Different Class (33 page)

I kept the copy of
The Wall
I was going to give Mr Clarke. I’ve hidden it away, along with the list of albums I’m going to buy. Except I probably
won’t
buy them now. I don’t know if I’ll ever dare. Not because it makes me feel bad to remember, but actually, quite the opposite. I know I
ought
to be feeling bad. But Mousey, I feel so alive. More alive than I’ve ever been; like I’m immortal, or something. For the first time since I can remember, I’m not afraid of dying. I can see everything clearly now. My Condition; my future. Everything is shiny and new, like a fresh fall of Christmas snow. When it snows, you can forget what’s hidden under the surface. Even the clay pits are beautiful under a nice fresh fall of snow. The old cars are wearing crisp white hoods; even the dogshit on the ground is erased. When the sun shines, it’s like everything is covered in powdered diamonds. The surface of the Pit Shaft is dotted with small islands. And the dark and lonely water is under a layer of silver lace, like a zombie bride beneath her rotted, mouldy wedding veil.

Resolution Number Four: stop thinking about it, Mousey. Let the memory stay buried under that layer of virgin snow. There’s no point hanging on to it, except that it makes me feel so good, and maybe that’s the problem. Some things just feel too good to stop. Drugs, I suppose. And the Sin of the Flesh – at least, if Goldie is to be believed. Maybe I’ll even stop writing things down. Give it up altogether. Stamp down on the temptation like stamping down on new-fallen snow. Except that we’ll still know it’s there, whatever the surface may look like. We all know I’m not
really
pure. Just as we know that the snow will melt. Just as we know My Condition won’t change. And just as we know Resolutions – like some people, Mousey – are really just there to be broken.

3

January 1982

Those clay pits were notorious. Ringed with chain-link fences and peppered with NO TRESPASSERS signs, they had been a traditional place for boys to misbehave since Eric and I, in caps and St Oswald’s blazers, had used it as our combat-ground, more years ago than seems possible. What they really were, of course, was
dark and lonely water
: a series of abandoned pits not quite large enough to count as quarries, now mostly flooded and commonly used as a tipping ground for household waste and junk of all kinds.

Any boy from St Oswald’s would have been wary of that place. Charlie Nutter certainly was. Thanks to that old TV campaign, shown to all our feeder schools, Charlie Nutter knew the risks of dark and lonely water. And he’d been missing for nearly a week before they searched the clay pits. Everything else had already been tried. A sign saying PRAY FOR CHARLIE had been put up by the church. Flowers and candles had been left by well-wishers at St Oswald’s gates. Mr Speight and the Chaplain had organized a vigil and Stephen Nutter, MP, had appealed to the public on
Look North
.

The response had been eager, though fruitless. Sightings of Charlie had been reported in Manchester, Sheffield and even Hull, but none of these turned out to be anything more than false alarms. Malbry and St Oswald’s began to prepare themselves for the worst. The media, too, now upped their game as the national press picked up the story. That pallid, twitching, colourless boy had become gilded by tragedy. The boys who had ignored him at School made tearful declarations of friendship. Even the
Malbry Examiner
(never a friend to St Oswald’s) described the missing boy as
popular
, which, as everyone knows, is only a step away from
the tragic loss of a young life
.

No one wanted to believe that the boy was dead, of course. But what else could have happened to him? Nutter was a quiet boy, shy to the point of sullenness. His pastimes were quiet; his friends were few. He never misbehaved at School. His family was affluent. He had whatever he wanted. For Christmas, his father had bought him a BMX bicycle. Why would he have run away?

Besides, it was winter. In July, boys can run away from home and live like outlaws in the woods, but at Christmas 1981 it snowed. No boy would have survived sleeping rough, and a number of sinister theories were beginning to gain popularity – theories ventured by Mr Speight, a firm believer in sacrifice rings, black magic and Satanic covens, whose
actual
knowledge of the occult was mostly taken from the novels of Dennis Wheatley.

And so, when a body was retrieved from one of the flooded clay pits, the reaction within the community was of sorrow, rather than surprise. And when the news came that the Nutter family had failed to identify the body, the general consensus was that the grief-stricken parents had been too deep in denial to face the truth. The
Examiner
ran the story the next day, flanked with a picture of Charlie – which made what happened later all the more remarkable.

What happened was, they found him.
Where
and
when
remained unclear. The papers seemed to suggest that it was on the fourth of January, but the time of day was unknown. Some said the boy had been found in a house somewhere in White City. Some said he’d come home of his own accord; some, that he had resisted. But whatever the truth of it, Nutter was safe. It was our Christmas miracle.

Back from the Dead!
the headlines exclaimed; and for twenty-four hours, the excitement of finding the Nutter boy safe and sound was almost enough to make us forget that a boy – an as yet
unidentified
boy – had been pulled out of the clay pits. That boy, too, had been someone’s son. That boy, too, had lost his life. It wasn’t that we didn’t care about the unnamed boy in the pit; but when all was said and done – that boy wasn’t one of ours.

As for Charlie Nutter, I went to see him as soon as I could. Not straight away – remember, I had a funeral to arrange – but a couple of days after his return. I think I felt responsible, as if there were something I could have done to prevent what happened. Not that I
knew
what had happened, of course: the grapevine was stubbornly silent on the subject of Charlie’s return, which meant that his homecoming had been tinged with a kind of awkwardness, a sigh of relief tempered by the vague dissatisfaction of a community preparing itself for the worst, only to find that its energies could have been better spent elsewhere.

