The Perils and Dangers of this Night (14 page)

Pryce struck the ground with the spade, winced at the
jarring in his wrists and struck again. He'd taken off
his coat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and now he
was working hard. Dr Kemp and Sophie and I watched.

It was a cold, grey morning. Unlike the previous
mornings, the sun had not pierced the cloud and broken
through, so the icy breath of night still hung in the
woodland. The sky lowered on a strangely silent world.
A silvery mist drifted and swirled in the treetops.

After a while, Pryce stood back and wiped his brow.
He'd managed to make a considerable hole; having
forced a way into the rock-hard earth at the surface, he'd
hit a seam of softer soil and was cutting deeper with every
blow. We were underneath the copper beech. The dog lay
nearby. Kemp had draped the body with a sheet, for
decorousness, to protect it from the crows, and to
smother the smell.

Kemp stamped his feet and blew on his fingers. He
looked older, I remember thinking as I glanced at the
headmaster; in a matter of days he seemed to have bowed
and shrunk, so that the brown jacket hung loosely on his
frame and his trilby was almost ridiculous, a size too big.
His eyes were watery. His nostrils were chapped and
blue; his nose dripped and he did nothing to stop it. His
skin was mottled grey, as though the blood had drained
from it. Like the sunless, lifeless morning, the pallor of
winter was on him.

Or maybe it was the contrast he made with Pryce. The
young man was burning with energy. Hot, strong, plying
the spade quite easily now that he'd broken through the
crust and into the yielding mulch that lay beneath, he'd
hit a steady swinging rhythm. His youth gleamed on him
and around him, the aura of his maleness. He tossed back
his hair, swept us three shivering spectators with a
glittering smile, and attacked the ground again.

'It doesn't have to be too deep,' the headmaster said. 'I
think you've done enough already.'

'We don't want anyone to find him,' Pryce said. His
breath smoked. 'I mean, with a winter as hard as this,
maybe a fox or a badger will get the scent and try to dig
him out.'

He looked into the mist, and we all followed his eyes.
In the forest, where the smooth whiteness of the lawn
petered into tangled undergrowth, the crows were perched
high up, watching. They made not a sound. They
gripped and swayed with the creaking movement of the
branches, but they themselves were motionless, like
pieces of iron welded to the gantry of the trees.

'They're hungry,' he said. 'It's best if he goes good and
deep.'

A shot rang out. The birds beat into the air and flapped
away, over the roof of the school and into the distance.
Pryce jumped and stared around. 'Who's that?' he
blurted, unusually startled. 'Who's out there?'

'It's the gamekeeper,' Kemp said. 'He . . .'

'A gamekeeper?' Pryce said. 'There was never a gamekeeper!'

Kemp stared at him queerly. I looked at him sideways;
still numb after the scene I'd witnessed the previous night,
quite unable to meet Pryce's eyes, I was nevertheless
surprised to see how discomfited he was. Pryce glared at
me, and I ducked my head. Sophie, who'd stood frozen
and mute ever since we'd all trooped onto the lawn,
started to say, 'A gamek-k-keeper? Maybe he c-c-can . . .'

Pryce cut her off. 'No, Sophie . . .'

'There is a gamekeeper,' the headmaster said firmly. It
was uncanny to see how quickly he asserted a shred of
his authority the instant he saw that Pryce was rattled.
'His name's Roly, he works for one of the farmers.'

'Has he got a t-t-tractor or something?' the girl tried
again. 'Maybe he c-c-can . . .'

'No, Sophie.' Pryce stared her out. Then, more gently,
'Sophie my love, we don't need anyone.'

Kemp shrugged. 'Whether we need anyone or not, it's
no good asking Roly. He's a surly old fellow, just
banging around the woods with a shotgun or festering in
his caravan. He wouldn't put himself out for anybody.'

Another shot. The sound echoed in the icy forest and
faded to nothing. 'He's further away this time,' Pryce
said. 'Good.'

There was a longer silence. Pryce rubbed the palms of his hands
together and turned to the hole he was making. The blade of the spade sliced
deeply, keenly, into brown earth.

Kemp pulled the sheet off the dog's body. He tried to do
it in a dignified and respectful way, but it snagged on one
of the hind legs, which had stiffened at an odd, unlifelike
angle. With his hand to his mouth, he bent close and
freed the sheet and took it right off. He snapped the sheet
open and laid it into the hole.

