But I knew it was none of that. From the moment I first saw him, standing in the Middle Corridor with his hair in his eyes and the end of his scissored tie poking out like an impudent tongue, I had already known. A filter had lifted from the world. Time had separated into before-Leon and after-Leon; and now nothing could ever be the same.
Most adults assume that the feelings of adolescence don’t count, somehow, and that those searing passions of rage and hate and embarrassment and horror and hopeless, abject love are something you grow out of, something hormonal, a practice run for the Real Thing. It wasn’t. At thirteen, everything counts; there are sharp edges on everything, and all of them cut. Some drugs can re-create that intensity of feeling, but adulthood blunts the edges, dims the colors and taints everything with reason, rationalization, or fear. At thirteen I had no use for any of those. I knew what I wanted; and I was ready, with the single-mindedness of adolescence, to fight for it to the death. I would not go to Paris. Whatever it took, I would not leave.
5
St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys
Monday, 25th October
On the whole, a poor start to the new half-term. October has turned menacing, tearing the leaves from the golden trees and showering the Quad with conkers. Windy weather excites the boys; wind and rain means excited boys in the form room over break; and after what happened last time I left them to their own devices, I dare not leave them unsupervised even for a moment. No break for Straitley, then; not even a cup of tea; and my resulting temper was so bad that I snapped at everyone, including my Brodie Boys, who can usually make me laugh even at the worst of times.
As a result the boys kept their heads down, in spite of the windy weather. I put a couple of fourth-formers in detention for failing to hand in work, but apart from that I hardly had to raise my voice. Perhaps they sensed something—some whiff of prestrike ozone in the air—that warned them that now was not the time for a display of high spirits.
The Common Room, as I understand, has been the scene of a number of small, sour skirmishes. Some unpleasantness about appraisals; a computer breakdown in the office; a quarrel between Pearman and Scoones concerning the new French syllabus. Roach has lost his credit card and blames Jimmy for leaving the Quiet Room door unlocked after school; Dr. Tidy has decreed that as of this term, tea and coffee (hitherto provided free of charge) must be paid for to the tune of £3.75 a week; and Dr. Devine, in his capacity as Health and Safety representative, has officially called for a smoke detector in the Middle Corridor (in the hope of driving me from my smoker’s den in the old Book Room).
On the bright side, there has been no immediate comeback from Strange over Pooley and his torn blazer. I have to say that surprises me a little; I’d have expected that second warning to have arrived in my pigeonhole by now, and can only suppose that Bob has either forgotten the incident altogether or dismissed it as end-of-term foolishness and decided not to take it further.
Besides, there are other, more important things to deal with than one boy’s ripped lining. The offensive Light has lost his driving license, or so Kitty tells me, following some kind of an incident in town over the weekend. There’s more to it than that, of course, but my enforced restriction to the Bell Tower meant that for most of the day I was out of the mainstream of Common Room gossip, and therefore had to rely on the boys for information.
As usual, however, the rumor mill has been at work. One source declared that Light had been arrested following a police tip-off. Another said that Light had been ten times over the legal limit; yet another, that he had been stopped with St. Oswald’s boys in the car with him, and that one of them had actually been at the wheel.
I have to say that at first, none of it troubled me overmuch. Every now and then you come across a teacher like Light, an arrogant buffoon, who has managed to fool the system and enters the profession expecting an easy job with long holidays. As a rule they don’t last long. If the boys don’t finish them off, something else usually does, and life goes on without much of a blip.
As the day wore on, however, I began to realize that there was something more afoot than Light’s traffic offenses. Gerry Grachvogel’s class next to mine was unusually noisy; during my free period I stuck my head around the door and saw most of 3S, including Knight, Jackson, Anderton-Pullitt, and the usual suspects, apparently talking amongst themselves whilst Grachvogel sat staring out of the window with an expression of such abstracted misery that I curbed my original impulse—which was to interfere—and simply returned to my own room without a word.
When I got back, Chris Keane was waiting for me. “I didn’t by any chance leave a notebook here, did I?” he asked as I came in. “It’s a little red leather book. I keep all my ideas in it.”
For once I thought he was looking less than calm; recalling some of his more subversive comments, I thought I could understand why.
“I found a notebook in the Common Room before half-term,” I told him. “I thought you’d reclaimed it.”
Keane shook his head. I wondered whether or not I should tell him I’d glanced inside, then, seeing his furtive expression, decided against.
“Lesson plans?” I suggested innocently.
“Not quite,” said Keane.
“Ask Miss Dare. She shares my room. Maybe she saw it and put it away.”
I thought Keane looked slightly worried at that. As well he might, knowing the contents of that incriminating little book. Still, he seemed cool enough about it and simply said, “No problem. I’m sure it’ll turn up sooner or later.”
Come to think of it, things have had rather a habit of disappearing in the last few weeks. The pens, for instance; Keane’s notebook; Roach’s credit card. It happens occasionally; the wallet I could understand, but I really couldn’t see why anyone would want to steal an old St. Oswald’s Jubilee mug, or indeed my form register, which has still not resurfaced—unless it is simply to annoy me, in which case it has more than succeeded. I wondered what other small and insignificant items had disappeared in recent days, and whether the disappearances might be in some way related.
I said as much to Keane. “Well, it’s a school,” he said. “Things vanish in schools.”
Perhaps, I thought; but not St. Oswald’s.
I saw Keane’s ironic smile as he left the room, almost as if I had spoken aloud.
At the end of school I went back into Grachvogel’s room, hoping to find out what was on his mind. Gerry’s a good enough chap, in his way, not a natural in the class, but a real academic with a real enthusiasm for his subject, and it bothered me to see him looking so under the weather. However, when I stuck my head around his classroom door at four o’clock, he was not there. That too was unusual; Gerry tends to hang around after hours, messing with the computers or preparing his interminable visual aids, and it was certainly the first time I’d ever seen him leave his room unlocked.
A few of my boys remained at their desks, copying up some notes from the board. I was unsurprised to recognize Anderton-Pullitt, always a laborious worker, and Knight, studiously not looking up, but with that smug little half-smirk on his face that told me he had registered my presence.
“Hello, Knight,” I said. “Did Mr. Grachvogel say if he’d be back?”
“No, sir.” His voice was colorless.
“I think he left, sir,” said Anderton-Pullitt.