Gentlemen & Players (23 page)

3

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysMonday, 1st November

What a shambles. What an almighty shambles. I saw the fire last night, of course; but thought it was the annual Guy Fawkes bonfire, a few days early and a few degrees from its usual spot. Then I heard the fire engines, and all at once I had to be there. It was so like that other time, you see; the sound of sirens in the darkness, the mother screaming, Pat Bishop like a crazed cinema director with his damned megaphone—

It was freezing cold as I stepped outside. I was glad of my coat, and of the checked scarf—a Christmas present from some boy, in the days when pupils still did such things—wound firmly round my neck. The air smelled good of smoke and fog and gunpowder, and although it was late, a gang of trick-or-treaters was pelting down the alley with a carrier bag of sweets. One of them—a little ghost—dropped a wrapper as he passed—a mini Snickers wrapper, I think it was—and I stooped automatically to pick it up.

“Hey, you!” I said in my Bell Tower voice.

The little ghost—a boy of eight or nine—stopped short.

“You dropped something,” I said, handing him the wrapper.

“You
what?
” The ghost looked at me as if I might be mad.

“You dropped something,” I said patiently. “There’s a litter bin over there.” I pointed to a dustbin only a dozen yards away. “Just walk over and put it in.”

“You
what
?” Behind him, there was grinning, nudging. Someone sniggered beneath a cheap plastic mask. Sunnybankers, I thought with a sigh, or juvenile thugs-in-waiting from the Abbey Road Estate. Who else would let their eight-or nine-year-old children roam the streets at half past eleven, without an adult in sight?

“In the bin, please,” I said again. “I’m sure you were brought up better than to drop litter.” I smiled; for a moment half a dozen little faces looked up wonderingly at mine. There was a wolf; three sheeted ghosts; a grubby vampire with a leaky nose; and an unidentifiable person who might have been a ghoul or a gremlin or some X-rated Hollywood creature without a name.

The little ghost looked at me, then at the wrapper.

“Well done,” I began to say as he moved toward the bin.

At that he turned and grinned at me, exposing teeth as discolored as a veteran smoker’s. “Fuck off,” he said, and ran off down the alley, dropping the Snickers wrapper as he went. The others ran the opposite way, scattering papers as they went, and I heard their jeers and insults as they pelted off into the freezing mist.

It shouldn’t have bothered me. As a teacher, I see all sorts, even at St. Oswald’s, which is, after all, a somewhat privileged environment. Those Sunnybankers are a different breed; the estates are rife with alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty, violence. Foul language and litter come as easily to them as hello and good-bye. There is no malice in it, not really. Still, it bothered me, perhaps more than it should. I had already given out three bowls of sweets to trick-or-treaters that night; among them, a number of mini Snickers bars.

I picked up the wrapper and put it in the bin, feeling unexpectedly depressed. I’m getting old, that’s all there is to it. My expectations of youth (and of humanity in general, I believe) are quite outdated. Even though I suspected—knew, perhaps, in my heart—that the fire I had seen was something to do with St. Oswald’s, I did not
expect
it; the absurd optimism that has always been the best and worst part of my nature forbids me to take the gloomy view. That’s why a part of me was genuinely surprised when I arrived at the school, saw the fire crew at the blaze, and understood that the gatehouse was on fire.

It could have been worse. It could have been the library. There was a fire there once—before my time, in 1845—that burned up more than a thousand books, some very rare. A careless candle, perhaps, left unsupervised; there is certainly nothing in the school’s records to suggest it was malice.

This was. The Fire Chief’s report says petrol was used; a witness at the scene reports a hooded boy, running away. Most damning of all: Knight’s satchel, dropped at the scene, a little charred but still perfectly recognizable, the books within carefully labeled with his name and form.

Bishop was there at once, of course. Pitching in with the firemen so energetically that for a time I thought he was one of them. Then he came looming out at me through the smoke, eyes red, hair in spikes, flushed almost to apoplexy with the heat and the moment.

