My Name is Michael Sibley Read Online Free Page B

his thick lips moulded over the instrument. Nobody ever knew why he learnt to play the flute. When asked, he simply said, well, because he liked it; which is a good enough reason.
    I deliberately cultivated David’s friendship. Firstly, because apart from myself he was the most junior boy in the House, so that I naturally went to him for advice about the incredibly numerous complications which beset the life of every new boy at a public school; and secondly, because I liked the look of him. I think the attraction was at first somewhat one-sided. I was not very much to look at; I was very ordinary indeed, and still am, if it comes to that. I had mouse-coloured hair, wore spectacles, and had a rather pasty complexion. But I was of medium build, and although not outstandingly strong I was certainly no weakling in a tussle.
    David was on what they called the Languages and Maths side of the school, and I was on the Classical. Prosset was in David’s form, and that was how they became friendly. They used to eat their buns together in the morning break, and help each other with last-minute adjustments to their “prep.” We were all three destined for Buckley’s House, but Prosset had already gone there direct.
    Thus the position was that both Prosset and I were friendly with David, but beyond a casual meeting here and there we did not yet know each other. Later, when David and I went to Buckley’s, we three linked up.
    Long after, when we had become thoroughly familiar, they both told me how Prosset used to ask David Trevelyan why he walked to and from college with “that awful tick, Sibley.” It was regarded as a good joke, which I was supposed to find very amusing. I was always one to laugh when people were expected to laugh, so I would join in the mirth then.
    So there we were, John Prosset, David Trevelyan, and I.
     
    That is how it began, and that is how it stayed for nearly four long years: Prosset, Trevelyan, and Sibley. We were not so much individuals, at first, as a unit. We walked up to college together, and we walked back together. We went up to the tuck shop together, and ate poached eggs on toast together. We lent each other sixpences and shillings, shared the contents of our tuck boxes, schemed to avoid the little troubles which lie in store for small boys at public schools. If one got into a fight, the other two would come to the rescue. As term followed term, and we came to be regarded by other boys as identities rather than as just three small nondescript boys, our unity remained and indeed became famous.
    We were secretly rather envied. Many people would have liked to have been in my shoes, bound by the ties of friendship to Trevelyan and Prosset, for Prosset, with his rather pronounced nose and chin and his challenging eyes, was well liked and respected, not only by other boys, but by masters, especially games masters. At first he was tried out for the Colts Fifteen, and played for them and did well; and in the end he played for the college side, not brilliantly, but boldly and with intelligence and tenacity. David Trevelyan and I basked in reflected limelight.
    Life was good, on the whole. We had made a niche, and we were not lonely as other boys were sometimes lonely who had no close friends. We were a small, compact gang, and if Prosset was the acknowledged leader, we fell in with his plans readily enough. We had security in the jungle of school life, and that is a very important thing indeed.
    Even in the light of what later happened, I must confess that looking back on the first year or two of the Prosset–Trevelyan–Sibley combine we had many good times together.
    Whitsun was the great time of the year for us, for on the Tuesday after Whitsun the school was virtually set free to do exactly what it liked. It was started as a bold experiment, and it worked. All bounds were abolished. We could roam over the whole county, on foot, on bicycles, even by train if we wished. So long as we did nothing