Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins (35 page)

‘They were comrades-in-arms – and a lot more besides.’

‘With each other?’

‘I think they preferred young boys. Apparently the two men thought they were ancient Greeks. Born at the wrong time into the wrong civilisation . . .’

‘I presume that defence was dismissed?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Extraordinary how often the traditions of the classical world are misappropriated . . .’

‘You say that you are planning a visit?’

‘To Mr Paine, yes.’

‘I’ll be interested to hear how you get on. Normally these types of places try to keep things quiet. You can hardly hush up an explosion.’

‘Do you think that was the point of it, then?’

‘I don’t know, Sidney. But you’re the man to find out.’

There was a little domestic frostiness on Sidney’s return from the pub. This was not, however, because he was later than he said he would be. (Hildegard was used to that.) Nor was it due to any anxiety that he was going to investigate the explosion. Instead, there was a cathedral matter his wife considered more pressing; namely the inappropriate attention Christopher Clough was paying their au pair girl.

Once they were alone in their bedroom, Hildegard went into detail. The overeager priest was taking Sabine out for a drink the following evening. ‘Perhaps she should have a chaperone? I would go myself but, of course, there is Anna.’

‘I could stay at home, perhaps, or I could go for the drink too?’

‘We can’t have
two
clergymen eyeing her up. You’re not judging Miss World.’

‘I wouldn’t be assessing her at all.’

‘I thought I was getting
help
. Instead it seems I have a second child. Sabine is distracted by this man, Sidney. He is
nervensäge
: a nuisance.’

Hildegard added that the au pair was dreamy and walked about the house in a world of her own. All she liked doing was playing with Anna and her farm.

‘That is good, is it not, if Anna likes her? They are becoming friends.’

It was not enough. Whenever her employer asked her to do anything Sabine said that she was too tired or too busy to concentrate on any domestic tasks. She also had lessons at ‘the college’ that meant she was often away at exactly the time she was needed.

‘She hasn’t even started on the ironing. Soon neither of us will have anything to wear.’

‘I once heard a sermon about the nakedness of Adam and Eve,’ Sidney mused in an effort to cheer his wife up as he joined her in bed.

‘Don’t.’

‘The preacher was saying that it wouldn’t take us long to get used to the idea.’

Hildegard shifted on to her side. ‘If I had wanted to live in a nudist colony, Sidney, I would not have come to England. It’s too cold and the people are ugly.’

She turned out the bedside light. Sidney decided neither to make any comparison with Germany nor to argue. ‘Well, I only hope that doesn’t apply to me.’ He leaned over and kissed his wife on the mouth, hoping for more.

The next day he made a point of reassuring Hildegard before leaving to see the chemistry teacher in hospital. ‘Cloughie can’t do too much damage, can he? Sabine’s only just arrived.’

‘He’s a very dangerous man.’

‘Not in the criminal sense.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do women see in him?’

‘Confidence,’ Hildegard answered. ‘People say he is amusing and a little dangerous.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Women are aware he is naughty and they like it. They know there might be trouble but they are bored. They want excitement. And because he is a clergyman there is a safety net. They expect he will be decent in the end, even if he is not. That is his trick. It makes him even more devious.’

‘It’s very odd, isn’t it, the people who find clergymen attractive?’

‘Be very careful, Sidney . . .’

‘I don’t mean me.’

‘Would you like me to tell you more?’

‘No, I think it’s best not to be too aware of these things. You just have to get on with life. I know you’ll keep me right.’

‘I will always inform you,
mein Lieber
, if there is something to worry about. Women know not to cause any trouble or they will have to answer to me. It is the one time when being German helps. People think I am fiercer than I am. In one flash, like the villain in the pantomime you once took me to, they are worried I will turn into a Nazi.’

‘I am not sure people really think like that, Hildegard.’

‘You don’t notice. If you did then perhaps you would be more arrogant.’

‘More?’

‘So many women would fall in love with you. And I would have to stop it.’

‘I don’t think any women are likely to fall in love with
me
,’ Sidney answered, half hoping for a denial.

‘And what are you going to do,’ Hildegard asked, ‘when men are attracted to me?’

‘I haven’t really thought about that. I am not a jealous man.’

‘Perhaps you should be?’

Sidney looked around for something to distract them both but his wife was looking straight at him, waiting for an answer.

‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ he asked. He was feeling decidedly shaky.

‘I am teasing you,
mein Liebster
.’

‘It doesn’t feel very affectionate.’

‘It is funny. Perhaps I am serious. Or not. You will have to spend more time with me in order to judge.’

‘There is nothing I would like more.’

Hildegard smiled. ‘I am always here. Why do you keep leaving me?’

‘That’s a very good question.’

‘Then answer it,
Mein Lieber
.’

In the kitchen, Sabine was singing her own version of ‘Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man’ to Anna as they prepared to make gingerbread men. The house was becoming German once more.

‘Backe, backe Kuchen,

Der Bäcker hat gerufen!

Wer will gute Kuchen backen,

Der muss haben sieben Sachen:

Eier und Schmalz,

Butter und Salz,

Milch und Mehl,

Safran macht den Kuchen gel’!

Hildegard pushed back from her husband. ‘You must go, I know. Visit your patient. Talk to Canon Clough. Then come home with your news. I will miss you.’

‘And I you.’

