Wilberforce (8 page)

—What's through the hedgerow isn't half so interesting as who.

 

7

Tea was excellent. Aspirin was excellent. The prospect of Prep, excellent.
To be continued?
To be finished! If Grieves thought he could cow Morgan Wilberforce, then he had fallen into error. Nothing appealed to Morgan more than loading his memory with historical minutiae to fire at Grieves with marksman-like precision.

But Nathan and Laurie refused to be quiet. They'd been complaining since tea, and now Nathan was damning Grieves to a sulfurous hell and Laurie was wondering aloud which circle their history master deserved.

—The ninth, declared Nathan. He's a traitor.

They showed no sign of sitting down, and no sign of shutting up so Morgan could pursue mental warfare.

—He's bolshie, Laurie said, but isn't traitor a trifle harsh?

—Not at all. Threatening the Upper School with a comp a week before the hols—

—Ten days.

—is a crime itself—

It was hard enough to decipher his own handwriting. How would he cram three pages of historical—

—but to interfere with the Sedbergh match and with such a vile essay betrays every rule in the book.

If he weren't allowed to concentrate, the excellence might evaporate, allowing the return of—

—Grievous might, Nathan continued, have been forgiven his bolshie white-feather rubbish if he'd repented of it, but his behavior towards the Fifth unmasks him for the traitor he is, and for that he deserves the worst hell has to offer. Would you allow him purgatory?

—Certainly not, Laurie said, but surely he belongs in the fifth circle.

—With the wrathful! Nathan brightened.

—With the sullen. This composition of his is one enormous sulk.

—About what?

About the fact that no one in Yorkshire could finish a thought without—

—About the fact that no one takes an interest in his beastly subject.

—No one takes interest in any subject.

—Ah, but you see Grievesy can't bear it, Laurie said. He's Sincere.

—I don't care what you call it. Making us swot under pain of Sedbergh is no way—

A thunderous clap silenced them, like a bolt from Zeus hurled into their realm. Like destruction from afar landed sharply upon them.

They threw open the window. Shouts and footsteps echoed below. Laurie dashed into the corridor. Morgan and Nathan followed, abandoning mental warfare for the rush of material destruction.

*   *   *

The Third were behind the whole thing, someone said. They'd caused an explosion, Darke said; in the laboratory, Holland said. One of them was even now on his way to the Tower with burns, Larkspur said. The tale strained belief, but in the cloisters Burton-Lee's prefects had established a barrier. Smoke poured out of the laboratory windows, an acrid, sulfurous cloud that told of chemical mishaps. Masters and servants bustled about while the Lower School and Remove mustered in the center of the cloisters and the Upper School murmured on the fringes. Colin joined them under the refectory arch and delivered a preliminary report: Clem had been taking the Third for Prep when something had exploded in REN's laboratory. Clem had been too slow to prevent four boys rushing through the adjoining door, which was presumably how the one boy (Carter? Peel? Wentworth minor?) had managed to set himself on fire, at least such was the word on the perimeter of the cloisters. Morgan had seen no boy incinerated, though several looked as though they'd taken up with the chimney sweep.

Nathan scanned the cloisters for his brother, but Alex was nowhere in sight.

—What if he's the one who…?

Before Nathan could enlarge on the idea, S-K emerged and ordered the Upper School back to its studies, promising six from his own arm to any who dared disobey him. Their own Prefect of Hall professed no sympathy for Nathan's anxiety and rejected their pleas that Nathan be allowed to check for his brother in the Tower. If Pearl minor had been injured, Kilby argued, Matron would have her hands full. Furthermore, Kilby told them, they could expect a JCR whacking in addition to S-K's six if they did not go to their study and stay there.

—I don't give a damn! Nathan snapped.

Morgan and Laurie dragged him inside before he punched Kilby.

There were no good men left in England. Any other JCR in history would have managed the crisis better. Even Silk would have done something to find out about Alex.

