The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy)

by Mann, W. E.

  The aim for anyone in the field is to catch the ball on the full in the most flamboyant manner possible, ideally sprinting fifteen yards, diving a further five, plucking the ball one-handed out of the air, and completing the motion with an elaborate commando-roll. Additional praise is available for an inch-perfect return-throw to the bowler and, most importantly, for displaying absolutely no smugness. Again, if any boy achieves all of this, he will likewise be celebrated as a hero and duly worshipped for the rest of the day.

  Freddie and I were standing out in the field, waiting for the tennis ball to fly in our direction.

  “I told you Barrington didn’t see you in the Dungeon,” said Freddie.

  “I’m not so sure, Fred,” I replied. Obviously I was extremely relieved that the Colonel hadn’t said anything about it, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was just impossible that he hadn’t seen me. “He must be up to something,” I said. “The only reason I can think that he wouldn’t have punished me or reported me is that he doesn’t want anyone knowing he was down there too.”

  Freddie shrugged.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I think we’d better keep clear of Vanderpump for a while. He’ll be after us.”

  “We don’t need to worry about him,” I lied.

  I had always tried to pretend that it didn’t upset me when people talked the way Vanderpump had about my father when we had been out in the Forest. But it did.

  My mother always said that he would return, any moment. I had worked out some time ago that I had to try and convince myself that he was gone forever just so that I could get on with things, but it’s impossible not to hope. However much time passed, I would always be sure that I would see him again. My mother, like most mothers of boys whose fathers had fallen in the War or had been taken away during the Resistance, hardly ever spoke about him. All she would tell me, whenever I asked, was that he was a very brave man and that I was not to listen to anything anyone said about him. And that he would come back to us.

  I hated Vanderpump. We were told that we were not supposed to speak about our fathers, but Vanderpump didn’t care for that. He had no shame at all.

  “Anyway,” I added, “he’s an idiot. He’s bound to find someone else to get angry with before the next time I see him.”

  “Well,” said Freddie, changing the subject, “when do you think we should look for this book Mr. English told us about? I told you there was a false book back there somewhere. What was it? Al de Sucksley?”

  “I think he said “Huxley”. But he was just recommending a book. He can’t have been helping us find a secret room. Anyway, even if he was, there’s no way we can look for it now. Not after Barrington caught us.”

  Archie Bartholomew-Crump, known as “ABC”, the Head Boy, was swaggering into bat. This should be good. He was the opening batsman for the 1st XI and captain of tennis.

  “Tom, look!” Freddie was pointing over to our left where Barrington was strolling over the gravel towards the 1st XI pitch with Doctor Saracen.

  “Looks like they’re having an argument,” I said.

  Colonel Barrington was gesticulating dramatically, clearly trying to impress a point of view upon Doctor Saracen. From this distance, it was impossible to hear what he was saying, but what was clear was that he was becoming very irate. Saracen then stopped walking and stood shaking his head and raising his hands in impatient exasperation. He then turned with a shrug of the shoulders and set off back towards the school building. The Colonel stood for a moment where he was with his hands on his hips and then he hurried after Doctor Saracen.

  But nobody else seemed to have noticed because, just then, ABC had managed to hit the ball so cleanly that it scudded miles up into the air, far over the heads of all of the boys in the field. It plummetted downwards like a Stuka Dive Bomber towards the swimming pool, bounced off the diving board and disappeared forever in a dense rhododendron.

  Everyone was cheering, even some of the teachers who were admiring the game with pre-dinner sherry from their vantage point on the terrace above the Veranda. ABC, of course, in the time-honoured spirit of slog-out, expressed no pride or pleasure whatsoever, and handed the racquet modestly to the next batsman.

  But something else had caught Freddie’s attention.

  “Tom, what’s that?” he asked, pointing to where Barrington and Doctor Saracen had stopped during their altercation.

  “What?” I was straining to see.

  “Look. There’s something on the gravel there.”

