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## Soda Water Memories (M/mm)

The first day of school - my first day at school ever. I am nine years old, nearly ten, and have been placed in a class where most of the other boys are twelve. All my new classmates, all my new schoolmates, seem to me to be so well behaved, so prim and proper and neat. It's alien to me. I've never been in a group like this.

None of them know how young I am. I have been told that I have been placed in this class because I'm smarter than most other children and I've also been told that this may cause some problems. Jealousy. It seems amusing, almost. I am so jealous of all these other boys. They have so much that I do not. And yet, I have to worry about the possibility they might be jealous of me? At the same time, I've also been told that I am expected to work as hard as possible and do as well as possible. And so I'm nervous. We probably all are - they may have been to school before but this is, for most of them, their first day at a new school - and that is a scary thing. Especially when every Master you've faced in your first four classes at school has made it his business to remind you that they use the cane here. It'll be a couple of weeks before we work out which ones were bluffing and which were deadly serious. At the moment, they all seem serious.

Lunch has come and gone, and we enter the science laboratory for our first science lesson. There's no sign of the Master but we file quietly into the room and we sit down and wait. After about a minute, a door opens and a man comes into the room.

He's old - he must be at least fifty. Unlike the other Masters we have seen today, he isn't wearing a gown - instead he is wearing a ratty old, heavily stained labcoat. He is carrying a steaming mug of something which he sips as he enters the room. He puts it down on the bench, next to a bunch of apparatus.

"Good Morning - I mean, Good Afternoon, boys of Form One. My name is... not important. You will call me Sir - because that's what boys here tend to do. I do have a name, but I hardly ever get to hear it, I'm afraid. Still, I suppose, that just in case you need to distinguish Sirs, I should probably tell it to you. My name is... Doctor Maddison. You can call me Sir, or you can call me Doctor, or you can call me Mad if you wish - hundreds have." He reached down onto the bench and picked up a beaker next to his coffee cup. He raised it to his lips. The classroom erupted.

"SIR!"

"DON'T!"

He smiled. "Ninety percent of all science is observation. This class is obviously full of many budding scientists."

He put down the beaker and turned to the board. A piece of chalk was suddenly in his hand (in six years of classes under him, I never worked out where he kept his chalk).

"Elements! Somebody name an element?"

There was silence.

"Come on. Elements... simple substances... fundamental building blocks of the universe. Come on, boys, a simple basic substance that is a foundation of our universe!"

"Water?" A boy near the front ventured hesitantly.

"Water? Water as an element. Don't tell me, lad, you're at the school to study Classics. Two thousand years ago, you'd have just earned a chocolate frog for giving me the right answer, unfortunately for you, today our science has moved on. Come on, boys - a chocolate frog to the first person who names an element for me!"

"Hydrogen!" I wanted the chocolate.

"Hydrogen - excellent! Another element for another frog!"

"Helium!"

"You're on a roll - fancy a third frog?"

"Lithium!"

"Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium... we have a sequence building. How far do you know the sequence boy and what's your name?"

"Rysher, Sir... and the sequence is..." I realized the class was looking at me. Jealousy. "I don't know, Sir."

"Really - you just happen to come out with the first three elements in sequence, completely accidentally? That strains my credulity, boy, and the quack has told me my credulity will snap if I keep straining it like that. So we'll cut to the chase, shall we? I have in my pocket - a quid!" He pulled out a crumpled up pound note. "Now - there's 92 fundamental elements - let's ignore the whacky ones for now. How far can you do the sequence if there's a chance of a quid in it for you?"

"I can do all 92, sir." I'd grown up in an isolated place - I'd rarely had a need for money in my life. But I liked it. I liked what it could buy. And we'd been told that we would receive 8 shillings a week pocket money (soon to become 80 cents - decimal currency was due in the next month). This was over two weeks pocket money on offer - well worth having.

"Then proceed."

"Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Berrylium, Boron..." the class fell silent as I recited. Without error, without pause. Finally... "Uranium."

"That's worth a quid. Better spend it quickly - it's worthless in a few weeks."

"No, Sir. You can still use the old money."

"Oh..." he looked crestfallen. Then he winked.

And he had me forever.

