At BOOK SA, we serve thirteen book excerpts to the dozen. With David Muirhead’s The Clamour King, we come to the end of the 2008 12 Days of Xcerpts. Hope you enjoyed them!
The Clamour King is Muirhead’s second work of fiction, published earlier this year and following on from his short story collection, The Curious Case of the Imaginary Tourist, published in 2006. Clamour is about the pressures of boarding school, and one especially “pretty” boy’s ability to deal with them.
You can read an interview with Muirhead about the book here; a review of the book here; and an excerpt here:
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“We are all slaves of the gods, whatever the gods might be.”
— Euripedes
Chapter 1
“What’s on the sandwich, Wankworth?”
Wentworth fiddled with his shoelaces, clenching the slices of bread between his teeth.
“Henut hutter,” he mumbled.
“What?” Voaden demanded, cupping a hand to his ear, leaning forward.
“Henut hutter,” Wentworth said a little louder.
Voaden pulled a face to show his disgust.
“Get your Mom to put something decent on - on the sandwich that is,” he said.
The other boys chuckled. They moved in closer.
Wentworth straightened up but he kept his eyes on his shoes. He wished he’d been paying better attention; he wished he’d got out of the bicycle shed in time. There was nowhere to go. The older boys were blocking all escape routes. Their toothy grins encircled him like the bars of an ivory cage. He took a small bite but didn’t swallow, fully expecting a sudden sharp jab in the ribs from Voaden’s big fingers.
“Ask her to try a new spread,” Voaden continued amiably. “There’s a new one in the shops.”
Wentworth looked up briefly. He was careful to avoid eye contact with any of them.
“Durex,” Voaden said with a deadpan expression: “Ask your Mom for that. It’s fucking delicious - isn’t it, Root?”
Root didn’t laugh at that. None of them did.
“Yeah, fucking delicious,” he said with a poker face.
Wentworth swallowed. He felt the piece of sandwich forcing its way down his throat against the strenuous counter measures of the rest of his terrified little body. He knew if he threw up on Voaden’s trousers his small world would end, probably with great violence. His head began to nod. He was surprised when that seemed to be enough. Voaden’s head began to nod too. He was actually smiling, satisfied that his sales pitch had worked.
“Remember the name, Wankworth - Durex. Ask your Mom tonight.”
A wind came up then. It was one of those huge pointless winds that seem to explode straight up out of the earth on hot days. It enveloped the bicycle shed, banging the tin roof like the skin of a pagan drum. The boys had to shut their mouths and eyes to stop the whirling dust. Their blue school ties writhed crazily at their pale throats like water snakes.
Close by Philip Dryden, the teacher on break duty, was standing by a classroom wall watching. He had to shield his eyes and hold his breath as the raging wind howled past. It was full of dancing dead leaves and pigeon feathers: the waste of living things.
He hadn’t heard any of the words in the shed because of the noise in the playground. He was watching the group closely though, waiting for something physical to happen. He was pleased when nothing did. The wind passed on. Voaden and his friends went in search of another victim, leaving Wentworth alone with his sandwich.
Dryden tapped the tip of his cane rhythmically against the side of his shoe. He looked at his watch. Another eight minutes of break it told him. A tennis ball bounced off the wall quite close to his head. He pretended not to notice.
He was already at the staff room door when the bell rang. All the other teachers were leaving or had already gone back to their classrooms. Only Arthur Tetley was still there. He was listening to the news on the radio.
“Doesn’t look as though the Chinks are going to back down,” he said. He turned the radio off.
“That bad?” Dryden said disinterestedly.
The sandwich plate was empty apart from a few crumbs. Dryden didn’t know why but in his mind’s eye he fixated on Kent, the French Teacher. He could see him hurriedly stuffing the last two or three cucumber wedges into his fat, bearded face. He could picture him blowing his nose in the revolting ostentatious way he had: a handkerchief full of snot and crumbs.
“There’s no doubt now that the ships are carrying troops,” Tetley continued importantly.
Dryden nodded.
“You don’t seem worried.”
“I don’t suppose they fancy having the nuclear crap blown out of them either,” Dryden said.
Tetley thought about that. He seemed unconvinced.
“They don’t think like us,” he said.
Dryden shrugged. He took the lid off the teapot and peered in. It really didn’t worry him because he didn’t think anything would happen.
Tetley was about to say something else but he was interrupted by a woman’s voice blaring from the intercom on the wall near his elbow: “Is Mr Dryden there?”
He pressed the black button: “Yes, Alice. “
“Can you ask him to come up to the Headmaster’s office, there’s a new boarder.”
“He’s on his way,” Tetley said.
Dryden put the teapot down, his cup half filled.
“Shit,” he said.
He didn’t like being summoned to Bruder’s office. It brought back unpleasant memories of visits to the headmaster when he was a schoolboy, not ten years previously. He knew it was silly to be like that, to think like that, but that was how it was.
Bruder was sitting sphinx-like at his desk when Dryden entered his office. Arms outstretched, his manicured hands were laid flat on the polished mahogany, paper-devoid surface in front of him. On the other side, transfixed, sat a woman and a boy.
