by Patrick Gale
The story reached Sophie in snatches, few of them trust-worthy. Early on Illumina afternoon somebody had alerted the Headman, via his secretary, suggesting he call at Mr Compton’s house. Dr Twyford had obeyed custom and let himself in through the garden gate. Walking in through the palm room, calling out, he surprised Charlie and Mr Compton.
Mrs Somborne-Abbot collected Charlie that afternoon. Mr Compton was sacked without references and told to vacate his house by Christmas. The police were not involved because Mrs Somborne-Abbot was keen not to damage Charlie’s reputation and career chances. He was to complete his schooling in the crammer’s that had helped him through his maths O level.
It was inevitable that the story would reach the local, then the national press, through the agency of the police or fire brigade or through the same person who had made the fatal call to Dr Twyford’s secretary. It became garbled and inaccurate in the process because no one with the facts was available for comment. Fuelled by conjecture and envy, the reports turned the tragedy into a salacious Gothic fantasy: gay lord burns to protest schoolboy sex ban.
When Sophie insisted on attending the funeral, Margaret was no less insistent that she accompany her. She did not say so in as many words but Sophie sensed she was angry with the school and wanted to shield Sophie from further harm at its hands. She had stood back until now, trusting Tatham’s to look after her, trusting Sophie to make her own way through the difficult route she had chosen, but now the school had failed in its proxy-parental duties and Margaret stepped in.
The service was well attended. Regardless of the scandal, Mr Compton had been a much loved and respected teacher and a surprising number of old pupils had come at short notice to show their support. High on his misericord, scholarly wife and the braver members of staff beside him, Dr Twyford might have been in a pillory. His pain must have been exquisite, knowing everyone there, from Lord Droxford and his wife and mother in the front row to Sophie and Margaret, was looking up at him over the coffin and flowers to pass judgement.
There was no eulogy. It would have been impossible. His brother Julius, a red-cheeked, fleshier version of the man they were mourning, haltingly read a surprisingly sunny and hopeful passage from the Song of Solomon: My Beloved spake, and said unto me, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.’ Otherwise it was left to Reverend Harestock to shield their shared anguish with the merciful rite of the prayer book.
A jackdaw had become trapped in the Chapel, as they sometimes did, and spent the service, perched and defecating, on one of the carved saints behind the altar. It was attentive and miraculously silent until the sudden movement of everyone kneeling for a final prayer sent it, wildly flapping, up into the gallery and the ringing-chamber. Like Mr Compton’s immolation on an old desk, it was one of those details nobody would believe who had not seen it.
There was no choir, it being the holidays, and the Droxfords had forbidden music in any case so the atmosphere of the coffin’s silent exit was doubly oppressive. Sophie noticed a flurry of coughing as men strove to master their emotions. Spontaneously, the congregation elected to follow the cortège, peeling out pew by pew as the coffin and family passed them. Sophie was shocked to see Lucas walking out ahead of her. They were the youngest there by several years, local pupils being still comparatively unusual and none of the boarders having parents who were prepared to drive them back just days after they had made the journey to collect them.
She had not had a chance to pass on Mr Compton’s cryptic message and when Lucas had not sought her out or rung her up, she had thought through its words in the light of his silence and assumed the worst.
The Droxfords were standing just outside the chapel doors, heroically shaking the hand of every mourner who emerged. Sophie craned her neck to watch Lucas greet the older Lady Droxford and wanted to shout down his hypocrisy. When it was her turn, she smiled sadly in her face, ready to say something but found Mr Compton’s mother dismissing her with a drained, ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ and no trace of recognition.
‘Hang on a sec,’ she told Margaret as they came out into Flint Quad and she hurried over to give Lucas a sharp poke in the back. Bewildered, he turned to see her.
‘God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hi. What?’
‘He knew it was you,’ she said. ‘He told me to tell you he understood. That’s all. That was his message to you. How could you look them in the face and live with yourself?’
‘What? Phi, wait!’
