Different Class (40 page)

The
Malbry Examiner
, which for historical and social reasons has always hated St Oswald’s, made much of the accusations. It was Harry’s and St Oswald’s bad luck that Malbry was still reeling from a previous case, a drama enacted a few years before, in which a little local girl had died in tragic circumstances. Of course, the Emily White affair was barely connected with the School, but even a loose connection was enough for the
Examiner
to deploy its most poisonous language.

SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL!
the headline read.
ST OSWALD’S GRAMMAR SCHOOL’S SECRET HOMOSEXUAL CURRICULUM!

Harry, besieged by journalists, battened down the hatches, but his home was vandalized, and as the case gathered momentum, he had to move to a hostel for his own protection. I fared rather better. In spite of my friendship with Harry; in spite of the fact that the Chaplain revealed that I had denied that Harry was gay; in spite of the fact that Nutter had been in
my
form, and that people (including the editor of the
Examiner
) found it hard to imagine how a member of St Oswald’s staff could have worked alongside a predator and not had the slightest suspicion of what was really going on.

At best, I suppose, it made me naïve. At worst, it made me a suspect. And yet, beyond a few predictable poison-pen letters and graffiti on the wall by my house, I managed to escape virtually unscathed from the dreadful business – more so, perhaps, than I deserved.

Meanwhile, St Oswald’s did what St Oswald’s has done for five hundred years. It carried on with business – in forty-minute segments, with emphasis on clean shirts, House ties, Assemblies, Parents’ Evenings, neat lawns and no running in corridors. We wrapped our everyday routine around us like a blanket, secure in the knowledge that nothing would change, that life would go on as always. Even the Harry Clarke affair would turn out to be no more than a storm in a teacup, we told ourselves, while outside our windows the gathering clouds were heavy with foreboding.

As the weeks and months went by, we became increasingly sure of ourselves. The case seemed to be at a standstill. No one had responded to the appeal by the police, or even phoned the helpline. We heard nothing at all about Spikely, or the exact nature of his claims. No one expected the case to go any further than a magistrate.

And then, after Christmas, we heard the news. Harry was going to trial. The
Malbry Examiner
went into throes of unbridled joy. The evidence gathered over six months, it seemed, pointed to something more serious than mere sexual misconduct. Along with the charges of assault, my friend had been charged with murder.

3

Michaelmas Term, 2005

Dear Mousey,

The first thing I did when Charlie left was to ask to speak to a therapist. My parents were surprised, but pleased (I’d refused therapy for over a year); and when I then asked to go to Church, their happiness was touching. I talked to the pastor who had come in to speak to the congregation, and then I joined a prayer group. Over the next few weeks or so, I became a regular. I found the courage to confess a few things (in fact, I quite enjoyed it). I talked about my feelings. I wrote down my dreams in a notebook. And most of all, I
remembered.

Oh, just little things at first. But memories are like dominoes, laid out in rows, ready to fall. And once the process had started, I was remembering things that I’d almost forgotten I knew. My therapist got excited, and urged me to go deeper. Her name was Liz McRae, and she reminded me a bit of Miss McDonald. She was blonde, and pretty, and sweet, and very sympathetic. She told me I’d been damaged, that it wasn’t my fault I’d turned out this way; that if I could identify the source of the pain, then I could put it behind me.

The thing about pain, Mousey, is that we build
over
it. We bury it, we mourn it, we copy it in marble. And it becomes a monument, carved with weeping angels, inscribed with words in Latin, bearing so little resemblance to the thing we put into the ground that even the memory of it fades, to be replaced by the memories of polished stone; stained glass; the bitter scent of lilies.

It started in his form-room. I used to go there at lunchtimes. He used to sit at his own desk, marking, or listening to music. One day, we were alone. He came and stood right next to me. And then he put his hand on my leg, and left it there for a long time. I didn’t know what to do. He was a teacher. I trusted him. And so I didn’t do anything. I just sat there and waited. And because it felt weird, I didn’t say anything, either. Instead I just sat there, pretending nothing was happening, and closed my eyes, and drifted, and listened to the music.

That was a mistake, of course. Now, we had a secret. And when it happened again, then again, I found it even harder to say anything. After all, he’d done it before. And
he
didn’t seem to think it was weird, which made me think I might be to blame. And anyway, what harm had we done? And how could I even describe it?

And so I never said a word. Not even to you, Mousey. That’s why I never wrote it down in my St Oswald’s diary, because that would have given the monster a shape. That would have made it real to me. I think perhaps I was wondering if it meant I
looked
different; if somehow he could tell that I wasn’t like other boys. I used to look at myself in the mirror, and try to see what he could see. But there was nothing. No special sign. No sign we had a secret. And when he pushed me on to the desk, with his hand on the back of my head, and whispered to me:
Good boy
– I did what I’d always done, and turned my mind to other things: to Ziggy and his left-handed guitar; to
Crow
, and
Nineteen Eighty-Four
; and the clay pits, and
Diamond Dogs
.

This is where those memories start to become fragmented. It’s not that I don’t
remember
– how could I forget that? The smell of him, the sound of him, there in the chalky darkness. The way I had to close my eyes so hard that when I opened them, all I could see for a moment or two was a brown, swirling nothingness.

Memory isn’t a camera. It’s an anthill, a thing of layers, built around a central core. And inside the core, there are sleeping things. Things that change, and sting, and fly. Things that come out of the walls at night, and crawl all over everything.

