Gentlemen and Players

by Joanne Harris

  I was in the kitchen when he finally called at the house. It was my birthday, just before dinner, and I’d spent half the day shopping with my mother, and the other half discussing my future and making plans.

  A knock on the door—I guessed who it was. I knew him so well, you see—albeit from a distance—and I had been expecting his visit. I knew he, of all men, would never take the easy solution over the just. Firm, but fair, was Roy Straitley; with a natural propensity to believe the best of anyone. John’s reputation cut no ice with him; nor did the New Head’s veiled threats; nor the speculations in that day’s Examiner. Even the possible damage to St. Oswald’s was secondary to this. Straitley was Leon’s form teacher, and to Straitley, his boys mattered more than anything else.

  At first my mother wouldn’t let him in. He’d called twice before, she told me, once when I was in bed and once more as I was changing my clothes, discarding my Pinchbeck gear for one of the Paris outfits she’d sent in her innumerable care packages.

  “Mrs. Snyde, if you could just let me in for a moment—”

  My mother’s voice, her newly rounded vowels still unfamiliar behind the kitchen door. “I told you, Mr. Straitley, we’ve had a difficult twenty-four hours and I really don’t think—”

  Even then I sensed that he was uncomfortable with women. Peering through the crack in the kitchen door I saw him, framed by the night, head down, hands digging deeply into the pockets of his old tweed jacket.

  In front of him, my mother; tensed for confrontation; all Paris pearls and pastel twinset. It disturbed him, that feminine temperament. He would have been happier talking to my father, straight to the point, in words of one syllable.

  “Well perhaps if I could just have a word with the child.”

  I checked my reflection in the kettle. Under Mother’s guidance, I was looking good. Hair neat and freshly styled; face scrubbed; resplendent in one of those new little outfits. I had removed my glasses. I knew I would pass; and besides, I wanted to see him—to see, and, perhaps, be seen.

  “Mr. Straitley, believe me, there’s nothing we can—”

  I pushed open the kitchen door. He looked up quickly. For the first time I met his eyes as my very own self. My mother stood close, ready to snatch me away at the first sign of distress. Roy Straitley took a step toward me; I caught the comforting smell of chalk dust and Gauloises and distant mothballs. I wondered what he would say if I greeted him in Latin; the temptation was almost too great to resist, then I remembered that I was playing a part. Would he recognize me in my new role?

  For a second I thought he might. His eyes were penetrating. Denim blue and slightly bloodshot, they narrowed a little as they met mine. I put out my hand—took his thick fingers in my own cool ones. I thought of all the times I had watched him in the Bell Tower; of all the things he had unwittingly taught me. Would he see me now? Would he?

  I saw his eyes flick over me; taking in the clean face, pastel sweater, ankle socks, and polished shoes. Not quite what he’d expected, then; I had to make an effort to hide a smile. My mother saw it, and smiled herself, proud of her achievement. As well she might be; the transformation was all hers.

  “Good evening,” he said. “I don’t mean to intrude. I’m Mr. Straitley. Leon Mitchell’s form tutor.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said. “I’m Julia Snyde.”

  10

  I had to laugh. Such a long time since I had thought of myself as Julia, rather than just Snyde. And besides, I’d never liked Julia, just as my father had never liked her, and to be reminded of her—to be her—now was strange and puzzling. I thought I had outgrown Julia, as I had outgrown Sharon. But my mother had reinvented herself. Why couldn’t I?

  Straitley, of course, never saw it. To him, women remain a race apart, to be admired (or perhaps feared) from a safe distance. His manner is different when talking to his boys; with Julia his easy manner stiffened a little; became a wary parody of its jovial self.

  “Now I don’t want to upset you,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “But do you know a boy called Julian Pinchbeck?”

  I have to admit that my relief was marred by a certain disappointment. I’d expected more of Straitley somehow; more of St. Oswald’s. After all, I’d already practically offered him the truth. And still he hadn’t seen it. In his arrogance—the peculiarly male arrogance that lies at the very foundations of St. Oswald’s—he had failed to see what was staring him in the face.

