John ransacked his medicine cabinet for a suitable container. Kardleigh had asked for the vial back, and a difficult patch lay ahead. Jamie had asked to see him after lights-out, and while he hadn’t said why, John suspected the Headmaster hadn’t appreciated the witty advertisement Audsley and Riding had staged at the end of Evening Prayers. Pearce had already given them fifty lines apiece, so as far as John was concerned, justice had been dealt, a fact he would convey to Jamie in no uncertain terms.
Also pressing, letters. He’d already sent Meg a note of thanks, simple and neutral, for the visit. Her reply would show him where things stood. He had written Tuesday night, and now it was Saturday; nothing would come tomorrow, so … He rinsed out the iodine bottle and poured Kardleigh’s solution into it. A drop rolled down the side; he licked it—prophylactic—before refilling Kardleigh’s vial with water.
Dorms, Kardleigh, Jamie. Then work, to repel thoughts of Monday’s post.
—Sir, to what do we owe the honor?
Moss greeted him outside the washroom.
—Making sure everyone finds his way to bed.
—Of course, sir.
—I’ll be through later.
—That won’t be necessary, sir.
—Nevertheless!
He left them to their noise. Outside, the wind had teeth. He bounded up the stairs to the Tower.
—Maestro?
—Be right there, Kardleigh called.
His heart slammed. The morning runs had improved his stamina, and he wouldn’t expect the stairs to wind him, even taken two at a time. Perhaps he ought to try Ovaltine? Tonight alone he had the Fourth, Remove, and Upper Sixth to mark in addition to the day’s correspondence. What was taking Kardleigh so long? It was spoiling the illusion of spontaneity.
—I’ve no idea how—
Kardleigh returned, wiping his hands with a towel.
—But Fletcher has made a pig’s dinner of his knee.
—He was all right at Prep, John said.
—Some sort of mucking about on Burton’s stairs.
—I only popped by, John said, to return your little drops.
He removed the vial from his pocket.
—Didn’t need them after all, luckily.
And dropped it on the floor.
—Oh, no!
Where it broke.
—I am sorry. What frightful butterfingers!
He stooped to collect the pieces.
—I’ll clean this up. It’s the least I can do.
Burton was in Jamie’s study when John arrived. Jamie was refilling their drinks and wearing that look: Headmaster displeased with his school. John refused the brandy and was forced to sit on the settee since Burton was occupying John’s usual seat.
—There’s method in Audsley’s insolence, Burton was saying, as if he’s laughing at us.
Jamie murmured in agreement.
—Tradition is tradition because it works, Burton continued. We must maneuver within it. We must find ways around one another.
Heavily, John realized he ought to have tackled this sooner, before Burton had worked himself up and before Audsley had worn out his welcome with Jamie. He poured himself a glass of soda as Burton waxed lyrical.
—Think of the original Academy.
The garden made by Academius for Plato, to think, to work, to teach. What would have become of the Academy, Burton asked, if each pupil had taken Academius to task for the shape of the walks, the choice of flowers?
—People like your Guilford Audsley—
Burton waved at John.
—Are blind to the delicate equilibrium we labor, yes labor, to maintain here, one garden at a time.
Jamie was agreeing with him.
—Peace is fragile.
Even John was beginning to agree with him.
—I’d thought, Jamie was saying, that it would only be the one play. But now we have another, not to mention these disruptions.
—Work is suffering, Burton said. Look at young Halton. Look at Audsley himself. You can’t deny it, Grieves. Ordinary life is suffering.
The days of excess were past, Burton reminded them. Their mandate was balance, decency, discipline. Without these things, one element could overpower the rest, like aggressive weeds or bullies. Too much study led to dullness, too much sport to brutishness, too much prayer to zealotry, too much diversion to shallowness, too much food to gluttony, too much desire to wantonness, too much of anything, in short, led to corruption and the flight of reason.
—I’m not sure what we’re arguing about, John said. The performance is tomorrow, and then it will all be over.
