Night of Fire Page 26

  Nobody was speaking to me. Wynne never met my eyes. Tansley talked instead to Fatboy, whom he despises. I thought I might sick up the semolina pudding. McMorris, sitting beside me, whispered: ‘Tansley’s in a whopping bate with you. He says you tricked us all.’ I said: ‘So did he’, although I still think Mr. Jarrold is odd.

  In the dormitory I pretended to sleep. The others were sniggering. I wanted to wake up far away, in another country, perhaps in Persia. For the first time I didn’t think about going home to Cyprus. I was afraid of what my father would say when Dick told him. I’m not the son he wanted. I’m not Dick. I’m too small, although I’m definitely not stupid.

  I dreamt about my mother. Her eyes, which slope upwards, were full of tears, tears of anger. She wondered why I wanted her to die.

  I’ve always been afraid of growing up. There are things that unnerve me: things peculiar to men, like smoking and shaving. My mother once told me that childhood was a long dream. But last week in the changing rooms I saw that a boy had hair between his legs. I thought that was for adults, but he was only thirteen. Just four years older than me. It made me sick and confused.

  And then there is what happened yesterday. One day I will ask someone what it means. I wanted to help Tansley. To be honest, I wanted to get back in his favour. After all, he is my best friend.

  I never could believe that Tansley was wrong. There must be something that I did not understand. Perhaps Mr Jarrold tricked us, or we just weren’t thorough enough. But if I slipped into his rooms alone, I thought, I would find documents to incriminate him. Maybe the cipher machine would be back. Then I would be the one to prove Tansley right after all. I would be the hero. I wanted to think of him as the Wizard again, and to believe in him.

  Sunday, I remembered, was when Mr Jarrold was away, and I waited until four o’clock, the same time as last week, when the corridor was empty and the others playing round the lake. I was scared all right. If anybody found me, I could think of no excuse for being there. And just as I prepared to enter, and knelt to peer through the keyhole, my knee cartilage twinged like an omen. The keyhole, in any case was shut on the inside.

  The door opened without a sound. I was so intent on closing it behind me that for a moment I did not see what was in front of me. Mr Jarrold was sitting on the sofa. His face as he turned to me was ashen, his eyes bulging like a hare’s. Beside him was Wynne. His shorts and belt lay crumpled on the floor. He was sitting in his pants. And Mr Jarrold’s hand was on his thigh. We were all frozen there. Wynne’s hair was dishevelled, his mouth open as he stared at me, and his eyes strange. I thought he had been blubbing.

  I don’t know how long I stood there. After a second or a minute I heard myself say: ‘I’m sorry, sir . . . very sorry.’ And I opened the door and left.

  As I walked away down the corridor, I thought Jarrold’s voice would yell at me to come back, or I would hear Wynne’s feet running up to me. But nothing happened. I had walked halfway across the cricket pitch towards the lake before I remembered that nobody wanted to play with me any more.

  Rain transforms this place. When it sheets across the lake and blurs the playing fields to mist, everyone gets excited, and thunderclaps bring squeals of terror from the juniors. The rain drips into our hollowed rhododendron dens around the lake, and pours through the lairs under the oak branches. My own den is hidden high up in a tree, where I fell last term, and its platform becomes too soggy to sit on. Rain falls on the cemetery too, of course, and makes me afraid: it seems to turn the dead more dead. I hope it will drench the cricket pitch so badly that the next match will be cancelled.

  Today my only refuge is the dormitories. Mine looks very bare. The first-year juniors are permitted to sleep with their soft toys, but the second year decided this was wet, and we took ours home. My bed is between Hamilton’s, who snores, and Wynne’s, which has a mackintosh under the bottom sheet, because he sometimes wets his bed. On the shelves above we are allowed our favourite books. Hamilton owns all the Bulldog Drummond stories; Wynne keeps the bible his father gave him; I have Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes and Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, a leftover from India when I was little.

  I lay on my back a long time. I didn’t know what else to do. The only person I might have asked about Wynne was Tansley, because although he may not know everything, he knows a lot. But it might be too late for that. It already seems an age since we raided Mr Jarrold’s rooms. Now when I looked out of the window through the rain, the secret rooftop radio had become an old trunk and two construction rods.