  I still couldn’t see anything.

  “Are you blind? Come on,” he said. We started to run over just as the bell rang to signal Tea.

  “Here,” he said, reaching down, “One of them has dropped his wallet.”

  As he opened it to look inside, a piece of paper fell out onto the gravel.

  “Look,” I said, bending down to pick it up. “A photo.” I peered at it closely. “Who do you reckon these people in it are?”

  The photo had obviously been taken a long time ago because it had faded somewhat. It was of two people: a blonde woman in a floral dress and a tall man, athletically built and wearing a light-coloured suit, both shading their eyes from the sun. It was impossible to make out anything in the background, but, wherever they were, it looked hot and bright.

  “Surely that can’t be Barrington, can it?” I said in amazement, pointing at the tall, dashing young man with jet black hair on the left of the photo.

  “Blimey!” exclaimed Freddie. “Definitely. But he looks so... happy! And look there: he has his arm around that woman. I never knew Barrington was married.”

  “Nor did I,” I said. In spite of the fact that the photo had bleached, it was obvious that this lady was very beautiful indeed. She gazed proudly up at this other Barrington, who struck a pioneering pose, perhaps in jest.

  “Anyway, we’d better get back in,” I said. One or two stragglers were heading indoors. “Let’s hand this in at the Under-Secretary’s office.”

  ***

  The Third Form prep-room was also Mrs. Stowaway’s History classroom. My desk was at the back. Directly in front of me was the back of Peregrine’s head. In front of him was the back of Freddie’s.

  The day had become no cooler and it was now an uncomfortably warm evening. A fly pestered my ear as I shifted in my seat.

  Anders Pontevecchio checked his watch. He was the prefect monitoring Form Three that evening. He was sat at Stowaway’s desk.

  Pontevecchio was head of Swallows, 1st XI wicketkeeper, 1st XI centre-forward and first violin. He was the sort of sickeningly brilliant all-rounder that his peers would probably want to despise, if only he wasn’t such a nice guy. He was every Junior’s favourite prefect. Professor Ludendorff referred to him as the school’s Übermensch or Superman, something which Pontevecchio always seemed to find very embarrassing.

  “Right, chaps,” he announced, “prep’s over and Mr. Furlong’s taking a swim if any of you are keen”.

  This brought about some stilted cheering, the slamming of desk-lids, and a swift exodus from the classroom. Freddie stayed where he was, though, and called me over to his desk.

  “Not swimming, you two?” inquired Pontevecchio.

  “Actually,” said Freddie, “Turnpike was going to give me a bit of help with these equations.”

  I looked at Freddie in puzzlement, trying to work out what he was up to.

  “Ah! Good man, Turnpike!” Pontevecchio hooted. He had a preposterously posh accent and peppered his conversations with turns of phrase that are really better suited to elderly naval officers. Expressions such as “splendid”, “good egg”, “not half bad”, and “I say!”.

  “Ponters,” Freddie began, “about Barrington... Well, I was wondering, I don’t suppose you know if he has ever been married, do you?”

  Pontevecchio hesitated for a moment. “What makes you ask, Strange?”

  “Oh nothing really,” said Freddie, feigning disinterest. “We just found his wallet earlier and it had
a photograph of him with a lady.”

  Pontevecchio ran his hand through his hair, deciding whether or not to tell us something.

  “Look here,” he said, staring intently at Freddie, “you cannot repeat any of what I am about to tell you to anyone. Anyone at all. Okay?”

  “I certainly won’t,” vowed Freddie.

  “Good. Well,” his voice dropped to a conspiratorial volume and, looking over his shoulder, he sat down at desk in front of us, “it’s rather an interesting story actually, which I was told by some chaps who left the school a couple of years ago. Nobody knows exactly what happened and, of course, I can only tell you what I’ve heard.”

  I sat down.

  “It was out in the Gold Coast, in Africa, just after the Surrender,” began Pontevecchio. “Barrington had served out in Africa, you see, with Doctor Boateng, and after the Axis Victory, the two of them set up a school for war-orphans and children whose parents had been put in prison.”

