Faraday said, and the waterworks increased in force.
That jolted me out of my own misery. I knew what it was to miss your parents, you see, and even I could imagine how infinitely worse it would be if you could never, ever see them again. Or not until after you died and went to heaven, assuming heaven was real, which in those days I still considered to be a sporting possibility.
‘So where do you go in the holidays?’
‘To my guardian’s, in Wales. But this year he’s had to go away. So I was going to stay with the Atkinsons until he comes back.’
This deepened the mystery. ‘Then why aren’t you there now?’
‘It’s because of Hampson Minor. Bloody Hampson.’
‘Yes, you said – he’ll get the five quid because he’s going to sing the anthem, and I suppose he’s the new head of the choir, too.’
Faraday’s bed creaked. ‘It’s not that. He had a postal order from his uncle. Ten bob.’
I whistled softly in the darkness. Not in the same league as the Bishop’s five pounds, but still pretty decent. I wished my aunt would give me ten shillings sometimes.
‘He was swanking about it all the time. The postal order and being head of the choir and the Bishop’s money. He just went on and on and everyone was sucking up to him. He said he was going to buy a big cake from Fowler’s for everyone. I just wanted to kick him. You know what he’s like.’
I only knew Hampson Minor by sight. He was a fat, pink-faced boy with small delicate features and prominent lips. When he sang, he made his lips into a perfect O.
‘He left the postal order on the floor. It must have fallen – it was with his exercise book. So I – I picked it up and put it in my pocket.’
‘You stole it?’
‘No,’ Faraday wailed. ‘I was just going to keep it for a bit, until he found he had lost it, and then give it back. To teach him a lesson. That’s all. Honestly.’
I didn’t know whether he was telling the truth. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.
‘But he told Dr Atkinson it was gone, and Dr Atkinson made us all empty our pockets and open our boxes.’ Faraday paused for a long moment. ‘And they found it.’
I didn’t know what to say. Stealing was a sackable offence at the King’s School.
‘I was going to give it back, I swear it. I didn’t know he’d tell old Atky straight away. The rotten sneak.’
‘What will happen?’ The scale of the offence awed me. ‘Will they chuck you out?’
‘I don’t know,’ Faraday whimpered. ‘I just don’t know. And even if they let me stay, everyone will know. So that’ll be almost as bad. And then there’s Hampson’s brother. I’d be in the senior school.’
I was beginning to take a warped pleasure in having a ringside seat to the tragedy which was unfolding on such a grand scale. Faraday, the golden boy, had lost his singing voice, his five pounds and his pre-eminent role as head choirboy. He was now faced with a hideous pair of alternatives: if he was expelled from school he faced a lifetime of shame and whatever punishment his guardian cared to mete out; if he was allowed to stay, his remaining years at the school would be made a living hell, particularly by Hampson Major, a gorilla of a boy who played second row forward in the First XV, and who had a well-deserved reputation for brutality verging on sadism. He was bad enough as a casual tyrant over anyone smaller than himself. He would be a figure of nightmare if he chose to persecute you seriously.
‘God,’ I said as the full horror of Faraday’s situation hit me. ‘You poor bloody kid.’
He was crying again, softly, continuously, a sort of moaning and sobbing that at last moved me to pity, and even to a desire to help.
‘Look here, Rabbit,’ I said. It was the first time I called him by his nickname. ‘Perhaps it won’t be as bad as you think.’
The crying stopped. I heard Faraday’s ragged breathing.
A sense of power filled me. He believed I might be able to help, and that almost made me believe it too.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘We’ll think of something. I promise.’
For every child, I think, there must be a day when Christmas loses its magic. By ‘magic’ I don’t mean an unquestioning belief in Father Christmas or a foolish attachment to improbable ideas about reindeer and chimneys and so on. Nor does the magic I mean reside in the religious connotations of the day, though of course, for many people, the one cannot be separated from the other and Christmas is always the birthday of Jesus. I envy them.
The magic has more to do with a sense that this is a special day, when nothing is allowed to go wrong. When you are given presents, good food and a licence to enjoy luxuries and activities that lie beyond the reach of most of us for 364 days of the year. When people are kind to each other and there is a sense of holiday.
The illusion is strongest in infancy, and most of us lose it gradually during childhood. But we cling to it, we fool ourselves, as long as possible. In the end there has to come a day when we are forced finally to acknowledge the truth: that Christmas is a day like any other, potentially neither better nor worse, but actually almost always worse because it trails in its wake the ghosts of its lost magic.
For me it was that Christmas at Sacrist’s Lodging: that’s when at last I accepted that a Christmas Day could be as miserable as any other.
The morning began when we went downstairs to find Mr Ratcliffe making tea in the kitchen. On the mat by the back door were the hind legs and tail of a mouse; Mordred had already celebrated Christmas in his own special way.
We wished each other happy Christmas. Mr Ratcliffe was wearing an ancient suit, once a uniform black but now shiny and even green in places, in honour of the day.
He gave us cups of strong, sweet tea, with very little milk in it.
‘I thought we would go to Matins and then the Eucharist afterwards,’ he said. ‘I don’t usually eat before taking communion, if I can avoid it. It seems rude somehow.’
‘What about Christmas dinner, sir?’ I asked in alarm.
‘Mrs Veal will have something for you at lunchtime, I’m sure. Don’t worry about that. I’ll have mine at the Deanery.’ He hesitated, and I guessed that he had remembered the Dean also entertained to lunch those members of the choir who had not left immediately after the morning services. ‘We’ll meet again in the evening, I expect, when you are back from the Veals’.’
Mordred sauntered into the room and picked up the remains of the mouse. He wandered into the hall.
‘I’ll let him outside, shall I?’ Faraday said in a rush.
He dashed after the cat. I heard him fumbling with the front door with clumsy urgency, as though trying to escape.
I suppose that was what we all wanted – Faraday, myself and even, perhaps, poor Mr Ratcliffe: to escape.
There was no snow that Christmas.
It was very cold. The grass around the Cathedral was a hard, sparkling white, and frost clung to the leafless branches of trees and bushes. The flagged paths were treacherous – any moisture had turned to ice overnight.
Mr Ratcliffe strode slowly along, his stick tapping the pavement. ‘Beautiful,’ he said over his shoulder to Faraday and me, trailing behind him. ‘Quite beautiful.’
The College was crowded with groups of people making their way to church. On Christmas morning, the Cathedral had one of its largest congregations of the year, even