The Perils and Dangers of this Night (8 page)

Pryce paused at one of the dormitory doors, flicked on
the light and looked inside.

'No, I don't think so.' He flicked off the light and
proceeded further. At the next door he stopped and
flicked on the light and peered in. 'No, not this one.' With
a resigned Sophie and an uncharacteristically browbeaten
Dr Kemp trailing behind him, and me following like an
eavesdropping shadow, he paused at the dormitory next
to mine. 'Ah,' he said, 'let's see . . .'

Pryce flicked on the light and looked in. He saw a row
of fifteen iron beds, all stripped to their bare mattresses,
a bare brown linoleum floor, bare white walls and two
curtainless windows as black and cold as the night
outside. Not a hotel. But he smiled strangely and drifted
into the room, past bed after bed, touching each one as
he went by as though it were a familiar pet. And at last,
when he came to the one in the furthest corner, he
stopped. There was a funny, altered twist of a smile on
his mouth and a wistful gleam in his eye, as he stroked
the icy-cold frame of the bed. He turned to the man and
the girl who'd waited at the doorway for him to speak.

'This one,' he said. 'Can I, Dr Kemp?
My
old bed . .
.'

At midnight the house was dark and silent.

In the great hall Wagner slept by the hearth, snoring
gently, as close as he could get to the glow of the dying
embers. He'd slept there all the nights of his life, through
sultry, airless summers and the aching cold of winter. It
was his place. Now he sighed in his sleep and felt the last
warmth of the fire in his old bones.

It was silent along all the corridors of the house. No,
not quite silent. From time to time the panelling creaked
as the temperature dropped, and sometimes the wind
which swayed in the forest and rustled the ivy on the
walls outside made the windows rattle in the empty
dormitories. So dark, so cold – the house seemed to groan
and shift like a bear in deep hibernation, slowing its
breathing, slowing its heart, sleeping a dead sleep.

I was half-asleep, restive, alone in my dormitory, aware
of the gleam of winter on my face. The hiss in my ear was
not the hiss of the wind in the trees: it was the sound of
my transistor radio, which I'd left switched on, on my
pillow, for the last ounce of comfort it could provide me.
No music, since the headmaster had banged it on the
floor, but only a whisper, as though it were exhaling a
long, last breath before it gave up completely.

But then there was another sound from somewhere in
the building. I rubbed my eyes and blinked, and I felt for
the radio and turned it off. Suddenly alert, I lifted my
head and listened as hard as I could, to try and catch the
sound that had woken me.

Voices? In and out of the silence, I thought I heard a
muffled cry, or a shout, or a muttered exclamation. It
came to me again, so that I slipped out of bed and padded
barefoot to the door of the dormitory. I opened the door
and peered into the corridor.

Voices – and in the distance, the faintest flicker of light
on the floor of the corridor, coming from beneath a
closed door. Not a dormitory, but on the opposite side,
perhaps from one of the lifts. I squinted into the darkness,
thinking that Mrs Kemp was coming down in the lift for
some reason, that perhaps she'd left something she
needed in the hall and was going to fetch it. I stepped
forwards and my feet were silent on the bare lino. As I
continued on and on, I saw that the light was coming
from inside the bathroom.

The cries too. I stood outside the door and the light
played on my feet, for it was moving, fluttering – not the
glare of the overhead bulb, but the living light of a flame.
I heard the high, suddenly muted cry of a woman, and
the strangely rhythmic grunts of a man.

I pushed the door open. A candle was burning, a stub
of wax on one of the sinks, and the single flame was
reflected again and again in the row of mirrors. Pryce and
Sophie were standing naked, their bodies locked together.
He was forcing her backwards against the wall and
ramming himself deep inside her.

I'd never seen such a thing before. Now I saw it in
multiple, moving reflections, the whole length of the
room, in mirror after mirror. The candle guttered, the
room darkened, the flame recovered and stood up again,
and still the man thrust himself into the girl. She cried
out, although one of his hands was partly covering her
mouth, 'You're hurting me – Martin, Martin . . .' and he
squeezed his eyes shut and grunted and pushed so hard
that her feet were lifted right off the floor.

His back and buttocks were shining. Her face, wet
with tears, twisted away from his and she opened her
eyes wide. She saw me and cried out, 'Martin! The boy!
Martin!'

