The Perils and Dangers of this Night (6 page)

Boy and dog, we stalked the car. Because the lane was
so tortuously twisting, winding like a snake around
ancient tumuli and barrows of long-ago settlements,
negotiating the stream beds and outcrops of rock over
which the forest had grown, I knew I could get back to
the school almost as quickly as the car would get there –
or even quicker – by weaving my way along the tracks I
knew so well. So we ran, this time with me going first and
the dog huffing and snuffling behind me, and I could see
the lights of the car over and away to my left as it spurted
and slowed and spurted again through the maze of
woodland. On foot the way was direct, and I bent low as
I ran, like a hunter trailing a great, snarling wild beast.
Sometimes the beast was close by, and I threw myself
down or hugged the bole of a beech tree as it shone its
eyes in my direction – and then, as the eyes flickered
away and the beast moved through the shadows, the mud
flecking its flanks and flying behind it, I ran harder, until
I could see a light in the school ahead of me.

'Come on, Wagner!' I hissed through my teeth. The
daylight was fading fast. The forest was a dark and
marvellous place of huge silver trees, frosty undergrowth
and the crunch of dead dry leaves underfoot. I knew
every step. 'We can get there first! Come on, boy . . .'

At last there was a clear burst across the playing field,
across the lawns. I skidded round the side of the school
building and into the stable-yard. Just in time, because
the lights of the car swept the open space where the dog
and I had run just a few seconds before – and as I
tumbled into the stable, tugged Wagner inside behind me
and pulled the door shut, the car rumbled into the yard
and stopped.

I peeped through a crack in the stable door. The noise
was even louder, and the impression in the old cobbled
yard even greater of an alien machine: because, as well as
the roar of the engine, as the car revved so hard that it
seemed to heave like an exhausted animal, there was a
pounding beat of music which thrilled me even more –
my generation, my generation baby
– a thudding beat
against the walls of the stables, which I could feel
reverberating in the door itself.

The noise, the lights, the smell and swirl of exhaust
fumes – Wagner started to bark. And the jackdaw began
to bate. I turned to see its beady black eyes bright in the
reflected glare of the car's headlamps, and it was beating
its wings so hard that the dust whirled in the air around
its head. And as I moved towards it, to try and calm it
somehow, I was too late – because the jackdaw flung
itself along the perch and beat to the end of its tether. The
tether snapped taut. The bird fell upside down and
dangled, beating and screeching in a hysterical panic.

Still the engine roared outside, and the beat of the
music grew louder. Wagner bellowed from the depths of
his barrelled chest. The jackdaw was a blur of wings and
claws, a shrieking maddened thing. Just as I timed my
grab at it, the engine and the music stopped. I caught
hold of the bird's body, through the brittle, thrashing
wings, but not before its scaly foot had gripped my hand
with needle-sharp claws.

I held the bird close and it fell calm. It heaved in my
hands, panting so hard that I felt its little heart would
burst. Wagner stopped barking. I put the jackdaw back
onto the perch, where it bobbed and ducked like an owl,
a manic imp, staring and hissing but settling again.

'All right,' I said. 'And Wagner, good boy.' I crossed to
the door again and peered out. I felt a warm trickle on
my fingers, and I flicked a few drops of blood onto the
stable floor. Taking a firm hold on the dog's collar, I
stepped outside, into the yard.

The car's headlamps were still shining. They were
yellow on the walls and doors of the stables, a flash of
golden light on the windows of the changing-room. The
man got out and walked around to the front of the car,
so that his shadow was huge and long on the wet cobbles.
He was tall, slim, and I caught the flash of a wolfish face
under a head of long black hair; coat and scarf, closefitting
black jeans and black boots; a lean dark figure that
cast spidery shapes as it moved in and out of the lights.

I knew his face. For a moment, as though by the same
kind of neck-snapping jolt I'd felt in my dream, my throat
was squeezed shut.

'Get out, Sophie,' the man said. She was slim, even in
the bundled coat and scarf: a very white face in the
gathering darkness, black, fashionably cropped hair,
jeans and high boots. When she tottered on her heels,
catching one of them on the uneven surface and reaching
out quickly to the door of the car to steady her balance,
the dog gave a single, very deep bark.

They both froze and stared in the direction of the
sound. The man threw up one arm and shielded his eyes
from the lights. 'Wagner?' he said. 'Bloody hell, are you
still here?' And as I stepped forwards, he said sharply,
'Who's that? Keep the dog away from me . . .'

