Once Again Assembled Here

by Sean O'Brien

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘I’m not upset. I’m angry.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not you I’m angry with, for God’s sake! It’s – the whole thing, the circumstances, because there’s nothing to be done but go on like this.’

  I had already dealt, or failed to deal, with one troubled woman. Clearly I had not learned my lesson. Whatever was amiss with Maggie seemed only to increase her attraction. There was a richness to it which forbade boredom just as it prevented repose. I took her hand. She did not resist.

  ‘It was a breakdown,’ she said. ‘More than one, actually. A series. Just got to get on with it. Life goes on, tempers the steel, Dunkirk spirit, all that rubbish. Don’t you ever wish we could all just bloody shut up? Stop talking and just do something. Has the world ended and I’ve not noticed? It’s bloody Purgatory like this. Come on, then. Come on. I haven’t got all day.’

  I had no reply.

  PART TWO

  ELEVEN

  After Maggie had come to see me in the pub I ended up at Percival Street for the weekend. On Monday morning Maggie was nowhere to be seen. Why hadn’t she woken me? I dressed quickly. If I went through the allotments and over the pedestrian railway crossing I should just be able to nip over the road to my flat for my briefcase and get back in time for assembly.

  Boys were forbidden to enter or leave the grounds by this route because of the trains, and in the foggy morning I could see no one else about. A muffled siren sounded, out on the river. I waited while a coal train crawled interminably past in the direction of the docks, and then I hurried across the line and went into the woods. My shoes were instantly soaked.

  The path brought me to the edge of the lake. The ground near the wooden jetty had been churned up by the boots of the cadets involved in the exercise. There was someone else there. I slowed, thinking of how I might explain myself. As I came closer I saw it was Arnesen. He was hanging around, looking into the water. I assumed he was having a cigarette before lessons. If Gammon found him he would be expelled.

  ‘Arnesen. What are you doing?’ He looked up but didn’t reply. He held an unlit cigarette. ‘You know the woods are out of bounds.’ I wondered if I could turn a blind eye to the cigarette. I wished he would put it in his pocket. Then he let it fall into the water and I followed his gaze, wondering idly why the raft of lashed-together planks and oildrums turned slightly among the lilypads. I realized that it was unmoored. Had the boy done this?

  ‘Have you been messing about with the raft? You’ll get yourself expelled, and that’s nothing compared to what Mr Renwick will do.’

  ‘Renwick, sir?’ said the boy. ‘Sod Renwick.’

  When the raft turned again, something else turned, caught half under it, and I realized I was looking at a pair of legs in uniform trousers.

  ‘Arnesen? What’s happened?’ He looked round and shook his head. ‘Who is that?’ Again he didn’t speak. ‘Go and get Sergeant Risman. Now. You understand?’ Slowly, as if moving underwater, he went off into the fog. I wondered if he’d return. I wished I could disappear myself. I went closer to the water’s edge.

  I should have left it alone and let someone else do the discovering, but I was unable to wait for Risman’s arrival. I hauled on the rope, and the raft, twelve feet by eight or so, slid slowly towards me over the lilypads, bringing the khaki legs with it. I found myself unable to touch the body.

  It seemed like an age, there with the corpse. I’d never seen one before. It lay patiently in the water. Behind the trees the trains went grinding past. It can only have been a few minutes before Risman arrived with Arnesen unwillingly in tow. The boy shook his head and refused to come closer than the edge of the woods. I went to meet Risman halfway.

  ‘What is it, Mr Maxwell?’ Risman said, striding over the leaves. ‘I can’t get any sense out of young Arnesen.’

  ‘I think there’s a body in the lake, Sergeant. I mean, there is a body.’

  ‘Bloody hell. Are you sure. Is it one of ours? Is it a tramp? They get in here at night sometimes.’

  ‘It’s in CCF uniform.’

  ‘Is it now? Better have a look, then,’ Risman said. ‘Arnesen, you stay there till I tell you.’

