Gentlemen & Players (33 page)

4

Bonfire Night, 9:45 P.M.

He’d seen her in the hospital, where I had not dared go. Oh, I’d wanted to; but Leon’s mother had been there at his bedside the whole time, and the risk was unacceptable. But Francesca had come; and the Tynans; and Bishop. And Straitley, of course.

He’d remembered her well. After all, who wouldn’t? Fifteen years old and beautiful in that way that old men find so inexplicably heartbreaking. He’d noticed her, first for her hair and the way it fell across her face in a single swatch of raw silk. Bewildered, perhaps, but more than a little excited by the drama of it all; the real-life tragedy in which she was a player. She’d chosen black, as if for a funeral, but mostly because it suited her, for after all, Leon wasn’t actually going to
die
. He was fourteen, for pity’s sake. At fourteen, death is something that only happens on TV.

Straitley hadn’t spoken to the girl. Instead he’d gone to the hospital cafeteria to bring Marlene a cup of tea, whilst waiting for Leon’s visitors to leave. He’d seen Francesca on her way out—still fascinated perhaps by that hair as it moved like an animal across her lower back—and it had crossed his mind that the roundness at her stomach looked more pronounced than the usual adolescent tubbiness; in fact with those long, slim legs and narrow shoulders, that weight around her abdomen made her look more than a little—

I breathed deeply, using the method my analyst had taught me. In for five beats; out for ten. The scent of smoke and dank vegetation was very strong; in the mist my breath plumed like dragon fire.

He was lying, of course. Leon would have told me.

I said it aloud. On the bench the old man lay very still, denying nothing.

“It’s a lie, old man.”

The child would be fourteen years old by now, as old as Leon when he died. Boy or girl? Boy, of course. Leon’s age; with Leon’s gray eyes and Francesca’s dappled skin. He wasn’t real, I told myself—and yet that image refused to be dismissed. That boy—that imaginary boy—with a hint of Leon in the cheekbones, a hint of Francesca in the plump upper lip…I wondered, had he known? Could he possibly
not
have known?

Well, what if he had? Francesca didn’t matter to him. She was just a girl, he’d told me so. Just another shag, not the first, not the best. And yet he’d kept this secret from me, from Pinchbeck, his best friend. Why? Was it shame? Fear? I’d thought Leon above those things. Leon, the free spirit. And yet—

“Say it’s a lie and I’ll let you live.”

No word from Straitley; just a sound like that of an old dog turning over in his sleep. Damn him, I thought. Our game was practically over, and here he was trying to introduce some element of doubt. It annoyed me; as if my business with St. Oswald’s were not simply a matter of pure revenge for my broken life, but some altogether messier, less noble affair. “I mean it,” I said. “Or our game ends now.”

The pains in
my chest had subsided now, to be replaced by a deep and languorous cold. In the darkness above me I could hear Miss Dare’s rapid breathing. I wondered if she was planning to kill me now, or whether she meant simply to let nature take its course. As it happened I found I wasn’t especially interested either way.

All the same, I wondered dimly why she cared. My assessment of Leon seemed hardly to have slowed her down; but my description of the pregnant girl had stopped her in her tracks. Clearly, I thought, Miss Dare hadn’t known. I considered what this might mean to me.

“It’s a lie,” she repeated. The cool humor in her voice was gone. Now every word crackled with a lethal static. “Leon would have told me.”

I shook my head. “No, he wouldn’t. He was scared. Terrified it would affect his university prospects. Denied everything at first, but his mother got the truth out of him in the end. As for myself—I’d never seen the girl. Never heard of the other family. But I was Leon’s form tutor. I had to be told. Of course both he and the girl were underage. But the Mitchells and the Tynans had always been friendly, and with support from the parents and the church, I suppose they could have managed.”

“You’re making this up.” Her voice was flat. “Leon wouldn’t have cared about any of that. He’d have said it was banal.”

“Yes, he liked that word, didn’t he?” I said. “Pretentious little oik. Liked to think the normal rules didn’t apply to him. Yes, it was banal, and yes, it frightened him. After all, he was only fourteen.”

There was a silence. Above me, Miss Dare stood like a monolith. Then, at length, she spoke.

“Boy or girl?” she said.