'Wagner, sir? You know him?' I tried to say, although
my throat was so dry and tight. I managed to shove the
dog back into the stable and shut the door. For a moment
I puzzled over how this vision from a faraway world
should recognise such a homely old creature as Wagner,
who'd never in all his years travelled more than a mile or
two from the school buildings. I went forwards again, my
eyes flicking from the filthy red flanks of the car to the
two white startled faces in front of me. I held out my
hand, as I'd been trained to do, and said hoarsely, 'I'm
Scott, sir. Can I help you, sir?'

The man leaned down and took hold of my hand. He
shook it for a moment, then, feeling the warm stickiness
of blood on it, let go and inspected his own hand in front
of the headlamps. 'Yes,' he said, with a glance across at
the girl. 'I guess you can help us. We've come to see Dr
and Mrs Kemp.'

I blinked at him, and then at the girl. I nodded dumbly
and swallowed hard, unable to speak. They were the
faces from my dream.

Thinking it was inappropriate to take the visitors
into the school through the changing-room, I led
the way around the side of the building, across the
gravelled drive to the front of the house. Now the late
afternoon was utterly dark, as dark as night. There was
a glimmer of frost on the lawns. The bare spars of the
copper beech were brittle and black against a looming
sky. The woodland was a wall of blackness. The shutters
in the great hall were already closed and only a gleam of
light came through the cracks and under the big front
door.

I reached up and rang the bell. The young man said,
'Can't we just go in?' and I instinctively replied, 'No sir,
the boys can't, sir,' ducking my head to one side when I
saw the exasperation on the visitors' faces. The girl was
shivering, pulling her coat tightly around her and hugging
herself with her arms. The man had brought a small, soft
travelling bag from the car. All three of us glanced up to
the sky and saw that a few flakes of snow were floating
like moths around our heads. The girl said, 'I'm so
c-c-c-cold,' which made the man grin with a quick flash
of teeth and softly sing '
hope I die before I get old
. . .' I
remember grinning nervously back at him, for I was still
buoyed up by the excitement and suddenness of their
arrival, and buzzing with the notion that, somewhere in
a blurry nightmare, I'd seen them before. The grin froze
on my face as the door opened.

Dr Kemp peered into the darkness. He was holding a
sheaf of papers in one hand and, with his reading glasses
perched on the very end of his nose and his hair flopping
over his eyes, he wore a customary look of impatience
and irritation.

'Scott?' he said. 'Is that you? What are you doing out
there?'

I started to say, 'There's a gentleman, sir, he wanted to
. . .' but then the young man pushed forwards, into the
light which fell from the doorway, and thrust out his
hand to the headmaster.

'Dr Kemp, I . . .' It was all he had time to say. Ignoring
the outstretched hand, not bothering to look at the man
on the doorstep and not even seeing that there was
another person, a girl, standing there as well, Dr Kemp
turned back to the house.

'You've come,' he said over his shoulder, hurrying
away towards his study at the same time. 'You're late,
and it's an odd time to come, but you might as well take
a look while you're here.'

The man stepped into the house and the girl followed
him. As I came in and pulled the door shut behind me,
Dr Kemp half-turned in the doorway of his study, threw
a quizzical look over the top of his glasses, and then
disappeared from sight.

'It's the grand, over there in the corner,' his voice came
barking out. 'I've done what I can, but it's practically unplayable.
I'd be obliged if you could take a look. And since
you've come all this way, you could look at the others, in
the chapel and the music rooms. Scott'll show you.'

That was it. The headmaster had returned to his study
and the muddle of end-of-term paperwork on his desk.
The young man and the girl stood at the door. They
stared into the gloomy cavern of the great hall, where at
least the fire was flickering in the hearth and the lights of
the Christmas tree threw splashes of colour on the
photographs and trophy cupboards and honours boards
on the walls. 'What is this, Martin?' the girl whispered,
but he silenced her by lifting a finger to his lips. He took
her by the wrist and led her into the hall, in the direction
of the piano.

'Let's have a bit of fun,' he said.

I moved off towards the corridor, which, lightless, led
off the hall like a tunnel. Although I was intrigued by the
two visitors and the extraordinary way in which they'd
arrived at Foxwood, I knew from my years of training at
the school that I should keep out of the way: I was only
a boy and they were grown-ups who had business which
did not concern me at all. In any case, I was wearing my
outdoor coat and scarf and shoes, all bespattered with
mud from the chase through the forest, so I thought I
should hurry along to the changing-room and take them
off and get back into my indoor shoes. I plunged into the
tunnel, feeling with my feet for the ramps, touching with
my cold fingers the door of the library, the staffroom, the
gun-room, through every twist and corner of the pitch-black
corridor.

