Skippy Dies: A Novel

by Paul Murray

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean, Father. The plain fact of it is, the boy is dead. There is nothing we can do to change that. If we could turn back time, we would. But we can’t. And at the risk of sounding cynical, I think we have to ask ourselves now how it would serve any of us, and I include in that the boy’s family, to bring the police into this. The benefits, as I see them, are pretty few. On the other hand, the cost, to the school as well as to his family, would be enormous.’

  Howard starts. ‘Wait, are you proposing we just brush this under the carpet?’

  ‘Damn it, Howard, just listen to me for five seconds, can’t you? There’s more to think of here than just some abstract notion of justice. This kind of thing can ruin a school. I’ve seen it happen. Even as it is I’ve got four sets of parents threatening to pull out their kids. This comes out and they’ll leave in their droves. Every boy who’s ever stubbed his toe here’ll be filing a lawsuit. As for the media, they’ll have a field day. They’ve been waiting a lifetime for something like this. We’ll be lucky if we’re left with so much as a blackboard by the end of it. So before you get up on your high horse, you tell me, Howard, who gains, exactly, from dragging this whole thing into the open? Juster’s parents? You think this is going to help them at all? His sick mother? Or the boys, think it’ll be good for them?’

  Howard does not reply, just scowls.

  ‘When these matters arose in the past–’ the foxy, delicate priest, when he speaks, has exactly the voice that Howard would have guessed: high and feminine, dry and friable as tissue-paper ‘– we always found it more satisfactory to handle them in private.’

  ‘I agree with Father Casey here,’ the Automator says. ‘It seems to me that the best way to deal with this is internally, through our own existing disciplinary channels.’

  ‘As we started, so shall we go on, is that it?’ Father Green addresses the dapper little man, who only laughs mirthlessly and places a hand on his companion’s knee.

  ‘Ah, Jerome, if it were up to you who of us would not be clapped in irons?’

  Something grotesque about his laughter sets off a trigger inside Howard; while the conversation flows back and forth around him, he stumbles unhearing through it, nauseous and dizzy as if he’s been drugged, until he sees his own hand rising in front of him and hears his voice say, ‘Wait, wait… a boy is dead. Juster is dead. It doesn’t matter what the school has to gain or not gain. We can’t let –’ absurdly, he turns to Tom here ‘– no offence, Tom – but we can’t just let this… go.’

  The silver-haired president starts making noises about reviews and hearings and sanctions, but the Automator hushes him with a hand: ‘Howard –’

  ‘He’s right,’ Father Green interjects.

  ‘Excuse me, Father, he’s not right – Howard, no one’s saying we’re letting this go. No one’s saying we should forget about Juster. But if Tom goes to trial it’ll be a kangaroo court and you know it. They’ll send him down without a second thought even though the facts are in actuality far from clear –’

  ‘The facts are perfectly clear, Greg, he made a full confession.’

  ‘I mean the facts, the circumstances of Daniel Juster’s death. We don’t know what was going through that kid’s mind, we’ll never know. Who of us can say for certain that these events that took place involving Tom were finally and definitively what pushed him over the edge? We know that he had other things bothering him. His sick mother, for instance, and this girl, this business with the girl.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘And the fact of the matter is that these pills that Tom allegedly gave him, there’s a question mark over whether he had any awareness at all of what happened, so setting aside the rights and the wrongs of it, can we genuinely –’

  ‘Jesus, Greg, he took him into his room and drugged him and abused him, how can you even –’

  ‘You settle down there!’ the Automator cuts him off. ‘Settle down, mister. Here at Seabrook, we judge a man by the sum of his actions, the sum. In this case we have a man with an unparalleled dedication to this school and to the boys of this school. Does one error of judgement, however grievous, does that cancel out at a stroke all the good he’s done? The good of that care?’

  ‘An error of judgement?’ Howard says, dumbfounded.

  ‘That’s right, any one of us –’

  ‘An error of judgement?’

