Pack My Bag by Henry Green

Author:Henry Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811226530
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2016-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

AFTER my brother left my horizon was bounded by the two boys who were our leaders because they played football for the house in spite of being so young. One was lazy and good-looking, different even when he did not wear his cap, his colours as we called it; the other was fairheaded and big, a waspish nature, capricious in his moods. He could not be trusted when he pretended to despise the cult of games and was in those days essentially a feminine character, the reverse of what he seemed. We revolved around these two suns and kept quite successfully out of trouble with the prefects.

As time went on the set we made began to break up. Once started this movement was gradual but painful so far as I was concerned. One or two became sixteen years of age, they were beginning to be old gentlemen, they would be leaving after two or three more years. They began to make friends outside the house and accidentally enough no doubt, although it was to haunt me for some time to come, they got in with the successful in some instances or suddenly developed skill at a game like fives.

Fives courts are three sided, built of stone, plain high walls open to the sky and on the left wall what is known as a pepperbox which is a low projection into the court up to one’s shoulder, topped by an ecclesiastical moulding. The game was first played so they say at Eton when boys knocked about with a ball between two buttresses on the outside of the School Chapel. You wear padded gloves on each hand and hit the ball with these keeping a loose wrist. There is the service which is guileless, a fierce return of service crack crack crack quick as a rattle round the three sides of the court and then the rally. When four people play the game there are shouts of “mine.”

Our courts were built in a long row back to back and when my hour’s exercise was done I used to drift along them. More and more often my friends played with strangers in friendly games. Each house had three or four courts allotted to it but they would play away from our own. I had not even heard they intended playing and this showed how out of their lives I could be that I did not share their plans. I did not like to stop to watch for fear they might think I was trying to get to know the others. When I saw them that evening in the house I would say meaningly “I saw you playing fives today” and as they could see nothing odd in this they would hardly bother to answer. I thought they were evasive and the next time in the School Shop, which was by the fives courts, I would stand by the door to see if any of them were with their new friends. If they were then I would go away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.