In spite, therefore, of his dislike of Carruthers which almost amounted to hate, he might still have succeeded in forgiving him if that had not happened which to Trill was the ultimately unforgivable. He might have lasted out to the end of the session, hating yet controlled; he might have been constrained to admit that he had been confronted not so much by evil as by mischief (though mischief carried to a higher degree than is usual), if that other event had not happened, which caused Trill’s soul to become as iron and his will inflexible.
One day a fifth year boy was found unconscious in the boys’ cloakroom. He had been beaten about the head with somebody’s boots and so viciously that he was nearly dead. It was Mr Trill who had found him. That particular day he had been on duty patrolling the corridors making sure that there was no horseplay in the washrooms, and protecting cars and property from vandalism. The incident must have happened very quickly, probably when he was over at the other end of the school, ‘mooning’ about in the sunshine. When he reached the cloakroom there was no one there but the boy, who was lying on his back breathing stertorously, his face covered with blood. One of his eyes was black and there were studmarks on his right cheek. His tie was askew and his jacket open; some of the buttons appeared to be missing. As he looked down at the boy, Mr Trill was at first overwhelmed by horror and then by the most terrible rage. His first reaction was to get hold of the headmaster, which was done, and the boy was immediately taken to hospital in an ambulance. The police had also been contacted.
Mr Trill was almost sick, but he continued his work with a grim expression and an unusually grim resolve. He had never believed that he was a violent man, but he felt convinced that if he could discover who had done that atrocious deed, he would have killed him with his bare hands. His mind was tormented by the most strange images. He imagined himself challenging the perpetrator to a duel with guns or with swords. Later he thought he would simply fight him, and his anger would in itself be sufficient to make him prevail.
He talked to the other teachers about this, and it surprised him that, though all were disgusted with the incident, they didn’t seem to feel it at all. They all condemned the beating by means of boots but they didn’t appear to feel the boots biting into their own flesh. Some of the younger men used phrases like ‘putting the boot in him’ which apparently was the practice among city gangsters. None of them revealed that absolute horror and disgust which he himself felt so strongly, but he knew that they would be better at finding out the truth than he was.
An investigation was immediately set on foot. It was discovered that the boy had owed money to another boy. At first this boy’s name could not be discovered, but eventually he turned out to be a member of Mr Trill’s own Sixth. He, however, protested that he had not touched the victim and it could be proved that he was nowhere near the washroom at the time as he had been sent on an errand downtown by one of the teachers.
Needless to say, Mr Trill ceased to speak to him from that time onwards, for he strongly suspected that the boy was lying. What horrified him more than anything else was that the violence had spread to his own class. His years of teaching the Classics, his concentration on the great thoughts of the world, had failed utterly and completely. It had all ended in a furious scuffle with the words, ‘Put the boot in him’.
As time went on, more and more facts were uncovered. The boy himself was unconscious for three days and was in no condition to be questioned. Later, however, it was discovered that he had been attacked by another boy who was in a non-academic class, the latter being immediately expelled after a careful examination. Mr Trill saw him before he left. In fact, he deliberately went to have a look at him to see what he was like. He had eyes like pebbles – this was the first thing he noticed – and no expression whatsoever. Apart from that, he appeared well-mannered and quiet. Irony of ironies, he was distinguished by the fact that he wore a school uniform which was not usual in the school. Mr Trill never had occasion to come into contact with this boy and looked on him as a being from another world, a chimpanzee with a school badge. In a sense, he felt a certain relief. After all, this boy might be the only culprit; this gave him some comfort, though it didn’t lessen his hate. He was beginning to feel that the world of the classics – peaceful and calm, devoted to verbs and poets, the world of avenues and stoas, of learning and scholarship – was collapsing all round him in a small vicious dust. Sometimes he would sit by the window of his classroom staring vacantly into space for long periods on end.
