Silent Children (20 page)

It was a woman's voice, and he had to make an effort to respond. "She's at work."

"I've been trying her there, but it's engaged. I'll try again." Instead of ringing off, however, the woman paused. "Are you the writer?"

Jack had little sense of who he was any more. "I guess."

Perhaps that seemed unworthy of a reply, or perhaps she felt she was responding to it when she spoke. As if she thought he was accountable for the state of affairs and unworthy to be told the details, she cut him off once she'd finished saying "If you happen to speak to her, please ask her to contact her son's school urgently. I'm afraid he's in grave trouble."

"Fix Duke's eye for him."

Leslie swung round to stare at the group of boys who were passing her and Ian. Any of them might have been pretending not to have spoken. "There's been quite enough of that," she said in a voice that rang on the concrete of the schoolyard, but as the boys vanished behind an annexe that resembled a temporary office on a building site, she heard them start to joke.

The brown bricks of the school, half a two-storey H with its middle bar facing the gates, looked sandy with mid-morning light. Dozens of windows leaned out as though to scoop heat into the classrooms, which were emitting a selection of the noises schools made. As Ian opened a side door for Leslie, she said "Don't let anyone start thinking you're a hero."

"I didn't mean to get his eye."

"You've told me that and I believe you. You aren't a monster, but you aren't a hero either. You're more or less who you've always been, so try not to let what people say about you affect you. Except what your headmaster says is going to have to count, and we'd better hope it isn't too bad."

The door closed behind her and her awkwardly overgrown son with more of a slam than she could think was encouraged. A classful of boys laughed and thought about whatever they were laughing at and laughed again, a master's voice echoed down the corridor whose walls looked slippery with paint. She felt as though she'd been sent back to school, and uneasier for knowing that some of the pupils thought the Duke boy's injury was a joke. How could they want him to be hurt when he'd lost his little sister? Perhaps they disliked how that had changed him, but why couldn't they see past their dislike? Now she was at the doors that gave onto the corridor inhabited by the headmaster, and when Ian pushed one open she saw Mrs. Duke and her son.

Four straight chairs had been placed with their backs to the headmaster's office, two on each side of the door. The Dukes were sitting on the farther pair, and turned just their heads toward the newcomers. The boy's movement might have been intended to reveal the right side of his face, the eye covered with a wad of gauze held by a cross of adhesive plaster. His mother let her dull gaze weigh on the Ameses as they took the remaining chairs, and Leslie tried not to imagine that she was comparing her grey suit and white blouse with Leslie's more expensive version of the outfit. When eventually she felt Mrs. Duke's stare lift itself from her she glanced at her wristwatch, and had another look a minute later. It was past time for the appointment, and so she wondered aloud "Should we tell anyone we're here?"

She had to turn and gaze at Mrs. Duke, then cock her head and raise her eyebrows, before the woman said tonelessly "He knows we are."

Either that or Leslie's question brought Mr. Brand to his door. He was a tall chubby man who smelled of sweetish shower gel and whose blond hair persisted in flopping over his brow. He extended his hands on either side of him, so slowly that he might have been offering a dual handshake or advising the women to remain seated or even inviting them to inspect his small neatly manicured nails. "Is everyone present?" he said.

Since Mrs. Duke only shrugged, Leslie risked trying to lighten the mood. "Looks like it, or there wouldn't be enough seats."

"One or both of the gentlemen would have given theirs up, I trust," the headmaster said, and with a residue of admonition "So it's just mothers and sons."

"Has been," Mrs. Duke declared, "since they took my man in because they thought he'd done something to Harmony."

"There's no chance of a reconciliation?"

"Not after what I said to him when I thought he had."

"I'm certain everybody sympathises with your tragic situation."

Mr. Brand held a respectful pause before saying "Shall we continue in my room? The ladies will need seats."

"I'll bring them," Ian said.

"Rupert can carry mine," Mrs. Duke told everyone.

