by H. S. Cross
Morgan’s chest seared. He burst out laughing.
—This is priceless!
Spaulding tensed as though he’d been punched:
—It isn’t funny.
A wave of shame, which had the inconvenient effect of making him laugh more.
—I know.
—Then stop laughing!
Morgan rallied rational thought: Spaulding had abducted him from lessons to show him Rees’s maudlin suicide note. To be brutally honest, they would all be better off without Rees. The world would be one soul deprived, and who knew what Rees might contribute to society once he’d grown out of the worst of his appalling tediousness, but really. If Rees succeeded in killing himself (a mighty if in Morgan’s opinion), the school would be shocked, Spaulding would feel awful, even Morgan would feel awful. There would be a tremendous furor, which would drain attention from the wretched Fags’ Rebellion, to Alex’s everlasting fury. Ha! Two tasks accomplished at once: an end to the suppurating splinter that was Rees, and the terrific, unanswerable thwarting of Alex!
Such thoughts were awful, of course, simply inhuman. He couldn’t quite abandon them, but at least he knew they were wrong.
Spaulding was still shaking as he took back the pages.
—I’ve got to try and stop him, Spaulding said. I was with him just before lunch. He can’t have got far.
He was with Rees just before…? Rational thought. Rational thought.
—You say he threatened to hang himself?
Spaulding dug in another pocket and produced a stub of rope a couple of inches long.
—Don’t tell me that was with the note?
Spaulding nodded, looking greener by the moment. Morgan groaned in exasperation. Despite his colossal ineptness, Rees had managed to create a crisis. He’d thrown Spaulding—Spaulding—into a panic. He’d even raised dread in Morgan. Rees—damn him!—had made himself the center of their attention, he’d made them rush after him, he’d made Spaulding care.
—Where’s he going to do it?
Spaulding appeared to be struggling not to retch. His eyes watered.
—Not McKay’s barn! Morgan protested.
Spaulding nodded.
—Bloody Christ!
Spaulding looked shocked, at Morgan’s anger or his blasphemy, he couldn’t tell.
—I was thinking, Spaulding quavered, if I could get away during the run …
—Don’t be daft. If he’s going to do it, he’s doing it now. How long does it take to get to the barn?
Spaulding thought Rees couldn’t get there in less than an hour.
—He’ll be there any minute now, Morgan said. Reckon quarter of an hour to sort out his rope work, at least the same again to think about it. We might just make it.
Morgan couldn’t remember Spaulding looking so baffled, or so childlike. Morgan took him by the wrist as if he were an actual child and without explanation led him down to Morgan’s House, where they barged through the green baize door and into his Housemaster’s study.
—He doesn’t keep it locked? Spaulding asked, astonished.
Morgan released that wrist—so warm, so wide—and preceded him out the French windows, across the garden and the playing fields, and up to the ruined walls of the lodge.
—Wait, Spaulding said. Explain.
—You can have an explanation, or you can get there before Rees tops himself.
—But the barn’s in the other—
—Raise your right hand, Morgan commanded.
Spaulding was too surprised to argue.
—Repeat after me.
Morgan pronounced the vow the Keeper of the poacher’s tunnel was bound to impose on all who accompanied him through it. Spaulding repeated it.
—Right, Morgan said hauling up the paving stone, mind your head.
He dove into the tunnel, wriggled through damp and mildew, and surfaced, not into a flea-ridden trench but into the bosom of Grindalythe Woods. Spaulding emerged muddy, detritus in his hair.
They ran up the path. Morgan’s school shoes slipped in the mud, and he fell hard on his hip, but Spaulding was there, pulling him to his feet. Changing their shoes would have involved detours to two changing rooms. As it was, their shoes would be wrecked, but at least term finished soon.
