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his own round Big Hall, where the photos of each year’s sixth forms hung. He would stand looking at the photograph for 1902, where his father’s boyish face stared out from a double row of stiffly posed prefects in tasselled caps. Then he would turn to the tablet behind the stage to the Great War fallen, the names picked out in gold. Seeing his father’s name there as well set tears pricking in his eyes, quickly brushed away lest someone see.
    The year Sandy Forsyth came, in 1925, Harry entered the fourth form. Although the boys still slept in a big communal dormitory, they had had studies since the previous year, two or three each to a little room with antiquated armchairs and scarred tables. Harry’s friends were mostly the quieter, more serious boys, and he had been glad to share a study with Bernie Piper, one of the scholarship boys. Piper came in as he was unpacking.
    ‘’Ello, Brett,’ he said. ‘I see I’ve got to put up wiv the smell of your socks for the next year.’ Bernie’s father was an East End grocer and he had spoken broad cockney when he arrived at Rookwood. It had gradually mutated into the upper-class drawl of the others, but the London twang always reasserted itself for a while when he came back from the hols.
    ‘’Ave a good summer?’
    ‘Bit boring. Uncle James was ill a lot of the time. Glad to be back.’
    ‘You ought t’ave spent it serving in my dad’s shop. Then you’d know wot boring is.’
    Another face appeared in the doorway, a heavily built boy with black hair. He put down an expensive-looking suitcase and leaned against the doorpost with an air of supercilious detachment. ‘Harry Brett?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Sandy Forsyth. New boy. I’m in this study.’ He hauled in the suitcase and stood looking at them. His large brown eyes were keen and there was something hard in his face.
    ‘Where have you come from?’ Bernie asked.
    ‘Braildon. Up in Hertfordshire. Heard of it?’
    ‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Supposed to be a good school.’
    ‘Yeah. So they say.’
    ‘It’s not bad here.’
    ‘No? I hear they’re quite hot on discipline.’
    ‘Cane you as soon as look at you,’ Bernie agreed.
    ‘Where are you from?’ Forsyth asked.
    ‘Wapping,’ Bernie said proudly. ‘I’m one of the proles the ruling class allow in.’ Bernie had declared himself a socialist the term before, to general disapproval. Forsyth raised his eyebrows.
    ‘I bet you got in more easily than I did.’
    ‘What d’you mean?’
    ‘I’m a bit of a bad lad.’ The new boy took a packet of Gold Flake from his pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Bernie and Harry glanced at the open door. ‘You can’t smoke in the studies,’ Harry said quickly.
    ‘We can shut the door. Want one?’
    Bernie laughed. ‘You get caned for smoking here. It’s not worth it.’
    ‘OK.’ He gave Bernie a sudden broad grin, showing large white teeth. ‘You a red, then?’
    ‘I’m a socialist, if that’s what you mean.’
    The new boy shrugged. ‘We had a debating society at Braildon, last year one of the Fifth spoke for Communism. It got pretty rowdy.’ He laughed. Bernie grunted, giving him a look of dislike.
    ‘I wanted to lead a debate in favour of atheism,’ Forsyth went on. ‘But they wouldn’t let me. Because my dad’s a bishop. Where do people go here if they want a smoke?’
    ‘Behind the gym,’ Bernie answered coldly.
    ‘Right-ho then. See you later.’ Forsyth got up and sauntered out.
    ‘Arsehole,’ Bernie said as he disappeared.
    A ND THEN , later that day, Harry was asked to spy on Sandy for the first time. He was in the study alone when a fag appeared with a message Mr Taylor wanted to see him.
    Taylor was their form master that year. He had a reputation as a disciplinarian and the junior boys held him in awe. Seeing his tall, thin figure striding across the quad, the habitual severe expression on his face, Harry would think back to the day he had come to Uncle James’s