Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

  “I love you, Leon,” I whispered as I struggled through the weeds. And that, for the moment, was more than enough.

  4

  It was hopeless, I knew. Leon would never see me as I saw him, or feel anything for me but kindly contempt. And yet I was happy, in my way, with the crumbs of his affection; a slap on the arm, a grin, a few words—You’re all right, Pinchbeck—were enough to lift me, sometimes for hours. I was not Francesca; but soon, I knew, Francesca would be back at her convent school, and I—I—

  Well, that was the big question, wasn’t it? In the fortnight that had followed my father’s revelation, Sharon Snyde had phoned every other night. I had refused to talk to her, locking myself in my room. Her letters too remained unanswered, her presents unacknowledged.

  But the adult world cannot be shut out forever. However high I turned up my radio, however many hours I spent away from home, I could not escape Sharon’s machinations.

  My father, who could perhaps have saved me, was a spent force; drinking beers and shoveling pizza in front of the television while his duties remained undone and my time—my precious time—ran out.

  Dear Munchkin,

  Did you like the clothes I sent you? I wasn’t sure what size to buy, but your father says you’re small for your age. I hope I got it right. I do so want things to be perfect when we meet again. I can’t believe you’re going to be thirteen. It won’t be long, now, will it, darling? Your plane ticket should arrive in the next few days. Are you looking forward to your visit as much as I am? Xavier is very excited to be meeting you at last, even though he’s a bit nervous too. I expect he’s afraid of being left out, while we catch up on the last five years!

  Your loving mother,Sharon

  It was impossible. She believed it, you see; really believed that nothing had changed, that she could pick up our life where she had left it; that I could be her Munchkin, her darling, her little dress-up doll. Worse still, my father believed it. Wanted it, encouraged it in some perverse way, as if by letting me go he might somehow alter his own course, like ballast thrown from a sinking ship.

  “Give it a chance.” Conciliatory now, an indulgent parent with a recalcitrant child. He had not raised his voice since the day he struck me. “Give it a chance, kid. You might even enjoy yourself.”

  “I’m not going. I won’t see her.”

  “I tell you. You’ll like Paris.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “I fucking won’t. Anyway, it’s just a visit. I’m not going to live there or anything.”

  Silence.

  “I said it’s just a visit.”

  Silence.

  “Dad?”

  Oh, I tried to encourage him. But something in him was broken. Aggression and violence had given way to indifference. His weight increased still further; he was careless with his keys; the lawns grew ragged with neglect; the cricket pitch, denied its daily dose of the sprinklers, grew brown and bare. His lethargy—his failure—seemed designed to ensure to remove any choice I might still have had between remaining in England and embracing the new life Sharon and Xavier had planned so carefully on my behalf.

  And so I was torn between my loyalty to Leon and the increasing need to cover for my father. I took to watering the cricket pitch at night; I even tried to mow the lawns. But the Mean Machine had ideas of its own, and I only succeeded in scalping the grass, which made it worse than ever, whilst the cricket pitch, despite my best efforts, refused to flourish.

  It was inevitable that sooner or later, someone would notice. One Sunday I came home from the woods to find Pat Bishop in our living room, sitting uncomfortably on one of the good chairs, and my father, on the sofa, facing him. I could almost feel the static in the air. He turned as I came in; I was about to apologize and leave at once, but the look on Bishop’s face stopped me dead. I saw guilt there—and pity, and anger—but most of all I saw profound relief. It was the look of a man willing to seize upon any diversion to get away from an unpleasant scene, and though his smile was as broad as ever and his cheeks were just as pink as he greeted me, I was not fooled for a moment.

  I wondered who had made the complaint. A neighbor; a passerby; a member of staff. A parent, perhaps, wanting his money’s worth. There were certainly plenty of things to complain about. The school itself has always attracted attention. It must be beyond reproach at all times. Its servants too must be beyond reproach; there is enough resentment between St. Oswald’s and the rest of the town without giving extra grist to the rumor mill. A Porter knows this; that is why St. Oswald’s has Porters.