  We went to the edge of the jetty. Risman bent down. I tried to gather my thoughts. The mooring rope had not been attached to its post but lay loosely on the planking. Hence the movement of the raft. Risman and I reached down and each took hold of one of the ankles. I was still not wholly prepared to believe that the figure could be dead. The body slid clear of the underside of the raft, face down, although I knew immediately from the back of the vast bald head that it was Carson. It was as if I’d always known it must be him, as if it should have been obvious that this was going to happen, since clearly it had happened.

  ‘Bloody hell, Mr Maxwell,’ said Risman. ‘What in fuck’s name’s been going on here?’ He shook his head as if to clear it, then hauled the body ashore and turned it over on its back. ‘Captain Carson?’ he said. ‘You’re not bloody all right, sir, are you? What the hell have you been doing?’ He shouted to Arnesen: ‘Go and fetch Mr Gammon right away.’ The boy hesitated. ‘Tell him it’s urgent and to get an ambulance over here. Understand? Go on, Private, run like fuck or I’ll cut your balls off, supposing you’ve got any. Understood?’ The boy set off at an unsteady run back across the field into the fog.

  Risman turned to me. ‘Why was it me you sent for, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘I suppose I thought you would know what to do.’

  He nodded. ‘Did you now? Don’t see there’s much we can do. We can’t move him from here ourselves, of course.’ He paced slowly about. ‘Let’s hope there’s no other smokers like Arnesen lurking about in this fog.’ He knelt down again and peered into the water. ‘What in the name of God happened to you, you daft old bugger?’ he said quietly. ‘What the hell were you up to, fannying about out here?’

  I moved a little further off so as not to hear him. I walked backwards and forwards over the bed of leaves. My mouth was dry. The grey fog hung between the birches. It was as if I had never been there before.

  Nothing happened for some time. The trees dripped and Risman remained crouched by the body at the water’s edge. At last Gammon came hurrying out of the fog into the wood, his gown flapping behind him.

  The ambulance got as close to the lake as possible but the body had still to be carried through the silver birches to the edge of the field. The driver and his mate moved slowly and carefully through the fog with the corpse wrapped in a red blanket on the stretcher. There was no rush now. The others in attendance were Sergeant Risman, myself and Gammon, plus a police constable. Arnesen was being dealt with by the nurse, Mrs Carew.

  ‘We shouldn’t be moving the body, should we?’ I said to no one in particular.

  ‘We can’t leave him lying there in public,’ said Gammon, as if this were obvious.

  We came out of the woods ahead of the stretcher party and then stood to one side like a ragged honour guard as the body was stowed in the ambulance. Carson’s uniform cap had been placed on his chest. The blanket dripped lake-water on to the floor of the vehicle. We watched in silence. I blinked in disbelief: we were all acting as though what had taken place was entirely possible. Risman offered around a packet of Park Drive, which Gammon disapprovingly declined.

  ‘I’ve ordered that the field be placed out of bounds,’ Gammon said, as though daring anyone to defy him. ‘Assembly is cancelled and the boys have been sent to their form rooms.’

  ‘Do the boys know yet, any of them?’ I asked.

  ‘Bound to, Mr Maxwell,’ said Risman. ‘Like a pack of dogs. They can smell death like they can smell women.’

  Gammon looked as if he was about to admonish Risman, but the Sergeant sniffed the air and scowled into the fog, which showed no signs of thinning. The story went that he had killed five German soldiers single-handedly with a Wilkinson dagger. Where death was concerned he had seniority here. I t
hink he was looking for someone to kill, as if this were a battlefield.

  ‘Why was Carson here by himself?’ I asked. ‘The exercise would have been over by yesterday lunchtime, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘That’s a matter for the authorities,’ said Gammon. ‘There’s no room for speculation, Maxwell.’

  ‘The man’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘I’m well aware of that,’ said Gammon. ‘I’m telling you that we have to act in a responsible manner. For example by not adding to the rumours that will already be spreading. It’s a crisis for the school.’

  ‘It’s a crisis for Carson too.’

  ‘It does you of all people no credit to make light of Captain Carson’s death,’ said Gammon. ‘There’s no excuse for showing off, but I will ascribe it to shock. Go and calm down. Sergeant Risman, would you escort Mr Maxwell?’

