The Perils and Dangers of this Night

by Stephen Gregory

  'All right,' I said. 'And Wagner, good boy.' I crossed to the door again and peered out. I felt a warm trickle on my fingers, and I flicked a few drops of blood onto the stable floor. Taking a firm hold on the dog's collar, I stepped outside, into the yard.

  The car's headlamps were still shining. They were yellow on the walls and doors of the stables, a flash of golden light on the windows of the changing-room. The man got out and walked around to the front of the car, so that his shadow was huge and long on the wet cobbles. He was tall, slim, and I caught the flash of a wolfish face under a head of long black hair; coat and scarf, closefitting black jeans and black boots; a lean dark figure that cast spidery shapes as it moved in and out of the lights.

  I knew his face. For a moment, as though by the same kind of neck-snapping jolt I'd felt in my dream, my throat was squeezed shut.

  'Get out, Sophie,' the man said. She was slim, even in the bundled coat and scarf: a very white face in the gathering darkness, black, fashionably cropped hair, jeans and high boots. When she tottered on her heels, catching one of them on the uneven surface and reaching out quickly to the door of the car to steady her balance, the dog gave a single, very deep bark.

  They both froze and stared in the direction of the sound. The man threw up one arm and shielded his eyes from the lights. 'Wagner?' he said. 'Bloody hell, are you still here?' And as I stepped forwards, he said sharply, 'Who's that? Keep the dog away from me . . .'

  'Wagner, sir? You know him?' I tried to say, although my throat was so dry and tight. I managed to shove the dog back into the stable and shut the door. For a moment I puzzled over how this vision from a faraway world should recognise such a homely old creature as Wagner, who'd never in all his years travelled more than a mile or two from the school buildings. I went forwards again, my eyes flicking from the filthy red flanks of the car to the two white startled faces in front of me. I held out my hand, as I'd been trained to do, and said hoarsely, 'I'm Scott, sir. Can I help you, sir?'

  The man leaned down and took hold of my hand. He shook it for a moment, then, feeling the warm stickiness of blood on it, let go and inspected his own hand in front of the headlamps. 'Yes,' he said, with a glance across at the girl. 'I guess you can help us. We've come to see Dr and Mrs Kemp.'

  I blinked at him, and then at the girl. I nodded dumbly and swallowed hard, unable to speak. They were the faces from my dream.

  FIVE

  Thinking it was inappropriate to take the visitors into the school through the changing-room, I led the way around the side of the building, across the gravelled drive to the front of the house. Now the late afternoon was utterly dark, as dark as night. There was a glimmer of frost on the lawns. The bare spars of the copper beech were brittle and black against a looming sky. The woodland was a wall of blackness. The shutters in the great hall were already closed and only a gleam of light came through the cracks and under the big front door.

  I reached up and rang the bell. The young man said, 'Can't we just go in?' and I instinctively replied, 'No sir, the boys can't, sir,' ducking my head to one side when I saw the exasperation on the visitors' faces. The girl was shivering, pulling her coat tightly around her and hugging herself with her arms. The man had brought a small, soft travelling bag from the car. All three of us glanced up to the sky and saw that a few flakes of snow were floating like moths around our heads. The girl said, 'I'm so c-c-c-cold,' which made the man grin with a quick flash of teeth and softly sing 'hope I die before I get old . . .' I remember grinning nervously back at him, for I was still buoyed up by the excitement and suddenness of their arrival, and buzzing with the notion that, somewhere in a blurry nightmare, I'd seen them before. The grin froze on my face as the door opened.

  Dr Kemp peered into the darkness. He was holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and, with his reading glasses perched on the very end of his nose and his hair flopping over his eyes, he wore a customary look of impatience and irritation.

  'Scott?' he said. 'Is that you? What are you doing out there?'

  I started to say, 'There's a gentleman, sir, he wanted to . . .' but then the young man pushed forwards, into the light which fell from the doorway, and thrust out his hand to the headmaster.

  'Dr Kemp, I . . .' It was all he had time to say. Ignoring the outstretched hand, not bothering to look at the man on the doorstep and not even seeing that there was another person, a girl, standing there as well, Dr Kemp turned back to the house.

  'You've come,' he said over his shoulder, hurrying away towards his study at the same time. 'You're late, and it's an odd time to come, but you might as well take a look while you're here.'

