Stand Before Your God [antikvár]

CHAPTER 1 m;? I SWEAR, I thought I was going to a party. I had a new suit made of blue corduroy and new black shoes that came with a free pack of playing cards. I was seven years old. | My father drove me to a house that I had never seen before. Mother refused to come with us. The last I saw of her was a tear-blotchy face staring down from the window of our room at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford. The door to the house opened and a man with a stubbly chin shook my hand. He led me into a room where dozens of other boys in blue suits and black shoes were playing board games and trading marbles. 'Goodbye,' my father said, and shook my hand. His face was hard and serious. He tasted the sherry that the stubbly man had poured for him. Then he put his glass down on a bookshelf and walked away from it. I went around showing my cards to people. I said I knew some games. This place had a smell to it - boot polish and old breadcrumbs and spilled milk gone sour and the flannelly warmth of our blue corduroy. 'This is a neat party,' I told the man. His hair was threads of black and grey. It looked sharp like steel wool. 'Did you say something?' he asked me. 'Where's my dad?' I flipped my cards from one hand to the other, hoping he would ask about them. 'He's gone.' The man crouched down until I was no longer looking at the buckle of his belt but at his face. 'Your father has gone home. I am Mr Vicker and I am your housemaster. From now on, you must call me "sir".' I reached out and touched his hair, sure that it would cut my fingers the way paper can cut you. He swatted my hand away and stood. The hard creases of his trousers fell back into their lines.