by C. J. Sansom
‘My God, it’s terrible.’
‘I know.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I have not told many people this story.’
‘It must be hard to tell.’
‘It is.’
‘What happened to your fiancé?’
‘I married him. And now he is dead.’ Her tone changed, that flat finality again. She turned away, stubbing her cigarette on the tarmac. ‘And now we should get back on the road. Focus on your friend Frank.’
Chapter Fifteen
FRANK SAT IN HIS USUAL ARMCHAIR, staring out at the grounds. There was a slight mist this morning. It was Sunday and some of the patients had gone to the church service, so it was quiet on the ward.
David was coming today. After Frank had telephoned him yesterday he had felt agitated; talking to his friend had got all his feelings jangled up, about how he had ended up in here and about what he knew. He was frightened that somehow he might let his secret slip. Sitting in his chair he found his mind wandering back to school. Maybe because he had only just had his Largactil dose, for once he found himself thinking of his time there in a detached way, almost as though it had all happened to someone else.
By Frank’s second and third year at Strangmans things had settled into a strange routine. Everyone pretty much shunned him, although the boys still shouted ‘Monkey’ after him in the corridors, ‘Give us yer grin, chimp’, and other things, too; names like Spastic and Weed and, occasionally, ‘English Cunt’. There were several other boys from England at the school but it was another stick to beat Frank with – metaphorically, for the school believed firmly that though sticks and stones could break your bones, names could never hurt you. In the bug-hut sometimes the sheets would be stolen from his bed, or someone would piss in his bedside glass of water, but he had his books and most of the time he lived, or existed, in a world of his own. Yet the knowledge that the other boys and most of the masters despised him left him with a deep, heartbroken sorrow.
At the beginning of his fourth year, when he was fourteen, things got worse again. Edgar had just gone to university and the boys in his year were changing. It was not just their bodies, which were getting larger and sprouting hair, as Frank’s was. Their personalities were changing too, some becoming withdrawn while others seemed to fizz with angry energy. Frank would overhear them, in class before the teacher came, talking about girls and sex, sticking their cocks up women. Frank had his own sexual imaginings but they were different, oddly romantic and untroubling. During the school holidays in Esher he often went to the cinema on his own. It was 1931, the talkies had come in. The romantic elements in the films Frank saw there, usually pure and chaste, stirred him; it was a strange window into a world of happiness.
Lumsden, the boy who had caused Frank trouble in his first year, now came back into his life. He was big now, nearly six foot, his fat turning to heavy muscle. He was loud and swaggering and he led, as always, a little bunch of cronies. One day, as Frank passed his group in the corridor, Lumsden leaned forward and, without a word, punched him hard in the stomach, as he had that day long ago when Frank let fly at him. Frank doubled up, gasping desperately for breath. Lumsden and his friends laughed and walked away.
Lumsden wouldn’t let him alone after that. He and his friends would come up to Frank and swing their arms low, do the monkey routine. Then one day Lumsden placed himself in front of Frank in the corridor, and asked why he was such a fuckin’ useless grinning spastic chimp, why didn’t he bloody say something for himself? He wanted a response; he wouldn’t be satisfied with Frank’s usual silence. Frank looked up into the bully’s eyes; they were large and bright blue behind his glasses, they seemed to spark and flash with rage.
‘Please,’ Frank said. ‘I haven’t done anything!’ He heard the plaintive anger rising in his voice.
‘Why the fuck should we leave you alone?’ The big boy frowned, genuinely angry. ‘Ye silly, grinning wee idjit, ye’re a disgrace to the school, crawling round the place like a daft monkey. Are ye not?’
‘No! Just leave me alone.’ And then, losing control, Frank shouted out, ‘You’re evil!’
Lumsden grabbed Frank’s arm with a damp, meaty hand, swivelled him round and twisted the arm behind his back. ‘Ye’re a fuckin’ grinning wee chimp! Aren’t ye?’ He twisted harder, making Frank cry out with pain. ‘Go on, say it!’
Frank looked desperately round at Lumsden’s friends; they were smiling, eyes bright as their leader’s. He said, gasping out the words, ‘I’m – a grinning – wee chimp!’ There was laughter. One of Lumsden’s friends said eagerly, ‘The wee spastic’s going t’cry!’
