Grievous

by H. S. Cross

  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 ignoranc
e, 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.

  24

  Dear Mr. Grieves, the shrewdness is in your imagination, I’m sorry to say. Anything beyond the most common medical cases are quite beyond my ken. I’m sure there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t know already, but ask away and if I don’t know, I can make inquiries on the ward. A poor sort of Man Friday, I’m afraid. Your correspondent, Elsa.

  John had drafted an article about his research, and one rash morning he posted it to The Lancet. He regretted it by teatime but consoled himself with the certainty that nothing would come of it. When, a fortnight later, he received a letter from the editor and a modest cheque, fear seized him. “Disease in History—History in Disease” was to appear in the August number, the editor informed him, but meantime, he had taken the liberty of forwarding John’s work to a colleague, who soon wrote John to inquire if he was writing a book on the subject. John, in a spirit of rebellious absurdity, replied that he was, the manuscript nearly complete. His flippancy ended when the man replied by return post with an offer of publication.

  —Of course you must accept, Jamie told him. I can let you off Games the rest of term.

  It was a serious concession, one due a scholar, not a charlatan who’d merely gone along with the conceit because it was so ridiculous.

  —I haven’t actually begun anything, John said. I’m not even certain—

  —Well, chop-chop! Jamie replied.

  Jamie was joking, partly, but when John dropped the idea i
nto a letter to France, it was met with an even stronger Amen:

  Bien sur, Mum says, tout de suite! Imagine if we had a book with your name on our very own shelf!

  He began a new notebook and filled two pages with questions. What if his nursing correspondent could act as his assistant? Hadn’t she more or less offered by calling herself his Man Friday? Scholars pursued knowledge by correspondence. His tutor at Cambridge had devoted each morning to letter writing, and John realized he had held it as an ideal all these years: rise at six to tea; bathe and then sit down to his correspondence by seven, with toast and more tea brought inconspicuously to him midmorning; letters to the midday post, luncheon, tutorials, lectures, walks with students or colleagues along the backs, evensong, supper, then evenings spent with colleagues or reading. He still longed for such a life, though it was a bachelor’s life, no room for family meals or for one who fed him as—as she would if she were free.

  John generally did his personal writing after the boys went to bed. His goddaughter’s letters arrived after lunch, Elsa Riding’s with the evening meal; he would contemplate both as he addressed the ordinary demands of classroom and House. When everyone else was asleep, it was easier to give his ideas full range, which seemed to inspire a corresponding boldness in his Nurse Friday:

  The ill, I sometimes think, are like hostages abducted by disease. The body remains in the bed, but the essential person has gone missing. The struggle for health, then, is a sort of battle waged over the battlefield of the body. A nurse, even a good one, which I am not, is no general or even foot soldier, but rather a kind of officer of the telegraph. All patients send messages. A nurse’s lot is to receive and, if possible, translate.

  What happened, he wondered, to messages misunderstood or ignored?

  Dear Uncle John, Les trois medicins have increased the mercury, so at least they agree on something. And, yes, I did ask them about the headaches, and I asked their mademoiselle, too. The trouble with headaches is they can mean almost anything. I interviewed seventeen people at the baths yesterday, and every one of them complained of headaches! Miss Murgatroyd said my research was poppycock, and that la plupart de gens aren’t ill at all but attend the spas as they used to attend the court, in the time before the Revolution. So there’s an idea for your book!