by H. S. Cross
Riding did not bother to conceal his disdain. This boy was the limit! How dare he stand there with his tight silence, his stubbornness and indignation? And how had this boy, this impossible boy, managed to entangle himself so impossibly with John?
Jamie had sent for John before he’d sent for Riding, but Mrs. Firth had reported that John could not be woken. Jamie had gone over himself and found John breathing but otherwise dead to the world. He’d left the woman with orders to let John sleep as long as possible and to avoid bothering him with the Riding business, which Jamie promised to resolve before breakfast. Breakfast was still a ways off, but they were no closer to resolution.
—Look at me when I’m speaking to you, boy.
How long would John persist with it—this tying himself into knots over people who didn’t deserve it, people who made habits of aggravating him with no care for the agony they caused? People like that woman. People like this boy, who also appeared oblivious to how much John cared for him. Jamie might not have been able to intervene with the woman, but he could here.
—But these faults are nothing, Riding, when put beside your selfishness.
Disarming, at last.
—Your callous disregard for the way your acts affect other people.
Truth dawning.
—Your Headmaster, for instance, who permitted Miss Líoht to come to the Academy. The Academy itself, still rebuilding its name.
Gaze cast to the floor.
—And finally, there is your indifference to Mr. Grieves. Have you any idea how you’ve compromised him?
—He doesn’t care what—
—Hold your tongue!
If the boy said another word, he would strike him, hard.
—Your Housemaster has done nothing but advocate for you since the minute you came here.
Mr. Grieves had paired him with Wilberforce. Mr. Grieves had arranged the acceleration of his studies. Mr. Grieves, last March, had petitioned for him, believed in him, exposed himself for him, done everything possible for a boy who didn’t deserve it.
—As for your friend Audsley and his precipitous departure—
—I had nothing to do with that, sir!
—I know you didn’t! Jamie barked. But it upset Mr. Grieves terribly, and he thought you could explain something. Yet you refused him even that. How do you suppose Mr. Grieves has taken it, being disgraced this way by his own goddaughter and his favorite pupil?
A look of naked shock. At least he’d managed to tell the boy something he didn’t know.
—Perhaps you’d be better off in another House.
Jamie didn’t know where the idea had come from, but as soon as he said it, the boy turned red to the ears. It wasn’t something Jamie had ever done, but it might actually solve the problem. Flogging the boy would do little good, and expelling him would hurt John unbearably. Yet, Jamie had no intention of allowing this boy to torment John any longer.
—Burton-Lee’s perhaps.
—No, sir!
—Or Henri’s.
—Please, sir!
The less the boy liked it, the more Jamie warmed to the notion. The French master, in fact, would be ideal. Henri took little interest in Sixth Formers who’d dropped French, so the boy was unlikely to get under his skin.
Jamie went to the side table. He poured a cup of coffee. He stirred in cream and sugar, returned to his desk, arranged some papers:
—I shall think on it.
—Oh … please, sir … please don’t—
Jamie didn’t look up.
—When I require your opinion, Riding, I shall ask for it.
—Yes, sir …
Voice breaking at last. Jamie sipped his coffee.
—When I’ve taken my decision, I shall write to your father. Or is it your mother?
He could see the jaw clenching.
—I think perhaps it would be best for all concerned if, when you return to us in February, you begin again in a new situation.
—Sir—
—That’s all, Riding. Good day.
The boy looked as though he’d been struck. He tried to hold his breath as he strode from the room, but Jamie knew he was blubbing. Coffee set aside, brandy poured. It had taken long enough and shot Jamie’s nerves in the process, but at last the arrow had found its mark.
52
Toothbrush, powder, shaving brush, foam. Were razors really wise? Sting zesty, marshaling thought: Jamie, carols, parents … Owain! Lord help them, if the Lord indeed existed on his icy throne, and cared. Aspirin forced down with the muscles he’d been given. The timetable they’d prepared scrolled in his mind: first bell, half past seven; breakfast, quarter past eight; dorm inspection, nine; trunks downstairs, quarter past; choir rehearsal, half past? Studs, tie, hair. What time was it now? Through the window, an unfamiliar sun. Was he truly awake, or was this one of those dreams where you thought it all made sense until you realized it didn’t?
He heard the hall clock but lost track of the chimes. Its face, when he arrived, claimed a minute after ten. First train presently, but now, even now, while Kardleigh was rehearsing … Tower, desk, key, what regiments! Five vials amongst them wore his colors. Which of you shall we say doth love us most? Hail, friend! And hail, thou friend-in-waiting. You others, holy three, stay until we meet again. Farewell, farewell, one kiss and I’ll descend.
* * *
Uncle John was not at breakfast and neither was the one she didn’t know how to name. She chewed the toast as her thumb rubbed the place that stung beneath her knee socks, chaffing it more sore. The sting relieved nothing, not now and not last night when she’d taken back the tool of her restitution. She found it in his desk amidst other objects she could only assume had been confiscated. Each score bit, but none stopped the iron that stretched her ribs from the inside and the out.
