by H. S. Cross
Lucy, mouth full of trifle, let out a muffled squeal. She tapped the table as she swallowed.
—You aren’t from Oxford at all, are you? she exclaimed.
—Of course not, Morgan said.
—But…?
—He’s from Jamie’s new school! Lucy told them.
—But, Agnes wrinkled her brow painfully, you said you came down with our brother.
—I did! Morgan said exasperated. We came down on the train yesterday. If you can call it coming down together. I’d call it more like kidnapping!
He had thought these girls liked him, fancied him even, but now they were pressing him to admit things that didn’t belong at a family dinner, and furthermore acting as though Dr. Sebastian’s economy with information was a widespread family trait.
—Just a minute, Lucy said. How old are you?
Morgan blushed.
—I’m twenty-two.
—Oh, yes? the Bishop said.
A chair scraped at Morgan’s right. Mr. Fairclough stood and placed his hand on Morgan’s shoulder:
—I say, old chap, could I borrow you for a moment? There’s something I need to …
He gestured to the door and gave Morgan a bashful, desperate expression. The girls had stopped speaking again. Morgan looked to the Bishop, who nodded, imperfectly hiding his amusement. Morgan wiped his mouth, folded his napkin, and followed Elizabeth’s husband from the room.
At the bottom of the drive, Mr. Fairclough produced a case:
—Smoke?
—Thanks.
The cigarette was smooth, expensive, well kept.
—Sorry for all that, Mr. Fairclough said. They don’t mean to be cruel. They always carry on when they get together. And I think the Bishop was being a bit naughty with them.
—I’m afraid I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Morgan said.
—Yes, you do, Mr. Fairclough replied. This family thrives on incomplete truths. All we knew was that an acquaintance of James was the Bishop’s new project. No one said it was anything to do with the new post.
—Oh.
—Or that the young man was still at school.
—I—
—You aren’t twenty-two, plainly.
A pinch as something bit the back of his neck.
—Sixteen?
—Seventeen … I don’t know why I said that.
Mr. Fairclough gazed at the field.
—I’ve said worse. They push you to it. You should see what it’s like when Flora’s there.
They finished their cigarettes in a comforting silence. Morgan’s neck itched. Mr. Fairclough slapped his own cheek.
—They’re eating us raw. Come on.
They went back to the house. Mr. Fairclough paused outside the dining room but then turned instead in to the library, where Morgan had suffered the hideous lines earlier that day. That ceaseless, purgatorial day.
The sun had not set, but Mr. Fairclough lit a lamp and took it to a little piano Morgan had not noticed earlier. He sat, ran his fingers down the keys, and began to play something liquid, like the bath-warm, fish-filled, syrupy sea.
—So, Mr. Fairclough said, what did you do?
Morgan thought to protest, but he didn’t want Mr. Fairclough to stop playing.
—A lot of things I shouldn’t have.
The music pressed against his rib cage.
—I only wish I could think straight.
—Isn’t that why you’re here?
Morgan leaned on the piano, head on his arms, feeling the vibrations.
—I can’t seem to stop doing things I don’t want to do.
The music lightened, as if the mosquito-filled air outside had come into the library with them.
—Of course, I want to do them, but I don’t want to have done them.
The whole summer enveloped them, conjured by Mr. Fairclough, infusing them with its lushness, its ease, its memory of Longmere and the woods where Emily would run away and be found, be brought home again.
—I didn’t think I would turn out like this, you see.
Mr. Fairclough applied the soft pedal.
—How dreary, he said, to have everything turn out as expected.
His right hand slipped, but just as it struck an off note, it crossed over the left and fell into a ravine of off notes, until they combined into a new atmosphere, like the ferny floor of the forest after tea, where one might encounter any type of thing, anything one had imagined or failed to imagine.
—But when things don’t turn out, it’s a failure, Morgan said.
—Too much of the unexpected is chaos, Mr. Fairclough said. But you’ve got to leave a little space, I think.
—For what?
—For breath.
