Wilberforce (20 page)

—Thank you, sir.

John felt the remark as reproach. Rees was looking as if he saw into John's errant lobe. Rees set his jaw as if to say,
You think you can take me for granted as everyone else does. You think you can orchestrate clever games and cast me in the role of despised and that I will not notice. But I do notice. If you cut me, do I not bleed? I expect their scorn, but yours, sir?

Rees looked away, and John realized that the form had, in his reverie, begun chanting rhymes about the fifth of November, demanding a penny for the Guy and suggesting Rees's immolation.

John had done this. He had introduced into his classroom a game whose object was to put Rees on the spot and see what he did. He hadn't chosen Guy Fawkes or apostasy, but as with all wicked deeds, fate had intervened to help it along. What would S-K do if he found out—not only that John had been playing games in lessons on such a day, but that—Lord, help him—he had permitted a mob mentality to gather momentum and make mockery of the Gunpowder Plot, mockery that turned even now to riotous celebration of the morning's bonfire in the …
What had he been thinking?

—That will do!

John raised his voice. His heart raced.

—I've no idea, he projected carefully, what on
earth
you imagine you are about. Sit down.

His scathing tone worked. They shut up and sat. He turned to someone he could reliably bully:

—Lydon!

—Sir?

—Perhaps you can recall for us what the Headmaster said very clearly at lunch about his expectations for your conduct this afternoon?

Lydon shuffled and looked at the floor.

—Well?

Lydon summarized S-K's threat.

—In that case, whatever possessed the lot of you to behave as you just have? Most especially when I had gone out of my way to offer a lesson that diverged from the ordinary, knowing the weight under which you have all labored today?

They did not answer him. John's voice developed a lofty, offended tone as he made it clear that taking advantage of his generous nature was the type of thing he would have expected only from selfish wretches, or beasts. What's more, he was quite beside himself to discover that they would make light of the repugnant vandalism that had been perpetrated only hours before. The Fifth mumbled but appeared too depleted to do more under rebuke.

—You may well mutter now, John persisted allowing his reproof full range, but it's all a bit late, isn't it? How do you imagine it felt for Rees, having gamely played his role, forced to sit there listening to the lot of you carrying vindictively on?

Morgan Wilberforce raised his hand:

—Please, sir. We were wrong, but it was only in fun.

John would not, he told them, dignify such an excuse by bothering to tear it to shreds as it deserved. In fact, he would waste no further words upon them. For the remaining minutes of the lesson they could begin their prep—

—But, sir, we've already got prep in Latin and Chemistry!

Their prep, which would be an essay of no less than two hundred fifty words outlining precisely what evidence existed to support or to refute the notion that Guy Fawkes could have renounced his faith. Due tomorrow, no exceptions.

The form looked daggers at him, but he did not care. He told Rees as gently as possible to return to his seat. Maddeningly, Rees seemed bent upon maintaining his role and moved with a steely arrogance that made John want to strike him quite firmly across the face. How they would, any of them, finish this execrable day without finishing one another off, he had no idea.

*   *   *

The aspirin had worn off. Lunch had worn off. Yet another lesson remained in the day, the one at which Nathan and Laurie would expect a full report on Alex. But what he was at liberty to say about Alex would fill one side of a postcard, and the person he had been while interrogating Alex had—he realized—expired.

Now he was a person Spaulding considered worth notice. Earlier in the balcony he had not realized the fundamental conversion under way, and when Spaulding had said he did not feel sorry for him, Morgan had flushed with disappointment. But if Spaulding did not feel sorry for him, why had he unbuttoned his clothing? He could only have done it by express intent, a free and full will. Spaulding wanted Morgan not out of pity but out of desire for what Morgan was. He wanted him for himself, because of himself. Spaulding reached for him—Spaulding who was everything and had everything. If Spaulding could desire him, who knew what kind of person he might secretly be, or become?

