Silent Noon (11 page)

It seemed strange to Barney that a girl everyone said was terribly clever shouldn’t know what mould looked like. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Oh, but they must be, if it’s a fungus.” She touched the plaster with her fingers.

“Very funny,” said Barney.

Belinda considered the empty paper bags. “Why don’t we invite Morrell next time?” Barney looked doubtful. “For a proper feast. We could come on Wednesday.”

There was to be a fireworks display that night: school would break for half-term the following day.

“I promise I won’t tell him you’ve being sharing all along. God’s honour.” She unwound her scarf, licked her index finger and drew a sign of the cross on her
throat.

“I’ll have a word.” It would be something to tell Spike over half-term when he asked to hear about all the fun things the boys got up to. Then, he had a thought. “But
first you have to tell us why you’re here.”

“Because there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. Because Daddy—”

“No secrets.” Barney crossed his arms, hoping that Morrell wouldn’t kill him for playing this game. “Not from us.”

She stared at him as if trying to guess what he wanted to hear. In this light, the blue veins that travelled to her temples resembled branches caught in a flash of lightning, delicate and
perfect and pulsing with life.

“Whatever the others are saying is probably true,” she said. “I pushed a girl down some stairs.”

The admission filled him with a weird relief. “That doesn’t get people expelled.”

“What did you expect?” She began to gather the empty bags. “If Cowper had hit me back, he’d get the sack too.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” She shoved the bags into her satchel.

And then she told him about Minty.

That spring, someone had left the gate to the coast road unlatched, and the headmistress’s little schnauzer had escaped. The headmistress had assumed that Minty was sleeping out of sight
until a craven-faced young man and his sobbing girlfriend were spotted traipsing up the drive carrying a limp bundle of grey fur. The dog had darted onto the road out of nowhere, they said,
probably chasing after some fulmars that had gathered on the sea wall. The young man had slammed on the brakes and the car had skidded almost to the cliff edge, but by the sound of the thump under
the passenger seat they had known that it was already too late.

As soon as Minty had been laid to rest under the ash tree in the headmistress’s garden, some girls began to whisper about who could possibly have left the gate unlatched. Within hours of
the funeral they were sewing the letter “M” onto the backs of their ties and leaving elegies to the little dog’s memory at the foot of the ash tree, while those not so inclined to
sentimentality focused on hunting down the culprit.

“So it was you who left the gate open?” said Barney. “That’s not so terrible.”

“We weren’t allowed on the coast road.”

“Then why were you there?”

“I was running away.”

Barney snorted. “Not many places you could go. Unless you were planning to swim to St Just.”

She shrugged, slinging the satchel over one shoulder.

“I’m not that good a swimmer,” she said.

After she’d gone, Barney noticed that her scarf had slipped behind the bench. He picked it up, noting the anxiously braided tassels, the greying school stripes, and cupped the wool to his
nose, breathing in the lingering scent of her mother’s perfume.

She did not acknowledge him in prep, and for an instant he felt rebuffed: caught in a smile that was not returned, publicly wounded by rejection. Cowper spotted it, of course
– Cowper was finely tuned to others’ humiliation – but instead of raising a jeer he beckoned Barney over with a comradely grin.

“Seat’s free,” he said, indicating the space next to him. Barney took it and began to unpack his books.

“Playing hard to get, is she?” said Cowper, with what sounded like genuine sympathy. Barney looked at him.

“Grow up.”

“She’s a snotty little madam, if you ask me.”

Barney made a show of looking over each shoulder. “Who asked you?”

“Very funny. I saw you smile at her, and she turned away. That’s rudeness, that is. Her parents ought to have taught her better.”

“I didn’t smile at her.”

“Oh, give over, Holland.” Cowper surveyed the room, noting the empty desk directly behind the girl. There was no master present; the classroom door was open and Swift was in the
library, listening for any disturbance in the low hum of boys half-heartedly doing their evening preparations. “Let’s have a little fun, shall we? And teach her not to be quite so vain
in the meantime.”