So the weeks passed and it appeared that nothing more could be elicited. Eventually, however, after some heart-searching and on the insistence of his parents, the victim told the whole story. He had in fact owed money and had been threatened with a doing over. He had been frightened, but there was no way in which he could get the money. One day he had been in the washroom by himself (he had felt rather strange and eerie at the time because it was unusual for the washroom to be so deserted) when this Fourth Former had come in, had immediately without speech or warning butted him in the head as he was moving away from the sink with the water and soap still in his eyes, had knocked him down and then begun to kick him. The new piece of information was that Carruthers (a friend of the creditor) had been watching all this butchery while it went on, and, with a smile on his face, had given instructions to the Fourth Former as to how he should deal with his victim.
Trill could imagine it all. He could imagine Carruthers standing there, radiant and handsome, he could imagine the delight which he took in the incident, the way in which he would savour every single exact drop of cruelty. All this was clear to him. And it also showed Carruthers as he really was, a perverted intelligence, one to whom Virgil, Homer and the rest were merely pretexts for getting ahead in the world, one whose smile concealed pure and utter evil.
He avoided Carruthers henceforth. The boy sickened him. As he lounged there, calm and relaxed, Trill would sometimes be seized by an almost insane desire to seize him by the throat and strangle him to death. When he went home at night he would think of what ought to be done. He now believed that Carruthers was a dangerous being and could not understand how others could not see this as clearly as he did. He was astonished to find that the incident had raised him in the opinions of the girls, who now idolised him more than ever, as if he knew adult secrets that they themselves longed for but were too shy to investigate. Trill felt that at least the girls would have some veneration for human life, that they would detest one who had not done the attacking but had watched while someone else did it. The fact that they did not appear to feel any disgust for Carruthers enraged him even more.
At night he brooded. What could he do? What he wanted was a kind of justice which would not be crude but which, on the contrary, would be refined and exact, a justice which would be Greek to its very essence, as if scholarship itself were taking revenge on one who had violated it with such contempt.
One night between dream and waking it came to him, the perfect solution. It was as if it had been given from the depths of his subconscious, where Virgil and Homer lay together on that sea bed.
It happened that in order to honour Mr Trill’s long service to the school, the headmaster invited him to present the prizes at the end of term. All his time in the school, Mr Trill had never asked for anything, had been uncomplaining and dedicated, had shown loyalty far beyond the call of mere duty. The honour was not disinterested since it might show others that their way of achieving an equal one was to show the same inhuman dedication.
Mr Trill spent the last week of the session (the nights, that is) in the workshop. Hour after hour he spent there. Sometimes he would not emerge till midnight. He was continually consulting clocks: did he have time? His cheeks became hollow, his eyes had dark circles under them. He hardly slept and he hardly ate. He almost completely ignored his landlady as if he had forgotten about her.
On the day of the prize-giving, which was a beautiful summer day, he dressed even more neatly than usual and ate a good breakfast. He
paid his landlady for the week saying jocularly,
‘Well, I think we’re even if anything should happen to me.’ She wondered about these words afterwards and would often quote them to her friends, the ‘girls’ who patronised bingo with her. Mr Trill tidied up his books and put them in a big case. He told her that he was going to sell them all as he didn’t need them now (of course she knew that this was the last day of his work at school, but she was surprised just the same). As he was going out the door he turned as if he were about to say something, but he seemed to change his mind and continued on his way. He had the silver cup with him, in order to save time, he said. She watched him walk down the road as he had done for so many years, but this time with a strange foreboding as if she were seeing him for the last time. He did not wave up to her, since he was holding the cup.
The cameraman knelt, the minister decided that perhaps God was not in the ceiling after all, the town clerk retained his military pose, and to Carruthers, the dux of the school (stepping smartly on to the platform, his cowlick flopping endearingly over his forehead), Mr Trill handed the cup. As Carruthers picked it up (and the organ pealed and the mothers of those who had not received prizes gazed at him with fake geniality) a needle containing poison punctured his hand, the poison quickly made its way through the bloodstream and, in his moment of triumph, he fell dead, Trill looking down at him with a detached Greek gaze.
