[Milliways]: The Kitty

[smallgayjew]

It isn't unusual. He's done it before.

Scripps had even encouraged him once he'd brought up the suggestion.

(Scripps knew, without words, what his real reason was for this particular selection. Scripps often knows without words what Posner really means. It happens, he supposes, when you've known someone that long, spent that much time with them.)

It's easy enough. Just a quick, “Sir, we've got a song.”

The other boys like it when they interrupt the class for a musical interlude. It means a bit less lecture. A bit less poetry.

So it's, “Sir, we've got a song,” and then Scripps takes his place at the piano, Posner standing beside him, and they start.

It's for Dakin. It's quite obviously for Dakin. Posner doesn't once take his eyes off the other boy except to look over Scripps' shoulder at the music. He doesn't even blush. He doesn't turn away. He can hear the subtle mumbling from the other boys, sees Timms out of the corner of his eye turn in shock and amusement to look at Dakin when he realizes that Posner is not just singing. He's singing to Dakin.

Dakin, for his part, looks bored, a bit annoyed, amused as well, shaking his head at Scripps when Scripps grins over his shoulder at Dakin.

The applause that greets them at the end of the song is scattered at best. Dakin's arms stay firmly crossed over his chest, and Posner supposes it's so that he doesn't encourage any ideas in Posner's head. As though it were necessary. As though he ever let Posner forget that he was nothing more than a hanger-on, someone he tolerates for Scripps' sake.

“Well done, Posner,” Hector says as he takes his place in front of the class. “And now for some poetry of a more traditional sort.

“Oh,” Timms groans, his head falling to the desk in front of him.

“Timms, what is it?”

“Sir, I don't always understand poetry,” he answers, and Posner turns to look at him before focusing again on Hector.

“You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now, and you will understand it...whenever.”

“I don't see how we can understand it,” Timms argues. “Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet.”

“But it will Timms, it will. And when it does, you'll have the antidote ready. Grief,” Hector says, with a flourish of one hand. “Happiness,” he concludes, mirroring his gesture with the other. “Even when you're dying. We're making your deathbeds here, boys.”

There's a knock at the door, and Hector takes it as a cue to move the lesson on to another topic, first motioning for them to be quiet. He's taken to keeping the door locked since Felix first suggested he give up some of his time to Irwin. Posner is glad of it. Something about Hector's classes beg for privacy, for a freedom from interruption.

“'O villainy! Let the door be locked!'” he says.
“'Treachery! Seek it out.'”

There's a sound in the hall, someone trying the door handle.

“Knocks at the door?” Hector asks, his voice low, not quite a whisper. “In literature. The trial, for instance, begins with a knock. Anybody?”

“The person from Porlock,” Akthar offers.

“Yes,” says Hector.

“Don Giovanni: the Commendatore,” Posner adds.

“Excellent.”

“Behold I stand at the door and knock,” Scripps mentions. “Revelation.”

Timms gets up to look out the door. “Gone, sir.”

“Good,” Hector says, too nonchalant to be truly casual.

“Irwin,” Timms clarifies to the others.

It was right, then, for Hector to lock them in, to protect them from Irwin, from his meddling, from his methods and his strategies. This is not the time for that. Posner wishes he could turn to look at Dakin without being obvious. He wants to see Dakin's reaction to his new favorite being excluded from their group.

“Very often the knock is elided,” Hector continues, “the knock, as it were, taken as knocked. Did the knights knock at the door of Canterbury before they murdered Beckett? And maybe the person from Porlock never actually knocked but just put his or her head in at the window? Death knocks, I suppose. Love. And of course, opportunity.” He glances at his watch, and as he does, Posner looks at the clock. Almost the end of class. “Now. Some silly time. Where's the kitty?”

Posner gets up to get the tin from its shelf. It jangles with the sound of loose change as he brings it to Hector.

“Oh, sir, sir,” says Timms. “We've got one, sir.”

“Fifty p each,” Hector reminds them.

“It's a good one, sir,” Timms assures him.

“You won't get this one, sir,” Lockwood adds.

“That remains to be seen,” Hector says as he takes his place in the back of the classroom.

“We have to smoke, sir,” Timms adds, and Posner suspects that's the real reason for this particular ending.

“Very well,” says Hector, magnanimously, though there was never a question that he would agree.

Scripps takes his place on the piano, accompanying them with some music hall tunes.

“Gerry, please help me,” Timms begins, his voice a high and ridiculous falsetto.

“Shall we just have a cigarette on it?” Lockwood asks, his Yorkshire accent abandoned for something much more posh, more suited to the scene.

“Yes.” At Timms' answer, Lockwood lights two cigarettes and hands one to Timms. They each take a dramatic drag and blow the smoke in opposite directions.

“May I sometimes come here?” Lockwood asks, and Timms turns away as if in embarrassment. (The blocking is awkward, the acting equally so. Posner can't help thinking how he'd change it if this were his ending.)

“Whenever you like,” Timms squeaks. “It's your home, too. There are people here who love you.”

“And will you be happy, Charlotte?”

“Oh Gerry. Don't lets ask for the moon. We have the stars.”

There's another dramatic puff of smoke as Scripps finishes with a dramatic flourish. The boys dutifully applaud, and Hector makes a show of thinking.

“Could it be,” he says after a moment, “Paul Henreid and Bette Davis in Now Voyager?”

The boys laugh, and Timms and Lockwood look at each other in defeat.

“It is famous, you ignorant little tarts,” Hector says.

“We'd never heard of it, sir,” Lockwood protests.

“Oh, Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass,
'The untold want of life and land ne'er granted
Now Voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.'

“Fifty p, please.”

“Shit,” Lockwood says as he adds his contribution.

“When you say shit, Lockwood,” Hector says, unfazed by the profanity, “I take it you're referring to the well-established association between money and excrement?”

“Too right, sir.”

“Good. Well, I will now tell you how much shit there is in the pot, namely, sixteen pounds.”

It's a reminder, whether Hector means it to be or not, that there is very little time left. For the kitty as well as the exam.







[ooc: All dialogue comes from the Fox Searchlight film The History Boys or the play of the same name by Alan Bennett.]