Different Class

by Joanne Harris

  Nothing very different from any other holiday; bad TV and leftovers; New Year’s Eve and pantomime; thank-you notes; snow turning to slush all along the pavements. Nothing special, except for one thing, which you and I will not discuss.

  No, I haven’t seen Poodle. I’ve already told that to the police. It’s not like we’re close or anything, and Christmas is a family time. I’m sure he’s OK, though. That’s what I said. He’s always been a bit nervous. And he’s been under pressure, too, especially from Mr Straitley, who doesn’t seem to like him much, and picks on him all the time at school. That’s what I told the policeman who came to talk to my parents. He wrote it all down in his notebook. He seemed very attentive. I mentioned Mr Clarke, too. I said he and Mr Straitley were friends. He asked me if Mr Straitley ever made me uncomfortable. I told him yes, he did. (It was true.) I think he’s been over to Goldie’s, too. And to Mr Speight’s house. But I don’t think Goldie will say much. I know he won’t mention the clay pits. He’s been too busy this Christmas trying to get inside Becky Price’s knickers, and he knows that if he opens his mouth, I’ll tell his dad, and he’ll give him hell.

  As for Harry – Mr Clarke—

  Mousey, that’s all over now. Poodle’s gone and spoilt everything. I can never go to his house; or talk to him in his form-room; or even give him his present. It’s over, just like Netherton Green. I may as well get used to it. I don’t need to tell you what happened, of course. That’s something I’ll never forget. But it makes me feel like something died. I mean, something apart from the obvious. And the worst of it is, I can’t even tell – not even you, Mousey.

  I kept the copy of The Wall I was going to give Mr Clarke. I’ve hidden it away, along with the list of albums I’m going to buy. Except I probably won’t buy them now. I don’t know if I’ll ever dare. Not because it makes me feel bad to remember, but actually, quite the opposite. I know I ought to be feeling bad. But Mousey, I feel so alive. More alive than I’ve ever been; like I’m immortal, or something. For the first time since I can remember, I’m not afraid of dying. I can see everything clearly now. My Condition; my future. Everything is shiny and new, like a fresh fall of Christmas snow. When it snows, you can forget what’s hidden under the surface. Even the clay pits are beautiful under a nice fresh fall of snow. The old cars are wearing crisp white hoods; even the dogshit on the ground is erased. When the sun shines, it’s like everything is covered in powdered diamonds. The surface of the Pit Shaft is dotted with small islands. And the dark and lonely water is under a layer of silver lace, like a zombie bride beneath her rotted, mouldy wedding veil.

  Resolution Number Four: stop thinking about it, Mousey. Let the memory stay buried under that layer of virgin snow. There’s no point hanging on to it, except that it makes me feel so good, and maybe that’s the problem. Some things just feel too good to stop. Drugs, I suppose. And the Sin of the Flesh – at least, if Goldie is to be believed. Maybe I’ll even stop writing things down. Give it up altogether. Stamp down on the temptation like stamping down on new-fallen snow. Except that we’ll still know it’s there, whatever the surface may look like. We all know I’m not really pure. Just as we know that the snow will melt. Just as we know My Condition won’t change. And just as we know Resolutions – like some people, Mousey – are really just there to be broken.

  3

  January 1982

  Those clay pits were notorious. Ringed with chain-link fences and peppered with NO TRESPASSERS signs, they had been a traditional place for boys to misbehave since Eric and I, in caps and St Oswald’s blazers, had used it as our combat-ground, more years ago than seems possible. What they really were, of course, was dark and lonely water: a series of abandoned pits not quite large enough to count as quarries, now mostly flooded and commonly used as a tipping ground for household waste and junk of all kinds.

  Any boy from St Oswald’s would have been wary of that place. Charlie Nutter certainly was. Thanks to that old TV campaign, shown to all our feeder schools, Charlie Nutter knew the risks of dark and lonely water. And he’d been missing for nearly a week before they searched the clay pits. Everything else had already been tried. A sign saying PRAY FOR CHARLIE had been put up by the church. Flowers and candles had been left by well-wishers at St Oswald’s gates. Mr Speight and the Chaplain had organized a vigil and Stephen Nutter, MP, had appealed to the public on Look North.

