Prelude

by William Coles

I kissed India on the lips.

  “See you this afternoon?” she said.

  “Don’t doubt it.”

  I flew down the stairs, out into the sunshine, out to the High Street and to the humming mass of Eton life in which I longed to bury myself. It had never felt so good to be in my tailcoat.

  Jeremy was waiting on the corner.

  “Nice girlfriend,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I hope you appreciate her.”

  “Very much.”

  Jeremy kicked out at a Coke can lying in the gutter. It clinked satisfyingly down the road. “I suppose you’ve just used up another of your nine lives.”

  “Quite probably.”

  PRELUDE 2,

  C Minor

  MY LIFE WAS India and my work suffered for it.

  I didn’t give a damn.

  My grades had tumbled in both Divinity and Economics. I was even bumping along the bottom in my favourite class, English. But it was nothing I could not handle. I felt that I could take any amount of abuse and raillery from my tutor and my beaks.

  Soon enough my indolence would find me out.

  For it is not for nothing that Eton has one of the best academic records of any school in Britain. The college’s internal exams are known as Trials and the penalties for failure are severe. Failed exams merit the obligatory roasting from your tutors and have to be re-taken at the beginning of the Michaelmas Half. Fail the lot and your Eton career is over.

  Trials were due to start on the Friday, a week before the end of term, and I was anxious. Five days to make up for a year’s worth of daydreaming.

  I’d done monster-cramming sessions before and they had been highly effective. So, with four days till my first English trial, I got down to some heavy work. No music, no photos, nothing ahead of me but my books and three solid hours of revision.

  It was hopeless.

  With every turn of the Othello page, all I could think of was India. Nothing would stick in my mind, even for a moment. Page-after-page would be read and seemingly absorbed, and twenty minutes later I would flick back and realise I had not taken in a single word.

  How could I concentrate on Othello when India was forever dancing through my brain, constantly nuzzling my ear, worming her hand in between my shirt buttons?

  I hurled the book across the room and tried some Economics instead. I thought the text’s turgid style might distract me.

  I didn’t make it past the first line before I saw India’s face beaming out at me. She pouted and blew me a kiss.

  Divinity: the same. Even St Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and the Romans were nothing more than another India photo-book.

  I gave up and grabbed an hour’s sleep before getting up at 11.30 for my midnight flit. But all the way down to India’s flat, I couldn’t get the Trials out of my head. Despite a year of lessons, I’d realised that my Economics knowledge was zip. The exam was coming at me with all the inevitability of a slow-mo car-crash.

  I was crabby even before I’d walked through India’s front door, like a stressed-out husband after a bad day at work. So when I saw her and kissed her, I was trying to sound carefree but looking for any opportunity to vent steam.

  I soon found one.

  I’d spotted the formal grey suit and white blouse that India had hung up in the bedroom. They were the clothes she’d need for her interview the next day in London—and for the ‘other stuff’ that needed sorting out.

  Other stuff?

  “Got your clothes all ready for tomorrow,” I said.

  She caught it instantly. I thought it was inflexion-free, that I’d just been making polite conversation. But she immediately discerned its every inference.

  “Anything up?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said. “Should there be?”

  She sat down beside me on the bed and gave me a hug. “Kim, I love you and only you.”

  “I know you do.”

  India held onto me as she looked me in the eye. “I know you feel left out.”

  She pecked at my chin, my lips unresponsive.

  “But when I’m with you I want to make love, to laugh and be free.” She held me secure round the neck. “What do you think?”

  “Great.” Slowly, so slowly, I could feel the door to my heart closing shut, for I knew that never again would I expose myself to the vulnerability of blind love. She could not trust me with her past, and rightly so as I could not even trust myself.

  India was fumbling with my belt now. And the sight of her slim fingers working their way into my boxers was—as always—more than enough to temporarily blow away the cobwebs of my insecurities.

  We made love, as frenetic as anything we had ever done before, position after position just for the sake of having done them. I marvelled at her beauty. I loved her completely and when I left the next morning I kissed her the very fondest of kisses.

  But it was as if the courses of my head and my heart had diverged and, ever after that night, the two of them were never in synch again.

  When I was with India, alone and walking the fields and feeling her weight bear down on me as we made love, I was brim full of love.

  But it was the times that we were apart that would come to dog me. Those times when my yammering jealousy would overrule my heart, when in under a minute I could forget that India loved me and only me. Instead I would obsess about her past and her secrets. And since she did not think fit to tell me about her past, I would invent these fantastic chimeras, would imagine that she’d been a call-girl, or that she was the mistress of some Arab millionaire.

  I didn’t know and my heart didn’t want to know.

  But my head?

  My head wanted to know everything.

  THAT TUESDAY, AFTER India had returned from London, she was as jolly as I’d ever known her. The champagne was already open when I’d arrived and it was the first time I’d ever seen her like a ditzy schoolgirl.

  We were up the whole night and, by the time I pedalled back to the Timbralls, I was nothing but a shell. Hollow-eyed and with the light drum-roll of an impending hangover.

  We had no lessons that week to give us time to revise. I did the best I could. But my bed was a constant distraction, forever luring me into its snug embrace. For every minute that I spent revising, I must have spent ten sparked out on my mattress.

