That was the start of my acquaintance with Faraday. Its strange that such a brief relationship should have had such a profound effect on both of us. He was very thin all skin and bone but there was nothing remarkable in that. The school food was appalling and few of us grew fat on it. Some people called him Rabbit because of his teeth.
The front door opened. Mr Ratcliffe came into the house. Ah there you are. I see youve met Faraday. But perhaps you two are already friends?
I shook my head. Faraday continued stroking the cat.
As you see, he has already established a friendship with Mordred. How long it will last is another matter. Mr Ratcliffe sat down and began to ream his pipe. Mrs Thing is making up the other bed.
Hes staying here? I said. But
Im not in the choir any more, Faraday interrupted. Thats why Im here.
I noticed two things: that Faradays face had gone very red, and that his voice started on a high pitch but descended rapidly into a croak.
Yes, Mr Ratcliffe said, tapping his pipe on the hearth to remove the last of the dottle. Poor chap. Faradays voice has broken. Pity it should happen just before Christmas, but there it is. Dr Atkinson decided it would be better not to take a chance: so here he is.
Even then I knew there must be more to it than this. The brisk jollity of Mr Ratcliffes voice told me that, and so did Faradays face. Even if Faradays voice had reached the point where it could not be trusted, they could have let him stay with them, let him walk with the choir on Christmas morning with his badge of honour around his neck.
Faraday looked up. They chucked me out, he said. Its not fair.
At the time I pitied only myself. Now I realize that all of us in that house deserved pity for one reason or another.
Faradays voice had betrayed him. His greatest ally had become the traitor within. He had lost not just his place in the choir but also his sense of who he was. Mr Ratcliffe must have loathed the necessity to share his house with two boys, disturbing his quiet routines and upsetting his cat. It didnt occur to me until much later that he was probably very poor. He must have received some money from the school for housing us. Perhaps he had felt in no position to refuse. After all, he was old and alone; he lived a grace-and-favour life in a grace-and-favour house.
Faraday and I went to the vergers house at six in the evening, where Mrs Veal gave us Welsh rarebit, blancmange and a glass of milk. We ate in the Veals parlour, a stiff little room smelling of polish and soot. On the mantelpiece was a mynah bird, stuffed and attached to a twig, encased in a glass dome.
On that occasion we saw only Mrs Veal, apart from near the end of the meal when Mr Veal came in from the Cathedral, still in his vergers cassock; he wished us good evening in a gruff voice and opened the door of a wall cupboard. I glimpsed two rows of hooks within, holding keys of various sizes.
Enjoy your supper, he told us, and went into the kitchen, where we heard him talking to his wife.
Faraday rose from his chair, crossed the room to the cupboard and opened the door.
Dozens of keys, he whispered. And all with labels. Its the keys for everywhere.
I pretended not to be interested. Sit down, I said. Or hell catch you.
That night I heard Faraday crying.
I remember in my first term at school I would lie in bed, listening for other boys crying and stuffing my handkerchief in my own mouth in an attempt to muffle my tears. There were about twenty of us huddled under thin blankets in a high-ceilinged dormitory, the windows wide open winter or summer. Sometimes one of the older boys would round on one of the weeping children.
Bloody blubber, he would whisper, and the rest of us would repeat the words over and over again, like an incantation, lest we be accused of blubbing as well. Little savages.
But that had been years ago. I wasnt a kid any more and nor was Faraday.
Faraday? I murmured.
There was instant silence.
Are you crying?
Ive got a cold.
It was the usual excuse, transparently false.
What is it? I said. And waited.
Everything. Bloody everything.
We lay there without speaking. The room was not quite dark the curtains were thin and the light from a High Street lamp leaked into the room.
But its my bloody voice really, he went on. Everything would have been all right if it hadnt been for that.
Thats rot, I said, with the loftiness of fourteen to thirteen. Everyones voice has to break sometime, unless youre a girl. You dont want to be a girl, do you?
This was an attempt at comfort but it seemed only to make Faraday start crying again.
Come on, I said. You cant just blub.
You dont understand. I was going to sing the Christmas anthem. Theres a solo, you see, and its usually the head chorister that does it, and the Bishop gives him a special present afterwards. Some money.