But then I stopped in the darkness and listened. Indeed,
at that moment, three people inside the building stopped
what they were doing and listened to the sounds of the
piano which were coming from the far corner of the great
hall.

Dr Kemp was in his study. He must have heard the
notes from the piano, and of course he knew it was the
stranger who'd just arrived at his front door who was
playing. I stood at the further end of the downstairs
corridor and listened, and I too knew that the young man
who'd burst into my unhappy world was playing the
piano. Mrs Kemp, just then coming down in one of the
lifts, heard someone playing the piano in the hall, and she
could tell it wasn't her husband. She knew that, unexpectedly,
someone else was in the house, and she didn't
know who it was.

It was the way the music changed in just the first
minute of playing that made the three of us cock our ears
so curiously.

The pianist had started with a few stately chords, then
a scale embroidered into an elegant arpeggio. Clearly he
was a competent musician, whose style at the keyboard
was easy and unhurried. He essayed the style of the piano
tuner for whom he'd been mistaken. He sat in the
shadows of the corner of the hall, having stationed the
girl behind him so that she was lost in the darkness, and
he caressed the keys with a lover's touch. And then,
slowly, so gradually that it was impossible to say where
or when it was happening, the sound altered – a blurry
chord here, a stealthy syncopation there – and the piano
tuner's respectful appraisal of a tired and neglected
instrument became the dirty sound of the blues.

I turned back towards the hall. I heard in front of me
one of the lift doors clanging open and I saw Mrs Kemp
propelling herself out backwards. Without bothering to
close the door, she spun the wheels of her chair and
accelerated as hard as she could ahead of me, towards the
hall, from where, now, there came a kind of music that
the house had never heard before. The sleazy blues had
become a full-blown boogie-woogie, with a rollicking
bass and a hammering right hand and even the ridiculous,
random scrubbing of the pianist's elbow.

Dr Kemp and Mrs Kemp burst into the hall at exactly
the same time, myself a second later. The headmaster,
who'd listened approvingly to the first minute of playing,
had leaped from his desk with such anger at the
progression of the music that he had shoved a pile of
paperwork onto the floor. Now he exploded from the
door of his study. Mrs Kemp whirled into the hall at the
same moment, and I slithered to a standstill behind her.

'What
is
that noise?' Dr Kemp shouted.

In the same breath as her husband, Mrs Kemp's high
little voice said, 'Who
is
that?'

The playing stopped. Not immediately. The fingers on
the keyboard could not resist an insolent coda, like the
signature of a bluesman finishing a late-night set in a
smoky club. Then there was silence.

It was broken when the two indignant voices started
again – 'What
are
you doing?' from Dr Kemp and the
same 'Who
is
that?' from a querulous Mrs Kemp.

The dark figure at the piano stood up and came
forwards. The man seemed to lope across the hall. He
was, somehow, a part of the shadows cast by the tower
of the Christmas tree and the flickering light of the fire.

He approached Mrs Kemp first. With a beautiful smile,
he leaned down to her, took her hand in a graceful,
swooping movement and kissed it. 'Mrs Kemp,' he said,
'you're as lovely as ever . . .' and as she flushed and stared
up at him, for the way he loomed was so overwhelming
that it seemed to preclude the presence of her husband a
few feet away, he added, 'It's Pryce. Surely you remember
me?'

I watched the wonderful transformation of the headmaster's
face. All of the anger, the exasperation, the
hostility, seemed to slip away from Dr Kemp. He actually
looked younger, suddenly, in that second. With a look of
real affection and a sincere welcome in his voice, he
stepped forwards with his hand outstretched and said,
'Jeremy Pryce? Well, how marvellous . . .'

'No.' It was Mrs Kemp who interrupted. She turned
her face up to her husband. She was still flushed from the
young man's kiss, and her beautiful hair caught the light
of the fire. 'No,' she said, and her voice was slightly
hoarse, 'it isn't Jeremy, it's Martin. It's Martin Pryce.'

Another transformation of Dr Kemp's face. His outstretched
hand seemed to freeze in mid-air. His face froze
too. His smile set, taut and cold. He took hold of the
man's hand and shook it, briefly.

