The Perils and Dangers of this Night (16 page)

Now I reached into the cupboard, with my eyes still
shut, and my fingers found the long, smooth barrel of a
.22. My other hand felt for a box of cartridges. As I
backed away and slammed the cupboard shut, as I turned
the key and switched off the light, as I fell out of the
gun-room and into the corridor and fumbled to close the
door again, it was as though I were shutting the door on
my nightmare and locking it up. All of a sudden the
image was gone. Except that I was holding in my hands
a real reminder of my dream, a dream that wasn't a
dream but a piece of my life that had really happened,
that would never change, that could never be completely
shut away.

I trod along the corridor, towards the point of light at
the further end that was the great hall.

A game
, Pryce had said,
a game for Christmas
. The
rifle was heavy and cold. I knew I could still change my
mind. So far I'd done what Pryce had told me to do, but
I could still change my mind and put the gun back in the
cupboard and lock it away. Then I could drop the whole
bunch of keys behind the dustiest books on the highest,
darkest shelf in the library, or stuff them deep inside a
burst leather sofa in the staffroom where no one could
find them, and go back to the hall and realign myself with
Dr and Mrs Kemp.

But I kept on walking, with the gun in one hand, the
box of cartridges in my pocket, the keys in my other
hand.

Because, because – the words were the shuffle of my
feet on the smooth lino – because it was only a game and
no harm would come of it, because I was big and brave
and nearly a teenager and more akin to the devilment of
Martin Pryce than the stuffiness of Dr and Mrs Kemp;
because I'd have some mind-boggling tales to tell my
friends when they came back to school in the New Year.

These were the reasons, the excuses, I ran through my head
as I walked the length of the corridor and saw the light at the end grow bigger
and bigger. But when I stepped into the hall and all the grown-ups turned
and stared, I knew in my heart that I'd opted for Pryce and I was doing what
Pryce had said because I was afraid of him.

Crack!
The tin cup flew into the air and landed,
miraculously, upside down. Eject, reload, and
crack!
again. The cup leaped off the mantelpiece and clanged
onto the hearth.

Pryce had immediately relieved me of the rifle and the
cartridges. While the headmaster had tutted and puffed,
slumped as deep into his armchair as he could go, while
Mrs Kemp and Sophie sat bravely upright, white-faced,
with their arms around each other, Pryce had loaded the
gun, stepped away to the opposite side of the hall and
taken aim at his cup. Now it bounced into the fireplace,
dented by the bullets that had struck it.

'For Christ's s-s-s-sake, Martin . . .'

'I've lost none of my skills,' he crowed. 'I'm still the
dead-eye I was when I was ten.'

He reloaded and fired at the cup again, where it had
landed by Mrs Kemp's feet. It jumped a foot into the air.
The bullet ricocheted off the hearth, fizzed across the
room and embedded itself in the side of the piano.

'You bloody fool!' the headmaster blurted. 'It won't be
so funny if somebody . . .'

He stopped in mid-sentence, as Pryce reloaded and
trained the gun at him and past him.

'It's a game, headmaster, it's Christmas,' Pryce said,
and he levelled the gun just over the man's head and fired
into the trophy cabinet he'd left open. Ejecting and
reloading every time, the spent cartridges jumping from
the chamber and smoking on the carpet, he fired and
fired. The cups clanged and jumped. Cups that hadn't
moved for years were suddenly loud and hot, and the
bullets lodged in the ancient oak panelling behind
them.

'Alan, your turn.'

I'd stayed by the headmaster's study, well away from
the shooting. Maybe I thought that by running the errand
and bringing the gun, I'd done all that was required of
me. Now Pryce took hold of my wrist and tugged me
centre-stage.

'Come on, Alan, have a go. When I was your age I was
already a champion, my name engraved for posterity – is
that the right expression, Dr Kemp? – on a magnificent
trophy. Here, just try it.'

He thrust the gun at me. I recoiled from the heat of it,
the smell of it.

Mrs Kemp stepped in. To me, she was a beautiful,
classical heroine: her fine blonde hair was aflame in the
firelight, her perfect complexion was flushed from the
heat of the blaze. 'It's not fair. I told you about Alan.
Leave him out of this.'

Pryce paused, as though to let it sink in. He seemed to
weigh what she'd said. 'Thank you for that, Mrs Kemp.
Yes, you told me the story, but I'm the teacher now. We
know what the problem is, so let's deal with it. Alan,
come on . . .'

He held me close, pulling me hard against his body,
and pushed the gun into my hands. 'Trust me, Alan. I
know you're afraid of guns, and I know why. You were
afraid of Dr Kemp but you're not any more, thanks to
me. So let's do it with the gun, come on.'

I squirmed like a fish. Pryce shouted through clenched
teeth, 'Do it!' and pulled the trigger. With one arm he
encircled me, with the other he pointed the gun randomly
into the air and fired into the ceiling. A cloud of plaster
showered down.