As if in illustration, he lifted his hands from the keys, inhaled, and then plunged back, following the notes somewhere new, like a wind blowing a schooner west across the sea, turning the world, disturbing and disordering everything, and as Mr. Fairclough’s fingers rippled the keys, the sound pulsed through Morgan like the thrill of Polly’s kiss, like Spaulding grabbing him from behind, like Grieves hurling cricket balls. The music tickled, pounded, shook him entirely apart and sewed him back with sharpest needle, drawing new thread through him, savaging him as nature savaged caterpillars in their chrysalis. He’d been altered before, and he was being altered again, into what, he didn’t know.
* * *
The piano fell silent. Mr. Fairclough massaged his palms. Morgan felt he ought to stand up.
—What’s that called?
—Oh, Mr. Fairclough said vaguely, how about After Dinner with the Bishop’s Daughters?
Voices in the corridor. Mr. Fairclough got up from the piano.
—Come on, he said, before the girls descend.
They repaired to the conservatory, where Mr. Goss stood before open doors, lighting a cigar. Mr. Fairclough again offered his cigarette case to Morgan. The tobacco opened his veins.
The trouble, he realized, was that he couldn’t work out whether he was in the middle of a disaster or not. Sometimes it seemed as though all was well, and all would be well, that he was merely spending an unconventional interval with people who wished him no harm. But in turns he had a powerful sensation of catastrophe—one of his own making, one immanent, or both.
Mr. Goss puffed his cigar:
—What’s your specialty, then?
Morgan wondered if he was being addressed.
—At cricket.
—Oh, Morgan said, drawing strength from the cigarette, I haven’t got one.
—You did something to impress my brother-in-law, Mr. Goss said.
—I got lucky. The bowling was savage.
Mr. Goss laughed:
—You survived, you mean?
They all laughed, and Morgan fell into describing the end of the match. Mr. Goss, it emerged, was a keen cricketer.
—But you say this master who nearly killed you had also directed your rehabilitation from the shoulder injury?
Morgan couldn’t think of another way to put it.
—A great favorite, is he?
—Rather the opposite.
They found this preposterous. Morgan was unable to explain Grieves in a way that made sense.
—He’s a pacifist.
—Not much of a pacifist if he’s crippling Sixth Formers, Mr. Goss said. Sounds to me as if no one has the measure of this man.
—You can never get a handle on him, Morgan complained. He’s moody. He persecutes. He misunderstands.
—Sounds like every schoolmaster I’ve ever known, Mr. Fairclough said.
—But he isn’t like any schoolmaster. He’s …
Morgan thought of sitting at Mr. Grieves’s table that night. He thought of Grieves throwing a punch that made his nose bleed.
—Is he your Housemaster? Mr. Goss inquired.
—No!
—Pity.
—He isn’t anyone’s Housemaster. He’s got rooms in Fridaythorpe.
—How v
ery peculiar, Mr. Goss said. This school of yours really does sound the most thumbs-backward establishment.
Mr. Fairclough laughed again:
—Whatever it is, it’s the perfect garment for James.
—Oh, yes, tailor-made! Mr. Goss replied.
—No wonder he took your case, Mr. Fairclough said.
—Old boy’s got to be over the moon James would—
Mr. Fairclough cleared his throat. Morgan stubbed out his cigarette and decided he would accept nothing else from either of them.
—The girls have gone through, said the Bishop from the corridor.
—Right, said Mr. Fairclough, grinding out his cigarette, ready for this?
Having conjured the coliseum, he took Morgan’s shoulder and led him from the conservatory:
—This, too, shall pass.
41
In the library, the Bishop was sitting on one of the settees. Lucy was handing him a glass. Elizabeth and Agnes had taken positions on either side of him. Mr. Fairclough made for the sideboard, while Mr. Goss retreated to Agnes’s side as if his batteries had discharged dangerously in her absence. The girls glanced at Morgan while trying to appear as if they were ignoring him. Lucy was recounting some bit of cathedral business. Mr. Fairclough poured two glasses and brought one to Morgan.
—Go on, he murmured. You look as though you could use it.
