Gentlemen & Players (30 page)

I stood up too fast and felt the invisible finger poke at my chest, insistently, as if advising me to sit down again. I ignored it. “Marlene,” I said. “We have to go. Quick. To the park.”

“Why there?” she said.

“Because that’s where he is,” I said, grabbing my coat and flinging it over my shoulders. “And he’s with Dianne Dare.”

6

Friday, 5th November, 7:30 P.M.

I have a date. Exciting, isn’t it? The first I’ve had, in fact, in years; in spite of my mother’s high hopes and my analyst’s optimism, I’ve never really been that interested in the opposite sex. Even now when I think of them, the first thing that comes into my mind is Leon, shouting—
you little pervert!
—and the sound he made as he fell down the chimney.

Of course I don’t tell
them
that. Instead I please them with tales of my father; of the beatings he gave me and of his cruelty. It satisfies my analyst, and now I’ve even come to half believe it myself, and to forget about Leon as he jumped the gully, his face freeze-faded to the comforting sepia of the distant past.

“It wasn’t your fault.” How many times during the days that followed did I hear those words? I was cold inside; wracked by night terrors; rigid with grief and the fear of discovery. I believe that for a time I genuinely lost my mind; and I threw myself into my transformation with a desperate zeal, working steadily (with my mother’s help) to eradicate every trace of the Pinchbeck that was.

Of course, that’s all over now. Guilt, as my analyst says, is the natural response of the true victim. I have worked hard to eradicate that guilt, and I think that so far I have succeeded rather well. The therapy is working. Naturally, I don’t plan to tell her the precise
nature
of this therapy of mine; but I do think she’ll agree with me that my guilt-complex is mostly cured.

One more job to do, then, before the final catharsis.

One more glance in the mirror before I meet my bonfire date.

Looking good, Snyde. Looking good.

7

Friday, 5th November, 7:30 P.M.

It usually takes fifteen minutes to walk from my house to the municipal park. We did it in five, the invisible finger urging me on. The mist had dropped; a thick corona surrounded the moon, and the fireworks that popped from time to time above us lit up the sky like sheet lightning.

“What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty. They’ll be lighting the bonfire any moment now.” I hurried on, skirting a group of small children dragging a guy on a trolley.

“Quid for the guy, mester?”

In my day, it was pennies. We hurried on, Marlene and I, through a night that was rich with smoke and shot with sparklers. A magical night, bright as those of my childhood and scented with the dusk of autumn leaves.

“I’m not sure we should be doing this.” That was Marlene, sensible as ever. “Shouldn’t the police be dealing with this kind of thing?”

“D’you think they’d listen?”

“Maybe not. But I still think—”

“Listen, Marlene. I just want to see him. Talk to him. If I’m right, and Pinchbeck
is
Keane—”

“I can’t believe it.”

“But if it is, then Miss Dare may be in danger.”

“If it is, you old fool, then
you
may be in danger.”

“Oh.” It actually hadn’t crossed my mind.

“There’ll be police at the gate,” she said reasonably. “I’ll have a quiet word with whoever’s in charge while you see if you can find Dianne.” She smiled. “And if you’re wrong—which I’m sure you are—we can all celebrate Bonfire Night together. All right?”

We hurried on.

We saw the
glow from the road some time before we reached the park gates. A crowd had already gathered there; attendants were posted at each entrance to hand out tickets, and beyond the gates there were more people—thousands of them—a bristling mass of heads and faces.

Behind, the fire was already lit; soon it would be a tower of flame leaping at the sky. A guy, perched on a ruined armchair halfway up the pile, appeared to dominate the scene like the Lord of Misrule.

“You’ll never find them here,” said Marlene, seeing the crowd. “It’s too dark, and look at all these
people
…”

Sure enough, there were more people at tonight’s bonfire than even I had expected. Families, mostly; men carrying children on their shoulders; teenagers in fancy dress; youngsters in alien antennae, waving neon wands and eating candyfloss. Beyond the bonfire was the funfair; arcade games, waltzers, and shooting ranges; Hook-a-Duck and the Tower of Fear; roundabouts and the Wheel of Death.

“I’ll find them,” I said. “You just do your bit.”

On the other side of the clearing, almost out of sight in the low-lying mist, the firework display was about to start. A cordon of children lined the area; beneath my feet, the grass was churned mud. All around me, a cocktail of crowd noise, several kinds of fairground music, and at our backs, the red pandemonium of the fire as the flames leaped and the stacked palettes exploded with the heat, one by one.

