Wilberforce

by H. S. Cross

  His face was serene and bored. Too serene, too bored. Morgan snatched at the volume.

  —Bugger off, Laurie said.

  —I don’t think I will.

  —I’m warning you, Wilber, sod the hell off.

  Normally Morgan would’ve had no trouble winning an object from Laurie, but now Laurie’s twists sent a spear through him. He gasped.

  —Sorry, but I warned you.

  Laurie set the book behind him. Morgan breathed until the pain lessened. They didn’t speak, but the conversation passed between them exploring the inevitable future, in which Laurie might refuse to tell Morgan his secret now, even tomorrow, but in which Morgan would persist until Laurie did tell him, at a time and place far less convenient than a deserted library at Prep.

  —Oh, all right, Laurie said at last, but you can’t tell JP. I’m serious.

  They had an understanding about what to keep from Nathan, items ranging from the salacious to the irrational to the unjust, all guaranteed to send their studymate into a frenzy of indignation. Morgan couldn’t imagine which Laurie would be cradling in the library, but he nodded in agreement and Laurie passed him the volume.

  It was an atlas of the Orient, but Morgan saw upon opening it that the book was only a front for the pages folded inside. A periodical without photographs, dusty, with an uninspiring title.

  —The Pearl? Morgan balked. Is that why you don’t want JP to know?

  But the title had nothing apparently to do with Nathan’s surname.

  —Is it some bit of Red rubbish?

  Laurie bit his lip as he flicked to a page titled LADY POKINGHAM, OR THEY ALL DO IT; Giving an Account of her Luxurious Adventures, both before and after her Marriage with Lord Crim-Con.

  He had never read anything quite so … Pulling up her skirts, I threw Miss Arundel backwards on the sofa, and releasing my bursting weapon, threw myself between her yielding thighs, as I exclaimed, ‘You have indeed relieved me of making an invidious selection, as I cannot restrain the heat of my passion!’

  —But where did you get it?

  —Uncle Anton.

  Laurie had any number of obscure relations, none of whom Morgan had met. The only member of the Lydon family he knew was Laurie’s grandmother, who kept an odd, shamble-down place in Lincolnshire.

  —Is there any more?

  Frank Fane is to stay,

  To be whipped in the hall,

  To be whipped, till his whipping

  Atones for you all.

  Any boy that enjoys

  A fine flogging to see,

  I give leave to stay here,

  With Frank Fane and me.

  The Prep bell rang; everything throbbed; Laurie took back the book.

  —God, Morgan groaned.

  —Warned you.

  * * *

  They headed down to Sunday cocoa. Morgan was greeted enthusiastically by some and jostled by others, all of which helped subdue his physical distress.

  —Ah, Wilberforce.

  Mr. Grieves intercepted them as they approached the refectory arch.

  —Sir.

  —Glad to see you ambulating.

  Morgan watched anxiously as boys flowed past them. He realized he was ravenous, and with each moment, the chances of getting an extra biscuit were draining away.

  —Can I expect your Plantagenet composition tomorrow? Mr. Grieves continued.

  —Matron’s only just released him, sir, said Laurie.

  —You ought to have some extra time at Games.

  —Sir, Morgan protested, I’m playing.

  Mr. Grieves snorted:

  —Tiddlywinks, perhaps. I’ll have a word with Barlow and expect your essay Tuesday at break.

  —But, sir—

  —Three sides, no less.

  A fever upon him …

  —Don’t look at me like that, Mr. Grieves said.

  —It isn’t my fault I was in the Tower! Morgan protested. It isn’t fair to make me—

  —Get some rest, Wilberforce, and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

  With a tap to Morgan’s good arm, Mr. Grieves departed. Morgan looked to Laurie for some common outrage, but Laurie had joined the queue.

  —And Wilberforce? Mr. Grieves called. You’re welcome.

  Laurie ushered him through the crowds, fetched his cocoa and biscuit, and relayed Mr. Grieves’s tyranny to Nathan.

  —What I can’t stand, Morgan complained, is the sarcasm. If you’re going to be a skunk, be one, but don’t go all you’re welcome at the end of it.

  —He doesn’t remember, Nathan told Laurie.

