20

I returned to school, hoping I’d managed to get away with my Easter adventure, but there was a niggling sense of not-quite-rightness from the very beginning that stank of Reese. He skulked around, more malevolent and cringing with each passing day, and there was something about his Gollum act that struck me as too knowing. But like Reese himself, it was more convenient to ignore. So I did.

We were studying the four forces in physics, and as I pretended to grapple with these concepts, my mind wandered first to Finn, most graceful and mysterious of forces, then to rumour, which is a force in a league all its own.

Rule number seven: All rumours are true.

If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter, and eventually, cease to exist.

The rumours claimed sightings of me in town and at the beach while I was meant to be on holiday with my family.

The interesting thing about these sightings is that they were, in the main, invented. Not that this altered the essential truth that I was with Finn when I was supposed to be in Spain with my parents. Rumour, muddled up with gossip, painted me in the company of an older man (read: dirty old pervert) at various upmarket establishments around town, taking tea or digging into a duck breast with redcurrant sauce at The Ship Hotel while my consort licked his lips and slid his hand helplessly up my thigh.

It was the hackneyed quality of the tale that gave it credence; after all, it was well known that many of our schoolmasters were middle-aged bachelors with a yen for the extramural companionship of younger boys, and many perfectly respectable married gentlemen in town thought back on the sexual peccadilloes of their own schooldays with something closer to nostalgia than unease. Add this to the frustrations and privations of an all-male boarding school, a small town no longer connected to London by a train line, a part of the world in which winters were long and lonely and devoid of more wholesome distractions, and you had the perfect setting for perversion – of truth, at the very least.

The accusations began as whispers, and most were so far off the mark that I didn’t bother to deny them. I might have missed them altogether if it hadn’t been for Reese, reporting back on all the latest stories as if he had nothing to do with bringing them to life. But by Wednesday of that first week, the jeering had emerged from the closet (so to speak) and come to the attention of my housemaster. A summons was duly made and received, and at 2 p.m. the following afternoon, in the break between cadet drill and RE, I trudged over to the Gothic brick gatehouse where Clifton-Mogg kept an office, and knocked (with a forthright, innocent knock) on the door.

‘Come in,’ he called, with that perfect mix of kindness and authority meant to seduce confidences and bring about the collapse of will.

I entered his study and he ignored me for long minutes, another old trick for prolonging the agony (the curiosity, the worry, the guilt). It had the opposite effect on me. As he scribbled notes, my heartbeat slowed, my tendency to babble dried up. I became Finn, steely, resolved.

‘Did you have a pleasant holiday?’ He didn’t look up.

‘Yes, sir. Quite pleasant.’

‘Majorca, was it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Chilly this time of year, wasn’t it?’

How should I know? ‘Not very,’ I said cautiously. ‘Warmer than here, anyway.’

Mr Clifton-Mogg grunted.

My parents had indeed gone to Spain for Easter and enjoyed themselves greatly. I knew this from the letter I received on my return from Finn’s.

‘There is talk,’ he began, looking up at last and speaking slowly, lips pursed with disapproval. ‘There is talk’ – he repeated the words for emphasis – ‘that you were sighted in town during the holiday break.’

There is talk. You were sighted. Despite his many faults, Thomas Thomas had managed to impress upon us the importance of avoiding the passive tense in our spoken and written work. It denoted weakness. This weakness (combined with the fact that Clifton-Mogg had posed no direct question) gave me the confidence to execute a king’s gambit.

I said nothing.

Clifton-Mogg glanced away, a peevish note in his profile – uncertainty, perhaps? ‘Well?’ he said at last. ‘What do you have to say to these accusations?’

Accusations, suddenly?

With the perfect composure of the pathological liar, I looked him straight in the eye, unblinking. ‘I was with my parents, sir. You’re welcome to phone them up and ask.’

He stared at the board as I exposed my queen.

It was a gamble, certainly, but not as real a gamble as you might imagine. With no hard evidence and no confession to go on, Clifton-Mogg was stumped. I knew it and he knew it. He couldn’t simply phone my parents and ask whether I’d really gone with them to Spain during the break; it would amount to a blatant confession that the school had no clue where the boys in its charge spent their time, and furthermore, that it had taken this many weeks to discover the extent of their irresponsibility.

Checkmate.

He sighed again.

‘Very well. Assuming your parents are happy to confirm your whereabouts, we needn’t discuss the matter again.’

But I knew he wouldn’t take up the matter with my parents. I held his gaze, modestly triumphant, and he looked away.

‘Now.’ Here he cleared his throat, as if getting to the real reason for our meeting. ‘Tell me, how are you getting along this term generally?’

I nearly laughed out loud. ‘Fine, sir.’ And then, lowering my voice to an earnest drone, ‘I want to do well.’ My eyes met his, pupils dilated with conviction.

He cleared his throat again. ‘Excellent. We often succeed with boys like you where others have failed. It’s rather a point of pride.’

Ah, the platitudes of a long, uncontroversial career.

‘Good food and brisk exercise of body and mind. Never fails. Right then. Off you go.’ He consulted a large chart in front of him on the desk. ‘RE, is it? Tell Headmaster I kept you.’

I bowed my head, muttered ‘Thank you, sir,’ and scarpered, my feet swift and light with relief. I felt like launching into a wild dance, but instead, practised my impersonation of a schoolboy keen to get back to work, my face set in a mask of humility.

Beneath the mask, I grinned.