Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  Peter liked the man and felt they might have been friends in another setting, not rivals, as he realized he had always imagined. Grieves was a Cambridge man, hadn’t Elsa said? What was he doing at a drab little school in the middle of nowhere with a First XV hardly worth the name?

  —Are you married? he asked.

  Grieves froze, and he saw that again he’d said the wrong thing.

  —Good evening, ladies and honorable gentlemen!

  Mercifully, the play was beginning. Two boys stepped to the front.

  —Not Far to Castle Noire! the first boy announced.

  —A serial in nine parts!

  The play was most peculiar, some combination of penny dreadful, matinee romance, and Idylls of the King. His godson worked a variety of contraptions on the sidelines, another boy sang and turned tumbles, while another entranced them with swordplay. The audience, so halfhearted at the football, now followed the drama with unfeigned enthusiasm. Peter had always taken his godson’s reports of the school as a product of the boy’s skewed perspective; now he saw the opposite was true and that he knew shamefully little about the heart of the boy or the men who shaped it.

  —Ladies and gentlemen, the adventure continues next Sunday!

  There’d been only two scenes, and now the cast was assembled for bows.

  —Will Flash escape the giant’s trap?

  —Will Valarious find his brother?

  —Will Master Shadow defeat the gruesome guards?

  —Will Kahrid of Langstephen repel the advances of Perspicacious—

  —The most intelligent and evil man in the land!

  —Find out here, seven days hence!

  * * *

  Uncle Peter bought them pints to celebrate. It was not Gray’s first drink, but it was the first he’d consumed in the open. Gill seemed to think nothing of it and in fact bemoaned the lack of public house at the Academy. It was much easier to resolve differences, he claimed, when one could simply nip round the corner and discuss it over a friendly pint. Gray couldn’t imagine resolving anything over a pint. He was more likely to make a fool of himself or say something ill-advised, such as pointing out that the Cross Keys was the place Wilberforce and his cronies used to go, through the poacher’s tunnel Saturday evenings. The night Wilberforce had told Gray the legend of the tunnel, he’d called it the Key to the Keys and thought it witty.

  By the time the second round arrived, the flavor had improved. They ate five steak and kidney pies between them and ordered the spotted dick. The best thing about exeats was eating until you couldn’t anymore. Had Morgan & Co. had the steak and kidney, too? Unlikely, as they were busy downing as many pints as possible between tea and Prayers. Morgan had expected him to use the tunnel to come to the Keys, but he wasn’t a slave. He and Trevor had used the tunnel to go to the barn, damn what Morgan said, and even now that he had a study and could, theoretically, cut Prep for the Keys, he wasn’t tempted by the prospect of drinking himself sick and then staggering back through the woods.

  —Ah, Grindalythe Woods! Peter said. Now there’s a place. Have you ever taken the binos around there?

  —Out-of-bounds, I’m afraid, sir, Gill replied.

  —I know the keeper. Quite a population of redleg partridge he’s got.

  The spotted dick had arrived, and the irony swirled like smoke from the men’s cigarettes: that the fabled keeper knew Peter; that Gray’s first visit to the Cross Keys had been accomplished not with the poacher’s tunnel but with his godfather’s car.

  —What poacher’s tunnel?

  Gill was talking to him, looking at him.

  —You said it was ironic you hadn’t come through the poacher’s tunnel.

  He pushed the second pint away, empty.

  —School legend.

  —Tell!

  That was the last thing of course he intended to do, yet he was doing it, spilling not only the legend but the secrets Morgan had told him, the ones he’d sworn to tell only his own fag, if he ever got to the point of having one. Gill looked shocked:

  —Why the hell—sorry, sir—haven’t you mentioned this before?

  He hadn’t deliberately concealed it, but they’d been busy with rehearsals, and in any case the barn had been leveled that summer. What need had there been to speak of the tunnel?

  —Reason not the need!