A fag came to him halfway through the Sedbergh match to announce Uncle Peter, waiting at the gates. Gray left the sidelines, walking briskly, nausea rising. To run would make real what he feared. That was how disasters worked. They hacked down everything you took for granted just to show you how powerless you were. He hadn’t answered his mother’s last letter, the one asking about Christmas, and now it would haunt him to the end of his days. Though, perhaps Peter had come to say she was only ill. Had his knowledge of the girl’s mother brought a sword upon his own? Or was this punishment for his refusal to obey the girl’s final command?
—What’s happened? he demanded.
Peter’s face was cheerful, not grave. He opened his arms to Gray:
—Unexpected change of plan.
—Is she…?
—Well! She’s very well. Oh, no, look at you.
As usual, he’d made a mess of it. First, he’d frightened the boy half to death arriving unannounced for his first visit ever without considering how it would look. Once the boy recovered himself, he began to babble, and Peter saw how foolish he had been to assume the boy would be grateful for a spontaneous exeat. It seemed a football match was in progress, attendance compulsory, and after that … The boy’s letters had described a play he had written, and now it emerged that he’d written another, to be performed after the match. Exeat therefore impossible. Chastened by his ignorance, Peter accompanied the boy back to the pitch, determined to see the school at least.
The playing fields, hacked out of moorland, looked as though they might revert to wilderness in the holidays. The school was smaller than he expected, only four houses, which helped explain why attendance at the match was compulsory. After the visitors had humiliated the First XV, the boy introduced him to his Housemaster, and Peter accompanied the man to the gymnasium for the promised performance. Grieves, too, was nothing like he’d imagined. Young, bright, charming, and possessing a sense of humor, he bore no resemblance to the dire tyrant his godson seemed to think him or the austere saint Elsa portrayed. There was an awkward moment when Grieves asked after Elsa and her fiancé, and Peter had to report that she was well and that the fiancé was he, or had been. Grieves had grown flustered, and Peter had been forced to reveal his purpose, which was to explain to his godson why the engagement had been suspended.
—Say no more, Grieves stuttered. Forgive me.
—Only suspended, not called off.
Something about the man compelled him to explain himself. She needed more time. The engagement had been too swift. They hadn’t called it off, but they weren’t going forward presently. It was all frightfully intricate, and the last thing Peter wanted was for his godson to get the wrong end of the stick.
—He’s good at that, Grieves said.
—Isn’t he though?
Grieves offered the exeat before Peter could ask. He’d need the boy back for Prep, but the Cross Keys in Fridaythorpe did a first-rate steak and kidney. Grieves also recommended the spotted dick, if they had it.
Peter liked the man and felt they might have been friends in another setting, not rivals, as he realized he had always imagined. Grieves was a Cambridge man, hadn’t Elsa said? What was he doing at a drab little school in the middle of nowhere with a First XV hardly worth the name?
—Are you married? he asked.
Grieves froze, and he saw that again he’d said the wrong thing.
—Good evening, ladies and honorable gentlemen!
Mercifully, the play was beginning. Two boys stepped to the front.
—Not Far to Castle Noire! the first boy announced.
—A serial in nine parts!
The play was most peculiar, some combination of penny dreadful, matinee romance, and Idylls of the King. His godson worked a variety of contraptions on the sidelines, another boy sang and turned tumbles, while another entranced them with swordplay. The audience, so halfhearted at the football, now followed the drama with unfeigned enthusiasm. Peter had always taken his godson’s reports of the school as a product of the boy’s skewed perspective; now he saw the opposite was true and that he knew shamefully little about the heart of the boy or the men who shaped it.
—Ladies and gentlemen, the adventure continues next Sunday!
There’d been only two scenes, and now the cast was assembled for bows.
—Will Flash escape the giant’s trap?
—Will Valarious find his brother?
—Will Master Shadow defeat the gruesome guards?
