‘Er — well, not really. I mean, one of the masters attempted suicide.’
‘Not really? Ye gods, darling, if that’s “not really” what on earth would you say if something bad happened? How do you mean, tried to commit suicide?’
Hattie explained and Judith listened as the rest of their party chattered on, absorbed in each other — the Arts Council couple were being bombarded with complaints by the actors and the two surgeons were conversationally ankles deep in blood and gore — and when she’d finished made a little face.
‘You can’t be funny about that, can you?’ she said a little unexpectedly. ‘Poor old sod! Imagine having such a lousy life that losing the chance to order little boys about pretending to be soldiers makes you suicidal. No wonder you look so miserable.’
‘Do I? I didn’t mean to,’ Hattie said. ‘I wasn’t that upset, I’m afraid. I mean, he’s the sort of chap you’d expect it from.’
‘Well, if it isn’t the poor old sod who has you on the edge of tears, who is it? The divine Sam?’
‘I’m not on the edge of tears!’
‘Well, a bit near the edge, anyway. This is me, remember, ducks? So tell me, how is the divine Sam, now I think of him? Next time we have an outing like this, we’ll have to ask him. Maybe for Peter’s birthday next May —’
‘No!’ Hattie cried hastily. Too hastily, for Judith was on the scent at once.
‘Aha! You’ve had a row!’ She pounced. ‘Why? When? How?’
‘Such stuff!’ Hattie said. ‘Of course we haven’t. There’s nothing to row about.’
‘Something’s happened to upset you,’ Judith said. ‘More people smoking pot, perhaps?’ She giggled, pleased with her alliteration. ‘Poor little poppets puffing pot.’
‘No, that’s all right. I talk to Harry about it fairly often and he’s a straight sort of chap. He wouldn’t lie to me. It’s stopped. Anyway, they were all so shaken by what happened to Tully it’s sort of taken the steam out of them. They don’t seem, any of them, to have the taste for rule-breaking they used to.’ And indeed everyone in the staffroom had noticed and commented favourably on the subdued air the boys were carrying about with them now. Hattie had found it depressing to see such young people feeling so low, but had been glad enough for her own sake; if they had still been hiding away in their basement hole using their drugs she’d have had her bluff called and would have had to do something. As it was, all was well there. She’d been down to look for herself, feeling a little guilty at not taking Harry’s word for it, and found the space dusty, cold and clearly abandoned. So now she shook her head. ‘I’m not worried about them the way I was.’
‘So what else can it be? Is he going to fire you, the ineffable Hilary?’
‘Not to my knowledge. The girls are still there so he still needs someone like me, and he seems content enough with what I’m doing. If he didn’t fire me over the Daniel Spero affair he’s hardly likely to do it now. I’ve done nothing to upset him.’
‘Ipso facto, quod erat demonstrandum, sine qua non, and all the rest of it, then!’ Judith said. ‘It has to be Sam.’
Hattie gave in. ‘He’s being a little odd,’ she admitted.
‘Lots of detail, ducky, please! I can’t make decisions for you without all the evidence, now can I?’
‘Who asked you to make decisions for me?’ Hattie managed to laugh. ‘Honestly, Judith, I don’t know why I put up with you.’
‘Because I’m a nice scatty friend who loves you and looks after you and is marvellous with your kids,’ Judith said. ‘So, details! Lots and lots of luscious details.’
Hattie sighed. ‘There aren’t any really. He’s just been — well, stand-offish, I suppose. We used to gossip so nicely, you know? It was fun going up for coffee in the mornings because he’d be there and we’d natter and —’
‘I know,’ Judith said. ‘It’s better than a tangle of legs in a bed sometimes, isn’t it? Sex is all right, but a natter over a coffee cup leaves it standing.’
‘Sex doesn’t come into this equation, damn you,’ Hattie said, and Judith laughed.
‘Wanna bet? Anyway, there you were, cosy chats over the coffee cups and now — well, now what?’