  ‘That’s what I said, damn it,’ the Automator bellows, flaring brick-red. ‘You had one of your own, or don’t you remember? Three and a half million pounds down the swanny in under a minute – under a minute! When you came here you were the laughing stock of the City of London! Unemployable! But who took you in? Who took you in when no one else would? This school, that’s who, because we look after our own! That’s what care means!’

  ‘How the hell –’ Howard on his feet ‘– does losing money compare with physically drugging and abusing –’

  ‘I’ll tell you how!’ the Automator rising too to tower above him. ‘You take a look at this man, Howard! Before you start laying blame, you take a good look at him! This man was a hero! This man was going to be one of the all-time sporting greats of his country! Instead, he’s a cripple, in constant physical pain, because of you! Because of your cowardice! You talk about justice. If there were any justice, you would have been at the bottom of that quarry, not him!’ This silences Howard all right. Beside the Acting Principal, the president nods ruefully. ‘Any other man, that kind of blow he might have retreated into his shell for ever. Not Tom Roche. Instead he has devoted himself to the education of these boys. I would even argue – you won’t like it, but I would even argue that it’s his very devotion that has led him to make this terrible mistake. But that’s beside the point, which is, when he tried to do the right thing, when he came to you of all people and confessed – when otherwise, no one would ever have found out – you just want to have him strung up! Well, let me tell you, you’re up to your neck in this too!’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I sent you to talk to Juster. This is a troubled boy, I said, go and talk to him, and you came back with diddly-squat!’

  ‘Was I supposed to hold a gun to his head? Was I supposed to hold a gun to his head, and say, Okay, Juster, start talking –’

  ‘Daniel,’ Tom mumbles.

  ‘What’s that?’ The Automator snaps round.

  ‘He preferred to be called Daniel,’ Tom, tilted forward awkwardly in his chair like a classical sculpture in transit, repeats through a patina of tears and mucus.

  The men lapse into a simmering silence.

  ‘The question is, how difficult would it be to keep the matter internal?’ the foxy priest remarks eventually. ‘From what I hear, the boy’s father doesn’t seem the type to cause trouble.’

  ‘Is he one of ours?’ the jowly president inquires blandly.

  ‘Class of ’84,’ the Automator says. ‘Went in for tennis mostly. Pretty decent team back then. Yes, he’s got enough on his plate with the wife’s cancer, I’d say.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it might be to our benefit to be seen pursuing some definite line of inquiry,’ the foxy priest counsels.

  ‘Well, he was upset about this girl,’ the president says. ‘Isn’t that the perfect alibi right there?’

  ‘I don’t want to encourage this Romeo and Juliet claptrap,’ the Automator says. ‘Otherwise they’ll all be at it like lemmings.’

  ‘The mother might be the angle to take, then,’ the foxy priest says.

  ‘That’d be my preference. Mum’s dying, boy can’t take it, game over. Press haven’t found out about her yet. We can throw them a few hints, at this end amp up the counselling service, maybe.’ He makes a note on a pad. ‘Well, gentlemen, I think we’re all agreed that the best thing is to sit tight. If Desmond Furlong were here, I’m sure he’d say the same.’ The board members around the table nod donkey-like, with the exception of Father Green, whose head is cocked at a contemplative angle, as if he’s savouring the fragrance of
a spring meadow, and the unknown bald man, who catches the Automator’s eye.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right…’ He rummages among the papers on his desk and locates a slim sheaf of three or four pages. He holds it out to Howard. ‘This is Vyvyan Wycherley, Howard, old classmate of mine. He and Father Casey here have drawn this up for you to sign.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s your new contract. I’m pleased to offer you a position as Seabrook’s first-ever school archivist. Runs concurrently with your existing teaching duties. Money’s not enormous, but tidy enough all the same. Work the hours you want, whatever particular areas take your fancy…’

  Howard flicks dumbly through the pages – job description, salary, and then, near the back, his eye catches on a short paragraph –

  ‘It’s a confidentiality clause. No doubt you’ll be familiar with these from your days in the City. In signing, you consent by law not to disclose sensitive information pertaining to school affairs, including what we have discussed here today.’