How much? I said.
Five pounds.
I whistled. For a bit of singing? Thats stupid.
No, its not. Faradays voice rose in volume and, suddenly, in pitch. Its a tradition. Theyve been doing it for hundreds of years. Some old bishop left money in his will for it. And now Hampson will do it instead.
Dont talk so loud. The Rat will hear you.
Its lovely, too, Faraday whispered.
Lovely was not a word we used much. What is?
The anthem. Its for Christmas Day. Its called Jubilate Deo, and we only sing it on Christmas morning.
Rejoice to God. Both of us had enough Latin to translate that.
All right, I said. Its beastly to lose five quid. But is it that bad? I mean, it was never yours in the first place.
Faraday started crying again. I was spending Christmas with a cry-baby. I curled myself into a ball to conserve heat and thought how perfectly miserable everything was. Or rather, how perfectly miserable I was. Boys are selfish little brutes. While I was wallowing in self-pity, however, my curiosity was still stirring.
Look here, I said, I can see its a shame your voice is broken and all that. But why are you like this about it? And why are you here?
The snuffling continued. It was getting on my nerves.
Why arent you still at the Choir House? Or why didnt Dr Atkinson send you home to your people?
My parents are dead, Faraday said, and the waterworks increased in force.
That jolted me out of my own misery. I knew what it was to miss your parents, you see, and even I could imagine how infinitely worse it would be if you could never, ever see them again. Or not until after you died and went to heaven, assuming heaven was real, which in those days I still considered to be a sporting possibility.
So where do you go in the holidays?
To my guardians, in Wales. But this year hes had to go away. So I was going to stay with the Atkinsons until he comes back.
This deepened the mystery. Then why arent you there now?
Its because of Hampson Minor. Bloody Hampson.
Yes, you said hell get the five quid because hes going to sing the anthem, and I suppose hes the new head of the choir, too.
Faradays bed creaked. Its not that. He had a postal order from his uncle. Ten bob.
I whistled softly in the darkness. Not in the same league as the Bishops five pounds, but still pretty decent. I wished my aunt would give me ten shillings sometimes.
He was swanking about it all the time. The postal order and being head of the choir and the Bishops money. He just went on and on and everyone was sucking up to him. He said he was going to buy a big cake from Fowlers for everyone. I just wanted to kick him. You know what hes like.
I only knew Hampson Minor by sight. He was a fat, pink-faced boy with small delicate features and prominent lips. When he sang, he made his lips into a perfect O.
He left the postal order on the floor. It must have fallen it was with his exercise book. So I I picked it up and put it in my pocket.
You stole it?
No, Faraday wailed. I was just going to keep it for a bit, until he found he had lost it, and then give it back. To teach him a lesson. Thats all. Honestly.
I didnt know whether he was telling the truth. I didnt know then and I dont know now.
But he told Dr Atkinson it was gone, and Dr Atkinson made us all empty our pockets and open our boxes. Faraday paused for a long moment. And they found it.
I didnt know what to say. Stealing was a sackable offence at the Kings School.
I was going to give it back, I swear it. I didnt know hed tell old Atky straight away. The rotten sneak.
What will happen? The scale of the offence awed me. Will they chuck you out?
I dont know, Faraday whimpered. I just dont know. And even if they let me stay, everyone will know. So thatll be almost as bad. And then theres Hampsons brother. Id be in the senior school.
I was beginning to take a warped pleasure in having a ringside seat to the tragedy which was unfolding on such a grand scale. Faraday, the golden boy, had lost his singing voice, his five pounds and his pre-eminent role as head choirboy. He was now faced with a hideous pair of alternatives: if he was expelled from school he faced a lifetime of shame and whatever punishment his guardian cared to mete out; if he was allowed to stay, his remaining years at the school would be made a living hell, particularly by Hampson Major, a gorilla of a boy who played second row forward in the First XV, and who had a well-deserved reputation for brutality verging on sadism. He was bad enough as a casual tyrant over anyone smaller than himself. He would be a figure of nightmare if he chose to persecute you seriously.
