VI
Mr Dedalus comes up with an idea while changing.
If all of those old pupils and teachers are here, he thinks, why don´t I simply make the most of it and ask them for help?
The only thing the headmaster isn´t sure of is whether or not he´ll be able to interact with anyone. The first time he´d been downstairs nobody had seemed to notice him, except his younger self. Would the others be able to talk? And, if they did talk, would they know where they are? Or remember being at the school before?
Well, anyway, he would give it a try. Mr Dedalus was nothing if not practical. And he knew there was no point forever procrastinating: better to do and see what happened than imagine endless possibilities. His mother´s voice, from somewhere: If you don´t try, you don´t get.
“Exactly, mother.”
After leaving Enid in the study room with the first paper, English, and Mr and Mrs Graves next door with the wireless and a pot of tea, Mr Dedalus makes his way downstairs to the Main Hall. He´s been thinking of who he needs to ask for help and quickly identifies his preferred candidates on the way. He needs former members of The Magistrate, the school´s prefect body, that´s for sure. Only they would be conversant in the matters he needed them to deal with.
The first person he approaches is a chubby youngster in a school cap who´s playing marbles with two other boys near the fireplace. These grey-toned figures are strangely ghostly and Mr Dedalus feels a pinch of apprehension as he clears his throat. Well, here goes. “Mr Bunter?”
The plump boy looks up. “That´s me, sir.”
“You´re wanted in the Library.”
“Who by?”
“Don´t be insolent, boy, or I´ll confiscate those marbles and you´ll never see them again.”
Mr Dedalus frowns as Bunter walks away, knees rubbing, and makes for the Library. Behind his eyepatch the headmaster is content. This just might work.
Two floors up, looking out over the bright gardens to the far-off hills, Enid takes a deep breath and writes out the date in fresh blue ink. She opens the paper and reads:
William Shakespeare has the following inscription on his tomb:
Good friend for Jesus sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Discuss the importance of the supernatural in Shakespeare´s work and why you think Shakespeare might or might not have been serious in penning this warning.
Enid scoffs. What a stupid question!
She´s read some Shakespeare plays, listened to them on the radio, too, but she has no great love for any of them, or the writer himself. Her hunch is that people say they like Shakespeare to seem clever. He might say clever things but you need a translator to understand them and what´s the point of that? Why not just read things from nowadays if you have to read at all?
But she begins to answer, in the way that she knows she must until a growing force within her seems to compel her to put down the pen and push away the ink pot. Why are you being so pathetic when you know you have The Power? the inner voice asks. You are The One. You have proven it. You have come home. You do not need to answer questions such as these.
Unfolding the old piece of paper from her pocket, Enid smooths it out on the desk and writes, in bold, flowing letters:
I go to Shakespeare´s tomb and give his bones a good shake. With a spear.
And then, satisfied, chuckling at her wit, she sits back and rocks on the chair´s hind legs.
On the wall in front of her is a painting. It is very bad, awfully ugly, and seems to depict a small boat on a rough sea. The skiff is dark and indistinct. The waves are bruised and the ocean looks uninviting. It´s all very amateurish and over-dramatic but it gives Enid an idea.
The boat in the painting begins to come in to shore, she writes.
She blots the paper and leans back again on the two legs of her chair. She waits, bites her nails, looks out of the window and picks her nose. She rocks back and forth. She perceives no movement in the ugly picture and doubt begins to set in. Perhaps the magic only works when there is a storm? Perhaps there is no magic?
Enid becomes frightened that if she doesn´t do the exam she might have to leave St Francis´ and go back to London with the Graves´. This she definitely doesn’t want to do. She doesn´t even want to think about what is back there. This is where she wants to be, at any cost. Even if it means doing an exam.
For the next hour she writes.
When Mr Graves opens the door to tell her the time is up, she blinks: it´s as though she has been in a dream.
“Come along now, Enid. Bring the paper here. Have a glass of milk with us next door and then you´ll go onto the maths.”
