Wilberforce (2 page)

Morgan called him Bradley, but to his friends he was Silk. It gave Bradley an aristocratic air, though there were no people of that kind at the Academy. Silk's things were no better than anyone else's, but he took care with them and ensured Morgan did the same. Unsatisfactorily blackened shoes were an early sore point.

Charismatic and popular among the boys, Silk treated masters with a smooth disdain. He was frequently accused of being a specimen of the current scornful generation. Bright without being swottish, he had a prodigious memory, especially for Morgan's failings.

—You're running up quite an account with me, Silk would say, and if you don't shape up, you'll have a very sore Accounting when it arrives.

Silk had pronounced
Accounting
with a capital
A
, and Morgan had not known whether he was speaking literally or not. The dread stole near, but Morgan told himself Silk was only trying to frighten him. He had to stop entertaining fears. The more one paid attention to them, the more powerful they grew.

He was not paying attention, and then the night came, the night he was startled from sleep by the door slamming against the dormitory wall. A chill as the blankets disappeared, then a hand on the back of his neck. No words, but a smell like the drawing room when his parents had dinner guests. His feet were on the floor, not pausing for slippers or dressing gown, and the hand yanked him by his hair out of the dorm, downstairs to Silk's study.

That night he found out about Accounting. He couldn't decide if knowing made it something to dread more, or the opposite. He still feared Silk, though not in the way he should have. As for the wrongness, he thought if he tried hard enough, he could banish the taste of it. He wasn't afraid of real things, he told himself. It was only cowardice.

Tell the truth, boyo, whatever it is. Whatever you do, don't lie to yourself.

*   *   *

The day his Housemaster called him to the study, it had already happened, the terrible thing.

More than destruction, that day in 1922. He had never forgotten the date, and he would remember what it was in a moment. (Was he awake and trying to sleep or asleep and trying to wake?) That day in his Housemaster's study when he grasped, or was told (he'd only grasped it slowly and later, if indeed he'd ever grasped it), the new, savage life without his mother in it. The first time he'd understood that the dread was evidence of something real. A kind of taste, steely and ashen, testifying to the real presence of a thing he could not name.

That thing had laid waste to life, more suddenly and thoroughly than a grenade. She had been in the peak of health! He repeated this fact to himself every time he thought of her as if somehow repetition would expose the wrongness of it and reverse the fact.

Nothing reversed the fact. Her death was the first perfectly irreversible, perfectly hopeless fact he'd known. But the one good thing about death was that it left you nothing to fear. The worst had already happened. She couldn't die twice.

Why, now, the sour apprehension, as if the greatest wickedness lingered just beyond the curtain? Was he under attack, or about to be, now at his weakest, befogged by Matron's drafts?

He sometimes fell victim to a kind of high tide, wherein certain thoughts threatened to drown him, thoughts that belonged wholly to the past. But there were tactics that worked against the high tides, tactics to keep sane. Pints at the Cross Keys, number one. Vigorous exercise, number two. Number three … basically there were two. He kept wanking to once a day, and he made it a rule never to discuss with himself the things he thought about then.

He had to stop getting confused. He had not to imagine that the past was the present. When something had a name and date, it was history. The Glorious Revolution (1688), the Council of Nicaea (325), the Wreck of the
Medusa
(1816), the Gallowhill Ghastliness (1923), the Confirmation Catastrophe (1923). Now the Spaulding Smashup (1926). These events could be enclosed in parenthesis.

These events had no business assaulting him in the Tower, reminding him, for instance, of the way Mr. Grieves had looked at him after finding the skull. Trembling, he'd asked if Morgan had done it, stolen the skull and the photograph of Gallowhill; put one inside the other and buried them in the archaeology pit to be discovered during the dig; purposely desecrated the memory of Gordon Gallowhill, Grieves's predecessor, beloved history master and Old Boy.

—I ask you to tell me the truth, Grieves had whispered. I deserve that.