The Bishop’s port was sweet, deep, ancient. It tasted less like drink and more like the blood of civilization. Morgan felt he could live on it.
The girls continued to eye him as Lucy’s tale gave way to Elizabeth’s report on the children’s croup. Eventually Mr. Fairclough and Morgan drifted back to the sideboard, where Mr. Fairclough refilled their glasses. The clock in the corridor chimed ten.
—Father, Lucy said, isn’t it time this boy was in bed?
The Bishop looked about as if he’d just remembered Morgan.
—Staying awake, Wilberforce?
—Yes, sir, Morgan said firmly.
—Be serious, Father, there are things we mean to discuss with you.
—Oh, yes?
—It isn’t right to discuss them in front of this child.
—I’m not a child!
He looked to Agnes for support, but she avoided his gaze.
—You’d no trouble discussing any number of things in front of him earlier, the Bishop said.
—Oh, very well! Lucy snapped. On your head be it!
—The point, Agnes said, is that you’re meant to be resting, not doing spiritual direction, and certainly not cleaning up messes for Jamie—
—Messes he didn’t even make! Lucy added.
—Mr. Rollins was most distressed this afternoon to find you—
—Rollins is a ninny.
—Father! Elizabeth pleaded. You promised … you …
The Bishop relaxed his fighting stance and took her hands in his.
—Darling, I’ve no intention of breaking my word. But you can’t expect me to sit here all summer clipping roses.
—That’s exactly what you said you would do! Agnes retorted.
—There are many ways to recuperate, the Bishop said quietly.
He looked to each of his daughters, giving them the gaze Morgan impulsively labeled The Magnetron. It seemed to soothe them, with the exception of Agnes, who burst into tears. Her husband patted her hand.
—It’s the baby, he explained.
Morgan filled his glass and Mr. Fairclough’s a third time.
—All right then, Lucy said, what about Jamie?
—What more could there possibly be to discuss? the Bishop asked.
Lucy looked to Elizabeth, who looked to Mr. Fairclough.
—Father! Agnes exclaimed through her tears. Be serious for once!
—I’m perfectly serious.
—If Jamie’s on the point of moving house up to Westmorland—
—Yorkshire, Morgan said.
Agnes tensed:
—then it won’t be possible to wait and see any longer.
The Bishop frowned. Morgan wished he could bathe in the port, it was that deep.
—I’ve said they should have an epistolary courtship, Elizabeth added, but you know how Jamie is about letters.
—If my sisters interfered in my private life, Morgan blurted, I’d give ’em beans!
They looked at him as if he’d sprouted appendages.
—Wilberforce has a point, the Bishop said.
—He hasn’t a shred of a point! Agnes retorted. He’s an impertinent little boy, and this is exactly why he ought to be in bed.
Elizabeth shot her husband a look, and Mr. Fairclough took the glass from Morgan’s hand. He felt robbed. There was still good port in it.
—Father, Agnes said firmly, if you won’t do something about Jamie, I will.
—It sounds as though your brother is on the brink of ruin all round.
—Don’t mock, Agnes cried. It’s true!
—And what is his response to your sisterly concerns?
—Father! Agnes cried losing her composure. Oh, I wish I could shake you!
She began to pace, leaving Mr. Goss forlorn beside her empty place.
—You know Jamie listens to nothing and nobody! You know what happened the last time we tried to discuss it!
—Please can we not dwell on that? Lucy begged.
—And then, Agnes continued relentlessly, not a fortnight later he’s whizzing off heaven-knows-where, on a day, I might add, he was meant to be looking in on you—
—I do not require this continual looking in on! the Bishop said. I’m not an invalid.
The girls contradicted him in one voice.
—And, Agnes said above the fray, next thing we hear, Jamie’s accepted a ludicrous post at some cesspool in the middle of nowhere and is going to resign the most promising position he’s ever had.
—Headmaster’s a promotion, Morgan snapped. And the Academy is no cesspool!
Agnes turned on him, once his collaborator, now his foe:
—If you don’t keep your nose out of our affairs, I shall box your ears.
—You can box away, but it doesn’t make you right.