Enid nods and yawns. It has been so very quiet, she thinks. With no trees for them to rest in, the birds have gone from the school grounds. Enid doesn´t know whether to be happy or sad about this. Sometimes birds make such a terrible racket, especially the small ones.
“Going to snow I shouldn´t wonder,” says Mr Graves, bending down to look out of the window.
“I don´t mind.”
“You don´t have to drive, missy.”
“I don´t want to go.”
“Gather up your pens and papers, come on. Don´t leave anything, there´s a good girl.” Mr Graves walks back to the door. For each footstep the old floorboards groan and creak.
Enid bends over the desk to collect her things. Just before she turns to go she happens to look up at the awful painting and notices the boat has moved in towards the shore.
Oh, golly.
The vessel is more distinct now it is closer. And there is a figure on the prow, dark and shadowy.
She scribbles, quickly:
The man in the boat comes to take Mr and Mrs Graves.
VII
Mr Dedalus stands in front of the weird collection of pupils and masters he´s summoned to the Library and calls for silence. “Please, all of you. Quiet, if you will.”
They form a grey mass in front of him. Some have already picked up the books and manuscripts lying around, half-broken, on their spines, from the floor. Others are beginning to restock the shelves or mop and sweep the boards. Mr Dedalus is moved to see his chosen few are taking care of the books, but then he knew they would, knowing how they were when they were pupils, teachers and staff at the school.
“This morning I call on each and every one of you to help me in a very delicate task,” he tells them. “Last night there was a great storm, one of the worst storms to hit this area of the country in many a long year. As you can all see, the storm has caused a great deal of damage to our precious Library, and indeed to The Book.”
The mention of The Book is enough to cause a respectful silence to fall upon those gathered in front of Mr Dedalus and his dais.
“As of now, my friends, I´m not quite sure as to the extent of the damage; indeed, I am hoping each and every one of you here today might be able to help me answer that question. I´m sure I do not need to impress on you the great importance of this task, and I thank you now for your co-operation in assisting me.”
“Is there a Writer, Mr Dedalus?” comes a voice. A Writer, as all of them know, is someone whose words, when written in The Book, become fact. Speaking generally, in each generation of pupils at the school there is one Writer who is allowed, from time to time, on controlled occasions, to write in The Book. It may be a pupil or it may be a member of staff.
“I think there is,” Mr Dedalus replies.
“You either know or you don´t,” comes a rather stinging heckle.
The previously benevolent group has now become a crowd, meshed together, too polite to be a mob, but hiding each other, acting as one, like a school of fish imitating a larger animal. It is hard for the headmaster to catch anyone´s eye. The most passive hide, but make the group stronger by numbers; the most aggressive s
tand taller and take advantage of the mass by speaking on behalf of everyone.
“The fact that you are here,” the headmaster replies, careful to control his voice, “leads me to believe that there is a Writer.”
“How´s that then?”
Mr Dedalus leans down and picks up one of the school photographs he has taken from the walls. The rest are leaning against the skirting board behind him. “Some of you have come from this photograph,” he tells them. “Some from others. But all of you are here because, I believe, someone - a Writer, yes - has written it so.”
“Then it´s not one of us?”
The grey mass seems to break apart into individuals again. They had worried it was them against Mr Dedalus but now they seem to know it is the headmaster and them against whoever it is who has conjured them here.
“I believe not.”
“You, maybe?” asks a lone voice; the last rebel. “You are alone here at the school, aren´t you? Maybe you wrote it?”
“How do you know I am alone here?” Perhaps his eyes are failing him but Mr Dedalus can see many faces but no speaker. He scans the heads.
“I see you from inside the pictures,” answers the voice, somewhat sadly. It is a neutral voice, neither male nor female. “From inside the frame I see everything that goes on. I shouldn´t be able to, should I?”
“I can´t.”
“I can!”
“Me too!”
