Work Text:
In London there are a few ways a boy of fourteen with no job and two-hundred pounds stolen from his drunken father can get a place to live. One is to live with an old lady who feeds you bread heels and makes you clean her gutters, which I did for about a month, and the other is to live in a dormitory, which I also did when the new term started. Secondary is difficult to get into if you haven't got any parents, but luckily, I landed myself in a situation that gave me free passage to a place called Willows School for Boys.
It was a somewhat drizzly day in summer when the old woman sent me out for a loaf of bread (the heels of which were to be my dinner). I was stopped outside the bakery by the presence of three boys in school uniforms, engaged in a conversation that piqued my short interest.
"I don't know if I can stomach another year at Willows…"
"Oh shut up, Parker, it's not that bad…"
"The teachers hardly care what you do, the dorms aren't bad, the food's all right…"
Food… My stomach growled and the boys' attention turned to me immediately, as if I were a bear. Once they turned, I got a better look at their uniforms… Short-sleeved dress shirts with the tails untucked, black ties messily done, and black trousers that cuffed around their shoes, which apparently weren't part of the uniform, as they were all wearing different brand-name runners. I waved nonchalantly.
"'Ello," I said loftily, as if I were an acquaintance passing by.
The boys grunted in acknowledgement of my presence, but I saw their eyes wander over my secondhand clothing, baggy sweatshirt and jeans, and the mess of coal-black hair that stuck wetly to my forehead from the drizzle. One boy spoke.
"Who are you?" said the complaining boy called Parker.
"Anri Mason," I replied.
"That's a dumb name," said Parker.
"Then why did you ask?" I said.
He didn't have an answer for that.
"What are you all talking about?" I asked them.
"Is it any of your business?" one of the taller boys said.
"I was only asking," I shrugged.
They looked at each other, and then the shortest boy spoke up. "We were talking about our school."
"What school is that?" I said curiously.
"Willows," Parker piped up, rather stubbornly.
"It's a reform school, kid," sneered the tall boy. "We're bad seeds, so watch out."
I frowned and crossed my arms. "You don't look that scary to me."
"Speak for yourself," said the short boy. "Parker gave a professor a black eye in primary, and Henry used to fight dogs after school."
"Why did you fight dogs?" I said to the tall boy named Henry. "There's no reason to fight a dog if it's not chasing you. I usually just run."
"Not like that, you git," Henry said, rolling his eyes. "Oy, Jerome, this kid's thick as a brick wall, he is."
"Did you say this place had dormitories?" I said, ignoring the insult as if they hadn't been talking about me.
"Course it has dormitories," said the boy named Jerome rudely. "If we didn't live in dorms we might never go back."
"I don't like the dorms," said Parker.
"Why not?" I said, but the other boys elbowed Parker before he could answer.
"Don't you go to a school?" said Henry incredulously.
"No," I told him. "I used to go to secondary, but I didn't want to live in Surrey anymore."
"You came here from Surrey?" said Parker.
I nodded.
"All by yourself?" said Jerome pointedly.
I nodded again. "I took a train."
The boys looked at each other oddly. Apparently it was quite strange for a fourteen-year-old to leave Surrey and come to London all by himself. Then again, I hardly looked fourteen.
"How do you get into Willows?" I asked.
Parker looked at me like I had moths in my ears. "You want to go to Willows?"
"Yes," I said, as if it were nothing. "I like school. And I want to live in a dormitory. I live with an old woman who feeds me bread heels."
This only got me more weird looks. But Henry spoke up. "If you want to go to Willows, it's easy to get in. They hardly ever keep track of who goes in, they only care about who escapes."
"How do you get in, then?" I asked again.
"Just come with us," said Henry, and he turned and walked away, followed by Parker and Jerome, and me tailing behind them.
I think it may be dreadfully boring for me to tell you how I followed three boys from a reformation school down the streets of London to get to the school called Willows. Now that I think about it, I never did get that loaf of bread for the old lady. In any case, we soon came to a one-story building surrounded by black iron-wrought fences that sat up on short brick walls, with two five-story buildings flanking the building in the middle, and a great lot of grass surrounding all three buildings and the walkways that connected them. In front of the main gate was a great sign with hedges on either side. It said:
WILLOWS
SCHOOL FOR BOYS
1973
It wasn't a terribly impressive sign, but I was still in awe of the school and the sign and the iron-wrought fences that sat on low brick walls and the hedges that flanked the unimpressive sign. Then again, back then a dinner roll could impress me if you baked it right. Henry and the boys tore me away from the sign and to the front gate, which was open and being guarded by a large woman with an umbrella who stared at us from under her security guard's cap that she had, for some reason, decorated with a daisy.
