The Suicide Club

by Rhys Thomas

  The weird thing was that I wasn’t feeling frightened, which is what I should have been feeling. I was, in all honesty, feeling anger towards the headmaster more than anything else. I’m sure my reaction wasn’t rational, but that’s the way it was. I felt confrontational.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said to me and Freddy. ‘What have you got to say about this?’

  I was only fifteen and I was already more intelligent than my headmaster, who didn’t realize that he had just told me to shut up and was now asking me to talk. Long service can get you a long way, you know? I’m sorry for saying that, but that’s how I felt. Something was stirring in me, and it wasn’t good. I knew what it was. It was the old me, the acerbic, ruthless Richard Harper that had been so horrendously behaved when his parents split up. I didn’t want him back. He was not welcome but he was still coming. I knew it.

  ‘Sir, we didn’t mean for it to happen. We didn’t want to kill it.’

  ‘Tell me which one of you did it.’ His voice sounded menacing.

  ‘It was me.’

  Everyone looked at Freddy, who was fixing the headmaster’s stare.

  ‘I grabbed it and its neck just got caught and somehow . . . it happened.’

  I was hugely impressed that Freddy had taken the hit. He knew I wouldn’t have said anything so he could have got away with it if he’d wanted, but he did the decent thing.

  ‘Sir, I swear I didn’t mean to kill Bertie. I was trying to set him free.’

  ‘What do you think your father will say about this, Mr Spaulding-Carter?’

  Freddy’s face looked a little afraid now.

  ‘He’ll be upset,’ he said calmly.

  I should say now before you get the wrong idea that Freddy’s father was not one of those strict fathers. He didn’t force him into doing anything that he didn’t want to do, like military school or something like that. I never actually met him, but I know that none of Freddy’s defects were caused by abusive parenting. Freddy was just plain nuts, I suppose. I guess you could say that everything he did tied in with his theory of motivation and how human behaviour can’t be explained away by cold, unromantic science. There was no reason for killing Bertie. None. It happened and there was no reason for it. A lot of life is like that.

  Then, out of nowhere, Craig Bartlett-Taylor burst into tears. Just suddenly started crying a torrent. He was inconsolable. His face was all red and I felt an arrow of sorrow pierce my heart. How long had this tear-storm been brewing in his poor fractured soul? Since Bertie, since the pill incident, before that even? His whole life maybe. I wanted to hug him and protect him from the world, apart from, of course, there’s no protecting anyone from it – it will get you in the end, no matter what.

  The headmaster’s face simply went blank, like he’d had a lobotomy.

  ‘Stop crying, boy,’ was the best he could manage. Cruel bastard.

  It showed me there and then that some adults live their lives behind a veil. As far as I can see, they pretend for all the world that they know what they’re doing but they only seem so self-assured because they think they know what’s going to happen next. They are planning two steps ahead and living within certain boundaries. But it is when things happen that are sudden and unexpected – when genuinely good people step up to the plate and come to the fore – that these supposedly ‘confident’ people flounder. My God, I sound bitter. But I’m not. And I am. I’m both. People think you can’t have two feelings at either end of the spectrum towards the same thing, but you can. Why do people think that?

  Clare and I both got out of our seats and went over to Craig. He wasn’t bawling like a little girl, he was crying with a real fucking tragic POWER. I’m sorry to swear but that’s what it was like. His entire body was aching up and down, heaving like an oak tree being uprooted. His pain was coming straight out of his skin. I noticed that his sweater was a bit too small for him and some of the scars on his arms were just poking out. I found myself holding his hand, which he gripped tight like a baby does. The headmaster actually got up and left the room. Not being able to deal with this amount of emotion, which I admit was intimidating, he had gone to fetch his secretary.

  There was no way that he could have understood what Craig Bartlett-Taylor was going through. I could tell that he was the sort of person who had never known the deeper depths of the spectrum. He’d probably never even fallen in love properly.

  I clutched Craig’s hand tighter and looked at Clare, who returned the stare. A bond burned up between us for a second. Suddenly we were all around Craig, all grabbing him and comforting him, telling him that it would be OK. Lying to him that it would be OK. How could it ever be OK for someone like him?

  ‘We’re going to be with you all the way,’ I told him.

  Freddy was crouched down. He had put his hands on the back of his head and was staring at the floor. He lifted one of his hands and put it on Craig’s knee. And then he started patting it, kind of in the same way that a child would try to reassure somebody. And that was when I forgave Freddy for killing Bertie. I sensed, in a searing flash of clarity, that I knew what had happened. He had made a stupid mistake. That was all. He had lost his head for a moment and done something terrible. I had to forgive him. God knows, I had to forgive him for doing something like that. How could I not?

  He sighed and stood up.

  ‘This is fucking bullshit,’ he said. ‘I’m getting out of here.’ He strode towards the window, quickly.

  ‘Freddy, hold on,’ I pleaded. ‘Don’t go. It’s not worth it.’

