The White Devil (14 page)

“Tomasina! Piers again. Remember my play about . . . ? Right. There’s an angle I stupidly left out. I was being vain, as usual, and hoping that the poetry alone would be enough. But what if . . . what if there’s a scholarly angle, too? Well, I’m finding new material on one of Byron’s lovers—a gay lover—that’s just emerging. So we wrap the publication of the play in sort of a literary discovery.”

Tomasina wanted to know whether the story was documented, and whether it was really new.

“Absolutely new,” he answered. “Working on the documentation—but I’m here at the source, at Harrow School, where Byron went of course. And the story, well . . . it appears that one of Byron’s little pals at Harrow, who was also his lover, was a murderer. Never before known.”

Tomasina spoke enthusiastically, talking herself through how she would promote it.
So we would treat this as a scholarly event
and
a literary event. Make it an off-the-book-page story. . . .

Fawkes let her talk, grinning to himself. He walked to the kitchen holding the cordless phone, and while she prattled and pitched, he made himself a drink.

ANCIENT HISTORY FELT
like a straitjacket. Boudicca, berms, javelin warfare, and the literary style of Tacitus . . . Sir Alan Vine sneered his way through a lesson, bathing the class in the acid of his nasal voice. Andrew sat at his desk in the Leaf Schools—so named because the small brick building nestled into the arboreal northern slope of the Hill. He daydreamed and gazed at the trees. Their leaves seemed to have passed poisoned into fall, sickened by all the rain and gone a soggy, withery brown. He was anxiously waiting for the moment when Sir Alan would look at his watch and dismiss them. At last the bell rang. Andrew leapt. He had another Vine on his mind.

The hall filled with boys. Hats, jackets, chatter. Fifty teenage boys crammed into the small foyer, crosscurrents of classes arriving and leaving.

Fifty boys, fifty bluers—and one white shirt. Andrew’s heart pulsed. He forced his way through.

Oi.

In a hurry?

He reached her and grabbed her elbow.

“I’ve got something to tell you,” he hissed.

“Andrew.” Persephone’s voice rose, a warning. “Do you know Seb?”

Andrew saw the tall Sixth Former from rehearsal, the one with red hair. Up close he was even more handsome—square chin, athletic build, and the coolly affronted expression of someone who’s just had a cookie taken out of his hand. Rebecca-the-short-skirted-girl’s words came back to him.
She seems to know a lot of boys
.

Andrew frowned. “Hi.”

“The famous Andrew Taylor,” Seb drawled.

“Would you excuse us?” Andrew said.

“Of course. See you Thursday, Miss Persephone,” Seb said with a mocking bow, raising a hand to his hat. Persephone laughed. Her glorious eyes crinkled and shone. Seb shot a sharp look at Andrew.
I see her two times a week for English A-Levels
, the look said.
Don’t think I’m done here
. Andrew watched him stride off. He was fucking
jaunty
.

“New friend?” he said sarcastically.

“Seb is the cleverest boy in my class. We were discussing ‘The Pardoner’s Tale
.’
”

“He seemed sorry to go.”

“Are you my chaperone now?” she returned. “Let’s see. I have boys in my lessons for English. And . . . Art! And . . . Biology! My God! There are boys everywhere! Andrew, it’s not safe!”

He fumed. They walked side by side in silence for a few paces. Then he charged ahead. “It was important,” he snapped. “But never mind.”

Andrew
, she called behind him.

HE LAY ON
his bed. Staring at the wallpaper.

In the back of his mind, a stampede of snorting buffalo trampled a landscape, ripped up turf and kicked stones. They thundered in a brutal, endless charge.

In the front of his mind, he was aware of the silent room.

I fucking hate this place
.

Andrew heard footsteps approach. He prepared a cutting remark to Roddy. Something especially heartless. But after his usual, perfunctory knock-and-enter, Roddy spoke in a different tone. “Oi man, stand up, you have a girl visiting.”

“Thank you, Roddy, you’re a gentleman,” a female voice stated. Roddy blushed and withdrew, savoring the compliment. Andrew remained splayed on the bed.

“Should I leave?” Persephone said when the door had closed.

“Are you even allowed to be here?”

“Ironically, so few girls visit Harrovians in their rooms, there are no rules against it.”

Andrew grunted. “That’s about the only thing.”

“Lucky for me. And you.”

