‘About this place?’
‘Well – partly. The Chancellor is wondering how we can make the grand jeu pay its way.’ There’s a pause, a change in Emile’s voice. ‘We’ll see. It depends. If I can make some progress while I’m here …’ He smiles, a complicit, sly smile that seems to include Léo in the joke: but there’s no joke that Léo knows of, only this odd sudden silence. Abruptly he’s aware of the empty wine bottles and dripping candles, the grease on the stained tablecloth. The alcoholic bonhomie drains away, leaving a gritty tidemark around the inside of his skull.
He hears himself say, ‘What are you doing here, Emile? You’re early for the Midsummer Game.’
‘My goodness. I’m sensing that you’d rather I was somewhere else.’
He doesn’t answer. He watches Emile’s smile waver and reset.
‘Well, dear boy, I wanted to get a sense of the school in its natural state. Be a fly on the wall, as it were. Not that your letters haven’t been extremely useful.’
‘My letters? That was all … gossip and parish notices.’
‘Don’t be so modest. Some of them were very articulate. Tomorrow you must tell me more about the Magister Ludi. Did she really say that the Party were … I can’t remember the exact phrase. Parasites? Thugs?’
‘No.’
‘Oh. Then am I mistaken?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Emile! What does it matter? She’s only a teacher. It’s only a school. You don’t understand. You don’t belong here.’
‘And you do?’
He gets to his feet. The room rocks a little before it settles. ‘I’m going to bed. I’m drunk.’
‘Yes, you do seem to be.’ There’s a pause. Léo makes his way to the door, floating a little as if he’s walking through water. As he reaches for the handle, Emile shifts in his chair. ‘Just one thing, Léo,’ he says. ‘You are still to be relied upon, aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘I understand that this must have been hard for you. It must have seemed like exile. And of course you did put the Old Man’s nose out of joint, there’s no denying that. But now you’ve done your time, and if you play your cards right, it may not be entirely wasted.’
‘What?’
‘We might have something in mind … as long as you cooperate.’
Léo leans one shoulder against the wall and makes a sort of vertical rolling movement so that he’s facing back into the room. A candle collapses into darkness and the room seems smaller. ‘Oh, certainly,’ he says. ‘After a year of nothing but studying the grand jeu masters I’ll waltz back into government. If you expect me to believe that …’
Emile’s face puckers into a weary half-smile. ‘Humour me. I’d like to be sure that you’re still … one of us.’
‘Of course I am.’ The word catches in his throat. He doesn’t know if it’s true. He thinks of Claire, and her contempt for the Party. A second later he thinks of the food he’s been leaving for Charpentier, the lies he’s told for him. Poor Charpentier, who’s hardly crossed his mind, except as an irritation; and yet if someone found out Léo had been helping him … Sweat tingles on his palms and hairline.
Emile stares, his pudgy face blurring and slipping into two fleshy, shadowy masks. Léo blinks until his eyes focus again. At last Emile nods and leans back, scratching a scab of wax from the tablecloth. ‘Good,’ he says. ‘You haven’t changed, then. I’m glad to hear that.’
31: the Rat
There is something wrong. Her head is full of things that aren’t there. She raises her head to listen when there’s nothing to hear; she flinches, when all that lurks at the far end of a corridor is a shadow. Since that night – when was it? but a rat wouldn’t remember, wouldn’t try to count days – she hasn’t seen Simon again. Perhaps he has fallen victim to hunger or fever or an accident. But still she finds herself mouthing the two syllables of his name, trying out the shapes they make on her tongue. Si-mon. Si-mon. Every time it makes his face rise in her mind’s eye like a mirage, wavering. He is dangerous. He is a trap, a particular insidious human trap, and she should swerve aside. But she doesn’t. She wants to see him again, without understanding the wanting. She thinks of him in that room, and something blurs inside her. She thinks of his hunger and she is hungry too.
