The Betrayals

by Bridget Collins

  ‘Yes. Well.’ He nods again, his chin sagging lower as though the weight has grown heavier. ‘I didn’t realise … Your name, you’re not a …?’

  He can’t even say de Courcy. ‘I changed it after – after he died. I went to live with my cousins in England. I wanted to make a clean break.’

  He makes a small sound that isn’t quite amusement. ‘And did you?’

  She doesn’t answer. For a second, in spite of everything, something flashes between them, some fleeting warmth. Understanding. He hasn’t made a clean break any more than she has. But swift on its heels comes the thought: he didn’t deserve one.

  ‘You look … I should have known. Even if I didn’t see it at first. When I saw you that night, without your glasses, in the dark, I nearly realised … But I didn’t trust – after he died I saw him everywh—’ He stops. His jaw tightens, as though he blames her for his having said too much. ‘That is, I can see the resemblance,’ he says, more smoothly. ‘When I arrived here … Forgive me, I should have guessed.’

  ‘Not at all. He died ten years ago. More. We’ve all changed.’

  ‘We certainly have.’ Silence. Is he inviting her to sympathise? ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘After he died … I never …’

  She stares past him at a knot in the panelling beside the window, the age-smoothed wood at the level of her eyes.

  ‘I was his friend.’

  ‘Were you?’ she says, and her voice twangs like a cello string. ‘Were you, really?’

  And he blushes. She can’t remember the last time she saw a grown man blush. The flush runs right up to his hairline and seeps down below his collar. He stares at her, speechless. She’s glad she’s silenced him. But the chord of triumph that rings in her head has a lower, softer harmonic. It isn’t pity, but it’s an echo of it.

  ‘Did he ever talk to you about me?’ he asks. ‘Your brother?’

  She takes a moment, not to consider whether to tell the truth, but to be pleased that she can. She says, ‘Not once.’

  He reaches down, picks up his pen from the desk and examines it as if he’s never seen one before. He flicks the clip with his thumbnail until she expects it to break. ‘I see.’

  ‘You could have come to his funeral, if you cared so much.’

  He looks up. The flush deepens into blotches of crimson against red, like a rash. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I could have done.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ She has imagined, more than once, what it would have been like if he’d been there. How at least then she wouldn’t have been the only person under the age of thirty. How he might have looked at her and seen her, made her feel more real, or less guilty, or – she doesn’t know. It might have meant catastrophe, or redemption, or both. It would have been different, anyway: and nothing could have made it worse.

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she says, ‘you were invited to the Midsummer Game. As a Gold Medallist. You couldn’t miss that.’

  ‘I didn’t go to that.’ He picks at his cuff as though there’s a thread loose, although there isn’t. ‘I went home. I couldn’t face it. Look, it doesn’t matter, does it? He was dead.’

  She nods. She recognises the pain in his voice. She wants to berate him – to see if she can make him crack, admit what he did – but that treacherous note of pity is still ringing in her ears. Whatever he’s done, then and since … ‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘Why should it matter? He’s dead.’

  He meets her eyes. Her pity is reflected on his face, and for a strange dislocated moment it’s as if they recognise each other.

  She wrenches herself into the present. She looks away and he draws himself up, both of them shaking off whatever has just happened. ‘I’ll dig out some old exam papers for you, if you want,’ she says, determinedly brisk. ‘Stop you mouldering over old games. It’ll be more rewarding than trying to match the glory of your past attempts.’

  ‘No need to be sarcastic,’ he says, with a faint gleam of amusement.

  She gives him a narrow smile, but she doesn’t reply. She goes out into the corridor. But she doesn’t close the door behind her; and some unfamiliar demon makes her hum the main theme of the Danse Macabre, pushing against the sharp knot in her throat, barely loud enough for him to hear.

  13

  Three weeks to go till we hand it in

  Two o’clock in the morning. Woke up, then didn’t want to go back to sleep. A dream about a net that was also the grand jeu. Thread getting tied round my fingers. Not a net, a web. Ugh.

