The Invisible Hand

by James Hartley

  “The poor thing’s just been dumped here because she’s got no family,” Salma explained. “Her mum and dad were, like, doctors, working with refugees in Africa or Syria or somewhere, and they drowned when one of the boats they were on went down. They had to move her here because her grandmother couldn’t cope. And now she’s stuck here. She can’t even go out this weekend, imagine. The only one in the whole house who’s stuck in for exeat! Bainbridge is screwing because it means she has to stay in and keep the heating on. She likes it cold, you know. Like a freezer, because it reminds her of her messed up childhood.”

  As they filed into the dining hall and mash was dolloped onto his plate and soup ladled into his pale-blue bowl, Sam felt his spirits rising for the first time in weeks.

  Leana would be at school all weekend, practically alone with him. Trapped.

  Perfect!

  Things couldn’t have worked out better. Instead of kneeling up at the common room window like a dog left at home, the next morning found Sam waving off Walt and his housemates with the cheeriest of smiles. The front lawns and red tiles of the Main Building were sprinkled with a hard, scratchy frost, which refused to melt and promised ever-colder weather, but the morning was bright, the sky clear for the first time in days, and there was even a faint blur of a faraway sun trying to gleam down from somewhere behind the hazy, high-up clouds.

  Sam was dressed for winter, in boots, scarf and a thick coat. He purposely scuffed the ice and frost as he made his way through the sea of bags, cases and children flooding the busy driveway. Since childhood he’d never been able to resist kicking snow or autumn leaves. It was just one of those strange things he always did, like pulling faces in the mirror if he was alone in an elevator.

  Once he’d walked around to the back of the Main Building Sam wandered conspicuously out over the lawn to the frozen pond between the Assembly Hall and silently prayed Leana would see him from one of the windows of the junior girls’ house.

  Sure enough, when he turned back towards the Main Building a few minutes later, there she was. A pair of dark eyes, unmistakably hers, stared out at him from between a thick brown bobble hat and a green woolly scarf.

  “Hello again,” Sam said.

  “Hello,” Leana answered.

  “Your voice sounds weird.” Sam had his hands in his pockets and was twisting his toecaps into the frosty grass.

  “So does yours.”

  “This is my normal one.”

  Leana smiled and lit up. “This isn’t my normal one!”

  “Shall we go for a walk? We need to talk, right?”

  Leana nodded and they moved off towards the Assembly Hall. Behind the building they joined a short, winding path which passed by the tennis courts and finished at the edge of the vast playing fields. The grass was a white totality, so uniformly pale that it camouflaged the far-off goalposts. The tall, proud elms, which formed a small copse between the cricket squares and the furthest pitch, gave them something to aim for and they crunched off together in its general direction. A trail of snowy footprints connected them with the path they’d left.

  The countryside, which surrounded the school, was pretty: a panoramic wintery scene animated by birds breaking from the tree canopies and sailing into the blue sky. But for their steps and breaths, all was silent.

  When Sam looked up at the far-off hills a strange phenomenon occurred. The boys called it ‘the conveyor belt’, a weird feeling of not actually moving as you walked across the open space of the fields. Only by focussing on the copse would this effect cease; only then could you tell how far you had left to walk and how much ground you’d already covered.

  “I don’t know what I’m saying sometimes. Words seem to come out of my mouth.” Leana’s voice was higher than it was in the other place, Sam noticed. She spoke like a shy, mildly posh English girl. “It’s like I know what I have to say.”

  “Believe me; I know exactly how you feel.”

  “I recognise my eyes when I look in the mirror but nothing else.” She shook her head. “But it’s like I know what to do. I’m not afraid. I feel protected, somehow.”

  “I was the same.”

  “Am I dreaming, Robbie?” Leana looked at him eye to eye for the first time since the music class the day before.

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t think so. Oh, and it’s Sam here. Just Sam.”

