The Perils and Dangers of this Night

by Stephen Gregory

  I blinked. For a paralysing moment I thought of the piano tuning keys I'd stuffed down the side of the armchair that Dr Kemp was sitting on. Pryce saw the terror in my eyes, and said, 'No, Alan, the keys in the study. You know where they are . . .'

  The relief, for a split second only, was so marvellous that, without hesitating, I got up from the hearth and turned towards the door of the study. I stopped dead when the headmaster said, 'What the devil's going on? Scott, you know you never go into my study unless . . .'

  And I was held there, hovering between the fireplace and the study. Pryce was saying, 'Get them, Alan, Mrs Kemp has belittled my expertise . . .' and the headmaster repeated, 'I've told you, Scott, you don't go in there except . . .' so that I just stood there gaping, swivelling my face from one to the other as they both spoke to me at the same time.

  'The keys, Alan, from the headmaster's desk.'

  'Sit down, Scott, he has no right to tell you to . . .'

  'Just get them, Alan, the bunch of keys.'

  'For heaven's sake, Scott, just do as I say and . . .'

  I took a step towards the open door of the study. Mrs Kemp's voice cut through, unusually shrill, the ugliest sound I'd ever heard her make. 'Listen to me, Alan! Keep out of there!'

  It produced a startling response from Pryce. 'Shut up!' he yelled into her face. 'You got what you were waiting for! I've dealt with you!'

  Kemp was on his feet, bristling and limber like a bear. 'How dare you?' He lunged at Pryce with all his weight, his arms stiff, his fists clenched.

  But Pryce was too quick and strong for him. Quite easily, his height and youth too much for the huffing, purple-faced headmaster, he held him off. Kemp tried to speak, but his anger was so great, his body quivering with rage, that the words refused to come. Mrs Kemp was pressing her hands to reddened cheeks. Sophie had stopped crying and had looped her arm around the woman's shoulders. When Pryce spoke, his voice was no more than a whisper.

  'Everyone jumps for the headmaster of Foxwood Manor School. The boys jump, the teachers jump, his wife jumps – well, she would if she could. It's time for a change. You don't bully me any more, Dr Kemp.'

  He propelled the man backwards and sat him into his armchair as though he were a helpless geriatric.

  He turned to me, where I stood frozen at the door of the study. 'Get me a gun.'

  My mind went blank. Reacting in fear, almost an automaton, I was in and out of the study in a matter of seconds. I grabbed the bunch of keys from their customary place in the top drawer of the headmaster's desk, flew out of the room and out of the hall and into the darkness of the downstairs corridor. My heart thudding, I just wanted to get away from the scene, a scene of ugliness and violence almost to match the extraordinary things I'd witnessed in the upstairs bathroom, the things that Pryce had done with Sophie the first night and with Mrs Kemp just the night before.

  I skidded through the shadows, jangling the heavy bundle of twenty or thirty keys – the keys for every room and cupboard in the school, on a single ring that the headmaster jangled with him wherever he went. The keys were the symbol of Dr Kemp's authority: his ownership of the school and everything in it. Now it was me, Alan Scott, a skinny, red-haired, twelve-year-old boy, who was holding them.

  I slithered to a halt, fumbled for the right one and inserted it into the lock. It snicked and turned.

  NO BOYS TO ENTER THIS ROOM WITHOUT A MEMBER OF STAFF. Inside the gun-room, where the single bulb festooned with cobwebs threw a yellowy light, I unlocked the safe. At the sight of the guns, I recoiled and squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing a bubble of nausea at the images that came to me: at home again, in summer, a man in black with a black balaclava and a thick, stubby gun, my father kneeling; my father twisting his head and shouting Run, Alan! Run! and an explosion of smoke and blood . . .

  Now I reached into the cupboard, with my eyes still shut, and my fingers found the long, smooth barrel of a .22. My other hand felt for a box of cartridges. As I backed away and slammed the cupboard shut, as I turned the key and switched off the light, as I fell out of the gun-room and into the corridor and fumbled to close the door again, it was as though I were shutting the door on my nightmare and locking it up. All of a sudden the image was gone. Except that I was holding in my hands a real reminder of my dream, a dream that wasn't a dream but a piece of my life that had really happened, that would never change, that could never be completely shut away.

  I trod along the corridor, towards the point of light at the further end that was the great hall.