Dryden didn’t listen to the introductions. He was bad like that. The names came and went. He didn’t hear them. He shook hands, first with the woman and then with the boy. The woman was very beautiful in an angular kind of way: very early thirties, he guessed, much younger than most. It was the boy who startled him. He had the most perfect complexion and symmetrical features Dryden thought he’d ever seen. He couldn’t stop staring. The boy looked back, smiling slightly. His bright eyes searched all over Dryden’s face, inspecting each feature, without ever actually meeting his. It wasn’t a cocky look, it wasn’t insolence, but it was weirdly unsettling.
“ … in the Far East.” he suddenly heard Bruder saying. He had no idea what he’d been talking about.
There was an awkward silence. They were waiting for him to speak, perhaps to agree or disagree or to say something soothing or amusing. When he said nothing Bruder realised he hadn’t been listening. He didn’t show his annoyance, but he didn’t want to go on making idle chitchat either.
“Anyway, I expect you’re in a hurry to get back up to London, Mrs. Chapman,” he said.
Mother and son said their good-byes at the door while Dryden and Bruder stood in the background pretending to be invisible. It was an intensely private moment both had witnessed many times. Then she was gone. Bruder sat down at his desk again. The boy stood obediently by the door.
“I’m putting Peter in School House, Philip” Bruder said. “He’s just turned thirteen. We’ll start in him in Lower 3B but I’m sure he’ll soon work his way up to the A stream - not so my boy?”
The boy smiled. That seemed to light up the room.
“He’s an excellent swimmer and diver according to his report, good enough to make the school team,” Bruder added.
Dryden nodded approvingly.
“Wait outside please, Peter. Mr. Dryden will be out in a moment to get you sorted out.”
When he’d gone Bruder motioned Dryden to sit. He took off his glasses and began polishing them methodically with a small yellow cloth, his big watery eyes fixed but unfocussed on Dryden’s face.
“I’m very pleased with the way you’ve settled in as House Master, Philip. You really seem to have the boys’ respect and that’s very important,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.”
Bruder went on polishing. He looked friendly and even fragile without the glasses. He reminded Dryden of the tired old men with sticks and baggy pants walking on the seafront promenade, gazing out beyond the waves, seeing dim sepia scenes from their youth. Then the glasses went back on and the illusion, if it was one, disappeared.
“Happy with your accommodation?” Bruder asked.
Dryden thought about his small room wedged on the landing between Dorms 4 and 5, tucked away in the heart of the convoluted warren that made up the boarders’ wing. His one small window looked down on the graveyard of St Mary’s Church and all its buried bones.
“Fine, thank you,” he lied. He wondered what Bruder was expecting to hear. He wondered why it was a topic at all after three whole months.
The old man nodded solemnly. He took his glasses off again. He’d missed a spot. There was another short silence, more absent-minded polishing.
“There’s a bit of a history to this boy and I want you to keep a special eye on him,” he said eventually.
Dryden nodded. He waited. The silence started to feel awkward. It didn’t seem as though there was going to be any more. Bruder’s mind seemed to be somewhere else.
“What sort of history, sir?” Dryden asked eventually.
“He wasn’t expelled from his last school, nothing like that but there was an incident.”
Bruder put his glasses back on for the second time. It was quite disconcerting the way his appearance kept changing back and forth, from granddad to despot.
“What sort of incident, sir?” Dryden asked.
“One of the masters at his last school committed suicide,” Bruder said. He let that hang in the air too. He seemed really reluctant to get the story out.
Dryden waited politely but by then he was very curious. He didn’t wait as long.
“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t follow? Did this boy witness the suicide or something?”
“No,” Bruder said. “I gather he was the cause of it - in a sense at least, although that’s probably a stupid way to put it. Apparently the master kissed him in front of the whole class.”
Dryden wasn’t expecting that. He immediately wondered whether the classroom kiss was a euphemism for something more. Bruder seemed to read that thought, perhaps predictably.
“These things always leave a sour taste, they’re very embarrassing all round but I gather no real harm was done,” Bruder said. “To the boy, I mean,” he added quickly. “I spoke to the headmaster at his last school and they’re not really sure that the two things were even connected anyway. Apparently he had various problems, financial, other things. But there was a lot of chatter, teasing from the other boys. You know how they are, you know the sort of thing. His parents thought it best to move him.”
Dryden realised he was sitting with his mouth open, gawping like an idiot.
“I debated whether to tell you any of this,” Bruder went on, “but on balance I think you should know. Needless to say, you must keep it to yourself.”
“Of course, sir.”
There was another short silence. Dryden wondered whether they were both thinking the same thing. The boy outside was astonishingly good looking, ethereally so, but it didn’t seem a good time to mention that.
“Anyway, we can’t keep him hanging around out there any longer,” Bruder said. “I’ll leave it to you to get him settled in. Get one or two of the other boys to take him under their wing. Rowell’s in his class, I think - he seems a steady sort.”
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