by Dan Vyleta
Charlie bites his lip.
“Yes,” he says. “I think so too.”
“So everybody knows. It’s only we idiots who are kept in the dark.”
ф
Two days later Trout summons Charlie. He does not send Cruikshank: it’s a note he finds in his pigeonhole, unsigned. Report to the headmaster. Seven o’clock sharp. The note is so beyond precedence that right away Charlie knows he is in trouble. There is nothing, of course, that can be done. He will have to go. Trout will ask him how he came to hear of Beasley and Son. If Charlie mentions Cruikshank, Cruikshank will get the sack. If he does not, he will be in disgrace and make acquaintance with the dentist’s chair. A tribunal seems possible. A letter to his parents will already be in the post.
As he sits at dinner, sawing forlornly at the lukewarm cutlet in front of him, Charlie watches an invisible wall spring up between him and his fellow students. Already he is set apart: they just don’t know it yet. Thomas would understand this feeling, but Thomas isn’t here. Charlie has not seen him since breakfast. There is no one to help him make sense of his fall, from good boy to pariah.
ф
Charlie arrives early at the headmaster’s door, then sets to pacing, up and down the long empty corridor. Dust balls attend him with the solicitude of pets, withdrawing some inches as he draws close, then following in his wake, sometimes as much as a yard. The moment he becomes conscious of this game, the headmaster’s door swings open and the fat, rosy dome of Trout’s head leans into the hallway.
“Cooper!” he calls and is answered by the prattle of footfalls.
“Here, sir.”
Charlie’s haste scatters the dust.
Past the door and the antechamber, logs smoulder in the fireplace, spreading the smell of pine. Two armchairs have been arranged before it, inclining to each other confidentially, as though they are in conversation. Trout pats the seat of one, before sitting down on the other. His weight is such that this is a delicate operation: he stands in front of his chair like a diver on the platform, his fundament thrown back and the chest forward for balance, then topples backward with a grunt. Charlie draws closer suspiciously, sits on the edge of the other chair, his weight still in his thighs. A coffee table fills the narrow gap between the two chairs’ armrests. It holds a decanter and a silver tray with glasses.
“Port or sherry?” Trout asks blandly. Behind the blandness, and the fatty half spheres of his cheeks, the headmaster’s eyes are shrewd.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Nothing? Nonsense. Some port then.” Trout fills two glasses. “Taste must be cultivated. Just like good habits. A gentleman appreciates his wine.”
Trout seems intent on waiting until Charlie has taken a sip before saying anything further: he sits with his own glass raised halfway to his lips, sniffing at the liquor. For a mad instant Charlie grows convinced that the headmaster is trying to poison him. But even if he is, Charlie has no choice but to drink. Unlike a pill, you cannot hide liquid under your tongue or in the pocket of one cheek.
“Well?” Trout asks when Charlie puts down the glass.
“It’s sweet.”
“Yes. Hints of plum. And something earthier. Truffle, perhaps.”
Charlie cannot tell whether he is making fun.
“I suppose you have guessed why I invited you here.”
Trout does not say summoned. There is no need. They both know the truth.
Charlie manages a nod.
“It is an unusual situation, Mr. Cooper. Unusual. I cannot recall the last time I had to ask a boy for such a tête-à-tête.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But then, what is to be done? After all, you are his closest friend.”
Charlie looks up, confused. “Whose?”
“Argyle’s.” Trout eyes him suspiciously. “Do I have the wrong boy?”
It takes Charlie three breaths to adjust his expectations. He tries to ward off the feeling of relief, but it is there. His body slides deeper into the armchair.
Perhaps, though, Trout is merely toying with him.
“No, sir. I mean I am. His best friend.” A new worry takes hold of him, its texture different from the old. “Is he in trouble?”
“You know he is. But perhaps you don’t understand the full extent of it. He may have been ashamed to share it.”
Trout wets his lips. Fat lips and a fat tongue; the glow of spittle on soft pink skin.
“We are worried about Argyle. There is something growing, you see. Inside him.”
