The Heat of the Sun

heaps inside entrance halls, of icicles on gutters and frost on glass, of the doggy, stale smell
of snow-spattered coats drying on lines of verdigris hooks. Classrooms were stifling; leaning forward, head on arms, I stared from steamy windows, watching the crisscross flurryings of snow. At
night I huddled under my blankets in my dressing gown. Everything I did – bathing, buttoning my shirt – was awkward, as if my fingers were twice their normal size. Quadrangles and
courtyards were slippery, slushy. Snowballs whizzed by and exploded into powder against backs, chests, and walls, to the accompaniment of delighted or anguished cries.
    We were in Literature with Mr Gregg when the bad things began. Striding up and down between desks, slapping a fellow on the head from time to time, Mr Gregg was discoursing on
Shakespeare’s late romances and the difficulties critics encounter with a form that dares to mingle comedy and tragedy, realism and fantasy. Often he wrote quotations, names or dates for us
to copy down, squealing out rapid-fire curlicues of chalky, illegible handwriting. When he informed us of Dr Johnson’s negative judgement of Cymbeline – ‘ Unresisting
imbecility ... so like the minds of most in this room’ – he charged to the board to record it for us.
    Classrooms at Blaze had twin blackboards that slid up and down like sash windows. That day, both boards in the room had been left in the upper position. Impatiently, Mr Gregg reached for the
pole with a hook in the end that stood behind his desk. As the outer board thudded into position, he seized a stub of chalk, scrawling up S . JOHNSON (1709–84), followed by the quotation in full.
    None of us copied it down. Intent upon his task, Mr Gregg had not noticed the other blackboard that now stood revealed, looming over the class from on high. But at once, every fellow had eyes
for nothing else.
    First there was silence, then explosive laughter.
    Mr Gregg reeled around. Every face, he realized, was fixed upon the board above, where the question was posed in handwriting of a clarity he could never have emulated:
    WHY WAS B . F . PINKERTON II
    EXPELLED FROM MILITARY SCHOOL?
    Underneath, a crude drawing suggested the answer.
    Trouble sat diagonally across from me, three seats ahead. I could not see his face, but the flush that spread up his neck stood out clearly enough. As turmoil reigned around him, he seemed
suspended in place: but only for a moment.
    He rushed from the room.
    ‘Mr Pinkerton!’ Mr Gregg cried, lunging to the door, and called again down the corridor: ‘Mr Pinkerton!’
    Soon the charges were known all over Blaze. Joe Boyd told us the story that evening at dinner; he had heard it from Hoppy Hopkins, who had heard it from a fellow in Form
C.
    This was the story. Before Trouble came to Blaze, he had been at naval school in Maryland, where (so it was said) he had proved himself unusually inept. With his shabby gear, his supercilious
quips, his inability to stand to attention, the penalties he incurred for his classmates were legion. None of them liked him; or rather, only one did. This was Scotty Ridgeway, the handsome,
popular son of an admiral who had distinguished himself in the Spanish–American War. Scotty Ridgeway, like his father, was a model of seamanly prowess, but Scotty’s academic work was
not up to much. All he wanted was naval glory. Bad grades would not only deprive him of his place as an officer cadet, but disgrace him in his father’s eyes. Quietly, he grew desperate: but
Trouble was on hand. When an important test loomed, Trouble broke into the school office, stealing the papers to give to his friend.
    Soon the crime was traced, but worse was to come when a diary discovered in Trouble’s desk revealed crimes still darker. Trouble, it appeared, had been at the centre of a circle of
corruption. Scotty Ridgeway was the first of his victims; later, the two of them initiated others into the vilest depravities.
    The scandal rocked the school. Only the most stringent efforts kept it from the public prints. Admiral Ridgeway, at all costs, had to be prevented from knowing the charges; Senator Pinkerton,
defending his son, threatened legal action. In the end, Scotty Ridgeway was saved, while B. F. Pinkerton II was compelled to leave and was banned from ever serving in the US Navy.
    ‘Quite a story.’ Elmsley winked at me from across the table.
    ‘It’s the biggest secret – the biggest ever,’ said Joe