The War of Jenkins' Ear. Michael Morpurgo

sure he will,’ said Christopher’s mother, and then they were out of sight, down the hallway towards the porch and the front door. Toby heard the front door open and was debating whether he should make a dash for the classroom now or wait until Rudolph and Cruella had gone back into the study. He never had the time to make up his mind.

      He heard a cough from behind him. There were two sturdy legs in dark stockings and flat shoes and one of the feet was tapping. Only Matron wore shoes like the police. ‘Jenkins,’ she said. ‘If I was a boy here that is probably exactly where I should spend as much time as I could, under the piano; but I am not a boy, I am Matron. Crawl out Jenkins, crawl out.’ Toby stood up before he should have done and banged his head on the piano. The strings reverberated. Matron smiled at him. ‘Well, that’ll knock some sense into you, won’t it?’

      ‘Yes, Matron.’ He was still rubbing his head and about to go back into the classroom when he heard Rudolph’s voice from across the hall. ‘Jenkins, what do you think you are doing out of class?’ Christopher was there with him.

      ‘He has a headache, Headmaster,’ said Matron. ‘I’ve given him something. It’s better now, isn’t it, Jenkins?’ She turned her attention to Christopher. ‘Back again then are we?’ Christopher nodded. ‘Staying this time are we?’ Toby never quite knew when Matron was being serious and when she wasn’t.

      ‘Oh, he’ll be staying, Matron,’ said Rudolph, ‘you can be quite sure of that. And I want no special treatment either. He’s in your class, Jenkins. Take him along. Matron, may I have a word?’ And the two boys were left alone in the hall.

      ‘This school, it smells of cabbage and polish,’ Christopher said sniffing. Toby had always noticed that too, particularly at the beginning of term.

      ‘I’m glad you’re back,’ Toby said as they walked towards the classroom, and he meant it. He didn’t know what else to say, but he thought he had to say something.

      ‘I’m not,’ Christopher said, and they went in together.

      ‘Now there’s a thing. You would have thought it a mathematical impossibility,’ said Mr Cramer, peering at them over the rim of his glasses. ‘One goes out, two come back.’ He pointed to the empty desk beside Toby’s. ‘Your desk I believe, Christopher. Sit down.’ Every eye in the room followed Christopher to his seat. ‘We are doing long division. Have you ever done long division?’

      ‘No, sir,’ said Christopher, ‘but I’ll learn. I learn very quickly.’

      To everyone’s surprise – boys and staff alike – Christopher did learn very quickly. At his Council school he had never before done French or history or geography or Latin – a fact which amazed everyone at Redlands – but it seemed to make no difference whatsoever. Within a few days he appeared to have mastered what had taken Toby several long years of grinding learning. He could decline the first and second declensions in Latin and he already knew his way around at least a dozen French irregular verbs – all the tenses, even the subjunctive. He knew almost every capital on the globe, and had learnt by heart the names and dates of all the Plantagenet kings. He had, or so it seemed, a photographic memory. He could learn a poem on reading it and recite it without hesitation in class the next morning.

      Yet in spite of all this brilliance, or perhaps because of it, Christopher had made no lasting friends or admirers except Toby. Brought up as they were to be wary of intelligent eccentrics, the boys kept their distance. Even the teachers were only grudgingly impressed. Toby overheard them once when he was waiting outside the staff-room door. Madame Lafayette was proclaiming enthusiastically that she had never had such a brilliant student, either in France or in England. ‘It’s just like as if ’e ’as the French blood in ’im,’ she said. ‘You say a word just once and ’e pronounces it like a French person. Mind you ’e can’t paint for toffee.’

      ‘Bright boy, maybe the brightest we’ve ever had, but surly,’ said Major Bagley.

      ‘If you ask me, he asks too many questions,’ Mr Cramer said. ‘Can’t stand boys who ask too many questions.’

      And that was the main problem. He unnerved everyone by asking too many penetrating and unexpected questions. Bare facts seemed unimportant to him, uninteresting. He always had to know the whys and wherefores. For instance, it wasn’t enough for him just to know the date of the South Sea Bubble or the Treaty of Utrecht or the Bill of Rights or the War of Jenkins’ Ear, he would go on questioning until either the teacher became irritated or until he was satisfied. As a result he would never write the regulation five lines on anything. His account of the Wars of the Roses covered two sides of paper and yet he seemed to do it in the same time it took Toby and the others to write their five lines. The teachers put it down to inexperience, to lack of early training at his Council school. He would catch up, in time.

      But in divinity it was quite evident that he had no catching up to do at all. The local vicar, the Reverend Jolyon – ‘Holy Jo’ the boys called him – came in every Friday and Tuesday morning to teach divinity. Always nervous and uneasy in front of the boys, they knew it and ragged him mercilessly, even calling him ‘Holy Jo’ to his face. In all the time Toby had known him he had never once lost his temper and Toby admired him for that. But now with Christopher in the class Holy Jo became a changed man, for it was soon clear to him and to everyone else that Christopher knew his Bible through and through. He knew all the parables and what’s more he understood what they meant. He could quote the prophecies of Isaiah and many of the Proverbs. He knew Psalm 23 and the Sermon on the Mount by heart. Holy Jo grew visibly happier and more relaxed as each lesson demonstrated yet greater depths of Christopher’s knowledge and understanding.

      Toby was there when Holy Jo called Christopher to his desk after the lesson was over. ‘Christopher,’ he said, ‘is your father a vicar by any chance?’

      ‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘He’s a carpenter, makes doors, windows and things.’

      ‘Well I’m amazed,’ said Holy Jo, shaking his head. ‘Utterly amazed. We must talk more, we must talk more.’

      Rugby was every afternoon, whatever the weather, except Sundays and Tuesdays. Tuesday was cross-country running. Christopher’s trunk hadn’t arrived until the second week of term and when he first turned out on the rugby pitch he looked very fragile in his shorts. Toby saw him wandering on to the pitch and he seemed to be in a world of his own. Pricey asked him if he’d ever played rugby before and he shook his head. ‘I’ve played football,’ he said. ‘What do you have to do?’ Everyone laughed at that.

      ‘Well it’s quite simple really,’ said Pricey. ‘You just pick up the ball and run with it. You run all the way down the pitch and you touch it down over the line. And anyone on the other side – you’ve got a blue shirt on, so that means the reds – anyone in a red shirt will try to tackle you and if you see anyone in a red shirt with the ball then you tackle him. We’ll show him Hunter, shall we?’ Hunter threw the ball to Porter, who tried half-heartedly to run past him. No one runs past Hunter. The tackle came in hard and low and Porter was lifted into the air before he crashed to the ground, the breath knocked out of him. ‘See?’ Pricey laughed. ‘Like that.’

      But Christopher seemed already to have lost interest.

      Pricey put him on the right wing for that first game so he wouldn’t get hurt and he had a quiet word with the reds to take it easy. ‘Let him in gently,’ he said, which of course was not at all what the reds had in mind.

      Whenever Toby looked up from the base of his scrum Christopher was standing, hands behind his back, often facing the wrong way, often offside. Toby told him time and again that he had to keep behind the ball, but Christopher was not listening. He kept gazing up at the clouds, as if he was looking for a plane, Toby thought. Then Runcy sliced a kick and the ball bounced across the field and came to rest at Christopher’s feet. He looked down at it as if it was some kind of intrusion. Pricey shouted at him. They all shouted. ‘Pick it up! Pick it up!’ Christopher bent down and picked up the ball in both hands. ‘Run, run!’ Toby shouted. He seemed not to know which way to run. ‘That