  Then the door opened, and I turned away. I pretended to be asleep. Even in the dorm, I thought, nobody leaves you alone. It was the way he walked – rolling on the balls of his feet – that made me realise it was Tansley. When I opened my eyes he was standing close, staring into my face. He said: ‘I know you’re shamming.’

  I said: ‘So what?’

  ‘You’re sulking.’

  ‘I’m not sulking. I feel horrible.’

  ‘It’s your own fault. You shouldn’t have pretended. Everyone used to feel sorry for you, so you got away with bags. You even asked me to think up spells to get your mother back . . .’

  ‘That was stupid.’

  ‘. . . and all the time she was alive. Your brother told Hamilton they were living in Cyprus.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wynne says you lied all the time to him. He even asked old Holy-chops to talk to you. That was pretty wizard of him. He wonders what other lies you’ve told.’

  ‘I haven’t told any,’ I said, but I imagined this was a lie too.

  ‘He says he doesn’t like you any more.’

  I felt a pang of hurt, like a gripe in the stomach, one of those pains you know will get worse later, when you stop to think. But at this moment I wanted to ask why Mr Jarrold was punishing Wynne, if that was what he was doing. Wynne used to be one of his favourites.

  Tansley went on: ‘Wynne says anything you say about him is a lie too.’

  ‘I haven’t said anything about him.’

  ‘Anyway, if you do, he says it’s a lie.’

  I pulled a blanket over my shoulders, although the air was warm, and turned away. My heart was beating senselessly. I looked into the light, at the great window pane where the rain was slithering down. After a while I felt Tansley’s hand on my arm. He said: ‘We’re still friends, Squit.’ He ruffled my hair. ‘You’re my second-best friend. After Wynne.’

  I held his hand against my chest. I was lost in a tangle of gratitude and sadness. I could not think straight at all. I had only wanted him to talk to me again, and now he had. I went on staring at the beads of rain manoeuvring down the window, while he closed the door behind him.

  On midsummer night the school would hold its yearly fire practice. The games master would set light to buckets of newspaper that spread smoke along the dormitory corridors. Then an alarm bell would ring. For some reason we were meant to crawl down the passages on all fours, which was fun anyway, so that Fatboy knocked over one of the buckets and nearly started a real fire. Then we assembled outside, where Cabbage White fussed round us, and the Head read a roll call. That night two boys were missing. They’d just gone on sleeping, so they were officially cinders, and they each got a black mark on the noticeboard next day. But I reckon it was all stupid, since if there was a real fire it would be much worse, and the Head and Cabbage White would be cinders too. But it meant that we were all wide awake for the Serpents’ council two hours later.

  It was a night without stars. A watery half-moon pushed through the clouds, then went away. I felt afraid. Fatboy, McMorris and Hamilton were whispering together as we went. In our council chamber among the trees we set light to a pile of twigs and an old copy of Kennedy’s Latin Primer, and the sacred fire burnt so high that I thought we’d be discovered. The night was silent round us. The Wizard’s throne wobbled and creaked as he climbed it, and Fatboy’s breathing sounded hoarse at its foot. Then, for a long time, there was almost no sound at
all, just the crackling of the fire and the owls hooting by the lake.

  The moment we put on our masks, something eerie happens. None of us looks like himself any more, or like anybody. The masks are only small, like the Lone Ranger’s, but we’ve painted them white and they turn us ghostly, like skulls, our eyes just black holes. Only the Wizard’s covers his whole face, and muffles his voice inside it, so he seems to speak from underground. He says he got the mask from Africa, but McMorris thinks he’s seen them in fancy dress shops. At any rate, because we were silent at first, nobody speaking at all, I got more and more scared. I thought they were going to expel me for all my lying, or do something even worse to me. I planned to run back to the school – its windows were dark – but I did not know if my legs would work. They were shaking. Then I remembered – and I suddenly felt a different kind of sadness – that the Wizard had kept me as second-best friend; and now the heads in the firelight were not looking at me but at him, waiting for someone to say something, and he was staring at the sky to see if the Serpens stars were shining, and they weren’t.

