Wilberforce (26 page)

—It's my fault, Wilberforce had said. I made him try to stop Rees.

—It was an accident.

—I should have let him go to S-K, but I wanted to be part of it.

—Wilberforce—

—I wanted Rees to die. I didn't want to kill him, but I thought it would be easier if he was dead.

—You didn't make it happen.

—I did try to help … I held him up while Spaulding—

John had been forced to disrupt the conversation by seizing Wilberforce's bad arm and dragging him, through dint of physical pain, away from the barn and back to the Academy.

Wilberforce babbled the entire way back, spilling every kind of confession. John hoped he wouldn't remember the things the boy had said. He hoped he could shortly forget the details of Wilberforce's assignations with Spaulding, of the utterly corrosive menace that was Pearl minor and his schemes, of the appalling literature Lydon had been importing to the Academy, and of the treatment Wilberforce had endured in his youth under “Silk” Bradley, a thoroughly poisonous creature if ever there had been one. John did not shock easily, but he had to work to conceal his shock now. The state of the Academy was acutely worse than any of them imagined. It was like the body of a soldier revealed, upon cutting away clothing, to be rotted through with gangrene. At any rate, it had all blown up now. There would be no putting anything back the way it had been, the way they had imagined it to be. He felt the irrational exhilaration he'd once known in the face of destruction, the same exhilaration that was surely now coursing through Wilberforce, prompting him to divulge transgressions of the worst sort.

John wished ardently that he had a study, a room, anything, where he could lock Wilberforce until his senses returned. He would have settled for passing the boy into the custody of his studymates, but in the chaos of the quad he had to abandon Wilberforce at the gates and go immediately with Fardley to recover the body from the barn.

John hoped he would be able to agree with himself, in the future, not to think of that day. He decided, rattling back to the Academy in Fardley's lorry, that he would indeed scour the paper for advertisements. He would box his things before the holidays, and once he had installed himself in Saffron Walden with Meg and Owain and his goddaughter, he would not leave that refuge until some other establishment had accepted his services. Perhaps he could teach urchins. Perhaps the maiden aunts could be persuaded to furnish him a few hundred pounds to establish himself in some impoverished parish. At any rate, he would not return to the East Riding of Yorkshire after Easter; whether or not the Academy continued in its existence mattered not to him.

His presence was demanded at nearly every confabulation over the following forty-eight hours. Burton-Lee resented this, and John did not begrudge him the ill feeling. Rees was sent away the first evening. In his distress, he confessed everything to his Housemaster, and Burton arranged his removal before the Headmaster could involve himself.

S-K, deprived of the chance to unleash fear, grief, and fury upon Rees, vented them instead upon Morgan Wilberforce. John tried to insert himself as a kind of counsel for the defense, but the Headmaster only turned his wrath upon John, repeating to him in florid, Old Testament rhetoric a sampling of Wilberforce's unfiltered confessions. Pearl minor was summoned and interrogated, but he denied all charges as the ravings of a distraught witness.

Wilberforce would be made an example, S-K announced to the SCR, Wilberforce, without whom no tragedy would have come to pass! Even Burton-Lee in his impaired state protested. Wilberforce was certainly compromised, Burton conceded, but his chief crime, besides an unprecedented lack of common sense, was inserting himself into business that wasn't his own. S-K changed his mind at least eight times on the day following the accident, informing poor Wilberforce each time of his newest fate. He would be flogged publically! (S-K had Fardley dig up some ancient birching block and arrange it prominently in the chapel.) He would be expelled in the night! He would be flogged every day that remained in the term but permitted to stay! He would be flogged daily and then disposed! Finally Wilberforce's father arrived from the London night train. John did not catch sight of the man, but he learned that Wilberforce had been taken away. Disposed or not, reports varied.

On the afternoon of Wilberforce's departure, S-K fell into a fever and was consigned by Matron to his bed. Only two more days remained to the term. They carried on with lessons because they had nothing else to do. Lockett-Egan accepted the post at Pocklington, and when John asked if they needed anyone else, the Eagle actually wrote his new employer to inquire, but returned the news that all posts had been filled. John was invited to send along his particulars in case something should open up.