One of the other boys whispered, ‘Teacher!’ A black-gowned figure could be seen, approaching from the other end of the corridor. Lumsden let Frank go. As he staggered away he spat a threat. ‘Evil, eh? We’ll show you fuckin’ evil, Monkey, don’t you worry about that.’
He came to himself with a jump; the door to the main ward was half closed and from outside he heard the crash of glass, then cries and running feet and a scuffle. Frank was scared.
Moments later the door opened and Ben came in. He had been frowning but when he saw Frank his face relaxed into a smile. ‘Och,’ he said. ‘You’re in here again.’
Frank shrank into his chair. ‘What’s happening in the ward?’
‘Nothing to worry about. The new patient, Copthorne, put his fist through the glass. Tried to slash his wrist.’ Ben spoke casually; suicide attempts often happened in the asylum despite all the precautions against them.
‘Why?’ Frank asked.
Ben shrugged. ‘No’ sure. He’d been to the church service; maybe something in the sermon upset him. Anyway, listen, your pal will be here in a few hours. You can see him in here if you like, I’ll keep other folk out.’
‘Thanks.’
Ben looked at him closely. ‘You seem a bit woozy. Not quite with us.’
‘I’m okay.’
Frank was conscious that the room was cold, the central heating radiator in the corner giving out only its usual low heat. His bad hand ached. He rubbed it.
Voices sounded from outside. Frank thought he heard Dr Wilson’s. ‘I’ll have tae go,’ Ben said. ‘The big brass will want to know all about Copthorne. You’ll be going round the airing courts after lunch, try and get your head clear for your friend coming, eh?’ Frank looked up into Ben’s sharp brown eyes and thought again, why are you doing this?
During that terrible autumn term at Strangmans Frank felt in danger all the time. If Lumsden’s group passed him in the corridor or sat anywhere nearby in the dining room, they would give him deadly looks. Once, from a couple of tables away, Lumsden drew a finger menacingly across his throat. Frank felt safer when the day boys had left and he was in the bug-hut. They had a quiet study room there, usually with a master on duty, and it was the safest place to spend the evenings. It was in the afternoons, when many of the day boys stayed behind to play rugby or train with the school cadet force, that Frank was most afraid of running into danger.
A red-and-white bus from Edinburgh ran past the school gates, bringing the day boys out from the city in the mornings and back in the afternoons. Its terminus was some way to the south, in the foothills of the Pentland Hills. In the afternoons, once classes were over, Frank took to going out of the gates and catching the near-empty bus, riding to the terminus and back again. It took half an hour or so each way. He would take a book and read. Sometimes he would make the return journey twice in one afternoon. The conductors gave him curious looks and once or twice asked why he kept travelling to and fro. He said he just liked the ride. He always had his penny ready for the fare.
The terminus was a little lay-by, the hills all around. The bus waited for twenty minutes before turning back, the driver and conductor sitting in a little wooden shelter drinking tea from Thermos flasks and smoking. Sometimes Frank would go for a little walk down a footpath, towards the hills. If it was one of those windy days when clouds scudded across the sky, the alternating light and d
ark on the hills was beautiful. Sometimes he thought of just continuing to walk, on and on into the Pentlands, until eventually, sometime in the night, he would drop from exhaustion. But as autumn turned to the early Scottish winter, and there were days of cold rain and sometimes streaks of snow high in the hills, he thought defiantly, why should I let the bastards make me go and die out there in the cold?
At the last assembly before the Christmas holidays, the headmaster announced that cross-country runs would take place on Wednesday afternoons next term, unless there was heavy snow. Over Christmas Frank’s mother had to buy him running shoes, complaining at the cost.
Frank hoped that snow might prevent the runs but when he returned to school in January the weather was mild and damp. And so, on the first Wednesday of term, Frank found himself in the big changing room next to the gym that reeked of sweat and old socks. As he had feared, Lumsden was there with a couple of his friends; as he changed into his singlet and shorts Frank avoided their eyes. He would try to stay near the teacher who was going with them.
They set off, a hundred boys trotting out of the school gates and into the hills. The gym teacher, an enormous former Scotland rugby player called Fraser, shouted to the boys to keep moving to stay warm, set a good steady pace and they’d be fine.