“He is sick?” His own voice sounds normal in Charlie’s ears, controlled. But his stomach is a knot. No, not his stomach. His entrails, from colon to diaphragm. A knot. It will take hours to unpick.
“Sick? In a manner of speaking. There is a darkness growing in him. Corruption. No, more than that. Evil. Yes, I think we cannot do without the word. Evil. It’s like your friend is carrying a bomb. When it blows, well…” Trout swirls the wine in his glass. “Dr. Renfrew has found evidence, you see. In his Soot. It’s scientific.”
The word is given a certain weight, a certain note. Not resentment, exactly. Wariness?
“And it can’t be stopped?”
“We mustn’t lose hope. Mr Swinburne recommends prayer. It has been known to help. For instance—”
But Charlie is not listening now. He is thinking, remembering Thomas’s conversation in the coach back from Oxford, picking through its terms. Smoke is a symptom, Renfrew said.
What then is evil?
Trout sits watching him. His tongue is restless within his mouth. Charlie can see it move around, probing his teeth, his gums, the insides of his cheeks. Or haunting them. It distracts Charlie.
“If it’s a disease,” he asks at last, forcing his thoughts into words. “Evil, I mean. Then it can be cured.”
Trout spreads his hands on his thighs. “Dr. Renfrew believes so.”
“You don’t?”
“Can we cure tuberculosis? Cancer? The common cold?”
“We might, one day.”
Trout sighs. “One day. Perhaps. But you go out there, whisper it. That there is a cure. Watch the world go up in flames.”
They both lapse into silence, each draining his glass. The heat from the fireplace is so intense, it climbs up their limbs, filling them, consuming their strength: a fat man and a boy, sprawling side by side.
Charlie fights it, sits up again, returns to the edge of the seat as though preparing his departure.
“Headmaster,” he asks, sounding adult to his own ears, “sir. Why did you call me here?”
“Ah, that.” Trout reaches into his coat pocket, produces a sheaf of papers. “Your friend Argyle has received an invitation. From his uncle, in Nottinghamshire. Asking Argyle to join him and his family for Christmas. He insists, in fact.”
Charlie stares at him, shocked.
“You open our mail?”
Trout flushes, laughs. “God, no. That’d be against the law. He wrote to me, naturally. Baron Naylor. Argyle’s uncle.” He waves the envelope at Charlie, too briefly to see to whom it is addressed. “I’d like you, Cooper, to go with him. As his friend. Keep him out of trouble. In light of things, I mean.”
A gaggle of questions rises up in Charlie. They spill out unsifted, in fragments, each word very fast.
“But I have already written to my mother to ask whether Thomas can come— Besides, won’t he want to go home— And after all, I can’t simply invite myself, can I?”
“Order, Cooper, order. One thing after the other. No, Argyle won’t be going home. It’s quite impossible, he’ll tell you so himself. And as I’ve already said, his uncle insists. So there cannot be any question of his spending the holiday at your parents’ house. As for you, all it will take is another little letter to your parents. After all, Baron Naylor is the head of one of the most prominent families in the country. Just like your father. Your people will approve of your wishing to make social connections. They will send a letter to Baron Naylor explaining tha
t you and his nephew are very fond of each other and had hoped to spend the holidays together. All it takes is a hint. He, no doubt, will respond with a formal invitation. It’s all very simple indeed.
“Naturally,” Trout adds, so casually he does not even feel the need to look at Charlie when he speaks, “naturally, there is no need to alarm Baron Naylor about young Argyle’s predicament. His condition. Nor yet your family. It would make it harder for Ar—that is, for Thomas. Once stigmatised, it will be twice as hard for him to…especially given his father’s disgrace. But I don’t need to go on. You understand very well how it is. Which is why I think your presence will be an invaluable asset to your friend.”
Trout heaves himself out of the armchair. The leather’s groan might have been comical under other circumstances. But the headmaster’s eyes are too shrewd to mistake him for a buffoon or a kindly relative troubled by wind. He walks Charlie to the door.
