Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

  “For you?” I said. “Why?”

  Something splashed against my hand; a droplet from the nearby trees, or something else, I wasn’t sure. I suddenly felt a surge of pity—surely inappropriate, but I felt it nevertheless.

  Could she really have thought that I had kept silent all these years for the sake of some unimagined relationship between us? That might explain a number of things: her pursuit of me; her all-consuming need for approval; her ever more baroque ways of gaining my attention. Oh, she was a monster; but in that moment I felt for her, and I reached out my clumsy old hand toward her in the darkness.

  She took it. “Bloody St. Oswald’s. Bloody vampire.”

  I knew what she meant. You can give, and give and give—but St. Oswald’s is always hungry, devouring everything—love, lives, loyalty—without ever sating its interminable appetite.

  “How can you bear it, sir? What’s in it for you?”

  Good point, Miss Dare. The fact is, I have no choice; I am like a mother bird faced with a chick of monstrous proportions and insatiable greed. “The truth is that many of us—the Old Guard, at least—would lie or even die for St. Oswald’s if duty demanded it.” I didn’t add that I felt as if I might actually be dying there and then, but that was because my mouth was dry.

  She gave an unexpected chuckle. “You old drama queen. You know, I feel half inclined to give you your wish—to let you die for dear St. Oswald’s and see how much gratitude you get for it.”

  “No gratitude,” I said, “but the tax benefits are enormous.” It was a lame quip, as last words go, but in the circumstances it was the best I could do.

  “Don’t be an ass, sir. You’re not going to die.”

  “I’m turned sixty-five, and can do as I please.”

  “What, and miss your Century?”

  “”It is the game,“” I misquoted from somewhere or other. “”Not he who plays it.“”

  “That depends what side you’re on.”

  I laughed. She was a clever girl, I thought, but I defy anyone to find a woman who really understands cricket. “I need to sleep now,” I told her drowsily. “Up stumps and back to the pavilion. Scis quid dicant—”

  “Not yet, sir,” she said. “You can’t sleep now—”

  “Watch me,” I said, and closed my eyes.

  There was a long silence. Then I heard her voice, receding now like her footsteps as the cold drew in.

  “Happy birthday, Magister.”

  Those last words sounded very distant, very final in the dark. The Last Veil, I told myself glumly—at any point now I could expect to see the Tunnel of Light Penny Nation’s always talking about, with its celestial cheerleaders urging me on.

  To be honest I’ve always thought it sounded a bit ghastly, but now I thought I could actually see the light—a rather eerie greenish glow—and hear the voices of departed friends whispering my name.

  “Mr. Straitley?”

  Funny, I thought: I’d expected celestial beings to be rather less formal in their address. But I could hear it clearly now, and in the green glow I could see that Miss Dare had gone, and that what I had taken for a fallen branch in the darkness was in fact a huddled figure, lying on the ground not ten feet away.

  “Mr. Straitley,” it whispered again, in a voice as rusty—and as human—as my own.

  Now I could see an outstretched hand; a crescent of face behind the furred hood of a parka; then a small greenish light, which I recognized at last as the display screen of a mobile phone, illuminating his face. And it was a familiar face; the expression strained but calm as he began, patiently, still holding the phone with what looked like an agonizing effort, to crawl across the grass toward me.

  “Keane?” I said.

  6

  Paris, 5ième arrondissementFriday, 12th November

  I called the ambulance. There’s always one near the park on Bonfire Night in case of accidents, fights, and general misadventure, and all I had to do was phone in (using Knight’s phone for the last time), reporting that an old man had collapsed and leaving instructions that would be at the same time precise enough to allow them to find him and vague enough to give me a chance to get away in comfort.

  It didn’t take long. Over the years I have become rather an expert at quick getaways. I got back to my flat by ten; at ten-fifteen I was packed and ready. I left the hire car (keys in the ignition) on the Abbey Road Estate; by ten-thirty I was fairly certain it would have been stolen and torched. I’d already wiped my computer and removed the hard drive, and now I disposed of what was left along the railway tracks on my way to the station. By then I had only a small case of Miss Dare’s clothes to carry; I left them in a charity bin where they would be laundered and sent to the Third World. Finally I dumped the few documents still pertaining to my old identity into a skip and bought myself a night at a cheap motel and a single rail ticket home.

