My Name is Michael Sibley Read Online Free PDF Page A

illegal and were back by 9 p.m., we could regard ourselves as adults.
    We three used to hire bicycles and cycle through the countryside, exploring, turning off where we wished, stopping by the Avon for a bathe, going into pubs for a glass of cider, for as yet we disliked the taste of beer, and eating stupendously. It is inevitable that all those Whitsun outings are in retrospect bathed in sunshine.
    Once, in a lonely country lane, we passed a beautiful girl cycling in the opposite direction. She was coolly dressed, and blonde and serene; she made our day for us. We goggled openly as she went by, a girl of about twenty-two who to this day does not know that three young fellows aged sixteen, in grey flannels and blazers, fell deeply in love with her after only seeing her for about ten seconds.
    For the rest of the day we discussed her off and on, and I for one wove stories around her. She was obviously the daughter of a retired Indian colonel, living a quiet life in some old-world manor, tending her fowls and pigeons and arranging flowers in the house. I imagined her getting into some sort of danger on a horse. Gallant Michael Sibley would leap at its head as it thundered by, bring it to a halt and catch the fainting angel in his arms; to be rewarded with a warm and lingering kiss, two soft arms around his neck, and vows of eternal gratitude. Later, of course, we would get married.
    I was rather inclined to indulge in these romantic fantasies, and from the way we occasionally talked I see no reason to suppose that the others did not have similar dreams. These dreams were always delightfully pure, terminating in soft arms and kisses, and nothing more.
    We graduated from the Junior Common Room to the Senior Common Room, and from the Senior Common, after agonies of waiting and calculating when it would be our turn, we were allotted each his own study. A crude enough affair, little bigger than a closet, but a place where you could have a table, a chair, a divan, usually made of wooden boxes covered with cushions and a bedcover, a bookshelf and cupboard, and a patch of carpet.
    But it was your own place, where you could read or work by yourself, or play the gramophone, or brew hot drinks. When you had a study you felt you had arrived. You were treated with gravest respect by the members of the Junior and Senior Common Rooms; you were even treated in a dignified manner by the House prefects and, highly important, it was an unwritten rule that no study-holder should be beaten by the prefects.
    You were a bit of a dog when you were a study-owner. If you were any good at all at games, life became even better. I wasn’t too bad. I had my House football colours, and was quite good at running, and was likely to end up rowing in the House boat.
    I had bought the contents of my study lock, stock and barrel from the previous owner. Prosset, Trevelyan and I were always in and out of each other’s studies. The very first time I went into it, eager and filled with a delicious sense of anticipation, I stopped abruptly in the doorway.
    Prosset was there, sitting in my chair, thumbing through a book. He immediately asked me why I had bought the contents from the previous owner. The curtains, he considered, were drab, the chair was inclined to sag, the cushions were worn; the whole place looked a bit cheap and tawdry. Why had I not brought stuff from home, like he had done?
    Life normally became quite civilized when you had a study: the only trouble was that I had begun to hate Prosset.
    Perhaps I should say more accurately that it was about this time that I first realized that I hated him. I suppose the feeling had been gradually growing in my subconscious mind for a long time, because normally you don’t suddenly hate somebody whom you have been friendly with for a considerable period; not deeply, as I hated Prosset. Doubtless I had refused to admit that the feeling was there, or had fought it back. After all, it seemed so unreasonable; we three