  —Grieves was talking about the tackle, Laurie explained. He did his first-aid-in-the-trenches on you. He and Barlow carried you to the Tower.

  Morgan had never heard a more unappealing report. An evening of snags and now this?

  As they got up from the table, Laurie passed him a clipping: Taking every possible advantage, he continued his motions with thrilling energy, till I could not help responding to his delicious thrusts, moving my bottom a little to meet each returning insertion of his exciting weapon (we were lying on our sides)—

  5

  A crash across the corridor interrupted Mr. Grieves’s lecture on Anne Boleyn. Morgan exchanged glances with Nathan, who reddened, and Laurie, who rolled his eyes. Mr. Grieves cleared his throat and continued.

  The ruckus emanating from the Third’s form room sounded like a collapsed desk, one of Alex’s specialties, and Morgan felt perturbed all over again at his inability to keep the boy in check. When Alex had come to the Academy the previous autumn, the three of them had tried to contain him, but he’d quickly earned a reputation as Most Whacked (in the Third, but now the school). They’d hoped that Alex would settle down after Christmas, but Alex parried a scathing set of term reports with a wounded attitude: Yes, we all know I’m not Saint Nathan. I’ll never be good enough for you, sob! After several performances of Misunderstood Alex, their mother took pity on him, their father took refuge in his writing shed, and Nathan took to wondering if he was too overbearing with his brother.

  Alex had returned after Christmas emboldened. Each new escapade made the fags more arrogant and Alex more of a perisher. He’d never have got away with it under Silk. Silk would have put Alex in his place. Given free rein, Morgan would put Alex in his place. But he wasn’t given free rein. He had no official authority over Alex and nowhere private to deal with him as required.

  Morgan had been out of the Tower two days, yet the shadow lingered, casting a pall over everything. He reported to Matron every four hours for chalky aspirin, which made his shoulder hurt less but did nothing against the stiffness and general feebleness that made him feel at least fifty. He would not be playing any more rugby this term, he knew that now, so the Smashup had wrecked not only his shoulder but also his career on the XV. The embarrassing urgency with which he’d hectored Barlow he blamed on Matron’s drafts. That explanation coupled with his scrupulously ordinary behavior had managed to scotch any rumors of off-his-dot-itude, but the solace of Uncle Anton’s magazine had introduced new difficulties. Monday, he’d been forced to take Personal Exercise in the toilets during French rather than in bed at night, which had presented a dilemma come evening Prep: either he could break his unbreakable rule that limited PE to once a day, or he could lie awake in demented anguish. He knew too well the consequences of breaking the unbreakable PE rule, so he resorted to visiting the Cross Keys during Prep. That whole operation—from the agony of crawling through the tunnel and hacking through the woods to Fridaythorpe, to the awkwardness of lying to Nathan and Laurie about it—had testified to the shadow’s contamination of the world since the Smashup.

  Mr. Grieves squeezed addendum after addendum into the baroque diagram, which purported to elucidate the court politics of Henry VIII.

  —Have you got that down? Mr. Grieves asked.

  The Fifth murmured. Nathan peered darkly into the corridor.

  —Don’t think about it, Laurie whispered. Me a
nd Wilber’ll sort Alex out.

  —With that wing? Nathan scoffed.

  —I’m not an invalid, Morgan growled. I can manage your beastly brother.

  —Like hell.

  —What was that, Pearl?

  Mr. Grieves turned from the blackboard. Nathan blinked cold eyes:

  —I was asking Wilberforce what it said below George Boleyn, sir.

  —It sounded like a bit more than that.

  —No, sir.

  Mr. Grieves and his chalk-covered gown returned to the diagram.

  —Pearl has a point, he said tartly. So to ensure you’ve all managed to decipher this scrawl—

  He scrutinized his handiwork:

  —Which appears, I must say, to have been written by a ballet-dancing hippo with chalk in its toe …

  No one chuckled.

  —Please leave your exercise books behind. I shall review them. With care.

  The room lapsed into sullen silence. Nathan’s knee jittered as he listened for sounds across the corridor.

