by H. S. Cross
—It’s for the feast, Gill explained, after lights-out.
—Oh, come on!
But it quickly became clear that the day had only been a prelude to the main event Gill had been anticipating all along. The dormitory feast was a set piece in school literature and therefore, Gill felt, compulsory for the Full Experience.
—You’ll have the full experience all right if you try this on in the dorm!
—Have a little faith, Gill scolded. Moss and Crikey are sorting it out.
—What?
—Don’t look that way. It’s going to be enormous!
The idea was excessive, not to mention embarrassing, but if Moss and Crighton knew, it was up to them to stop it. In the meantime, Gray applied himself to repairing his English prep.
—Dear Mater and Pater! Gill cried from atop a chair. I can no answer make but thanks, and thanks and ever thanks, and oft good turns are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay!
—Switch off, can’t you?
—My birthday at the Cad has excelled in every way. Before first bell I was abducted from bed, relieved of my pajamas, and submerged in a bath, one I might add that was covered in ice until it met my arse.
—Life’s perilous, Pauline.
—Your first hamper was enjoyed by all, and chaps showed their appreciation with sundry love taps and pranks, in really bang-up style.
—No pun intended?
—Things came to a pretty pass after Games, I must say, when I was debagged and given the Academy version of a birthday spanking, which I don’t mind telling you hurt like bloody hell.
—When you’ve finished your clamorous whining, your present’s on the table.
Gill jumped down, alert with anticipation, and opened the newspaper.
—Oh! he said. But, oh …
Gray began to sweep up the straw. Gill sat down at the table:
—Are you sure?
—So you’ll remember us in your future ca-re-ah.
Gill folded the newspaper into an airplane and threw it into the fire:
—Thanks and thanks and ever thanks.
—It’s nothing.
—It’s enormous.
* * *
Audsley’s so-called feast was a ludicrous success, like everything else he touched. The whole House crowded into Moss’s dorm, and even Mac enjoyed himself once Audsley had toasted the House’s victory over Lockett-Egan’s. They’d never done such a thing at the Academy, or, so far as Moss knew, at any school outside the pages of fiction, but in Audsley’s hands, it was made to seem natural. His glamour bewitched them into a make-believe school life, one played by torchlight with first-rate food shared like loaves and fishes. As costume, Audsley wore the goggles from the play. They sat on his forehead except when he was proposing toasts, at which time he put them over his eyes. A fag had been set to keep cave, the volume remained under control, and the food disappeared before it got late:
—Three cheers for Goggles, Moss said before dispersing them. Hip-hip—
* * *
The next day was Michaelmas, which meant goose at luncheon, early evensong, and shortened Prep. Gray was still thinking of new lines for the lakeshore scene, but it was all like a hedgerow full of berries no one would eat. Guilford, meanwhile, had acquired a nickname. Corridors rang with Goggles-this and Goggles-that. Gray couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept enough, and as the afternoon dimmed and his head began to ache, he wondered if he was on the verge of the Tower. No harm if he were. His work as Keeper was finished. Gill was better liked than he, Gray, would ever be. As they jostled into chapel, his skin felt raw and his stomach overfull from two days’ feasting.
Crighton read the first lesson, his voice rich and confident: Jacob falling asleep with the rock for his pillow, the angels in his dream ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. Then the Eagle, bright tympani, told of war in Heaven and the fight against the Dragon, and then the organ began to blast the pilot’s song, only it wasn’t quite the pilot’s song.
Ye Holy angels bright
Who wait at God’s right hand
Or through the realms of light
Fly at your Lord’s command
Gray looked to Gill, who grinned and sang: Trente mille amants! The pilot’s words didn’t scan exactly, and the choir sang a different harmony.
My soul bear thou thy part
Rejoice in God above.
And with a well-tuned heart
Sing thou the songs of love!
They could have used these words if he’d known. It would have been finer. More beautiful and better. Jesus saw Nathaniel under a fig tree. Ye shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. The greatest stories had already been told. No concoctions of a schoolboy could be more than a speck on that eternal face.
