After years of contention, diplomacy, and bribes, Farmer McKay tore down his barn. The news was received with the muted tones due the dead, but for Moss and the other prefects, it called for raising a glass. Carter and Swinton and those of their year went beyond relief to a puzzling form of rancor. The Head should have made him tear it down years ago, they said. The place was a crime (or at least a crime scene). Moss refilled their glasses and tried to emphasize the positive. No longer would they be plagued by bounds-breaking there. They could rest easy that the summer’s bunking off would be limited to nearby hills, streams, and at worst run-ins with the keeper of Grindalythe Woods. Sanity was reigning at last. Even Grievous had risen from his sickbed.
Happy days are here again … It wasn’t just a song; it was reality. Halton was a more careless fag than his predecessor, but Moss and Crighton found him infinitely more amusing. It wasn’t hard to trim his leash: short enough to avoid anarchy, long enough to enjoy life.
Moss himself had never minded fagging; secretly, he’d rather enjoyed it, though Crighton and others in their year still bore the scars. Lydon had been a laissez-faire fag-master. Provided Moss did the basics—and this included a butler-like responsibility for keeping Lydon on the rails, making sure his shoes were in order, that he ate, that he had things he could eat, that he kept general track of time—if Moss did these things, he’d be given some of the things Lydon had to eat, and Lydon would make him feel that the Academy wasn’t such a bad place, and that living across the globe from parents had a certain charm to it, that amusements could be had if one found the places to pursue them, and the discretion, the style. He had Lydon to thank for his nickname, too. Lydon called him Bastable and made everyone else do the same, giving coherence to the initials H. O. without his having to reveal what they really stood for. The nickname didn’t stick beyond that first year, lacking the ring and the sense of good nicknames, but it had bestowed favor and belonging at the start, an unearned gift that cemented Moss’s loyalty to Lydon. Moss hadn’t yet been able to think of a satisfactory nickname for Halton. Last term the fags had called him Infant, but it was a dull name Halton had already outgrown. The way things were going, though, something sensational was bound to present itself.
6 Mai, Vichy—Dear Thomas Gray, you said your father was a physician. I’m wondering, that is I’m writing to ask if he was ever unable to diagnose something. If a diagnosis is correct, then different doctors must agree on it, mustn’t they? If not, then isn’t it a question of finding the right doctor or waiting for enough evidence? Do you know anything about the French medical profession? Are they renowned? It’s hard to take someone seriously when he doesn’t speak English very well. I know, I’m a snob. You won’t hold it against me, will you? I hear her waking. Must stop. Amitié, Cordelia (Líoht).
Letters fixed times and places together. The words she’d put on the page Wednesday week were still there when he read them this Friday and would be a hundred Fridays from now. She wrote them in Vichy, and he held them here in Yorkshire. Verba volant, littera scripta manet. Her manuscript, as individual as a fingerprint, grazed him as her chatter never had. The envelope flap had been licked by her tongue, the paper folded with her fingers. Yet, as outrageous as the sudden missive was, what he felt most keenly was her failure—by oversight or design?—to include a return address. Sometimes eating something small made you hungrier. He asked Monsieur Henri about Vichy, and the Frenchman lent him a copy of Baedeker:
The town of Vichy is prettily situated on the right bank of the Allier and has a healthy and temperate climate. Except its old quarter, which dates only from the middle ages, the town is modern. It is easily reached from Paris in 5 hrs. (by the Vichy–Royat Express, p. xiii) to 7 hrs. 25 min.
—What’s this, you brownnosing little sod?
McCandless snatched the book from his hands. After a glance at the fraying red cover, the form’s beefy leader hurled it to Tighe, who caught and opened it to the title page.
Gray had been a fortnight in the Fifth and was no less hated than when he arrived. Nearly three years their junior, he could not hope for friendship. His former companions in the Remove had even less sympathy for him; not only had he set himself above them, but he’d had the indecency to place into the Top Fifth, rather than the Bottom or possible Middle Fifth, as any self-respecting cad would have done. Tighe, known as Legs due to his enthusiasm for cycling, was the most sympathetic of the lot, but Gray did not expect his visible support. He would have let them punt Baedeker around until they tired of it except that he’d promised it would come to no harm.