Doctor Maddison (he held a PhD) was, I believe, a genuine genius. We all knew that he had done something important, something scientifically important, during the war, and after the war had quietly returned to teaching, which he said he'd always wanted to do. He obviously loved teaching and he loved boys. He was able to get the best out of people, almost effortlessly. He was funny, and really believed in the carrot approach, over the stick - he dispensed immense amounts of chocolate in his classes, and occasionally money as well. When it came to the carrot and the stick, he greatly favoured the carrot - whereas most of our Masters made much more of the stick.

Mad (also known as the Madman) rarely caned. There were a couple of Masters who never caned at all - he wasn't quite that abstentious. He obviously hated using the cane and would avoid doing so whenever he could get away with doing so. And most of the time he could - he had the ability to freeze a class in place just by raising an eyebrow. But, just occasionally, in the face of truly egregious misbehaviour, he would announce that the situation required a severe punitive response - and at that point the cane came out. It was rare. But it did happen.

I was one of his favourite students. I had a very good grounding in science and I greatly enjoyed science - and he liked that. And to be honest, I was a bit of a teachers pet as well - I liked being around him and I liked being helpful. Every boy in the school had to take on a certain amount of responsibilities within the school - you had some choice in this and could to an extent choose activities you enjoyed. So some of what I chose wound up being helpful to him. I had to visit the schools weather station every evening to take down readings, sometimes I mopped the floors of the science lab. Over time, he gave me more and more responsibilities - even to the extent that I sometimes acted as something of a lab assistant, getting out chemicals that would be needed for classes later in the day. I wasn't the only boy who did this by any means - there were a couple of us at each form level - but I do think I was genuinely one of his favourites.

And that eventually lead to a little of trouble for me.

Third form - so I'm 12 years old now. And I'm now completely comfortable in the school. It is, in a very real sense, my home. I belong there, and I know my place. I'm just starting to get my first taste of responsibility in the school as well and I'm finding that I like it - I've been made responsible for teaching a first form boy the ropes, how the school works. And I find that I enjoy it.

In first and second form, I was... well, the fairest way to describe me, at those ages, would be as a naughty little boy. I did a lot of things I shouldn't have. Most of them were fairly minor things viewed objectively, but there were a few incidents where my behaviour was much worse than just childish naughtiness. Fortunately for me, the school came down very hard on my behaviour and that got through to me. I was heading towards a life of petty crime - and they'd persuaded me this wasn't going to be allowed to happen. And I had decided to reform myself. I didn't become a paragon of virtue - but I did decide to try and be good. Partly out of a fear of pain. Partly out of a desire to be the type of person my parents would have been proud of. And partly out of a desire to be a person worthy of the school.

I still got in trouble - at times I still got in a lot of trouble (at least partly, I think, because it took those in charge of me time to realize that I was genuinely trying to reform and so relatively minor transgressions tended to be dealt with rather harshly).

It was fairly early in the year - the boat race was approaching. And that's where the trouble had its roots.

The boat race - the Head of the River - was the absolute highlight of our schools sporting season. We raced against the other quality schools of the state - the best and most exclusive schools, the 'great Public Schools' - and the race was a major social event both for boys and their families - and even for a lot of other people. Thousands - tens of thousands - of people turned up for the race. The newspapers were there. Any parents close enough to come came - from all the schools.

The races themselves only involved a small number of boys and a few minutes of the day - the rest of the time was a major carnival. We spent our time eating and drinking and talking and playing - especially us younger boys. We mixed relatively freely with the other schools - they were our equals, and we didn't have many of those - together we considered ourselves the future leaders of the state and the country. It sounds arrogant, I know - but when you consider that the Prime Minister of the day, and his two immediate predecessors - had all come from one of the small number of schools represented in our association - well, it's not that surprising that we had this attitude.

Our relationships with the boys of the other schools were complex. Some schools were friends, some were bitter rivals. Now, it must be said, that when needed we would all stand together against any common foe - but while there wasn't a common foe, there were a couple of schools that we professed to cordially hate. We screamed abuse at each other during the boat race and at other sporting events. Fights occasionally broke out (despite the best efforts of the assorted Prefects). And sometimes things got a little more involved. It was clearly understood that under no circumstances could you do anything to negatively affect the boat race - but except for that, you could do just about anything you liked.

I was in the laboratory wiping down tabletops one afternoon in my third form year, when an older boy came into the room. I looked up a bit warily - there were some bullies about - but relaxed when I realised that the boy in question was a sixth formers of relatively good reputation. His name was Stanley Fitzpatrick. He wasn't a Captain, or a Prefect - but he was only just below that level in the school. He was on the XI and the XVIII, and to a third former like myself that was very impressive.

