Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  * * *

  As a prefect, as supervisor of their dorm, as a Christian, Pearce knew he ought to have noticed something. Halton’s arrest was, fundamentally, the result of his own failure to safeguard the common weal. When Halton attempted blackmail last summer, he should never have yielded. Morgan would have seen it for the test it was. He would have found a way with Halton, and not Moss’s way either. By their fruits ye shall know them—had Halton thrived under Moss’s regime? Last term he’d frequented the JCR in a way that was frankly provocative; this term he’d larked about with Audsley, run his lessons into the ground, relentlessly baited their Housemaster, and bullied the fag of two House prefects. If he had seen to Halton properly in the beginning or even along the way, none of this would have happened. Perhaps there was a reason he hadn’t been able to write the letter to his parents. Perhaps its errand was vanity, vanitas et arrogantia.

  * * *

  The Headmaster was in York until evening, Lewis said. John wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or vexed, but the delay gave him time to organize his arguments and to read the fifty-four compositions that needed marking. Of course, the Common Room had learned of the affair, so his afternoon was interrupted by colleagues coming by to take his opinion and offer their own. A midafternoon dose had been necessary to settle himself to the Remove on the Reformation, and then as darkness fell and he contemplated a preprandial corrective, another knock.

  —Uncle John?

  A sight for sore eyes. Her hair was falling out of its plaits. He capped his pen and leaned back his head as she rubbed his scalp in the motherly way she’d taken to lately, discharging the day’s vice, the stupidity of the Fifth, the dangling participles, fingers now at his hairline, shivers turning warm, bathing him in a kind of love he’d never deserve.

  —There’s something I ought to have told you, she said. Promise you won’t be cross?

  He murmured and placed her index fingers against the ridge of his eye socket.

  —I’ve …

  She pressed, a pain that satisfied like iodine.

  —I’ve invited Da to the caroling service.

  His eyes flicked open.

  —And he’s said yes.

  —You what?

  —Mrs. Firth said lots of parents come.

  He sat up.

  —Don’t be cross. He’ll like it.

  He got up from the chair and raked back his hair.

  —He is all alone, she said. I feel sorry for him. Don’t you?

  She wrapped her arms around him, and he hadn’t the strength to resist. He hooked his chin over the crown of her head, and beneath his hands, her back vibrated as she hummed and then began to sing a hymn the choir were preparing. Lo! he comes, with clouds descending, once for our salvation slain. Strange, powerful strange, to hear this Quaker child sing and know the words as if they were hers. Thousand thousand saints attending … If only he could be the man she thought she knew.

  * * *

  After Prayers, Jamie summoned him to the study. Evidently, in the hour since his return, Jamie had been deluged by the SCR’s opinions of the Halton business. Evidently, he resented the ambush, and evidently he blamed John for leaving him exposed to it, or so John supposed given his blustery diatribe on the evils of bullying and the necessity of cutting the canker out. John tried to return him to a calmer state of mind, but the more he reasoned, the more punctilious Jamie became. Bedtimes came and went, and as the vise tightened on John’s head, discussion turned to quarrel, and John lost his patience:

  —For Heaven’s sake! I never would have told you if I thought you might actually send the boy down!

  Jamie was shocked from his petulance:

  —You would have kept it from me?

  If Jamie imagined he could or should know everything that went on in the school, he was overtired and solipsistic. And if he insisted on clinging to an unsuitable solution out of stubbornness, from sheer pique that the matter wasn’t proceeding under his control, then it was time someone stopped humoring him.

  —Damn it, Jamie, stop larking about! You aren’t going to dispose him and you know it.

  A bull-point chisel was chipping at his skull.

  —Damn it, yourself! I’m Headmaster here, not you.

  —Then punish the boy, John said, by all means. But he stays. Can we drop it now, please?

  He got up to leave, but Jamie stood between him and the door.

  —Are you quite all right? Jamie asked.