Once, across the Channel, she had etched things onto paper and sent them to that faraway pigeonhole. Her paper now was white, and what she had to write deserved blood, not ink: bargains, green fairies, watchmen, princes; cold air, lemons, what she’d done again just now. There was more she could have said, but the pen ran out. In the morning she couldn’t bear to read it, but only to fold it, thrice times three, and take it with the blue stack to their chair loft—she vowed always to think of it so and never to let what happened spoil what it was to her heart. Under the floorboards she buried them again, the old with her new. She hadn’t watched when they closed the lid on her mother. It had been open and she had been in it, and then it was closed and only a box. Now she fit the board back in place and knocked it down with her heel.
* * *
The clock had just tolled ten, and now it was going eleven. From the library window Gray could see the throng in the quad, his mother certainly amongst them. He’d refilled his pen twice, and his hand cramped. Only a few more lines, a paragraph at most …
* * *
John caught the Headmaster’s eye:
—A word!
—Feeling better?
—Perfectly—
—Mrs. Briggstone-Egge, Jamie cried. Good morning! How is the Major?
Minutes passed before John could pull him aside:
—I’m expecting Mrs. Riding today.
—I’ve seen him already.
—What?
Jamie removed John’s hand from his elbow:
—It’s been dealt with. Please don’t worry. Ah, Fletcher! Is this your father? Canon, an honor.
* * *
She showed her father the painting of the boat that hung in the hallway. She suggested it might be famous, and as he examined it, she dropped the note in his pigeonhole. Look in our place.
* * *
He signed his name and closed the cover on Valarious. It wasn’t perfect, parts of it weren’t even good, but it was finished. He might have failed to win back her letters; he might have blubbed before Dr. Sebastian; he might even be banished from the House, but he had kept one promise, at least.
Everyone was filing into the chape
l. He locked the library door and slipped back to the House. Corridor empty, her room empty. There was her hairbrush, her wireless, her dressing gown. He swapped his fountain pen for hers and left the book on her pillow.
Crighton hailed him in the corridor:
—Where the hell have you been? You missed inspection, and your mater’s here.
She stood by the fire in the empty houseroom.
—Darling!
He went to her, and she wrapped her arms around him, his arms above, like embracing his own child.
—What on earth happened to your lip, darling?
Again, he blamed the ice. She adjusted his tie and gave her nurse’s smile.
—It has been wretched, hasn’t it?
He offered his arm and led her to the chapel, glad for its darkness. His face betrayed nothing, he hoped, but inside a sick weakness spread. She knew nothing, pressed for nothing, yet her touch, her smell, the pitch of her voice all kicked aside his bricks like toys.
She admired the pew candles and the greenery, praised the prefects and the boys she had met. He should never have let her come. With every observation, she penetrated further the fortress that was his, until the hour removed its mask: not a festive visit but hazard, reckless and fatal.
The Turtle began to sing from the back, and light spread up the pews, candle to candle, showing faces where there had been only forms. There near the front, the girl sat with a short and ruddy figure who daubed his eyes with a handkerchief and held her tight beside him. Her father, plainly.
The choir continued in parts, processing up the aisle.
—That poor boy! his mother whispered.
The Turtle was going past, his purple eye set off against his red robe and white surplice. Gray murmured something about football, and his mother shook her head with the kind of happy disapproval she displayed when discussing her Unfortunates.
Christian children all must be
Mild, obedient, good as he
He hated this song, so cloying and didactic, but at least it made a change from people telling him he was a terrible liar.
* * *
The crowd adjourned through the smoke of extinguished candles and drifted to the refectory for the Christmas tea. Everywhere John looked was too bright. The light glared off the ice, and their usual palette of black and gray was littered with frocks, hats, and handkerchiefs in every possible color. He’d been obliged to sit with the Common Room, but who could miss Owain’s lusty singing and his daughter’s averted gaze? Now as John scanned the refectory, he couldn’t see either one of them.
—There he is, darling.
He turned towards the voice. A woman extended a gloved hand:
—Crusoe.
A clumsy hesitation, and then his mind caught up. He took her hand, gave a slight bow:
—Mrs. Riding, my pleasure at last.
He saw in her eyes that he’d cut her, but she continued as if he hadn’t. Her son had shown her the classrooms. He promised to show her the gymnasium after tea.
—I was certain he was trying to keep me from you, but he’s been foiled now, hasn’t he?
He suspected she was teasing, but the boy scowled beside her, drawing a hand across his mouth as if to hide a sneer.
—You must tell me everything, Mr. Grieves.
She called him that deliberately, whether in retaliation against his calling her Mrs. Riding or to erase the unseemliness of her initial greeting, he couldn’t say. This new address felt strained, yet also somehow wanton.
—The boy is impossible, as you know.
She tucked her arm through her son’s.
—I do hope you’ll be candid and tell me about these plays of his.
She smiled, and the boy looked away. Jamie had dealt with him? How?
—John, man!