  I turned to my father. He would not look at me but kept his eyes on Bishop, who was already halfway to the door. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “I—we’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch, me and the kid. You tell them, sir. They’ll listen to you.”

  Bishop’s smile—quite humorless now—could have spanned an acre. “I don’t know, John. You’re on a final warning. After that other business—hitting a lad, John—”

  My father tried to stand. It took an effort; I saw his face, soft with distress, and felt my insides crawl with shame. “Please, sir—”

  Bishop saw it too. His big frame filled the doorway. For a second his eyes rested on me and I saw pity in them, but not a glimmer of recognition, though he must have seen me at St. Oswald’s more than a dozen times. Somehow, that—his failure to see—was worse than anything else. I wanted to speak up, to say: Sir, don’t your ecognize me? It’s me, Pinchbeck. You gave me two House points once, remember, and told me to report for the cross-country team!

  But it was impossible. I had fooled him too well. I had thought them so superior, the St. Oswald’s Masters; but here was Bishop looking flushed and sheepish, just as Mr. Bray had looked, the day I brought him down. What help could he give us? We were alone; and only I knew it.

  “Sit tight, John. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He was shaking now. “You’re a friend.”

  Bishop put a large hand on my father’s shoulder. He was good; his voice was warm and hearty, and he was still smiling. “Chin up, man. You can do it. With a bit of luck you’ll have it all in order by September, and no one need know any better. But no more messing about, eh? And John”—he swatted my father, in friendly fashion, on the arm, as if he were patting an overweight Labrador—“stay off the juice, won’t you? One more strike, and even I won’t be able to help you.”

  To some extent, Bishop kept his word. The complaint was dropped—or at least shelved for the present. Bishop dropped by every few days to ask him how he was, and my father seemed to rally a little in response. More importantly, the Bursar had hired a handyman of sorts; a problem case called Jimmy Watt, who was supposed to take over some of the more irksome of the Porter’s duties, leaving John Snyde free to cope with the real work.

  It was our last hope. Without his Porter’s job, I knew he had no chance against Sharon and Xavier. But he had to want to keep me, I thought; and for that, I had to be what he wanted me to be. And so, in my turn, I worked on my father. I watched football on television; ate fish-and-chips from newspaper; jettisoned my books; volunteered for every household chore. At first he watched me with suspicion, then bemusement, and finally, a sullen kind of approval. The fatalism that had first afflicted him when he learned of my mother’s situation seemed to erode a little; he spoke with bitter sarcasm of her Paris lifestyle, her fancy college-boy husband, her assumption that she could re-enter his life on whatever terms she damn well pleased.

  Emboldened, I fed him the notion of thwarting her plans; of showing her who was boss; of playing along with her pathetic ambitions only to frustrate her with his final, decisive master stroke. It appealed to his nature; it gave him direction; he had always been a man’s man, with a sour distrust of the machinations of women.

  “They’re all at it,” he told me one time, forgetting who I was as he launched into one of his frequent rants. “The bitches. All smiles
one minute, and the next they’re reaching for the kitchen knife to stab you in the back. Get away with it too—it’s in the papers every day. I mean, what can you do? Big strong man—poor little girlie—I mean it stands to reason he must’ve done something to her, right? Spousal abuse or whatever the fuck—and the next thing you know there she is, in court, fluttering her eyelashes, getting custody of kids and cash and God knows what else—”

  “Not this kid,” I said.

  “Ah, come on,” said John Snyde. “You can’t mean it. Paris, a good school, a new life—”

  “I told you,” I said. “I want to stay here.”

  “But why?” He stared at me befuddled, like a dog denied a walk. “You could have anything you wanted. Clothes, records—”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want them,” I said. “She can’t just come back here after five bloody years and try to buy me with that French bloke’s money.” He was watching me now, a crease between his blue eyes. “I mean, you’ve been there all the time,” I said. “Looking out for me. Doing your best.” He nodded then, a tiny movement, and I could tell he was paying attention. “We’ve been all right, haven’t we, Dad? What do we need them for anyway?”