Morgan had no idea how they would explain their absence, but whatever Rees had in mind, they would stop him. There would probably be an interlude of argument, but eventually the three of them would trek back to the Academy. Morgan wanted urgently not to have to take Rees back through the poacher’s tunnel. Even if Rees could keep his mouth shut about it (a bigger if than his ability to hang himself—and how exactly had the horrible Rees found himself an actual length of rope and learned to tie it?), even if the suicide manqué kept mum about the tunnel, a bond would thenceforth exist between them, and Morgan wanted no bond with Rees. Of course, by the time they reached the barn and talked Rees down from his perch, the steeplechase would have begun, so there would be no rush to return and they could take the road. If they got back before the end of the run, they would only have to answer to their Games Captains. A brief, painful encounter, and the matter would be closed. No Housemasters, no S-K, no histrionics of any sort. Morgan would rather not have a JCR thrashing if he could avoid it, but in this case, he would probably not be able to avoid it.
At least he would be taking it for Spaulding. Spaulding would get worse since Burton’s JCR were savage, but Morgan would suffer alongside Spaulding, not literally alongside, but Morgan would suffer for Spaulding. Spaulding would know it, and Spaulding would remember.
A worse outcome would be finding the barn empty. Or finding Rees there but in no danger of suicide. Could he literally mean to kill himself? Rees was squeamish under the cane. He shied away from the scrum. He protested loudly when abused by his form-mates. In short, he was a big girl’s blouse. How could such a specimen monkey up the rafters of McKay’s barn, tie knots properly, and strangle himself willingly to death?
The whole thing was bunk, and Spaulding was running and slipping through the woods straight into it. Worse, by coming when pulled, he was showing Rees that he cared, that this was the knob to turn whenever Rees wished to control him. It was a disaster.
They arrived winded at the bit of wall that overlooked the barn. The building stood deserted, ramshackle, almost fragile at the bottom of the slope. Spaulding leaned against the wall, catching his breath, his cheeks and lips red, forehead perspiring, tie disarranged, breath fogging before his mouth, the mouth Morgan wanted to feel, doing what it had done before and rescuing the day from destruction.
—I’ll go, Morgan said.
—No.
—If he sees you, he might …
Morgan pulled his arm out of the sling to hoist himself over the wall, but Spaulding cupped hands beneath Morgan’s foot, those fingers gripping his shoe, fingers so able and knowing, fingers he hoped would touch more than his shoe, perhaps shortly, perhaps very shortly indeed! Spaulding lifted, and Morgan was over the wall, skidding down the slope.
At the barn, silence. A door hung uncertainly on its hinge. Morgan slipped inside.
Dim, mildew, decaying air. Then a rustling.
—Don’t come any farther, warned that unmistakable voice. I’ll jump.
Morgan craned to see into the rafters. Rees sat astride a beam, a flimsy rope connecting it with his neck.
—Rees, Morgan said, don’t be an idiot.
—Who is that? Rees demanded.
—It’s Wilberforce. Come down before you hurt yourself.
Rees shifted. The rafter creaked.
—I’ll jump.
Morgan tried to keep his voice calm:
—What do you want to jump for?
—You wouldn’t understand!
—That rafter’s only just got your weight, Morgan said. It certainly won’t hold if you jump.
—It will.
Clearly a logical approach wouldn’t work with someone like Rees, someone divorced at least from the laws of
mechanics.
—If you’re going to hang yourself, Morgan said, you want to make a clean snap of it.
—I shall.
Rees squirmed as if to stand on the rafter.
—Hold still! Morgan shouted. If that breaks, you’ll fall but you won’t die. You’ll wind up paralyzed.
—I don’t care.
Morgan had never faced a more infuriating opponent. A buoyant stubbornness rose within him:
—Do you think you could wait just a minute?
The rafter swayed. Rees froze.
—If this is really it, Morgan continued calmly, what shall I tell people?
—I’ve put it all in a letter, Rees declared. Someone important is going to find it. He’ll tell everyone.
—If you mean Spaulding, he already found it and showed me. Why d’you think I’m here?
Rees teetered but caught himself:
—Where is he?
The voice urgent, plaintive.
—Not here, Morgan said. I came instead.
—But…?
