Wilberforce (7 page)

—You've got a lot of nerve after what you did to Wilberforce.

—What exactly did I do? Spaulding asked.

Spaulding crossed his arms, supremely confident, his teeth miraculously straight. Unlike the bodyguards, Spaulding possessed intelligence, humor, and a magnetic presence. Nathan squared his shoulders but did not reply.

—He didn't do anything, Bux said, except stand there and be plowed down by yon minotaur.

Ledge addressed Morgan:

—Hear Matron's sidelined you the rest of term.

—That's a lie, Laurie snapped.

—It doesn't matter, Ledge told the pack. They wouldn't have come to anything even with their young wing.

—Now wingless.

—Hilarious, Laurie muttered.

Morgan drew himself to his full height and addressed Spaulding:

—Unfortunately for you, you'll never know.

—Know what?

Spaulding defiant, curious, tempted. Morgan held his gaze, heart thudding.

The pack reached the front of the queue, but Spaulding kept looking at him even after the others had turned away, sustaining a kind of silent conversation Morgan hadn't had since—

There could be no shred of truth in the rumor that Spaulding had been seduced by Rees. Spaulding was in the Sixth, Rees the Fifth; Spaulding excelled on every field, Rees on none; Spaulding was adored, Rees hated.

Indeed, Rees slumped into History well after the bell, daubing his nose ostentatiously with a handkerchief. Grieves squinted at him but said nothing. When it came to Rees, Grieves had no notion. Rees was a swot, though not half so clever as he imagined, and Grieves allowed him to show off. Despite having passed three and a half years at the Academy, Rees still failed to understand just how much showing off was reviled. Add to this his lugubrious manner, his laziness at Games, his inability to listen to what anyone was saying, and his spots, which he insisted on picking, and you had someone irredeemably obnoxious, someone they in the Fifth were forced to tolerate every single day of the year. If someone had bloodied his nose during break, it was the least he deserved.

—Well, then.

The form's attention drifted to Mr. Grieves, who leaned against the window, newspaper in hand. His habit was to begin lessons by reading them an article from
The Times
. Today's turgid offering concerned the new German cabinet:
Herr Luther's choice, a liberal policy
. Morgan deliberately looked away. If Grieves imagined that Morgan was going to start courting his approval, then he had another think coming. Morgan owed him nothing, and there was no way in Hades he was going to start swotting like beastly Rees. Grieves could drone until he was hoarse, but Morgan refused to show the least interest in Herr Luther's cabinet, his cupboards, his credenzas, his wardrobes, or his water closets.

—So.

Having concluded his reading, Grieves watched them until they began to fidget. His object apparently accomplished, he sauntered to the blackboard, pulled down the slate with the Tudor diagram, and announced that they could expect a composition during tomorrow's double lesson. A groan of protest filled the room, but Grieves ignored it.

—Any boy, he began—

They resented being called boys at their age.

—earning less than twelve out of twenty tomorrow will find himself in extra-tu Saturday.

They fell silent, not from fear but from grim recognition. Saturday afternoon was the match against Sedbergh School, their greatest rival. Having to miss it for extra tuition would be a severe penalty, but they knew Grieves well enough to realize he wasn't bluffing. Apparently the man still possessed the will and the wherewithal to make them work, if only for a day.

Grieves sat behind his desk and unfolded his newspaper, airily oblivious as they retrieved their exercise books and crowded the blackboard to decipher his notes.

Morgan copied the chalky schemata as well as he could. Under no circumstance was he willing to miss the Sedbergh match or to allow Grieves the satisfaction of giving him extra-tu. Obviously the man had decided to punish him (for bounds-breaking? For cheek? For…?) by oppressing the whole form with a composition. Obviously, it was personal. Obviously, Morgan's only option was mental warfare: outclassing Grieves by actually swotting and then writing a composition clever enough to irk the man.

Copying complete, Morgan leafed back through his earlier notes and glimpsed something that hadn't been there before: Grieves's script at the bottom of the page,
To be continued
.

