‘It’s a bit poor on definition,’ he explained, panting as he arrived. ‘I haven’t edited it and that’s why there’s some wobbly of course, but I can get it a bit better, I think.’
He fiddled with the controls, muttering under his breath, and then hit the ‘Play’ button and went to the window to stare down at the screen.
‘That’s better,’ he said after a few minutes, sounding satisfied. ‘Better colour. Too much brightness last time.’ And he went back to the machine and rewound the tape and grinned widely at her.
‘Well, thanks for your help, Mrs Clements. Excellent assistant you were, excellent. If you ever need a job as a PA to a moviemaker, let me know.’ He laughed. ‘Not that I could afford to pay you what you’re worth, of course. You’re a treasure. Well now, will you be at the Assembly to see this or have you seen enough? Or do you have to be there anyway, being staff?’
‘I’ll be there,’ she said shortly. She’d had more than enough of his jejune bounce and she wanted time to think before Assembly; and it would be a good thing to see Sam to tell him what she’d seen. Then he could watch too. If they didn’t see it now, she thought, that would be that; Freddy would take the tape away with his precious machine and edit it and she’d not get the chance to look again. The scenes showing the shooting of Tully would obviously be cut out; they would hardly enhance a fundraising video, so it had to be now. Any attempt to see it again later would seem very suspicious.
She thought hard as she made her way into the hall, watching all the time for Sam to arrive, and took her place at the end of the first row where the girls sat, and let the film rerun in her mind’s eye.
Had she seen an unexplained extra rifle muzzle after the first couple of shots, or had she been so eager to see something that she had imagined it? She let her memory roll on to what came after that. The camera had cut across to the group of people who had been standing with Tully on the gravelled area, Bevan close to Tully, and on his other side Steenman, Wilton and Collop. Richard Shuttle from the French department next to Tully on the opposite side, and then someone she hadn’t known, probably from the Board of Governors, then Genevieve’s father — she’d seen him around on the day several times with some of the Governors — and then George Manson. There had been others but she couldn’t remember them, and anyway, they didn’t matter. What mattered was just one thing: an extra gun and the angle at which it had been firing. As far as she could tell it hadn’t been aimed all that differently from the other guns; certainly not at the wall of the little building by which she’d been standing herself.
And, come to think of it — and now she sat up a little straighter as the idea lit up her mind — that was the only wall around from which a bullet could have ricocheted. Everyone had been saying that was how Tully had been shot, and everyone had accepted it was so, yet no one seemed to have noticed that there wasn’t anything the bullet could have bounced from. Not even the police. It was extraordinary.
She saw Sam then, coming in as the boys began to drift in too and she lifted her chin at him, hoping he’d see her unobtrusive signal, and he did, and came across to her, not obviously hurrying, she noticed approvingly, but coming all the same.
‘Sam,’ she said urgently and very quietly. ‘It’s the oddest thing. I just realized something. What did the bullet bounce off? I mean, that’s what a ricochet is, isn’t it? A bounce? Well, the only wall around was on the storage sheds where I was standing and I swear nothing hit them. I’d have heard it, wouldn’t I? And I didn’t.’
He frowned with the ready understanding that she was coming to value in him so much. She’d always tended to reach conclusions long before Oliver; going, as he used to say sourly, ‘from A to Z via nowhere at all,’ while she complained at the way he always had to go laboriously through every logical step to reach the same conclusions she did; but Sam was as intuitive and swift as she was herself, and she watched him as he thought about what she said, grateful for his comprehension.
‘It must have been the ground, then,’ he said. ‘There was gravel under the targets, wasn’t there?’
She closed her eyes to conjure up a thread of memory of the field on Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t difficult; she suspected she’d never be able to forget it. And he was right. She opened her eyes and said quickly — for the hall was filling rapidly now and he’d have to go soon to his own place further back — ‘Yes. But can bullets ricochet off gravel?’