'Would you help me?'

Pryce nodded, and together they lifted the dog from the
ground and lowered it onto the sheet. There was only a
faint whiff of decay. The body was frozen hard, locked
in rigor mortis. The dog stared obliquely at the sky, its
mouth set into a twisted snarl; the tongue had stiffened
into a long grey blade. Pryce stood back.

The headmaster knelt to the grave. He stroked the
dog's head. He took hold of one of its paws and squeezed
it hard, in the way that only a loving owner would do,
who knew every ridge and whorl of the pads, every notch
in the blunted claws, and could read in them all the miles
and years of walking they'd done together. Still holding
the foot, reluctant to let go, he gazed around the lawn
and into the forest, into the branches of the copper beech.

At last he whispered, 'This is a good place for you,
Wagner, it's your place.' He stood up with some difficulty,
for the cold was in his knees and his hips. 'It's our
place.'

He looked at Pryce and tried to lighten the moment.
'It's a mighty big hole you've made. Big enough for me
as well, when the time comes.' He glanced back to the
school, where his wife moved dimly in one of the upstairs
windows. 'For both of us.'

He read not a glimmer of warmth in the young man's
eyes. With a lift of his brows and a movement of his hand
to the spade, Pryce merely asked if he should start to
close the grave. Dr Kemp pursed his lips, and his mottled
face set in a look of determination. 'I'll do it,' he said. 'I
wish I could have dug the hole myself. I'll fill it in even if
it kills me.'

He took the spade from Pryce. 'Don't judge us too
harshly,' he said. 'We've always done our best for all the
boys who've been at Foxwood. That includes you.'

Still Pryce said nothing. He reached for Sophie's hand,
as though to lead her away from the grave and back to
the house. But she recoiled, and, in a quick, instinctive
movement, she stepped to the headmaster, folded her
arms around him and hugged him.

His body seemed to sag, all of a sudden, as though the
warmth of her embrace had thawed the aches and pains
from his bones. His eyes filled with tears. To cover his
embarrassment, he eased the girl away from him and
wiped his face. 'Thank you, thank you,' he murmured.
He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then
peered blearily into the treetops for something to say. As
a clumsy non-sequitur, he added, 'It'll snow again. It's
Christmas.'

Pryce and Sophie trudged across the lawn. Kemp
leaned into the grave and folded the sides of the sheet
over the dog, shrouding it completely. I waited a moment
for the headmaster to say that he needed help or give me
permission to go, but he seemed to have forgotten that I
was there. I moved away as quietly as I could.

When I reached the corner of the building, I paused and looked
back. Dr Kemp had taken off his jacket and thrown his hat onto the ground
and was shovelling the earth into the hole – a small, dark figure against
the silvery woodland, under the spreading boughs of the tree, beneath a leaden
sky.

Sophie moved along the downstairs corridor. She'd come
down the boys' staircase, on her own. It was only five
o'clock in the afternoon, but it could have been midnight,
the house was so dark. She must have thought the Kemps
were in their apartment at the top of the building, and
that I was moping upstairs or in the yard.

Utterly dismal, the silence and the chill, the musty
gloom. She padded up and down the unfamiliar ramps,
she slithered on the worn lino; she tiptoed past closed
wooden doors, past the iron grilles of the two lifts. She
hurried past doors which were ajar and whose
shadows exhaled a whiff of stale cigarette smoke, the
dust of a neglected library, the lingering smell of little
boys.

I'd been skulking in the library. I heard her come down
the stairs and go by.

When she reached the great hall the only light was the
glow of the embers in the hearth. I watched her as she felt
for the switch on the wall, found it, but then decided not
to turn on the lights. Instead she crossed to the fire,
fumbled and fumbled for something beside the walnut
cabinet of the record player, until at last her hand fell on
the telephone.

With a furtive glance around her and back to the grand
staircase, thinking she was quite alone, she picked up the
receiver and put it to her ear. I could hear the faint
humming from where I was hiding. She pressed down the
receiver bar and released it, but there was only a
humming, no dialling tone. She dialled a number, waited,
listened. She jiggled the bar impatiently, hissing
come on
come on
, and still there was nothing but a hum, worse
and more infuriating than silence: it was the sound of
somewhere faraway and out of reach.