The air grew charged, as if lightning were about to strike. Persephone glowed: her white shirt, her curls, the erectness of her posture; pert, mysterious, feminine, fragrant. She dignified the cruddy little space. A part of Andrew cringed over his rotten behavior. Yet he felt compelled to keep up his angry sulk. He’d come this far.

To his surprise, Persephone sat on the bed next to him.

“You left me there,” she said.

“I found out something important,” he moped. “The ghost. It’s real. Even Fawkes believes it now. He thinks it’s Byron’s boyfriend from Harrow.”

“Fawkes?” She was surprised. “He thinks that?”

“Yes, Fawkes. You still don’t believe me, do you?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “He thinks it’s Byron’s boyfriend? That’s odd. I thought Byron . . .”

“He went both ways. For a while, anyway.” Andrew picked up the battered manila folder. “Poems about the boyfriend.”

She took the folder and thumbed through it. “This whole obsession of yours is weird,” she declared.

Andrew lay back, wounded.

“Does that door lock?” she asked suddenly.

“No,” he grumbled. “None of them . . .”

Her lips were on his. He resisted for a microsecond, then opened his lips in response. Their tongues touched. Andrew abandoned his pose and sat up.

“I thought I was
weird
.”

“A little,” she said. “Maybe a lot.” She laughed.

“What about
Seb
?” Andrew asked bitterly.

She frowned. “Don’t spoil it.” Then she offered: “If you were normal, I wouldn’t like you.”

She kissed him again. Her hands—white, small, freckled—were twisting around her shirt, popping two, three, four buttons. Andrew’s heart stopped. Then she reached inside and twisted the clasps of the pale beige bra, and her breasts suddenly appeared in the faded daylight of his room—pale and freckled and larger, more nippley than he could have dreamed of—proffered like a kind of sacrifice; as if to say,
If you don’t believe I like you, here is the only token of sincerity I can offer
. If Andrew had stopped to think, he might have found this offering a little sad—why would stripping, surrendering herself, be her first and instinctive means of getting his attention? But he wasn’t thinking. When he gained his breath back, he crouched down and took her breasts in both hands, tenderly—they were cool to the touch—and his powers of observation ceased. He dove for them, groped them, licked them hungrily, a starving man offered a bowl of sweets, and she held his head there until he had had enough, and then she raised him,
Come here
, and Andrew pressed himself to her, kissing her, gnawing her neck, hoping desperately this would lead to more. She pulled away. Stood. Began to button back up. He watched her in agony.

“Why don’t you come to my house,” she said, her cats’ eyes glowing, her hands working the bra and buttons. “The next exeat weekend.”

“Your house . . .” He had trouble speaking. “Headland House?”

“My mum’s. In Hampstead. She’s in Athens. We’ll make a weekend of it.”

Andrew felt a jolt of adrenaline, an unexpected terror.
Of sex. Of the moment of truth
. “Okay.”

He tried to fight the memory descending on him. Of the humiliating (
exciting strange
) ritual in the basement with John Harness
now he could name him
who had stirred him. More than stirred. Delivered him up.

John Harness was Byron’s lover

Maybe this ghost thinks you’re Byron

He felt an unexpected gloom. And a terror that Persephone could read his thoughts.

“I like you, Andrew.”

“Okay.”

“Is that all you can say?”

“You’ve kind of left me speechless.”

She liked that. “Good.”

Then a look of insecurity shadowed her face. Perhaps she could read his mind.

“So you’ll come?” she said, standing there.

“Of course. Yes.”

She smiled again and departed with an actress’s outward dignity.

EVENING CLASS, THE
one that ended at 5:15, nearly dark, in this northern latitude: French. A kid from Druries was butchering some lines of dialogue when a boy knocked on the classroom door with a message—for Andrew. Oohs, aahs, and catcalls erupted.

His housemaster needed to see him urgently.

On the walk over, every kind of doomsday scenario played in Andrew’s mind. His father had run out of money. He was being withdrawn from Harrow. But as soon as Andrew entered the Lot foyer, it became clear that none of these melodramas was the one unfolding.

Fawkes paced the foyer, in black robes, whirling on Andrew as soon as he entered. Andrew immediately grew wary. Fawkes’s eyes were red-rimmed; he had a wobbling, slurry appearance, overlaid with an affected calm, a Mona Lisa smile, intended, no doubt, to give him an air of confidence, self-containment; but it only had the effect of making Fawkes seem like he were listening to some other conversation, the ongoing and ever-charming party in his bloodstream.