‘Don’t see why not,’ he said and looked over his shoulder as one of the boys in the fifth came and said something to him. ‘I’m coming, Richard. Go and start the line, neatly now. Listen, Hattie, I don’t think it’s significant, you know. A bullet can ricochet off anything, I imagine, even the earth. So why not gravel? It has to have been an accident, whatever it bounced off.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ she said. ‘Watch the left-hand side of the screen where the leaves are, about three minutes in.’
The girls arrived and, nodding politely at Sam, pushed their way past Hattie into their places in the line and she bit her lip, wanting to say more but not able to, and he nodded reassuringly and said, ‘I will. The left you say? Fine,’ and went back to the fifth.
The Headmaster came sweeping in in his usual elegant style, his gown floating behind him (Did he have it specially weighted to create that effect? she wondered) and stood at the front of the dais, his hands folded on the lectern, looking down at them all with an expression on his face which spelled stern justice tempered with mercy, which Hattie knew now as the one he always assumed for his public Headmasterly appearances, and the big hall with its hundreds of boys and masters sighed to a silence and waited.
‘A tragedy,’ said the Headmaster in tones about half an octave lower than his usual speaking level, ‘occurred at the Foundation on Saturday.’
Silence, except for some shuffling of feet.
‘You don’t need me to tell you what a loss Mr David Tully is to this school. His flame of talent, his great concern for the truth that is in Art, his care for you, his pupils. All gone.’
The silence became even gloomier and Hattie sank lower in her place, wanting to blush for him. Didn’t he know how ridiculous he sounded?
‘Not that Mr Tully has died. Glory be. By some miracle his life burns on, albeit dimly.’ This is getting worse, Hattie thought, almost in despair. I’ll start giggling soon. ‘But he lies deep in coma. He is not expected to regain consciousness for some time If at all. We must weep indeed to have lost so brave a heart.’
Even the shuffling had stopped now.
‘And we must pray that by a further miracle his senses will be fully restored to him so that he can be restored to us.’ The voice had gone even deeper. ‘So although it is not usual to do so for a living person, I ask you to hold a minute’s silence to think of Mr David Tully and, if you are so minded — and I trust you are — to pray for his wellbeing. He is one of us but not with us except it thought. Let your thoughts be deep and true.’
He stood there with his head bent and the school descended into a strained and barely contained silence. I’m not the only one who wants to giggle, Hattie thought. God help us all if anyone starts. The whole place’ll go up in a conflagration of laughter.
Behind her someone hiccuped and to her right she felt a frissor of giggles move along the line and she caught her breath and looked up at the Headmaster on his dais. He was looking down directly at her with his face carefully set in melancholy lines and she lifted her brows at him, silently begging him to stop the silence at once and get on if he wanted to avoid immediate and appalling embarrassment; and he stared back and then at the girls and finally up at the clock, and to her intense relief coughed and spoke.
‘We will now do something I regard as important if unusual under the circumstances. We will watch a film. We will do this for a very important reason. I want no silly gossip around the Foundation, no apportioning of blame, no foolish chatter at all about what happened to Mr Tully. It was an accident, and that’s an end o
f it. But to prove to you all it was indeed just an accident and that no one can be called to fault, I’m going to show you a film that was made here ready for a special fundraising video by Mr Freddy Langham. It’s rather rough and shakes a good deal because it hasn’t been cut and edited, but you can see clearly what happened. And you’ll see that it puts paid to any hint of reproach attaching to anyone here. It was a sad accident. A live bullet — and the bullets, I’m told, had to be live though I’m not quite sure I comprehend why, but then I’m not an armaments man’ — a light musical sound escaped from him — ‘a live bullet ricocheted and hit our unfortunate Mr Tully. Mr Langham will show you the film and afterwards I want to offer no further comment at all about the events of that afternoon. Is that understood? Any talk or conjecture I hear will be swiftly and firmly punished. Be sure of that. All the staff know my feelings on this and, I am sure, share them. There will be no gossip. This will put a full stop to the whole matter, except for prayers for Mr Tully of course. Mr Langham?’