And now it began. There was a sudden scattered sound of applause followed by a
whoooo!
from the crowd as a double handful of rockets bloomed and burst, illuminating the mist in a sudden flashgun-flare of red and blue. I moved on, scanning the faces now illuminated in neon colors; my feet shifting uncomfortably in the mud; my throat harsh with gunpowder and anticipation. It was surreal; the sky was in flames; the faces in the firelight looked like Renaissance demons, forked and pronged.

Keane was among them somewhere, I thought. But even that certainty had begun to fade, to be replaced by an unfamiliar self-doubt. I thought of myself pursuing the Sunnybankers, old legs giving way as the jeering boys escaped over the fence. I thought of Pooley and his friends, and of my collapse in the Lower Corridor, outside the Head’s office. I thought of Pat Bishop saying
you’re slowing down,
and young Bevans—not so young now, I suppose—and the small but constant pressure of the invisible finger within. At
sixty-five,
I told myself,
how long can I expect to keep up the pretense?
My Century had never seemed further away—and beyond it, I could see nothing but dark.

Ten minutes in, and I knew it was hopeless. As well try to empty a bathtub with a spoon as try to find anyone in this chaos. From the corner of my eye I could just see Marlene, some hundred yards or so away, talking earnestly with a harassed-looking young police officer.

The community bonfire is a bad night for our local constabulary. Fights, accidents, and casual thefts are rife; under cover of darkness and the holiday crowd almost anything is possible. Still, Marlene looked to be doing her best. As I watched, the harassed young officer spoke into his walkie-talkie; then a swatch of crowd pulled across the pair of them, hiding them both from sight.

By this time I was beginning to feel quite peculiar. Perhaps the fire; perhaps the belated effect of the mulled wine. In any case I was glad to move away from the heat for a while. Nearer the trees it was cooler and darker, there was less noise, and the invisible finger seemed inclined to move on, leaving me a little breathless, but otherwise fine.

The mist had settled lower, made eerily luminous by the fireworks, like the inside of a Chinese lantern. Through it now almost every young man appeared to be Keane. On each occasion, however, it turned out to be some other young man, sharp-faced and with a dark fringe, who glanced at me oddly before turning back to his wife (girlfriend, child). Still, I was sure he was there. The instinct, perhaps, of a man who has spent the last thirty-three years of his life checking doors for flour bombs and desktops for graffiti. He was here somewhere. I could feel it.

Thirty minutes in,
and the fireworks were almost over. As always they’d kept the best till last, a bouquet of rockets and fountains and spinning wheels that made a starry night from the thickest fog. A curtain of brilliant light descended, and for a time I was almost blinded, fumbling my way through the mass of people. My right leg ached; and there was a stitch running all the way down my right-hand side, as if something there had begun to unravel, gently releasing stuffing, like the seam on a very old teddy bear.

And then, suddenly in that apocalyptic light I saw Miss Dare, standing alone, some distance from the crowd. At first I thought I’d made a mistake; but then she turned, her face, half-hidden beneath a red beret, still lit in garish shades of blue and green.

For a moment the image of her stirred some powerful memory in me, some urgent sense of terrible danger, and I began to run toward her, feet slipping in the soapy mud.

“Miss Dare! Where’s Keane?”

She was wearing a trim red coat that matched her beret, her black hair tucked neatly behind her ears. She smiled quizzically as I arrived, panting, at her side.

“Keane?” she said. “He had to go.”

8

Friday, 5th November, 8:45 P.M.

I have to admit I was quite nonplussed. I’d been so sure Keane would be with her that I stared at her stupidly without a word, watching the red-blue shadows flicker across her pale face and listening to the giant beat of my old heart in the darkness.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No,” I said. “Just an old fool playing detective, that’s all.”

She smiled.

Above and around me, the last rockets flared again. Rain forest green this time; a pleasing color that made Martians of the faces that turned to watch. The blue I found slightly unnerving, like the blue lights of an ambulance, and the red—

Once more, something that was not quite a memory rose partway to the surface and dived again. Something about those lights; the colors; the way they had shone against someone’s face—

“Mr. Straitley,” she said gently. “You don’t look well.”

As a matter of fact I’d felt better; but that was the smoke and the heat of the fire. More important to me was the young woman standing at my side; a young woman who all my instincts told me might still be in danger.

“Listen, Dianne,” I said, taking her arm. “I think there’s something you need to know.”

And so I began.
With the notebook at first; then with the
Mole
; with Pinchbeck; with the deaths of Leon Mitchell and John Snyde. It was all circumstantial when viewed piece by piece; but the more I thought and spoke about it, the more I could see a picture emerging.

