Prelude

by William Coles

  What an idiot, to risk everything for a night with India. I would do it again for only a single kiss.

  That evening I was a bundle of nerves, like a sprinter in the run-up to a big race. I did my best to stick to my normal routine, washing and brushing my teeth.

  Jeremy was in the washroom too. All he could do was shake his head before pointing his cocked fingers to his temple and pulling the trigger. But nothing he could say was going to stop me.

  In the passageway, I chatted to Frankie. I was fortunate that he didn’t come into my room, for his acute antennae couldn’t have missed that something was up.

  With the radio low, I started to lay out the things I’d need. Jeans, T-shirt, dark jumper, trainers and a snug hat to pull low over my brow. Some gaffer tape for the fire-door. Fresh batteries for Jeremy’s bike lights. I bit at my thumbnail, wondering if I’d missed anything.

  I had.

  I had no present.

  I scanned the room for anything that might service. A few crinkled novels and some dog-eared books of poetry; some shabby schoolboy clothes; my posters. Useless, all useless.

  I had a nose through my box of trinkets. There were a few collar studs and five cufflinks; nothing remotely worthy for my love.

  But as I raked through the little plastic box, I saw the one thing that would be a fitting present for India.

  I would give her my watch.

  It was the most expensive thing I owned, a classic Heuer, with a thick crocodile skin strap and a handsome face that almost covered my wrist. My father had given it to me for my sixteenth birthday. It was my most treasured possession.

  Without a second thought, I decided to give it to India.

  But perhaps you can already tell that this Heuer is not just some light detail that I have tossed into the mix? Before my tale is done, we will return to it.

  WITH THE LIGHTS off, I dressed and peeled off some strips of gaffer tape, sticking them lightly to my arm. At 11.30, I stole out of my room. Every door pulsated with menace. There were at least fifteen other boys’ rooms on the corridor, with the most dangerous of all, Savage’s, adjacent to the fire-escape.

  The passage was lit by the dim pink glow of the night-lights. I tiptoed along, feet next to the walls, testing every step.

  Earlier that evening, I had already tried the fire door. It had seemed simple enough. You pressed the horizontal bar down and the two bolts at the top and bottom clunked back. But when I tried it in the still of the night, the crack of the bar seemed to sound like a rifle shot.

  I was champing on my lip with nerves. I hung there motionless, my hand on the bar and the door three inches ajar.

  Somehow the house stayed fast asleep. I gave it a minute and peeled off some strips of gaffer tape, slapping them on the top and bottom bolts to secure my route back in. Outside, I closed the door behind me, not shut tight, but enough to prevent a casual glance noticing anything amiss.

  I felt a huge surge of exhilaration. I was out, out and on the road to my love.

  For a while I stood on that black cast-iron balcony, leaning against the wall and staring at the stars.

  To schoolboys everywhere, I could not recommend the experience more highly. It was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done.

  I crept down the fire-escape stairs, scrabbled onto one of the Timbralls’ bins and jumped over the outer wall. Only as I looked back at the smooth bricks did I realise that breaking back into the house was going to be a teaser. The wall had to be a full ten-feet high.

  Still, I’d deal with that when I came to it.

  Jeremy’s bike was where I’d hidden it, tucked away behind a van in a corner of New Schools Yard. A last look at the Timbralls, a brooding black block against the starry skyline, and off I rode, slapping the black Sebastopol cannon on the way and whistling a jaunty tune to myself.

  I wasn’t heading direct for India’s home, which would have meant riding past any number of beaks’ houses on the High Street. Instead, I made a wide detour that took me past the Music Schools and the lower chapel before heading cross-country over the South Meadow playing fields.

  It was one of those times in my life when it felt so good to be alive, with the wind in my face, the air tart on my lips and cold in my throat. I was on a mission and that night I knew I could not possibly fail for the Gods were with me.

  On the far side of South Meadow, I turned the bike lights on and rejoined Meadow Lane. In another minute I was by Windsor Bridge.

  It would have been too conspicuous to leave the bike outside India’s flat, so instead I locked it up near Rafts, where Eton’s scores of boats were stored, and skipped over to her cul-de-sac. I was grinning every step of the way. I’d done it! We’d bring in her birthday together.

  I gave the bell a short ring and in moments she was tripping down the stairs. She wore silk pyjamas, a white cotton dressing-gown, leather slippers on her feet and, as she stood there in the doorway, her hands clasped her cheeks in amazement.

  “You made it.” She was still shaking her head.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “I’d better make it worth your while,” and with that, she took my hand and we were tearing up the stairs, up through the living room, and up the oak stairs to the heaven of her bedroom. And, of course, she’d been expecting me. The patio window was open, and the table, the walls and the windows were lined with scores of dainty, round, tea-light candles. By the bed, a bottle of Bollinger on ice. For my first introduction to indoor sex, it couldn’t have been any better.

  Windsor Castle was a blaze of light above us and a zephyr of wind was seeping in off the river, bubbling at the blinds. We held each other by the window, India’s eyes sparkling bright as she gazed at me. “You came,” she said. “You’re here for my birthday.”