“I enjoyed our talk, Mr. Cooper, really I did. We should do it again. Perhaps after your return. You can tell me then how it went. Yes, I think that’s an excellent idea. A debriefing of sorts. Like in the army.”
Outside, at the top of the stairwell, Charlie nearly runs into Swinburne, lurking in the darkness of the landing and breathing heavily, as though he’s been running. Charlie passes him quickly, telling himself that it is merely a coincidence. No dust dances in the gaslit stairwell beneath: it’s only when the boy passes that it rises and hovers, like inverted snow.
ф
“So are you coming along as my nurse or as Trout’s spy?”
They are sitting on the bathroom floor again, making themselves small amongst the row of tubs. Above them, where copper pipes crisscross underneath the ceiling, a spider is sitting in a wedge of web. It may be dead, trapped in its own design. Then again, it mayn’t.
Charlie ignores the question. If Thomas is angry, so is he. They have both taken off their shirts, in case they Smoke. They mustn’t stain.
“You should’ve told me, Thomas,” he says. “I’m your friend.”
Thomas responds without looking at Charlie.
“Yes, Charlie, you are. But will you still be my friend when I end up killing someone? When I turn into that woman underneath her noose, and you feel your own heart blacken with my filth?” He spits, angry, the spit steaming with white Smoke. “I’m rotting. Inside. Like a cancer, growing in here.” He rubs his chest, his guts, his hand a fist that he forgets to unclench. “Renfrew says there’s a machine, on the Continent somewhere. You step behind a sort of mirror and then they can see inside your rib cage. The bones show snow white. And your Smoke shows like fog. The blacker it is, the lighter it shows.” He spits again, watches it steam. “Another year and I’ll glow like an angel with my darkness.”
Charlie does not know what to say. He has rehearsed his conversation with Trout for Thomas. There is a cure, he wants to say, but the words get stuck in his throat.
There may be a cure.
It isn’t the same thing at all.
“Do you know him?” he asks instead. “This uncle who has invited you?”
“I met him as a child. Him and his wife. I only saw them from across the room: a bald man and a woman in a fancy frock. I was too young to be introduced. You know—the childhood years of sin.”
Charlie watches Thomas spit once again, hears his own voice drop to a whisper.
“Why can’t you go home for Christmas, Thomas?”
A snort, tinged with dark. “Nobody there. Mother’s dead.”
“And your father?”
“Dead.” Smoking now, breath and skin: “Disgraced.”
“What did he do, Thomas? Tell me.”
“What did he do? He beat a man to death.”
The words are hard, curt, devoid of pity. Here I am, Thomas seems to be saying, exposed. But also: Don’t push me, not now. I might break.
Charlie hears it, fights a shiver.
“He beat a man,” he repeats, no weight in his voice. “Very good. Thoughtful of him. This way we can spend Christmas together.”
It takes Thomas a heartbeat to react. A transformation in his Smoke, a lightening, colour entering the grey; a parcel of emotions exhaled by one boy and inhaled by the other; infection: the sharing of a burden.
“Prick!” Thomas says softly, shaping a Smoke ring with his mouth.
“You’re welcome.”
Charlie waits until both their breaths have slowed and Thomas’s Smoke has cleared out of his blood. It’s like stepping inside after racing through a tempest; as such not without a sense of loss. Then he changes the subject.
“Where were you all day? I was looking for you.”
It does something for Thomas, this question, completes his transition from desolation to wry humour.
“Well, first I had to see Renfrew. Kept me for a full three hours. And then I went over to Foybles’s rooms to ask him whether he would help me with my maths.” Amusement flashes in Thomas’s eyes. “Made him rather nervous, I think. The demon boy coming to visit.”
“Maths? But you are doing fine with—”
In answer Thomas opens his right hand which has been curled into a fist from the moment they left the dormitory. Inside sit two little cubes, clear like icicles. For two heartbeats Charlie does not know what they are. Then it dawns on him and his stomach contracts with excitement and fear.
“He will know who took them,” he whispers.
“Maybe. There were five pieces left. He may not know the count.”
“He’s sure to.”
