Silent Noon (20 page)

Barney was about to say that he didn’t know – but then he felt Robin’s fingers lacing around his neck and instinctively grasped the boy’s hands by the wrists.

“Snap! Just like that – eh, Holland? If you’re lucky.”

Barney twisted, feigning a struggle against the collar formed by Robin’s fingers. His hands were hot, but not clammy, and there was something thrilling about wrestling him across the lawn.
He stopped when he heard the Head’s wife address Mrs Morrell by name and shook Robin off to get a better look.

Next to Mrs Pleming – as usual, in sensible shoes and inexpertly applied lipstick – Mrs Morrell exuded a wildness barely repressed by tasteful jewellery, a dove-grey suit and a
badger-pelt coat. Her rolled and lacquered hair had golden lights, and her nails were painted red. She appeared restless, opening and closing her purse to check for something that was never there,
and more than once Mrs Pleming cast a quick, nervous glance in her direction as one might throw at a child on the brink of some disgraceful behaviour.

When the Fifth filed in, Ivor was too engaged in conversation with Potts to acknowledge his mother, although she soon spotted him and gave a little lurch as he passed her.

Barney looked for Belinda, who sat at the far end of the pew and did not appear to have noticed Mrs Morrell. He thought the girl looked small and sad, lost among the rows of fidgeting boys. She
did not move her lips to murmur the prayers, but stared straight to the front as if imagining herself somewhere else. Now and then she shivered. A wind was coming in from the sea, licked fierce by
tall waves, and the stone walls of the chapel seemed to feed the cold air, spreading a smell that made the grown-ups whisper in worried voices about another storm tide. Detritus was still being
cleared from the floods that had claimed twelve lives that year. Barney breathed into his palms and rubbed them on marbled knees, wincing as he stamped his feet upon the flagstones.

Mrs Morrell sang discordantly through the hymn, attracting looks from the adults and obvious smirks from the boys. It was only after a few bars that they realized she was following a different
tune altogether and investing it with her own words. In counterpoint to the mighty ‘Kingsfold’, her voice rose louder and louder.

Barney searched for Ivor in the rows behind and found him staring, grey-faced, straight ahead. As his mother’s voice strained higher, he closed his hymnal with a snap.

By now only the masters and their wives continued with the hymn, while the boys stared. As the organ thundered the final refrain, they watched Ivor shove past the other Medes in
his row and make for the exit. The final chord sounded as the panelled door slammed closed behind him.

Afterwards, Barney noticed Mrs Morrell standing before Jonty’s plaque. She betrayed no emotion: only a rigidness as though she had been caught off-guard by something unanticipated and
unpleasant. He watched Mrs Pleming join her, take her gently by the elbow and whisper a few words in her ear.

Soon after, the driver returned with the car and Mrs Morrell made her departure, waved off by the Head and his wife. Ivor remained nowhere to be seen.

Swift followed the boys as far as the patch of scuffed grass circling the Medlar steps and watched them file in through the common door. Try as he might to dismiss it, the scene
caused by Mrs Morrell preyed on his mind. To the boys, it had been a laugh; to the masters, a mild embarrassment. A broken woman always was. The Head’s wife had handled her admirably,
considering how frightened the other masters’ wives looked. Mollie Flood had watched Mrs Morrell standing before Jonty’s plaque, and though Swift had tried to look away before she
noticed him, she had seen him and paled. One mother observing another’s grief.

Passing in front of the housemaster’s study, Swift was stopped by the sudden, shrill sound of a telephone. He counted six rings, each in its way louder and more desperate than the one
before it. He waited for several moments, believing that every plaintive peal must surely be the last. Fourteen, fifteen. He placed his hand on the doorknob; but as soon as he did the ringing
stopped.

As though by some strange premonition that whoever it had been at the other end of the telephone line had not given up the pursuit, Swift remained where he was. Sure enough, less than a minute
later the telephone shuddered into life again. He tested the door, which was open, and entered the study.

