Kiddar's Luck by Jack Common

Author:Jack Common [Jack Common]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780370309
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

GUY FAWKES LIGHTS UP TWO WORLDS

Luckily I had never allowed anything of this religious phase of mine to show on me during school hours. Neither its coming nor its passing could have been noticed there. No doubt there were moments when I endeavoured to put a little extra fervour into the singing of ‘Strong Son of God, Immortal Love’, or ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ with which we alternately began the day, ‘Strong Son’ if wet, ‘Bright and Beautiful’ when it was, but as my voice was not musical enough to register any emotional quality, the effort was lost on one and all. As far as school went I was no different from my pals, not for a long time. Each examination found me outside the first ten, but in the first twenty-five of a class which numbered between fifty and sixty. That was enough to secure a regular move up every six months, but not to call any unwelcome attention to my prowess from teachers or schoolmates. As to the great virtue they gave all the best prizes for, regular-attendance-and-punctuality, it is simplest to say that I was never there when I could find a convincing excuse for not going and when I had to be my arrival was regularly first, second or third last.

There was a school bell which tolled for some five minutes in the mornings, a peculiarly flat despondent sound, not urgent, not very loud, though it carried all over the Avenues, and it always seemed as if it was meant to go on forever. Then all at once, it didn’t. And the tempo it had been upholding, so weary and dutiful, right for the time of day, slid into one long moment. In fact all the motions of the morning, without a metronome now, congealed slightly, so it seemed to me. The silence clung to horses and trams and was especially impeding on my legs. I had to run round the whole eastern face of the brick barracks, past many class-room windows before I got to the playground where the lines of boys had formed up ready for their march into the hall. Far too often when I got to it, the playground was empty. I had to push my way through more of this sluggish morning air, going hard and panting, before I caught up the last of my comrades either on the stairs or, final chance, crossing the hall. Miss that and I was a proclaimed defaulter. After the hymns and ‘Our Father’ when the teacher had time to attend to me, I’d get a belting for being late. This was delivered on the hands with a leather strap and you didn’t want it too early if the day was cold.

The week’s curriculum, I fancy, must have been a bit of a conundrum to all concerned. Why were we learning or not learning these things? Of course, reading, writing, arithmetic have their own sense to them, like sewing, knitting and cooking in

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