—It’s Ennui’s, he said.
—Taking you on holiday? McCandless sneered.
Legs twirled the book on a finger.
—Don’t bugger it about.
—Golly, he’s fierce! McCandless cried.
He gave Gray’s desk a hearty kick as the Fifth responded with mock fear.
—He’s far too clever for us, isn’t he, Tighe?
—Too clever by half, Legs replied.
—Him and his stonking great cerebellum.
Gray lifted the ink as McCandless dumped his desk and its contents onto the floor and Legs slammed the book over his head.
He’d suffered resentment before, but not recently and not alone. Now at meals, he sat in Coventry, at Games he received boots and elbows, at Prep he worked alone in the empty form room while the rest of the Fifth repaired to their studies. He’d made an attempt at ruin, twice submitting juvenile efforts in lieu of prep, but the tongue lashings he endured from offended masters did nothing to improve his standing amongst the Fifth, who considered his poor performance a type of mockery.
Hôtel du Globe, Vichy, 14 Mai—Dear Uncle John, You’ll never believe I got my very first French manicure! Mum got un soin des ongles, too, and now we’re ready for the Season (which opens tomorrow, in case you didn’t know). I’ve told her I’ll need proper shoes, too. Mum says I’m too young for court shoes, but I can’t keep dressing like a child, especially when I’m expected to toujours discuter nos affaires comme une jeune fille française. You probably won’t believe me, but Miss Murgatroyd agrees. In case you didn’t know, le subjonctif is beastly. Miss you heaps. Love, Cordelia.
John dispatched letters daily to the Continent and hovered by the pigeonholes each morning and night as Fardley sorted the post. He emptied the library of medical volumes and was working his way through the stack of journals Kardleigh had given him. His first exercise book (marked France) soon gave way to others, as off-hours reading became single-minded research. A German called Ehrlich had created Salvarsan. He called it a magic bullet. The medicine was neither magic nor applied by firearm, but it was made of arsenic and appeared especially toxic to the microbe causing morbus gallicus, or so The Lancet claimed.
No, she isn’t taking M. Chose’s tablets anymore. Messrs. F, M, and B stopped them because of what they were doing to her digestion. I thought I’d explained all this! M. Bétise was particularly concerned about the effect of le médicament on her liver. Of course, Miss Murgatroyd says the French are morbidly obsessed with their livers, but it never hurts to be careful, does it?
The doctor in Paris had said Salvarsan was the modern treatment, but the three warlocks in Vichy seemed to have lost track of essentials. John could not, through letters, make sense of their views, but he could see that their bickering blended perfectly with Meg’s parade of complaints, and presumably with the fog of charlatanism in Vichy, to the point that the treatment had devolved into lethal whimsy. Even if Meg refused to hear reason, he ought to be able to influence matters through her daughter, but letters were a vexing medium. If John had been present with the girl, he would have been able to educate her on this matter as he educated the boys on others, step by step, not overwhelming with what they couldn’t understand, but leading them inexorably to an appreciation of the truth—in her case, not the precise truth but at least an understanding of the appropriate treatment. As it was, the ambiguity of the written word on top of the exasperating postal delays rendered him nearly helpless. Nevertheless, he persevered, editing each of his letters into a potent, persuasive document (perhaps not a magic bullet, but what kind of image was that anyway?). Meantime, his research expanded as much as Kardleigh’s periodicals would permit, which at least allowed him to feel he was making progress somewhere.
Dear Tommy Gray, What would your father say to a patient who couldn’t cope on her own but refused to be helped?
The Fifth were more restless than usual, even for a Saturday morning in summer. John was hoping he could ignore it, but since it was only Primus, he knew the disorder would gain steam if left unchecked. He wished he could speak to them man to man. Just relax, he’d say, and we can pass a pleasant morning with the Third Messenian War. He had a few jokes in hand, and if they would stop being so very juvenile, he could deploy them. But before he could do anything but prepare the blackboard, his peripheral vision caught sight of Riding, pariah of the Fifth, rolling down the aisle an object that resembled a sausage from the breakfast table.
—Riding and Tighe!