So, she believed me. I drew a long breath, and the hand pressing against my heart seemed to give way, just a little. “I don’t know. I lost touch.” Well, of course I did—we all did. “There was some talk of adoption at the time, but Marlene never told me, and I never asked. You, of all people, should understand why.”

Another silence, longer, if anything, than the previous one. Then, softly and despairingly, she began to laugh.

I could see her point. It was tragic. It was ridiculous. “It takes courage sometimes to face up to the truth. To see our heroes—and our villains—as they really are. To see ourselves as others see us. I wonder, Miss Dare, in all that time you say you were invisible, did
you
ever really see yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

She’d wanted the truth. And I gave it now, still wondering for what stubborn purpose I was putting myself through all this, and for whom. For Marlene? For Bishop? For Knight? Or simply for Roy Straitley, B.A., who had once tutored a boy called Leon Mitchell with no more or less favor or prejudice than to any other of my boys—or so at least I fervently hoped, even with the drag of hindsight and that small, persistent fear that perhaps some part of me had
known
the boy might fall—had known but had factored it into some dark equation, some half-considered attempt to slow down the
other
boy, the boy who pushed him.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I told her softly. “That’s the truth.
You
pushed him, then thought better of it and tried to help. But I was there, and you had to run—”

For
that
was what I thought I’d seen, as I peered shortsightedly from my aerie in the Bell Tower. Two boys, one facing me, the other with his back turned, and between us the figure of the school Porter, his wavery shadow flicking out across the long rooftop.

He’d called out, and the boys had fled; the one with his back to me plunging ahead of the other so that he came to a stop almost opposite me in the shadow of the Bell Tower. The other was Leon. I recognized him at once, a brief glimpse of his face in the harsh lights before he joined his friend at the edge of the gully.

It should have been an easy jump. A few feet, and they would have reached the main parapet, allowing them a clear run right across the main school roof. An easy jump for the boys, perhaps, though I could see from John Snyde’s lumbering progress that he was far from capable of following them there.

I could—I
should
—have called out then; but I needed to know who the other boy was. I already knew he was not one of mine. I know my boys, and even in the darkness I was sure I would have recognized him. They were balanced together on the edge of the drop; a long finger of light from the Quad illuminated Leon’s hair in scarlet and blue. The other boy was still in shadow; one hand outstretched, as if to shield his face from the approaching Porter. A low, but nevertheless violent discussion seemed to be under way.

It lasted ten seconds, maybe even less. I could not hear what they said, though I caught the words
jump
and
Porter
and a smattering of shrill, unpleasant laughter. I was angry now; angry as I was with the trespassers in my garden, the vandals at my fence. It was not so much the trespass itself, or even that I had been called there in the middle of the night (in fact I’d come of my own accord, on hearing the disturbance). No, my anger ran deeper than that. Boys misbehave; it’s a fact of life. In thirty years I’ve had ample demonstration. But this was one of
my
boys. And I felt much as I imagine Mr. Meek to have felt, that day in the Bell Tower. Not that I would have shown it, of course—to be a teacher is principally to hide rage when it is truly felt, and to feign it when it is not—all the same, it would have done me good to see the look on the faces of those two boys as I called out their names from out of the dark. But for that, I needed
both
their names.

I already knew Leon, of course. In the morning, I knew he would identify his friend. But the morning was still hours away; just then it would be as clear to the boys as it was to me that I was helpless to stop them. I could imagine their response to my angry call—the laughter, the jeers as they sprinted away. Later, of course, I would make them pay. But the legend would endure; and the school would remember, not their four weeks’ litter duty or five-day suspension, but the fact that a boy had defied old Quaz on his own turf and—even for a few hours—had got away with it.

And so I waited, squinting to make out the second boy’s features. For a moment I glimpsed them as he stepped back to make the leap; a sudden slice of red-blue light showed me a young face twisted by some harsh emotion; mouth drawn, teeth bared, eyes like slots. It made him unrecognizable; and yet I knew him, I was sure of it. A St. Oswald’s boy. And now he took the jump at a run. The Porter was approaching fast—his broad back partly eclipsing my field of vision as the roof dipped toward the gully—and then in the sudden blur of movement and the shutter-click of lights I’m sure I saw Pinchbeck’s hand connect with Leon’s shoulder—just for a second—before they went over together into the dark.