  —Except for this wretched headache!

  Jamie’s expression softened, and John could see moving across it the recollection of his headache that summer.

  —It’s been a long day, John said, a long term.

  Jamie inhaled, and so did John at the thrill of tweaking Jamie where he felt it. He pressed harder, holding Jamie’s gaze, refusing to release him.

  —Very well, Jamie said, I’ll see the boy tomorrow and think on what you’ve said.

  He stepped aside to let John pass, but as John opened the door, Jamie touched the small of his back.

  —Yes? John said.

  —Good night.

  Jamie let him go with a look, that look, daring and cheeky, and as John reached for a riposte, the chisel resumed, blurring his vision and queering his balance. House, bathroom, cabinet, make it stop, softer, smooth …

  Another knock—would they never cease, even after midnight in his own bathroom? He emerged as if on an errand and encountered Mrs. Firth, tray in hand. She’d brought him something before bed, she said. As he mulled the unusual gesture, she delivered a report: she had enforced bedtimes on the corridor (said with the air of a wife who’d sorted out ten children while her husband was off on a blind). She had supervised steam inhalation and cough mixture with Miss Líoht. She had escorted young Halton in his preparations for the night. The boy, she informed him, had eaten next to nothing all day even though she’d brought him lunch and tea. She’d taken the liberty of providing a hot-water bottle. She thought Mr. Grieves might not mind, given the terrible cold in that room and the wind that had blown across it all afternoon—John thanked her and excused himself. The dose had not sufficed and he couldn’t wait—with what rapture, with what rapture …

  Back in his study he found biscuits and a cup of steaming milk. He ate the biscuits without tasting them and assigned the last two exams the low marks they deserved. Unbuttoning his collar, he drifted up the corridor and saw a light under Halton’s door. He ought to have checked on him earlier. He hadn’t because he’d dreaded it, but now he had no choice. He fetched the key from his study and opened the door. The room was cold as its moniker and dark now. Halton did not stir.

  —You needn’t play possum, John said. I saw the light a minute ago.

  A pause, during which he found the light switch. Mercifully the boy opened his eyes.

  —Have you any idea what time it is? John demanded.

  Halton looked away.

  —You ought to be asleep.

  John stepped closer. The boy’s eyes, usually prominent, looked sunken and dark. John wondered if he’d been crying. He looked stretched out, as if he’d been dragged to the Orient and back with only one change of camel and half a flask of tea.

  —Please, sir, what’s going to happen?

  Damn Jamie and his wait-a-day tactics. The boy had been alone since eleven o’clock in the morning, and now he faced a frigid night waiting further. John felt an ache, the wish to put the boy out of his misery, or at least put him through it.

  —Wait there, he said.

  * * *

  He had lost his bearings entirely. This morning in the study, he’d almost shed tears, not because he was trapped, but because he’d been suddenly rescued from it all. He had just begun to sense it—not only that he was being delivered but into Grieves’s hands—when Grieves had cast him aside, declaring him untouchable and consigning him to the Chamber of Death. No room had ever been colder, and he’d had all day to understand the jaws that held him.

  He threw
off the blankets and stood at the end of the bed, cold to the marrow, like the man in that story Grieves had made him read, the man who thought of killing his dog (or was it his horse?) just so he could thaw his hands inside its carcass. If he had a dog, he would defend it to the death. He would pick fleas off it and drown them in antiseptic. He would give the dog room in his own bed and food from his own plate. Never would he turn his back on it.

  —What are you doing? Grieves said from the door.

  He startled, and before he could answer, Grieves handed him a cup of milk and told him to drink it.

  —Chop-chop.

  Grieves rested his other hand, the one holding the slipper, behind his back. Halton choked down the lukewarm milk, wondering what tortures it held beyond the usual foul taste. Did it contain castor oil or some other purgative chosen to punish him as his ayah used to? Grieves took the empty cup and told him to get into bed.

  —Aren’t you going to whack me, sir?

