Different Class

by Joanne Harris

  Oh, just little things at first. But memories are like dominoes, laid out in rows, ready to fall. And once the process had started, I was remembering things that I’d almost forgotten I knew. My therapist got excited, and urged me to go deeper. Her name was Liz McRae, and she reminded me a bit of Miss McDonald. She was blonde, and pretty, and sweet, and very sympathetic. She told me I’d been damaged, that it wasn’t my fault I’d turned out this way; that if I could identify the source of the pain, then I could put it behind me.

  The thing about pain, Mousey, is that we build over it. We bury it, we mourn it, we copy it in marble. And it becomes a monument, carved with weeping angels, inscribed with words in Latin, bearing so little resemblance to the thing we put into the ground that even the memory of it fades, to be replaced by the memories of polished stone; stained glass; the bitter scent of lilies.

  It started in his form-room. I used to go there at lunchtimes. He used to sit at his own desk, marking, or listening to music. One day, we were alone. He came and stood right next to me. And then he put his hand on my leg, and left it there for a long time. I didn’t know what to do. He was a teacher. I trusted him. And so I didn’t do anything. I just sat there and waited. And because it felt weird, I didn’t say anything, either. Instead I just sat there, pretending nothing was happening, and closed my eyes, and drifted, and listened to the music.

  That was a mistake, of course. Now, we had a secret. And when it happened again, then again, I found it even harder to say anything. After all, he’d done it before. And he didn’t seem to think it was weird, which made me think I might be to blame. And anyway, what harm had we done? And how could I even describe it?

  And so I never said a word. Not even to you, Mousey. That’s why I never wrote it down in my St Oswald’s diary, because that would have given the monster a shape. That would have made it real to me. I think perhaps I was wondering if it meant I looked different; if somehow he could tell that I wasn’t like other boys. I used to look at myself in the mirror, and try to see what he could see. But there was nothing. No special sign. No sign we had a secret. And when he pushed me on to the desk, with his hand on the back of my head, and whispered to me: Good boy – I did what I’d always done, and turned my mind to other things: to Ziggy and his left-handed guitar; to Crow, and Nineteen Eighty-Four; and the clay pits, and Diamond Dogs.

  This is where those memories start to become fragmented. It’s not that I don’t remember – how could I forget that? The smell of him, the sound of him, there in the chalky darkness. The way I had to close my eyes so hard that when I opened them, all I could see for a moment or two was a brown, swirling nothingness.

  Memory isn’t a camera. It’s an anthill, a thing of layers, built around a central core. And inside the core, there are sleeping things. Things that change, and sting, and fly. Things that come out of the walls at night, and crawl all over everything.

  But now, at last, after seven years of misery and self-hatred, I was finally starting to see. Those things I did, when I was a boy – those terrible things – they weren’t my fault. Poodle, the rabbits, Ratboy and all – they were all part of my trauma. I wasn’t possessed. I wasn’t bad. Those things were a Coping Mechanism, brought on by My Condition, and if I’d felt aggressive, confused – even weirdly exhilarated – who could really blame me? That was just part of what I’d been through. Symptoms of an inner disease.

  I tried very hard to remember it now. I searched my soul. I prayed a lot. Miss McRae taught me how admitting weakness can also be strong, and said how proud she was of me. That was nice; it had been a long time since anyone had been proud of me. It made me show off a bit, perhaps, and by the time I saw where it was leading, I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. Not that I really wanted to. I was rather enjoying it all. My victimhood was a novelty; the sympathy made me feel special. The other boys from my year at St Oswald’s were going to university; driving cars; getting girls. The other boys had had their names painted on to the Honours Boards. Where were my honours? Where was my name? Why was I the only one to be left behind?