No rat would go looking for trouble. No rat would creep towards a box of poison, knowing that one lick would make her tongue start to fizz and her stomach dissolve. But somehow tonight – wrong wrong wrong – she has come back from the kitchens a different way. What is she doing here? She looks up. It’s only now that she can name here as the place under there. There is where he is. That room. She hates that place – she can feel it, above her head, like a boulder waiting to fall – and yet she came. A rat would have taken the shortest path from the kitchens to its nest. A rat wouldn’t have paused, wondering, drawn by an elusive waft of something, a not-scent that made the not-hunger flare … A rat wouldn’t run the risk. A rat would be safe and eating now, gnawing at salty sausage, unthinking.
She wants to turn aside. She wants to take the safe path. But she wants to go up the little staircase and the next, until she can push open the door and see him again. She wants him to say, Oh, it’s you, in the way he did. And she wants to hold out the bundle of food in her hand, and … what? The rival desires knot round her like threads, until she can’t move at all. A rat would despise her for her helplessness.
Someone is coming. It isn’t Simon. The footsteps are clipped, like hooves, but slow. She doesn’t like the sound of them. They stride. They wander. They pause until she thinks it might be safe to move, and then come closer the instant she steps out of the shadows. She freezes. There is a figure at the end of the corridor. If she takes another step he’ll see her. She is trying to breathe silently but it’s getting harder and harder; fear is rising like water, up to her shoulders, her chin, her nose. How has she let herself get cornered like this? She could run. Is it better to run or to stay still? A rat would know, but she doesn’t. When did this hesitant human voice take over, instead of her clever unthinking instincts?
She crouches, hunkering down like a gargoyle. She doesn’t know why, except that perhaps this way she’ll be out of his eyeline. In the shadows. Or maybe it’s because her knees have gone soft, like rotten fruit. There is something about the sound of him, the smell … A faint bitterness on the air. Smoke. Something else. The hairs on her skin stand up.
He walks past her. He doesn’t seem to see her, but there is something slippery about him, something that makes her unwilling to trust her senses. There is a narrow window at the far end of the corridor, beyond the stairs, and he stands by it. Now – in the thin strip of moonlight – she can see him better. He is overfed, but still nimble. He has thick curling hair, slicked to his head, and a line of shadow along his top lip. He slides a hand into his jacket and brings out something shiny and flat. It opens like a shell and inside there are dark-and-gold cylinders; it’s only when he puts one between his lips and produces a flame that she realises it’s a cigarette. She has seen those before, although she doesn’t understand what they’re for. Is it some kind of medicine? He inhales and exhales. The smoke billows across the edge of moonlight, white and dark.
The exhalation goes on and on. As if his lungs contain enough smoke to fill every passage and room and crevice. Whenever she breathes, he’ll be there.
His face. Tightness in his mouth, narrow eyes. It creates a space around him, as if even the air doesn’t want to get too close. She trembles, unable to run. Predator. Predator who would break your neck and leave your corpse where it is, without eating. He looks round at the blank walls, and through some sickening magic she sees what he sees: termite mound, wasp-ball, rat’s nest. Kick it apart and stand back.
He turns his head. The moonlight slides across his cheek, narrowing it. There is something in the plane of it, the shape. There is sharp grit in her throat. Her heart is her enemy, threatening to give her away. He crushes out the cigarette on the windowsill as thou
gh there is skin underneath it, and suddenly she knows him.
She shuts her eyes. For a moment she feels Mam’s hands dragging her shirt over her head: skin-a-rabbit, sweetheart – and then Mam jumps to her feet, whirling to hiss at her – be quiet – and back to the door, eyes wide. The Rat (although she is too small and young to be a rat, she doesn’t yet know what she is, only that she’s Mam’s) trembles. There was comfort, and now it’s gone. Mam bends her head, listening, and the room takes advantage to creep inwards, the way it always does when Mam isn’t looking. She cracks the door open, holds her finger to her lips, and slides out into the passage. The Rat knows she is meant to stay where she is. Make no noise, stay where you are, whatever you do, darling, you must not … But Mam inches along the passage, under the shreds of sunset-sky between the rafters. Then she disappears. She has gone down the stairs. For once, distracted, she has left the door open.
The Rat (not-yet-Rat) slides her body into the gap. She takes a few steps and nothing happens, the floor doesn’t collapse or the sky explode. She can smell fresh air blowing through the gaps in the roof.