  He’d eaten too much. He excused himself. Careless—excess—ruin. When would he learn simple cause and effect? Peter could be sworn to secrecy, but Gill’s eyes had fixed in the middle distance, twirling pencils with his mind, desiring the tunnel for the Full Experience.

  * * *

  His godson returned looking queasy, and Peter realized he should not have got the second round. Audsley could handle it, but he was older. When Audsley at last went to the toilets himself, Peter had only a scant moment under poor conditions to convey what he’d come to convey.

  —Only suspended, not called off.

  —Oh, said the boy.

  —I’m not giving up, on her or you.

  —Is that why you came?

  He nodded.

  —How’s she taking it?

  There was something incorrect about the way he referred to his mother with pronouns.

  —It was your mother’s idea.

  —Oh.

  * * *

  The dark leaked everywhere. It had glowered when they left the Academy, fallen when they arrived at the Keys, and by the time they emerged, it had spawned a chill rain. Peter’s motorcar crawled through the mist and smelled of Boggle Hole, recalling the things Gray had heard through the walls there, walls so thin they barely deserved the name: He looks so much like Tom it feels like adultery …

  Fardley was waiting to lock the gates:

  —Headmaster to see you, Audsley. Quite a spectacular this afternoon.

  —Thank you, Fardley.

  —That Valarious, what a fellow!

  —You’ll be there next week, I hope?

  —Wouldn’t miss it for the world, young sir.

  Gray reported their return to Crighton and quizzed him on Gill’s summons.

  —Congratulations, probably.

  They’d missed the congratulations going with Peter, and Gray had missed Jottings, his practice of writing down what mistakes he’d noticed so they could be fixed next time. There hadn’t been time for anything, not even to remember who he was and wasn’t, and now he was opening the door to study number six and the light was off like it used to be when he was smaller. In the dark, rain ticking the panes, was now really so different from then? It didn’t look different or even feel it, but he could no more shrink back to that time than he could rebuild the barn or climb through any window of memory. Sometimes change came sudden and drastic. Sometimes time refused to budge. What if he’d been traveling weeks on foreign soil without having perceived the frontier? Had there been signposts? Such as the Keys, where he had gone today after so long refusing. His visit had been licit, to celebrate something he couldn’t have imagined two months ago. The Keys had not been sinister, but warm and good. No one said I told you so.

  Signpost two, Valarious, who today had stepped forth, escaping his mind and rehearsal’s make-believe. Today his people had taken on public bodies, independent and visible. No one had warned him how it would feel.

  There was a pain in his chest, hot below his heart, and he had to lie down on the floor. His blood was thumping when it ought to rush. Heart attacks weren’t supposed to happen to people his age, but there had been a boy his father knew: fifteen, football, dead. If he himself died, would anyone really mind? The play could go on; the script was complete. He’d passed on the secret of the poacher’s tunnel—not meant to, but had. What else was he needed for?

  It was too late for games, especially with himself. You can lie to other people, boyo, but not to yourself. He’d been telling himself that her last letter was indeed all he could expect. He’d felt bold refusing her command to destroy them all, but in truth, in his floor beneath the floor, did h
e actually believe she’d stop writing? Didn’t he expect, in his secret cell, that any day her retraction would come, and when it did, he could say, Fear not! He could say, Here they are! Here am I.

  His blood was about to stop flowing, and the truth, the true truth, was that she meant what she wrote. He would never hear from her again. He knew it now, and he’d known it all along. True truth more grinding than stone.

  And to such a hopeless fortress Peter had come like a vandal. He had dropped his news in the final moments, defenses retired, and now the fact burned like mustard gas: after months of laying siege to their engagement, he had defeated it. Time didn’t blow backwards, but there they stood, his mother and he, waist deep in the brook, willows pulling past them. Swan Cottage leaked, moths chomped through the books, but year on year they waited for the dead to return, and when she had tried to climb from the river, he had pulled her back, and when Peter had reached out his hand—to take them to a cove where the tide came every day, new sand, new sea—he himself had hacked at the arm and run away into the marsh, into the window seat, sleeping with his arms around things that weren’t there. And now death was breathing on his neck even as he galloped through the wind and the rain, his father’s arm around his waist, horse warm between his legs, sand stinging, the devil behind them, gaining, gaining with his claw and his staff, Hold still, boyo, you’re not going anywhere …

  —What are you doing down there?

