Gentlemen & Players (14 page)

“Hey! Hey, Pinchbeck!”

My God, he’d seen me. I considered making a run for it; but Leon was already coming toward me, puzzled but not annoyed, with the girl a few steps behind him. My chest felt tight; my heart shrunk to the size of a nut. I tried a smile; it felt like a mask. “Hello, Leon,” I said. “Hello, Mrs. Mitchell. I was just passing by.”

Imagine, if you
can, that terrible afternoon. I wanted to go home, but Leon would not allow it; instead I endured two hours of utter wretchedness on the back lawn, drinking lemonade that soured my stomach while Leon’s mother asked me questions about my family and Mr. Tynan slapped me repeatedly on the shoulder and speculated on all the mischief Leon and I got up to at school.

It was torture. My head ached; my stomach churned, and throughout all of it I was obliged to smile and be polite and reply to questions whilst Leon and his girl—there was no doubt now that she was
his
girl—lounged and whispered to each other in the shade, Leon’s brown hand laid almost casually over Francesca’s tawny one, his gray eyes filled with summer and with her.

I don’t know what I said in answer to their questions. I remember Leon’s mother being especially, agonizingly kind: she went out of her way to include me; asked me about my hobbies, my holidays, my thoughts. I replied almost at random, with an animal’s instinct to stay hidden, and I must have passed scrutiny, although Charlotte watched me in a silence I might have found suspicious if my mind had not been wholly taken up with my own suffering.

Finally, Mrs. Mitchell must have noticed something, because she looked at me closely and observed that I was looking rather pale.

“Headache,” I said, trying to smile, while behind her Leon played with a long strand of Francesca’s honey-mink hair. “I get them sometimes,” I improvised desperately. “Better go home and lie down for a while.”

Leon’s mother was reluctant to let me go. She suggested that I lie down in Leon’s room; offered to get me an aspirin; overwhelmed me with kindness so that I was almost reduced to tears. She must have seen something in my face then, because she smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “All right, then, Julian, dear,” she said. “Go home and lie down. Perhaps that’s best, after all.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mitchell.” I nodded gratefully—I really was feeling ill. “I’ve had a lovely time. Honest.” Leon waved at me, and Mrs. Mitchell insisted on giving me a large and sticky slice of cake to take home, wrapped in a paper napkin. As I was walking back down the drive I heard her voice, low and carrying from behind the house: “What a funny little chap, Leon. So polite and reserved. Is he a good friend of yours?”

5

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysTuesday, 5th October

The official report from the hospital was anaphylactic shock, caused by ingestion of peanuts or peanut-contaminated foodstuffs, possibly accidental.

Of course, there was a terrible fuss. It was a disgrace, said Mrs. Anderton-Pullitt to Pat Bishop, who was there; school was supposed to be a safe environment for her son. Why wasn’t there any supervision at the time of his collapse? How had his schoolmaster failed to notice that poor James was unconscious?

Pat dealt with the distressed mother as best he could. He’s in his element in this kind of situation; knows how to defuse antagonism; has a shoulder of comforting proportions; projects a convincing air of authority. He promised that the incident would be thoroughly investigated but assured Mrs. Anderton-Pullitt that Mr. Straitley was a most conscientious Master and that every effort had been made to ensure her son’s safety.

By then, the individual concerned was sitting up in bed, reading
Practical Aeronautics
and looking rather pleased with himself.

At the same time, Mr. Anderton-Pullitt, school governor and ex-England cricketer, was pulling rank with the hospital administration in his attempt to have the remains of his son’s sandwiches analyzed for nut residue. If they yielded as much as a trace, he said, a certain health-food manufacturer would be sued for every penny it possessed, not to mention a certain chain of retailers. But as it happened, the tests were never made, because before they could get started, the peanut was found floating and still mostly intact, at the bottom of James’s can of Fanta.

At first, the Anderton-Pullitts were bewildered. How could a peanut have found its way into their son’s drink? Their initial reaction was to contact (and sue) the manufacturers, but it soon became obvious that any malpractice on their part was, at best, unprovable. The can had already been opened; anything might conceivably have fallen inside.

Fallen, or been put there.

