A Passionate Man (31 page)

He had gathered all his money together from all his hidey-holes and hidden it under Blue Rabbit's skin, pushing the coins in through a split in his side seam. There was nearly six pounds. This seemed to him a significant amount and quite enough to get him to London by bus. He had considered the train, but it was very expensive, and there would probably be a difficulty at the ticket office over selling a ticket to someone who, though tall for his age, was definitely only a boy on his own. The national buses, on the other hand, with their red, white and blue livery, ran from Poole and Bournemouth to London for only a few pounds. Thomas had seen them, on his journeys to school, and the fares were painted on the back, in scarlet letters. Return, it said, four pounds fifty. Thomas only needed to go one way and in any case was only a child, so perhaps it would only cost him a pound. He had to get to Bournemouth, of course, but he thought he could do that, on local buses, one into Wimborne, another down to Bournemouth. If he did that at a carefully chosen time of day, when the buses were full of state-school children going home, he thought he could just mix in, not be noticed. And when he got to London – and this moment shone in his mind like a little, bright lantern – he would telephone Marina. And then, in some way which she would achieve, it would all be over.

‘Grown-up people,' Marina had said to Thomas without the faintest trace of condescension, ‘make the mistake of thinking that life for the very young is amusing. It isn't.'

For Thomas, that moment at his grandfather's wedding lunch had been a revelation. It was not simply that Marina had known and understood the great perils of Thomas's life, but that her understanding and her manner had abruptly inspired him with absolute trust. He knew she knew and that she would tell no-one. She had not laboured her point, she had gone on at once to mock the pretension of the hotel and, in so doing, had sealed her and Thomas's little secret nugget of sympathy. She had said her own childhood had been either exciting or alarming. Thomas felt that in his, the two sensations overlapped so often that he hardly knew which was which. The dreams of recent weeks appeared to him as the perfectly natural result of fear and thrill, and thus, even if dreaded, not to be wondered at. He would be able to describe them to Marina and she would not try to belittle them with disgusting baby comfort. ‘Don't worry,' people had said – Matron, Mr Barnes, even Archie. ‘Don't worry,' as if Thomas could be seduced out of his troubles with a kiss and a sweetie, like Imogen. Marina wouldn't do that. She would, instead, Thomas was sure of it, help him to attack the monster instead of pretending it wasn't there.

The certainty of this, of her ability to help him, made the business of getting to her relatively unalarming. The best moment for getting out of school was after afternoon games, with the showers and changing rooms full of confusion and yelling, and half the masters guzzling tea in the staff room. The hoard of money was prised out of Blue Rabbit and hidden at the back of his football-boot locker, ready to be transferred, at the last minute, to his shorts pocket, just before he initiated his plan. Then, he would embark on a deception to give him time to slip away while everyone else surged avidly in to tea. Thomas planned to complain of a painful foot, and be sent up to see Matron, and then do a quick U-turn in the locker-room corridor, skid out through the courtyard door and have a good half hour's start before anyone noticed he was not in prep.

‘I can't see anything,' said John Thorne, who had taken football that afternoon. He was holding Thomas's foot.

‘I know,' Thomas said. ‘It feels deep inside. Sort of squashed. I expect it happened when I fell over.'

‘Did you fall over?'

‘Yes,' Thomas said. ‘Trying to get the ball from Rigby. Ow,' he added, as John Thorne turned his foot.

‘But you weren't anywhere near Rigby.'

‘I meant Bennet,' Thomas said.

‘Stand up.' John Thorne said. ‘Now up on your toes.'

‘Ouch,' Thomas said. ‘Ow. That really hurts.'

‘You'd better see Matron.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Be quick.'

‘Mr Thorne—'

Thomas had planned this.

‘Yes.'

‘Would you keep a bun for me? In tea—'

‘All right,' John Thorne said. He thought Logan looked rotten. ‘It'll make you hurry.'