She threw his hand off her arm. ‘Fuck off,’ she hissed. ‘You disgust me. You always have.’ Then she hurried back to Margaret, easily losing him in the aimlessly shifting crowd.
As Margaret drove her home, Sophie pictured his pale, sensitive face above his dapper coat with the velvet collar and thought to herself, Lou will become a spy.
CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS
(sixteen years, eleven months)
She said nothing to Margaret about Lucas’s betrayal. Margaret’s paper had been too high-minded to carry any version of the story and she did not listen to local gossip. All she knew was that a favourite teacher of Sophie’s had committed suicide horribly and that Sophie had seen it all. Sophie told her nothing further, cherishing her unquestioning support. Several times she tried ringing Charlie but each time hung up without speaking when she heard his mother’s querulous, ‘Hello? Hello?’ She could not imagine what he must be feeling. It was unthinkable that news of the tragedy had not reached him. She wrote him several drafts of a letter intended to tell him he must not blame himself but found she could not keep a judgemental tone from colouring her prose. The fault lay with him, after all, even more than it did with Lucas. The fault of his silly, self-dramatizing, competitive passion. Besides, Christine Somborne-Abbot knew her handwriting by now and would be sure to pounce on the envelope before the corrupting letter inside it could reach her precious son.
When Wilf turned up on the doorstep, Saturday-clean, blithe in his ignorance of the story and keen to take up exactly where they had left off it seemed a chance to turn back time and recover from him an earlier version of herself untainted by grief or bitterness.
They went shopping. She helped him choose Christmas presents for his mother, Margaret and Kieran. Then they went to a pub for some lunch and grew boozily nostalgic about how they used to buy one another’s Christmas present in the home.
‘So who do you buy for now?’ he asked.
‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘Whoever’s name I pull out of Margaret’s pudding basin, I suppose,’ and she caught a ghost of sorrow in his face.
‘So what about this teacher who topped himself?’ he asked. ‘Was he queer like everyone says?’
Of course he had heard the stories. He skimmed the papers every day. He heard gossip from half the clients who picked up or dropped off cars at the garage. The only reason he hadn’t mentioned it earlier was that he had no inkling of how closely she was connected to the story. The temptation to keep the day on its nice, unthreatening level was strong, to carry on being the happy, normal girl Mr Compton had looked straight through when he passed her in the High Street. All she had to do was shrug and say, ‘Yeah. Wasn’t it awful, poor sod,’ and maybe give Wilf some gory detail, harmless enough now, to pass on to his mates.
But he was so solid and good and dependable and the huge gin and tonic he had bought her had undone a resolve already loosened by the Sally Army band playing carols outside and memories of their shared childhood. She broke down.
‘Hey,’ he crooned. ‘Hush. I’m sorry, Soph.’ He took her in his arms, sloshing their drinks, and rocked her gently against him. She knew he would be glaring at anyone with the temerity to look their way and she relaxed against the bearish bulk of him, clutching his leather jacket against her cheek. She stayed on his side of the table, curled against him in the booth, and, while the juke box played Slade, she told him everything. She told him how first Lucas had fallen for Mr Compton, then Charlie, or rather how Mr Compton had fallen for Charlie and Charlie, once forbidden t
o see him, decided he was in love. She told how Charlie had broken the ban and the pair had taken ever wilder risks until Lucas, crazily jealous, had betrayed them. As she told the story, from innocent beginning to brutal close, it occurred to her how entirely marginal her role had been in it all. Given confidences to the last, she had been emotionally, even morally implicated yet she could remove herself from the narrative and it would still make perfect sense.
She had expected Wilf to become angry but he listened without interrupting, although plainly disgusted, and his final response was solicitous and protective. ‘He used you,’ he said. ‘That teacher.’
‘Mr Compton.’
‘Yeah. He only made friends with you to get at the blond one.’
‘Charlie.’
‘Yes. That’s how nonces work.’
‘Oh he’s not, he wasn’t a … a nonce.’ Her shock was real but it concealed a doubt.