"Hallo, Rysher."

"Hallo, Fitzpatrick."

He looked around to make sure nobody was listening. "Rysher... I've got a little proposal for you. But it's not exactly all above board. Are you interested in hearing about it, on spec terms?"

'Spec terms' was part of our schoolboy slang - and referred to a completely hypothetical discussion. When somebody told you something on spec, there was a clear understanding by both parties that you were under no obligation to get involved in it - but at the same time, you also agreed that if you weren't involved that the discussion had never happened. It was generally used only for fairly serious matters - because with minor matters, it didn't need to be stated.

I was flattered that a sixth form boy might want me to be involved in something - but also rather cautious. The previous year I'd become involved in a cigarette smuggling operation run by a prefect that had resulted in me being beaten in front of the entire school.

"Okay - on spec terms, though."

"You can get keys to Maddison's cupboards?"

"Yes, I can." Doctor Maddison gave me his keys sometimes so I could set up the room for classes - and I knew where he kept his spare set as well.

"I want some sodium. A nice lump of it."

I knew where the sodium was kept - it was locked away in a cupboard in the back of the class room.

"Why?"

"Some of us have built a catapault - well, kind of a catapault - and we're going to use it to fire some rocks into the river after the boat race. And apparently if you use sodium, you get a nice bang."

"Sounds dangerous."

"We're not firing it at anyone - it's just like fireworks on water we want."

That let me understand why he wanted the sodium - the previous year somebody from another school had set off a large number of fireworks during the race festivities and there was a tendency for everyone to want to outdo what had been done before. But I was also aware that there wasn't a lot of sodium in the lab - and a nice lump of it would probably constitute a notable absence. It also seemed just a little too dangerous to me - messing around with chemicals didn't seem wise, and I was worried about being caught.

"Sorry, Fitzpatrick. It sounds like it might be fun, but I don't want to be involved."

He nodded and smiled. "All serene, then."

He left the lab, knowing that I was the type who honoured the conventions. I'd chosen not to help him, but because he'd spoken on spec, there was no danger I'd report him.

The day of the race came around, and it was all that I expected. I spent most of the day running around stuffing myself with food at every opportunity, talking to friends and cheering at the appropriate time. Our school didn't win - but victory went to a school we were reasonably friendly with, rather than one of our major rivals so we were reasonably content with the result.

Towards the end of the day, wherever supervision was lax boys started throwing out bits of bread and cake onto the waters surface to try and attract ducks and other birds down. We weren't very nice to be honest - the main reason for calling them down was to try and 'bean' one of them - hit it with a rock. This was a traditional part of the proceedings but was seriously frowned upon by those in authority. Fortunately the birds were rarely hit - that was why it was a challenge.

I was involved - not in the throwing of rocks, but I was doing my bit to try and attract the birds attention by hurling cupcakes out into the river. Some others were throwing rocks though - and a Master - not from my school, but from another - was heading towards us, so I stopped.

There was a loud splash from the water - and a plume of water erupted about thirty yards offshore. It wasn't huge but it was fairly big - like a half brick hitting the water (which is what it was). Ten seconds later there was a second splash and a second plume at nearly the same location. I was watching to try and work out where it was coming from. There was no sign of anyone throwing large rocks.

Then I saw in the air, quite a distance in the air, coming down towards us in an arc, just kind of glinting in the sunlight. It seemed to be heading right for me - the Master from the other school had arrived just next to me and he was watching it as well.

It hit the water about twenty yards off to our left, and only a yard or two offshore. There was an almighty bang, and a plume of water that went so high and spread so far that we got wet where we were standing. Those closer to it got drenched.

As it hit, the object broke into pieces. Presumably most of it was lost in the water, but a few pieces came ashore and landed in the grass. They were sizzling - that's the only word for it. The adult who was with us ran forward to have a look, and yelled at us to stand back. But we approached anyway.

He looked at what was on the ground - and then turned to look across the river in the direction from which the projectile had come. A boy nearby had some binoculars - the man, borrowed these and began looking through them. At his feet, the object still sizzled a bit, and looking at it, I was pretty sure it was sodium. A small lump - only the size of a large marble.

He looked down at me.

"You boy - do you know Doctor Maddison?"

