no doubt. They wait for no man, do they?’
I followed him into the room and stared about me. I dare say I looked a little forlorn.
‘You could read a book, I suppose,’ he suggested. ‘That’s what I generally do. Or perhaps you would like to unpack. You mustn’t mind me – just as you please.’
I was standing near the chair on which Mordred lay. The first I knew of this was when I felt an acute pain in the back of my left hand. I cried out. When I looked down, the cat had folded its forelegs and was staring up at me with amber eyes, flecked with green. There were two spots of blood on my hand. I sucked them away.
‘Mordred!’ Mr Ratcliffe said. ‘I do apologize.’
Freedom is an unsatisfactory thing. I had longed for the end of term, to the end of the chafing restrictions of school. But when I had freedom, I did not know what to do with it.
Mr Ratcliffe set no boundaries whatsoever on my conduct. In this he was perhaps wiser than I realized at the time. But he made it clear – wordlessly, and with the utmost courtesy – that he and Mordred had their own lives, their own routines, and that he did not wish me to disturb them if at all possible.
On that first day, I went into the town during the afternoon. During term time, we boys were not allowed to leave a College except when specifically authorized – to walk to the playing field, for example, or to visit the home of a dayboy, or to go to one of the few shops that the school authorities had licensed us to patronize. We were allowed to go shopping only on Saturday afternoons, and only in pairs.
So – to ramble the streets at will on Christmas Eve, to go into shops on a whim: it should have been glorious. Instead it was cold and boring. The hurrying people making last-minute purchases emphasized my own isolation. Everywhere I looked there were signs of excitement, of anticipation, of secular pleasures to come. I had a strong suspicion that Mr Ratcliffe would not celebrate Christmas at all, except perhaps by going to church more often than usual.
I tried to buy a packet of cigarettes in a tobacconist’s, but the man knew I was at the King’s School by my cap and refused to serve me. I had a cup of tea and an iced bun in a café, where mothers and daughters stared at me with, I thought, both curiosity and pity.
In the end, there was nothing for it but to go back to the College, to Mr Ratcliffe’s. At the Sacrist’s Lodging, his door was unlocked. I hung up my coat and cap and went into the sitting room.
Mr Ratcliffe wasn’t there. But a boy was sitting in Mordred’s chair, with Mordred on his lap. He had a long thin head, and his ears stood out from his skull. His front teeth were prominent and slightly crooked.
The cat was purring. They both looked at me.
‘Hello,’ said the boy. ‘I’m Faraday.’
That was the start of my acquaintance with Faraday. It’s strange that such a brief relationship should have had such a profound effect on both of us. He was very thin – all skin and bone – but there was nothing remarkable in that. The school food was appalling and few of us grew fat on it. Some people called him ‘Rabbit’ because of his teeth.
The front door opened. Mr Ratcliffe came into the house. ‘Ah – there you are. I see you’ve met Faraday. But perhaps you two are already friends?’
I shook my head. Faraday continued stroking the cat.
‘As you see, he has already established a friendship with Mordred. How long it will last is another matter.’ Mr Ratcliffe sat down and began to ream his pipe. ‘Mrs Thing is making up the other bed.’
‘He’s staying here?’ I said. ‘But—’
‘I’m not in the choir any more,’ Faraday interrupted. ‘That’s why I’m here.’
I noticed two things: that Faraday’s face had gone very red, and that his voice started on a high pitch but descended rapidly into a croak.
‘Yes,’ Mr Ratcliffe said, tapping his pipe on the hearth to remove the last of the dottle. ‘Poor chap. Faraday’s voice has broken. Pity it should happen just before Christmas, but there it is. Dr Atkinson decided it would be better not to take a chance: so here he is.’
Even then I knew there must be more to it than this. The brisk jollity of Mr Ratcliffe’s voice told me that, and so did Faraday’s face. Even if Faraday’s voice had reached the point where it could not be trusted, they could have let him stay with them, let him walk with the choir on Christmas morning with his badge of honour around his neck.
Faraday looked up. ‘They chucked me out,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair.’
At the time I pitied only myself. Now I realize that all of us in that house deserved pity for one reason or another.
Faraday’s voice had betrayed him. His greatest ally had become the traitor within. He had lost not just his place in the choir but also his sense of who he was. Mr Ratcliffe must have loathed the necessity to share his house with two boys, disturbing his quiet routines and upsetting his cat. It didn’t occur to me until much later that he was probably very poor. He must have received some money from the school for housing us. Perhaps he had felt in no position to refuse. After all, he was old and alone; he lived a grace-and-favour life in a grace-and-favour house.
Faraday and I went to the verger’s house at six in the evening, where Mrs Veal gave us Welsh rarebit, blancmange and a glass of milk. We ate in the Veals’ parlour, a stiff little room smelling of polish and soot. On the mantelpiece was a mynah bird, stuffed and attached to a twig, encased in a glass dome.
On that occasion we saw only Mrs Veal, apart from near the end of the meal when Mr Veal came in from the Cathedral, still in his verger’s cassock; he wished us good evening in a gruff voice and opened the door of a wall cupboard. I glimpsed two rows of hooks within, holding keys of various sizes.
‘Enjoy your supper,’ he told us, and went into the kitchen, where we heard him talking to his wife.
Faraday rose from his chair, crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door.
‘Dozens of keys,’ he whispered. ‘And all with labels. It’s the keys for everywhere.’
I pretended not to be interested. ‘Sit down,’ I said. ‘Or he’ll catch you.’
That night I heard Faraday crying.
I remember in my first term at school I would lie in bed, listening for other boys crying and stuffing my handkerchief in my own mouth in an attempt to muffle my tears. There were about twenty of us huddled under thin blankets in a high-ceilinged dormitory, the windows wide open winter or summer. Sometimes one of the older boys would round on one of the weeping children.
‘Bloody blubber,’ he would whisper, and the rest of us would repeat the words over and over again, like an incantation, lest we be accused of blubbing as well. Little savages.
But that had been years ago. I wasn’t a kid any more and nor was Faraday.
‘Faraday?’ I murmured.
There was instant silence.
‘Are you crying?’
‘I’ve got a cold.’
It was the usual excuse, transparently false.
‘What is it?’ I said. And waited.
‘Everything. Bloody everything.’
We lay there without speaking. The room was not quite dark – the curtains were thin and the light from a High Street lamp leaked into the room.
‘But it’s my bloody voice really,’ he went on. ‘Everything would have been all right if it hadn’t been for that.’
‘That’s