The following lines from Johnson were later discovered inscribed on the cup:
Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid,
still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade:
In virtue’s cause once more exert his rage,
Thy satire point and animate thy page.
It was noted later that the word ‘point’ might have given Trill his idea.
One of the Christian ministers (who had the habit of wearing a long cassock and drawing attention to himself by the fervour of his devotions) made a long and apparently profound prayer over the dead dux. He did not realise that he was present at an older justice.
The Adoration of the Mini
It was an old people’s hospital and yet he wasn’t old. As she stood at the door about to press the bell she looked around her and saw beside a shrouded wheelchair some tulips swaying in the white March wind. Turning her head into the cold bright sun, she saw farther down the road a fat man in blue washing a bright red car. She felt joyous and sad by turns.
She pressed the bell, and a nurse in white and blue came to the door. Visiting hours were two to three, but she thought she could call at any time now. The nurse was stony-faced and middle-aged and glancing at her quickly seemed to disapprove of the roundness of her body: it was not the place for it. She pushed back her blonde hair which had been slightly disarranged by the wind. She asked for Mr Mason, and the nurse showed her the door of the ward. Here and there she could see other nurses, but none of them was young; it would have been better if at least one or two had the expectancy and hope of youth. It would make the place brighter, younger, with a possible future.
She walked into the ward. The walls were flaked with old paint, and old men, propped on pillows, stared ahead of them without recognition or care. One old man with a beard, his eyes ringed with black as if from long sleeplessness, looked through her as though she had been a window pane beyond which there was no country that he could love or desire. By one or two beds – the bedside tables bearing their usual offerings of grapes and oranges, and bottles of yellow energy-giving liquids wrapped in cellophane – there were women talking in whispers.
She walked through the main ward, not seeing him, and then through into a smaller one. And there he was, on his own, sitting up against the pillows as if waiting. But he could not be expecting her. He might be expecting her mother or her brother or her other sister, but not her.
The smell of imminent death was palpable and distinct. It was in the room, it was all round him, it impregnated the sheets, it was in his face, in his eyes. She had seen him ill before, but not like this. His colour was neither yellow nor red, it was a sort of grey, like old paper. The neck was long and stringy, and the knotted wrists rested meagrely on the sheet in front of him.
She stood at the foot of the bed and looked at him. He looked back at her without energy. She said,
‘I came to see you, father.’
He made no answer. It was as if he hadn’t heard her or as if (if he had heard her) she wasn’t worth answering. She noticed the carafe of water at the table at the foot of the bed and said,
‘Do you want a drink?’
He remained silent. She began again:
‘I came up by train today. It took me eight hours.’
She shook her yellow hair as if to clear her head and said,
‘May I sit down?’ He still didn’t speak and she sat down on the chair. He spoke at last:
‘How do you think I look?’
She replied with conscious brightness,
‘I had thought you would be worse.’
‘I think I’m dying,’ he said tonelessly and almost with cunning, ‘I’ve had strange visions.’
He shut his eyes for a moment as if to rest them.
‘What do you want?’ he asked without opening his eyes.
‘I wanted to see you.’
‘What about?’
‘I . . . ’
‘You left a good job and went off to London and you’re pregnant, isn’t that right,’ he said slowly, as if he were carving something with a chisel and hammer. ‘You had a good brain and you threw it all away. You could have gone on to university.’
‘We’re married now,’ she said.
‘I know that. You married a Catholic. But then Catholics breed a lot, don’t they?’ He opened his eyes, looking at her in disgust, his nose wrinkling as if he could smell incense. She flared up, forgetting that he was dying.
‘You know why I left, father. I didn’t want to go to university. I’m an ordinary person.’
‘You had an IQ of 135. I shouldn’t be telling you this but I saw it on your school records.’
‘I didn’t want to go to university. I didn’t want to do Science.’