  The man stepped into the house and the girl followed him. As I came in and pulled the door shut behind me, Dr Kemp half-turned in the doorway of his study, threw a quizzical look over the top of his glasses, and then disappeared from sight.

  'It's the grand, over there in the corner,' his voice came barking out. 'I've done what I can, but it's practically unplayable. I'd be obliged if you could take a look. And since you've come all this way, you could look at the others, in the chapel and the music rooms. Scott'll show you.'

  That was it. The headmaster had returned to his study and the muddle of end-of-term paperwork on his desk. The young man and the girl stood at the door. They stared into the gloomy cavern of the great hall, where at least the fire was flickering in the hearth and the lights of the Christmas tree threw splashes of colour on the photographs and trophy cupboards and honours boards on the walls. 'What is this, Martin?' the girl whispered, but he silenced her by lifting a finger to his lips. He took her by the wrist and led her into the hall, in the direction of the piano.

  'Let's have a bit of fun,' he said.

  I moved off towards the corridor, which, lightless, led off the hall like a tunnel. Although I was intrigued by the two visitors and the extraordinary way in which they'd arrived at Foxwood, I knew from my years of training at the school that I should keep out of the way: I was only a boy and they were grown-ups who had business which did not concern me at all. In any case, I was wearing my outdoor coat and scarf and shoes, all bespattered with mud from the chase through the forest, so I thought I should hurry along to the changing-room and take them off and get back into my indoor shoes. I plunged into the tunnel, feeling with my feet for the ramps, touching with my cold fingers the door of the library, the staffroom, the gun-room, through every twist and corner of the pitch-black corridor.

  But then I stopped in the darkness and listened. Indeed, at that moment, three people inside the building stopped what they were doing and listened to the sounds of the piano which were coming from the far corner of the great hall.

  Dr Kemp was in his study. He must have heard the notes from the piano, and of course he knew it was the stranger who'd just arrived at his front door who was playing. I stood at the further end of the downstairs corridor and listened, and I too knew that the young man who'd burst into my unhappy world was playing the piano. Mrs Kemp, just then coming down in one of the lifts, heard someone playing the piano in the hall, and she could tell it wasn't her husband. She knew that, unexpectedly, someone else was in the house, and she didn't know who it was.

  It was the way the music changed in just the first minute of playing that made the three of us cock our ears so curiously.

  The pianist had started with a few stately chords, then a scale embroidered into an elegant arpeggio. Clearly he was a competent musician, whose style at the keyboard was easy and unhurried. He essayed the style of the piano tuner for whom he'd been mistaken. He sat in the shadows of the corner of the hall, having stationed the girl behind him so that she was lost in the darkness, and he caressed the keys with a lover's touch. And then, slowly, so gradually that it was impossible to say where or when it was happening, the sound altered – a blurry chord here, a stealthy syncopation there – and the piano tuner's respectful appraisal of a tired and neglected instrument became the dirty sound of the blues.

  I turned back toward
s the hall. I heard in front of me one of the lift doors clanging open and I saw Mrs Kemp propelling herself out backwards. Without bothering to close the door, she spun the wheels of her chair and accelerated as hard as she could ahead of me, towards the hall, from where, now, there came a kind of music that the house had never heard before. The sleazy blues had become a full-blown boogie-woogie, with a rollicking bass and a hammering right hand and even the ridiculous, random scrubbing of the pianist's elbow.

  Dr Kemp and Mrs Kemp burst into the hall at exactly the same time, myself a second later. The headmaster, who'd listened approvingly to the first minute of playing, had leaped from his desk with such anger at the progression of the music that he had shoved a pile of paperwork onto the floor. Now he exploded from the door of his study. Mrs Kemp whirled into the hall at the same moment, and I slithered to a standstill behind her.

  'What is that noise?' Dr Kemp shouted.

  In the same breath as her husband, Mrs Kemp's high little voice said, 'Who is that?'

  The playing stopped. Not immediately. The fingers on the keyboard could not resist an insolent coda, like the signature of a bluesman finishing a late-night set in a smoky club. Then there was silence.

  It was broken when the two indignant voices started again – 'What are you doing?' from Dr Kemp and the same 'Who is that?' from a querulous Mrs Kemp.