*   *   *

That afternoon it rained with the force of punishment. Laurie and Morgan watched miserably from the sidelines as Clem's XV slaughtered their own. Nathan came away with a blackening eye, and Morgan with a chill that resisted the influence of hot tea before the study's grate.

Three long hours until tea, then Prep, bed, and ten more days—twenty-four hours apiece—until the holidays, which themselves promised nothing. He had squandered PE before lunch and was quickly feeling persuaded by the idea that twice a day wasn't really any different from once, provided he adhered strictly to a schedule. He felt himself on a precipice, unable to retreat and helpless to resist the plunge into grave error. He was powerless to stop the XV losing, powerless against whatever the shadow had planned, and powerless now to restore himself to sanity through physical exertion or stout porter. It was enough to drive a person to suicide, if a person were so inclined.

Morgan poked at their dismal excuse for a fire. The din of wireless dance music filled the study. Nathan took possession of the wing chair and began to browse last week's paper, tapping his feet in rhythm against the grate. Laurie lounged on the window seat behind a book of sonnets, which Morgan knew contained leaves of Uncle Anton's magazine. How he was meant to keep his head with Nathan's senseless racket and Laurie's blatant pursuit of Lady Pokingham, he had no idea.

—I'm off to the bogs, he announced.

Nathan and Laurie looked up listlessly but did not stir. His arm itched under its wrapping. His legs ached from lack of exercise. His stomach grumbled.

He avoided the lavatory (
was
twice a day any different from once?) and made for the cloisters. A din assaulted him even there, and in the lower corridor he discovered a full-on rugby match, attended by the Third and some of the Fourth. He could not remember having seen quite so much bedlam in a corridor, on a rainy half holiday or any day. He shoved his way through it to his own form room, only to find a knot of Third Formers, attending … Alex. Of course.

—What's the idea? Morgan demanded.

Alex looked up, surprised and annoyed:

—What are you doing here?

—It's our form room, Morgan said, not yours.

—Don't see anyone using it.

Morgan evaluated the group. There were eight of them, and while he would not normally have trouble thumping sense into eight fags, circumstances were subpar.

—Do you want something? Alex asked irritably.

Morgan opened his desk and removed a book to justify his presence:

—I was supposed to come and see Grieves.

—Grievous ain't here, Alex said, turning back to his friends.

Morgan seized Alex from behind, shoved him over a desk, and kicked him until he yelped.

—If you even think about messing the Fifth, Morgan barked, we'll send the lot of you to the Tower. Hear?

—Pardon? Alex quipped.

Morgan slammed Alex's head against the desk. He howled.

—Anyone else have trouble hearing?

The fags backed away. Morgan kicked Alex upright:

—Shut up before I give you something to bawl about.

*   *   *

He left more unnerved than he'd been. His good arm shook, his bad arm twanged, his trousers strained. He'd overdone it, obviously, but hopefully no one would find out. If word got back to Nathan and Laurie, he'd explain that he'd merely been trying to slam sense into Alex's skull. There hadn't been any blood, and anyway Alex was a virtuoso of crocodile tears.

Twice a day couldn't be a serious departure from once a day. What was important, surely, was that PE be contained within some bounds and not become a fixation. It was important not to be too rigid! Circumstances had changed since the Spaulding Smashup, so PE routines might change with them, for the time being, without unleashing madness. Twice a day; once per twelve-hour period. Done.

What he needed was privacy, a rare commodity on a rainy half hol. He tramped up to the boxrooms, but found them full of rival parties. What was the point of renegotiating PE if he couldn't get five minutes' privacy? Stomping down the back staircase, he cursed the Lower School, cursed the rain, and cursed the Academy. Someone was going to commit murder before the day was—

Out the rainy window, a figure crossed the playing fields, a figure out of uniform, a figure he knew: Spaulding, alone and clandestine, achieving the south-bounds hedgerow and disappearing through it.

*   *   *

A bang startled Morgan awake. The study floor was hard, the light fading, his right side hot.

—You look like someone who let the kettle burn dry, Laurie announced, dumping books on the table and kicking the study door closed.

Morgan squinted. It wasn't night. It was day. He'd fallen asleep in front of the fire after PE, after … he jolted up—

—There's something—

Stood, unsteadily—

—Back in a tick.