Lucy went to Agnes and put an arm around her waist:
—If this school of yours is so first-rate—
—I never said—
—then how do you explain the boy who killed himself in a barn—
—Lucy, really—
—committed suicide, Father, in a barn, all because of beastliness gone awry!
—You don’t know anything! Morgan cried.
The room went silent. He turned to the sideboard. He hadn’t been able to stop his mouth from speaking. What would stop his hands from striking? He took the half-empty port glass and drained it. He drained the other one. His blood pounded more slowly. He thought he might face them without committing an assault.
—It wasn’t suicide, his mouth was saying. It was a—an accident. A bloody hellish accident.
No one shut him up. He could hear the blood in his ears, like being under the sea.
—And it wasn’t beastliness. Spaulding was the best person you could know, and he was trying to save Rees. We both were. Nobody wanted to die. It was the stupid, bloody rafter that fell. And then Spaulding was dead instead of Rees, and it was the biggest swiz that’s ever been, and if God cared about anything, instead of buggering off and leaving things to us, then he would have stopped it, but he didn’t, and so Spaulding is dead when he shouldn’t be, and I’m taking up space for no reason at all.
Still no one spoke. His mouth sticky and sour, he turned again to the sideboard; Mr. Fairclough blocked the decanter, but Morgan won the vessel and filled his glass with a proper measure. People spoke of draining a glass in one drink. A capital time to do just that. He concentrated on swallowing and breathing through his nose—a feat of skill now he attempted it—drawing the redness down his throat, the only thing in the entire world capable of soothing him. Snares and ruin might wait in every inch, but thi
s elixir could fortify him from the inside against speaking when he shouldn’t, acting when he shouldn’t, thinking what he shouldn’t, and most of all against loving when, where, and whom he shouldn’t. This blood was already altering him, oral transfusion, depth and wisdom leeched from its oaks, feeding him with everything he longed for and lacked.
He set down the glass. Kerfuffle behind him, someone at his elbow leading him liquidly across the floor. The someone had magical feet of the soft-shoe, the type that whirled his sisters across dance floors and wore clothing that fit and dazzled everyone with smiles. The arm was guiding him now. Soon they would meet cheek against cheek. The waltz, his mother said, was a dance so scandalously intimate that one must dance it only with one’s wedded husband. His wedded husband had him by the elbow, and he was swooning.
—Steady on, old boy.
His husband was supporting him, sweeping him away from Spaulding and out to a dance floor more cavernous and fine. Another hand took his other elbow. Suitor? Rival? Oh, ecstasy of a summer night! How many fingers would finger his—
—You listen to me, boy.
Pinching his face.
—I don’t care what becomes of you, but you had better be perfectly clear about one thing. Are you following me?
—As bees to the honeypot.
Pinching his ears, stinging, twisting.
—If you cause my father one iota of harm, you will regret it bitterly.
—Mmm.
—Repeat what I said.
—If daddy is baddy, you’ll go maddy.
A blow—ringing inside and out all at once. Then Lucy stood before him, lips more red than he could stand.
—I swear I’ll give you a smack you’ll never forget, she whispered.
Then someone was pulling her away and his husband was leading him by the waist to the upstairs dance floor. It wasn’t a dance, though, was it?
—Where have you got him?
—St. Anne’s.
People were talking and something was hurting on his face. Had it been Lucy that stung him?
—Come on, said the arm round his waist. Easy.
The arm pulled him up the way Rees had pulled him when he slid down the grass, when his own arm didn’t work. But his arms worked now, and he was holding on to the bathroom basin, and the man was pressing a wet flannel against his face, and it was like every kind of reprieve there was to have. Except Spaulding wasn’t having a reprieve. His face was still broken open, the blood goring onto the floor. Had they put it back inside when they buried him? It wasn’t right for him to be mauled that way. To die was bad enough, but to have his head ripped open, and for nothing except being brave enough to climb all the way up there and cut down the rope to let Rees away from … Why couldn’t he have caught him? If Spaulding had fallen a foot closer, all that blood would have stayed inside.
