Extra-curricular
There had always been three of them; the trio of boys who came top of the class in every subject, in one order or another, like a perpetual academic dance. Their monopoly smacked of an unspoken arrangement; a secret cartel which wielded power and influence not only over their fellow pupils but over the teachers too, teachers who wanted to devise ways of giving the rest a chance, a shot at glory. Yet if they made the weekly tests easier, the triumvirate scored a hundred percent; made harder, and the gulf between them and the also-rans was only exaggerated.
At first innocent of their superiority, once they came to realise how gifted they were it was easy enough to build a moat around themselves. They created a kind of democratic Camelot peopled by just three knights, each one taking turns to be king; and although they had no need to do so, they were happy to perpetuate myth and legend - like that week when they collectively chose to ace every challenge presented in order to make it impossible for the staff to separate them. The same had been true at the end of their first academic year, forcing the headmaster to award them joint first prize for their cohort’s annual achievement award. In consequence, second and third places were cancelled; there were no runners-up. Only when they narrowed their fields of study for GCSEs did anyone else get a look-in, though never for first place. It was a dominance exercised every year up to their first year as A-level students. New pupils would arrive from time-to-time and, for the briefest of moments, perhaps threaten to shine as brightly; yet in the end all were eclipsed.
Given their uniformity of academic excellence, it was perhaps a surprise that their backgrounds, upbringing, and domestic situations should be so different - and all the more remarkable that outside of the classroom their tastes and appetites varied wildly.
Spencer excelled as the athletic one, physically beyond the margins of the average; he was slightly taller, slightly stockier, stronger yet more nimble, explosive, persistent, determined. He moved with an elegance and easy grace most evident when he had a football at his feet or a tennis racquet in his hand; yet his approach to such supremacy never traversed the borders of arrogance. Top scorer in the junior football team, he became captain of the seniors two years earlier than he should have. Inevitably an all-rounder, he threatened to make county under-16s for cricket, and was the school badminton champion four years in a row. However, in spite of his physical superiority, he approach sport with the kind of diffidence displayed in relation to his studies: it was all too easy, so significant effort seldom required; only when his dominance was threatened - like the year he was taken to a deciding set in the tennis competition - did he show anything like a mean streak. When people talked of sporting scholarships at university or future England call-ups (if only he could decide in which sport to major!) he would brush the notions aside as if irrelevant. For the other two, Spencer was either at the pinnacle or the base of their triumvirate, depending on the prevailing situation.
In spite of Spencer’s considerable prowess, on occasion he was socially gauche and insecure, at least until he was fifteen or so. For many - especially his teachers - there was something incongruous about a boy with so many advantages, displaying discomfort in public situations as often as he did. Such reserve was not an ailment from which Alistair suffered, however; completely the opposite in fact. Although less physically adept than Spencer - yet no more nor less intelligent - Alistair’s extrovert confidence was born of privilege, knowing he could get his hands on whatever he wanted. The only son of a father who was a successful City trader and with a renowned historian for a mother, his early childhood had been cushioned in the extreme. Where Spencer’s dominance was manifest on the sports’ field, Alistair’s arrogance was born from something less visible but equally tangible: wealth. If his companion was first among equals when it came to physical endeavour, Alistair was always the first to possess the latest technological gadget, the first to have travelled to far-flung places. And given his greatest weapons were charm and self-confidence, he proved articulate enough to be able to extricate himself out of - and into - almost any situation; teachers loved him because he could be relied upon to shine publicly. It was his natural milieu.
And then there was Russell. On the face of it Russell offered the world nothing other than his academic prowess: there was no extra-curricular activity over which he could demonstrate superiority, no area of personality or endeavour in which he shone brighter than anyone else. He was physically mediocre and average at games, and his background was so diametrically opposed to Alistair’s that on the whole he seemed an odd adjunct to the other two. If you were being generous you might have described his upbringing as ‘modest’ - even if ‘challenging’ and ‘deprived’ may have been far more appropriate adjectives. In the care of parents who didn’t understand him, as a young child he had worked hard and independently to build up his stock of knowledge, to decipher how the working world functioned, and to hone his skills when it came to taking tests or articulating answers to questions, theories, propositions. None of it had come easily to him. Yet it would be a mistake to think that hard-won intelligence, sharpened to be the best it could possibly be, was Russell’s only notable attribute. Buried beneath his unremarkable outward persona lurked an extreme romantic, a boy who cultivated a passion for - and unswerving faith in - the supremacy of the emotional life. Romantic with a capital ‘R’. Where Spencer and Alistair’s non-academic excellences were always in plain sight thanks to the way they competed or behaved, Russell’s passion was hidden at a depth impenetrable to everyone except himself.
Given the three of them were clearly not peas from the same pod, one might be forgiven for regarding their alliance as a little surprising; it was as if they had agreed on a truce without ever going to war. Had you asked them, both Spencer and Alistair might have suggested that fighting to be academic ‘top dog’ would have been such a waste of energy - energy better spent elsewhere - that there had been no point going into battle in the first place. Disingenuously or not, Russell would probably have countered that, in his case, keeping up with his two friends was sufficient struggle in itself - and a constant one at that. Few would have disbelieved him.