The Montague School for Boys had been in existence for almost four centuries. So many great men had passed through its portals that it had become almost a microcosm of the Empire, a byword for all that was once great about Britain. It stood amid rolling hills and green playing fields, its buildings elaborate constructions of towers and battlements, as though the school were in a state of constant readiness to repel the great masses envious of the privilege it represented. Its Old Boys’ network spread through the upper echelons of British society like a great unseen web, permitting only its favored sons to trip lightly across its strands on the way to wealth and glory while trapping those less worthy of ascension and draining them of hope and ambition. Their hollow forms littered the hallways of the Civil Service, the Foreign Office, and the lower divisions of the foremost institutions in the land, an object lesson in the power of good breeding and better connections.
It was surrounded by a vast high wall, and although its great iron gates remained open from early in the morning until late in the evening, few without business at the school dared to venture beyond them. Relations with the natives of the neighboring villages were strained at best, for the school appeared to evoke feelings of intense dislike among those whose children would never experience the benefits of such an establishment (feelings exacerbated by the knowledge that, in all likelihood, their children would be subject to the whims of some of its graduates in later life, just as they themselves were). As a result, trips to the villages were carefully monitored and supervised by the school, although the older boys were permitted greater latitude in their wanderings and took a perverse pleasure in taunting the local merchants, certain in the knowledge that however much the merchants despised these wealthy interlopers, they could ill afford to turn down their custom.
Still, occasionally groups of local urchins would mount an assault on the school’s property, hoping to inflict some minor vandalism on the statuary or steal apples and pears from the orchard. If they were very lucky, they might encounter an unfortunate student who had drifted too far from the safety of the herd, and a beating would be administered. But this was a risky business, for the grounds were regularly patrolled by porters in night blue uniforms who meted out their own brand of justice upon those who fell prey to them; and, on at least one occasion, potential marauders had found themselves facing the combined might of the school’s First Fifteen, and were fortunate to leave the grounds without medical assistance.
Yet the Montague School appeared to recognize, in some small and infinitely patronizing way, a vague duty toward those less fortunate than its fee-paying elite. Every ten years, a scholarship examination was held in the school’s Great Hall, and this test, along with a subsequent interview, was used to determine the identities of those lucky few who would be plucked from a life once destined to be littered with disappointment and unhappiness and instead allowed to glimpse the possibility of a better future (even if that future was never really on offer, for the ignominious reek of charity would hang about them for the rest of their days, and dirt would forever cling to their boots, leaving a trail behind them so that the wealthy and privileged might not, however briefly, mistake them for their own).
Like all such great institutions, the Montague School had its own unique traditions and rituals. There were particular dress practices to be followed, certain directions in which to walk, and peculiar hierarchies of students and teachers that appeared to have little to do with age or merit. Those with the strongest familial ties to the school were permitted dominion over those with less secure links, and with great wealth came the freedom to inflict pain and humiliation with impunity. There were songs to be learned and histories to be recited. There were games with no rules and rules without purpose.
And then there were the bones, and with them went the strangest ritual of all.
That morning, following my first face-to-face encounter with the headmaster, I saw them for the first time. A selection of the final-year boys was presented with them at Assembly, each one stepping onto the stage in turn to receive a bone locked in a small velvet box. In most cases their fathers had held the bones before them, and their fathers in turn, back, back for hundreds of years. When a family line died out, there was always another great name waiting to take its place, and so possession of the bones remained the preserve of only the bluest of bloodlines. It was an old Montague tradition, this ritual of the bones. When at last the final student received his token, all the boys turned to face their younger fellows and we were permitted-nay, instructed-to cheer loudly three times.
I wondered where the bones had come from, but when I tried to catch more than a glimpse of them as their new owners were proudly displaying them I found myself shunted roughly away, and a sea of backs closed before me, denying me even that small concession. Later that night, as I lay in my dormitory bed, I imagined my father, devoted but impecunious, discovering to his surprise that he was the lost heir to a great fortune, with a title to his name that would eventually be passed on to his son. Overnight, I would find myself elevated to a position of influence and respect in the school. I would perform heroic deeds on the sporting field, and my academic achievements would dwarf those of my peers. As my reward, the school would ignore the submissions of better-known families in order to make up for earlier injustices, and I would take my place on the stage and receive into my hand a small velvet box containing a single yellowed bone, the symbol of a new life to come.
It was a brief fantasy, driven sharply away by the flicking of a towel at my face and a burst of laughter from the culprits. I knew that there would never be a relic for a scholarship boy, that they were not for the likes of us.
But I was wrong, for in a way they were all for us.
One week later, I was standing in the rain watching a dispiriting rugby match when a small untidy-looking boy with dirty-blond hair approached me.
“Jenkins, isn’t it?” said the boy.
“Yes?” I replied. I tried to sound detached and unconcerned, but secretly I was quite grateful to be approached. I had found it difficult to make friends among the other students. In fact, I had made no friends at all.
“I’m Smethwick, the other scholarship student.” He smiled uneasily. “I’ve been a bit ill, so I started term late. Crumbs, it’s quite a place, isn’t it? So big, and old, but everyone’s being jolly kind, even the older boys, and they were the ones who scared me the most.”
For a brief moment, I was jealous of Smethwick. Why had the older boys spoken to him but not to me?
“Scared you?” I said at last. “Why?”
“Oh, you know, in case they’d try to bully me. And then there are the stories.”
“The stories?”
“Crikey, Jenkins, you’re like an echo. The stories. You must have been told some of them? Ten years ago, a scholarship boy died during some kind of prank. It was all hushed up, of course: they claim he wandered off and got hit by a passing train, but some say he was dead before the train even left the station.”
Smethwick ’s face betrayed mingled terror and fascination at the tale. I wasn’t sure what to feel. I was finding it hard enough to settle into the routine of life there without adding stories of mysterious deaths to my woes. I had already been regaled with tales of wandering spirits and creatures that lived in the eaves, and on my second day at the school my head was covered with a pillowcase and I was locked in a dark cupboard beneath the stairs until the housemaster heard my cries and finally released me.