Wilberforce by H. S. Cross Page B

had no notion. Rees was a swot, though not half so clever as he imagined, and Grieves allowed him to show off. Despite having passed three and a half years at the Academy, Rees still failed to understand just how much showing off was reviled. Add to this his lugubrious manner, his laziness at Games, his inability to listen to what anyone was saying, and his spots, which he insisted on picking, and you had someone irredeemably obnoxious, someone they in the Fifth were forced to tolerate every single day of the year. If someone had bloodied his nose during break, it was the least he deserved.
    â€”Well, then.
    The form’s attention drifted to Mr. Grieves, who leaned against the window, newspaper in hand. His habit was to begin lessons by reading them an article from The Times . Today’s turgid offering concerned the new German cabinet: Herr Luther’s choice, a liberal policy . Morgan deliberately looked away. If Grieves imagined that Morgan was going to start courting his approval, then he had another think coming. Morgan owed him nothing, and there was no way in Hades he was going to start swotting like beastly Rees. Grieves could drone until he was hoarse, but Morgan refused to show the least interest in Herr Luther’s cabinet, his cupboards, his credenzas, his wardrobes, or his water closets.
    â€”So.
    Having concluded his reading, Grieves watched them until they began to fidget. His object apparently accomplished, he sauntered to the blackboard, pulled down the slate with the Tudor diagram, and announced that they could expect a composition during tomorrow’s double lesson. A groan of protest filled the room, but Grieves ignored it.
    â€”Any boy, he began—
    They resented being called boys at their age.
    â€”earning less than twelve out of twenty tomorrow will find himself in extra-tu Saturday.
    They fell silent, not from fear but from grim recognition. Saturday afternoon was the match against Sedbergh School, their greatest rival. Having to miss it for extra tuition would be a severe penalty, but they knew Grieves well enough to realize he wasn’t bluffing. Apparently the man still possessed the will and the wherewithal to make them work, if only for a day.
    Grieves sat behind his desk and unfolded his newspaper, airily oblivious as they retrieved their exercise books and crowded the blackboard to decipher his notes.
    Morgan copied the chalky schemata as well as he could. Under no circumstance was he willing to miss the Sedbergh match or to allow Grieves the satisfaction of giving him extra-tu. Obviously the man had decided to punish him (for bounds-breaking? For cheek? For…?) by oppressing the whole form with a composition. Obviously, it was personal. Obviously, Morgan’s only option was mental warfare: outclassing Grieves by actually swotting and then writing a composition clever enough to irk the man.
    Copying complete, Morgan leafed back through his earlier notes and glimpsed something that hadn’t been there before: Grieves’s script at the bottom of the page, To be continued .
    *   *   *
    That afternoon it rained with the force of punishment. Laurie and Morgan watched miserably from the sidelines as Clem’s XV slaughtered their own. Nathan came away with a blackening eye, and Morgan with a chill that resisted the influence of hot tea before the study’s grate.
    Three long hours until tea, then Prep, bed, and ten more days—twenty-four hours apiece—until the holidays, which themselves promised nothing. He had squandered PE before lunch and was quickly feeling persuaded by the idea that twice a day wasn’t really any different from once, provided he adhered strictly to a schedule. He felt himself on a precipice, unable to retreat and helpless to resist the plunge into grave error. He was powerless to stop the XV losing, powerless against whatever the shadow had planned, and powerless now to restore himself to sanity through