‘Small harm?’ she exploded, lifting her head from her work. ‘Small? How can you sit there and say that, with Martin Collop in hospital with a tracheostomy and God knows what damage done to him —’
‘You’ll see what I mean,’ he said, and his voice had hardened. ‘Oh, you’ll see what I mean when you hear why it was. I suppose the one I do regret a bit is Dave Tully, I wasn’t after him.’
‘What did you say?’ She dropped his hand, the last bandage now in place, and sat down, reaching behind her for the chair, because her legs had suddenly turned to cotton wool. ‘Tully? Were you — Was that you who …’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said calmly. ‘That was me.’
‘Oh, God,’ she said and sat and stared at him.
‘I’ll start at the beginning, shall I?’ he said, and smiled at her. ‘It’s a very good place to start.’ And there was a hint of the song in his voice. ‘And don’t think I’m not taking it seriously, because I’m not beating my breast. I am. But I’m damned if I’ll apologize for any of it because it was, well, necessary. You’ll see.’
She said nothing, just sitting and looking at him, as the most vivid sense of déjà vu she had ever known filled her. She had been in this situation before, listening to a boy starting his story at the beginning. But then she remembered and understood why she felt so; Arse had been as Harry was now, sitting in his grimy pub on that dark evening, contemplative, relaxed, ready to talk. Now Harry was, and she shook her head to clear it of the confusion that had blunted the edges of her awareness and let him speak without interruption.
‘Well, where do we begin?’ He sighed, a long soft childlike sound. ‘I was twelve when I came here first. It was hell. I wasn’t like I am now, you know. Oh no. I was your actual ugly duckling. My mum always said I’d get better to look at. Beautiful, she said, and she was right, wasn’t she? I know the value of how I am now, and I’m grateful for it. But it wasn’t like that five years ago. I was a great lump. Bigger than any other boy in my form and with teeth like tombstones and all out of kilter. The wrong bits had grown, and I was — oh, all over the place. They made my life a complete hell.’
He was sitting a little hunched now, his eyes wide and gazing over her head, far away down into the past. ‘I was bullied like no one else was ever bullied. I was spat on and shat on — oh, yes, shat on. They used to collect dog crap and put it on my plate at dinnertime because they knew I wouldn’t dare to complain. My mum used to worry, you know, because I was so thin, but how could I not be? I couldn’t eat here and at home I was too sick with being scared of the next day and the one after, so I never ate. That’s why I understood about my Jenny.’ His face softened. ‘No one but me could understand Jenny properly. She’s suffered as I did, only more quietly, and at home instead of school. It was all right at home for me.’
‘Your parents, didn’t they know what was happening?’
‘My dad’s not around much. He’s a journalist. White, of course. Spends more of his time abroad than at home. Mum’s all right, but she works such odd times.’ His face softened. ‘She sings. She’s Barbara Blossom.’
‘Oh!’ Hattie said, startled, and he looked at her and his mouth twisted in a wry smile.
‘They all say that. Oh, they say, as though no one ever had a well-known mother. Well, I have. And I never told anyone and I don’t know why I told you.’
‘Didn’t she ever come here? Wouldn’t the staff have known?’
‘I wouldn’t let her come here. Nor my father. They did it all by phone and letter, and I’ve got the same name as my Dad. He’d been a Foundationer when he was a boy, so he thought it’d be OK. And once I started I told them never to come here. Said it was easier for me if they didn’t know I had well-known parents, and they were great. They stayed away.’ He laughed, an ugly sound in the small quiet room. ‘It was such hell here, I didn’t want to mix it up with home. Home’s good and right. Here’s a shithole.’
‘And they didn’t know you were being bullied and —’
‘I told you. I made up my mind they wouldn’t. I had to deal with it. I knew I would one day, I just had to wait.’
‘Didn’t one of the masters —’
‘The masters!’ His voice was thick with scorn. ‘That lot? They knew. They heard the sorts of things that bastard Bevan used to say to me in class, they heard the sorts of things Collop said and chose to forget he’d said when it suited him. But they thought I could handle it. Handle it! As if any kid could handle what I was getting. But I stuck it, and it got better. Oh, the difference it made, growing up!’