  Craig had stopped heaving now but the tears were still pouring down his face and he was making this odd groaning sound. His head was slumped over his shoulders and I wondered if he was about to break for ever, or if he was feeling some sort of catharsis. An image of his old parents flashed in my brain and I hoped that this outpouring of emotion would clear the skies and make everything nice and fresh for Craig and his family. I knew that it wouldn’t though. Nothing could change the fact that he wasn’t quite normal. That was it for him, the beginning and the end.

  Freddy was on the windowsill and looked like a superhero, crouched and ready to pounce.

  ‘I’ll call you all at some point. I have an idea,’ he said. And he jumped out the window, just as the headmaster came back in.

  His face was a picture, you should have seen it. It was pure astonishment mixed in with what can only be described as hatred for Freddy.

  ‘Get back here,’ he screamed. And I do mean screamed. Even his voice was angry because the air from his lungs split either side of his vocal cord and came out far too high-pitched.

  But Freddy was heading across the lawns. I hoped to God that the headmaster would get out of the window and start pegging it after Freddy. But he didn’t. He let him go with a shake of his head. I assumed that Freddy was going to be expelled. Which he wasn’t. Our crime was deemed so heinous that we had a far worse punishment awaiting us.

  12

  ‘MR HARPER,’ SAID the headmaster. ‘You come with me.’

  I looked at my friends and saw four faces staring back at me like I was the Chosen One. I was being torn away from them and it was becoming apparent that it was me who was going to take most of the fall for Bertie. Which was, of course, the way it should have been.

  My brain was blazing. I now felt exactly like I had when I was fourteen. I was the same person, all those months of hard work had gone out the window as I regarded the world with cold eyes. I felt the headmaster by my side and whereas I should have felt intimidated, I actually felt nothing.

  I was taken out of the office and into the room next door, a room that I had never seen the inside of before. It was a conference room with a big meeting table and a load of high-backed chairs all around. Sat at the far end like the Godfather was a fat woman wearing a blouse that was absolutely horrendous. I took an instant dislike to her. Not because of her clothes but because of the way she looked at me. She looked at me like I was a victim.

  ‘Richar
d,’ the headmaster said calmly. ‘This is Miss Bowler. And I’d like you to have a little chat with her.’

  I thought she might have been a detective. The headmaster went to close the door behind me.

  I sat down at the far end of the table, keeping my distance from Miss Bowler, still having no idea who she was.

  She grinned at me and I thought her mouth was going to rip apart at the edges.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, her voice all waterlogged and flabby. ‘I’m Sylvia.’ Her voice was horrid and she had a terrible double chin. I’m not at all judgemental ordinarily, but something about this woman really gave me the creeps. ‘Do you know why I’m here?’ she asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Elucidate,’ I said sharply. It was a bit too acerbic for me. The monster was growing inside.

  Her eyes narrowed when I said that.

  ‘I’m here to help you,’ she hissed.

  ‘Are you a counsellor?’

  ‘Yes. I’m a psychotherapist.’

  I sneered inwardly.

  ‘How many A levels have you got?’ I said cuttingly.

  She fixed my gaze. I’m never this confrontational and I could feel myself breaking new ground. But I didn’t like it, I wasn’t being a nice boy.

  ‘I don’t have any A levels because I got my degree as a mature student,’ she said, thinking that she had regained her composure. She should have regained her salad.

  I smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll never get any A levels either because we do the baccalaureate here. Because we have a lot of American kids, you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was obvious that I had offended her because I had let her know loud and clear that I was laughing at her idiocy. I tried to make it up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘How can I help you?’

  But my remarks had struck a nerve.

  ‘You make fun of me because I didn’t have the opportunities you have. But let’s take a look at facts. No, I don’t have any A levels but then, you killed an innocent creature.’

  She sort of had a point. Apart from I hadn’t physically killed Bertie.

  ‘Look, I didn’t mean anything by asking about your credentials.’ I was on a roll. ‘I’ve read some Freud,’ I lied.

  ‘What did you think?’ Her guard was up. She was being exceedingly unprofessional.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I haven’t really read any of that stuff. It’s not science, is it? I mean, in a hundred years’ time, people will look back at people like you in the exact same way that we look back now on the people who thought the world was flat. You think you know it all but you don’t. People will laugh at you because your evidence doesn’t follow the rigours of the scientific method.’ I cursed myself for saying it because I didn’t really mean it and also because I was being very rude. I immediately apologized and asked if we could start again. I also lied and told her that I didn’t really think such awful things about psychotherapy and that I sometimes said things to show off. She liked that because I was scratching beneath the surface.

  ‘Tell me what happened on Saturday morning.’

  I went through the story of Bertie, telling her that it was just an accident.

  When I was finished, Sylvia looked at me with condescension.

  ‘Tell me about your parents.’

  I sighed a little and went through the story just to keep her happy, making sure that she knew that I had fully forgiven them for what they had done.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said at last. ‘Listen, I’m going to the coffee machine. Would you like anything?’

  ‘I don’t like tea or coffee,’ I said.

  ‘What about a can of Coke?’

  ‘Oh, my parents don’t like me drinking carbonated drinks,’ I lied again. I like lying to people for whom I have no respect because it’s funny.