—Will Kahrid of Langstephen repel the advances of Perspicacious—
—The most intelligent and evil man in the land!
—Find out here, seven days hence!
Uncle Peter bought them pints to celebrate. It was not Gray’s first drink, but it was the first he’d consumed in the open. Gill seemed to think nothing of it and in fact bemoaned the lack of public house at the Academy. It was much easier to resolve differences, he claimed, when one could simply nip round the corner and discuss it over a friendly pint. Gray couldn’t imagine resolving anything over a pint. He was more likely to make a fool of himself or say something ill-advised, such as pointing out that the Cross Keys was the place Wilberforce and his cronies used to go, through the poacher’s tunnel Saturday evenings. The night Wilberforce had told Gray the legend of the tunnel, he’d called it the Key to the Keys and thought it witty.
By the time the second round arrived, the flavor had improved. They ate five steak and kidney pies between them and ordered the spotted dick. The best thing about exeats was eating until you couldn’t anymore. Had Morgan & Co. had the steak and kidney, too? Unlikely, as they were busy downing as many pints as possible between tea and Prayers. Morgan had expected him to use the tunnel to come to the Keys, but he wasn’t a slave. He and Trevor had used the tunnel to go to the barn, damn what Morgan said, and even now that he had a study and could, theoretically, cut Prep for the Keys, he wasn’t tempted by the prospect of drinking himself sick and then staggering back through the woods.
—Ah, Grindalythe Woods! Peter said. Now there’s a place. Have you ever taken the binos around there?
—Out-of-bounds, I’m afraid, sir, Gill replied.
—I know the keeper. Quite a population of redleg partridge he’s got.
The spotted dick had arrived, and the irony swirled like smoke from the men’s cigarettes: that the fabled keeper knew Peter; that Gray’s first visit to the Cross Keys had been accomplished not with the poacher’s tunnel but with his godfather’s car.
—What poacher’s tunnel?
Gill was talking to him, looking at him.
—You said it was ironic you hadn’t come through the poacher’s tunnel.
He pushed the second pint away, empty.
—School legend.
—Tell!
That was the last thing of course he intended to do, yet he was doing it, spilling not only the legend but the secrets Morgan had told him, the ones he’d sworn to tell only his own fag, if he ever got to the point of having one. Gill looked shocked:
—Why the hell—sorry, sir—haven’t you mentioned this before?
He hadn’t deliberately concealed it, but they’d been busy with rehearsals, and in any case the barn had been leveled that summer. What need had there been to speak of the tunnel?
—Reason not the need!
He’d eaten too much. He excused himself. Careless—excess—ruin. When would he learn simple cause and effect? Peter could be sworn to secrecy, but Gill’s eyes had fixed in the middle distance, twirling pencils with his mind, desiring the tunnel for the Full Experience.
His godson returned looking queasy, and Peter realized he should not have got the second round. Audsley could handle it, but he was older. When Audsley at last went to the toilets himself, Peter had only a scant moment under poor conditions to convey what he’d come to convey.
—Only suspended, not called off.
—Oh, said the boy.
—I’m not giving up, on her or you.
—Is that why you came?
He nodded.
—How’s she taking it?
There was something incorrect about the way he referred to his mother with pronouns.
—It was your mother’s idea.
—Oh.
The dark leaked everywhere. It had glowered when they left the Academy, fallen when they arrived at the Keys, and by the time they emerged, it had spawned a chill rain. Peter’s motorcar crawled through the mist and smelled of Boggle Hole, recalling the things Gray had heard through the walls there, walls so thin they barely deserved the name: He looks so much like Tom it feels like adultery …
Fardley was waiting to lock the gates:
—Headmaster to see you, Audsley. Quite a spectacular this afternoon.
—Thank you, Fardley.
—That Valarious, what a fellow!
—You’ll be there next week, I hope?
—Wouldn’t miss it for the world, young sir.
Gray reported their return to Crighton and quizzed him on Gill’s summons.
