The Guardians (2 page)

“What is it then, Rob?” she asked.

“I was wondering if there was anything I could mend this book with. There's a page torn.”

“Books.” She shook her head. “What do you want with them, anyway? Well, I suppose it takes all sorts. There's some sticky tape somewhere. Yes, on that top shelf.”

Rob put the torn edges together and carefully
taped them. Watching him, she asked him how it had got in such a state, and he told her about the riot.

“Hooligans. There's too much of it altogether,” she said. “They ought to put them in the army and send them out to China.”

The war in China had been going on as long as he could remember. Troublemakers were sometimes given the option of enlisting and going out there instead of to prison. It was all far away and unreal. She had said it perfunctorily, her mind more on making the tea. Now she gave him a tray, with teapot and cups and saucers and a plate of chocolate biscuits.

“Take this through while I wipe up,” she told him. “I'll be along in a minute.”

Mr. Kennealy was still fiddling with the inside of the HV set. Rob put the tray down on a coffee table and went over to the window. The long-threatened rain had come and was sheeting down the chasm between this block and the next to the dark gloomy street hundreds of feet below. He stood watching it, thinking of his father and feeling miserable.

•  •  •

The apartment had a spare bedroom, once used by the Kennealys' daughter, who had married and left home. Rob was put up there, in a pink bed patterned with roses. He read for a time and then, tired, thumbed out the light and was soon asleep.

He woke again, feeling thirsty, and made for the bathroom to get a drink of water. He went very quietly, imagining it was the middle of the night and not wanting to disturb anyone, but heard voices as he crossed the lobby and noticed a line of light under the sitting-room door. Men's voices, three at least. They seemed to be arguing about something. Coming back quietly from the bathroom he heard his father's name mentioned, and stopped to listen. He could only catch a word here or there—not enough to get the sense of what was being said. He realized how bad it would look if someone were to come out and find him eavesdropping, and went back to bed.

He did not sleep, though. He could hear the low murmur of voices through the wall and found that he was straining to listen to them. Then after what seemed a long time there was the sound of a door
opening, and the voices louder and clearer in the lobby outside.

A man said: “There's something wrong. I told him a week ago he needed to watch out.”

“Accidents happen,” another voice said.

“You can't take chances,” the first voice insisted. “I'd warned him. You have to take account of the risks. This is a dangerous business. We'd all better remember that. Not just for ourselves but for the others, too.”

“Quiet,” Mr. Kennealy said. “The boy's in there. And the door's ajar.”

There were footsteps and the door was gently shut. Rob heard their muted voices for a few more moments before the two visitors took their leave and Mr. Kennealy went to his bedroom. Rob lay awake still, thinking about what he had heard. He was angry at the things the men had said, the first speaker anyway. He was not only blaming his father for what had happened, but suggesting that he had put others at risk. How could that be true, when it was just a matter of touching a wire that was live when he thought it was insulated?

And Mr. Kennealy . . . he had stopped the man, but only because he had thought Rob might hear. He had not stood up for his father as he ought to have done. Rob was hating him, too, as he finally fell asleep.

•  •  •

The hospital was a fairly new building, more than forty floors high, its exterior in pale-green plastibrick with anodized aluminum trim on the windows. The windows gleamed brightly in spring sunshine—the sky was blue except for a few white clouds in the west. At the very top was the balcony ringing the roof garden and heliport, toward which an ambulance copter was at this moment dropping. The doctors also parked their copters up there, coming in from the County, but there would be few at present. Only a skeleton staff remained on duty on Sunday.

The Kennealys and Rob joined the queue of people waiting for the lifts, which did not operate until the start of visiting hour. At least, this being a hospital, they were all working. They were whisked up quickly and into a second line of people waiting
outside the ward door. A bored medical clerk, his head tonsured in the latest fashion, checked off names on a list. When they reached him, he said, “Randall? Not down here. You must have come to the wrong ward.”

“We were told F.17.”