Pryce did not slow his steady, quickening movement.
Perhaps he could not. He turned to look at me, the little
boy who stood in the doorway. He leered, his tongue
wet, his teeth silver in the light of the candle, and he
thrust with exaggerated vigour at the girl. He silenced her
by kissing her long and deeply – and at last, when they
drew apart, her face was muddled with fear and pain as
though the fusion of their lips had burned her.

I spun out of the room, banging the door behind me. I
ran back along the corridor, across my dorm, and buried
myself deep in my bed.

In the morning, the world was quite altered.

All night the snow had fallen, steadily, heavily,
settling in deep silence. Now the woodland was muffled
in snow and every sharp, cold edge of the house was
softly blurred.

Dr Kemp stood in the stable-yard with Pryce and
Sophie. It was a miraculous day of bright sunshine and a
clear blue sky. The three of them were staring at the car.
I had thought it looked so marvellously cruel the evening
before, like a bloody, muddy beast of prey, but now it
was asleep under a thick white blanket. The snow had
drifted deeply around the spoked wheels. And the inside
of the car was full of snow, because it had been left all
night without the hood.

I'd gone out early, thrilled to see the world so
wonderfully changed, and now I watched the grown-ups
from inside the stable where I kept the bird: Pryce and
Sophie, wrapped in the coats and scarves they'd arrived
in; the headmaster, wearing his familiar brown anorak
and a brown trilby. Dr Kemp bent to the car and scuffed
away the snow with his foot. The off-side front tyre was
completely flat.

'You'll need to change the wheel,' he said.

Pryce shrugged. 'There's no spare. Anyway, I don't
think she'll start, even if we manage to dig her out.'

Dr Kemp, his face reddening with the cold, did not add
anything. His exasperation at the carelessness of the
young man, who was travelling in mid-winter without a
spare wheel, unprepared for even a puncture, who could
have moved the car into one of the empty stables instead
of leaving it outside all night, was apparent in every
twitch of his mouth and stamp of his feet. His crooked
fingers were aching, as he'd told me they always ached in
winter, because I saw how he rubbed them hard to ease
the throbbing pain: his war wound, as his wife called it,
and now, as though to fuel the testiness he felt at the
idiocy of these unexpected, unwanted visitors, he must
have thought of the stupid accident which had so
miserably disabled him.

War wound. He'd told me the story, in the privacy of
one of my singing lessons; he saved it, he'd said, for only
the best of his pupils, and I'd been one of them. Soon
after the outbreak of war he'd been conscripted and
presented himself at Aldershot barracks, where by chance
the recruiting officer had recognised him as a young
musician who'd already made a mark as a concert cellist.
Deliberately to protect him from harm, the officer had
kept him as his personal driver, the safest of all wartime
postings, snug and warm in a big black Humber. The
following week, his fingers had been irreparably crushed
as he struggled to change a wheel.

Now I watched him from the stable doorway, as he
stared at the flat tyre on Pryce's car, as he rubbed at his
crippled hand. He flicked his eyes impatiently into the
sky, where the rooks were clacking softly around their
nests at the top of the beech trees, and higher still a
buzzard was wheeling and mewing. It was a delicious
day, the kind of day he must have looked forward to at
the beginning of the Christmas holiday, which he and his
wife could savour alone without boys or teachers or
visitors. He sighed and chafed his hands together. He
caught a movement at the other end of the yard and saw
me, peering out of the stable.

'Let's give it a try,' Pryce said.

He yanked open the driver's door. He dug away the
snow on the seat until the upholstery showed through
and he climbed inside the car. He inserted the ignition
key and turned it, and we could all hear the whir and
click of the petrol pump as the engine primed. And
suddenly, deafeningly, the crashing chords of 'My Generation'
which he didn't bother to turn off before he
pressed the starter button.

The engine churned and churned. The music blasted
out. And as the engine churned slower and slower, as a
couple of bangs like shotgun blasts exploded from the
exhaust pipes and the air was filled with the stink of oil
smoke, so the music churned slower as well, grotesquely
distorted, '
my generation – my generation baby
. . .' just
as loud but even more dangerously ugly.

'You could turn that off!' Dr Kemp was shouting.
'Turn it off!'

But Pryce cupped his hand to his ear and grimaced as
though he couldn't make out what the man was saying.
And still he pressed and pressed at the starter button,
pumping at the throttle with his foot so that the exhaust
pipes banged again.

