Wilberforce (44 page)

Jamie turned to Burton, who shocked John by laughing.

—You, Burton said to Jamie, are arrogant, devious, and far too big for your boots.

Jamie had the grace to blush.

—S-K tried to sack Wilberforce last term, you know.

—I did not know, Jamie said.

—And the two of us tried to dissuade him just as we've tried with you.

—I am not trying to dissuade—

—Of course you are, Grieves. We should be thankful this one's prepared to listen to reason.

—But, John stammered, he doesn't—he never—

—He's listening to
you
.

Burton looked at John. Jamie looked at him, with that look John had vowed never again to endure, the look that showed Jamie knew him, that he remembered what it was to know him, that he realized he'd missed it, tremendously.

—Something does have to be done with the boy, however, Burton said. He'll have to be rusticated at least. Someone ought to give him a monumental thrashing, but I haven't the heart for it, to be honest.

Jamie turned to John.

—Don't look at me! John snapped.

Jamie sighed.

—Can you reach his parents? he asked Burton. Can they fetch him tomorrow?

—The mother's dead, John said. The father's in London, and sending him home will do no good at all.

Jamie grimaced. The tower bell began to toll, and John felt a sudden panic at his inability to explain. If Jamie had been there the night Wilberforce ran away, he would have understood.

—You can't send him home, John said.

How could he untangle what beset this boy, a boy so potent and so fragile?

—He can't stay here, Burton said.

—I know that! I meant—

Could John mean what he meant? It would kill him: to recall the middle chapter, Jamie and the Bishop; and to stay at the Academy, for better or for worse. But the memory of the boy entirely undone pressed on John's chest until he thought it would break.

Jamie stepped towards him.

—John, he said.

John stood where he was. He breathed in and he breathed out again. Sometimes suffering was guaranteed; thrashing about only made things worse.

John looked at Jamie:

—Morgan Wilberforce needs sorting out.

Jamie caught his breath.
We've got to suffer our suffering. There is no shortcut.
Some fatal hand had brought Jamie to the Academy, and that same hand now held Wilberforce. One word from John—

—What do you mean?

Jamie searched his face. John let him search it:

—What do you think?

Jamie, nonplussed, did not look away. Slowly, he set down his drink.

—May I use your telephone? he asked.

Burton, bemused, waved him to it. Jamie picked up the handset and asked for a Wiltshire number. John's mouth tasted hard, sour, metallic.

—Satisfactory, Jamie was saying.

He spoke staccato, uttering one word for every ten from his interlocutor.

—Yes … Yes, actually. A case … Urgent … No, sir. I'm catching the first, at …

Jamie looked up.

—Seven oh three, Burton supplied.

—Seven oh three, so teatime?

Jamie listened, holding the receiver as if it might do something unexpected.

—Thank you, he said. Thank you, sir.

He replaced the handset and took a breath. John's forehead throbbed.

—Well? Burton asked.

Jamie went to refill his drink. John put a hand on the decanter:

—What did he say?

His hand trembled. Jamie trembled. Everything dead lived and stabbed.

—Oh, John, what do you think?

 

PART THREE

 

28

Trains were supposed to be soothing. They hurled one across the countryside yet gave the impression of leisure. Trolleys came through at intervals, offering tea and food. Nothing was required except that one sit back and allow oneself to be conveyed. Frequently, the lulling motion induced sleep.

Morgan wanted to sleep. His head was heavy but he could not sleep, or possibly he dared not. Whenever he closed his eyes, fragments of the previous day assaulted him.

—Sir, Morgan said, there's a telephone at the premises of my father's firm. I learnt the exchange by heart. We could place a call at King's Cross.

—Oh, yes? replied Dr. Sebastian, lowering his newspaper an inch.

—I'm sure he'll send a cab for me.

—Are you?

Morgan hesitated.

—Have you spoken with him already, sir?

Dr. Sebastian pressed his lips together.

—It's only that I don't see why you ought to be inconvenienced any more than you already have been.

—Wilberforce, Dr. Sebastian said coolly, I suggest you read that book and abstain from conversation.