‘I didn’t care. It didn’t need to be Science. It could have been any subject. You threw yourself away. You went to work in a wee office. And then you got pregnant. And now you say you are married. To a Catholic. And you’ll have to be a Catholic too. I know them. And your . . . ’ He couldn’t bring himself to say that her child would be a Catholic.
She couldn’t stop herself. ‘I thought a scientist wouldn’t care for these things. I thought a scientist would be unprejudiced.’
He smiled grimly. ‘That’s the kind of remark I would have expected from you. It shows that you have a high IQ. You should have used it. You threw it away. You ignored your responsibilities. You went off to London, to see the bright lights.’ She sensed envy in his voice.
After a while she said,
‘I couldn’t stand school. I don’t know how I can explain it to you. The books didn’t mean anything after a while. It was torture for me to read them. Can you understand that?’
‘No.’ His mouth shut like a rat-trap.
‘I tried,’ she continued. ‘I did try. But they didn’t mean anything. I would look at a French book and a Latin book and it didn’t connect with anything. Call it sickness if you like, but it’s true. It was as if I was always tired. I used to think it was only people in non-academic classes who felt like that. I was all right in the first three years. Everything seemed to be interesting. And then this sickness hit me. All the books I read ceased to be interesting. It was as if a haze came down, as if the words lost any meaning, any reality. I liked music but there was nothing for me in words. I’m trying to explain. It was a sickness. Don’t you understand?’
‘No, I don’t understand. When I was in the upper school I wasn’t like that. I read everything I could lay my hands on. Books were treasures. When I was in university it was the same. I read because I loved to read. I w
anted to have as much knowledge as possible. Even now . . . ’ He paused.
She probed: ‘Even now?’
But he had stopped speaking, like a watch run down. She continued,
‘Yes, I admired that in you, though you were narrow-minded. I admired your love of books and knowledge and experiments. I admired you for thinking out new ways of presenting your subject. I admired your enthusiasm, though you neglected your family. And then too you went to church. What did you find in church?’
‘In church? I found silence there.’
‘It was different with us,’ she continued. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t try. I did try. I would lock myself in my room and I would study my Virgil. I would stare at it. I would look up meanings. And then at the end of an hour I hadn’t moved from the one page. But I tried. It wasn’t my fault. Can’t you believe me?’
‘I don’t understand.’ Then he added mercilessly, ‘It was idleness.’
‘And there you would be in the other room, in your study, preparing your lesson for the following day, smoking your pipe, thinking up new ideas like the time you made soap. You were the mainstay of the school, they said. So much energy. Full of power, boyish, always moving, always thinking. Happy.’
A smile crossed his face as if he were looking into another world which he had once loved and in which he had meaning and purpose.
‘Yes, I gave them a lot,’ he said. ‘A lot. I tried my best with you as well. I spent time on you. I wanted you to do well. But I couldn’t make a favourite of you. And then you said you were leaving.’
‘It happened one night. I had been doing some exercises in English. I think it was an interpretation passage. I was sitting at the table. There was a vase with flowers in front of me. The electric light was on, and then I switched on the radio and I heard this voice singing “Frankie and Johnny”. It was Lena Horne. I listened to it. At first I wasn’t listening to it at all. I was trying to do my exercise. Then, after a while, the music seemed to become more important than what I was doing. It defeated what I was doing. It was about real things and the interpretation wasn’t about anything. Or rather, it was about the lack of trade unionism in Japan. I’m not joking: that’s what it was. How the bosses wouldn’t allow the workers any unions and how they kept their money for them. It had no meaning at all. It was like . . . It was like some obstacle that you pushed against. Like a ghost in a room. And I laid down my pen and I said to myself. What will happen if I stop doing this? And then I did stop. And suddenly I felt so free. It was as if I had lightened myself of some load. I felt free. I listened to the song and I didn’t feel any guilt at all.’
The Red Door Page 15