He’d told me himself he’d been a Sunnybank boy. Imagine what
that
must have been for someone like Keane. A smart kid; a reader; a bit of a rebel. The staff would have disliked him almost as much as the pupils did. I could see him now, a sullen, solitary boy, hating his school, hating his contemporaries, making his life in the fantasy world.

Perhaps it had started off as a cry for help. Or a joke, or a gesture of revolt against the private school and what it stood for. It must have been easy, once he’d found the nerve to take the first step. As long as he wore the uniform, he would have been treated like any other of our boys. I imagined the thrill of walking unseen down the solemn old corridors, of looking into classrooms, of mingling with the other boys. A solitary thrill, but a powerful one; and one that had soon darkened into something like obsession.

Dianne listened in silence as I expanded my tale. It was all guesswork; but it
felt
true, and as I went on, I began to
see
the boy Keane in my mind’s eye; to feel something of what he had felt and to understand the horror of what he had become.

I wondered whether Leon Mitchell had known the truth. Certainly, Marlene had been completely taken in by Julian Pinchbeck, as indeed had I.

A cool customer, Pinchbeck, especially for such a young lad. Even on the roof he had kept his nerve; escaping like a cat before I could intercept him; vanishing in the shadows; even allowing John Snyde to be accused rather than admit his own involvement.

“Perhaps they were horsing about. You know what boys are like. A silly game that went too far. Leon fell. Pinchbeck ran. He let the Porter take the blame, and he’s been living with the guilt for fifteen years.”

Imagine what that might do to a child. I considered Keane and tried to see the bitterness behind the facade. I couldn’t do it. There was perhaps some irreverence—a whiff of the upstart—a hint of mockery in the way he spoke. But malice—actual
malice
? It was hard to believe. And yet, if not Keane, then who could it be?

“He’s been playing with us,” I told Miss Dare. “That’s his style. His humor. It’s the same basic game as before, I think, but this time he’s taking it through to the end. It isn’t enough for him to hide in the shadows anymore. He wants to hit St. Oswald’s where it really hurts.”

“But
why
?” she said.

I sighed, feeling suddenly very tired. “I liked him,” I said irrelevantly. “I still like him.”

There was a long silence.

“Have you called the police?”

I nodded. “Marlene has.”

“Then they’ll find him,” she said. “Don’t worry, Mr. Straitley. We might get to have that birthday drink after all.”

9

Needless to say my own birthday was a sad affair. I understood, however, that it was a necessary stage, and I opened my presents, still waiting under the bed in their gaudy wrappers, with gritted-teeth determination. There were letters too—all the letters I had previously scorned—and now I gave every word my obsessive attention, combing through the reams of nonsense for the few precious scraps that would complete my metamorphosis.

Dear Munchkin,

I hope you got the clothes I sent you. I hope they all fit! Children seem to grow up so much faster here in Paris, and I do want you to look nice for your visit. You’ll be quite grown-up by now, I suppose. I can hardly believe I’m nearly thirty. The doctor says I can’t have any more children. Thank goodness I’ve still got you, my love. It’s as if God has given me a second chance.

The packages contained more clothes than I’d ever owned in my entire life. Little outfits from Printemps or Galeries Lafayette, little sweaters in sugared-almond colors, two coats (a red one for winter and a green one for spring), and any number of little tops, T-shirts, and shorts.

The police had been very gentle with me. As well they might; I’d had a terrible shock. They sent a nice lady officer to ask me some questions, and I answered them with becoming forthrightness and the occasional tear. I was told several times that I had been very brave. My mother was proud of me; the nice lady officer was proud of me; it would be over soon and all I had to do was tell the truth and not be afraid of anything.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how easy it is to believe the worst. My story was simple (I’ve found lies are always best served as plainly as possible), and the police lady listened to it keenly, without interruption or apparent disbelief.

Officially, the school declared it a tragic accident. My father’s death closed the matter rather conveniently, even gaining him some posthumous sympathy from the local press. His suicide was put down to extreme remorse following the death of a young trespasser on his watch, and the other details—including the presence of a mystery boy—were rapidly set aside.

Mrs. Mitchell, who might have been a problem, was given substantial compensation and a new job as Bishop’s secretary—they had become rather close friends in the weeks that followed Leon’s death. Bishop himself—recently promoted—was warned by the Head that any further investigation of the unfortunate incident would be both detrimental to the reputation of St. Oswald’s, and a dereliction of his duties as Second Master.

