Thirty-one
There had been a late frost in the night and traces of the purity of it lingered in the quad, and she hurried into the building with her head as far down into her collar as she could manage to get it to protect her ears from the bite of the morning wind, grateful for the gust of stale warm air that greeted her. She felt a great deal better than she would have hoped after the exertions and stresses of the past few days; she had slept dreamlessly last night and felt surprisingly good this morning.
Because of the way Sam was yesterday? Her secret voice murmured in her ear as she brewed a pot of coffee in the corner she’d fitted up in her room for that purpose, and she smiled over the rim of her cup as she sipped, feeling as much warmth from the memory of his words as she did from the scalding liquid.
She wasn’t surprised when he appeared in her doorway a few moments later. Already the school was stirring with the early arrivals among the boys, even though there was still more than half an hour to go to the Big Assembly which was due this morning. It would be the last of the term, with the school breaking up on Wednesday for the Easter holidays, and there was already an air of frivolity about, in spite of what had happened to Collop only last week. So seeing Sam with a bunch of sticky chestnut buds clutched in one hand didn’t surprise her unduly.
‘It’s for the dais,’ he explained when she looked at it. ‘The Head wants us to pay some sort of attention to the fact that it’s Easter without being over the top, because of Collop.’
‘In equal scale, weighing delight and dole,’ Hattie said, and he looked startled.
‘A quotation? I’m the one who’s supposed to have literary pretensions around here.’
‘Then you’ll have to look at your laurels,’ she said and laughed, and he grinned at her and it was as though they were enclosed just for a moment in a bubble of happiness; but then he came further into the room and said, ‘We have to talk about last night, don’t we?’ and the bubble vanished.
‘Yes. I believed him,’ she said. ‘Did you?’ And she poured coffee for him.
‘I had to.’ He had pulled off his coat and dropped it on the table and now was sitting on the edge, looking at her over folded arms. ‘You look much better this morning.’
‘I feel it. So what do we do now?’
‘I’ve been trying to work that out. I just don’t know. It’ll be a waste of time talking to the Headmaster —’
‘That goes without saying,’ she said bitterly.
‘And the police? We can’t get anywhere with them unless the boy is willing to talk to them, and you heard what he said about denying it all.’
‘But we can’t just let it go on! Someone’s got to find this man, whoever he is, and deal with him.’ She frowned then. ‘It was odd. He’d been so upfront about all the rest of it, why should he suddenly get so agitated when we wanted to know the man’s name?’
‘That wasn’t what alarmed him,’ Sam said. ‘It was Matterson’s name that got to him, wasn’t it?’
‘Not only that. It was asking him who the man in the flat was.’ She shook her head. ‘I just don’t know what we do next.’
‘One comfort is that it should stop now.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Collop can hardly give parties for his friend, whoever he is, to pick out his victims, if he’s in hospital.’
‘But he’ll get out,’ Hattie said. ‘His injuries were dreadful, but they weren’t terminal. He isn’t like Tully, locked up in a coma for God knows how long. He could be back at work at the start of the summer term. So what do we do? Go to the hospital, tell him we know what he does? Make him tell this other man that the train’s hit the buffers?’
‘We could try that, but I don’t see it’d get us far. He’ll deny it, of course. And even if he didn’t, how are we to stop him? We can’t put a watch on his home.’
‘A tip-off to the police, then, anonymously.’
‘On what grounds? They have this tiresome preference for evidence.’
She was silent. ‘Then we just have to put up with it?’ she said at length. ‘I couldn’t bear that, knowing boys were being damaged this way and not trying to stop it.’
‘I wonder who Jamie is? He let that much slip.’
‘Even if we quizzed every Jamie in the fourth, what good would that do? It wouldn’t stop the man finding other boys to — Oh, God, it makes me so sick!’ She was suddenly on the edge of tears. ‘I know horrible things happen and I know I can’t stop all of them, none of us can do that, but to be this close to someone so wicked and to be stuck this way —’
‘Oh, Hattie, don’t,’ he said, and was off the table and beside her in a second and he put his arms around her and held her close, patting her back comfortingly with one hand.
