Oh, I had to indulge him. More than was good for him, I suppose. However, there’s nothing quite so vicious as a lover, unless you count the terminally ill, with whom they share many unpleasant characteristics. Both are selfish; withdrawn; manipulative; unstable; reserving all their sweetness for the loved one (or themselves) and turning on their friends like rabid dogs. That was Leon; and yet I treasured him more than ever, now that he finally shared my suffering.
There is a perverse satisfaction in picking at a scab. Lovers do it all the time; seeking out the most intense sources of pain and indulging them, sacrificing themselves again and again for the sake of the loved object with a dogged stupidity that poets have often mistaken for selflessness. With Leon, it was talking about Francesca. With me, it was listening to him. After a while it grew unbearable—love, like cancer, tends to dominate the life of the sufferer so fully that they lose the ability to conduct a conversation on any other subject (so numbingly dull for the listener)—and I found myself trying with increasing desperation to find ways of breaking through the tedium of Leon’s obsession.
“I dare you.” That was me, standing outside the record shop. “Go on, I dare you. That is, if you’ve still got the balls.”
He looked at me, surprised, then looked beyond me into the shop. Something crossed his face—a shadow, perhaps, of pleasures past. Then he grinned, and I now thought I saw a faint reflection of the old, careless, loveless Leon in his gray eyes.
“You talking to me?” he said.
And so we played—the one game this new Leon still accepted to play. And with the game, the Treatment began; unpleasant, even brutish, perhaps, but necessary, just as aggressive chemotherapy can be used to attack cancers. And there was plenty of aggression in both of us; it was simply a question of turning it outward rather than in.
We began with theft. Small things first: records; books; clothes that we dumped in our little hideout in the woods behind St. Oswald’s. The Treatment turned to stronger fare. We graffitied walls and smashed bus shelters. We threw stones at passing cars; pushed over gravestones in the old churchyard; shouted obscenities at elderly dog-walkers who entered our domain. During that fortnight I veered between utter wretchedness and overwhelming joy; we were together again, Butch and Sundance—and for minutes at a time Francesca was forgotten; the thrill of her eclipsed by a stronger, more dangerous rush.
But it never lasted. My treatment was good for the symptoms, not the cause, and I discovered to my chagrin that my patient needed increasingly stronger doses of excitement if he was to respond at all. More and more often it fell to me to think of new things to do, and I found myself struggling to imagine newer and more outrageous exploits for the two of us to perform.
“Record shop?”
“Nah.”
“Graveyard?”
“Banal.”
“Bandstand?”
“Done it.” It was true; the night before, we had broken into the municipal park and smashed every seat on the town bandstand as well as the little railings that surrounded it. I’d felt bad doing it; remembered going into the park with my mother when I was very small; the summer smells of cut grass and hot dogs and candyfloss; the sound of the colliery band. I remembered Sharon Snyde sitting in one of those blue plastic chairs, smoking a cigarette, while I marched up and down going pom-pom-pom on an invisible drum, and for a second I felt horribly lost. That was me aged six; that was when I still had a mother who smelled of cigarettes and Cinnabar, and there was nothing braver and more splendid than a town bandstand in summer, and only bad people smashed things up.
“What’s up, Pinchbeck?” It was already late; in the moonlight Leon’s face was slick and dark and knowing. “Had enough already?”
I had. More than enough. But I couldn’t tell Leon; it was my Treatment, after all.
“Come on,” he’d urged. “Think of it as a lesson in taste.”
I had, and my retaliation had been swift. Leon had ordered me to demolish the bandstand; I reciprocated by daring him to tie tin cans to the exhausts of all the cars parked outside the police station. Our stakes escalated; our outrages grew increasingly complicated, even surreal (a row of dead pigeons tied to the railings of the public park; a series of colorful murals on the side of the Methodist church); we defaced walls, broke windows, and frightened small children from one end of town to the other. Only one place remained.
“St. Oswald’s.”
