Wilberforce (65 page)

—Hypothesis: a good many of your errors spring from a failure to submit to suffering.

—Sir, I've had more suffering than—

—Been subjected to, not submitted to.

—Only feeble people submit to suffering, Morgan said. Sometimes you have to put up with it, but giving in to it is just … wrong.

—Giving in to unnecessary suffering is indeed wrong. I am talking about suffering that's unavoidable.

—Well, if you can't escape it, Morgan said, then you've just got to grit your teeth.

—Did our Lord grit his teeth on the cross, would you say?

Morgan sank back in his chair.

—Sir, please can you stop bringing God into things?

—What are you afraid of?

—I'm not afraid of anything.

—Don't contradict me; trust me. And answer my question.

Rebuked, Morgan glowered at the bookshelf.

—I've no idea if he gritted his teeth, but he certainly didn't seem to be enjoying it.

The Bishop wrenched Morgan's chair around to face him:

—You need to learn how to suffer, Morgan, first of all because life deals suffering—has already dealt it—and the more you thrash about trying to escape it, whether through gritting your teeth or outright flight, the deeper you will fall into the pit.

He wanted to sit there silently until the Bishop dismissed him, satisfied or fed up. But something was reeling him towards the man, like the golden hook, but thicker. This man was saying things he didn't comprehend, things he ought to treat with the choicest scorn a public schoolboy could command. This man was not his father, much less his conscience, and ought to be reminded of the fact. Yet despite the putrid coating, there was something irrationally attractive in what he was saying. Something destructive enough to be the truth.

It had been such a long time since he and the truth had got on.

—We don't have to take what we're dealt, sir. We can fight.

—Some things. Not others.

—Are you saying we should all be pacifists and turn the other cheek?

He wasn't arguing to win; he was arguing to be defeated.

—I am saying, Morgan, that we have to suffer our suffering. There is no shortcut. Of course
he
promises endless shortcuts and has done since …

—Genesis three?

A slivered smile at last:

—Who says reading is a waste?

—But if there's no shortcut out of suffering, what does it matter how we take it?

—Perhaps, the Bishop said with the first hint of wryness, once you've taken it properly, you'll be able to answer that for yourself.

A tense chill settled on him, a terrible discomfort he both feared and craved.

—Does this mean you've changed your mind about punishing me, sir?

The Bishop appraised him.

—It means that it's time to start distressing you. Mentally, emotionally, physically.

*   *   *

The Bishop asked him to enumerate encounters that would cause him distress. It took some prodding for Morgan to admit them. Nathan and Alex, obviously. Polly. Silk. Grieves. His father.

—And where do your friends pass the holidays? the Bishop asked.

As far as Morgan knew, Laurie would be with his grandmother in France, and Nathan would be home in Annaside.

—I don't suppose they've a telephone in Annaside?

The question made Morgan uneasy, but in any case, he thought the only telephones were in the public house and the post office.

—Fine, the Bishop replied. I shall write to Mr. Pearl in the morning.

Morgan's arguments accomplished nothing save provoke the Bishop to write the letter immediately, as Morgan watched. At least, Morgan reasoned to himself, it was highly probable that Nathan, Alex, their father, or all three would reject the idea of visiting Morgan.

The Bishop sealed the letter, demanded the address, and rubbed the envelope against the blotter.

—Right, the Bishop said, beyond the Pearls, your father has made arrangements to come to us the last fortnight of the holidays.

Morgan flushed, stunned.

—In the meantime, we'll have to work on your courage.

He probably deserved it, but was he really such a coward?

—We'll ease you into it, shall we, and begin with your forte.

The Bishop stood:

—Take me through it from the beginning. Start as far back as you can recall and keep going until you reach the present.

—Sir, I know I'm thick, but what do you want me to tell you?

—How you've been punished in the past, and by whom.

There wasn't so much to tell. His father, occasionally his mother, his sisters' rough justice if you could call it punishment, masters at school, the JCR. The methods were terrifically uninteresting: deprivation, imposition, seeing-to. The usual.

—A pedestrian topic, I see.

—Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but it isn't worth the candle.

—
It
meaning?

The word inconveniently stuck in his throat:

—Punishment.

—Yet you've importuned me more than once, have you not, to punish you for things you've done wrong.

—I might have wished we could get it over with.

—And by punishing you, I would be releasing you from the discomfort of your remorse?

Morgan thought that sounded abstract.

—In your mind, punishment is a penalty to remit, but it doesn't do you much good, does it?

Didn't people punish you so
they
could feel better and get on with forgetting about it?

—You don't appear to have the faintest notion that your errors come at a personal cost.

—Believe me, sir, you've made the costs more than clear. Which is why I wish you'd let me write to William—

—A personal cost to you, Morgan.

—I got sent down from school, twice, I—

—If you can't appreciate the damage you're doing, at least you can feel it in your physical person.

That sounded ominous.

—You're experienced, aren't you? the Bishop continued. You know the drill. You aren't afraid. You can take whatever your JCR dishes out, can't you?

—Yes, sir.

—In short, the entire subject is an occasion for pride.

—I wouldn't say that.

—I would.

They assessed one another. Morgan felt a heady mixture of combativeness and fear. Was the Bishop criticizing him for his stoicism? Accusing him of false remorse? Preparing to punish him, or refusing ever to do so?

—I am not merely a man of the cloth, the Bishop said. I am also the father of five children, five exceedingly difficult children, and the fact that none of them has yet gone off the rails ought to tell you something.

He unclasped his arms and removed his jacket.

*   *   *

Like all the real things, you could imagine all you wanted, but then suddenly they happened.