  Morgan couldn’t understand how Nathan and Alex could have grown up in the same household. Summers on the Irish Sea, Alex wore piratical costume; Nathan, short trousers and bare feet. Alex mooched around the house reading penny dreadfuls and the novels their father had written; Nathan strode down the sand, long-limbed, wiry, peering at tide pools through his camera. Alex disliked the water, but Nathan went with Morgan thrice daily into the sea. Thrashed side by side in the heavy, gritty surf, knocked back, upside down, sand and salt churning up their noses, they fought the undertow, until Nathan’s hands closed around his arm and his hair, hauling him again into the air, onto the sand, leaning over him, flesh pink and lacerated by the sea, eyes bloodshot, lashes long, long enough to—

  The bell dispersed their lethargy. Morgan tossed his empty book onto Grieves’s desk and pressed through the crowd after Nathan and Laurie.

  —What’s the point? Nathan grumbled. No one’s going to copy that tripe.

  —Makes him feel better, Laurie said. He’ll moan half the lesson tomorrow and then have it out of his system.

  Across the cloisters, a cluster of juniors erupted into laughter.

  —Oi! Nathan shouted.

  The cluster laughed louder as Alex burst from it and dashed past the three of them with a taunting curse. Before Nathan could react, Morgan and Laurie pulled him into the dim, empty chapel.

  —You can’t let Alex needle you, Laurie said. If he wants to raise hell, on his arse be it.

  —Mendacious little sod! I’m not stiff in my moral joints, and I’m not a fainting virgin, thank you very much.

  —Perhaps not fainting, Laurie breathed.

  —The point, Morgan said, is that Alex knows how to get you on the raw, and he loves to do it. Let me and Snail remediate him. If you try, it’ll only give him more satisfaction.

  —It’s easy for you to take the high ground, Nathan said bitterly. You don’t have a brother making a fool of you, busting things up right and left, driving your mother into the grave with worry, and—

  Laurie kicked him. In a flush of embarrassment, Nathan stalked out of the chapel. Morgan followed, high tide of mothers—you’re grand, a stór—He yanked his bad arm until the pain cleared his head.

  —Speaking of rumors, he said, do you think it’s true about Spaulding and Rees?

  Except he wasn’t supposed to be asking about Spaulding.

  —It’s rot, Laurie told him. Spaulding isn’t even attainable.

  —Larkspur says he is.

  —But by Rees? Laurie protested. I mean, what a loathsome specimen.

  —Larkspur says Rees’s had half the House already.

  —Larkspur told you this?

  He’d found Larkspur in the toilets during Chemistry, and as a connoisseur of changing-room gossip, Larkspur surpassed even Colin.

  —It came up, Morgan replied feebly.

  —At least, Nathan grumbled, we can be grateful Alex hasn’t gone in for that.

  Such remarks were precisely why Nathan could never know about The Pearl, and why Morgan had not invited him or Laurie to the Keys last night, because that would involve an explanation of his PE difficulties, which would not only involve Uncle Anton’s wretched magazine, but would also advertise that he, Morgan, had grown disordered in his personal habits and perhaps even in that regard gone off his dot. The reasons for lying to his friends last night were too complex to explain even to himself, but the point was that he wasn’t planning on making a habit of it.

  They strolled into French after the bell. As Hazlehurst had not yet arrived, they punted Rees’s belongings around the room while Rees gave chase, complaining in his high, irritating voice. Once their Housemaster turned up and moaned at them to take their seats, Morgan’s chest began to tighten, restricting breath, nothing to block the high tide rising by the second: Rees and Spaulding alone in the changing room; Alex in the study after dark, sitting on a striped backside, learning what his cock was for …

  —Le passé simple est simple, Hazlehurst crooned.

  —Le passé simple est simple.

  It was essential that he think of something else: Tudors, Stewarts, Plantagenet intrigues, the cosine of 60, the meter of Endymion, the passé simple of aller.

  —Il allé?

  —Alla. Alla, idiot boy! Le passé simple est simple!

  —Sorry, sir, but Est-ce que je peux aller aux toilettes?

  Personal Exercise urgent. If he couldn’t defeat the high tide, he’d have to resort to getting caned just to stop himself going mad.

