The Perils and Dangers of this Night (15 page)

'Dr Kemp thought it might be rec-c-c-connected soon,'
she said. 'I just tried . . .'

Pryce reached for the receiver and put it to his ear.
'Hello?' he said. He cooed into the mouthpiece, '
Is there
anybody out there?
' He replaced it gently on its cradle.
There was a click, then dead silence. 'No good,' he said.
'Good.'

He took Sophie by the wrist and, the tiniest bit harder
than he needed to, squeezed on the bone. She squirmed
and grimaced, but he didn't let go. 'Come on, Sophie,
you've been talking too much. I want you to help me with
something.'

He led her out of the hall. Before they were swallowed
into the darkness of the corridor, Sophie cast a look over
her shoulder. Mrs Kemp had wheeled herself as close as
she could get to the hearth. She tossed the ball of hair
into the embers.

It sizzled and burst into flame. For the briefest moment
it lit the pain and the fear on her face, and then it went
out.

The school kitchen, a scene of catastrophic disorder
. . .

Every pan, every utensil, had been used and left
heaped, unrinsed, unwashed, in the sink. The stove was
splashed with gravy. The oven door swung open, billowing
a breath of residual warmth into the air. On the
work-table, there were loops of potato peelings, onion
skins, the wrinkly outer leaves of sprouts.

The room was empty and dark, but a mouse had
crossed the floor and shimmied up the table leg and onto
the top to investigate the scraps. With its whiskers it
tested the edge of a meat tray, decided it had cooled
down enough to negotiate, and hopped inside to nibble
the sweetness of a roasted parsnip that had been left
behind. The silver of stainless steel shone in its eyes. It
moved from corner to corner of the tray, leaving tiny
footprints in the congealing fat.

I'd been sent to the kitchen a few times, to run an
errand, to fetch this and that. Now, back in the great hall,
the fire was blazing. It was the best fire since Pryce and
Sophie had arrived. I'd carried armfuls of logs and
stacked them neatly on the hearth, careful to be sure that
neither a toad nor a bat were sleeping there, rebuilding
and reviving the fire from the embers which had all but
died earlier in the evening. Pryce had told me to do it.
And throughout the evening I'd watched the fire and kept
it ablaze.

It had been the only successful part of the proceedings.
When the Kemps had come down in the lift, along the
corridor and into the hall, they'd found a table set for all
of us. An hour later, it was strewn with the remains of a
cheerless Christmas dinner: the carcase of a capon,
picked to the bone; a tureen of bland, over-cooked
vegetables; a solitary bottle of wine beside a candelabra
whose flames had dripped wax onto the table cloth and
finally sputtered out; the crumbs of a few mince pies – the
paltriest trappings of a slapdash dinner, not enough, and
not a scrap of festive spirit.

In the corner, the tree had been propped against the
wall. The flex and its shattered bulbs dangled haphazardly
from the branches.

The fire threw a ball of heat into the room. Mrs Kemp
sat close to the hearth; once, the flames had driven her
back when my carefully constructed pyre had collapsed
in a shower of sparks and spilled towards her feet: the
liveliest moment of the evening. She had not come to the
table. Morose, deeply wounded in a way that her
husband could not have imagined, she hardly spoke.
She'd hardly eaten. Dr Kemp finished his wine, set down
the empty glass, got up and joined her at the fireside.

'Not exactly a banquet,' Pryce said. 'But it was the best
we could do. We used up everything we could find in the
kitchen.'

'Yes, everything,' the headmaster said sourly. 'And no,
not a banquet. We didn't think there'd be five of us.
There would've been plenty for me and Mrs Kemp, for
the dinner we traditionally have together on Christmas
Day.'

Pryce shrugged. 'We thought it would be a nice
surprise for you. It's Christmas Eve. Sophie and I wanted
to show our appreciation of your hospitality.' He raised
his glass, still half-full, and waved it in the air. 'Thank
you for having us.'

'I don't know what we'll eat tomorrow,' Kemp said.

'The snow'll clear soon,' Pryce went on. 'I'll get the car
started, get the tyre blown up just enough for us to get
going, and we'll limp away. Sophie and I'll be gone.' He
turned to me, as I knelt on the rug where Wagner used to
lie. 'What about you, Alan? Have you heard from your
mother?'

Kemp harrumphed. 'He might as well stay until the
beginning of next term. There's no word . . .'

'She couldn't come anyway, could she?' My voice was
unusually forceful, louder than I'd meant it to be.
Flushing from the heat of the fire, I blinked at the adults'
surprised faces. 'I mean, even if she's back in England, the
road's blocked and the phone isn't working. It's not her
fault.'