Before Barney could speak Cowper was out of his seat and striding calmly towards the front of the room. Passing by the master’s desk, he took a pair of scissors from the pencil pot. Then
he slipped into the vacant seat behind the girl, who still did not turn around. She sat perfectly straight, black ponytail hardly moving even as she tilted her head to look between her Latin primer
and exercise book.

Several of the others had noticed that something was afoot, and a wave of telegraphed messages rippled between the benches. One by one, they looked up to see Cowper brandishing the scissors in
the air behind the girl, pulling a ridiculous face begging encouragement.
Shall I?
it said.
Shall I do it?

Barney could still pretend not to be watching: he could still say nothing and so risk neither accusations of attempted gallantry nor retaliation from Cowper. The scissors widened, and Cowper
mimed snipping the girl’s ponytail. Despite himself, though, Barney looked on, noting the tendons of her slender neck, the china-white skin behind her ears.

Someone – it might have been Opie – stifled a laugh, and in that instant the girl turned just sharply enough for her ponytail to leap between the gaping blades. There was a metallic
slicing sound, a hush of breath…

…and then she saw Cowper fall back in his seat, letting the scissors fall to the desk as he flung up his hands in the air in mock surrender. “I didn’t do it,” he
said.

Only now did she look down to see the straight black fringe of hair on the floor, like the mane lopped off a toy horse. One, two inches at the most – her mother would not even notice it
– but still it was an alarming sight. She felt the blunt brush of hair at the base of her neck and her mouth opened.

“Liar!” said Barney, jumping from his seat. “Liar!”

“Liar!” joined in Opie, who was now able to cackle freely. “Liar!”

“Liar! Liar!”

“We were just joking about,” Cowper told Belinda, who had yet to say anything. “If you hadn’t turned around like that—”

“What’s going on in here?”

There was a communal thump of bodies hitting their seats as the boys feigned concentration. Only Belinda and Cowper remained where they were. Mr Runcie stood in the doorway, hands on hips.
“Cowper. Where is your prep?”

“Over there, sir.”

“Then what are you doing out of your desk? Miss Flood?”

Beneath sullen brows, eighteen pairs of eyes watched her.

“It was nothing, Mr Runcie.”

“Turn around, then – you have work to do too.” The housemaster scanned the rows, and his distracted gaze alighted on Barney. “Holland: my study, please.”

His first thought was that someone had spied him going into the fallout shelter with Belinda Flood. But if it was to be a caning, Runcie would have waited until after lights-out
to call him. By then the boarding house would be still, the boys in bed upstairs listening to the swish of the birch and the yelps below, pretending to be asleep when their chastened comrade
returned.

The housemaster greeted him with a smile and invited him to sit. That was when Barney knew that it could only be bad news.

“We’ve had a telegram from your father,” said Runcie, withdrawing a piece of yellow paper from his inside pocket. “Spike, is it?”

“My stepdad. Is Jake all right?”

“Everyone’s fine,” said Runcie, smoothing the yellow paper on the leather padding of his desk. “But I’m afraid it means you won’t be able to go home for
half-term. Apparently your stepfather has business in Manchester…”

A gig
, thought Barney.
One of his mates at The Moon and Sixpence must have cut a deal with some landlord…

“And he’ll be taking your brother with him. They leave tomorrow, and considering the distance and the fact that we don’t have an address where they’ll be
staying—”

Sleeping on Mick Allen’s sofa
, thought Barney,
or beneath the bar
…

“—we’ve agreed that you should remain here for the week. I’m sorry, Holland – it’s rotten luck.” The housemaster steepled his fingers. “To make up
for it, I thought you might like to stay with one of our neighbours: that way, you won’t be all on your own in an empty dormitory at night, and you’ll have some company in the
day.” He peered over the rim of his reading glasses. “There could even be some pocket money in it.”

Barney blinked at him.

“A lady who lives on the road to St Arras needs help with a spot of housekeeping. Mr Krawiec, our groundsman, was doing some work for her a while ago: it was he who passed on the request.
There’s two pounds a week in it for the right man.”