—But—

—I think we really must be ruthless and scotch this soothing notion that I am merely here to assist with logistical hiccups. I am sitting in this railway carriage this morning because it is my express desire.

Dr. Sebastian let that sink in.

—This isn't something you can think your way out of, Wilberforce.

The train clattered down the valley. Dr. Sebastian folded his paper and gazed out the window. The tea trolley limped through, and Dr. Sebastian purchased a cup of tea, sweet. He used the first person plural, so the woman did not ask whether Morgan wanted anything. Morgan felt he couldn't put anything in his mouth, but once the woman had toddled away, leaving Dr. Sebastian holding a cup and Morgan empty-handed, he felt bereft.

Yesterday had delivered a ruthless string of crises. Today, he was sitting exhausted, thirsty, and curiously small in a second-class railway carriage with a man he had only just met, a man who had lost no time exerting a penetrating authority over him. No man treated him with such casual command, not since he was a child and his father had been a different person. There had been moments, perhaps, with Mr. Grieves, but Morgan couldn't bear to think of him, or of the wrath Grieves had shown him last night. His stomach fell remembering the fear in Grieves's eyes outside the barn, just before he hit him. The blow itself had thrilled almost as much as it shocked, like the cricket balls thrown without restraint. Then there was the man's unexplained apparition in the cell where Burton had consigned Morgan for the night. Morgan had been lying across the bed in his clothing, head throbbing, mind adrift, when he had become aware of a presence: Grieves lurking at the door. Morgan couldn't remember exactly what Grieves had said—it had happened so fast, he'd been half-asleep, and then Grieves had disappeared and locked the door behind him—but there was something about messes and waiting until one understood, and something about fathers and consigning spirits into their—if he never saw Grieves again, it would be too soon. And as it happened, he had quit that realm. Every crank of the wheels hauled him farther south, away from the classroom and the cricket pitch and the barn and—

He opened the book Dr. Sebastian had given him, a small volume,
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
. He knew the story generally. Veronica used to tell it to him. Doctor drinks potion, turns werewolf. Was it connected with Jack the Ripper? He thought in at least one of Veronica's enactments it had been. Once, she had shown him a greenish liquid she claimed to have prepared according to Jekyll's recipe. If she swallowed it, she said, she would transform under the light of the moon into a long-toothed, ravenous beast; she would scour the garden for squirrels, tear off their heads, and eat them raw; he must pray the squirrels satisfied, for if her hunger was not assuaged, she in her monster form would prowl through the house in search of young meat, and what would tempt her more than the unspoiled flesh of a six-year-old boy?

Why should Dr. Sebastian wish him to read such a ghastly book? Ought he not be subjected to some dreary moral tome?

He began to read. The first page developed a portrait of a lawyer. There was no mention of monsters. Perhaps this was a different Jekyll and Hyde. He read the fourth paragraph twice without comprehending it. The carriage was stultifying. He shut the book and unbuttoned his jacket. He wondered whether Dr. Sebastian would allow him to remove it.

As if in response, the man snatched the book away, handed Morgan his half-finished cup of tea, and wrenched open a window. A fresh wind pounded them. Morgan made to pass back the cup.

—You drink that, Dr. Sebastian said.

Gratitude flooded him. He took hold of himself:

—Thank you, sir, but I don't care for sweet tea.

A flash of—he didn't know what—passed across the man's face but was gone before he could examine it.

—Do as you're told.

The cooler air was helping, but surely the tea would make him retch? He raised the cup to his lips and blew across it.

—Stop playing, Dr. Sebastian said severely. Drink it.

He drank, and with the first mouthful his thirst returned, whipping his tongue to drink the rest.

—That's better, Dr. Sebastian said when he'd finished. A bit less green around the gills. And I think we might remove our jackets, so long as no ladies join the carriage.

Morgan followed Dr. Sebastian's example and hung his jacket on the hook behind him. The minor act left him curiously exposed, as if he had removed his jacket as prelude to a formal thrashing.

—I don't suppose you're going to make me touch my toes, sir?

Dr. Sebastian looked at him oddly. Morgan realized the joke had failed.

