The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) (6 page)

“Oh,
honestly!” hissed Barrington.  I saw him briefly as he moved across the room
past the gap in the door behind which we hid.  “Do not pretend that you have a
special relationship with the Vodun.”

Boateng
replied angrily.  “You know just as well as I do that this whole aspect of the
religion was invented by your British Empire as a way of stamping it down and
replacing it with Christianity, tainting the beliefs of your slaves with
accusations of witchery and Satanism.  That fact that it is now so popular with
our new masters does not make it any more valid than it ever was.”

“Yes,
yes,
yes
!” interrupted Barrington impatiently, “I do
know
these arguments.” 

“Even
so, ignoring these cultural arguments, what you have proposed to do is, as you
well know,
medically
incredibly dangerous.  Many of the boys could die. 
Or worse
.”

My
heart jumped and Freddie looked at me with an expression of confusion and
terror.  What could it be that Barrington was proposing to do?  Was Doctor
Boateng referring to the boys who had already disappeared or was he talking
about all of us?  And how could Barrington be plotting something that was
worse
than death?  What could that even be?  You hear rumours of gruesome tortures
performed by the Gestapo on Resistance activists...

Freddie
and I started to edge backwards towards the base of the staircase, trying to
contain the panicked instinct to run.  Being caught by Barrington now, well, I
just didn’t know what it might mean.  But what I was certain of was that being
caught stumbling into the Headmaster’s flat would be a very welcome
alternative.

“Well,”
replied Barrington, with a malevolent calm, “Miss Prenderghast and Head Matron
are already under the spell.  The time is coming, and it is a risk I am
prepared to take.”

“It
is not
your
risk to take!” Boateng shouted furiously.

Freddie
and I were now halfway up the staircase and we could see a very thin sliver of
light up above.  Probably emanating from underneath the door to Wilbraham’s
flat.  It was becoming harder to hear the discussion continuing below and I did
not know whether some of the words they were using were unfamiliar or whether I
was just mishearing what they were saying:

“
Please
listen to me for a moment,” said Barrington, his voice quietened in an effort
to impose some reason upon the discussion.  “Have you seen this text before?”

Boateng
paused.  In spite of being quite far away by now, I could still hear Boateng
breathing heavily, clearly still angered by Barrington’s determination.  “What
is it?” he asked, forcing himself to speak evenly.

“I
was given it by the
Witchdoctor
in Accra.”

Freddie
stared at me wide-eyed with disbelief.

“After
she...”

“Yes. 
After she was taken.  He told me to prepare myself for the
Bokor
.  Look,
it is all written down here.  Most of this admittedly is nonsense, but this
portion here sets out the prescriptions, the timings and the methods of
administration.”

There
were a couple of minutes when they spoke too quietly for us to hear them. 
Freddie and I did not dare to move a muscle.  We were still well within earshot
of Barrington and Boateng.

“So
the potion is to be prepared before....  But how do you propose to administer
this to the boys?”

“I’m
planning to gas them!”

Freddie’s
eyes widened even further.  At that moment, I leant too heavily on the banister
and it let out a faint creak.

Barrington
and Boateng fell silent.  I could then hear one of them stepping quickly
towards the door just below us.  I still had my hand on the banister, and loosening
my grip just slightly let out another treacherous creak.

“Who’s
there?” shouted Barrington.

Without
hesitating, we scrambled up the stairs as fast as we could, heedless of the
amount of noise we were making.  This was a new kind of fear, one I had never
felt before.  I hadn’t realised before that every time I had previously thought
I was afraid, I was, in fact, not.  Even when we were down in the Dungeon and
Barrington had shone the torch straight at me, my fear still had the element of
playfulness and mischief that my current fear was lacking.  Now I was afraid
for my life and for whatever fate had befallen the others. 

We
burst through the door at the top of the stairs.

six

“Where
are we?”

“Not
sure,” panted Freddie.  “But it’s definitely not the Beak’s flat!”

We
had emerged into a large, empty bathroom that smelt of wet gym socks.  There
were three baths in a row down the middle of the room, and a series of five
sinks along the wall to our right.  The dripping taps looked as if they hadn’t
been used for centuries and there were rusty streaks running down the porcelain
below them which, in the reddened light, made the taps look like sixteen
bleeding noses. 

Behind
the sinks was a very large window with its shutters drawn halfway across,
restricting what little daylight remained.  The window sill was overlaid with a
crust of dead and half-dead flies, some still fizzling on their backs, buzzing
frenzied death-spasms.

As
we closed the door hurriedly behind us, it seemed to vanish into the wood
panelling around it.  There was no handle on this side, so there was no way of
returning to the Hidden Library from this direction.

We
could hear the voices of Seniors coming from behind the only other door out of
the room, on our left opposite the window.

“Quick!”
I said.  “Up here.”

I
clambered upon one of the sinks and onto the window sill with flies crunching
under my feet.  The shutters were so stiff that they would barely budge and I
edged around behind one of them so that I was hidden in its fold.  Freddie squeezed
behind the shutter opposite mine.

A
few seconds later we heard a door open and footsteps march through the bathroom
and out of the other door, which was left open.

“Vanderpump,”
said Barrington abruptly.  There was a pause.  “Which... which dormitory is
this?”

“Er,
well it’s Wolfhall, Sir.”

“Of
course, yes.”  There were a few more moments of silence.

“Is...
everything okay, Sir?”  Vanderpump enquired hesitantly in his grovelling tone.

“Yes,
yes, quite alright thank you, Vanderpump.”  He cleared his throat.  “I don’t
suppose anyone has passed through here have they?”

“Well
no
, Sir,” he answered unable to suppress how odd he thought the question
was.  “But where would they, I mean, where did
you
come from?”

I
could hear Barrington turning and coming back into the bathroom.  He stopped,
obviously looking around.  I held my breath.

“How
long have you three been here?” he called to Vanderpump.

“Not
long, Sir.  Probably no more than five minutes.  We just got back from the
Swimming Pool to get changed, you see Sir, and...”

“Yes,
yes, Vanderpump.  Do pipe down for Heaven’s sake.  What about you two?  Either
of you seen anyone come through here?  No?  Well then, Doctor Boateng, I think
you and I should check on the Junior dormitories.  I’ll have to pop upstairs to
get my torch.”

We
heard Barrington and Boateng stalking off.  We were already running a couple of
minutes late for Third Form curfew.  Thankfully Pontevecchio was the duty
prefect and would not mind if we were only a few minutes late.  Our immediate
problem though was that we would need to clean our teeth and be in bed by the
time Barrington and Boateng came prowling, but we were stuck here until
Vanderpump and whoever else there was next-door had left.

“God,
that man’s a total lunatic!” Vanderpump snorted.  “I mean, what on Earth was he
doing in there?”  He wandered into the bathroom, his voice starting to echo
hauntingly around us.  “It’s disgusting in here!”

“This
bathroom gives me the heebie-jeebies,” came another, deeper voice.

“Me
too,” said a third, very similar.  “I can hear footsteps in here at night.”

There
was a pause.

“Anyway,
we’d better get downstairs, chaps,” said Vanderpump.  “Hey listen, how about a
dorm raid tonight?  One o’clock, soon as we’re back from Night Ops?”

“Sounds
great,” replied one of his companions enthusiastically.

“Yeah,”
said the other.  “Which dorm?”

I
had a pretty strong hunch which dorm Vanderpump would want to raid tonight.  A
dorm raid involved a number of senior boys armed to the teeth with pillows,
creeping into a junior dorm after lights-out.  They would generally begin by
upending (or “lamp-posting”) as many of the beds as they could.  Half-asleep,
unarmed boys would tumble out into an eiderdown apocalypse as they and their
dorm-mates would be pulverised with pillows until the whole room was snowing
feathers.

Usually
dorm raids were conducted in good humour by the Seniors as an end-of-term
dare.  But occasionally, if a Senior had a score to settle, things could get a little
nasty.  During the Michaelmas Term, for example, one of the boys in West Ante,
Tarquin Chorley, was hit so hard about the back of the head with a pillow that
he cracked his forehead on the corner of the mantelpiece and had to go to hospital
to have eight stitches.  

“I’m
thinking...Portico,” said Vanderpump, pretending to select a dormitory at
random. 

“Wizard
idea!” enthused one of the others.  “It’s out of the way, so we’re a lot less
likely to be caught.”

Inevitably
I had been right.  Portico was Freddie’s and my dorm and Vanderpump was clearly
planning his revenge.  Freddie looked at me, wincing.  But strangely I didn’t
feel at all nervous.  I mean, it wasn’t as if I’d never taken a beating before
and at least this time I could be well prepared.  Also, I was far too shaken by
what we had heard downstairs to be worried by a dorm raid.

Gas. 
Barrington had said he was going to gas some of the boys.  There had been
strange rumours about people being gassed to death in the Eastern Reich, but we
had been told not to believe them.  There had been other rumours that
scientific experiments were being conducted on the physically handicapped and
other Asoziale to make them think differently.  I wondered with dread whether
Barrington had been told to carry out this kind of experiment on some of the
boys at Talltrees.

“Keep
it under your hats, chaps,” said Vanderpump.  “We certainly don’t want them
finding out before we arrive, eh?”

“Not
a word,” stated one of the others, as the three of them left the dorm.  “I had
this idea about putting something hard into my pillow, like a book or a rock or
something...”

We
waited for a few moments after we could no longer hear them, just to ensure
that they were gone.  We then emerged from behind the shutters.

Creeping
through Wolfhall, I asked Freddie who the other two with Vanderpump might have
been.

“The
twins,” he replied ominously.

That
was bad news.  The twins were Angus and Amos Bearbaiter, the two prop forwards
for the Talltrees 1
^st
XV.  They were enormous, hulking behemoths
with buzz-cuts and body-hair.  Apparently they had both started shaving when
they were nine years old.  They were also renowned school-wide for being
mind-numbingly stupid.  I heard that one of them (it didn’t matter which because
they were both the same) had managed to score just one per cent. in his
Geometry exam last term and he only got that because he had managed to spell
his name correctly at the top of the page.  What an idiot!