‘Well what would you call it? Christ, Sophie! You’re well out of there. They should be shot.’
‘Who?’
‘The school. The headmaster.’
‘That’s what Margaret said. She wanted someone to blame but I don’t think anyone was, really. Charlie was very persistent.’
‘Come on,’ he said, standing to close the subject. ‘Mum’s off with mates in London till at least seven. We’ll have the flat to ourselves.’
She felt weak with tears and gin and talking and went with him readily but what she really wanted was to curl up in bed with him and have him just hold her safely while she fell asleep. She wanted a guard, not a lover.
Elsa must have cleaned the flat before she left that morning for its air was full of the admonitory smells of cleaning products and Wilf had to move a pile of neatly ironed clothes off the bed before they could lie down.
They had never had sex in daylight before and only once on a proper bed. She found herself shy and inhibited, as if he had become a stranger to her. She kept her eyes closed to make it easier. Wilf had gained weight in her absence, spending more time in pubs, without her to keep amused, and she felt smothered by him. She had stopped taking the pill once she realized she wasn’t going to see him during term-time and she wasn’t sure how the chemistry of it worked or how soon after she began taking it again it would become effective.
When he finally came, humping into her so hard she was sure she’d find bruises later, he groaned so loudly she thought he was pretending and had felt as unaroused as she. But then he said, ‘I love you,’ close against her ear. He pulled back to make her look him in the eye. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘I really love you, Soph.’
‘Oh, Wilf,’ she said as warmly as she could and tried to pull him back onto her where he couldn’t read her expression but instead he lay to one side, caressing her face over and over until the nerves in her cheek and neck were raw and angry.
And then he reached into the little drawer on his side of the bed, pulled out a box with an Eternity ring in it, and proposed. He hadn’t liked to before, he explained, as she stared at the ring, appalled at what it must have cost him, because he wasn’t earning enough and because she was doing so well at school. But now he had been offered a full partnership in his mate’s garage and was making enough to leave his mother with the flat and take out a mortgage. And after what had happened Sophie wouldn’t be going back to Tatham’s. And she’d be seventeen in January, old enough to move out of Wakefield House to a place of their own.
She took his hand in hers to stop him stroking her face. ‘I can’t,’ she told him. ‘Oh Wilf. I can’t! I’m not stopping school. It’s my life.’
‘I thought I was.’
‘You mean so much to me. You’ve really kept me going, especially last term with everything that was happening, but … Oh. Oh, Wilf. It’s a beautiful ring. But I can’t.’
‘Take it. Just wear the ring at least. See how you feel after Christmas. I might not have got the size right. They can alter it, the lady said.’
‘No, Wilf. I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t leave school yet. I want to go to university, maybe Oxford, and …’ She shut up, hating how prim she sounded. He was so warm against her, not smothering any more, just comforting, and she wanted to pull him around her and stay there all night, as long as it would get dark soon so she didn’t have to see the reproach in his big, gentle face.
‘It’s that twisted fuck Lucas and his friends, isn’t it? And that silly queen at the café.’
‘No it isn’t.’
‘They’ve turned you.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You’re only happy round perverts now, aren’t you? I’m not queer enough for you. I’m surprised you don’t go the whole hog and turn dyke.’
‘Wilf!’
‘Go on. Get out.’
‘Wilf, I’m sorry. You’ve got it all wrong.’
‘No I haven’t. Fuck off.’
He lurched away from her and out of bed and shut himself in the tiny bathroom across the way. She knocked on the door but he ignored her. She thought of climbing back into bed to wait but felt chilled. Instead she dressed quickly, glanced at her pink, teary face through the lettering on his Southern Comfort mirror and escaped.
The Salvation Army band was still playing by the Butter Cross, though only a brave few were singing along now and they were probably drunk. ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’ followed her halfway home and for the rest of the walk she found she was singing it in her head. If I were a wise man I should do my part. But what can I give him? Give him my heart!
