The White Devil (12 page)

Andrew turned back around and assessed the long row of volumes. They stretched out for a century.

“Did Mr. Fawkes make you aware of my title here?” she demanded.

“Title?” Andrew struggled. “Um, are you a dame or something?”

She fixed him with an angry glare. Then her lips tugged, fighting a smile.

“That,” she said, “is perhaps the most ignorant thing anyone has ever asked me in this place. And the competition has been stiff. No, I am not a dame. I am
Doctor
Judith Kahn.”

Andrew debated whether it would be better to speak or stay silent.

“I am known as Dr. Kahn,” she continued, “because I am a doctor of philosophy. I received a D.Phil. in history. At Cambridge, if that matters.”

Andrew opened his mouth.

She held up a hand. “Don’t say anything else. I’m not sure I could bear it,” she said. “Let me help you.” She waited, then repeated: “I said,
Let me help you
.”

“Oh,” he said quickly. “Got it. Could you . . . help me? Find it? I’m looking for
The White Devil
. . .”

“By John Webster, yes yes,” she said; “1804.”

“It was performed in 1804?”

“Its only performance, that I’m aware of, on the school stage.”

“You just . . . know that?”

“I looked it up. That’s what I do,” she said. “And you were not just interested in the play, according to Mr. Fawkes?”

“No. I’m looking for someone who may have acted in it.”

“That, I have not had time to research, despite the urgency of the message from your housemaster. Male or female role?”

“Female,” stammered Andrew. “How did you know to ask?”

“Most plays have male and female roles. That takes no guessing. But if we’re going to look for your student, we must know his year of entry to the school, give or take. And to know his year of entry, we must know how old he was in 1804. And if he played a female role . . .”

“He would have been younger,” finished Andrew. “Before his voice broke.”

“Very good.”

“1803?” suggested Andrew.

“Let’s try it.” And then, to Andrew’s surprise, she smiled.

They stood side by side, flipping through the
Harrow Register
, scanning the pages for names. Each leaf they turned sent up dust and the whiff of centuries-old paper, thick and brittle as vellum. They carried on for a while. Then, at last, Dr. Kahn pointed.

“There’s our boy.”

HARNESS, JOHN (The Lot). Free Scholar. Northolt, Harrow. Drama: The White Devil, Beggar’s Opera. Left 1807. Died July, 1809.

“How do we know it’s him?” said Andrew.

“The register would only mention a play if the boy had a prominent role. Fawkes told me your boy played the lead.”

Andrew gazed at the entry. “John Harness,” he murmured, staring at the words. “Now I know your name.”

“And much more besides,” interjected Dr. Kahn.

“Like what?”

“You tell me.” She hung back, watching Andrew.

Andrew scanned the entry again. “Uh . . . Northolt, Harrow. He was from around here.”

“Good.”

“He died two years after leaving school.” Andrew thought of the white skin and the sunken eyes. Could that have been the face of a twenty-year-old?

“You’ve missed the two most important words. And you’ve also missed two important words that aren’t here.”

Andrew looked at her, puzzled.

“The two most important words:
free scholar
. They go to the origin of the school. Harrow was founded as a charity to educate the local poor. Until the masters discovered they could grow wealthy by taking on boarding students. They could overcharge for room and board, let the boys live in squalor, and pocket the proceeds.”

“Teachers did that?”

“Shocking, isn’t it.”

“Squalor,” repeated Andrew. “Like with rats running around the dorms.”

“Vivid—and yes, that’s the idea. The boarders, because they came from outside the immediate vicinity, were called
foreigners
. They were from all over England. Often titled. Always rich. They subsidized the whole operation. You can imagine how they treated the free scholars.”

“How?” ventured Andrew.

Dr. Kahn lowered her eyes to the page and lightly touched the spot where
Harness, John
was printed. “Like bloody garbage. They called them
town louts
. The abuse grew to be so severe . . .”

“They called them bitches and raped them,” uttered Andrew without thinking.

Silence fell then.

“Not far off the mark,” said Dr. Kahn, her eyes boring into him curiously. “I was going to say, the abuse grew to be so severe that in the end, the scholarship funds remained unused. No one wanted them. To enter Harrow as a free scholar was all but a death sentence. John Harness would have been one of the last for some time.”

