Stephen’s Purpose

By Richard Herley

Stephen Grove is a twelve-year-old schoolboy living in a small town on the south coast of England. His father walked out when he was three, leaving him with an unsympathetic elder sister and an almost equally unsympathetic mother. Stephen is shy, friendless and studious, and has become the target of bullies.

Their campaign against him is so vicious that he decides to hang himself. In the woods he chooses a tree and is about to climb up when a tiny bird appears above him in the foliage.

“The bird glanced down at him, half over its shoulder as it were, revealing that the eyes were curiously tilted together by the shape of its skull. This lent it a benign, quizzical expression which seemed to be reaching deep, very deep, inside him.

“He felt as if he had been found out and were being chided by an omniscient friend.”

From that moment on, Stephen’s life is not his own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Herley
• Release date: Dec 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005863654

Richard Herley

I was born in England in 1950 and educated at Watford Boys' Grammar School and Sussex University, where my interest in natural history led me to read biology.My first successful novel was "The Stone Arrow", which was published to critical acclaim in 1978. It subsequently won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, administered by the Royal Society of Literature in London, and was the first in a trilogy. This was followed by "The Penal Colony" (1987), a futuristic thriller that formed the basis of the 1994 movie "No Escape", starring Ray Liotta.The main difficulty for the author is making his voice heard in the roar of self-promotion. I believe that the work I am producing now is of higher quality than my prize-winning first, and ask you, the reader, to help spread the word by telling your friends if you have enjoyed one of my books.

Book preview

1

Saturday, 12 December 1964

Stephen had soon guessed, in his dragging progress along the cloisters, what their destination was to be. All three of them had laid hands on him, but when the door banged open and they forced their way into the cubicle he thought that it was now only Crafton who was gripping him, in a choke-hold so brutal that he was indeed almost choking.

Someone reached down to fling back the seat and its lid. Crafton released his hold and with both hands grasped Stephen’s neck. He was forced to his knees.

The humiliation had already far outstripped his pain, but the impact of his skull on the lavatory bowl was so sickening that his hatred of his persecutors and the whole school flared into loathing for the whole world, and he wished then, perhaps truly for the first time, that he had never been born.

For an instant, in the semi-darkness made by his own head, he was able to inhale more freely, the air damp, smelling somewhat of disinfectant or bleach, but also of something else, the invisible residue of generations of careless ejection, by juveniles, of their excrement, day after day, year after year, all of which was now merging with and irreversibly polluting, in these last few moments, whatever shreds remained to him of his soul.

Distorted by the acoustics of the cubicle and of the porcelain itself, he heard Nesbitt’s triumphant shout of ‘I hereby baptise the Creep!’ It was instantly followed by the clank of iron. Stephen clamped his eyes shut; the thundering cataract forced itself up his nostrils, into his sinuses and ears. All sounds were deadened. His head felt as if it had been filled with concrete.

The torrent ceased, as did the pressure on his neck. He understood then that he had inadvertently spread his hands on the cold and clammy floor on either side of the bowl. That he had done this to himself seemed almost as bad as everything else. To the dull and distant refilling of the cistern, he raised first his head and then himself.

They had gone.

As he bathed his palsied hands at the basin, Stephen was careful to avoid whatever image the steel mirror above it might be trying to offer him. His whole being was trembling, retracting further and further into itself, seeking some inmost sanctuary where Nesbitt and the others did not exist; where none of this could have happened.

There were no paper towels in the dispenser and, as usual, the roller towel hung limp and filthy. Trembling ever more violently, he bent double in an effort to clear his ears. Drops from his hair puddled on the floor, and when he stood upright again he felt another trickling down his chest and belly. His collar and tie had been soaked through, together with much of his shirt-front, his lapels and the upper parts of his blazer.

He decided to delay leaving in case his enemies were lying in wait.

The time was almost a quarter past twelve. Hiding here as the minutes passed, he saw that he had been wrong. He had supposed that his loneliness could not have grown worse. Why did they hate him so? What had he done to them? Nothing, except be himself. It followed that there must be some fault within him. At primary school, too, he had felt apart, usually the last to be chosen for any team or the first casualty in a game of musical chairs, whether real or metaphorical.

