Authors: David Mitchell
‘Yes, I’d say so too. But ask yourselves this. Is a secret a secret if it isn’t true?’
That was a tight knot of a question. Miss Lippetts wrote,
MISS LIPPETTS IS NANCY REAGAN.
Most of the girls laughed.
‘If I asked you to stay behind after class, waited till we were alone and then whispered, in all seriousness, this statement, would you go, “No! Really! Wow! What a secret!” Duncan?’
Duncan Priest had his hand up. ‘I’d phone Little Malvern Loonybin, miss. Book you a room with a nice mattress. On all the walls.’ Duncan Priest’s small fan club laughed. ‘That’s not a secret, miss! It’s just the gibberish of an utter nutter.’
‘A pithy
and
rhyming assessment, thank you. As Duncan says, so-called “secrets” that are palpably false cannot be considered secrets. If enough people
believed
I was Nancy Reagan, that might cause me problems, but we still couldn’t really think of it as a “secret”, could we? More of a mass delusion. Can anyone tell me what a mass delusion is? Alastair?’
‘I heard loads of Americans think Elvis Presley is still alive.’
‘Fine example. However, I’m now going to let you in on a secret about myself which
is
true. It’s a
touch
embarrassing, so please don’t spread it around at break-time…’
MISS LIPPETTS IS AN AXE-MURDERER.
Now half the boys laughed too.
‘
Shhh!
I buried my victims under the M50. So there’s no evidence. No suspicion. But is
this
secret still a secret? If it’s one that nobody, and I mean
nobody
, has the faintest suspicion about?’
An interested silence played itself out.
‘Yes…’ muttered a few kids as a few kids muttered, ‘No…’
‘
You
’d know, miss.’ Clive Pike raised his hand. ‘If you really were an axe-murderer. So you can’t say nobody knows it.’
‘Not if Miss was a schizo
phrenic
axe-murderer,’ Duncan Priest told him. ‘Who never remembers the crimes she commits. She might just…
turn
, like that, chop you to bits for forgetting your homework,
whack splurt splatter
, flush the remains down the sewers, black out, then wake up again as mild-mannered Miss Lippetts, English teacher, go, “Gosh, blood on my clothes again? How odd that this keeps happening whenever there’s a full moon. Oh well. Into the washing machine.” Then it
would
be a secret nobody knew, right?’
‘Delicious imagery, Duncan, thank you. But imagine
all
the murders to have
ever
occurred in the Severn Valley, since, say, Roman times. All those victims, all those murderers, dead and turned to dust. Can
those
violent acts, which no one, remember, has thought about for a thousand years, also be called “secrets”? Holly?’
‘Not secrets, miss,’ said Holly Deblin. ‘Just…lost information.’
‘Sure. So can we agree, a secret needs a human agency to
know
it, or at least write it down? A holder. A keeper. Emma Ramping! What are you whispering to Abigail?’
‘Miss?’
‘Stand up, please, Emma.’
Worried, lanky Emma Ramping stood up.
‘I’m conducting a lesson here. What are you telling Abigail?’
Emma Ramping hid behind a very sorry face.
‘Is it a piece of information that not everybody knows?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Speak up, Emma, so the groundlings can hear you!’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Aha. So you were confiding a secret to Abigail?’
Emma Ramping reluctantly nodded.
‘How topical. Well, why not share this secret with us? Now. In a nice loud voice.’
Emma Ramping began blushing, miserably.
‘I’ll do you a deal, Emma. I’ll let you off the hook if you just explain why you’re happy sharing your secret with Abigail, but not the rest of us.’
‘Because…I don’t want everyone to know, miss.’
‘Emma is telling us something about secrets, 3KM. Thank you, Emma, be seated and sin no more. How do you
kill
a secret?’
Leon Cutler stuck up his hand. ‘Tell people.’
‘Yes, Leon. But how many people? Emma told Abigail her secret, but that didn’t kill it, did it? How many people have to be in the know before the secret’s an ex-secret?’
‘Enough,’ Duncan Priest said, ‘to get you sent to the electric chair, miss. For being an axe-murderer, I mean.’
‘Who can reconstruct Duncan’s glorious wit into a general principle? How many people does it take to kill a secret? David?’
‘As many,’ David Ockeridge thought about it, ‘as it takes, miss.’
‘As it takes to do
what
? Avril?’
