Free Sail Upon the Land by Josa Young Page A

again. ‘Mount-Hey, Mount-Hey, Munt Hey, Munt-hay, Muntay, Munt, Munty.’
    Bert sat quietly, not wanting to interrupt the process of his re-christening.
    ‘I think Munty,’ pronounced Payge at last. ‘It’s easy to say, and sort of amusing sounding. Could be the making of you. Goodbye, Hayes. Hello Munty.’
    And he shook the younger boy’s hand, clapping him on the shoulder.
    Munty, the cornucopia of decent tuck, now had a nickname too. His acceptance was assured. The name caught on as crazes run through closed communities, and it helped him to accept his new identity for himself. Shortened and tightened, it was less alarming, more friendly. He was grateful.
     
    One evening, a couple of townies (as he had learned to call them) attacked a chap named Melville who had gone out for a smoke in the sheep pastures around the school. He was small but they had miscalculated, as Melville was the school’s best flyweight. Both townies had to be unstitched from barbed wire by the neighbouring farmer.
    This marked the beginning of a series of skirmishes. Boys from the town would come loping up the Downs intent on mayhem and a little light sabotage, breaking windows and attacking isolated groups of smokers, gathered in the evenings under cover of the scant woodland on the south-facing side of the school. Bert didn’t smoke, but he liked to saunter down with the others. It was sociable, before it became exciting with the prospect of a battle in the ongoing war.
    Boys who were used to them – usually farmers’ and landowners’ sons – had permission to keep shotguns in their housemaster’s gun cupboard. They were allowed to sign out their guns and go after rabbits in the gloaming among the woods and fields around the school. Payge was one of them.
    One June evening when he was sixteen, Munty was preparing to go out in the company of a loose alliance of shooters and smokers, as they chatted idly about the prospect of an attack by townies.
    ‘It’s getting worse, you know,’ said Atkinson, displaying a healing split lip.
    ‘What did you do to him?’ Munty asked. He half dreaded meeting someone he knew up from the town in these encounters. Luckily it was unlikely, as the grammar school boys believed they were above ‘going up the hill’. It was the technical college lot who were rowdier and always spoiling for a fight. There was still a chance that one of his fellows from Mixed Infants might appear. Not only that, but he had to live in Eastbourne during the holidays and was visible in his grandparents’ shop. So far, no one had recognised him in the few years he had been at Armishaw’s. But still he didn’t have the confidence to go in, fists flailing, as he saw the other boys do.
    ‘I couldn’t get close enough, he had a longer reach,’ Atkinson was saying. ‘They don’t seem to care what they do now.’
    Payge, his broken gun resting on his forearm, chipped in: ‘Perhaps we could give them a fright. Guns might be more effective than hockey sticks.’
    Eggy, high-stepping in his nervy way past the group just outside the House Study doors, overheard.
    ‘Ha!’ He let out a barking laugh. ‘Why don’t you let off a couple of rounds over their heads? That’ll show the beggars who’s in charge.’ Grinning, he lurched onwards, leaving a trail of winks and sniggers in his wake. Bert wandered off with the smokers, the shooters choosing to go in another direction.
    It was getting darker, and after an hour of peaceful chatting, the boys spotted shapes moving up the steep fields that separated the southern extreme of the school grounds from the outskirts of Eastbourne.
    ‘Here they come, lads,’ said Atkinson, touching his lip. ‘What shall we do tonight?’
    Nothing, as it turned out – the pearly evening was rent by a series of loud bangs, followed by screams and yelps. The shadowy figures were galvanised and running very fast down the hill.
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ yelled Munty. ‘Stop! You might