Just after half-past twelve he left the lavatory block, hoping to get away unobserved. Despite the bitter cold, he had decided to walk home rather than endure the scrutiny of the conductor and passengers on the bus.

He had resigned himself to the loss of his raincoat and had even devised a story for his mother, but there it was, lying in a heap in the cloisters: they had grabbed him in the cloakroom before he’d had a chance to put it on.

Nine boys had been in for detention this Saturday morning. Three had been released after an hour and another two after the second hour, leaving only himself, Nesbitt, Crafton and Preece-Owen. In that final hour his gathering terror had reached completion. They had been gifted a perfect opportunity.

And now, as he was heading for the school gates, he was dismayed to see a master emerging from the door in the corner between the main building and the boiler house. He was about thirty, his longish brown hair combed back, wearing a tweed jacket and grey flannels, by no means new. His open-featured face was familiar. Stephen had seen him often enough at assembly, but could not quite recall the name.

‘You, boy!’

Stephen halted; the master came up. A long tube of rolled paper, like a map or chart, was in his hand. With this he had pointed at Stephen while shouting.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I had detention, sir. Three hours.’

‘But that would have ended at twelve.’

Stephen said nothing.

‘Why is your hair wet?’ Then he said, much less harshly, ‘Who did that to you?’

‘No one, sir.’

Stephen was avoiding his eye. He remembered then that the master was Mr McKechnie, who taught Latin – though not to him.

The protracted silence made Stephen look up. The expression he saw in Mr McKechnie’s eyes almost brought to the surface the tears he had been suppressing till now.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Grove, sir.’

‘You can’t swan about like that. You’ll catch your death of cold. Go inside and wait.’ He indicated the doorway he had just left. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. There’s no one in the staffroom. You can dry off there.’

‘I can’t, sir,’ Stephen said. ‘I’m late already and I’ve got to get home.’

‘Why?’

‘We’re going to visit my granny in hospital. She’s in Welhampton, we don’t have a car and visiting hours finish at four. I’ve held things up enough already by getting detention.’

Mr McKechnie seemed to be deciding whether all that was believable. He said, ‘Who’s your form master?’

‘Mr Edmonds.’

‘All right, off you go. Get home and change as quick as you can.’

Stephen’s navy blue gaberdine raincoat was fitted with a detachable lining, but it was inadequate. The raincoat itself provided little warmth, he had neither gloves nor scarf with him today, and so he was feeling especially cold. The only alternative to the raincoat was his anorak, but he was not allowed to wear that to school. As he made his way through the town he was trying to ignore the easterly wind and the way it was hurting his ears; he was trying to ignore also whatever odd looks he was getting from passers-by.

What concerned him now was not so much the bullying itself as the effect that an inquiry would have, for Mr McKechnie was bound to suggest to Mr Edmonds that a boy in his form was being singled out, and they would know who else had been given the full three hours. Stephen rued the fact that he had not had the presence of mind to give false names. Nesbitt would be convinced that he had sneaked.

As ever, there were four solutions. He could fight back, which was impossible against the whole lot of them; he could play truant, perhaps indefinitely; he could run away from home, though he had no idea how he might survive alone or even evade recapture; and fourth, much more realistically, he could do away with himself.

With greater seriousness he revisited, yet again, that plan now. He had already perfected the details: get some stout rope or electrical cable, then take a Moleshill bus and alight at or near ‘Chalkpit Cottages’. A footpath from there was marked on the Ordnance Survey map he had studied in the school library. At first it led westwards and uphill but soon trended to the north and became very steep. Half a mile on it entered some extensive woods – woods likely to be little frequented at this time of year and well away from Chilham. There he would choose a secluded spot far from any paths, preferably made difficult of access by dense undergrowth. He would find a suitable tree, make a noose, climb up …

Not just yet. There were only four more schooldays to get through, after which the Christmas break would begin: three whole weeks of respite. He would allow himself one last holiday, and then, after dinner on Sunday, 10 January, the eve of the new term, take that bus north.

When at last he got home he was relieved to find no one else there. His mother had left a hasty note on the kitchen table. She had gone out – with ‘auntie’ Rita, no doubt. He was supposed to ‘get’ himself ‘something to eat’, which meant tinned beans or spaghetti on toast.