  Howard gapes back at him stupidly. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Merely a precaution, Howard, making sure we’ve got all our angles covered. No need to rush into it right away. Take it home with you, think it over. If you want to turn it down, do the honorable thing, I can’t stop you. I’m sure you’ll find a position elsewhere easily enough. Gather there are vacancies in St Anthony’s at the moment. Teacher got stabbed there just last week.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me, Greg,’ Howard says softly.

  ‘Like I say, Howard, it’s up to you. Here at Seabrook we take care of each other. Play by the rules, listen to your captain, and we’ll always find a place on the team for you. But if you can’t stick by your school when it has a bad bounce of the ball, why should it stick by you?’

  With numb fingers, Howard leafs again through the pages of dense, recondite text till he arrives at the last, where he sees his own name, with a line above it for his signature, and the date already added. He can feel the surreptitious and lowered gazes on him, pressing against him like bodies in a crowded elevator.

  In the closeness Father Green’s voice rings out like a bell, in a merry sing-song: ‘And will God be apprised of what has taken place?’

  An irritated mutter passes around the table. The priest rephrases his question. ‘I am merely asking, as a matter of protocol, whether on the Last Day, when God demands of us our sins, our confidentiality agreement requires that we keep silent then too?’

  ‘With all due respect, Father –’ the Automator visibly annoyed ‘– now is not the time.’

  ‘You are quite right, of course,’ Father Green agrees. ‘I daresay we shall have plenty of opportunity to consider it, when we are condemned to eternal hellfire.’

  The quick-eyed, foxy priest turns to him exasperated. ‘Why must you always be so medieval?’

  ‘Because this is sin!’ The priest’s bony hand pounds on the table so that the teacups in their saucers and the plastic biros jump, and a raging eye roves over the table to fix each of them in turn. ‘It is sin,’ he repeats, ‘a most egregious sin against an innocent child! We may hide it from ourselves with our nice talk of the good of the many. But we cannot hide it from the Lord God!’

  For the rest of the day, while school continues at some invisible remove, Howard wanders alone in a clammy, evil fog. Farley asks if he wants to go for a drink after work, and Howard can barely look him in the eye. With every moment he feels the secret worming deeper into him, making itself at home, like some monstrous parasite.

  When these matters arose in the past: the words spoken so casually, a parent explaining the change of seasons to a child. Is this what he’s been living in all along? Old stories rise up from the depths of his mind – the straying hands of this priest, the sadistic tendencies of another, doors that were kept locked, eyes that lingered for too long in the changing room. Stories, though; stories were all he’d ever taken them for, idle gossip made up to pass the time, like everything in Seabrook. Because otherwise how could those men still be walking around? Wearing Pentecostal doves in their lapels? Surely at that level of hypocrisy God or whoever would be compelled to swing into action! Now it’s as if a panel has been slid back and he’s glimpsed the secret machinery of the world, the grown-up world, in which matters arise – hotel doors are pushed open, pills are dropped into glasses of Coke, bodies are laid bare, while outside life goes on oblivious – and are dispatched again, by small cadres of men in rooms, the priests in their conclave, the Automator and his legal team, it doesn’t really make any difference. A little white lie for the common good. That’s how we keep it on the road.

  His last period is free; today he doesn’t feel like staying around, so he gathers his things and makes his way out. At home he unsheathes the contract from its envelope and lays it on the table, from where it seems to glow at him, polar-white.

  Halley’s phone rings out three times before she answers it. When she does it’s a shock to hear her voice – outside his own head, independent of his memory. He realizes he’s imagined her suspended in some atemporal state; only now does it hit him that in the moment before his call, and all the moments before that for the last weeks, she’s been doing other things, living through days that he knows nothing about, just as before he met her there were thousands more days as real to her as the hand before her face that he will never have an inkling of, in which he never figured even as an idea.