“They're always getting things wrong,” the clerk said indifferently. “You'd better go and ask downstairs.”

Mr. Kennealy said in a quiet but hard voice, “No, you call them up. We're not wasting time going all the way down there again on your say-so.”

“The procedure . . .”

Mr. Kennealy leaned over the desk. “Never mind the procedure,” he said. “You call them.”

The clerk obeyed sullenly. He did not use the visiphone but his handphone. They heard but could not make out the tinny whisper of speech at the other end. The clerk asked for a check on Randall, J., admitted the previous afternoon. He said: “Yes, got that,” and replaced the phone.

“Well,” Mr. Kennealy said, “where is he?”

“In the morgue,” the clerk said. “He was taken
into Intensive Care this morning and died of heart failure.”

“That's impossible!” Mr. Kennealy said.

His face was white, Rob saw, while the shock hit him too. The clerk shrugged. “Death's never impossible. They'll give you particulars at the office. Next, please.”

•  •  •

Mrs. Kennealy came with Rob to help sort things out. She clucked over the untidiness and set about putting the place to rights while Rob packed his clothes and belongings. The furniture, he supposed, would be sold. He wondered if it would be possible to keep the saddle-backed chair in which his mother used to sit in the evenings. He would have to ask Mrs. Kennealy if she could find room for it, but did not want to bother her at the moment.

He left her cleaning and rearranging the living room and went into his father's bedroom. The bed was made, but a towel had been left lying carelessly across the foot, and two bedroom slippers were at opposite ends of the rug. There was a half-empty pack of cigarettes on the bedside table, a glass with
a little water in it, and the miniradio which his father had sometimes listened to at night. He remembered waking and hearing the sound of music through the dividing wall.

He still could not properly grasp what had happened. The suddenness was as shocking as the fact. His mother had been continuously ill for a long time before she died—he could scarcely remember a time when she was not ill. Her death had been no less horrifying for that, but even then, when he was ten, he had known it to be inevitable. His father, on the other hand, had been a strong, active man, always in good health. It was impossible to imagine him dead. He could not be.

Rob opened the wardrobe. The clothes would probably be sold, too—they would fit Mr. Kennealy. He felt his eyes sting, and pulled open one of the drawers at the bottom. More clothes. A second drawer. Folded pullovers, and a cardboard box. On the outside was written “Jenny,” his mother's name. He took it out and opened it.

The first thing he saw was her photograph. He had not known one existed: he remembered his
father once trying to get her to have a photograph taken, and her refusal. This was an old-fashioned 2-D print, and it showed her as much younger than he had known her—scarcely more than twenty, with brown hair down her shoulders instead of short as she had worn it in later years.

He looked at it for a long time, trying to read behind the slight, anxious smile on her face. Then he heard Mrs. Kennealy calling him. He had time to see that there were other things in the box—a curl of hair in a transparent locket, letters in a bundle held together by a rubber band. He closed the box and put it with his own things before going to see what Mrs. Kennealy wanted.

•  •  •

Rob was called from geography to the principal's office. They were without a master at the time, though of course under closed-circuit TV observation at the main switchboard; and the holovision set was taking them on a conducted tour of Australia, with a bouncing, breezy commentary full of not very funny little jokes. The voice blanked out though vision continued, and with a
warning ping a voice said, “Randall. Report to the principal immediately. Repeat. Randall to the principal's office.”

The commentary came up again. One or two of the boys made their own even less funny jokes about possible reasons for his being summoned, but Mr. Spennals was on the switchboard that morning and the majority kept their attention firmly on the screen; he was not a man to trifle with.

Assemblies apart, Rob had seen the principal twice before; once when he joined the school, the second time when they met in a corridor and he was given a message to deliver to the masters' common-room. He looked at Rob now as though wondering who he was. This was not surprising since there were nearly two thousand boys in the school. He said, “Randall,” tentatively, and then more firmly, “Randall, this is Mr. Chalmers from the Education Office.”

