The White Devil
Page 35
But the real roar came at the end, for Byron. The actor now stood at the front, his curly hair gleaming with sweat, gobbling up the attention. One section of Speech Room rose in enthusiastic applause—girls squealing in that unattractive way—as well as Sir Alan Vine and the Headland boys. Byron made a gesture, as if to rip off his clothes. The young males in the audience thundered; nervous laughter followed. Byron blushed, then coyly unbuttoned his Regency coat. The effect was anticlimactic, since Persephone Vine was of course still wearing a shirt, and had strapped down her breasts in a very tight athletic bra; even she was not going to flash her tits to three hundred parents and students in Speech Room.
Fawkes saw a middle-aged couple, sitting one row in front of him, look confused. The wife leaned over to another couple nearby. Fawkes could partly read her lips and suspected he knew her question: I know it’s really a girl, but who is she? What’s all the excitement about? The reply, he could partially hear over the curtain calls: She’s one of the ones who was sick. She and the other boy survived. Woman Number One shook her head, moved; hard to believe, that poor girl, Fawkes read in her expression; and the woman applauded harder. Fawkes had had enough. He ducked through the row and out a back exit, into the December night.
Once there, he did not quite know what to do. The right thing would be to stay, mingle, drink in the attention, store it up for later, thank his hosts and former employers. But then there would be the awkward goodbyes. That feeling of everyone else having someone to go home with, somewhere to go, but him. And there was Persephone. Looking at her, and the rest of the cast, up close, was knives to him. The missing face . . . well, it was best just to avoid the whole scene. He lit a cigarette, circled around Speech Room, and started down the hill.
“Sir,” piped a voice behind him.
It was the tiny form of a Shell in his straw hat. He squinted up at Fawkes in the glare of the streetlight.
“Hello.”
“You’re Mr. Fawkes.”
“I am.”
“Are you still teaching here?”
“No, I’ve left.”
“Why?”
Why? Fawkes asked himself. Because I was fired. Because I was a drunk. Because I battled the inexplicable, when no one asked me to. Because I lost precious things that did not belong to me.
“I’m pursuing other opportunities,” he said drily.
“Sir?”
“Never mind. Piss off.”
Fawkes dug his hands in his pockets and restarted his journey, then reproached himself—hadn’t he vowed to be better than that? He stopped and turned, but the boy had vanished.
An old sense of panic gripped Fawkes. Where had the boy gone? Who—what—had Fawkes been speaking to, out there in the darkness? He stood, bewildered. Then a giggle caught his attention. He turned again, and saw that the Shell was watching him, and had been joined by a friend: another tiny man, with pale skin, long white fingers, in his white shirt and black tie and bluer. The two regarded him with undisguised, gleeful malice, exchanged a whisper, and giggled again. He supposed he deserved it. They turned their backs to him and resumed their journey. Fawkes noticed that the two boys were holding hands. He watched them, surprised: their fingers intertwined as they walked away, one of them actually skipping. It was a delightfully innocent sight, in such a cynical, rowdy, bullying environment. A young friendship, born at Harrow: a good thing, he reassured himself. Yet Fawkes found a familiar fear pulsing through him. He watched them, until the two straw hats vanished into the black.
Acknowledgments
I AM LUCKY to have attended Harrow School for one year. It was an enriching and transformative time for me; one for which I will be forever grateful. It is unfortunate that Andrew Taylor’s experience at the school, in circumstances similar to mine, was less happy. With some reluctance I felt it necessary to represent accurately Mr. Taylor’s time at Harrow, not my own.
Without the support of my mother, Martha Evans, this book could not have been written. Exceeding my wildest hopes, she offered to be my guide into literary, social, and medical history, and gave me the tireless, cheerful commitment that only my mom can offer; wearing her expertise lightly, and always making it fun.
I am grateful to Dr. Eric Leibert and Dr. Rany Condos of the NYU Langone Medical Center for their generosity, patience, and wit in answering my many questions about TB and its treatment.
My agent, Simon Lipskar, and editor, Sally Kim, worked hard to bring this book to life. An author couldn’t ask for a more gifted, dedicated team.
Debts for other kindnesses: Jonathan Smith, the Witteveen/Quirijns family, Judith Lee, Rob Munk.
Sources for this book include Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame by Benita Eisler; A History of Harrow School by Christopher Tyerman; and accounts of John Keats’s death by his friend Joseph Severn.
My wife and children tolerated much caffeine abuse and many sunny days spent indoors in order for this novel to be written. They saved me, and it, a thousand times. Always to them, my deepest thanks
About the Author
Justin Evans, the author of A Good and Happy Child, is a digital media executive in New York City, where he lives with his wife and their two children.
www.justinevans.com
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ALSO BY JUSTIN EVANS
A Good and Happy Child
Credits
Cover photograph © Robert Llewellyn/Getty Images
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE WHITE DEVIL. Copyright © 2011 by Justin Evans. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
EPub Edition MAY 2011 ISBN: 9780062092021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Evans, Justin.
The white devil : a novel / by Justin Evans.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-172827-3 (hardback)
ISBN-10: 0-06-172827-6 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-172828-0 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3605.V366W47 2011
813’.6—dc22 2010051662
11 12 13 14 15
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
&nb
sp; Contents
Prologue
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART II
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
PART III
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher