Free Fludd: A Novel by Hilary Mantel Page A

neared the station, Fludd saw advancing upon him another gang of juveniles, older this time, more orderly, a dozen or so adolescents in tight formation. These young Fetherhoughtonians were the pupils of the grammar school in the nearest town. They were few but conspicuous; their maroon school uniforms, bought large so that they could grow into them, stood out from their bodies like the dark capes of Crusaders. There was a wary, darting-eyed expression on the faces of the gawky lads of eighteen, their little caps on their heads, satchels like postage stamps slung over their great bony shoulders. Some of the girls carried cake tins, held against their bodies like shields, and others had bags of knitting, from which metal needles poked; the boys carried wood-working tools which they did not trouble to hide. The outriders of the group, grim-faced girls of twelve and thirteen, bore their hockey sticks at a vigilant, offensive angle.
    “Good evening,” the priest said. “I am the new curate, Fludd’s my name. How are you enjoying the new term?”
    Startled, offended eyes passed over him. As he stood in their path they could not proceed, and, unwilling to break ranks, they came to a halt.
    “May we pass?” said one of the stick-wielding girls.
    “I was only wondering,” Fludd said, “what the young such as yourselves find to do in this place.”
    “Our homework,” said a voice from the centre of the group.
    “Do you not find yourselves with a bit of free time at the weekend?”
    “We don’t go out,” the girl said firmly. “We don’t want fights with teddy boys.”
    “We stay in,” another voice said; adding, in explanation, “It is called bettering ourselves. We have to get into Manchester University.”
    “Do you come to Mass?” Fludd said. “We could have a meeting after. We could have games. Table—tennis.”
    The children looked at each other. Their expressions softened; one of the small boys said, with a lingering regret, “We are atheists.”
    “I don’t think that would be a good idea at all,” the girl said. “You see, Father, our parents won’t let us outside without we put our uniforms on, and it attracts trouble.”
    The little boy said, “Them from Thomas Aquinas bash us up.”
    “They’ll be upon us now,” the girl said, “if you don’t excuse us.”
    Behind her, in unison, three girls held out their cake tins, and rattled them in unison: odi, odas, odat.
    “I hate,” the girl explained balefully. “You hate. He she or it hates.”
    “You need not go on,” Fludd murmured. “I know the rest.”
    “Nothing personal,” a large boy said; and the rattlers, holding their cake tins aloft, explained, “We pelt’em with our domestic science.”
    Fludd stood aside and watched them go, their heads swivelling to check the doorways of the shops. In the station yard he climbed over the stile that let him on to the footpath and struck out across country, swiping at the tussocks of grass with Father Angwin’s umbrella. The incline, slight at first, became steeper, and he stopped to catch his breath before mounting the next stile; he handed himself over it, and found himself in Netherhoughton’s main street.
    It proved to be a straggling settlement, with two dilapidated inns, the Old Oak and the Ram; a tobacconist’s shop, shuttered, which must surely be the one Father Angwin had mentioned; a general grocer, with a pyramid of tea packets in the window; and a baker, whose shelves were quite empty except for the sleeping form of a large black cat. The cottages here were of a different design, some of them only one room deep; low, sway-backed roofs showed their age, and he noted at once the Netherhoughtonian habit of bricking up any window deemed superfluous. All about him he saw the lively
signs of alchemy: the black hens scratching in the small back-plots, and the nine-runged ladder, the scala philosophorum, leaning casually against a wall. He walked on until the houses petered out, and he