It was extraordinary. It was the first time anyone had hugged her quite like that since Oliver had, and that had stopped well before the end of his life; to feel it now, a man’s arms holding her close, filled her not with pleasure, as she would have expected, but with a great wash of confusion. She had no right to be hugged so, it was wrong, dreadfully wrong; but she liked it and that make the wrongness greater; and she pulled herself into as small a space as she could and slid away from him to stand with her back to the wall, staring at him with her eyes wide and frightened.
He was shocked, so much so that he was left standing with his arms dangling by his sides and his face blank with astonishment, and she felt worse than ever, and knew she had to explain and didn’t know if she could. But she had to try.
‘That was — it felt all wrong,’ she managed. ‘I can’t cope with — not yet — it doesn’t feel right to be — I couldn’t manage to —’ And then she shook her head and said no more, terrified she was about to weep.
And he understood and took a deep breath and the expression of amazement left his face and he nodded.
‘It’s all right. I didn’t stop to think. It was an instinctive thing, and I do beg your pardon. I promise not to try that again until — I mean, I’ll leave it to you, if, that is, you ever — I won’t do that again. Please forgive me.’
‘Nothing to forgive,’ she said, and managed a smile. ‘I’m being perfectly absurd. You caught me by surprise. I’m not usually such a wimp.’
‘You don’t know how raw you are until someone touches you,’ Sam said. ‘I should have remembered.’
‘Were you the same?’
He managed a smile of sorts. ‘Oh, indeed I was. I couldn’t bear it if people came anywhere near me. It made life very tough for a long time. But it gets better.’
‘So I see,’ she said, and this time she was able to laugh, albeit a little shakily, and he laughed too, in relief.
‘I’m forgiven?’
‘I told you, nothing to forgive. I should ask your pardon for being so ridiculous.’
‘Believe me, you weren’t.’
‘Thank you.’
There was a silence, then they both started to speak at the same time and he shook his head and said, ‘No, you first,’ just as she put up both hands and said, ‘I’m sorry, I interrupted.’
‘I was just going to say,’ he said, ‘that there isn’t a lot we can do about what Vivian told us. But I’ll think about it, and if you do too maybe we’ll come up with some sort of answer. Right now I’d better get this damned greenery sorted out.’
‘And I have things to do too,’ she said and smiled brightly. ‘And yes, we’ll think about it.’
He nodded and went and then she did allow herself the luxury of tears, only now they were tears of anger at herself and her stupidity, and she kicked the table leg furiously, which only hurt her foot and made her want to weep more. But it was all over almost as soon as it had started, and she blew her nose and dug a little mirror out of her bag and began to repair her make-up. Pink eyes on a cold day were permissible, she told herself, and anyway, she could wear her glasses, even though she only really needed them for very close work.
The door opened again and Harry Forster
put his head round. ‘Ah! We come not too early on our errand!’ he said and came in and stood leaning against the door, smiling down at her. ‘I seek succour, good madam.’
‘I’m sure you’ve got all that wrong,’ she said, and put away her make-up hurriedly. ‘You sound like a bad historical novel rather than the way I imagine the real thing did.’
‘That’s the whole point of the joke,’ Harry said. ‘It’s meant to be all wrong, like really cheap cloak-and-dagger jobs. Stap me vitals, ma’am, but where’s the jest, an none recognize it? I weep for my own ineptitude.’
‘You’ll weep for better reasons soon if you don’t tell me what you want,’ she said and he smiled and bowed with a little flourish.
‘I seek some advice, ma’am,’ he said and then, as she lifted her brows at him, shook his head. ‘All right, I’ll stop.’ And suddenly he was quite different. It was as though someone had switched off one set of gaudy lights and switched on another of a sober colour. He stood quietly with his arms at his sides, looking at her with face so firmly set it could have been carved from wood. It was the most extraordinary transformation and it left her quite speechless.
