by H. S. Cross
—Now.
Now. A thousand, rushing—now!
* * *
Lungs, air, in, out, green-and-brown still trained upon him. Even now, when no eyes should look, they looked on him. They looked on him because they desired him, even as he lay conquered and drained. The ruins of the Hermes Balcony lay around them, relic of another age. This green-and-brown lion had crashed through every wall, not to savage, but to sit as he did now, with the one he had wanted all along. Shadows, trenches—all swept aside by this new and real life.
Green-and-brown still held him in its ray, even as Spaulding took a handkerchief and did what one used to do to oneself, in the age when one didn’t look. A wave of sleepiness brushed across him, but he clung to the green-and-brown, which burned on him now with a homecoming he had craved as long as he knew.
Spaulding did up Morgan’s flies and buttoned his jacket, those hands straightening his tie, those fingers brushing against the stitches in his chin, a minuscule kind of pity.
Time, having nearly perished in the deep, regained its stay. From the steeple above, it tolled, a terrible pulse that wrenched them back to the morning hour, to the school, to the damp and dreary March of their year.
Spaulding looked up, no longer as he’d been, and as he slid off Morgan’s knees, an abysmal sorrow stabbed. This harbor did not belong to him. Spaulding was preparing to depart, to cast the green-and-brown on another, on that most loathsome creature the earth had ever belched up.
—What about Rees?
Spaulding’s face darkened. Morgan wished he could take back the question and the sour voice that asked it. Spaulding looked away, pulled away, leaving Morgan unweighted and cold.
—He says he’ll …
—What?
Spaulding moved to the corner of the balcony and peered over the rail, his whole self consumed with Rees.
—Who cares what the brute says? Morgan protested. He’ll say anything under the sun, and none of it true. You should’ve seen him doing Guy Fawkes in class. It was enough to make you sick.
Spaulding looked back at him, pity, sorrow, disappointment:
—He says he’ll hang himself.
Morgan caught his breath, at Rees’s nerve, at Spaulding for believing him and for looking at Morgan as though—
—Has he got any rope?
Spaulding drew back. The crass weight of material fact had apparently not occurred to him.
—Just what is it he wants you to do? Morgan asked.
Spaulding blushed:
—I don’t fancy trekking back to the barn just now, with everything.
—Good.
—But if I don’t go, he says … that’s where we …
Morgan’s tongue soured. The vileness that followed pleasure now pounced, clamping him in its jaws all the harder for having been delayed. Spaulding and Rees were We, and they went to lengths far greater than the Hermes Balcony to achieve it. The balcony was cold, drab, and scruffy, the green-and-brown a figment of his imagination.
Morgan got up and dusted his clothes.
—You’re clever, Spaulding said. What would you do?
—I would never have messed about with Rees in the first place.
Spaulding winced:
—I know.
It didn’t sound like affirmation. It sounded as though he knew Morgan lacked some essential human capacity.
—Still? Spaulding said.
Spaulding stood between the broken chairs, a gray-suited schoolboy, mostly grown yet unprepared for what stalked him. His humility and his need melted everything, until Morgan was weak again before him.
—I don’t know what I’d do, Morgan said at last. But if you give in to him today, he’ll only carry on with it tomorrow and the next day, as long as he likes.
Spaulding’s shoulders tightened:
—I know.
* * *
The morning was interminable, but at least it had spared them yesterday’s trials. John’s classes behaved themselves. S-K had not yet made an appearance, and John wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if the man became seriously indisposed. Burton-Lee normally stood in when the Headmaster was obliged to be elsewhere; he would surely serve as Deputy Head if S-K fell ill for an extended period, a notion, once conceived, that stirred John’s unease. While it was true that Burton shared John’s ambition to elevate the intellectual attainment of their pupils, rather than the usual public-school aim to churn out good sports with good manners, John suspected that Burton unleashed would make life unpleasant for everyone, most especially for him. Burton’s vision for the Academy would certainly be filled with athletic and disciplinary excess, a vision unmoored in its enthusiasms from the Academy S-K was trying to conserve. Not that John approved of the Academy as it operated presently, but when he had first come, a mere seven years previous, S-K’s Academy had still lived and breathed, a world of loyalty and faith, one that would accept a pacifist into its midst not because it in any way approved of his pacifism, but because it respected his having withstood attacks on the basis of conscience.