The two boys slouched to their feet, the first defiant, the second incredulous. John was not born yesterday. He had every intention of giving Riding the notoriety he sought, but he knew that misery loved company and that multiple casualties improved esprit de corps. Thus he treated them both to a florid harangue on the subject of the lower-thirdery to which they had sunk and, remembering that a little unfairness went a long way, gave them both late-school stretching into the next hot week. When Riding protested, claiming sole responsibility, John delivered the coup de grâce:
—Very well. Tighe, vade in pace. Riding, my study after Games.
This was why he hated his Housemaster, and why every right-thinking cad did as well. Five days of late-school was a suitably oppressive penalty that also gave him somewhere to be during the afternoon break, but having bestowed the boon, the beast took it back and lowered the hammer with my study after Games. In the changer, he had to listen to sardonic remarks and sound effects, and by the time he arrived to the study, his courage had decamped. Dr. Sebastian said God heard every prayer but answered them according to his wisdom. If that was so, he thought, checking his fingernails, the divine wisdom was grievous. He knocked. Hark, you tyrant! Almighty and indifferent, who gave your servant into the hands of the accuser, who saw his family slaughtered, who covered him in boils and never said sorry …
Dear Uncle John, Thank you! Thank you! We’ve just returned from the shops with the most gorgeous pair of shoes you’ve ever seen in your whole long life! They’re navy blue, with a very sensible heel (Miss M says), and they’re made of the softest leather you’ve ever felt. Thank you milles fois for everything you said. Mum says to write that it’s beautiful here and that we ought to come back soon all together. I prefer Paris moi-même but il n’importe pas where we go so long as we’re together. Love love love, C.
P.S. I didn’t mean to imply you were old when I said that about your long life. In fact, Mum says you’re a dashing gentilhomme, so there.
John startled at the knock on his door. There wasn’t time to brace himself, but he called the boy in and opened with his gambit:
—Ah, Riding, good of you to drop by.
John had a line in surprises and normally could direct all the sections of the orchestra: the public appearance of strictness, the private admonishment, either appealing to better nature or threatening more stringent tactics, and finally the chord, unexpected but perfectly tuned, of allegiance. Sometimes he gave lines when they deserved the JCR, sometimes he omitted punishment altogether, other times he imposed it but not as they expected. He’d never intended to go through with the late-school, but Riding didn’t know that. By the end of the interview, he would believe he’d had a lucky escape, and at long last relations between them would be restored to something like normal. John was prepared to forget about the past; one way or another, this boy must be made to realize it.
John sorted mail at the table as if Riding had merely dropped by to banter, but the boy stood rigidly on the rug. John tried it all, from How are you getting along? to What shall we do about the study? Riding returned monosyllables. The stonewall provoked John to chatter, and he ran again through the options before them, all of which involved Riding joining a previously established Fifth Form study. Riding behaved as if facing an executioner. Even when John suggested that he might be able to do his prep in the library if a key could be found, the boy stared resentfully at the floor. The interview was a failure. If he reprimanded Riding or punished him now, it would only harden his sense of opposition; if he let the boy off, he’d be rewarding bad manners.
—Well, Riding, what have you to say?
Hostility and blame came off the boy in waves, even as he refused to reply; John’s blood was rising.
—Out, he said. And stay out until you can behave decently.
21 Mai, encore en Vichy—Dear Thomas Gray, What do you know about the major diseases and their cures? Monsieur Miteux has Mum on magnesium tablets to treat spasmophilia. The trouble is they’re making her hands tingly. Try telling him and he shouts “Impossible!”
—Blubbing, Cerebellum?
Gray crushed the paper before they took it from him. He tried bravado, calling McCandless a fool-born maggot-pie, but this only enraged the henchmen. They seized him, dragged him down the row of toilets, and upon threat of Noah’s Flood made him admit what had not happened in Grieves’s study. He may as well kill himself now, they opined, unless he meant to enlist as Grieves’s pet and sleep in a basket at his feet. Only the announcement, relayed from the corridor, of a wireless program in the Eagle’s houseroom diverted them from bodily revenge.
Gray had avoided the chair loft that term, lest someone see him and follow, but now as the Fifth tramped away, he returned and sprang again the latch.