He was badly chilled, but before thinking about food he decided to go upstairs and trespass on the forbidden territory of Natalie’s room, even though she was at work and would not be back till long after he had finished with her hair-dryer. Being scrupulously careful to note how it had been laid in her dressing table drawer, Stephen took it, retreated to his own little domain, and there began to conceal all trace of what had happened to his clothes.

・・・

Preceding him, Pauline took their coffee into the living-room, which, beyond the emaciated privet hedge bounding the communal garden, overlooked the expanse of the playing-field and, beyond that, the redbrick buildings of this part of town.

Already the afternoon was waning. In midwinter Campbell liked to get out, when he was free, before dawn, but today he had needed to finalise his contribution to the timetable for the Spring Term. The Head had already complained twice about his tardiness in this matter, yet another black mark against him. Derek did not regard him as a team player and he was beginning to fear, perhaps irrationally, that they might not renew his contract when the time came. This flat belonged to the County. If Campbell lost his job he and Pauline would be homeless.

He took another sip and said, ‘Something’s troubling me and I’m not sure what to do about it.’ To counter her expression he quickly added, ‘A school matter. Just before I left today I encountered a junior boy on his way out who – well, his hair and the upper parts of his clothing were soaked and he himself was shivering and in distress. I’m pretty sure someone had put his head down the lavatory. He effectively denied it, of course. His name is Stephen Grove; I looked him up. That’s why I was late back. He’s in 4A. George Edmonds’s form. It seems he had three hours this morning—’

‘Detention, you mean?’

‘Yes. Presumably the culprit or culprits got three hours too, though one can’t be sure of that. If I tell George about this … you can see the spot that could put the boy in.’

‘With a man like him especially.’

‘And Derek would be no better. Worse, in fact, especially if it came from me. "Campbell, there is no bullying in my school." This Grove didn’t perform too well at his interview. They measured his IQ at only 117 so they started him in 3C2, but last year his progress was so spectacular he got promoted. First in maths and English, streets ahead, in fact, and second or at best third in everything else. The IQ test must have been faulty in some way, or he was ill or otherwise compromised when he took it. From his marks I’d guess he’s 150 or even more. This term all that has gone to pot. I’d also guess he’s being bullied. At a further guess, the bullies might be former classmates.’

‘Jealous of his promotion?’

‘It’s a theory.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Slightly built, fair haired. Shy, I should think. Young for his age.’

‘Which is?’

‘Twelve. February birthday. I told him he could go into the staffroom to dry off but he said he was late already and handed me some story about his family having to make a hospital visit this afternoon.’

‘I can’t see any way of bypassing Edmonds or Derek that wouldn’t get you into hot water.’

‘Nor me.’

‘At least we’ve got the rest of the weekend to ponder it.’ She smiled. ‘What would Epictetus say?’

He returned her smile. ‘I have some agency in this matter and so I must act. Indeed, the school has a legal responsibility towards him. Towards all of them. Besides which, young Grove struck me as a nice little lad. An honourable schoolboy, observing the code. Somebody’s son. Their pride and joy, no doubt.’

This morning Pauline had put on the willow green mohair sweater he liked best. In returning his cup to its saucer, he issued her a sly glance. She raised her eyebrows in a way that indicated her mind had joined his in its groove. She was already twenty-eight; they were desperate to start a family. On such a dull, beastly cold Saturday afternoon as this, the washing up and all the rest of that sort of nonsense could wait.

2

The near vertical incline of the dune was giving way with every struggling movement of his body, but somehow, all at once, he managed to reach the summit. The dune was scarcely that, more a colossal heap, irregular and man made, not of orange builders’ sand but the sort of blond stuff found at the seaside. In the unearthly light he looked over the edge and beheld the drop on the other side. It ended hundreds of feet below, with sandy but solid ground sparsely turfed. A single wrong move would send him over. Yet he knew he had to reach the top of the tower, over there, higher still, the one safe place where he could lie down and sleep.

This tower was already familiar to him. He had climbed it before. It was immensely tall and made of stark black timbers, semi-ruinous now and glistening as if wet with decay. There was no ladder of any kind, but by clambering from strut to strut he was able to gain the open-sided chamber at the top. Here, at least, no one would be able to get at him.