"Yes, Sir, he's our science mast..."

"I know that - can you find him and bring him here?" He turned to another boy from another school who was with us as well. "Can you get Mr Binchall?"

Most of the Masters - and certainly all the senior ones - from each of the schools knew each other. Doctor Maddison was an excellent scientist, I presume Mr Binchall must have been the same.

I ran and I fetched Doctor Maddison - I told him there'd been an explosion and he was wanted - I may well have overstated things in my excitement because as he ran off following me, another half dozen adults he'd been having tea with followed us as well.

When he arrived he crouched down in the grass and looked at the remnants of the fizzing metal pointed out to him by the first Master on the scene. It had stopped fizzing by this stage and there were a few grayish lumps on the ground. Another man joined them - I assume Mr Binchall.

"Sodium?" That was the first man's opinion, which he offered in a tentative questioning tone of voice.

"Indeed. Somebody has been playing silly buggers. Did you see who was near it?"

"It came from the other side of the river."

At this point, all of us boys who were standing around - and the number was growing as word spread - we dispatched back to our own schools areas. The fun and games for the day were over - it was nearing time for us to return to our schools, or home for day boys.

The Head of the River was held reasonably close to our school (one of the few things that was) and so there was no necessity to have enough buses to move us all in one go. Junior boys were taken back to the school first - first form boys initially, then second form, and so on. Not everybody took the bus back either - a lot of parents came for the day and while some of them took their sons away for the weekend, quite a number did not - and they tended to drive their sons back to school, and were generally enlisted by the staff to fill their cars with other boys. All in all, probably a third of us got back to school in private transport, a third on the first bus round and a third on the second round.

I had a lift - the mother of a day boy who was one of my friends had come to see the race, and as they lived near the school it was no difficulty for her to drop myself and three others off at the gates as she passed. I was heading towards the car park where we had to meet and I was passing the buses being loaded with first form boys when I noticed something a little disturbing.

Stanley Fitzpatrick was standing talking to a first form boy - and not just any first form boy, this was Derek Gordon - the first boy from my own house who I had been assigned to look after. By this stage of the year, my duties were mostly discharged - Derek had now been at the school long enough to be left to his own devices under normal circumstances - but there were some limits. We weren't expected to nursemaid our first formers, but we were expected to keep an eye out for them. And I knew that Derek, like myself, helped out in the science laboratory. And it occurred to me that just because I had refused to help Fitzpatrick, didn't mean nobody else had. The sodium had to have come from somewhere.

Fitzpatrick handed Derek a bundle, which Derek held under his coat as he boarded the bus. And I decided that when I got to school, I'd talk to him about what I had seen. Not that there was much I could do about it, though. But at least I could find out what was going on.

We all piled into Mrs Fountain's car - her son, myself, and two other boys from our form who she'd also agreed to drop off at the gates. Going by car, we'd have normally beaten the bus back to school - but Mrs Fountain offered to stop and buy us all ice cream and naturally we accepted. I was a little worried about Derek - but certainly nowhere near enough to pass up free ice cream. And so when we arrived back at school, a lot of people had already arrived before us - the second round of buses were starting to come through the gates. And I went looking for Derek.

He wasn't in the House - and so I asked some questions and another first form boy told me that he'd said he'd had to drop something off at the science lab. I shot off towards the science block and found him in the lab, on his hands and knees trying to spring open the door to one of the cupboards with a pen knife. The bundle he'd been given was sitting on a table next to where he was kneeling.

"Hallo, Derek."

He almost jumped out of his skin and turned around to look at me. There was relief on his face, and then a little guilt - being caught by me was nowhere near as bad as being caught by a Master, but he was still definitely doing something he shouldn't have been. And Derek was a good boy.

"Hallo, Nathan."

"You won't spring that door." A lot of the cupboards in the lab could be sprung reasonably easily - but there was a row that had far better locks than the other cupboards, used for storing things that were dangerous or expensive. For those you needed Doctor Maddison's keys.

"I've got to get it open, Nathan!"

"Why?" I asked almost as a test.

"I can't tell you." He passed. Dobbing was not on. Now telling another boy wasn't automatically dobbing - but you couldn't do it for no reason. And because he passed - well, that meant he was honouring our codes as I'd tried to teach him to do. And so I decided to make things easier for him.

"You need to put some of the sodium back that Fitzpatrick had you nick?"

