Silent Noon (10 page)

For the last fifteen minutes she had been mentally rehearsing the knock on the saloon-room door: one of the older boys would come in to say that there was a visitor waiting for Belinda Flood in
the atrium. Joe would be standing by the enormous palm in the gilded pot outside Mr Pleming’s study. He would have stubbed out his cigarette on the steps before entering, and as he waited for
her he would be noting the liver-coloured tiles with faint pity, thinking how pleased he was to be rescuing her from this dingy, forgotten place…

“Hungry?”

Belinda looked up to find Cowper standing over her with his hands behind his back. The others remained where they were, only now they were silent, watching her. The glue spat bubbles in the
pot.

“Not really, no.”

“Go on.” He rattled something in one fist, like a person tempting a dog. When she didn’t reply, he edged closer and opened his hand. It was filled with grey shells.

“Those are limpets,” she said. Then, recognizing the silence from the other side of the room, she added, “You probably think you’re being clever.”

A few of the boys snorted at this.

“Have one.”

“I don’t want one.”

She hated the feeling of all those eyes on her. Last year, after Cathy Duggan had fainted in the toilets and Miss Horne had to restrain Suzette Marx from rushing down the coast road to swim out
after her sister Audrey, Belinda had climbed up into the enormous cedar tree and stayed there after the dinner bell had rung twice, thinking of bodies never quite making it to shore, teased back
and forth on the waves. Eventually, a cluster of girls had gathered at the front of the school, and then Miss Haugherty had arrived, her square face even more creased and crumpled than usual. The
tree shook when the groundsman leant his ladder up against the trunk, and she had heard the girls’ whispers and the exasperated edge in the Head’s voice.

Cowper picked out one limpet and smashed it on the countertop. He dug out a grey, slimy lump from broken bits of shell before slurping it from his fingers.

“Go on,” he said, rattling the shells in his hand. “Tell you what: if you do—” and he leant in closer to whisper something in her ear.

It was a moment before the others registered the sound of her hand hitting his face – and even then it was easier to believe that a ruler had been snapped, a book slammed shut. Only when
Cowper lifted his hand from his cheek, revealing the bright red outline of four slender fingers, did a jeer rise from the ranks.

“You bitch,” said Cowper. Belinda lowered herself into her seat and picked up the pencil.

“You little bitch,” repeated Cowper, loudly enough this time for the others to hear. “Don’t think we don’t know why you’re here. What gets a girl sent to a
school for boys? Funny business, that’s what. You ugly, no-good little
bitch
—”

She lunged, then, but not at him: towards the pot of glue, which she grabbed by the handles and raised high over Cowper’s head.

It was only too possible to imagine what might have happened next – but then the door swung open, and as Belinda brought the pot crashing down onto the hotplate, Cowper leapt away from the
desk. The shells scattered across the floor as he retreated across the room.

Belinda looked up to see a dark-haired Mede in wellington boots and glistening sou’wester. His cheeks were wind-ruddy and damp. He did not notice the limpet shell spinning on its point at
the foot of the long table.

This is it
, Belinda thought.
“Which one of you is Flood?” he’ll ask, and I’ll put up my hand and then he’ll say, “Visitor for you in the atrium,
Flood. Chap called Cotten in a long coat and fedora. Says he’s come to sort out a bit of scum by the name of Cowper…”

But instead the Mede was withdrawing a clipboard and pencil from his satchel. “Runcie has sent me to take the roll,” he said. “Once everyone’s accounted for you’re
to scram back to your house. Abbott?”

“Yes, Morrell.”

“Ainsley?”

“Morrell.”

The Mede continued through the list without so much as glancing up.

“Flood?”

“Here, sir.”

There was a silence before a couple of the boys suppressed snorts of laughter.

“I say,
sir
…” began one of the smart alecs in the front row.

“Shut up, McEllroy, or you’ll take a brown slip.” Morrell returned to his clipboard. “Holland?”

“Here, Morrell.”

“I’ve an errand that needs running this afternoon. Runcie said you could come up to my set once we’re done here.”

Visits to a senior’s set were expressly forbidden. Sensing an opportunity to deflect his shame onto someone more vulnerable, Cowper whistled lowly, prompting sniggers from one or two of
the other boys as Barney looked down at his hands and answered, “Yes, Morrell.”

