Dark Places Read Free Page B

If Kristabel knew she had something between her legs that could tear a man apart, no wonder she thought herself so superior! Morrison told us of the insatiable appetite of women for men: ‘They don’t, you know, have a squirt and be done with it, they can never get enough of it,’ Morrison whispered, and not a boy crouched on the scuffed dirt would have been the one to ask, ‘What is this “it”, Morrison?’
    When we arrived back from holidays one term, there was a new master. Cargill was tall and thin, and walked with a faint shamble, as if he was wearing feet a couple of sizes too big. He was a loosely put-together individual with a permanent rash on his jaw where his starched collar rubbed the skin; his slow smile showed a crooked tooth and his large face was mild and attentive. He was a man whose academic gown was stiff and new, whose laurels still sat unfaded on his brow. He had been a prodigy, we heard, and would go far, and was full of schemes to get his boys developing team spirit. Under Cargill’s direction, we boys with chests were no longer to moon on the edge of the football games hugging ourselves in the wind. ‘You are all part of the team too,’ Cargill shouted over the grunts of the players. ‘You will barrack, and I will teach you to barrack as you have never barracked before!’
    He took it seriously, as he wanted us to. Once a week he sat us in the assembly hall, among the rows of dusty chairs, and directed us from where he sat right at the back of the hall. ‘Project,’ he would declaim, ‘project, boy, I want them to hear you in Broken Hill!’ and we would try again:
    â€˜Rovers Rovers red and blue,
    Rovers we are counting on you,
    North and South and East and West,
    Rovers Rovers you’re the best!’
    If we could not get the hang of projecting our thin voices as far as where he sat, he would stride down through the chairs with his long legs, bound up onto the platform, and grasp a boy around the waist to demonstrate the existence of the diaphragm.
    I was that boy once, and could hardly breathe, let alone project, as he stood behind me, one hand in the small of my back and the other on my stomach. ‘Push, Singer!’ he exclaimed. ‘I want to see my hand move out as you take in air, go on, push, boy!’ I pushed, and we all watched as Cargill’s large hand was moved outwards by the volume of air I had taken in. ‘Now, project, Singer, on that chestful of air,’ he urged, and I found myself filled with a resonant and steady voice which filled every corner of the chalky hall. ‘Well done, Singer, well done indeed, that is quite a voice.’ Cargill said, and let go of my back and my stomach, but gave me a smile into my eyes that made the world warm for the rest of that day.
    It was Cargill whom I began to adore, and longed to resemble. ‘What are you slouching for, Albion?’ my stern unfriendly father demanded when I went home for holidays, and jabbed me in the button of my jacket. ‘Stand straight, boy, be a man.’ I would not tell him, or even myself, that I was being Cargill, that I was trying out the skin of another being who I longed to be one with. I felt my toes turn in and I took the long gangling strides that Cargill took, and was at peace and in a tumult of excitement both at once, because I was feeling what it was to be Cargill, and to leave lonely Albion somewhere else.
    Cargill’s smile was a leaf caressing the sky. It was a bird through blue, it shaved the stone away from the world and left soul shining through. In the angular and bloodless cold world in which I lived, Cargill was the moment of warmth in it, the only moment when it felt acceptable to be Albion Gidley Singer. Stony boy that I was, with a reputation for being one for tittle-tattle and going to the authorities, disliked as I was for my stiffness and prissiness, and too much insincere politeness: this stony boy