Laurie tried to calm Nathan by inviting Holland and Darke to their study to play Black Maria. Morgan let Nathan shoot the moon, but as Nathan recovered his equilibrium, Morgan's began to falter.

Was this explosion what the shadow had been preparing all along, awaiting only a trigger—head bashed into desk, changing room trespassed, third PE borrowed from tomorrow? He had damaged his own person by smashing into Spaulding last week. Had he now through his excess released destruction into the Academy at large? An actual explosion had torn through the school, and Alex—

Let him not be burned, Hermes, friend, let him not
—

This was what happened when he let himself go. Finding Alex in the lab Sunday evening ought, after the gunpowder business, to have sounded every alarm. Had Morgan listened? Distracted by Spaulding and the XV, Morgan had dismissed Alex, the true threat to civilized existence. Alex had been taunting him that night, just as he had taunted Morgan in the form room this afternoon. Alex wanted sorting out, wanted Morgan to haul him back from his folly. He yearned for those times apart from the world, when they wrestled and Morgan won, and they both in their antagonism felt altogether alive.

Hermes, friend, let him
—

If Alex was not burned, Morgan would never overdo it with him again. If the explosion itself would fade away as a minor accident, then he would never again trespass in another House. He would erase Spaulding from every list in his mind. If the shadow would now depart, Morgan would pull himself together. He would reduce PE to once a day. He would even submit to a PE fast on Sundays.

They drifted up to the dorms, where Colin had harvested fresh intelligence: the Third were officially being blamed for the Bang and had been threatened by the JCR with mass whacking. Unless the guilty parties owned up, the entire form would appear in games kit outside their respective houserooms at seven o'clock the following morning.

—God knows they deserve it, Laurie said, but first thing's a bit stiff.

Last and finally, Colin summoned one of the fags to repeat his testimony, that Alex was in the Tower and had been there since tea.

—Alibi? Laurie asked.

—Malingering, Nathan said.

Morgan felt a surge of elation, like a pint drained in one go.

—Matron's keeping him overnight so she can observe, the fag reported.

—Observe what? snapped Nathan. His being an idiot?

—The bark on the head he got at Games, the fag said looking darkly at Morgan.

*   *   *

The next morning, Morgan saw signs that his bargain had succeeded. The JCR followed through on its threat, and the Third turned up to breakfast visibly subdued. No further word of burning reached them. Grieves had the spite to inflict his composition after all, but Laurie pointed out that the teeth would be in the marking. If Grieves depleted spectators for the Sedbergh match, the Headmaster would annihilate him; QED, Grievous was bluffing.

This was an optimistic hypothesis for an optimistic day. At Games, Morgan and Laurie watched from the sidelines as REN's XV made hash of their own, but this depressing outcome did not disrupt Morgan's sanity. He did not look for Spaulding. No one got injured. Disaster had been averted. The coast was clear, of high tides, low tides, hurricanes, and fog.

By the time Prep rolled around, he had to face the fact that the shadow had departed and that therefore he would have to keep his vows. He had already begun to forget Spaulding, Alex remained out of reach in the Tower, and the new PE regime would begin at bedtime (or possibly the following morning). In the meantime, he felt he ought to do everything possible to build up his equilibrium. He took Laurie's book of sonnets to the drying cupboard of their own changing room.
With a furious plunge, the dart of love shot true to its mark. The collision with her hymen was most destructive, and the virgin defenses gave way as, with an awful shriek of pain, she lost all consciousness. He completed the conquest and then lay soaking, trying to revive her sensibility by his lascivious throbbing inside of her, whilst we applied salts and restoratives to bring her round.

Calm did not descend, which might have distressed him were he not inhabiting an optimistic age, but he
was
occupying an optimistic age, and in the optimistic age a second quick release could be permitted for the purposes of equilibrium.
The rod is delicious if skillfully applied after the delights of coition.
Or perhaps after a short reverie …
You're up to your balls in trouble
 …

When he returned to the study with his usual excuse of the Tower, Laurie and Nathan fell upon him:

—What's the news? Who got burnt?