‘I told you. He just isn’t there, or if he is, he’s already got his coffee and he’s sitting in a corner with his head in a book so that I can’t disturb him, or he’s talking shop with the others. It’s all, well, it’s like writing in water. Nothing to get hold of but you know it’s there. Nothing to point to.’
‘And what happened today?’
Hattie told her and it sounded limp in the extreme. ‘So there you are,’ she finished. ‘It’s nothing really, is it? He used to see me to the station and share part of my journey home. Now he goes and catches a bus instead.’
Judith was silent, stirring the remains of the noodles on her plate as she thought. Around them the chatter of the others went on and Hattie was grateful for it. Judith might be dreadfully inquisitorial and sometimes tiresome but she was wonderfully comfortable to talk to.
‘When did it start?’ Judith said abruptly, and Hattie screwed up her eyes, thinking.
‘After the film was shown to the school, I think,’ she said slowly. ‘I told you I thought I saw something and I asked him to look and he did, but he said he didn’t think it was anything to worry about.’
‘I remember,’ Judith said and she sounded unusually sober. ‘You thought you saw a gun. He pooh-poohed it.’
‘Not exactly pooh-poohed it,’ Hattie protested. ‘Just didn’t think he’d seen what I thought I saw.’
Again Judith was silent and then she looked up at Hattie and her face was unusually unsmiling. ‘Did you see him in the film?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘I said —’
‘I heard you. I don’t think …’ Hattie squinted at the wall facing her, not seeing the embroidered pictures of birds and bridges and cherry trees that hung there, but watching the film in her mind’s eye. She’d seen it often enough to remember it very well; and then she said slowly, ‘No, I don’t think I did, to be honest.’
‘Oh!’ Judith said and that was all.
There was a little silence between them and then Hattie said pugnaciously, ‘And what does that “Oh!” mean?’
‘Nothing. Just oh.’
‘Come off it, Judith, this is me, this time. I know you as well as you think you know me. You do mean something by that. You think there was something odd about not being able to see Sam in the film? There were hordes of other people who weren’t in the film! So why make a point of it with Sam?’
‘Only because he was so definite about it not being a gun muzzle you saw,’ Judith said. ‘That was the only reason. It’s all settled down, hasn’t it? I mean, the police have left it alone. Only if old Tully dies will there be an inquest, and at the moment it’s all peaches and cream, isn’t it? Everything at the Foundation’s lovely.’
‘What with suicides and —’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I suppose so.’
There was another silence and then Hattie said, ‘You think he’s involved in the Tully business in some way?’
Judith shrugged. ‘How can I know, darling? I just sit here and listen to you talk. It’s the things you say that make the ideas come to me. You tell me three things. That Sam’s gone funny on you. That he said he didn’t see a gun where you saw one on the film. And he wasn’t in sight on the film when you watched it. So I can’t help thinking, Was he at the other end of that gun you saw, only not on the film? It’s a logical thought, after all, ducky, isn’t it? It’s obviously occurred to you. If it hadn’t, how come you put it into my mind?’
Twenty-six
With just two weeks left to the end of term, it wasn’t difficult for Hattie to keep herself very busy at school. There were the final rehearsals for the last performance of The Taming of the Shrew which was to take place on the last Thursday of term, to replace the cancelled showing on Founder’s Day, and t
hat meant most of the girls were heavily occupied with organizing their costumes and arranging their rehearsals round class work. Hattie, in spite of Collop’s continuing tendency to produce comments of such biting sarcasm they made her and almost all of the girls want to scratch his eyes out, helped them as much as she could and was very much in evidence in the dressing rooms during the rehearsals, helping the girls reconstruct their costumes there and learning more about make-up. She’d always done the stage make-up for the Old East shows in her student days, and she enjoyed gathering up her old skills as she showed the sixth-formers how to highlight and disguise in the way demanded by the battery of light Collop used for his productions (‘We might be amateurs,’ he would say. ‘But we’ll be the most bloody professional amateurs there can be’) and generally making them look exceedingly Elizabethan.
