Devotion

Not that any of that was any of Slater’s beeswax. So Slater had been confused, and, not being very intelligent, had marked Locke as an enemy and potential victim.

Now, as they ambled by, Slater and his companion caught sight of Riley’s face, or to be precise its unlikely shape, and the scars which held it together. They stalled, walked on, giggled, then turned back and behind Riley’s head started a little dance of mockery, fingers pulling at the flesh of their own young faces, eyes rolling, at Tom.

Tom flared.

‘What is it?’ said Riley, turning. The T was lost in the ghost of the cockney accent of his childhood; the entire phrase just caught in his rebuilt mouth.

‘Wo’ issit?’ leered Slater.

So Tom lurched forward, punched him, kicked the other in the balls, and to his shame let the words escape him, ‘Don’t you bloody laugh at him, you bloody snobs!’

Riley, though he felt as strongly as ever the instinctive, instant urge to pull the lad out, restrained himself. His reason was impeccable: if his patched-up face were to suffer a blow he could lose the remains of his jaw, and be a half-head once again, and God knows what would become of him. He had promised Nadine, after the contretemps during the strikes in Wigan in 1919, to be careful. In fact, he’d promised her again last week, when he’d told her about dropping the splint while cleaning it, and needing to see Mr Gillies about a new one. Of course he had learnt that he had to behave.

So he stood back, just barked ‘Tom!’ and the Head came out. An unpleasant scene ensued. Slater was made to apologise, Riley was made to listen to it, and Tom was expelled.

They thought they might as well go home to London immediately, as soon as Matron had Tom’s trunk packed up.

Tom, a black eye rising mauve and cloudy on his white face, was simultaneously delighted with his fearsome defence of Riley’s honour, and deeply embarrassed by the fact that Riley knew what it had been over.

‘Don’t do it again,’ Riley said. ‘It’s understandable but not useful.’

‘Never?’ said Tom. Though many didn’t, Tom understood Riley’s constricted speech clearly. He wanted to, which helped.

‘Never,’ said Riley.

‘So, you’re saying, violence is never to be used?’ said Tom.

‘It’s very rarely a useful response,’ said Riley. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth’ – with a little smile. He looked tired.

‘Shall we see if we can get a cup of tea?’ Tom said. ‘Evans will probably make one for us.’

So they slipped off to the sickbay, where Evans the under-under-matron, sixteen and as pretty as a Renoir, laughed and glanced and provided not just tea but digestive biscuits, with a fair amount of ‘Oh, I shouldn’t,’ and ‘If Mrs Dale catches us!’ and ‘He’s got us all eating out of his hand, Mr Locke, sir.’

Riley was accustomed to being Mr Locke on such occasions, and let it pass. Evans may well have been wondering why Tom Locke, pale and blond and tall for his age, looked nothing like his broad-shouldered, black-curled dad, but then Tom said: ‘I’m off, Evans – been chucked out again …’ Her face actually fell, and her ‘oh!’ was small and soft.

Riley noticed that Tom did not notice.

Walking out to the car, Riley said, ‘By the way—’ but by the time he said it, Tom had already seen. A long tall figure was leaning against a narrow tree, smoking. Tom found that his face had gone a little hard and he was looking at the ground. He’d have to go in the back of the car now. And – Peter! Out of doors!

‘Hello, Tom,’ Peter said. He dropped his cigarette on the hard muddy path and came forward.

There’ll be hell to pay for someone, Tom thought. Cigarette ends in the grounds. ‘Hello,’ he said, with just enough courtesy not to annoy Riley.

‘Didn’t want to swim, eh?’ said Peter. ‘Thought you liked swimming.’

Since when did you ever know anything about me? Tom thought.

‘Not always, sir,’ he said, and glanced up, and saw that Peter didn’t seem saddened by this response, and that Riley looked almost approving. It’s so hard to tell with grown-ups if they ever actually feel bad about anything at all. They’re just oblivious or happy or angry. Perhaps sadness is only for children.

It was not the first time he’d thought this. But when you are born into sadness, and normality is based on it, it is difficult to winnow out what sadness actually is. Happiness now – happiness was a recognised stranger, to be welcomed with a big embrace and clung to like a departing parent. Tom always had his eye out for happiness, and grabbed it where he could. For example: Tom had very much looked forward to being with Riley, and talking as they drove back up to London. He thought it definitely worth being expelled for. But with Peter there, it could not be. As well as Peter being the gooseberry, it was much harder to follow Riley’s speech over the engine noise when you were sitting in the back. You couldn’t see his face.

Riley said, ‘We need to find you another school. Assuming there’s any left that will have you.’

Tom’s eyes flickered over the dull green fields outside; heavy wet English summer. He appreciated Riley’s attempts to interest him in ordinary education and proper work. He terribly wanted to indulge him, but he couldn’t care less about education – and how could he say anything important with Peter there?

A while after they reached the main road, Peter fell into a doze.

‘There’s really no point,’ Tom hissed, leaning forward to Riley’s ear. ‘Books send me to sleep. Anyway it’s the hols now.’ Without noticing, he repositioned himself so he could see Riley’s face in the rearview mirror.

Riley eyed him, and attempted to put to one side how very much he would have loved to have had this boy’s educational opportunities.

‘Work bores me to sobs,’ Tom said.

Riley’s mouth twisted a little.

‘It’s a waste of money,’ Tom tried.

‘Peter doesn’t have very much else to spend his money on,’ murmured Riley.

At the mention of his father, Tom glanced at him, his worn and pale face, his thin hair, and grew a little mulish. ‘He could buy me a decent pair of goggles,’ he said. ‘Or a motorbike. I could learn to dive. Or fly! Something useful. There are spear fishers in Italy who live in the sea. I could go and live with them.’

‘You must go back to school,’ said Riley.

‘Why?’

‘To make Nadine happy,’ said Riley, at which Tom gave him a mock-evil look and said, ‘That’s below the belt, old man. Totally below the belt.’

‘Like that blow you gave that poor senior,’ Riley pointed out.

‘Different!’ cried Tom.

‘Why?’ asked Riley.

‘That was self-defence!’ Realising he was on slippery ground, he amended it to, ‘I was defending my family honour.’

Riley blinked at him fondly, in the rearview mirror. Tom started laughing.

Riley said, ‘What if – all right – you crash your bi-plane on to a Greek island, while on a diving trip to discover Atlantis. A ferocious peasant with a huge moustache and an ancient blunderbuss approaches you. Would you rather know some Greek, or not?’

‘I wouldn’t crash,’ Tom said. ‘But say I have allowed some second-rate chap to pilot me, and we go belly up, how ancient is the ferocious peasant? Because we only do ancient Greek.’

‘If you speak to him in the tongue of his ancestors, of the wine-dark sea and rosy-fingered dawn, is he more or less likely to shoot you?’

‘More!’ said Tom.

‘Then you reduce me to emotional blackmail,’ Riley said. ‘I would have liked the education you are having. I need you to continue, so that you can come home and teach me all that I don’t know.’

‘Totally unfair,’ said Tom. ‘I’ll work as hard as you like but school is wasted on me.’