  It had been nearly seven years since the death of Lee Bagshot. People had mostly forgotten him, except for his mother, I suppose. The death of an estate boy is never as widely reported as the death of a little girl. We’d already seen that in Malbry with the death of Emily White – flowers and teddy bears on the streets, prayer groups, charities, letters to the local MP. The Emily White affair lasted months. Lee Bagshot was gone in a week or so. Of course, there’d been nothing to link his death to violence of any kind. It was a tragic accident, that people blamed on the Council, for not putting up enough warning signs and barbed wire round the clay pits. But when I started to recall what had happened seven years ago, the case of Lee Bagshot suddenly seemed to acquire a new distinction. And then, at last, when the trial began—

  People are very suspicious, you know; always so quick to believe the worst. I’d only revealed to Miss McRae that I’d been abused by a member of staff. She was the one who’d assumed who it was; she was the one who brought it all out. And of course, St Oswald’s has always been a windmill for boys to tilt at. At her request, I told the police. Everything but the man’s name. That I couldn’t – wouldn’t – say. That one I left to someone else. Someone more charismatic.

  I never really believed we’d win. Perhaps that was the problem. But stories are like weeds; they grow. You can never stop them. And the story that was meant to blow Poodle out of the water became something more sinister. A boy had disappeared for a week in December of ’81. Another boy had drowned in the pits. That death had been ruled accidental, but now, with these new allegations of corruption at St Oswald’s, the Malbry authorities saw their chance to link one with the other. The Malbry Examiner, never a friend of what it sees as a privileged institution (and never mind those scholarship boys from dirt-poor backgrounds, whose fees were paid by the St Oswald’s Trust), had always loved to publish the worst. Now its pages were awash with rumour and hysteria. The Nutter affair was brought out again, with a whole lot of new theories. And when my tale was made public – they started making connections.

  Had Charlie Nutter been lured away during Christmas of ’81? Had Harry Clarke corrupted him? Was Harry Clarke the member of staff who had traumatized me so badly that I could not even say his name?

  Miss McRae was supportive throughout. She searched my personal history. She sought out my old schoolfriends. One of them was Poodle, who violently denied the suggestion that he had been abused as a boy. Yes, he and Harry had had a relationship. But it had never been sexual – at least, not until Poodle was twenty-one, and legal. Poodle’s parents denied this, of course. Poodle had been brainwashed. And when I told them the story of what I’d seen that Christmas, through the window of Harry’s house—

  Mr Clarke was a charismatic teacher, said the Malbry Examiner. Like many sexual predators, he was outgoing and popular. Was he charismatic enough for even his victims to deny that he had abused them? Could this reluctance to speak out be some kind of Stockholm Syndrome? Or was there a more sinister truth lurking behind that old story? And, yet more enticingly, could the death of Lee Bagshot now be linked to a suspected paedophile?

  All right, Mousey. It got out of hand. That was Poodle’s fault, not mine. But Poodle was being difficult. For a start, he denied that he and Harry had had a relationship while Poodle was still at school. He admitted to having been troubled, but blamed it all on his parents. He also blamed me, Mousey – talked about the clay pits, the burnt-out car, even the rabbits. He told them he’d been afraid of me – that both he and Goldie had been afraid – and that they had gone along with the games in order to humour me.

  It wasn’t very plausible. I didn’t look like the kind of boy who could make other people afraid of me. Goldie looked like a leader, with his Cambridge-boy physique. Even Poodle looked fitter and healthier than I did. But I looked like a victim; bloated, hairless and pitiful, as if what had happened seven years before were a cancer eating
away at me. But Poodle wouldn’t leave it alone. He was besotted with Harry Clarke. He phoned my home repeatedly, trying to make me confirm his tale. He wrote me crazy letters, threatening to expose me. And so I did the only thing I could. I dropped the bomb I was holding before Poodle could use it against me. That way, if he told the police about the death of Lee Bagshot, it would look like a made-up story, fabricated to shift the blame away from Harry on to me.

  Recovered memory therapy is such a useful tool, Mousey. Miss McRae was a strong believer in its healing powers. Thanks to her, I remembered how I’d seen Lee Bagshot in the clay pits. I was even able to describe the boy’s clothes on the day he disappeared. I remembered conversations; dragged out scraps of memory; hinted and hesitated, confided and confessed, until at last there was enough for the police to build a case.

  It took a while. Miss McRae helped; and Mr Speight; and my parents. I feigned reluctance at first; then, allowed them to persuade me. I felt like the kid at a party, politely refusing the last slice of cake. I let them woo me.