  Another figure appeared in the wood, a small, weaselly man with thinning hair. He wore an overlarge sheepskin overcoat and a pork-pie hat. He looked as if he should be standing under a bookie’s blackboard at the races.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Smales,’ said Gammon.

  ‘Should the body have been moved?’ I asked.

  ‘In the case of an accident,’ said Smales, looking me up and down. ‘And who are you, sir?’

  ‘This is Maxwell. History. He found the body,’ said Gammon.

  ‘That’s not exactly true,’ I said, but I was beginning to feel dazed.

  ‘Off you go, Maxwell,’ said Gammon. ‘I’m sure the inspector will need to talk to you later.’ Smales nodded without looking at me. ‘So make sure you’re available. Risman, escort Mr Maxwell to your office and wait for us And we may want to talk to you as well.’ It felt as if I were being placed under arrest, but no words came with which to point this out.

  As we drew level with the ambulance, Smales was speaking to the driver through the window of the vehicle. The ambulance pulled away, leaving tracks on the frosty grass at the edge of the Spion Kop pitch. It vanished into the fog that deadened the noise of its passage.

  ‘Come on, Mr Maxwell,’ Risman said. ‘You need a bracer first before they question you. We’ve got a few minutes.’ We made our way to his cubby-hole at the back of the Main Hall stage. I sat by the one-bar electric fire while he poured two glasses of rum.

  ‘Is that policeman one of ours?’ I asked.

  ‘Smales G., 1942–47, early leaver. Inspector Smales to you and me.’ Risman nodded and sucked his horse-like teeth. ‘Redcap in Malaya during National Service. Known to some of my muckers in the Regulars. Nasty little bastard.’ Though Risman had a talent for insult befitting his former rank, he was not given to personal comments of this kind. He took his cigarettes out again and offered me one. This time I refused. I was starting to feel sick.

  ‘You don’t seem very shocked about the death, Sergeant,’ I said. The rum was making me dizzy.

  ‘I’m not much for seeming, Mr Maxwell,’ said Risman, in a manner that invited no further enquiry. ‘You have to deal with these things, somehow, in my experience. Happened a lot in wartime and things just had to be got on with. There’s always something useful that needs doing.’ He drained his glass and offered me a refill, which I declined.

  ‘I heard you served with Captain Carson.’

  ‘That’s correct, sir. Good officer in his way. And it’s because of him that I’m working here. He put in a word.’ Then Risman changed tack. ‘What I don’t understand is why he was down at the lake at all. The exercise was finished by three o’clock yesterday afternoon and everyone would have been off the grounds by four p.m. when it was getting dark. I was last to go, had a look round as Mr Renwick and the Captain requested. They left me to it, so the Captain must have come back. I didn’t find any waifs and strays to report, no forgotten bits of kit. The raft was secured at the shore side. I was reading the paper back at home with Mrs Risman by five.’

  ‘I’m sure you were,’ I said.

  Risman looked at me sharply.

  ‘What I’m saying is,’ he went on doggedly, ‘why did he come back? There was no need.’

  I had no reply. Did it matter if Carson felt like going for an evening walk? The woods in darkness didn’t seem the most practical place to choose, and he didn’t live exactly nearby. Risman seemed to collect himself and stood up.

  ‘Well, as I said, Mr Maxwell, we’d just better get on with it, hadn’t we? Mr Smales will be needing to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ve got lessons.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and tell them to read a bloody book, sir. And a word to the wise: just watch out, OK? This is messy, so you don’t want to get tangled up in it. Do things by the Queen’s Regulations, that’s best.’

  ‘Messy.’

  ‘Well, people don’t die here every day, do they? The school will want it sorted out quick smart.’ The phone rang and he rose to answer it. He listened a moment and said, ‘Right. I’ll send him over now, Mr Gammon.’

  TWELVE

  I made my way to Gammon’s office. There were no boys about. But I could feel the place waiting.

  I sat in the anteroom, anxiously observed by the school secretary-cum-nurse, the motherly Mrs Carew. She had made me a cup of tea which I couldn’t drink. She offered me a Phensic which I declined. I looked out at the empty field. The fog was slow to clear. The place felt stone cold.