'For fuck's sake, Martin! You're f-f-f-fucking crazy!'

Pryce shoved me away. 'Jesus, Sophie, of course I'm
crazy. I'm an old boy of Foxwood Manor School, you
wouldn't expect me to be sane, would you? I mean, look
at Alan, the poor snivelling little sod, and look . . .' He
reloaded and trained the gun across the honours boards
and the school photographs. 'Look, hundreds of crazy
people, and just think of the ones you've met – me and
Jeremy, both of us fucking crazy . . .'

The girl took a breath, very deliberate, determined to
slow things down. She made a flagging gesture with both
hands, as if to calm a runaway horse. She said very
quietly, 'Don't tell them, Martin. If you don't tell them,
we can still get out of this.'

He put the gun on top of the piano. He crossed to
Sophie and took her head in both his hands. It was a
curious gesture. His hands were big and powerful,
cupped around her small, round head. They could have
been lover's hands, and he might have leaned down and
kissed her; or they could have been the hands of a killer,
strong enough to break her neck with a single twist. He
just held her head and swayed it from side to side, as
though it were a ball, or a bowl full of water.

He said to her with particular politeness, although
some of the words were ugly, 'We can never get out of
this, Sophie. It's like Fauré's fucking Requiem. It goes
back too far. What happened last week to you and me
and Jeremy started here, at Foxwood, fourteen fucking
years ago.'

He let go of her head and stood back. He had the rapt
attention of everyone in the room. He said to Mrs Kemp,
'You wanted to hear about Jeremy. Well, it's Jeremy I've
come to talk about. It's why we're here.'

Pryce sent me outside for more firewood.

It was snowing heavily. An odd expression, wrong
really, because the snowflakes were as light as moths.
There was no wind, but as the snow fell from the
heavens and came to earth, on some mad impulse it
whirled in the trees and danced in the cold air until it
floated to the ground. In a glimmer of moonlight, it was
pretty, it was a picture: the vast, silent woodland, the big
old house with just a faint gleam of gold from its shutters,
the snow so soft on the lawn with not a footprint of man
or beast.

Christmas Eve. It looked like a Christmas card; or a
Christmas ornament, a globe filled with water and
artificial snowflakes, shaken to make a perfect winter
scene.

Not quite a silent woodland. The trees groaned as they
moved together, very old and very cold; not dead,
although their branches were so black and so bare, but
ancient living things which felt the ache of the ice in their
bones. I heard the yelp of a fox as it limped through the
derelict bracken. I listened and watched as an owl beat
through the air and landed in the copper beech. It gripped
with its talons and shuffled its feathers, and it heaved and
heaved until it retched a shining black pellet which fell to
the ground and steamed a little. A minute later, the owl
had wafted into the forest, and the pellet was hidden
under gently deepening snow.

I went around the house to the yard. The owl hooted. I peered
into the stable, where the jackdaw heard the sound and stared into the darkness.
As it sprang from one end of its perch to the other, as far as the leather
jesses would allow, the silvery bells tinkled softly. The bird hissed, as
though in answer to the owl. It could hear the snow falling in the stable
yard, and the whisper of the wind in the trees.

In the great hall, when I returned with an armful of logs,
Pryce was talking. He was sitting in one of the fireside
chairs. He'd picked up the gun again and was cradling it
in his arms.

He was calm, his voice tinged with nostalgia.

'My dear little brother, my little Jeremy – it's funny,
but before he came to Foxwood, I seem to remember that
Dr Kemp thought I was quite a good singer, with quite a
good ear. But then Jeremy arrived, and he had perfect
pitch, which made all the difference. Like Alan here, he
was born with a gift from God. He was angelic, brilliant,
perfect Jeremy Pryce, and from then on, I was just not
good enough.'

He pointed the gun at the honours boards, training it
up and down until he found his brother's name.

'Yes, Jeremy went up to Oxford this autumn, with a
scholarship. But these were the formative years, at
Foxwood Manor. Jeremy was the headmaster's darling, a
quiet, sensitive thing – always in the study with Dr Kemp,
always in the music room or the chapel with Dr Kemp,
always behind closed doors. So that some of us – not me
of course, because I was his protective, loving older
brother – some of the other boys wondered what else was
going on in there, apart from the music, the headmaster
and Jeremy locked away so long and so often. You know
how they giggle, horrid smutty boys, how they tittle and
tattle. Somebody coined a name for Jeremy: he was Dolly
Boy, the headmaster's little Dolly Boy . . .'

The headmaster sighed noisily and rolled his eyes at the
ceiling.

'Yes, it sounds so silly, doesn't it?' Pryce went on.
'Petty, prep-school stories. But Jeremy was afraid. He
told me. He was afraid of the other boys. And worse, he
was afraid of Dr Kemp.'