  At last he leant forward above the flames and his eyes glittered inside the sockets of his bull mask. ‘I declare the Serpents’ meeting open,’ he said, ‘and I propose a new member.’ He left a silence. Maybe he expected one of us to ask who. But nobody did.

  Eventually somebody mumbled: ‘We’re already seven. If we’re more, we won’t be so secret.’

  The Wizard threw back his head. ‘Eight is a lucky number.’ Then he proclaimed: ‘I say we elect Wynne!’

  I stared up at him. Wynne: his new best friend. I felt too lonely to speak.

  But Fatboy cried at once: ‘He’s a sissy.’

  ‘He couldn’t join us anyway,’ Hamilton said. ‘He’s got that thing in his heart.’

  ‘He’ll join,’ the Wizard said. ‘I asked him.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to do that,’ Fatboy said.

  The Wizard glared round at them, his horns swivelling from one to the next. Then he raised his arms and let them fall again, silently crushing revolt. ‘I’m Chief Serpent! I make the rules.’ His head lifted again to gaze over us. He crossed his arms. ‘What’s next?’

  Out of nowhere I felt a surge of hatred. The Wizard was sitting there so superior, lording it over us, his stupid skinny legs monopolising the throne. I hated the way his horned head tilted back in the firelight, so certain of himself, dismissing us all, and how smugly he folded his arms.

  I heard McMorris mutter: ‘We’re all allowed a vote. Wynne’s too wet. I don’t vote for him.’

  The Wizard said: ‘It’s too late. I’ve voted him in.’ He pointed upwards, then said in his unearthly voice: ‘I elect him by the power of the Serpens star!’

  I thought it was all over then. The silence returned. The fire was dying to red ash, and I was trembling, maybe from the cold. A low wind had risen in the trees. We looked so feeble, all of us, I thought, with our skull faces lowered to the embers and the Wizard preening over us. He was grinning behind his mask, I was sure, perched there in his vanity.

  Then somebody whispered: ‘But the Serpens star isn’t there.’

  ‘It will return,’ the Wizard answered.

  Suddenly Fatboy said: ‘How do you know?’ He was leaning grossly against the throne. ‘Maybe it’s gone for ever. You don’t know anything.’

  A cold excitement went through me. Something was changing. I sensed that anything might happen. It was like the way fog lifts, or the bursting of a bubble. The others must have felt it too. They no longer sat cross-legged, but were crouched on their ankles, like frogs. McMorris the beanpole stood up, his head almost level with the Wizard’s, and said: ‘We don’t want you any more.’

  The Wizard waved him away.

  Fatboy almost shouted: ‘You told us whoppers about Mr Jarrold, Tansley. Busting into his room like that, you might have got us all expelled.’

  Someone else piped up: ‘We could have been caned.’

  The Wizard didn’t budge. ‘I still think Jarrold’s a spy.’

  ‘He’s not. He’s too drippy.’ Hamilton got to his feet and turned to the others. ‘I vote Fatboy for Chief Serpent.’

  Three more chorused: ‘We vote for Fatboy too.’

  And now Fatboy, standing under the throne, had raised his sceptre stick. ‘You can get down off that now.’ He was suddenly scary, I must say, his buttocks swelling out of his shorts, his thick legs apart. He grabbed the frame of the throne and shook it. Then he brought his sceptre down on the Wizard’s naked thigh. It made a noise like a handclap. McMorris started pushing at Tansley’s chest. But still the Wizard remained erect and gazing through us all, we were so beneath him. I imagined him still smiling with contempt, thinking how stupid we all were.

  I don’t know what happened in me then. Something terrible. I came to the bottom of the throne. The Wizard took no notice of me, of course, he was so busy despising us all. Then I couldn’t help myself. Someone else was waking in me. Someone I didn’t know. I reached up and hit him across the face. It brought a thrill of freedom, like hitting Dick. I hit him again, full on the forehead. The others were urging me on. I was letting go of everything, all my anger, and a bitterness I couldn’t name. I heard myself say: ‘You’re not much of a Wizard, are you?’ I pulled at his collar, ripped it. Fatboy was pushing at his legs. I reached up, my feet on the crossbar of the throne. I closed my fingers round his mask – it felt quite flimsy – and yanked it off. One of the horns broke away in my hands.