The second man was broad where the principal was thin, with hairy cheeks and a quiet watchful expression. Rob said, “Good morning, sir,” to him, and he nodded but made no reply.

“Mr. Chalmers has been looking into your case, following the regrettable death of your father,” the principal said. “You have only one close relative, I understand, an aunt living in”—he glanced at a pad in front of him—“in the Sheffield Conurb. She has been consulted. I'm afraid she does not feel able to offer you a home. There are difficulties—her husband is in poor health. . . .”

Rob said nothing. It had not occurred to him that this would even be suggested. The principal continued, “Under the circumstances it is felt that the best solution to your problem—in fact the only solution—will be to have you transferred to a boarding school where you can have full care and attention. We feel . . .”

Rob was so surprised that he interrupted. “Can't I stay with the Kennealys, sir?”

“The Kennealys?” The two men looked at each other. “Who are they?”

Rob explained. The principal said:

“Yes, I see. The neighbors who have been looking after you. But that would not be suitable, of course, for the longer term.”

“But they have a spare room, sir.”

“Not suitable,” the principal repeated in a flat, authoritative voice. “You will be transferred to the Barnes Boarding School. You are excused classes for the remainder of the day. Transport will be sent to pick you up at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.”

•  •  •

Rob took the bus to the stadium where he knew Mr. Kennealy was on duty. On the way he thought about the State boarding schools. Some were supposed to be not quite so bad as others, but they were all regarded with a mixture of contempt and dread. They catered to orphans and the children of broken marriages, but also to certain types of juvenile delinquents. There were ugly rumors about the life there, particularly about the terrible food and the discipline.

Rob sent in a message asking for Mr. Kennealy, who came out to the leisure room ten minutes later. Rob had been watching the closed-circuit holovision which showed what was happening in the arena. It was gladiators in high-wire combat. In this, men fought with light, blunt-ended fiberglass spears from
separate wires that approached each other at differing heights and distances. The wire system was complex and changed during the contest. The drop could be into water or onto firm ground, which in this case was covered with artificial thorn bushes, glinting with murderous-looking spikes. A loser always got hurt, sometimes badly, occasionally fatally. There were three men in the present fight and one had already fallen and limped away with difficulty. The remaining two swayed and probed at each other in the bluish light cast by the weather screen which at the moment covered the top of the stadium.

“Well, Rob, what are you doing away from school?” Mr. Kennealy asked.

Rob told him what had happened. Mr. Kennealy listened in silence.

“They said I couldn't stay with you, but it's not true, is it?”

Mr. Kennealy replied heavily, “If that's what the regulations say, there's nothing we can do.”

“But you could go and see them—you could apply for me.”

“It wouldn't do any good.”

“There was a boy at school last year—Jimmy McKay. His mother went off and his father couldn't manage. He went to Mrs. Pearson in your block and he's still living there.”

“The Pearsons may have adopted him.”

“Couldn't you? Adopt me, that is?”

“Not without your aunt giving consent.”

“Well, she won't have me herself. She's said so.”

“That doesn't mean she'd be ready to sign you away. She might be thinking things will change later, that she can take you then.”

“They could ask her, couldn't they? I'm pretty sure she'd say yes.”

“It's not as easy as that.” Mr. Kennealy paused and Rob waited for him to go on. “What I mean is, this may be the best thing for you. You'll be safer there.”

“Safer? How?”

Mr. Kennealy started to say something, then shook his head.

“Better looked after. And with boys of your own age. Mrs. Kennealy and I are too old for a boy like you to have to live with.”

“You said ‘safer.' ”

“It was a slip of the tongue.”

There was a silence. Mr. Kennealy was not meeting Rob's eyes. Rob felt he could see the truth of the matter. All these were excuses, attempts to conceal the central fact: the Kennealys did not want him. He felt a bit as he had when Mr. Kennealy had not spoken up for his father against the man who had said that he was to blame for getting killed, but now it was more a feeling of desolation than anger.