Gentlemen & Players (27 page)

Carefully, I looked down.

I knew from my travels across the roofscape that Straitley’s room was just below me, and that the window that gave onto its crumbling balcony was loose. I teetered on the walkway, trying to gauge the distance from where I was standing, then jumped lightly onto the parapet, then down into the shelter of the small balcony.

The window, as I’d hoped, was easy to force open. I scrambled through, heedless of the broken catch that gouged my back, and at once the burglar alarm sounded, a high, unbearable squealing that deafened and disoriented me.

Panicked, I wriggled back the way I had come. In the Quad below, the security lights popped on, and I ducked down to escape the harsh illumination, cursing helplessly.

Everything was wrong. I had disabled the alarm in the Library wing; but in my panic and confusion I had forgotten that the Bell Tower’s alarm was still on; and now the siren was screaming, screaming like the golden bird in
Jack and the Beanstalk
, there was no way my father could miss it, and Leon was still up here with me somewhere, Leon was trapped—

I stood on the balcony and jumped across onto the walkway, looking down as I did into the illuminated Quad. Two figures stood there, looking up, their giant shadows fanning around them like a hand of cards. I ducked into the shelter of the Bell Tower, crawled forward to the edge of the roof, and glanced down once again.

Pat Bishop was watching me from the courtyard, my father at his side.

9

“There. Up there.” Radio voices across a far distance. I’d ducked back, of course, but Bishop had seen the movement, the round dark head against the luminous sky. “Boys on the roof.”

Boys
. Of course, he’d assumed that.

“How many boys?” That was Bishop; younger then, tense and fit and only slightly red-faced.

“Don’t know, sir. I’d say at least two.”

Once more I dared a glance below. My father was still watching, his white face upturned and blind. Bishop was already moving fast. He moved like a bear; heavy, all muscle. My father followed him at a slower pace, his huge shadow doubled and trebled by the lights. I did not bother to watch them anymore. I knew already where they were heading.

My father had
turned off the burglar alarm. The megaphone was Bishop’s idea; he used it on Sports Days and fire drills, and it made his voice impossibly nasal and penetrating.

“You boys!”
he began. “
Stay where you are! Do not attempt to climb down! Help is on the way!”

That’s how Bishop spoke in a crisis; like a character from some American action movie. I could tell he was enjoying his role; the newly appointed Second Master; man of action; troubleshooter; counselor to the world.

In fifteen years he has hardly changed—that particular brand of righteous arrogance seldom does. Even then he thought he could put things right with nothing but a megaphone and a few glib words.

It was one-thirty; the moon had set; the sky, never quite dark at that time of year, had taken on a sheer translucent glow. Above me, somewhere on the Chapel roof, Leon was waiting; cool, collected; sitting it out. Someone had called the fire brigade; already I could hear sirens in the distance, Dopplering toward us. Soon, we would be overrun.

“Indicate your position!”
Bishop again, wielding his megaphone with a flourish.
“Repeat, indicate your position!”

Still nothing from Leon. I wondered whether he had managed to find the Library window on his own; whether he was trapped or running silently down the corridors, looking for a way out.

Somewhere above me a slate rattled. There came a slithering sound—his trainers against the lead gutter. And now I could see him too—just a glimpse of his head above the Chapel parapet. As I watched he began to move—so slowly that it was almost imperceptible—onto the narrow walkway that led toward the Bell Tower.

It made sense, I thought. He must have known that the Library window option was impossible now; that low, slanting roof ran right alongside the Chapel building, and he would be in plain sight if he tried. The Bell Tower was higher, but more secure; up there he would be able to hide. I was on the other side, however; if I joined him from where I was standing, I would be instantly visible from below. I resolved to go around, to take the long way across the Observatory roof and join him in the shadows where we could hide.

“Boys! Listen!”
It was Bishop’s voice, so highly amplified that I clapped my hands over my ears.
“You’re not in any trouble!”
I turned away to hide a nervous grin; he was so convincing that he almost convinced himself.
“Just stay where you are! Repeat! Stay where you are!”

Leon, of course, was not fooled. The system, we knew, was run on such platitudes.

