Aegri somnia.
(HORACE)
1
Michaelmas Term, 2005
Dear Mousey,
How time flies. It must be twenty-four years since I last kept a diary. I still remember it clearly; my old St Oswald’s Prep diary; blue, with the school motto – audere, augere, auferre – in gold letters on the front. They say they’re the best days of your life. In my case, I think maybe they were.
No, don’t laugh. I mean it. I was young and healthy. I had my whole life ahead of me. I wasn’t exactly happy then; but at least I felt alive. Nowadays everything seems dead and dull in comparison. Everyone has moved forward, but me. Harry’s dead; my father’s dead; even you’re dead, Mousey.
Funny, I thought you’d survive me. I saw it in the papers, you know. Family Dispute Leads to Tragedy. They flattered you more than you deserved. They always do that for the dead. You were a promising young man; clever, handsome and popular. No one knew what you were really like. No one but me, Mousey – and maybe that fat brother of yours who knew more than he was telling. Still, it seems right for you to be dead. I might as well have died myself. Some days, I still feel like that; a drowned man, in dark water.
As for my friends at St Oswald’s – well. Harrington’s Headmaster now. Imagine that. Goldie, running St Oswald’s. Charlie Nutter – Poodle, as was – never quite recovered. He’s spent most of his adult life in one institution or another. I’m glad. The little queer had no right to think that he could get away like that. From his parents, from the Church, from St Oswald’s, even from me. What right had he to be happy? What right did he have to move on?
After leaving St Oswald’s in January ’82, he spent six months in a Church-run retreat somewhere down in Oxfordshire, then the rest of his schooldays in a place somewhere in Wales – a nice school, with nice girls, to take his mind off Harry Clarke. For a while he did pretty well; behaved himself; played the game. I watched him all the time, from afar. Turns out I’m good at watching. They say you discover your passion before you hit your teens: if so, I’d already discovered it at seven years old, down in the clay pits with Mousey.
Of course, not everyone gets to spend their life following their passion. Perhaps that’s why I’ve ended up here, back in dull old Malbry. The clay pits are gone, landfilled, link-fenced; but somehow the spirit of them lives on. Kids from Sunnybank Park still go to smoke their roll-up cigarettes; some of them climb the fence at night. What are they looking for in there? Nowadays, it’s decent enough, if not entirely wholesome. Gone are the fridges crawling with mould; the rocks; the cars half-buried in the soil, their fins chopping the surface like sharks’. Now it’s just a grassy space, perhaps too bleak to be called a park, with a few little trees and a memorial bench that no one ever sits on. Perhaps they sense how haunted it is; and not just by Lee Bagshot. The living make better ghosts than the dead. I know; I’ve been one for twenty-four years.
After I came back to Malbry, I went looking for my time capsule, with the album, the Christmas card, and the pages torn from out of my diary. I knew exactly where it was, buried under a big rock between the Pit Shaft and the Long Pond. Except that when I went looking, neither the Pit Shaft nor the Long Pond were recognizable any more, the big rock had gone into landfill, and the time capsule was lost. I’m rather disappointed: I would have liked to read those pages again, to see how much I’ve really changed. Perhaps I haven’t changed at all. I look into my mirror at night and see a fourteen-year-old boy, wrinkled before his time, with disappointment in his eyes. But the real David Spikely is somewhere else; a demon that cannot be exorcized.
Harry Clarke stayed in his post for seven years after the scandal. I stayed on for a month or two, although, for obvious reasons, I stopped spending lunchtimes in his room. Goldie and I were both under strict instructions about that, and Mr Speight and the Chaplain both kept us under discreet supervision. It was very frustrating. I wanted to know what (if anything) Poodle had said about me. But Harry never mentioned anything, and because he wasn’t my English teacher, I didn’t see him much at all. Just once or twice in the corridor, at which times he spoke to me just as he spoke to everyone else. I left Malbry in ’82; went to a school in Manchester. My grades were fair, but my health was poor. I developed alopecia. I lost my hair and eyebrows. My eyebrows came back eventually, but my hair did not; by sixteen I was totally bald, and looked like a man of forty.
