The school building was new. The school had been recently transferred from an old and blackened building further up the hill to something modern. The old school was a decorated stone edifice, conspicuous with Victorian aspiration and benevolence; with its two entrances, still inscribed BOYS and GIRLS, it looked very much like a school. The new one, oddly, did not. Built in yellow brick, a single storey, the whole shape of the building was difficult to construe as Francis and his mother had crossed the empty playground, that first morning. The building bulged out at either side of a wide external staircase, burst into angry and fanciful geometries of brick and glass, sagging unexpectedly on to rounded banks of grass and, already, well-trodden flowers. He held his mother’s hand tightly. An odd pair, given his height; but he held his mother’s hand tightly.
Inside the building, they made their way somehow to the headmaster’s office. He contributed nothing to this, allowing his mother to make the enquiries, follow the signs, and only when they were sitting on two out of the line of five chairs, the kind lady remaining behind her desk, did he realize that he could not rely on his mother to lead him round his new school from now on. But waiting there, his main concern was for her: in her clothes, the tight smile which was in her mouth but not her eyes, there was something he ought to be able to console. He wanted to tell her that it would be all right, not altogether knowing that himself. But now the headmaster himself was coming down the corridor, buoyant from his assembly; down there, a daunting flood of children, all of whom he would shortly have to come to terms with, all of whom knew exactly where they were going.
The headmaster was affable; the secretary on the way out smiled kindly; a kiss had come from nowhere; and suddenly he was walking by the side of a teacher who, apparently, he had been introduced to, who, apparently, was now his teacher. His mother was gone. It had been her kiss. Once, when he was much smaller, he had in a moment of confusion in a classroom said, ‘Mummy…’ before realizing that he was addressing his teacher. He went clammy, as if he had already done it again, as his first act in a new school.
‘Quiet, now,’ the teacher said, coming into a room. It was full of children; they fell silent and looked at him. It was a terrible moment. The teacher had an extraordinary voice. She talked, too, in that strange way, as she went on to explain who he was, where he came from – London, it produced giggles across the classroom – and assigned a boy to show him round; she talked in that way where ‘castle’ sounded like ‘cattle’, a blunt and, to Francis, not very friendly-sounding manner of speech. He was surprised and ashamed on her behalf: he had not thought that a teacher, a person in charge, would speak in the ordinary way everywhere.
The boy he was supposed to sit next to shoved up roughly, and turned his face deliberately away from Francis, placing his hand against it so that Francis could not see anything of him. He was a naughty boy, you could see that straight away; he started hissing and sniggering to two other boys, naughty boys too, across the aisle, who leant forward and examined Francis from a safe, contemptuous distance, their lips curling like crimped pastry. He thought about his friends; they might be sitting at this exact moment, hundreds of miles away, in that sensible classroom, not just-built but old and solid, and there might be – his heart leapt to think of it – an empty chair there now, and perhaps a new person, someone a little like him, being guided to it.
The lesson started, but no one had taken out any books: they were just sitting there. Francis had been dreading that; he thought that he might be the only one without the books, and though everyone would notice no one would help. He had imagined he would go through his whole life in this school without books and, which he had anticipated and accepted, without friends. But there were no books. He placed his pens and pencil, the ruler and rubber on the table; he had brought them with him. He could not understand what sort of lesson this was. The teacher was just talking, and in a moment he listened. It was a while before her words started to make sense. She was talking about the government. He did not know what sort of lesson that could be part of. From time to time she asked a question, and nobody put their hands up so she answered it herself. Some of those questions Francis knew the answers to, but he didn’t put his hand up. It was like a party you weren’t sure you were meant to be at and he kept quiet, though it was painful for him not to be able to put his hand up to answer a question he could answer. The boy next to him went on talking to the boys over the aisle, and there was a sort of malice in the hiss, which was directed at Francis.
‘Michael,’ the teacher said abruptly. That was the boy’s name, which Francis hadn’t taken in, and the boy straightened up, lowered his hand from his face, and gave Francis a poisonous look, as if he had betrayed him. There was a smell as if of boiled peas from the boy; it was shocking, he was sitting next to a bad boy who wasn’t even clean. ‘Do you want to tell the class the name of the prime minister?’
‘Don’t know,’ Michael said eventually, full of scorn at being asked something so stupid.
‘Perhaps our new boy knows,’ the teacher said, quite gently.
‘It’s Mr Wilson,’ Francis said. He hardly knew how to pretend not to know.
‘Very good,’ the teacher said, enunciating with surprise in her voice, as if talking to an idiot. Francis felt himself getting a little cross. ‘And how long has he been prime minister?’
‘He was prime minister before,’ Francis said. ‘But there was a general election this year and he became it again. He’s Labour. I thought the Conservatives were going to come first, but they didn’t.’
‘Very good,’ the teacher said, now really surprised. ‘Quite a lot of people thought, like – like our new friend from London here’ – a wave, a giggle, but why? – ‘that the Conservatives were going to win. Now, who can explain to me what a general election is?’
The lesson went on, but Francis felt he shouldn’t have said anything, should have said, ‘Don’t know, Miss,’ and swapped what he possessed for something he might have, popularity and the quality of being ordinary. Once the attention of the teacher went elsewhere, the naughty boys on the other side of the aisle said, ‘Kick him,’ quite loudly, and Michael, the boy he was sitting next to, gave him a hard angry shove. Francis did not know how to respond, and blushingly rearranged his pens and pencils, his ruler and rubber. In time, the lesson came to an end; it was interrupted – and it had only really been a speech by the teacher, diversifying into reminiscence of a life led partly, it seemed, in Africa – by a bell that, so unexpectedly, was exactly the same as the bells in the school in London. The class got up, their chairs screeching on the floor, and the teacher, too, screeching for them to sit down until they were given permission to go. But half the class were already through the door, and she only wanted to say one more sentence before they were dismissed.
It was playtime. The boy he had been assigned to had disappeared and, anyway, Francis would not follow that boy: he knew well what would happen if he tried to make friends, having said in clear London tones who the prime minister now was. He didn’t know what to do or where to go, but he followed them anyway, and was soon in the playground. It was already full, and excited with noise.
All of a sudden, a boy was by his side, addressing him.
‘Do you see that girl?’ the boy said. Francis recognized him slowly. He must be in his class, he supposed; but there was some familiarity apart from that.
‘Yes,’ he said, though he did not know which girl the boy meant.
‘I think she’s so beautiful,’ the boy said. He was a strange boy: his voice was not ecstatic but robotic, as if he was producing an interesting fact. ‘Venus was the Roman goddess of beauty so I call her Venus.’
Francis did not know what to say to this. The boy was looking away from him across the playground. It seemed that he hadn’t actually been talking to Francis at all, not specifically. His buck-toothed face was flushed, his hair stuck down against his pink forehead. He called out, ‘Venus, Venus, my love, my love,’ and ran away towards the girls. At this they scattered, giving little screams, running off in twos and