  There was a silence. I could tell that my words had struck a chord. “You’ve been all right,” he said. I wasn’t sure whether or not he meant it as a question.

  “We’ll manage,” I said. “We always have. Hit first and hit fast. Never give up, eh, Dad? Never let the bastards grind you down?”

  Another pause, long enough to drown in. Then he laughed, a startling, sunny, young laugh that took me by surprise. “All right, kid,” he said. “We’ll give it a try.”

  And so, in hope, we entered August. My birthday was in three weeks’ time; term started in four. Ample time for my father to restore the grounds to their original perfection, to complete the maintenance work, to set traps for the mice, and to repaint the Games Pavilion in time for September. My optimism returned. There was some justification; my father had not forgotten our conversation in the lounge, and this time he really seemed to be making an effort.

  It made me hopeful, even a little ashamed at how I’d treated him in the past. I’d had my problems with John Snyde, I thought; but at least he was honest. He’d done his best. He hadn’t abandoned me, then tried to bribe me back to his side. In the light of my mother’s actions, even the football matches and the karate lessons seemed less ridiculous to me now, and more like clumsy but sincere overtures of friendship.

  And so I helped him as best I could; I cleaned the house; I washed his clothes; I even forced him to shave. I was obedient, almost affectionate. I needed him to keep this job; it was my only weapon against Sharon; my ticket to St. Oswald’s, and to Leon.

  Leon. Strange, isn’t it, how one obsession grows from another? At first it was St. Oswald’s; the challenge; joy of subterfuge; the need to belong; to be someone more than the child of John and Sharon Snyde. Now it was just Leon; to be with Leon; to know him, possess him in ways I could not yet understand. There was no single reason for my choice. Yes, he was attractive. He had been kind too in his careless way; he had included me; he had given me the means of revenge against Bray, my tormentor. And I had been lonely; vulnerable; desperate; weak.

  But I knew it was none of that. From the moment I first saw him, standing in the Middle Corridor with his hair in his eyes and the end of his scissored tie poking out like an impudent tongue, I had already known. A filter had lifted from the world. Time had separated into before-Leon and after-Leon; and now nothing could ever be the same.

  Most adults assume that the feelings of adolescence don’t count, somehow, and that those searing passions of rage and hate and embarrassment and horror and hopeless, abject love are something you grow out of, something hormonal, a practice run for the Real Thing. It wasn’t. At thirteen, everything counts; there are sharp edges on everything, and all of them cut. Some drugs can re-create that intensity of feeling, but adulthood blunts the edges, dims the colors and taints everything with reason, rationalization, or fear. At thirteen I had no use for any of those. I knew what I wanted; and I was ready, with the single-mindedness of adolescence, to fight for it to the death. I would not go to Paris. Whatever it took, I would not leave.

  5

  St. Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysMonday, 25th October

  On the whole, a poor start to the new half-term. October has turned menacing, tearing the leaves from the golden trees and showering the Quad with conkers. Windy weather excites the boys; wind and rain means excited boys in the form room over break; and after what happened last time I left them to their own devices, I dare not leave them unsupervised even for a moment. No break for Straitley, then; not even a cup of tea; and my resulting temper was so bad that I snapped at everyone, including my Brodie Boys, who can usually make me laugh even at the worst of times.

  As a result the boys kept their heads down, in spite of the windy weather. I put a couple of fourth-formers in detention for failing to hand in work, but apart from that I hardly had to raise my voice. Perhaps they sensed something—some whiff of prestrike ozone in the air—that warned them that now was not the time for a display of high spirits.

  The Common Room, as I understand, has been the scene of a number of small, sour skirmishes. Some unpleasantness about appraisals; a computer breakdown in the office; a quarrel between Pearman and Scoones concerning the new French syllabus. Roach has lost his credit card and blames Jimmy for leaving the Quiet Room door unlocked after school; Dr. Tidy has decreed that as of this term, tea and coffee (hitherto provided free of charge) must be paid for to the tune of £3.75 a week; and Dr. Devine, in his capacity as Health and Safety representative, has officially called for a smoke detector in the Middle Corridor (in the hope of driving me from my smoker’s den in the old Book Room).