—How many were there?

They continued this inconvenient line of questioning until Morgan realized the awkwardness of his error. It might have been all right if he'd told the truth casually from the start, but now his omission had given PE a significance he'd never meant it to have. If he admitted it now, they'd think him thoroughly disordered, and Laurie might even get it into his head that Morgan had been in the changer with someone else.

—What did Alex say?

—Nothing. He …

—Quit diddling us around, Laurie said. Just tell the truth!

—What's the matter with you? Nathan demanded. You aren't yourself, and you haven't been for some time.

Morgan stood against the wall, breath caustic, as if gas had been released in their room and only he lacked a mask. Here were his friends, his only allies anywhere on earth, denouncing him as a liar and a stranger. What were the countermeasures against gas, again? Hadn't Grieves said one was supposed to stand still, that those who tried to run made it worse? Those who stood on the parapets of the trenches fared best, Grieves had told him. Until someone shot them.

—I don't think you're being fair, Morgan said.

—Don't you? Nathan retaliated. Well, we don't think it's fair when you pretend you're on our side and then go conspire with Alex in the Tower.

—What!

Nathan turned to Laurie in fury:

—Told you he'd never listen.

—Are we your friends or aren't we? Laurie demanded.

—Of course!

—Then how are we supposed to defend you if you act this way?

How had things got to this ludicrous point? They suspected him of deceiving them and conniving with Alex to blow up the school? Did gas cause hallucination? He thought he remembered Grieves saying it took days to die from poison gas, and meantime one lay suffocating and burned in a field hospital. Was that chlorine or mustard gas he meant? Didn't the Germans give one of them up as ineffective?

—He's too bloody arrogant, Nathan hissed. This is pointless!

This wasn't the way things were supposed to be. He had heeded the warning of the explosion. He had opened and closed negotiations with the shadow. Danger had departed. He had reformed. But now his friends—allies since their first day at the Academy—were turning on him, pinning him literally to the wall, and letting him know they saw his lies. The shadow had left the Academy, but here in the cloister of their study, a sinister war had broken out, a war his friends had conspired to wage when Morgan's back had been turned.

—Can't you trust us? Laurie implored. After all this time?

A perilous weakness seized him—the yearning to confess to them everything he carried.
If you can trust anyone, you can trust them
, the weakness whispered. And what surrender it would be to trust somebody, to have somebody equal to the truth, someone who would demand it of him, all of it, and on hearing it would not flinch.

—I'll tell you the truth if you're so determined to know it.

Laurie crossed his arms. Nathan glared. Morgan opened his mouth, but the weakness turned to alarm. What exactly could he confess, to them or anyone? What words could convey the menace of the shadow, the allure of Spaulding, the mess of Alex—and was that even the extent of it? How dare they torment him by pretending they wanted the truth! The
truth
? Even his father could not wrest it from him anymore. How dare they behave as if the truth were explicable. Or endurable.

—If you must know, his voice said loftily, I was in the chapel.

—Right.

—Why? Laurie countered.

—If you must know, it's my mater's birthday.

They boggled at him. Good. He had more ammunition and was not afraid to use it. Oh, they were clever. They conspired to trap him? To resurrect that desperate longing. How dare they? How
dare
—

—She would have been forty-eight, his voice continued.

Their faces reddened. Sods. They deserved this and worse.

—They always talked about going back to Venice for it. Now of course, they aren't.

Their silence confirmed they took the lie as truth. When was his mother's birthday, actually? It was in March, but when again?

—If you were in the chapel, Nathan said ruthlessly, why didn't you tell us in the first place?

A rifle against his ribs; it was the eleventh of March—that was the date he'd written on Grieves's composition this morning, and that was in fact his mother's birthday. He caught his breath. This was not, absolutely
not
the moment to—he'd only said it to make them ashamed, and actually, since it was that day, not only could he have been in the chapel, but as far as the two traitors before him knew, he had been!