Mr Dedalus holds his hands up and calls for quiet. “I do not have The Power,” he tells them. “I did not write this.”
A woman´s voice, older, impatient: “Then what can we do to help?”
“I need you to organise the Library. To guard the doors. I need you to see which pages are missing from The Book. To guard The Book. To see, in any of those volumes of school history over there, if there is any precedent for this type of thing happening at St Francis´ and, if so, what we should do about it.”
There follows a long silence. But then, one by one, the grey voices answer.
“I´ll stack the shelves…”
“I´ll check the histories…”
“Pass that mop, will you?”
Mr Dedalus breathes a lengthy sigh of relief. He walks back through the Main Hall and, trying his best to ignore the familiar faces wanting to speak to him, strides upstairs.
In the Common Room he finds the wireless on, the room rather dingy with smoke, and Mr and Mrs Graves´ suitcases on the rug.
Next door he raps gently and cracks the door. Enid is sitting at the table by the window, leaning over to write, and she turns now and looks at him with a macabre smile which curdles his blood. Mr Dedalus realises with a flash that Enid has The Power and it is she who has been writing but he cannot conceive of how and so steadies himself and pretends that nothing is the matter. “Have you finished, my dear?”
“Yes!” replies Enid, flourishing the ink-bombed answer paper.
Mr Dedalus crosses the room but doesn´t notice Enid hiding the old piece of paper in her skirts. He takes the sheets and his eye is caught by the scene from the window. Such desolation. Devastation. High in the sky, very pallid, like a fading white print on the blueness, he glimpses your eye. “And your parents?”
“They are not my parents.”
“Ah, yes.”
Enid´s eyes flicker up to the wall but when the headmaster follows her glance he sees only a bad picture of a boat with three figures in it. One is very calm, perhaps rowing, while the other two have their silhouetted hands in the air as though screaming. It is a terrible picture, no doubt left by one of the girls, or put up by the housemistress to cover a hole or a crack in the wall.
“Are all those strange people still downstairs?”
Mr Dedalus looks at Enid and she seems inhuman. The girl is standing in the middle of the room in a shaft of bright sunlight and has waxy skin, like a doll´s, and her eyes do not reflect the light at all. They are black and instead of twinkling: they seem to suck the sunlight in. He feels his scalp shrink and knows he is in the presence of something evil.
“Yes, they are.”
“They´re old pupils and teachers, aren´t they?”
“Yes, they are.” The headmaster sees Enid for who she is; for what is inside her, and for a moment it is as if they are alone in the room, as if the room doesn´t exist. “You made them come here, didn´t you?”
“I did.”
“You know, I really must warn you, young lady…”
“No! I must warn you.” Enid points at him and Mr Dedalus is rooted to the spot. “I have The Power now.”
“But you do not understand what power you have.”
“I am The One,” the little girl answers. “Whatever I write comes true.”
“Not always,” replies Mr Dedalus, although he is uncomfortable with Enid´s poise and arrogance. There is something older and deeper than a young girl dwelling inside the body he can see, he knows. He remembers the look in Mr and Mrs Graves´ eyes. The story of Enid being found walking about in the flames after a bombing raid. There is fire within her. “What have you done with Mr and Mrs Graves?”
“They´ve gone on a little trip,” replies Enid, laughing.
Mr Dedalus looks up at the painting and recognises the figures in the boat. The two with their hands in the air are undoubtedly the Graves´. “Oh, what have you done, you evil little thing?”
“Stay back!”
“How dare you!”
“Stay back or you are next!”
As though warning him, Enid taps her skirts, where the concealed pocket is, and the headmaster is immediately aware of what weapon lies there. No doubt there is a page from The Book. Now everything makes sense. “Stay away from me, old man.”
“I am not afraid of you. You must know that.”
“Oh but you should be.” Enid laughs. She walks to the door, seems to consider what to do for a moment and then takes the folded paper from her pocket. She tears it carefully, almost in half, and throws one part onto the floorboards between them. “Happy reading!”