  The response had been eager, though fruitless. Sightings of Charlie had been reported in Manchester, Sheffield and even Hull, but none of these turned out to be anything more than false alarms. Malbry and St Oswald’s began to prepare themselves for the worst. The media, too, now upped their game as the national press picked up the story. That pallid, twitching, colourless boy had become gilded by tragedy. The boys who had ignored him at School made tearful declarations of friendship. Even the Malbry Examiner (never a friend to St Oswald’s) described the missing boy as popular, which, as everyone knows, is only a step away from the tragic loss of a young life.

  No one wanted to believe that the boy was dead, of course. But what else could have happened to him? Nutter was a quiet boy, shy to the point of sullenness. His pastimes were quiet; his friends were few. He never misbehaved at School. His family was affluent. He had whatever he wanted. For Christmas, his father had bought him a BMX bicycle. Why would he have run away?

  Besides, it was winter. In July, boys can run away from home and live like outlaws in the woods, but at Christmas 1981 it snowed. No boy would have survived sleeping rough, and a number of sinister theories were beginning to gain popularity – theories ventured by Mr Speight, a firm believer in sacrifice rings, black magic and Satanic covens, whose actual knowledge of the occult was mostly taken from the novels of Dennis Wheatley.

  And so, when a body was retrieved from one of the flooded clay pits, the reaction within the community was of sorrow, rather than surprise. And when the news came that the Nutter family had failed to identify the body, the general consensus was that the grief-stricken parents had been too deep in denial to face the truth. The Examiner ran the story the next day, flanked with a picture of Charlie – which made what happened later all the more remarkable.

  What happened was, they found him. Where and when remained unclear. The papers seemed to suggest that it was on the fourth of January, but the time of day was unknown. Some said the boy had been found in a house somewhere in White City. Some said he’d come home of his own accord; some, that he had resisted. But whatever the truth of it, Nutter was safe. It was our Christmas miracle.

  Back from the Dead! the headlines exclaimed; and for twenty-four hours, the excitement of finding the Nutter boy safe and sound was almost enough to make us forget that a boy – an as yet unidentified boy – had been pulled out of the clay pits. That boy, too, had been someone’s son. That boy, too, had lost his life. It wasn’t that we didn’t care about the unnamed boy in the pit; but when all was said and done – that boy wasn’t one of ours.

  As for Charlie Nutter, I went to see him as soon as I could. Not straight away – remember, I had a funeral to arrange – but a couple of days after his return. I think I felt responsible, as if there were something I could have done to prevent what happened. Not that I knew what had happened, of course: the grapevine was stubbornly silent on the subject of Charlie’s return, which meant that his homecoming had been tinged with a kind of awkwardness, a sigh of relief tempered by the vague dissatisfaction of a community preparing itself for the worst, only to find that its energies could have been better spent elsewhere.

  Now, over a week from the day Charlie Nutter had disappeared, no one seemed to know where he had been, or what he had done during that time. The parents had made a statement, saying that Charlie was in good health and expressing their joy at his return. That was all anyone knew, and, much to the chagrin of the Malbry Examiner, neither Charlie nor his parents were prepared to divulge anything more. But I was the boy’s form-tutor. I felt obscurely responsible. And so I went to see him at home, to offer
what help and support I could.

  The Nutters lived on Millionaires’ Row, the nicest street in Malbry. Big stone houses with metal gates and walls to keep the trespassers out, with nicely mown lawns and flower beds and broad gravel paths under the trees. One of my colleagues lived there – an Art Master, now long since retired, working on a book in one of those gracious old houses. The Nutters’ house was especially large, especially well kept, with electronic gates and a set of cameras surveying the drive. I supposed that Nutter, like all MPs, had to be suspicious. The troubles in Northern Ireland had spread since the hunger strikes at the Maze, and might one day spread even to Malbry. It had briefly occurred to me, too, that Charlie might have been kidnapped; that his parents had paid the ransom and that this was the cause of their reticence.