Andrew recalled the scene he’d witnessed in the prefect’s bath.

“What are the two words that are missing?” he asked after a long pause.

“Look at the other entries,” she prompted.

Andrew scoured them, then called out:
“Son of !”

“I will think better of American education after this. Quite right.
Son of
is missing. When you’re the son of a local tradesman—or worse: the lamplighter, or the dung carter gathering manure for fertilizer—no one gives a damn who your father is. Class differences were less like England today—where one person shops at Harrods, another at Oxfam—and more like the third world. The rich in comfortable homes, plenty of fuel and food. The poor crowded in tiny houses, family members sleeping in the same bed along with the bedbugs and the vermin. Living on bread and cabbage, everything adulterated to make it last longer, your bread leavened with alum. Pigs in the backyard. Few baths. Clothes patched. Windows sealed shut to keep in the heat—but also keeping in the stench and the soot. Which leads us to another clue on this page: 1809.” She eyed Andrew. “Your Mr. Harness met his demise early. With those conditions, disease killed the lower classes like flies.”

“You can tell a lot from a few words, Dr. Kahn.”

“My father was the Jew assistant financial manager at Harrow his entire career.
Assistant
to none; he was the only financial manager. But he assisted the governors, and he was humble; thus the title.” The words stung, and held both bitterness and pride. “He kept the school on track financially. Honest and straightforward. I am doing the same, in my way. Accuracy is everything.”

“I can tell.”

He had gone too far in presuming informality. Dr. Kahn recovered her acid air to put him in his place. “I can only help you so much without context, without a research thesis. You and Mr. Fawkes haven’t given me much thus far,” she said, steamed.

Andrew weighed his words. “We’re still developing . . . a research thesis.”

She crossed her arms, unsatisfied. “You’re involved in Fawkes’s play, I’m told?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she continued impatiently, “is this related?”

“Why would it be?”

Her eyes popped. “
Why would it be?
The play is about Byron, is it not? You see the dates here?”

Andrew glanced at the page: “1807.”

“Byron matriculated in 1804. He would have overlapped with this boy for several years. I thought the two of you were engaged in some meaningful research. Is this all a whim?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then what is this about? Are you
acting
in Fawkes’s play?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Whom do you play?”

“I’m Byron,” Andrew said.

At that moment they heard a click, and were plunged into blackness. Dr. Kahn stood silent a moment, her eyes adjusting.
The timer. Not to worry,
I can find my way blind
, she was saying. But Andrew had a different reaction. It was as if the feeling had been lodged in his breast for hours, since his visit to Fawkes, since the night before, since he had heard that terrifying drumbeat in his ears and felt the drive and fury of impending violence and had been its terrified and unwilling witness
unwilling had he been unwilling to everything the handkerchief around the throat he had submitted to it
and all it needed was this little snap to release it. He felt himself grabbing Dr. Kahn’s arm in the darkness.
Turn on the light, turn on the light
, he repeated, his voice a whisper of panic.
All right
, she replied.
Stay here
. He remained a moment, clutching the tabletop to root himself; listened to her footsteps until they rang out on the metal stairs. Then he heard the click of the light and the persistent ticking of the timer. She returned.

“You’re shaking,” she declared. “What’s going on?”

“Sorry.”

“
Sorry?
That’s all you have to offer? You’re white as a ghost!”

At this word, Andrew’s eyes snapped to her—too quickly.

She caught it. She watched him now, taking him in, calculating. Andrew cast his eyes downward. He was revealing too much. He was ashamed of himself. He needed to get control. But the adrenaline soaked his system; his legs quivered and jumped. She watched it all, her eyes growing into rounder circles, her mouth into a tighter one.

“Mr. Taylor,” she began. “Is there something I should know?”

He kept his eyes cast downward.

“There are a number of suspicious elements here—now I see. The sudden haste. The upside-down request. Instead of ‘Please tell me everything you can about the school in Byron’s time,’ you ask for an obscurity, a single isolated fact: who played the female lead in
The White Devil
. And perhaps you can explain,” she continued, “how you seem to know so much about life at Harrow two hundred years ago?”

Andrew felt his face get hot. “Oh, just from learning about the school,” he bluffed.

