the field. They were screaming at him to pass it. If he heard them, he didn’t appear to understand. Hunter was running alongside him. ‘Here, here! Pass it!’ And then Christopher stopped dead in his tracks and turned to face the pack of converging red shirts.
Toby expected, and everyone expected, that he would just throw the ball in the air or drop it. He did neither. Instead he tucked the ball under his arm and ran at them. He sliced his way through them, going like the wind for the corner flag. When the cover came across to tackle him he simply bounced off his outside foot and wrong-footed them all, including Porter who was left floundering by the touch-line. Christopher touched the ball down between the posts and stood wiping the mud off his hands. There was no whistle. Pricey was so stunned he had forgotten to blow it. The boys stood gaping and silent except for Toby who ran up and clapped him on the shoulder. He felt suddenly very proud of Christopher and very fond too. ‘Well done!’ he said, picking up the ball. He noticed that Christopher was hardly breathing. He’d just run fifty yards and he was hardly breathing.
In the communal bath afterwards Toby and Christopher sat side by side, chest deep in hot brown water, scrubbing the mud off their knees. The bath was the size of a small swimming-pool. From the other end Porter was glaring at them. ‘Hey you! New bug!’ The bath fell silent.
Christopher was splashing water over his face. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. I was watching you. You never tackled, not once. Anyone can run.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Christopher, stepping out of the bath and picking up his towel.
‘Bit of a coward then, are you?’ Porter had his blood up. Toby knew how it would end. He got out too and tried to lead Christopher away. But Christopher would not leave.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not that. I just don’t want to tackle, that’s all. There’s no point in hurting someone, not if you don’t have to. Doesn’t help.’
‘Doesn’t help what?’ Porter was out of the bath now and advancing towards Christopher, flicking his towel at him.
‘Leave him be,’ said Toby, surprised at his sudden surge of courage, ‘he hasn’t done anything.’
Hunter tried to restrain Porter from behind but Porter shook him off. They were nose to nose now, Runcy egging Porter on. ‘Fight! Fight!’ The cry went up from all around the changing-rooms and the wash-room filled with boys, silent with eager anticipation. Christopher stood, his towel around his waist and looked back at Porter, unflinching.
‘It’s always the same with your kind,’ Porter sneered. ‘You’re an oik, aren’t you?’ and he pushed Christopher in the chest. ‘Come from an oik’s school, didn’t you?’
‘Using force is a sign of weakness,’ Christopher replied coolly. ‘Think about it. Just because you knock someone down, doesn’t make you right, does it? You can hit me if you like. Whatever you do I won’t hit you back, so there really isn’t any point in starting anything, is there?’ And he walked away.
Porter blurted a few words of vicious invective, stabbing his finger at the departing Christopher. ‘Next time, oik!’ he bellowed. ‘Just you wait. Next time!’
Toby followed Christopher out. ‘Jesus,’ Toby said, whistling through his teeth. ‘You got lucky.’
Christopher stopped suddenly and turned on him. ‘Please don’t blaspheme,’ he said quietly. ‘And understand this, Toby, with me nothing is lucky, nothing is unlucky. Everything is meant.’
Each day at school was a ritual of meals and lessons and games and more lessons and more meals and prep and bed. Toby dreaded them all. But of all of them Tuesday was the day Toby dreaded most. And he wasn’t alone. The Tuesday run was compulsory, like most things at Redlands, unless you were off-games. Matron’s surgery was always unusually busy on Tuesday mornings. It took place rain or shine, snow, ice or fog. It was three miles up around the village running the gauntlet of the village boys, the ‘oiks’ as they called them, dodging their insults and sometimes their stones. It took you past the village school, past Mr Woolland’s farm and back through the school park. You weren’t allowed to stop, even on the hills – there was always a master about to ensure that. Anyone caught trying to take a shortcut had to repeat the whole run escorted by a master on a bike. But much as Toby hated the pain in his legs and the stitch in his stomach, this term he had something to look forward to, something to take his mind off it. There was always a chance that he might catch a glimpse of Wanda in her garden. If she was there she would wave to him and he would wave back. It was a moment worth any amount of suffering.
Sunday was the only day Toby really looked forward to. There would be no lessons to survive and no prep he couldn’t do. There was chapel in the morning, of course, but Toby sang in the choir and liked the hymns and the anthems and wearing a surplice. It made him feel good. In chapel you could think your own thoughts and be alone, even with everyone sitting around you. There was letter writing after that and then lunch – Sunday roast, with apple or rhubarb crumble afterwards, and custard with lots of brown sugar. But best of all was the long afternoon in the park below the school. The boys shared it with Mr Woolland’s cows and sheep. There were rabbits and slow-worms and even the occasional roedeer. It was their paradise. There’d be blackberries to plunder, forests of oak and elm to explore, trees to climb and conkers to collect. In the evening there’d be a film in the hall, cartoons, Tom and Jerry or Popeye, followed by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Then storytime with Matron or Miss Whitland in the dormitory and then sleep. The only trouble with Sundays was that they ended and they were followed by Mondays. But they came round again, so Toby always had something to look forward to.
Two Sundays into the term and Christopher had volunteered for the choir. Toby found himself sitting next to him in the choir-stalls, not by arrangement. They just liked being together, content if silent, in each other’s company. Christopher seemed to know all the hymns and followed the service avidly in his prayer book. He prayed properly – with his eyes closed, Toby noticed – as if he was really praying. Toby envied him that. He could never finish a prayer without his mind wandering off long before the Amen.
Toby’s letter home that Sunday was typical. You had to write one side at least neatly, and have it read by the master-on-duty, Pricey it was this Sunday. Toby wrote it in large handwriting, you covered the paper more quickly that way. He could never remember what he’d written the week before. His mother often said he told them the same news again and again.
‘Dear Mum and Dad and Charley and Gran, I am well. How are you? I am in Four A this term and my desk is near the window. I am in The Pit and a new boy called Christopher is next to me. Matron says can I have cod-liver oil and malt again? So can I? And can you send me more name-tapes she says. And Mr Cramer says I must have extra maths again, so can I? I played rugby yesterday and scored a try. That’s four in all I’ve scored this term so far. Hunter says that maybe I’ll be in the First Fifteen. I hope so, but there’s another boy and he’s very good so I probably won’t. I hope Gran is better and that there’s no more greenfly on Dad’s roses. I hope Charley’s been good. I’ve eaten all my tuck-box biscuits so could you send me some more? Squashed fly are my best. I’ve got a new friend, he’s called Christopher. He’s the one that sleeps next to me in The Pit. Lots of love. Toby’
The letter passed Pricey’s inspection and he was free. That afternoon found him showing Christopher the park. Dressed in regulation blue boilersuits and wellies he took Christopher through the spinney, down Woody Hill to the river that ran along the bottom of the park. From there you could look back and just see the chimneys and castellated walls of the school and the bell tower with the weather-vane stuck pointing North. Turn around and on the other side of the river, up across three fields and on the far side of a heart-shaped wood – Innocents’ Copse they called it – there was the village. It was just a few houses, a pub, a church and a chapel.
‘That’s Ickham,’ Toby said. ‘You see the grey-roofed farmhouse below the church? That’s Mrs Woolland’s house and Wanda’s.’ He hadn’t meant to mention her – it had just slipped out.
‘Wanda?’ said