Morgan removed his dressing gown and draped it across the back of the chair. It was difficult, more than he'd guessed, to submit before the man, but at least when it was over, he'd know where he stood. The Bishop would see it wasn't pride, but courage. He'd no idea how the Bishop planned to go about it—just what sort of implement he would retain from his career as a father—but whatever the weapon, Morgan would not shirk.

He looked to the Bishop for a cue where to stand, and the sudden gaze struck a spike of excitement, the terrible nerves of the arena.

—Put your dressing gown back on, the man said.

Morgan flushed and, in obeying, felt more exposed, not less. But he needed to put the gaffe behind him. If they were adjourning to another room, he needed his reserves.

The man had once threatened him with the slipper, a humiliating and juvenile implement, though effective enough when wielded by energetic prefects or masters, which the Bishop was not. A wave of fascination and horror washed over as it occurred to him that the Bishop hailed from S-K's generation, when they had all been so enthusiastic about the birch, whether at home, school, prison, or the navy. That ritual had never been enacted during Morgan's time at the Academy, though S-K had threatened him with it, but it was said you had to cut the rods yourself. The Bishop was rummaging in a drawer, searching for a knife? Given everything—everything said, thought, done, and failed to be done—it made sense that the man would choose as solvent such a trial. Only great bloodlettings could restore the Greek world, and only the violence of the nineteenth century could tear him away from those who held him (those he held?).

The Bishop closed the drawer and came to stand beside him.

—Put out your hand.

His ears weren't working. His eyes weren't working. The Bishop was holding a wooden ruler. Nothing made sense.

—Morgan.

—That's for
girls
.

—
Morgan
.

—I'm not one of your daughters!

The Bishop stood his ground.

—Sir!

The Magnetron as never before.

His right hand did as the Bishop told it. The man took his wrist, adjusted its position, straightened his fingers, and told him to hold still.

The wooden thing came down across his palm.

It simply wasn't happening. This creature Morgan had almost trusted had unmasked himself as the worst kind of dope. He had never understood, Morgan or anything. Now he was employing a milksop technique, just as Morgan had been green enough to imagine rescue.

The thing fell again. He trained his attention on the edge of the desk. The less he interfered, the sooner this mortifying scene would end. The third snap established a slow and steady rhythm, transmitting sensations too inadequate to acknowledge.

He'd never been caned across the hand, but he'd watched it happen to Laurie, and after three of the Flea's stingers, Laurie's palm had been swollen and bruised. This nursery accoutrement would accomplish nothing beyond making a little girl squeak.

Should he pretend to wince?

—Don't move.

—Sir, please, it doesn't even sting.

—Be patient, the Bishop replied.

Silk would do it properly. He'd start with Kitty Deadlock, and by the time he'd finished, they'd need iodine and a story about clawing through brambles.

—Switch.

Morgan stared, uncomprehending and appalled.

—Other hand.

Was it cowardice or an iron self-discipline that kept him there, taking the unthinkable insult on the chin, or the … it wasn't happening, the left hand offering itself, the right tingling at his side.

—Now, the man said, resuming his tempo, why don't you start by telling me what this is for.

On top of everything he wanted to converse?

—I suppose it's for all the times I acted like a girl and ran away from distress, like you're always on about.

Steady, stubborn, not faster, not slower, now having the gall to prickle.

He'd suffered more in this house than he'd thought possible, but even the worst had eventually passed. This indignity promised to continue all night, and then, when it finished, to keep on humiliating him in perpetual remembrance.

—Sir, how can you—

Sharper, hotter.

—William got sacked, and I'm getting
this
?

The Bishop touched Morgan's arm, supporting it as it began to tremble.

He could kill himself. That's what he could do. He could find something in the kitchen. Then the man would see how wrong he'd been, how comprehensively and revoltingly he had misjudged Morgan. Painted across his kitchen floor, he'd find the only logical outcome.

—Switch.

His hands, rogue agents. But soon he'd—

—Morgan, look at me.

His head refused, but his traitor's eyes snapped to that voice, to that face, to the unnerving sight of his own hand reddening beneath the thing. It fell not by the dispassionate will of gravity, but with intent and force, driven by the Bishop himself. He had an eye, a wrist, timing; Morgan struggled to keep his hand from pulling away. Never had he been made to stand there, fully upright, and watch. He'd never been forced to look his opponent in the eye, unless that opponent was taking satisfaction from it.

The Bishop wasn't taking satisfaction. He proceeded not with appetite, nor with a Sunday-school teacher's grim duty, but with resolve, like a surgeon conducting an operation in the field, unruffled but urgent, caring not for the patient's cries because he was saving a life. And between blows, his gaze held, responding to Morgan invisibly but clearly as if he could see to the heart of the battlefield.

—Switch.

Did a battlefield take sides? Did a patient remove his own shrapnel? The Bishop continued steadfast and keen, looking straight inside where Morgan could never see.

—Ah!

—Stay.

A word to his hand, to his heart. The man let go of his arm and trained the weapon on the weakest place, that useless hand that couldn't write, couldn't catch, inept in every sense, no longer telling him to switch but letting the sting rise, at-the-edge, beyond, ringing his nerves like a cold bell, like the days that kept coming and going, where nothing changed until it got worse, and you could try everything but it didn't matter how good you were or how bad you were or how many tears you shed, you still woke up every morning and knew nothing was right.

The Bishop let go of his shoulder. His head rang. His breath …

—That will do, the Bishop said, setting the thing on the desk.

His hands fled, pressed beneath his arms. He had won. He'd withstood the barrage without ceding ground.

He looked to the Bishop—saw his face, felt instantly bereft.

—Interesting, the Bishop said.

—What? Morgan balked. What's
interesting
?

The Bishop paused.

—That's all I'm prepared to say at present. But—

He took him by the shoulder and led him to the door.