  Leana continued to walk. “When I saw you yesterday I recognised you but I knew I couldn’t say anything. I’m sorry.”

  “I didn’t know what to say, so don’t worry.”

  “I went back home last night. After I fell asleep. Back to the cottage.”

  “What cottage?”

  They had reached the copse but neither of them fancied sitting on the small frozen-over bench under the boughs. Something unspoken passed between them and they continued to walk on towards the perimetre of the fields.

  “My cottage. Where the well is.” Leana dropped her eyes and voice. “The witches. Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” nodded Sam. “What happened?”

  “After you fell from the window,” Leana began, but then her brows knitted and the old fury Sam had seen before, in Scotland, flared up over her features again. For a moment he thought she was going to hit him. “What were you doing that night, anyway? Did you really climb out of the window?”

  “I was looking for you!” He pushed it further. “I wouldn’t have even gone looking for you if you’d not decided to ignore me. What was I supposed to do? I wanted to speak to you. I thought you’d understand.”

  Leana wanted to say something but too much had happened. She shook her head, trying to clear it, looked up at the sky and recovered her composure. “Well, you fell from the walls,” she began slowly. “I knew nothing of this. A servant came to my room and I went down for you. It was the same night the King was murdered.”

  “Macbeth did it! I heard them talking about it. Him and his wife!”

  “I know, I know,” nodded Leana. But then she processed what he was saying and leant forward, her amber eyes wide open. “Are you sure?”

  “Definitely. We’re studying the play in English,” Sam told her excitedly. “I know everything that’s going on. I thought that was why I was dreaming about it, but obviously not. I mean, here you are. But it’s all there. We’re reading it in class! That night, when I was looking for you, I hit an owl that was in a nook in the wall with my fingers; the owl cried out as it flew out of the hole and that noise was in the play! That was there! But I did it first, do you see? I didn’t know it was going to happen. I did it first. That’s how I know!”

  Leana couldn’t take this in. She sank back into her angry state. “I can’t believe you thought climbing the castle walls was a good idea.”

  “Not climbing exactly.” Sam grinned, wagging a finger. He’d worked a hole in the sleeve of his jumper as most boy’s did, and his thumb poked through it. “Traversing.”

  “Do you know how dangerous that was? Do you know what I had to do to protect you afterwards? They thought it was you who had murdered the King. Someone had seen a body jumping or falling from the castle. They thought it was the murderer escaping.”

  Sam stopped, shocked. They were two small dots in the vast blanket of frost. “What did you do?”

  “I took you to the cottage.”

  “Why do you go there if you obviously don’t like it? I can see it upsets you. I don’t get it.”

  Leana again grew angry. “Well, where was I supposed to go?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere?”

  Throwing her hands high above her head, Leana walked away. Sam took off after her, catching her up, smoke billowing from his mouth as he asked, “And what? Is that where I am now?” He tried to make her look at him but she avoided his eyes. “Tell me what happened. You said you were going to tell me what happened.”

  “That’s where I thought we were.” Leana jabbed him in the chest. “And do you know what? I’m sick of saving you.”

  “Saving me?”
Sam tried to look confused and shocked at the same time, aping the way actors did it in films, arms outstretched, eyebrows raised, but he quickly realised there was no one to see him. Leana had gone. She was walking back towards the Main Building, fast. Sam began to jog after her but within a few strides he gave up.

  Cupping his hands to his mouth, he shouted, “I don’t know why you have to be so angry all the time!” and heard his voice echo back to him.

  Ahhnnngreee all the time-time-time.

  That afternoon he was like a dog left behind in a house, occasionally kneeling up on the arms of his chair in the common room to peer out through the steamed up windows of St Nick’s at the frighteningly empty school.