In seconds Thomas, his money clutched hard against his thigh, was through the courtyard and into the laurustinus hedge that bordered Pinemount's drive. He looked back fleetingly. Nobody. It was a great temptation to run easily on the drive, but he dared not risk it. He must stay inside the hedge, stumbling a bit, scaring himself with snapping twigs, until he reached the gate, and could dodge out into the lane and then behind the left-hand field hedge. It seemed to take a long time, blundering down the hedge, and so intent was he upon it that he did not for a while hear the even, running adult feet coming down the drive behind him.

‘Logan,' John Thorne called. ‘Logan, stop running.'

He stopped at once.

‘What is all this? Where are you going?'

Thomas began to shake terribly.

‘To my grandmother. In London—'

John Thorne, who was young and kind and clumsy, came off the drive into the hedge and put his hand on Thomas.

‘Sorry, Logan. No go. Sorry.'

Tears began to pour down Thomas's face. He put an arm up, across his eyes.

‘Please, please—'

‘I heard your money chinking,' John Thorne said, ‘when I told you to stand up. That's how I knew. Look. Don't be afraid. I'll come with you to Mr Barnes. Don't be afraid.'

Thomas looked up at him through a sliding screen of tears. Afraid? Why should he be afraid of Mr Barnes? Why did no-one ever see what the really frightening things were?

‘Sir,' Thomas said obediently.

John Thorne took his arm. He would have liked to put his own arm round Thomas's shoulders but was doubtful about walking back to school in such an embrace.

‘Come on, old boy. Come on. We'll get you sorted out.'

‘I don't want that,' Thomas said. ‘I don't want it. I just want to see my grandmother.'

‘We'll tell Mr Barnes that. Shall we?'

‘Yes,' Thomas said dully. He remembered suddenly, ‘Not my mother and father. Not them. My grandmother.' His voice was urgent. ‘It must be her!'

The sick-room door opened.

‘Thomas,' said George Barnes, who never called boys by their Christian names. ‘Thomas, here they are.'

He looked up. Matron had put him to bed, for some reason, but he wouldn't lie down, he simply sat there in his pyjamas and looked without seeing much at Rackenshaw's newest
Dungeons and Dragons
magazine, kindly lent as a restorative.

‘Darling,' Liza said.

Thomas saw she had been crying again.

George Barnes said, ‘I'll leave you together—'

The door closed with elaborate softness.

Archie came over and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Thomas. Thomas looked down at the dragons.

‘Can you tell us? Can you tell us why you tried to run away?'

‘Why didn't you ring? Why didn't you, darling? I'd have come and collected you at once, you know I would—'

‘You wouldn't,' Thomas said. ‘You didn't.'

Liza was fumbling for a handkerchief. Archie took out his and handed it to her.

‘We can take you home now,' Archie said. He longed to hold Thomas but every vibe of Thomas's held him off. ‘For ever, if you like.'

Desolation filled Thomas.

‘Not come back to Pinemount?'

‘Not if it gives you nightmares. Not if you need to be at home.'

Thomas said clearly, ‘I need Marina.'

Nobody said anything. Sensing a powerful advantage, Thomas said rudely, ‘I can't talk to you.'

‘Darling—'

‘I'm not a baby!' Thomas shouted. He was so angry with them. Why were they so blind and stupid and unable to see? How could they have all their horrible secrets and be all upset and not tell him the truth about why they were upset and then pretend they didn't know what they'd done? He turned round and lay down with his face in the pillow.

‘Come on,' Archie said gently. ‘Come on, darling. We are going home now.'

‘We needn't talk about it at all. We needn't talk about anything you don't want to.'

Fatigue was stealing upon Thomas, the opiating fatigue of emotion, too much fear. He sighed and stirred a little. Archie bent over him and lifted his long, thin, reluctant body out of the bedclothes.

‘Come on, old boy. Give us a bit of a hand—'

They took off his pyjamas and dressed him like a doll, vest and pants and socks and shirt and shorts – silent shorts; where was his money – and jersey?

‘Where is my money?'

‘Here,' Archie said. ‘Mr Barnes gave it to me.'

‘It's mine!'