“No way.” So far we had avoided the school grounds—barring a little artistic self-expression on the walls of the Games Pavilion. My thirteenth birthday was days away, and with it approached my mysterious and long-anticipated surprise. My father played it cool, but I could tell he was making an effort. He was dry; he had started exercising; the house was immaculate and his face had developed a hard, dry grin that reflected nothing of what was going on inside. He looked like Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter; a fat Clint, in any case, but with that same slitty-eyed air of concentration on some eventual, apocalyptic showdown. I approved—it showed resolution—and I didn’t want to blow it all now over some idiotic stunt.
“Come on, Pinchbeck. Fac ut vivas. Live a little.”
“What’s the point?” It wouldn’t do to seem too reluctant; Leon would think I was afraid to take the dare. “We’ve done St. Oswald’s a million times.”
“Not this.” His eyes were shining. “I dare you—I dare you to climb to the top of the Chapel roof.” Then he smiled at me, and at that point I saw the man he might have been; his subversive charm; his irrepressible humor. It struck me like a fist, my love for him; the single pure emotion of all my complicated, grubby adolescence. It occurred to me then that if he had asked me to jump from the Chapel roof, I would probably have said yes.
“The roof?”
He nodded.
I was almost laughing. “All right, I will,” I said. “I’ll bring you back a souvenir.”
“No need,” he said. “I’ll get it myself. What?” Seeing my surprise. “You don’t think I’d let you go up there on your own, do you?”
6
St Oswald’s Grammar School for BoysWednesday, 3rd November
Five days, and still no word of Knight. No word of Bishop either, though I saw him in Tesco the other day, looking dazed before a trolley piled high with cat food (I don’t even think Pat Bishop has a cat). I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. He looked like a man under heavy medication, and I have to admit that I didn’t have the courage to pursue the conversation.
Still, I know that Marlene calls every day to make sure he is all right—the woman has a heart, which is more than can be said of the Headmaster, who has forbidden any member of the school to communicate with Bishop until matters have been cleared up.
The police were here all day again, three of them, working through the staff, boys, secretaries, and such with the machine efficiency of school inspectors. A helpline has been set up, encouraging boys to confirm anonymously what has already been established. Many boys have called it—most of them to insist that Mr. Bishop couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. Others are being interviewed in and out of lesson time.
It makes the boys unteachable. My form don’t want to talk about anything else, but as I have been told quite clearly that to discuss the matter might harm Pat’s case, I must insist that they do not. Many of them are deeply upset; I found Brasenose crying in the Middle Corridor toilets during period four Latin, and even Allen-Jones and McNair, who can usually be relied upon to see the ridiculous in most things, were listless and unresponsive. All my form are—even Anderton-Pullitt seems odder than usual and has developed a new, extravagant limp to go with all his other peculiarities.
The most recent word on the grapevine is that Gerry Grachvogel too has been questioned and may be charged. Other, more outrageous rumors are also running, so that according to gossip, all absentee staff members have become suspects.
Devine’s name has been mentioned, and he is absent today, although that in itself shouldn?
??t mean anything. It’s ridiculous; but it was in the Examiner yesterday morning, citing sources within the school (boys, most probably) and hinting that a pedophile ring of long duration and unprecedented importance has been uncovered within the hallowed portals (sic) of the Dear Old Place.
As I said, ridiculous. I’ve been a Master at St. Oswald’s for thirty-three years, and I know what I’m talking about. Such a thing could never have happened here; not because we think we’re better than anywhere else (whatever the Examiner may think), but simply because in a place like St. Oswald’s, no secret can be kept for long. From Bob Strange, perhaps; rooted in his office working out timetables; or from the Suits, who never see anything unless it comes to them in an e-mail attachment. But from me? From the boys? Never.