“Jessop?”

When all the names had been called, the Mede returned the clipboard to his satchel and consulted his watch. “You lot have five minutes to report to your house.” He waited for the
scuffle towards the door before summoning Barney with a jerk of the head.

Although the rain had let up, there was still a high wind as the boys hurried across the drive, shielding their faces with their cloaks. The barracks block that was Tern House gleamed white
against the pewter sky.

“You can leave your shoes on the hot-water pipe and borrow Potts’s slippers for now,” said Ivor as they ducked inside. “Baggage will flip if she sees the state of your
socks.”

It was his first time inside a private set, and Barney was disappointed by its Spartan appearance. Some Medes were said to keep Baby Belling stoves, even though electric appliances were
forbidden in the dormitories. There were no such accoutrements here – no posters of Hollywood starlets, no popular magazines – just an empty fire grate, a stack of books piled in one
corner and a desk in the other, bare apart from a postcard and two photos in paper frames. A record player sat, closed, on the floor. The book on the bed bore the words
Roth Memory Course
.
Noticing the tilt of Barney’s head as he considered the subtitle –
A Simple and Scientific Method of Improving the Memory and Increasing Mental Power
– Ivor picked up the
book and returned it to the pile in the corner.

“The trick is to make a mental catalogue of things by placing them in the rooms of a house,” he said. “Soon I shall be able to recall the order of an entire deck of cards. A
little wager I’m having with Potts, you see.”

He hauled off his boots and sou’wester and shook the rain from his hair. Then he unsheathed a record –
The Rite of Spring
, said the cover – and set up the player.
Moments later, the silence was broken by a clash of aggressive rhythms, a wild pulse syncopated with furious accents. It was music designed to agitate: it made Barney afraid.

“Drives Headington barmy,” said Ivor, indicating the room next door.

He set to work pulling out a trunk from a tiny cupboard in the corner under the eaves. Barney meanwhile looked at the postcard stuck in the mirror between the frame and the glass. It depicted
two floodlit and very naked men: one restraining the other by the wrist, forcing his knee into the arc of his back and clutching at his side with raked fingers as he bit the other on the neck.
Overhead hovered what looked like a winged monkey, and behind the struggling duo stood a pair of dark figures, one of whom was covering his mouth in alarm. Hesitating, Barney slipped the postcard
from the frame and turned it over. Nothing had been written on the reverse. The title was printed in small type in one corner:
Dante and Virgil in Hell
, followed by the name
“Bouguereau”.

He returned the postcard to the mirror frame.

The larger of the two photographs next to it was of a much younger Ivor, his parents and an elderly woman Barney took to be his grandmother. The setting was a rather grand drawing room; the boy
Morrell was crouched on a deep, brocaded carpet. The women perched on armchairs and his father, dressed in military uniform, hovered behind them. The mother had a strained appearance and the
grandmother wasn’t even looking at the camera: her mouth was slightly agape and her eyes seemed to be searching out something to the right of the frame. The boy’s hair was shortly
clipped, revealing protruding ears. He could not have been older than four or five.

The other photo was a portrait of a young man of seventeen or eighteen, smartly turned out in cap and high-collared military jacket, gazing beyond the camera with stern eyes.

“Is this your brother?” he asked.

Ivor didn’t look up from the trunk. “I don’t suppose you’ve had the pleasure of hearing Pleming’s Armistice Day speech yet? In a year’s time you’ll have
the roll call of the school’s Glorious Dead by memory.” He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and took a deep breath. “
Coatsworth, Comfrey, Curless, de Bock, Dockett,
Frankland, Hess, Just, Kors, Kingsley, Lennert, Loft, Morrell, Overbay, Previn, Potts, Savin, Standring, Thorup, Thrane, Voigt, Voysey, Widdows, Williams, Wilbermere
. And the greatest of them
all was Morrell.” He snorted, though it could have been involuntary. “Jonty’d have hated knowing that he’d end up as part of some set-piece propaganda drill. He only went
into the military because Runcie sat him down for a chat one evening and told him it would make Pater proud.” He closed the lid of the trunk so that Barney could see the words printed in
white across the lid.
Effects of Cpl. Jonathan W. Morrell
, it read. He reopened the trunk and withdrew a box tied with elastic bands. “Ah. There you are.”