Well of course,
it wasn’t
quite
like that. Not from where I was standing, anyway, but close enough all the same. Yes, old man,
I
pushed Leon, and when you called my name I was sure you’d seen me do it.

Perhaps I even
wanted
someone to see it; someone to acknowledge my presence at last. But I was confused; appalled at my act; uplifted at my daring; incandescent with guilt and rage and terror and love. I would have given anything for it to have happened the way I told you; Butch and Sundance on the Chapel roof; the last stand; the last look of complicity between friends as we made our brave leap to freedom. But it wasn’t like that. It was nothing like that at all.

“Your
dad
?” said Leon.

“Jump!” I said. “Go on, man, jump!”

Leon was staring at me, face streaked with fire-engine blue. “So that’s it,” he said. “You’re the
Porter’s
kid.”

“Hurry up,” I hissed. “There isn’t time.”

But Leon had seen the truth at last; the look I so hated was back on his face, and his lips were curling with cruel mirth. “It’s almost worth getting caught for this,” he whispered, “just to see their faces—”

“Stop it, Leon.”

“Or what, Queenie?” He began to laugh. “What are you going to do, eh?”

There was a horrible taste in my mouth; a taste of sour metal, and I realized I had bitten my lip. Blood ran down my chin like drool.

“Please, Leon—”

But Leon was still laughing in that gaspy, affected way; and for a terrible instant I saw through his eyes; saw fat Peggy Johnsen, and Jeffrey Stuarts, and Harold Mann, and Lucy Robbins, and all the freaks and losers from Mr. Bray’s class, and the Sunnybankers with no future beyond the Abbey Road Estate, and the pram-faces and slappers and toerags and proles, and worst of all I saw myself, clearly, and for the first time.

It was then that I pushed him.

I don’t remember this part as clearly. Sometimes I tell myself it was an accident. Sometimes I almost believe it was. Perhaps I expected him to jump; Spider-man does it across twice that distance; I’d done it enough times myself to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t fall. But Leon did.

My hand on his shoulder.

That sound.

God.
That sound
.

5

Bonfire Night, 9:55 P.M.

So, at last, you’ve heard it all. I’m sorry it had to be here and now. I was quite looking forward to Christmas at St. Oswald’s—not to mention the inspection, of course. But our game is done. The king is alone. All our other pieces have left the board, and we can face each other honestly, for the first and last time.

I believe you liked me. I think you respected me. Now you know me. That’s all I really wanted of you, old man. Respect. Regard. That curious
visibility
that is the automatic birthright of those living on the other side of the line.

“Sir? Sir?”

He opened his eyes. Good. I was afraid I’d lost him. It might have been more humane to finish him off, but I found I couldn’t do it. He’d seen me. He knew the truth. And if I killed him now, it would not feel like victory.

A draw, then, Magister. I can live with that.

Besides, there was one last thing that troubled me; one question left unanswered before I could declare an end to the game. It occurred to me then that I might not like the answer. All the same, I needed to know.

“Tell me, sir. If you saw me push Leon, why didn’t you say so at the time? Why protect me when you knew what I’d done?”

I knew, of course, what I wanted him to say. And silently, I faced him now, squatting low enough at his side to catch even the smallest of whispers.

“Talk to me, sir. Why didn’t you tell?”

For a time, there was silence, but for his breathing that rattled slow and shallow in his throat. I wondered then if I’d left it too late; if he planned to expire out of sheer spite. Then he spoke, and his voice was faint, but I heard him well. And he said:
“St. Oswald’s.”

She’d said
no lies
. Well, I gave her the truth. As much of it as I could, anyway, though I was never sure afterward how much of it I had spoken aloud.

That’s why I kept the secret for all these years; never told the police what I’d seen on the roof; allowed the business to die with John Snyde. You have to understand; Leon’s death on school premises was terrible enough. The Porter’s suicide made it worse. But to involve a child—to
accuse
a child—that would have catapulted the sorry affair into tabloid territory forever. St. Oswald’s didn’t deserve that. My colleagues, my boys—the damage to them would have been incalculable.

And besides, what precisely
had
I witnessed? A face, glimpsed for a split second in treacherous light. A hand on Leon’s shoulder. The figure of a Porter blocking the scene. It wasn’t enough.