Obviously, this had an effect on my self-esteem, not to mention my love life, which was hardly healthy anyway. I went back to killing things to make myself feel better. Rats; mice; a neighbour’s cat and, finally, a mongrel dog belonging to a family friend, after which my parents intervened, appealed to the Church, consulted a variety of therapists and took me to a prayer sanctuary in Philadelphia, where I saw a faith healer, who totally failed to cure both my baldness and My Condition, but from whom I managed to catch a sexually transmitted disease which led to my immediate removal, both from the sanctuary and from my school, where my grades had slipped so badly that there was by then no hope of recovery.
You see how it happens, Mousey. See how those school years cling on to you. The best days of our lives, they say, and yet I was dragging them around like a dog with a stone round its neck. I’d tried so hard to forget, you know. I’d torn out the diary pages. But even so, the memories kept coming back – the smell of chalk dust, and cut grass, and wood; the sleepy sound of the classroom clock; the feel of his hand on my leg, on my head; the way he’d whisper in my ear—
Good boy. Good boy.
By then, I was in a bad way. I lived with my parents for four more years, rarely leaving my bedroom. My mother brought my meals to my room; my father, improving literature, and occasional exhortations to pull myself together. The dreams of escape receded. University was no longer a possibility. I settled into a routine of TV, reading and apathy. I put on weight; at my heaviest, I weighed over three hundred pounds. I knew I’d lost something, and yet I was unaware of what it was.
Perhaps if I’d had my diary, I might have put the whole thing to rest. But I’d torn out the relevant pages – besides, that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it I never wrote down. I never put it into words.
Words give shape to things, Mousey. Words bring the monsters into the light. But this monster stayed hidden, like something rotten and mouldy at the back of a cupboard, growing less recognizable as time passed, only perceptible in dreams. And so I forgot it, Mousey. I forgot the monster.
And then, in the summer of ’88, Charlie Nutter came back into my life. Just turned up at my parents’ house one day, looking tanned and nicely groomed and very different from the nervous Poodle he’d once been. Gone were the little mannerisms; gone were the patches of eczema that had once straggled up his skinny arms. Now he had just turned twenty-one, and had collected his English degree from Durham University. He’d had some years of therapy, both in and out of the Church, but now he was independent, glowing with a new confidence.
He didn’t comment on how much I’d changed, but I could tell he was shaken. He said he’d been visiting Malbry; staying with a friend, with whom he planned to go on holiday to Italy. It took him all of five minutes to admit that this friend was Harry Clarke; five more to admit their relationship. Poodle never could keep his mouth shut; and besides, he was happy. He was past the age of consent. His friendship with Harry was legal now; and university was his escape from his parents, and from his former life.
Turns out that he and Harry had had quite a correspondence over the years. Poodle told me everything: how he had written to Harry from school; how Harry had told him to bide his time; how Harry had said it would only be four years before he could leave home for good; how Harry had saved his sanity.
‘It took me a long time to realize,’ he said, ‘that God loves me just the way I am. God isn’t responsible for prejudice and hatred. God made me gay, and He loves me.’
I’d never heard him talk so much. I listened, but inside me, I could feel a little red b
all of anger. God made me gay, and he loves me. What rubbish. God made you gay for the same reason that He puts temptation in your path and then fakes surprise when you fall for it.
I made a sympathetic sound. ‘I presume this is Harry’s philosophy.’
He nodded. ‘Harry helped me so much. He made me understand that I don’t have to be the person my parents wanted me to be. I don’t have to share their views, or feel guilty because I’m different. For the first time in my life, I’m free.’
Poodle babbled on happily, oblivious in every way. People in love are so boring; supremely unaware of the fact that they have become the dullest, most self-obsessed person on the planet. And I pretended to listen, and nodded in all the right places, as he explained his philosophy, which was mostly Harry’s philosophy. But inside I was all rage, the ball of anger in my gut moving towards nuclear fission.
