Silent Noon (18 page)

“Big lass, isn’t she?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

On the tiered walkway below, a young man was walking arm in arm with a young woman. The wind was blowing the woman’s hair into her face: she had clearly given up tucking it behind her
ears. She laughed suddenly, nudging into the young man’s side, and he pulled her one way and then pushed her gently back.

“Do you suppose they’re doing it?” she said.

Barney grunted through a mouthful of pastry.

“The girls in my dormitory used to talk about it after lights out,” she said. “You know what.”

“Girls talk too much,” said Barney.

They wiped their fingers on the grass and walked along the sea wall.

“Robin knows about the dining society,” said Barney. “He’s seen us go to the shelter at night.”

“He said so?”

“I don’t think he’ll tell anyone else.” He registered her dimpling brow. “Don’t let Morrell know. He’d murder me.”

“Of course.”

The North Sea waters had turned a grungy colour. “We should go to St Just,” said Belinda. “We could rent a boat one day and come back when we felt like it. No one would have to
know.”

“If you say so.”

“The top sets used to go there for an excursion just before exams started,” she said.

There would be walks and a visit to the paintings on the rock face where the centuries stacked upon one another; afterwards there would be a picnic by the midden strewn with oyster shells from
Stone Age feasts. A local family would loan the senior form a two-masted schooner and the younger girls would wave them off enviously from the pier before trudging back to continue their
revision.

“All right,” Barney said. “We’ll do that.”

They arrived back at the school gates to find Ivor already waiting.

“Where the hell have you been?” he said.

“We went into town,” said Barney.

“Without saying anything to us? Very nice.”

“Sorry,” said Barney.

“Don’t apologize,” said Belinda. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What would your father say?”

“Nothing, because you won’t tell him.”

Ivor took her by the arm. “I won’t tell him because it won’t happen again.”

“Let her go,” said Barney.

For a moment it looked as though Ivor was going to belt him, but then he just laughed and released his grip. “Come back to the shelter. I’ve something to show you.”

They passed Robin teasing the Head’s ginger cat with a piece of string. He was using the twitching, bodiless tail to lure it onto the fountain’s edge, where the water had stained the
grey stone green.

“Watch this, Holland,” said Robin. “Watch the way he wiggles his arse when he thinks he’s about to catch it. Bugger – he’s stopped doing it
now—”

“Later,” said Barney.

“You’ve been gone all day,” said Robin. But they were already halfway across the green.

In the shelter, Ivor showed them how he’d stuffed a fountain pen cartridge with match heads, sealing the ends with cigarette foil. “This is just a prototype,” he said. “A
little sugar and vinegar would mean more power, and lighter fluid would give us a flame. Still, it’s a start.”

They followed him outside to the bit of ground behind the shelter covered in a carpet of fir pines. Ivor cleared an area with his foot and placed the cartridge in the dirt.

“Stand back,” he said, pulling a lighter from his pocket and holding the flame near the butt of the cartridge. There was a whistling noise, and then a stream of smoke darted into the
air, trailing out seconds later in a flourish of curlicues as it sputtered back to earth.

“You could try it up a pipe,” said Barney. “There’s one here—” And they followed him around the side of the shelter, where there was a water tap covered with
cobwebs. Barney tested the handle, which had rusted stiff. A spurt of brown water trickled to the ground. The stream dried almost instantly, and so they each gave the tap a whack and a kick.

Out spilt a thicket of legs: a nest of black spiders, tumbling one after the other. There were dozens of them, it seemed, in that quivering mess of scrambling bodies. A voice from across the
green made them turn in panic.

“What’s going on down there?”

Krawiec. He had a coil of rope looped over one shoulder and had stopped to lean on a spade. Through the trees they could make out the red handkerchief knotted at the groundsman’s neck, the
burr of white whiskers.

“I was just sending these two into Hall,” said Ivor. Then, in a low voice, “If it turns out anyone spotted you in town, I didn’t know.”

They emerged onto the green to find that Krawiec had already disappeared with his rope and spade. Only Robin remained where he’d been earlier.