No: somehow he knew this was not safe, and then he was astride a massive, horizontal, rough-barked pine bough above the edge of a lake or river. Even as he tried to inch along it he saw that it curved upwards to the vertical, blocking his passage and, as he became aware that he had no choice but to turn back, Stephen realised that he was dreaming, was emerging from a dream, and he woke up.

His eyes opened in the dark. His heart was beating fast, his throat felt painfully sore, and he was hot; sweating, even. His head hurt, and not just from the raised bruise above his hairline left by the impact of the lavatory bowl.

He dragged his eiderdown aside and let it slither to the floor. For a while he lay supine, his thoughts swirling. He hoped he had got something serious, like meningitis; that he was really ill; that he would die.

Or was this just a bad cold, or the ’flu?

He had heard or read that the incubation period for such things was at least three days, so the morning’s assault couldn’t be the cause. Might it have weakened his defences, though? He recollected his long and gruelling walk through the town. Up on the footbridge over the main coast road, nearing home, the wind had seemed more cruel than ever, made yet more unfeeling by the impersonal cars and lorries rushing below. By then his hands had felt frozen too, and it had been no easy matter to find his latchkey and open the front door.

Stephen groped on the nightstand for his pocket torch and lit the black face of his Baby Ben alarm clock. Almost twenty past four. The greenish glow of the luminous paint waned and died. He wondered by what mechanism the light had excited the paint. The paint was made with something called phosphor, he thought; the women who applied it, in licking their paintbrushes, gave themselves radiation poisoning. Was phosphor a sort of radioactive phosphorus? He would look it up, if he could, in the school library, where he spent his morning breaks and dinner hours. It was safe there and, besides, he liked it, liked the supervised, peaceful atmosphere and the stairs to the upper level, where a big round window looked out across the school field and along the backs of the houses in Sheepcot Road.

Besides the soreness of his throat he was thirsty. Envisioning a soothing drink at the bathroom basin, he turned sideways but, even before putting his feet on the floor, felt horribly giddy and fell back, his heart beating yet faster, thudding in his ears. Then he understood that he might legitimately get off school on Monday and his spirits rose. He had anyway been planning to feign illness then, not that his mother could easily be deceived, but God had vouchsafed him this.

Stephen’s relationship with God was ill defined. For most of the time he didn’t believe in him; didn’t believe, for example, what he was told in Religious Education by Mrs Lambton. During her lesson last week, the attention of the class had been drawn to what was happening outside, through the big picture windows of 4A’s temporary form-room. She had been upstaged by two dogs, a small brindled mongrel behind a bigger whitish one, ineffectively pushing it along. The caretaker came into view with a fire bucket and doused them. Mrs Lambton seemed flustered, especially when Hedges, acting the innocent, put up his hand and asked, ‘What were those dogs doing, miss?’

The repressed sniggering of the whole form revealed their attitude to Mrs Lambton and the subject she taught. They too regarded RE as a waste of time, a part of the school ritual, like the morning hymn and prayers at assembly. A few boys, Catholics and any others outside the Church of England, were excused those, but not RE.

The school’s stuffy God occupied a place in the curriculum superior to the Headmaster’s, or even to that of the Prime Minister or Queen, and was just as remote. More, in fact, much more. And Stephen could never understand why an omniscient deity had to be addressed not in colloquial English but the archaic language of the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. That conceit smacked of an oily sort of humbug in which God, if he gave it ear, might be complicit. And further, if he knew you better than you did yourself, why did he have to be petitioned at all? Surely it must bore him stiff to sit up there and listen to what he already knew inside out; surely he was already minded to grant or withhold favour in any particular circumstance. He was certainly withholding favour from Stephen.

Such was the school God. There was another, very different, sort of deity in whom Stephen did believe, but hazily and intermittently. That God needed no petitioning. He saw through you, was pleased when you followed the dictates of your conscience and displeased when you didn’t. According to Scripture, he tested you by setting you challenges. But sometimes the challenges were insuperable and if you were to follow your conscience you couldn’t resolve them. To overcome Nesbitt, Stephen would have to kill him, thereby breaking the Sixth Commandment. That seemed much worse than ducking the challenge and doing away with himself. The Decalogue said nothing specific about suicide, although a lawyer might be able to stretch ‘thou shalt not kill’ far enough to persuade a jury.