‘It’s Genevieve, Mrs Clements,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about Genevieve.’
‘Oh.’ She was cautious. ‘Does she know you do?’
‘She knows I’m very concerned about her.’
‘But does she know you want to talk to me about her? Because it isn’t right to discuss someone else without their knowledge and behind their back.’
‘You’ve talked to her mother about her without her being there,’ Harry said, and Hattie reddened. ‘She knows you did that. She told me.’
‘That was different.’
‘Why? Because she was her mother? And I’m only a boy she happens to know?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Doesn’t it occur to you that I might care more for Jenny than her mother does? That I might be better for her than her mother? Who did Jenny eat that sandwich for the other evening? Me or her mother?’
There was a little silence and then Hattie said, ‘You’ve got a point there. But all the same, I’d feel uncomfortable talking about her behind her back.’
‘You wouldn’t be. She knows I want to talk to you. She’ll come herself, maybe, if I tell her the right things about what happens when we talk.’
‘Bribery?’ Hattie said and Harry shook his head. He was still very sober.
‘Encouragement.’
She was silent and then nodded. ‘All right. I’ll talk to you. But I need to ensure that Genevieve herself’ll come and see me some time as well. I do care about her, you know.’
‘I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.’
She smiled. ‘Fair enough. Well, what is it you want to talk about?’
‘This eating thing. Her periods have stopped.’
She lifted her brows at him. ‘Yes, that’s a common side effect. An early one. I wouldn’t be surprised if it hadn’t been like that for a long time.’
‘Years and years, she says.’
‘Does it worry her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then that should be an inducement to start eating properly again. To put on some weight. Her periods won’t return until she does have the right body weight.’
‘Could she get pregnant before that?’ He sounded very intense, suddenly, and she looked at him with a cold spiral of distaste lifting in her.
‘Is that why you’re so interested? Not because of Genevieve’s wellbeing, living as she does on the edge of starvation, but your own worries about making her pregnant? Hardly the attitude of a caring partner —’
‘Don’t make judgements about me when you’ve no evidence, madam!’ he flared. ‘Don’t ever make such judgements upon me!’
She took a step back, startled by his vehemence. His eyes were very wide open, so that a faint rim of white showed above the black pupils, and his teeth were very white too, gleaming in his black face, and she was genuinely afraid. He looked the most threatening thing she’d ever been faced with and she wanted to shriek for help. But she bit her tongue and just stood there, looking back at him as steadily as she could.
He seemed to relax and took a deep breath and rubbed his face with both hands.
‘I’m sorry. I just got so — I’m not having sex with Genevieve, Mrs Clements. I’ve got more respect, more — I love her. You know what that means? Or haven’t you ever really loved anyone properly? Is that what it is, that you make such judgements so quickly?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said and her lips felt stiff and hard to move. ‘You’re right. And, yes, I do know what it’s like to love someone almost as desperately as you love Genevieve. I had no right to jump to that conclusion. Though the way you said it —’
‘It’s someone else who’s been — using her,’ he said, and his voice was tight. ‘I try to push it out of my mind, what she told me, but I can’t. It’s very difficult when you love someone to know they’ve been hard-used.’
It seemed to her an odd turn of phrase and she blinked at it. ‘Hard-used …’
‘Ill treated. Bullied. Abused, altered.’
She shook her head, not understanding and he said impatiently, ‘She isn’t the way she was meant to be! She’s been made what she is. Frightened and sick. I know she’s killing herself the way she’s behaving, and so does she. We have to make it stop. That’s why I came to ask questions. I need to know all I can about her state before I can help her get out of it.’
