'Go on, Alan,' Pryce said, and he started to play again. 'Dr Kemp won't mind. I'm playing a Christmas carol, that's all.'
So I stepped into the vestry and took hold of the rope. Pryce was playing another verse, with perfect reverence. I essayed an experimental tug and the bell in the roof of the chapel sounded a single muffled note. It was soft, it was pure, it was in keeping with the carol, on a sparkling snowy afternoon a few days before Christmas. I tugged again, and again, and Pryce played up.
The sound of the piano carried through the building. The tolling of the bell, clear in the cold air, carried there too. Where Dr Kemp would hear it in his study.
I knew what would happen: the headmaster would lumber from his desk and down the corridor, and his wife would try, unsuccessfully, to soothe him, to stop him – and I knew that, by tugging the rope the very first time and sounding a single note, I had aligned myself with Pryce and now it was too late, impossible, to stop and realign myself with Kemp.
There was a shift in the music. Pryce's playing was changing, blurring, and I tolled faster to keep up with the beat. Somehow, with skill and stealth and sleight of hand, Pryce was transposing 'While Shepherds Watched . . .' into the doomy dirge of 'Paint it Black'. I recognised it, it was always on my transistor radio, or had been until the headmaster had broken it. My stomach turned over at the sudden realisation of what he was doing. But by now the bell was tolling a regular, faster beat which I couldn't stop, and Pryce was playing louder and louder, with a deadly insistence, repeating the same menacing monotone over and over . . . I see a red door and I want it painted black – no colours any more I want them all turned black . . .
Dr Kemp burst into the chapel.
Too late, Pryce shifted in a split second back to the carol. It made it worse. By the time the headmaster was halfway up the aisle, Pryce was smiling like an angel and playing with utter loveliness. Dr Kemp was unstoppable. He bore down onto Pryce, his face purple, his hair flopping, his lips flecked with spittle, and he shoved him right off the piano stool onto the floor.
The bell rang three more times. I was powerless to stop it. Pryce scrambled to his feet and thrust his face into Kemp's.
'Don't you touch me!' he yelled. 'I'm not one of your little boys!'
'How dare you?' the headmaster bellowed. 'Here, in this place! In my house!'
They stood chin to chin, panting: a handsome boy of twenty, his smooth complexion flushed with anger; a florid, middle-aged schoolteacher, the veins popping in his temples. The only sound in the chapel was their breathing, because the final notes from the piano had faded to nothing, the bell was silent, and the girl and I were holding our breath.
Dr Kemp found something to say. Struggling to control himself, he took a step backwards. 'You are a guest in my house,' he said very slowly. 'I'd be obliged if you would forbear . . .' His sentence dried up, shrivelled and died.
Pryce stepped back too. Theatrical, he ran a hand through his hair. 'Forbear?' he said. He pondered the word, as though he'd never heard it before. 'Of course, Dr Kemp, we're grateful for your hospitality.'
He turned back to the piano and closed the lid. He made a tiny, courtly nod of his head, the closest he could come to an apology, and proffered his hand. Dr Kemp ignored it. So he moved past the headmaster, towards the back of the chapel.
'And Scott, as for you . . .' Dr Kemp let the words hang in the air. I came out of the vestry. Behind me, the rope was still swinging. 'As for you, I'm disappointed, and you know what that means.'
Sophie spoke up. She'd watched the confrontation, speechless, aghast, but now her voice, despite the stammer, cut clearly through the room. 'It wasn't h-h-his f-f-f-fault – he only d-d-did what M-m-m-Martin . . .'
'Please don't interfere,' the headmaster said. 'At least you could allow me jurisdiction over my own house.' He signalled to me with a lift of his eyebrow and marched out of the chapel. I followed him.
It was twilight at four o'clock. I was in the stable; I'd lit the lantern and was bending close to the flame, to see what I was doing. The rest of the room was in darkness. In the far corner, the jackdaw hopped from one end of its perch to the other, with a rhythmic rattle and click of its claws. I didn't look up to watch, and in any case, the task in which I was so deeply engrossed would shortly take me back to the bird. As ever, Wagner was in the stable with me. He'd wolfed the remains of the rabbit which I'd fed to the jackdaw, and now he was dozing on the cobbled floor.