I’ve been thinking perhaps she has a disease of the nerves, or a parasite. When I suggested this to M. Miteux, he treated me to his best French disdain: “Mlle Lumière, vous lisez encore de toute évidence.” The beast. We can rule out Malaria because she hasn’t had chills, but I’ve been wondering if it might not be the Kala-azar. I’m looking into things as well as I can, and my reading is improving, at least. I’m doing lessons in the afternoons with a rather dusty English lady named Miss Murgatroyd. (Need I say more?) Mum met her here in Vichy. She says she was recovering from a crise de foie she got during her last appointment, but j’ai mes soupçons!
He’d been keeping her letters in the lining of his tuck box, but the stash was nearly full and the Fifth were bound to turn their ire upon it, now sooner rather than later. McKay’s barn had been torn down, not that he’d have taken them there. As foolish as he was, he had no intention of repeating—
—Ah, John! Where have you been hiding?
Jamie arrested him on the way out of the SCR. Startled, John tried to untangle his words. They hadn’t expected Jamie back so soon from … where had he been?
—The mice have been playing, I see.
John allowed himself to be led into the Cloisters.
—You’ve missed both of my Friday teas, Jamie said. If I can’t keep my SCR in tea, they’ll start asking for decent wages, and then where will we be?
John fell into step beside the Headmaster. He was being teased, which he supposed was better than being ticked off, or being reminded of the chat Jamie had promised but thus far failed to inflict.
—Edinburgh was dreary, Jamie said, London even worse. No one ever tells you that running a school means begging across the country like some overgrown Oliver Twist.
They made a fifth circuit and then a sixth as Jamie narrated his efforts to raise money for the new organ. It would take a miracle, but if they could pull it off, they’d secure Kardleigh long term and then be in a position to develop a music program, a proper one, not like the cathedral schools, obviously, but worth the while, and who knew if the Academy might not become a desirable public school for boys who’d trained as choristers.
—Which reminds me, Jamie continued, Father has been pestering.
John froze in shame and surprise.
—He wants you to come down this summer.
Flustered, John laughed.
—I’m glad you can laugh. Three letters. He’s determined.
John uttered something about Meg and being needed, his goddaughter and—
—Don’t worry. I’ve put him off for now. Who knows what will happen by summer?
—Just what do you mean?
—Don’t take that tone, Jamie said. Makes one feel like a third former, rather.
He was polishing the floor as he had when a fag, and the floor was the floor of study number six, Wilberforce sprawled across the window seat, and he wore an Eton jacket and Wilberforce wore rugby kit and he could feel the girl’s letters crunching in his trouser pocket.
—What about that box of yours? Wilberforce was saying. Isn’t it where you left it?
Cold with fear, he shouted: It was gone, burnt up, and so was the barn.
—I told you not to go there, Morgan said.
He wasn’t a slave, he went where he wanted! Many things had happened since Morgan had left, many and many, and he told them until his throat hurt, and seawater flooded the floor, and he mopped it and Morgan mopped it, but still it rose to their ankles. He explained faster—someone had taken the box, had hidden it, and then on Gray’s orders had destroyed it and everything inside.
—Sure about that?
—Of course, I’m sure.
The water rose higher, to their waists, chests.
—Oh, boyo, Morgan said.
They bobbed, freezing.
—What proof do you have?
He woke, ill rested, to Whitsunday. It was a red-letter day, so the vicar came and talked at them through his nose. Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. The Holy Ghost came over the apostles like fire, and like wind, and they began to speak in tongues, telling everything to everyone, spreading the word across the earth.
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire
And lighten with perpetual fire
Thou the anointing Spirit art
Who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart
What proof did he have that T had obeyed his command to destroy box and contents? In sane times, he would simply ask T, but he had no more idea who T was now than he had the very first night.
Enable with perpetual light
The dullness of our blinded sight
Like when Guilford Audsley, the Messenger, had climbed down through the rubble to the girl, whom now he imagined as his saffron-haired correspondent, smudging ink across her paper at some wrought-iron table beside a pool of Vichy water. He couldn’t reach T. He couldn’t reach her. He was at the mercy of each, and within it.
