Wilberforce (24 page)

The problem was getting Rees alone. He was too old to be forcibly abducted and too hostile to come willingly. What's more, Morgan felt he had exhausted the Head-to-see ruse. He could explain to his friends only so many aberrations.

And now in the middle of the meal, S-K was descending from the masters' table and extinguishing conversation as he swept between the benches and came to a halt before REN's junior table. There he spoke to three boys, who turned red as though seized by fever. Then S-K returned to the masters' table, noise resumed, and the objects of S-K's address were devoured by the surrounding boys; Morgan half expected to find their bones after the meal, cleaned dry and spread across the benches. As the table fags cleared, Burton-Lee called for silence and announced new arrangements for the afternoon's steeplechases, none of which mattered to Morgan since Matron had confirmed that he was forbidden to run. He was to spend the afternoon in his study, she said, or he might if he wished take light exercise in the—

Some ideas shimmered, but others blasted through darkness like the Eddystone Light. Matron had ordered him to forgo the steeplechase. She had restricted him to the Academy while the rest of the school took to Abbot's Common. He was at liberty for almost two hours, free to track Rees to his bunker, be it study, dormitory, even changing room (
Alex!
). The Eddystone Light overflowed the gloom: he would uncover Rees this very day, and once he had him alone, he would roll up his sleeves and set the stockfish straight. Technique, and more technique. Rees thought he'd blackmail Spaulding? Morgan would sort the sprat out before the first runners hit Nut Wood, and then—then! There was a gully just beyond the last turn on the course, a gully he could achieve in some few minutes at a light jog—Eddystone, Holyhead, all paled beside this! If, after dismantling Rees, he could achieve the gully, and if Spaulding could achieve it with him, what a quarter of an hour they might spend! Spaulding would have to give his lieutenants the slip, but certainly Spaulding possessed the necessary cunning. Morgan had only to tell him of the plan. In a minute luncheon would end, and they would drift en masse to the final lesson of the day, after which they would repair to changing rooms for the run. What he had to do was to slip Spaulding a note, now before lessons resumed. He had to jumble against Spaulding as if by accident and in that one jarring moment, he had to tuck the note into Spaulding's pocket, slipping his fingers into the fabric of his—

A voice within him bellowed in despair. Morgan, filing out of the refectory with his friends, wondered just what demanded such vexation. The tide was turning, dangling before him a glorious opportunity to do for Spaulding what Spaulding could do not for himself in the life-giving radiance of Eddystone—the voice exhorted him to untangle his metaphor and reattach his brain. He proposed passing Spaulding a note? A
note
? Notes could be found. Notes could be read. Notes were off the agenda.

Morgan deflated as the crowd swept him into the washroom. There Laurie clambered onto the basins to address the mob about what he'd learned in the refectory:

—Someone has gone to S-K and confessed.

Shock and consternation from the assembly.

—S-K told three of REN's fags to come to him after lunch.

—Which ones?

Laurie reeled off two names but couldn't swear to the last.

—So the fags
were
behind it! someone cried.

—Do you think so? Laurie retorted.

Nathan glowered in the doorway. Morgan knew what he was thinking: Someone had confessed to S-K, but Alex had not been summoned?

—I'd hate to be the one who peached, someone else said.

The assembly murmured and began jointly to imagine an array of punishments inflicted by the Headmaster on the guilty, and by the guilty on their betrayers.

Had Alex sold his comrades? Morgan couldn't believe it. What would he gain?

The bell rang, and Morgan was propelled out of the washroom to French. He had not worked out how to tell Spaulding about the gully, but at least the fever that had gripped the school would shortly break. More confessions would ensue, tears, recriminations, punishments, perhaps even expulsions, but then S-K would stop holding grudges against the rest of them. Term would end in a few days, and they could depart for Easter cleansed. Come summer, everything could return to usual—as long as someone put Rees in his place and foiled his extravagant plot against Spaulding.

A knock at the classroom door once again disturbed their lesson. One of the fags from lunch entered, eyes bloodshot; he handed Hazlehurst a note and fled. Hazlehurst opened it with relish.