He boxed his things—a motley collection of clothing, books, and mismatched crockery, fitting into three suitcases, his trunk, and a crate his landlady supplied—and arranged for them to be posted on to Saffron Walden. He drafted the simplest of resignations, copied it in a fair hand, and placed it in his pocket, intending to give it to S-K's housekeeper as he left for the station with his bicycle and rucksack.

The final morning of term he arrived at the gates with the last of his worldly possessions only to discover an atmosphere of renewed sensationalism. He made for the SCR, where the commotion was half outrage, half thrill. The
Daily Mail
had got hold of the story and plastered the Academy's woes across the bottom of its front page.
Public School Boy Dead. Tragic accident or lovers' tryst gone awry?
A photograph of the interior of the barn (still standing, rafter fallen) accompanied the article, which aired every prurient rumor and unfortunately mentioned all the real details of the case, including the school's poor discipline, one boy's attempted suicide after having been spurned—John could not stomach a black-and-white recital of the sinking ship that was St. Stephen's Academy.

During breakfast, three gentlemen arrived at the gates, not fathers, but apparently representatives of the Board, which in all of John's time had maintained a policy of complete nonappearance. These men convened the Housemasters and, after nearly an hour's conference, emerged only to disappear again into the Headmaster's house. The boys departed for the holidays, leaving the halls empty and unnatural.

That afternoon John was cross-examined by the Board. They seemed almost as anxious to determine who had informed the press as they were to decide S-K's ability to carry on as Headmaster. John did not care. He could not care. He told them what he knew, left his resignation on the Headmaster's desk, and got into the cab he had called to transport him to York.

The car bumped along the Wetwang road, his bicycle wedged into the boot. Through Fridaythorpe they jumbled, past the rooms where he had spent the last years cloistered from the world, occupied, he'd thought, in something worthwhile. Behind them now the Cross Keys, where he had spent so many evenings poring over schoolboy compositions, observing their gradual improvement. Gone now the two evenings he spent with Morgan Wilberforce, who had confided, amidst the things John hoped to forget, that he wished ardently for John to be his Housemaster, that he wished to come to him of an evening and talk things over, that there were things, so many things, he longed to discuss.

The cab rattled away from St. Stephen's, John's home of six and a half years. He had left another school after six years and had never—would never return. His childhood and youth had passed away, along with both parents and the person he had been. The Bishop had passed away, if not literally then for all practical purposes. Jamie had passed away. Now Morgan Wilberforce was passing away. What the future held, John could not fathom beyond the dark road, the swaying cab, and the lights on the walls of York, glowing in the distance, a beacon in the meanwhile.

 

PART TWO

 

18

The trouble with life was that it would go on. Especially when it oughtn't. Ruthlessly it continued until, more ruthlessly, it ceased. There was no way as with a gramophone to lift the arm, remove the needle from the disc, and grant respite from the din.

Morgan tried to sleep, but his body had the uncooperative habit of awakening. It was indecent to wake in his father's house after evacuation from the Academy and find that the world had not ceased. Vehicles were braking outside the windows. Someone downstairs was baking bread. Throngs of people were at that moment going about their daily affairs with no notion, no notion at all, of what had occurred. Even his father had gone in to the firm, or so Morgan learned when hunger forced him from the bedroom. Betty informed him that his father would not return until teatime. She offered food but no further instructions for what he ought to do with himself.

The day carried on carrying on. Then, after the night, another day broke and persisted. His father, disturbed by what Morgan had witnessed yet exasperated by what he saw as Morgan's propensity to involve himself in other people's melodramas, looked into schools for him; none were satisfactory, for reasons Morgan never bothered to discover. His father contacted the man who had educated him in his own youth. The man, though ancient, had come to dinner, made Morgan's acquaintance, and apparently agreed to tutor Morgan pro tem. Easter came and went. Morgan refused to go to church, and his father, lacking the will he once possessed, did not insist. A perplexing series of letters arrived: from his Housemaster, announcing Morgan's expulsion from the Academy; from Burton-Lee, retracting the expulsion; from Nathan, enclosing a newspaper clipping about the disaster, which Morgan burned upon seeing the photograph; from Laurie, chattering frantically about inconsequential items; from his Housemaster again, informing them of Morgan's possible reinstatement; from his Housemaster, advising the probable lack of reinstatement; and finally from Burton-Lee, declaring officially that the Academy welcomed Morgan back should he be well enough to return at the end of the holidays.