And stumbled out the door.

Downstairs, around the kitchens, and up the passage to Burton-Lee's empty changing room. Twilight seeped in the half windows. It would be call-over soon. In his own House, call-over had sunk to the level of charade, but Burton-Lee ran a strict House, and his Head Boy, Spenser, possessed a legendary right arm. Still, Morgan doubted that someone of Spaulding's stature could have much respect for call-over.

As the changing room came into focus, he scanned the pegs for Spaulding's name. Spaulding's uniform hung there, empty of his body. Morgan sat down beneath it, his heart beating in his throat, the fabric of Spaulding's trousers brushing his cheek.

Rain battered the windows. Soon his dim sanctuary would become enemy territory as Burton-Lee's arrived to change for tea and Prep. Trespassing in another House was Not Done, and trespassing in another changing room was unmitigated taboo. If he was discovered there, he could expect … he wasn't sure what, but certainly the wrath of two JCRs and a month of awkward questions from—

A wedge of light, a door clicked shut. A ping, a lightbulb's glare—

—Bloody—

And a voice he'd know anywhere: Spaulding, hand on light switch, looking as though he'd just crawled out of a lake.

Morgan stood.

—What do you think you're playing at? Spaulding demanded.

Spaulding's mouth was no longer amused. Instead, a ruthless edge, and a note of moral outrage. Morgan suppressed the wild urge to laugh.

—Who else is here? Spaulding said.

—No one!

—Who was here, then?

—Nobody.

Hammering heart.

—I was waiting for you to turn up.

Spaulding gaped. Morgan sat back down. They breathed.

Something flickered in Spaulding's eye. He noted Morgan's position beside his own pegs. This would be the moment to grin, but Morgan didn't, couldn't. With a grim frustration, Spaulding peeled off his top and dropped it, heavy with water, into the basins. Ignoring Morgan, he stripped off the rest of his clothes and put them, minus his boots, also into the basins. Then he turned on the shower tap and stood beneath it, cold water cascading down his shivering frame.

The muscles in his back stretched. Below, he was even more perfect than Morgan had gleaned through rugby shorts. The shower was brief, and when Spaulding turned around, Morgan saw the rest of what he'd come to see.

—Chuck us a towel, Spaulding said.

He spoke casually, as if Morgan belonged in that changing room, as if nothing out of the ordinary were occurring. Morgan pulled a towel from the basket and lobbed it at him. Spaulding rubbed himself down, draped the towel over his shoulder, collected his clothes and mud-soaked boots, and disappeared into the drying cupboard. An irregular drip from tap onto tiles, a pipe clanging to announce the hour of steam heat, but otherwise nothing, no one. Morgan strode past the basins, clutched the handle of the drying-room door, and pulled.

Inside, the pungent aroma of games kit. A small window gave the dimmest light, revealing rails of clothing, racks of boots, a wall of radiators, and, leaning against them, Spaulding.

—Push, or it won't stay closed, Spaulding said.

Morgan kicked the door. The radiators hissed and devoured the chill that had dogged him all the day. Spaulding took the towel from his shoulder and wrapped it around his waist with an ease that made Morgan's mouth dry.

—You like to flirt with death, Spaulding said to a row of boots.

—I like answers.

—Oh, yes?

Morgan sidled up to the radiators and pressed against them, letting them burn into his jacket and the back of his trousers.

—You're up to your balls in trouble, Spalding continued mildly. Don't imagine that wing'll let you off Spenser's wrist.

—Spenser can save it to wank himself, Morgan said.

A hoot from the changing room. Morgan flushed to his ears:

—What's through the south-bounds hedgerow?

He couldn't see Spaulding's face, but he heard a sharp intake of breath and then the clear shouting of boys on the other side of the door. Spaulding lurched toward him and wrenched open the window:

—Go on! Bunk!

A pounding energy propelled Morgan up the radiator and through the window. On the wet grass outside, he extracted feet from the casement. Spaulding reached for the latch.

—I asked the wrong question, Morgan said.

Spaulding hesitated. Morgan grinned: