by Mann, W. E.
I stared at him and he slapped me firmly about the face, catching me painfully in the left eye with his finger. “Answer me, boy!” he shouted angrily.
I could taste the blood gurgling from my nose, but I wasn’t going to humour him. It was probably stupid, but all I wanted to do was anger him even more with my defiance. I could hear Freddie struggling to shout out, but I had stopped caring what Vanderpump might do to me.
“I don’t care what I am,” I wheezed. “Maybe I am a Russian gypsy Jew! Maybe you should inform on me again, you coward! Maybe you should tell your Jerry-loving father...”
“My father,” he shouted and smashed me again in the stomach. This time Amos let go of me and I crouched down on the floor, doubled over in agony. “My father is a hero!”
“He’s a traitor!”
He kicked me brutally in the ribs. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and I was choking for breath. Freddie’s Swiss Army Knife slipped from my pocket and onto the floor. I reached out for it, but Vanderpump trod heavily on my hand.
“At least I have a father,” he hissed. “Who knows where yours might be? Who knows what they do to Resistance Terrorists? That’s what he was, isn’t it, eh?” He reached down and picked up the knife. “What have we here?”
He grabbed a handful of my hair and wrenched my head back so that I was staring straight at the knife, a couple of inches from my eyes.
“Ever wondered what it might be like to be blind?” he asked.
“Whoa there, Hector!” warned one of the Bearbaiters.
“Shut up!” he shouted. “I’ve had enough insolence from this... this sub-Aryan vulgarian. I’ll teach him a lesson he’ll never forget!”
I heard Freddie choke and splutter. Suddenly I wished I could take back everything I said, I wished the floor would swallow me or that I could be safely wrapped up in my bed. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, but I knew it was futile. This was it.
“Vanderpump! Drop the knife at once!”
Caratacus. Thank God!
Vanderpump released my hair and I faced the floor, ashamed of the floods of relieved tears that were streaming from my eyes, still intact. I wiped them hurriedly and looked up.
Vanderpump was red faced. His mouth was hanging open and his eyes darting around, searching thin air for excuses. He started blabbering; words like “insolence”, “treachery” and “snivelling little communists”. The Bearbaiters stood by, their heads hanging in shame. Freddie was slumped on the floor, rubbing the back of his neck and looking to see that I was alright. My ribs were throbbing, my stomach was aching, my neck was creaking, my eye was stinging, my nose was bleeding, but I was safe now.
Caratacus’ face wore an expression that I had never seen before; his jaw was set with annoyance, but his eyes were wide and his brow contorted by bewilderment. Thank God for Caratacus!
“Enough, Vanderpump!” he boomed. “Enough! Save your pitiful excuses. You are coming with me. You two,” he pointed to the Bearbaiter twins, “go and reintroduce yourselves to the Headmaster. If you do not, or if you fail to tell him exactly what I have seen, you will certainly be expelled.” The Bearbaiters shuffled off. “You, Strange, help Turnpike and go directly and wait outside of my Private Room. I will be with you shortly.”
twenty
Caratacus’ Private Room was located among the cobwebs of the Top Floor of the school building. The Top Floor, like all of the most exciting places in the school grounds, was entirely out-of-bounds on account of there being no classrooms, dormitories, changing rooms or other places for boys. In fact, it occurred to me that I had been to the Top Floor only once. It was on my very first day at Talltrees when I had come here with my mum to select a hand-me-down blazer from the moth-eaten Second-Hand Clothes Room. While many of the other boys had been bought brand new ones from the school supplier, my mum, of course, picked out a blazer which was far too big for me so that I might have grown into it by the time I left the school.
But since my previous visit to the Top Floor had been such a long time ago and when the whole place was still bewilderingly big to me, it felt now as if I was seeing a place for the first time. It was drab and threadbare, with grime trodden into the tired carpets and tatty etchings hanging listlessly from the walls, depicting wretched scenes from rainswept urban backwaters. The doors here, along the dusty gallery overlooking the Main Hall, were, for some reason, apparently made with the same material as they use to make the sacks for sack-races, nailed onto wood. Each door bore a number and a name: “11 – Col. Barrington; 10 – Mrs. Stowaway; 09 – Mr. Molyneux; 08 – Mr. Caratacus...”
The Masters had Private Rooms for the nights when they were on duty and unable to get home before General Curfew. I was pretty sure though that for some of them - Mr. Molyneux, the French teacher with sellotaped spectacles and the nervous disposition, sprung immediately to mind - their Private Rooms served very well as a retreat from nagging spouses.
“Vanderpump will say whatever he can to get us into trouble, you know,” said Freddie, anxiously chewing his fingernails. “He’s got nothing to lose.”
“I know,” I said, spitting on my handkerchief to wipe the crusting blood from my face.
Caratacus emerged from the Spiral Staircase with a stormy expression on his face. “You alright?” he asked me perfunctorily, scarcely looking at me as he pushed open the door to his Private Room to usher us in. I nodded.
Freddie and I trooped in single-file behind Caratacus. We both sensed that our careers at Talltrees were teetering on the brink of a treacherous precipice and that the faintest activity by either of us, such as speaking or even looking at one another, could just nudge them over the edge and into bottomless doom. Best thing in a precarious situation such as this is keep quiet, eyes down, speak when spoken to and, above all, say “Thank you, Sir” whenever possible.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“I think the two of you had better take a seat.” He pointed towards a ramshackle sofa whose springs had retired a long while ago.
“Thank you, Sir.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
We sunk down into our seat with our knees up around our chins and waited while Caratacus filled his kettle from a sink in the corner of the room and prepared three cups of tea.
“Thank you, Sir,” we chimed.
His room was a menagerie of knick-knacks, baubles and trinkets. Much of the wall-space was occupied by shelves groaning under the weight of classical texts, philosophical treatises and piles and piles of weathered paper. There was so much scholarship in here that it had also overflown onto the coffee table next to me: Apocolocyntosis by Seneca, La Monadologie by Gottfried Leibniz... I could scarcely imagine how to pronounce many of the words written on the spines, so imagine what the words between the covers must look like!
I noticed that on the back of Caratacus’ door as he pushed it shut there hung a small wooden cross, but with a kind of loop at the top of it, where Jesus’ head would have been. I had never really thought of Caratacus as an especially religious man. In fact, I had supposed that he was more of a modern man than that, but also, in what wall-space there was between the bookshelves, there were three mediæval pictures of religious figures with halos – not so many as to make the room feel like a shrine or an altar, but enough to make the message clear!
Mr. Caratacus sat on a stool in front of us and pushed shut his desk drawers in order to make room for his knees. Freddie and I clutched our mugs of tea nervously, not knowing whether to look downwards in shame or up towards Caratacus with self-assurance.
“What were you doing in the Science Labs?” he asked simply.
With Caratacus, I thought, we at least had a glimmer of a chance of getting ourselves out of this predicament. If it were Barrington or Wilbraham or anyone else, our fate would certainly have been sealed without any opportunity for feeble excuses. Caratacus was far more likely to listen to our feeble excuses and consider them before passing judgment. There was onl
y one thing for it and Freddie was clearly one step ahead of me:
“Sir,” he began frantically, “Sir, we were... there’s this awful thing happening, Sir... well, going to happen... Monday night, Sir... Colonel Barrington’s got this terrible plan, Sir... and we have to stop it... everyone’s in terrible danger and we were trying to do the right thing, Sir, I promise...”
“Strange, pipe down for Heaven’s sake! Turnpike, can you translate what Strange is trying to tell me into English?”
“Sir...” interrupted Freddie.
“Pipe down, boy!” he boomed. “Turnpike, what you are about to say had better be damned impressive.”
