A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett [5]
“Come here, Pilaster,” Mr. Offerton said.
Hugh shuffled over to him, with Tonio following behind. Why do I take such risks? Hugh thought in despair.
“Headmaster’s study, right away,” said Mr. Offerton.
“Yes, sir,” Hugh said miserably. It was getting worse and worse. When the head saw how he was dressed he would probably be sacked from the school. And how would he explain it to his mother?
“Off you go!” the master said impatiently.
The two boys turned away, but Mr. Offerton said: “Not you, Silva.”
Hugh and Tonio exchanged a quick mystified look. Why should Hugh be punished and not Tonio? But they could not question orders, and Tonio escaped into the dormitory while Hugh made for the head’s house.
He could feel the Striper already. He knew he would cry, and that was even worse than the pain, for at the age of thirteen he felt he was too old to cry.
The head’s house was on the far side of the school compound, and Hugh walked very slowly, but he got there all too soon, and the maid opened the door a second after he rang.
He met Dr. Poleson in the hall. The headmaster was a bald man with a bulldog’s face, but for some reason he did not look as thunderously angry as he should have. Instead of demanding to know why Hugh was out of his room and dripping wet, he simply opened the study door and said quietly: “In here, young Pilaster.” No doubt he was saving his rage for the flogging. Hugh went in with his heart pounding.
He was astonished to see his mother sitting there.
Worse yet, she was weeping.
“I only went swimming!” Hugh blurted out.
The door closed behind him and he realized the head had not followed him in.
Then he began to understand that this had nothing to do with his breaking detention and going swimming, and losing his clothing, and being found half naked.
He had a dreadful feeling it was much worse than that.
“Mother, what is it?” he said. “Why have you come?”
“Oh, Hugh,” she sobbed, “your father’s dead.”
3
SATURDAY WAS THE BEST DAY OF THE WEEK for Maisie Robinson. On Saturday Papa got paid. Tonight there would be meat for supper, and new bread.
She sat on the front doorstep with her brother, Danny, waiting for Papa to come home from work. Danny was thirteen, two years older than Maisie, and she thought he was wonderful, even though he was not always kind to her.
The house was one of a row of damp, airless dwellings in the dockland neighborhood of a small town on the northeast coast of England. It belonged to Mrs. MacNeil, a widow. She lived in the front room downstairs. The Robinsons lived in the back room and another family lived upstairs. When it was time for Papa to arrive home, Mrs. MacNeil would be out on the doorstep, waiting to collect the rent.
Maisie was hungry. Yesterday Maisie had begged some broken bones from the butcher and Papa had bought a turnip and made a stew, and that was the last meal she had had. But today was Saturday!
She tried not to think about supper, for it made the pain in her stomach worse. To take her mind off food she said to Danny: “Papa swore this morning.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Mrs. MacNeil is a paskudniak.”
Danny giggled. The word meant shitbag. Both children spoke English fluently after a year in the new country, but they remembered their Yiddish.
Their name was not really Robinson, it was Rabinowicz. Mrs. MacNeil had hated them ever since she discovered they were Jews. She had never met a Jew before and when she rented them the room she thought they were French. There were no other Jews in this town. The Robinsons had never intended to come here: they had paid for passage to a place called Manchester, where there were lots of Jews, and the ship’s captain had told them this was Manchester,