That’s why I kept the secret for all these years; never told the police what I’d seen on the roof; allowed the business to die with John Snyde. You have to understand; Leon’s death on school premises was terrible enough. The Porter’s suicide made it worse. But to involve a child—to accuse a child—that would have catapulted the sorry affair into tabloid territory forever. St. Oswald’s didn’t deserve that. My colleagues, my boys—the damage to them would have been incalculable.
And besides, what precisely had I witnessed? A face, glimpsed for a split second in treacherous light. A hand on Leon’s shoulder. The figure of a Porter blocking the scene. It wasn’t enough.
And so I’d let the matter lie. It was barely dishonest, I told myself—after all, I hardly trusted my own testimony as it was. But now here was the truth at last, returning like a juggernaut to crush me, my friends—everything I’d hoped to protect—beneath its giant wheels.
“St. Oswald’s.” Her voice was reflective, barely audible across a cavernous distance.
I nodded, pleased she’d understood. After all, how could she not? She knew St. Oswald’s as well as I did; knew its ways and its dark secrets; its comforts and its little conceits. It’s hard to explain a place like St. Oswald’s. Like teaching, you’re either born to it or you’re not. Drawn in, too many find themselves unable to leave—at least until the day the old place decides to spit them out (with or without a small honorarium taken from Common Room Committee funds). I have been so many years in St. Oswald’s that nothing else exists; I have no friends outside the Common Room; no hopes beyond my boys, no life beyond—
“St. Oswald’s,” she repeated. “Of course it was. It’s funny, sir. I thought maybe you’d done it for me.”
“For you?” I said. “Why?”
Something splashed against my hand; a droplet from the nearby trees, or something else, I wasn’t sure. I suddenly felt a surge of pity—surely inappropriate, but I felt it nevertheless.
Could she really have thought that I had kept silent all these years for the sake of some unimagined relationship between us? That might explain a number of things: her pursuit of me; her all-consuming need for approval; her ever more baroque ways of gaining my attention. Oh, she was a monster; but in that moment I felt for her, and I reached out my clumsy old hand toward her in the darkness.
She took it. “Bloody St. Oswald’s. Bloody vampire.”
I knew what she meant. You can give, and give and give—but St. Oswald’s is always hungry, devouring everything—love, lives, loyalty—without ever sating its interminable appetite.
“How can you bear it, sir? What’s in it for you?”
Good point, Miss Dare. The fact is, I have no choice; I am like a mother bird faced with a chick of monstrous proportions and insatiable greed. “The truth is that many of us—the Old Guard, at least—would lie or even die for St. Oswald’s if duty demanded it.” I didn’t add that I felt as if I might actually be dying there and then, but that was because my mouth was dry.
She gave an unexpected chuckle. “You old drama queen. You know, I feel half inclined to give you your wish—to let you die for dear St. Oswald’s and see how much gratitude you get for it.”
“No gratitude,” I said, “but the tax benefits are enormous.” It was a lame quip, as last words go, but in the circumstances it was the best I could do.
“Don’t be an ass, sir. You’re not going to die.”
“I’m turned sixty-five, and can do as I please.”
“What, and miss your Century?”
“ ‘It is the game,’ ” I misquoted from somewhere or other. “ ‘Not he who plays it.’ ”
“That depends what side you’re on.”
I laughed. She was a clever girl, I thought, but I defy anyone to find a woman who really understands cricket. “I need to sleep now,” I told her drowsily. “Up stumps and back to the pavilion. Scis quid dicant—”
“Not yet, sir,” she said. “You can’t sleep now—”
“Watch me,” I said, and closed my eyes.
There was a long silence. Then I heard her voice, receding now like her footsteps as the cold drew in.
“Happy birthday, Magister.”
Those last words sounded very distant, very final in the dark. The Last Veil, I told myself glumly—at any point now I could expect to see the Tunnel of Light Penny Nation’s always talking about, with its celestial cheerleaders urging me on.
To be honest I’ve always thought it sounded a bit ghastly, but now I thought I could actually see the light—a rather eerie greenish glow—and hear the voices of departed friends whispering my name.
“Mr. Straitley?”
Funny, I thought: I’d expected celestial beings to be rather less formal in their address. But I could hear it clearly now, and in the green glow I could see that Miss Dare had gone, and that what I had taken for a fallen branch in the darkness was in fact a huddled figure, lying on the ground not ten feet away.
“Mr. Straitley,” it whispered again, in a voice as rusty—and as human—as my own.
Now I could see an outstretched hand; a crescent of face behind the furred hood of a parka; then a small greenish light, which I recognized at last as the display screen of a mobile phone, illuminating his face. And it was a familiar face; the expression strained but calm as he began, patiently, still holding the phone with what looked like an agonizing effort, to crawl across the grass toward me.
“Keane?” I said.
6
Paris, 5ième arrondissement
Friday, 12th November
I called the ambulance. There’s always one near the park on Bonfire Night in case of accidents, fights, and general misadventure, and all I had to do was phone in (using Knight’s phone for the last time), reporting that an old man had collapsed and leaving instructions that would be at the same time precise enough to allow them to find him and vague enough to give me a chance to get away in comfort.
It didn’t take long. Over the years I have become rather an expert at quick getaways. I got back to my flat by ten; at ten-fifteen I was packed and ready. I left the hire car (keys in the ignition) on the Abbey Road Estate; by ten-thirty I was fairly certain it would have been stolen and torched. I’d already wiped my computer and removed the hard drive, and now I disposed of what was left along the railway tracks on my way to the station. By then I had only a small case of Miss Dare’s clothes to carry; I left them in a charity bin where they would be laundered and sent to the Third World. Finally I dumped the few documents still pertaining to my old identity into a skip and bought myself a night at a cheap motel and a single rail ticket home.
I have to say, I’ve missed Paris. Fifteen years ago, I never would have believed it possible; but now I like it very much. I am free of my mother (such a sad business, two burned to death in an apartment fire); and as a result I am the sole beneficiary of rather a neat little inheritance. I’ve changed my name as my mother did hers, and I’ve been teaching English for the last two years at a comfortably suburban lycée, from which I have recently taken a short sabbatical to complete the research that will, I am assured, lead to my rapid promotion. I do hope so; in fact I happen to know that a little scandal is about to erupt (regarding my immediate superior’s online gambling problem) which may offer me a suitable vacancy. It isn’t St. Oswald’s, of course; but it will do. For now, at least.