Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  Rhetorical?

  —Shall we not?

  —Yes, sir.

  —I’m glad we agree. Hold still and count these out.

  * * *

  Potholes, Wetwang, John’s cab swerved and swayed, sun long set, Holy Stephen, pray for us.

  * * *

  Gray returned to the study and made a poor attempt at work. He’d made it through the six, composure intact, and had just begun to feel the surge of relief when the Head fired a final shot: Mr. Grieves has had a death in the family, unexpected, taken hard, and the last thing he needs, the very last, is to be let down by boys in his House.

  The Head’s disgust lingered with the rising fear—let down, death, unexpected, hard. Grieves had family besides the girl, surely, but—

  Door slammed open and shut. Guilford flung himself across the window seat. Fear cresting, curdling—this wasn’t supposed to happen, not to Guilford. Experiences weren’t supposed to end in tears.

  —It doesn’t hurt for long, Gray said.

  Guilford turned on him, bloodshot:

  —I’m not blubbing because it hurts. I’m not a bloody coward!

  Wrongness and blame, from a friend, his only. He should have stayed while Gill went in, even outside the door.

  —What did he say?

  Had the Head got him, too, parting shot more keen than the rest? Gill turned his face to the wall.

  —He called it rubbish. Music hall rubbish.

  * * *

  It was the time of night when the things you’d put behind you woke you up just to kick you in the teeth. By bedtime Moss had regained his equilibrium, but now echoes of his interview with the Head were toying with him like a dog with a rabbit. Mr. Grieves had undergone a personal loss. Having just now returned from the funeral, he needed his Head Boy’s help more than ever. Would the good governance they had labored to establish survive and prosper? Surely Moss could remember the miseries of the past? Surely Mr. Grieves’s trust, and through him the Academy’s, had not been misplaced?

  Everyone was defenseless in the middle of the night. Demons could play on you, especially ones you deserved. Grieves had looked like a shell when Moss found him in his study talking with the Head. He’d been nursing a cup of tea and pressing his brow as if he might pluck out his eyes. Moss had brought Riding, who needed his tick signed by the Head but couldn’t bring himself to knock on the door, and then he’d hauled Riding away when he’d asked impertinent questions about where Grieves had been. Moss had never let Grieves down, no matter what the Head believed. Though he supposed, from a certain point of view, it might look that way.

  Bedsprings creaked across the room, and Riding slipped from the dorm. Moss left the demons on his pillow and went to the toilet where Riding was on his knees being sick, or trying to be.

  —Give it a rest, won’t you?

  Riding pulled his hand away from his mouth.

  —Can’t you do what you’re told just one night of the blessed year?

  The boy gripped the toilet as dry heaves racked him. Moss went to him. Face, flushed. Forehead, cool.

  —Why can’t you stay in your bloody bed, if only as a personal favor to me?

  Riding spat, raised himself, spat again:

  —Do you know where Grieves went?

  —Not that again.

  —But do you?

  His nose itched.

  —Buggered if I can remember. Cambridgeshire somewhere.

  Riding gagged, and a gag rose in his own throat.

  —Stop it!

  Pulling himself together, Riding got up, and rinsed his face and mouth. Shoulders set, he turned back to Moss:

  —If you find out who died, I’ll do whatever you want.

  His sudden desperation was as bizarre as it was embarrassing.

  —What I want, Moss said, is for you to keep your nose clean.

  —Will you, though? Find out?

  Moss sighed.

  —The wire said someone called Margaret.

  A cry, ringing off the tiles.

  —Shh! Give me strength! Why on earth do you care?

  Riding bent down, racked again, but not this time with—

  —What?

  —I’m sorry, he gasped.

  He pretended he was sick, but his shoulders gave it away. Moss turned off the torch. This was one of those ambushes school could inflict, particularly when you were tired.

  —Thank you, Riding whispered.

  You never got to choose who saw you at your weakest, or who heard your confession when you couldn’t help make it.

  43

  The only way to face the day was to think of it as a schedule of doses. In Ely, Owain secured the services of a physician who provided drops to see John through the term as well as a neatly ruled timetable for tapering the doses so that he might by Christmas be free of them. John hadn’t begun the tapering yet, but he would as soon as the shrill icebergs left his head. The doses made it possible to move himself through the time in Ely and to tolerate the ghastly sense of relief the funeral produced, not only in himself, but, judging by his conduct, in Owain. The latter followed his usual prescription, which left him vague during the day and maudlin at night. John wished that he hadn’t let himself sit up with the man, drinking his whiskey and permitting him to recount, repeatedly, her final moments. Now he couldn’t get Owain’s sloppy Irish words out of his head—an she sat herself down right there where you’re sitting an she blinked her eyes an then she … oh those angel eyes! At the time, Owain’s grief had left him cold, and the more Owain declared that the Holy Ghost had come and tapped his angel on the shoulder, the more numb John felt; now, in unguarded lulls of the day, the image would blossom, and he would imagine her clutching her chest, or racked with pain, even spurting blood inside, all pushing him to the point of sickness until he could substitute the memory of Owain blubbing down his shirtfront.