  He watched a film until lunchtime but then ate alone with one older girl, of at least eighteen, in the dining room, from a series of bowls which had been left covered with foil. Apart from “hello” and “goodbye”, the girl didn’t say a word. She played a game on her phone the whole time and walked out speaking what sounded to Sam’s ear like Dutch or German. “Nay, nay, nay…”

  He walked back to the house in dim twilight as snow started to fall. He could see it sliding diagonally through the air by the yellow street lamps, which lined the school drive, and instead of making him feel cosy and Christmassy as snow usually did, it made him feel totally and utterly alone. I am lost in the Arctic desert, he thought dramatically.

  He watched the news and changed chairs. He switched channels every ten seconds, even watching some curling at one point. He doodled on the back of his wrist with a pen.

  Finally Pram came back from his day out, startling Sam by crashing open the common room door and demanding to watch American Football. Sam acquiesced. A new thought had begun to terrify him – that perhaps Leana was so angry with him and so crazy that she might do the other him – Robbie Cauldhame – some damage. Somewhere, in the other world, Robbie was lying in a ramshackle cottage near a poisoned well surrounded by witches which manifested themselves in fog.

  “You shouldn’t bite your nails,” admonished Pram.

  “You should use deodorant.”

  “I use deodorant!” Pram shot back, appending the phrase with a variety of swearwords he’d learned at the school. Sam was amused to see, as he left, that Pram was gingerly sniffing beneath his raised arm.

  Sam went to bed. He tried to come up with something to think about. What do I want to think about before I die? he thought. But all he could think about was Leana. This he found very depressing. But she did have pretty eyes. She was actually really nice even when she was angry.

  Would you think she was lovely even if you knew she was going to kill you?

  Yes, I would. I would fancy her even if she was going to kill me.

  I like her. This in an indisputable fact.

  Sam fell into a feverish sleep, which took in aspects of little red riding hood – what big teeth you have, dear! – and some kind of skiing adventure in which he was an ace jumper who broke his leg but came back from the accident better and wiser (thanks, American films!). Sometime in the early dawn, the curtains ghostly grey, he awoke to a hideous scratching sound, like a giant itching its hairy back.

  He sat up, noticing Pram in the only other made bed, flat on his back, snoring quietly. Again it came: fingers on a blackboard. His eyes scanned the gloom until his ears led him up to the drawn curtains He stepped out of bed – ouch! Freezing! – and padded to the window.

  There, between the gap in the curtains, he saw Leana, her face white as a ghost. She was crying. In a moment Sam was outside in his pyjamas and bare feet, standing in a fresh fall of snow, hugging her so closely he could feel her warm heart beating against his ribs.

  10

  Evil Cannot Exist Without Good

  Dense banks of fog rubbed out parts of the buildings and lampposts. Treetops floated in the air. Kerbstones and ghostly hedges guided them back to the locker room door, which squeaked and rattled on its hinges as they dragged it open.

  Sam led them both up the grey-lit corridor to Dorm Four and Leana faced away as he changed. The red digits on the wall above Walt’s locker said six ten. Leana took the fleece jacket Sam offered her and they borrowed gloves and scarves from drawers of the other cupboards.

  “We shouldn’t be in the school,” Leana whispered, her voice jittery and weak. “I need to talk to you but not in the school. It’s not safe.”

  “We’ll go out for a walk if you want?”

  “Yes, yes. Anywhere. Just not here. It’s not safe.”

  Back down in the locker room Sam emptied his backpack of books and filled it with all the food he had left in his tuckbox. The booty was three bags of ready-salted crisps, a dented can of lemonade and two Granny Smith’s. “All set. Let’s go.” With their scarves pulled up over their mouths, the couple walked out of the back door into whitening fog.

  “Nobody’s going to know if we go out today,” Sam said, and meant it. He hadn’t seen a teacher since Friday evening. Food appeared in the dining hall as if by magic and there were no set times to check in or be seen. “Let’s go up to the Gallops. It’s a path that goes all the way around the hills. We did it in cross-country. We can keep walking all the way around or come back when we want. It might even be clearer up there.”

