She had come home from her wild lurches. This very fact signaled to John a return to soundness. Meg had not in the summer’s torturous silence become incapacitated or died. She had not even, by her own account or the girl’s, declined but rather improved, to the point of alleged recovery.
Honestly—and wasn’t he getting too old to toy with lies?—he didn’t quite believe it. How could she have been as gravely ill as she had seemed—so ill that fear had made his scalp break out in spots—and then out of the blue recovered? Not only recovered but reconciled with the scoundrel? There were countless explanations beyond the obvious angle of self-delusion. Perhaps one of the charlatans had offered a cure that worked. This possibility John rated low. It was also possible that the illness had gone into remission. Much of disease could never be cured, yet people carried on with it for a full life span. His own father, for instance. His grandfather, even. John had never known the latter, but the maiden aunts attested to his relentless smoking, drinking, and carousing; he’d been given a year to live when he was sixty yet carried on hale and hearty until the age of eighty-five, when he’d died falling down some stairs. It was further possible—at least John had to consider it if he were honest—that her condition had not been as dire as it had seemed. It was possible that, in his fear of losing her, he had mistaken it for the bane of his family. If he’d had a shred of sense, he would have taken notes in Paris, of her symptoms, of his conversation with the French physician. The one or two fits had stuck prominently in his mind, but had she really been so weakened overall? He’d read his goddaughter’s letters many times over the summer, but—honestly—had he not read them with the aim of confirming his own fears, or at least bolstering the thesis of his book?
He knew her. Honestly, he knew her. She was often unwell, but how unwell? Had it not all begun when Owain ran off with the piece from his office? The cad humiliates her, cue collapse, cue hospital, cue retreat to Paris in the arms of her friend (man-in-waiting?), and then after he leaves, cue lurch across the continent, lurching and lurching, one lark after another (a Hungarian persuasionist?), until now, months later, she lurches back home, having recalled the scoundrel, having punished him and punished him and finally brought him to heel.
It was possible.
But John couldn’t know until he saw her for himself. In the meantime, he had her on the line, answering his letters, as long as he didn’t spoil it. All calculations rested on axioms, and his with Meg were and must be the principles of friendship. Paris was a distant dream; they were friends, longtime family friends, best friends. When it came to correspondence, friends did not pester or take silence as a slight, but neither did friends calculate their candor, holding back for fear of appearing excessive. At first, he wrote her every day, describing his walking tour and the new business of term. She replied with droll remarks and enchanting descriptions of the house they had bought in Ely. His letters the next week earned only brief reply, but she was occupied moving house. Not wishing to be a burden, he scaled back to three times a week, but even then she blew hot and cold. Mention of his book seemed to inspire silence, whereas sharp remarks on affairs of the day—Dr. Pfrimer’s failed coup in Austria, naval mutinies at Invergordon, a dirigible moored to the Empire State Building—received bright replies. The most effective tactic seemed to be a period of silence followed by a couple of sentences or fragments, like a wire cheaply sent. One such dispatch gave rise to her longest reply yet, three pages describing a cast of new neighbors, after which she’d gone silent for another week. The cycle of expectation, disappointment, calculation, and surprise was straining his nerves. But, in less than a week, he would see her in the flesh and sort everything out for himself, and for good.
Gill led them through the usual tongue twisters and physical stretches before going out to supervise the seating. Despite his past solos, Halton felt on edge, and it only got worse when Gill told them to break a leg. They protested vigorously, but Gill explained that in the theater, everything was reversed. Good luck was bad luck. Bad luck was good.
—So say break a leg, and it’s all understood.
The atmosphere in the woodshop had all the excitement of a public execution. John had been dreading it, and of course the Common Room had come en masse to witness the train wreck and record it for all eternity. Jamie sat in the front row next to John while Burton-Lee skulked in the back. A handbill announced six titled scenes, demanding some round-the-houses change of seating halfway through. John had been expecting a pageant or perhaps an extended tableau vivant, but as someone flickered the light switch, he realized he’d been hoping secretly for something else, something that would take him back to the Lion Inn and to the bountiful pleasure and invention he’d found there.
Lights out. Guffaws from the crowd. Insults, some profane, hurled under cover of darkness. Then a low, humming whistle, like wind on the moor, growing louder than the catcalls, until—click—a phalanx of torches trained on the audience, blinding them, silencing them, and then swooping around in mad kaleidoscope until they settled on Audsley and Moss, who were turning by hand the pedals of a bicycle, already breathless, already perspiring.
The Wright brothers’ bicycle shop. Inventors’ dreams. A star-crossed romance with a girl far away. The scene progressed, and though the jeers continued, they never found a foothold. There wasn’t time to examine what was happening; Audsley’s sheer conviction overwhelmed them. They listened, they laughed when they were meant to laugh, and when Audsley began—insanely!—to sing, they fell silent. Even when Halton and Malcolm tertius began from the sidelines to whistle along and then to make sounds in imitation of instruments, the enchantment only deepened. Audsley could sing, and he could dance; even Moss looked as if he, too, could dance if he chose.