Fairies in Heaven … The choir was singing again, blowing over them with sound. Where happy souls have play … That giant breath from the firmament, where everything enjoyed its perfect place, where everything was good and loved by its creator, where Halton sang, open and pure, plunged wholly into making it and giving it. It ended with a whisper, and he didn’t want it to end at all. If he were a girl, he might have fallen into tears.
Dr. Sebastian dismissed them to what remained of Prep, but in the cloisters Gray turned back, telling Gill he’d left his pen behind. The mere sight of those blue envelopes pulled from their hiding spot brought promise and hunger again. Rehearsing for the play, he thought that he’d outgrown her, but now, legs crossed in the chair loft, envelopes piled before him … what harm would come of opening one, say this, opening and reading again … My dearest and best, my onliest friend. Adieu.
If he could fly to her new and perfect home, he would stand outside her window looking in. She would sit at a table with her mother and father and the man who was her godfather while he huddled in the snow and wept—like this—and she would open the window, not to climb out but only to ask him what was wrong. You haven’t written! he’d sob—like this—and she’d laugh gold: What on earth would I say?
* * *
In the study, Gray repeated the excuse he’d given Pearce—sudden retching brought on by goose—but Gill stared as if he could see how his face had looked before he washed it. They sat down to prep, which was slight and easily finished, and afterwards Gill shared the new praise the play had received.
—The Eagle said he knew the Coward song. Saw it in a review, This Year of Grace.
—Good for him.
—Don’t be that way.
—I’m not any way, Gray said. I’m only sick to the back teeth of this play of yours.
—Mine?
—No one will shut up about it, even now it’s finished.
—How can you call it my play when the whole thing’s down to you?
—Right.
—You wrote it, Gill said. The idea came from your goggles.
—Your goggles.
The bell rang, but Gill held his chair where it was:
—Do you have any more?
—Complaints?
—Stories. In your head that you think about at night.
Hot, the air, and heavy.
—Write them, Gill said.
36
Everything is lovely in the town full of eels. It was the first thing she thought to herself every morning, as soon as she remembered to think it. Their house smelled of paint, and the walls of her bedroom were yellow. Optimisy-May regarde par la fenêtre jaune. Ely’s cathedral had a labyrinth in the floor and an eight-sided tower. When you looked up, the glass and angels were like a kaleidoscope that might sing if someone twisted it. She rode the train to school in Saffron Walden. There had been talk of her boarding, or of Mrs. Kneesworth’s keeping her during the week, but she’d begged to stay at home. Every night after tea, she got on with her project—Improving the Common Weal—stenciling the bathroom, arranging the bookshelves, tidying the garden. If you turned your back on weeds, they conquered like a Moslem horde. Same with b
ad thoughts. You couldn’t give them a red inch.
Their old house had been bought by a man who’d come to Saffron Walden to kit out the museum in natural history. Taxonomy was not the study of taxes. Through the living room windows, she could see crates heaped against the wallpaper. Something had gouged a streak where the piano used to be. She felt embarrassed for the wall, showing its welts to whoever passed by. Dead animals lay on a table like a macabre doll hospital.
Everything is lovely in the town full of eels. The cathedral was the Ship of the Fens, and nothing could harm them unless they let it. There were candles at dinner, and on Saturday nights her parents went out together. She had found the dearest present for her mother’s birthday, and at school they’d learned to pipe fancy icing. Uncle John was coming down, and she would sleep in the sewing room and give him her bed. She didn’t mind! The house was different than their old one, but ever so much sweeter. He’d never come for her mother’s birthday before, and everyone said it was grand. The cold, sick fear couldn’t be allowed a drop of earth to root in. Everything was lovely; nothing horrid, nothing ill.