  “Gosh!” said Freddie, “It’s hard to imagine someone like Barrington being interested in doing something to help other people, especially children.”

  “Well, Colonel Barrington was a very different man back in those days, you see,” Pontevecchio said. I thought of the fresh-faced young man with the jet black hair in the photo.

  “Anyway,” continued Pontevecchio...

  ***

  There was an occasion after the Colonel had been out there for a year or two when there was an outbreak of malaria at the school. Sadly this was not unusual, but this time it was fateful for Barrington. Two of the children were so ill one night that they needed to be rushed to the nearest hospital for immediate treatment.

  The hospital was, of course, in reality, a series of makeshift shelters, sheets of corrugated iron slung hastily over wooden supports, rows of deflated mattresses on concrete floors, fatigued doctors rushing pell-mell from one clammy, anguished patient to another, administering dwindling remedies in strict order of likelihood of survival.

  But there, amid the pandemic, Barrington encountered a young and beautiful English nurse, working as a volunteer. Her patients believed that her blonde hair gave her a divine ability to cure them. So they called her “the Angel of Accra”.

  The Colonel, seasoned officer of the British army, was disarmed. On seeing her, it was as if someone had applied a defibrillator to his chest, issuing a monstrous jolt from which his heart could never recover. The panic of urgent medical activity, cries of desperate relatives, all echoed distantly around him.

  They fell adventurously in love.

  They married on New Year’s Day with promises to spend the rest of their life in Africa, growing old and adopting orphaned children.

  ***

  Freddie shook his head. “I still find it hard to believe you are talking about the same person,” he said.

  “Well,” said Pontevecchio, his voice darkening, “the next part of the story will explain that. But this is where it all gets a bit uncertain. Nobody, not even Barrington himself, knows what happened next. But one of the chaps who told me about it, his father worked for the Kommissar out there at around that time...”

  ***

  One moonless night, there was some kind of raid on the suburb where the school was situated. There was confusion and screaming terror. Nobody knew what the raiders wanted or who had sent them. All they knew was that guns were being blasted and firebrands were shattering through their windows, casting their belongings in a frenetic, blood red light. There were people running in all directions, panicking to find their children or parents.

  The raiders were single-minded and merciless, as if they were possessed. As men, women and children scrambled from the fire and smoke, they were set upon by these demonic creatures. Many were bound and gagged and bundled onto the backs of the horses on which the raiders had arrived. Many more, those that had presented too much resistance, were shot or hacked down bloodily with machetes and left to die.

  The Colonel and Doctor Boateng spent hours crashing from one burning home to another, battling with the flames, trying desperately to round up as many people as possible and guide them to the safety of the schoolhouse.

  As Barrington entered one burning hut, he was thumped around the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. He was knocked off balance, staggered forward and lost consciousness inside the blazing shack with smoke billowing all around him.

  It is possible that Barrington would, with hindsight, have preferred to have been left there, in his own crematorium, to pass without notice from unconsciousness into comfortable death. But Boateng, having seen this cowardly attack, was on hand to prevent that from happening. He waited nearby in the shadows until Barrington’s assailant was gone, and then, closing his eyes, barged headlong through the pounding heat into the hut where Barrington lay. Raising his forearm against the flames, he opened his eyes for just long enough to locate Barrington amid a crackling mirage. He then took Barrington by the feet and dragged him back out of the hut, just as it finally surrendered to the fire and came crashing down before him.

  Eventually, shortly before daybreak, the cinders settled and there was a restless calm, punctuated by cries of pain and despair. The raiders might have left hours ago, nobody knew. There was so much panicked activity throughout the night that they may have left within minutes of their arrival.

  Barrington regained consciousness as the sun rose.

  It took him a second or two to understand where he was, why his head was pounding and why he felt that his skin was stretched taut over his face. He opened his eyes to see that he was looking up at the ceiling of his classroom.