—Congratulations, probably.
They’d missed the congratulations going with Peter, and Gray had missed Jottings, his practice of writing down what mistakes he’d noticed so they could be fixed next time. There hadn’t been time for anything, not even to remember who he was and wasn’t, and now he was opening the door to study number six and the light was off like it used to be when he was smaller. In the dark, rain ticking the panes, was now really so different from then? It didn’t look different or even feel it, but he could no more shrink back to that time than he could rebuild the barn or climb through any window of memory. Sometimes change came sudden and drastic. Sometimes time refused to budge. What if he’d been traveling weeks on foreign soil without having perceived the frontier? Had there been signposts? Such as the Keys, where he had gone today after so long refusing. His visit had been licit, to celebrate something he couldn’t have imagined two months ago. The Keys had not been sinister, but warm and good. No one said I told you so.
Signpost two, Valarious, who today had stepped forth, escaping his mind and rehearsal’s make-believe. Today his people had taken on public bodies, independent and visible. No one had warned him how it would feel.
There was a pain in his chest, hot below his heart, and he had to lie down on the floor. His blood was thumping when it ought to rush. Heart attacks weren’t supposed to happen to people his age, but there had been a boy his father knew: fifteen, football, dead. If he himself died, would anyone really mind? The play could go on; the script was complete. He’d passed on the secret of the poacher’s tunnel—not meant to, but had. What else was he needed for?
It was too late for games, especially with himself. You can lie to other people, boyo, but not to yourself. He’d been telling himself that her last letter was indeed all he could expect. He’d felt bold refusing her command to destroy them all, but in truth, in his floor beneath the floor, did he actually believe she’d stop writing? Didn’t he expect, in his secret cell, that any day her retraction would come, and when it did, he could say, Fear not! He could say, Here they are! Here am I.
His blood was about to stop flowing, and the truth, the true truth, was that she meant what she wrote. He would never hear from her again. He knew it now, and he’d known it all along. True truth more grinding than stone.
And to such a hopeless fortress Peter had come like a vandal. He had dropped his news in the final moments, defenses retired, and now the fact burned like mustard gas: after months of laying siege to their engagement, he had defeated it. Time didn’t blow backwards, but there they stood, his mother and he, waist deep in the brook, willows pulling past them. Swan Cottage leaked, moths chomped through the books, but year on year they waited for the dead to return, and when she had tried to climb from the river, he had pulled her back, and when Peter had reached out his hand—to take them to a cove where the tide came every day, new sand, new sea—he himself had hacked at the arm and run away into the marsh, into the window seat, sleeping with his arms around things that weren’t there. And now death was breathing on his neck even as he galloped through the wind and the rain, his father’s arm around his waist, horse warm between his legs, sand stinging, the devil behind them, gaining, gaining with his claw and his staff, Hold still, boyo, you’re not going anywhere …
—What are you doing down there?
Light from the corridor flooded his face.
—And in the dark?
Light switch thunked, and Gill knelt beside him, eyes bright, ears red.
—What? Gray said. What happened?
—Bad news.
He sprang up, heart racing.
—Head gave us the chop.
—What!
Gill took off his jacket and tie before relaying the Head’s edict: Two plays, delightful, but more than enough. Apply for club permission next term.
—Next term?
—Aurea mediocritas leads not to mediocrity, but to greatness.
—What?
—The Head says.
Moderation was the worst kind of tyrant. It leached life for arid routine.
—Next term is next year!
—Why are you on the floor?
His hand returned to his chest.
—I had a pain.
—Probably cramp, Gill said, after all that pie.
It wasn’t a cramp, but that didn’t matter now.
—What will we tell people?
—Nothing, Gill said.
The look was back, and he hadn’t picked up any pencils.
—We’ll be like the people in Paris.
Speaking French?
—Uprising crushed. Gutters run with blood. There’s only one thing to do.
Die?
—Head for the sewers.
Literally?
—Go underground!