Owain burst into the refectory, girl in tow. Several people turned to see the commotion. John needed a dose, but he was being clapped on the back and drowned in Irish chatter, and then Owain was introducing himself to Mrs. Riding and her son, and a ray of sunshine was glinting off the silver. The room was too hot, too close.
—Excuse me, sir?
Another? Moss, into focus beside him:
—Sorry, sir, but Halton and his father are waiting in your study.
—Now?
—As you asked, sir.
It was suicide to leave this lot together.
—They’re catching the early train, sir.
On the other hand, if he stayed, he might faint.
* * *
Grieves considered him dead. The man hadn’t even concealed his disgust at meeting his mother. By contrast, the girl’s father chattered away, flattering his mother with what Gray supposed to be Irish charm. Gray could tell she found him overdone, but when he revealed that his daughter had been staying at the school, his mother launched into an animated interview. The girl refused to meet anyone’s eye. Did she loathe him, too, or did she simply find him mortifying? Would he ever again see those eye teeth or hear her say Follow me?
—Riding!
Moss summoned him, and he went, not knowing if it was a mercy or folly to leave the girl alone with his mother. Drawing him into the nearest washroom, Moss revealed an envelope:
—From the Head.
Mrs. T. Riding. By hand. On the back, a glob of wax.
—See she gets it, won’t you?
The sick was spreading everywhere.
—Well, put it away, Moss said.
He fumbled with his coattails. Moss lingered, turning off a dripping tap:
—I heard about Audsley, Hamlet and all that.
The envelope stuck going into his pocket.
—Might go down and see it in the New Year. You?
There was simply nothing to say. Moss gave him a slug:
—Cheer up, Riding. It’s Christmas.
* * *
—What do you have to say to your father?
His tongue stuck in his mouth, dry as the bush. Mr. Grieves pressed his shoulder:
—Go on.
His mouth spoke as though only learning how, and when it stalled, Mr. Grieves supplied a phrase, until it seemed the outline was covered.
—I see, his father said.
He couldn’t look any higher than their knees. His father’s voice had edge, vague and chancy, as when having things explained to him by African overseers or English housekeepers.
—He’s been punished, Mr. Grieves said, by me, and I’m convinced the lesson has been learnt.
—His blushes agree with you, sir, his father said.
—I think you’ll see an improvement in his term reports as well.
Grieves let go of his shoulder and handed his father a drink.
—He comes from perfectly good stock, his father was saying, but he’s lazy. Isn’t that right, boy?
A thwack on his back made his teeth slice his tongue.
—Enough mollycoddling and running wild like heathen, I said to his mother—
—Excuse me, John—
Kardleigh was coming in.
—Moss said I might find you here. Ah, you must be Timothy’s father?
Kardleigh was shaking his father’s hand and accepting a drink from Grieves.
—That third descant was his own composition.
Ruffling his hair, which he’d labored that morning to shape.
—He kept it a secret, but we have our sources, do we not, Timothy?
—Not bad, this choir of yours, his father said. Not St. Paul’s, but—
—And this must be Mrs. Halton!
The door opened farther and they slipped in from the corridor.
—And Miss Halton?
—Not a bad service, his father was saying, but whatever possessed you to end with “Little Town of Bethlehem”?
Kardleigh was taking his mother by the arm:
—Are the musical gifts your side of the family, madam?
He glanced to Grieves in vain appeal, but his Housemaster was busy at the mantel.
&nbs
p; —Everyone knows you end with “Hark the Herald,” his father insisted.
Like a flame, his sister’s hand on his wrist:
—You wrote that all on your own, Timmy?
His face laid him bare, and his traitorous eyes.
—It was good, she said. Beautiful and good.
* * *
In the toilet stall, he broke the seal. The school crest pressed into the page, speaking for St. Stephen’s entire. My dear Mrs. Riding, It pains me to write this. He scanned the rest, brief but plain. It omitted nothing—barn, play, loft above the chapel—and proclaimed the Headmaster’s sentence, exile to an alien House. He crushed it away without suffering the end. Eyes, to your posts. His mother was waiting.
As the call came for the last train, the refectory disgorged its crowd, full of hope and even joy, calling farewells and Happy Christmases. His mother waved to him across the cloisters, and he forced a smile as deep as any lie he’d told.
—Riding!
God! How many—Pearce now pushing against the tide:
—Where have you been? Lucky I caught you.
Pearce’s hat was askew. He was holding an envelope.
—You dropped this.
Another? This one bore his name.
—Someone found it, Pearce said.
Surname only, but he knew her hand, would know it always.
—Mind yourself, won’t you?
This day was making him delirious, so much it seemed that Pearce’s face contained a shadow of—
—Happy Christmas, Riding.
* * *
Two fresh vials clinked in his pockets, but there hadn’t been a moment even to step into an alcove. Now he’d seen off the last cab. The grass beyond the gates held only a few motorcars. He’d lost track of who had gone and who remained, but he’d got through his appointed chats without disaster. The interview with Halton’s father had gone better than expected. The parents were awful, of course, but in the sway of Kardleigh’s flattery, they softened; why the boy should have left in barely suppressed tears, John couldn’t fathom.