* * *
He’d prepared everything in advance, but when the afternoon arrived, John was rushed. His small case strained and the stitching frayed in one of the corners. The short jaunt seemed to require nearly as much paraphernalia as the holidays. Pajamas, slippers, sponge bag, reading, dress suit. Also, running kit. Since the walking tour, he’d developed a habit of rising at five to take stiff exercise. His routine took him around Abbot’s Common before bathing and dressing for Prayers. It also kept him off the cigarettes, but if he skipped a run, sleep became a battle and the decanter more credible. He made room in his case for the books he’d purchased as gifts as well as sixty-three exercise books, which he would mark on the train, mitigating as much as possible the absence Jamie obviously begrudged him.
His neck felt stiff, and as he lugged his things to the gate, the lights began at the edge of his vision. He left Fardley to watch for the cab while he staggered up the stairs to the Tower.
—Ah, Grieves, said Kardleigh. Who’s broken what?
—Oh, John panted. No, it’s—I’m off, cab’s—
—Now don’t worry. I’ll make the rounds. Everything will be fine.
A yawn overcame him:
—The thing is my head. It’s …
He yawned again.
—Like before?
John nodded:
—It took Heaven and Earth to get Sebastian to agree to this, and if something were to stop me …
Kardleigh felt his forehead, looked in his eyes, and then unlocked the dispensary. John’s pulse skipped as Kardleigh emerged with a vial and drew a sip into the dropper.
—Open.
John stuck out his tongue and stifled the urge to yawn again.
—Take this now, Kardleigh was saying, and if necessary another drop in an hour.
It fell bitter in his throat, then warm, blooming—
—Don’t take more than three drops in twenty-four hours.
Melting—
—Don’t take a drop more than is necessary.
Everything would be well. Meg was well!
—I don’t have a smaller vial.
—That’s all right! John said.
—So I’ll need that back from you.
—Of course.
Not that he was going to take anything further. He hadn’t planned to take any, but Kardleigh had insisted. And of course he wouldn’t touch anything else in her house, even medicinally. He hadn’t, even with soda, since the pints after the footrace. As for the vial, he’d return it untouched, and Kardleigh would see he hadn’t needed it after all and the exercise books would be marked and the House would be well and he’d see how well Meg was, how like her old self, and Cordelia, how darling, how all the things she’d always been, and even Owain, all was forgiven and it could be even perhaps a little like the old days, except they were all wiser, and history was progressing with trains, rapid trains like the Flying Scotsman, wonders like that and who knew what else, and things with Jamie were not as they had always seemed and he himself was not as he’d been and so many things, Flight, Audsley, the books on his floor from Nurse Friday, time was on the move and so was he, speeding south to that town full of … wasn’t it something to do with Oliver Cromwell? It would come to him … the cathedral tower rising above the fens like a ladder. He’d run three miles every day for more than a month, he hadn’t smoked in forty-two days or taken a drink in forty-five nights, things could change. Not only could, but plainly were, and although he was older—he’d found six gray hairs the day before—it wasn’t too late. He had boarded a train during term time. The sunshine was brisk, the fields green, and the leaves on the trees flamed before his freedom. Life surged through his rejuvenated lungs, the smoothest, warmest spirit he had ever swallowed.
* * *
He was awakened the next morning by a vampire bat falling across his face. He jolted upright to find an oversize map of Indochine across the bed, its back heavy with blue globs of putty, which had presumably held it above in an ominous sort of canopy.
He swallowed four tooth-glasses of water and took himself for a run. Halfway around the cricket grounds, the water came back up and he remembered about Cromwell—house in Ely, open for tours? On the way back, he encountered his goddaughter rushing to school. His damp appearance kept her from embracing him, but she let him walk her to the station. Her satchel cut into the shoulder of her coat, but she insisted it wasn’t heavy. She carried crates full of books up and down the stairs all the time, she said. She described an attic with a pull-down ladder, a lumber room she called it, where only she could crawl and where lived heirlooms only she had catalogued. For instance, the bed that had been his in the old spare room? That was in the lumber room, but soon, hopefully by Christmas when they had got the men in to knock the wall of the sewing room through to the linen cupboard and make a new spare room that would fit it, the bed would return to regular service and he would have his own room again.