Hattie nodded. ‘I understand, and I deeply regret hurting your feelings, Harry. You’ve got more understanding of it all than I realized. Look, it’s called anorexia nervosa, and it’s dreadfully common. Usually girls like Genevieve, though it can happen to boys too sometimes. As they get thinner, because they don’t eat, they get downy — you must have noticed that — and they lose their secondary sex characteristics. She’s got no breasts any more of course, as well as no periods. It’s like she was a child. Certainly she’s trying to make her body more childlike —’
‘Even though having a child’s body makes pain for her?’ Harry said and Hattie frowned and shook her head.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It makes it worse for her, being like a child! If only she could be like a woman, could get pregnant, that’d make it all stop, wouldn’t it? If she could get pregnant, then she could go to him and make him understand that it was over, that she was grown up, that it had to stop …’
He began to move around the little room restlessly, prowling from side to side, and she let her eyes follow him, not sure what to think, not sure if she understood what she thought he was saying, suddenly seeing all the pieces of Genevieve’s story fall into place, her mother and her fearfulness, the watchful way both parents had sat and stared at her when she’d talked to them, the way they had been, the three of them, that afternoon at the autumn fair; and she lifted her chin and said softly, ‘You’ll have to explain more, Harry.’
‘It’s him, of course,’ Harry said savagely. ‘It’s him! Ever since she can remember, she told me. All those years … When she was small, a thin child like her brothers, all those years. It’s the way he talks to her, holds her, controls her. It’s the way he makes her do the things he wants. If she got pregnant, though, and went and showed him, that would stop him, wouldn’t it? He’d know the time had come to let go, to let someone else take over and start caring for Genevieve —’
He stopped then and stood and looked at her and for the first time since she had known him he looked his age, tentative, uncertain, yet incandescent with anger and hurt. He was a boy, not a man, and she put out one hand and said gently, ‘It isn’t as easy as that, Harry. She has to find her own life. She has to control herself. Not just be handed over from one to another strong person —’
‘It’s too late for that,’ he cried impatiently. ‘She’s already been ruined that way. She’ll always have to have people to look after her! And better me than him, with the way
he’s been.’
‘Let me get this very clear,’ Hattie said carefully. ‘I have to be sure. You say her father has abused her?’
He was standing with his back to her now, stopped short in his prowling. ‘Yes.’
‘Sexual abuse?’
He lifted his head and almost howled it. ‘Yes!’
‘Intercourse?’ She had to probe however much it hurt him.
He let his head droop now and said in a muffled voice, ‘She says not. But I don’t believe her. I think he did. Not the normal way though …’
‘How do you mean, Harry?’ she persisted, feeling his resistance like a palpable thing.
‘Does it matter? Isn’t it obvious? Can’t you see? How can she eat, how can she find pleasure in putting food in her mouth after — He’s done dreadful things to her, and I want to kill him! I want to kill him —’
She came and stood behind him and after a moment risked putting a hand on his back and eventually, after what seemed a pause that lasted minutes, he turned and looked at her. His face was quite smooth again, and he smiled down at her as though none of the things he’d just said had distressed him in the least. The transformation was as complete as the earlier one had been. A chameleon, she thought, or do I mean Proteus? So changeable a thing; how can I trust him?
‘So there you have it, Mrs Clements! I want to kill this man, but of course I can’t, so I have to find other ways of dealing with him. And I wondered, Genevieve and I wondered, if she goes and tells him she’s pregnant and it’s my baby, will he know she’s not able to get pregnant? Does he have that much knowledge? Do you see my difficulty? I have a better way of hurting him than killing him. If he thinks his little girl’s been knocked up by a bloody nigger like me, he’ll go through hell, won’t he? For the rest of his life. Tell me it’ll work. Because Genevieve swears to me she’ll do it if it will.’
Thirty-two
‘He told me to come and see you,’ Genevieve said, standing just inside the door, not looking at her. Hattie sat at her table and didn’t move, but she smiled cheerfully and raised one arm to welcome her.
Dangerous Things Page 34
