The Lines Incident

On a baking hot lunchtime I was strolling across the field following a trip to the tuck shop, when a commotion in the distance alerted me to something going on by the tennis courts. Kids were flocking to the fence, while others were hurrying away. Curiosity drew me so far, until I saw girls coming away in tears.

One of them told me a dog had been kicked to death on the Lines and that Geoff Bray, our head boy, had gone out there to remonstrate with the perpetrator. Sickened at what I’d heard, I backtracked to the playground.

A former pupil did it, someone said. A relation of a first year boy I knew well, it turned out. I felt for him when I saw him sitting quietly alone that afternoon, and tried talking to him.  ‘Will you ever speak to him again?’ I asked.

‘He’s my cousin, ain’t he?’ he replied with a shrug.

It was a daft question to ask. Neither of us mentioned it again.

There was further trouble after school that afternoon, though I knew nothing of it until next morning. It seemed the villain of the piece had unfinished business with Geoff and confronted him at the upper school gate. In the fight that followed it sounded like our head boy might have been getting the worst of it until Mister Fisk intervened. If the account I heard is true, he didn't just break it up. A sad and sorry episode, certainly, but Geoff Bray and Mister Fisk came out of it with a lot of credit.