  Well, if you insist—

  All that was just bait, of course. I know a bit about bait, you know. Of course, there was no actual proof that Harry had ever known Lee Bagshot. But Harry’s house was half a mile from where Lee’s body had been found, and, now that he was in the dock for acts of gross indecency, it seemed almost poetic that he should be a murderer, too.

  The evidence was pretty thin. And I never said it was him. But I had seen Lee at the clay pits, and I told them – reluctantly, under oath – of how the boy had boasted to me that he knew of a bloke in the Village who would pay for sex with sweets, marijuana and alcohol. Lee had described Harry to me, as I described him to the court. And when Harry denied all knowledge of ever meeting Lee Bagshot, the people in the courtroom booed like at a pantomime.

  Poodle tried to defend him, of course. But by then, no one believed him. The son of a politician; privileged and wealthy; and on top of that, a little queer – he just wasn’t the kind of person juries find appealing. He never spoke above a whisper, and often had to be asked to repeat himself. He never made eye contact. His tics and twitches had returned, making him tremble and stammer. With the help of his parents, who described him as a troubled young man; the Chaplain of St Oswald’s, in whom I had once confided, and to whom Harry had already confessed his version of the story; the Head of St Oswald’s, who came across, as always, as a bully; and all the staff of St Oswald’s who came out en masse as character witnesses for the accused, Poodle ended up doing more harm than good as far as Harry was concerned.

  Oh, I remember them, Mousey. All lined up like senators in their academic gowns and with their Oxbridge accents. There was Straitley, more like a toothless lion than ever, saying over and over again how Harry just couldn’t have done those things; then Mr Bishop, the Head of Year, with his rugby-school physique; then the Head, like a Juggernaut, addressing the crowd the way he spoke to his boys in Assembly.

  I noticed Mr Scoones wasn’t there, even though he’d been Harry’s friend; nor was Dr Devine, whose room was so close to Harry’s. But standing in front of a jury of ordinary folk from the estate, who had always mistrusted the posh school, those witnesses all came across as shifty, smirking and arrogant. You could tell that most of them weren’t taking the business seriously. Straitley, with rumpled suit and his Latin that the jury didn’t understand; trying to explain that you can’t hide secrets in a school, that if there’d been something going on, he would have known it, somehow. The Chaplain, looking confused; Mr Fabricant, with his book on the Marquis de Sade, saying boys weren’t to be trusted and looking like a vampire.

  Then Mrs Bagshot came to plead for justice for her dead son, triggering a battle between the Shifty-but-Rich and the Honest-but-Poor, fought on the pages of tabloids all across the country. St Oswald’s was portrayed nationwide as a hotbed of privilege and vice. Mrs Bagshot wasn’t ideal, but her grief was genuine. And everyone loves an underdog. I played the part to perfection.

  But Johnny Harrington was the star. I could understand why, of course. He was handsome; articulate; spoke of his deep faith in God; blamed himself for not having seen what was happening to his friends; remembered how Poodle and Ziggy had always seemed so secretive; played down his own involvement with the rats and the rabbits, but said how he’d always suspected something sinister was afoot. He, too, had seen the signs. He, too, had suspected something amiss. He cited Mr Fabricant’s book; Straitley’s Latin profanities; quietly painted a picture in which all of St Oswald’s was riddled with vice and corruption, an Old Boys’ club that preyed on the young; a place in which no questions were asked, and where colleagues would cover for even the vilest of abuse. Then he told the jury how he had come to Mr Straitley for advice after the thing with Poodle and me, and how Mr Straitley had laughed at him.

  And the jury swallowed everything. Johnny’s sincerity; his remorse; the fact that his northern accent had not quite vanished (at least for the trial); his portrayal of himself as the boy who’d never fitted in. Everything was perfect. He never faltered, even under the most aggressive cross-examination, but always kept eye contact and spoke quietly, but firmly. Charlie Nutter and I came across as crazy; damaged; uncertain. But Johnny Harrington came across as sincere, as well as totally sane. Of course, people believed him. Johnny believed the story himself. He couldn’t have done a better job if I’d actually coached him.