  Leana didn’t mind where they went. She was pale, quiet and drawn. “I’m not going to say anything until we get out of the school,” she repeated, looking anxiously behind herself as they walked up the paved route which ran alongside St Nick’s.

  Sam led them briskly across the dark tarmac drive to the main entrance but paused at the perimetre like a caged bird suddenly afraid to fly. Leana coaxed him over the threshold and they stepped officially Out of Bounds. Directly ahead was a stony footpath, which bisected the teacher’s cottages and the senior girl’s house, and the couple walked up it in silence, hearing the neighs and snorts of the school ponies before they saw their heads emerge from the mist.

  Only when they’d surmounted the stile at the end of the path and had begun to traverse the long, damp grass of the field beyond did they talk. And then it was Sam who spoke, apologising for the misunderstandings of the day before. This was all so new and confusing to him, he stammered. He went on, detailing his theories of why he was dreaming of Macbeth; of her; of why this might all be happening until Leana turned on him with a look on her face that stopped him in his tracks.

  “Sam, please,” she begged, her eyes closed. “I need to tell you what happened to me last night. I need you to listen. Just listen.”

  The night before Leana had gone to bed in the girls’ house as usual, she said. She’d been so tired she’d fallen fast asleep in no time at all. Almost immediately she’d found herself back at the cottage in Scotland where the well was, shivering, alongside Sam’s body: the body of Robbie Cauldhame. “You were very cold,” she told him as they walked uphill into the woods. “Cold like you were dead. That was what woke me up. The feel of you. It was something terrible.”

  A noise from outside the hut had alerted Leana to the presence of a man standing by the well. “He was a soldier of the King. A handsome man. Smiling. Almost glowing. And he was with a boy, a younger version of himself; the spit of his father. Both of them were just standing there, calling to me.”

  When she’d gone out, she said, the soldier had told her he’d been sent by his Lord, the Thane of Ross, to inform Leana her presence was requested at a banquet which was to be held at the castle that night. “The man was very courteous and chivalrous. He was almost magical. His way. His bearing. He knew my name and my position and there seemed no reason to doubt him.”

  “And the boy? How old was he, anyway?”

  “Oh, about our age. He was obviously the soldier’s son.” Leana held her hands together as she tried to remember. “It was like he was glowing from the inside. Happy, perhaps. Content. Otherworldly.”

  “I’m surprised you trusted them,” Sam interrupted, pricked by jealousy. “Everyone’s always going on about how you shouldn’t speak to s
trangers. It’s not a bad rule.”

  “You should be glad I did speak to them,” Leana replied firmly. “The boy saved your life for one thing.”

  “How?”

  The boy had given Sam, or Robbie, some kind of potion, which had revived him, Leana said. “You began to breathe more easily straight away,” Leana explained. “I really thought you were going to wake up right there and then. You didn’t, of course, but I knew you were going to be all right. I knew you were going to live.”

  “Luckily,” replied Sam, sulkily. He’d picked up a branch and was swishing it.

  The soldier had insisted, Leana went on, that she accompany him and his son to the castle. Leana was told that Sam would sleep for a few more hours but would recover soon enough and that it was safe to leave him alone in the hut. “You were warm,” she said. “I knew I could trust them. I don’t know how to explain it now but you have to believe me. I wouldn’t have left you if I thought you were in danger.”

  “No. Alone, unconscious. Totally safe, I’m sure.”

  Leana rolled her eyes.

  She’d ridden to the castle with the others, she said, in foul weather. Although she’d been glad to be in a safe place, she’d not had long to think about anything before things had taken a strange turn.

  “We were late for the banquet,” she remembered. “When we walked in the others were already feasting and had been for some time. I was making my introductions, glad to see my friends again, when I noticed a strange scene. The soldier had walked right to the front of the hall, where the master was sitting with his people and the clan chiefs, and almost immediately Macbeth began acting strangely.”