“Your sources?” she demanded.

“Ah,” he stumbled. “Just, you know, stuff I pick up around the house.” That much was true, anyway.

“Mr. Taylor,” she said again. “I wonder if you and Mr. Fawkes have been completely open with me. Would you like to tell me why you had that reaction just now?”

“Not really.”

She crossed her arms. “You came here for my help. If you want it, you must tell me the truth.” She looked at her watch. “And the library closes in twenty-five minutes, so I suggest you get on with it.”

9

Voraciously

ANDREW CHECKED HIS
watch. He was alone in his room, in his bluer and his tie, seated on a chair, leaning over his bed like a desk—his preferred way to study—holding the stapled pages of the script, muttering the words. He checked his watch again. Two minutes had passed. Time had changed for Andrew. Back at Frederick Williams, it moved in horrible jerks, sometimes dragging out cruelly; he would measure out time in bummed cigarettes and drifting conversations he would pick up and discard around the common rooms like a small-town browser going back to a shop for the hundredth time. Then it would pounce. An exam. A paper due. As if time were some wicked funhouse machine, tuned by a mustache-twirling villain. But at Harrow, his isolation—fewer classes, fewer friends—slowed time, and made it a different element. At FW it had been fire: hypnotizing, then suddenly consuming. At Harrow, it was water: heaving, dense; deliberate. Every moment—having seen the name of John Harness under his fingertips—now spent anxiously questioning his own senses. Was an overheard whisper real, or the latest signal that reality had warped? Which was worse—suspecting you had seen a ghost, or confirming with solid facts that you had?

Or perhaps it was the prospect of meeting Persephone alone that afternoon that made the minutes drift.

It tops any trick that our old man did
. He spoke the words aloud in his new stage English accent.

He checked his watch again. To hell with it. He would go. He would be early. He could not stand waiting anymore.

HE STOOD ON
the empty High Street holding his script, waiting under the heavy grey sky. Behind him stretched the stairwell to the Classics Schools, where he and Persephone had taken refuge a few nights before. They had arranged to meet there again: a place to rehearse. A moment later, voices started to become audible, in a trickle. Then came a stampede of Harrow hats. The two o’clock lesson had let out.

Persephone, books in hand, finally crossed the street, hailing him. At FW, it might have been a mark of triumph to be seen meeting up with the prettiest girl in school. But at Harrow, to be seen meeting up with the
only
girl in school prompted jealousy and abuse. A cluster of his classmates from the Lot passed. Moroney, Mims, Hugo, and Cumming, four of the sulkier Sixth Formers.

“
Mmmrow
, Andrew, making friends?”

“Going to get your hair done, girls?”

Hugo leapt forward, antically. “Going to the
thpa
? Letth make a day of it!”

Andrew smiled and shook his head. Harrovians were artists with an insult. They could have improvised this way for an hour—and probably would, beyond his hearing.

“You’re popular today,” muttered Persephone.

“It’s not me, it’s you,” Andrew grunted back.

“Oi piss off,” she called at them.

“Ooh, not very ladylike,” came the rejoinder.

“You’re the only lady around here, Cumming,” she called.

This met with hoots of delighted derision, and a shamed blush from Cumming.

Andrew and Persephone turned to descend the steps, when Andrew received a bump from behind that sent his script pages flying.

“Dude, what the
fuck
.” Andrew spun around angrily.

Vaz stood there, mountainous. Several mates—not St. John this time, but other rugger pals, broader in the chest and more ominous—hovered behind him.

“It was an accident,” Vaz said evenly.

Not quite ready to back down, Andrew snapped: “Yeah, right.”

Vaz’s black eyes took in Persephone. “You’re quite a pair, you two. The scum and the slut.”

“What did you say?” Andrew snarled.

“You heard me. Now he’s all gentlemanly,” Vaz chuckled, walking away. “Don’t let this one slip you anything,” Vaz called back to Persephone as he heaved down the High Street, followed by his sniggering teammates. “You’ll end up in a body bag.”

DEFLATED, ANDREW AND
Persephone entered the classroom. Persephone flung her books on the table with a loud thump.

“The ever-charming Harrovian.”

“Now I see why you acted that way when we first met,” said Andrew.

“Acted what way?”

“Hostile.”

