God's Sparrows. Philip Child
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before time had any particular meaning. Sometimes when there was a match with another school, there would be a short report in the paper. “For St. Horatius, Thatcher Minor scored forty-two runs. Thatcher Major also did well.” The chink of a ball well hit, the stately march of flannelled figures after an over, the thrill of seeing the bails fly after a well-pitched ball, the fearful delight of stalking out from the pavilion under all eyes to take the first ball; these things one remembered after years when one told oneself, “Anyway, I had a jolly happy childhood.”
Once Dan learnt his new world, he took it pretty much for granted. He learnt the different sizes and sorts of human nature. There were amiable scamps, like Geoffrey Tripp. There were boys who were clever and unpopular, like Flint, and boys who were both clever and popular, like Alastair; there were boys who got bullied and boys who bullied; there were those masters you could rag and those you couldn’t. These were not matters for speculation, they were simply facts.
Alastair, easily the leader in all he attempted, was sought by everyone. But with one exception, Dan chose his friends rather than they him. The exception was his cousin Quentin Thatcher.
One day Jiffy Tripp greeted him in the hall with the news that there was a new boy in the school, a boarder.
“I know him,” said Dan, “he’s my cousin.”
“Well, if you ask me, he’s a bit of an ass. Last night during study Mandover asked him if he could translate. He said he could and — listen Granny! — he spouted the whole passage, quantities and all. Then he told Mandover he’d been taught to pronounce Latin as the Romans pronounced it, not the English.”
Dan grinned. “And what did Cut-to-slips say?”
“Stared at him for a minute — you know, as if he were a laboratory specimen not well pickled, and said that German methods of scholarship were rapidly making it impossible for a gentleman to quote Latin at all.… Come on! The fellows are going to rag him.”
One of the doors in the great hall led into a corridor opening into what had once been a scullery. Now it was lined with handwash basins, and it was a polite fiction that the boys washed their hands and faces before going home from school. This room was sometimes put to more clandestine uses, and at the present moment it and the corridor leading to it were crammed with boys, their backs turned to Dan and Tripp.
A tall, dark boy with a fiery, contemptuous expression faced the jeering ring of boys.
“What’s your name?”
“What do you want to know for?”
“Well, you don’t want us to call you Grubby or Hatpin or Stinkfish, do you?”
“My name’s Thatcher.”
“An honourable name! Alastair, Granny, where are you? Here’s your long lost uncle from Patagonia. I bet you’re a nigger, Thatcher, aren’t you? What’s your full name?”
“George Pilgrim Thatcher.”
“Is your name Pilgrim!”
“Yes, it is — if it’s any of your business!”
It seemed too good to be true. Several boys embraced one another in convulsive merriment.
“Well, Pill, what have you come here for? Come on, Pill, speak up. You had enough to say for yourself last night!”
“To go to school.”
“To go to school! Now isn’t that nice for us. Pill’s going to school with us, and maybe if we’re nice he’ll teach us how to read our Latin properly. Well, Pill, so you’ll feel at home, we’re going to initiate you into the Order of the Bath.”
Dan pushed through the circle and said briefly: “No, you’re not!”
“Hello, Granny! Look here, is he really your cousin?”
“Yes, he is. And if you want to know what he’s here for, I’ll tell you. His parents were drowned on the Titanic , and Pill was in a lifeboat for forty-eight hours.”
Mockery gave place to curiosity and even respect in the faces of his tormentors.
“Say, Pill, were your parents really drowned?”
“Yes.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
“Holy smoke!”
“Come on, Pill,” said Dan, “we’ll go and get some ginger beer.”
They went down the path to the tuck shop. “You’re snivelling, you mug!” exclaimed Dan. “You don’t need to bother about them. You should have seen what they did to me when I was a new boy.… Besides, they think you’re a stout fellow. Your parents were drowned on the Titanic — see?”
Quentin stamped his foot — just like a girl! thought Dan — and said furiously: “I’m not snivelling. I’m angry! And ‘I loathe the vulgar mob and avoid them’ arceo valgum profanum , you know.” Dan gaped at him. “I’m going to be a great writer, and great writers are always misunderstood by the mob.… I’m not snivelling! I’ll punch you if you say I am. It’s because you’re so darned decent.… Look here, Dan, let’s swear friendship forever and ever.”
Dan stared at him curiously, not unkindly, but as at a strange animal. “You’re a queer fish, Pill. You’re like my sister. She always wants to cry when she’s happy or sad. She cries when I remember to give her a birthday present, and she cries when I don’t. If she doesn’t give me one, I get mad as blazes, but I don’t cry!”
Quentin paid not the least attention to this. He went on ardently. “And you’ll see what a good friend I’ll be. I bet you there’ll be a war someday and I’ll save your life.… Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Be brothers-in-arms .”
“Not yet. I’ll see.… There’s no war now. Let’s forget it, Pill, and get that ginger beer.”
“I’ll never forget it,” said Quentin.… “All right, I’ll buy the beer and we’ll drink a toast to our friendship. And will you kindly remember not to call me ‘Pill’? I’ll poke you one if you do.”
Quentin boarded at St. Horatius, and being a year older than Dan, he became Thatcher Maximus. The boys let him alone because of his sharp tongue, but he never won popularity, for he was nearsighted and had to peer at people and he was no good at games; try how he would — and he tried again and again — he could not catch a ball to save his life. Moreover, he was too proud to accept the role of the clever ass who is a mug at games. He and Dan were opposites. Dan was steady, except when he lost his temper; Quentin was changeable and moody. He was both timid and reckless and, plagued by too vivid an imagination, he was afraid of a thousand things — and dared not give in to a single fear.
The boys were growing up. Growing outward, they burst the chrysalis and began to show the kind of insect they were going to become; growing inward, they became aware of other boys as different persons from themselves. Coming back from the holidays, one found one’s best friend turned into an alien creature in long trousers with an uncertain command over his voice.
Mr. Mandover annually delivered a lecture to those boys who had newly assumed the toga virilis. Tilting his chair back and twisting his moustache, he talked with complacency and gusto.
“For tomorrow,” he began, “you will write an essay on the ‘Awkward Age.’ The Awkward Age is when a boy first realizes that he is grubby without and unkempt within. Plastered with mud, he comes running into the house screaming at the top of his voice. Having been told to clean his boots lest worse befall him and because there are guests in the house, he wipes them off on the guest towel, stumbles down the stairs, and rushing into the room where his mother is giving tea to some ladies, he trips over a chair and measures his length on the floor. Recovering himself, he has eyes for nothing but the cake plate, whence he seizes a cake in each hand, and