  This was like hospital in reverse, I thought: the terrible news followed by the waiting. At length I was admitted to what Gammon now clearly regarded as his rightful domain. He sat behind the desk, under a time-darkened portrait of the founder, ‘a man of liberal piety, a believer in human fellowship and the transforming power of the word’, as Carson put it in A Firm Foundation. I sat directly in front, with Smales standing over by the window so I had to half turn to speak to him. It was an arrangement familiar from my own pupil days, one effective in interrogation.

  The room was warm but Smales had kept his increasingly loathsome car coat on, and now he played with a set of keys as though he might leave at any minute, so that quite against reason I wished him to remain. The two men seemed disappointed in me, disapproving. The fact that the Chief Constable was also an old boy passed uninvited across my mind. I wondered if Smales and Gammon thought I had brought the death about by discovering it. For some reason the idea had already occurred to me. I wished Carson were here to assist me through the questioning. But he was dead, and if that was possible then so was anything else.

  ‘Why don’t you tell us what you saw?’ Smales said. I wondered if Gammon had any business to be there, and whether I should have a companion of my own, but I wasn’t prepared to risk asking the question.

  I explained how I had happened upon Carson’s body. Gammon turned an expressionless gaze on me when I told the policeman that, as I quite often did (which was, in a sense, true), I had been getting some fresh air before school began.

  ‘A fresh-air fiend,’ said Smales, as if this were somehow a dubious tendency in an institution obsessed with taking and enforcing frequent exercise on the merest pretext.

  ‘Not particularly, Inspector. But it helps to clear the head and prepare for the day’s work.’

  ‘Overdid things at the weekend, did we? Head needed clearing, I imagine.’

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘Fresh air didn’t clear Captain Carson’s, did it? Sad to say.’ Smales continued to scrutinize me as an interloper in the peaceable but distrustful kingdom where he was the law.

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, I do mind,’ said Gammon. ‘It encourages the likes of that fool Arnesen to do the same.’

  ‘I don’t think he needs any punishment after what’s happened,’ I said.

  ‘Stick to the matter in hand,’ said Gammon.

  ‘You don’t live on that side of the school, over by the lake, though, do you?’ Smales asked after a pause. I assumed he had already checked this with Gammon. ‘You’re from the other side, on Fernbank. I mean, you have to take the trouble to go down to the w
oods for a stroll.’

  ‘I like the woods, and the lake,’ I said. I prevented myself from adding that that was what they were there for, for enjoyment.

  ‘Do you now? Why would that be?’

  ‘I find they calm me down. At any rate they did until this morning.’

  ‘Meet anyone interesting? Down in the woods, on your constitutional, while you were calming down?’ I shook my head. ‘Not Captain Carson? You didn’t meet him on one of these tranquil outings of yours?’

  ‘I never see anyone one at all. Well, except the groundsmen now and again.’ Smales nodded and sniffed, dismissing this.

  ‘You don’t seem to have brought a briefcase with you on this walk. I assume you use one for your work.’

  ‘It’s at home. I planned to nip back to my flat and collect it,’ I said. ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘It seems a complicated arrangement, though. Having to go to and from like that.’

  ‘I suppose it does. It hadn’t occurred to me.’

  ‘Can’t have, can it?’

  I wondered for a couple of bowel-melting seconds if Smales was really about to accuse me of somehow being connected with whatever had happened to Carson. But he just nodded and went on looking. Gammon stared too, outraged at some incoherent level.

  After a while, Smales said, ‘I understand you’re Captain Carson’s man.’

  ‘He was my senior colleague and my mentor. He taught me when I was a pupil. He had a hand in my appointment.’

  ‘A hand in it, you say. And you were on good terms.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Not sure?’

  ‘Then, yes, we were on good terms.’

  ‘Anything worrying him that you’d care to tell us about?’

  ‘No, but I wasn’t his confidant.’ All in good time, Carson had said, seeming to say nothing except that life would take its course.

  ‘You were just his man.’

  ‘I don’t like the way you say that, Inspector.’