  Grieves frowned:

  —Whack you?

  And took the hand from behind his back, revealing a book.

  —I’m going to read to you.

  Eyes stinging, Grieves’s hand on his shoulder, he dove into bed and bit down on his tongue. No one had read to him since Miranda read him that girl’s book, under the eucalyptus trees in Victoria Road. It was about a garden and a boy who was ill, and when they sent him to Yorkshire, he’d expected Misselthwaite Manor but encountered only the Academy.

  —Head on the pillow, Mr. Grieves said. Close your eyes.

  He closed them against the cold and the past.

  —Marley was dead, to begin with …

  Grieves’s voice surrounded him, not scolding, but drawing him to another place, a place of wraiths and chains, Audsley, Miranda, Wilberforce, the Turtle’s face leaping from doorknobs, pursuits and pursuits, accusation, condemnation, an icy ghost grabbing his wrist—

  The room was dark, and his hand stuck out in the cold. He lay rigid, unable to stop every dire thought he’d ever had, from his ayah’s chinjachinja to the ghosts Fletcher claimed to have seen in the cloisters one night. Oh, the night! How long would it last? With the lions that could savage a grown man, the sorcerers draining your blood, and the jinns that came up through the floor to bite the willies off wicked boys.

  * * *

  Halton looked seasick, Jamie thought. He told him to sit down before he fell down and then poured himself another cup of coffee. When he began the questioning, Halton admitted everything, even volunteering evidence John had never mentioned. He answered briefly but firmly, as if he were testifying against an enemy and not himself. John was right, of course, in what he had said and what he had left unsaid. This boy was not some remnant of the noxious root Jamie had been compelled to dig out when he took charge of the Academy. The dramatic dismissal of boys and staff, with all its collateral injuries, was an action peculiar to that time; the present grew out of the past, of course, but it never emerged a perfect replica. Timothy Halton was not Alex Pearl, nor was he any of the other unsavory characters whose names Jamie would never forget. There was no question Halton had acted despicably, but after only a few minutes’ interview, Jamie was convinced he would not be bullying again; more likely he’d be a front guard against it. Whatever John had done with him had turned the tide. Jamie knew he shouldn’t be surprised. John had always had that gift, even if he buried it in a field.

  Nevertheless, he was glad he’d called for the boy during lessons when John was occupied. He wouldn’t have been able to think straight if John had been there, too. He had no intention of expelling the boy, but a case of bullying brought to the Headmaster demanded exemplary response. Young Halton, though repentant, would have to take his medicine; the question was how, and what measure.

  Jamie poured another cup of coffee. This boy was stoic, courageous, and, Jamie sensed, lamentably experienced in taking what was dished out, yet his entire body broadcast his misery, one that longed not for clemency but for deliverance. Jamie felt a certain envy and irrelevance as it dawned on him that the justice the boy required could never come from him. The rescue had to be personal.

  * * *

  John had saved the magic lantern slides for these last two days after exams. The Third were excited by the images of mummies in various states of unwrapping and with the views of pyramids and stellae. The knock on the classroom door was unwelcome; so was the intruder. He stepped into the corridor, and Halton handed him a note from Jamie. John read it and told the boy to come to the study after lunch. There wasn’t time to see Jamie, to burst into his study and ask what he thought he was playing at, only time to set the Third drawing as he stepped into the washroom—pocket, tongue—and returned before mayhem erupted.

  —Turtle, whatever that is, put it away before I notice. Martin, turn your book or you’ll never fit the whole coffin in.