'It still isn't working . . .'

Sophie whirled around at the sudden voice. She dropped
the receiver so hard that it banged on top of the
record player and fell towards the floor. Mrs Kemp
wheeled silently towards her. 'Still not working,' the
woman said, 'but I don't blame you for trying.'

Mrs Kemp pushed her way to the hearth. I knew she'd
been sitting at the window earlier in the afternoon, in the
far corner behind the great black bulk of the piano,
watching the grave of the dog: keeping a kind of vigil.
She must have stayed there into the evening, through all
the hours I'd been lurking in the library. From time to
time, I'd been drawn to the window too – no more snow,
not yet, although the sky had bulged with snow clouds
and threatened throughout the short hours of daylight –
until, in the sullen glimmer of dusk, the heap of earth was
the only mark on the lawn. It looked as though the dog
were still lying where we'd left it the day before. Yet I'd
seen the headmaster filling the hole and patting it smooth
with the flat of his spade, so I knew that Wagner was
safely sleeping where nothing and no one could disturb
him.

Alone in the lightless hall, Mrs Kemp had been sitting
and watching his grave.

'I'm sorry I frightened you,' she said to the girl. 'I was
sitting and thinking.' In the glow of the embers, her face
was thin and lined. Her fine hair looked dry. Her fingers
twitched at something in her lap, picking and unpicking.
She had the dog's brush in her hands and she was teasing
out a ball of hair.

She reached to the girl and took her by the wrist. 'I
don't blame you for trying,' she said urgently. 'For trying
to get out of here. I know you said your mother and
father were angry with you and you'd run away from
home, but it's Christmas, you should be with your family
and . . .'

'How can I? There's no phone, no car, no . . .' Sophie
winced at the strength of the woman's grip.

'Are you hurt?' the woman hissed. 'Is Martin hurting
you? You must get away from him! He's a bad bad man
. . .'

'How can I? I can't get out and I can't go home! It's too
late! We're both bad! It makes me sick to think about it!'

She suddenly knelt onto the floor and, taking hold of
both Mrs Kemp's hands, leaned forwards and pressed
them to her face in a sad, impulsive gesture, as if they
were the only comfort she could find in such a wretched
place.

'I thought Martin loved me,' she started, and then the
words came sobbing, spilling from her. 'At first he was
nice to me, he was nice and funny and – and then last
week, he took me to see his brother in his college rooms.
I didn't want to go but he made me, and it was horrible,
he . . .'

'Tell me, Sophie, go on, tell me,' the woman whispered
to her. 'Did he hurt you?'

'We drank a lot, we drank too much, the three of us –
until it was late and Martin crashed out somewhere and
left us on our own, me and Jeremy – and we were kissing
and it was nice and I thought it was OK and it was what
Martin wanted me to do . . .' She took a big gulping
breath, looked up at the woman and said, 'I thought it
was why he'd taken me to see Jeremy, to go with him
for the first time 'cos he'd never had a girl before, and so
we . . .'

She kissed the palms of the woman's hands. She was
confessing, she was begging forgiveness. Having gone so
far and said so much, she wanted – she needed – to go on.

'But then Martin woke up. He came in and saw us
together, me and Jeremy, and he – he just went crazy, I
couldn't stop him – it makes me sick . . .'

'Ah, there you are.' Pryce's voice cut through the
darkness, from the foot of the staircase. He crossed the
hall to the hearth, and he smiled at the woman and the
girl, as he saw Sophie let go of Mrs Kemp's hands and
get up from her knees. The light from the dying fire
gleamed on his teeth and the whites of his eyes. 'So,
what's this? A cosy chat? Not talking about me, I hope?'

Mrs Kemp flinched from him, ducking her head, and
her fingers worked fast and feverishly at the dog's brush.
Sophie said nothing, just smearing at her eyes with the
backs of her hands. The quiet was so intense that even a
fall of needles from the Christmas tree seemed suddenly
loud: so quiet that Pryce heard a very faint humming
from the fireside.

He saw the receiver of the telephone dangling on its
flex. His smile somehow froze, as charming as ever but
oddly crooked. 'Any luck with the phone? What's the
matter, Sophie? Don't you like it here?'