"Afternoon, Douglas," said Jerome with mock cheerfulness.
The woman grunted.
"Stay clear of that one," Henry muttered to me with a wink once we were past. I was confused.
The path we took to get to the main building was winding and wet from the drizzle, as were all three boys and me. Once inside, the building split down a corridor lined with doors, and the boys took me down a corridor to the right, and then to a door with a window that looked as if it had a small fence over it. I wondered for a moment why a window needed a fence over it before Henry pulled me inside.
"Good afternoon, Headmaster Dawson."
The boys had all arranged themselves around me as if I were a pet they were bringing home to their mother. It wasn't till I heard a loud scraping that I looked up at what everyone else was looking at.
The scraping, apparently, came from the feet of a large chair covered in red leather, which sat behind an even larger mahogany desk – possibly oak, but what did I know about wood then? – on which a nameplate reading "ADRIAN DAWSON - HEADMASTER" shone in bronze. There came a loud clearing of voice, and I noticed the man who sat in the red leather chair, hunched over the desk like a vulture. In fact, he reminded me much of a vulture in every way, complete with bald head and beady eyes. The vulture made a noise of dissent just as I finished my examination of the area, glancing over each boy in turn but sparing no notice to me.
"What do you three want this time? Haven't got into any more trouble, have you?" said the Headmaster, glaring at Henry in particular, who grinned.
"No, Headmaster Dawson," he said angelically. "But we found a truant on lunch break, Sir. This boy was skipping school, he was."
The vulture's eyes turned to me, examining me with one eye wide open and the other one squinting, as if the space between he and I were occupied by a spyglass or a telescope. He gave a loud "Humph!" and then turned back to whatever was on his desk.
"A truant?" he said derisively, scribbling down something on a paper in front of him. "And how do you know? Where's your uniform, boy?"
I opened my mouth to say I hadn't got one, but Jerome spoke for me. "He never got one, Sir. He never came to school when term started. Thought he could weasel out of going at all, Sir."
"It's true," piped Parker. "He confessed the whole thing to us. Thought he'd get a bit of bragging done, but we turned him in right quick."
The Headmaster turned his glazed eyes up at me again, as if questioning the solidarity of this ridiculous story, then gave another "Humph!" and got up from his seat. Once up, I saw that he seemed to have very long legs and a hunched back, so he looked like a vulture crossed with a flamingo. I wondered momentarily if he slept standing on one leg with his head tucked under his arm. He turned away from us and opened up a drawer in a file cabinet, flicking through the numerous files with long, gnarled fingers.
"What's your name, boy?" he barked at me with his back turned.
I jumped slightly and answered, "Anri Mason."
It took him only ten seconds to flit through the files and look back at me with a scowl. "There's no Anri Mason in here."
"That's another part of his plan, that is, Sir," said Henry, wagging a finger with a smile. "He told us he messed with his school admissions form and gave the wrong information so they wouldn't come find him. What was the name he used, Jerome?"
I looked over and saw Jerome peeking over at the files while Headmaster Dawson's focus was on Henry, snapping back into place before the Headmaster could notice him. "Thomas Jacobs, he said. He's a clever one, Headmaster, Sir."
For a moment the Headmaster's eyes traveled over each of us boys in turn, then over me. I felt my toes go numb with nerves. Surely this ridiculous story couldn't get me in… I jumped as the Headmaster gave his third "Humph!" and sat down at his desk again.
"So, Mason, you gave us the wrong name and thought you'd get out of coming to Willows, did you? I'll have you know a little arsonist like you doesn't have half my experience," the Headmaster snarled, "and I'll also have you know this trick has been tried dozens of times. Dozens! And it always fails, because you little bastards get cocky. Truman, Beale, Harris… take Mason down to the laundry room and get him his uniform, then off to the dormitories with the lot of you… I'll be having the guards at the front gate keep a close eye on you, Mason…"
The three boys led me out of the Headmaster's office, almost dragging me, not because I was unwilling but because I was simply stunned as to how I'd just gotten in. Once out of earshot, Henry laughed.
"That was brilliant, eh, Mason?" he grinned, letting go of my arm.
"Bloody brilliant," I nodded breathlessly, staring at him in awe. "How did you know what name to use…?"
"Simple," shrugged Jerome. "Dawson marks the students who haven't shown up for class on the first day of school in red. Chances are the kid whose place you just took is never going to show up anyway."
I nodded, smiling as I followed them down the hall, but my smiling faded as I remembered the dormitories. "But what about the dorms?"
"That's no worry," Henry said, waving away my question. "I live in a double by myself. You can take the other bunk."
I found myself grinning ear to ear as I followed the group of ne'er-do-wells who would become my friends. And that, dear, is how I became enrolled at Willows School for Boys.