Silver Fin Page 6

  ‘I’ll get you in the swimming!’ he called over to Carlton, trying to make it sound like a joke. But James knew him well enough to know that he would be rattled and desperate to thrash Carlton in the race.

  James watched as Lord Hellebore beckoned to his son and led him away to a quiet corner, away from the throng. James followed, fascinated, but keeping a safe distance. Randolph was talking heatedly to George, who nodded his head over and over. Finally Randolph took the boy’s chin in his hand, tilted his face upwards and leant very close to him, speaking with such an intense expression on his face that George actually looked scared.

  James remembered the time when Randolph had breathed on him, he remembered the heat and the smell, and he almost felt sorry for George. Then a strange thing happened. Randolph took a little glass medicine bottle from his pocket, glanced round to check that they were unobserved and tapped some pills out into his palm.

  George protested and tried to turn away, but Randolph shook him quickly and thrust the pills into his hand. Deflated, George swallowed the pills and returned to his friends.

  James didn’t have time to reflect on this, as they were all soon herded away from the Butts, down through town to the river for the second event – the swimming.

  On the way James found himself next to Carlton again.

  ‘That was pretty good,’ said James, and Carlton grinned.

  ‘I went on a camp in the summer,’ he said. ‘It was run by the army, and we did a fair bit of shooting, but I must say I never expected to do so well.’

  ‘I think you’ve got Hellebore rattled.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, he’s a very fast swimmer.’

  Later on, as they got changed in the swimming hut, James looked at Carlton. With his shirt off, he could see just how strong the boy was. All the rowers were good swimmers – you couldn’t even go on the river until you’d passed a swimming test – but exactly how good Carlton was nobody knew.

  Several floating rafts had been anchored in a quiet stretch of the river to make an even platform for starting the races. The swimmers had to dive in, swim downstream, round a marker post, then back upstream against the flow of the river. It was a tough course and one or two competitors dropped out as soon as they saw it.

  Just how tough it was James didn’t find out until his first race. The water was a tiny bit warmer than it had been, but it still took your breath away when you dived in. Swimming downstream to the marker was easy enough, but swimming back against the current was murder; at times it felt as if you weren’t moving at all, and when competitors finally reached the rafts they were all exhausted and fighting for breath.

  Carlton was in the first heat, which he won by a good ten feet, but in the second heat Hellebore was nearly twice that distance ahead of the boy behind him, and he remained the overall favourite. James got off to a good start and came third in his heat, but he couldn’t keep up with the older boys in his second heat and only managed fourth place.There were eight boys in the final race, with four clear favourites: Hellebore, Carlton, Gellward and Forster. Gellward was a stocky, broad-shouldered lad and Forster was the oldest boy in the tournament. The oldest and also the largest. He was a huge, loud boy with ghostly white skin and a tangle of thick black hair who was always either laughing or furious, with nowhere in between.

  They lined up on the rafts and Croaker stood ready with his starting whistle. There was a large turnout of rowdy boys on the bank, ready to shout and cheer. Croaker called for quiet, but he was largely ignored. As the day had gone on, the festival atmosphere had grown.

  James, his shirt sticking to his wet back and his hair still damp, joined Pritpal, Tommy, Leo Butcher and Freddie Meyer, who were sitting on a bench.

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Pritpal.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said James. ‘I didn’t expect to be in with a chance of winning the cup. Just so long as I do well in the cross-country.’

  They were interrupted by a shout of ‘On your marks’ from Croaker, quickly followed by ‘Get set…’ But before he could shout ‘Go!’ a joker in the crowd let out a loud whistle and three of the racers dived in. There was much laughter and jeering from the boys and dark looks from most of the beaks, although James noticed that a couple of them, Mr Merriot included, were trying to hide smiles.

  Lord Hellebore was furious. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he roared. ‘You need to take this more seriously.’

  One of the three embarrassed boys climbing out of the river was George. He was shaking his head and laughing. But even though it had been a practical joke, this still counted as a false start, so there was a slightly nervous mood among the swimmers now. James looked at Carlton and Hellebore. Carlton was standing, relaxed, taking the same casual approach to this race as he had done to the shooting. He was doing it for the fun of it and didn’t really expect to win. Hellebore, however, had soon stopped laughing and was now crouched in a dramatic starting position of his own, every muscle tensed, staring grimly at the slate-grey river.

  He had lost all his coolness and poise from before; now he looked jittery and kept clamping his jaw. James wondered just what had been in those pills.

  ‘On your marks… Get set…’

  A gasp went up. Hellebore had made another false start. He’d been so anxious to get ahead, he’d jumped the whistle for real this time. After a few moments the boys began to snigger again, but Hellebore got out of the water with such an angry look on his face that they soon stopped. James looked over at Randolph Hellebore, who was with the other judges on the rafts. His glow seemed to have dimmed a little; he was sitting, tight-lipped but otherwise showing no emotions.

  ‘Come along now, boys,’ said Mr Merriot. ‘Concentrate. One more false start, Hellebore, and you’ll be disqualified.’

  Hellebore threw him a very dirty look. He didn’t want to be reminded.

