Sherrington Park for Boys

It was three weeks before the end of my eleventh year at Sherrington Park for Boys when my father killed my mother. He didn’t use a knife or a gun, just cold words and colder indifference. He might as well have poured the wine into her glass and fed her the pills from his own cupped hand. The whole household knew he had remained closeted in his study the night she’d died. It was the maid who had eventually discovered the body, draped as if sleeping on the chaise in their bedroom, the curtains still shut even in the morning’s brightness.

As far as I know, my father had remained in his study after being told the news as well.

The Headmaster had broken the news to me, after inviting me to sit in the high-backed, plush leather chair he usually reserved for courting the wealthy fathers of prospective pupils. He didn’t use the word suicide. His secretary even brought in a cup of tea, hot and over-sweet, pressing the saucer firmly into my hands. An average-sized man of bland, average looks, Stevenson had put his elbows on his desk and leant forward, all kind concern as he’d said, “Of course you must go home for the funeral. And for your father’s sake, you must remain. You have - what - three exams remaining? If you have no objection, I will petition the school board on your behalf to accept your mock exam results as your final grades.”

I had no objection. Stevenson, no doubt, would have, if I hadn’t already achieved straight As in my mocks. He didn’t fool me.

The funeral had been a cold and miserable affair. In a brand new suit, I had stood next to my father and had nodded and shook hands with relatives and family friends I barely recognised - let alone knew. They were vultures, all of them: they circled the casket, murmuring condolences and gossip in a single breath, their glittering, beady eyes watching my father, watching me, searching for titbits and speculating on what had driven such a strong woman! such a good woman! to an early grave. At my father’s suggestion, I had read a poem, something with all the right words for grief and death and loneliness but nothing which reminded me of her. Of her laugh, and her beauty, and how her face would shatter open into grief after alcohol eased the way. My father, himself, contributed nothing but the price of the wooden box and burial plot.

I had been sixteen and so very young when it had happened. Afterwards, I was sixteen but older, burdened with grief for a mother I had never known and hatred for a father I had no wish of knowing further. I had never understood before just how meaningless my father’s house was to me without my mother’s presence. Without her there, it was nothing but a husk, cold and empty, and I could hardly stand it. The whole of that summer, I kept myself to myself, spending long hours aimlessly wandering the local countryside, or holing up in my room when the weather and my father’s disapproval forced me inside. The activities which would have preoccupied me before - the pre-season football friendlies and the evenings spent with my childhood acquaintances in the village - seemed suddenly suffocating. I had boarded at school from the age of six and Sherrington, even with its strict code of conduct and cold, stone walls, was at the very least bearable. For the first time, I felt myself longing for the holidays to be over.

My father called me to his study the day before I was to leave for the start of my first term as a sixth-former. He was a tall man, once-blond hair turned colourless with age, with a peaked nose and thin, pale lips. It seemed I would inherit his height, but the shape of my face, my brown eyes and sandy brown hair were all from my mother’s side. Hard grey eyes met mine and he waved me impatiently forward from where I lingered in the doorway. The study was a large room, neo-classical in design, with a marble fireplace spanning one wall and wide sash windows that neatly framed the rain-drenched grey and green of the garden. It was that uncertain time between light and dusk, before curtains could rightfully be drawn, and there was no fire lit. The one true source of light came from the desk lamp, and it served only to throw the rest of the room more deeply into gloom. As I drew nearer to my father, I saw the letter spread neatly out on the desk in front of him, recognised both the embossed paper and the crest of the letterhead. The impetus behind such an abrupt summons suddenly became a great deal clearer.

My father did not bid me sit.

“You will explain to me, Christopher,” he said, “why your headmaster has written to inform me that you have turned down the offer of being made prefect.” His diction was as precise as ever, the slightly clipped endings of his words the only indication of his fury.

I stood straighter and met my father’s eyes. “Probably because I wrote to refuse it last week, sir.”

And this was Stevenson’s retaliation. Of course. I had been foolish to think the Headmaster might ever quietly accept such an affront. Losing a mother was not excuse enough for a man who would always put the school’s name first.

My father went very still. “And why,” he said, slowly, “would you refuse such a prestigious honour? When the Headmaster writes to say you are the first member of the lower sixth to be considered for the prefecture in nine years? And now, of course, they will never consider you for next year. Did you think how this might affect your entrance to Oxford or Cambridge? Mark your words carefully, boy, if you wish to escape a thrashing.”

Before that summer, I might have felt I owed him an apology. It was a moot point: before that summer, I would never have turned down Stevenson’s offer.

I remembered the smell of my mother’s perfume, jasmine and warm spice, and said, “Maybe I have no desire to go to Oxford or Cambridge, sir.”

I watched as his face tightened with anger. He stood, fingers already going to his belt buckle. It was an infrequent yet familiar enough gesture, one I had known since leaving prep school, and I reached down to grip the hem of my shirt, pulling it up and over my head, without having to be asked. My skin goose-pimpled in the chill of the room and I braced my hands on either side of the desk, resigned to an uncomfortable train journey the next day.

My father rounded the desk, his footfalls silent in the thick pile of the carpet. “I gave you time,” he said, stopping behind me. “These last few months, I have left you alone to grieve in peace.”

The first blow came, impacting firmly across my shoulder blades and wrenching a hiss of pain from me. The first was always the worst. Not the most painful, no - that came when a new blow was layered on top of already bruised and damaged skin. But the first blow was the least expected, the one before you had any pain to gauge pain by, the one you couldn’t ever truly prepare yourself for. I set my jaw and stubbornly refused to make another sound.

My father was still speaking, his words coming somewhat breathy, caught between grunts of exertion as he laid the belt into my back. “But I have given you time enough to grieve. I am reining you back in, Christopher. Do you understand? We will have no more of this foolish rebelliousness. You are acting the child. I will not tolerate it and I will tell your headmaster not to tolerate it either.”

I clung to the desk, fingers gripping tight to the mahogany, and concentrated on the pain radiating from my back in lieu of listening to his admonishments. It wasn’t a difficult task. From the strength of the blows and the number of them, my father was perhaps angrier at me than he’d ever been. He ran out of words eventually, the silence only broken by the faint swish of leather travelling through air and the jarring crack it made when it met flesh.

When he finally finished, my father put his hand on my shoulder, almost gently. I took a moment to regain myself, the flesh of my back throbbing hot and dull in time with my heart, then shrugged out from under his hand. I collected my shirt from his desk but wasn’t fool enough to try and put it back on just yet. The material would only irritate the skin further.

“Is that all, sir?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. Then, sincerely: “Enjoy the new school year.”

I left without looking at him.