  But a kidnapping, in Malbry? It seemed barely conceivable. Malbry is one of those places where nothing really happens. Even now, in the Village, people still leave their doors unlocked – although it is very different down in White City, where the pebble-dashed houses are often fitted with grilles to safeguard the windows. White City is less than a mile from the Village, and yet it is a world apart. Even the pubs are different; and the takeaways are all fish-and-chip shops, rather than places like the Pink Zebra, which sells salads and ethnic food. White City boys (and girls, of course) go to school in Sunnybank Park, the concrete abomination on the Abbey Road estate, and wear expressions of cocky disdain to hide their essential self-loathing. They also push their fish-and-chip wrappers into my hedge at the end of Dog Lane, as if doing so absolves them of the responsibility of disposing of their litter. And yet, the Sunnybankers, too, have parents who would grieve for them. Who was that boy in the clay pits? I thought. Was there someone still waiting for him?

  Mrs Nutter answered the door. I remembered her as a thin, elegant woman. Now she looked almost skeletal. She was wearing a long, flowing thing with some kind of looping, swirling pattern; she looked like a child dressed in a bedspread. Mrs Harrington was with her, holding a cup of coffee.

  ‘Mr Straitley! What a surprise!’

  From her face, I wasn’t sure whether the surprise was good or not. I touched my hat. I’d taken to wearing one in the winter; it was unfashionable, but very practical in the snow, and besides, it gave me something to do when I was dealing with women.

  ‘Mrs Nutter. Good morning. I just came to see if Charlie needed anything. Books, class notes, anything. We’ve all been very anxious.’

  She gave a brittle smile. ‘Thank you. Charlie’s resting, but he’s well. I’ll tell him you called. I’m sure he’ll be glad. I’d ask you in for coffee, but—’ She gave an abstract little wave that took in Mrs Harrington, the drawing room beyond the hall, the shapeless garment she was wearing – A kaftan? A housecoat? – while at the same time conveying the impossibility of receiving guests.

  Mrs Harrington looked at me. Her eyes were like her son’s, a brown so dark that it might have been black. ‘We were praying,’ she told me. Prayer, that get-out-of-jail-free card to every social embarrassment.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I won’t intrude. I just wanted to make sure that Charlie was all right. If there’s anything I can do to help – if there’s been any trouble at School—’

  ‘No, there’s nothing, thank you,’ said Mrs Nutter. I noticed that her hands were like her son’s, red with patches of eczema. She lingered in the doorway, waiting for me to leave.

  I said: ‘It’s just that if there’s something at School – bullying, or anything else . . .’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was thin and sharp. ‘Thank you, Mr Straitley. But none of this has anything to do with St Oswald’s. Charlie’s a little highly strung. He’s been under the weather. My husband’s work, the pressures, you know—’ She let the sentence trail off.

  I nodded. ‘Of course. I do understand.’ And then I touched my hat again and went back down the long drive.

  I turned once, and thought I saw a face at one of the upstairs windows, blurry with condensation. I think it might have been Charlie, although I could not be certain.

  If so, it was the last time I was to see him for seven years.

  4

  December 1981

  Drowning is quiet, Mousey. A man who can struggle can also breathe. A man – or in this case, a boy – who can scream is not running short of air. St Oswald’s has a swimming pool, which pupils visit once a week.

  But Ratboy was a Sunnybanker. Sunnybankers don’t have a pool. Ratboy could paddle a bit, but that was it. And it was cold; the Pit Shaft glazed with a film of ice. Not enough to slow his fall; but enough to make sure that his struggle was brief. They say all your life passes before your eyes at the moment of drowning. Ratboy’s life can’t have been much. A couple of gulps, and he was gone. Still, what a feeling, Mousey. This must be what God feels like all the time.

  I didn’t push him, Mousey. But I was the one who pushed Poodle. Wound him up like a clockwork toy, and watched him do the rest. It was fun. Like pouring my demons into someone else and watching them run off a cliff. But the water was too cold, I guess, and Ratboy went under too fast. It doesn’t take long, in cold weather. It’s called the Instinctive Diving Response. Ratboy dived. And Poodle – well. Poodle went a bit crazy.