  A game, Pryce had said, a game for Christmas. The rifle was heavy and cold. I knew I could still change my mind. So far I'd done what Pryce had told me to do, but I could still change my mind and put the gun back in the cupboard and lock it away. Then I could drop the whole bunch of keys behind the dustiest books on the highest, darkest shelf in the library, or stuff them deep inside a burst leather sofa in the staffroom where no one could find them, and go back to the hall and realign myself with Dr and Mrs Kemp.

  But I kept on walking, with the gun in one hand, the box of cartridges in my pocket, the keys in my other hand.

  Because, because – the words were the shuffle of my feet on the smooth lino – because it was only a game and no harm would come of it, because I was big and brave and nearly a teenager and more akin to the devilment of Martin Pryce than the stuffiness of Dr and Mrs Kemp; because I'd have some mind-boggling tales to tell my friends when they came back to school in the New Year.

  These were the reasons, the excuses, I ran through my head as I walked the length of the corridor and saw the light at the end grow bigger and bigger. But when I stepped into the hall and all the grown-ups turned and stared, I knew in my heart that I'd opted for Pryce and I was doing what Pryce had said because I was afraid of him.

  Crack! The tin cup flew into the air and landed, miraculously, upside down. Eject, reload, and crack! again. The cup leaped off the mantelpiece and clanged onto the hearth.

  Pryce had immediately relieved me of the rifle and the cartridges. While the headmaster had tutted and puffed, slumped as deep into his armchair as he could go, while Mrs Kemp and Sophie sat bravely upright, white-faced, with their arms around each other, Pryce had loaded the gun, stepped away to the opposite side of the hall and taken aim at his cup. Now it bounced into the fireplace, dented by the bullets that had struck it.

  'For Christ's s-s-s-sake, Martin . . .'

  'I've lost none of my skills,' he crowed. 'I'm still the dead-eye I was when I was ten.'

  He reloaded and fired at the cup again, where it had landed by Mrs Kemp's feet. It jumped a foot into the air. The bullet ricocheted off the hearth, fizzed across the room and embedded itself in the side of the piano.

  'You bloody fool!' the headmaster blurted. 'It won't be so funny if somebody . . .'

  He stopped in mid-sentence, as Pryce reloaded and trained the gun at him and past him.

  'It's a game, headmaster, it's Christmas,' Pryce said, and he levelled the gun just over the man's head and fired into the trophy cabinet he'd left open. Ejecting and reloading every time, the spent cartridges jumping from the chamber and smoking on the carpet, he fired and fired. The cups clanged and jumped. Cups that hadn't moved for years were suddenly loud and hot, and the bullets lodged in the ancient oak panelling behind them.

  'Alan, your turn.'

  I'd stayed by the headmaster's study, well away from the shooting. Maybe I thought that by running the errand and bringing the gun, I'd done all that was required of me. Now Pryce took hold of my wrist and tugged me centre-stage.

  'Come on, Alan, have a go. When I was your age I was already a champion, my name engraved for posterity – is that the right expression, Dr Kemp? – on a magnificent trophy. Here, just try it.'

  He thrust the gun at me. I recoiled from the heat of it, the smell of it.

  Mrs Kemp stepped in. To me, she was a beautiful, classical heroine: her fine blonde hair was aflame in the firelight, her perfect complexion was flus
hed from the heat of the blaze. 'It's not fair. I told you about Alan. Leave him out of this.'

  Pryce paused, as though to let it sink in. He seemed to weigh what she'd said. 'Thank you for that, Mrs Kemp. Yes, you told me the story, but I'm the teacher now. We know what the problem is, so let's deal with it. Alan, come on . . .'

  He held me close, pulling me hard against his body, and pushed the gun into my hands. 'Trust me, Alan. I know you're afraid of guns, and I know why. You were afraid of Dr Kemp but you're not any more, thanks to me. So let's do it with the gun, come on.'

  I squirmed like a fish. Pryce shouted through clenched teeth, 'Do it!' and pulled the trigger. With one arm he encircled me, with the other he pointed the gun randomly into the air and fired into the ceiling. A cloud of plaster showered down.

  'For fuck's sake, Martin! You're f-f-f-fucking crazy!'