  “Colonel, you are awake,” said Boateng, holding a glass of water to Barrington’s lips, the jubilation of his tone thinly veiling his tired distress.

  Barrington sipped tentatively. He felt as if his ragged, parched throat was causing the water to evaporate as he tried to swallow it. “Where is she?” he strained to ask.

  “You are looking well,” said Boateng, avoiding Barrington’s eyes. “No permanent damage. Just a few cuts and bruises.”

  “Dammit, man, where is she?” croaked Barrington angrily, struggling to raise himself up onto an elbow.

  Boateng put down the glass and looked at Barrington, a look of exhaustion, pain and bewilderment.

  “She is gone.”

  The Colonel spent the next weeks, and then months, in a frenzied and desperate attempt to locate his wife. He journeyed sleeplessly throughout the Gold Coast, Togoland and Dahomey, clutching at any futile thread that might lead him to her, issuing threats and bribes to people who had no relevant information. But it was hopeless. Her captors had left no trace.

  Throughout this time, Boateng had tried to persuade Barrington of the pointlessness of his search. Doctor Boateng knew that, though the hope sustained by the hunt was all that was preventing the Colonel from drowning in despair, the Colonel would have to accept that his Angel of Accra was gone forever. Boateng eventually managed to convince Barrington to return to the school. The Doctor’s hope was that gradually, by applying Barrington’s efforts to his classroom routine, the Colonel’s agony would soften into pain and then into an ache, and eventually some of the joys of life might creep back into his heart.

  But nothing could persuade Barrington that life held any pleasure. And slowly the life disappeared from him and his hair faded from jet black to ghostly white. His existence became mechanical, zombie-like. He scarcely spoke, slept or ate. He dwindled into shadow, without any remnant of the man he once was.

  Eventually, in order to try to heave himself from one day to the next, he filled his heart’s emptiness with omnivorous hatred. And it satisfied him. He bore ill-will towards any person, indeed any creature, that had any glimmer of happiness in its eyes. He took delight in suffering, even his own, and he took to disciplining his pupils cruelly and mercilessly. He even turned upon Doctor Boateng, whom he blamed for not having left him to die on the night of the raid.

  ***

  “
Gosh,” muttered Freddie, who had been completely mesmerised by this story. “In a way, I can understand why he became so bitter. I mean, wouldn’t you if you lost the thing that was most important to you? I feel sorry for him.”

  “Well I’m not sure if you should feel sorry for him just yet,” said Pontevecchio, “not until you have heard the last part of the story.

  You see, this chap whose old man used to work out there told me that there was a rumour at the time that Barrington got involved with an African religious cult. I’m talking black magic, witchcraft, maybe even human sacrifice.”

  Freddie gasped. “No way!”

  “Look, I can only tell you what I heard. I can’t tell you whether it’s true. Anyway, what happened was that children from the school started to disappear, you know, like orphans who nobody would miss. At first, everyone thought they were dying from malaria or one of those other horrible diseases. But then the numbers were just getting out of hand. People started to get suspicious and rumours started going around that Barrington was kidnapping the children for rituals and sacrifices.

  Well, Doctor Boateng stood by Barrington at first because they were such old comrades. But the rumours started getting way worse and Barrington did nothing to deny them. And so, after a while even Doctor Boateng wasn’t sure because it was as if Barrington had turned into a totally different person. So Boateng finally managed to convince Barrington to leave the country for his own safety. The Kommissar gave him a permit to return to Britain.

  So, there you have it, chaps.”

  “Wow!” exclaimed Freddie. “Witchcraft, eh? Do you believe it?”

  “Well, Strange, I’m not really sure that I even believe in witchcraft at all. Sounds like a load of poppycock to me. Anyway, look here, chaps, I’m going to have to go. I’m meant to be supervising First Form bedtime in a mo. So, whatever you do, don’t tell a word of this to anyone at all. Okay?”