He was enraged to feel a sliver of pity for Rees. Rees did love Spaulding, in his pathetic, unreciprocated way.
—Do you think a sorry old letter would get Spaulding to hack all the way out here?
Morgan knew what it was to love without reason. He steeled himself to kill in Rees the shoot that that lived in him.
—Spaulding thought it was hilarious, absolutely sidesplitting.
—He didn’t.
—You should’ve seen him. We cut lessons and— What? You didn’t think you were the only one?
—I don’t believe you.
He could hear in Rees’s voice that he did believe, and he could feel the blade slicing into that heart, perhaps not perfect surgery, but with enough heat to cauterize the incision once done.
—It was a bit much, don’t you think? Morgan continued relentlessly. Farewell, adieu, auf Wiedersehen?
Rees had stopped fidgeting.
—He wanted to take it to your Housemaster and S-K, Morgan said. I convinced him not to.
—They’ll see it when I’m dead.
His voice did not carry the power it had.
—I made him burn it.
—You what?
The beam shuddered. Morgan pressed on brutally:
—If you jump now, you’ll die for nothing. Spaulding isn’t here. No one will see your letter. People will think you were wet.
—I’m the only person in this place who has the courage to end things on his own terms.
—You think suicide is courageous? Morgan balked.
—It’s better than living like dirt on everyone’s shoes.
—Is it? I thought it was a sin.
—You’re such a hypocrite, Wilberforce.
The second person in twenty-four hours to call him a hypocrite.
—I’m not saying I care about sin, but I certainly don’t think killing yourself is ending things on your own terms. It’s ending things on death’s terms.
—Wilberforce?
—What?
—I don’t care what you think.
With that, Rees swung his leg over the creaking beam, and his body slipped, falling in a breath.
Morgan shouted. He kept shouting. He lunged beneath the beam to catch Rees. Except the rope held. The beam sagged. The rope shifted around Rees’s neck, wrenching it back, biting into his throat and the underside of his chin, holding him above the floor just out of Morgan’s reach.
Then Spaulding was there, and Spaulding was shouting at Rees to pull himself up. Rees was kicking and scratching wildly at the rope to relieve the pressure around his throat. But the rope was accomplishing its work. Regardless of second thoughts, regardless of the worth of suicide, the rope did the thing it had been made to do: hold its fibers together and bear its weight, the weight of Rees, of his error, of his ill-conceived affection.
Morgan reached for Rees’s feet. Spaulding dragged a piece of wood for him to stand on.
—Stop kicking, damn it!
Every instinct in Rees’s body told him to kick, to protest this slow strangulation, but the sound of Spaulding’s voice and its far-reaching power made him permit the rope its grasp just long enough for Morgan to press upwards on the soles of his shoes and begin to relieve the pressure.
—For God’s sake, Morgan cried, hold still!
And Spaulding was climbing up to the rafters, crawling along the beam that was aiding the gradual asphyxiation of Rees. It shuddered and swayed.
—Don’t! Morgan called. It won’t hold you both.
—Just a second, Spaulding said.
He wriggled forward, reaching for the rope. Rees writhed.
—Hold still! Spaulding cried.
Morgan’s shoulder protested, but he pushed with all his strength, as if he would hold all of Rees’s weight in the palms of his hands.
Let him get the rope. Let Rees not die. Let this thing not come to pass. Please.
Nothing intervened. Except that Spaulding touched the fringes of the rope. Spaulding tugged at the knot. Spaulding opened his penknife and dug at the fibers, until they frayed, loosing their weight, which swayed beneath them, pulling tighter the loop around Rees’s throat, concentrating blood in his face, eyes bulging, hands grasping desperately to finish the divorce Spaulding’s knife had begun, until enough entropy ensued, and the beam itself—neglected in their suit—let loose its joints and sent its load crashing, in obedience to gravity, bringing Rees down on top of Morgan, knocking the wind from his lungs and kicking them both free of the rafter, which crashed to the ground with a mighty, unanswerable destruction.
* * *
Silence where it shouldn’t be.