Oh, I’ve seen my share of irregular colleagues. There was Dr. Jehu (Oxon.), who turned out afterward to be just plain Mr. Jehu, from the University of Durham, and who had a reputation, it seemed. That was years ago, before such things made the news, and he left quietly and without scandal, as most of them do, with no harm done. Or Mr. Tythe-Weaver, the art teacher who introduced life modeling au naturel. Or Mr. Groper, who developed that unfortunate fixation on a young English student forty years his junior. Or even our own Grachvogel, who all the boys know to be homosexual—and harmless—but who fears terribly for his job if the Governors were to find out. A bit late for that, I’m afraid; but he isn’t a pervert, as the Examiner crowingly suggests. Light may well be a boorish ass, but I don’t think he is any more of a pervert than Grachvogel. Devine? Don’t make me laugh. And as for Bishop—well. I know Bishop. More importantly, the boys know him, love him, and believe me, if there had been any breath of irregularity about him, they would have been the first to scent it out. Boys have an instinct for such things, and in a school like St. Oswald’s, rumors disseminate at epidemic speed. Understand this; I have been teaching alongside Pat Bishop for thirty-three years, and if there had been any kind of truth in these accusations, I would have known. The boys would have told me.
Within the Common Room, however, the polarization continues. Many colleagues will not speak of the matter at all, for fear of being implicated in the scandal. Some (though not many) are openly contemptuous of the accusations. Others take the opportunity to spread quiet, right-thinking slander.
Penny Nation is one of these. I remember the description of her in Keane’s notebook—poisonous do-gooder—and I wonder how I could have worked alongside her for so many years without noticing her essential malice.
“A Second Master should be like the Prime Minister,” she was saying in the Common Room this lunchtime. “Happily married—like Geoff and me.” A quick smile at her Capitaine, today attired in navy pinstripe that perfectly matched Penny’s skirt-and-sweater combination. There was a small silver fish in his lapel. “That way, there’s no possible cause for suspicion, is there?” Penny went on. “In any case, if you’re going to be working with children”—she says the word in a syrupy, Walt Disney voice-over tone, as if the very thought of children makes her want to melt—“then you really need to have one of your own, don’t you?”
That smile again. I wonder if she sees her husband in Pat’s job in some not-too-distant future. He’s certainly ambitious enough; a devout churchgoer; a family man; a gentleman player; a veteran of many courses.
He isn’t the only one with ideas. Eric Scoones has been putting the boot in—rather to my surprise, as I’d always thought of Eric as a fair-minded chap in spite of his resentment at being passed over for promotion. It seems I was wrong; listening to the talk in the Common Room this afternoon I was shocked to hear him siding with the Nations against Hillary Monument—who has always been pro-Pat and who, being at the end of his career, has nothing to lose by nailing his colors to the mast.
“Ten to one we’ll find it’s some ghastly mistake,” Monument was saying. “These computers—who trusts them? Always breaking down. And that—what d’you call it? Spam. That’s it. Ten to one old Pat got some spam in his computer and didn’t know what it was. As for Grachvogel, he hasn’t even been arrested. Questioning, that’s all it is. Helping the police with their enquiries.”
Eric gave a dismissive grunt. “You’ll see,” he said (a man who never uses computers any more than I do myself). “The trouble with you is that you’re too trusting. That’s what they all say, isn’t it, when some bloke gets up on a motorway bridge and shoots ten people dead. It’s always: and he was such a nice chap, isn’t it? Or some scoutmaster who’s been fettling little lads for years—ooh, and the kids loved him, you know, never thought for a minute. That’s the trouble. No one ever thinks. No one thinks it might happen in our own backyard. Besides, what do we really know about Pat Bishop? Oh, he plays it straight—well, he would, wouldn’t he? But what do we really know about him? Or any of our colleagues, for that matter?”