‘As it takes to change,’ Avril Bredon frowned, ‘whatever it
is
the secret’s about. Miss.’
‘Solid reasoning, 3KM. Maybe the future is in safe hands, after all. If Emma told us what she told Abigail,
that
secret would be dead. If my murders are exposed in the
Malvern Gazetteer
,
I’m
…well, dead, if Duncan’s on the jury, anyway. The scale is different, but the principle is the same. Now, my next question is the one that truly intrigues me because I’m not sure what the answer is. Which secrets
should
be made public? And which
shouldn’t
?’
That question had no quick takers.
For the fiftieth or hundredth time that day I thought of Ross Wilcox.
‘Who can tell me what this word means?’
ETHICS
Chalk mist falls in the wakes of words.
I’d looked ‘ethics’ up once. It crops up in the
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
books. It means morality. Mark Badbury already had his hand up.
‘Mark?’
‘The answer’s in what you just said, miss. Ethics is to do with what you should and shouldn’t do.’
‘Very smart answer, Mark. In Socrates’ Greece they would have considered you a fine rhetorician. Is it
ethical
to get
every
secret out in the open?’
Duncan Priest cleared his throat. ‘Seems pretty ethical to get
your
secret out in the open, miss. To stop innocent schoolkids being chopped up.’
‘Spot on, Duncan. But would you spill the beans on
this
one?’
BATMAN’S REAL NAME IS BRUCE WAYNE
Most of the boys in the class let out murmurs of admiration.
‘If
this
secret gets out, what is every master criminal in the world going to do? Christopher?’
‘Blow Bruce Wayne’s mansion to smithereens, miss.’ Christopher Twyford sighed. ‘No more Caped Crusader.’
‘Which would be a loss to society at large, yes? So sometimes it’s ethical
not
to reveal a secret. Nicholas?’
‘Like the Official Secrets Act.’ Nicholas Briar usually doesn’t say a word in class. ‘When the Falklands War was on.’
‘Just so, Nicholas. Loose lips sink ships. Now. Think about your
own
secrets.’ (The connection between Ross Wilcox’s wallet and his lost leg. My grandfather’s smashed-up Omega Seamaster. Madame Crommelynck.) ‘How quiet it has suddenly become. Right, are
all
your secrets of the “Yes, I Should Tell” or “No, I shouldn’t Tell” varieties? Or is there a third category that, ethically speaking, is
not
so clear cut? Personal secrets that don’t affect anyone else? Trivial ones? Complex ones, with uncertain consequences if you tell them?’
Mumbled
Yes
es, growing in strength.
Miss Lippetts got a fresh stick from a box of chalk. ‘You acquire more of these ambiguous secrets as you age, 3KM. Not less. Get used to them. Who can guess why I’m writing this word…’
REPUTATION
‘Jason?’
3KM turned into a radiotelescope aimed at the class grass.
‘Reputation is what gets damaged, miss, once a secret’s out. Your reputation as a teacher’d be shot to bits, if it’s proved you
are
an axe-murderer. Bruce Wayne’s reputation as this wouldn’t-say-boo-to-a-goose Mr Nobody’d be done for. It’s like Neal Brose, too, isn’t it?’ (If I can grind a solar-powered calculator to bits then stuff this rule that I should be ashamed for grassing on a kid and getting him expelled. In fact stuff all rules.) ‘
He
had quite a secret going, didn’t he? Wayne Nashend knew, Anthony Little knew. A few others.’ Gary Drake, over to my left, stared straight ahead. ‘But once his secret is out, his
reputation
as this…’
To everyone’s surprise, Miss Lippetts suggested, ‘Golden boy?’
‘Golden boy.
Excellent
term, Miss Lippetts.’ (For the first time in God knows how long I earnt some class laughs.) ‘That reputation’s wrecked. His
reputation
with kids as this…hard-knock you don’t mess with is wrecked too. Without a reputation to hide
his
secret behind, Neal Brose is…totally…completely…’
Say it
, nudged Unborn Twin,
I dare you to
.
‘…buggered, miss. Screwed and buggered.’
That appalled silence was
my
handiwork. Words made it. Just words.
Miss Lippetts
loves
her job, on good days.