‘But you aren’t —’
‘Not yet, you’d say? You don’t know the half of of it. I found out how to do it earlier than most. And I’m black, remember. My sort mature younger than your sort.’ He laughed at her, enjoying her discomfiture. ‘I was having sex with various girls I met in Watney Street, round the market, before I was fourteen. I was shaving by the time I was in the fifth form. You don’t know the half of what it’s like to be me!’
‘You’re still not explaining,’ she said, needing to take the initiative and get away from the embarrassment his words created in her. ‘So you were bullied. But it got better. You solved the problem for yourself and that’s very laudable. But why should you think now it’s all right to — to do what you did to Martin Collop, and to Tully?’
‘Hear me out,’ he said, and leaned back in his chair. ‘All right, I was OK, and everyone forgot what bastards they’d been. A couple more black kids got into the school and some Asians and suddenly I’m not the peculiar one any more and I’m getting better to look at and clever with it. Getting the work done so well they had to give me good marks. And then Collop got friendly.’
‘Oh,’ she said and knew what was coming and looked at him and saw Vivian in her mind’s eye and tried to understand how Collop chose his boys. Viv was unprepossessing compared with this glorious creature, and yet Viv had something else, a burning intelligence that of itself was very attractive, and she thought, If Collop had been as good a teacher as he was capable of being with his insight into people, he’d have been a marvel — and felt sick for a moment.
‘He asked me to come to his house to a party,’ Harry said. ‘Only it wasn’t just a party.’
‘I know,’ Hattie said, and he lifted his brows at her.
‘You know?’
‘Yes. There are — it still goes on. Or did.’
‘I see,’ he said softly. ‘So someone else has confided in you?’
‘He had to. I found out things.’
‘Just as you did about me?’ he said lightly. ‘Clever Mrs C. Finding out things about people. It’s as well you aren’t interested in blackmail, isn’t it? You found out about our little den and our comfortable little sessions with a bit of pot, didn’t you? Do you always go prying around that way, looking for things that don’t do any harm?’
She reddened furiously. ‘I did that because I thought it was right! You could have done harm! That child Spero nearly burned the school down and himself with it. I had to be concerned about risks with fire and —’
‘Phooey!’ he said, still softly, not taking his eyes from her face. ‘You just hate smoking, whether it’s pot or tobacco, even though everyone knows pot doesn’t do any harm to people. You went all pompous about it and set out to find out where we smoked and smoked us out.’ He smiled then. ‘An agreeable pun, isn’t it? You smoked us out. But it was all because you were being, shall we say, inquisitive?’
‘Say what you like. I did it and I don’t care. I’d do it again. And I didn’t find out about Collop and his parties in the same way. I was told.’
‘Oh? Who’s he got hold of now?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘No. And it won’t be his any longer, will it?’
There was silence and then she said, ‘Are you trying to say that you …’
‘That I put acid in his bottle to stop him getting any more kids the way he got me?’ Harry said. ‘Yes. Th
at’s what I’m saying.’
‘But why so suddenly?’ She stared at him, nonplussed. ‘You said it had gone on for years, the way the staff and the boys here treated you, but that it had stopped. If you’d taken action against them in the beginning, it’d have been — well, not forgivable. It can never be that. But understandable. But to get revengeful now, for other people rather than yourself, is stretching my belief in your altruism a bit thin.’
‘But that was before Jenny,’ he said, as though that explained everything. ‘Wasn’t it?’
‘You did what you did because of Jenny? But I don’t see how what you did would many any difference. I mean, she cares for you, doesn’t she? You’ve only got to wait a while and the world’s all yours. Why take acid to Collop now when —’
He sighed again, a little theatrically. ‘You’ve forgotten, like everyone else. I thought better of you, but you’ve forgotten like everyone else how long it takes to be free. When you’re our age, every week, every month is twice as long for people like Jenny and me as it is for you. Longer. And I want to be free now. And I thought, I can frighten him off. I can get at Collop and frighten him through him. If Collop gets hurt, then too bad, it’s his turn anyway. He’ll get over it. But once he knows someone’s got it in for Collop he’ll understand they’ve got it in for him —’
‘Got it in for whom?’ she cried, lost now and getting angry. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Harry lifted his brows. ‘Weren’t you told properly? About the parties? About how they were so that he could come and choose the people he wanted?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was told that, but not who …’
‘But not the man who came and did the choosing? Oh, I see. No wonder you’re so cross. Well, it’s no mystery, is it? Gordon. The Ineffable Gordon. Jenny’s father.’