I was whittling the tip of a feather with Roly's knife. The feather was from the bird itself, one of its tail feathers which had been bent almost ninety degrees when it was tangled in the brambles. I'd carefully cut it off, just below the fatal kink, and now I was whittling the tip into as sharp a point as I could.
I held the feather close to the lamp and flicked the dust from it. Perfect. I thought for a moment how good it would be to keep it and use it as a quill, to dip the point into an ink-well and write with the magical blue-black feather of an imp I'd rescued from the forest. I held it like a pen and wrote my name in the air.
I winced, put the feather down and blew on the palms of my hands, one after the other. There were three welts on each palm, red and very sore. Not the quickly fading signs of a nightmare I'd had, but harsh and painful reality: the marks of the headmaster's cane.
Anointing the point of the feather with glue, I took it, and the lantern, across the stable to the jackdaw. To quieten the bird, all I did was blow gently on its whiskery face. And it settled immediately, angling its head this way and that for the waft and warmth of my breath, blinking at the lamplight. Without the slightest fuss, finding my tiny target first time, I imped the newly sharpened quill straight into the round socket left after the removal of the damaged feather. I held it a second, made a minute adjustment and stood back.
'There,' I said. 'Soon you can fly.'
I blew little kisses of air into the bird's face, and it bristled at me, shivering its wings around its body like a cloak. Then it swivelled its head and started to rearrange the tail feathers the way it liked them. I looked on intently, concerned that my handiwork would be undone. And I was watching, unconsciously blowing on the palms of my stinging hands, when I heard a sound outside in the stable-yard.
Wagner heard it too, and started a long, low growl. He stopped when I bent and touched his muzzle. There were footsteps and voices. Turning down the wick of the lamp until it was snuffed in a plume of smoke, I peered over the door into the yard.
The sky was dark. Big flakes of snow were whirling like a million moths. The moon, round and faint behind a smothering cloud, threw a feeble light – enough for me to see Pryce and Sophie crossing the yard towards the car. Their footsteps crunched to a standstill.
Pryce made a desultory swipe at the bonnet. The snow had frozen hard. He rubbed his hands and looked around. Sophie was shivering in her coat and scarf, wobbling on her high heels.
'She'll go in one of the stables,' he said. 'They're all empty, I think.'
'So s-s-s-sad,' she said. Her shivering made her stammer worse. 'The whole p-p-place is so empty . . .'
'There hasn't been a horse here since Mrs Kemp had her accident,' Pryce said. He made a pistol shape with his fingers, fired an imaginary shot and blew away the smoke. 'Not since Dapple got his coup de grâce. Here, let's try this one.'
He went to one of the stables and tried to pull the door open. The snow had banked against it so he kicked it clear with his boot. He kicked and kicked, because the snow had crusted into ice, until at last when he wrenched at the door it grated ajar. It was a wide, double door, and over years of neglect and lack of use the hinges had rusted and sagged. Cursing, straining, Pryce had to lift the door and swing it clear of the snow, so that it yawned open and revealed the dark space inside.
'All right.' He was breathing hard. 'Now help me, Sophie. We can do it together!'
He leaned into the car and released the hand-brake. They both bent to the bonnet and strained with all their weight, to try and push the ca
r backwards. It didn't budge. The flattened tyre seemed to be frozen to the ground. Again they shoved, their boots slithering hopelessly, until at last there was a splintering of ice and the wheels broke clear. They stood up, heaving, their breath billowing around them.
'For fuck's sake, Sophie, are you pushing or just sticking your fat arse up into the air? You've got to help me!'
'I'm p-p-pushing the stupid thing!' she retorted. 'It's not my f-f-f-fault we're here and . . .'
'It is your fucking fault! If you hadn't been screwing around with Jeremy . . .'
'That's what you w-w-wanted me to do!' she spat at him. 'That's why you t-t-took me to see him! It was all your idea! I did what you w-w-wanted me to do, and then you went c-c-crazy . . .'
'You were the fucking final straw!' he hissed at her.
Maddened, she stood away from the car and hissed back. 'You couldn't s-s-stand it, could you? Seeing him happy! You had to go and t-t-tease him with me, you had to remind him of all the sh-sh-shit you'd given him! Now there's no chance for him, and no chance for us, just this m-m-mess, this bloody mess!'
He lunged at her, grabbed her shoulders and shook her to silence. He blew the words into her face, a fume of steam in the freezing air. 'Listen, Sophie. Right now, at this moment, you're here with me. Here, now, with me. That's all there is, nothing else. Now push!'
I'd steeled myself to go out of the stable and help them, but at the angry exchange I hid behind the door. I watched as they bent and pushed again, and every inch they won was an exhausting effort, for the snow in the yard was deep and hard. At last they shifted the car back and back until its nose was angled towards the door of the stable that Pryce had opened.
Sophie squatted with her head between her knees, as though she would retch. Pryce, with his hands on his hips and head thrown back, lurched into the stable and clattered around inside, emerging a moment later with a spade.
'N-n-n-nice timing,' she wheezed. 'We move the sodding car and then you f-find the sodding shovel.'
He attacked the snow in front of the door and around the wheels of the car. He flung the spade with an enormous clang back into the stable and they rested another minute. I watched, and all this time Wagner leaned his hot, heavy head against my thigh, his body rumbling and ready to go. Pryce and Sophie braced themselves for the final awkward manoeuvre. He grappled the steering wheel and shoved at the same time, wrestling the car as though it were a reluctant steer, while she applied her puny weight to the rear bumper. The flat tyre flapped and squelched. And that forbidden word, which I'd thought so rare the day before, was hissed and stuttered and grunted so often in one fraught minute that it was just a meaningless noise of fluster and frustration.
The car rolled into the stable. The two people who'd fought so hard to get it there stood and stared at it with resentment in their eyes. A long slab of snow slid off its nose and onto the stable floor. And once more, as I peered from my hiding place, the car was an animal, shivering the ice from its pelt, revealing its reddish, filthy flanks.
Pryce came out with the spade. He made a few tentative raking movements at the mess of footprints and tyre marks, then looked up at the sky. The snow was falling heavily.
'No need,' he said. 'In a few hours there won't be a sign that anyone's been here. It'll give us time. Here, Sophie. Help me, the last thing . . .'
Together they lifted and closed the door of the stable. Without speaking, with hardly the breath to speak, they crossed the yard and went back into the school.
SEVEN
Dr Kemp bent to the walnut cabinet, opened the lid and put a record on the turntable. No one spoke as he set it turning and gently placed the needle on it. There was a crackle and a hiss, and we all waited for the music to begin.
It was nine o'clock in the evening. Mrs Kemp was sitting by the fire in the great hall, with Martin Pryce and Sophie and me; and Wagner, of course. Despite the fact that the humans were eating bacon sandwiches from a tray balanced precariously on a table I'd been ordered to fetch from the headmaster's study, the dog lay very still and kept his eyes closed. He'd been trained from puppyhood not to beg for food, indeed, to avoid eye contact with humans who were eating. So now, although the smell of the bacon was tantalisingly good, he feigned sleep at his mistress's feet. I could tell, however, from the twitch of an ear at every word that was spoken, that the dog was wide awake and hoping for a treat.
The fire spat a spark onto the hearth rug. Dr Kemp rubbed it out with the sole of his shoe. In the far corner of the hall the lights on the Christmas tree were flickering – not by design, but probably because one or two of the bulbs were loose. We all listened to the hiss of the needle on the record and waited.
'No prizes for guessing,' Pryce said, one beat before the music started.
Smooth, swirling strings, a sweet melody and a surge of muscle. The lazy power of an orchestra filled the room. Sophie nodded her head and raised her eyebrows at Mrs Kemp. 'I think I know this – what is it?'
Before she could speak, the headmaster gestured towards me, to indicate that I should answer the question. 'It's Fauré's Requiem, sir,' I said. A bit of salt from the sandwiches had got onto the palm of my right hand, the grains burrowing into the welts. In a free world I could have leaned over to the dog and let him salve the irritation with his tongue. But I sat as still as the dog and endured the stinging by clenching my fist.