  The dark figure at the piano stood up and came forwards. The man seemed to lope across the hall. He was, somehow, a part of the shadows cast by the tower of the Christmas tree and the flickering light of the fire.

  He approached Mrs Kemp first. With a beautiful smile, he leaned down to her, took her hand in a graceful, swooping movement and kissed it. 'Mrs Kemp,' he said, 'you're as lovely as ever . . .' and as she flushed and stared up at him, for the way he loomed was so overwhelming that it seemed to preclude the presence of her husband a few feet away, he added, 'It's Pryce. Surely you remember me?'

  I watched the wonderful transformation of the headmaster's face. All of the anger, the exasperation, the hostility, seemed to slip away from Dr Kemp. He actually looked younger, suddenly, in that second. With a look of real affection and a sincere welcome in his voice, he stepped forwards with his hand outstretched and said, 'Jeremy Pryce? Well, how marvellous . . .'

  'No.' It was Mrs Kemp who interrupted. She turned her face up to her husband. She was still flushed from the young man's kiss, and her beautiful hair caught the light of the fire. 'No,' she said, and her voice was slightly hoarse, 'it isn't Jeremy, it's Martin. It's Martin Pryce.'

  Another transformation of Dr Kemp's face. His outstretched hand seemed to freeze in mid-air. His face froze too. His smile set, taut and cold. He took hold of the man's hand and shook it, briefly.

  'Martin Pryce,' he said, and added with an enormous effort, 'welcome back to Foxwood Manor.'

  Night fell. It fell on the woodlands and all of the creatures that sniffed and scurried and swerved through the darkness. The treetops creaked and the dry leaves rustled. There was no moonlight. The stars were smothered in cloud. Cold.

  The night gathered around the old house and the people inside it. In the great hall, Mrs Kemp sat at the fire with the two visitors, Martin Pryce and his friend Sophie. Oddly unnerved by their presence, I'd found an excuse to get away and just watch what was happening from the shadows. Mrs Kemp leaned towards them and refilled their glasses with sherry.

  Dr Kemp was in the furthest, most shadowy corner of the hall. He'd opened the top of the piano and was leaning deep inside with a torch and a set of tuning keys. From time to time, as the voices at the fireside murmured politely in deference to the almost holy ritual that the headmaster was performing, he would emerge from inside the piano, his hair flopping and his glasses slipping off the end of his nose, and he would strike a bass note. The sounds were oddly plangent in the big room, with a hollow reverberation from the oak panels and high ceiling as though the hall were another corner of the forest outside.

  Mrs Kemp was trying to make some conversation, volunteering a few reminiscences of Martin's days as a boy at the school and attempting to draw out the stammering Sophie, but it was halting, desultory, with the headmaster huffing and puffing in the corner, with the melancholy notes of the piano hanging in the air like the hum of a bell. In any case, she could see that Pryce was content to sit back and drink, swallowing several glasses of their good sherry in unnecessarily big gulps until his teeth and lips gleamed in the firelight and his eyes shone.

  Suddenly, Dr Kemp straightened up and then sat himself at the keyboard. He launched into a Chopin sonata, playing with a panache, a verve which seemed a bit put on, a false and inappropriate bravado. To me, it just sounded wrong. The three at the fireside raised their eyebrows at each other and smiled with relief, for the music was bright and vigorous, altering the mood in an instant. 'That's better,' Mrs Kemp mouthed silently at the young people beside her, raising her glass in a kind of toast.

  Not for long. The headmaster stopped in mid-phrase, tried the same phrase again, stood up and slammed down the lid of the piano. He knew it was wrong too. He stomped across the room towards the fire. As he reached to the mantelpiece and picked up his own glass of sherry, Pryce glanced at Mrs Kemp and said, 'Oh dear, it sounded all right to me.'

  The headmaster sighed. 'It may have sounded all right to you,' he said. He stood with the backs of his legs close to the flames. The fire was burning low; the logs had collapsed, exhausted, into a smouldering heap and there were only a few coils of ivy waiting on the hearth as fuel. He took a swig from his glass and said, with a mixture of contempt and pity in his voice, 'I expect it sounded all right to Mrs Kemp and to your friend, er, Sophie, is it? It would have sounded all right to most people. But there are two people in this room to whom it didn't sound all right at all.'

  Pryce and Sophie and Mrs Kemp looked round to see who the other person might have been. I stepped into the hall, from the long dark corridor where I'd been hiding, and I stood there, too shy at first to approach the grown-ups. I was holding an armful of logs.

  'Come in, Scott, come in,' Dr Kemp said. As I came forwards, the headmaster continued, directing his words to Pryce. 'This boy has perfect pitch. For him and me, the music was painfully off-key, as indeed it would've been for your brother Jeremy . . .'

  Two things happened to interrupt the headmaster's grumpy speech. I caught my foot on the edge of the threadbare rug in front of the fire and dropped the logs onto the floorboards with a rumble like a roll of drums. At the same moment the girl stood up, spluttering and choking on a mouthful of sherry, and she hurried off to the darkness of the Christmas tree, where she carried on choking and spluttering into a handkerchief.

  It all stopped Dr Kemp in mid-sentence. He leaned down and helped me to stack the logs at the side of the hearth, while Pryce, with a wolfish grin of amusement on his face, said to a concerned Mrs Kemp, 'Sophie's OK, don't worry. It just went down the wrong way. I should tell you that she hasn't got perfect pitch either – in fact I reckon she's tone-deaf. But that's one of the things I like about Sophie: she isn't perfect, by any means.'

  'Where's Wagner?' Mrs Kemp put in, trying to smooth over the little moment of confusion.

  As Sophie returned to her seat, dabbing her eyes and mouth and throwing a snarly sidelong look at Pryce, I said, 'I left him outside, Mrs Kemp, inside the stable. The gentleman doesn't like him.'

  It was the first time I'd really seen the visitors, although I'd watched their arrival in the shadows of the stable-yard and escorted them through twilight to the front door. They'd taken off their big coats. Pryce was wearing a black round-neck pullover, black brushed-denim jeans and black elastic-sided boots. He was lean and angular, with bony wrists and a pronounced Adam's apple, long black hair and strong, beaky features; so that, as I met the mocking, sardonic look in the young man's eye, I thought of the cormorant I'd seen on the lake, far off in a part of the woods that only I explored. Like the cormorant – sleek in the water, and then, drying its wings in the
sunlight, a sinister, croaking sea-crow – he seemed like a visitor from another world. The girl was a pretty little urchin in a black pullover like the man's, jeans and high boots; she had an electric-blue silk scarf knotted loosely around her throat. And the flash of blue, her startled eyes and the tuft of hair like a crest on her head, reminded me of a fledgling jay I'd found last spring: Roly had shot down the nest and hung both the parents on his gibbet, alongside the corpses of stoats and weasels. The fledgling, peppered with pellets, had died in my hands.

  Again it came to me: a jolting flash of the dream I'd had, and their presence in it.

  Dr Kemp snapped at me, 'The dog lives here, in this house, not in the stable. Go and get him.'

  I'd placed a couple of the logs onto the fire and coaxed the flames alive again with holly twigs, but then I stood up and dusted my hands over the hearth. Glad to get away again, I stepped gingerly past the young man's outstretched legs and boots and away towards the darkness and security of the corridor.

  I heard the voices of the grown-ups behind me. It was Sophie, the gawky, flustered girl who was probably eighteen years old but looked like a child, who was covering her embarrassment by broaching a different line of conversation. I hesitated, eavesdropping, as she said, 'W-w-where are all the boys, M-m-mrs Kemp? The school seems very q-q-quiet . . .'

  'It's the Christmas holiday, Sophie,' Pryce explained with mock weariness. 'That's one of the reasons we thought it would be a good time to call by, remember?' He said to Mrs Kemp, 'We were passing, not far away, driving down to my parents for Christmas, and I couldn't resist a little detour to drop in and say hello.'

  'So who's the b-b-boy?' Sophie persisted. I'd turned out of the hall and was hidden from the adults. Peeking round the corner, I paused to catch Mrs Kemp's reply.

  She said, 'His name's Alan Scott. Sometimes it happens at the beginning of a holiday, or at half-term. For some reason or other the parents can't come – maybe they're overseas, in the services, or, unfortunately, wrangling through a divorce or something – and then, once in a while, we're left with a little waif or stray for a few days.'