‘East-west looks okay but north-south is undoubtedly skew-whiff,’ Jim declared, testing the other window ledge. ‘What are you good at, Bill?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Roach woodenly.
‘Got to be good at something surely, everyone is. How about football? Are you good at football, Bill?’
‘No, sir,’ said Roach.
‘Are you a swat, then?’ Jim asked carelessly, as he lowered himself with a short grunt on to the bed, and took a pull from the beaker. ‘You don’t look a swat I must say,’ he added politely. ‘Although you’re a loner.’
‘I don’t know,’ Roach repeated and moved half a pace towards the open door.
‘What’s your best thing, then?’ He took another long sip. ‘Must be good at something, Bill, everyone is. My best thing was ducks and drakes. Cheers.’
Now this was an unfortunate question to ask of Roach just then for it occupied most of his waking hours. Indeed he had recently come to doubt whether he had any purpose on earth at all. In work and play he considered himself seriously inadequate; even the daily routine of the school, such as making his bed and tidying his clothes, seemed to be beyond his reach. Also he lacked piety, old Mrs Thursgood had told him so, he screwed up his face too much at chapel. He blamed himself very much for these shortcomings but most of all he blamed himself for the break-up of his parents’ marriage, which he should have seen coming and taken steps to prevent. He even wondered whether he was more directly responsible, whether for instance he was abnormally wicked or divisive or slothful, and that his bad character had wrought the rift. At his last school he had tried to explain this by screaming and feigning fits of cerebral palsy, which his aunt had. His parents conferred, as they frequently did in their reasonable way, and changed his school. Therefore this chance question, levelled at him in the cramped caravan by a creature at least half-way to divinity, a fellow solitary at that, brought him suddenly very near disaster. He felt the heat charging to his face, he watched his spectacles mist over and the caravan begin to dissolve into a sea of grief. Whether Jim noticed this, Roach never knew, for suddenly he had turned his crooked back on him, moved away to the table and was helping himself from the plastic beaker while he threw out saving phrases.
‘You’re a good watcher, anyway, I’ll tell you that for nothing, old boy. Us singles always are, no one to rely on, what? No one else spotted me. Gave me a real turn up there, parked on the horizon. Thought you were a juju man. Best watcher in the unit, Bill Roach is, I’ll bet. Long as he’s got his specs on. What?’
‘Yes,’ Roach agreed gratefully, ‘I am.’
‘Well, you stay here and watch, then,’ Jim commanded, clapping the safari hat back on his head, ‘and I’ll slip outside and trim the legs. Do that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where’s damn marble?’
‘Here, sir.’
‘Call out when she moves, right? North, south, whichever way she rolls. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Know which way’s north?’
‘That way,’ said Roach promptly and stuck out his arm at random.
‘Right. Well, you call when she rolls,’ Jim repeated and disappeared into the rain. A moment later Roach felt the ground swaying under his feet and heard another roar either of pain or anger, as Jim wrestled with an off-side prop.
In the course of that same summer term, the boys paid Jim the compliment of a nickname. They had several shots before they were happy. They tried Trooper, which caught the bit of military in him, his occasional, quite harmless cursing and his solitary rambles in the Quantocks. All the same Trooper didn’t stick, so they tried Pirate and for a while Goulash. Goulash because of his taste for hot food, the smell of curries and onions and paprika that greeted them in warm puffs as they filed past the Dip on their way to Evensong. Goulash for his perfect French which was held to have a slushy quality. Spikely of Five B could imitate it to a hair: ‘You heard the question, Berger. What is Emile looking at?’ – a convulsive jerk of the right hand – ‘Don’t gawp at me, old boy, I’m not a juju man. Qu’est-ce qu’il regarde, Emile, dans le tableau que tu as sous le nez ? Mon cher Berger, if you do not very soon summon one lucid sentence of French, je te mettrai tout de suite à la porte, tu comprends, you beastly toad?’