On the fourth ring, the deputy housemaster lifted the phone from its cradle. “Medlar House—”

“Is that you?” It was a woman’s voice. “I hoped you might be there—”

The phone slipped in his hand; he fumbled, pressed it to his ear. She was already mid-sentence.

“—in town said it must have been hers. It must be. She came here often in those days, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“It must be hers. Please say it is. I may go mad otherwise—”

“Why are you calling?”

“I’m sorry – I don’t know what I was thinking—”

There was a sound in his ear like an accordion being squeezed of its air, then the click of a line going dead.

The study door remained open, and a leaf skittered across the gravel and over the threshold. Outside, the chaplain walked across the drive, his cassock stiff and rustling. It occurred to Swift
that it would not do for Mr Runcie to find him here like this: answering his telephone with the door open, letting the leaves in.

Someone was emerging from Ormer House: the girl, Belinda, dropping her satchel to pull on her coat. She slung the bag over one shoulder, turned on the step and saw him there, telephone in hand,
staring through the open door at her across the empty drive.

There was no reason to feel caught out. He acknowledged her with a nod, returned the receiver to the cradle and pretended to busy himself with some papers in a tray on Mr Runcie’s desk.
When he looked up again she was already halfway across the green, heading towards the forest path.

He waited for her to disappear into the gloom before tugging sharply at the phone line until at last it pulled clean away from the wall.

The inner door was scarcely ajar, but the sound hummed through the gaps in the panelling. It was a grotesque murmur, urgent and unceasing like a heartbeat. As the second door
opened, it raised to a drone: and then a hundred black bodies were swarming and darting towards the light, hitting their faces, skimming their open mouths. The flies were fat and hairless,
intoxicated on sugar.

The toffee tin lay open on the floor, the last few squares lumped together where the paper wrappers had begun to sweat. Four days had passed.

“You were supposed to bring it back,” said Ivor to Barney. “The other night when we had our hands full, I told you to bring the rest.”

“I thought I had.”

Shielding his face with his arm, Ivor grabbed the tin and chucked it onto the ground outside the shelter. “It’ll have to air out now. No point coming tonight.”

“The sandwiches won’t keep,” said Belinda in a small voice.

“We could have them somewhere else,” said Barney.

“Perhaps in Ratty’s study? Honestly, Holland.”

Barney looked up at the sky. The clouds hung so low it seemed that from the top of the highest tree it would be possible to touch them. “We could go to the rock pools,” he said.
“It won’t be too cold tonight.”

To his surprise, Ivor agreed. Later that night, he even took the precaution of bringing along a sinister-looking bottle, “to keep out the chill”. Settling into a ledge in the rock
face – out of sight from the school’s attic windows and shielded from the wind – the others regarded it with suspicion.

“That’s not brandy,” said Belinda.

“It hasn’t even got a label,” said Barney. “He’s probably filled it with bog water.”

“Don’t have it, then,” said Ivor.

High above loomed trees bent inland by the wind. The tide was out, and the muddy sand gleamed slick. By night, even the sea seemed to know to keep silent.

Belinda shivered, and Ivor passed her a jar filled from the bottle he had brought. “It will warm you up,” he said when she hesitated.

First she tasted a certain sourness, then the hint of something sweet, like bruised plums. After that her tongue was hit by a burning ginger tang, and finally a bitter aftertaste that made her
want to drink more, if only to replace the sensation.

“It’s fortified,” said Ivor. “I got it off Krawiec.”

“Why would he give it to you?” said Barney.

“I didn’t say he gave it to me. I said I got it off him.”

“You stole it?”

“We have an understanding.”

Belinda tore open a bag of sandwiches and shoved it under the boys’ noses. “Take one,” she said. She drank again from the jar.

Food had become their obsession: sweet things for Belinda, and for Barney the fattier the better. No wonder some of the masters had begun to comment that Holland had put on some weight, or that
Mollie Flood often found another popped button on her daughter’s gym blouse. For the first time in her life the girl had pimples, and dark rings circled her eyes. For his part, Ivor did not
seem to need sleep: he neither gained nor lost weight. Only the younger two were steadily fattening up.