It was inescapable; if James’s drink had been tampered with, then the culprit must have been someone in the form. Worse still, the perpetrator must have known that his act might have dangerous, if not fatal, consequences. The Anderton-Pullitts took the matter straight to the Head, bypassing even Bishop in their rage and indignation, and announced their intention, if he did not pursue the matter, of going directly to the police.

I should have been there. Unforgivable, that I was not; and yet when I awoke the morning after my brief stint in the hospital I felt so exhausted—so wretchedly
old
—that I called the school and told Bob Strange that I wasn’t coming in.

“Well, I didn’t expect you to,” said Strange, sounding surprised. “I assumed that they’d keep you in hospital over the weekend, at least.” His prissy, official tone failed to hide his real disapproval that they had not. “I can have you covered for the next six weeks, no problem.”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ll be back on Monday.”

But by Monday the news had broken; there had been an investigation of my form on Friday afternoon; witnesses had been called and questioned; lockers searched; telephone calls exchanged. Dr. Devine had been consulted, in his capacity as Health and Safety officer, and he, Bishop, Strange, the Head, and Dr. Pooley, the Chairman of the governors, had spent a long time in the Head’s office with the Anderton-Pullitts.

Result: I returned on Monday morning to find the class in uproar. The incident with Knight had even eclipsed the recent—and most unwelcome—piece in the
Examiner
, with its sinister implication of a secret informant within the school. The findings of the Head’s investigation were irrefutable; on the day of the incident, Knight had bought a packet of peanuts from the school tuck shop and had brought them into the form room for lunch. He denied it at first, but several witnesses remembered it, including a member of staff. Finally Knight had confessed; yes, he
had
bought the peanuts but denied tampering with anyone’s drink. Besides, he said tearfully, he
liked
Anderton-Pullitt; he would never have done anything to hurt him.

A record sheet had been produced from the day of Knight’s suspension, listing the witnesses to the fight between himself and Jackson. Sure enough, Anderton-Pullitt was among them. A motive was now clearly established.

Well, it wouldn’t have stood up in the Old Bailey. But a school is not a court of law; it has its own rules and its methods of applying them; it has its own system, its safeguards. Like the church, like the army, it looks after its own. By the time I returned, Knight had been judged, found guilty, and suspended from school until after half-term.

My problem was that I didn’t quite believe he’d done it.

“It’s not that Knight isn’t capable of something like that,” I told Dianne Dare in the Common Room that lunchtime. “He’s a sly little oik, and far more likely to cause mischief by stealth than to play up in public, but—” I gave a sigh. “I don’t like it. I don’t like
him
—but I can’t believe that even he could have been
that
stupid.”

“Never underestimate stupidity,” remarked Pearman, who was standing nearby.

“No, but this is
malice
,” said Dianne. “If the boy knew what he was doing—”

“If he knew what he was doing,” interrupted Light from his place under the clock, “then he should be bloody well locked up. You read about these kids nowadays—rapes, muggings, murders, God knows what—and they can’t even put them away for it because the bloody bleeding-heart liberals won’t let ‘em.”

“In my day,” said McDonaugh darkly, “we had the cane.”

“Bugger that,” said Light. “Bring back conscription. Teach ‘em some discipline.”

Gods, I thought, what an ass. He held forth in this muscular, brainless style for a few minutes more, attracting a sultry glance from Isabelle Tapi, who was watching from the yogurt corner.

Young Keane, who had also been listening, did a quick, comic mime just outside of the games teacher’s line of vision, twisting his sharp, clever face into an exact parody of Light’s expression. I pretended not to notice and hid my smile behind my hand.

“It’s all very well to go on about discipline,” said Roach from behind the
Mirror
, “but what sanctions do we have? Do something bad, and you get detention. Do something worse, you get suspended, which is the opposite. Where’s the sense in that?”

“No sense at all,” said Light. “But we’ve got to be seen to be doing something. Whether or not Knight did it—”

“And if he didn’t?” said Roach.

McDonaugh made a dismissive gesture. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is
order
. Whoever the troublemaker is, you can be bloody sure he’ll think twice about stepping out of line again if he knows that the minute he does, he’ll get the cane.”

Light nodded. Keane pulled another face. Dianne shrugged, and Pearman gave a little smile of vague and ironic superiority.

“It was Knight,” said Roach with emphasis. “Just the kind of stupid thing he would do.”

“I still don’t like it. It feels wrong.”