Fifty perhaps had squeezed into the woodshop, but when they moved outdoors, the crowd seemed to double. John had no idea what da Vinci was doing speaking to the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, or whether the second scene (In a Labyrinth) was intended as a dream or something else. And Riding’s role, the French pilot with his courrier précieux, why did his speech bring a strain to the throat, his song even more? The crowd whistled during the bows, and before the cheers had ended, Audsley and Co. had been carried off like football heroes. Burton had the grace to congratulate John (as if any of it had been his doing). Jamie beamed, and for a moment it seemed they had stepped into the future, where the school had become what Jamie had always wanted, where Jamie was fully and completely happy and John was part of it, aiding, believing, standing firm.
Afterwards, as he tried to explain the play in his letter to Meg, he realized it was beyond his power to describe. Everything he wrote sounded cloying or outré. The whole thing was a mess, structurally speaking—Fantasia on Flight, he would have called it. He’d been their age when he’d first heard the Fantasia on Christmas Carols. He tried to express to Meg the link in his mind between Flight and the Vaughan Williams composition. Had she ever heard the latter? It had been September, like now. He and his father had been with the maiden aunts in Herefordshire, and the aunts had insisted they attend a certain festival. John had expected candy floss, but instead they crammed into the cathedral for a concert. John had known little of music beyond what he heard in the Marlborough chapel, but the Fantasia had knocked him down. He couldn’t remember all the parts, but the piece had begun in the Beginning, man’s first disobedience, and then it had swept on through every sad and beautiful, half-forgotten but still longed-for good. God bless the ruler of this house and long may he reign. And many happy Christmases he live to see again. He set down his pen and pressed the place between his eyes. It seemed impossible that he would live to see another truly happy Christmas, and now, as he remembered his troupe of boys singing, his heart strained again, and he could feel the breath of memory on his neck, of a life before this life, a life they all once had together, before the world began to forget, before they’d fallen captive, before the noise and the machines and this endlessly confused day.
He’d said the truth in Paris, said it out loud. She’d pretended not to hear, and then she’d run away—to escape what, if not her heart’s desire? Now she’d stopped running, and he was going to her and she was letting him. Owain might behave, but the one constant with the man was inconstancy. He’d stray again, hurt her again. And then—perhaps not the next time or the time after that—but one time—
Gill said there were always celebrations with plays, when they opened and when they closed, all the more so when they did both at once. Sunday night there had been no time; they only just got the woodshop set to rights and everything else back where it belonged before tea-Prep-Prayers and bed, into which Gray collapsed as if he’d been bicycling for a week. The next day, however, was Gill’s birthday, and festivities began by tradition at first bell. Gray had warned Gill what to expect, so he met the ritual with grace. Gray had also warned Gill’s parents, by letter, of their responsibilities. They’d obeyed his command, and a hamper arrived after breakfast. Gill shared the whole thing out at morning break, using the occasion to thank everyone who’d helped with the play, and anyone else who claimed to have seen it. This, Gray did not need to tell him, was not done, but it seemed to improve Gill’s stock rather than degrade it.
The play had been all the talk and continued so. Birthday rituals continued also, beyond the usual cold bath, seeming actually to intensify as the day wore on. Gill took the kicks, trips, and punches with a smile, though he was reduced to calling Pax at the business in the changing room. Gray wasn’t entirely sure if they were accepting him, through it, or punishing him. So long as Gray joined the throng, none of it turned towards him, but he felt that in a breath it could, and that he and Gill both occupied the dangerous shadowland between approval and shame.
At Prep, Gill collapsed across the window seat and fell promptly to sleep. The color was coming up around his left eye, and his shirt was torn. Gray took the flight goggles from the mantel and wrapped them in newspaper. He hadn’t been sure, and he wasn’t now, but if ever a person deserved them …
—What? Who?
Gill startled awake. Someone was kicking the study door, not the horde, but Fardley, who dropped a heavy crate on the table.
—My prep!
—My back, Fardley grumbled.
Gray palmed over sixpence to get rid of him and helped Gill move the crate to the floor. It had been sent from London. They pried the lid off, and Gill began to unpack it, strewing straw across the floor and removing bottles of ginger beer, bags of sweets, tins of sausages, and not one, but two differently iced cakes.
—It’s for the feast, Gill explained, after lights-out.
—Oh, come on!
But it quickly became clear that the day had only been a prelude to the main event Gill had been anticipating all along. The dormitory feast was a set piece in school literature and therefore, Gill felt, compulsory for the Full Experience.
—You’ll have the full experience all right if you try this on in the dorm!
—Have a little faith, Gill scolded. Moss and Crikey are sorting it out.
—What?
—Don’t look that way. It’s going to be enormous!
The idea was excessive, not to mention embarrassing, but if Moss and Crighton knew, it was up to them to stop it. In the meantime, Gray applied himself to repairing his English prep.
—Dear Mater and Pater! Gill cried from atop a chair. I can no answer make but thanks, and thanks and ever thanks, and oft good turns are shuffled off with such uncurrent pay!
—Switch off, can’t you?