King’s Lynn, Norfolk—Dear Mr. Grieves, You flatter me with your lines, which I have read many times since first opening them. I am, you must know, merely a volunteer nurse, occupying the hours doing what I can for the unfortunates my brother labels the Destitute and Deranged. To his mind, medicine comes dressed in expensive clothes, dispensing high-priced concoctions to a wife whose chief ailments are overeating, lack of charity, and boredom, and whose chief requirement is a swift smack across both cheeks.
I almost began to apologize, as you have asked me not to, and to chide myself for writing so spitefully (if not untruthfully) to a person I scarcely know. Everyone here sees a crisp if quickly aging exterior, no hint of the thoughts within, yet something in your lines has let me believe that you will not be repulsed, entirely, and that you might even, a widower, find familiar this madness.
I really must stop before I write things I regret. I remain, Your Correspondent, Elsa Riding.
Grieves would have the girl’s address, of course. In a way it was that simple, yet never more out of reach. Good afternoon, sir, I was wondering if you could let me know your goddaughter’s whereabouts as we’ve fallen into a correspondence. One might as well confess perversion.
Dear Tommy Gray, I hope you don’t mind that I call you that. I know it’s bad for Mum to have all these arguments, but she keeps trying to get rid me to go home. Whenever she catches me feeling sour or under strain, she threatens to send me to stay with Mrs. Kneesworth, our neighbor in Saffron Walden. She isn’t even cross, she just goes weepy and limp. I can’t make her believe that I want to help.
Still, Miss M improves things. She’s taken Mum under her fathers feathers, and I suppose it relieves Mum’s conscience that I’ve learned to say things like “Are you a princess? I am.” She’s waking. Must stop.
Monday first bell tore him from sleep. The morning was damp, as it had been in his dream where Valarious had dismounted in fog, arrested by a goshawk that pinched his shoulder like dread. The lamp above the Academy gates barely penetrated the quad, veil between worlds so thin that it seemed not impossible to wander by accident into a green grove.
He’d hardly thought of Valarious since Easter, but now he took a new exercise book and began a new telling though the old was not complete. He wrote through English, through French, and even through the Flea’s Latin Unseen. The goshawk didn’t speak in words, but as Valarious questioned it, its talons gripped and loosened in response. The bird pecked at his chin, and when he mentioned Castle Noire, it bated. Valarious examined its jesses; their leather, finely tooled, gave no hint to the owner. A breeze rushed through the greenwood then, but rather than dispel the mist, it blew thicker, and suddenly he knew—had the goshawk purred?—knew the source, who had trained and loved this bird—
—Sit down, McCandless, you philistine swine.
The Unseen had ended, and McCandless had read his translation.
—It is insulting enough, the Flea complained, that you propose to crib your way through last night’s prep, but to do so without understanding a single word—
McCandless scanned the room for support, but his aides had faded into schoolboys before the Flea.
—and then to employ your ignorance, shamelessly, with the apparent expectation that we would not notice—
The Flea tore a docket from the book.
—is an affront too far, even for ears as long-suffering as these.
He abandoned the dais, cast the docket on McCandless’s desk, and then commenced a tour of the room, dilating on matters of consequence: the form’s ignorance, Seneca’s wisdom, Dante’s error, Cardano’s libel. A maiden most fair, and long golden hair. The goshawk had begun to sing, and Valarious knew the words and knew the bird was singing of his mistress, trapped not in a tower, but in a hall without window (find window rhyme). How had the hawk escaped? And how—
—Riding! Perhaps you would be so good as to join us and continue.
He set down his pen and scanned Auden’s Unseens.
—Where from, sir?
—Just where we are.
He flipped to the correct page and began translating.
—Riding, the Flea interrupted, do I look to you a man who appreciates showing off?
His stomach dropped.
—No, sir.
Like Valarious felt as the hawk flew away.
—Then indulge us, please, by leaving Auden alone and reading out whatever you managed to scrawl into that exercise book of yours.
Come back, come back!
—Don’t stand there staring, boy. Tempus fugit.
Beyond the fog, in the bracken, wolves moved.
Burton-Lee took his book and drifted to the front of the room reading, though not aloud. Valarious stood at the mercy of men whose property was to have none. The soldiers had pierced the fog, ringing him with steel. The Flea set his book on the chalkboard ledge.