  Julian Pinchbeck.

  Julia Snyde.

  “Pinchbeck?” I said. “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “He’d be your age, or thereabouts. Dark hair, skinny. Wears glasses with wire frames. He may be a pupil at Sunnybank Park. You may have seen him around St. Oswald’s.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You know why I’m asking, don’t you, Julia?”

  “Yes, sir. You think he was there last night.”

  “He was there,” snapped Straitley. He cleared his throat and said, in a softer voice, “I thought maybe you’d seen him too.”

  “No, sir.” Once more I shook my head. It was too funny, I thought to myself; and yet I wondered how he could have failed to see me. Was it because I was a girl, perhaps? A slapper, a pram-face, a toerag, a prole? Was it so impossible to believe of Julia Snyde?

  “Are you sure?” He looked at me sharply. “Because that boy’s a witness. He was there. He saw what happened.”

  I looked down at the shiny toes of my shoes. I wanted to tell him everything then, just to see his jaw drop. But then he would have had to know about Leon too; and that, I knew, was impossible. For that I had already sacrificed so much. And for that I prepared to swallow my pride.

  I looked up at him then, allowing my eyes to fill with tears. It wasn’t difficult in the circumstances. I thought of Leon, and of my father, and of myself, and the tears just came all on their own. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see him.” And now old Straitley was looking uncomfortable, huffing and shuffling just as he did when Kitty Teague had her little crisis in the Common Room.

  “Now then.” He pulled out a large and slightly grubby handkerchief.

  My mother glared. “I hope you’re happy,” she said, putting a possessive arm around my shoulders. “After everything the poor kid’s already been through—”

  “Mrs. Snyde, I didn’t—”

  “I think you should go.”

  “Julia, please, if you know anything—”

  “Mr. Straitley,” she said. “I’d like you to leave.”

  And so he did, reluctantly, caught between bluster and unease, apologies on one side, suspicion on the other.

  Because he was suspicious; I could see it in his eyes. He was nowhere near the truth, of course; but his years of teaching have given him a second sight where pupils are concerned, a kind of radar that in some way I must have triggered.

  He turned to go, hands in his pockets. “Julian Pinchbeck. You’re sure you’ve never heard of him?”

  Mutely, I nodded, grinning inside.

  His shoulders slumped. Then, as my mother opened the door for him to leave, he turned abruptly and met my eyes for what was to be the last time in fifteen years. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “We’re all concerned about your father. But I was Leon’s form tutor. I have a responsibility to my boys—”

  Again I nodded. “Valé, magister.” It was no more than a whisper, but I swear he heard.

  “What was that?”

  “Good night, sir.”

  11

  After that, we moved to Paris. A new life, my mother had said; a new start for her little girl. But it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t like Paris. I missed my home and the woods and the comforting smell of cut grass rolling over the fields. My mother deplored my tomboyish manners, for which, of course, she blamed my father. He’d never wanted a girl, she said, lamenting over my cropped hair, my skinny chest, my scabbed knees. Thanks to John, she said, I looked more like a
dirty little boy than the dainty daughter of her imaginings. But that was going to change, she said. All I needed was time to blossom.

  God knows, I tried. There were endless shopping trips; dress fittings; appointments at the beautician’s. Any girl would dream of being taken in hand; to be Gigi, to be Eliza; to change from the ugly duckling into the gracious swan. It was my mother’s dream, anyway. And she indulged it now; crowing happily over her living doll.

  Nowadays, of course, little trace remains of my mother’s handiwork. My own is more sophisticated and definitely less showy. My French is fluent, thanks to my years in Paris, and although I never quite made the grade as far as my mother was concerned, I like to think I have acquired a certain style. I also have an abnormally high sense of self-esteem, or so my analyst says, which at times verges on the pathological. Maybe so; but in the absence of parents, where else is a child to seek approval?