God, I said as the full horror of Faradays situation hit me. You poor bloody kid.
He was crying again, softly, continuously, a sort of moaning and sobbing that at last moved me to pity, and even to a desire to help.
Look here, Rabbit, I said. It was the first time I called him by his nickname. Perhaps it wont be as bad as you think.
The crying stopped. I heard Faradays ragged breathing.
A sense of power filled me. He believed I might be able to help, and that almost made me believe it too.
Listen, I said. Well think of something. I promise.
4
For every child, I think, there must be a day when Christmas loses its magic. By magic I dont mean an unquestioning belief in Father Christmas or a foolish attachment to improbable ideas about reindeer and chimneys and so on. Nor does the magic I mean reside in the religious connotations of the day, though of course, for many people, the one cannot be separated from the other and Christmas is always the birthday of Jesus. I envy them.
The magic has more to do with a sense that this is a special day, when nothing is allowed to go wrong. When you are given presents, good food and a licence to enjoy luxuries and activities that lie beyond the reach of most of us for 364 days of the year. When people are kind to each other and there is a sense of holiday.
The illusion is strongest in infancy, and most of us lose it gradually during childhood. But we cling to it, we fool ourselves, as long as possible. In the end there has to come a day when we are forced finally to acknowledge the truth: that Christmas is a day like any other, potentially neither better nor worse, but actually almost always worse because it trails in its wake the ghosts of its lost magic.
For me it was that Christmas at Sacrists Lodging: thats when at last I accepted that a Christmas Day could be as miserable as any other.
The morning began when we went downstairs to find Mr Ratcliffe making tea in the kitchen. On the mat by the back door were the hind legs and tail of a mouse; Mordred had already celebrated Christmas in his own special way.
We wished each other happy Christmas. Mr Ratcliffe was wearing an ancient suit, once a uniform black but now shiny and even green in places, in honour of the day.
He gave us cups of strong, sweet tea, with very little milk in it.
I thought we would go to Matins and then the Eucharist afterwards, he said. I dont usually eat before taking communion, if I can avoid it. It seems rude somehow.
What about Christmas dinner, sir? I asked in alarm.
Mrs Veal will have something for you at lunchtime, Im sure. Dont worry about that. Ill have mine at the Deanery. He hesitated, and I guessed that he had remembered the Dean also entertained to lunch those members of the choir who had not left immediately after the morning services. Well meet again in the evening, I expect, when you are back from the Veals.
Mordred sauntered into the room and picked up the remains of the mouse. He wandered into the hall.
Ill let him outside, shall I? Faraday said in a rush.
He dashed after the cat. I heard him fumbling with the front door with clumsy urgency, as though trying to escape.
I suppose that was what we all wanted Faraday, myself and even, perhaps, poor Mr Ratcliffe: to escape.
There was no snow that Christmas.
It was very cold. The grass around the Cathedral was a hard, sparkling white, and frost clung to the leafless branches of trees and bushes. The flagged paths were treacherous any moisture had turned to ice overnight.
Mr Ratcliffe strode slowly along, his stick tapping the pavement. Beautiful, he said over his shoulder to Faraday and me, trailing behind him. Quite beautiful.
The College was crowded with groups of people making their way to church. On Christmas morning, the Cathedral had one of its largest congregations of the year, even though the Kings School wasnt there to swell its ranks.
We sat in the presbytery, the rows of seats on either side near the high altar, to the east of the choir stalls. Above us were the pipes of the organ and the wooden cabin of the organ loft, clinging like a growth to one bay of the choir aisle.
I dont remember much about the services except that they seemed to go on for ever and that I seriously thought I might faint or even die from hunger. It must have been hell for poor Faraday to see the choir processing through the chancel gates, filing in two by two, and peeling off into their stalls in the choir.
Hampson Minor led them in, with the head boys medal resting on his surplice. He looked larger and pinker than before, as if his promotion had inflated him a little further than nature had done already. His eyes darted about the chancel. I guessed he was looking for Faraday. As he turned to lead his file into the choir stalls, he found us. For a fraction of a second he paused. Beside me, Faraday stiffened like a threatened animal.