  Pryce shoved me away. 'Jesus, Sophie, of course I'm crazy. I'm an old boy of Foxwood Manor School, you wouldn't expect me to be sane, would you? I mean, look at Alan, the poor snivelling little sod, and look . . .' He reloaded and trained the gun across the honours boards and the school photographs. 'Look, hundreds of crazy people, and just think of the ones you've met – me and Jeremy, both of us fucking crazy . . .'

  The girl took a breath, very deliberate, determined to slow things down. She made a flagging gesture with both hands, as if to calm a runaway horse. She said very quietly, 'Don't tell them, Martin. If you don't tell them, we can still get out of this.'

  He put the gun on top of the piano. He crossed to Sophie and took her head in both his hands. It was a curious gesture. His hands were big and powerful, cupped around her small, round head. They could have been lover's hands, and he might have leaned down and kissed her; or they could have been the hands of a killer, strong enough to break her neck with a single twist. He just held her head and swayed it from side to side, as though it were a ball, or a bowl full of water.

  He said to her with particular politeness, although some of the words were ugly, 'We can never get out of this, Sophie. It's like Fauré's fucking Requiem. It goes back too far. What happened last week to you and me and Jeremy started here, at Foxwood, fourteen fucking years ago.'

  He let go of her head and stood back. He had the rapt attention of everyone in the room. He said to Mrs Kemp, 'You wanted to hear about Jeremy. Well, it's Jeremy I've come to talk about. It's why we're here.'

  TWELVE

  Pryce sent me outside for more firewood.

  It was snowing heavily. An odd expression, wrong really, because the snowflakes were as light as moths. There was no wind, but as the snow fell from the heavens and came to earth, on some mad impulse it whirled in the trees and danced in the cold air until it floated to the ground. In a glimmer of moonlight, it was pretty, it was a picture: the vast, silent woodland, the big old house with just a faint gleam of gold from its shutters, the snow so soft on the lawn with not a footprint of man or beast.

  Christmas Eve. It looked like a Christmas card; or a Christmas ornament, a globe filled with water and artificial snowflakes, shaken to make a perfect winter scene.

  Not quite a silent woodland. The trees groaned as they moved together, very old and very cold; not dead, although their branches were so black and so bare, but ancient living things which felt the ache of the ice in their bones. I heard the yelp of a fox as it limped through the derelict bracken. I listened and watched as an owl beat through the air and landed in the copper beech. It gripped with its talons and shuffled its feathers, and it heaved and heaved until it retched a shining black pellet which fell to the ground and steamed a little. A minute later, the owl had wafted into the forest, and the pellet was hidden under gently deepening snow.

  I went around the house to the yard. The owl hooted. I peered into the stable, where the jackdaw heard the sound and stared into the darkness. As it sprang from one end of its perch to the other, as far as the leather jesses would allow, the silvery bells tinkled softly. The bird hissed, as though in answer to the owl. It could hear the snow falling in the stable yard, and the whisper of the wind in the trees.

  In the great hall, when I returned with an armful of logs, Pryce was talking. He was sitting in one of the fireside chairs. He'd picked up the gun again and was cradling it in his arms.

  He was calm, his voice tinged with nostalgia.

  'My dear little brother, my little Jeremy – it's funny, but before he came to Foxwood, I seem to remember that Dr Kemp thought I was quite a good singer, with quite a good ear. But then Jeremy arrived, and he had perfect pitch, which made all the difference. Like Alan here, he was born with a gift from God. He was angelic, brilliant, perfect Jeremy Pryce, and from then on, I was just not good enough.'

  He pointed the gun at the honours boards, training it up and down until he found his brother's name.

  'Yes, Jeremy went up to Oxford this autumn, with a scholarship. But these were the formative years, at Foxwood Manor. Jeremy was the headmaster's darling, a quiet, sensitive thing – always in the study with Dr Kemp, always in the music room or the chapel with Dr Kemp, always behind closed doors. So that some of us – not me of course, because I was his protective, loving older brother – some of the other boys wondered what else was going on in there, apart from the music, the headmaster and Jeremy locked away so long and so often. You know how they giggle, horrid smutty boys, how they tittle and tattle. Somebody coined a name for Jeremy: he was Dolly Boy, the headmaster's little Dolly Boy . . .'

  The headmaster sighed noisily and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

  'Yes, it sounds so silly, doesn't it?' Pryce went on. 'Petty, prep-school stories. But Jeremy was afraid. He told me. He was afraid of the other boys. And worse, he was afraid of Dr Kemp.'