They arrived at French, where Hazlehurst began to interview them in various tenses on various topics. Soon he would instruct them to interview one another, and Morgan would have to deliver his account to Nathan and Laurie. He had no desire to revisit a single moment of the Tower, and he had every desire to revisit the Hermes Balcony, its blueness, the ghost of incense, and the ticklish, utterly—

—What on earth's the story with Alex? Nathan demanded.

Morgan reported the bare facts from the Tower, not facts about the bare, of course, but facts stripped of unnecessary detail, not that he ought to be thinking about stripping while speaking sotto voce with his friends—he had to concentrate with every muscle or he would—Hazlehurst drifted near, forcing them into the conditional tense. If they traveled to Monte Carlo, Laurie would hire a motorcar and traverse the Alps. Nathan would relax himself by the seaside, encounter some young ladies, and dine at a restaurant. Morgan would make the games, play at cards, and win many francs to construct his castle in Alsace-Lorraine.

Quickly he finished his report: Covenant, bromide, wax, gunpowder, revolution. Nathan looked ill. Hazlehurst passed by again. Laurie would perhaps mount a sailboat and travel with some friends to Italy, where they would speak Italian. Morgan would promenade the countryside, discover a daughter at a farm, and buy her milk. Nathan would kill animals.

These two had no inkling of the revolution that had occurred within him! They spoke as if he were the same person they had always known, a person concerned with explosions, locks, the residents of the Tower. Laurie claimed to know the bandaged fag, at least by name:

—Carter. He did that sonnet about snow, in the poetry competition last term.

Morgan and Nathan regarded him, dumbfounded.

—Little weed can hurl a couplet like a lethal weapon.

Morgan couldn't spare an inch of his mind for poetry, for bandaged fags, for Alex, or for the things that excited his friends. He needed aspirin. He needed food. He needed to see Spaulding, meet his eye, and know—that Spaulding saw him, wanted him, and knew him, for his secret true self.

 

14

After a tea that scratched at their hunger, they repaired to the study for Prep.

—First business, Laurie announced, the fags.

Nathan excavated the last of their biscuits and some tinned pilchards that proved inedible once exposed to light and air. Laurie installed himself on the window seat and called for bright ideas. What were they three to do about Alex, about the Fags' Rebellion, and about the Headmaster's resolve to get to the bottom of it?

—What do you imagine there is to do? Morgan protested. They've got their wretched Covenant, and Alex can look after himself.

Laurie could not accept such logic. If this was Morgan's position, then he was blinded by exhaustion and lack of exercise. Morgan lay on the floor and stretched his shoulder while Nathan and Laurie examined the matter. They discussed stealing here, dashing there, conferring with this one and with that; they considered emergencies, contingencies, tendencies, every
cies
under the sun except the pertinent point—that it was not their concern. After much heated verbiage, it dawned on Morgan that the problem for Laurie was that the Fags' Rebellion actually wasn't his affair. He knew the truth of it, but he had not abetted the crime. He was not even under suspicion. The most sensational caper in Academy history had been pulled off without Laurence F. Lydon, victor of the Great Prank War (1923). As for Nathan, he seemed torn between a desire to shield his brother from harm and a desire to see him get the lambasting he deserved. Barring expulsion, Nathan hoped Alex would be made to suffer in a way he'd remember a very long time, or at least the remaining ten days of term.

They debated like a useless parliament. Morgan wondered if other studies were similarly wittering or were confining themselves to complaint and gossip, freed from the ambition of Doing Something.

—Alex should own up, Laurie argued, not only for our sakes, but for his own.

—S-K'll crucify him, Nathan said.

—He won't dispose him, Laurie replied. S-K never disposes anyone. Can't afford to.

—Still.

—Your brother won't be able to sit down for a week after S-K has finished with him, but he'll earn people's respect.

—The fags'll idolize him even more than they already do, Morgan broke in. How will that help?

With this, Nathan grasped what Morgan had known from the start:

—There'll be no living with him!

—It's a good reason to own up, Laurie reasoned. Think of it, hero and martyr.

