Free The New Confessions by William Boyd Page A

imagine any professor’s wife pressing her lips to his livid cheeks.
    After a while I went through to the kitchen. Oonagh sat on onechair, her legs stretched out upon another. She was drinking whiskey from a sherry glass and munching on a square of shortbread.
    “C’mere, darlin,’ ” she said. “Happy New Year, Johnny.”
    Without getting up she pulled me to her. I smelled her whiskey-sweet breath, felt her strong grip around me, heard the starch crackle on her pinny. She kissed me again and again on my left temple, muttering Gaelic endearments. I hugged her in return, my forearm innocently squashing her breasts. My face was crushed against her cheek. I pouted my lips. My first kiss freely given. That gentle pressure made her turn her head and as she did I kissed her again, quickly, full on the mouth.
    “Happy New Year, Oonagh,” I said. “Let’s hope it’s better than the last one.”
    There was the briefest knowing pause before she spoke.
    “Aye,” she said. “Let’s.”
    If anything, Hamish’s spots looked worse in cold weather: something to do with the skin tightening, making the knobbled quality of the pustules more evident. In the oblique washed-out afternoon light, his skin looked more like bark or a section of wall from a pebble-dashed villa.
    It was four in the afternoon, night coming on fast. We were crouched behind some bushes, shivering slightly as we waited for the light in the art rooms to go out. The art rooms were in a small cottage some distance beyond the stable block. Hamish held some rag wadding in one hand and a small bottle of his homemade chloroform in the other. We were waiting for the object of his revenge.
    This was a boy named Radipole. He was one of the black buns, possessing both a talent for drawing and the ability to run very fast. He was a tall, fit youth with reddish hair and curious slanted eyes—almost Eastern in configuration. He was known, imaginatively, as Chink. Apparently he had been the chief instigator of the urine soaking Hamish had received the previous term. It was he who had encouraged the mob to bundle Hamish over the railings and he had been the first to lift up his kilt and let fly. Hamish had never forgotten, never forgiven. But his mind worked with its own cool logic. Hamish decided to postpone his getting even for many months. So he presented to Radipole a face of resigned amusement, a grudging acceptance of the rag—sure, it had not been very pleasant, but still, no point in making a fuss over a bit of good-natured horseplay. Radipole duly forgot all about it. He and Hamish were not friends but there was no animosity between them.The whole point of this, Hamish reasoned, was that when he did eventually strike he would be one of the last people Radipole would suspect. No one could recall a four-month-old slight, and Radipole, being a boisterous unfeeling lout, had made many enemies since.
    “He’s coming,” Hamish said. A light had gone out in the art room. “Remember,” he said to me, “count to three after he goes past.” Hamish crept off.
    By now the light was almost gone. The evening meal and evening roll call were an hour away. The gloomy pines and ash trees that lined the path to the schoolhouse made it even darker here. I saw Radipole coming down the path. He was whistling through his teeth, kicking at fir cones as he went. I crouched behind a tree. He passed by. One, two, three.
    “Hey, you!” I called in a deep voice.
    Radipole stopped and turned, looking back curiously. Hamish stepped up behind him and clamped the rag over his mouth and nose. Radipole gave a shudder, an arm flailed and he went down. We dragged him off the path and further into the small grove of trees. We heaved him upright against a trunk and, with Hamish holding him fast, I ran a length of washing line several times around him and the bole of the tree and tied it secure. We stepped back and looked at him. He was semi-upright, his head lolling, making small snoring