The Lower Sixth were writing a short essay. A knock at the door revealed Rees, looking flushed and worse for wear.
—Head to see Spaulding, sir.
His voice was raspy, as confessing a secret in stage whisper. John gritted his teeth at the manufactured melodrama of it all. He had no notion why S-K should want to speak with Spaulding—John would have interviewed several others in the Lower Sixth first—but apparently Rees had himself been confronted. John regretted ever having made Rees the center of attention. It had only egged him on, and now he was attempting to drag Spaulding into his misfortunes. Hopefully S-K had rattled Rees, if not on the grounds he deserved. John bade Spaulding go and waved Rees back to wherever he belonged.
John was inordinately hungry. Had he remembered to eat breakfast before departing his digs this morning? There had not been anything, he remembered now. He had returned much later than planned, the shops had been closed, and—he simply couldn’t keep track of housekeeping details in the face of midnight visitors, improvised bonfires, unexpected duty hours, complex bicycle arrangements, not to mention the ever-shifting developments each day seemed poised to inflict.
The lesson was almost over. Shortly luncheon would bring relief, provided S-K hadn’t again mandated a meal more Spartan than inmates could expect in York Castle Prison. He ought to mark at least two more exercise books in the eight minutes that remained. Why did he set so much written work? Here before him was the mere tip of the iceberg, the Fifth’s prep from last night, their surely unsound arguments on the evidence for Guy Fawkes and his apostasy (short answer: fat chance). He couldn’t do it. Not just now. Tonight he would do it. He was off duty tonight. He would return to his digs in time for tea. He would purchase biscuits. He would even, he decided, treat himself to shepherd’s pie and parkin at the Keys. Then—post steeplechase, post shower, post parkin, nursing a pot of tea in the warmth of the Keys—then he would storm through the abysmal pile of compositions. He would work like the motor of a Halford Special. He would dust through the Fifth and consign memory of the entire Guy Fawkes lesson to the bin; then he would devour the tepid study questions of the lower forms and the tangled paragraphs of the Sixth. In fact, he vowed he would not turn out the light until his satchel was fully addressed, and tomorrow night he would cycle home unladen! He could hear his Magdalene supervisor now: He ought to make a start on the pile in the last moments remaining to the morning. To refuse would be to encourage the demon sloth. Even if he only skimmed the contents, it would be easier to face them later. His supervisor had been correct in everything (save his disapproval of pacifism), but still, John felt the urge to sulk in the face of this man summoned by mere thought. John sighed aloud and opened the top book in the pile. It belonged to Lydon. John flipped through it but did not find the assigned composition. Joy blended equally with outrage. He tossed the book aside and addressed the next: a mere five sentences! He would savage it later. The next fo
ur revealed equally paltry efforts. In the final minutes of lesson, he surveyed the entire pile from the Fifth and discovered only five that required marking, the remainder having declined to complete the assignment. Among the five he was pleased—disproportionately pleased—to find Wilberforce, who usually numbered himself amongst the idle. For Wilberforce to have done the prep last night indicated genuine effort, especially as Pearl and Lydon had returned blank books. Wilberforce’s composition (and on quick glance it appeared worthwhile; at least it stretched to two sides) felt to John a vote of confidence. Wilberforce was saying to him, in the only language available, The things you teach us matter, sir. I understand you.
* * *
Morgan was starving. He had by stroke of genius deflected Nathan’s and Laurie’s horrified interest in his summons to the Headmaster. It was, he told them, another of the Academy’s howlers. S-K hadn’t sent for him; Matron had sent for him, to administer one draft in advance of the other directly before lunch. Who could make sense of it? He wasn’t supposed to be lying to them anymore, but he couldn’t get into Spaulding, especially not with the glance Alex was throwing him across the queue (keep your arse out of other people’s changing rooms), threatening to puncture his composure and leave him spewing the truth (I couldn’t have dreamed you up!). But then S-K materialized, led silent procession into the refectory, and pronounced grace with record coldness. Morgan glimpsed Spaulding three tables away: flushed, distrait, and blasting him with the green-and-brown.