That left Straitley. Not so different then as now; a man gray-haired before his time, delighting in absurdity, rather slimmer than he is now but still ungainly, a shambling albatross of a man in his dusty gown and leather slippers. Leon never respected him quite as I did; saw him as a harmless buffoon, likeable enough, clever in his way, but essentially not a threat. Still, it was Straitley who came closest to seeing the truth, and it was only his arrogance—the arrogance of St. Oswald’s—that blinded him to the obvious.

I suppose I should have been grateful. But a talent like mine begs to be acknowledged, and of all the casual insults St. Oswald’s has thrown at me over the years, I think it is his I remember most vividly. His look of surprise—and yes, condescension—as he looked at me—
dismissed
me—for the second time.

Of course I wasn’t thinking clearly. Still blinded by guilt, confusion, fear, I had yet to learn one of life’s most shocking and closely guarded truths: remorse fades, like anything else. Perhaps I
wanted
to be caught that day; to prove to myself that order still ruled; to keep the myth of St. Oswald’s intact in my heart; and most of all, after five years in the shadows, to finally take my place under the lights.

And Straitley? In my long game against St. Oswald’s, it has always been Straitley, and not the Head, who has played the king’s role. A slow mover, the king; but a powerful enemy. Even so, a well-placed pawn may bring him down. Not that I wished for that, no. Absurd as it was, I wished, not for his destruction, but for his respect, his approval. I had been the Invisible Man for much too long, the ghost in St. Oswald’s creaking machine. Now at last I wanted him to look at me—to
see
me—and concede, if not a win, then perhaps a draw.

I was in
the kitchen when he finally called at the house. It was my birthday, just before dinner, and I’d spent half the day shopping with my mother, and the other half discussing my future and making plans.

A knock on the door—I guessed who it was. I knew him so well, you see—albeit from a distance—and I had been expecting his visit. I knew he, of all men, would never take the easy solution over the just. Firm, but fair, was Roy Straitley; with a natural propensity to believe the best of anyone. John’s reputation cut no ice with him; nor did the New Head’s veiled threats; nor the speculations in that day’s
Examiner
. Even the possible damage to St. Oswald’s was secondary to this. Straitley was Leon’s form teacher, and to Straitley, his boys mattered more than anything else.

At first my mother wouldn’t let him in. He’d called twice before, she told me, once when I was in bed and once more as I was changing my clothes, discarding my Pinchbeck gear for one of the Paris outfits she’d sent in her innumerable care packages.

“Mrs. Snyde, if you could just let me in for a
moment
—”

My mother’s voice, her newly rounded vowels still unfamiliar behind the kitchen door. “I told you, Mr. Straitley, we’ve had a difficult twenty-four hours and I really don’t think—”

Even then I sensed that he was uncomfortable with women. Peering through the crack in the kitchen door I saw him, framed by the night, head down, hands digging deeply into the pockets of his old tweed jacket.

In front of him, my mother; tensed for confrontation; all Paris pearls and pastel twinset. It disturbed him, that feminine temperament. He would have been happier talking to my father, straight to the point, in words of one syllable.

“Well perhaps if I could just have a word with the child.”

I checked my reflection in the kettle. Under Mother’s guidance, I was looking good. Hair neat and freshly styled; face scrubbed; resplendent in one of those new little outfits. I had removed my glasses. I knew I would pass; and besides, I wanted to see him—to see, and, perhaps, be
seen
.

“Mr. Straitley, believe me, there’s nothing we can—”

I pushed open the kitchen door. He looked up quickly. For the first time I met his eyes as my very own self. My mother stood close, ready to snatch me away at the first sign of distress. Roy Straitley took a step toward me; I caught the comforting smell of chalk dust and Gauloises and distant mothballs. I wondered what he would say if I greeted him in Latin; the temptation was almost too great to resist, then I remembered that I was playing a part. Would he recognize me in my new role?

For a second I thought he might. His eyes were penetrating. Denim blue and slightly bloodshot, they narrowed a little as they met mine. I put out my hand—took his thick fingers in my own cool ones. I thought of all the times I had watched him in the Bell Tower; of all the things he had unwittingly taught me. Would he see me now? Would he?

I saw his eyes flick over me; taking in the clean face, pastel sweater, ankle socks, and polished shoes. Not quite what he’d expected, then; I had to make an effort to hide a smile. My mother saw it, and smiled herself, proud of her achievement. As well she might be; the transformation was all hers.

“Good evening,” he said. “I don’t mean to intrude. I’m Mr. Straitley. Leon Mitchell’s form tutor.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said. “I’m Julia Snyde.”