Morgan's father looked to him for direction. Should he return to the Academy? Should he be educated at home by the decrepit tutor? Should he enroll at a frankly questionable crammer somewhere in Berkshire? Should he leave school directly and apprentice at the firm?

As protest against life's obscene continuance, Morgan essayed no opinion. His father denounced him as indolent, spoilt, and obstreperous. His sisters arrived in serial to berate and cajole him into taking some decision. He refused. And still the days relentlessly continued to break, meals continued to appear, baths continued to be drawn, and newspapers continued to arrive full of apparently essential matters. His father's physician spitefully declared Morgan's shoulder much improved and ordered him to remove the wrappings and follow a course of stretching and strengthening thrice daily. This tedious item from Harley Street also commanded him to take fresh air for a minimum of two hours each day, to attend at least five social gatherings in the fortnight remaining to the holidays, and on no account to shirk proper school.

Morgan loathed the man. What's more, this verdict had the outrageous effect of galvanizing his father, who summoned Morgan to his study, not the study Morgan associated with the man, but the alien chamber in the newfangled London house. As paterfamilias, he announced that he had taken a decision: Morgan would return to St. Stephen's Friday next. He would hear no more of the matter. Not only did he expect Morgan to follow his physician's advice to the letter—something he would confirm daily—but he also expected Morgan to pull himself together in short order, to apply himself to his studies, to play his cricket manfully, and forthwith to keep his nose disentangled from matters that did not concern him. That was the paternal word. He had had more than enough of Morgan's self-indulgence. He had put up with it out of consideration for Morgan's difficulties losing his mother and growing so very many inches so quickly, but he informed Morgan that his indulgence was at an end. He advised Morgan not to test him. It was time for Morgan to stand up and be who he was. That was all.

 

19

There was something humiliating about boarding the train for the journey north, back to the Academy, or what remained of it. Had he not four weeks previous resigned and cleared out his possessions to Saffron Walden? Had he not after a suitable period of recovery launched himself into the search for a new position? Was he so weak-willed that he could not execute one plan?

Before resigning, John recalled having seen
The Times
brimming with positions vacant. He had the impression that young, physically capable men were hotly sought. Vacant posts, however, proved less suitable than he'd anticipated. He had been unable to secure a reference from S-K not, he explained, because the Headmaster of St. Stephen's refused to endorse him, but because the gentleman was incapacitated by a health crisis. Lacking this document, only the shadiest of characters were inclined to entertain his application. John had visited two families to interview as tutor, and found them … off-putting? Vulgar?
Unsatisfactory
was the fairest term. One charity school in East London would have been happy to have him but was unable to offer a living wage, though it did offer dingy tenement accommodation (infested, to be accurate). John was prepared for discomfort, but his prospective pupils, when he examined them, were so dull, so incurious, so … foreign sounding, that he felt he'd wandered into a prison camp for Gypsies. They showed no interest in him or in any topic of history, literature, philosophy, or current affairs. He wondered if they'd been drugged. All this combined to dampen his missionary zeal and make him long for the relative stimulation of a third-rate public school.

But that was not why he had boarded the train north. That move had been a last resort, and the inevitable result of his failure to think things through. Having fled the dispiriting interview in Stepney, he arrived home not to the balm of sympathetic family, but to his former colleague Lockett-Egan perched on the drawing-room settee. He was being given tea by Meg, who failed to interrupt her duties to soothe John. Worse, Lockett-Egan had entirely charmed Meg and turned her to his scheme, which he proceeded to unfold. On the one hand, his unsurprising goal was to persuade John to return to the Academy; on the other, John professed himself bewildered since, he explained for Meg's benefit, the Eagle had himself left the Academy for a college superior in every way. But the Eagle, it transpired, had been persuaded to return to the Academy as a Housemaster—persuaded by members of the Board, by Burton-Lee, now Headmaster pro tem, and by Clement, who had offered to relinquish command of his House to Lockett-Egan. John's former colleague and friend put extensive pressure on him to come to the aid of the school, but John, though depressed by the disastrous visit to Stepney, had refused, citing a higher calling to educate the poor. The Eagle had left gravely disappointed.