“You’re not in any trouble!”
I imagined Leon’s grin at that perennial lie and felt a sudden pain in my heart that I was not there with him to share his amusement. It would have been so fine, I thought; Butch and Sundance trapped on the roof, two rebels defying the combined forces of St. Oswald’s and the law.

But now…It struck me then that I had more than one reason for not wanting Leon caught. My own position was far from secure; a word, a single glimpse of me, and my cover was blown forever. There was no getting round it—after this, Pinchbeck would have to disappear. Of course, he could, quite easily. Only Leon had any inkling that he was anything more than a ghost; a fake; a thing of rags and stuffing.

At the time, however, I felt little fear on my own account. I knew the roof better than anyone, and as long as I kept hidden, I might still escape discovery. But if Leon spoke to my father—if either of them made the connection—

It wasn’t the imposture that would provoke the outrage. It was the challenge. To St. Oswald’s; to the system; to everything. I could see it now; the enquiry; the evening papers; the squib in the national press.

I could have lived with punishment—I was
thirteen
, for God’s sake, what could they do to me?—but it was the ridicule I feared. That, and the contempt; and the knowledge that in spite of everything, St. Oswald’s had won.

I could just see my father standing, shoulders hunched, looking up at the roof. I sensed his dismay; not just at the attack on St. Oswald’s, but at the duty that now awaited him. John Snyde was never quick; but he was thorough, in his way, and there was no doubt in his mind as to what he should do.

“I’ll have to go after them.” His voice, faint but clearly audible, reached me from the Quad below.

“What’s that?” Bishop, in his eagerness to play the man of action, had completely overlooked the simplest solution. The fire brigade had not yet arrived; the police, always overworked, had not even looked in.

“I’ll have to go up there. It’s my job.” His voice was stronger—a St. Oswald’s Porter has to be strong. I remembered that from Bishop’s lectures
We count on you, John. St. Oswald’s counts on you to Do Your Duty
.

At a glance, Bishop measured the distance. I could see him working it out; clocking the angles. Boys on the roof; man on the ground; Head Porter in between. He wanted to go up himself—of course he did—but if he left his post, who would wield the megaphone? Who would deal with the emergency team? Who would take control?

“Don’t spook them. Don’t get too close. Take care—all right? Cover the fire escape. Get on the roof. I’ll talk them down.”

Talk them down
. There’s another Bishop phrase, with its action-man overtones. He, who would have liked nothing better than to climb up onto the Chapel roof—possibly abseiling down again with an unconscious boy in his arms—could have had no inkling of the effort—the astonishing effort—it took for my father to agree.

I’d never actually
used the fire escape. I preferred my less conventional routes; the Library window; the Bell Tower; the skylight in the glass-fronted art studio, which gave access onto a slim metal joist that ran from the art block to the Observatory.

John Snyde knew nothing of these, nor would he have used them if he had. Small for my age, I was already getting too heavy to balance on glass, or to scramble through ivy onto the narrowest of ledges. I knew that in all his years as a St. Oswald’s Porter, he had never ventured as far as the fire escape on the Middle Corridor, let alone the precarious complex of gutters and pavements beyond. I was willing to gamble he would not do so now; or that if he did, he wouldn’t go far.

I looked across the roofscape in the direction of the Middle Corridor. There it was, the fire escape; a dinosaur skeleton strung out across the drop. It was in poor shape—bubbles of rust bursting through the thick paint—but it looked strong enough to take a man’s weight. Would he dare? I asked myself. And if he did, what would I do?

I considered climbing back toward the Library window, but it was too risky, too visible from the ground. Instead I used another run, teetering on a long joist between two large art-room skylights before climbing across the Observatory roof and up through the main gully back toward the Chapel. I knew a dozen possible means of escape. I had my keys, and I knew every cupboard, every passage and back stair. Leon and I need never be caught. In spite of myself I was excited; I could almost see our friendship renewed, the silly quarrel forgotten in the face of this greater adventure—

By now the fire escape was safely out of range; however, for a minute or two I knew I would be in full sight of the Quad. The risk was small, however. Silhouetted against the moonless sky, there was little chance of my being recognized by anyone from the courtyard below.