Charlie pictures it, Thomas searching the desk in Foybles’s office, while the latter had his back turned. It seems impossible. Thomas picks the thought off Charlie’s face.
And dares a smile.
“Foybles left me alone in his living room. The question I asked, it turned out to be rather complicated. He needed to consult his books. It appears Foybles has his library under his bed. At least that’s what it sounded like. Like he was moving all his furniture about. Hunting for Newton. He left me alone for a full half hour.” Thomas shakes his head in disbelief.
“Did you smoke?”
“A little. But I opened the window. By the time he came back, it was barely noticeable. And he was very focussed on the problem.”
Charlie tries not to think it. Thief. But there is admiration in the word, too. It has long been a puzzle to him how often sin aligns with pluck.
“Shall we?” Thomas asks. “Together?”
They each pick up a sweet. Held up to the light Charlie discovers a pattern stamped into one side. “B&S” underneath a stylised crown. The Queen’s stamp.
There is no smell to the little cube.
“Let’s do it then. On three.”
Thomas counts them down and they each place it on their tongues, like sugar lumps, gently pressing it against the roof of their mouths waiting for it to melt. It takes a while for the taste to spread. Lemon and the sharp herbal notes of Chlorodyne. The sweet dissolves very slowly, one has to suck on it, chew it, wear it out with one’s tongue. Charlie is waiting for something, a tingling, a giddiness, some sensation of change: a surge of strength, a sudden sleepiness, the elation of alcohol. But nothing happens, nothing at all. A look at Thomas tells him it is the same for his friend. At long last they swallow the final few shards. All that remains of the sweet is a medicinal flavour clinging to their gums, like they have just cleaned their teeth.
They both sit in silence, feeling crushed.
“So what does that mean?” Charlie asks when he can no longer bear it.
“It means,” Thomas says, “that we don’t understand anything. Not a thing.”
The spider above them quivers when they rise, in imitation of life.
SWINBURNE
The boy asks me after vespers: name of Kreuzer, Martin Herman. First year upper school. A German. Naturalised, I suppose, the whole family, for generations.
But still.
“Sir,” he asks, nervous, perhaps on a dare. “What is theatr
e?”
He does not smoke when he says it, so he thinks the question must be safe. I make him kneel in the pew. Sore knees. Good for the soul. He’s been reading Mr. William Shakespeare, he admits after some probing. A book of plays. Where does he have it from? This he is not supposed to say.
His crying is unbecoming.
I bring all this to Trout. His brother gave the book to him: Kreuzer, Leopold Michael, five years the elder. I remember him well. Daft little shite. Wouldn’t have thought him capable of something quite so monstrous.
“There has to be a letter,” I say. “An investigation.”
Trout won’t have it. Soft, he is, or else adaptable. Changing times: turning with how the wind blows.
“Confiscate the book,” he says, “and let it rest.”
Let it rest indeed. He didn’t hear the boy: “Please, sir. I don’t understand. Why is it forbidden?” Snot on his lip from all the crying, sitting there like a wet moustache.
I could have told him, of course, could have recited the Stratford Verdict, chapter and verse (Seeing that theatre depicteth sin and maketh it a matter of entertainment; that it maketh bad actors commit the action of sin without the sign of Smoke, and good actors inhabit sin so thoroughly that their crime showeth on the skin; that the former createth an illusion that sin be possible without Smoke, and the latter forceth paid servants to distort their souls for the sake of spectacle; that in short the whole enterprise be lewd and filthy, unbecoming to gentlemen and dangerous for the crowd; that its lessons and morals, however pious, be lost behind intemperate words and idle shouting; and theatres be cow barns plastered with Soot; for all these reasons, and by the power invested in us by the Crown, we henceforth forbid and banish the performance, circulation, writing, and reading of theatre plays, be they comedy or tragedy, history or romance, from this our realm from this day forward etc. etc.), but that is hardly the point. Obedience is. A boy must not question. A new wind is blowing indeed. Renfrew’s kind of wind. Some mornings one can smell its stench all the way from London.