—Ah! It appears that our esteemed Headmaster wishes to speak with Wilberforce.

—Again? Laurie hissed.

A current coursed through the room. Nathan turned to him, astonished and betrayed.

This was the true summons, one direct from the Head's study given the messenger, one that could testify only to involvement, complicit or direct, in the abysmal matters that beset their world. This was the destruction he had been sensing, waiting to take him when he was weak and unsuspecting.

He floated out the classroom door and along the corridor towards the Headmaster's house. One of the fags must have seen him going out or coming in and had peached to curry favor with the Headmaster. He made a decision: whatever S-K knew or demanded, Morgan would not implicate Grieves. He had gone to Fridaythorpe and changed his mind. That was all. And he would not implicate Spaulding or Rees, since it was a damnable fact that he could not expose the latter without the former. The important thing was to hurry the interview along so S-K would release him (to what end he didn't care) before the lesson finished. Once dismissed, if only temporarily—O Eddystone Light!—he could position himself in the cloisters to collide with Spaulding after the lesson and deliver the note he would now have time to craft with perfect clarity and anonymity:
Fern Farm Gully, solo
. Surely Spaulding would catch the drift of that!

At the turn by the chapel, something seized him from behind, a hand over his mouth. He knew its scent, its texture. He surrendered to abduction.

Spaulding dragged him up the stairs as if hauling him off for a thrashing. Who knew salvation would arrive with such force? He'd always thought of good things as benign, almost anodyne, but now he understood that the really good things—things capable of remaking a life—tore into existence with power and might, with pain even, but rather than destroying, they turned their teeth against every cord that bound them. Spaulding wrenched his shoulder at the top of the stairs, and he understood that the best things would hurt, in the best possible way.

Bypassing the Hermes Balcony, Spaulding dragged him to the light at the end of the corridor. There he produced a piece of paper and held it, trembling.

It was starting, it had already begun, the life more thrilling than any he'd imagined, a life full of goodness no shadow could ever take. Morgan took the paper and unfolded it.

A wild script scrawled in pencil. Its author could no longer endure. Its author was not made of the stuff of giants. Its author had a heart that bled when stabbed. If Spaulding had been able to remove himself even briefly from his great, great height to condescend to the poorest of the poor, the author's life would have taken a different course. The author had reached his limit, and the time had come, the time had long come—Spaulding handed Morgan a second sheet, where the missive continued—long, long, longtime come for the author to Go into Night. Death would not be proud but would have Pity, he hoped, upon him, upon his soul, and upon the soul of Spaulding. The author hoped that Spaulding would find peace once the author had gone from his realm, no longer a cankerous sore on his gleaming future and dazzling present. The author wanted Spaulding to know, whatever life might bring in distant years, that he, the author—a third sheet—had loved Spaulding, truly and rightly and in the best manner known to man. His sentiment would not waver. It would continue into always. That was the last word of his earthly testament. Spaulding must not think of trying to stop him. He would have accomplished his dark work long before Spaulding read this, and Spaulding must on no account distress himself. Spaulding must only remember that he had been loved once perfectly. Spurred, Love departed this world for a better one. He would see Spaulding on the other side.

Morgan's chest seared. He burst out laughing.

—This is priceless!

Spaulding tensed as though he'd been punched:

—It isn't funny.

A wave of shame, which had the inconvenient effect of making him laugh more.

—I know.

—Then stop laughing!

Morgan rallied rational thought: Spaulding had abducted him from lessons to show him Rees's maudlin suicide note. To be brutally honest, they would all be better off without Rees. The world would be one soul deprived, and who knew what Rees might contribute to society once he'd grown out of the worst of his appalling tediousness, but really. If Rees succeeded in killing himself (a mighty
if
in Morgan's opinion), the school would be shocked, Spaulding would feel awful, even Morgan would feel awful. There would be a tremendous furor, which would drain attention from the wretched Fags' Rebellion, to Alex's everlasting fury. Ha! Two tasks accomplished at once: an end to the suppurating splinter that was Rees, and the terrific, unanswerable thwarting of Alex!

