The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [117]
“Do you have a question?”
“One question? I have a thousand.”
“One. You must go quickly, not looking behind you, before the tide comes in and cuts off the mouth of the cave.”
“What is the worst thing I can meet down there?”
“The worst? The Dark Elf, and the great rat, are bad things. But the worst may be your own shadow, when you see him, if you recognise him.”
“That is bad, since I must seek him out.”
“It is bad. Go quickly now, and watch your steps.”
17
In September 1896 Tom put on his spanking new uniform, and got into the train, at King’s Cross, with crowds of other Marlowe boys. The family—Olive, Violet, Dorothy, Phyllis and Hedda—Violet carrying baby Harry—had come to see him off, and already he saw that they were an embarrassment. They were too many, too loud, too female, too agitated. His mother’s beauty made her remarkable in the wrong way. Dorothy’s scruffiness made her remarkable in another wrong way. They had had long discussions about how much of his hair must be cut off. It had been trimmed, once, and cousin Charles had said it wouldn’t do, it would be thought girly, and now it was trimmed close to his head, so that he felt exposed, and saw himself as a condemned felon. He wore a cap, sewed in segments of wine and gold felt, with a tassel and foolish little brim, that made his lovely face egg-shaped. He wore a blazer, in the same rich wine-red, with a unicorn embroidered in dull gold on the breast pocket. He was not allowed, as a new boy, either to do up the buttons of this garment, or to put his hands in his pockets. He had a wine-red tie with small unicorns on it, which he would be allowed to exchange for a knitted tie in two years, and a bow tie when he was eighteen. He had a stiff white rounded shirt-collar, which had to be buttoned—later again, it would be allowed to be unbuttoned, and later still he could wear a shirt with a pointed collar, like a man. His mother said she thought the presence of the imaginary unicorns might be a sign of imagination. Tom did not think so. When he got into the train, Hedda started to howl, and had to be taken away.
And so he went North. Marlowe was in the Yorkshire dales, just outside a market town called Fosters. It was hideous, built in grey stone slabs, imposing and imprisoning, with all sorts of anachronistic turrets and portcullis gates. Tom saw Julian Cain, and called out to him, across a quadrangle. Julian sauntered over—the boys cultivated a kind of vulpine lope—and said sotto voce that Tom must never use his first name, and must never speak to older boys unless he was spoken to. Tom said how could he know all these things? And Julian said he would learn them pretty quickly, or the archets would take it out of him. Boys who at Eton would have been prefects and fags, were at Marlowe archets and butts. Julian asked what house Tom was in, and was told Jonson House—the Houses were named for seventeenth-century dramatists, the heirs of Marlowe, Dekker and Jonson, Middleton and Ford, Webster and Turner (anglicised from Tourneur). Tom said he was to be Hunter’s butt. Hunter was the head archet of Jonson, blond and muscular, with a face like a knife. He was captain of the Second Eleven, and rowed stroke in the Jonson boat. Tom had formed an unfavourable impression of him, but dared not ask Julian what he was like, in case he was breaking some complex tabu. Julian knew what he was like, but dared not tell Tom. Tom would find out soon enough. Julian was in Ford House, whose head archet was a mild boy called Jebb, who was the best slow bowler in the whole school, and therefore did not have to keep proving himself. Julian looked at what had been done to Tom’s loveliness, to cram him into cap and blazer, and saw that it still shone out. The shaved nape of his neck was elegant and vulnerable. For Hunter’s butt, this presaged horrors. Keep out of Hunter’s way,