He unfastened the box and picked out something wrapped in crushed paper. He handed it to Barney, who discovered that it was a pot of jam. “Blackcurrant, I think,” said Ivor.
“Granny’s finest. You’ll give it to her for me.”

“Who?”

“Flood.”

Barney considered the pot. “I… suppose so.”

“As an apology for embarrassing her in front of the class today.”

But you didn’t embarrass her
, Barney wanted to say.
She called you sir. She embarrassed herself.

Ivor closed the trunk and returned it to the closet under the eaves. He stood up and joined Barney by the desk, pointing at the larger of the two photographs. “Big ears,” he
said.

“It’s a nice photograph,” said Barney.

“When he saw that picture, my father insisted that I have them seen to,” continued Ivor. “The next week I was sent to have my ears pinned at an army surgery near our house. I
recovered in a ward next to the burns unit. Can you imagine?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Grown men returning from battle with the most ghastly wounds, and a five-year-old having
his ears pinned so his old man needn’t be ashamed.”

“Did it hurt?” asked Barney.

“I don’t really remember.”

They stood staring at the photograph for a few moments, saying nothing.

“I suppose I should go,” said Barney.

“Take care with that.” Ivor indicated the pot of jam. “If I hear about any Medlar scum getting their fingers in you’ll find yourself in Ratty’s office for six of
the best before you can blink.”

When he stopped Belinda on the drive later that afternoon, Barney told her he had something from Ivor Morrell in the Fifth before handing over the pot, still wrapped in paper. It was the first
time he had spoken to her, and he hated himself for sweating so.
What did it look like?
he wanted to ask.
What does a dead thing look like?
She received the bundle with white
fingers, a cleft digging between her eyebrows as she registered its weight.

“Is this a trick?” she asked, looking up at him. Barney shook his head, realizing only now that it might seem this way. “What is it, then?” she asked.

“Blackcurrant, I think,” said Barney, starting to wish the girl would just accept the gift and walk away. “Jam.”

There was a flicker of excitement as she examined the jar.

“Well,” she said. And then again, “Well.” She tucked the pot under one arm. “Thank you. Tell him I say thank you.”

“I will.” He turned to go, then stopped. “Cowper was asking for it,” he said.

For a moment, she seemed about to smile.

“Holland, yes?” Barney nodded. “Would you like some?”

Barney remembered Ivor’s warning. “No, it’s all right,” he replied. “Really. It’s for you.”

The girl narrowed her eyes. “Then how will I know he’s not put something in it?” she said.

“He didn’t. His gran made it.”

“Is that what he told you?” Barney shrugged. “Come on,” said Belinda, making for Ormer House. “I don’t think I should come in,” said Barney. The
girl’s expression hardened, and Barney swallowed. “How about the shelter?” he said.

It was the most protracted apology he’d ever known. Twice that week, Ivor summoned him to collect another bundle – a bag of pear drops, a tin of Wagon Wheels –
and between the end of lessons and first prep the new boy and the housemaster’s daughter met in the shelter behind Ormer House to divide the spoils.

At first they ate in guilty silence, but by their third rendezvous the girl had realized that Barney was not as dull-witted as he looked and began to probe him for information about their
benefactor. She hadn’t noticed Morrell before, she said, because she’d always been away at school in term time.

“He looks terribly old to be in the Fifth,” she said. “Out of school clothes he’d easily pass for twenty.”

“I’ll be done for if he finds out you’ve been sharing his gifts with me.”

“I can share what’s mine with Pleming’s dog, if I like.” She pulled on a liquorice whip, stretching the black lace between sharp teeth.

“Makes a difference from the pig swill they serve us in hall,” said Barney. Lately, he had begun testing out Robin’s sneering tone. “The tapioca
yesterday—”

Belinda made a face. “Frogs’ eyes in pus, you mean.”

He was dying to ask her about the body she had discovered by the old kitchens, but every time he came close she started talking again.

“Are they alive, do you suppose?” She was pointing at a cluster of black spots rising like a rash up the concrete wall.