  On the bright side, there has been no immediate comeback from Strange over Pooley and his torn blazer. I have to say that surprises me a little; I’d have expected that second warning to have arrived in my pigeonhole by now, and can only suppose that Bob has either forgotten the incident altogether or dismissed it as end-of-term foolishness and decided not to take it further.

  Besides, there are other, more important things to deal with than one boy’s ripped lining. The offensive Light has lost his driving license, or so Kitty tells me, following some kind of an incident in town over the weekend. There’s more to it than that, of course, but my enforced restriction to the Bell Tower meant that for most of the day I was out of the mainstream of Common Room gossip, and therefore had to rely on the boys for information.

  As usual, however, the rumor mill has been at work. One source declared that Light had been arrested following a police tip-off. Another said that Light had been ten times over the legal limit; yet another, that he had been stopped with St. Oswald’s boys in the car with him, and that one of them had actually been at the wheel.

  I have to say that at first, none of it troubled me overmuch. Every now and then you come across a teacher like Light, an arrogant buffoon, who has managed to fool the system and enters the profession expecting an easy job with long holidays. As a rule they don’t last long. If the boys don’t finish them off, something else usually does, and life goes on without much of a blip.

  As the day wore on, however, I began to realize that there was something more afoot than Light’s traffic offenses. Gerry Grachvogel’s class next to mine was unusually noisy; during my free period I stuck my head around the door and saw most of 3S, including Knight, Jackson, Anderton-Pullitt, and the usual suspects, apparently talking amongst themselves whilst Grachvogel sat staring out of the window with an expression of such abstracted misery that I curbed my original impulse—which was to interfere—and simply returned to my own room without a word.

  When I got back, Chris Keane was waiting for me. “I didn’t by any chance leave a notebook here, did I?” he asked as I came in. “It’s a little red leather book. I keep all my ideas in it.”

  For on
ce I thought he was looking less than calm; recalling some of his more subversive comments, I thought I could understand why.

  “I found a notebook in the Common Room before half-term,” I told him. “I thought you’d reclaimed it.”

  Keane shook his head. I wondered whether or not I should tell him I’d glanced inside, then, seeing his furtive expression, decided against.

  “Lesson plans?” I suggested innocently.

  “Not quite,” said Keane.

  “Ask Miss Dare. She shares my room. Maybe she saw it and put it away.”

  I thought Keane looked slightly worried at that. As well he might, knowing the contents of that incriminating little book. Still, he seemed cool enough about it and simply said, “No problem. I’m sure it’ll turn up sooner or later.”

  Come to think of it, things have had rather a habit of disappearing in the last few weeks. The pens, for instance; Keane’s notebook; Roach’s credit card. It happens occasionally; the wallet I could understand, but I really couldn’t see why anyone would want to steal an old St. Oswald’s Jubilee mug, or indeed my form register, which has still not resurfaced—unless it is simply to annoy me, in which case it has more than succeeded. I wondered what other small and insignificant items had disappeared in recent days, and whether the disappearances might be in some way related.

  I said as much to Keane. “Well, it’s a school,” he said. “Things vanish in schools.”

  Perhaps, I thought; but not St. Oswald’s.

  I saw Keane’s ironic smile as he left the room, almost as if I had spoken aloud.

  At the end of school I went back into Grachvogel’s room, hoping to find out what was on his mind. Gerry’s a good enough chap, in his way, not a natural in the class, but a real academic with a real enthusiasm for his subject, and it bothered me to see him looking so under the weather. However, when I stuck my head around his classroom door at four o‘ clock, he was not there. That too was unusual; Gerry tends to hang around after hours, messing with the computers or preparing his interminable visual aids, and it was certainly the first time I’d ever seen him leave his room unlocked.