“No one inside,” he panted, and I saw now that he was carrying a large clock under one arm, running with it like a prop forward about to score a try. “Thought I’d try to save a few things.” Then he was off again, his bulk somehow pathetic against the flames. I called after him, but my voice was lost; a few moments later I glimpsed him trying to drag an oak chest through the burning front door.

As I said, what a fiasco.

This morning the
area was cordoned off, the debris still fiercely red and smoking, so that now the whole school smells of Bonfire Night. In the form there is no other topic of conversation; the report of Knight’s disappearance, and now this, are enough to fuel rumors of such wild inventiveness that the Head has had no choice but to call an emergency staff meeting to discuss our options.

Plausible denial has always been his way. Look at that business with John Snyde. Even
Fallowgate
was hotly refuted; now HM means to deny
Knightsbridge
(as Allen-Jones has dubbed it), especially as the
Examiner
has been asking the most impertinent questions in the hope of turning up some new scandal.

Of course it will be all over town by tomorrow. Some pupil will talk, as they always do, and the news will break. A pupil disappears. A revenge attack on the school follows, perhaps provoked—who knows?—by bullying and victimization. No note was left. The boy is at large. Where? Why?

I assumed—we all did—that Knight was the reason the police were there this morning. They arrived at eight-thirty; five officers, three in plainclothes; one woman, four men. Our community officer (Sergeant Ellis, a veteran, skilled in public relations and manly’tête-à-têtes) was not with them, and I should have suspected something there and then, though in fact I was far too preoccupied with my own affairs to give them much thought.

Everyone was. And with good reason; half the department missing; computers down with a deadly germ; boys infected with revolt and speculation; staff on edge and unable to concentrate. I had not seen Bishop since the previous night; Marlene told me that he’d been treated for smoke inhalation but had refused to stay in hospital and, moreover, had spent the rest of the night in school, going over the damage and reporting to the police.

Of course it is generally, if unofficially, accepted (at least in management circles) that I am to blame. Marlene told me as much, having glanced at a drafted letter dictated by Bob Strange to his secretary, and now awaiting approval from Bishop. I didn’t get a chance to read it, but I can guess at the style as well as the content. Bob Strange is a specialist of the bloodless coup de grâce, having drafted a dozen or so similar letters in the course of his career.
In the light of recent events…regrettable, but unavoidable…now cannot be overlooked…a sabbatical to be taken on full pay until such time as…

There would be references to my erratic behavior, my increasing forgetfulness, and the curious incident of Anderton-Pullitt, not to mention Meek’s bungled assessment, Pooley’s blazer, and any number of smaller infractions, inevitable in the career of any Master, all noted, numbered, and set aside by Strange for possible use in instances such as this.

Then would come the open hand, the grudging acknowledgment of
thirty-three years of loyal service
…the small, tight-mouthed assurance of personal respect. Beneath it, the subtext is always the same:
You have become an embarrassment.
In short, Strange was preparing the hemlock bowl.

Oh, I can’t say I was entirely surprised. But I have given so much to St. Oswald’s over so many years that I suppose I imagined it made me some kind of an exception. It does not; the machinery that lies at the heart of St. Oswald’s is as heartless and unforgiving as Strange’s computers. There is no malice involved, simply an equation. I am old; expensive; inefficient; a worn cog from an outdated mechanism that in any case serves no useful purpose. And if there is to be a scandal, then who better to carry the blame? Strange knows that I will not make a fuss. It’s undignified, for a start; and besides, I would not bring more scandal to St. Oswald’s. A generous settlement on top of my pension; a nicely worded speech by Pat Bishop in the Common Room; a reference to my ill health and the new opportunities afforded by my impending retirement; the hemlock bowl cunningly hidden behind the laurels and the paraphernalia.

Damn him to hell. I could almost believe he’d planned this from the start. The invasion of my office; my removal from the prospectus; his interference. He’d held on to the letter until now only because Bishop was unavailable. He needed Bishop on his side. And he’d get him too, I told myself; I like Pat, but I have no illusions as to his loyalty. St. Oswald’s comes first. And the Head? I knew he would be more than happy to present the case to the governors. After that, Dr. Pooley could do his worst. And who, I thought, would really care? And what about my Century? From where I was standing, it might have been an age away.