—My birthday at the Cad has excelled in every way. Before first bell I was abducted from bed, relieved of my pajamas, and submerged in a bath, one I might add that was covered in ice until it met my arse.
—Life’s perilous, Pauline.
—Your first hamper was enjoyed by all, and chaps showed their appreciation with sundry love taps and pranks, in really bang-up style.
—No pun intended?
—Things came to a pretty pass after Games, I must say, when I was debagged and given the Academy version of a birthday spanking, which I don’t mind telling you hurt like bloody hell.
—When you’ve finished your clamorous whining, your present’s on the table.
Gill jumped down, alert with anticipation, and opened the newspaper.
—Oh! he said. But, oh …
Gray began to sweep up the straw. Gill sat down at the table:
—Are you sure?
—So you’ll remember us in your future ca-re-ah.
Gill folded the newspaper into an airplane and threw it into the fire:
—Thanks and thanks and ever thanks.
—It’s nothing.
—It’s enormous.
Audsley’s so-called feast was a ludicrous success, like everything else he touched. The whole House crowded into Moss’s dorm, and even Mac enjoyed himself once Audsley had toasted the House’s victory over Lockett-Egan’s. They’d never done such a thing at the Academy, or, so far as Moss knew, at any school outside the pages of fiction, but in Audsley’s hands, it was made to seem natural. His glamour bewitched them into a make-believe school life, one played by torchlight with first-rate food shared like loaves and fishes. As costume, Audsley wore the goggles from the play. They sat on his forehead except when he was proposing toasts, at which time he put them over his eyes. A fag had been set to keep cave, the volume remained under control, and the food disappeared before it got late:
—Three cheers for Goggles, Moss said before dispersing them. Hip-hip—
The next day was Michaelmas, which meant goose at luncheon, early evensong, and shortened Prep. Gray was still thinking of new lines for the lakeshore scene, but it was all like a hedgerow full of berries no one would eat. Guilford, meanwhile, had acquired a nickname. Corridors rang with Goggles-this and Goggles-that. Gray couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept enough, and as the afternoon dimmed and his head began to ache, he wondered if he was on the verge of the Tower. No harm if he were. His work as Keeper was finished. Gill was better liked than he, Gray, would ever be. As they jostled into chapel, his skin felt raw and his stomach overfull from two days’ feasting.
Crighton read the first lesson, his voice rich and confident: Jacob falling asleep with the rock for his pillow, the angels in his dream ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. Then the Eagle, bright tympani, told of war in Heaven and the fight against the Dragon, and then the organ began to blast the pilot’s song, only it wasn’t quite the pilot’s song.
Ye Holy angels bright
Who wait at God’s right hand
Or through the realms of light
Fly at your Lord’s command
Gray looked to Gill, who grinned and sang: Trente mille amants! The pilot’s words didn’t scan exactly, and the choir sang a different harmony.
My soul bear thou thy part
Rejoice in God above.
And with a well-tuned heart
Sing thou the songs of love!
They could have used these words if he’d known. It would have been finer. More beautiful and better. Jesus saw Nathaniel under a fig tree. Ye shall see Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. The greatest stories had already been told. No concoctions of a schoolboy could be more than a speck on that eternal face.
Fairies in Heaven … The choir was singing again, blowing over them with sound. Where happy souls have play … That giant breath from the firmament, where everything enjoyed its perfect place, where everything was good and loved by its creator, where Halton sang, open and pure, plunged wholly into making it and giving it. It ended with a whisper, and he didn’t want it to end at all. If he were a girl, he might have fallen into tears.
Dr. Sebastian dismissed them to what remained of Prep, but in the cloisters Gray turned back, telling Gill he’d left his pen behind. The mere sight of those blue envelopes pulled from their hiding spot brought promise and hunger again. Rehearsing for the play, he thought that he’d outgrown her, but now, legs crossed in the chair loft, envelopes piled before him … what harm would come of opening one, say this, opening and reading again … My dearest and best, my onliest friend. Adieu.
If he could fly to her new and perfect home, he would stand outside her window looking in. She would sit at a table with her mother and father and the man who was her godfather while he huddled in the snow and wept—like this—and she would open the window, not to climb out but only to ask him what was wrong. You haven’t written! he’d sob—like this—and she’d laugh gold: What on earth would I say?
In the study, Gray repeated the excuse he’d given Pearce—sudden retching brought on by goose—but Gill stared as if he could see how his face had looked before he washed it. They sat down to prep, which was slight and easily finished, and afterwards Gill shared the new praise the play had received.
—The Eagle said he knew the Coward song. Saw it in a review, This Year of Grace.
—Good for him.
—Don’t be that way.
—I’m not any way, Gray said. I’m only sick to the back teeth of this play of yours.
—Mine?
—No one will shut up about it, even now it’s finished.
—How can you call it my play when the whole thing’s down to you?
—Right.
—You wrote it, Gill said. The idea came from your goggles.
—Your goggles.
The bell rang, but Gill held his chair where it was:
—Do you have any more?
—Complaints?
—Stories. In your head that you think about at night.
Hot, the air, and heavy.
—Write them, Gill said.