  “Ask of me anything you will.”

  Her hand slipped underneath my shirt. “Well . . .”

  We made love on the bed. We timed it to perfection, tapering our finish to the exact stroke of midnight.

  For the last time, I looked at the Heuer on my wrist.

  “Happy birthday, India.” I kissed her. “I have another present for you too—not much, but a very small token of my esteem.” And with that, I took off my Heuer and gave it to her.

  “You can’t give me that!” She gaped. “It’s your watch! It’s far too expensive!”

  “Seriously, I want you to have it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “But it’s beautiful.” She examined the Heuer before strapping it to her wrist. It was a perfect fit. In fact, even though it was a man’s watch, the Heuer looked sensational, more than just a watch but a piece of jewellery.

  “I love it.” She lifted her arm up and the watch glinted in the candlelight. “And you know what I love about it best of all? That it’s yours, that you used to wear it. Now I’ll always have a part of you next to me.” She kissed me. “Do you really want me to keep it?”

  “Of course; that’s why I gave it to you.”

  She gazed at the watch one more time before catching sight of my empty wrist. “But what about you? What are you going to wear?”

  I shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I can’t have that.” She leaned across me, her breast touching my arm as she stretched to the bedside table. “You must have this.”

  She gave me her watch, a silver Cartier with black leather strap, a little larger than your typical petite ladies’ watch, but not as big as the Heuer.

  “But it’s your birthday, not mine!”

  “I want you to have it.”

  I tried it on. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Every time you look at it, you can think of me.”

  And India was right about that, for as I write these words now, I have that same Cartier watch on my wrist. A little battered, a little knocked at the edges, but every time I look at it, I do indeed think of India.

  I popped the champagne and we nestled down to the
luxury of a mattress, cotton sheets and soft pillows. The simple pleasures of a bedroom. Don’t think I didn’t appreciate them.

  Neither of us slept that night. We made love, we kissed, we caressed.

  And we talked.

  “What were your other girlfriends like,” India asked.

  “Other girlfriends?” I said. “Are you joking?”

  “Someone like you, Kim?” India said. “I thought you must have been snapped up long ago.”

  I laughed at the thought of it. Me with legions of girlfriends? “You flatter me India.” I poured her more Bollinger. “I was keeping myself chaste for you.”

  “Chaste rather than pursued,” she laughed, swirling the champagne as she stared at the rainbow of colours in her cut-crystal glass. “I wish . . . I wish I could say the same.”

  And the silence stretched and stretched till it was at breaking point. After asking me about my past loves, India was undoubtedly waiting for me to volley back the same question.

  I knew she wanted me to ask her. But I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. I didn’t want to know. The thought of learning about India’s exes was too awful.

  She spoke again, quickly. “There’s something you should . . .”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t tell me.” I was too fast for her, far too fast for her. I knew what she was going to start describing and I shut her up by tickling her armpits and her tummy. I’d known that finally she was about to embark on tales of boyfriends past—and I knew too that it was a place I never wished to visit.

  To have started unearthing India’s past would have been like spitting on a sublime work of art. My perception of India would never have been the same again.

  I tickled her until she was squealing for mercy, red in the face, ribs aching with laughter. And just as I’d hoped, the moment of terrible confession passed by. Everything that India had wanted to say had diffused into that great ether of thoughts that are left unspoken and unheard.

  From that night on, I think India sensed my jealousy. She never once brought up the subject of her ex-boyfriends again.

  But I was nothing if not contrary.

  For although I did not wish to hear a sentence, a single word, of India’s sexual past, another darker side of me was burning to know it all. I wanted to know how many lovers there had been, when she’d lost her virginity and with whom. I wanted to know about the snapshot downstairs of the guy that she’d been holding; and the story behind that picture on her piano when she was looking so beautiful in the surf; and why certain Well-Tempered preludes made her cry; and exactly how long she’d been on the pill before she’d met me, and—one other thing besides.

  The diamond ring.

  That night she had it on the ring-finger of her right hand and, as I lay in the crook of her arm, it was winking in the candlelight, daring me, goading me on.

  I didn’t ask her outright.

  But I brought the subject up. Even though I knew it would torture me, I had to ask. I couldn’t help myself.

  “Nice ring,” I said. Sly. Devious. Probing.

  She stared at the diamond, splaying her fingers out to catch the light. She was on the very cusp of telling me.

  I willed her on.

  I urged her to stop.

  “I don’t know why I still wear it.” She sighed. “Sometimes it’s hard to let go.”

  The blood was draining from my cheeks. Was this it? Was she going to tell me everything? Was I about to learn that my golden Goddess had feet of clay?

  “Do you like it?” she said, but then she answered her own question. “No, I know you don’t want to know.”

  I cocked my head. I said nothing although I hated it, of course I did, because it would become a daily reminder that India had once loved a man other than myself.

  She knew all this without a word being said. “You’re right,” she continued. “It’s time to move on.”

  She worked the diamond off her finger and tossed it onto the bedside table.

  “Look,” she said, and held up her long, bare fingers. “A fresh start.”

  We kissed and I gazed at her hands.