‘Take it, then.'

Elaborately, maddeningly, Thomas counted his money and put it in his pocket. They might be able to lift him bodily out of bed, but they couldn't lift his mind out and dress it and take it tamely home. Liza wanted to hug him, so he let her, but it only made her cry again.

They went down the main staircase together, Archie and Liza holding Thomas as if he was an invalid. He resented this but could not summon up one ounce of physical resistance. Mr Barnes came up, and then Mrs Barnes appeared and so did Matron, and there was a lot of bustling about and officiousness and then he was put on to the back seat of the car where they made a nest for him with cushions and rugs. The car smelled familiar and Archie's black doctor's case was on the floor behind the front seat. Thomas lay down. Liza bent over him, tucking the rug round, murmuring. He heard them both get in and the click of the seat belts and then the engine started and made the car throb underneath him. He put his hand into his pocket and held the money. Then he slept.

They drove in silence. There was, if they spoke, only one subject and if they even dipped a toe in that ocean they would be at once sucked in and whirled about in cataracts and waterspouts. Liza knew Archie had telephoned Marina to say – she had to believe this – that they would never see each other alone again, but she also knew he had not wanted, in any way, to make such a call. He had been reluctant to elaborate the reasons for this to Liza – ‘Don't ask me, don't keep asking me for answers you then say you can't bear to hear' – but she knew what they were. He was not simply averse to looking at life ahead without Marina, he was also afraid to.

‘But you can't mean it! You must be exaggerating. How can you be that deep in, in two evenings?'

‘Don't ask me,' Archie said, meaning it literally.

‘But I must and you must tell me; you owe it to me to tell me—'

He had looked away from her.

‘If something comes to you as a revelation, a discovery, at the end of a long journey, it can happen in seconds, you can recognize it in an instant.'

‘Rubbish!' Liza had shouted angrily. ‘Absolute rubbish. What value has anything so selfish beside twelve years of marriage and three children?'

‘It is quite separate.'

It was the separateness that gave Liza such pain, a complicated, many-headed pain, because for so many months, separateness was exactly what she had craved and now it was the last thing she wanted. But had she – oh, these wearisome analyses, she thought, leaning her head back in the dark car – had she instinctively sought comfort from Blaise's admiration because Archie had withdrawn himself in some way that her subconscious self had recognized and reacted to? Was she in part responsible for Archie's turning to – no, headlong rushing at was more accurate – Marina, because she had been self-absorbed and had allowed herself to believe the enchantments Blaise had spun about her? Did Thomas's troubles all stem from his sensitive unhappy perceptions of tension between them . . .

‘Don't,' Archie said abruptly.

‘Don't what?'

‘Don't keep looking for something to blame. Or someone.'

‘There must be some kind of explanation, some reason. Life isn't so arbitrary—'

‘People are.'

Liza thought of Dan Hampole. Without the people who trudged along shoring up the status quo, he'd said, the whole contraption would fall apart at the centre.

She said cautiously, ‘Unhappy people?'

He sighed. He said, ‘Oh yes.'

She waited, staring fixedly at the red tail-lights of the car in front.

‘It's those who are unhappy who break the rules,' Archie said. His voice was very quiet and she had to lean sideways to hear him. ‘And it's those rule-breakers who test the rules to see if they still hold good, and who push out the boundaries. Without them there would be fewer new horizons.'

He waited for her to accuse him of making excuses, of trying to glamorize something hackneyed and squalid, but she didn't. She didn't say anything. They drove for a long way again in silence and on the back seat Thomas turned in his sleep and snuffled slightly. Poor Thomas. Poor troubled, muddled Thomas, already beginning to make the fatal human mistake of taking himself too seriously. When George Barnes had rung and described, in soothing, measured tones, Thomas's abortive attempt to run away, Archie had waited then, as well, for Liza to accuse him of involving the innocent in his seedy trails, of creating confusion and upheaval in blameless lives of order and regularity. But she had not done that then, either. She had been very frightened for Thomas, and about him, but she hadn't turned on Archie.