  I was being tugged this way and that—trying to revise yet having lost all ability to learn; yearning for love, yet so desperate to pick our relationship to pieces.

  And it all came to a steaming, frothing head that Sunday night. It was the first time that my spell of luck had been broken and, after that, it was as if my every step was dogged by ill-fortune.

  I now had my routine down-pat when I visited India at night.

  While everyone else was at supper, I primed the fire-door, opening it and sealing down the two bolts. Later, at 11.30 p.m., all it needed was a slight push and without a sound I was out on the fire-escape and inhaling the crisp night air.

  Jeremy’s bike was tucked away in the New Schools Yard and with a slap of the Sebastopol cannon I was off into the night and to the delights of India.

  That particular night she was playing the piano as I walked into her flat; my old favourite, Prelude 17, the very first piece I’d heard her play.

  The wheel had almost turned full-circle.

  I sat beside her on the piano stool and gazed at her fingers moving so precisely over the keyboard.

  “Still like that prelude?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “It reminds me of you.”

  We had a drink outside on her patio, with just a candle for light while all around us was the loneliness of the dark night.

  I blew her a kiss and in an instant she was on my lap, kissing me, her fingers raking through my hair.

  “Let’s make love outside,” she whispered.

  “Shall I get the mattress?”

  “Why not?”

  So we tugged out the mattress, the pillo
ws and the duvet, and there with the ramparts of Windsor Castle silhouetted against the stars, we made love on the patio. It was glorious, the very best al fresco sex that we’d ever had, and with all the luxury of a mattress.

  How she clung to me, her legs cocked round my knees. The breath caught in her throat as a choking sob. Perhaps she had already scented the disaster that was lurking round the corner.

  We snuggled underneath the duvet and fell asleep, holding each other tight, locked in our last embrace.

  I WOKE TO the jarring shrill of India’s phone in the bedroom. It took a moment to remember where I was. It was still quite dark, a trace of dew on the duvet, the stars bright.

  India was awake.

  “Who’s that?” she said.

  I didn’t know. But already my heart was sinking, for any phone call at 3 a.m. can never be anything other than bad news.

  She got up and kissed me, and I can still recall that exact picture of India as she sashayed naked over the patio and into the bedroom. It’s etched into my chambers of remembrance, so lithe, her hair swinging from side to side.

  She steps out of the twilight and into the dark.

  I would never see her naked again.

  Would never hear her play another Bach prelude.

  For we had made love for the last time and our piano-playing was done.

  I lay back and looked at the stars. My heart was thumping. Already I had a suspicion of what had happened.

  The conversation was brief. India was fluttering at the door. “It’s Jeremy,” she said, her words sharp with alarm. “There’s a fire drill.”

  I arrowed out of the mattress. No time for words, no time for kisses, for I was pulling on trousers, shirt and shoes and with a farewell wave was thundering down the stairs.

  A sprint to the bike and a manic fumble with the lock as I nearly snapped off the key, before the panicked dash back to the Timbralls. I pedalled like a demon.

  On the bike, I had a moment to weigh up my chances.

  They were bleak.

  Once a year, Frankie would hold a night-time fire-drill. The rules were specific. At the first sound of the alarm, you leapt out of bed, put on shoes and dressing-gown and made certain that your neighbours were up. The fire-doors were flung open and you would troop out to the garden where Frankie would be waiting for the roll-call.

  Of course I should have thought of it, should have been aware of the possibility of a fire-drill, but love had made me blind. I was lucky; I’d always been lucky. The fates were with me on this one too.

  I tried to concoct a plan as I raced up the High Street. But the closer I got to the Timbralls, the worse it looked.

  To evacuate every boy normally took about three minutes. Jeremy’s phone call had been about eight minutes ago.

  Oh boy.

  It was going to be carnage.

  I tried not to picture the scene that awaited me. Probably Frankie and a couple of the senior boys waiting for me in my room.

  The grand inquisition.

  Expelled by noon.

  I did have some sort of plan. I couldn’t go back up the fire-escape because it was in full view of the boys on the lawn.

  But I did know that all the Timbralls’ doors would be open. So I’d march up the main staircase and pray that I didn’t meet anyone on the way.

  I shot through Cannon Yard, and there was the Timbralls, ablaze with light and alarm bells ringing. With her tall chimneys, she struck me as an ocean-going liner plunging into the night.

  I dumped the bike by the railings and took the stairs three at a time. The noise of the alarms was deafening.

  I didn’t know how it was going to end, but I’d play it out to the last card. I’d say that I’d fallen asleep in the lavatory, that I couldn’t sleep and that I’d had a cat-nap in the library, that I’d been so dead to the world that not even the sound of the alarms and the stampeding boys had been enough to wake me. Deny, deny, deny. I’d admit to any foolishness or oversight, but I would never confess to being out of the house after dark.

  Up one flight of stairs and hurling myself up the next. Then stopped. She had me.

  The Dame, Lucinda, was hobbling out of her suite of rooms. Her dog Rufus wagged his tail at the sight of me.