'Like I said, no prizes for guessing,' Pryce put in. 'I think I heard this every night of my years at Foxwood.' He directed himself to Sophie. 'Every night, after Dr Kemp had been round the dorms and said the prayer and turned all the lights out, he'd come downstairs and put on this record. We'd hear the music creeping up the stairs, crawling along the corridors, slithering under the doors and under our beds and . . .'
'That sounds horrible,' Mrs Kemp said. 'We used to play it often, we still do. But I didn't know that the boys could hear it upstairs in the dormitories.'
Pryce pulled a teasing, doubtful face at her. 'That was the whole idea, wasn't it? Wasn't it, Dr Kemp?'
The headmaster had taken his ivory baton from the mantelpiece and was conducting as the record played. 'A requiem is for the repose of the dead,' he said, 'not a lullaby.'
'I know that,' Pryce persisted. 'I mean, you intended it to be part of our schooling. Even at night, you were dinning the music into our heads.'
'Dinning?' the headmaster said. He closed his eyes as he swished the baton up and down, from side to side. 'I teach music at Foxwood Manor. I instill music, and the love of music, into the boys. I have music in my head all the time, waking and sleeping . . .'
'And you make sure the boys do too.' Pryce leaned back, smiled, and conducted airily with a bacon sandwich. 'These days, teenagers like a different kind of music.'
Mrs Kemp countered, seeing that her husband had deliberately shut his eyes and ears from Pryce's playful provocation. With a charming smile at him and Sophie, she said, 'Well, the boys at Foxwood aren't teenagers. So, in the meantime they listen to the music we . . .'
'How old are you, Alan?' Pryce's question was so abrupt that it stopped her in mid-sentence. It surprised me too, having assumed I was excluded from the grown-ups' conversation.
'Twelve,' I said. Before Mrs Kemp could butt in and make her point, I added, 'I'll be thirteen on Christmas Day.'
Honours were even. Pryce and Mrs Kemp held each other's eyes and held their smiles. In a final thrust she shrugged and said, 'Twelve or thirteen, it makes no difference.'
He parried with, 'He'll be a teenager, like Sophie, and that makes all the difference.'
Sophie was drawn into the conversation by the use of her name. She asked Mrs Kemp if she was a musician too, like her husband, and the woman replied that Dr Kemp had tried his best to teach her, but without much success – not, of course, because of any limitations in his ability as a teacher, but because of the paltriness of her talent. The music swelled around us, moody and moving and somehow tremendous, and Dr Kemp swayed with it, as though mesmerised. I
t was odd, as I'd remarked before, to see someone who looked so everyday, so ordinary, so commonplace, absorbed so utterly by the music. The headmaster was a part of it, he was lost in it.
With a nod in his direction, as he continued to conduct with his eyes closed, Mrs Kemp whispered to Sophie, 'Music is the life-blood of the school. It runs through the building.'
Pryce had heard her say it before. He must have done, it was a kind of mantra at Foxwood Manor. He sighed and let it go by, unworthy of comment. Mrs Kemp saw the disdain on his face, and she suddenly looked enormously, almost unbearably tired, as if she could have wept with tiredness. Her eyes prickled with tears as she looked at her husband, whom she loved so much despite the suddenness of his moods, who cared so much for the music and for the boys he taught.
She turned to me, and I could see the gleam of her tears. And she could tell from my face that I understood her, how Pryce's unconcealed contempt made her heart ache for the man she loved and honoured despite all his shortcomings.
To disguise her feelings from Pryce, she whispered, 'Alan, my dear, would you do something for me, please, before you turn into a teenager and get too grown up to pay attention to an old thing like me? The lights on the Christmas tree, you could tighten the bulbs and stop them from flickering . . .'
Glad to oblige, to have any excuse to leave the fireside and the bickering adults, I got up and moved into the shadows in the corner of the hall. Dr Kemp must have sensed my passing, because he opened his eyes, emerging as though from a trance. He put down the magic wand of his baton, exchanging it for the mundane reality of a bacon sandwich.
As though he'd never been away, he said to Pryce, 'Did you really mind? I mean, did you mind listening to this up in the dorm at night?'
'It's too late to mind,' Pryce said. 'The music is in my head.' He held up his hand, as he'd done once before. 'It's like the scar I got from Wagner, I've got it for life whether I mind or not.'
The Perils and Dangers of this Night Page 9