  The tension was now felt by all. James’s heart was beating faster. The pressure on Hellebore must be terrible.

  ‘On your marks… Get set…’

  James couldn’t believe it, Gellward dived in before the whistle and, in his panic, Hellebore followed him. When he surfaced, he thrashed the water with his fists and cursed silently. Despite everything, James felt sorry for him. He had wanted to win so much, it had cost him the race.

  Randolph had looked away, but he turned back as Croaker waddled over to the judges’ table and they had an animated head-to-head. Mr Merriot tried to take charge, but the furious lord was having none of it. In the end he slapped his hand down on the bench and the discussion was obviously over. Mr Merriot stood up to make an announcement, shouting over the noise of the river and the crowd.

  ‘We have reached an agreement. Although, technically speaking, Hellebore had three false starts and should be excluded from the race, the judges have decided that as the first start was caused by an as yet unidentified boy, it cannot count as the swimmers’ fault. However, it cannot be ignored, so, although Hellebore will be allowed to race, he will have a ten-second handicap. On the first whistle the other swimmers will start and Hellebore will start on the second whistle.’

  There was a rumble and a murmur of voices from the assembled boys, and much discussion, some for and some against the decision, until Merriot once more called for quiet and Croaker prepared to start the race for, surely, the last time.

  In fact, if anything, the boys were so scared of having another false start they held back, and on the first whistle they all got off a little late. Hellebore, too, waited till the second blast was well and truly sounded before he hurled himself into the water and set off at great speed after the others.

  He really was a great swimmer and his powerful front crawl soon took him past first one swimmer and then another so that, by the time he rounded the halfway post, he’d caught up with the leaders and it looked as if it was going to be a close finish. There was no doubt that if he hadn’t had the handicap, Hellebore would have won the race easily, but now it was between him, Carlton and the big, curly
haired boy, Forster, all three pulling desperately against the flow of the mighty Thames.

  ‘Go on, Hellebore… ! Come on, Carlton… ! Forster! Forster!’ The roar from the spectators was deafening, and James added his own voice, calling for Carlton. But Carlton was tiring and slipping back, Hellebore edged level with him and was now right behind Forster. Forster must have sensed this and he managed to put on a final burst of speed so that his hand just touched the raft a fraction of a second before the others’.

  So Forster had won, but who had come second? A hush descended on the watching boys.

  One of the judges, Mr Warburton, had been kneeling at the edge of the raft to catch the finish. He stood up, his face ashen, then smoothed his trousers and walked nervously over to the judges, where Lord Hellebore sat waiting like a giant bronze statue.

  Mr Warburton said a few words and Lord Hellebore’s eyes grew wide for a moment, then he stood up.

  ‘In first place,’ he growled, ‘Lawrence Forster. In second place…’ he looked across to the expectant racers. ‘Andrew Carlton…’

  The rest of his words were drowned out as the place erupted. Nobody could have anticipated that it would be such a tremendous race and that Carlton would be a new school hero.

  The talk at Codrose’s that lunchtime was of little else, as the boys went over the events of the morning: Carlton’s surprise result in the shooting, Hellebore’s false starts, Forster winning the swimming. Then, of course, there was excited speculation as to what would happen in the cross-country.

  Pritpal had been studying the score sheets. After each event there had been much learned discussion among the boys as to how things lay and who had the best chance of winning the cup; but to make sure that there was an outright winner and that no two boys could end with the same number of points, there was a fiendishly complicated scoring system. Pritpal was one of the few boys who fully understood it.

  ‘As we all know,’ he said, pushing his plate to one side, ‘even though Forster won the swimming, it’s still between Hellebore and Carlton. But it is very close. Hellebore’s upset in the river has cost him dearly.’

  ‘So, whichever of them beats the other in the cross-country wins the cup?’ said Tommy.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Pritpal. ‘If Carlton beats Hellebore, then he wins outright. But for Hellebore it is a little more tricky.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’ asked James.

  ‘Provided Carlton finishes somewhere in the first three, then Hellebore must win the race to win the cup.’

  ‘So, in other words – unless Hellebore comes first then he hasn’t got a chance?’

  ‘Exactly. But I think he can probably beat Carlton, so that only leaves you. Can you do it, James?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said James. He shovelled in a mouthful of food and thought it over while he chewed the tasteless mush. He was trying to eat as much as he could to give him energy for the race, but the food was as foul as ever: chicken pie with stringy chicken and rubbery, grey pastry with a portion of ancient, bullet-like peas and watery boiled potatoes.

  He decided that he no longer felt sorry for Hellebore. After the swimming race, surrounded by his usual gang, he had behaved as badly as ever, storming about the school, complaining loudly, threatening people and generally acting like a spoilt bully. So, perhaps, this was a way to settle everything between the two of them.

  ‘I don’t know if I can beat him or not,’ James said at last. ‘But I’m going to try. Hellebore and I have some unfinished business.’

  6

  The Race

  The forty or so boys who had entered for the cup were in a loose group, ready for the cross-country. It was a warm afternoon and James hoped that the heavy food in his stomach wouldn’t make him sluggish. He jogged on the spot for a while to get his circulation going and to wake up his muscles. He was eager to get going. He knew how George Hellebore must have felt, standing ready for the swimming race, too tense to think straight.