When she is gone, Mr Dedalus walks across and reads what is written on the paper. In Enid´s young girl´s handwriting, it says:
All of the people in the photographs in the entrance hall come alive.
I want to be the Head Girl here at St Francis´s school.
I want to stay here.
I go to Shakespeare´s tomb and give his bones a good shake. With a spear.
The boat in the painting begins to come in to shore.
The man in the boat comes to take Mr and Mrs Graves.
Mr Dedalus does what I want or will die immediately.
VIII
Mr Dedalus bursts into the Library but before he can speak he utters a little cry of joy at what they´ve done to the room. The shelves are stacked, the great volumes of school history have been put back in place and there is an air of calmness and continuity which was missing before.
“Only one page torn out, sir,” reports an old boy, holding up a leather-bound tome. It is The Book. “It was blown from its place by the wind and we think, after examining the imprints on the pages just before and after it, that whoever was in the room stepped on it. Perhaps they tore the page out that way, but whatever happened, it was only the one.”
“I know who it was,” Mr Dedalus replies seriously.
“The footprint suggests a pupil. A child.”
“That would make sense.”
“Shall I replace the book, then, sir?”
“First tear out another page.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Tear out one more page.” The headmaster looks across at the first librarian he ever remembered knowing, when he had come to the school as a young master. “Mrs Murdoch,” he says. “If you´d be so kind, I would like to look up the school´s founding principles, as enshrined in The Book but earlier codified by the first meeting of the Magistrate, I believe.”
Mrs Murdoch responds to the gravity of the situation with a slig
ht flicker of her eyes but quickly nods her thick head of hair. “Right away, headmaster.”
The old boy steps forwards. “Here is the blank page, Mr Dedalus.”
The headmaster takes the thick, crisp sheet and stares at it for a moment. He has never had a genuine page from The Book in his hand, never even felt the paper. Very solemnly he asks who in the room has, or has ever had, The Power. “Those of you who were Writers in your time here, please identity yourselves now.”
Three hands rise.
“Take one step forwards, please,” he tells them.
There are two females and a male. All are pupils. The boy is very young, perhaps seven, and has a sickly look. Mr Dedalus can´t place him and although he should know it, he cannot recall the boy´s name. “Ricketts?” he tries, hopefully.
“Dickens,” the boy answers, in a small, squeaky voice. “Oliver Dickens.”
“Of course. Very well, Oliver Dickens, I will ask you first. Are you prepared to write on this page that all of you should return from whence you came?”
“To the pick-chas, sir?” asks the boy. His nose his running.
“Correct.” Mr Dedalus is aware that there is a murmur going about the room. The others now know what is going on, what the headmaster´s plan is, and some are not happy. “You should not be here,” the headmaster states in a loud, clear voice. “You have been made to come here by means foul and you must return to where you should be. Just as you felt no pain in coming here, so you shall feel no pain in returning.”
“I don´t want to, sir,” the small boy says. He wipes his nose with his sleeve.
“Be that as it may,” the headmaster replies. “But we all have things to do that we don´t want to in this life. In this instance you shall have to trust that I know best. And believe me, I do.”
“Can I go back with them?”
“Very well.” Mr Dedalus turns to the next oldest, a young girl with ringlets and freckles but she barely catches his eye before shaking her head and stepping back into the crowd.
“The statutes you asked for, headmaster,” says Mrs Murdoch, holding up what looks like a ledger. Mr Dedalus squints with his good eye and traces the list of rules with his finger until he finds what he´s looking for.
“A full moon last night, wasn´t it, Mrs Murdoch?”
“Twas indeed, sir.”
“But not tonight?”
“Not tonight, Mr Dedalus.”
“Thank you, Mrs Murdoch.”
“You´re very welcome, sir.”
“No, please don´t go. I have one more task for you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please take The Book and hide it somewhere in this room. Choose anyone you want to help, but do it quickly and do it now.”