  Then I stopped dead. The others went quiet too. Behind the mask, Tansley’s whole face was ashen and pinched inwards. He was staring back at me, his eyes awash with tears. Slowly he slid down the throne and remained slumped against it. He refused his mask from my hands. Fatboy tried to climb up in his place, but the throne shuddered and cracked under him, and he clambered down again, muttering: ‘All the same, I’m Chief Serpent,’ while Tansley began crying in sobs that shook his whole body.

  I closed my eyes. It was the first of my betrayals. And I am still not sure why I did it.

  He imagined a long journey, a road that would take him away from here, to Cyprus or even further. If you climbed on to the fence beyond the lake, the highway stretched to Wales, or to London, one on either side. Hurry a short way through the graveyard (although he had never done this) and you might find a path going anywhere, and he could imagine entering the classroom map and making for Persia.

  He dreamt of running away, but never did. He was not unhappy. Yet he lived most fully in his head. He was frightened of the future, so he clouded it in dreams. It was easier to live fantasies in those days. He used to imagine himself a great surgeon who restored the dying, or a missionary leading whole peoples to God. Nothing was too hard for him. He became a photographer whose creations outshone real life, and an explorer or naturalist who disappeared into the unknown and returned with butterflies as huge as eagles. At one time he had imagined collaborating with Wynne in these discoveries, or exploring the East with Tansley, but later he pictured himself going alone, and thought this a sign of growing up.

  Years later, as an old man, he wondered about the veracity of even long-established memories. Once he ran into Tansley in a London pub. The man was unmistakable, his face pure bone. Tansley’s eyes strayed pleasantly over his old friend. He recalled their looking at pond water under the microscope, and their secret that all elements were one, and like the stars, or the dead. He laughed a lot. No, he did not remember anything called the Serpents. He had become a successful barrister.

  That last night it was the seeping of smoke under his bedroom door that reminded the invalid, half asleep, of the ritual fire. He had only once gone back to Springdown, and had experienced it two-dimensionally, seeing again the fields and the rhododendron lake and the panelled corridors. But the masters were mostly younger than him, and callow, and the place touched him with the pathos of its imperfection, and a faint, dreamy nausea. When he looked for the Serpents’ clearing among the oak trees, he could not
find it. He kicked at the earth there, half expecting some charred remnant to emerge. His knee cartilage jarred him then, as it ached now in his bed, waiting for its replacement and wondering why the seagulls were crying about the house so late at night.

  7

  Traveller

  The uppermost tenant awoke with a presentiment of what was coming; but for a minute he imagined that the danger was not yet his. Stumbling out of bed, he took from his walls and shelves the mementoes of fifty years of travelling: an Indian leopard skin, Tanzanian wood-carvings, a Nepalese Buddha, the granite head of a Tang dynasty goddess (a fake), enamelled Persian vases. After casting these through the sitting room windows, he waited long seconds before he heard them crunch in the sodden flower beds below, and only then wondered whether the same fall might kill him, or whether he should risk the passage to the fire escape beyond.

  Craning from the open window, he thought he saw the lights of a fire engine flashing in the thickened smoke clouds below. He even anticipated a ladder rising through the growing mass of smoke and flames, and a fireman balanced there, and the silver steps to earth. But the engine lights were only sparks from the ruined basement, and waves of heat were blowing him back from the aperture and into his room.

  He felt dizzy, suddenly sick, and lay down on his sofa, as if it were a place of safety. He stared in perplexity at the new bareness of his walls, forgetting how they came to be that way. To his dimming gaze they intimated that he must begin travelling again, that the world waited outside still untouched beyond where he lay. Had he brought nothing back after all? Or even dreamt his travels? Ever since the excision of a brain glioma late in life, he had not trusted his memory. He even imagined things that never happened, or had happened in some hinterland to which he no longer had access.