  I gawked. “Good evening, Ma’am.”

  Lucinda stared at me, cocked her head to the side, trying to understand why I should be fully dressed and racing upstairs during a fire-drill.

  “Good evening, Kim,” she said at length.

  I held my breath, wondered what to say. Would she call for Frankie now? Report me later?

  “Just getting my dressing-gown, Ma’am,” I said.

  “Really?” she said.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She bent to stroke Rufus, fussed over his ears. “I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for all your dog-walking,” she said. “I’m very grateful.”

  “Been a pleasure.”

  “Well, be off with you then,” she said. “You’d better be quick.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.” I darted up the stairs. “Thank you very much indeed.” Then and there, I vowed that come the end of term I would buy Lucinda the biggest box of chocolates that she’d ever laid eyes on.

  Still not a boy in sight. My luck was in—of course it was, because, as with all my dealings with India, everything I touched would turn to gold.

  I bolted into my room and barked an astonished sigh of relief. The door was open, the lights were on, but it was empty.

  I was hauling off my jeans when Jeremy, ice white, hurried in.

  “Get out of here.” He was grabbing my dressing-gown and tugging at my elbow. “Come to my room.” I followed him down the passage, ripping off my T-shirt as we went. He clicked the door behind.

  We heard the drum of thundering footsteps on the stairs.

  “Put on the dressing-gown,” he ordered, throwing himself onto the ground. “I’ve had an epileptic fit. You’re tending me.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Make it good.”

  The door cannoned open and there staring down at us was Frankie, Savage and Archie. Frankie was red-faced, breathless, eyes raking over the room. I can even remember the exact clothes that the boys were wearing: Savage in blue silk pyjamas and an immaculate white gown, while Archie was still in the same stained dressing-gown that he’d had since prep-school.

  I was kneeling on the floor by Jeremy’s stricken body. His face was stuck in a grotesque rictus and his eyelids twitched.

  “Jeremy’s had an epileptic fit, Sir.” I looked up at Frankie. “I’ve been looking after him.”

  “A fit?” Frankie said. “Jeremy’s had a fit?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Jeremy shuddered and started to cough. I delicately rolled him into the recovery position, head into the crook of his elbow, one leg straight, the other bent at the knee.

  Frankie turned to Savage and Archie. “You two, get those alarms turned off.”

  The pair left together, Savage with a scowl, Archie with a knowing leer.

  Had I missed something? Was there some tell-tale clue that would finish me off?

  Frankie squatted down beside me and took Jeremy’s wrist. “So, he’s had an epileptic fit?” he said again.

  “I believe so, Sir.”

  “Did you know he was epileptic?”

  “No, Sir.” I stood up now. It was uncomfortable squatting knee-to-knee with Frankie.

  “Right.” He counted off the seconds on his watch. “Pulse is fine. And how did you know what to do?”

  “I have an aunt who’s epileptic.”

  “You do, do you?”

  The whole conversation had about it an air of disbelief, as if Frankie knew I was lying, was certain I was lying, but couldn’t quite figure out exactly what was going on.

  He sat on the bed and stared at me, and, while Jeremy lay quivering on the floor between us, he tried to divine the truth.

  “So, tell me what happened.”

  I patted my hair, stared at my knee. Had
to keep things simple.

  “The fire-alarm went off and I came to check that Jeremy was awake, Sir,” I said. “We were about to follow the other boys out when he had a fit.”

  “And then?”

  “I made sure that he couldn’t injure himself and I monitored the fit.”

  “I see.”

  “I thought that was more important in the circumstances than coming down for the roll-call.”

  “I see.”

  But he couldn’t see at all. I watched as his brain ticked over all the possibilities, tested my story. But so long as I stuck to my guns, he couldn’t pin a thing on me.

  “I see,” he said again. He looked down at Jeremy, who was breathing normally now. “Very well.”

  My spirits were lightening by the second. I’d done it! Yet again I’d got away with it. I couldn’t resist tugging Frankie’s tail. “Do you think I did the right thing, Sir?”

  “I’m sure you think you did.” He got up. “I’ll send the Dame to check Jeremy.”

  He scrutinised the scene one more time as he stood at the door, his eyes minutely checking over us.

  “Nice watch,” he said. “Don’t think I’ve seen it before.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “What happened to that Heuer your father gave you?”

  “Lost it, Sir.”

  And with a final disbelieving shake of his head, Frankie was gone. Jeremy turned and winked, and I had to bite my cheek to suppress the whoop of laughter that wanted to burst out of me.

  THE TRIALS WERE not a total fiasco. Somehow, some small smatterings of English and Divinity must have lodged into my head during that wild summer. English questions about Othello and his fatal flaw, Divinity questions about Justification by Faith. The exams were yet further evidence of my supremely mediocre academic standards.

  But the day after the fire-drill, I didn’t have a thought for my exams. I was still on a high from the previous night. I’d come through! Against all the odds, despite all the traps and snares that had been laid for me, I had come through. My Eton career intact and my love affair going from strength to strength.

  It felt like a near miss in the trenches, a sniper’s bullet fizzing past my face. I had inhaled the stench of death and had lived to tell the tale.