The battery died. The music slowed to a grinding
standstill. As the smoke drifted and thinned, as the rooks
whirled in sudden confusion, at last there was silence and
stillness again in the snow-filled yard. Pryce essayed a
couple more jabs at the button. There was nothing.

He got out of the car and banged the door shut. 'She's
dead,' he said.

Sophie looked hopelessly from Dr Kemp to Pryce and
back to the headmaster. 'Isn't there s-s-somebody . . .?'
she started to say. 'I mean, c-c-can't you telephone
someone and maybe . . . ?'

'The phone is dead,' Dr Kemp put in, pointedly
echoing what Pryce had said. 'The lines are down. It
happens out here if there's a heavy fall of snow. And
the snow-plough can't come because the lane's too
narrow. Mrs Kemp and I can be cut off for days, or even
a week at Christmas and New Year. We don't usually
mind . . .'

Pryce took a deep breath. He held it for a second, then
blew out a silvery plume, like a man enjoying the best
and most expensive cigar in the world. He flashed a
glittering smile at the headmaster.

'It's so beautiful,' he said. 'And you've got company this
time.'

I was singing. '
In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made
moan – earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone . . .
'

I stood with my hands on top of the piano, as Dr Kemp
accompanied me, and it was a timeless scene in the grand,
shabby hall, where now the light from the snow outside
fell on every cobwebby crack in the oak panelling, on
every smear of dust on the photographs and the honours
boards, on the dry needles of the Christmas tree and the
mottled tarnish of the tin cups in the trophy cabinets. The
light was perfect, too perfect, because it showed every
imperfection of the neglected room. Mrs Kemp sat at
the hearth, and although the fire was burning briskly,
spitting and crackling, the glow of it was quenched by
the gleam of snow. The light showed how lovely she
was, a fragile, broken creature swaddled in her wheelchair,
her stockinged feet resting on the body of the
sleeping dog.

I sang until, thump, a snowball hit the window nearest
to the piano, stuck for a moment and slid slowly down.
I hesitated in mid-phrase, so that Dr Kemp stopped
playing. At the same time, Wagner struggled to his feet
and started barking in the vague direction of the thump,
although he had no idea what had caused it or what it
meant. His voice was hoarse and booming, after the
precision and clarity of the carol.

'Thank you, Wagner, that will do . . .' the headmaster
cried out above the noise, so that the dog slumped down
again, still wondering where the thud had come from.
'Now, Scott, try to concentrate. Where were we?
Earth
stood hard as iron
. . .'

I took a breath and continued to sing. There was
another thump, harder than the first, and this time
Pryce's face appeared in the blur where the snowball had
struck the window. Wagner was on his feet again,
bellowing, big and brave and ready for battle. Dr Kemp
sighed heavily, and in a little space between the barks he
mouthed at the young man outside, 'Yes, Pryce, that will
do, thank you very much,' in more or less the same weary
way he'd addressed the dog.

The difference was that the young man didn't
respond with the automatic deference that Wagner had
shown. He affected misunderstanding, frowning and
cupping his hand to his ear as he'd done in the stable-yard.

'Go,' the headmaster intoned loudly. 'Go elsewhere,
please.'

The face disappeared, although a hand made a final
swipe at the snow on the window so that a long smear
remained. Wagner collapsed onto the floor with a terrible
groan, breathing hard.

'Yes, old boy,' Mrs Kemp said to him, 'it is a pity for
you to be indoors on a day like this, isn't it? Perhaps
you'll be able to go out soon?' The question mark in her
voice hung in mid-air, like a chime.

Dr Kemp relented. 'Well then. The last verse, one more time,
and that'll do for this morning.
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow
. . .'

I burst out of the front door. Wagner forced past me so
violently, mad to get out, that he almost knocked me
headlong. Boy and dog, together we flung ourselves onto
the lawn and ran and ran, for the joy of the sparkling
whiteness of the snow, the snapping cold of the air and
the perfect blue heavens above.

I shouted and whooped, the dog bellowed from the
depths of his barrel chest – until we both stopped and
listened, oddly abashed by the deadened echo of our
voices.