How was he meant to survive this cloak-and-dagger of glances? Noise exploded through the hall, harsh and nauseating. It didn’t help that the soup was greasy, that Laurie made lavatorial jokes about what was floating in it, or that an aroma of onions pervaded the air. Morgan scanned the hall for Rees; he’d been absent from the last lesson and was absent now. Morgan hadn’t seen him in the Tower when he’d gone for his aspirin just before the meal. He choked down the soup and pulled himself together. Only in the pages of a penny dreadful would Rees go and hang himself. Obviously he was sulking somewhere.
Madness could not reign unchecked forever. Even the Jews got out of Babylon eventually. The trick to an impossible mess, his mother taught him, was to begin in one place and refuse to be discouraged by the enormity of the thing. He couldn’t repel a whole army of evils, but he could, if he chose, take Rees down a peg and curb his infernal nerve. He could do it easily. Rees would collapse like a matchstick tower in the face of the technique. Given quarter of an hour and some privacy, Morgan could put an end to Rees’s infuriating threats and beat back the column of insanity.
The problem was getting Rees alone. He was too old to be forcibly abducted and too hostile to come willingly. What’s more, Morgan felt he had exhausted the Head-to-see ruse. He could explain to his friends only so many aberrations.
And now in the middle of the meal, S-K was descending from the masters’ table and extinguishing conversation as he swept between the benches and came to a halt before REN’s junior table. There he spoke to three boys, who turned red as though seized by fever. Then S-K returned to the masters’ table, noise resumed, and the objects of S-K’s address were devoured by the surrounding boys; Morgan half expected to find their bones after the meal, cleaned dry and spread across the benches. As the table fags cleared, Burton-Lee called for silence and announced new arrangements for the afternoon’s steeplechases, none of which mattered to Morgan since Matron had confirmed that he was forbidden to run. He was to spend the afternoon in his study, she said, or he might if he wished take light exercise in the—
Some ideas shimmered, but others blasted through darkness like the Eddystone Light. Matron had ordered him to forgo the steeplechase. She had restricted him to the Academy while the rest of the school took to Abbot’s Common. He was at liberty for almost two hours, free to track Rees to his bunker, be it study, dormitory, even changing room (Alex!). The Eddystone Light overflowed the gloom: he would uncover Rees this very day, and once he had him alone, he would roll up his sleeves and set the stockfish straight. Technique, and more technique. Rees thought he’d blackmail Spaulding? Morgan would sort the sprat out before the first runners hit Nut Wood, and then—then! There was a gully just beyond the last turn on the course, a gully he could achieve in some few minutes at a light jog—Eddystone, Holyhead, all paled beside this! If, after dismantling Rees, he could achieve the gully, and if Spaulding could achieve it with him, what a quarter of an hour they might spend! Spaulding would have to give his lieutenants the slip, but certainly Spaulding possessed the necessary cunning. Morgan had only to tell him of the plan. In a minute luncheon would end, and they would drift en masse to the final lesson of the day, after which they would repair to changing rooms for the run. What he had to do was to slip Spaulding a note, now before lessons resumed. He had to jumble against Spaulding as if by accident and in that one jarring moment, he had to tuck the note into Spaulding’s pocket, slipping his fingers into the fabric of his—
A voice within him bellowed in despair. Morgan, filing out of the refectory with his friends, wondered just what demanded such vexation. The tide was turning, dangling before him a glorious opportunity to do for Spaulding what Spaulding could do not for himself in the life-giving radiance of Eddystone—the voice exhorted him to untangle his metaphor and reattach his brain. He proposed passing Spaulding a note? A note? Notes could be found. Notes could be read. Notes were off the agenda.
Morgan deflated as the crowd swept him into the washroom. There Laurie clambered onto the basins to address the mob about what he’d learned in the refectory:
—Someone has gone to S-K and confessed.
Shock and consternation from the assembly.
—S-K told three of REN’s fags to come to him after lunch.
—Which ones?
Laurie reeled off two names but couldn’t swear to the last.
—So the fags were behind it! someone cried.
—Do you think so? Laurie retorted.