At Fawkes’s side stood two shuffling workmen, both bored (they had been kept waiting) and suspicious (the housemaster was loaded). Around these three men, several younger boys hovered, curious. Andrew could see why. The two workmen—in dusty, paint-stained jeans and sweatshirts—carried sledgehammers. The handles were three feet long with heads as big as iron bricks.

Fawkes waved Andrew to his side. “C’mere.” Over his shoulder, he called, “One moment, chaps.”

He took Andrew by the shoulder—a chummy, we’re-old-friends gesture, in keeping with his off-kilter management of the whole scene, almost as if he needed to prove how
in
with Andrew he was, to the laborers—and escorted him to a stairwell, where they could speak in private. The elder of the two workmen rolled his eyes. “Whenever you’re ready. Sir.”

“We have thirty minutes before the next lesson gets out and the house fills with boys,” Fawkes hissed near Andrew’s ear.

“Okay . . . ,” said Andrew uncertainly. “What’s going on? Why did you pull me out of class?”

“We can find the room!” Fawkes said with a crazed grin.

“Find . . .” Andrew was puzzled.

“That room,” Fawkes said impatiently. “The room . . . in the past . . . where John Harness took you. It could still be here. In the house. These places are mazes. If you can find it, find that actual room . . .” He gestured grandly. Andrew waited. Fawkes leaned forward and breathed gin on him.
“It would prove it.”

“Prove what?”

“Prove the ghost exists!”

Andrew squirmed. “I don’t need any more proof.”

“But you do. I do. All of these things—
The White Devil,
Lord Byron, John Harness—could be in your mind. Weird coincidences, certainly. But not proof. No one knows exactly what Harness looked like. There are no portraits. There’s no place to
check
.” Fawkes drew closer. “Think about what we’re trying to accomplish with the play. This is a one-in-a-million . . .
confluence
. A
discovery.
The ghost, returning? Trying to tell us something? It could be important. Very, very important.”

Andrew regarded Fawkes. “You mean it will make
you
feel very important.”

Fawkes drew back, stung. Was he being too obvious? He needed to lighten up. He was sounding desperate again.

“I admit. I want the play to be unique. I want it to be wonderful. I want it to be . . . published.” He gave a bitter laugh. “There’s nothing wrong with that. And
you
can help.”

The American’s tone was worldly and deflating: “I’m just an
actor
in your
play
.”

Fawkes’s eyes flashed. His diction might be slurry, but his mind snapped with alcoholic inspiration. He saw an angle and did not hesitate to take it. “We’re not just helping ourselves, Andrew. We’re helping
Theo
.”

Andrew glanced at his housemaster sharply.

“You said it yourself. How he died. It happened. It’s real. But no one will believe us,” Fawkes continued. He placed a confiding hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “Don’t we owe it to Theo—you and I—to find out for certain?”

ANDREW FELT LIKE
a bloodhound. A string of people followed his every move as he traipsed around the house, guided by some invisible scent. The first clue was finding the right staircase. He started in his bedroom, paced the length of the corridor, but then, seeing the new construction of the western staircase, doubled back, forcing his entourage to squeeze, grumbling, back through the tiny space. “We’re going on a guided tour of the Lot, Reg, aren’t we fortunate,” cracked the elder workman, Dick, to his mate. The handles of their sledgehammers bumped and nicked the walls. Eventually the group descended the eastern staircase together, with Fawkes watching Andrew’s every move with his bulgy eyes.

At the bottom, Andrew paused. He turned around slowly, once again forcing the dubious sledgehammer bearers to back away. That door, with the battered tin handle, would have been . . .

“Here,” he said.

“You’re sure?” Fawkes cried.

Of course I’m not sure
, he thought, snappishly. But he restrained himself. The workmen had already been making remarks.
They invented somefing called plumbing, Mr. Fawkes. No need for cisterns anymore.
“Yep,” he said aloud.

They came to a stop, crammed into the tiny crossroads of basement corridors, all seven of them. Andrew, Fawkes, the two workmen, and three boys who had trailed along to see what happened next: one, the messenger from French class, and two of his pals—all Shells.