She goes down the stairs. She’s holding out her hand, wanting Mam to take it. But Mam is out of reach, standing by a little round window with a black one, a human-headed crow. He laughs, and immediately she dislikes him, wants to run forward and drag Mam away.
‘… mustn’t come up here, not in daylight – you gave me a shock.’
‘I was curious. You didn’t go back to your room.’
‘You mustn’t follow me!’ But she sighs, and the Rat can hear the beginning of a laugh in her voice, like the onset of a cold.
‘I can’t resist your animal magnetism.’
‘I’m not an animal. I’m a woman.’
‘You can say that again …’ He leans forward. ‘I could do it here, right now. Just looking at you …’
‘No!’
He laughs again, and grabs her. They reel. The Rat shivers, wanting to rip him off, somehow knowing that Mam would be angry. The two of them are crushed together as if they’re trying to step into each other’s clothes. He grunts. He nuzzles into her neck as though he’s going to bite her.
Then he stops. He looks up, over Mam’s shoulder. At the Rat.
‘Where did that come from?’
Mam whirls round. Her mouth opens. ‘Get back!’
‘Is it yours?’ He tilts his head, looking at the Rat as if he’s calculating how much meat is on her bones. ‘I didn’t realise … She looks like you, doesn’t she?’
‘You mustn’t tell – no one knows – they’d throw me out.’
‘Of course I won’t,’ he says. But he’s smiling, his eyes still narrowed, and his gaze hasn’t wavered. ‘A bastard in the attic. I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? When you’re such a hot little whore …’
A silence. Mam’s face is flushed. Those words were bad words, you could hear it in his voice, but she is smiling. Smiling as though she hasn’t heard. The Rat – the bastard, whatever that means – takes a step down, towards them both.
Mam says, ‘Get back to the room! I told you before. Now.’
She hesitates. She opens her mouth.
‘Now!’
She stares at them. The black-robed man’s smile widens. He raises his hand and gestures, twirling a finger in the air: go on then, run away. Then he pulls Mam back into his arms. He puts his mouth on hers: but his eyes flick to the Rat with a pleased glint, enjoying his victory.
The Rat turned and went up the stairs. All the way up she was waiting for Mam to run after her and take her hand. But she didn’t. The Rat got to the room and lay down on her back, with the door open a crack. The sunset-light went redder and smaller and then it was dark and Mam still didn’t come, and she stayed awake for as long as she could, waiting and waiting for Mam to say goodnight, but she didn’t come that night and the way it feels now it’s like she never came back at all, ever, after that; even though she did.
Watching the man breathe out the last lungful of smoke, the-fat-and-old-but-same man, she remembers the empty ache in her chest, the sobs building, because Mam had never – she always – she loved, before that the Rat had always known that whatever happened she loved—
It is the same feeling as the not-hunger she feels now, thinking of Simon. And fear. Fear like now, too. She puts her hands over her mouth, very quietly, and bites into the soft part of her palm.
The man puts his hands in his pockets and walks forward, towards the foot of the stairs. He cranes to peer upwards. Then he ascends, step by deliberate step. The banister wobbles and he shakes it harder, pausing to enjoy the faint crackle of breaking wood. Then he disappears into the darkness at the top.
She relaxes. Her insides are shivery, but now he’s gone. She can run. The predator-shadow has passed over her. His attention is elsewhere.
His attention … He must be at the foot of the other staircase now, the one that leads up to her little room – Simon’s room.
Simon. Simon is hiding too. He mustn’t be found. It’s important. Whatever you do you must not … Not by this man, especially not by this man.
She scampers up the stairs. She has made the decision too quickly to be afraid; too quickly to see how unratlike it is, or to care. She makes noise, deliberately. And then they are facing each other, at the foot of the second flight: as they were ten years ago (a lifetime ago) only reversed, with him on the lowest step, her below. He jumps and blinks at her. His teeth are bared.
He says, ‘My word.’
She lets him see her. She stands in his gaze, even though it burns. A rat would run. She should run.
And now she does. She spins and swerves, takes the grey ones’ corridor and flies along the length of it, nearly silent on her bare feet. She pauses at the end, where she could go either way: and she looks back over her shoulder. He’s following, intent, treading lightly. He is a hunter. A wave of terror goes through her; but there’s something else there too, a fierce pleasure, because (this time at least) she’ll escape, and she has led him away from Simon.