  ‘Howard?’

  ‘Yes.’ He hasn’t planned out what he was going to say. ‘It’s been a while,’ he manages finally. ‘How are you? How have you been?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Are you still staying with Cat? Is it okay?’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘And work, how’s that going, it’s all…?’

  ‘Work’s fine. What do you want, Howard?’

  ‘I just wanted to see how you were.’

  ‘Well, I’m fine,’ she says. The ensuing silence has the conclusive air of a raised guillotine.

  ‘Me too,’ Howard says miserably. ‘Although I don’t know if you heard, we’ve had some trouble at the school, this boy, he was in my History class…’

  ‘I heard.’ The ice in her voice melts, if only fractionally. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He has an impulse to tell her everything, about Coach, the Board meeting, the confidentiality clause. But at the last second he recoils, not sure it’ll do him any favours at this point to show her the contaminated world he’s living in. Instead he blurts out, ‘I made a mistake. That’s what I called to say. I’ve been a fool. I’ve done such terrible things. I hurt you. I’m sorry, Halley, I’m so sorry.’

  A single word, ‘Okay,’ like a barren atoll in the oceanic silence.

  ‘Well, I mean, what do you think?’

  ‘What do I think?’

  ‘Can you forgive me?’ Spoken out loud the question sounds laughably misjudged, as if he’d started quoting Casablanca at her. Halley doesn’t laugh, though. ‘What about your other woman?’ she says in an indifferent, uninflected voice. ‘Have you checked this with her?’

  ‘Oh,’ he waves his hand dismissively, as if the past were a smoky image that could be dispelled at a stroke. ‘That’s over. It wasn’t anything. It wasn’t real.’

  She doesn’t reply. Pacing distractedly back and forth over the room, he says, ‘I want to try again, Halley. I’ve been thinking – we could get out of here. Start over somewhere else. Back to the States even, we could get married, and move back to the States. To New York. Or wherever you wanted to go.’

  In fact this is a plan he has thought of only now – but as he speaks it sounds so perfect! A new, committed life, somewhere far away from Seabrook! In one fell swoop all their problems would be solved!

  But when she answers, although a measure of affection has returned to it, her voice sounds sorrowful and weary. ‘When your hand’s in the fire, right?’

  ‘What?’

  She si
ghs. ‘You’re always looking for ways out of things, Howard. Escape routes out of your own life. That’s why you liked me, because I wasn’t from here, and I seemed to offer something new. When I stopped being new, you slept with that woman, whoever she was. Now because you don’t have me I look like a way out again. You have something to aim for, you have a quest to get me back. But don’t you see, if you did get me back the quest would be over and you’d be bored again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ he says.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because it’ll be different, because I feel different.’

  ‘It can’t just be feelings. How can I trust my life to a feeling?’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘There has to be something,’ she says. He can’t think of anything to say to this, and while he is searching about, she speaks again. ‘The point is that life isn’t a quest, Howard. And it’s not the kind of fire you can take your hand out of. You need to accept that, and start dealing with it.’

  The hostility has dropped from her voice now and her tone is the plaintive mixture of urgency and pity of someone trying to save a self-destructive friend. Howard waits for a moment after she has finished talking and then says softly, ‘And what about us?’

  The hum of the empty phone line is like a knife twisting between his ribs.

  ‘I don’t know, Howard,’ she says at last, in a small sad voice. ‘I need time. I need a little bit of time to work out where I’m going. I’ll call you in a little while, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay. Take care, Howard. Bye.’ The line clicks dead.

  The day after the Board Meeting, Father Green fails to arrive for his morning classes. The official word is that he’s been taken ill, but this is confuted almost instantly by a sighting of the priest lugging boxes down Our Lady’s Hall, hale and hearty, or as hale and hearty as he ever is. He doesn’t turn up for his afternoon classes either, and then the news emerges – from no particular source, it’s just there, floating in the ether – that he has retired from teaching to concentrate on his charity work.