  All I could see was not bare fingers, but the indent from where her diamond ring had once been.

  I couldn’t even rejoice that the ring was off and that I wouldn’t have it thrust in my face every day because, jealous twisted teenager that I was, every time I looked at India’s manicured fingers, all I could think was that once that diamond had been there.

  And here is a tip if you ever have the misfortune to bring a jealous lover into your life.

  Don’t ever pander to them, because all you will be doing is stoking the fires. Cave in once, twice, and they begin to believe that they’re in the right, that they’re being reasonable.

  So India had thoughtfully caved in on this one. She had taken off her diamond ring because she thought it might make me happy.

  It did nothing of the sort.

  For a few hours, I had a guilty glow. I knew I had won a very minor battle. But, before the cock had even crowed thrice in the morning, I was thirsting for more information. I wanted to know who had given her the diamond, why she had worn it so long.

  But another side of me was also horrified at my petty victory. For I had walked into the stagnant swamp of my own jealousy and the more I floundered, the more it sucked me down.

  PRELUDE 17,

  A-flat Major

  BREAKING BACK INTO the Timbralls was just as formidable as I had feared.

  At 4.30 a.m., I had given India a final birthday kiss and, as the first glimmers of sunlight were pinking in the east, I was racing back over South Meadow and onto Keate’s Lane. I should have felt uplifted, exhilarated. But I was disgusted with myself. I felt soiled by that whole repugnant business with the diamond ring.

  I loved India and only India, and somehow I would learn to embrace her past because that was what had turned her into the joy of my life.

  There and then I made a vow.

  Whatever the provocation, whatever the circumstances, I was never going to quiz India about her past loves.

  If she wanted to tell me about them, then I would listen quietly and with sympathy. She had been hurt, I knew that. If talking was going to help her get over the past, then I would hear her out.

  But as for doing any of my own digging and as for grilling India about those photos, from that time forth, I would never speak a word.

  In a way, I managed to keep that vow.

  But, like a weasel-tongued lawyer, I was to stick to the words of my promise but not its spirit.

  I LEFT THE bike tucked by a pillar in Cannon Yard and gave General Peel’s cannon another slap for luck.

  Some puffs of smoke were trailing out of the Timbralls’ chimneys as the boilers fired up, but the house was still asleep.

  I examined the smooth brick wall that separates the Timbralls from New Schools Yard. There was not even a hint of a handhold.

  I decided to do what I had seen the Eton Rifles do when they were out practising on the assault course; I ran at the wall full-tilt, kicked my foot into the bricks and stretched up to get a hand over the coping stone.

  Not even close.

  Worse, the sound of my kick against the wall echoed across the yard in a dull, flat boom.

  I tried it again. I ran faster, strained to kick higher.

  I was still nowhere near and, to my fevered ears, the sound of the kick was like a discharge from that old Sebastopol cannon.

  All thought of India had melted from my mind. Trapped outside my own house? How I could I have been so stupid?

  I was petrified.

  It was now past 5 a.m. and cars were already out on the Slough Road, which runs directly next to the Timbralls.

  I walked to the back of the house and onto Sixpenny. But the walls there were, if anything, more insuperable, higher and topped with razor-wire. There was worse to come. Already there were a couple of lights on in the Timbralls. The house
was rousing itself for the start of a new day.

  I tore back to New Schools Yard and sat down by the railings to take stock. I just had to think. How could this be happening to me?

  I studied the wall. It seemed insurmountable. But when I looked to the side, I felt a thrill of joy as I realised the main gate might serve as a stepladder.

  How I would come to love that hefty black gate, with its steel bars so conveniently placed for a boy in desperate need of a ladder.

  I was up the gate in under twenty seconds. My earlier gloom dissolved in a surge of adrenalin. Of course it was going to work out all right. The result had never been in doubt.

  I trotted along the top of the wall, as carefree as a tightrope walker, and was soon darting up the fire-escape and into the house. I was meticulous in covering my tracks, clearing off all the gaffer tape before slotting the fire-door back home.

  I was hauling off my clothes even before I was back in my room. I sat on my bed grinning to myself.

  I’d spent the night with my love and had got clean away with it, and, as I slipped between the sheets, I knew that my night-times at Eton would never be the same again. For if India was in her home and willing to see me, then every night I would go to her. I would not get sloppy, but would be every bit as vigilant and wary as I had been that first night.

  Sometimes, though, it doesn’t matter how vigilant you are. For it’s not your mistakes or blunders that find you out, just the natural order of events. Things happen; inconceivable things that would have seemed so unlikely that they would never even have raised a blip on the radar.

  SO THAT SUNDAY, I saw India after lunch and hand-in-hand we walked the fields. I gazed admiringly at my Heuer that was on her wrist. I think I almost preferred it to seeing her Cartier on mine, for it was my mark and stamp and signified that she was mine.

  I took my leave of her at 6.30 p.m. in time for Absence, but the birthday celebrations continued that night when again I crept to her door. We would eventually learn to sleep with each other but, in those early days, when everything was so fresh, we would spend our time making love, talking and playing the piano. For night after night after night.