At lunchtime I
got a memo from Dr. Devine, handwritten for once (I assumed the computers were still down) and delivered by a boy from his fifth form.

R.S. REPORT TO OFFICE AT ONCE. M.R.D.

I wondered if
he
was in on it, too. I wouldn’t have put it past him. So I made him wait; marked a few books, exchanged pleasantries with the boys; drank tea. Ten minutes later Devine came in like a dervish, and on seeing his expression I dismissed the boys with a wave of the hand and gave him my full attention.

Now you may have been under the impression that I’ve got some kind of a feud going with old Sourgrape. Nothing could be further from the truth; in fact most of the time I quite enjoy our spats, even though we don’t always see eye to eye on matters of policy, uniform, Health and Safety, cleanliness, or behavior.

I do know where to draw the line, however, and any thought of baiting the old idiot vanished as soon as I saw his face. Devine looked sick. Not merely pale, which is his natural state, but yellow; haggard; old. His tie was askew; his hair, which is usually immaculate, had been pushed out of place so that now he looked like a man in a high wind. Even his walk, which is usually brisk and automatic, had developed a hitch; he staggered into my room like a clockwork toy and sat down heavily on the nearest desk.

“What’s happened?”

There was no trace of banter in my voice now. Someone had died; that was my first thought. His wife; a boy; a close colleague. Only some terrible catastrophe could have affected Dr. Devine in this way.

It was a sign of his real distress that he took no opportunity to berate me for my lack of response to his summons. He remained sitting on the desk for a few moments, his thin chest drawn down toward his protuberant knees.

I pulled out a Gauloise, lit it, and held it out.

Devine hasn’t indulged in years, but he took it without a word.

I waited. I’m not always known for my savoir faire, but I know how to deal with troubled boys, and that was exactly what Devine looked like to me then, a gray-haired, very troubled boy, his face raw with anxiety, his knees bunched up against his chest in a desperate protective gesture.

“The police.” It came out as a gasp.

“What about them?”

“They’ve arrested Pat Bishop.”

It took me some time to get the whole story. For a start, Devine didn’t know it. Something to do with computers, he thought, although no one seemed to know any details. Knight was mentioned; boys in Bishop’s classes were being questioned, though what the charge against Bishop actually was no one seemed to know.

I could see why Devine was panicked, though. He has always tried very hard to ingratiate himself with the management, and he is naturally terrified of being implicated in this new, unspecified scandal. Apparently the visiting officers questioned Sourgrape at some length; seemed interested to know that on several occasions Pat has played host to Mr. and Mrs. Sourgrape; and were now about to search the office for any further evidence.

“Evidence!” yawped Devine, stubbing out his Gauloise. “What are they expecting to find? If only I knew—”

Half an hour later, two of the officers departed, carrying Bishop’s computer. When Marlene asked why, no answer was given. The three remaining officers stayed to
carry out further enquiries
, mostly in the computer labs, which have now been closed to all members of the school. One of the officers (the woman) came into my form room during period eight and asked me when I had last used my station in the IT lab. I informed her curtly that I never used the computers, having no interest at all in electronic games, and she left, looking like a school examiner about to write an unfriendly report.

The class was completely uncontrollable after that, so we played hangman in Latin for the last ten minutes of the lesson while my mind raced and the invisible finger (never far) jabbed at my breastbone with ever-increasing persistence.

At the end of the lesson I went in search of Mr. Beard, the Head of IT, but I found him evasive, speaking of viruses in the school computer network, of workstations and password protections and Internet downloads—all subjects that hold as little fascination for me as do the works of Tacitus for Mr. Beard.

As a result, I now know as little about the matter as I did at lunchtime and was forced to leave (after waiting over an hour, without success, for Bob Strange to emerge from his office), feeling frustrated and horribly anxious. This isn’t over, whatever it is. November it may be, but I have a feeling the Ides of March have just begun.