But now, at last, after seven years of misery and self-hatred, I was finally starting to see. Those things I did, when I was a boy – those terrible things – they weren’t my fault. Poodle, the rabbits, Ratboy and all – they were all part of my trauma. I wasn’t
possessed
. I wasn’t
bad
. Those things were a Coping Mechanism, brought on by My Condition, and if I’d felt aggressive, confused – even weirdly exhilarated – who could really blame me? That was just part of what I’d been through. Symptoms of an inner disease.

I tried very hard to remember it now. I searched my soul. I prayed a lot. Miss McRae taught me how admitting weakness can also be strong, and said how proud she was of me. That was nice; it had been a long time since anyone had been proud of me. It made me show off a bit, perhaps, and by the time I saw where it was leading, I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. Not that I really wanted to. I was rather enjoying it all. My victimhood was a novelty; the sympathy made me feel special. The other boys from my year at St Oswald’s were going to university; driving cars; getting girls. The other boys had had their names painted on to the Honours Boards. Where were
my
honours? Where was my name? Why was I the only one to be left behind?

It had been nearly seven years since the death of Lee Bagshot. People had mostly forgotten him, except for his mother, I suppose. The death of an estate boy is never as widely reported as the death of a little girl. We’d already seen that in Malbry with the death of Emily White – flowers and teddy bears on the streets, prayer groups, charities, letters to the local MP. The Emily White affair lasted months. Lee Bagshot was gone in a week or so. Of course, there’d been nothing to link his death to violence of any kind. It was a tragic accident, that people blamed on the Council, for not putting up enough warning signs and barbed wire round the clay pits. But when I started to recall what had happened seven years ago, the case of Lee Bagshot suddenly seemed to acquire a new distinction. And then, at last, when the trial began—

People are very suspicious, you know; always so quick to believe the worst. I’d only revealed to Miss McRae that I’d been abused by a member of staff.
She
was the one who’d assumed who it was; she was the one who brought it all out. And of course, St Oswald’s has always been a windmill for boys to tilt at. At her request, I told the police. Everything but the man’s name. That I couldn’t –
wouldn’t
– say. That one I left to someone else. Someone more charismatic.

I never
really
believed we’d win. Perhaps that was the problem. But stories are like weeds; they grow. You can never stop them. And the story that was meant to blow Poodle out of the water became something more sinister. A boy had disappeared for a week in December of ’81. Another boy had drowned in the pits. That death had been ruled accidental, but now, with these new allegations of corruption at St Oswald’s, the Malbry authorities saw their chance to link one with the other. The
Malbry Examiner
, never a friend of what it sees as a privileged institution (and never mind those scholarship boys from dirt-poor backgrounds, whose fees were paid by the St Oswald’s Trust), had always loved to publish the worst. Now its pages were awash with rumour and hysteria. The Nutter affair was brought out again, with a whole lot of new theories. And when my tale was made public – they started making connections.

Had Charlie Nutter been lured away during Christmas of ’81? Had Harry Clarke corrupted him? Was Harry Clarke the member of staff who had traumatized me so badly that I could not even say his name?

Miss McRae was supportive throughout. She searched my personal history. She sought out my old schoolfriends. One of them was Poodle, who violently denied the suggestion that he had been abused as a boy. Yes, he and Harry had had a relationship. But it had never been sexual – at least, not until Poodle was twenty-one, and legal. Poodle’s parents denied this, of course. Poodle had been brainwashed. And when I told them the story of what I’d seen that Christmas, through the window of Harry’s house—

Mr Clarke was a
charismatic teacher
, said the
Malbry Examiner
. Like many sexual predators, he was outgoing and popular. Was he charismatic enough for even his victims to deny that he had abused them? Could this reluctance to speak out be some kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Or was there a more sinister truth lurking behind that old story? And, yet more enticingly, could the death of Lee Bagshot now be linked to a suspected paedophile?

All right, Mousey. It got out of hand. That was Poodle’s fault, not mine. But Poodle was being difficult. For a start, he denied that he and Harry had had a relationship while Poodle was still at school. He admitted to having been troubled, but blamed it all on his parents. He also blamed
me
, Mousey – talked about the clay pits, the burnt-out car, even the rabbits. He told them he’d been afraid of me – that both he and Goldie had been afraid – and that they had gone along with the games in order to humour me.

It wasn’t very plausible. I didn’t look like the kind of boy who could make other people afraid of me. Goldie looked like a leader, with his Cambridge-boy physique. Even Poodle looked fitter and healthier than I did. But I looked like a victim; bloated, hairless and pitiful, as if what had happened seven years before were a cancer eating away at me. But Poodle wouldn’t leave it alone. He was besotted with Harry Clarke. He phoned my home repeatedly, trying to make me confirm his tale. He wrote me crazy letters, threatening to expose me. And so I did the only thing I could. I dropped the bomb I was holding before Poodle could use it against me. That way, if he told the police about the death of Lee Bagshot, it would look like a made-up story, fabricated to shift the blame away from Harry on to me.

Recovered memory therapy is such a useful tool, Mousey. Miss McRae was a strong believer in its healing powers. Thanks to her, I remembered how I’d seen Lee Bagshot in the clay pits. I was even able to describe the boy’s clothes on the day he disappeared. I remembered conversations; dragged out scraps of memory; hinted and hesitated, confided and confessed, until at last there was enough for the police to build a case.

It took a while. Miss McRae helped; and Mr Speight; and my parents. I feigned reluctance at first; then, allowed them to persuade me. I felt like the kid at a party, politely refusing the last slice of cake. I let them woo me.

Well, if you insist—

All that was just bait, of course. I know a bit about bait, you know. Of course, there was no actual proof that Harry had ever
known
Lee Bagshot. But Harry’s house was half a mile from where Lee’s body had been found, and, now that he was in the dock for acts of gross indecency, it seemed almost poetic that he should be a murderer, too.