  Despite a macabre curiosity, John had not managed to enter her bedroom, let alone sleep in the bed she’d shared with her husband, as Owain had offered. The man had declared he would never sleep in the bed again and had taken to collapsing, still dressed, across the settee where she had been sitting when it happened. When the time came for John to leave, Owain announced he would sell the house and move back to Saffron Walden in the New Year. Or perhaps he would move to Cambridge. John couldn’t care a toss about any of it.

  * * *

  Life now was like unsalted soup. Moss had lost his humor, the school had lost its dramatics, and Halton had lost … to say he had lost Audsley would be to suggest that Audsley was gone, but how else to describe the removal of that thing that had made time worthwhile? The Turtle bemoaned the new regime as a personal tragedy, which made Halton want to punch him in the nose. He contented himself with making acid jokes at the Turtle’s expense, which at least improved his standing with Malcolm, White, Fletcher, and other rugby-crazed members of the Fourth. Now, having been accepted back into their company, Halton could not afford to be addressed by the Turtle here in the tuck shop queue. He looked away when the Turtle caught his eye, but the Turtle would not be deterred:

  —That descant is a stinker!

  White and Fletcher sneered. Malcolm minor snickered:

  —Still bumming around with fags, Infant?

  His hands were prickling.

  —Is Malc’s baby brovver your special fwend now? White mocked.

  —We’d no idea the choir could be so stimulating.

  —Run along, Infant, and play with baby Malc.

  —Unless you’re letting him play with you, saucy tart.

  Halton left the queue and went to the chapel to think. That night after Prayers, he set to the remedy. When he’d finished, the Turtle was in tears.

  —It’s only a joke. Don’t be a girl.

  The Turtle looked at him, rubbing the sore spots, his red eyes uncomprehending:

  —I thought we were friends.

  * * *

  Bonfire night came and went. Tics were filled, prep submitted, rugb
y football played. The Lower Sixth began Paradise Lost, which Gray considered a slog. Even more of a slog were the bizarre articles Grieves was making them read, in French, from a French magazine called Annales. What La potasse en Allemagne had to do with medieval kings who cured scrofula by royal touch, Grieves did not deign to explain.

  Gill did his own prep, but the results seemed a matter of indifference to him. Gray tried to rekindle morale by talking about the plays they would stage once they had a proper dramatics club.

  —The Head’ll relent once he sees we’re sorry, Gray assured him. No punishment lasts more than a term.

  —Bugger that, Gill said. Look at this.

  He slapped down the paper, but it contained only dry announcements of London productions.

  —The Classical Players!

  —Are rehearsing Hamlet. And?

  —Theodore Rhys-Mills is playing Hamlet!

  —Who’s he?

  —Who’s he? Vain, untalented, almost thirty years old! We gave Hamlet two years ago, but my father said I had to be at least sixteen to play him. Now the Players are giving it, and I’m sixteen, and they’ve cast Rhys-Mills of all people!

  It hurt to hear Guilford speak this way. He seemed to regard Gray as shallow, concerned only with lessons and prep, while London held the strings to his heart. Gray came close to telling him about the girl, but each time, the volume of what there was to tell prevented him. In one way, it was a relief that her mother was dead. The thing she’d long dreaded—the thing he realized he had dreaded with her—could no longer be feared. But if he let himself stand inside with her, imagining how she must have felt and how she must be feeling now, a snuffing terror closed in, and he could feel death breathing down his neck again. He did not, for any reason, want to recall how his father had looked in the bed. The memory had battered him for years, and only recently had he realized the battering had stopped. Now, thinking of her took him back again, but this time he imagined her standing beside him, her arm brushing his as they looked at the four-poster thing.

  One wet afternoon while Gill was in extra-tu, Gray ventured to the chapel and stood in the nave. From below, the chair loft looked like nothing, a railing, no more. The choir were rehearsing, and he felt the sound in his teeth.

  —Stop! Kardleigh was calling. Stop, stop, stop.

  Voices tapered off.

  —Breathe, Halton, after day.

  In his mouth, an aching weakness.

  —No, you cannot. The edge is coming off pride. Again, alone please.

  Halton’s voice piped through the dark:

  —I loved the garish day … and spite of fears, pride ruled my will.

  —Breathe!

  * * *

  Grieves disappeared again the day before their tic finished, and when they reported to Moss at tea, he signed each twice, freeing them from the final reporting that night:

  —Cut along, and don’t say I never did anything for you.

  They stopped at the pigeonholes, where Gill collected the late Times, its headlines surely of interest to someone. Labour Amendment Defeated. Marked Improvement in Textiles. Air Defences of London: Interceptor Theory from Our Aeronautical Correspondent. Saturday evening, free and empty, they drifted back to the study. Gray scanned the bookshelf, but there was nothing he wanted to read.

  —We could go round to Moss and Crighton, Gray suggested. They might let us listen to the gramophone.

  —I’ve a better idea.

  Gill let the paper fall to the floor:

  —The Cross Keys.

  Gray told him to forget it.

  —To be, or not to be, Gill proclaimed, that is the question!

  The eyes were back, that Messenger who brought so much disorder and so much joy.