I looked at Freddie and Caratacus, both of whom were red-faced. I took a deep breath. In spite of my instincts, I knew that only the whole truth could help us now.
“Sir, we’ve uncovered an evil plan and we realised that none of the Masters would believe us unless we had good evidence of what is happening. We had to break the rules you see, Sir, because we are certain that a lot of people’s lives are at risk...”
“Turnpike,” he said, slightly more calmly. “You are, unlike Strange here, at least speaking in complete sentences. But you’re going to have to do better than that because at the moment this sounds like nothing more than Boy’s Own nonsense.”
“Sir, that’s just the problem you see. We need to be able to prove that this isn’t just nonsense,” I began. I realised now that I would have to mention the Z-word even though I knew it would sound even more like Boy’s Own nonsense than what I had already been saying. This was my last throw of the dice. “And now we think we’ve got the evidence we need, Sir.” I pointed to Barrington’s research log, which Freddie was clutching tightly to his chest. Freddie glared at me urgently to tell me that we didn’t know that it contained any good evidence, but I knew that we would just have to pray that it did.
“What is it?” asked Caratacus.
“Sir, it’s evidence that proves that Colonel Barrington has been kidnapping boys – the boys who have been taken ill over the past couple of weeks – and is planning to turn them all into...” I looked down at my feet and my voice tailed off pathetically because now I could hear how childish my excuse must have sounded.
“What, boy?” Caratacus asked, rubbing his eyes exasperatedly with his forefinger and thumb.
I cleared my throat. “... Into zombies, Sir.”
I looked upwards sheepishly, hoping at best for an outburst of laughter, but fully expecting to be whisked off to Wilbraham’s study for a thrashing. Instead, Caratacus froze still for a few seconds with his fingers paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. I could not gauge at all what it was that he might be thinking.
“What did you say, boy?” he whispered intently.
I looked at Freddie for moral support. “I said “zombies”, Sir.”
He lowered his hand to rub his chin. He looked at Freddie and then down at Barrington’s logbook. His facial expression softened and his brow unfurrowed suddenly and I recognised again the kind, childlike eyes.
“Boys,” said Caratacus, his voice much calmer. His only outward indication of emotion was his right hand shaking slightly, causing ripples on the surface of his tea. “I think you need to get your story straight.”
I began at the beginning. And between the two of us, we told him everything, even where it meant owning up to times when we had broken the rules: Creeping around the Dungeons at night, discovering the Hidden Library, rummaging through Barrington’s wallet.
“Can I take it, therefore, that Pickering and the Kitchen Boy are part of this too?”
I looked at Freddie. One of the first rules you ever learn at Talltrees is that under no circumstances do you tell on another boy unless he has been conspiring against the Party. It’s like honour among thieves. It was one of the basic rules of the Youth Movement and I thought of it as so fundamental that you were not really a boy if you broke it.
“You need not answer that question,” said Caratacus, clearly sensing my concern. “Continue.”
I continued the account right up to the point when Caratacus caught us, including an explanation of what we had read in Colonel Barrington’s research log and how that connected to what we had read in the page that had fallen from the Witchdoctor’s text and what we had found out from our research in Mr. English’s room. Caratacus gave nothing away with his facial expressions. So I had no idea whether my arguments were getting us anywhere closer to not being expelled. The only times he even furrowed his brow slightly were when I mentioned the Witchdoctor’s text and the content of the logbook.
“So you see, Sir, there is a real danger. We had to break the rules to make people believe that this is what the Party is planning to do.”
“Well,” he said after taking a long slurp of his tea, “you certainly construct a forceful argument, Turnpike.”
I said nothing and waited anxiously for him to draw his conclusions. Freddie even took off his cap as if he were at a funeral.