  First he started to shake and cry, just like with the rabbits. Then he sat down and couldn’t get up; all he could do was shiver. I took him to the burnt-out car (I was feeling cold as well), and waited till he could talk again. It took a while. I watched the fire, which by now had died to orange and black, with the leaves of Poodle’s beefcake books curled up and red round the edges. I found a couple of cigarettes lying on the ground, and lit one each for Poodle and me. Poodle dropped his. I picked it up.

  He said: ‘We’ll have to tell the police.’

  I finished my cigarette. I said: ‘Really? You’ll tell them you pushed him?’

  Poodle looked at me like a dog about to be put down. ‘Ziggy, what else can we do?’

  I shrugged. ‘I know what I’ll do,’ I said. ‘I’m going home to watch TV. It’s The Two Ronnies on tonight. I’m going to watch TV, and eat leftovers, and maybe read a book, and – oh, probably not say I was with you today when you pushed that Sunnybanker.’ I flicked the cigarette end away into what was left of the fire.

  Poodle looked at me with big eyes. ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, grow up,’ I said. ‘Imagine what would happen if you actually told the police. Everyone would know about you. There’d have to be a trial. You’d get expelled from school, at least. It would be on your record for life. You’d never get into uni, or even get a proper job. You might have to go to a special school, maybe even Borstal. And even if they all believed that it had been an accident, what would your parents say? Your dad? What about the papers? What’s that going to look like, an MP with a killer son?’

  Poodle began to cry again. ‘You can’t. We’ve got to tell,’ he said.

  ‘No, we don’t. And neither do you. You don’t want to say a single word. Because if you do, I’ll deny it. And that’ll make it even worse.’

  He looked at me in misery. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can,’ I told him. ‘Listen to me. It’s not like you meant him to die, is it? It’s not like you knew he couldn’t swim. It was just an accident. Accidents happen all the time. He could have been standing there alone, and the bank could have given way under his feet. Or he could have slipped on the ice, or fallen when he reached in to pick something up out of the water. Anything could have happened to him. Anything at all.’

  Poodle was watching me, glassy-eyed.

  ‘Think about it, Poodle,’ I said. ‘Telling people won’t bring him back. That would only cause trouble – for us, and for our families. You know what Sunnybankers are like. They all hate St Oswald’s. He’s probably got friends who’d tell the police we planned to get him from the start. They’d never believe what really happened. So even if the police let you off, the Sunnybankers would get you.’

  That made him twi
tch a bit. I smiled and passed him half a cigarette.

  ‘Look, the worst is over,’ I said. ‘All you have to do is go home. Have your dinner, watch TV, forget this ever happened. You can do that, can’t you?’

  Poodle didn’t answer. He just wiped his face with the back of his hand, turned and walked away from me. The last I saw of him, Mousey, he was heading down towards White City, looking like a dog with no tail. And that was how it ended that day. Not even with a whimper.

  Dad’s already talking about sending me to another school. Perhaps he’ll wait till the end of the year, but then again, perhaps he won’t. He has a way of looking at me, when he thinks I’m watching TV. And I’m nearly certain that Mum’s been looking through my things again. She’d never say, of course. But there’s something about the way she goes through my books and papers, straightening loose edges that have been carefully left crooked. She may even have glanced at my St Oswald’s diary, which is why I’m going to hide these pages where no one will ever find them.

  The thing about my parents is that they don’t really want to know. They’d rather live in ignorance, believing they’ve done all they could. Bring it into the open, and everything begins to stink. My parents; the Church; Goldie’s dad; Mr and Mrs Poodle. That’s why they won’t say anything. Especially not at school, or to me. Instead, they’ll pray, and light candles, and hold fund-raising coffee mornings, and shake their heads, and wonder why Poodle ran away.

  We know, Mousey. Don’t we? But we’re never going to tell. Some things are too secret even to whisper to the reeds. That’s why I tore these pages out. I was going to burn them. But now I have a better idea. I’m making a time capsule. I’m going to leave some things inside – you know, to mark the occasion. The card I wrote to Mr Clarke. The pages from my diary. That copy of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. My list of special albums. I’m putting it all in a box. Then I’m wrapping it in plastic. Then I’m going to bury it, somewhere safe, by the clay pits.