At breakfast he could hear himself being cold to Owain though Meg seemed not to notice. It was her birthday; she ate with pleasure, and her cheeks glowed. As if to make a point, Owain kept reaching across the table to kiss her. Of course, it was his right, but to break off conversation repeatedly and murmur My darling little girl was overdoing it, surely.
—Now, John, Owain was saying, you mustn’t hurry this afternoon, not in the slightest.
John and Meg had planned an afternoon in Saffron Walden, to visit the graveyard and to collect Cordelia after school for tea with Mrs. Kneesworth.
—You three have a grand old natter with Mrs. K, the old battle-axe.
Another kiss.
—My darling girl.
It would be sickening if it weren’t so transparent: husbands only overdid it when they had something to hide. Likely Owain had not so much started over with her as he had moved the wife to a different town so he could carry on with his pieces in the first. More obvious was Owain’s hostile maneuver in buying a house without a spare room. By many measures the new house was better than the old, but there was no place for John in it. Cordelia had decamped to a cupboard-cum-sewing room and given him her bed, but his neck had begun to ache as soon as he arrived, necessitating another drop.
As they left for the station, Meg put her arm through his. She had been chattering about the new house and town, and now she began to describe the Meeting in Ely, though it sounded as though she’d gone only once. Tradesmen where shouting across the road, and the unsaid pressed like the weight of the scrum.
—Darling, she said, closing her hand around his. Let’s not speak of it. Let’s agree, shall we, not to?
He tried to stop, but she pulled him along.
—You know, don’t you, darling, how grateful I am?
She used the voice that repelled every protest.
—We’re all grateful, for everything you did and are doing.
—I can’t think what
you mean.
—Darling.
Sweet, shaming. He sounded like a child and knew it.
—We’ve such a beautiful day. Don’t let’s spoil it.
He followed her, chastened, into the carriage and smiled as she, through a stray association, began to reminisce about the production of Patience they’d both been part of at Cambridge. He’d almost forgotten it, but she conjured every detail.
—Knee breeches vermillion!
A man such as Jamie would simply insist. I’m afraid this won’t do. I’m afraid we must speak of it. It being the madcap string of—what to call them even? Travels? Consultations? Dramatics?—adventures you followed from the moment I left you until the end of August, one hundred and twenty-five interminable days later, when you wrote from Liverpool that We were coming home All of Us, that Everything Was Splendid, that you were, no explanation, Cured. And as for the Splendid New House, it’s plain our holiday arrangements will have to change. But if he said those things, her eyes would overflow, she’d begin coughing, and it would all come around to his spoiling things again.
In Saffron Walden, Meg bought chrysanthemums to put on Delia’s grave. It was something they did every holiday, but this time they found weeds grown up around the headstone. Meg pulled them out with horror and apology, and John realized she was treating him as if he required consolation, presumably for the distress of seeing his wife’s grave untended, this woman dead ten times longer than he’d even known her. Meg was acting as if she were the one whose life was satisfactory, whereas he—wife in the ground, life held hostage by some wretched school—were the one deserving solace. For a moment he froze in fear that she might suggest, obscenely, he marry again.
—It doesn’t seem so long ago, she was saying, does it?
—On the contrary.
—Oh, darling!
He had always believed Delia was pregnant when she died. He’d found markings in her diary that suggested it, and to his shame, rather than grieve at the notion, John had felt only relief that the child had died with her. What sort of creature would it have been, he’d told himself, a child conceived while in his heart he made love to another? He’d always believed it had been a boy, who would now be Cordelia’s age, just old enough to come to the Academy. Now as he carried the grave weeds over to the rough, it occurred to him that the child, if it had indeed existed, would exist still in this very grave, inside her, without name or headstone or even a prayer. Was it wrong to pray for a child you’d no proof existed? Perhaps it was even sacrilegious. This was the kind of question Jamie’s father could answer. You could ask, and he’d listen, and all the embarrassment would vanish as he told you decisively: Yes, pray this; or No, and here is why. Was writing the man so far out of the question? Yet if the Bishop’s portcullis were to raise again for him, Meg would accuse him of backsliding to the superstitions of his childhood.