  'It's preposterous,' the man said. 'I don't know why we're sitting here listening . . .'

  'Afraid of Dr Kemp. He told me. He was ten years old, a long way from home, and often alone with Dr Kemp, who . . .'

  'I won't hear any more of this . . .'

  'Who would sometimes sit on the edge of Jeremy's bath and watch him, and sit on the side of his bed at lights-out and sometimes touch . . .'

  'I never touched him, I would never . . .'

  'And sometimes touch him or else just look and look – so that the other boys saw what was happening and made life a misery and a torment for Jeremy Pryce, the headmaster's little Dolly Boy . . .'

  'None of the boys are unhappy here. It just isn't true.'

  Pryce levelled the gun at the school photographs. 'Look at the faces. Lost and lonely little boys, bullied and abused by Dr Kemp . . .'

  'That's enough!' The headmaster struggled to pull himself out of his chair. 'I won't have any more . . .'

  Pryce pulled the trigger. A bullet shattered the glass of one of the photos. Sophie and Mrs Kemp squealed. He reloaded and fired again, and another photo exploded into smithereens. Kemp collapsed back into his chair.

  'Jeremy was afraid and unhappy at Foxwood.' Pryce's voice was unnervingly matter-of-fact. 'It all started here, and it didn't stop when he left. When he went to public school, when the two of us were at public school in our teens, the rumours went with him. There were other boys who'd been at Foxwood, and they kept the Dolly Boy nickname going – not just the nickname, but the reputation too. Jeremy was pale and shy and pretty, small for his age. Some of the senior boys, and even one of the masters, took advantage of him . . .'

  'I just don't believe it,' the headmaster said.

  'They took advantage of his prettiness and shyness. They used him for sex. He told me. I tried to help him, but I couldn't.'

  He paused. There was a silence. Neither Mrs Kemp nor Sophie said a word. They stared into the fire. Sitting in the shadows at the foot of the staircase, I ducked my head and picked at the weals on my hands.

  Pryce broke open the gun. A spent cartridge flew out; he thumbed in another. The metallic click as he snapped the chamber shut was sharp and business-like. He aimed the gun at Dr Kemp's foot.

  'Marti
n – d-d-don't . . .'

  He ignored the girl, her querulous stammering. He trained the gun up and down the headmaster's body, so that the man cringed and clenched himself involuntarily as though trying to become an invisible part of the chair.

  Pryce went on, his voice even softer.

  'So Jeremy won a scholarship and went to Oxford. It was a credit to him, that through all the fear and the misery of his schooldays he achieved so much. And at Oxford, for the first time in ten years, he found a place where no one knew him. No more sniggering, no more rumours, no more ugly, suggestive whispers. He thought he'd escaped all that.'

  No one was looking at the fire any more, and I'd stopped studying the palms of my hands. Pryce had the full attention of the Kemps and Sophie and me. The headmaster was especially attentive: the gun was aimed straight at his head.

  'But no,' Pryce said, reflectively. 'They never heal, the scars of our childhood. Jeremy was riddled with shame. He questioned his own sexuality. The first time he met girls – and he'd never met them before in all his life – he was disturbed and agonised. It only took a glance and a smile from another man to make him snap . . .'

  He lowered the gun, reached into his pocket and took out a slip of paper. He started to unfold it.

  'I had a note from Jeremy last week,' he said, his voice no more than a whisper. 'His last note.' He read from the piece of paper. 'It started with Kemp. I disgust myself. I would rather be dead.'

  We all gaped at him. My palms were prickling. Sophie was weeping.

  'Jeremy killed himself five days ago, at the end of his first term at Oxford. Somehow – I don't know how exactly, but he must have thought it was appropriate – he contrived to strangle himself with a string he'd removed from a piano.'

  Mrs Kemp put her hands to her mouth and leaned forwards. She retched, barking like a dog, then buried her face and mewed. Sophie just stared and stared at Pryce. Tears rolled down her cheeks and into the corners of her lips.

  Pryce crumpled the piece of paper into a tight little ball and lobbed it into the fire. I watched the lazy, dreamlike, almost slow-motion arc of it, and then it lay and smoked for a moment before bursting into a lovely blossom of flame.