—I am aware, the Flea began, from painful experience, that it would be useless—nay, folly—nay, a desecration of the God-given hour to waste my ink and my dockets complaining to your Housemaster.
The form snickered.
—For if I am not mistaken, Riding, your singular talent, besides translating Seneca ex tempore, appears to be eluding the arm of the law at every juncture.
He looked to the form for confirmation and got it.
—And carrying on with your pursuits in complete disregard of ordinary society.
McCandless brightened.
—You will therefore write me three hundred lines.
A wave of consternation flooded the form.
—You may take up where we have left off and deliver them to my study by half past five this afternoon.
But quickly gave way to glee as they realized that it would be impossible for anyone, even the pariah of the Fifth, to complete the Flea’s imposition in the break between lunch and Quintus; his only option was to cut Games. The Flea knew it, they knew it, and now Gray knew it: six from his Captain of Games lay in his certain future, and Swinton was formidable both on and off the cricket pitch.
Things have gone from bad to worse. She found my diary and then got furious with me for lying to her. When I told her I don’t lie, she said, How can you pretend to be happy when it’s clear you hate me so? I don’t pretend! I love her more than anything in the world. I told her I’d been feeling unwell and had just got out of balance. This was partly true, I had the sniffles, and in the end the whole row made me sicker. Then Miss M got into it, saying it was my own fault for sitting up late catching a chill. I burned my diary in the grate when they went out. You’re my only recourse now. Thirteen today. Must stop.
He departed the JCR dry-eyed, and without comment to those waiting in the corridor, he proceeded across the quad to a foreign study, foreign realm.
—Ah, Riding.
The Flea continued writing as Gray set the lines on the blotter.
—Seen your JCR, have you?
—Yes, sir.
—Good.
The man looked up, and he was pinned, held by that gaze which pierced his thin defense with an acute kind of knowing.
—Then this should be an end to the matter.
He held out Gray’s exercise book.
—Take, write. Keep it out of my lesson.
He folded it away.
—Fama volat et crescit eundo, the Flea said. Or so one should hope in this case.
—Sir?
The man sighed but did not drop his gaze.
—Don’t play the naïf with me, Riding. By now, if you’re fortunate, news of your six should have spread through your House and form, likely amplified in the telling.
On the rack, pained for thrill and relish.
—You can thank me another time, the Flea said placidly, but for now indulge me, please, with a touch of recitation.
He pointed to a place in the sloppily copied lines.
—Haec ego non multis, sed tibi: satis enim magnun alter alteri theatrum sumus.
—Yes? the Flea prompted.
—I, er …
—Scripto, you’ll find, is understood.
—I write … this … not to the many, but to you only…?
—Go on.
—For you and I are … surely … enough of a … an audience … for each other.
—Very like your translation, but the point. Elegant there, don’t you think?
He wasn’t blubbing, but his eyes informed against him.
—Which reminds me …
He squeezed them straight as the man dressed as his enemy rifled through a drawer.
—Your Housemaster has been pestering me, and you know how I dislike being pestered.
And held out a key.
—You may tell him this is my only copy. If it gets lost, on his head be it.
Whose tag read Library.
The library was out-of-bounds and locked, except during the morning break when the library prefect checked books in and out. Now, he opened it free and clear and pushed the switch for the chandeliers. Never before had he liberty to browse, to roam and see what fate put before him. He finished his prep and then drifted amongst the shelves, which sagged with books misplaced and others that had lost their labels or even bindings. One such tome, on a shelf up a ladder, offered its pages as sanctuary for her letters; he leafed her blue envelopes between its brittle sheets, and when the bell rang for Prayers, he locked the door on his keep, vast, booked, licit.
No one elbowed him on the way to Prayers, and on the way out, Legs asked about something in the English prep and then relayed Gray’s answer to another of the Fifth, who agreed. In the washroom, the House admired Swinton’s efforts and asked, more than once, how much it had hurt. (Not much.—Go on.—Well, a bit.) And when Swinton put his head around the door to rustle them along and admire his handiwork, he had the charity to say Well stuck so all could hear.
Still, his eyes defied him, and even though he went to bed with a key to the library and the kind of soreness that makes schoolboys heroes, they revolted in the dark, soaking his pillow. The time, they said, was out of joint, and no one was who he had been anymore.