by James Runcie
Sidney sat with him in the visiting-room in the presence of a guard. He asked the prisoner how well he knew Trevor Paine, whether he had been at the school at the time of the suicide of Luke Barnes and if he remembered Marcus Pearson.
‘Trevor certainly administered a good beating, but Luke Barnes encouraged him.’
‘You are saying that the boy wanted to be punished?’
‘He kept offending. He knew the consequences.’
‘You don’t think he was picked on?’
‘Sometimes boys are complicit in these matters, Canon Chambers. Perhaps Barnes sought the attention?’
‘I don’t see how you can know that.’
‘Most boys find ways to avoid it if they want.’
‘I’m not sure that they should be expected to do so. Were you responsible for similar punishments?’
‘I was asked to discipline the boys.’
‘Asked? You didn’t choose?’
‘It was part of my job.’
‘And did you enjoy it?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘But did you?’
‘I don’t see why I should answer that question. I was doing my duty. If there were what you might call ancillary benefits . . .’
‘Such as pleasure . . .’
‘Then that’s all well and good.’
‘I think it’s neither,’ Sidney replied.
After a moment of silence, Kevin Warner began to confess. ‘I prefer something gentler if you must know.’
‘And did you find that at Millingham?’
‘It doesn’t do that much harm.’
‘It depends on who you talk to. What might be a passing moment in an evening, a day, a week or a month to a teacher can damage a boy for a lifetime.’
‘It happened to me when I was at school.’
‘And are you telling me that it hasn’t affected you?’
‘It can be quite loving.’
‘Not if the boys are under the age of consent and it is against their will.’
‘They knew what they were going along with, Canon Chambers.’
‘I am not sure they had much choice. Perhaps they consented for fear of something worse.’
‘I don’t think that was ever the case. They weren’t threatened.’
Sidney tried to contain his anger. This was a man who had made the erroneous and dangerous assumption that repetition normalised abuse. ‘I find that hard to believe. Why did Luke Barnes kill himself?’
‘I imagine someone found out.’
‘Or perhaps he thought that no matter what he did or who he told no one would do anything about it.’
‘Any father who had been to the school would have believed him.’
‘Only they wouldn’t have done anything about it. That’s the problem. It “never did them any harm”. Is that what you are saying?’
‘It is not for me to say anything. I’m here. I’m enduring my punishment.’
‘And you feel no remorse?’
‘I am what I am, Canon Chambers.’
‘What about Luke’s younger brother: Adam?’
‘I don’t remember him.’
‘Or Marcus Pearson?’
‘The pretty one? Oh, we all remember him.’ Kevin Warner smiled. ‘He was a very naughty boy. Played right along . . .’
‘Did he really?’
‘Then he stopped. I think Matron had her eye on him. As soon as he hit puberty she was all over him. There are always some that are lost to us.’
Sidney was appalled. He did not know what to say. ‘Don’t you have any regrets?’
‘I’m sorry I was caught.’
‘Is that all?’
‘As I have already said, what I did was loving . . .’
‘It was exploitation.’
‘That is not how I see it.’
Sidney persisted. ‘Trevor Paine caned boys until they bled. There is evidence.’
‘Pain can be a pleasure – for both parties.’
‘These boys were abused. Can you not see that?’
‘And can you not understand why these things happen, Canon Chambers? There is a history, a tradition even, in this behaviour.’
‘Then it’s one that should stop.’
‘You didn’t have it at your school?’
‘I knew it went on.’
‘Perhaps you weren’t pretty enough . . .’
‘I was lucky.’
‘It depends what you mean by luck. Some boys enjoy it.’
‘They are too young to know, and you should be too responsible to exploit them.’
‘It’s easy enough for you to preach about it.’
‘And it should be morally obvious enough to observe. You have a duty of care to young people in your charge. People like Luke Barnes . . .’
‘That boy had so many other problems.’
‘So it can hardly have helped when you all made the situation worse.’
‘You can’t blame us.’
‘I can, as a matter of fact, and I’m going to continue to do so until this matter is resolved.’
‘Some things are best kept private.’
‘This isn’t one of them.’
‘I can’t understand why so many people today want everything out in the open.’
‘Because they can’t trust what is hidden.’
‘There’s no need to make such a fuss about it all.’
‘There’s every need,’ said Sidney.
He had never felt such violence towards a man. What made it worse was that this was a man of the cloth. Kevin Warner had abandoned morality. What would it take to make him realise what he had done? Were some people beyond redemption?
No matter how understanding people thought he was, Sidney was determined to show that forgiveness had its limits. Mercy had to be earned. If it was not, then only judgement remained.
On 27th July, Geordie Keating was in an exceptionally good mood, having watched England beat Portugal 2–1 the previous day to reach the World Cup final. He was looking forward, he said, to teasing Hildegard about the thrashing West Germany were going to receive. Sidney then reminded him that her family originally came from Leipzig, now in the GDR, and that his wife was likely to be neutral in the matter since she took very little interest in football.