A flock of crows rose from the trees and whirled like
cinders, black and smutty and strangely silent. As old and
as wise as the woods, they did not cry out. They only
folded and unfolded, alerted by the cries but not alarmed.
Indeed, even before we reached the middle of the lawn,
beneath the bare boughs of the copper beech, the crows
had returned to their roost, shuffling their wings, watching
and waiting.

'Hey, Scott!'

A snowball thudded on the back of my head, an
explosion of ice on my red hair. And there was Pryce,
already armed with another snowball and ready to
launch it: a big grinning boy a few years older than me,
hurling the snow and then bending for more. I bent to the
ground, scooped a handful of snow so crisp and crunchy
and easy to compact that, in one single movement, I'd
packed a missile and thrown it. It smacked on the side of
the young man's head. Nothing could be better, more
perfect, than to be boys in snow on a sparkling morning
– so we joined in battle, we shouted and dodged and
scooped and ran and hurled, until at last we closed in
hand-to-hand combat, smothering handfuls of snow into
each other's faces and necks and laughing and spluttering.

We rolled apart. For a second, gasping for breath, as I
blinked at the infinite sky through kaleidoscopic eyelashes,
I was suffused with love – yes, it felt like love, the
warmth of companionship with this miraculous man
who'd arrived at Foxwood in a snarling, filthy red chariot
with a stam-mering elf as his companion, who'd spoken
such rare, forbidden words, and who later, in the
fluttering candlelight, had performed an act of such
startling bestiality that I'd surely never forget it – who,
overnight, had transformed my lonely world into a glitter
of snow and sunlight.

Then, 'Fuck!' Wagner came for Pryce.

Sophie had been watching, as disinterested as the
crows, crouching in the snow with her arms around the
old dog's neck; it seemed that she'd found a friend in
Wagner. Myopic, he'd sensed from her touch and her
voice that she was someone he would never dream of
biting. But as he watched the blur of snowballing and
fighting, and when he knew that his true friend, me, was
in battle with a tall dark figure he'd never liked and
indeed had learned to hate so many years ago, he
wrenched himself from the grasp of the girl and came
rollicking forwards, burly, black and all but blind.

The dog hit Pryce's shoulder with a breathtaking
shock. Wagner rolled him over, and he shoved his grey,
slobbering muzzle into his enemy's throat. For a mad
moment, Wagner had the young man pinned into the
snow. Only the scarf and the collar of Pryce's coat
prevented the dog's teeth from meeting bare flesh.

The teeth tore at the young man's ear. Pryce squealed,
'Fuck!' again as I manhandled the dog away.

Pryce sat up and squeezed the lobe of his ear. He said
the word once more when he saw blood on his fingers,
and he flicked a spatter of it into the snow. In the bright
sunlight the blood was black at first, then red, and almost
at once it fused into the ice, the loveliest pink. I hugged
the dog, who was panting so hard that his fat old body
was hot and huffing like a boiler. Sophie stared and
gaped, as if half-afraid, half-thrilled by the conflict, and
a funny, fake smile played on her face.

I tugged Wagner across the lawn, our feet crunching
where the snow was still perfectly unmarked. I spotted
something under the boughs of the copper beech, and
bent to pick up the frozen capsule of an owl's pellet:
sometime in the night, since the snow had stopped falling,
a tawny owl must have perched in the branches and
regurgitated this pellet of indigestible matter. I broke it
apart with numb, clumsy fingers, and found, among the
chitinous remains of many beetles, the skull and bones
and matted fur of a shrew that the owl had swallowed
whole. I glanced upwards to see where the owl had
gripped the tree with its talons, and I tried to imagine
how the bird had sat there, its feathers puffed out, its
swivelling head hunched into its shoulders, through the
cold, dark hours before dawn broke, while I'd been fast
asleep in bed. I saw also that Sophie had crossed towards
Pryce and knelt beside him.

The girl winced as Pryce took hold of her arm and
pulled her closer. 'You're hurting me,' she said. 'You hurt
me last night . . .'

He tried to kiss her, but she squirmed like a child and
averted her face, flicking his lips with her hair.

'Hey relax, Sophie,' he said, and he caressed her cheek
with the snowflakes on his fingers. 'No one knows we're
here. No one knows anything. Look, we're in the middle
of nowhere.' And he gestured around him, at the
encircling woodland and the tall, cold sky.

But the girl glanced over her shoulder towards the
house. There was a movement in one of the upstairs
windows. They both saw that Mrs Kemp was watching
them.