'It's preposterous,' the man said. 'I don't know why
we're sitting here listening . . .'

'Afraid of Dr Kemp. He told me. He was ten years old,
a long way from home, and often alone with Dr Kemp,
who . . .'

'I won't hear any more of this . . .'

'Who would sometimes sit on the edge of Jeremy's bath
and watch him, and sit on the side of his bed at lights-out
and sometimes touch . . .'

'I never touched him, I would never . . .'

'And sometimes touch him or else just look and look –
so that the other boys saw what was happening and made
life a misery and a torment for Jeremy Pryce, the
headmaster's little Dolly Boy . . .'

'None of the boys are unhappy here. It just isn't true.'

Pryce levelled the gun at the school photographs. 'Look
at the faces. Lost and lonely little boys, bullied and
abused by Dr Kemp . . .'

'That's enough!' The headmaster struggled to pull
himself out of his chair. 'I won't have any more . . .'

Pryce pulled the trigger. A bullet shattered the glass of
one of the photos. Sophie and Mrs Kemp squealed. He
reloaded and fired again, and another photo exploded
into smithereens. Kemp collapsed back into his chair.

'Jeremy was afraid and unhappy at Foxwood.' Pryce's
voice was unnervingly matter-of-fact. 'It all started here,
and it didn't stop when he left. When he went to public
school, when the two of us were at public school in our
teens, the rumours went with him. There were other boys
who'd been at Foxwood, and they kept the Dolly Boy
nickname going – not just the nickname, but the reputation
too. Jeremy was pale and shy and pretty, small for
his age. Some of the senior boys, and even one of the
masters, took advantage of him . . .'

'I just don't believe it,' the headmaster said.

'They took advantage of his prettiness and shyness.
They used him for sex. He told me. I tried to help him,
but I couldn't.'

He paused. There was a silence. Neither Mrs Kemp nor
Sophie said a word. They stared into the fire. Sitting in
the shadows at the foot of the staircase, I ducked my head
and picked at the weals on my hands.

Pryce broke open the gun. A spent cartridge flew out;
he thumbed in another. The metallic click as he snapped
the chamber shut was sharp and business-like. He aimed
the gun at Dr Kemp's foot.

'Martin – d-d-don't . . .'

He ignored the girl, her querulous stammering. He
trained the gun up and down the headmaster's body, so
that the man cringed and clenched himself involuntarily
as though trying to become an invisible part of the chair.

Pryce went on, his voice even softer.

'So Jeremy won a scholarship and went to Oxford. It
was a credit to him, that through all the fear and the
misery of his schooldays he achieved so much. And at
Oxford, for the first time in ten years, he found a place
where no one knew him. No more sniggering, no more
rumours, no more ugly, suggestive whispers. He thought
he'd escaped all that.'

No one was looking at the fire any more, and I'd
stopped studying the palms of my hands. Pryce had the
full attention of the Kemps and Sophie and me. The
headmaster was especially attentive: the gun was aimed
straight at his head.

'But no,' Pryce said, reflectively. 'They never heal, the
scars of our childhood. Jeremy was riddled with shame.
He questioned his own sexuality. The first time he met
girls – and he'd never met them before in all his life – he
was disturbed and agonised. It only took a glance and a
smile from another man to make him snap . . .'

He lowered the gun, reached into his pocket and took
out a slip of paper. He started to unfold it.

'I had a note from Jeremy last week,' he said, his voice
no more than a whisper. 'His last note.' He read from the
piece of paper. 'It started with Kemp. I disgust myself. I
would rather be dead.'

We all gaped at him. My palms were prickling. Sophie
was weeping.

'Jeremy killed himself five days ago, at the end of his first
term at Oxford. Somehow – I don't know how exactly, but
he must have thought it was appropriate – he contrived to
strangle himself with a string he'd removed from a piano.'

Mrs Kemp put her hands to her mouth and leaned
forwards. She retched, barking like a dog, then buried her
face and mewed. Sophie just stared and stared at Pryce.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and into the corners of her
lips.

Pryce crumpled the piece of paper into a tight little ball
and lobbed it into the fire. I watched the lazy, dreamlike,
almost slow-motion arc of it, and then it lay and smoked
for a moment before bursting into a lovely blossom of
flame.

Dr Kemp watched it too. When he turned back to
Pryce, he found that the barrel of the gun was an inch
from his nose.

'Is the music going through your head?' Pryce whispered.
'A requiem for the souls of the dead? Is it for
Jeremy Pryce? Or for yourself?' The man closed his eyes.
Pryce murmured to him, '
Requiem aeternam dona eis,
Domine
– Grant them O Lord eternal rest . . .'

The man started gibbering. 'I never touched him, I
swear to God I never . . .'

Pryce jammed the gun into his throat. All of a sudden
his voice was hard. No more whispering. There was a
fleck of spittle on his mouth.

