He couldn’t reach the wound to treat it, but after last time he had hacked himself triangles of lint and stitched strings to the corners. Having put these handy on the draining board and prepared the hibitane, he cooked hot water, added half a packet of salt and gave himself an improvised shower, crouching to get his back under the jet. He soaked the lint in the hibitane, flung it across his back, strapped it from the front and lay face down on the bunk with a vodka handy. The pain eased and a drowsiness came over him, but he knew if he gave way to it he would sleep all day, so he took the vodka bottle to the window and sat at the table correcting Five B French while Thursday’s dawn slipped into the Dip and the rooks started their clatter in the elms.
Sometimes he thought of the wound as a memory he couldn’t keep down. He tried his damnedest to patch it over and forget but even his damnedest wasn’t always enough.
He took the correcting slowly because he liked it, and because correcting kept his mind in the right places. At six-thirty, seven, he was done so he put on some old flannel bags and a sports coat and walked quietly down to the church, which was never locked. There he knelt a moment in the centre aisle of the Curtois ante-chapel, which was a family monument to the dead from two wars, and seldom visited by anyone. The cross on the little altar had been carved by sappers at Verdun. Still kneeling Jim groped cautiously under the pew until his fingertips discovered the line of several pieces of adhesive tape; and, following these, a casing of cold metal. His devotions over, he bashed up Combe Lane to the hilltop, jogging a bit to get a sweat running, because the warm did him wonders while it lasted, and rhythm soothed his vigilance. After his sleepless night and the early morning vodka, he was feeling a bit lightheaded, so when he saw the ponies down the combe, gawping at him with their fool faces, he yelled at them in bad Somerset – ‘Git ‘arn there! Damned old fools, take your silly eyes off me!’ – before pounding down the lane again for coffee, and a change of bandage.
First lesson after prayers was Five B French and there Jim all but lost his temper: he doled out a silly punishment to Clements, the draper’s son, and had to take it back at the end of class. In the common room he went through another routine, of the sort he had followed in the church: quickly, mindlessly, no fumble and out. It was a simple enough notion, the mail check, but it worked. He’d never heard of anyone who used it, among the pros, but then pros don’t talk about their game. ‘See it this way,’ he would have said. ‘If the opposition is watching you, it’s certain to be watching your mail, because mail’s the easiest watch in the game: easier still if the opposition is the home side and has the co-operation of the postal service. So what do you do? Every week, from the same postbox, at the same time, at the same rate, you post one envelope to yourself and a second to an innocent party at the same address. Shove in a bit of trash – charity Christmas card literature, come-on from local supermarket – be sure to seal envelope, stand back and compare times of arrival. If your letter turns up later than the other fellow’s you’ve just felt someone’s hot breath on you, in this case Toby’s.’
Jim called it, in his odd, chipped vocabulary, water-testing, and once again the temperature was unobjectionable. The two letters clocked in together, but Jim arrived too late to pinch back the one addressed to Marjoribanks, whose turn it was to act as unwitting running mate. So having pocketed his own, Jim snorted at the Daily Telegraph while Marjoribanks with an irritable ‘Oh, to hell’ tore up a printed invitation to join the Bible Reading Fellowship. From there, school routine carried him again till junior rugger versus St Ermin’s, which he was billed to referee. It was a fast game and when it was over his back acted up again, so he drank vodka till first bell, which he’d promised to take for young Elwes. He couldn’t remember why he’d promised, but the younger staff and specially the married ones relied on him a lot for odd jobs and he let it happen. The bell was an old ship’s tocsin, something Thursgood’s father had dug up and now part of the tradition. As Jim rang it he was aware of little Bill Roach standing right beside him, peering up at him with a white smile, wanting his attention, as he wanted it half a dozen times each day.