Mrs Kemp reached to me and put her hand on my
head. 'No, it isn't, Alan. And it isn't your fault either. I'm
so sorry you're having a horrid time . . .'

'Did you w-w-w-want anything, Mrs Kemp? A glass of
w-w-w-wine, before Martin drinks the lot?'

The woman shook her head. Before she could speak,
her husband said, 'My wife has a chill. I told her not to
come outside with me yesterday. And then she was lying
in the snow for goodness knows how long.'

'A hot bath,' Pryce said. 'Best thing for a chill. Let the
heat get deep inside you.'

The woman stared at him. She fixed her eyes on his,
unflinching. Then she swivelled her eyes onto me. And
she read on my puzzled, frightened face that it was as
extra-ordinary for me as it was for her, to think of what
Pryce had done to her the night before: so nearly
unbelievable that it had left us both numb, that it must
have been a dream, that surely we'd had the same dream
and now we could read it on each other's face. Then she
turned back to Pryce, and she stared at him so hard and
so coldly that it was he, at last, who looked away.

She felt for her husband's hand and squeezed it – the
crotchety, moody man to whom she'd been married for
the past twenty years – and I felt her despair at the
realisation that
he
didn't know what had happened to her
during the night, that he would never know, that for all
he knew she was glum because the dog was dead.

How odd.
I
knew, a little boy of twelve, and her
husband did not. And it would be like this forever.

Pryce said, 'Good shooting, Mrs Kemp. I mean,
yesterday. I was impressed. And I say that as a bit of an
expert myself.'

How odd, that he could look at her, that he could speak
to her, that he was not dumb with shame . . . I remember
these thoughts running through my head, I remember
opening my mouth to speak them. But my mouth opened
and closed, my tongue was still, and I just stared at him
while the ideas trickled away and left my head empty.

Sophie snorted. 'You aren't an exp-p-p-pert on anything,
Martin. What do you know?'

He got up from the table and strolled across the hall.
He peered into the trophy cabinets, found the one he was
looking for and opened it. He took out a little tin cup,
tarnished and dented, which looked as though it hadn't
been cleaned in years. He blew into it and a cloud of dust
flew out. 'School shooting champion, under-11,' he said.
'It's got my name on it.' He rubbed it up and down his
sleeve.

'It's p-p-pathetic,' Sophie said. 'You're pathetic.'

'I'm inclined to agree.' Dr Kemp leaned to the fire and
put another log on it. He did it in a somehow proprietorial
way, as if to assert that it was his fire, in his house,
where he should have been enjoying Christmas with his
wife. He sat back in his armchair, assuming an air of
magnanimity. 'Really, Pryce, I don't want to disparage
your prowess as a marksman. I meant it yesterday when
I said that my wife and I do all we can for all the boys in
our care. But you wouldn't scoff so much if you'd made
any significant achievement at Foxwood.' He waved his
empty wine glass towards the honours boards on the
walls. 'These are the boys who took a pride in the gifts
that God gave them. I don't see your name, although
your brother's is there. Of course you were a valued
member of the school and, like it or not, you'll always
have a love of music that we fostered in you. But your
brother had a perfect ear, and he had self-discipline.
Scott, your name will be up there too, if you . . .'

'Well, I'm proud of this.' Pryce interrupted the headmaster
with an elaborate show of polishing the cup,
breathing on it, rubbing it, holding it to the light as
though it were a priceless antique. 'Apart from my initials
carved into an old desk, it's the only sign that I was ever
here.'

'And what about your brother?' All of a sudden, Mrs
Kemp's voice rang clear and strong. 'Tell us about
Jeremy.'

Pryce hesitated, taken aback by her intervention. He
tried a little swagger, a laconic smile. 'Why do you want
to talk about Jeremy, when you've got
me
here?'

'He went to Oxford, didn't he? He won a choral
scholarship.' She made the points and pressed them
home. 'Come along, Martin, we've acknowledged the
sum of your achievements: at school you were the
under-11 shooting champion, and now you're a salesman
with a big car. How's Jeremy getting on?'

Turning to the girl, who'd swung her head so low that
her fringe of hair completely covered her face, she added,
'Jeremy was a favourite of ours, Sophie, one of our
brightest and best. You were telling me you'd met him a
few days ago . . .'

'Yes, as a matter of fact Sophie
has
met Jeremy,' Pryce
put in quickly. 'I introduced her to him in his college
rooms last week. They got on rather well – didn't you,
Sophie?' She didn't look up. His voice was very soft, but
something in the way he spoke made a curious pause, an
uneven beat in the pulse of the conversation – as though
everyone in the room had stopped breathing. 'But we'll
deal with Jeremy later. He's on the agenda.'

'What do you mean?' Mrs Kemp said. 'What agenda?'