  I have to say, I’ve missed Paris. Fifteen years ago, I never would have believed it possible; but now I like it very much. I am free of my mother (such a sad business, two burned to death in an apartment fire); and as a result I am the sole beneficiary of rather a neat little inheritance. I’ve changed my name as my mother did hers, and I’ve been teaching English for the last two years at a comfortably suburban lycée, from which I have recently taken a short sabbatical to complete the research that will, I am assured, lead to my rapid promotion. I do hope so; in fact I happen to know that a little scandal is about to erupt (regarding my immediate superior’s online gambling problem) which may offer me a suitable vacancy. It isn’t St. Oswald’s, of course; but it will do. For now, at least.

  As for Straitley, I hope he survives. No other teacher has earned my respect—certainly not the staff at Sunnybank Park, or at the dull Paris lycée that succeeded it. No one else—teacher, parent, analyst—has ever taught me anything worth knowing. Perhaps this is why I let him live. Or perhaps it was to prove to myself that I have finally surpassed my old magister—though in his case survival carries its own double-edged responsibilities, and what his testimony will mean to St. Oswald’s is hard to tell. Certainly, if he wishes to save his colleagues from the present scandal, I see no alternative but to raise the specter of the Snyde affair. There will be unpleasantness. My name will be mentioned.

  I have little anxiety on that front, however; my tracks are well hidden, and unlike St. Oswald’s, I will emerge from this once again unseen and undamaged. But the school has weathered scandals before; and although this new development is likely to raise its profile in a most disagreeable way, I imagine it may endure. In a way, perversely, I hope it does. After all, a sizeable part of me belongs there.

  Now, sitting in my favorite café (no, I won’t tell you where it is), with my demitasse and croissants on the vinyl tabletop in front of me and the November wind snickering and sobbing along the broad boulevard, I could almost be on holiday. There’s the same sense of promise in the air; of plans to be made. I should be enjoying myself. Another two months of sabbatical to go, a new, exciting little project to begin, and, best of all, strangest of all, I am free.

  But I have dragged this revenge of mine behind me for so long that I almost miss the weight of it; the certainty of having something to chase. For the present, it seems, my momentum is spent. It’s a curious feeling and spoils the moment. For the first time in many years, I find myself thinking of Leon. I know that sounds strange—hasn’t he been with me all this time?—but I mean the real Leon, rather than the figure that time and distance have made of him. He’d be nearly thirty now. I remember him saying: Thirty, that’s old. For Christ’s sake, kill me before I get there.

  I never could before, but now I can see Leon at thirty; Leon married; getting a paunch; Leon with a job; Leon with a child. And now, after all, I can see how ordinary he looks, eclipsed by time; reduced to a series of old snapshots, colors faded, now-comic images of fashions long dead—my God, they used to wear that gear?—and suddenly and ridiculously I begin to weep. Not for the Leon of my imagi
nation, but for my own self, little Queenie as was, now twenty-eight years old and heading full tilt and forever into who knows what new darkness. Can I bear it? I ask. And will I ever stop?

  “Hé, la Reinette. Ça va pas?” That’s André Joubert, the café owner; a man in his sixties, whip thin and dark. He knows me—or thinks he does—and there is concern in his angular face as he sees my expression. I make a shooing gesture—“Tout va bien”—leave a couple of notes on the table, and step out onto the boulevard, where my tears will dry in the gritty wind. Perhaps I will mention this to my analyst at our next appointment. On the other hand, perhaps I will miss the appointment altogether.

  My analyst is called Zara and wears chunky knitwear and l’Air du Temps. She knows nothing of me but my fictions and gives me homeopathic tinctures of sepia and iodine to calm my nerves. She is full of sympathy for my troubled childhood and for the tragedies that robbed me, first of my father, then of my mother, stepfather, and baby sister at such an early age. She feels concern for my shyness, my boyishness, and for the fact that I have never been intimate with a man. She blames my father—whom I have presented to her in the garb of Roy Straitley—and urges me to seek closure, catharsis, self-determination.

  It occurs to me that perhaps I have.

  Across the boulevard, Paris is bright and sharp around the edges, stripped raw by the November wind. It makes me restless; makes me want to see precisely where that wind is blowing; makes me curious as to the color of the light just over the far horizon.

  My suburban lycée seems banal next to St. Oswald’s. My little project has been done before; and the prospect of settling down, of accepting the promotion, of fitting into the niche, now seems altogether too easy. After St. Oswald’s I want more. I still want to dare, to strive, to conquer—now even Paris seems too small to contain my ambition.