  She left the room and I was on my own. I considered, but only for a second, what I had said about my parents. About how I had forgiven them for my humiliation. I have forgiven them. I never tell them, but I love them. Normal teenagers never tell their parents that they love them, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t.

  Sylvia returned and waddled back to her chair. She was carrying a plastic cup of coffee, from which rose a snake of steam.

  ‘Would you like to hear what I have to say about you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. I really did want to hear. It would be amusing for someone of my intellect to hear someone of her intellect judge me.

  ‘I think that you have forgiven your parents. But you haven’t forgotten. You think that your fellow pupils still look at you and make fun of you behind your back because you were once part of a broken home.’ She looked at me as though she was clever. She thought she had impressed me.

  In fact she had done the opposite. She was plain wrong. I freely admit that my parents’ temporary separation did mess me up, but not any more. The scars will always be there, of course, but scars don’t actually hurt, do they? I decided that this woman had embarrassed herself for long enough so I started to make fun of her. I looked at the desk, pretending that she had struck a chord. I was play-acting. I can guess what you’re thinking. You might be thinking that I was being arrogant, but I wasn’t. Consider who was wrong: me, because I was being cynical, or her because she thought she had all the answers? I absolutely admit that I was being very, very horrible to Sylvia but then I didn’t ask for help, and she didn’t know me, so why did she think that she could just waltz into my life and ‘cure’ me of whatever it was I had? I know I was being harsh, but I didn’t care.

  ‘It’s OK, Richard, I’m here to listen.’

  She really did say that, I’m not making it up. And do you know what she did next? I was dumbfounded. She took an orange ball from her bag, got out of her seat, put the orange ball on the table in front of me, walked back to her seat and sat down. Let me just reiterate: this was an orange ball, not a piece of fruit. She then looked at me and said something so incredible that, as soon as she said it, I couldn’t wait to tell my friends so we could have a good laugh at the stupid fat bint.

  She said,’ Peel the orange, Richard.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She made the motions of somebody peeling an orange. ‘Peel the orange.’

  I had to nip this in the bud straight away.

  ‘Look, Sylvia, I have to tell you this.’ I picked the ball up. ‘This is an orange ball. I don’t know what you mean, but I’m not going to pretend to peel a ball as if it’s a piece of fruit.’ I couldn’t exactly have said it any clearer.

  She wrote something down in her book.

  I put the orange ball back on the table.

  ‘We’ve had a good talk today,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you next week.’

  She went back to her book. This was the end of this session.

  ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course you can, Richard.’

  ‘Um, this is awkward, but, you know you said you’ll see me next week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does that mean that, sorry, that I’m . . . not . . . going to get in trouble for killing the bird?’

  ‘I’ll see you next week,’ she said.

  I left the room and the headmaster was waiting outside.

  ‘Take this home with you, Mr Harper,’ he said. He was holding an envelope. I took it from him and tried to look timid.

  ‘Sir,’ I said. ‘How’s Craig?’

  ‘His parents are coming to collect him. He’ll be fine.’

  I smiled a little.

  ‘Can I just say something?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I looked at the floor.

  ‘You know I’m sorry about Bertie, don’t you, sir?’

  I was serious that I was sorry about Bertie being dead – of course I was sorry, I’m not disaffected. But that didn’t change the all-important fact of the matter; that, although I was sorry about Bertie, when I said I was sorry to the headmaster I only said it because I was maki
ng fun of him.

  13

  I KNEW WHAT was in the envelope. It was a summons for my parents. The headmaster would like them in to talk about their son – me. This would be the worst part of it all. I had to somehow explain to my parents about Bertie. This bird was kind of like a local celebrity and now he was dead. They were going to see that all of their efforts had gone to waste and that their son really was a bad egg.

  By the time I got home that evening, I was numb. The envelope from the headmaster was in my hand and I desperately didn’t want to give it to my parents. But I had decided to face the music like a man so I went into the kitchen and sat at the table with my mum and dad whilst they read the letter.

  The initial reaction wasn’t explosive because they were in shock. How could their son have done this? My father looked at me like I was a stranger, and that hurt. My father was always supportive of me, but now I feared I had lost him for ever. My mother stood up from her chair and walked out of the room, carrying the letter in her hands.

  That was a bit of a let-off. I was glad that she had taken the time to cool off before speaking to me. But I was not going to be so lucky with my father.

  I really love my father. After he left he stayed in constant contact with Toby and me. We never spoke about whether or not he was seeing another woman, or who she might have been. And that suited me fine because I knew nothing was going on.

  I always knew that my mother would forgive me for anything and I could sort of get away with anything, but my father was different. If I, for example, murdered somebody, he would turn me in. Because that would be the right thing to do. And now I was on trial and in jeopardy was his approval of me.

  ‘I can never forget this, son,’ he said coolly.

  His calm voice chilled me. I knew that he wasn’t going to go off his nut at me because the nature of my crime was so horrific that scolding me would be meaningless. But the way he was speaking was not nice. My mouth got even drier than it already was. I knew what he was thinking – he was thinking, Richard hasn’t changed. My chest was actually experiencing physical pain and my head felt light.