I wondered what the three boys had in common, except for their outsider status. All came from good families; all were only children; all attended the same Church; and yet they were so different. Seventh-term boys often find it hard to make friends at first, especially when they are not naturally outgoing. And yet the three stood out as odd, even for seventh-term boys. At fourteen, the world is a fairground of ominous attractions. A time of violent enthusiasms and equally violent aversions; of poignant sorrows and terrible joys and secret laughter that wrenches the heart. Other boys played soccer, using their jerseys for goalposts. Other boys played Top Trumps; discovered girls or rock music. Other boys ran hell-for-leather across St. Oswald’s playing fields, shirts untucked and splattered with mud, with shoes that would have to be left at the door to spare the parquet flooring, and which would slowly dry and crack under their carapace of clay.

But Harrington, Nutter, and Spikely never got muddy; never ran; never even untucked their shirts. Nutter was prone to allergies that made him wheeze at the slightest exertion; Harrington was too dignified and Spikely was a clumsy boy, always tripping over his feet. They rarely said very much in class, or to me, although they seemed to enjoy spending time in the room above mine, with Harry Clarke, who taught the third-form middle set. In the case of another member of staff (or another group of pupils), I might have felt a little aggrieved to see them prefer his room over mine. But Harry was a good friend—and frankly, if I’d been in their place, I would have preferred it too.

Harry was older than Eric or I, but looked and sounded younger. A lanky, vaguely awkward man, with hair slightly longer than the regulation length and a voice that commanded attention without his ever raising it. He’d entered the teaching profession some years before, via the state sector, and was thus unencumbered by the kind of rigid academic thinking that characterized St. Oswald’s. As a result, he was popular with the boys—not in the style of those colleagues who never set any homework, and thereby believe that this gives them an understanding with the boys, but because he made every boy in his care feel like an individual. He was less popular with the staff. Perhaps because he made no effort to fit in, preferring to stay with his form rather than socialize in the Common Room; or because he encouraged the boys to call him by his Christian name; or because of his humble background and lack of qualifications.