The boys were
unusually reticent on the subject. In normal circumstances, an incident of this type should provide a welcome break from the school’s routine; petty scandals and minor mishaps; secrets and fights; the furtive stuff of adolescence. But this, it seemed, was different. A line had been crossed, and even those boys who had never had a good word to say about Anderton-Pullitt viewed the incident with unease and disapproval.

“I mean, he’s not all there, is he, sir?” said Jackson. “You know—not a
mong
or anything, but you can’t say he’s completely normal.”

“Will he be all right, sir?” asked Tayler, who has allergies himself.

“Fortunately, yes.” The boy was being kept at home for the present, but as far as anyone could tell, he had made a complete recovery. “But it could have been fatal.”

There was an awkward pause as the boys looked at one another. As yet, few of them have encountered death beyond the occasional dog, cat, or grandparent; the thought that one of them could actually have died—right in front of them, in their own form room—was suddenly rather frightening.

“It must have been an accident,” said Tayler at last.

“I think so too.” I hoped that was true.

“Dr. Devine says we can have counseling if we need it,” said McNair.

“
Do
you need it?”

“Do we get to miss lessons, sir?”

I looked at him and saw him grinning. “Over my dead body.”

Throughout the day
the feeling of unrest intensified. Allen-Jones was hyperactive; Sutcliff depressed; Jackson argumentative; Pink anxious. It was windy too; and the wind, as every schoolteacher knows, makes classes unruly and pupils excitable. Doors slammed; windows rattled; October was in with a blast, and suddenly it was autumn.

I like autumn. The drama of it; the golden lion roaring through the back door of the year, shaking its mane of leaves. A dangerous time; of violent rages and deceptive calm; of fireworks in the pockets and conkers in the fist. It is the season in which I feel closest to the boy I was, and at the same time closest to death. It is St. Oswald’s at its most beautiful; gold among the lindens, its tower howling like a throat.

But this year, there is more. Ninety-nine terms; thirty-three autumns; half of my life. This year those terms weigh unexpectedly heavy, and I wonder whether young Bevans may not after all be right. Retirement need not be a death sentence. One more term and I will have scored my Century; to withdraw on such a note can carry no shame. Besides, things are changing, and so they should. Only I am too old to change.

On my way home on Monday night I looked into the Porter’s Lodge. Fallow’s replacement has not yet been found, and in the meantime, Jimmy Watt has taken over as many as he can manage of the Porter’s duties. One of these is answering the phone in the lodge, but his telephone manner is not good, and he has a tendency to hang up by mistake when transferring calls. As a result, calls had been missed throughout the day, and frustrations were running high.

It was the Bursar’s fault; Jimmy does what he’s told but has no concept of working independently. He can change a fuse or replace a lock; he can sweep up fallen leaves; he can even climb up a telegraph pole to retrieve a pair of shoes, tied together by their laces and flung across the wires by a school bully. Light calls him Jimmy Forty-Watt and jeers at his moon face and his slow way of talking. Of course, Light was a bully himself a few years ago; you can still see it in his red face and aggressive, oddly careful walk—steroids or hemorrhoids, I’m not sure which. In any case, Jimmy should never have been left in charge of the lodge, and Dr. Tidy knew it; it was simply that it was easier (and cheaper, of course) to use him as a stopgap until a new appointment was made. Besides, Fallow had been with the school for over fifteen years, and you can’t turn a man out of his home overnight, whatever the reason. I found myself thinking about this as I passed the lodge; it wasn’t that I’d especially
liked
Fallow; but he had been a part of the school—a small but necessary part—and his absence was felt.

There was a woman in the lodge as I went past. I never questioned her presence, assuming she was a secretary drafted in through the school’s agency to take calls and to cover for Jimmy when he was called upon to perform one of his many other duties. A graying woman in a suit, rather older than the standard agency temp, whose face seemed dimly familiar. I should have asked who she was. Dr. Devine is always talking about intruders, about shootings in American schools and how easy it would be for some crazed person to enter the buildings and go on the rampage—but that’s just Devine. He’s the Health and Safety man, after all, and he has to justify his salary.

But I was in a hurry, and I did not speak to the graying woman. It was only when I saw her byline and her photo in the
Examiner
that I recognized her; and by then it was too late. The mystery informant had struck again, and this time, I was his target.