Eyes open, so he thought. Brown. Dust. Something rolling off him.
—Rees?
A moan.
—Spaulding?
The iron present.
—Spaulding!
Morgan tried to sit up. His shoulder screamed, stabbing pain through—
—What happened? a voice croaked.
Rees, altered.
The pain seized all thought, until Rees wrenched him to his feet. Squinting through the dust, they took in the barn—changed, catastrophically.
Spaulding lay twisted beneath the rafter, mouth open, eyes closed. Morgan climbed through debris to reach for him.
The hand was warm. The arm was warm. The neck and the chest were warm.
But the chest no longer moved. The blood no longer pumped, except to seep out the back of his head. The color had drained from his face, leaving it a sallow, sickly white. Spaulding’s face looked now as lifeless as Morgan’s mother’s had looked when he had peered into her coffin. Hers, too, had looked as though it were sleeping, but her skin had been hard and cold, not like skin at all. Spaulding’s was still warm, still soft, like the skin of the living, like the skin of one who had risked himself for another. Except he wasn’t living, Morgan knew. He knew this wrongness.
The hurt returned—from his arm now dangling uselessly, from his head, from the bruises ripening across him, and most loudly from the interior, the marrow—bringing with it the taste of blood, and the euphoric horror of a life forever wrecked.
17
The main pack in the junior steeplechase had rounded the first bend, turning west and striking out across Abbot’s Common. John’s limbs protested after the previous day’s abuse, but he was grateful to S-K for allowing him to set pace for the juniors rather than the Upper School, as was his custom. The Fourth were already suffering, so he was keeping the pace in check. If necessary, he would cut the whole thing short, S-K be damned.
It would help if the rain held off another three-quarters of an hour, but it had been misting, and now, as they slogged up the slope, it began to fall sincerely. The clouds had lowered, concealing the extent of the Common, exactly the type of day that boys went missing on the moors; John kept a close eye on the snake of runners, mindful that none diverged in ignorance from the course.
In fact there were
two figures ahead, across the Common, emerging from the mist. He didn’t think they could be his party; they might have come from the Upper School pack though its course ran nowhere near. John hoped he wasn’t about to encounter an absconding pair, some boys from the Upper School who’d cut away to pursue … whatever nefarious activities they could concoct. If possible, he would pretend to believe whatever excuse they offered.
The figures slipped down the slope, falling to the ground several times. He now saw they were not wearing running kit, but something else, full uniform. Like wounded soldiers, the figures helped each other across the field. The figures, he realized with dismay, belonged to boys he knew well.
The next hour blended with the hours that followed. Sometimes when John thought back on it, he recalled every detail with a horrible excitement. He could recall Rees’s senseless keening at the sight of him. Morgan Wilberforce’s steely demeanor. His own fascinated alarm seeing Wilberforce’s dislocated arm. The thrill of speaking sharply to Rees and demanding he pull himself together. How unhesitating and sharp his judgment had been, dispatching the fastest runner back to the Academy for help, halting the run, turning it around, sending it back from whence it had come. Then running as fast as he could up the brutal, slippery slope.
John was familiar with death. He was accustomed, or had once been, to shifting the corpses of young men. He was not accustomed to fashioning a makeshift stretcher to transport the body of a Sixth Former in school uniform, or to carrying the body of a pupil in tandem with Fardley across a squelching field and loading it into the back of Fardley’s lorry. He knew what it was to ride in the back of rough vehicles with bodies that shifted at ruts in the road, bodies that moaned constantly, intermittently, or not at all. He knew the sticky feeling of human blood outside the body. He had many times permitted it to soak his clothing, not, however, the bare skin of his legs in running shorts and not his clammy singlet. John had suffered cold, wet, mud, and snow in the line of duty, but all stood apart from this interval fighting chill in the back of the school lorry as his blood returned to its usual temperature, unlike the blood in the other body, which was turning fortysome degrees Fahrenheit, though as he recalled, it took several hours for heat to depart entirely.