Harry sighed. ‘Well, see, it’s like I have friends. Up in my head.’
‘Imaginary friends!’ Jimmy scoffed, but not unkindly.
‘No, they’re more than that,’ Harry answered. ‘Arid they’re good friends, too. Of course they are … I’m the only friend they’ve got!’
‘Huh!’ Jimmy snorted. ‘Oh, you’re weird, all right!’
Way up at the head of the column, ‘Sergeant’ Graham Lane came out of the woods into bright sunlight, pausing to hasten on the double rank of kids behind him. This was the narrow mouth of the dene, also the mouth of the stream which had cut its gulley through the sea cliffs. To north and south those cliffs now rose, mainly of sandstone but layered with belts of shale and shingle, and banded with rounded stones; and here the stream passed under an old, rickety wooden bridge. Beyond lay a reedy, weedy marsh or lake of brackish water, only ever replenished by high tides or storms. A path skirted the boggy area towards the sandy beach; and beyond that, there lay the grey North Sea, growing greyer every day with debris from the pits. But today it was blue in the bright sunlight, flecked white here and there by the spray of diving gulls where they fished.
‘Right!’ Lane called loudly, standing arms akimbo and very much The Man, in his track-suit bottoms and T-shirt on the nearside of the bridge. ‘Off you go, over the bridge, round the lake and on to the beach. Find your stones and bring ’em back to me – er, no, to Miss Gower – for grading. We’ve a good half hour, so anyone who fancies can have a quick dip as soon as he’s found his stone – if you’ve got your costumes with you. But no nude bathing if you please, remember there are other people on the beach. And stick to the pools left by the sea. You all know what the current’s like just here, you young buggers!’
They knew, all right: the current was treacherous, especially on an ebb tide. People were drowned up and down this coast every year, strong swimmers too.
Miss Gower – Religious Instruction and Geography -from her position roughly half-way back along the column, had heard Lane’s gravel-voiced, parade-ground instructions. She gave a little grimace. Oh, she understood well enough why she was to grade the stones: it was to allow Lane and Dorothy Hartley a bit of freedom, so they could have a little ‘ramble’ along the rocks and find themselves a spot for a quick hump! Purely physical, of course, for their minds were totally incompatible.
Miss Gower tilted her nose and sniffed loudly; and now, as the pace of the kids towards the front began to speed up, she called out: ‘All right, boys – hurry along. And remember this week’s wild-life quest. We need some good razor-shells for the natural history room. Whole ones, still hinged together if you can find them. But please – empty ones! Let’s not carry any rotting molluscs back, shall we?’
Farther back, along the path under the trees, where the rear was brought up by Miss Hartley and the monitors of her English and History classes, Stanley Green trudged, hands in pockets, his clever but vicious mind dark with thoughts of violence. He had heard Miss Gower’s memo to the kids: no dead shellfish. No, but he’d like to fix it for a dead ‘Speccy’ Keogh! Well, maybe not dead, but severely mauled. It was that dumb kid’s fault he had those maths problems to work out tonight. Dumb shit, sitting there like a zombie, fast asleep with his eyes wide open! Well, Big Stanley would open his eyes for him, sure enough – or close them!
‘Hands out of your pockets, Stanley,’ pretty Miss Hartley said from behind him. ‘It’s five months yet to Christmas, not quite cold enough for snow. And why the hunched shoulders? Is something bothering you?’
‘No, Miss,’ he mumbled in answer, his head down.
‘Try to enjoy, Stanley,’ she told him, a little archly. ‘You’re still very young, but if you keep on taking your spite out on the entire world you’ll get old very, very quickly.’ And to herself she added, like that frustrated bitch, Gertrude Gower . . .!