Until now Barney had been worrying at a piece of skin at the corner of his thumbnail. At the mention of payment in pounds, not shillings, he stopped. “You’re interested, I
hope?”

“Sir.”

Runcie flashed a grin revealing teeth that were small and square, like a child’s. “Good. I shall run a message to Miss Duchâtel to let her know to expect you on Friday
evening.” He stood up, and so Barney did too. “I’m sorry about your disappointing news, but perhaps it’s for the best. Krawiec will drive you down once the others have
cleared off.”

“Sir.”

“Good lad. Think of it as a little holiday, won’t you?”

Of course he wouldn’t. It sounded like work, dull work, and loneliness tinged with shame. Screw Spike. No doubt he thought Barney would be happier here, just as he’d convince himself
that Jake enjoyed caroming from gig to gig in a haze of hunger and boredom. The last time they’d stayed at Mick’s, one of the band members’ girlfriends had taken pity on them and
brought a chess set. The boys had passed the next three days launching battles between the black and white pieces, scattering sentries along the window sills and planting hidden commandos beneath
the furniture, while Spike and his mates played their music to empty taverns on the other side of town.

At least there was still the feast to look forward to. When Ivor heard that the plan was entirely Belinda’s, he seemed to warm to the idea, even promising to pick up a few supplies in town
that afternoon. The prospect of the fireworks display had put everyone in buoyant spirits, and with half-term just around the corner some risks seemed worth taking.

It was customary for students from the girls’ school to join the masters and boys on their playing field to enjoy the best views of the fireworks. The junior boys commandeered the stone
wall that ran from the chapel to the pumping station, swinging their legs at latecomers and increasing the volume of whistling and cheering whenever one of the girls came into view. The St
Mary’s students set up camp in the middle of the field, laying out blankets and waterproofs on the cold ground and anchoring these with baskets filled with thermoses and packets of
biscuits.

From the edge of the field where the ground dipped towards the river, a group of girls silently appraised Belinda, who had drifted over to say hello to one of the mistresses. Some already had
the thick-heeled, lumpish figures of middle-aged matrons, their young faces showing the early signs of puffiness from too many sweets and starch – a diet of peacetime privilege. The ones
sitting in positions that allowed them a comfortable view did not take their eyes off Belinda when they opened their mouths to speak in low voices; the ones with their backs to her did not turn
around, but waited for their friends to narrate for them, at once shunning and scrutinizing their former classmate.

Watching them at a distance, Flood noticed with a pang how small his daughter looked, how entirely lacking in self-possession. She had never rushed, as others did, to show off her friends to her
parents at sports days and music recitals – those strange occasions, cruel in their cultivation of aspiration, when he found himself wondering what, exactly, those girls were being prepared
for. Flood sensed that she may not have learnt the usual techniques for suppressing her loneliness and fear – the camaraderie of games, or the mysterious arts of schoolgirl cruelty
(banishment to Coventry, Chinese burns beneath the dining table) – and this filled him with a sudden pity. But then a girl with a shiny forehead and hair twisted into slick plaits rose and
joined Belinda with the mistress, the deputy head, she of the equine features and pungent lavender eau de toilette, whose most distinguishing characteristic was a propensity for speaking in
subordinate clauses. The girl with the plaits squeezed her hands under her armpits while Belinda fiddled with her bracelet – a cheap thing she must have picked up in town, made of blue glass
beads – shifting her weight from one leg to the other, feeling the cold. After a few minutes she embraced the girl with the plaits and accepted a gentle pat on the cheek from the mistress
before peeling away from the group. Flood called out to some boys squabbling over a lawn chair before turning to find his daughter already waiting to speak to him.

“I’ve an awful headache,” she said, not looking up. “I think I might go to bed.”

“The fireworks will be starting any minute.”

“I’ll see them from my window,” said Belinda.

She did look rather pale, thought Flood, touching her forehead with the back of his hand. The smooth skin felt cool as marble. “Poor Linda-Lou,” he said.