Mr. Grieves looked at him with a wide, wild stare. Unlike Silk, who seemed always to look through his skin to his most private parts, Mr. Grieves had looked through him entirely, to the other side, bypassing his essential self and everything Morgan wished him to see. Mr. Grieves had never believed his denials. He thought Morgan was responsible, thought—

The Gallowhill Ghastliness had nothing to do with the present. He had to put things back in their parentheses. There was no point in heaven or earth dwelling on Mr. Grieves or his mother or Silk, Silk in the changing room, Silk on the rugby pitch, Silk in the study—where were his parentheses? Silk Bradley (1922–23) full stop!

The thing beyond the curtain was drawing near. He could smell it, no longer metal, but sulfurous, like the bottle Matron had held under his nose after the Confirmation Catastrophe (May …
Parenthesis, parenthesis, wherefore art thou, parenthesis!
What had happened that day and why—none of it mattered because it couldn't happen again. Which was
why
it belonged in parenthesis! It was inhumane to lie paralyzed in the Tower, afflicted by the smell of that bottle, by the Headmaster's color-drained expression when Morgan announced his refusal to be confirmed. It was sinister in the extreme to hear again all the things S-K had hurled at him. Until that day, S-K had never paid him the slightest notice, but afterwards, Morgan knew every vile thing the Headmaster thought of him, some of them perhaps even—but S-K was not in the Tower! And the Confirmation Catastrophe had happened ages ago (May 1923). Take that, high tide!

*   *   *

Spaulding was new this year, a form above Morgan and in another House. Morgan knew him only from rugby, and then only in the violent, unconversational society of the scrum. He was taller than Morgan, well built, with a smile that could stop trains. It had seemed like nothing to run at him, but now he'd gone and buggered his shoulder again, and whatever else he'd ruined in the process.

How many times did he need to repeat it to himself? When he let himself go, things got damaged. His elbow had never been the same since The Fall (1923). After months of painful stretching it more or less extended, but he could never lock the joint as he did with the other arm. And now, three years later, entirely of his own initiative and power, he had damaged something else; another part of his body would never work properly again, not in its original state. He hadn't thought of that when he'd charged at Spaulding, when he saw Spaulding looking at him, his expression melting curiosity-mirth-alarm, until the glorious impact, Spaulding's stomach giving way, Spaulding's arms catching him as the ground fell away, the knife of his teeth through his own tongue. Had he bit through his tongue the other time, too? Silk around him, wood paneling against his face, the high-pitched pang of his arm twisted back, then the skid down steps of stone, the bell-clanging blackness as his head hit ground …

After The Fall, Emily and Captain Cahill had come. (Hadn't they?) They came to the Tower and took him home. There was medicine that made him sleepy, and he spent the holidays with his arm wrapped like a mummy. He was in the Tower now, but his sisters didn't know of this disaster (did they?) and neither did his father. With luck, he would be better before the hols, and none of them would have to find out. He couldn't bear to spend another hols like the one after The Fall: his sisters talking constantly around him and about him, talking of his arm, his appetite, his sanity; his father impartial and consolatory, a man who no longer demanded the truth or detected its opposite.

*   *   *

Morgan had never seen his father cry, but at the funeral there had been a moment of horror when “For All the Saints” began and his father's eyes filled. Morgan sent off a desperate prayer that his father would not succumb. The man's eyes briefly overflowed, but his father didn't weep, not then, not at the grave, not across the long day. But that night, when Morgan thought they were clear of the risk, when he was due to return to school, that night he had woken with hunger pangs. On his way to the kitchen, he'd passed his father's study and heard a sound that paralyzed him: his father's sobbing, fierce, animal-like, grotesque. Morgan had run back to his bedroom, hunger chased. In the morning, he had been unable to look his father in the eye.

Morgan had a reputation at school for not blubbing. He had not blubbed from homesickness, not after the Fourth Form's raids, not even from Accounting. Surviving his mother's death and funeral without tears had been the final test, and he had passed it.