Sophie was crying. She made not a sound, but her
shoulders heaved and shuddered in a strange, silent
convulsion. The Kemps stared at her. I stared at Pryce.

Slowly, with great deliberation, Pryce ticked the items
on his fingers. 'There was the dog, there was Mrs Kemp,
there's Jeremy, and there's Dr Kemp. All in good time.'

A longer silence. The flutter of the fire. A little gasping
sob from the girl.

Mrs Kemp whispered, 'What do you want with us?'

'I don't understand,' the headmaster blustered. 'What
are you talking about?'

Pryce moved to the hearth, reached up and put the tin
cup on the mantelpiece. He stepped back and appraised
it. Then he turned to us, and he licked his lips with a
flickering, snakelike tongue. His eyes were cold and
empty.

'It's Christmas,' he whispered. 'Let's have a game.'

* * *

'Get the keys,' he said to me. 'There's a good boy.'

I blinked. For a paralysing moment I thought of the
piano tuning keys I'd stuffed down the side of the
armchair that Dr Kemp was sitting on. Pryce saw the
terror in my eyes, and said, 'No, Alan, the keys in the
study. You know where they are . . .'

The relief, for a split second only, was so marvellous
that, without hesitating, I got up from the hearth and
turned towards the door of the study. I stopped dead
when the headmaster said, 'What the devil's going on?
Scott, you know you never go into my study unless . . .'

And I was held there, hovering between the fireplace
and the study. Pryce was saying, 'Get them, Alan, Mrs
Kemp has belittled my expertise . . .' and the headmaster
repeated, 'I've told you, Scott, you don't go in there
except . . .' so that I just stood there gaping, swivelling
my face from one to the other as they both spoke to me
at the same time.

'The keys, Alan, from the headmaster's desk.'

'Sit down, Scott, he has no right to tell you to . . .'

'Just get them, Alan, the bunch of keys.'

'For heaven's sake, Scott, just do as I say and . . .'

I took a step towards the open door of the study. Mrs
Kemp's voice cut through, unusually shrill, the ugliest
sound I'd ever heard her make. 'Listen to me, Alan! Keep
out of there!'

It produced a startling response from Pryce. 'Shut up!'
he yelled into her face. 'You got what you were waiting
for! I've dealt with you!'

Kemp was on his feet, bristling and limber like a bear.
'How dare you?' He lunged at Pryce with all his weight,
his arms stiff, his fists clenched.

But Pryce was too quick and strong for him. Quite
easily, his height and youth too much for the huffing,
purple-faced headmaster, he held him off. Kemp tried to
speak, but his anger was so great, his body quivering with
rage, that the words refused to come. Mrs Kemp was
pressing her hands to reddened cheeks. Sophie had
stopped crying and had looped her arm around the
woman's shoulders. When Pryce spoke, his voice was no
more than a whisper.

'Everyone jumps for the headmaster of Foxwood
Manor School. The boys jump, the teachers jump, his
wife jumps – well, she would if she could. It's time for a
change. You don't bully me any more, Dr Kemp.'

He propelled the man backwards and sat him into his
armchair as though he were a helpless geriatric.

He turned to me, where I stood frozen at the door of
the study. 'Get me a gun.'

My mind went blank. Reacting in fear, almost an
automaton, I was in and out of the study in a matter of
seconds. I grabbed the bunch of keys from their customary
place in the top drawer of the headmaster's desk, flew
out of the room and out of the hall and into the darkness
of the downstairs corridor. My heart thudding, I just
wanted to get away from the scene, a scene of ugliness
and violence almost to match the extraordinary things I'd
witnessed in the upstairs bathroom, the things that Pryce
had done with Sophie the first night and with Mrs Kemp
just the night before.

I skidded through the shadows, jangling the heavy
bundle of twenty or thirty keys – the keys for every room
and cupboard in the school, on a single ring that the
headmaster jangled with him wherever he went. The keys
were the symbol of Dr Kemp's authority: his ownership
of the school and everything in it. Now it was me, Alan
Scott, a skinny, red-haired, twelve-year-old boy, who was
holding them.

I slithered to a halt, fumbled for the right one and
inserted it into the lock. It snicked and turned.

NO BOYS TO ENTER THIS ROOM WITHOUT A MEMBER OF STAFF
. Inside the gun-room, where the single bulb
festooned with cobwebs threw a yellowy light, I unlocked
the safe. At the sight of the guns, I recoiled and squeezed
my eyes shut, swallowing a bubble of nausea at the
images that came to me: at home again, in summer, a
man in black with a black balaclava and a thick, stubby
gun, my father kneeling; my father twisting his head and
shouting
Run, Alan! Run!
and an explosion of smoke and
blood . . .