  Hellebore. How must he be feeling now? He would have counted on winning the shooting and swimming and only needing to be placed in the running. As it was, he now had to win the cross-country or lose the cup.

  James could bear the waiting no longer; he decided to stretch his legs but, as he turned to clear himself from the crowd of boys, he almost ran straight into Lord Hellebore.

  ‘Not so fast, young man,’ he said. ‘A little eager, aren’t we?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said James, and he looked up into the big man’s tanned face with its glistening skin and wide moustache. Once again he was aware of the strange animal smell and the heat coming off him.

  Lord Hellebore studied him, like a snake watching his prey, ready to strike. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said.

  ‘I’m James Bond… Andrew Bond’s son.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Randolph’s face brightened and then almost immediately clouded as he remembered.

  ‘You’re the fellow that hit me.’

  ‘Yes…’

  Randolph swung at James as if he were going to hit him full in the teeth but pulled the punch at the last moment and grinned, though not before James once again saw a madness behind the eyes, a madness that his son had not yet learnt to control or conceal. It was well hidden in Randolph, but James caught a glimmer of it raging deep down inside him, and James wondered just what it would take to let it loose, to release the fire that was burning him up.

  ‘Take your place ready for the race, boy,’ he said, and James gratefully hurried off into the centre of the pack, where he found Carlton.

  ‘Have you heard the news?’ Carlton asked.

  ‘What news?’ said James, breathing in deeply, trying to get the wet-dog stink of Lord Hellebore out of his nostrils.

  ‘There have been some changes over lunch, with the marshals.’

  The marshals were boys who were spread out round the route of the race at strategic points to keep an eye on things. It was their job to watch the runners and make sure that they didn’t get lost or stray from the track.

  ‘What sort of changes?’ said James.

  ‘A group of them have been replaced by friends of Hellebore.’

  ‘Really?’ For a moment James forgot all about running the race as he considered what this meant. ‘How many?’

  ‘Quite a few of them,’ said Carlton, ‘including Sedgepole, Wallace and Pruitt.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ said James. ‘But surely Hellebore wouldn’t consider cheating?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ said Carlton. ‘He’s more scared of his father than of anything else. Imagine what would happen if he lost…’

  James glanced back at the huge figure of Lord Randolph Hellebore and remembered the madness behind his eyes. He thought about his own father: a quiet, serious and distant man. When he was younger, James had been a little scared of him, but he couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have a character like Randolph as your father.

  Mr Merriot was wandering around among the boys, offering encouragement. He came up to James.

  ‘All set, Bond?’

  ‘Yes, sir. As set as I’ll ever be.’

  ‘Just do your best…’ He smiled. ‘Good luck. And remember to pace yourself, it’s a long race.’

  ‘I know, sir.’

  ‘I know you do.’

  Merriot went on his way, chatting to some of the other boys.

  This was the first time a cross-country race had been run here in Windsor Great Park. A large, rowdy bunch of spectators was lined up, ready to cheer the runners on, but James knew that once the race was under way they would soon be out of sight. It was a five-mile course, beginning and ending out here in open parkland, but the heart of the race would take place up and down a series of low, wooded hills.

  Lord Hellebore was to start the race, and he couldn’t resist making another speech.

  ‘Sport is what makes a man of a boy. It is what prepares him for his life. Now you go out there and you run, you run as hard and as fast as you c
an. You may feel at times that your feet can’t carry you any further, but that’s when you have to say to yourself – “I can do it! I can go on. I will be a winner.” Although, of course, there can be only one ultimate winner.’

  James wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed it but, as Lord Hellebore said this, he glanced very briefly at his son, whose lips twitched into a sly smile.

  ‘Take your positions, please,’ Lord Hellebore bellowed, and a quietness settled over the massed runners.

  ‘On your marks, get set…’

  Bang!

  He fired his starting pistol and the boys set off in a great unruly mob, jostling for position. The spectators yelled and whistled, but the sound of them quickly died away as they were left behind.

  James held back and made his way to the side of the pack where there was more room. It was a long race and he’d practised a great deal over this distance. He knew not to tire himself early on, but there was a big difference between practising for a race and actually running it. There were all sorts of extra factors to consider in a real race: nerves, tension, excitement, the other runners, the weather, the condition of the ground… James would have preferred a cooler day, but the weather was the same for all of them and it wouldn’t give any runner a particular advantage. It had rained a lot during the last few weeks so the ground was soft, which could cause difficulties, but at least it felt light and springy underfoot.

  After a few minutes the field had opened out, the weaker runners were falling behind and a small pack was forming at the front. James increased his speed, passing several laggers, until he was comfortably settled in at the rear of the leading group. He spotted Carlton and Hellebore pounding away at the front, as well as Gellward and Forster and several others of the older boys, some of whom were already growing tired and beginning to pant and wheeze a little.

  James checked his own body, almost as a detached observer, and he was pleased to report that he felt fine, coasting along comfortably, with plenty held in reserve. So far the race was going to plan.