The Remove were at History, bent over books in grudging fealty to hourlies on the morrow. Gray’s uniform chafed, but a stubbornness came across him. The hunchback at the front was nothing to him. He opened the door, took his seat, and barricaded himself behind the Deuxième Empire. Revolutions killed people, usually more than they meant to at the start.
When the bell rang lesson’s end, the hunchback threw out his grappling hook:
—Riding. Your composition.
He had to go and take it.
—Fine, as usual.
A thank-you rolled up his tongue, but he bit it down and turned to leave.
—Just a minute.
Claw.
—Here is the tic. I’ll sign it now. You can see Moss for the rest.
He took the chit, to be signed by school authority six times in the day, a penance designed to entangle you in restriction, to remind you that you were still being punished.
There was absolutely nothing to do there. Newspapers consumed only so much time. Lessons kept Uncle John captive by day and paperwork by night. The snow had melted, but mud remained. She couldn’t use her roller skates, and she didn’t have boots to muck about the grounds.
She wasn’t supposed to wander from the House, but during lessons, who would know? Passages burrowed beneath the school, connecting servants’ quarters and giving onto places she’d never be allowed. The smell of the changing rooms defied description, and the sight of their clothing, all the bits in every state, made her stomach beat.
Uncle John’s House was not the largest (that was Burton-Lee’s), nor the most ornate (Lockett-Egan’s), nor even filled with the strangest objects (Henri’s). Still, it was home, and its passages and corners smelled of the past, as if every legend had grown up there.
The stone stairs by the chapel led to a paneled corridor. At the far end, she found a music room, and in the interval before tea she heard the choir practicing there. Two of the panels had keyholes in them. One opened easily to her hairpin, and she spent a heady half hour exploring narrow ladders and planks between pipes of the organ. The other panel required two hairpins but delivered the greater prize: an abandoned balcony overlooking the chapel, airy and silent, piled with broken chairs.
They treated him as one returned from the dead. Not disposed, not sent home raving, had he been half-killed, or what? He confirmed nothing, contradicted nothing, but as he had no note off Games, in the changing room they saw what they wanted. By tea, wild rumors had worn themselves out, and his tale ceased to be notable. Only one splinter remained.
He forced his pen to the sickening note and left it in his pocket after changing for bed. T: Destroy box and contents. On pain of death, do not read. Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor. In the morning when he dressed, the thing was gone, murder accomplished.
Wuthering Heights was supposed to be the ultimate love story, but she put it down after they were horrid to the dogs. White Shadows in the South Seas proved better and kept her from pondering the boy returned from exile. There is in the nature of every man, I firmly believe, a longing to see and know the strange places of the world. She glimpsed him at lunch Wednesday, poking at the horrible meat and making the odd remark to his fellows. Life imprisons us all in its coil of circumstance, and the dreams of romance that color boyhood are forgotten. The boys at his table turned to him repeatedly with questions. But they do not die. They stir at the sight of a white-sailed ship beating out to the wide sea. He replied with an air of bored authority. Somewhere over the rim of the world lies romance, and every heart yearns to go and find it.
He refrained from looking at her since she sat beside the hunchback, but he couldn’t avoid thought of her, since she was all anyone talked about. Interloper, goddess, tart. It was indecent, they said, for Grieves to bring such a piece into their midst. She was haughty. She was randy. She was fresh. She needed to be kissed, or spanked. There was nothing for it but to ravish her.
The afternoon was a half holiday, and he had nowhere to go but his form room. When everyone else dispersed outdoors, he began to track the girl. Having lingered at the masters’ table with her godfather, she kissed the hunchback on the cheek and made for the cloisters. There she darted up the staircase by the chapel. Running was strictly banned, but he took the stairs two at a time. At the top, an empty corridor mocked him. He felt along one side, and suddenly the panel gave way, hinging in, spilling light and an audible gasp:
—You!
Revolutions outran their instigators.
—Do you go around everywhere giving people heart attacks?
—Sorry!
—Sit down before someone sees you.
There was no one to see him, but he dropped to the floor.
—Lemon?
She thrust a packet towards him. Would accepting her sweets mean accepting her conquest, she who had made a keep in corners of his country no one knew existed?
—If you don’t want one, simply say no thank you.
She had an evil eye and used it. He put a lemon drop on his tongue.
He fit there, and he didn’t mind the dust. He looked at her as though they were friends, or had once been. With friends you didn’t always have to explain. He sucked on the sweet and eyed her newspaper. She peeled off the Special Section and passed him the rest.
Electricity Schemes, the Miners’ Welfare Fund, he scanned the words but didn’t absorb them. She lay on her stomach and kicked her heels together, as if they always passed half holidays reading in silence. Minutes passed, and she continued to pore over photographs of motorcars. The paper told of the crocuses at Hampton Court bit by frost, and of a play called The Messenger. Mr. Audsley has done it again. Never has a more delightful marriage of allegory and whimsy graced the stage of the Gaiety Arts. She’d done her hair in plaits and the parting was crooked.
John had marked his hourlies long into the night, and he continued the next morning while invigilating the Third at their Latin paper. The Remove acquitted themselves more or less as expected, with the exception of Riding, whose exam was a disaster. He’d left several answers blank, and other plain facts he’d conflated or confused. John slashed through the errors, irate and betrayed. Had the boy been cribbing from Mainwaring all along? Or were the answers intended as a form of vengeance, aimed straight at his heart?
Results went up before tea. John perused the lists for the status of boys in his House. Halton, no surprise, came last everywhere but French. As for Riding, John stared dumbfounded at the singularly miserable results.
On the floor of the chair loft, she gasped. Neck sweaty, side cramping, she couldn’t laugh anymore. He’d been relentless in making her laugh, and now he did it again by whispering the word that first set her off:
—Bumf.
Her whole body strained. She hit his leg to signal surrender. He composed himself and waited for her to recover before pronouncing the word yet again.
These boys had a language more exotic than Chinese, everything shortened and removed from its source. He tutored her in Stephenese, terms absurd, terms profane. Dead Man’s Leg, Maggots in Milk, Boiled Baby, Grass; soccer, saccer, footer, changer; the Eagle, the Flea, Fardles, Ennui; rag, chaff, pong, swiz; top-hole, dribble-tank, lose your rat, bumf.
She begged him to stop, but he didn’t. It was like being tickled, when you pleaded for mercy but didn’t mean it, really.