He had come down to Cambridge to join his friend in the Eagle. Once the two men had settled in the RAF bar with their pints, Keating cut to the chase. ‘Luke Barnes gassed himself,’ he announced as he handed over the file. ‘At home. In his mother’s kitchen. Not very nice for her.’
‘Or anyone else.’ Sidney opened the manila folder. ‘If his brother had anything to do with the explosion in the chemistry labs, caused by a surfeit of gas, it might be considered poetic justice.’
‘Gives it a bit of symmetry. You are arguing that this was an act of revenge rather than an elaborate prank?’
‘I suppose the death of Luke Barnes really was suicide?’
The inspector made one of his exasperated noises that Sidney always took to be theatrical rather than genuine. ‘Don’t start. He wasn’t drugged beforehand, it wasn’t staged, it happened at home, and there were no other marks on his body.’
‘But it should be motive enough for the explosion.’
‘And time for you to question the person responsible.’
‘I had better go back to see the mother. I have had a sense of dread about this ever since Prize Day.’
‘Adam Barnes was playing the piano at the time . . .’
‘But we know that does not really matter. He could have set the gas going hours before, either with or without Pearson.’
‘I’m sorry, Sidney.’
‘What for?’
‘I know he’s Hildegard’s protégé.’
‘That gives him no protection.’
‘Will you warn her?’
‘I’ll try to find a way of explaining it all.’
Sidney was delayed by his normal duties but found it hard to immerse himself in cong
regational concerns that were less than life-threatening. He tried not to intervene in a dispute between a mother and daughter and legislate over the length of the fifteen-year-old’s mini-skirt; he extended his sympathy to a wife who had found a note in her husband’s diary suggesting that he might be meeting another woman; and he felt sorry for someone who was so lonely she said that she felt like a Christmas tree that had been left out in February: half dead and too late for anyone to do anything about it.
Sidney could hear Adam practising his Dvořák piece when he arrived. He spoke to the boy’s mother by the dovecote. ‘It must be hard for you, Mrs Barnes – to still be here, in this house where it all happened.’
‘I’ve kept Luke’s room as it was. I haven’t changed anything. Just made the bed. Washed and ironed his clothes. Put them back. Sometimes I go to his room and sit at his desk. I try to imagine what it might be like to be him.’
‘I wondered why your son Adam was still at the school?’
‘He said it was what he knew. I don’t know if he was being brave or not. I’m not sure how many friends he has. He doesn’t go out much. He enjoys his music, though. And he likes your wife. She’s been good to him. He needs someone other than me to stick up for him.’
‘I think she would do anything for her pupils. Is Adam at home? I thought that might have been him playing the piano just now.’
‘He’ll be up in his room. I don’t know what he’s doing. Reading probably. He likes The Lord of the Rings.’
Sidney climbed the stairs. He felt anxious and thought of Anna. Was this what having a teenager was going to be like in ten years’ time: the nervous confrontation with a closed door?
Adam Barnes was drawing a fossil and had a half-finished packet of Toffos on his desk to keep him going. The room looked out on to the dovecote. The boy could watch his mother from here, Sidney thought, and always see that she was safe. He was suddenly touched by how much the boy cared for and looked after her.
(He thought of little Anna; how she watched him as he drove the car, as he carved the Sunday roast, as he lifted her high above his head. ‘Careful, Daddy.’)
There were a few photographs of past holidays, but none containing any images of Adam’s father. Sidney asked again about the explosion at the school.
‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Anyone could have done it. We all hated Paine. That’s what did for my brother Luke. He couldn’t stand it any more.’
‘Mr Paine was bullying him?’
‘And Rev Kev. They took it in turns; found excuses to beat him.’
‘Even when he was in the sixth form?’
‘I think it was different then. Luke didn’t like to talk about it. I knew something was wrong. He wasn’t being hit. But they gave him money, I think, special privileges. They let him drink in their rooms. I know that much. Then things happened, although I don’t like to imagine them.’
‘You think the teachers did things with your brother that were against his will?’
‘They said that if he told anyone anything then he’d die before he was thirty. Turns out they were right. But by the time he killed himself he didn’t have much will left. They got him drunk. They made him feel bad about himself.’
‘So how much did he tell you?’
‘Only that I was lucky to be in a different house. And that if any teacher hit me or did anything I didn’t like then I was to tell him and he could get it stopped.’
‘So he had some level of power over his persecutors?’
‘He would have hated to use it.’
‘Did he leave you a note?’
‘He didn’t need to. I was the one that found him.’ Adam Barnes would not meet Sidney’s eye. ‘I called my dad. He’s the doctor. I knew I had to protect Mum. But in the end, she reached us first. I think she guessed what had happened. Somehow. I don’t know.’
‘Did anyone from the school say they were sorry?’
‘Pearson. He showed me something Luke had carved into his desk. Mors potius macula.’
‘Death rather than disgrace,’ Sidney translated. ‘Do you think that message was meant for everyone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What were the last words your brother said to you?’