  By the time I was fourteen, my mother had realized that I would never be a beauty. I wasn’t the type. Un style très anglais, as the beautician (the bitch!) repeatedly pointed out. The little skirts and twinsets that looked so pretty on the French girls simply made me look ridiculous, and I soon forsook them for the safety of the jeans, sweatshirts, and trainers of my earlier youth. I refused makeup and cut my hair short. I no longer looked like a little boy, but it had become clear that I would never be Audrey Hepburn, either.

  My mother was not as disappointed as she might have been. Despite her high hopes, we had failed to bond. We had little in common, and I could tell that she was tired of making the effort. More importantly, she and Xavier had finally achieved what they had hitherto thought impossible—a miracle baby, born in the August of the following year.

  Well, that clinched it. Overnight, I became an embarrassment. The miracle baby—they called it Adeline—had basically priced me out of the market, and neither my mother nor Xavier (who had few opinions of his own) seemed interested in a sullen, awkward teenager. Once more, in spite of everything, I was invisible.

  Oh, I can’t say I cared. Not about that, anyway. I had nothing against Adeline—who looked like nothing more to me than a squawking lump of pink putty. What I resented was the promise; the promise of something that had been barely offered before it was snatched away. The fact that I hadn’t wanted it was irrelevant. My mother’s ingratitude was. I had made sacrifices for her, after all. For her I had left St. Oswald’s. Now, more than ever, St. Oswald’s beckoned to me like a lost Eden. I forgot how I’d hated it; how for years I waged war against it; how it had swallowed my friend, my father, my childhood at a single gulp. I thought about it all the time, and it seemed to me then that it was only in St. Oswald’s that I had ever felt truly alive. There I had dreamed; there I had felt joy; hate; desire. There I had been a hero; a rebel. Now I was just another sullen teen, with a stepfather and a mother who lied about her age.

  I know it now; it was an addiction, and St. Oswald’s was my drug. Night and day I craved it, finding poor substitutes where I could. Rapidly they bored me; my lycée was a dull place, and the most daring of its rebels only dabbled in the most adolescent of misdemeanors; a little sex, a little truancy, and a number of basically uninteresting drugs. Leon and I had covered far more exciting ground together years before. I wanted more; I wanted misrule; I wanted everything.

  I was unaware at the time that my behavior had already begun to attract attention. I was young; angry; intoxicated. You might say St. Oswald’s had spoiled me; I was like a university student sent back to kindergarten for a year, smashing toys and turning over tables. I delighted in being a bad influence. I played truant; I mocked my teachers; I drank; I smoked; I had hurried (and, for me, joyless) sex with a number of boys from a rival school.

  The crunch came in a most distressingly ordinary way. My mother and Xavier—who I’d assumed were too goggle-eyed over their miracle child to care much about the down-to-earth kind—had been watching me more closely than I had thought. A sweep of my room had provided the excuse they were seeking; a five-gram block of workaday resin, a packet of condoms, and four Es in a twist of paper.

  It was kid’s stuff, that was all. Any normal parent would have forgotten all about it, but Sharon simply mumbled something about my previous history, removed me from school, and—the final indignity—booked me in with a child psychologist, who, she promised, would soon bring me to rights.

  I don’t think I am a naturally resentful person. Whenever I have lashed out, it has always been after almost unbearable provocation. But this was more than anyone could stand. I wasted no time in protesting my innocence. Instead, and to my mother’s surprise, I cooperated as best I could. The child psychologist—whose name was Martine and who wore dangly earrings with little silver kitties—declared me to be progressing nicely, and I fed her every day until she got quite tame.

  Say what you like about my unconventional schooling, but I do have quite an extensive general knowledge. You can thank St. Oswald’s Library, or Leon, or the films I’ve always watched—in any case I knew enough about mental cases to fool a kitty-loving child psychologist. I almost regretted the ease of the task; found myself wishing they had given me more of a challenge.