“Well now, I think it’s obvious that you two and Reginald Pickering and Samson Akwasi have all got a bit carried away by Doctor Boateng’s talk at Prayers the other morning. But I can also see that there have been a number of coincidences that have led you to draw your outlandish conclusions. But,” he took a sip of his tea, “but if you think about each of these coincidences in turn, you will realise that nothing out of the ordinary has happened at all. Think about them:
The conversation, or argument, as you say, that you heard between Doctor Boateng and Colonel Barrington would no doubt have related to experiences they shared a long time ago in a foreign country where everything is different. As you have discovered, the two of them are old friends and have been through a lot together. I must say, whatever you heard them talking about, if it related to something from their Gold Coast days, I can well imagine that it would have been something that you, or indeed anyone else for that matter, would have had trouble understanding. And what’s more, as you yourself have said, Tom, you could not even hear them clearly.
Miss Prenderghast’s tending for a particular plant in the Forest, poisonous or not, and her giving Form Three a lesson in dissection cannot of themselves be said to be noteworthy incidents. She is, after all, a Biology teacher! And though we all know that she’s very strange – and you are not to repeat that to anyone – you cannot automatically assume that she is therefore a zombie!” He forced a chuckle.
And, as for this book you saw a part of... What did you call it? The Witchdoctor’s text?”
“Yes, Sir,” I said.
“Well, I would certainly be interested to see that. Do you know where it is now?”
“No, Sir. I’m afraid not,” said Freddie.
“Hmm, pity,” Caratacus said, frowning and scratching his chin. “Well from what you say, all you have really seen of that seems to make it sound more like an astronomy text book in a foreign language than some sinister book of black magic with instructions for creating mythical creatures, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose so, Sir,” I said, starting to find what he was saying increasingly convincing.
“Then there’s your alleged disappearance of boys, and I know you’ve both been concerned about that. Well that is, of course, easily explained by the ‘flu epidemic. And finally, your dream about Milo, Tom. Come now, can you really be all that certain that the photo of his family really was on his chair and not his bed when the lights went out? I mean, do you really look around the dorm before lights-out and remember where everything is?”
I started thinking through what he was saying. We had been so certain, but everything he was saying sounded right.
“Yes, Sir.” Freddie blurted. “Absolutely, Sir. It does seem like we’ve let our imaginations run away with us a bit.”
“Anyway, Turnpike, even if Milo really was there, it may well be that he just sleepwalked from the Sick Bay. It does happen. And I daresay he wouldn’t have looked his usual spritely self.”
I hadn’t even thought of th
at. Boys were sleepwalking all the time, especially when they were ill, and doing strange things, like holding doors open for people and even talking to people, without any idea that they were doing it.
“Have either of you heard of Ockham’s Razor?” asked Caratacus. He did not wait for a reply presumably because it was pretty obvious what it would be. “Let’s see “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” I think it is. A self-consciously succinct formulation of the rule,” he mused (Heaven only knew what he was talking about). “It means “Plurality should not be asserted without necessity”, hmm? Ockham’s Razor is a philosophical and scientific tool whereby when you are trying to explain why or how something happened, you shave away all the unnecessary assumptions in order to give the simplest explanation.”
He looked at us and noticed that we were both completely baffled. “What I mean to say, boys, is that there are plenty of simple and reasonable explanations for all the things you have seen and there is no good reason for you not to think that those simple reasons explain them. Now perhaps you will tell me that your zombie-theory is the simplest explanation because it explains all of these things in one sentence. But it is not, in fact, a simple explanation at all because it assumes far too much that hasn’t ever been proven. Do you see?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Freddie.
“Yes, Sir,” I agreed, just about grasping what he was saying. “But, Sir, do you see why we thought there was a danger? I mean, all the coincidences.”
He paused, sipping his tea.
“Yes I do, Tom. And you are both very young and with typically wild imaginations. You read in a book that zombies might exist and so you thought, perhaps reasonably, that they do. And so that was your explanation. When you are older, you will learn that you cannot trust everything you read. Even in classroom text books. So, now then, what’s to be done with you two vigilante-sleuths then, eh?”