  As they drew the eyes of Horus, John read the note again: quid pro quo, the boy could stay but … orders. And beneath his reflex for outrage, amidst the memory of the last orders he’d received and the travesty that had unfolded—the shame that stung him still—beyond the determination to refuse, something else grew. Even if Jamie did intend to punish him with the command just as he’d punished him with the last, still was there not a secret relief? Oh, why cling to the desiccated shell of his principles and continue to shun what, in truth, he’d always known? He had thrown himself body and soul into everything she believed, her rejection of war, her declaration of friendship with mankind that made killing or even violence impossible. Yet now and for some time, perhaps some long time, these principles—dearly cherished and hotly defended—had left him impotent in the face of serious things. Her pacifism, so romantic in its disrepute, had seemed to answer the cataclysm of war, but had it truly answered anything? He hadn’t been on speaking terms with Jamie’s father since the war, but he’d long wondered what the Bishop would say about all of it. As for this mess with Halton, he knew with good confidence what the Bishop would say: there was sin in the world, and it shot through every one of them. It was the fashion to reject such a view as both overdone and pat, but wasn’t it the only blade that could cut through this thicket? John had once known, and despite it all still knew, that sin was not an old-fashioned term for things society disapproved, but a condition as old as the world, a desolate and willful separation. Across that chapter of his life, the Bishop had revealed to him sin’s power, and had shown him the remedy. Why, John had once asked, was suffering necessary to bridge that gap? It was a mystery, Jamie’s father had admitted, but the best that could be said was that it had been true throughout the ages, and was yet true now.

  An exotic stubbornness came over him as he imagined her reaction to these orders: What did she know of escaping such a prison? Inflicting a measure of pain on this boy, who suffered in exile and required something to release him, this, he felt now, was a kind of mercy. Who was she to condemn it? Hadn’t she held herself indifferent to his suffering, scourging him with her pacifism year after year, life after life?

  After the Third, the Upper Sixth, and a lunch scarcely eaten, John went to the study, where he found Halton waiting. A dose was needed, but in a rush of solidarity, he refused. If Halton had to face it, then he would give it unaided.

  Boy on the carpet, John passed him Jamie’s note and asked if he’d anything to say. Halton’s eyes widened, but he shook his head.

  —Well, John said, I have.

  Before the punishment one delivered the jaw, a first-class reproof to prepare the ground and heighten the yearning. John felt strangely impatient, but he steeled himself—

  —Please, sir!

  He turned, half relieved. The boy was digging in his own pocket, extracting another paper, something torn from an exercise book: confession, apology, unreserved and undressed.

  —Has Dr. Sebastian seen this?

  —No, sir!

  The boy looked wounded, and John realized it had been written for his eyes alone.

  He hadn’t the
heart for rebuke, not to that face, one miserable in every sense of the word. There was only one way out, for either of them.

  He opened the cupboard. He wasn’t there for his manuscript, nor the boxes of letters, the ink bottles, the housekeeping receipts, or the carbon copies of term reports. He was there to step into the fire, sear him though it would.

  —Are you ready?

  He closed the cupboard door and set the cane on his desk. Halton nodded. John removed his jacket and unfastened a cuff link.

  —I shall have to write to your father, of course.

  A flash of panic:

  —Sir?

  It was something John had made Jamie agree, that whatever the outcome, John would deal with the father.

  —Write him about what, sir?

  —About this.

  And the composure, so stoic and resigned, now faltered:

  —Please, sir, can’t you…?

  The boy’s jaw tightened, his fists clenched at his sides:

  —Please, sir, please don’t.

  Jamie’s sentence had been willingly accepted, but now, at the mention of the father, this ungoverned pleading?

  —If your father has something to say about this, Timothy, then you must face it.

  —I know that, sir! I’m not …

  Breath as if inflating a balloon.

  —I’m not afraid, sir.

  The chin faltered, feet shifting.

  —Stand still.

  If Halton didn’t want his father written to, then he oughtn’t to have done the things he had. But the tears—for they were tears now, leaking down the face and brushed away—surely these were not the tears of a boy afraid of his father, not this boy who feared so little.

  —Please don’t write to them, sir.

  The voice had returned to issue this prayer.

  —Couldn’t you deal with it, sir? You could give it to me twice. Once from you, and once from—