He looked up at the small window that led to the projection room and after a moment the light in the small hall dimmed and the window curtains on their tracks clacked jerkily as various boys set to the task by their form masters ran to pull on the cords. The hall shuffled and settled down just like a Saturday night audience at the pictures, Hattie thought, when a particularly gruesome film’s on the bill.
The screen lit with the first dancing blank frames of film and then as the Headmaster pulled his lectern out of the way and went to one side of the dais, it started; and she leaned forward, her eyes fixed on the left-hand side of the screen.
The film was getting to be dreadfully familiar. She watched the way Staveley behaved; watched Harry Forster send the shooters off to their places; watched them carry their kits and put them in position; watched Harry go to organize the boys taking charge at the target end; watched as he moved out of shot, carrying the spare boxes; watched as the boys opened their kits. The first one was shown in close-up, reaching into his box, taking the bullets out of the squared-off block with the holes in it which held the bullets as in a rack; then, close-up, moved to the gun, and she watched as he loaded it … The film went on in its familiar way and she was getting restless, aching to get to the point when the shooting began, feeling as though it never would. She watched the cutaway as the camera raked round the crowd, homing in on interested watching faces: there was Steenman and Collop, and there was Tully moving towards the gravelled area, still alert and grinning at something someone had said to him; then the party of Governors with Genevieve’s father leading them coming into frame; and then, at last, the camera went back to the boys with the guns, closed in on the one taking aim and firing and then cut to the target —
And there it was again. She peered hard at the edge of the screen, trying to be sure, but it was harder now somehow. The leaves danced and moved as they had on every other occasior she had watched and she could see what it was she had seer before; but this time she couldn’t be sure. The muzzle of a rifle or a trick of the light? A bullet being fired at exactly the same moment as another, or a blip of the soundtrack? And then it was too late; the camera had moved, was showing the next shooters loading, cocking, taking aim, hitting their targets, and she leaned back in her seat and bit her lip. Maybe she’d just been looking for something to prove Judith was right? After all, it had been Tully who’d been hit; the horrible Tully who made so many boys so very miserable and who might indeed be part of some sort of sex thing. The fact that Sam had said he thought Tully had kissed the boy in the street just to shock her didn’t mean it had to be so; she mustn’t take all he said at face value, however agreeable and intelligent he was. She could have ideas of her own, in the matter, after all —
Oh, stop it, she told herself furiously and stood up as, the film over, the Headmaster announced the hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy, and a wispy boy from the fifth form began to play the melody on the tired old grand piano in the corner of the dais. You’ll drive yourself round the twist this way. Wait and see what Sam saw. That will be soon enough to start deciding what she could do next.
Then Assembly ended in its usual welter of form announcements, details of sports matches arranged and exhortations about the use of the cloakrooms and the way people still insisted on running in the corridors, a highly dangerous activity, and she followed the girls out of the hall towards their form room for the first period of the day, wanting to catch up with Sam to talk to him, and knowing to do so would cause people to gossip. They’d gossip about anything in this school, she thought with some bitterness as Sam disappeared into his own form room and closed the door behind him. Now she’d have to wait till lunchtime. It was an eternity.
It wasn’t in fact until after school that she was able to talk to him alone. At lunchtime, the masters’ table was occupied from the moment the bell at the end of morning school went until it was time to return to afternoon school again by Bevan, quite ignoring the Headmaster’s dictum, expatiating at great length about how much help he’d offered the police about the shooting because of his proximity to Tully, and how little consideration he’d been shown by anyone, least of all the Headmaster who seemed to be totally unconcerned that he, the most senior of the masters, had suffered such a shock. To have attempted to have a private conversation with Sam under those conditions was out of the question and even after lunch, when they generally went to the staffroom for coffee, there was little chance to talk. Sam signalled hopelessness at her with his eyebrows over the heads of the others and she set herself to an afternoon of teaching the youngest forms about personal hygiene as best she could. At least she had her teaching commitments now, for which she had to be grateful. Being so very busy all the time gave her little time to think and today that was a help.