“What were you doing?” he asked Barney as soon as the other two had gone inside. “I heard something go off.”

“It was nothing. Where’s the cat?”

“He heard it too. He ran away.”

“Did you tell Krawiec we were in the forest?”

“Honestly, Holland – you needn’t be so precious about the company you keep.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The way you and that girl follow him around everywhere. You’re like a dog that thumps its tail to show its master he’s still waiting. So very sad.”

“At least I don’t go around with a mopey look on my mug all the time,” said Barney.
I know where you got that postcard
, he was about to add – but something
stopped him. Robin was smiling.

“Fool yourself, if you must, but it’s all in his file. Last year was his final warning. They’re just waiting for him to try something like it again, and then he’ll be
out.”

“Like what?”

“Now you’re interested.” Robin slid from the edge of the fountain and headed back towards the house. As he went, Barney watched him wrap the string around one finger and slide
it into his pocket.

The following day during Scripture, Robin leant in to Barney and whispered, “Four o’clock outside the Sixth Form common room. I told Maccleson we’d rake out
the fire. Normally it’s the ones in the First who do it, but it doesn’t make any difference to them.”

Gumming at a fruit drop, Reverend Marrett turned to Barney. “Holland: ‘
And he dreamt, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the
angels of—
’”

“Elohim, sir. Ascending and descending on it.”

Reverend Marrett turned the fruit drop over in his mouth and resumed his pacing between the desks. When his back was turned, Barney looked again to Robin, but his friend had become suddenly
engrossed in his psalter.

At four o’clock Barney stood outside the Sixth Form common room on the gallery overlooking the atrium. He watched the tops of boys’ heads bobbing from one end to the other: hurrying
to change for games, ducking down to hall for some bread and honey, a few conspiring in groups of twos and threes. Now and then a master would sweep through trailing a short gown with shoulder
flaps like wings. Never before had he known that all this could be observed, invisibly, from above, and he wondered how many times someone might have watched him wandering by unawares.

“There you are,” said Robin, who had appeared at the top of the staircase with a newspaper tucked under one arm. “Soon you’ll see what Morrell’s really after. His
file will prove it.”

“I thought they were all kept in Pleming’s study.” Hughes had told him so. There was one strongbox for current students, while another held the files of boys recently
graduated: letters from estranged parents who used the school as a marital intermediary; requests for patience while fathers scrambled to scrape together payments that their wives did not know were
overdue by three terms; confidences about delicate dispositions, family tragedies, embarrassing health problems; prep-school histories that had made applications to other institutions complicated;
police records.

“They are.” Robin knocked on the door, which was opened by a bored-looking giant of a boy named Sackler. “We’re here to do the fire,” said Robin. “Your usual
chap is in the San.”

Sackler grunted and opened the door wide enough for them to enter.

Barney counted four sofas, on which lounged an assortment of senior boys. A rowing blade was propped on the mantelpiece and would have given the room a distinguished air were it not for the
various bits of clothing and gym shoes littering the floor. The smell of cigar smoke lingered by an open window.

“What’s he doing here?” someone demanded as the junior boys approached the fireplace.

“Hove’s ill,” said Sackler.

“Ill my arse.”

“Littlejohn shall do perfectly well,” said a sandy-haired boy in spectacles, who Barney deduced was Maccleson. “Besides, I promised him a ride in the dumb waiter.”

“Not me,” said Robin. “Holland here wants a go.” He shot Barney a look that warned him to be silent.

Maccleson considered the new boy. “You’re a big chap,” he said. “Usually we only send kids from the First down. Most of them are half your size.”

“You forget Quilty,” said Sackler from behind a copy of
The Times
. “He must have been ten stone.”

Maccleson rolled his lip. “It’s up to you. Ratty’ll be out until five o’clock – he always takes tea at home with his wife.”

“Go on,” whispered Robin, who had unfolded the newspaper and was reaching for the fire brush. His back was to the room, and he spoke so low that only Barney could hear. “The
cabinet on your left. M for Morrell.”