The house was full of noise and food smells. Round-the-table ping-pong was that holiday’s craze and the hysterical laughter, shuffling feet and the repeated slamming-down of the two bats was booming from the dayroom. She tried to slip up to her room but Kieran emerged to call up to her.
‘You’ve got a visitor, Sophie. Mrs Compton. She’s in the kitchen with Margaret. Been here an hour, nearly.’
It was typical of Lady Droxford not to correct them about her name. She would have introduced herself as Mr Compton’s mother. She and Margaret were sitting at the kitchen table with empty mugs and a tin of chocolate brownies. The milk bottle was on the table and there were no plates. For a second Sophie found herself looking on with Mrs Somborne-Abbot’s critical eye, then realized Lady Droxford was entirely comfortable and that Margaret was too.
‘Sophie,’ Lady Droxford said. ‘How nice. Margaret and I have been having such a lovely talk.’ She stood and kissed her, not an air-kiss but a proper one, with a chocolate-scented hug. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t speak to you at the funeral. I was telling Margaret here I was completely legless on tranquillizers and brandy. It was the only way I could get through it. But I wanted to come and see you as soon as I could to see how you were bearing up.’
‘Oh. I’m okay,’ Sophie said, feeling anything but. ‘Thanks.’ She took the mug of tea Margaret poured her.
‘I’m probably terribly in your way,’ Lady Droxford told Margaret.
‘No you’re not,’ Margaret said. ‘Not really.’
‘Actually, I want to see Sophie’s room. Is that allowed?’
Margaret winced. ‘Against house rules,’ she said. ‘But since it’s you and the dayroom’s so heaving … Sign Mrs Compton in, would you, Soph?’
‘Sure.’
Lady Droxford smiled warmly. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered. She picked up a big carrier bag to follow Sophie.
‘Have you ever been in a children’s home before?’ Sophie asked her as she signed the visitor’s register, wrote Lady Droxford 5.30 and led the way.
‘Well, do you know I have, but only once and I was cutting the ribbon on an extension so it was all rather artificial. This is lovely. So warm and colourful. And this is where you live?’
Sophie held the door open for her. She was acutely conscious of how battered the room looked. Posters she had stopped noticing were now glaringly out of date and so very much posters not paintings. Lady Droxford sat on the hard chair, Sophie on the bed. But almost at once Lady Droxford wa
s on her feet again, holding out the carrier bag, looking around her at the room.
‘These are for you, Sophie,’ she said. ‘But you don’t seem to have a record player.’
‘Well, no. But there’s one downstairs.’
‘But of course! I’ll have Antony’s one sent to you. It’s far too complicated for me to work – technology’s for the young – and anyway I’ve got one already. But I’m sure he’d have liked you to have those.’
She had put several boxed recordings of complete operas into the bag. Rosenkavalier, The Marriage of Figaro and Mr Compton’s pride and joy, the almost new Solti Ring Cycle.
‘I … I can’t,’ Sophie said.
‘Ah but you must. You can’t say no to the dead. It’s a rule.’ Lady Droxford smiled in a way that showed she was joking but could not be denied and gave the top of the bag a little pat, half-closing it as she closed the subject. ‘And I almost forgot.’ She reached into her capacious handbag and brought out her husband’s old army binoculars. ‘The records were from Antony but these are from me.’
Sophie took them. They were heavy and she had to use both hands.
‘You can’t say no to those, either,’ Lady Droxford said quietly.
‘But you’ll be using them, won’t you?’
‘Not any more, dear. Oh, and you can lie in bed here and see trees. That’s so important.’
‘Lady Droxford?’
‘My name’s Veronica. Do call me that.’
‘Thank you. Veronica, I … I know who killed him.’
‘He killed himself, Sophie.’
‘I mean I know who made it happen by betraying them to Dr Twyford. It was Lucas Behrman.’
‘Lucas, your charming friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because … Oh dear. I don’t know about you, Sophie, but ever since I heard I seem to keep telling people things I had quite intended to take to my grave.’
‘Me too. I split up with my boyfriend this afternoon.’
‘And you hadn’t meant to?’