The headmaster made a sound not unlike that of a machine gun with his throat and led the way into his office, a wide bright room slitting its blinds at a view of the outstretched legs of the building. Ian planted a chair well away from its twin before the broad oak desk, and Leslie sat while he stood beside her. She remembered when she would have lifted him onto her lap; she sensed the vulnerable little boy hiding inside him and imagined one inside Rupert too, and willed Mr. Brand to be quick with the interview. Instead he reached or at least mimed reaching for the phone. "Will the ladies have a coffee?"

"Not with my nerves," Mrs. Duke said.

"Tea, then."

"You won't want me gurgling when you're talking to them."

The heat that the blinds were failing to exclude was parching Leslie's mouth, but she shook her head at Mr. Brand. "I'm fine," she lied.

"In that event let me hear the accounts. Duke, you may begin."

"Ames cut my eye with his book."

"I think that's common knowledge. How is it presently feeling?"

"Hurts."

"I fancy it must," Mr. Brand said dabbing at both of his own. "What word from the hospital, Mrs. Duke?"

"His corny whatever they call it is ripped."

"The cornea. The horny membrane, from the Latin," Mr. Brand told Rupert in case the knowledge came in useful. "How will it affect his sight, can that be told yet?"

"He won't lose it, the doctor said."

"That's cheering. Meanwhile I understand it tends to aggravate Rupert's problems with his schoolwork."

"It would, wouldn't it?"

"Anything else you would like to place on the record, Duke? What do you say led to the incident?"

"Ames wrote a horror thing about putting a girl under the floor."

"So Mr. Cardigan informs me, but I wonder what it has to do with you."

"You're joking. It's like using what that bastard did to our Harmony."

"I didn't mean her. I wasn't thinking of her."

"No polyphony, if you please. One voice at a time. I must say, Ames, if you weren't thinking about her then perhaps you should have been."

"He shouldn't have wrecked it. He won't be able to wreck the book Jack's writing about all the stuff Hector Woollie did."

"He's what?" Mrs. Duke demanded.

Mr. Brand showed her a palm. "Anything further, Duke? Anything that doesn't involve language we don't expect from our boys. Intemperateness only leads to the sort of incident we're having to discuss." When some or all of that left Rupert speechless, Mr. Brand said "Ames's version, then. Speak as freely as you wish within the limits of politeness and accuracy."

"It's like I said, Duke heard Mr. Cardigan talking about my story and he came and tore it up. I was going to show my mother and Jack. Duke made me mad, that's all."

"Are you saying you were temporarily insane?"

"Just mad."

"Angry, you're trying to say. Furious."

"Right."

"There's no merit in a usage that blurs meaning." Having led a silence to mourn the loss, Mr. Brand said "The destruction of another boy's schoolwork is a serious matter, but I think we may accept that Duke has paid for the infraction. On the other hand—"

"Sir." Ian waited to be sure he would be heard, and then he said "That isn't all he did."

"I see," Mr. Brand said, though Leslie was certain he had no more sense of what was coming than she had. "Continue."

"He broke into our house and sprayed stuff on the doors."

"That's a rotten lie," Mrs. Duke cried, grabbing her knees with her silver-nailed hands as if to launch herself at him, and Leslie was readying herself to intervene, breathing as deliberately as she could to slow her pulse that felt like the shakes, when the headmaster brandished a hand. "What evidence have you of that, Ames?"

"Duke said."

"Is that true, Duke?"

Rupert dragged his glare, intensified by its confinement to one eye, away from Ian and neutralised his look before it reached the headmaster. "Can't remember what I said."

"In other words, you might have."

"He got me so furious angry I could've said any—anything, sir."

"That would hardly have improved the situation, would it? I appreciate you must have felt aggrieved, Ames. Nevertheless—"

"Hold on." Leslie's throat was so dry she had to clear it with a cough. "Can we stay with what we just heard? Can we establish if he broke into my house?"

"He just said he did," Mrs. Duke informed her as if addressing a backward child.

"No, he only admitted he said it. Was it true?" Leslie asked him.

His tight lips twitched, and she saw Mrs. Duke open her mouth to talk over anything he said, but it was Mr. Brand who spoke. "Forgive my interrupting, but I think we must confine ourselves to school matters. If you've reason to believe Duke was responsible for any damage to your property you should contact the police."