‘“Have you got rugger this afternoon?” I think he wanted to check I wouldn’t be home.’
‘Apart from that . . .’
‘“If anything happens to me, I want you to kill those bastards.”’
‘He assumed you would know who he meant?’
‘Mr Paine, Rev Kev.’
‘But Rev Kev’s in prison. Did you therefore try and kill Mr Paine?’
Adam Barnes thought for a moment and then answered simply, ‘What would happen if I said that I did? Is revenge forgivable?’
It was almost two hours later when Sidney began to wend his way home through the unhurried splendour of an English summer afternoon. The atmosphere was at odds with his feelings. He was going to have to persuade the school to let Marcus Pearson back after retracting a false confession. He would have to ensure that there was a police inquiry into Trevor Paine’s behaviour (and any other members of staff who had abused their position of trust); and, at the same time, he would try to prevent the punishment of Adam Barnes. If the boy was to have any chance of securing a good reference for university then he would need an unblemished school record.
Sidney walked back into his home, longing to see his daughter and appreciate her uncomplicated innocence and unquestioning love. He called her name and Hildegard answered as she came from the kitchen.
‘She’s swimming.’
‘Is that all right? Sabine can swim, can’t she?’
‘I decided they both needed to calm down. We all do.’
‘Why? What has happened?’
Over a pot of tea, and after Sidney had told his wife all about Adam Barnes (‘Are you sure? Adam?’ before checking her pupil would be given a sympathetic hearing), Hildegard explained that Christopher Clough was in hospital. It was not serious, but he had been wounded in a domestic incident.
‘Give me the details.’
‘Sabine was doing the ironing.’
‘Here?’
‘No. At Canon Clough’s. She was not fully dressed; she was only wearing her panties.’
‘What? Or, perhaps more to the point, why?’
‘He offered her more money if she took her top off. She was just finishing what she was doing when things went wrong. I don’t think I need to explain . . .’
‘You do.’
‘Canon Clough found he could no longer control himself. He had promised that he didn’t need to touch her, that looking was enough, but this was a lie. I could have told her it would end this way. Of course, the man wanted more. Luckily Sabine had just unplugged the iron when he made his move and she was able to defend herself.’
‘With the iron?’
‘Exactly. A very hot iron.’
‘Is Cloughie all right?’
‘Yes, but he is in hospital as I said. He has burns.’
‘And where is Sabine now?’
‘She said she was going to drop Anna off after swimming. Then she was meeting some friends for a drink.’
‘To drown her sorrows?’
‘I think she plans to celebrate. Her friends want to hear all about it. It’s given everyone an idea of how to deal with their men when they misbehave. It’s not just an iron that can be used in self-defence. Our homes are full of weapons: the carving knife, the meat cleaver, the axe for the wood, the rat poison, and that’s before we move on to the bathroom, the electric fire, the sleeping pills, the medicine cabinet . . .’
‘So are you telling me that the women of Ely are planning a series of outbreaks of domestic violence?’
‘They might be. What are you going to do about it?’
‘Be kinder to you.’
Millingham School had an elegiac feel when Sidney visited the next day. The empty cricket ground and abandoned swimming pool made it seem that summer
had ended before its time. He looked out across the silent cricket pitch to the elms beyond and told the headmaster that Adam Barnes had left the Bunsen burners on in the science block as an act of revenge for his brother’s suicide. Luke Barnes had been driven to his death after a sustained campaign of bullying, unnecessary punishment and sexual abuse suffered at the hands of the Reverend Kevin Warner and Trevor Paine. Other teachers may have been involved but further details of the case showed the school in an appalling light.
Sidney made his position clear. ‘You do realise that reforms are essential? All this must be stamped out. There will be a police investigation.’
The headmaster tried to concentrate simply on the explosion. ‘Barnes will admit to what he did?’
‘I believe he will, but this is not really the issue.’
‘It is to me. Prize Day was ruined.’
‘Adam Barnes has suffered a very great deal. He may go on suffering. These events will stay with him for a long time,’ Sidney continued. ‘Forgiving him is the least we can do.’
‘I am not sure about that. I don’t want to show any weakness.’
‘He is going to leave the school in any case. You can say that he has been expelled if you like. I only pray he will find a happier place to complete his studies.’
‘We tried to do our best for him.’
‘I am afraid that you did not. That is the point.’
After much forceful discussion the headmaster said that he would make amends. ‘I will make sure that what Barnes has done doesn’t count against him. Trevor Paine can take early retirement on health grounds.’
‘That is not enough.’
‘He will complain that it’s the fault of “modern times”.’
‘It’s considerably more significant than that and well you know it, Headmaster.’
‘I do know. But it may be too late to change that particular sinner.’
‘It’s never too late to turn anyone away from a destructive path,’ Sidney asserted, ‘whether they are endangering their own life or the lives of others. Ethical positions exist outside time. I will talk to Trevor Paine again. So will the police. There is no excuse for his behaviour. He must understand what effect his actions have had even if he has to do so in prison. I owe that to all the boys who were placed in his care.’