They met at last as they left the school and went together to the underground station to stand on the platform and talk as they waited for their trains. He didn’t suggest they should stop off to have a drink as they sometimes did and she was glad of that, she told herself firmly. Very glad. She hadn’t the time today, with Judith out at her wretched nail-wrapping session, and her Inge tending to be a little unreliable about looking after Sophie and Jessica when she had her hands full with Petra and Jenny; and if somewhere deep inside Hattie was a little depressed because he hadn’t given her the chance to explain all that and say, ‘No thank you,’ to a drink, she didn’t allow herself to think about it.
‘Did you see what I meant?’ she said. ‘You watched the left-hand side where the leaves were?’
‘I watched,’ he said. ‘Though it would have helped to know just what I was watching for.’
‘Better you didn’t. Then if it wasn’t there you wouldn’t have seen it because you hadn’t been told it was there. If you see what I mean.’
‘Yes. You think I might be suggestible. You tell me what to see and I see it.’
‘No, of course not! But you have to admit it’s strange if you see something without being tipped off. Don’t you?’
‘I know what you mean,’ he said. ‘There was that narrow oblong shadow —’
‘You thought it was a shadow?’ Her spirits dropped like a stone. ‘Really?’
‘I know what you want me to say. You want me to say I saw a rifle muzzle.’
‘Well, the fact that you think that shows you did!’ she cried. ‘Doesn’t it? That’s what I thought I saw and if you did too —’
He shook his head. ‘I think what I saw was a shadow. An odd trick of the light made a long narrow shadow seem remarkably straight, so that it could have been a human artefact. But I don’t think it was anything more than that. A trick of the light. D’you want it to be a gun?’
‘What?’
‘It seems to me you want to discover something which the police and the man who made the film himself — and who’s therefore highly expert at looking at films — didn’t see. Do you want this to have been a deliberate act? Isn’t it bad enough it was a dreadful accident?’
She bit her
lip, staring up at him in the dim light of the underground. Stale cold air whispered around her feet and she could hear the distant rumble of the train. They’d only have another few seconds to talk.
‘No, I don’t want it to have been deliberate. My God, that would be awful. And yet — I just thought, maybe — he wasn’t popular.’
‘He’s a bastard of the nastiest kind. And the fact that he’s now in hospital lying like a vegetable doesn’t alter that fact,’ Sam said as the rush of air from the tunnel sent scraps of paper and cigarette ends dancing and bouncing along the platform ‘I wouldn’t blame anyone for taking a pot shot at him. But I don’t think anyone did, Hattie. I think that shadow was just that. Don’t you believe the police would have seen a gun muzzle if it had been there? They’ve seen the film several times, I understand.’
The train slid alongside the platform, and squares of yellow light chequered the tiled walls as she nodded, turning to stare up at the indicator. Dammit. It was her train. She’d have to go.
‘I suppose you’re right, if the police didn’t see it. Well, there it is then. I was wrong. All we can do now is wait and see how Tully gets on and hope he doesn’t die of his accident. But I still wish I really understood how it happened. Oh, well. Goodnight. See you in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And let’s hope we can get back to normal soon. When you start looking for trouble, then things really are out of step. No more fussing about deliberate shootings?’
‘No,’ she said as the door closed in front of her, leaving her to wave a little inanely at him as the train slid out of the station on its way westwards. ‘No …’
But it wouldn’t be easy, she told herself as she pushed her way into one of the few seats available. Not easy at all.
‘You didn’t really think it would make any difference, did you?’ the man said and sounded genuinely amazed. ‘Why on earth should it?’
Dangerous Things Page 24
