When they entered the hut Peter Nichols crossed the floor to talk to a group of uniformed boys at the back of the room. Some of the boys Alexander recognised from school, but none of them took any notice of him or John. All were behaving like Peter Nichols, as if to make it clear that this place was governed by rules that superseded mere friendship. One boy even shook hands with Peter and folded his arms across his chest to listen to him, like a middle-aged man at a business meeting.
‘Grim,’ John commented. ‘This is very grim. Not what I expected, I’ll admit.’ His doleful gaze moved down the rows of pennants and flags that were pinned to the rafters. At the end of the hall, under a large photograph of the king, one of the senior scouts was energetically buffing his shoes with a duster. ‘We’ve come to a Nuremberg rally, mate,’ said John.
The scout master, Mr Gardiner, introduced himself to them. His shorts were as wide as a skirt and his whiskerless white skin was as delicate as Mrs Beckwith’s. ‘Peter told me about you,’ he said, looking at them as though they were items in an auction room. ‘So what has kindled your interest in scouting?’ he asked, with a whimsical lilt to his voice.
‘All the things that Peter has told us, sir,’ John replied. ‘Making ourselves better members of society, helping each other, that kind of thing.’
Mr Gardiner made a concurring squint. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s about. And you think it’s the kind of thing for you, do you?’
‘We think so, sir,’ said John.
‘Jolly good. Jolly good,’ said Mr Gardiner, and he checked the time on his wristwatch. ‘You two can join Peewit patrol for now. Peter will show you what to do.’
‘Peewit patrol, eh?’ John remarked to Peter Nichols once Mr Gardiner had left them.
‘Yes. That’s my patrol,’ Peter Nichols replied.
‘That’s nice.’
‘What’s nice?’
‘Peewit patrol.’
‘What do you mean, it’s nice?’
‘It’s a nice name.’
‘It’s not meant to be nice,’ said Peter Nichols primly.
‘No, but it’s nice anyway. Nice sound to it. Peter’s Peewit patrol.’ John scowled at the floorboards and then at Alexander. ‘But what’s a peewit when it’s at home?’
‘Search me,’ said Alexander.
‘Another name for the lapwing,’ Peter Nichols interrupted.
‘Lapwing?’
‘A type of bird, obviously. Now get in line. Stand like me,’ he told them, sliding his left foot away from his right and stiffening his shoulders.
Mr Gardiner positioned himself proudly in front of the king and locked his hands in the small of his back. A thin, tall boy with a very narrow head took his place beside Mr Gardiner; with a hand placed over his heart he recited an oath, accompanied by a mumbling from the two parallel ranks of scouts.
‘Jesus,’ John groaned.
‘It’s not going well,’ Alexander agreed, though he was intrigued and amused by the proceedings. The appearance of the skinny scout, like a small boy made big by stretching, seemed to Alexander wholly appropriate to this comical ritual.
‘Sorry, Al,’ John murmured.
‘Quiet!’ ordered Mr Gardiner, so ferociously that both John and Alexander blushed. The skinny scout was saluting the picture of the king with a rake-like hand.
‘When’s the football, Pete?’ John enquired as the two ranks broke up, but Peter Nichols, drawing back the bolt on a black tin chest, ignored him.
‘A few basics,’ said Peter Nichols. ‘What’s this?’ he asked, letting a bolt of cloth drop open from his outstretched hands.
‘The Union Jack,’ Alexander replied.
‘Wrong. It’s the Union Flag. The Union Jack is flown from a ship. On land it’s the Union Flag.’
‘What’s the difference?’ asked John.
‘I told you the difference. The Union Jack is flown from a ship. On land it’s the Union Flag.’
‘But it’s the same flag?’
‘Yes. But it’s wrong to call this the Union Jack, and there’s a right and a wrong way to fly it.’ Peter Nichols demonstrated the right way, and then they studied a chart of national flags and signalling flags, and then the skinny scout stood by the door to send semaphore messages to Mr Gardiner, who flapped his two small flags in reply, from in front of the king.
‘SOS!’ Mr Gardiner cried, and his rigid arms flew up and down in a sequence of electrocuted spasms. ‘Once again!’ cried Mr Gardiner, and the flags went up and down with a cracking sound.
‘Why do they need the flags when they can holler at each other?’ John asked Peter Nichols.
‘That wouldn’t do any good, would it?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s obvious.’
‘Not to me.’
‘You couldn’t be heard in a storm, could you? It’s obvious,’ said Peter Nichols, with a contemptuous look. ‘Use your head.’
‘Ah,’ said John, relieved to have at last been given access to understanding. ‘This’ll be handy, I’m sure. One day. Lost in a storm on the Thames, miles from dry land.’
‘If you’re going to be flippant, Halloran,’ said Peter Nichols angrily, ‘there’s little point in your being here.’
‘Quite true, mein kapitan,’ John replied, but he and Alexander did return the following week and for several weeks after that. Under the tutelage of Peter Nichols they learned how to make a fire without matches, clean their teeth without a toothbrush, identify badger tracks and the tracks of foxes, otters, goats and sheep. They learned never to shelter under an oak tree in a thunderstorm, because the rainwater coursing through the grooved bark would conduct the lethal lightning bolt. They were required to memorise nonsense syllables that were said to represent the songs of birds they would never find in London. Doggedly Peter Nichols tied and untied knots of pointless complexity, until Alexander could form them unaided.
By then it required effort for John Halloran to dissemble his discontent. ‘Only deer we’re going to see are in the zoo,’ he grumbled, as Peter Nichols, his hand obscuring the captions, held up a page of hoofprints. ‘What about doing makes of cars instead?’ he suggested, when presented with the silhouettes of various wings. ‘Any chance of football, Pete?’ he would ask at some point in every evening, and ‘Not until you’ve got this right,’ became Peter Nichols’ customary reply. But only once did they go out to the yard for a game, and that was for no more than ten minutes, and then one evening Alexander called at John Halloran’s house and was told that he would have to go on his own.
‘Kicked out before I could walk out,’ John explained. ‘Himmler put in a call to the ma. It’ll be your turn next if you don’t put your name on the dotted line. Why don’t you tell them to stuff it?’
‘I think I will,’ said Alexander. ‘Soon.’
‘It’s so boring,’ said John. ‘Making a bivouac out of lettuce leaves and all that.’
Alexander did soon leave, but not because he was bored by the peculiar skills he was being taught. He was never bored, though he could rarely think of any use for what he was learning. He enjoyed making cross-sections from contoured maps of London, plotting the altitudes on a graph and bringing out the shape of the land beneath the houses and roads of his neighbourhood. There was pleasure in becoming able to shorten a length of rope with a sheepshank without looking at what his hands were