"How did you... I mean..."

"I'll put it back. I know where the Madman keeps his spare keys. You keep cave for me."

I walked into the prep room. Derek did as I asked - headed to the door of the lab to keep a lookout. I began looking for the spare keys - they were not where I expected them to be, and so I started checking other drawers.

There was a tap-tap-tap noise. I looked up and my heart plummeted. Standing, looking in the window, was Doctor Maddison. He gestured with a finger to me to approach and open the window.

"Stay where you are, Nathan. I shall be with you shortly." He headed off to move around the building to an entrance. I darted out to speak to Derek.

"Sprint, Derek, I'm caught - no point in both of us copping it."

"Oh hell, I'm sorry, Nathan."

"Forget it. Just get out of here. If I'm going to get in trouble for saving you, you'd better bloody well be saved."

"I'll find Fitzpatrick and tell him what has happened?" It was a question.

"Try it - and tell him fair go."

I was willing to take a punishment to protect Derek in this case - but I was not in the least averse to the idea of Stan Fitzpatrick taking the punishment to protect me.

Derek vanished from sight, just moments before Doctor Maddison arrived in the room. I met him at the doorway.

"I told you to stay where you were."

"I'm sorry, Sir, I..."

"Stand still now. Don't move an inch."

His face was very solemn and his voice was very controlled. He nearly always had a smile on his face and a lilt in his voice, but both of these things were gone. He walked to the back of the classroom and unwrapped the bundle.

"Sodium... you idiot child."

I stood in silence.

"Turn around when I speak to you."

I slowly did so, and he walked back towards me.

"Who else was involved?"

"I can't tell you, Sir."

"Hmmm. Come with me."

We walked into the prep room and he flicked on the lights. It was just beginning to get dark - still plenty of light to see by, but evening was approaching. The window was still open and he sat down at his desk in front of it. He left me standing on the other side of the desk. My position meant I had a clear view out of the window over his shoulder. A clear view of the avenue where buses parked and boys disembarked from them. There were a lot of boys, mostly senior boys milling about there.

"Nathan... I understand that you cannot just tell on other boys. I know there's rules of camaraderie that must be observed, and I'm quite in favour of that. But I also know that you cannot have been the only boy involved. Look, I need to know this, if nothing else - is that all the sodium that is left? If you can assure me that there's none of it still at large, then I don't need to speak to anyone else, and perhaps we can put this matter behind us."

"I don't know, Sir."

"That's not acceptable, Nathan. I have to know this."

Out of the window, I could see Stan Fitzpatrick now. He was laughing and joking with a couple of his friends.

"I'm sorry, Sir, I don't know."

"Nathan - if you don't know, then you have to tell me the names of those who would know. Schoolboy honour has its limits - and I can't run the risk of boys running around with dangerous substances."

"I'm sorry, Sir."

"So am I." He stood up with a deep sigh. "I hate to do this - but under the circumstances, a severe punitive response is all that is available to me." He walked over to a bookshelf and reached up to its top, seven feet up in the air, and took hold of a cane. Dust came with it - he didn't use it often. Out of the window, I could see that Derek had found Fitzpatrick and was talking to him. Derek pointed in my direction and I saw Fitzpatrick look. He must have been able to see me, because he gave a quick wave and started running towards our building.

"Bend over and touch your toes, Nathan."

"Please Sir. Can't we wait two minutes?" Two minutes would be more than enough time for Fitzpatrick to arrive. He had to run around to the other side of the building to the entrance doors, but that wasn't any huge distance.

Doctor Maddison looked at me. His lips were clenched.

"Is there a point to waiting?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Very well."

We waited. We waited two minutes. Then three. Then five. Fitzpatrick did not appear.

"Bend over and touch your toes."

I felt betrayed - betrayed enough that I almost - almost - blurted out that Fitzpatrick was involved. I'd expected him to save me. And he hadn't - and that was a violation of all our codes. But just because he'd broken them - didn't mean I could. They meant too much to me to do that, even though that also made the betrayal seem so much worse.

I bent over.

I heard him walk into position behind me. And then I felt the pain.

He brought the cane down hard and fast. Three strokes in a matter of a couple of seconds. The pain was devastating as it built, and as I obeyed his instruction to stand up, tears were already streaking down my face.

As I looked at him, I realized to my utter shock and amazement that he had tears in his eyes as well.

