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Chapters (93)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Part One
  6. Chapter 1
  7. Chapter 2
  8. Chapter 3
  9. Chapter 4
  10. Chapter 5
  11. Chapter 6
  12. Chapter 7
  13. Chapter 8
  14. Chapter 9
  15. Chapter 10
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter 1
  18. Chapter 2
  19. Chapter 3
  20. Chapter 4
  21. Chapter 5
  22. Chapter 6
  23. Chapter 7
  24. Chapter 8
  25. Chapter 9
  26. Chapter 10
  27. Chapter 11
  28. Chapter 12
  29. Part Three
  30. Chapter 1
  31. Chapter 2
  32. Chapter 3
  33. Chapter 4
  34. Chapter 5
  35. Chapter 6
  36. Chapter 7
  37. Part Four
  38. Chapter 1
  39. Chapter 2
  40. Chapter 3
  41. Chapter 4
  42. Chapter 5
  43. Chapter 6
  44. Chapter 7
  45. Chapter 8
  46. Chapter 9
  47. Part Five
  48. Chapter 1
  49. Chapter 2
  50. Chapter 3
  51. Chapter 4
  52. Chapter 5
  53. Chapter 6
  54. Chapter 7
  55. Chapter 8
  56. Chapter 9
  57. Chapter 10
  58. Chapter 11
  59. Part Six
  60. Chapter 1
  61. Chapter 2
  62. Chapter 3
  63. Chapter 4
  64. Chapter 5
  65. Chapter 6
  66. Chapter 7
  67. Part Seven
  68. Chapter 1
  69. Chapter 2
  70. Chapter 3
  71. Chapter 4
  72. Chapter 5
  73. Chapter 6
  74. Chapter 7
  75. Chapter 8
  76. Chapter 9
  77. Chapter 10
  78. Chapter 11
  79. Part Eight
  80. Chapter 1
  81. Chapter 2
  82. Chapter 3
  83. Chapter 4
  84. Chapter 5
  85. Chapter 6
  86. Chapter 7
  87. Chapter 8
  88. Chapter 9
  89. Epilogue
  90. Acknowledgments
  91. Reading Group Guide
  92. About the Author
  93. Copyright

My words were not idle. Since the start of that term, Devine had already put into detention fourteen boys in my form alone, as well as lodging several complaints against his neighbors along the Upper Corridor for such various crimes as playing music at lunchtime; failing to tidy his room after use; stealing his chalk; moving his plants; and failing to wear a gown to morning Assembly. Dr. Shakeshafte famously referred to him as “that little shit,” and the boys had already given him his current nickname of Sourgrape.

“What possible reason could there be, except the desire to disrupt?” he said.

I shook my head and returned to my room—sensing that my request for chalk would be met with a cool reception. Instead I went up to room 58, which was Harry Clarke’s room, and from which the sound of music emerged dimly, from behind the door.

I knocked and went in. A rail-thin, untidy young man in round glasses and a Harris Tweed jacket was trying to fit a cardboard box under a desk that was already stacked with boxes of records, towers of books, and a portable record player.

He looked up as I came in. “You’re from downstairs, aren’t you?” he said.

“Straitley, Latin,” I told him.

“Harry Clarke. English Lit.” He grinned. “For a moment I thought you were that German chap, complaining about my music again. I’ve been expecting him anytime over the past two weeks. I was going to play him this—”

He grinned again and took a record from the pile on his desk. He slipped it onto the turntable and waited for the song to begin. A sunny little tune rang out. Then I glanced into the cardboard box that he’d slid under the desk, and saw a row of plaster gnomes, neatly packed in polythene, all of them identical to the one I’d seen in Devine’s hand—

The record on the turntable went on playing that bright little tune. I later learned that Harry was fond of collecting novelty records. After a time I started to laugh, and Harry Clarke laughed with me.

The song was, of course, “The Laughing Gnome.”

Chapter 5

5

Michaelmas Term, 1981

Dear Mousey,