Maccleson’s finger was already on the call button next to a small door in the wall. There was a distant bang, and the door opened. Maccleson slid up the grille to reveal a metal box about
two feet wide and three feet deep.

“Slide in backwards,” he told Barney, who did as he was instructed. By now some of the other boys had looked up from their work to watch the cumbersome second-former squeeze into the
lift. “What you mustn’t do is get out while you’re down there,” he was saying. “For one thing, we won’t know when to call you back up, and for another, if Ratty
finds out you’ve been poking about his study every single one of us will get sacked.”

“Will you give me a minute, at least?” Barney said. “To catch my breath.”

“Fine.”

Once Barney was squashed inside the lift, Maccleson pulled down the grille and shut the outside door, leaving him in total darkness. There was a clang and a jolt, and then Barney felt himself
being lowered through the shaft. The metallic scrape of the rails was piercing; the sway of the lift on the pulley enough to make him wonder how far he should fall if one of the ropes were to
break. Just as he felt he might not survive it, there was another loud bang, another jolt – and the shrieking rails fell silent.

Barney pushed up the grille as Maccleson had shown him and nudged the outside door with his toe. It fell open easily – Mr Pleming had not locked it – and before him was the enormous
desk, the table covered in green baize, the bay windows and the bookshelves.

The key was already in the cabinet lock. Open. The files, tightly packed, in two drawers: A–L, M–Z.

Barney pulled out the second drawer and began to finger through the paper tabs: there was Maccleson, near the front. Mason, Meyer, Middleton, Moat. Mowbridge – too far. He worked
backwards: Moss, Mortlake, Morrison.

Morrell.

There were four items in the folder. The first was a letter, dated 1950, written by a Mrs E. Carr on behalf of Morrell’s mother. On his last visit home, Ivor had reacted to news that his
family had been forced to let go of a much loved footman with violent fury and tears “befitting a snubbed schoolgirl”. She thought the Headmaster might like to know in case the boy
showed signs of “continued disturbance” when he returned. Mrs Carr went on to say that Mrs Morrell respected the Headmaster’s decision not to grant her son’s request for a
change of personal tutor. She had every faith in Mr Swift and was sure that the boy would come to appreciate his guidance.

The next item was a typed complaint, dated 1952, by the parents of a boy who claimed to have come under attack by a senior pupil. Another boy reported to have been witness to the scene was
believed to have lost a watch in a scuffle that followed, although there was no mention of his name. “H. Cray lost a portion of one ear,” someone had written under a section headed
“Details”. There had been hope that the doctors might be able to reattach the missing piece, but it had never been found.

Last were two photographs of a damaged ear: one taken side-on, so that a ridge of teeth marks stood out clearly against dark hair, the skin still blistered and swollen around the stitches; the
other from the front, so that the chewed-down ear was barely visible.

There was a thud from the elevator shaft, followed by the echo of voices. Barney returned the folder and turned the key in the cabinet lock. He climbed into the dumb waiter head first, so that
by the time Maccleson released the grille all they could see was the hunch of his spine. His reappearance was greeted by disappointed grunts. He wondered how many of the senior boys had hoped that
he might have been caught, after all.

“So,” said Maccleson, “Did you enjoy that?”

“Not half dark in there.”

“Once you could go all the way down to the basement.”

Barney waited for Robin to finish sweeping out the grate before they both thanked Maccleson and excused themselves.

“Well?” said Robin when they were in the corridor.

“You were there when he bit Cray’s ear off?”

By the way he paled, Robin clearly had not expected this. “It said that?”

“It said someone lost a watch.”

“And?”

“And he asked for a change of tutor. That’s not news: I know Morrell hates Swift.”

“Well, excuse me for trying. I thought you ought to know you’re friends with a maniac.” Robin clattered down the stairs. “If you think he’s got nothing else to
hide, why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Barney found Krawiec closing up the potting sheds as dusk was starting to fall.

“You should be inside,” said the groundsman, not looking up as he rattled at the lock.