"Get out, Rysher. And you're no longer welcome in this lab outside of your classes. If I can't trust you, I can't use you."

It was the pain that made me cry - at least that's what I told myself as I walked out of the prep room, across the lab, and out into the corridor.

Barelling up the corridor was Fitzpatrick. He saw my face and looked absolutely stricken.

"Oh fuck, Rysher. I'm sorry!"

I tried to walk past him. I didn't want to talk to him. But he grabbed me.

"Do you hear me, I'm sorry?"

"Let me go. Leave me alone." He'd broken our codes.

"It's not my fault."

"I don't care."

"For the love of God, hear me out!" He voice was raised, and rather frantic.

"All right?"

"I came running when Gordon told me - but Mr Marsden caught me running down the lane." The lane ran between the science block and a classroom block. It was under a cover and so you weren't allowed to run there, but it was also out of bounds. It was the shortest route between where Fitzpatrick had been when I'd seen him and the entrance to the science block though. "He held me up. I told him I had to go or a boy would get caned, but he said that he didn't care. And he made me stand - he ordered me to stand. And he wouldn't let me go."

Mr Marsden was one of the Mathematics masters - and to be frank, he was a total bastard. He's someone who I'm fairly sure got some sort of kick out of knowing boys were getting the cane. I don't know if he enjoyed using it himself - but he certainly seemed to love rubbing it in, if he knew a boy had been caned. I knew what he was like - from bitter experience - and instantly all anger I had been directing towards Fitzpatrick had a new target.

"Fair enough."

He looked at me and released my arm. And started to walk down the corridor towards the science lab.

"Where are you going, Fitzpatrick?"

"To take my punishment."

"There's no point! I've already been caned - there's no point in you getting it as well!"

"I beg to differ." He didn't stop. He just walked on down. I followed him, speaking in a low voice as we got closer trying to persuade him that he didn't need to do such a noble and stupid thing on my behalf. Doctor Maddison must have heard us though - he stepped into the corridor and pointed at us.

"Both of you. In here."

We both followed him into the prep room. The cane was still sitting on his desk. He sat down behind it and looked at us. "Well?"

<>Fitzpatrick spoke. "Sir, I was responsible for the sodium being taken."
"And you got Rysher to take it?"

"No, Sir."

"No?" Doctor Maddison looked shocked.

"No, Sir. But I will not say who took it."

"Did you have any role in this, Nathan?"

"Only putting it back, Sir."

"Who took it?"

Both Fitzpatrick and I stood silent.

"Is there any of it left?"

"No, Sir. We cut what we had in two parts - we were going to fire twice, but the explosion was bigger than we expected - and attracted more attention."

"Who is we?"

Again, we were silent. I was silent because I didn't know, but Fitzpatrick was abiding by the code.

"Very well. Stanley, do I have your word of honour that there is no excess sodium still out there?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Well... in that case, I suppose I don't need to know names. But what you have done calls for the most severe punitive response I have at my disposal, I'm afraid. Nathan - you can go - and remember it's your job to sweep the labs this weekend, just because of the fun today doesn't mean you can avoid your service chores."

"Yes, Sir."

"Bend over and touch your toes, Stanley."

As I walked up the corridor I could hear the swish and crack of the cane. They were hard strokes, and fast strokes, and there were six of them. I left the science block, and standing there was Mr Marsden. He had a nasty, thin, smile on his face.

"Did the naughty boy get his bottom caned?"

I walked on, praying he didn't tell me to stop. I was 12 years old - and I had no idea how to deal with this man. I knew instinctively that he was a nasty piece of work - but what could I do about it? Nothing is the answer. I couldn't stand up to him. And I could only walk away if he let me.

"Rysher - how dare you ignore..."

"Leave him alone, Marsden." Fitzpatrick had left the science block just a few seconds behind me - he must have run down the corridor.

The Master rounded on him. "What did you say?"

"Leave him alone, Sir. Or I will tell the Headmaster what you did. You stopped me from stopping him getting caned - all right, Sir, you had the power to do that. But I can tell what you did - and I will unless you leave him alone."

Mr Marsden span around and stalked off.

The older boy and I headed towards the dining hall.

"For someone who doesn't cane often, the Madman know what he's about, doesn't he, Nathan."

"He certainly does, Fitzpatrick."

"Call me, Stanley, kid."

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