Maiden Voyage Read Online

The other part of me wanted to smash his face into pulp. My mind was rocking about like a cart on a rough road.

I was scowling deeply by the time I reached the dormitory. Woods saw it and called out gaily, “Had a nice beating, Welch \ Show us your marks.”

I made no answer but went quickly to my bed and began to undress. I kept my back to the wall and pulled my pyjama trousers on, tying them tightly before I took my shirt off.

I thought I would be forced to show my marks, but I meant to fight.

For some reason I was left alone; so I got into bed and lay, hot and sore, between the cold sheets.

I came in from games one afternoon, to find a letter from my father waiting for me. He wrote so seldom that his letters were always an event.

I wanted to read it quietly, by myself, so after I had changed I took it with me, still unopened, into the fields.

The path I took must once have been a road. There was an old inn half-way down, now stranded in the fields. The banks were high and crumbling, with Old Man’s Beard creeping like mildew over them.

I spread the skirts of my raincoat on the ground and sat down to read the letter.

Via Siberia was written in the top left-hand corner. Then there was my name and address. I looked at everything, including the Chinese postmark and stamp. I did not want to open the letter and see inside what my father said about my running away.

At last I tore it along the top and quickly pulled the letter out.

He did not say much; only that he was sorry, not annoyed, that I had run away and, as I seemed to be unhappy at school, he thought that it would be a good plan if I went to Shanghai with Paul, who was going to join him at the end of the term.

He finished up with the words, “Write and tell me what you think of this.”

I leapt up and walked about, giving small jumps and screwing up my eyes as climaxes of excitement swept over me. I could not believe that my father was suggesting that I should leave school and go to China.

I was so full of joy that I ran down the lane and over the fields until I was exhausted. I felt like a person full of power and skill. I was no longer a part of the dead old system. I could bear anything now till the end of term.

Back in the House, I snatched up my books for evening school and hurried out into the street again, for I was a little late.

The hum of the waiting class reached me as I mounted the stone steps of the Science Block. The master had not opened the Laboratory yet. Geoffrey was there, fooling noisily with some others. All around us were cases of fascinating, coloured crystals.

I wanted to tell him about my letter at once, but I had to wait until we were inside. We both stood at the same bench and I managed to whisper my news while we were making sulphuric acid.

“Lucky sod!” he muttered. “You get everything you want just because you run away.” But I knew that he was glad for me. We dabbed some of the sulphuric acid on to a piece of blotting-paper and watched it burning brownly and wetly into it; then he flapped it at me as if he would get it on my hands or clothes.

I started back, frightened. I hated the stuff, remembering the stories of vitriol throwing I had heard. He made a laughing noise by breathing out in little gasps, then he said between his rigid teeth, “So Cyril’s frightened, is he? Perhaps the horrid stuff might spoil his beauty.” He was often silly and theatrical like this.

I blushed hotly and would not talk to him again. But at the end of the lesson, as we were collecting our books, I looked in my pockets and saw that I had a little money; so I asked Geoffrey to come and have tea with me at the school shop.

The fire-light was jigging on the floor and on the tables in the little tea-room. We sat down in a corner and ordered poached eggs on crumpets spread with anchovy paste. Geoffrey still seemed to be dwelling on his mother’s death, but he listened to me.

We enjoyed the fire and the hot tea as long as we could; then, when the time for prep, came, we walked slowly back to the House, down the damp blue-black street.

After this letter the term began gradually to melt away. It was no longer a great lump of time which nothing seemed able to dissolve. When the foreboding, senseless bell woke me up each morning in the bleak dormitory. I was content to live that day and not to worry. Now that I could see the end in sight everything was different.

Geoffrey and I did most things together although we often disagreed. His aunt, as I have said, wanted him to be confirmed. He had given in at last and was having instruction twice a week.

Most people of our age were being confirmed that term, but I refused to be. I think it was my obscure answer to Geoffrey’s aunt.