“I’ve never been here by night,” said Ivor, shooting Barney a look. “In the summer it would be a fine place for a swim, don’t you think, Bel?”

“It’s too shallow to swim properly,” she said. “But people throw anything down here thinking that the water is deep. I found a bracelet once.”

“Odd thing to throw away.”

Belinda shrugged. “The wine is making me thirsty,” she said. “If only I could drink just a little of that water down there.”

“That’s what one of the POWs on St Just thought,” said Ivor. “He was already starved, so the seawater knocked him right out. While he was unconscious, a couple of the
other workers killed him.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they were famished. They ate him then and there.”

All that on an island visible on a clear day from Miss Duchâtel’s bedroom window
, thought Barney.

“You’re making it up.”

“I’m not. Krawiec told me. They ate rats too – and birds, when they could catch them. But this lad was young, and there was still meat on him.”

Belinda looked at Barney. “I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Why not? The Japs ate their own troops when things got really bad in the East.”

At this Barney chucked the stale heel of bread into the water. There was no sound of a splash. “Don’t listen to him,” he said.

“It’s slippery here,” said Ivor, scuffing his soles to illustrate the point. “If you fell and hit your head, you’d drown without anyone knowing. Even if you called
out for help, most likely no one would hear.”

The sea released a sudden, hungry rumble.

“What did you mean about having an understanding with him?” Barney asked. “Krawiec.”

“We see through people. And we’re both good at keeping our mouths shut.”

Belinda snorted.

“If only you knew,” said Ivor.

“So tell us. Who have you seen through?”

“Henry Cray,” said Barney.

Ivor looked at him. “Cray was a kid. He had nothing to hide.”

“Who then? Doc Dower?”

“My father?” said Belinda.

“Ratty?”

Ivor looked away.

“Swift,” said Barney at last. “That’s why you wanted to change tutors.”

“Who told you that?”

Now it was Barney’s turn to stare out to sea. “Littlejohn.”

“Liar.”

“So what’s Swift got to hide?”

“Weakness. A guilty conscience.”

“For what?” asked Belinda.

“I don’t know. All I know is that he tried to top himself. Here, in fact.” Ivor kicked a stone down to the water. “Four years ago now: I was in the First.”

“That’s when I started at St Mary’s,” said Belinda.

Ivor frowned. “You can’t have been old enough.”

“I was almost ten. Mother was ill.”

“Get back to Swift,” said Barney.

“Krawiec’s the only other person who knew. ‘Just as well for her, he failed’: that’s what he told me.”

“Just as well for who?” asked Barney.

“God knows. A lover.”

They stared at the water, lost in their own thoughts.

“I’m not hungry. I think I’ll go back now,” said Belinda at last.

“Me too,” said Barney.

They began to pack their satchels as Ivor drained the remains of Krawiec’s wine. Suddenly he leapt to his feet. “Listen. For God’s sake,
listen
.”

They stood stock-still, straining after what Ivor had heard through the sound of the waves worrying the shoreline.

“Do you hear them coming through the forest?” Ivor shambled closer to the rock face. “Can you hear what they are saying?”

Again, they listened.

“
We will eat you if we can
,” said Ivor. “
We will eat you if we can
…”

“Come on,” said Barney to Belinda. He slung both their satchels over his shoulder and offered her his hand. “Watch your step.”

“We can’t just leave him in that state,” said Belinda. “He’s drunk.”

“We can.”

“Try it,” said Ivor, hurling himself at Barney and pinning him against the rock face. “Just try and leave me.” His breath was hot and sweet. “Do you know what we do
with spies, Holland?”

“Get off,” said Barney.

“Shan’t. You’ll stay there until you tell me.”

“What are you talking about?” said Belinda, who was regarding them with a frightened look.

“Nothing to worry about,” said Ivor. “Follow the breadcrumb trail.”