She was silent for a long time, sitting and looking at him and trying to see it, trying to see that smooth pallid man with his polished hair and his too-white shirts and overpressed trousers standing behind a door, peering in, choosing the boys he wanted to take away with him — and shook her head.
‘He wouldn’t tell me,’ she whispered. ‘He said he wouldn’t tell me …’
‘Now I have to ask who,’ Harry said and she looked up at him and shook her head to clear it. There was a lot to get used to here and it wasn’t easy.
‘Arse. Vivian Botham,’ she said. ‘He — Oh, Christ! I had no right to tell you that.’
‘It’s all right. I won’t tell a soul. It’s as secret with me as it was with you before you told me.’ And she believed him.
‘But why? I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t he tell me? How could he not tell me that, when he’d told me so much already about Collop?’
Harry looked at her for a long time. Then he said, ‘Do you remember hearing about Matterson?’
‘Matterson? The sixth-former who died last year? Before I got here?’
‘That’s the one. He was Arse’s friend.’
It was her turn to be silent now as she tried to fit the information into what she already knew.
‘He, Arse — I mean Viv — he was involved in what happened to Matterson?’
‘He probably thinks so. He probably thinks it’s his fault for showing him how to do what he did.’
‘Arse showed him?’
‘Probably. He used to do that, Gordon. You had to teach your successor his little ways. The man’s a bastard, I told you that. Don’t you believe me? Arse is too scared of him to give him away, I’d say. How did you find out as much as you did? I imagine you caught Arse in some way? As you did with me? With your technique for nosing around? If you’ll forgive me for saying it, Mrs C.’
‘I wasn’t nosing around! He was …’ And she saw no reason not to tell him how it was that Vivian had been made to talk to her. It was an extraordinary situation. She was sitting here with a boy who by his own admission had done horrendous things to two of his schoolmasters, yet they were talking as comfortably as a pair of very old friends. She felt no unease in his company and no fear at all. And surely she should?
‘This is weird,’ she said. ‘I should be — I don’t know, I shouldn’t be as calm as I am with you, should I?’
‘I don’t see why not. I’m a reasonable person. And I’m giving you a reasonable explanation.’
‘Are you? What about Tully? You say you hit him — why Tully? Was he involved in this ring of — I don’t know what to call them, they’re horrible —’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you can see that they’re horrible. As for Tully’ — his face seemed to cloud — ‘that was unfortunate.’
‘Unfortunate! That’s a hell of a word to use for a man who’s ended up in Intensive Care.’
‘Well, it was. It’s just the sort of thing that would happen to a wanker like him. Always showing off, always trying to impress people by being different, wanting to be one of the boys. Too pally by half, he was. We got our pot from him, you know. Really! Don’t look at me like that, I’ve told you nothing but the truth all through. Why stop believing me now? He was a wanker. He shouldn’t have been there, that was the thing of it. I was making the best of an unexpected opportunity. There we were with live ammo and the guns and that ass of a man making his film and everyone staring at him as much as at the guns and all I had to do was stroll over to the side and pretend to be cleaning a gun and checking the sights and aim it and fire it. I was shaded by the trees; it was easy in the hubbub. I knew no one’d notice. And what happens? That half-witted wanker spots the camera coming his way and steps out in front to get right into the picture and steps in front of Gordon.’
She took a deep breath. ‘You wanted to kill Gordon? I see. That makes some sense.’
He shook his head, almost affronted. ‘Of course not! I’ve no intention of getting myself locked up for life for murder! Accidents are one thing, killing is another. No, I was just going to wing that bastard. Get him in the arm. That’d hurt like hell and limit him a lot. I was aiming at his elbow but because he was further back and because Tully was shorter than he was and stepped in front, it got him in the face. And I’m not that good a shot, to tell the truth. Better than most here, but that doesn’t make me good. It’s like everything else at the Foundation. The second rate comes out good because there’s no first rate to measure it against.’