My mind was scratching itself raw over how Mum and Dad’ll react to what I did today, so I got the Christmas tree out of its cupboard as a distraction. The Quality Street tin of decorations too. December 20th’s here and Mum and Dad’ve hardly
mentioned
Christmas. Mum’s at the gallery seven days a week and Dad keeps going off for interviews that only lead to more interviews. I put the tree together, and strung its fairy lights. When I was a kid Dad’d buy real trees from Gilbert Swinyard’s dad. Mum got this artificial one from Debenham’s in Worcester two years ago. I whinged that it didn’t smell of anything, but she pointed out
I
wasn’t the one who had to hoover and unpick the needles from the carpet. Which I s’pose’s fair enough. Most of the decorations are older than me. Even the tissue paper they’re wrapped in’s ancient. Frosted baubles Mum and Dad bought for their first (and last) Christmas alone together, without Julia or me. A tin choirboy hitting a high note, his mouth a perfect o. A wooden family of jolly snowmen. (Everything wasn’t made of plastic in those days.) The fattest Father Christmas in Lapland. Precious Angel, from Mum’s mum’s mum. Precious Angel’s made of blown glass – she was a gift to my great-grandmother from a one-eyed Hungarian prince, so the story goes, at a ball, in Vienna, just before the First World War.
Step on her
, said Unborn Twin.
She’d crunch like a Crunchie
.
No bloody way
, I told Unborn Twin.
The phone rang.
‘Hello?’
Clunks and grundlings. ‘Jace? Julia. Long time no speak.’
‘You sound like you’re in a blizzard.’
‘Call me back. I’m out of coins.’
I dialled the number. The line was better.
‘Cheers. No blizzards yet, but it’s
freezing
up here. Is Mum there?’
‘No. She’s still at the gallery.’
‘Oh…’
Joy Division throbbed in the background.
‘What is it?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘Absolutely nothing’ is always something. ‘
What
, Julia?’
‘Nah…nothing. When I got back to halls this morning, there was a message from Mum, that’s all. Did she phone me yesterday evening?’
‘Could’ve done. What was the message?’
‘Phone home immediately, it said. But our avuncular super-efficient porter – not – didn’t write the time of the call. I phoned the gallery at lunch-time, but Agnes told me Mum’s gone to her solicitor’s. Phoned
again
, but she hadn’t got back. So I thought I’d phone you. But there’s no need to worry.’
‘Solicitors?’
‘Just be business stuff. Is Dad in?’
‘He’s doing interviews in Oxford.’
‘Right. Good. Sure. He’s…y’know, keeping up okay?’
‘Oh…okay. He’s not locked himself in his office again, anyway. Last weekend he made a bonfire of Greenland files in the garden. Dean and me helped. Poured petrol on! It was like
The Towering Inferno
. Then this week Craig Salt’s lawyer told Dad a delivery man was coming that afternoon to collect all the computer gear, and that if Dad didn’t cooperate they’d sue.’
‘What did Dad do?’
‘When the van pulled up, Dad dropped the hard drive out of my bedroom window.’
‘But that’s the first floor.’
‘I know, and you should’ve heard the
monitor
smash! He told the delivery bloke, “Give Craig Salt my compliments!”’
‘
Jes
us! Worm turns, or what?’
‘He’s been decorating, too. Your bedroom was first on the hit list.’
‘Yeah, Mum said.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Well, no. It’s not like I wanted them to preserve it for ever like a shrine to Julia or anything. Brings it home to you sharpish, though. “Right, you’re eighteen years old, off you go. Drop by the care home in about thirty years, if you’re passing.” Oh, ignore me, Jace, I’m being morbid.’
‘You’re still coming home for Christmas, right?’
‘Day after tomorrow. Stian’s driving me down. His family own this mansion in darkest Dorset.’
‘Stan?’
‘No, St
i
an. He’s Norwegian, PhD in dolphin language? Didn’t I mention him in my last letter?’
Julia knows
exactly
what she ‘mentions’ in her letters.
‘
Wow
. So he speaks in dolphin with you?’
‘He programs computers that might, one day soon.’
‘What happened to Ewan?’
‘Ewan’s a
dear
, but he’s in Durham and I’m up here and…well, I knocked it on the head. In the long run, it’s for the best.’
‘Oh.’ But Ewan had a silver MG. ‘I liked Ewan.’
‘Cheer up. Stian’s got a Porsche.’
‘
God
, Julia. What sort? A GT?’