He sighed wistfully. Morgan got up from the floor. The debate had got out of hand. If he didn't haul Laurie down to earth, they'd careen into even more trouble than the day had already brought. He pulled up a chair and prepared to kill Laurie's illusions:

—The trouble with you is you're jealous.

—Jealous?

—That you never did anything half as good.

—I did the skull! Laurie protested. I even had you two going.

—If you start on that, Nathan said, I'll swear I'll break your nose.

Morgan recaptured Laurie's attention:

—Face it, Lydon, the only reason you're exercised is you wish you were in Alex's place. You'd love nothing more than to march into S-K's study and confess the whole thing.

—He could still do that, Nathan observed.

Laurie brightened.

—Don't encourage him!

—I could do it! Laurie declared. I could tell S-K everything, the lab, the wax, the gunpowder—

—And get yourself a public licking!

—It'd be worth it, though.

—No, Morgan said, it wouldn't! Have you completely lost your mind?

—No more than you have lately, Nathan muttered.

Morgan kicked him and turned an icy gaze on Laurie:

—I've had quite enough bollixing from S-K today. I don't need you confessing to the worst crime in the history of the Cad.

—It is the worst, isn't it?

Laurie was growing more envious by the moment.

—Look, Morgan exhorted him, just think this through! You confess to S-K. He whacks you from here to Christmas, in front of the whole school.

—Maybe you'd get the birch! Nathan added.

Morgan kicked him again.

—Then you're the one who can't sit down for a week,
and
all three of us will be under suspicion, so we won't be able to go anywhere or do anything!

Laurie's face had acquired a dreamy expression:

—And once it blew over—

—Don't—be—moronic! The Third will know you didn't do it. Alex will know you didn't do it. They'll tell everyone, and you'll be left looking like … like …

The association that sprang to mind was too prurient to voice in front of Nathan.

—Like someone who thought quicker than they did, Laurie said.

Morgan resorted to kicking Laurie:

—You'll look like Frank bloody Fane.

Laurie blushed.

—Who? Nathan asked.

—The point, Morgan continued, is everyone will know you're a fake. They'll think you're deranged or pathetic, and they'll think the same of us.

—You'll be a pariah, Nathan concluded, at last catching on.

—And so will we!

Laurie sat down slowly, as crestfallen as a child informed that Christmas was canceled.

—Right, Nathan said firmly. You're not going to S-K. At least not to confess.

—None of us are going to S-K for bloody anything! Morgan cried. Because—it is absolutely—nothing—to—do—with—us!

—Shh, Nathan scolded. You'll have yon bunglers in here.

—If it's nothing to do with us, Laurie retorted, then why did you have JP thump your face open and tear down our photo bracket?

Nathan and Laurie were glaring at him, united again. They had no right to cross-question him; the point was—a combativeness seized him. They were both mentally defective, he told them, and so were S-K and his entire apparatus. Any sane person could in five minutes concoct a way to sort out Alex and the fags. Why not publically ignore the whole thing? Deny the Third their hour of persecution. More important, he continued, deny them the chance to invoke their ridiculous Covenant. Have the locks cleaned. Then, after a brief interval, oppress the Lower School in ways small enough to evade protest but persistent enough to chafe. Occupy their time with extra Games. Send them on long daily runs, ostensibly to build their fitness, but actually to drain their energy. Expand the list of fagging duties. Summon them for pastoral chats in Housemasters' studies on half holidays. Schedule extra confirmation lessons. Seat them together at meals under the supervision of prefects to reform their table manners. Do anything, in short, to keep them busy and exhausted but to avoid the impression of deliberate persecution. Keep the atmosphere benign, but take their leash and shorten it until they hadn't an inch.

And that was only one idea.

Laurie shook the crumbs from their biscuit tin into his mouth. Nathan slipped their flask from the bookshelf and took a pull.

—Do you think, Laurie asked Nathan, that our panjandrum will offer his insights to the Reverend Headmaster?

—Can't think how S-K's got on without him.

—If you ask me, Laurie continued, our resident percher will flit straight over prefect and join the SCR, next term.