All of which made it much easier to keep out of Sam’s way. She hardly ever went to the common room at coffee time now, preferring to remain with the girls in their sixth-form room, or busying herself in the props room where a good deal of time was being spent making up what purported to be costly jewellery for some of the cast to wear for this special performance, and she usually went out for lunch, not feeling up to facing them all at the staff table in the dining room. She would walk quickly through the March chill to the market at Watney Street to buy herself something from the delicatessen and coffee in a plastic cup and would eat and drink quickly as she watched the passers-by, concentrating on them in all their winter busyness as a way of not thinking about Sam.
It wasn’t easy. She would stare at a woman with a clutch of children wrapped in vivid red and blue woollens (for the people hereabouts favoured strong colour in their clothes) as she haggled with stall-keepers for the cheapest vegetables while cuffing the children indiscriminately, if they tried to move an inch from her side, and imagine herself walking over to her, starting to talk to her, finding a way explaining that hitting wasn’t the best way to help children grow up happy and successful; would imagine the woman losing her temper and hitting out at her as she did at her children — and then suddenly Sam would arrive in her little fantasy, walking through the hubbub of the market to take her arm and smile and nod at the angry woman and assure her she wouldn’t be bothered again by this foolish person —
And then she would crumple her coffee beaker and throw it away and march out of the deli to thread her way through the stalls, sometimes stopping to buy sweet potatoes and plantains — for Sophie and Jessica had learned to like her attempts at West Indian cookery — trying to concentrate on that too; but again Sam would appear in her mind’s eye, leaning over her shoulder, pointing out a particularly luscious mango or papaya and telling her to buy it, to try something new —
The truth of it is, she’d told herself bleakly, padding back to school after the lunch hour one day, her arms dragged down and her fingers blanched by an extra load of shopping she hadn’t really needed to buy, but which had kept her anxiety at bay while she did it, the truth is, I’m scared and angry, all at the same time. Scared it might be true, that Judith is right and Sam is somehow involved in what happened to David Tully, and angry with myself for caring. If he’s the one who hurt Tully I should be a sensible citizen, and a caring one, I should go to the police and tell them what I know, and —
At which point she was stopped short. For what did she know, after all? Nothing. Judith had come up with one of her more ridiculous notions — and Hattie had denied hotly and still did that she had put the idea in Judith’s head — and that was all there was. No evidence, not a scintilla of proof that he was anything but what he seemed, a schoolmaster absorbed in his work and his pupils, friendly, agreeable —
‘He’s not,’ she said aloud, stopping in the middle of the pavement, so that other people had to eddy round her as though she were a rock in a stream, and then, catching a curious stare from one of them, plodding on, her head down. He isn’t friendly and agreeable, and I hate him for letting me think he was. I was beginning to like him a lot —
‘Too much?’ her secret voice asked sardonically and she considered that instead of trying to push the thought away. Well, yes. She had to admit it. She had come to regard him very warmly indeed, liking the way he smiled, the shape of his body as he stood there in the common room, the smell of him as she went by, medicated soap and warm skin; and knowing that made her angrier than ever.
What made it all the more difficult was the fact that Sam seemed to have changed. No longer did he try to avoid her. On the contrary. On the rare occasions she came into the common room and he was there he would make for her eagerly, only to be stopped by the way she firmly attached herself to someone else — often Dinant — so that he couldn’t talk to her alone. If he saw her in the corridors he would try to catch up with her, or wait till she reached him, and she would deliberately hurry her steps to outstrip him or turn round and go the other way, waiting till he’d gone to complete her errand. He looked tense and angry when she did look at him — which wasn’t often, for she was determined to avoid any eye contact — and that he was worried was very clear to her. And she didn’t want to think more than she had to about why he was worried and above all didn’t want to remember that day in the staffroom when he had attacked Tully so heatedly, telling him he’d cheer if Tully got his throat cut. She most especially didn’t want to think about that, or indeed any of it. The possibility that Judith might be right was too awful to contemplate.
It was decided that The Taming of the Shrew would manage to get on stage without another full dress rehearsal but a technical one was needed, and she was glad of that. It wpuld make her extra busy and less inclined to silly thinking.