Back at the Academy after the funeral, he could feel himself weakening. He'd always endured discomfort by thinking of his mother, how she'd cup his cheeks—
my brave one, a stór
—but now thought of her unmanned him. When he returned after three days away, he expected Silk to fault him for missing fagging duty, but Silk said nothing beyond grumbling that Fletcher had been forced to make the tea, and that it had been foul. For a moment Silk looked at Morgan with something like pity, a look that made Morgan afraid he'd offer condolences. But Silk turned to Fletcher and spoke as if Morgan weren't there:

—He's in a funk, Fletch. Not himself at all.

—He's getting lazy, that's what.

—Fletch. Have you no heart? Wilberforce has been through a terrible ordeal.

Fletcher spat into the fire.

—Have you ever suffered such a thing? Silk asked.

—I've suffered you.

—Don't be facetious, Fletch. 'Tain't Christian.

Morgan continued to prepare their tea, hoping Fletcher would divert Silk to other topics.

—What we need to do, Silk said, is take young Wilberforce's mind off his troubles. Don't we?

—If it'd get us toast without the char.

Silk made a show of thinking:

—I believe I know the perfect diversion!

—Touch your toes and count these out? Fletcher offered.

But Silk was hauling Morgan to his feet.

—Don't be hard, Fletch. He has a broken heart.

—I weep for him.

—Luckily, said Silk, I've got a remedy.

Silk lifted Morgan's pullover until it imprisoned his hands and head. Then Silk hauled him to the carpet, straddled him, and removed the pullover, pinning his hands at his side.

—A remedy, Silk crooned, guaranteed to cure complaints of the heart.

The thrill of captivity, the exquisite horror of being helpless to escape until the worst had passed. Morgan's blood pumped as it always did, dread transposed into an attractive and familiar key. Silk tightened the grip of his knees and applied a single finger to the center of Morgan's chest:

—
Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man, bake me a cake as fast as you can
 …

So little pressure, but such pain—as if his chest would crack!

—Feeling better yet, young Wilberforce?

Then harder—

—See, Fletch, he's perking up already.

Morgan yelled and kicked, but Silk held him.

—
Then put it in the oven for Fletchy and me!

Silk pressed down on Morgan's mouth until it hurt, too. Fletcher wedged a chair under the doorknob and removed Morgan's shoes and socks.

—Can't have you disturbing people, Silk said, thrusting a sock into Morgan's mouth.

Morgan breathed heavily through his nose. Sweat trickled down his neck.

—Silk—

—Shut up, Fletch. It's doing him the world of good. Color's come back to his cheeks. Besides which, I've never seen him blub.

—Yet, Fletcher said.

—Point taken.

Morgan steeled himself. If they thought they could make him cry, they were mistaken. He'd hadn't yet; he wouldn't now. And if a sudden fatigue swept across him, like despair but more exhausting, he ignored it. Silk would let him up in a minute, certainly sorer, but it would pass.

—Right, Silk said, the game is called Baker's Dozen.

A chill, despite sweat.

—That was number one.

What piercing … breathtaking … Could Bradley break his chest so easily, with a finger? He could no longer move, and the air—infrequent, searing—no longer mere pain delivered by Bradley's hand, but a heart-stopping agony, the hand of death on his very chest—he yelled through the sock and sucked air with his last … would he travel in a moment to the place where she was? A brief surrender was all it required. So small a sacrifice to feel her hand—

—
As fast as you can
 …

To depart the world, to fall backwards into her arms …

—
Pat it
 …

Never to see Longmere again. Never see Veronica, Emily, Flora. No Grindalythe Woods from the study window. Never again his father's embrace, bringing forgiveness. No more Accounting. Even the sting of the cane, no more. All this in exchange for release. His coin to her domain. She would want him. She would welcome him. Was that in fact the purpose of these tests, to draw him to her—

—
Roll it
 … Hold still.

Come unto me all ye who travail and are heavy laden
. Come to me, who made you, who waits to embrace you at the end of this last, long day.

—The game is Baker's Dozen, and that was number two.

Again racking—
come here
—roaring—
a stór
—blow—broken!—within his chest or his skull he never knew, but with this breaking, the flood. From every bone, every muscle, tears so long refused now rushed, and with them a love—a great and terrible love—for every good and wicked thing.