"It's us that ought," Mrs. Duke protested. "We'll be sending them after her boy for what he did to mine if you don't give him what he deserves."

"I assure you I shall be taking all the relevant factors into consideration." The headmaster raised his chin an inch as if to render his unruly hair less prominent or his solemn expression more so. "However provoked you may have felt," he told Ian, "you could very easily have blinded him."

"I know." Ian grimaced with regret or to steel himself to add "Sorry, sir."

"Easy said and not enough," Mrs. Duke objected.

"When it becomes necessary to expel a boy," Mr. Brand said, "I feel the school has failed."

Leslie held her breath and found she couldn't look at Ian. By the time Mr. Brand went on, her eyes had begun to sting. "Given everything I've heard here today, and bearing in mind the need to send a signal to the students, I shall with immediate effect be excluding Ames for the remainder of the term."

"That's not nearly enough," Mrs. Duke said at once. "You heard what I said about the police."

"I hope you wouldn't expect that to alter my decision, Mrs. Duke. If your son weren't injured I should have to consider excluding him for destroying Ames's work. As far as recourse to the police is concerned, I gathered that if either you or Mrs. Ames were to involve them, the other would reciprocate."

Mrs. Duke gave him a long dull stare before saying "Have you finished with us?"

"Unless there was anything further you wished to say. Thank you for attending."

"Come on, Rupert. Can you see where you're going all right?" Mrs. Duke said, and as a parting shot "Time you were in your class if it doesn't hurt too much to work."

Leslie supposed the headmaster's decision was just, but she wished he could have stopped short of making her feel helpless over the break-in at her house. It was like so much of life, she thought: a mess of motives and emotions that couldn't be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, that would simply linger until the passage of time let the frustration of it dissipate. "What will Ian do about his schoolwork?" she said.

"Arrangements will need to be made with his teachers. Perhaps you could telephone the staff room at lunchtime." Mr. Brand stood up, and as a further sign that the interview was over, used his fingertips to clear his forehead of hair. "I hope to see a continuing improvement in your work, Ames," he said. "I hear your teachers had been happy with your progress."

Leslie tried not to feel ostracised as she left the building for the deserted schoolyard. "It's good that they're pleased with your work, isn't it?"

"Guess so," he said, not much more than a shrug.

"It is, Ian. The bad stuff's been dealt with, so let's concentrate on the good. If you have time and you want to, you could try writing your story again for me and Jack to read."

He turned his back on the suggestion and walked ahead, and she kept the rest of her thoughts to herself along the North Circular Road. Most of the journey across the recreation ground was accompanied by a terrier that was determined to see her and Ian off, to the amusement of its slowly jogging rotund owner, and some of the people in the streets nearer Jericho Close were visibly of the opinion that Ian should be at school. At least the sight of her house was welcome, not least because the Nova in front of it meant Jack was in.

She didn't call to him as she stepped into the hall. He'd been preoccupied of late, no doubt with his book. She filled the percolator in the kitchen and sent Ian to fetch a mug from the garden table. When she saw him wave at Jack's window and at Janet's, she went out herself.

Jack was at his desk, and gazing either into the distance or at the screen of his word processor. It took him a few seconds to notice her, at which point he raised a thumb and then its fist, though not far. Rather than distract him further, she only smiled and turned to Janet, who was leaning out of her bedroom window. "Just finishing the packing," Janet said, "and then it's the time-share for three weeks. Do I see someone else on holiday?"

"Just studying until the end of term because of the fight he was in."

"Boys." Having summed up a great deal in the syllable, Janet presented Ian with a grin as compensation. "Still," she said, "I'll sleep better knowing there's two men at home to keep an eye on the house."

HORROR MAN WRITES BOOK ABOUT MURDER HOUSE

"Bitch."

"Now, Ian, there's no need for that."

"Well, she is. I bet Jack thinks she is."

"I'm sure Jack is too well brought up to say so even if he thinks it. That's right, isn't it, Jack?"

"I—I didn't catch who we're talking about, to tell you the truth."

"Rupe's mom. She must have told the paper you were writing your book. I shouldn't have said at school you were."