“He’s very fond of you, Mr. Straitley.”
Here it comes, I thought.
“But you’re sixty-five years old—”
“Sixty-four. My birthday’s on November fifth. Bonfire Night.”
He dismissed Bonfire Night with a shake of his head. “And you seem to think you can go on forever as you always have—”
“What’s the alternative? Exposure on a rocky crag?”
The doctor sighed. “I’m sure an educated man like yourself could find retirement both rewarding and stimulating. You could take up a hobby—”
A hobby, forsooth! “I’m not retiring.”
“Be reasonable, Mr. Straitley—”
St. Oswald’s has been my world for over thirty years. What else is there? I sat up on the trolley bed and swung my legs over the side. “I feel fine.”
3
Thursday, 30th September
Poor old Straitley. I went to see him, you know, as soon as school finished, and found that he’d already checked himself out of the cardiac ward, to the disapproval of the staff. But his address was in the St. Oswald’s handbook, so I went there instead, bringing with me a little pot plant I had bought at the hospital shop.
I’d never seen him out of character before. An old man, I realized, with an old man’s white stubble under his chin and an old man’s bony white feet in battered leather slippers. He seemed almost touchingly pleased to see me. “But you needn’t have worried,” he declared, “I’ll be back in the morning.”
“Really? So soon?” I almost loved him for it; but I was concerned too. I’m enjoying our game too much to let him slip away on a stupid principle. “Shouldn’t you rest, at least for a day or two?”
“Don’t you start,” he said. “I’ve had enough of that from the hospital. Take up a hobby, he says—something quiet like taxidermy or macramé—Gods, why doesn’t he just hand me the hemlock bowl and have done with it?”
I thought he was overdramatizing, and said so.
“Well,” said Straitley, pulling a face. “It’s what I’m good at.”
His house is a tiny two-up, two-down midterrace about ten minutes’ walk from St. Oswald’s. The hallway is stacked high with books—some on shelves, others not—so that the original color of the wallpaper is almost impossible to detect. The carpets are worn right down to the weft, except in the parlor, where lurks the ghost of a brown Axminster. It smells of dust and polish and the dog that died five years ago; a big school radiator in the hallway throws out an unforgiving blast of heat; there is a tiny kitchen with a floor of mosaic tiles; and, covering every scrap of uncluttered wall, a multitude of class photographs.
He offered me tea in a St. Oswald’s mug, and some dubious-looking chocolate digestives from a tin on the mantelpiece. I noticed that he looks smaller at home.
“How’s Anderton-Pullitt?” Apparently he’d been asking the same question every ten minutes at the hospital, even after the boy was out of danger. “Did they find out what happened?”
I shook my head. “I’m sure no one blames you, Mr. Straitley.”
“That isn’t the point.”
And it wasn’t; the pictures on the walls said as much, with their double rows of young faces; I wondered whether Leon might be among them somewhere. What would I do if I saw his face now, in Straitley’s house? And what would I do if I saw myself beside him, cap crammed over my eyes, blazer buttoned tightly over my secondhand shirt?
“Misfortune comes in groups of three,” said Straitley, reaching for a biscuit, then changing his mind. “First Fallow, now Anderton-Pullitt—I’m waiting to see what the next one will be.”
I smiled. “I had no idea you were superstitious, sir.”
“Superstitious? It comes with the territory.” He took the biscuit after all, and dipped it in his tea. “You can’t work at St. Oswald’s for as long as I have without believing in signs and portents and—”
“Ghosts?” I suggested slyly.
He did not return my smile. “Of course,” he said. “The bloody place is full of them.” I wondered for a moment if he was thinking of my father. Or Leon. For a moment, I wondered if I was one myself.
4
It was during the summer preceding my thirteenth birthday when John Snyde began—slowly and inconspicuously—to unravel. Small things at first, barely noticeable within the greater picture of my life, where Leon loomed large and everything else was reduced to a series of vague constructions on a far and hazy horizon. But as July waxed and the end of term came closer, his temper, always a presence, became a constant.
Most of all, I remember his anger. That summer, it seemed, my father was always in a rage. At me; at the school; at the mysterious graffiti artists who spray-painted the side of the Games Pavilion. At the junior boys who called out at him as he rode the big lawn mower. At the two older boys who had ridden it that time, and who had caused him to receive an official reprimand. At the neighbors’ dogs, who left small unwanted presents on the cricket lawn, which he had to remove using a rolled-up plastic bag and a paper tissue. At the government; at the landlord of the pub; at the people who moved over to the other side of the pavement to avoid him as he came home, mumbling to himself, from the supermarket.
One Monday morning only a few days from the end of term, he caught a first-year boy searching under the counter in the Porter’s Lodge. Ostensibly for a lost bag, but John Snyde knew better than to believe that story. The boy’s intentions were clear from his face—theft, vandalism, or some other means to disgrace John Snyde—already the boy had discovered the small bottle of Irish whiskey hidden underneath a pile of old newspapers, and his small eyes gleamed with malice and satisfaction. So thought my father; and, recognizing one of his young tormentors—a monkey-faced boy with an insolent manner—he set out to teach him a lesson.
Oh, I don’t suppose he really hurt him. His loyalty to St. Oswald’s was bitter but true; and although by now he loathed many of the individuals—the Bursar, the Head, and especially the boys—the institution itself still commanded his respect. But the boy tried to bluster; told my father You can’t touch me; demanded to be let out of the lodge; and finally, in a voice that drilled into my father’s head (Sunday night had been a late one, and this time, it showed) squalled, Let me out, let me out let me out let me out—until his cries alerted Dr. Tidy in the nearby Bursar’s office, and he came running.
By this time the monkey-faced boy—Matthews, he was called—was crying. John Snyde was a big man, intimidating even when he was not enraged, and that day he had been very, very angry. Tidy saw my father’s bloodshot eyes and rumpled clothing; saw the boy’s tearful face and the wet patch spreading across his gray uniform trousers, and drew the inevitable conclusion. It was the last straw; John Snyde was summoned to the Headmaster’s office that very morning, with Pat Bishop present (to ensure the fairness of the proceedings), and given a second, final warning.
The Old Head would not have done it. My father was convinced of that. Shakeshafte knew the pressures of working within a school; he would have known how to defuse the situation without causing a scene. But the new man was from the state sector; versed in political correctness and toytown activism. Besides, he was a weakling beneath his stern exterior, and this opportunity to establish himself as a strong, decisive leader (and at no professional risk) was too good to miss.
There would be an enquiry, he said. For the moment Snyde was to continue his duties, reporting every day to the Bursar for instructions, but was to have no contact at all with the boys. Any further incidents—the word was uttered with the prissy self-satisfaction of the churchgoing teetotaler—would result in immediate dismissal.