Boy in the World

Confusion made him slow down and stop. He stood in the middle of the road, the dust blowing against his Confirmation clothes. Then he heard the Master’s voice calling out from behind him.

‘Don’t start again for a minute.’

The boy turned and saw the old man puffing along to catch up. When he did he reached out a hand and leaned on the boy and briefly let his head drop low while he sought to catch his breath.

‘I had to leave the car,’ the Master said, his voice a whispery gasp. ‘I thought I wouldn’t have any trouble catching up to you.’ He wheezed twice, ‘But God bless you, the legs of you, you walk very fast.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the boy said.

‘No need to be sorry.’

‘But I ruined everything.’

‘Well, there’s many ways of looking at a thing,’ the Master said, his head upright now and his breath coming more steadily. ‘And if it wasn’t what you wanted, then if you’d gone ahead with it you could say I was the one would have ruined everything.’

‘But I don’t know what I want.’

‘I know that. And I know there’s many there today standing up and being confirmed don’t know what they want either but are too lazy or afraid or deceitful or dim-witted to say so. And some of them only want the envelopes with the money from the aunts and uncles.’ At that, the Master paused and looked about. There were no cars coming or going on the country road and they were halfway from the village to home. He seemed to consider this for a few seconds and then said: ‘Well, we might as well head on together, eh? I daresay the aunts will be hurrying off home and not coming back to the house now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ll have to stop saying that.’

‘But …’

‘No.’

The Master’s tone was final. The boy said no more. They walked together homeward. Because in the village the Confirmation was still proceeding there was no traffic and they could walk down the centre of the road. In the stillness of the countryside there was peace, and for a time the problems that had bubbled in the boy’s mind grew calm. They were just walking, that was all. There was only the blue and white sky of the May day, the fields, the cattle standing in them, the birds and their short quick flights making them seem like creatures of mission, or messengers darting through the air.

‘The world is full of conundrums,’ the Master said when they were not far from home. ‘Conundrums, puzzlements,’ he added, ‘and to a young person with any intelligence it will seem as though these should be thought about and puzzled over and eventually solved. That’s the thing. Solved. And as I well know, and have tried to tell you many times, you are not a boy of any intelligence, you are a boy of very great intelligence, and so these puzzlements have to seem even greater, more urgent to you. And even greater and more urgent the need to solve them.’ The Master stopped in the road and put his finger in the air, as if pointing to an invisible blackboard just in front of him. ‘And I know there are very many adults who, if I gave them the time, might look at you and say: the boy thinks too much, you must get him to stop thinking about things so deeply, get the boy outside, give him hard chores, something to tire him out. But you know this is not what I think. I think this would be like having a very fine racehorse and tying him to a plough. Do you understand?’

‘But what’s the use of being intelligent if it only makes things worse?’

The Master didn’t answer this straight away. They walked forward the last few yards towards the house.

‘It is all right to think about things,’ said the Master. ‘It is all right to find the world full of problems and to want to be able to solve them. Beginning with the ones right here in your life. And all right too not to have any idea how to proceed.’

They stepped through an overgrown arch of hedge where there was a small green gate. On the ground in front of them was a wandering line of flagstones that wound its way in the form of a question mark up to the house.

‘See,’ the Master said. ‘When I laid these I was not so sure how I was going, only where I wanted to get to.’

They arrived at the front door and stepped inside the house that had been set for the Confirmation party.

‘Well now,’ the Master said, his cheeks flushed and his soft grey eyes watering a little, ‘I haven’t walked from the village in years. Lemonade, I think.’ He poured a glass for himself and one for the boy. They sat at the kitchen table and for a time the only sound was the ticking of the large clock on the wall.

Then the boy said he would go upstairs to his room and read for a while and the Master nodded. He wanted to be able to say something more to the boy but what it was or what exactly the words were escaped him, and so instead he smiled kindly.

In his room the boy threw himself on to the bed. He kicked off his polished shoes, pulled free the tie and opened the button at his collar. He let his eyes look along the titles of the books on the shelves. He had read all of them already, but sometimes liked to read over again his favourites even knowing how things would turn out. In fact sometimes the books were better for that. Now he took down the hardback David Copperfield the Master had given him two years before, which had been too difficult at first, but become in time one of the boy’s treasures. Now he opened the first page and read the opening words as if meeting again an old friend.

‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.’

Downstairs the Master sat in an old leather armchair. For a long time he considered what had happened and what it was he should do now. He felt hurt for the boy at how things had turned out, and his hurt was so sharp and pressing that he thought of seeking relief in one of the whiskey bottles waiting for the guests that were not coming. It had been seven years now since he had stopped drinking, seven years since he had admitted to himself that he could not control the power of alcohol over him. Seven years since he had been found unconscious in the village street in the early morning. But now, the pain he felt for the boy needed some relief. He turned the bottle top of Powers whiskey and lifted it off. The strong bitter scent rose familiarly. He might have poured a glass for himself then, but the hand that reached for it stopped in mid-air. It wavered there. Involuntarily the Master touched his lips together and closed his eyes and, with no one but the ghost of his wife watching, he fought a silent battle against himself.

The boy was still reading David Copperfield with the light outside his window dimming when there was a knock again on his bedroom door and the Master appeared. Now changed back into his old tweed jacket and baggy trousers, he came in and sat on the end of the bed.

‘David Copperfield?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said the boy, closing over the page. ‘I’ve read it before.’

‘I know you have.’

‘But it’s still good. It’s better.’

‘I daresay I could read it again myself. A book like that you should read every few years. In fact if there was enough time in the world you could read some books year after year and each time get something new from them.’

‘That would be good,’ said the boy.

‘Yes.’ The Master looked at all the books on the shelves and thought not for the first time that day how remarkable this boy was. ‘Just checking that you are all right,’ he said.

‘I am.’

‘Well,’ the Master angled himself slightly to one side and reached into his jacket pocket, ‘here are the cards from your aunts.’ He held out a cluster of white envelopes.

‘I shouldn’t take them.’

‘Of course you should. You crossed a threshold in your life today as much as anyone else in that church.’

‘But …’

‘No but, here.’

The boy took the cards and placed them on the bed.

‘Oh, and here.’

There in the Master’s hand once more was the creamcoloured envelope from that morning, only now its edges were black and one side was burnt away completely.

‘Got it out as best I could,’ he said. ‘It is for you. I promised your mother I would deliver it. I don’t see how it would have been right to let it burn. Read it. Read it when you’re ready to, years from now if you like, and then by all means if you want to, go ahead and throw it in the fire, forget about it if you want to, but at least read it first.’

The Master stood up. His eyes were fixed directly on the boy. He knew there was more to say but couldn’t think of how to say it. ‘Well, anyway, all right?’

‘All right.’

The quiet in the room after the Master left was deeper than before. There was a sharp expectancy, as if the air had been pulled tight as the skin of a drum and at any moment the sticks would begin to beat. The boy moved the Confirmation envelopes about on the bed with his fingers. He looked at the burnt cream-coloured one and lifted it and put it on the bookshelves behind his bed. He picked up David Copperfield to read some more, but as he read down a page he knew he had been following the words with his eyes only. He had no idea what he had just read. He tried again, but with no success.

He was tired. Evening had just folded into night outside. He opened his bedroom door and called out goodnight, and then got dressed in his pyjamas and into bed.

Some time before, the boy had stopped saying prayers before sleep. He was not sure God was listening. Besides there were many different Gods people all over the world prayed to, and anyway he didn’t like praying for things for himself. So instead he lay in the bed and tried to think of David Copperfield.