‘I’m teaching Adam Barnes later. He’s going to make a start either on a piece of Chopin or Dvo
ř
ák. I’m going to let him choose. You could ask him a few questions about Prize Day, perhaps?’

‘I’m not sure how much he will know. Wasn’t he with you for most of the morning in the music rooms?’

‘He was. But he’s a boy at the school and he likes me. He would make a good informant, don’t you think?’

‘You are ahead of me, Hildegard.’

‘That is where I like to be.’

‘Would you mind . . .’

‘Keeping him until you return? Of course. Now you can leave. The price is one more kiss.’

There were times, as he bicycled through the streets of Ely with Byron running by his side, that Sidney wondered what on earth he had done to deserve such a wife. Was it a God-given gift, he thought, made as recompense for his endeavours in helping other people in war and peace? He did not believe that God behaved like that. Life, he thought, should be its own reward. But still, he decided, it would do no harm to be grateful.

The Tower Hospital was situated on the Cambridge Road and the authorities were as dubious about Sidney’s visits as they had been at Addenbrooke’s. The chaplain had already suggested that Sidney spent so much time there (and, by implication, so much less in the Cathedral Close) that it might be simpler if they swapped jobs.

Trevor Paine had just been for a cigarette and a cup of tea in the canteen. Despite the bandage round his face and on the right side of his body, the damage done would not be permanent and he was expected home in the next few days.

He was a small man with thick, bristly grey hair, a long dark toothbrush moustache and a ruddy face that looked as if its owner was no stranger to either drink or anger. He explained that he was sure that someone had come in after he had unlocked the building that morning. They must have opened up all the Bunsen burners, allowing methane gas to pour out into the room, mixing with oxygen and requiring only the tiniest spark from the electric light switch or the flame from a cigarette to set off the explosion.

‘Didn’t you smell it first?’ Sidney asked.

‘I was smoking as I entered the room. I reached for the light switch.’

‘In broad daylight?’

‘The blinds were down. We keep the room dark to preserve the chemicals.’

‘I thought they were locked away.’

‘They are. This is an additional precaution. But obviously no matter what safety measures we employ, it’s not going to stop someone blowing up the labs if they feel like it.’

‘Would it have to have been a sixth former?’

‘It could have been any one of the little bastards. We teach them how to blow up empty biscuit tins and lemonade bottles all the time. It’s part of the excitement of chemistry, moving copper wires through flames or seeing the different colours produced by things like copper sulphate, strontium chloride and boric acid. Sometimes the boys get out of hand, pouring methanol directly into a crucible rather than using a pipette . . .’

‘What happens then?’

‘The flame follows the vapour back into the bottle. Then there is a kind of flashover, and bang. Explosion. Fire. Drama. Panic. Most of the boys are pyromaniacs. Pearson especially. The headmaster will be on to him, I’m sure.’

‘He was playing cricket when the explosion . . .’

‘The timing is irrelevant. This was planned well in advance.’

‘Targeting you? Or just the lab in particular?’

‘I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with me. It may not be anything personal at all. I think it’s one of the leavers showing off.’

‘Pearson is not a leaver. He has another year at the school . . .’

‘I don’t think he was aware I might have been killed. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I wouldn’t mind giving him a good caning.’

‘There is still corporal punishment at Millingham? I know some schools have decided to do away with it.’

‘More fool them.’

Sidney wondered if this was the right way of going about things. Just because the beating of boys had been passed down through the generations didn’t make it acceptable. Tradition, he suggested, was no guarantee of morality.

Paine headed him off. ‘I have no truck with those new-fangled educationalists who believe that their pupils should choose what they want to study. What is the point of one of those ridiculous schools where children are allowed to pick their own lessons? How can they know what they don’t know?’

‘I think the idea behind them is that the child lives his or her own life instead of one that anxious parents or traditional educators lay down for them.’

‘Boys need to be guided and disciplined. It’s as simple as that. They can decide what to do on their own when they’re older.’

‘Is that what your friend Rev Kev thought?’ Sidney asked.

‘I don’t think he’s got much to do with this inquiry.’

‘How well did you know him?’

‘What are you asking about him for?’

‘It might be connected . . .’

‘With the explosion? I don’t think so.’

‘The two of you were friends.’

‘We weren’t that close. And Kevin’s in prison, as you probably know.’

Sidney leaned back in his chair. ‘Could you tell me about the other boys that you have had to punish; and not just Pearson? Have there been some particular troublemakers who have kept coming back; any who have needed, for example, more and more discipline?’

‘There are one or two of them every term.’

‘I am thinking about the last three or four years; either a boy who is still in the school or one that left recently. Someone who might want a bit of revenge.’

‘It’s Pearson, I know it.’

‘The other names would be helpful . . .’

Sidney made an unexpected stop on his way home at a riverside pub. Christopher Clough was having a drink with Sabine. Two things annoyed him about this. The first was that although his au pair girl appeared to be drinking an orange juice he couldn’t be sure that vodka had not been added. Secondly, Hildegard was teaching. Anna would need supper, bathing and putting to bed and here was the person they had specifically employed for the task, dressed in little more than a T-shirt, which revealed an all-too-visible cleavage, out on a jolly.

Sabine said that they were just finishing and that she would soon be home. Christopher had been very kind, even, apparently, ‘
reizen
d
’.