  It’s snowing outside. Lamplight from my window catching on the sweep of it. Another window further along, too. Could be Carfax’s. Not sure. Wide darkness, darks of sky and trees, white-in-dark of snow and slope. And against it all two patches of gold, mid-air, flickering as the flakes thicken. Uncanny. Nothing here is the same as in my dream and yet it is, whatever story my brain was telling me, it’s this. Not making any sense, am I? I’m afraid of what’s waiting at the heart, lurking spider, something that wants to suck my insides out. But worse than that, afraid of getting stuck. Afraid of the sticky filaments, afraid of a cocoon. Safety and death.

  What am I talking about? Shut up. Waste of paper. Rambling.

  So tired. Tired but not sleepy. Wasn’t like this last year, this is new. My appetite’s gone to pot, too, most of the time I’m not hungry and then late at night I’m famished. Tonight – last night – I came back to my room after working with Carfax until nearly midnight, and devoured all the chocolate Mim sent yesterday. Maybe that’s why I had a nightmare.

  Danse Macabre. Everything’s the Danse Macabre. I look at snow and see bone. Trees and skeletons. Beds and tombs. Saw Carfax asleep the other day, when I knocked and he didn’t answer. On his side, face half in his pillow, unguarded. Thought of Juliet. Asleep only she’s dead only she’s not. Worms as chambermaids. How sweet that is, like a kid’s story, like the footmen-rats in Cinderella. Sweet and disgusting. Chambermaids that burrow into you. Consumed by your underlings. Supper not where you eat but where you’re eaten. Stood there staring at him thinking all that, and then went back to the door and knocked again until he woke up. Strange feeling of not wanting to leave him at a disadvantage. Unfair to look when he can’t look back. (Death, I suppose, being the biggest disadvantage of all. But he wasn’t. Luckily.)

  His tune. Found myself picking it out on the piano the other day when I was trying to practise a prelude. Death waltzing with the lovely young girl. It’s suggestive. Does he mean it to be? Later I wanted to ask but I couldn’t. Your little melody, Carfax – it gives me a metaphorical hard-on, and I wondered whether you meant it to? No? Oh well, it’s probably only me. Perverse, as usual.

  Glad no one can see inside my head. Especially glad Carfax can’t.

  At least I hope he can’t. Argh, what if he can?

  He’s so inscrutable. No, not inscrutable. Most of the time I know how he’s feeling, or at least I can guess. But underneath it all, there’s that constant unknowability. Keeping everyone at a distance. Superiority. Looking down at us, refusing to be on the same level. Always holding something back. It’s why it feels like such a triumph when I make him laugh or swear at me. Breaking through. Showing him he’s human, after all. His lamp’s still burning. Wonder what he’s doing now? With any luck he’ll turn up in the library tomorrow with something clever. Oddly pleasant to know he’s there, awake.

  Watching the lamplight glimmer gold on the falling snow. My shadow, flickering in mid-air.

  His light’s gone out.

  Maybe it wasn’t even his. Could’ve been Jacob, or Felix, or Dupont. Don’t know why I care. It’s Montverre, getting under my skin. This blasted place. There are times when you feel more alone here than if you were the last person left on earth.

  Two weeks, two days

  Letter from Mim. Wish she’d stop. Wish I could send a telegram home: TOO BUSY TO REPLY STOP SEE YOU AT NEW YEAR … She’s worried about Dad and his heart. A good thing I don’t have time to answer or I’d be say
ing, ‘Dad’s heart? What heart?’

  Business is thriving, though. Apparently the stock market crash, all the people losing their jobs, all the suicides, depression, austerity (etc., etc.) are a Good Thing for the scrap business. Who’d’ve thought?

  I’m glad I’m out of all that.

