Free Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris Page A

least until my father’s attention turned elsewhere.

    Months passed, and my life at Sunnybank Park settled into a dismal routine. I coped with it as best I could—mostly, increasingly, with avoidance. At lunchtimes I would play truant and lurk in the grounds of St. Oswald’s. In the evenings I would run back to watch after-school games fixtures or to spy through the windows. Sometimes I even entered the buildings during school hours. I knew every hiding place there was; I could always go unseen or, wearing a uniform pieced together from lost or pilfered items, in a corridor I could even pass for a pupil.
    Over months I grew bolder. I joined the crowd at a school Sports Day, wearing an overlarge House singlet stolen from a locker on the Upper Corridor. I lost myself in the general mill and, emboldened by my success, even crashed a Lower School 800-meter race, presenting myself as a first-year from Amadeus House. I’ll never forget how the boys cheered when I crossed the finishing line, or the way the Duty Master—it was Pat Bishop, younger then; athletic in his running shorts and school sweatshirt—scruffed my cropped hair and said, Well done, lad, two House points and report for the team on Monday!
    Of course, I knew that there could be no question of my joining a team. I was tempted, but even I didn’t dare go as far as that. My visits to St. Oswald’s were already as frequent as I dared make them, and although my face was nondescript to the point of invisibility, I knew that if I wasn’t careful I would one day be recognized.
    But it was an addiction; as time passed I ran greater risks. I went into school at break and bought sweets from the tuck shop. I watched football matches, waving my St. Oswald’s scarf against supporters of the rival school. I sat in the shadow of the cricket pavilion, a perpetual twelfth man. I even joined the yearly full-school photograph, tucking myself into a corner among the new first-years.
    In my second year I found a way to visit the school during lesson time, missing my own Games period to do so. It was easy; on Monday afternoons we always had a five-mile cross-country run, which took us right around St. Oswald’s playing fields and back in a wide loop to our own school. The other pupils hated it. It was as if the grounds themselves were an insult to them, provoking jeers and catcalls. Sometimes graffiti appeared on the brick walls of the perimeter after their passage, and I felt a fierce and penetrating shame that anyone watching us might imagine that I had been among those responsible. Then I discovered that if I hid behind a bush until the others had passed I could quite easily double back across the fields, thereby giving myself an entire free afternoon at St. Oswald’s.
    At first I was careful; I hid in the grounds and timed the arrival of the Games class. I planned things meticulously. I had a good two hours before most of the runners arrived back at the school gates. It would be easy enough to change back into my Games kit and rejoin the tail of the group unnoticed.
    Two teachers accompanied us—one in front, one at the back. Mr. Bray was a failed sportsman of colossal vanity and bludgeoning wit, who favored athletic boys and pretty girls and held everyone else in utter contempt. Miss Potts was a student teacher, usually to be found at the tail of the group, holding court—she called it “counseling”—to a little clique of admiring girls. Neither paid much attention to me; neither would notice my absence.
    I hid my stolen St. Oswald’s uniform—gray sweater, gray trousers, school tie, navy blazer (with the school crest and the motto— Audere, agere, auferre —stitched across the pocket in gold)—under the steps of the Games Pavilion and changed there. No one saw me—St. Oswald’s Games afternoons were on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so I would not be disturbed. And as long as I was back for the end of my own school day, my absence would remain unnoticed.
    At first