Free Any Human Heart by William Boyd

added.
    They both laughed at this and for an instant I felt ridiculously pleased and sophisticated, making these adults laugh, as if I were an equal with them, and I sensed a sudden warmth for H-D and his ironic, distanced interest in me. Maybe he was right: this was the only way a master could develop a relationship with one of his charges — goading, provocative, testing, but genuine for all that.
    And I was impressed with Cynthia Goldberg, my God. H-D went to fetch some sherry and she offered me a cigarette. I almost dared to accept it but declined, explaining the school rule.
    ‘Don’t you let your boys smoke?’ she asked when H-D reappeared. ‘Poor Logan says he’s not allowed.’
    ‘Poor Logan smokes enough, as it is. Here—’ He handed me a glass of pale sherry. He raised his own in congratulation and explained about my exhibition to Jesus. We clinked glasses. Cynthia said, eyes mockingly narrow, ‘And clever with it, I see.’
    It was a rather magical time that afternoon. H-D lit a pipe, Cynthia smoked her cigarette and I drank three glasses of sherry as we talked about this and that. The late sun lit the new leaves on the apple trees from behind, turning them a glowing lime green, and the swifts began to swoop and swerve above our heads. Cynthia Goldberg is a concert pianist — ‘a poor and striving one’, she said. I find her profoundly, stirringly beautiful — intelligent, worldly, gifted. Oh for a world that contains Cynthia Goldbergs! I feel a growing jealousy for H-D — that he knows her, that she’s a part of his life (Are they lovers? Can they be?). And what will she remember of our encounter? Nothing, probably. Who? Mount-what? Oh, the
schoolboy.
A schoolboy. Jesus Christ, I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.
     
     
Friday, 23 May
     
    Peter, who has not seen the toothsome Tess for weeks, has finally managed to construct a means of communication. They leave notes for each other behind a loose brick of an old gatepost. He is trying to arrange a rendezvous as far away from Abbey as possible and together we have come up with the idea that it might be best achieved during the night exercise which, according to Tozer, is due to take place in the woodland around Ringford. Ben quizzed a school gardener who lived in Heringham and he said there was a nice pub in Ringford called the Lamb and Flag. Peter left a note in the gatepost urging Tess to meet him in the Lamb and Flag at 9.30 p.m. on the 4th of June. Peter invited us along as well — which I thought was unduly civil of him, but there you go.
    The school play was last night, I forgot to mention.
Volpone
— wretchedly bad. Cassell says he has a place at Christ Church — perhaps Oxford won’t be so grim after all.
     
     
Thursday, 29 May
     
    Sergeant Tozer, bless him, has given us a wonderfully idle role in the night exercise: six of us are to guard a signal box on the branch line to Ringford, somewhere on the left flank of the Abbey defence. The section is under the command of a man called Crowhurst-Joyce (a corporal) and the other two are a couple of fifth formers from Swinton’s — all malleable, Ben thinks, though I’m a little worried about Crowhurst-Joyce — he has a little too much military zeal and I don’t think he’ll be easily suborned. It might not be quite so easy to slip away.
    At Corps today Tozer was all fire and brimstone. Abbey was meant to be defending a notional ammunition dump that St Edmund’s would try to capture. Tozer was disappointed to have been cast in a defensive role, but, as he kept repeating as though he’d forged the axiom himself, The best means of defence is attack.’ Aggressive patrolling would be Abbey’s secret weapon, he insisted; in this way we’d stop them as far off as possible, never let them get close.
    ‘How “aggressive” is aggressive, sir?’ Ben asked, with due eagerness.
    ‘Use your initiative, Leeping.’
    ‘What — even up to a mile in