I ran for it then, my sneakers holding firm to the mossy slope. Below me, I could hear Bishop with his megaphone—
Stay where you are! Help is on its way!
—but I knew he hadn’t seen me. Now I reached the dinosaur’s spine, the ridge that dominated the main building, and stopped, straddling it. There was no sign of Leon. I guessed him to be hiding on the far side of the Bell Tower, where there was the most cover, and where, if he kept his head down, he would not be visible from the ground.

Quickly, on all fours, I monkeyed along the ridge. As I passed into the shade of the Bell Tower I looked back, but there was no sign of my father, either on the fire escape or on the walkway. Nor was there yet any sign of Leon. Now I reached the Bell Tower, jumped the familiar well between it and the Chapel roof, then from the comforting flag of shadow surveyed my rooftop empire. I risked a low call. “Leon!”

No reply. My pale voice ribboned out in the misty night.

“Leon!”

Then I saw him, flattened against the parapet twenty feet ahead of me, head craning like a gargoyle’s to the scene below.

“Leon.”

He’d heard me, I knew it; but he did not move. I began to climb toward him, keeping low. It could still work; I could show him the window; lead him to where he could hide; and then bring him out, unseen and unsuspected, when the coast was clear. I wanted to tell him that, but I wondered too whether he would listen.

I crept closer; below, the deafening yawn of the megaphone. Then, sudden lights harrowed the rooftop in red and blue; for a second I saw Leon’s shadow shoot over the roof, then he was down flat again, swearing. The fire engines had arrived.

“Leon.”

Still nothing. Leon seemed mortared to the parapet. The voice from the megaphone was a giant blur of vowels that rolled over us like boulders.

“You there! Don’t move! Stay where you are!”

I ducked my head over the parapet, visible, I knew, only as a dark protrusion among so many others. From my aerie I could see the squat form of Pat Bishop, the long neon gleam of the fire engine, the dark butterfly-shadowed figures of the men surrounding it.

Leon’s face was expressionless, a mushroom in shadow. “You little shit.”

“Come on, man,” I said. “There’s still time.”

“Time for
what
? A quick shag?”

“Leon, please. It’s not what you think.”

“No, really?” He began to laugh.

“Please, Leon. I know a way out. But we’ve got to hurry. My dad’s on his way—”

A silence, long as the grave.

Below us, the voices, all blurred together like bonfire smoke. Above us now, the Bell Tower with its overlooking balcony. In front of us, the well separating Bell Tower and Chapel roof; a stinking siphon-shaped depression, lined with gutters and pigeons’ nests, which sloped down to the narrow gullet between the buildings.

“Your
dad
?” echoed Leon.

Then came a sound from the rooftop behind us. I turned and saw a man on the walkway, blocking our escape. Fifty feet of roof lay between us; though the walkway was broad, the man shook and faltered as if on a tightrope, hands clenched, face stiff with concentration as he inched forward to intercept us.

“Stay there,” he said. “I’m coming to get you.”

It was John Snyde.

He couldn’t have
seen our faces, then. We were both in shadow. Two ghosts on the rooftop—we could make it, I knew. The well that separated Chapel from Bell Tower was deep, but its throat was narrow—five feet at its widest point. I’d jumped it myself more times than I could remember, and even in the dark I knew the risk was small. My father would never dare follow us there. We could scramble up the roof’s incline, balance along the Bell Tower ledge, and jump onto the balcony, as I’d done before. From there, I knew a hundred places for us to hide.

I did not think beyond that. Once more in my mind we were Butch and Sundance; freeze-framed in the moment; forever heroes. All we needed was to make the jump.

I like to think I hesitated. That my actions were in some way determined by thought, and not the blind instinct of an animal on the run. But everything after that exists in a kind of vacuum. Perhaps that was the very moment when I ceased to dream; perhaps in that instant I experienced all the dream time I was ever likely to need; an end to dreams for the rest of my life.

At the time, though, it felt like waking up. Waking up
all
the way, after years of dreaming. Disconnected thoughts shot across my mind like meteors against a summer sky.

Leon, laughing, his mouth against my hair.

Leon and me, on the ride-on mower.

Leon and Francesca, whom he had never loved.

St. Oswald’s, and how close—how very close—I had come to winning the game.

Time stopped. In space, I hung like a cross of stars. On the one side, Leon. On the other, my father. As I said, I like to think I hesitated.

Then I looked at Leon.

Leon looked back.

We jumped.