fish restaurant, where they would be boiled alive and pulled limb from limb by an unremarkable class of diners. We ate a whole crab each that night, the shells crushed and the bodies eviscerated by the warrior in all his cold-blooded splendour. The pinky-white meat we sucked out of each claw was sweet and oily and as fresh as the sea.

  Back at school it was shepherd’s pie: lumpy mash, tinned tomatoes and cheap mince swimming in orangey fat.

  When we had finished eating, Finn wiped his face and hands on a tea towel and sat back as I collected my belongings in preparation for the trek back to school.

  ‘I think,’ he said, in the manner of a pronouncement, providing an answer to the question I had long ago forgotten asking, ‘I think we should explore the fort.’

  16

  A group of students remained behind at St Oswald’s during the break between Lent and summer terms to pursue areas of excellence (swimming, choir, chemistry) – although this was generally a cover-up for those boys whose parents lived abroad, or holidayed without them, or simply couldn’t be bothered to have them at home. In the spirit of entrepreneurship, I forged a letter from Clifton-Mogg informing my parents that I would be staying at school during the break, and another to Clifton-Mogg from my parents with permission to return home by train. I had something of a talent for forgery and wondered if I’d found my calling at last.

  The fortnight preceding the break was nerve-wracking, but I needn’t have worried. Neither the school nor my parents noticed anything suspicious and I felt wonderfully smug at the successful planning of my enterprise.

  ‘Parents not here yet, Kipper? Must have forgotten you,’ Gibbon sneered. ‘Wish I could stay and keep you company. But, bad luck. South of France again.’

  ‘Father on the run from the revenue?’ I didn’t bother looking up.

  He dropped a used condom on my textbook. ‘A going-away present. Broke it in for you.’ Across the room Barrett howled with mirth. ‘At least you and Reese will have each other for company. You have had each other, haven’t you?’

  I sighed. Reese had been signed off to spend the holiday with an
elderly aunt, but wouldn’t be leaving till Monday. He was the perpetual fly in the perpetual ointment, was Reese.

  So the last Friday of term, while most of the other students signed out to travel to Spain or Cornwall or France with their loving families, I packed my bag while Reese buzzed about.

  ‘Where are you going?’ He hovered, suspicious.

  ‘Spain. I told you.’

  ‘Where are your parents then?’

  ‘I’m meeting them. Taking the train.’ I continued to pack. He continued to hover.

  ‘Could I meet your friend now? You promised.’

  ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘I’ll follow you again.’

  Again? That was it. I swung at him, catching him in the stomach. To my horror, he folded instantly and began to sob, and I felt tired and fed up and wished vaguely that I hadn’t hit him.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Reese.’ I helped him up but he shook my hand off his arm with surprising violence. ‘Look, I’m sorry I hit you. Stop crying for Christ’s sake.’

  I sat, embarrassed and unhappy, as he struggled to control his (embarrassed, unhappy) sobs. When at last his breathing calmed, I offered him water but he wouldn’t take it, wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t even look at me, and so finally I picked up my bag and left. He just wasn’t that important.

  He realized this, naturally, with the perfect instinct a dog has for rejection. And just as naturally, he despised me for it almost as much as he despised himself.

  I walked through the deserted school and caught the bus into town, where I’d arranged to meet Finn, but when I arrived at the market a few minutes early, he was nowhere to be seen. His menacing boss-lady fixed me with her beady eye and called me over.

  ‘Your friend will be back in a minute.’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  For about ten minutes we sat in uncomfortable silence. At least I was uncomfortable; she looked as imperturbable as ever.