Free The New Confessions by William Boyd Page B

sounds. He had all the inert limpness of someone shot by a firing squad. A long string of drool hung from his bottom lip.
    “Well,” I said, “what do we do now? Piss on him?”
    “No. We don’t want to remind him of that.” Hamish looked at Radipole. “I’m going to hit him a few times, then cut his hair.”
    Hamish slapped Radipole’s face with some brutality, making the drool jerk into the grass, and punched him in the torso. Then he took a small pair of nail scissors from his pocket and swiftly cut—transversely—half of Radipole’s hair away, leaving an uneven gingery stubble.
    “Let’s go,” he said.
    At roll call that night Radipole’s absence was discovered. Minto sent Angus in the trap to Galashiels and Thornielee stations to determine whether any boy answering Radipole’s description had been seen boarding a train. During the evening meal Hamish initiated a rumor (which he attributed to somebody else) that boys from the Innerleithen orphanage had been seen in the school grounds. Later that night, at about nine o’clock, one of the maids in the stable block heard Radipole’s desperatebellows and he was released. By this time Angus had returned from Galashiels, irritated by his fruitless journey.
    For some reason, Minto decided to flog Radipole: he was offended by his bizarre appearance and maddened by his inability to remember anything more than a bass shout of “Hey, you!” I suppose Minto thought he was lying and, on the principle that everyone involved in a misdemeanor was punished, considered that he might as well thrash Radipole forthwith as wait for the eventual truth of his culpability to emerge. Which it never did, of course. By this time, the orphan gang rumor was rife. Minto sent a rude letter to the principal of the orphanage and received a ruder rebuttal in reply (he was accused, I later learned, of being “unchristian”). Both Hamish and I commiserated with Radipole about his torment and the flogging (an unforeseen bonus, Hamish admitted) and the fact that he was gated until his hair grew back. I know he never suspected us. He rounded on a few people but the hysterical veracity of their innocent protestations convinced him. He ended up believing in Hamish’s rumor and swore vicious revenge on all orphans.
    I was, I confess, mightily impressed by Hamish’s subterfuge. Not so much by the audacity and neatness of its execution but by his sinister patience. From that day on I stopped worrying about him. I only wish he could have shown as much confidence in himself as I did. Later in life when he was at his lowest I would remind him of the Radipole incident, hoping it would cheer him up, offering it to him as a sign of his own self-composure. “But I was a child then,” he would say. “It’s a different world, the adult one—I was never cut out for it.”
    In any event, the besting of Radipole made Hamish a kind of hero in my eyes. He was not just a brilliant mathematician, I felt he had it in him to be something great.
    “Wait till your spots go,” I said. “It’ll be different then.”
    “No. Not me. You. You’ll be the one.”
    He had his own faith in me, I now realize, although I have no idea of the evidence he based it on. Perhaps he was biased by our friendship—that I was not repelled by his pustular mask. After Radipole a real bond formed. It survived many years and many separations.
    The school terms passed with no significant upheavals. In the spring of 1914, Minto flogged three boys in one week and for a while we thought we might be on the brink of a reign of terror. Minto bought a motor car, a Siddeley-Deasey, on the profits—we whispered—of theMinto Academy orchestra’s tour of six Scottish cities. Angus severed two fingers from his left hand while chopping kindling. One boy died of meningitis. Mrs. Leadbetter produced twins.
    And at home Oonagh became pregnant and miscarried—“the Good Lord’s will,” she said with a beaming smile. My father developed