It was a remark that troubled me then, and has continued to do so ever since. Eric’s had run-ins with Pat for years, but I’d always thought, like my own little spats with Dr. Devine, that it was nothing personal. He’s bitter, of course. A good teacher—if a little old-fashioned—and might have made a good Head of Year if he’d made a bit more of an effort with the management. But deep down I’d always thought he was loyal. If ever I’d expected any of my colleagues to stab poor Bishop in the back, it would not have been Eric. Now I’m not so sure; there was a look in his face today in the Common Room that told me more than I’d ever wanted to know about Eric Scoones. He’s always been a gossip, of course; but it has taken me all these years to see the gleeful schadenfreude in my old friend’s eyes.
I am sorry for it. But he was right. What do we really know about our colleagues? Thirty-three years, and what do we know? For me, the unpleasant revelation has not been about Pat at all, but about the rest of them. Scoones. The Nations. Roach, who is terrified that his friendship with Light and Grachvogel might prejudice his case with the police. Beard, who sees the whole business as a personal affront to the IT department. Meek, who merely repeats everything Beard tells him. Easy, who follows the majority. McDonaugh, who announced at break that only a pervert could have appointed that queer Grachvogel in a teaching post anyway.
The worst of it was that no one speaks against them now; even Kitty, who has always been friendly with Gerry Grachvogel and who has invited Bishop to dinner several times, said nothing, but simply looked into her coffee mug with faint distaste and would not meet my eye. She has other things on her mind, I know. Still, it was a moment I could have done without. You may have noticed I’m rather fond of Kitty Teague.
Still, I’m relieved to see that in one or two cases at least, sanity still reigns. Chris Keane and Dianne Dare are among the very few not to have been infected. They were standing by the window as I fetched my tea, still raging against the colleagues who had so summarily condemned Bishop without trial.
“I think everyone’s entitled to a fair hearing,” said Keane, after I had aired my feelings a little more. “I don’t really know Mr. Bishop, of course, but I have to say he doesn’t strike me as the type, somehow.”
“I agree,” said Miss Dare. “Besides, the boys seem genuinely fond of him.”
“They are,” I said loudly, with a defiant glance at the moral majority. “This is a mistake.”
“Or a setup,” said Keane thoughtfully.
“A setup?”
“Why not?” He shrugged. “Someone with a grudge. A discontented staff member. An ex-pupil. Anyone. All you’d need would be access to the school, plus a certain degree of computer literacy—”
Computers. I knew we were better off without them. But Keane’s words had touched a nerve—in fact, I wondered why on earth I hadn’t thought of it myself. Nothing damages a school more cruelly than a sex scandal. Hadn’t something similar happened once at Sunnybank Park? Hadn’t I seen it myself too in the days of the Old Head?
Of course, Shakeshafte’s tastes ran, not to boys, but to secretaries and young female members of staff. Such affair
s rarely go beyond the stage of tittle-tattle; they are resolved between adults; they rarely make it outside the gates.
But this is different. The papers have declared open season on the teaching profession. Pedophile stories dominate the popular press. Not a week passes without some new accusation. Head teacher, scoutmaster, police officer, priest. All fair game.
“It’s possible.” That was Meek, who had been following our conversation. I hadn’t expected him to voice an opinion; so far he’d done little but nod energetically every time Beard spoke. “I imagine there are plenty of people who might have a grudge against St. Oswald’s,” went on Meek in his small, colorless voice. “Fallow, for instance. Or Knight.”
“Knight?” There was a silence. In the backwash of the bigger scandal I’d almost forgotten my juvenile runaway. “Knight couldn’t be responsible for any of this.”
“Why not?” said Keane. “He fits the type.”
Oh yes. He fitted. I saw Eric Scoones’s expression darken; he was listening, and I could see from the insouciant looks on my colleagues’ faces that they too were following the exchange. “Staff passwords aren’t difficult to get hold of, either,” said Meek. “I mean, anyone with access to the administration panel—”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Mr. Beard. “Those passwords are absolutely secret.”
“Yours is AMANDA,” said Keane, smiling. “Your daughter’s name. Mr. Bishop’s is GO-JONNY-GO—not much imagination required there, for such a keen rugby fan. Gerry’s is probably something from The X-Files. MULDER, perhaps, or SCULLY—”