My Name is Michael Sibley Read Online Free PDF Page B

verbally. He was not content to get his man down; he had to trample in his face as well. Sometimes he would insist on an apology.
    “So you were wrong, weren’t you?” he would say.
    “Oh, all right, all right, I was wrong, then, if you like.”
    “Well, apologize, then.”
    “Why should I?”
    “Because you were wrong. Go on, apologize.”
    “I don’t see why I should.”
    “You made a wrong statement. I have proved it wrong. Well, apologize for making it, go on.”
    “I’m damned if I will. Bread, please.”
    “Why should I pass the bread?”
    “Why shouldn’t you?”
    “Why shouldn’t you apologize and admit you were wrong?”
    “I’ve admitted I was wrong.”
    “Well, go on—apologize.”
    “Oh, all right, all right, I apologize. Bread, please.”
    He was gay and had humour of a sort, and I think he often domineered, not out of malice, but for the fun of the game. But it made it no easier to bear. He seemed so heartless.
    On one occasion only, Prosset and I were united on an emotional issue. It was before we got our studies. Ackersley, the assistant housemaster, was the cause of it, a man clearly destined to be one of the world’s failures; he was a gentle, middle-aged man with a passion for fly-fishing which he could not afford to indulge, and he would listen avidly to the accounts boys told of the fine fishing they had had, and sigh, and say such fishing was not meant for poor schoolmasters.
    In appearance, he was of medium height and slim. He had a lean face and a long nose, and was afflicted with one of those blue-black jowls and the very red lips which sometimes go with them. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and his voice had that soft, bottled-up quality which you sometimes come across. He had neither a voice nor an appearance to inspire respect in boys, and he got none. It was all rather painful, really, and some of us even pitied him, but not many.
    When he took “prep” in the evenings, instead of the deep hush normally required on such occasions, the Common Room buzzed and hummed like the stalls on the first night of a new play; until at least even Ackersley felt he had to do something. He would try to raise his voice above the din to still it, and all would be quiet for about five minutes. Then the murmuring, gradually increasing in volume, would begin all over again. It was hopeless.
    When he supervised supper last thing at night the air would be filled with pellets of bread as the boys at the three long tables happily pelted each other. Now and again, for a lark, a group of boys by a combined effort would raise their long table almost above their heads. Ackersley would usually pretend not to see. He would keep his eyes glued to the Bible, as though he were reading the text which preceded the evening prayers. It seemed to me that the House mocked and oppressed him in some such way as Prosset did me; I felt that in a measure we were fellow sufferers; I understood how he felt in the face of such mockery: ineffectual, almost tearfully ineffectual. I guessed from the way he occasionally mentioned Mrs. Ackersley, that when he returned home to his lodgings and his wife he found in her a refuge and a balm which he could find nowhere else.
    One evening the Head House Prefect was taking “prep,” which meant that there was a very deep hush indeed, and no nonsense at all. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, very light and still, so that you could hear the birds twittering outside. I was in one of the back rows of desks, drowsing over a geometry problem, and apart from the birds there was no sound except the occasional noise of a desk being quietly opened and shut, or of the leaves of a book being turned, or of a hand brushing paper clean after rubbing something out.
    Suddenly one of the other prefects came into the room and whispered something to the Head Prefect. He got up quickly and left the dais and went out of the room for a minute or two. Whereupon, starting at the front row of desks