  Two weeks

  Nearly got thrown out of Historiae. I got into an argument with Jacob which turned into an argument with the Magister. They were basically saying that civilisation was buggered up, that technology and weaponry and industrialisation mean we’re all doomed. Normally I wouldn’t care – or at least I wouldn’t rise to it – but for some reason I got angrier and angrier. How dare they sit there smugly discussing the imminent destruction of society? Looking gently rueful about the economy and the people starving in the streets. And the grand jeu, too – accepting that the Golden Age is over and that there’s nothing we can do. Such apathy. Everything around us can go down the drain, but we’ll stay here in our ivory tower, riding the last melancholic wave of truth and beauty before the end of the world. Looking down on real people. Who do they think they are?

  I think I might have said that. That’s why the Magister told me to be quiet or leave the room. It made everyone stare at him, and then at me. No one’s ever been chucked out of a lesson before – not in our class, anyway. I was choking on my words already so I shut my mouth and sat down. But the arrogance of it! And no one else seemed to notice or care. I didn’t dare look at Carfax; somehow, if he hadn’t understood, that would have been worse than anything.

  Later

  Wrote that at lunchtime, when I was still raging. Now it’s nearly dinner time. Feeling calmer, but a bit … strange. We had Factorum this afternoon. I was still fizzing when I went in, but I got out my sketchbook and pencil and sat down to draw my still life, as per usual. Two bottles and a glass. I could draw them in my sleep. The Magister used to hover over my shoulder and say things like, ‘How about drawing something else, today?’ and ‘Or perhaps a change of medium …?’ but he finally gave up a couple of weeks ago. It’s not quite as good as a nap, but at least it’s undemanding. (Everyone uses Factorum as a way to stop thinking, I’m not the only one.)

  So I was sitting there, trying to draw, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why – maybe because I was still seething from the Historiae lesson, or because the others were sneaking looks at me as if I might explode at any moment. I flipped through my sketchbook: dozens of bottles and glasses. All more or less similar. All more or less competent. Not even bad. And I thought: I’ve never even looked at the stupid bottles. I draw them how I think they should look. I draw my mental image of them. Pictures of pictures.

  I got to my feet, left my sketchbook where it was and wandered away, winding through the tables and benches. It’s the only thing I like about Factorum, the long classroom with all the cupboards and tools and models, crazy paper-and-wire frames hanging from the ceiling … Everything’s a bit dusty, shadowy, a kind of cave where you can find a corner to be unobserved. There’re bits everywhere, rooms off to the side with printing stones and pottery wheels and carpentry tools, but I’ve never seen anyone use them. At the beginning of last year the Magister tried to encourage us to experiment, but somehow we all knew that the done thing was to sit in a circle around a still life and pretend to take it seriously. Even the people who disappear off to do their own work – Carfax and Paul and Freddie – don’t ever actually make anything, as far as I can see. There’s so much equipment, so many mouldering projects (paintings, papier-mâché sculptures, collages, faces in plaster-of-Paris) that it can’t always have been like this. There must have been scholars who entered into the spirit of it. But not us.

  I found myself at the far end of the building, in a bitterly cold storeroom. The snow had drifted up against the window so it was hard to see anything clearly, but there were piles of planks and boards against one wall, and a dried-up palette resting on a backless chair. I started opening cupboards at random. I found some old tubes of oil paint. They were stiff but still soft. I got one of the bits of wood and squeezed a blob of red paint on to it. First I was only seeing if the colour had stayed fresh, but then I began to spread it out – with anything I could find, an old bit of rag, the end of a stiffened brush, my hands … And then I added other tints, different shades of orange and crimson and burgundy, seeing if I could make the red redder. I covered the whole panel with it. I must have looked like a kid, kneeling on the floor, smearing the colour right to the edges. Later I found flecks of dried scarlet in my hair.

  I lost track of time. It was only when I heard the bell that I came back to reality. I was covered in paint and dust. The panel was a mess of hot colours. Study of an Executioner’s Block. Here and there the grain of the wood still showed through, but in other places the colour was as thick and shiny as blood. I’d left handprints in it, the shapes where it had oozed between my fingers. It was paint and wood, flesh and oil and pigment. It was real. It was the exact opposite of a grand jeu.