'Martin Pryce,' he said, and added with an enormous
effort, 'welcome back to Foxwood Manor.'

Night fell. It fell on the woodlands and all of the
creatures that sniffed and scurried and swerved through
the darkness. The treetops creaked and the dry leaves
rustled. There was no moonlight. The stars were
smothered in cloud. Cold.

The night gathered around the old house and the
people inside it. In the great hall, Mrs Kemp sat at the fire
with the two visitors, Martin Pryce and his friend Sophie.
Oddly unnerved by their presence, I'd found an excuse to
get away and just watch what was happening from the
shadows. Mrs Kemp leaned towards them and refilled
their glasses with sherry.

Dr Kemp was in the furthest, most shadowy corner of
the hall. He'd opened the top of the piano and was
leaning deep inside with a torch and a set of tuning keys.
From time to time, as the voices at the fireside murmured
politely in deference to the almost holy ritual that the
headmaster was performing, he would emerge from
inside the piano, his hair flopping and his glasses slipping
off the end of his nose, and he would strike a bass note.
The sounds were oddly plangent in the big room, with a
hollow reverberation from the oak panels and high
ceiling as though the hall were another corner of the
forest outside.

Mrs Kemp was trying to make some conversation,
volunteering a few reminiscences of Martin's days as a
boy at the school and attempting to draw out the
stammering Sophie, but it was halting, desultory, with
the headmaster huffing and puffing in the corner, with the
melancholy notes of the piano hanging in the air like the
hum of a bell. In any case, she could see that Pryce was
content to sit back and drink, swallowing several glasses
of their good sherry in unnecessarily big gulps until his
teeth and lips gleamed in the firelight and his eyes shone.

Suddenly, Dr Kemp straightened up and then sat himself
at the keyboard. He launched into a Chopin sonata,
playing with a panache, a verve which seemed a bit put on,
a false and inappropriate bravado. To me, it just sounded
wrong. The three at the fireside raised their eyebrows at
each other and smiled with relief, for the music was bright
and vigorous, altering the mood in an instant. 'That's
better,' Mrs Kemp mouthed silently at the young people
beside her, raising her glass in a kind of toast.

Not for long. The headmaster stopped in mid-phrase,
tried the same phrase again, stood up and slammed down
the lid of the piano. He knew it was wrong too. He
stomped across the room towards the fire. As he reached
to the mantelpiece and picked up his own glass of sherry,
Pryce glanced at Mrs Kemp and said, 'Oh dear, it
sounded all right to me.'

The headmaster sighed. 'It may have sounded
all right
to
you,' he said. He stood with the backs of his legs close to
the flames. The fire was burning low; the logs had
collapsed, exhausted, into a smouldering heap and there
were only a few coils of ivy waiting on the hearth as fuel.
He took a swig from his glass and said, with a mixture of
contempt and pity in his voice, 'I expect it sounded
all right
to Mrs Kemp and to your friend, er, Sophie, is it? It would
have sounded
all right
to most people. But there are two
people in this room to whom it didn't sound
all right
at all.'

Pryce and Sophie and Mrs Kemp looked round to see
who the other person might have been. I stepped into the
hall, from the long dark corridor where I'd been hiding,
and I stood there, too shy at first to approach the
grown-ups. I was holding an armful of logs.

'Come in, Scott, come in,' Dr Kemp said. As I came
forwards, the headmaster continued, directing his words
to Pryce. 'This boy has perfect pitch. For him and me, the
music was painfully off-key, as indeed it would've been
for your brother Jeremy . . .'

Two things happened to interrupt the headmaster's
grumpy speech. I caught my foot on the edge of the
threadbare rug in front of the fire and dropped the logs
onto the floorboards with a rumble like a roll of drums.
At the same moment the girl stood up, spluttering and
choking on a mouthful of sherry, and she hurried off to
the darkness of the Christmas tree, where she carried on
choking and spluttering into a handkerchief.

It all stopped Dr Kemp in mid-sentence. He leaned
down and helped me to stack the logs at the side of the
hearth, while Pryce, with a wolfish grin of amusement on
his face, said to a concerned Mrs Kemp, 'Sophie's OK,
don't worry. It just went down the wrong way. I should
tell you that she hasn't got perfect pitch either – in fact I
reckon she's tone-deaf. But that's one of the things I like
about Sophie: she isn't perfect, by any means.'

'Where's Wagner?' Mrs Kemp put in, trying to smooth
over the little moment of confusion.