  Psychologists. They’re all the same. Talk to them about anything you like, it always gets down to sex in the end. After an impressive show of reluctance and a number of nicely Freudian dreams, I confessed; I’d been having sex with my father. Not John, I said; but my new father, which made it all right—or so he said, although I myself had been having second thoughts.

  Don’t get me wrong. I had nothing (as such) against Xavier. It was my mother who had betrayed me; my mother I wanted to hurt. But Xavier was such a convenient tool, and besides, I made it sound mostly consensual, so that he would get off with a lighter—maybe even a suspended—sentence.

  It worked fine. Too fine, perhaps; by then I’d been working on my routine and incorporated a number of embellishments to the basic formula. More dreams—I don’t dream, as I said, but I do have quite a vivid imagination—a number of physical mannerisms, a habit of small cutting picked up from one of the more sensitive girls in my class at school.

  Physical examination provided the proof. Xavier was duly ousted from the family home, a generous allowance was promised to the soon-to-be divorcée, and I (thanks in part to my brilliant performance) was stuck in an institution for the next three years by my loving mother and the kitty-wearing Martine, neither of whom could be convinced that I was no longer a danger to myself.

  You know, there is such a thing as doing a job too well.

  MATE

  1

  Friday, 5th November, 9:15 P.M., Bonfire Night

  “Well, then,” he said. “I suppose that’s that.”

  The fireworks were over, and the crowd had begun to disperse, shuffling slowly toward the exits. The cordoned area was almost empty; only the smell of gunsmoke remained. “Perhaps we ought to find Marlene. I don’t like to think of her waiting alone.”

  Dear old Straitley. Always the gent. And so close too; certainly he’d come closer to the truth than my mother, or my analyst, or any of the professionals who had tried to understand my teenage mind. Not quite close enough—not yet—but he was almost there, we were in the endgame now, and my heart beat a little faster at the thought. Long ago I’d faced him as a pawn and lost. Now, at last, I challenged him as a queen.

  I turned to him, smiled, and said, “Valé, magister.”

  “What did you say?”

  She had turned to go; in the glow of the embers she looked very youthful under her red beret, her eyes pinned with dancing firelight. “You heard,” she said. “You heard me then, didn’t you, sir?”

  Then? The invisible finger prodded me gently, almost sympathetically. I felt a sudden urge to sit down and resisted it.

  “You’ll remember in time,” said Miss Dare, smiling. “After all, you’re the one who never forgets a face.”

  I watched him as he worked it out. The mist had thickened; now it was hard t
o see beyond the closest trees. At our backs, the bonfire was nothing but embers; unless it rained it would continue to smolder for two or three days. Straitley frowned, burnished like a wrinkled totem in the dim light. A minute passed. Two minutes. I began to feel anxious. Was he too old? Had he forgotten? And what would I do if he failed me now?

  Finally, he spoke. “It’s—it’s Julie, isn’t it?”

  Close enough, old man. I dared draw breath. “Julia, sir. Julia Snyde.”

  Julia Snyde.

  Such a long time since I’d heard that name. Such a long time since I’d even thought of her. And yet here she was again, looking just like Dianne Dare, looking at me with affection—and a touch of humor—in her bright brown eyes.

  “You changed your name?” I said at last.

  She smiled. “Under the circumstances, yes.”

  That I could understand. She’d gone to France—“Paris, was it? I suppose that’s where you learned your French.”

  “I was an apt pupil.”

  Now I recalled that day in the gatehouse. Her dark hair, cut shorter than it is now, the neat, girlish outfit, pleated skirt and pastel sweater. The way she’d smiled at me, shyly then, but with knowledge in her eyes. How I’d been sure she’d known something—

  I looked at her now in the uncanny light and wondered how I could have failed to miss her. I wondered what she was doing here now, and how she had changed from Porter’s girl to the assured young woman she was today. Most of all I wondered just how much she had known, and why she had hidden it from me, now and all those years ago.