  I’m making it sound like something mystical. It wasn’t. It was childish, like scrawling on a wall. Wanting to leave my mark. Change something. But the thought of it makes me happy. It’s stupid. Right now, sitting here, the memory makes my heart lift. I made it. Me. Something honest.

  When I got up, I thought I heard someone in the room beyond, hurrying away. It was probably nothing. But I couldn’t shake off the conviction that someone had been watching me.

  One week, five days to go

  I am so tired. At prep school they used to play a game where you had to let someone stroke the inside of your forearm a thousand times. I know, it sounds indecent. But after a while it was unbearable. Felt like your skin was coming off. Too much of anything drives you crazy. I’ve spent so long in the library with Carfax – or in his room, or mine, or in empty classrooms, wherever, doesn’t matter – that it’s taken off a layer of skin. Everything he does gets to me. Last night we were talking through the last movement of the Danse Macabre, arguing about whether the transition out of the melody works. I think it’s limp, that that sort of fading-to-nothing is cowardly and predictable. He thinks it’s the only option, that going out with a bang is vulgar. Frankly I’d rather a bit of melodrama than be bored. But anyway, so we were debating it (with some heat) when I stood up to show him what I meant. As if I was performing it. And the bastard started to smirk.

  I asked him what he was laughing at, and he leant back in his chair and said, ‘What’s your instrument? It’s the piano, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must play it like a typewriter.’

  I glared at him. Thank goodness our music practicals are one to one with the Magister, or he’d be parodying my touch as well as my grand jeu style. But he didn’t apologise; he didn’t even blink. He said, ‘Do that bit again.’

  ‘What?’

  He drew a little spiral in the air. ‘That last bit you did. Show me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please.’

  I clenched my jaw. I was tempted to walk out, but I realised I was being childish. And he had a sort of considering look on his face, like he was paying attention to the point I was trying to make. I said, ‘All right. Look – if it stays the way it is, it’s like a sort of dying marionette—’

  ‘It’s a Danse Macabre. Dying marionettes are entirely appropriate.’

  ‘No, I mean …’ I repeated the gesture. ‘See? It makes me look like a—’

  ‘That’s because of the way you’re doing it. It’s got to be smooth. Easy. Not like you’re trying to swat a mosquito.’

  ‘Look—’

  ‘Let me.’ He stood up. ‘You’ve got to imagine resistance. Like everyone’s attention is on you, and it’s thick, like cream. Relish it. Even if it’s only me, watching you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me how to—’

  ‘It’s all wrong. Your arms. The rest of you, too, actually. You’re more than your brain, Martin.’ He looked me up and down and chuckled. ‘Listen – do that
gesture again – only this time …’ He reached out and put his palm against my wrist. ‘Feel the weight of it.’

  I didn’t move. His hand was hot, bony, like – oh I don’t know what it was like, it was just his hand. A hand, that’s all. But I’d never been so conscious that my skin was the only thing separating me from the universe. I wasn’t thinking about the grand jeu.

  I said, ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Don’t go dead, I want to show you—’

  ‘Get off!’ I jerked away. He staggered – maybe I was a bit violent – and suddenly his face was slack and shocked. ‘Who do you think you are, Carfax? You’re not the fucking Magister Ludi yet.’

  ‘I only …’ He stopped. We stared at each other.

  ‘When I want tips on my technique, I’ll ask. Till then, keep your sweaty hands off me.’ I don’t know why I was so angry. His wide eyes, his sleeves rucked up, the sound of his breath. His telling me what to do. My wanting to let him.

  He started to say something else and bit his lip. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, after a pause. ‘There must be a more inventive way to end it.’

  I went back to the desk. Our notes had stopped making sense. I wanted to reflect his tone back to him, but I couldn’t. For once I didn’t want to think about the grand jeu, or any other kind of game.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘The bloody thing’s nearly finished. It doesn’t have to be perfect.’

  ‘Léo,’ he said, and stopped.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, and went.