Neither of his grandfathers fought, on account of their poor eyesight, and the fact his family did not do their bit brings him shame. When the other boys in his year boast of their grandfathers’ heroics in the army, navy or air force, he must keep quiet. His father did national service, but rather than killing Germans he played in a brass band and catered in the officers’ mess. Perhaps his family are cowards.
As well as three roads, the town also has three rivers. Every winter these rivers break their banks and flood the surrounding fields. In summer, the flood‑plain grows thick with lush green grass. In this way, the town is open and expansive in summer, while becoming hemmed in and dark with the water surrounding it from all sides in winter.
Every morning, unless his father has choir practice, he and his sister make the short walk with him from their front door, along Church Street and into the school. Later, when he remembers this, he has an image of them walking together, his own hand small and warm in his father’s fist, his father carrying an umbrella and swinging it like the gentlemen in films. But this is a false image, or false memory, because his father is too forgetful to ever keep an umbrella for more than twenty‑four hours.
Similarly, he imagines his father in a suit and people touching their foreheads in a little bow as they go by. But this is also false. His father always wears thick, plaid shirts, with one button unwinding on its thread. The only thing that is true is his own pride at the warmth and greetings that fall on his father, and by extension himself, when they’re in town. This makes them a pre-eminent family—the first family. But then maybe that is every family’s sense of itself.
Will the school also form part of his inheritance, one day? he wonders. His father is reticent about this, but surely if the school is his father’s, then, like everything else—like the clock his father says has been in the family for generations and one day will be his—the school will also become his own.
As the headmaster’s son he is in a unique position. Unlike his sister, who is embarrassed by her special status, he raises it with classmates often. Yet, the more he mentions it, the less they seem to like him. When the other children, particularly the boys, boast and square up to each other over their fathers’ jobs, he does not see why his own father’s should be a source of suspicion rather than pride.
His father does not teach him, he only teaches the top two forms. However, sometimes he will see his father around school. When he does, he waits for a sign, an acknowledgment that he is his son, a sign that he is special. But his father does not acknowledge him in this way, no sign is forthcoming. He wants his father to lay claim to him. But he will not. His mother, on the other hand, is always happy to claim him as her own. She will call to him, wave to him at the school gates. She will lie to get him out of school or off games. His mother claims him to a degree that is humiliating.
The only time he is his father’s son is when his mother cannot collect him from school. On these days, he is permitted to go through the red double doors of the main school building, the doors only to be used by teachers, and to wait on the long settle in the hall for his father to finish teaching. He is unique among the children in being able to use these doors, in being able to access the school at weekends, and in being able to walk up the staff staircase, which is made of marble and sweeps in a curve up to the landing.
It only occurs to him how arbitrary it is to forbid the use of a set of doors one Monday morning, when he is running an errand during class and is caught going through them by the games master. He does not see why he should be able to use the doors at weekends with his father but not during the week. He can use these doors, the staff staircase, because he is his father’s son. To deny him is in some way to deny his father. And yet, after the games master tells him that it is not the weekend, so he cannot go that way, he accepts: his fear of being bad is greater even than his sense of his own importance.
He dare not say that this is a stupid rule. He is yet to see any sign that the teachers possess some quality in relation to doors that he does not. All he feels is how much he wishes he were with his father all the time. With his father he can go anywhere.
One day, while waiting for his father to finish the last lesson of the afternoon, he’s taken to the top of the school, where his father teaches maths. The ceilings on the upper floor are lower and each of the rooms is lit by long strip lighting that emits a low‑level buzz. His father’s classroom is dim and airless. The boy stands next to him at the front, while his father draws in chalk on the blackboard. The floor is covered with a dark brown vinyl that is breaking up in places to reveal the boards beneath. The boys are lined up behind desks. But these are not boys, they are all thirteen, or nearly thirteen, and they have the long limbs of men. Some even have men’s voices. He cannot imagine ever being as old as they are.
When the bell goes, he and his father are left alone. With the school quiet and empty, he feels the place belongs to his father and, as a result, it must belong to him also. They walk down to his father’s study, past wall displays in French and drawings of trees. He knows the words are French, although he has not yet learned what they mean; he can make his own drawings of trees but has not yet learned how to reproduce them so beautifully. Next to the study door, there is a large wooden cupboard, which his father opens with a small key. Inside are packs and packs of shrink‑wrapped exercise books. These are the books they use in class, each covered with pastel shades of sugar paper. Dark teal green with squares for maths, yellow with wide‑ruled lines for his year group, pink‑orange with narrower lines for use by the older children. His father takes one and then asks if he’d like some too.
Receiving a new exercise book is one of his chief joys. Whenever one of his classmates finishes their book and puts a hand up to say they need a new one, a hush covers the room. If he had bigger, messier handwriting he would get a new book more often. He feels it an injustice that he should be punished for having a better, tidier script.
The new books are stiffly bound, with shiny covers. Over time, their binding grows weaker, the pages dirty, and the sheen disappears. In the first lessons after receiving a new book, he will write smaller, more neatly, ensuring that every letter sticks to the line. Every time he harbors some hope that this time will be different: this time he will reach the end with no errors at all.
However, he knows that no matter how careful, no matter how well‑meaning he is, he will make crossings out. When he misspells a word, he is torn between two equally bad choices: to cross it out and correct it, leaving messy evidence of his mistake, or carrying on regardless, but with the mistake there for all to find.
To make an error on the clean, white pages of a new exercise book feels, to him, a terrible sin. He wants to leave no trace or, at least, no trace of his own fault. It would be better to have written nothing than to leave signs of error.
When his father opens the cupboard to reveal a wall of such books, he cannot believe it. And when he casually grabs a couple of each of the exercise books and hands them to him, he is dumbfounded. He opens one and then another, smells the sickly release of glue and fresh paper. His father asks what he will use them for, to which he replies, “Stories.” He does not have any stories to tell, he cannot think of any, but he likes the idea of filling the pages, writing a book of his own, like the ones he reads in the evenings at home. He would like to write a story that carries all the way to the end.
He tries to prolong their stay here because this is the happiest he can ever remember being. Here he has access to all he could want. When they finally descend the stairs to the staff car park it is with the knowledge that he is his father’s son.
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From The Boyhood of Cain by Michael Amherst. Used with permission of the publisher, Riverhead Books. Copyright © 2025 by Michael Amherst.