Now, over a week from the day Charlie Nutter had disappeared, no one seemed to know where he had been, or what he had done during that time. The parents had made a statement, saying that Charlie was in good health and expressing their joy at his return. That was all anyone knew, and, much to the chagrin of the
Malbry Examiner
, neither Charlie nor his parents were prepared to divulge anything more. But I was the boy’s form-tutor. I felt obscurely responsible. And so I went to see him at home, to offer what help and support I could.

The Nutters lived on Millionaires’ Row, the nicest street in Malbry. Big stone houses with metal gates and walls to keep the trespassers out, with nicely mown lawns and flower beds and broad gravel paths under the trees. One of my colleagues lived there – an Art Master, now long since retired, working on a book in one of those gracious old houses. The Nutters’ house was especially large, especially well kept, with electronic gates and a set of cameras surveying the drive. I supposed that Nutter, like all MPs, had to be suspicious. The troubles in Northern Ireland had spread since the hunger strikes at the Maze, and might one day spread even to Malbry. It had briefly occurred to me, too, that Charlie might have been kidnapped; that his parents had paid the ransom and that this was the cause of their reticence.

But a kidnapping, in Malbry? It seemed barely conceivable. Malbry is one of those places where nothing really happens. Even now, in the Village, people still leave their doors unlocked – although it is very different down in White City, where the pebble-dashed houses are often fitted with grilles to safeguard the windows. White City is less than a mile from the Village, and yet it is a world apart. Even the pubs are different; and the takeaways are all fish-and-chip shops, rather than places like the Pink Zebra, which sells salads and ethnic food. White City boys (and girls, of course) go to school in Sunnybank Park, the concrete abomination on the Abbey Road estate, and wear expressions of cocky disdain to hide their essential self-loathing. They also push their fish-and-chip wrappers into my hedge at the end of Dog Lane, as if doing so absolves them of the responsibility of disposing of their litter. And yet, the Sunnybankers, too, have parents who would grieve for them. Who
was
that boy in the clay pits? I thought. Was there someone still waiting for him?

Mrs Nutter answered the door. I remembered her as a thin, elegant woman. Now she looked almost skeletal. She was wearing a long, flowing thing with some kind of looping, swirling pattern; she looked like a child dressed in a bedspread. Mrs Harrington was with her, holding a cup of coffee.

‘Mr Straitley! What a surprise!’

From her face, I wasn’t sure whether the surprise was good or not. I touched my hat. I’d taken to wearing one in the winter; it was unfashionable, but very practical in the snow, and besides, it gave me something to do when I was dealing with women.

‘Mrs Nutter. Good morning. I just came to see if Charlie needed anything. Books, class notes, anything. We’ve all been very anxious.’

She gave a brittle smile. ‘Thank you. Charlie’s resting, but he’s well. I’ll tell him you called. I’m sure he’ll be glad. I’d ask you in for coffee, but—’ She gave an abstract little wave that took in Mrs Harrington, the drawing room beyond the hall, the shapeless garment she was wearing – A kaftan? A housecoat? – while at the same time conveying the impossibility of receiving guests.

Mrs Harrington looked at me. Her eyes were like her son’s, a brown so dark that it might have been black. ‘We were praying,’ she told me. Prayer, that get-out-of-jail-free card to every social embarrassment.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I won’t intrude. I just wanted to make sure that Charlie was all right. If there’s anything I can do to help – if there’s been any trouble at School—’

‘No, there’s nothing, thank you,’ said Mrs Nutter. I noticed that her hands were like her son’s, red with patches of eczema. She lingered in the doorway, waiting for me to leave.

I said: ‘It’s just that if there’s something at School – bullying, or anything else . . .’

‘No.’ Her voice was thin and sharp. ‘Thank you, Mr Straitley. But none of this has anything to do with St Oswald’s. Charlie’s a little highly strung. He’s been under the weather. My husband’s work, the pressures, you know—’ She let the sentence trail off.

I nodded. ‘Of course. I do understand.’ And then I touched my hat again and went back down the long drive.

I turned once, and thought I saw a face at one of the upstairs windows, blurry with condensation. I think it might have been Charlie, although I could not be certain.

If so, it was the last time I was to see him for seven years.

4

December 1981

Drowning is quiet, Mousey. A man who can struggle can also breathe. A man – or in this case, a boy – who can scream is not running short of air. St Oswald’s has a swimming pool, which pupils visit once a week.

But Ratboy was a Sunnybanker. Sunnybankers don’t have a pool. Ratboy could paddle a bit, but that was it. And it was cold; the Pit Shaft glazed with a film of ice. Not enough to slow his fall; but enough to make sure that his struggle was brief. They say all your life passes before your eyes at the moment of drowning. Ratboy’s life can’t have been much. A couple of gulps, and he was gone. Still, what a feeling, Mousey. This must be what God feels like
all the time
.

I didn’t push him, Mousey. But I was the one who pushed Poodle. Wound him up like a clockwork toy, and watched him do the rest. It was fun. Like pouring my demons into someone else and watching them run off a cliff. But the water was too cold, I guess, and Ratboy went under too fast. It doesn’t take long, in cold weather. It’s called the Instinctive Diving Response. Ratboy dived. And Poodle – well. Poodle went a bit crazy.