She took a moment to remember. “Because I thought you were one of them.”

“You don’t, now?”

“You’re different,” she acknowledged. “And if I didn’t have this play I think I’d go mad. Piers is the only island of normality in this whole place.”

“You think Fawkes is normal?”

“You don’t?”

“He’s smart. He’s accomplished a lot. But he’s kind of a train wreck.”

“At least he’s not mummified.”

“But he’s doing his best to be embalmed.”

She released a bark of laughter. “Like I said, cleverer than you look.”

Andrew felt a part of him go runny. To be in the same room with her, alone, with her open-collared white shirt . . . he had been not thinking about it for a few moments, distracted by his anger, by Vaz’s insults . . . but now . . . “Well, let’s get on with it,” she said. “I don’t want to spend any more time brooding about fat Vasily than I need to.”

“Yeah,” he said, quickly coming to himself. “Yeah.”

Andrew shuffled, as he always did, as if trying to find the right spot to stand. Persephone waited, standing erect, script in hand, practiced.

“All right?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Yep. Okay.”

She began.

AUGUSTA

Your father bagged my mother

In that other English hunt

Not by blue-bloods, but for them . . .

Andrew attempted to keep up with her. Her voice practically sang: rich, round, and from the diaphragm. His felt cloddish, nasal, buzzing with head tones. She inhabited the emotion of the scene (flirty, sexy, but also full of the wonder of mutual discovery—
like the two Dromeos in
Comedy of Errors
,
Honey had said, unhelpfully). He struggled to remember the blocking.

TOGETHER

You must be, like me

Mad Jack’s progeny

Let’s engage

In adultery

BYRON

But why stop there

AUGUSTA

That’s hardly sisterly

TOGETHER

Incest adds a little spice

And fulfills our destiny

AUGUSTA

Knocked up by a brother?

BYRON

Let’s be candid.

TOGETHER

It tops any trick that our old man did.

They circled each other—two fighters sizing each other up in the ring—then came together and gripped hands. The scene ended. Persephone dropped Andrew’s hand and stepped back.

“Right,” she said, pleased.

“It, uh . . .” Andrew’s brain went numb, as if he were even now onstage, staring into the lights. He fumbled for his script and pretended to read it even though the final stage directions in this scene were the only words he had truly memorized. They’d been imprinted on him the moment he got the script. “It says,
They come together, attracted . . . pull apart in revulsion . . . then surrender to temptation and kiss voraciously
. So pull apart in revulsion. That shouldn’t be hard,” he joked, desperately self-deprecating.

“Sort of a fascinated approach,” Persephone remarked thoughtfully.

She gripped his hand, striking their former position, then took two slow steps toward him, eyes locking with his, about to kiss him . . . but no, it was acting.
How does she do that?
Andrew wondered, crestfallen. He gamely mirrored her.

“Now the revulsion,” he said.

She spun away from him, looking over her shoulder with regret and fear, as if he were a looming figure she had encountered suddenly in the street.

“That was good,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No really, you’re a phenomenal actress.”

“Compared to what?” she laughed.

“So, should we . . .”

“You want to kiss voraciously?”

He was rendered speechless by this question.

“It will be hard to explain if someone passes.” She nodded to the windows.

“No one’s coming.” His voice hit a high note. God, he was almost begging.

She came at him, theatrically. She tilted her head. She pressed her face to his.

Andrew met her kiss, eyes open. He could hear her breathe through her nose. It was all too sudden, too mechanical, and yet was true torment. It was what he desired, but it had no flavor, no meaning. She was merely acting, and he somehow was still terrified. (He’d had some half-dozen girls, he reminded himself; stripped them like mannequins and smelled their earthy sex and ground his way to drunken satisfaction in empty bedrooms at my-parents-are-away keg parties. But this bravado was poor currency here; a weak dollar.) He tried to calm a trembling right leg. What was the matter with him? He had been thinking about this, about her, too much. And to win his prize, get the kiss . . . and have it be
this
? A dry, lip-protected, scripted face-lock? Shame and resentment brewed in him, as if she were taunting him.

They pulled apart.

“I wonder,” he managed to say, in the awkward silence, “whether that was voracious enough.”

“We’ll work on it. We could grip each other. Could actually be funny.”