Stephen switched on his torch again. Over half an hour had passed. He really did feel bad. The doctor might even have to come. And sooner or later Stephen would have to go back to school.

‘O God,’ he thought. ‘Help me. What am I to do? Can’t you just stop it?’

As ever, there was no reply.

He thought of the people all over the world like himself who suffered. That made him think about the war, and what his mother had said yesterday about his father, how the war had changed him – ruined him, she claimed, and consequently ruined the whole family. She said he was conscripted three months after their wedding and they didn’t see each other for nearly five years. When he returned they were strangers. Finally, when Stephen was three, his father left and never came back. Why did God permit such things? Hadn’t Stephen’s parents been married in a church?

The wedding photos were in the big album. He had studied them, and all the others, under a lens, trying to fix the man’s face in his memory. There was no resemblance to himself, as far as he could see, but Natalie looked rather like him. That had made Stephen wonder who his father really was, given the arrival and departure in his mother’s life of such men as Alan and Eric. Not that she had entertained an ‘uncle’ for some years past. She was older now, of course, worn down by poverty and care, and in any case nowhere near as slender and pretty as the girl in those photos.

If God hadn’t cared about the people in the Blitz, or at Dresden or Stalingrad and everywhere else, and if he hadn’t cared about a husband and father walking out without a word and leaving his wife and children to their fate, why should he care about Stephen taking that bus north?

Stephen understood then that he was not yet committed. His will had yet to overcome the final obstacle. He visualised himself getting off the bus, following the as-yet unseen footpath uphill, reaching the woods, damp and funereal under a January sky; he saw himself clambering ten or fifteen feet up to a big branch and fastening the rope to it. He saw himself looping the noose round his neck and tightening the knot; saw his body bending forward as it toppled off the branch; felt the violent tautening and heard the creak as the branch took his weight: together with which would come, he supposed, no more than a moment of agony.

‘If you don’t want me to do it,’ he whispered, ‘give me some sort of sign,’ though he had known even before forming those words that there wouldn’t be one, and, sure enough, the darkness and silence of his room remained the same as before.

It wasn’t just the bullying. He was opposed by the whole tide of his life. There was never enough money. Natalie had told him often enough that he was a little pest and that she hated him, often enough that he was beginning to believe the former as well as the latter. His mother was scarcely better, but in a different way. She had never treated him as he had been led to believe a mother should. He longed for a father, someone to look up to, but he was alone, alone in all the world, with no idea of what the future held. Why he had aspired to work so hard at his books he couldn’t now understand.

Stephen turned on his side and, having abandoned also the idea of salving his parched throat, wondered whether he would be getting any more sleep.

・・・

The staffroom was on the ground floor, at the centre of the rear of the main school building. Five tall, white-framed casements in its curved outer wall gave on to what was called the ‘quadrangle’ or simply the ‘quad’, this comprising, principally, the asphalted area between the main building and the grassy bank at the edge of the playing-field.

Other bits of public school argot had been adopted, long before Chilham Boys’ Grammar School had been subjected to the provisions of the 1944 Education Act and its control given to the County Council. Before then it had charged fees and its striving after gentility had included the choice of sports: in summer cricket and tennis, in winter hockey and rugby football rather than its plebeian cousin. It comprised also the school crest with its grandiose Latin motto, and even the numbering of the classes, which were called ‘forms’.

Boys in the entry year were assigned to 3A or 3B if deemed A-stream material, and 3C1 or 3C2 otherwise. The fourth year was called the Lower Remove and the fifth the Upper Remove. From there, if a boy passed his Ordinary Level exams, he could move to the Lower and thence the Upper Sixth, where he sat Advanced Level exams in three subjects of his choice. The results could qualify him for a university place.

The traditions had remained intact. They helped to earn the resentment of local children who had failed their Eleven Plus examination and been relegated to St Luke’s, the secondary modern school, where the emphasis was on vocational rather than academic teaching. Failing one’s Eleven Plus, sat during the final year of primary education, was by some parents viewed as a catastrophe.