Frank did his best to keep up with Fraser, but a life sitting in classrooms, on buses and hiding under the chairs meant he was unfit. The new running shoes were tight and soon began to pinch his feet. The long line of boys became more strung out, the bigger and fitter ones at the front, laggards like Frank at the back. Mr Fraser ran near the front, looking behind him only occasionally, and Frank fell further and further to the rear, though he was relieved to see that Lumsden and his two friends were well ahead.
As they ran up the first hill more and more boys fell behind. Mr Fraser didn’t realize, or didn’t care, that many of them couldn’t keep up the pace he set. By the time a panting Frank reached the top of the first hill Mr Fraser and the leading boys at the front were out of sight over the crest of the next one. One boy just ahead collapsed onto the wet grass with a groan, clutching a stitch in his side. A little afterwards two others, realizing the teacher was well out of sight, stopped running and sat down, too.
Frank pressed on, towards a clump of bushes and rowan trees nestling in the dip between the two hills. He was the last one now. He thought, I can hide in there. He felt a little dizzy, his heart was racing and his feet were very sore. There was a narrow path through the trees and here, out of sight, he sat down with a gasp on a carpet of damp leaves, his back against the trunk of a rowan. He pulled off the running shoes with relief, his feet throbbing, and closed his eyes. His breathing gradually returned to normal. He became conscious of the leaves under his bare legs, cold sweat drying on his body. Then he smelt something, a familiar smell, rich but sharp. He sat up suddenly, heart pounding. Lumsden and his friends, each smoking a cigarette, were standing looking at him from a few yards away, their arms and legs red and blotchy from the cold. Lumsden was smirking. His eyes, fixed on Frank’s, were coldly predatory, like a cat’s.
‘Look at this,’ he said. His voice was very sharp and clear. ‘The babe in the woods. The monkey, anyway.’ The three boys walked towards him. Frank scrambled up but Lumsden gave him a heavy push that sent him staggering back against the tree.
‘We’ve no’ seen ye for a wee while, Monkey,’ said McTaggart, a tall, rangy boy with black hair. His tone was friendly, but with an edge of menace to it.
‘Uh-huh,’ the third boy agreed. ‘It’s as though he was avoiding us, ye’d think he didn’t like us.’
‘He does not, too,’ Lumsden said. ‘He wis fuckin’ rude last time he spoke to us. And now he’s dropped out of the race, hiding in the bushes.’ His voice rose with fake self-righteousness.
Frank said desperately, ‘So have you, and you’re smoking.’
Lumsden leaned forward threateningly. ‘Are you trying to tell us off, you wee spastic?’
‘Sheer insolence,’ McTaggart said.
‘He’s a most cheeky wee lad.’ Lumsden folded hefty arms across his chest. He sounded like a teacher. He glanced down at Frank’s running shoes. A slow smile spread across his big round face. ‘I think he needs a few strokes of the tawse. This’ll do.’ He bent and picked up one of Frank’s shoes, running a big hand across the spikes.
McTaggart chuckled, but the third boy, a small stocky lad called Vine, looked worried. ‘What’re ye goin’ to do, Hector? We don’t want to get into trouble just over Monkey.’
‘We won’t,’ Lumsden said.
Frank scrambled up and tried to make a run for it, but it was hopeless; McTaggart and Vine grabbed him by the arms. He kicked out frantically but they threw him on the ground again. Lumsden leaned over him and grasped his chin, staring into his eyes. He said, quietly, ‘We’re going to give you the tawse, wee monkey man, just to teach you manners.’ There was a catch of pleasurable excitement in his voice. ‘When you get back, ye’re going to say you took your shoes off here, and when you got up again you fell onto one of them. See? If you don’t,’ he added, very slowly, ‘it’ll be your word against three of us, and next time, you wee cunt, we’ll kill you.’
Vine said, ‘Ye’re no going to hit him with the spikes, Hector?’
Lumsden turned on him threateningly. ‘Do you want some?’ Vine glanced at McTaggart. The dark-haired boy hesitated for a moment, then gave a quick, strange smile. ‘All right. It’ll just be a wee bit blood, won’t it?’
