Wilberforce (28 page)

—Through Jesus Christ—

He was a fool. Of course they had said it, as the names of all Old Boys were said when they—when it was the place to say them. He needed to wake up absolutely. They'd said it in the past and the past was done. Thank Hermes, thank Zeus, thank all of Olympus.

It was thanks to them, surely, that no one else said the name either. No one asked him to recount the day. No one afflicted him with nauseating concern. Whether anyone thought of it Morgan didn't care, so long as they didn't speak. The only shade of the past was gossip, slight, of Rees. Reports winged in of Rees installed at a school dubbed
wet as Bedales but third-rate
, so it was known that Rees had gone on to plague other people, people who at third-rate-wet-as-Bedales probably deserved it.

The other absence was—just—he couldn't—

 

20

Burton summoned John by note during the first week of lessons. A tyro delivered the missive folded in Burton's trademark style, and as John opened it, he could feel the tension spreading through his Fourth Form lesson. The tyro lingered, expecting a reply. Having finally dismantled the origami, John scanned the note, which rather than announcing an unpleasant interview for one of the Fourth, instead requested his presence in Burton-Lee's study during the break. He looked up; the tyro was still waiting.

—I'll be there, John said curtly.

Mirth erupted.

—Oh, sir, what've you done?

—You're for it, sir!

John shut them up with ill humor and set them copying from the blackboard. He realized as they wrote that he'd mishandled the moment. His testiness made him look guilty, like a trespassing boy himself. Which he wasn't! It was offensive for Burton to summon him like that rather than simply speaking to him in the SCR as a normal human being. The only explanation was that Burton proposed to haul him onto the carpet for the indiscipline of his classes. John doubted his were worse than any others, but he wasn't prepared for that contest today, and what's more, he had planned to use the break actually to bolster discipline by polishing up his lesson for the Fifth. They had returned from the holidays not merely dull, but openly contemptuous, and as for Wilberforce, the boy hadn't spoken once. In saner times, they would feel a modicum of concern about their promotions to the next form, but since S-K had allowed summer examinations to atrophy into mere formalities, a none-too-subtle sneer came over his pupils' faces whenever John mentioned exams. His only hope was to disarm them with ingenious lessons that could slip a poniard under the mail of their boredom and rouse some curiosity, however fleeting, in their jaded, naïve hearts.

He had to wait outside Burton's study nearly six minutes. Break lasted only twenty. He could have been concocting something—anything—for Wilberforce and the horrible Fifth. At least S-K had left them alone to get on with things!

—Ah, Grieves, forgive me.

Burton swept across the corridor and in one fluid movement unlocked the study door and breezed inside, depositing books on a table and striding to the windows to haul them open.

—It's the cricket, Burton began.

John hovered near the door. Burton had not invited him to sit and had not taken a seat himself. Having opened the windows, Burton pitched around the study rifling drawers and shelves.

—What about the cricket? John replied.

And what kind of an opening was that anyhow?
It's the cricket.
Had he missed the entire introduction?

—It's disgraceful, Burton declared.

John continued his attitude of confusion, but he knew what Burton was talking about. The expanded timetable called for every boy to have practice daily and matches thrice weekly; thus far the cricket had been slovenly, soulless, soporific.

—I'm putting you in charge, Burton said.

—I beg your pardon?

—Of the cricket. Sort it out.

—In charge how? How on earth am I meant to—

—That's your affair.

John was caught feeling half-flattered, half-used.

—I'm not sure what you mean by
sort out
, John replied, but you can't expect me to reform the cricket games of two-hundred-odd apathetic, ill-disciplined little troglodytes.

Burton blinked. John blinked.

—Concentrate on the Fifth, Burton told him, and the Lower Sixth.

Wilberforce's form, Spaulding's form. Second chance? More like Augean stables.

—Just what sort of authority are you giving me?

—Unofficial authority.

John exhaled in vexation; unofficial authority meant full responsibility and no power.

—The trouble isn't the cricket, John told him. The trouble is Spaulding.

Burton inhaled sharply as if John had uttered an obscenity.

—Why wasn't he mentioned Sunday?

—That is entirely—

—We do it whenever an Old Boy dies, John persisted. We even kept Year's Mind for Gallowhill, two years running—

—Will you kindly hold your tongue! Burton barked.

John held his breath. Burton lowered his voice:

—The time to have done it was then. Bringing it all up now—dragging us through it—would be calamitous. Not to mention cruel.

—I disagree.

Burton looked suddenly old.

—November perhaps, but not now. The Board concur. That's an end of it.

John felt desperate.

—In that case, he said, I don't see how you expect me to get anywhere with that lot. Seriously,
cricket
?

Burton sighed:

—Tend to the strong plants. Prune, fertilize, don't overwater. Make them send their roots down for food. When they've established themselves, they'll compete with the weeds.

—Are we still talking about cricket?

Burton snatched a book from his desk and lurched out of the study:

—Start with Wilberforce.

John flushed.

—But—he's got no time for me.

—He trusted you enough to spill a rangy confession, didn't he?

—That wasn't my fault.

Burton paused at the quad door, slamming John with his gaze:

—Morgan Wilberforce is disobedient, headstrong, reckless, sexually immoral, a hard drinker and smoker, and nowhere near as clever as he imagines.

—That's terrifically unfair!

Burton opened the door:

—Prove me wrong.

*   *   *

Morgan, Nathan, and Laurie disappeared from batting practice once their Deputy Captain had ticked them off the list. They'd stashed a change of clothes in the old lodge, and divested of cricket flannels, they crawled through the tunnel and traversed the woods to Fridaythorpe. At the Keys, Morgan paid for the first round and flirted, as they always did, with Polly.

Plump without being rotund, Polly wore her chestnut hair loose, pulled back in a kerchief. Her face was clear and rosy, and the color of her frock made Morgan notice that her eyes were a robin's-egg blue. She laughed at his flirtations but did not reciprocate as she had in the past. Somehow she had become shy in a way that made Morgan feel he couldn't touch her.

Not that he'd ever touched her, at least not in ways his father would construe as touching. He'd tickled her, kissed her cheek, squeezed her hand, but none of this, he felt, could be considered touching, per se.

The ale worked its way into his bloodstream, and Morgan began to feel as if he'd emerged from battle, though five days of an indifferent term could scarcely be considered battle. Still, as he gazed across the wobbly table, he saw Nathan and Laurie doing the same. He was exhausted. He'd been exhausted the entire hols, which according to his father's physician was because his shoulder required extra sleep yet prevented him from sleeping properly. That was Morgan's excuse and he was sticking to it, but he couldn't see what Nathan and Laurie had to look so shattered about.

Nathan drained his glass and nodded for the second even though Morgan and Laurie were only halfway through theirs. When Polly brought the round, she caught Morgan's eye and then looked away. He noticed a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. When she turned back to the bar, he saw that her frock clung to her figure and that her apron nipped it in at the waist. The seam in her stockings was crooked. Morgan was seized with the idea of straightening it using only his teeth.

He drank his pint.

—Is it Alex? Laurie asked apropos of nothing.

Nathan lowered his head.

—I've resolved something, he announced.

Morgan and Laurie looked up.

—I'm not going to discuss my brother, Nathan declared. At all.

Morgan did not know what to say, but Laurie had no such qualms:

—That's a load of tosh. Why on earth won't you discuss your brother with us?

—Because!

Nathan lowered his voice:

—If I start discussing him, I don't know where I'll stop, and there are things it isn't right to say about family, no matter what.

—Is that your father talking? Morgan quipped.

Nathan's jaw tightened and he took another long drink.

—It's only because of your letter that I'm here at all, he told Morgan.

Morgan winced at mention of the unguarded drivel he'd written Nathan over the holidays.

—The medicine they shoved down my throat—

—Hang on, Laurie said. Are you saying you weren't going to come back, JP?

—That's right, Nathan said.