Nathan glowered in the doorway. Morgan knew what he was thinking: Someone had confessed to S-K, but Alex had not been summoned?
—I’d hate to be the one who peached, someone else said.
The assembly murmured and began jointly to imagine an array of punishments inflicted by the Headmaster on the guilty, and by the guilty on their betrayers.
Had Alex sold his comrades? Morgan couldn’t believe it. What would he gain?
The bell rang, and Morgan was propelled out of the washroom to French. He had not worked out how to tell Spaulding about the gully, but at least the fever that had gripped the school would shortly break. More confessions would ensue, tears, recriminations, punishments, perhaps even expulsions, but then S-K would stop holding grudges against the rest of them. Term would end in a few days, and they could depart for Easter cleansed. Come summer, everything could return to usual—as long as someone put Rees in his place and foiled his extravagant plot against Spaulding.
A knock at the classroom door once again disturbed their lesson. One of the fags from lunch entered, eyes bloodshot; he handed Hazlehurst a note and fled. Hazlehurst opened it with relish.
—Ah! It appears that our esteemed Headmaster wishes to speak with Wilberforce.
—Again? Laurie hissed.
A current coursed through the room. Nathan turned to him, astonished and betrayed.
This was the true summons, one direct from the Head’s study given the messenger, one that could testify only to involvement, complicit or direct, in the abysmal matters that beset their world. This was the destruction he had been sensing, waiting to take him when he was weak and unsuspecting.
He floated out the classroom door and along the corridor towards the Headmaster’s house. One of the fags must have seen him going out or coming in and had peached to curry favor with the Headmaster. He made a decision: whatever S-K knew or demanded, Morgan would not implicate Grieves. He had gone to Fridaythorpe and changed his mind. That was all. And he would not implicate Spaulding or Rees, since it was a damn
able fact that he could not expose the latter without the former. The important thing was to hurry the interview along so S-K would release him (to what end he didn’t care) before the lesson finished. Once dismissed, if only temporarily—O Eddystone Light!—he could position himself in the cloisters to collide with Spaulding after the lesson and deliver the note he would now have time to craft with perfect clarity and anonymity: Fern Farm Gully, solo. Surely Spaulding would catch the drift of that!
At the turn by the chapel, something seized him from behind, a hand over his mouth. He knew its scent, its texture. He surrendered to abduction.
Spaulding dragged him up the stairs as if hauling him off for a thrashing. Who knew salvation would arrive with such force? He’d always thought of good things as benign, almost anodyne, but now he understood that the really good things—things capable of remaking a life—tore into existence with power and might, with pain even, but rather than destroying, they turned their teeth against every cord that bound them. Spaulding wrenched his shoulder at the top of the stairs, and he understood that the best things would hurt, in the best possible way.
Bypassing the Hermes Balcony, Spaulding dragged him to the light at the end of the corridor. There he produced a piece of paper and held it, trembling.
It was starting, it had already begun, the life more thrilling than any he’d imagined, a life full of goodness no shadow could ever take. Morgan took the paper and unfolded it.
A wild script scrawled in pencil. Its author could no longer endure. Its author was not made of the stuff of giants. Its author had a heart that bled when stabbed. If Spaulding had been able to remove himself even briefly from his great, great height to condescend to the poorest of the poor, the author’s life would have taken a different course. The author had reached his limit, and the time had come, the time had long come—Spaulding handed Morgan a second sheet, where the missive continued—long, long, longtime come for the author to Go into Night. Death would not be proud but would have Pity, he hoped, upon him, upon his soul, and upon the soul of Spaulding. The author hoped that Spaulding would find peace once the author had gone from his realm, no longer a cankerous sore on his gleaming future and dazzling present. The author wanted Spaulding to know, whatever life might bring in distant years, that he, the author—a third sheet—had loved Spaulding, truly and rightly and in the best manner known to man. His sentiment would not waver. It would continue into always. That was the last word of his earthly testament. Spaulding must not think of trying to stop him. He would have accomplished his dark work long before Spaulding read this, and Spaulding must on no account distress himself. Spaulding must only remember that he had been loved once perfectly. Spurred, Love departed this world for a better one. He would see Spaulding on the other side.