Free? What right did he have to be free? What right did he have to escape his guilt? Anybody listening might have found it hard to believe that he, not I, was the murderer. And yet, Harry Clarke had chosen to help him, to redeem him. It wasn’t fair. He’d chosen me first. Why had he abandoned me?
The fleeting scent of chalk dust; cut grass; oiled wood. The sound of clattering footsteps. Music playing; something light. The echo of distant voices against a polished parquet floor. The feel of his hand on my shoulder, pushing me down towards the desk. Then, the sound of his voice. Good boy; like something you might say to a dog.
That’s the thing about memory, Mousey. Sometimes the smallest thing triggers it. And this time, ironically, Poodle was the trigger: Poodle, flushed with happiness, Poodle saved; redeemed by Love.
And then an idea came to me. I thought about it as Poodle went on. It was nicely simple; neat, with square-edged hospital corners. It would, at the same time, validate my suffering and mess up Poodle’s disgusting little dream of happiness. It could be done, I realized. There was a way I could escape the pit into which I had fallen. Of course, I’d need a sacrifice – God hates those unbalanced accounts – but if what I had glimpsed was right, then it might mean my salvation, and more – my return from the wilderness.
2
October 14th, 2005
Just like Harry Clarke, I thought, as I saw the figure in blue at my door. It was not a rational thought; but nevertheless, it gripped me like an icy hand on the back of the neck. I considered just turning and running away. But to where? This was home. There was nowhere else. Unlike Eric, who likes his little trips to Paris, or Dr Devine, whose wife has made of him quite the globetrotter, I don’t even have a passport any more. These fantasies belonged to a world long dead. And so I took a shaky breath and stepped forward into the porch-light, and saw, not a uniformed officer, but Winter, dressed in jeans and a blue hooded parka. There was a folder under his arm.
Relief made me weak, then angry. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I’d rediscovered my Bell Tower voice, designed to cut through concrete.
‘I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ he said. ‘I heard you had some trouble today.’
‘Vae! The St Oswald’s grapevine,’ I said. ‘Listen, won’t you come inside? I, for one, am in need of a drink.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
I unlocked the door. I was feeling better by then. Those boys in the park had rattled me, but I was over the shock. Arriving in the living room, I found the decanter of brandy and poured myself a decent glug. ‘One for you?’
He nodded. ‘Thanks.’ He sat down and sipped his drink.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He looked surprised. ‘Sorry for what?’
‘We should have talked about Harry,’ I said. ‘I should have told you everything. But I suppose I thought I owed it to Harry to keep the details to myself, especially after what happened. But Harry’s gone, and St Oswald’s – well, St Oswald’s badly needs a friend.’
Winter put down his brandy glass and handed me the folder. ‘I’m guessing you’ve seen most of this,’ he said. ‘But it looks to me like St Oswald’s has a funny way of treating its friends.’
I opened the folder. Inside, there were some dozen or so sheets of paper – reproductions of newspaper clippings from the time; drawings from the trial; pictures of Harry, looking confused, and of Nutter, lost and distraught. There were even pictures of me, looking unkempt and defiant.
OLD BOYS’ CLUB, said the headline. DID THIS MAN COVER FOR CLARKE? Then there were pictures of Harrington, not a hair or a crease out of place. Then, almost an afterthought, right at the bottom, was Spikely.
Looking back at those pictures now, I see why the press were so quick to believe him. Something had happened to Spikely. Something dreadful and lasting. The grinning little boy had grown into a bloated, pale young man who might have been thirty, or thirty-five, instead of barely twenty-one. His hair, always fine, was almost gone; his face was like uncooked pastry. And his eyes were smoky; wild; staring at some distant point on a lost horizon. What happened, on that island of time, half forgotten in the mists? What hidden rage and resentment could have transformed that bland little boy into an avenger?
David Spikely, the tattletale. No one remembered him clearly. A boy who’d stayed less than a year in the School; undistinguished in every way; an average student, with average grades and a less-than-average personality. No misdemeanours; no incidents; no detentions; no House Points. He had been close to Harry, though – in fact, he was the reason we had originally coined the acronym SLF – Special Little Friend – to describe the soulful, adoring way the boy lay in wait for Harry at Break or, more often, at lunchtime, bringing him a cup of tea when he was on duty; watering his plants and tidying his classroom.