—But why?

Nathan exhaled heavily:

—My father wasn't exactly thrilled about last term, was he?

—Which part of it?

—All of it. And once the
Mail
ran that piece, well, he wasn't keen for us to come back.

—My grandmother was the same, Laurie said, but once the letter came explaining that S-K was ill and the Board were sorting things out and the fees would be reduced this term, she came round.

—They've cut the fees? Morgan said.

—Keep up, Wilber.

Nathan's jaw stayed tight. He looked wistfully from his second empty glass to Morgan's and Laurie's nearly full. Laurie moved them out of Nathan's reach and resumed his inquiry:

—Not to put too fine a point on it, JP, but your pater's stretched finding two sets of fees. Why wouldn't he send you back once they reduced them?

—You are out of line, Lydon.

Laurie persisted:

—Was it Alex who didn't want to come back?

—Please, Nathan scoffed. He was dying to, the little …

—Sod?

—Jackdaw.

—Well, Laurie reasoned, of course he'd want to come back. He just pulled off the biggest rag in the history of the Cad and got away with it.

Nathan sighed heavily.

—What did your mater say? Laurie continued.

—She was with Alex, as usual!

—You mean
you
didn't want to come back?

Nathan signaled to Polly for the third round.

—Take it easy, Morgan said.

—Shut up! Nathan snapped. And quit nosing into my affairs. I'm here. What more do you want?

He left the table. Morgan felt he'd been slapped.

—That's a
yes
then, Laurie murmured.

—But … why?

What had Alex told Nathan about him, in the sanctuary of home, never expecting to see Morgan again?

—When you left last term, Laurie confided, Nate was angry, an absolute black temper.

—Over what?

—Over what S-K did to you! Blaming you, messing you about,
disposing
you.

—Oh …

Laurie wedged a beer mat under the table leg:

—It's possible someone did a bit of
service-propagande
on how you found yourself at that barn.

Morgan flushed to the roots of his hair.

—But the point, Laurie said, steadying the table, is JP. He went simply
firebrand
against S-K. Never seen him in more of a bate. He was writing his father twice a day about it. I only just stopped him writing his MP.

Morgan's mind spun. Nathan returned to the table with the third round, which he drank aggressively even though Morgan and Laurie were still on their second. He avoided Morgan's gaze as he did whenever he was furious.

Morgan addressed his pint to defeat the rising tide of revelations. Laurie began to babble about moving pictures, and Nathan knocked rhythmically on the tabletop, as if applying the technique to furniture. No one interrupted Laurie's monologue, but somewhere at the bottom of the second pint Morgan sensed a new and more welcome twinge—the thrill of realizing that things did not stack up.

—One question, Morgan said quietly. Were there newspapermen hanging about the Cad?

—No, Laurie said.

—And did either of you go to out to the barn?

—Don't be macabre! Laurie retorted.

Not stacking up, not even a bit.

—JP?

—I thought you said one question, Nathan growled.

—Right, Morgan said, here it is. How did the
Mail
get a photograph of McKay's barn with its rafter fallen down?

Nathan helped himself to Laurie's third pint. Laurie looked from one to the other.

—Hang on, Wilber, are you suggesting…?

Morgan narrowed his eyes:

—Oh, I'm not suggesting, I'm knowing. You—

—Shut up, Nathan warned.

—You
are a regular double agent. How
could
you go there?

—It wasn't difficult.

—Wait, Laurie said, just wait—

—Who else knows? Morgan demanded.

—No one.

—Besides your pater, of course.

Nathan and Laurie both gaped at him.

—Keep up! Morgan exhorted Laurie. This one hacked out to the barn, took the wretched photograph, developed it, and sent it to his pater. Who sent it to the
Mail
.

Laurie laughed in astonishment:

—You can't be serious!

—S-K deserved it! Nathan cried. Alex was getting away with his rubbish, S-K was treating Morgan like a beast, Spaulding was
dead
, and nobody was asking what a sewer this place had become. It was unforgivable!