Susan left Exley Hall the first thing the next morning. She left behind the pink dress, taking it now seemed wrong. She didn’t see any of the family. It was one of the maids who saw her off. She’d never really spoken to the maids, but this one was kindly enough.
“And Miss Clara still hasn’t spoken,” she said. “Not a single word, though they do try and coax ‘em out. Shock, I shouldn’t wonder.”
A taxi took her to the nearest railway station. Because it was Christmas, she had to wait some hours for a train, and she was cold.
She found in her coat pocket a letter. Miss Cowley, it said on the envelope, and she recognised the handwriting as Edwin’s. She opened it with strange excitement. She didn’t know what to expect. An apology. Or some words of new tenderness?
Inside there were just two words. Something’s coming.
In her dreams, the rain stopped. Or, rather, in her dreams she could make it stop. If she only gave up struggling. If she just let things be.
But when she woke to her second day at H___ Priory, the rain was still battering hard against the windows. Even Valerie took no pleasure in it today, and when they ran for the school they were drenched from head to foot in an instant.
The children in the class were neat and dry, of course. And Susan feared that they would laugh at her when she came into the room looking like a drowned rat. Not a bit of it; and if they harboured any grudge towards her for what had happened yesterday, there was no indication of it at all. They stood to attention when she addressed them; one of them had even left an apple on her desk.
“Where is the little girl from yesterday?” Susan asked. She didn’t know what she wanted to say to her. She knew she mustn’t apologise, or show weakness. The little girl wasn’t there. No one seemed to know where she might be, or gave her answer at any rate. Perhaps it was just as well.
For the morning they drew pictures and sang roundelays. Before lunch she told them another Arthurian legend; Edwin might have thought that Guinevere and Lancelot was mush, but it was a lovely story, and Susan saw to her satisfaction that even some of the boys’ eyes watered at the telling.
She knew she could not avoid the matter forever. And in the afternoon she fetched from the cupboard all the abacuses they had, and distributed them liberally about the room.
“Mathematics,” she said.
That was all it took.
Some boy, some wag, suddenly piped up with the seven times table. He sang it out, bold and confident. Susan opened her mouth to stop him, and then decided she’d have more power if she let him proceed. If only for a little while.
Maybe if she’d spoken up then she could have stopped it. Maybe she missed her chance. But as the numbers grew bigger, so more of the children picked up the mantra. By the time they reached fifty-six, all of the boys were at it—by the time they reached ninety-eight, all the girls were at it too.
“All right,” she said. “Very clever. That’s enough.”
But it wasn’t enough, was it? Because numbers don’t stop at one hundred. “Fifteen times seven is one hundred and five. Sixteen times seven is one hundred and twelve.” And for a moment Susan was floored, it was almost as if she’d forgotten you could get any higher than the little abacuses allowed her! “Nineteen times seven is one hundred and thirty-three. Twenty times seven is one hundred and forty.” And by now the voices were in utter concert, all keeping the same pace exactly.
“Please stop,” she said.
They didn’t stop.
She got out her cane. “You know I can use this,” she said.
They didn’t care.
Susan stared at them in silence. She put the cane down.
The numbers reached seven hundred, and showed no signs of stopping, chuntering on towards the first millennium.
Susan left the room and went to get help.
She didn’t know whether the nearest classroom would be Miss Bewes’ or Mrs Phelps’. On the whole, she was glad that it was Miss Bewes’. She could at least trust her to want to help, and when she saw Susan through the glass panel door she beamed in delighted surprise and was quite prepared to abandon her own class in an instant.
Susan’s pupils were no longer sitting down. By the time Susan and Valerie got to the classroom, they had pushed all the desks and chairs to the back, and now stood in a rough circle. Susan could no longer pick out boys’ voices or girls’ voices—it seemed to her more like a sexless chant, something almost monastic; indeed, there was a cool emotionless to it all that made it sound strangely reverent. Valerie strode into the room, Susan trailed behind her. The children turned to them. “Two hundred and forty-one times seven is one thousand six hundred and eighty-seven,” they informed the teachers.
“Sit down! Sit down, all of you, and shut up!” Valerie Bewes raged at them. Susan hadn’t realised Valerie had such fire in her, and for a second she was quite impressed. Only for a second, though; it was quite clear that that the children weren’t going to obey her, or even take any notice of her—they all turned away, and looked back into the circle. Valerie had no further fire to offer. She was spent.
“Which one started this?” she asked Susan. “There’s always a ringleader.”
It was a boy, Susan knew, but she couldn’t remember which one. Now they were standing up, uniformed from head to foot, they all looked eerily the same. She pointed vaguely at one boy, thought he would do.
“Right,” said Valerie. “You’re coming with me.” She grabbed at the boy. He might have struggled, but Valerie’s fat piston arms were strong, and she pulled him out of the circle, pulled him out of the classroom.
As soon as he was free, the boy stopped chanting. He looked baffled by this turn of events, and then frightened; he jerked in Valerie’s grasp like a fish on dry land.
“What are you playing at?” Valerie demanded to know.
But the boy looked at Susan, and gave her one long despairing glance—help me, it seemed to be saying, but help him with what?—and then the boy lashed out, he kicked at Valerie’s shins. Valerie grunted with surprise, and let go. In a trice the boy had rushed back into the classroom, and slammed the door behind him.
“The little bastard,” Valerie muttered, and rubbed at her legs—but Susan had no time to waste on her. She was looking through the window at the boy. He was back in the circle now. He was starting to chant. But he’d lost his way. The other children were up to two hundred and eighty-three times seven, he was still only at two hundred and sixty. He croaked and stopped. He looked about, confused, as if woken from a dream. He walked slowly into the middle of the circle. Without missing a beat, as one, the children closed in on him. Susan couldn’t make him out through the press of bodies. And then, soon, too soon, the children parted once more, they stepped back and let the circle widen—and the boy was gone, and no trace of him was left.
“Two hundred and ninety-nine times seven is two thousand and ninety-three,” they intoned. “Three hundred times seven is two thousand one hundred.” If three hundred were any sort of landmark they didn’t show it, there was no hint of achievement. On they marched to three hundred and one, and beyond.
“Go and get Mrs Phelps,” said Susan.
“You don’t want to involve Mrs Phelps,” said Valerie. “Not on your second day!”
“Go and get her.”
Mrs Phelps looked angry when she arrived. “What is the matter, girl?” And then she looked through the glass door, and listened to the children, and frowned.
“One boy has already gone missing,” said Susan.
“They ate him,” said Valerie. And that seemed such a ludicrous thing to say that Susan wanted to laugh—but then she realised Valerie was perfectly right.