  After that, Harry didn’t have much of a chance. He denied all knowledge of my abuse; denied having known Lee Bagshot; denied offering boys money for sex; denied sleeping with Charlie Nutter until the boy had turned twenty-one. But none of that swayed the jury, all of them comfortable northern folk who found it hard to believe that a deviant like Harry might have any kind of moral code. Most of them thought that buggery should be illegal anyway, and mistrusted Charlie Nutter, with his ridiculous name, and his twitch, and his wealth, and his father, with his seat in the House of Commons and his look of pompous outrage.

  And Harry would not accuse me. That, and not his words, was what hurt. His damn superiority. His refusal to engage when his lawyer tried to destroy me. He stood behind his screen, looking old, and all he said when questioned was:

  ‘David was a special case. I should have seen he needed help. I’m sorry. I should have helped him.’

  I knew what he meant, of course. But that was enough to condemn him. The rest of his words were forgotten, as the headlines did their worst.

  I’M SORRY! screamed the tabloids. The rest printed watered-down versions. PERVERT TEACHER BREAKS DOWN IN COURT. HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT! HOMOSEXUAL ENGLISH TEACHER MAY HAVE ABUSED HIS CHARGES FOR YEARS! And the most damning headline of all, flanked with a picture of Harry: DID THIS MAN KILL LEE BAGSHOT?

  That, and not my testimony, was what turned the tide that day – not that it needed much turning. Malbry still remembered the sorry death of Emily White, and although the cases weren’t the same, there were enough parallels to give the press some ammunition.

  Troubled Boy Speaks Out, they said. Thousand-Pound-a-Term School Was a Hotbed of Vice, they said. And, faced with a chance to get even for generations of social supremacy, the jury voted with their hearts, and Harry was sentenced to twenty years.

  Sometimes you need a sacrifice in order to stamp out evil. The Bible is full of reminders of this. Abraham and Isaac; the Gadarene swine; the story of the scapegoat. In this case, it was Lee Bagshot, who went to his death so that others might live purer, better, happier lives. And although Harry Clarke didn’t kill him, as such, I now understood, after seven years, that he’d died in part because of Harry, which made Harry almost as guilty as if he’d done the deed himself.

  Under the rule of reasonable doubt, they should have gone for an acquittal. But they didn’t. Is that my fault? Call it the work of Providence.

  4

  October 14th, 2005

  Some stories enter the public eye like splinters. The Moors Murders. The Yorkshire Ripper. Malbry’s Emily White affair. And
to see Harry Clarke in such company – yes, it hurt. It still does. Sixteen years later, it’s still surprisingly hard for me to look at those old headlines, those photographs. So many people have had their say over the Harry Clarke affair. So many bits of graffiti scrubbed off lavatory walls; so many casual references in newspapers and magazines. There was even a book, you know, by a man called Jeffrey Stuarts – a hack journalist, specializing in character assassination – in which it was suggested that Harry’s victims were more numerous than anyone suspected, and which attempted to link him – and, by association, St Oswald’s – with a number of disappearances. No one protested openly, even though Harry was on a School trip to France at the time of at least one of these. None of Harry’s ex-colleagues – including Eric, including myself – were brave enough to stand up for him. And why? Because an unstable young man had made a vague accusation, abetted by his therapist; his church; his parents; a prominent MP – and supported by Johnny Harrington, the boy who kept on coming back.

  Everything begins with him. From that first visit to the Headmaster’s office; from that first complaint; from the church; from that first mention of the word possession, back in ’81. You might still wonder why I blame Harrington over Spikely. Perhaps because Spikely was disturbed; everything about his testimony pointed to his delusional state. But Harrington was presentable; boyish; confident; even charming. He gave his testimony in much the same way as he had spoken to me that day when talking about his troubled friend; with an air of polite sincerity. And when that Sports Day photo emerged, with Harrington looking so neatly pressed, and Harry, sweaty and grinning, the papers had a field day, and Harrington (forever fourteen in the eyes of the public) became a perpetual poster-child; the final nail in poor Harry’s coffin.