“Hide The Book, sir?”
“That´s right. Here or in the tunnels. Wherever you like.”
“Very well, sir.”
Mr Dedalus points at the last young lady waiting in the file. She is about seventeen. “Miss Austen, isn´t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come along with me, please.”
The headmaster leads the girl into one of the corners of the room so that he can’t see what is going on behind themselves. He sits them both down, presses the sheet of old paper flat, and says: “Are you willing to write what I tell you?”
“I am,” comes the reply. “I believe it is the right thing to do.”
“Very well. Then as soon as Mrs Murdoch gives me the signal, you will write what I tell you to write.”
“Understood.”
And so Mr Dedalus bows his head and waits. He can hear splintering wood and the squealing of bookshelves and is calm: the longer this procedure goes on, he thinks, the better.
Finally he hears footsteps and Mrs Murdoch´s voice. “We are ready, headmaster.”
“Very well,” he says. He passes the pen to the young girl. “Now you will write what I tell you to write.”
“Yes, sir,” replies Miss Austen.
VIV
Enid blinks and is suddenly alone.
What? Where is everyone?
She is in the Main Hall and the sound of silence is deafening. She can still smell the perfume of the girl she was standing next to, and the laughter at the joke the Humanities Master was telling echoes around the panelled walls like a Chinese whisper. A lone marble rolls out from the empty fireplace and comes to settle by her feet.
She hears a door squeak. Footsteps. A shadow. Presently Mr Dedalus appears at the head of the corridor.
“What did you do with them?” Enid shouts impetuously, pointing her finger at the headmaster. “What did you do with all these people that were here, talking to me?”
“I don´t know.”
“Bring them back! How dare you take them away?”
“Who?” Mr Dedalus shrugs his shoulders and turns to look at the school photographs on the wall behind him. He catches the eye of young Miss Austen and whispers a silent prayer of gratitude to her. “Do you mean these people?”
“Oh! I´ll show you!” Enid runs to the staircase. “I warned you, you horrible old fool! I warned you what would happen if you crossed me!”
Enid runs upstairs and Mr Dedalus wanders over to the front door and unbolts it. It is twilight outside, snow falling gently from the bruised sky. He walks out of the stone arch doorway and crunches out onto the gravel path. I should have got them to clean some of this mess up before I sent them back, he thinks, looking at the bracken and branches lying about the pathway and lawns. But perhaps the snow will cover everything. Snow always makes everything look pretty.
It becomes night as he circumnavigates the old building and wanders about the school grounds. For most of the time he simply enjoys the walk and the snow. Sometimes he puts his hand out and lets a snowflake land upon his palm. They fizzle and melt and he thinks: Are all snowflakes really different? Can we know that for sure, or do we just take it for granted? Surely there´s always a chance that two might form exactly the same?
He walks past the freezing-over pond and stands at the edge of the playing fields. Looking up over the whitening hills he sees you staring back at him. Your eye is no longer wide and bright, but shadowed slightly in the corner, as though closing. Mr Dedalus salutes you and hopes in his heart of hearts that what the first school-masters and pupils wrote in the statues will be proven right.
A terrifying, blood-curdling scream from a window high up in the old building behind him brings a broad smile to his face.
Yes. It appears so.
X
Enid writes:
Dedalus dies
Dedalus DIES NOW
Dedalus dies painfully
Dedalus drowns in the pool
Dedalus has heart attack
The people come out of the picture again
The people come and talk to me
I can fly
I am all powerful
Dedalus –
But there he is, Mr Dedalus, in the doorway.
Enid screams. She backs up, yelling and spitting like a cornered rat but the headmaster does not flinch. He shows no sign of emotion. His eye is unblinking. “How do you know I am not a ghost?” he asks, his voice level and controlled. The young girl´s eyes flicker with hope.
I cannot see ghosts, she scrawls quickly. She is running out of space, of paper.