  Where, then? America might be nice; that land of reinvention, where just to be British confers automatic Gentleman status. A country of black-and-white values, America; of interesting contradictions. I feel that there might be considerable rewards to be gained for a talented player such as myself. Yes, I might enjoy America.

  Or Italy, where every cathedral reminds me of St. Oswald’s and the light is golden on the dust and the squalor of those fabulous ancient cities. Or Portugal, or Spain—or farther still, to India and Japan—until one day I find myself back in front of St. Oswald’s main gates, like the serpent with its tail in its mouth, whose creeping ambition girdles the earth.

  Now that I come to think about it, it seems inevitable. Not this year—maybe not even this decade—but someday I will find myself standing there, looking in at the cricket grounds and the rugby fields and the quads and arches and chimneys and portcullises of St. Oswald’s School for Boys. I find this a curiously comforting thought—like the image of a candle on a window ledge burning just for me—as if the passing of Time, which has been ever more present in my thoughts these past few years, were simply the passing of clouds across those long golden rooftops. No one will know me. Years of reinvention have given me protective colors. Only one person would recognize me, and I do plan to wait until long after Roy Straitley has retired before I show my face—any of my faces—around St. Oswald’s again. A pity, in a way. I might have enjoyed a final game. Still, when I come back to St. Oswald’s I’ll make sure to look for his name on the Honors Board among the Old Centurions. I have a definite feeling it will be there.

  7

  14th November

  I think it’s Sunday, but I’m not quite sure. The pink-haired nurse is here again, tidying up the ward, and I seem to remember Marlene here too, sitting quietly on the chair beside my bed, reading. But today is really the first day that time has run its natural course, and that the tides of unconsciousness, which have ruled my days and nights for the past week, have begun to recede.

  Miss Dare, it seems, has vanished without a trace. Her flat has been cleared; her car was found torched; her last pay packet remains untouched. Marlene, who divides her time between the ward and the school office, tells me that the certificates and letters submitted at the time of her application have been revealed to be fake, and that the “real” Dianne Dare, to whom her Cambridge languages degree was offered five years ago, has been working at a small publisher in London for the past three years and has never even heard of St. Oswald’s.

  Naturally, her description has been circulated. But appearances can be changed; new identities forged; and my guess is that Miss Dare—or Miss Snyde, if that’s still her name—may be a long time in eluding us.

  I fear that on this subject I have not been able to help the police as much as they would have liked. All I know is that she called the ambulance, and that the medics on board administered the on-the-spot care that saved my life. The next day, a young woman claiming to be my daughter delivered a gift-wrapped packet to the ward; inside they found an old-fashioned silver fob watch, nicely engraved.

  No one seems to be able to remember the young woman’s face, although it is true that I have no daughter, or any relative fitting that description. In any case, the woman never returned, and the watch is just an ordinary watch, rather old and slightly tarnished, but keeping excellent time in spite of its age and with a face that, if not precisely handsome, is certainly full of character.

  It is not the only gift I have received this week. I’ve never seen so many flowers; you’d think I was a corpse already. Still, they mean well. There’s a spiny cactus here from my Brodie Boys with the impudent message: Thinking of you. An African violet from Kitty Teague; yellow chrysanthemums from Pearman; a Bizzy Lizzy from Jimmy; a mixed bouquet from the Common Room; a Jacob’s ladder from the sanctimonious Nations; a spider plant from Monument (perhaps to replace the ones Devine removed from the Classics office); and from Devine himself, a large castor-oil plant that stands at my bedside with a kind of shiny disapproval, as if asking itself why I’m not dead yet.

  It was close, so I’ve been told.

  As for Keane, his operation lasted several hours and took six pints of donated blood. He came to see me the other day, and though his nurse insisted he remain in his wheelchair, he looked remarkably well for a man who has cheated death. He has been keeping a notebook of his time in hospital, with sketches of the nurses and caustic little observations on life on the ward. There may be a book in it someday, he says. Well, I’m glad it hasn’t stifled his creativity, at least; though I’ve told him that nothing good ever comes of a teacher turned scribbler, and that if he wants a decent career he should stick to what he’s really good at.