Campbell McKechnie had himself attended a grammar school, Dumfries Academy. At one time, having come down from Cambridge and started his first job at Chilham, he had compared the school’s traditions with the older and richer culture of the university and, even though Chilham was one of the top three grammars in the country, had found their pretentiousness risible; nowadays they barely even registered.

At the start of the morning break on Monday he made his way to the staffroom and was pleased to see Grove’s form master in one of the group of easy chairs by the far wall, drinking the school’s instant coffee and, more pleasing still, chatting to Dickie Ravenscroft.

‘Morning Dickie. Morning George. Hope I’m not intruding.’

‘Not a bit,’ said Dickie.

Outside, in the quad, as usual when the morning proved dry, sixty or seventy boys of sundry shapes, complexions and sizes, each apparelled in a turquoise blazer and grey flannel trousers, some wearing coats, were getting up to whatever they got up to during break. The smaller ones tended to run about, their voices shrill; the others behaved with a little more decorum, walking or standing together in pairs and threes. More boys would be in another section of the quad, behind the library wing with its cloisters.

Campbell sat down. ‘George, may I have a word? No, don’t go, Dickie, I’d like your opinion of this as well.’ He summarised his encounter with Grove. ‘The boy refused to say anything, as one might expect, but it rather looks as if he’s being bullied.’

‘That’s a bit of an assumption,’ George said.

The interview was shaping up much as Campbell had feared.

George went on. ‘As a matter of fact he’s off sick this morning. His mother telephoned. I was surprised as I didn’t think they were on the phone, but the Bursar said it was from a box. The doctor’s been called. Might be ’flu.’

That didn’t surprise Campbell, given Saturday’s weather. ‘What sort of household is it?’

‘No father, I think. At least, one didn’t appear at Parents’ Evening. Not much money. They live in Dorne, as I recall, on the council estate.’

‘Does he get free lunches?’

‘Yes.’ George scrutinised Campbell more closely. Perhaps he was having doubts about divulging personal information about one of his boys. ‘Thank you for bringing this to my attention.’

Dickie said, ‘Why did he get the three hours?’

‘Bunked off games yet again. Jack Simpson collared him in West Street as he was coming out of the park. The Head’s having second thoughts about putting him in the A-stream. If Grove doesn’t buck his ideas up soon he might even be asked to leave.’

‘May I ask what you propose to do?’ said Campbell. ‘About what I’ve just told you.’

When he didn’t answer, Dickie said, ‘How else could he have got wet like that? Seems open and shut to me. Someone must’ve stuffed his head down the jakes. Standard practice in a boys’ school.’

‘Not this one.’

‘It was in mine.’

‘Tom Brown’s alma mater, I believe. We do things differently here.’

‘O come off it, George,’ Dickie said, and Campbell’s heart swelled with gratitude. ‘Anything is possible. We really should look into this. Easy enough to find out who else was in with him for the full three hours. Grill the little blighters, at the very least.’

Campbell said, ‘That might cause a problem, if any of them are the culprits. Word’ll get out he’s ratted and the bullying, if it’s happening, will get a lot worse.’

‘True enough,’ Dickie said, and for the first time eyed George somewhat askance, perhaps realising what was being left unsaid.

George’s manner had stiffened yet more. ‘Leave it with me.’ He looked at his watch, stood up and took his leave, placing his cup and saucer on the trolley by the door.

‘Sorry, old sport,’ Dickie said. ‘Did I put my size twelve in it?’

‘No. In fact you helped a lot.’

‘You had no choice but to tell him. What do you think he’ll do?’

‘Who can say?’

‘And if he doesn’t do anything?’

‘I don’t know, Dickie. I really don’t. It seems such a waste. From the boy’s record it’s obvious he has real potential, were it not for this. He may even be gifted.’

‘One could talk to his mother.’

‘She’d come straight back to George. Or even Derek. Even the County.’

‘Then suggest he leaves for another school.’

‘What other school?’

Dickie made a face, as if to say, ‘That was stupid of me.’

This was the only boys’ grammar school for miles, and Grove’s mother would almost certainly be unable to afford to send him to an independent.