Frank screamed, ‘Please don’t, Lumsden, I just want to be left alone, please, don’t—’
‘Ye called me evil, you wee bastard!’ Lumsden pulled a dirty handkerchief from the pocket of his shorts and shoved it in Frank’s mouth. His cries turned to muffled squeals as Vine and McTaggart dragged him to his feet. Lumsden seized his right arm and yanked it forward. Instinctively Frank clenched his hand into a fist.
‘Open your hand,’ Lumsden snapped. ‘It’ll hurt more on the knuckles.’ He spoke sternly like a teacher, he was pretending to be a teacher.
McTaggart laughed. ‘Look at him with that snot-rag in his mouth.’
‘Hold him!’ Lumsden snapped. Vine held Frank round the waist and McTaggart held his arm out straight. Frank stared at Lumsden in horror as the big boy raised the running shoe, spikes down, shifting his balance to get the best aim. Frank closed his eyes as the shoe came down with all the force of Lumsden’s arm. The pain was terrible, sharp spikes cutting into his palm, and Frank gagged, almost choked. He opened his eyes. The blow had made several deep cuts, which were all bleeding heavily, but one spike had penetrated his wrist, and blood was spouting out of it like water from a pump.
‘Fuckin’ hell, Hector,’ McTaggart said quietly, dropping Frank’s arm. Pulling the handkerchief from his mouth, he pressed it to the pumping wrist. It turned bright red almost instantly. A stream of blood was running down Frank’s arm now. He began to moan.
‘Shit, Hector,’ Vine said. ‘How do we stop it bleeding?’
Lumsden had gone pale. ‘I don’t know. We’ve got to somehow, it’s a mile to the fuckin’ school.’
Frank slumped against the tree, clutching his arm as more blood flowed down onto his vest.
McTaggart said urgently, ‘We have to make a tourniquet.’
‘A what?’
‘My sister fell out a tree once and gashed her leg. My dad tied a hanky round it and told her to hold the leg up. Said it was what they did with injured men in the trenches.’
‘Well, do it!’ Lumsden shouted. ‘Do it, or we’re fucked.’
McTaggart went over to Frank, pulled away the bloodstained handkerchief and lifted his arm up. He tied the handkerchief tight, halfway down his skinny forearm. ‘Ye’ll be all right, wee man,’ he said. His voice was suddenly, astonishingly, gentle. There was a sudden gush of blood from Frank’s wrist, making him cry out, but then the stream slowed to a trickle. His arm began to go white.
‘You have to keep your arm up,’ Mc
Taggart said. Frank just stared at him blankly so McTaggart lifted his arm and held it pointing upwards. The trickle of blood slowed further, though it was still coming.
Lumsden stepped forward. ‘We’ll get you back to school,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll say we found you here and brought you back. Ye’ll tell them you fell on the spikes, right?’ Frank just stared at him, his face blank. His teeth began to chatter. Lumsden said, louder, panic in his voice, ‘Say ye’ll tell them that, Muncaster, or we’ll bloody leave you here!’
Frank’s eyes focused on Lumsden’s red, frightened face. He nodded.
‘Swear on the Bible?’
Frank nodded again.
‘Say it! I swear on the Bible!’
‘I swear,’ Frank whispered. ‘On the Bible.’
‘Come on then, keep that arm up. Here, I’ll hold it.’
They took Frank and helped him get his shoes back on, helped him out of the dell, telling him to watch his feet as he stumbled over a fallen branch. It was strange how they were aiding him now, as though they were his rescuers.
Halfway to the school, Frank fainted dead away.
He woke in a hospital bed. All around him men, mostly old, lay sleeping or reading. His right arm lay on the counterpane, swathed in bandages almost to the elbow. He tried to move his fingers and pain coursed through his arm. A nurse appeared, a stout woman in a blue uniform and large white cap. She leaned over him. ‘Hello, you’re awake then?’
‘Where am I?’ Frank croaked.
‘Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. The school brought you in earlier. We did an operation on your hand, you’ll be a bit groggy for a while from the anaesthetic.’ She put cool fingers on his uninjured hand and took his pulse.
‘Will – will my hand be all right?’
The nurse smiled at him. ‘We’ll see,’ she said evasively.
After that Frank slept again for a while. He was gently shaken awake by another nurse. There was a doctor with her, a thin, grey-haired man in glasses and a white coat, a stethoscope round his neck. He smiled at Frank. ‘How are you feeling now, son?’