  Light from the corridor flooded his face.

  —And in the dark?

  Light switch thunked, and Gill knelt beside him, eyes bright, ears red.

  —What? Gray said. What happened?

  —Bad news.

  He sprang up, heart racing.

  —Head gave us the chop.

  —What!

  Gill took off his jacket and tie before relaying the Head’s edict: Two plays, delightful, but more than enough. Apply for club permission next term.

  —Next term?

  —Aurea mediocritas leads not to mediocrity, but to greatness.

  —What?

  —The Head says.

  Moderation was the worst kind of tyrant. It leached life for arid routine.

  —Next term is next year!

  —Why are you on the floor?

  His hand returned to his chest.

  —I had a pain.

  —Probably cramp, Gill said, after all that pie.

  It wasn’t a cramp, but that didn’t matter now.

  —What will we tell people?

  —Nothing, Gill said.

  The look was back, and he hadn’t picked up any pencils.

  —We’ll be like the people in Paris.

  Speaking French?

  —Uprising crushed. Gutters run with blood. There’s only one thing to do.

  Die?

  —Head for the sewers.

  Literally?

  —Go underground!

  40

  Meg’s letter, when it came, revealed and resolved nothing. Her correspondence had never been as unguarded as Nurse Riding’s, John realized as he reviewed the specimens side by side, but given her circumstances, how could it be? Meg returned his thanks, for the visit and for his birthday gift; she was reading the book and promised to share her thoughts soon. John had hope that although she could not state the truth directly, he would understand what she meant when she wrote about the Brownings.

  And he saw, as he was filing their letters, that he’d been remiss in his correspondence with Nurse Riding. Had he thanked her for the last volume she’d sent in August? He kept a ledger of correspondences—date, sent or received, to or from whom, general subject. It was the only way to manage the never-ending stream of professional and personal envelopes that crossed his desk, most promising one unpleasantness or another if not answered promptly. His habit with Nurse Riding had been to thank her within two days, but his ledger delivered the mortifying news that he’d overlooked it thanks to Jamie’s walking tour and the disruptions that had ensued.

  However, the visit of her fiancé—ex-fiancé—and the presentation of her son’s newest play provided a natural excuse to write, and her reply came by return post.

  “Suspended or called off—what’s the difference, I wonder, when it comes to engagements?” You can’t know, Crusoe, though perhaps you do, what a breath of air your words are, and how suffocating it is to have one’s half-truths routinely taken as fact.

  He hadn’t meant to be blunt, but perhaps he’d been exhausted by the exacting calculations required with Meg. Now he wondered what would happen if he were to dispense with half-truths altogether. Perhaps he could get away with telling Nurse Riding that she was well out of the business with her son’s godfather, that the so-called second chance had been ill-judged and that she could begin again more prudently now.

  He watched the post even though he knew it would take Meg at least a week, if not a fortnight, to finish the Brownings and compose a response. In the meantime, the churn of term demanded his daily attention: Audsley’s ignorance of the curriculum, Halton’s ignorance full stop, a bitter feud amongst the youngest boys in his House, overweening ambition from his Captain of Games, Jamie’s efforts to rewrite the prospectus. The last had put a strain on John’s time as Jamie sent him draft after draft for editorial critique. Jamie was not a natural stylist, and every time John untangled his clauses, another version would appear, taking a new and more baroque angle. When they at last had a draft ready for the printers, Jamie asked if they shouldn’t include a Theatrical Club.

  How’s that when you shut them down? John wrote in the margins.

  But next term?

  If you’re prepared to stand by it!

  Are you calling me fickle?

  Finally, John took the portfolio to Jamie’s study and hammered everything out face-to-face.

  Oh, Crusoe, you can’t know the humiliation of negotiating with tradesmen! They seem to consider a woman on her own as a mental defective or at best an easy mark. I have been assured that the roof of our cottage is easily repaired, reparable for a hefty sum, and beyond hope entirely. My brother advises I sell the place and come to King’s Lynn. After everything, I’m inclined to agree with him. Your view?

  He outlined his view in seven interlocking arguments (précis: don’t move in with brother), and just as he’d regretted sending that off with the postman, he discovered a letter from his publisher asking when the promised article could be expected (deadline, a fortnight past). As consequence, he had had to sit up five nights in a row, which did not—he emphasized to a clucky Mrs. Firth—indicate habit, but rather duty. Evidently he’d failed to convince her, and the old dragon had gone to Jamie about it (or done the next best thing by gossiping to one of his servants), which had let John in for an irritating lecture during the Lower School hare and hounds, which he ran with Jamie as usual.

  —I need you at full whack, Jamie scolded. It’s breach of contract to run yourself ragged.

  John replied by sprinting ahead.

  There’s no question of moving in with my brother and his wife. How could you think it, Crusoe? But the agent has sold the cottage. You can’t know my relief!

  The more Nurse Riding enumerated what he couldn’t know, the more he wanted to shout, I do!

  I’ve no idea how to break the news to the boy. It’s bound to bring on every sort of unpleasantness. I don’t suppose you could have a word? Though, as I write this, I realize it’s asking too much, of a Housemaster or a friend.

  Her retracting the request made John want to grant it, but he reminded himself of a lesson he’d learned the hard way, that it never paid to intervene between a mother and her son. How would it be, after all, to summon the boy to the study and treat him to a paternal pi-jaw along the lines of Your mother has just sold your home, you’ll never see it again, and you must behave better towards her, good day.

  On top of everything, Kardleigh’s drops were losing their potency, that or they’d reacted badly with some trace of iodine still in the bottle. John
had expected the vial to last beyond Christmas, but now he wasn’t sure it would make it to Guy Fawkes. He was reduced, after another week of silence from Ely, to digging out his own copy of the Browning and writing a response to the first two poems. He itched to send it but managed, by strenuous self-control, to put it aside in the drawer. She had to fashion her own position without influence from him. If she didn’t, how could he ever trust her decision?

  Finally, arrangements have been settled with the removers. My brother keeps telling me I ought to go down there myself to sort out Tom’s affairs, supervise the removal, and ensure nothing goes missing or ruined, but I’ve had to take on four more shifts at the hospital as they’re paying me something now. My brother naturally does not approve of waged work for ladies, but he isn’t a widow, and in any case, he can’t know the desperate suffering of our poor unfortunates! Those in the grip of tuberculosis, cancers, laudanum, drink, or the occasional young thing run afoul of Absinthe,

  Which reminded John he’d quite like to try that …

  people in such circumstances have needs far greater than some vague desire to wrap china just so or to see the old house “one last time.”

  The way she wrote of her patients provoked an irrational urge to fall ill under her care. The pain in his head had become general malaise, and his entire body yearned for the release the drops used to bring when they were strong enough to soothe him singly. He approached Kardleigh once more with an array of new symptoms (aching Achilles tendon, raw throat, rash inside the elbow, boil on the back of the knee, dyspepsia), but the doctor had given him only aspirin and advised him to apply a poultice to the boil and get more sleep. The drops, he’d said, were not to be employed except as a last resort.

  I’m certain half an hour’s consultation with a physician would address your research questions better than I can, but given the “baying hounds” (your publisher?) we shall have to make do, Crusoe. Generally speaking, our unfortunates are ordinary members of society. Many have been carrying on quite happily for years in the grip of one daemon or another, their families never the wiser. There are thousands who can quite comfortably drink themselves into a stupor on a daily basis and suffer little harm. The trouble comes when they vary their routine, for instance by combining their drink with laudanum, or with any of the great number of “patent” medicines hocked by charlatans to a gullible public.