‘We’ll have a run-through for lights and make-up, but only principals need wear costume,’ Martin Collop said. ‘Though I want all props, of course. Half past four sharp, if you please, and I want no time wasted. I’ve got better things to do than hang around here while you halfwits get your acts together.’ As though no one else in the cast had any reason to want to finish on time, Hattie thought wrathfully, and went to phone Judith about coping with the girls.
‘I’m sorry to do this so often,’ she said. ‘But it’ll be easier next term. No play, and tomorrow’ll be the last late night there’ll be for that. We break up next Thursday, glory be.’
‘Never give it a thought,’ Judith said blithely. ‘I like being Mum to four instead of two. Makes me feel useful for a change. Have fun, ducky, and keep out of the wicked Sam’s way.’
‘Idiot!’ Hattie said, ringing off, and went to the school kitchens to see if she could scrounge some sandwiches from the cooks. Collop wouldn’t give a second thought to the fact that his cast would get hungry, so she had better deal with it.
She got herself and the trays of sandwiches back to the hall, which was already set out with its rows of chairs for tomorrow’s performance, at four o’clock, and found it empty except for the two boys who were rigging lights. They waved to her from the tops of their ladders and she called cheerfully back, then went backstage to set out the food she’d brought. The less Collop knew about it the better, she decided; he might regard stopping for a sandwich as a waste of time and not let the cast eat them; and that would mean a stand-up row, Hattie told herself, because there’s no way I’d let him get away with that —
I’m getting positively childish, she told herself then as she set the plastic-film-covered trays on the long trestle table that held the props for the play. Rehearsing conversations and encounters that won’t ever take place, getting worked up over things that haven’t happened and almost certainly won’t. Grow up, woman!
Damn, she thought. I’ve nothing for them to drink; and she looked at her watch. Should be enough time if she hurried to get to the small corner shop round the corner from the main gates and stock up on lemonade and Cokes. She herself would prefer coffee, but that wouldn’t appeal to the cast; and maybe she could get some of them to chip in for the cost of the drinks afterwards? It would make a fair hole in her hous
ekeeping if they didn’t.
She got back from the shop with her laden carriers just as Collop was settling himself in the front row of the seating, and she tried to slip unobtrusively behind the curtains at the side, but he saw her and called, ‘What have you got there?’
Bloody man, she thought and looked over her shoulder at him. ‘I went to get drinks for them, Cokes and so forth. I thought they’d get hungry and thirsty.’
‘Still on watch for the ewe lambs? The boys have the wit to bring their own refreshments —’
‘I’ve got enough for the boys as well,’ Hattie retorted. ‘And sandwiches.’
‘There’s generous!’ Collop said mockingly. ‘Is there even enough for me?’
‘Since the school supplied the sandwiches, I see no reason why you shouldn’t have your share,’ she said. ‘Though I’d be glad to have your contribution to the cost of the drinks. I bought these out of my own pocket.’
He grinned, pleased with himself. ‘Then more fool you. I’ve got my own drink, thank you.’ He patted the zipped-up bag at his side. ‘I’m not used to having a shepherdess take care of me, so I thought of it all on my little own. And I’ll need more than Coke to get me through an evening with this lot.’ and he scowled up at the boy on top of the ladder nearest to him and bawled, ‘You bloody idiot, that’ll come down like a hernia if you don’t fix it properly! Use your bloody eyes, man! That screw’s open!’
‘Hadn’t forgotten it, sir,’ the boy called. ‘I had just got it finished.’ Obediently he screwed up the bracket that held the lamp and then, after squinting at the way the beam fell on the upstage left area, nodded and came down. ‘That’s it, sir. You’ll see it all works now. Shall I start the run-through?’
‘Got your cue sheet?’
The boy pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and waved it at Collop.
‘Then what are you hanging around here for? Get to the lighting board.’
The boy went, taking his ladder with him, and after a few moments called down from the back in a muffled shout, ‘Shall we do the music cues at the same time, sir? We could — Johnny Silverman’s here and he’s got it all ready.’
Dangerous Things Page 28
