Hindsight by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

hoot? No, he’d be glad of the information, glad of the chance to wipe out eighty young men who in a few years’ time would be doing their bit about keeping the Hun in his place. So it’s up to you. Mr Stock will be official Air Raid Warden. Dorm praes will be in charge of black-out in their dorms, and form heads in their forms. The duty master will be going round outside after dark, and if he spots one chink of light every boy in that dorm or form will be punished. Understood? You are all soldiers in the war against the Hun, and this is an important part of your soldierly duties.’
    Next The Man introduced the new staff in ascending order of seniority. There was an Assistant Matron, who looked friendly, and a pale young woman called Miss Penoyre who was going to teach Freshers. Two new masters, Mr Wither, who would take Senior Maths and Captain Smith who would take Greek as well as some Latin and History. To avoid confusion with himself The Man said that Captain Smith should always be referred to by his rank.
    The school stared at the two men. (Matrons hardly counted and Freshers, except for the two or three older ones who would be put into higher forms almost at once, kept rather separate.) All masters were extraordinary at first sight, almost freaks. The relationship gave them such power over the boys that they seemed to stalk or creep on stage like monsters; and so some of them remained, a sense of dread and misery, or more rarely of glory and release, hanging round them always; others lost their apparent potency but never became human, reaching instead an accepted indifference, idols as it were of deities in whose power few citizens any longer believed.
    Mr Wither was visibly a bit of a freak because one of his shoes had an enormously built-up sole, almost six inches high. He was quite young, pink-faced, grinning with obvious unease as he stood to be introduced. His wispy blond hair flopped sideways and his blue eyes blinked behind gold-rimmed specs.
    Captain Smith was older, short and tubby. His head seemed not to belong to that body, looking too large with its high, bald brow, and too lean with its sculptured cheekbones. Furthermore he wore a quite extraordinary moustache which bristled out sideways, as if it had been a bundle of horsehair stuck on for amateur theatricals. He too rose from where he had been sitting with the rest of the staff in a line along the wall to the left of the dais.
    â€˜It will be a pleasure to get to know you better, gentlemen,’ he said, lowering his head in a curiously oriental fashion as he finished. He had a very deep voice, like a priest’s or an actor’s.
    Paul felt a tremor run through the school, perhaps surprise that he had spoken at all or at his complete self-confidence. Later Paul wondered whether they had not sensed, with that mild telepathy common among groups of children, a tinge of mockery in his use of the word ‘gentlemen’. For The Man the purpose of St Aidan’s, and therefore of his own existence, was to train gentlemen who would grow into the natural leaders England required—he said so in his Leavers’ Sermon at the end of each term. There was never any irony in his calling the boys gentlemen. But they were to learn that the Captain seldom spoke of anything without layer under layer of what might or might not be ironical intent, unfathomable. Certainly Paul’s first impression was correct. There was something much more freakish about Captain Smith than about Mr Wither, despite the latter’s deformity.
    Chapel resumed its normal course for a while. Scammell read a bit of St Luke. Dormer read three collects. The boys rose for the last hymn. But at this point The Man came back to the dais.
    â€˜Since we last gathered here,’ he said, ‘I have learnt that the following Old Aidanians have made the supreme sacrifice. Pilgrim, J. P. c.; Wynn-Williams, H. J.; Darlington, s. v. Greater love hath no man than this,