  That night at Prep, he excused himself from the study, again pleading pain too sharp to endure. With calculated gait he crossed the quad, but inside the Tower, rather than mounting the stairs to Matron’s rooms, he used his penknife to spring the latch on the supply cupboard. Taking care not to disturb the mops and brooms, he let himself out the window to the grass beneath. A jagged dash across the playing fields, a stabbing squeeze through the poacher’s tunnel, and a swift stalk through Grindalythe Woods brought him mercifully to the Cross Keys, where Polly, the landlord’s daughter, brought him the usual.

  —How’re you keeping, pet? she asked. Still badly?

  He allowed her to touch his hair while he mouthed flirtations. She was affectionate to him, but he didn’t desire her. Laurie considered her plain, and Nathan declined her advances out of respect for Julia, a girl he claimed to have had during the holidays. Morgan classed Polly as a child.

  He drank half the pint in one go. It calmed the back of his throat and sent an agreeable pulsing through his jaw and temples. He swallowed the rest and nodded for another.

  He would drink the next more slowly, he told Polly. His shoulder would stop hurting halfway through the second pint, and by the third, the high tide would be well out to sea … if that’s what happened to tides? The point was that the entire visit was medicinal, and anyone who said otherwise was a moralist.

  Morality was something invented by old men who wished upon the young a life as desiccated as those they lived themselves, he told Polly. If he left the Academy to take a peaceable pint in lieu of Prep, he was merely making more of the evening than his fellows, who were in any case occupied consuming home brew, placing wagers, venting their frustrations on the younger generation, doing anything, in fact, but attending to the worthless tasks their masters had assigned them knowing full well they wouldn’t even try.

  —You have got a lem on, Polly declared tousling his hair.

  She went to pull his second pint and winked as she placed it on the bar. Perhaps she wasn’t such a child after all. As a matter of fact, she seemed to have recently … Yesterday you were a child, Now a blooming blushing virgin; Female passions warm and wild—

  He dragged himself to the bar and exchanged his glass for the new one full of soft, thick, perfectly foamed bitter. Two gulps, three, cooling the gills, opening passages, oiling his joints as he turned back to the room—into the path of Mr. Grieves.

  * * *

  A mere
six feet between them and the room changed color—warm yellow to a buzzing brown. Mr. Grieves wore a pullover, shirt open at the collar, fingertips at his trouser pocket as if he were about to remove a handkerchief.

  —I think you’d better sit, Wilberforce, before you spill any more down the front of yourself.

  Morgan righted his glass. Grieves produced the handkerchief, but Morgan pointedly used his own.

  The brown moment continued, regardless of sense. Grieves fetched a mug of tea, which he placed on Morgan’s table. He sat down. Morgan eyed him.

  —What are you doing here, sir?

  —I might ask the same of you.

  He gestured to the stool Morgan had been occupying. Morgan dragged it to the opposite side of the table and sat.

  —Last I checked, Grieves said, it wasn’t out-of-bounds for an undermaster to take solace at the Cross Keys. Fifth Formers, however …

  Morgan’s heart beat in his throat with the buzzing fear, the hunger he used to know when there were men who could hold him to account, so painful and essential that he could hardly breathe.

  But Grieves was not one of those men, not anymore. Grieves was an undermaster in a time when nothing mattered. Grieves, in fact, was nothing but a nuisance, taking it upon himself to interrupt the remedies Morgan had come all the way to Fridaythorpe to attain. Grieves needed taking down a peg.

  —Are you going to tell S-K? Morgan asked flatly.

  The man met his gaze, unthreatened and oddly unthreatening, as if capturing a pupil at the Cross Keys were an occasion for curiosity rather than indignation.

  —I should, Grieves replied at last. I can’t think how you’ve managed to skive off Prep, but please don’t tell me.

  —I wasn’t going to, sir.

  —What interests me, Grieves continued, is why you’re here.

  Morgan did not reply.

  —The second night in a row, and without Pearl or Lydon.

  Morgan took a slow swallow of his drink.

  —Don’t look so shocked, Grieves said mildly. You normally come together, don’t you, Saturday evenings?

  Morgan’s head thumped, and he could feel his veins rushing blood to his heart, as if some agent were summoning it from the outposts of his body.