It was different from anything we’d had before, but I got the feeling some of the older masters didn’t like Mr. van Hout too much because none of them really talked to him and gave him sidelong glances when they walked past him. Every so often our class would erupt in laughter and doors to other classrooms would close. We reckoned they were just jealous. When we had a double, Mr. van Hout let us lie on the grass during the break for ages, and now and again he told us to close our books and he recounted stories of what it was like when he was at Haven. The best lessons were when he put his head around the door and curled his finger for us to follow, and we would go and sit under a tree and talk, not about history or about him but about us, because he wanted to know, he said. Now and again, however, he would come in and we knew straightaway there would be no fun. We just had to sit and wait for those lessons to pass, like when the horizon turns gray and you hear thunder crashing toward you.
