The Leopard's Wife by Paul Pickering

Author:Paul Pickering [Pickering, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781847378286
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

FOURTEEN

In those final hours as he fished and waited for his sister and Smiles to return to the boat, St James read another packet of the Englishman’s writings. He had to know more about the murder and the terrible punishment hanging over Smiles. Yet he felt he must puzzle over every word, one page at a time. His sister said to cheat and go straight to the end of a story showed a market thief’s impatience and a lack of education.

My Confession:

Stanley Miles-Harcourt: black book, packet four

Lyman Andrew always reminded me of a cat at school, Dr Kaplan, especially in the way he moved and how his independence was always informed by the prospect of death at the jaws of the pack, or should have been. A couple of weeks after Lyman Andrew stopped the prefect hitting me in the army-corps parade, I agreed to go and time him running. The cinder track at the back of the school was below the terraces of a classical open-air theatre, scooped out by boys during the war with picks and shovels and bare hands and was one of the best in the county. After the murder of David Wace we were forbidden to go there alone. From there you could always see the smouldering rubbish dump, where the third-formers hunted voles, which was also beside the back fence and now strictly out of bounds. That cold morning I remember smelling the smoke and wondering how far the police were in their investigation. I had found a picture of myself and David Wace in my tuck box, taken at the junior school, and could hardly bear to look at it.

Lyman Andrew asked permission from my housemaster, who was a bit puzzled and said that athletics was a warm-weather sport, until Lyman Andrew told him that he was being considered to run for the USA team in the four-forty yards and had to keep himself in practice. The housemaster had not known whether to be impressed by what Lyman Andrew said or be embarrassed by what he might call ‘boasting’. He glared down at his shoes as Lyman Andrew innocently produced a letter from his inside pocket from the United States Olympic Committee.

This made the housemaster breathlessly angry.

‘I wasn’t questioning you, old fellow, no need to pull rank. You can take Miles-Harcourt, by all means. But get him back for classes. He’s a bit of a swot and we need our swots. Sport is necessary but where would England be without its brains? And don’t practise too hard as too much preparation is contrary to the Olympic ideal. We don’t want anyone thinking a master at this school is any sort of professional.’ The housemaster then rushed off, one shoulder held stiffly higher than the other, which always happened when he was annoyed.

Lyman Andrew was open-mouthed.

‘He was joking, right?’ he said to me.

‘No … I’m afraid not. He wasn’t joking at all.’

‘You mean you’re not meant to win?’

‘No. You are … absolutely … It’s …’

‘What then?’

‘You’re not meant to show you … actually enjoy it.

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