It wasn’t really surprising. Harry had many followers. Most schoolmasters, even the least prepossessing, have the occasional SLF, but Harry had had an army of them, trained to collect his books, deliver mail, pick up litter on the Upper Corridor and report on the outrages of the ever-critical Dr Devine. He never showed any favouritism, although he had his favourites. Spikely was not among them, however. In fact, I remembered Harry telling me, in that humorous way he had, how David Spikely had followed him all around St Oswald’s like the Laughing Gnome in the song, grinning beatifically.
And now, here he was, seven years later, making accusations of a kind that no one wanted to believe, but few dared question too aggressively. Guilt by association can kill a Master’s career as fast as in a court of law, and some – Eric Scoones, for example – had been quick to take precautions. The rest of the School went into shock: a shock that manifested itself at first through contempt and laughter.
We shouldn’t have laughed. Young Spikely was totally in earnest. Harry was removed from School, pending investigation. We were all instructed, on pain of dismissal, to have no contact at all with him. A telephone helpline was set up by the police, encouraging pupils to speak up about their experiences at School, and St Oswald’s was swamped by the press, demanding to know more details about a case that promised everything a tabloid reader could hope for.
The Malbry Examiner, which for historical and social reasons has always hated St Oswald’s, made much of the accusations. It was Harry’s and St Oswald’s bad luck that Malbry was still reeling from a previous case, a drama enacted a few years before, in which a little local girl had died in tragic circumstances. Of course, the Emily White affair was barely connected with the School, but even a loose connection was enough for the Examiner to deploy its most poisonous language.
SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL! the headline read. ST OSWALD’S GRAMMAR SCHOOL’S SECRET HOMOSEXUAL CURRICULUM!
Harry, besieged by journalists, battened down the hatches, but his home was vandalized, and as the case gathered momentum, he had to move to a hostel for his own protection. I fared rather better. In spite of my friendship with Harry; in spite of the fact that the Chaplain revealed that I had denied that Harry was gay; in spite of the fact that Nutter had been in my form, and that people (including the editor of the Examiner) found it ha
rd to imagine how a member of St Oswald’s staff could have worked alongside a predator and not had the slightest suspicion of what was really going on.
At best, I suppose, it made me naïve. At worst, it made me a suspect. And yet, beyond a few predictable poison-pen letters and graffiti on the wall by my house, I managed to escape virtually unscathed from the dreadful business – more so, perhaps, than I deserved.
Meanwhile, St Oswald’s did what St Oswald’s has done for five hundred years. It carried on with business – in forty-minute segments, with emphasis on clean shirts, House ties, Assemblies, Parents’ Evenings, neat lawns and no running in corridors. We wrapped our everyday routine around us like a blanket, secure in the knowledge that nothing would change, that life would go on as always. Even the Harry Clarke affair would turn out to be no more than a storm in a teacup, we told ourselves, while outside our windows the gathering clouds were heavy with foreboding.
As the weeks and months went by, we became increasingly sure of ourselves. The case seemed to be at a standstill. No one had responded to the appeal by the police, or even phoned the helpline. We heard nothing at all about Spikely, or the exact nature of his claims. No one expected the case to go any further than a magistrate.
And then, after Christmas, we heard the news. Harry was going to trial. The Malbry Examiner went into throes of unbridled joy. The evidence gathered over six months, it seemed, pointed to something more serious than mere sexual misconduct. Along with the charges of assault, my friend had been charged with murder.
3
Michaelmas Term, 2005
Dear Mousey,
The first thing I did when Charlie left was to ask to speak to a therapist. My parents were surprised, but pleased (I’d refused therapy for over a year); and when I then asked to go to Church, their happiness was touching. I talked to the pastor who had come in to speak to the congregation, and then I joined a prayer group. Over the next few weeks or so, I became a regular. I found the courage to confess a few things (in fact, I quite enjoyed it). I talked about my feelings. I wrote down my dreams in a notebook. And most of all, I remembered.