“Funny?” His heart crumpled.

“Yes, sort of a comic . . .”

He cut her off, voice bitter. “I’m actually disappointed.”

“Disappointed? Why?”

“By the kiss,” he shrugged.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean . . .
you
. . .”

“Me, what?”

“You’re supposed to be good at this.”

“Oh am I?” She turned scarlet. “According to whom?”

“According to . . .” Anyone with a modicum of brains and experience would have shut up and reversed course at this point; Andrew knew this, but now he felt locked into a dialectical track and did not know how to get off it. “Well, you heard Vaz.”

“You’re calling me a slut?” She blinked, stunned. “And what about you? Why is Vaz calling you scum? He’s the authority, suddenly?”

Andrew felt his mouth turn dry. They were in a real fight. How had he brought them here so quickly? “Because people accused me of giving Theo drugs,” he muttered. “There was a rumor he died of an overdose.”

“Yes, I heard that. Absolute nonsense. Theo was
sheltered
.” She used the word pejoratively, as if Sheltered were a subcaste of Harrovian. “But why would they accuse you, unless maybe you
are
some kind of drug-dealing scum?”

“I don’t do drugs. Anymore,” he added.

Andrew regretted this turn in the conversation. He was lucky she hadn’t stalked out. He desperately resolved to make up for his stupid remarks by revealing how much worse off than her he was.

“My father paid for me to come here,” he began.

“Doesn’t everyone pay?” she said, still angry.

“He paid, as in, made a gift. A big one. There was no other way to get me in. I did do drugs. I got expelled from my school, in the States, about three weeks before graduation.” He hesitated. “For heroin.”

“Heroin?”
she said.

“My friend Daniel and I did it. Twice.” Andrew sighed. “He knew a dealer in Bridgeport. I was chicken. I did the tiniest amount the first time. But it was . . . awesome. I mean it
felt
awesome. So we were going to do it again. It was a Saturday. We had the whole day free. What I didn’t know is that Daniel had only done it a couple of times. He made it seem like it was . . . his thing. So we’re snorting from these bags in my dorm room, and I’m just doing
some
. . . but he’s like, almost finished the bag by himself. And I look over after a while, and he’s kind of . . . waxy. He was barely breathing.”

“What did you do?”

“I got out my phone and I called 911. That’s the emergency line,” he explained. “I told them I was on the third floor of Noel House at Frederick Williams Academy and that my friend was dying of a heroin overdose. Then I sat there trying to get him to stay awake until the sirens came. But by the time they arrived, I’m . . . I’m way into the junkie zone.” Andrew rubbed his forehead.

“What happened?” Persephone’s voice was quieter now.

“They saved him.”

“To you.”

“Um. We were both expelled,” he said matter-of-factly. “Daniel went to rehab. I did community service. I had to take a urine test every couple of weeks. My offers to college got rescinded. So . . . I needed to do something totally different. According to my dad,” he added. “Get away. My dad had a whole pitch: I got in with the wrong crowd . . . I had never done drugs before . . . I had ninetieth-percentile SATs. But Harrow has zero tolerance for drugs. It ended up requiring a cash donation. I even signed a document swearing I would never even
think
about doing drugs. And here I am.”

He picked at the lint on his trousers, disgusted with himself—for being at Harrow for such a lame reason; for telling such a crummy story; for having the story to tell in the first place.

“That took courage,” Persephone said, her tone changing. “To call for help for your friend.”

Andrew scoffed. “He died anyway.”

“
What?
Your friend, Daniel?”

“Yeah.” Andrew’s voice fell. “Over the summer. He OD’d.”

“Oh God, Andrew,” said Persephone, flush with pity and disgust. “I thought you said he went to rehabilitation.”

“He did. He started using again.”

“Well, you couldn’t control that.”

Andrew did not respond.

“Andrew?” she insisted. “That isn’t your fault.”

“No, I know.” He was distant, noncommittal.

“And,” she continued, “you were brave.”

He turned to Persephone in surprise. “No one’s said
that
to me before.”

“Well, now they have. You saw your friend dying and you took control. You risked your school career to do the right thing.”

Andrew grunted, eager to change the subject. “What about you?”

“Me?” she said. “Oh, I’m just a slut.”