'You made him disgust himself. You were killing him
right from the start. And you're doing it now, you're
doing it to Alan . . .'

Without shifting his eyes from Kemp, he called across
to me, 'Does he make you afraid? Alan, does he make
you afraid?'

I stood up. All of my schooldays I'd been trained to
stand up when a grown-up spoke to me, and now a
grown-up with a gun pressed into the headmaster's throat
was asking me a question. 'I – I don't know. He . . .'

'Tell me and tell him! Does he make you afraid?' Pryce
started shouting at me. 'Afraid that he'll hurt you? Like
he hurt you yesterday? Come here! Come here and show
me, show him, show him your hands.'

Unable to protest, I crossed to the fireside. Mrs Kemp
still had her head on her lap, her hair falling about her
face and hiding her completely. I manoeuvred past her
wheelchair, caught the hopeless, terrified look in Sophie's
eyes, and then Pryce's hand lashed out and caught my
wrist in a grip like steel. I felt my fingers prised open, and
Pryce shoved my palm into the headmaster's face, so
close that the man could have stuck out his tongue and
licked it.

'Did he hurt you? He hurt you, didn't he? Look at your
hands, look at them!'

We all looked, where the blood was oozing from the
scabs I'd been picking – lines of scabs, as thin as wires,
more than the stripes that Kemp had given me.

'Yes, yes – he . . .'

'And you're afraid?'

Pryce was louder now, tugging me close and squeezing
the bones in my wrist, jamming the gun harder and
harder into the headmaster's throat.

'You're afraid he'll find out what you did to the piano?
Yes, with these!'

Pryce wrenched my hand deep into the side of the
armchair where Kemp was sitting, forced me to feel by
the headmaster's thighs, jammed my fingers between the
cushions until I found the wallet of the piano's tuning
keys.

'With these!' He tugged out the wallet and held it aloft.
'I saw you hiding them, Alan, and now you're afraid he'll
find out it was you and he'll hurt you again.'

'It wasn't me . . .'

'Does he make you afraid when he looks at you in the
bath? Does he?'

'Sometimes – yes, sometimes . . .'

'Does he make you afraid when he sits on your bed?
Does he touch you? Alan, tell me! Does he touch you?'

'Yes, he . . .'

'I never, I never!' the headmaster blurted. Pryce forced
us together, me and Dr Kemp, jamming our faces
together with all the force of one hand on my wrist and
the thrust of the gun on the headmaster's throat.

'Last night . . .' I heard myself breaking down. 'Last
night, or the other night, I don't know when – he touched
me, he . . .'

'His hair was wet!' the headmaster was shouting. 'For
God's sake, tell him, Scott! I touched his head because
. . .'

'My hair was wet! He touched me! He frightened me!'

And we both broke down, speechless, heaving for
breath.

Pryce let go of us. I fell away from the armchair and,
finding that I was holding the wallet of tuning keys,
dropped them onto the floor as though they were burning
my fingers. I instinctively shrank towards Mrs Kemp and
Sophie, who were clutching each other's hands and
weeping together, threw myself down by the pile of logs
I'd made and blinked into the flames. Kemp was struggling
for air, a man drowning.

Pryce stood up, composed again. He sneered at Sophie
and Mrs Kemp. 'Women,' he said, as though it were a
dirty word he'd learned in the playground.

He sneered at me and Dr Kemp. 'Perfect pitch, look
what it does for you.'

He leaned the gun against the headmaster's armchair,
picked up the tuning keys and moved from the fireside.
His footsteps were slow and deliberate as he crossed to
the piano.

No one dared to watch him. We could hear what he
was doing. It filled my stomach with a terrible sickness.
With his left hand he thumped a bass chord, sonorous,
menacing, out of tune. With his right hand he leaned into
the body of the piano and felt with one of the keys. And
then the ugliest of sounds, as he loosened and loosened
one of the strings, a horrible groaning, like something
wounded and dying, as he thumped with one hand and
loosened with the other.

When it stopped, we all looked up. I saw him wrench
a bass string out of the piano and hold it up, and it coiled
and writhed in a gleam of firelight. He tugged it tight in
front of his face.

He moved towards Dr Kemp. '
I disgust myself
. . .' he
whispered.

I noticed what happened next, saw how Mrs Kemp and
Dr Kemp exchanged a secret, furtive look of understanding
distilled by twenty years of marriage. She looked from
the gun – leaning against his chair – and into her
husband's eyes. He looked from her eyes to the gun.

As Pryce advanced towards him, with the piano string
taut in his hands, the headmaster started blustering. 'I
never touched him, I never! Afraid of me? Afraid of
work, more like it! I made them work, I made your
brother work, without me he'd have gone nowhere, none
of them would! I saw his talent and worked it! I made
him what he was, I . . .'