Such thoughts were awful, of course, simply inhuman. He couldn't quite abandon them, but at least he knew they were wrong.

Spaulding was still shaking as he took back the pages.

—I've got to try and stop him, Spaulding said. I was with him just before lunch. He can't have got far.

He was with Rees just before…? Rational thought.
Rational thought.

—You say he threatened to hang himself?

Spaulding dug in another pocket and produced a stub of rope a couple of inches long.

—Don't tell me that was with the note?

Spaulding nodded, looking greener by the moment. Morgan groaned in exasperation. Despite his colossal ineptness, Rees had managed to create a crisis. He'd thrown Spaulding—
Spaulding
—into a panic. He'd even raised dread in Morgan. Rees—damn him!—had made himself the center of their attention, he'd made them rush after him, he'd made Spaulding care.

—Where's he going to do it?

Spaulding appeared to be struggling not to retch. His eyes watered.

—Not McKay's barn! Morgan protested.

Spaulding nodded.

—Bloody Christ!

Spaulding looked shocked, at Morgan's anger or his blasphemy, he couldn't tell.

—I was thinking, Spaulding quavered, if I could get away during the run …

—Don't be daft. If he's going to do it, he's doing it now. How long does it take to get to the barn?

Spaulding thought Rees couldn't get there in less than an hour.

—He'll be there any minute now, Morgan said. Reckon quarter of an hour to sort out his rope work, at least the same again to think about it. We might just make it.

Morgan couldn't remember Spaulding looking so baffled, or so childlike. Morgan took him by the wrist as if he were an actual child and without explanation led him down to Morgan's House, where they barged through the green baize door and into his Housemaster's study.

—He doesn't keep it locked? Spaulding asked, astonished.

Morgan released that wrist—so warm, so wide—and preceded him out the French windows, across the garden and the playing fields, and up to the ruined walls of the lodge.

—Wait, Spaulding said. Explain.

—You can have an explanation, or you can get there before Rees tops himself.

—But the barn's in the other—

—Raise your right hand, Morgan commanded.

Spaulding was too surprised to argue.

—Repeat after me.

Morgan pronounced the vow the Keeper of the poacher's tunnel was bound to impose on all who accompanied him through it. Spaulding repeated it.

—Right, Morgan said hauling up the paving stone, mind your head.

He dove into the tunnel, wriggled through damp and mildew, and surfaced, not into a flea-ridden trench but into the bosom of Grindalythe Woods. Spaulding emerged muddy, detritus in his hair.

They ran up the path. Morgan's school shoes slipped in the mud, and he fell hard on his hip, but Spaulding was there, pulling him to his feet. Changing their shoes would have involved detours to two changing rooms. As it was, their shoes would be wrecked, but at least term finished soon.

Morgan had no idea how they would explain their absence, but whatever Rees had in mind, they would stop him. There would probably be an interlude of argument, but eventually the three of them would trek back to the Academy. Morgan wanted urgently not to have to take Rees back through the poacher's tunnel. Even if Rees could keep his mouth shut about it (a bigger
if
than his ability to hang himself—and how exactly had the horrible Rees found himself an actual length of rope and learned to tie it?), even if the suicide manqué kept mum about the tunnel, a bond would thenceforth exist between them, and Morgan wanted no bond with Rees. Of course, by the time they reached the barn and talked Rees down from his perch, the steeplechase would have begun, so there would be no rush to return and they could take the road. If they got back before the end of the run, they would only have to answer to their Games Captains. A brief, painful encounter, and the matter would be closed. No Housemasters, no S-K, no histrionics of any sort. Morgan would rather not have a JCR thrashing if he could avoid it, but in this case, he would probably not be able to avoid it.

At least he would be taking it for Spaulding. Spaulding would get worse since Burton's JCR were savage, but Morgan would suffer alongside Spaulding, not literally alongside, but Morgan would suffer
for
Spaulding. Spaulding would know it, and Spaulding would remember.