—When and if I do, the man said quietly, you'll be a good deal less flippant and a good deal more chastened.

Morgan flushed again and took refuge behind the book.

 

29

The Rectory was like many buildings of its time, he supposed, and objectively no more impressive than Uncle Charles's place at Longmere. A cab had delivered them from the station, passing beyond the town and into the green, canal-ridden country. They were in Wiltshire, he learned. The house stood tall, pink-bricked and slate-roofed, atop expansive grounds. The air teemed with insects and small birds. Morgan's school trunk stood on the threshold of the house, a brash reminder of the place he had fled. Dr. Sebastian by contrast carried only a small case. The man wore what he'd worn yesterday, but his shirt and collar were fresh; he removed his hat and wiped his brow.

—Right, he said, brace yourself.

He pulled the bell. It sounded far away, deep in the house. Above the bell rope, a lion in bronze guarded the door. Dr. Sebastian had told him only the name of the place, the Rectory, conjuring an ecclesiastical prison. But perhaps the name bore no relation to the establishment. Perhaps the Rectory was home to some tutor, like the man produced over Easter as an alternative to St. Stephen's. Or had they arrived at a crammer for errant boys, last chance before locking up in Borstal? It was probably seductive to look at but sinister on the inside. Why else would Dr. Sebastian have told him to brace himself?

The lion regarded him, neither hostile nor tame, but conjuring—if it could—something like fear, like sadness, and faintly like love.

A round woman opened the door and greeted Dr. Sebastian by kissing both of his cheeks and chattering away in a stream of questions and remarks.

—Mrs. Hallows, Dr. Sebastian inserted, this is Morgan Wilberforce.

Morgan bid her good evening, but she only looked him up and down. Calling for William to come see to the cases, she ushered Dr. Sebastian inside and took his hat. Morgan removed his school cap, but as she didn't offer to take it, he folded it into his pocket.

—He's in the garden, she said to Dr. Sebastian, but perhaps you'll want the cloakroom?

Dr. Sebastian disappeared behind a panel, and the woman departed, leaving Morgan alone in the corridor. A tall clock ticked, its face revealing the sun chased by Death with a scythe, and the moon followed by a dove with a twig in its mouth. The polished parquet floors, the spotless paneling, the well-dusted rails of the banister, all testified to scrupulous housekeeping. A table displayed several envelopes addressed and ready for posting. As Morgan's eyes adjusted to the indoors, he discerned a wooden cross hanging above the table. Simple, roughly hewn, substantial, it spoke more loudly than anything about the atmosphere he had just entered. It didn't flaunt itself, golden or finely wrought; it simply occupied the wall, an uncompromising announcement. Of what, though?

Was it lavender he smelled, like his mother grew beneath the kitchen window?

A panel opened, and Dr. Sebastian emerged.

—Go on, he said impatiently, mustn't keep him waiting.

Morgan used the toilet, washed his hands, and despite a strong aversion to the looking glass, splashed water on his face. Dr. Sebastian opened the door and told him to stop dawdling. He scrutinized Morgan's appearance, adjusted Morgan's tie, and used the hand towel to clean something off Morgan's ear. The feeling of being treated as a child only continued when Dr. Sebastian ordered him out of the cloakroom, dusted one of his trouser legs, and told him to stand up straight. Without further comment, Dr. Sebastian led him smartly down the corridor and out to a bricked patio.

An older man in a straw hat trimmed roses in an archway. He addressed them without turning around:

—You've had no tea, I suppose.

—No, sir, Dr. Sebastian replied.

—I've waited.

—That wasn't necessary, sir.

The man clipped a yellow rose and turned to them:

—Nevertheless.

He didn't smile in greeting, but something like pleasure tugged at the corners of his eyes.

—Well, he asked, how does it feel?

Dr. Sebastian cleared his throat:

—I can't say yet, but this is … what I told you about.

The man acted as though he had only that moment glimpsed Morgan.

—Is that so?

—May I present Morgan Wilberforce. Wilberforce, the Bishop of—

—Yes, yes, the man said impatiently.