‘So you hit Tully, and you put acid in Collop’s bottle —’ She stopped then. ‘But you were marvellous that evening! You helped me. Without you I don’t know what I’d have done. You saved his life.’
‘You bet I did,’ Harry said loudly. ‘I told you, I’ve no intention of getting myself locked up for life. I wanted to hurt him, that was all. I wanted it to be the sort of accident that could happen. If the bloody cap on the acid bottle in the biology lab hadn’t been broken so that the stuff got on to my fingers, I’d have been all right, wouldn’t I? Pity about Tully, but there it is. I dare say he’ll be all right eventually, too.’
‘And if he isn’t? Will you confess and —’
‘Confess?’ He opened his eyes wide. ‘Of course not! Why the hell should I? If he hadn’t been so bloody vain and stepped in front when he did, it wouldn’t have happened. I’d have winged Barratt and that would have been what I wanted. As it was, he had only himself to blame.’ His insouciance left her breathless; she could only shake her head at him in disbelief.
‘And now,’ he said with huge satisfaction, ‘now I’m going to get my own back on Gordon Barratt.’
‘Your own …’ she said, filled with a sudden cold fear, and he smiled brilliantly.
‘He gave me a bad time,’ he said almost dreamily. ‘I can’t tell you what sort of time it was. He called me nigger and that was the least of it. He rubbed my face in it and worse. He — Oh, it doesn’t matter now. But he used me and treated me like — Well, now it’s my turn. I didn’t know at first that he was Jenny’s dad, you see. It was amazing. I fancied her as soon as she came here, as soon as all of you came here. There were t
he others dribbling after that stupid tart with the boobs and the yellow hair and all the time there was my Jenny, the best thing I’d ever seen. And then when I get to know her and it turns out he’s her dad, I thought I’d go mad. I didn’t know what to do. I thought she’d love him, you see, the way people do. The way I love my dad. He’s — Well, I do. And I thought, If she loves him and I love her … It was like the world was coming to an end. That was when I thought of doing something to him and got the gun idea and all that. But then it turned out that she hated him more than I did, that he’d been as bad to her, only he told her he loved her, and —’ He took a sudden deep shuddering breath and lifted his head to stare up at the ceiling and there was a long silence and when he brought his chin down and looked at her she saw his eyes were glittering with tears.
‘It was like I’d waited all my life for that,’ he said and he was a little husky now. ‘I just had to find a way to get back at him. Collop first, only just to hurt him, so that he knew not to do it again, what he’s done to me and to the other boys, like poor old Arse, and then I had to get to him.’
‘You can’t,’ she said breathless with her fear. ‘Harry, you can’t. Murder is the —’
‘Who said anything about murder?’ He opened his eyes wide again and now the glitter of tears had gone, replaced by the laughter that was usually there. ‘When he sees me sitting in his living room, when he’s told his girl’s my girl and she’s pregnant, he’ll go mad. He’ll lose everything at once, won’t he? Because I’ll threaten him that if he says a word I’ll tell all about what he did to me and other boys. I’ve got photographs to show him. I’m taking them with me to the meeting when we go there. I hadn’t told you about them, but now I can, and that makes it all so much easier. I’m going to show him the photographs, tell him I’ve got the negatives locked away and I’m going to take away his girl and take away his job and his being Governor, the lot, because if he doesn’t do what I tell him to do, then I show the pictures and tell my story. It’s all perfect, isn’t it? You see? So don’t make a fuss about that silly acid, Mrs C., will you? Because it doesn’t matter any more, does it? Collop gets better and comes back but he won’t hurt any more kids because the bastard’s been and had his balls chopped off by me. He won’t use Collop any more. Collop won’t get whatever it was he got out of it all, and as for Tully, well, I can’t say about him. But he was stupid to show off like that and step in front and … and well, however you look at it, it’s turning out all right, isn’t it? So don’t spoil it, dear Mrs C., will you? You won’t tell anyone what happened, will you? And anyway’ — he giggled then — ‘if you do, I’ll deny it. You’ve only got my word against yours, but who’d believe such stuff from me? After all, I’m only seventeen. Hardly a villain, am I? With my school record and all.’ Again that soft giggle. ‘No one’ll believe you.’
Dangerous Things Page 36