And so I’d let the matter lie. It was barely dishonest, I told myself—after all, I hardly trusted my own testimony as it was. But now here was the truth at last, returning like a juggernaut to crush me, my friends—everything I’d hoped to protect—beneath its giant wheels.

“St. Oswald’s.” Her voice was reflective, barely audible across a cavernous distance.

I nodded, pleased she’d understood. After all, how could she not? She knew St. Oswald’s as well as I did; knew its ways and its dark secrets; its comforts and its little conceits. It’s hard to explain a place like St. Oswald’s. Like teaching, you’re either born to it or you’re not. Drawn in, too many find themselves unable to leave—at least until the day the old place decides to spit them out (with or without a small honorarium taken from Common Room Committee funds). I have been so many years in St. Oswald’s that nothing else exists; I have no friends outside the Common Room; no hopes beyond my boys, no life beyond—

“St. Oswald’s,” she repeated. “Of course it was. It’s funny, sir. I thought maybe you’d done it for me.”

“For
you
?” I said. “Why?”

Something splashed against my hand; a droplet from the nearby trees, or something else, I wasn’t sure. I suddenly felt a surge of pity—surely inappropriate, but I felt it nevertheless.

Could she really have thought that I had kept silent all these years for the sake of some unimagined relationship between us? That might explain a number of things: her pursuit of me; her all-consuming need for approval; her ever more baroque ways of gaining my attention. Oh, she was a monster; but in that moment I felt for her, and I reached out my clumsy old hand toward her in the darkness.

She took it. “Bloody St. Oswald’s. Bloody vampire.”

I knew what she meant. You can give, and give and give—but St. Oswald’s is always hungry, devouring everything—love, lives, loyalty—without ever sating its interminable appetite.

“How can you bear it, sir? What’s in it for
you
?”

Good point, Miss Dare. The fact is, I have no choice; I am like a mother bird faced with a chick of monstrous proportions and insatiable greed. “The truth is that many of us—the Old Guard, at least—would lie or even
die
for St. Oswald’s if duty demanded it.” I didn’t add that I felt as if I might actually be dying there and then, but that was because my mouth was dry.

She gave an unexpected chuckle. “You old drama queen. You know, I feel half inclined to give you your wish—to let you die for dear St. Oswald’s and see how much gratitude you get for it.”

“No gratitude,” I said, “but the tax benefits are enormous.” It was a lame quip, as last words go, but in the circumstances it was the best I could do.

“Don’t be an ass, sir. You’re not going to die.”

“I’m turned sixty-five, and can do as I please.”

“What, and miss your Century?”

“”It is the game,“” I misquoted from somewhere or other. “”Not he who plays it.“”

“
That
depends what side you’re on.”

I laughed. She was a clever girl, I thought, but I defy anyone to find a woman who
really
understands cricket. “I need to sleep now,” I told her drowsily. “Up stumps and back to the pavilion.
Scis quid dicant
—”

“Not yet, sir,” she said. “You can’t sleep now—”

“Watch me,” I said, and closed my eyes.

There was a long silence. Then I heard her voice, receding now like her footsteps as the cold drew in.

“Happy birthday, Magister.”

Those last words sounded very distant, very final in the dark. The Last Veil, I told myself glumly—at any point now I could expect to see the Tunnel of Light Penny Nation’s always talking about, with its celestial cheerleaders urging me on.

To be honest I’ve always thought it sounded a bit ghastly, but now I thought I could actually
see
the light—a rather eerie greenish glow—and hear the voices of departed friends whispering my name.

“Mr. Straitley?”

Funny, I thought: I’d expected celestial beings to be rather less formal in their address. But I could hear it clearly now, and in the green glow I could see that Miss Dare had gone, and that what I had taken for a fallen branch in the darkness was in fact a huddled figure, lying on the ground not ten feet away.

“Mr. Straitley,” it whispered again, in a voice as rusty—and as human—as my own.

Now I could see an outstretched hand; a crescent of face behind the furred hood of a parka; then a small greenish light, which I recognized at last as the display screen of a mobile phone, illuminating his face. And it was a
familiar
face; the expression strained but calm as he began, patiently, still holding the phone with what looked like an agonizing effort, to crawl across the grass toward me.

“
Keane
?” I said.