  —Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death—

  —It’ll be death all right if the Head finds out.

  —The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveler returns—

  —Not to mention the JCR. They’ll make the Head’s six feel like pattycakes.

  —And makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of!

  * * *

  They emerged from the tunnel to darkness, Grindalythe Woods cut only by the beams of their torches. Everything about the woods delighted Gill. Trevor had appreciated it as a shortcut to the barn, but he’d never seen it as Gill did now—evocative, creature-filled, alive. At the fork, Gray searched for the path to Fridaythorpe. He’d never taken it before, and while it might have been straightforward in the daytime, now they were forced to double back and recover the way.

  At the Keys, Gill treated the woman behind the bar as an old friend. The place was even more crowded than when they’d come with Peter, the only seats far from the fire. Gill bought their pints and chatted to three young women on the way. When Gray asked who they were, Gill claimed to have met them last time.

  —What do you mean you met them? Where was I?

  —Puking?

  As the evening wore on, Gray found it easy to believe Gill had befriended three girls; he began conversations easily, and just as easily had people laughing. Steak and kidney pies came and went, the first pints were followed by more, and at last Gill succeeded in convincing the barmaid to let him stand her a pint. She came out from the bar and squeezed beside Gill, treating him half as a lovesick puppy, half as a daring new craze. Gill’s accent had altered to blend with those around him, mimicking their expressions and even getting the barmaid to teach him Yorkshire sayings.

  —’Ear all, see all, say nowt, she recited. Eat all, sup all, pay nowt.

  —And if ever thou does owt fer nowt, Gill answered, allus do it for thyself.

  —For thissen, love.

  —For thissen, flower.

  The barmaid returned to the pumps, and Gill collected another round.

  —We’ve got to go, Gray told him.

  They could slip in Grieves’s French windows, but bedtime was less than an hour away.

  —In a minute.

  Gill took a sip and then set the glass aside as if clearing the table for business.

  —Now, he said, about Valarious.

  Gray grinned despite himself; Gill was staring like Mr. Grieves with a point to make.

  —It’s time you faced facts. The play is dead, but Valarious isn’t.

  Gray tried to order his thoughts. Valarious had been with him for years, but the play had effected alchemy upon the tale. Now it was inseparable from their performances, and from Guilford, who embodied his hero.

  —What have you been doing these past two weeks? Gill demanded. You could’ve had the story written.

  —Why would I do that?

  —He stopped us performing it, but he can’t stop you writing the book.

  Valarious wasn’t a book. It wasn’t even a complete story.

  —You’ve got to finish it.

  Even if he went back to the notebook and put into prose the scenes of the play, the story would not have reached its end. He didn’t know when it would.

  Gill was squeezing his wrist:

  —Once you’ve started a thing, you can’t stop. You’ve got to finish and publish and then write something else. If you don’t, you’ll be like those people in Exodus who tried to store things overnight.

  —Manna?

  —It’ll breed worms and stink.

  —It already stinks!

  —You can’t keep hold of precious things.

  Gray laid his head on his arm:

  —What about love?

  —Love most of all.

  The table started to spin. She had given away precious things, terrible and precious, and if he didn’t keep them, who would? Keeper of a hundred secrets, all concealed beneath the planks of the loft, infused with dust and incense, held above their heads as they prayed. How many radiant secrets were hidden all around them?

  Gill leaned close:

  —The trick with secrets is knowing
who to tell, and how to tell them.

  They got up to leave, but heat rushed through him.

  —I’m going to be sick.

  Gill pulled him down the street and over the stile; inside the woods, it all came up, disappearing into the dark. Gill had his elbow and kept them to the path, kept their way within the light of his torch.

  —There are things I haven’t told you.

  —I know.

  The darkness closed behind them and before them, protecting them from the day, from its wrecking and reproof. Here Morgan had walked, and here had walked all the keepers before him, in darkness, in light, thou knowest, woods, the secrets of our hearts, and words were spilling out like eggs from a basket, and Gill was catching each before it hit the ground, hiding it in his pocket, which never filled.

  —You love her.

  —I despise her!

  —Write her.

  —I would if I knew where!

  Guilford sighed:

  —I don’t think you’ve been trying very hard.

  —What?

  —And the same for him. You must write to him as well.

  —Morgan?

  Naked on his tongue, ten years old again.

  —Everything I touch gets ruined.

  —Nothing’s ruined.

  —When people leave, you don’t have them anymore!

  —Don’t you?

  They reached the old log, and the truth fell down, like the rock in the rack where they found the Elf Rider: Guilford Audsley did not understand. He had seemed sage, even Delphian, but he had never watched everything struck down before him. The worst he’d ever suffered was the Head’s cane and insult. His wisdom was shallow, and his pockets couldn’t hold a robin’s egg.

  Gray plunged into the tunnel, upsetting up and down, dirt, stone, head and teeth pounding. Then Gill was crawling out and telling him to hurry, steering him around the playing fields to Grieves’s windows, Grieves’s study, corridor. In the changing room, Gray lay across the bench to keep from being sick again.

  —What time is it?

  —Curtain time.