“What are you afraid of, Enid? You will be Head Girl here at St Francis´ soon enough. That part of what you have written will be honoured.”
“What?” She wants to disbelieve him but she also wants to know. “Why?”
“Because you wrote that part before you made your mistake.”
“What mistake?” Enid stands up and wants to approach the headmaster but without her magic she feels weak. She manages to make it across the rug but stops close to him, shaking her head, trying to appear confident. “What mistake?”
“In this school we respect writers,” Mr Dedalus replies. In his mind he is like his young self:
back then he could stop anyone. He can see the demons in the girl retreating, can see the young creature for what she is. For once she looks her age.
Enid is thinking. “Do you mean what I wrote about Shakespeare?” she asks, aghast. “That? Really?”
“An affront to the man and his beliefs and a violation of everything we stand for at St Francis´.”
“Pah!” Enid throws up her hands. “That´s ridiculous.”
Mr Dedalus watches as the girl walks back to the table. She puts both hands on the papers there and suddenly her shoulders began to heave and there follows the sound of long, hard, childish sobs. Enid falls to her knees and cries like the little girl she is.
He walks over to comfort her and notices Mr and Mrs Graves sitting in their chairs looking vaguely shocked and disorientated. They leave for London shortly afterwards.
Later that night Mr Dedalus walks a small, broken, timid Enid to her new dormitory, the one where she would sleep that term, leading the way with a flickering candle. The storm had put the power lines down. “This is it,” he says, turning the handle. “Perhaps it would be better if you stay in your bed tonight.”
Enid nods. She has been silent throughout dinner. Mr Dedalus lights her lamp with the dripping wick and leaves her in peace. He wanders upstairs to the garret in a dancing vermillion orb.
Enid can´t sleep.
She gets up and looks into the lamplight but her eyes are tired. She is tired. She goes over to the window and pulls the curtains. It is snowing heavily and settling and the world glows. She looks at the dark, hardening surface of the pond and thinks: the fish will hibernate. She has read this. And she walks back to bed thinking, I too will hibernate. When I wake up everything will be white and new.
On the side-table there is an old battered volume whose title has been worn away by its readers. Enid opens it and sees with disgust that is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. For a moment she wants to fling the book onto the floor but then, a drop of humanity emanating from the cracks in her hard shell, she leans back on the pillow, props herself up and opens the book.
“Very well, I am sorry,” she declares in a small, broken voice. She opens the book at random and sees:
Ambition´s debt is paid.
Enid reads the words in her own voice and stares at the page until the words disappear. With surprise she realises she is tired. Acknowledging that she has lost the battle takes the bitterness and sting out of the business and she lies the book down carefully, blows out the lamp and thinks: I like it here.
From her bed she can see the snow falling and, sometimes, she can see your face, your own eyelids slowly closing.
She sleeps.
Hello again.
It´s me, James.
You have just read the story of young Enid Waters. I hoped you liked it.
Enid does indeed become Head Girl at St Francis´ School and, by the time described in the first book in the series, The Invisible Hand, she is the headmistress there.
The Invisible Hand is a story about a boy, Sam, who has just started life at St Francis´ and finds himself able to travel back in time to medieval Scotland. There he meets a girl, Leana, who can travel to the future, and the two of them become wrapped up in events in Macbeth, the Shakespeare play, and in the daily life of the school.
The book is the first part of a series called Shakespeare´s Moon. Each book is set in the same boarding school but focuses on a different Shakespeare play.
The Invisible Hand will be published by Lodestar Book on 24th February, 2017. It is now available for pre-ordering at all good outlets.
Follow me on Twitter, at @jameshartleybks.
Remember, for another FREE, exclusive Shakespeare´s Moon short story called Delirium, go to my website and subscribe to my mailing list.
www.jameshartleybooks.com
Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from you soon!
James
Madrid
Halloween, 2016
Heart of Winter Page 6