  Pat Bishop has left the cardiac ward. The pink-haired nurse (whose name is Rosie) professes to be heartily relieved. “Three Ozzies at the same time? It’ll turn my hair gray,” she moans, although I have noticed that her manner has softened considerably toward me (a side effect, I suppose, of Pat’s charm), and that she spends more time with me now than with any of the other patients.

  In the light of new evidence, the charges against Pat have been dropped, although he is still under a suspension order signed by the New Head. My other colleagues have a better chance; none of them were officially charged and so may well return in due course. Jimmy has been reinstated—officially for as long as it takes the school to find a replacement, but I suspect that he will continue to be a permanent fixture. Jimmy himself believes that he has me to thank for this second chance, although I have told him several times that I had nothing to do with it. A few words to Dr. Tidy, that’s all; as for the rest, just blame the approaching school inspection, and the fact that without our dim-witted but mostly capable handyman, a great many of St. Oswald’s small but necessary cogs and wheels would have long since seized up completely.

  As for my other colleagues, I hear that Isabelle has gone for good. Light too has left (apparently to begin a business management course, having found teaching too demanding). Pearman is back, to the secret disappointment of Eric Scoones, who saw himself running the department in Pearman’s absence, and Kitty Teague has ap
plied for a Head of Year’s job at St. Henry’s, which I have no doubt she will get. Further afield, Bob Strange is running things on a semipermanent basis—though the grapevine tells me he has had to bear with a significant amount of indiscipline from the boys—and there are rumors of a redundancy package being put together (a generous sum) to ensure that Pat stays away.

  Marlene thinks Pat should fight—the Union would certainly back his case—but a scandal is a scandal, regardless of its outcome, and there will always be people who voice the usual clichés. Poor Pat. I suppose he could still get a Headship somewhere—or better still, a post of Chief Examiner—but his heart belongs to St. Oswald’s, and his heart has been broken. Not by the police investigation—they were just doing their job, after all—but by a thousand cuts; the phone calls left unreturned, the embarrassed chance meetings; the friends who changed sides when they saw the way the wind was blowing.

  “I could go back,” he told me as he prepared to leave. “But it wouldn’t be the same.” I know what he means. The magic circle, once broken, can never quite be restored. “Besides,” he went on, “I wouldn’t do that to St. Oswald’s.”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Marlene, who was waiting. “After all, where was St. Oswald’s when you needed help?”

  Pat just shrugged. There’s no explaining it, not to a woman; not even one in a million, like Marlene. I hope she’ll take care of Pat, I thought; I hope she’ll understand that some things can never be fully understood.

  Knight?

  Colin Knight remains missing, now presumed dead by everyone but the boy’s parents. Mr. Knight is planning to sue the school and has already thrown himself into a number of muscular, well-publicized campaigns—calling for a “Colin’s Law” to be passed, including compulsory DNA testing, psychological evaluation, and stringent police checks on anyone planning to work with children—to ensure, he says, that whatever happened to his boy can never happen again. Mrs. Knight has lost weight and gained jewelry; her pictures in the newspaper and on the daily TV bulletins show a brittle, lacquered woman whose neck and hands seem barely capable of supporting the many chains, rings, and bracelets that hang from her like Christmas baubles. For myself, I doubt her son’s body will ever be found. Ponds and reservoirs have yielded no trace; appeals to the public have raised a great deal of well-meaning response, many hopeful sightings, much goodwill—but no result. There is still hope, says Mrs. Knight on the TV news, but the reason the television is still running the story is not for the boy (whom everyone has written off) but for the riveting spectacle of Mrs. Knight, rigid in Chanel and armored in diamonds, still clinging to that delusion of hope as she stiffens and dies. Better than Big Brother; better than The Osbournes. I never liked her in the old days—I have no reason to like her now—but I do pity her. Marlene had her job to sustain her as well as her affection for Pat; more importantly, Marlene had her daughter, Charlotte—no substitute for Leon, but all the same a child, a hope, a promise. Mrs. Knight has nothing—nothing but a memory that grows ever less reliable as the days pass. Already the tale of Colin Knight has grown in the telling. Like all such victims, he has become a popular boy in retrospect, loved by his teachers, missed by his friends. An outstanding student who could have gone far. The photo in the paper shows him at a birthday party, aged eleven or maybe twelve; smiling brashly (I don’t think I ever saw Knight smile); hair washed; eyes clear; skin as yet unblemished. I barely recognize him, and yet the reality of the boy no longer matters; this is the Knight we will all remember; that tragic image of little-boy-lost.