We
crept down the corridor, making sure that Vanderpump and the twins were a good
distance in front of us before they headed down the Spiral Staircase.  Then we
ran as fast as we could to the Junior Bathroom, quickly cleaned our teeth and
hurried to our dorm.

“Where
the deuce have you two been?” asked Pontevecchio.  He had his hands on his hips
and was raising his voice in an effort to sound as if he was annoyed with us. 
But it was a feeble act.  Pontevecchio was one of those people who were just
far too relaxed to get annoyed with anyone.

“Terribly
sorry, Ponty,” replied Freddie.  “We were in the Library and lost track of
time.”  One of our dorm-mates snorted.  “Has Barrington been around?”

“Not
yet, luckily for you.  Righto, chaps,” he announced, “lights out.”

He
flicked the switch on his way out.

***

Portico
was the smallest dormitory in the school.  It had just seven beds.  But without
Milo, who was taken to the Sick Bay the previous night, we were down to six: 

Freddie,
as dorm head, had his bed to the left of the door as you entered.  How on Earth
Freddie had ever been made dorm head was a mystery to all of us and had become
something of a joke in Form Three.  We could only suppose that it had something
to do with the fact that he was very good at getting people to do what he
wanted.  But the fact that what he wanted people to do was often against the
school rules was obviously not a factor that the teachers had taken into
account when they decided that he was head-of-dorm material; 

Next
to him was Yannick Anderson.  He was the tallest boy in our year by a long
stretch and was brilliant at sport.  He usually kept quite quiet, but
occasionally told stories after lights-out that were so terrifying that they
almost rivalled Freddie’s;

Next
to his bed was Milo’s, whose bed-sheets looked sadly deflated;

The
next bed around was that of Algie Foxtrap.  He was a small, quiet and obedient
type with asthma, thick glasses and, more often than not, a matron’s note
excusing him from PE.  I think that in most schools, Algie was the sort of boy
who would suffer from merciless bullying.  But for some reason, whenever
someone tried to pick on him, we all rallied.  It wasn’t as if he was especially
generous or friendly really.  In fact he was so protective of his stationery
that he would never lend anyone a pencil sharpener.  But I think perhaps we
each recognised in him some of our own weaknesses, the ones we tried to keep
hidden from view, and so we defended him;

After
Algie was Reginald Pickering.  He was a strapping lad with a swarthy walk like
he had just jumped off a horse and was strutting through the swinging doors of
a saloon in the Wild West.  He spoke with a slight, at times almost
tongue-in-cheek, cockney accent which of course immediately melted into BBC
pronunciation as soon as he was speaking to a teacher.  He had an incredible
memory for bawdy jokes and could down a bottle of milk in under three seconds;

Next
around from Reggie was Peregrine Trout, who had broken the news of Milo’s
disappearance on the way to Showers that morning;

Finally,
as always last in alphabetical order, was me, the other side of the door from
Freddie.

“Right,
listen up you lot,” whispered Freddie.  “Turnpike and I have been doing some
serious
espionage
and we have found out that some of the guys from
Wolfhall are going to raid us at one tonight.”

“Brilliant!”
exclaimed Yannick. “I love pillow-fights.”

It
was easy enough for him to say; he wasn’t the intended victim of a thorough
beating.  In any event, Yannick was simply one of those boys whom Seniors would
never pick upon, not least, I imagine, because he was taller than a fair number
of them.

“I’ve
got an idea,” I said.  “We know they’re coming and we know when, right?  So
let’s be ready.  Let’s
ambush
them.”

“I
know!” said Reggie enthusiastically, “One of us should go and get a beaker of
water to balance on top of the door just before they get here, right?”

“Perfect,”
I said.  “Vanderpump’s bound to come in first.  Okay, so here’s the plan. 
Reggie, you go and get a beaker of water in a few minutes.  I’ll go on the
look-out and run back as soon as I can hear them coming.  Then we’ll prop the
door open with one of Milo’s slippers so that we can balance the beaker on
top.  Reggie and Yannick, you guys stand either side of the door ready with
your pillows when they get in.  The rest of us will be waiting to pounce from
Freddie’s bed.  Okay?”

“One
more thing,” said Freddie.  “Reinforcements.  If we could get three or four
boys from Marlborough to come round straight after the Seniors have got here,
we’ll have them surrounded.  This’ll be great!  Foxtrap?”

Behind
Algie’s bed there was a locked door to Marlborough dorm.  Marlborough was
another Third Form dorm, so we had allies on the other side.

It
was almost impossible to get Algie to speak after lights-out because he was so
afraid of getting slippered.  But I realised that I could convince him that it
may be the lesser of two evils.

“Listen,
Algie,” I said.  “It’s simple.  Let me come over there and speak to
Marlborough.  Then, when we get raided, all you have to do is knock on the door
to Marlborough three times to let them know when to come round.  Okay?  The
alternative is that we
all
get a walloping and have our beds
lamp-posted?”

That
ought to convince him.  Algie was fastidiously tidy.  The last time he got
lamp-posted, he burst into tears and cried for his mother.

We
left a few moments for Algie to agree. 

“Okay
then,” he whispered meekly.