32: Léo
It’s Midsummer Eve. The air is still, like glass. The valley holds the night like a bowl, frothy with stars. The silence is as thick as deafness. Léo sits in the Magisters’ courtyard, lighting match after match and flicking them away. He could be the only person left in the world. A few nights ago – after he’d been drinking with Emile and two of the Magisters – he went past Claire’s door and stood there listening, aching to knock. But she was on retreat, and he couldn’t face the thought of her anger. Can’t we go back? No … Now, when it’s too late, he wishes he’d been braver. Tomorrow he’ll be sitting with the other Gold Medallists, another face in the audience. She doesn’t even know he’s going to be there.
Everyone else is asleep. The guests that arrived yesterday are asleep in the scholars’ cells, and for once, although it’s not midnight yet, there’s no light in Emile’s window. Léo stares up at it; he wouldn’t put it past Emile to be standing in the dark watching him. He has felt Emile’s gaze on him for days, sly and constant. Even when Léo is alone, there’s an itch at the back of his neck, a sense that he’s no longer safe. If he ever was. It’s almost better when he’s in Emile’s rooms, drinking and politicking, ignoring the others’ jokes about female Magisters: at least then he knows he’s under scrutiny, and he can perform as though he were back at Party headquarters. At least then he knows it isn’t paranoia.
But he has no right to complain. For months, he’s been the spy. Those fucking letters. Details of who was a Party supporter, who’d said something subversive, who had a weakness and might be bribed … How could he have thought that gossip was innocuous? He sees his own treachery in the way Emile smiles at him. Another thing he wants to confess to Claire and be forgiven for, somehow.
And not only is he a traitor, he’s a coward. He should have done more to help Charpentier than leave food out for him in an unlocked room: half-eaten bread and sausage and fruit piled on a plate, easily deniable. It
’s not enough, but now Emile is watching him he daren’t do anything else. He’s hesitated about writing a note – leaving cash, or the contact details for an official who owes Léo a favour – but if Charpentier can get into his room, so could Emile. His skin crawls at the prospect of Emile finding incriminating evidence. So the food is all he can do; food, and an occasional sheepish prayer. Sometimes he hopes that Charpentier has absconded, but then the next day’s leftovers will disappear, and Léo guesses with a sinking heart that he’s still in hiding, slowly starving. If only Léo knew what to do – or if only he had never tried to help in the first place …
Match after match dies, until the box is empty. He closes his eyes. He’s so tired he’s light-headed. He aches to see Claire. Tomorrow he will. He wants to see the Midsummer Game. But does he want her game to be brilliant, or only good? Or does he – the question wafts into the back of his mind like a fetid smell – does he want the Magister Ludi to fail, conspicuously? No, of course not. He loves her, he wants her to silence all her critics, for ever. The way he wanted Carfax to triumph with the Red game. He swallows the taste of guilt. Somehow Claire knows about that; and she thinks he betrayed Carfax. She thinks he did it on purpose, that he’d known that the Magisters would despise the Red game for its daring, its newness, its sheer audacious genius – that he’d known that Carfax would fail … You wanted to win, didn’t you? You would have done anything to win. But that wasn’t why he did it. It wasn’t. He was shocked, wasn’t he, when he saw the marks? He can remember it now, joy – all that sleepless night he’d sat in the Great Hall, full of a dazzling rush of happiness – evaporating into numb disbelief as he saw his own name and slid his gaze down the page: Léonard Martin, Gold Medallist, Reflections— and then nothing. It was only as he scanned the rest of the page – First Class, mostly third-years, Upper Second Class, a few second-years, Paul and Emile, but most of them in the Lower Second Class – that he’d begun to feel giddy and unreal, as if an odourless gas was seeping into his bloodstream. Someone jostled him, said, ‘Get out of the way, will you, you’re blocking everyone else …’ but the voice was muffled, distant. Where was Carfax? Surely … Not in Third Class, and the only name under Pass was Felix. He splayed his fingers against the hessian-covered board, skimming the list again. He must have missed—
The Betrayals Page 30