The White Devil (17 page)

“Quite right,” said Dr. Kahn, coolly.

“You’re humoring me. I did everything I could for him, Judy,” he said. “I took him to the bloody morgue.”

“I know.”

“And still I get the blame! What am I doing wrong?”

“You’re being,” Dr. Kahn said, in answer, “a selfish, narcissistic prick.”

He sat up straight, stung.

“Really.”

“Yes, really.”

“Would you be so kind as to explain?”

“A boy died, Piers.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“What do we do when other people die?”

“We drink ourselves silly.”

“Yes. And we make it all about us, and we make it a big drama involving the headmaster, and we spend a lot of time whinging about how it’s going to affect our poetry,” she said acidly.

“Ouch,” said Fawkes.

“What do
other
people do when their loved ones die?” She repeated the question rhetorically.

“I haven’t the foggiest. Weep. Ululate. Tear their hair out.”

“No one close to you has died?”

“My dad, some years ago.”

“And?”

“I went on a bender. I drank and fucked everything in sight for six weeks. I gained ten pounds. I got herpes,” he added. “So I’m maturing.”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “The word I’m searching for is
mourning
, Piers.”

“
I’ll be that light, unmeaning thing
,” he intoned, “
that smiles with all, and weeps with none
.”

“Quotations. You’re a bag of them. But you’re all ashes and straw inside.”

“Ashes and straw. I’m going to use that.”

“To mourn is a transitive verb. You should appreciate that, at least. You mourn
someone
. Have you mourned Theo Ryder?”

“I barely knew him,” he grunted.

“He was a boy in
your house
.” Dr. Kahn watched him. Fawkes’s face hung slack. Puffy, pale, spotty. He did look ill, and miserable. “You cared for him. In every sense.”

“Did I?”

“You did,” she said emphatically. “You did a fine job.”

“Thank you, Judy.”

“But we’re still talking about you, aren’t we?”

“I barely knew him!” He threw up his hands.

She changed tack. “When Jute put you on probation, why did you decide to stop drinking? Why not just go on another bender?”

“I need to finish the play,” he mumbled.

“Because you’re better than Jute thinks. You said it yourself. You did everything you could for Theo, and if you quit now, you’re the housemaster who
let
a boy die in his house, who couldn’t cope. And that’s not you. And you’ve got boys relying on you now, who need you. Andrew Taylor. What did you call him? A beggar? An urchin?”

“Orphan.”

“He’s Oliver Twist, holding out his bowl, begging. You’re not the kind to walk away. You think you are. But you’re not, really.”

“Andrew Taylor is merely a means for me to understand Byron better,” Fawkes said coldly, stubbing out his umpteenth cigarette of the day. “I want this ghost business to pan out. I want to use it for the play. If not in the actual plot, then to get the play published. Andrew is the lynchpin.”

“Surely even you are not that mercenary?” Dr. Kahn eyed him searchingly. “Are you?” He did not answer. “Tell me you’re joking, Piers. That’s a despicable way to treat someone.”

He avoided her gaze. “Of course I’m joking.”

“Are you helping him?”

“I’m helping him with his research,” he said.

She shook her head. “You need to do more. He’s suffering. He’s your next Theo, Piers. But this one, you
can
save.”

“Me? Save someone else?”

“I know. It sounds improbable.”

Fawkes slurped the sugar sludge from the bottom of his teacup and set the cup down with a shaking hand.

“How long has it been since you’ve had a drink?” she asked, with sympathy.

“Forty-six hours.” He glanced at the clock. “And forty-one minutes.”

“You made that decision on your own, Piers. You knew you had to change. That means you’re doing it already. I have faith in you.”

“I feel a hundred years old.”

“You look awful,” she acknowledged.

“Thanks,” he drawled sarcastically. Then added: “Cunt.”

She smiled. “Give me one of those.” She reached over and lit herself a cigarette.

“What if I’m not cut out for it?” he said at last.

“Cut out for what?”

“For being . . . you know.
Caring
. Being
a human being
.”

“Of course you are. We all are.”

“You’re not,” he said accusingly.

“What an awful thing to say!”

“You and your archives,” he continued. “Barking at your assistants, frightening the boys to death. Guarding your library like an ogre.”

“You’re calling me an ogre now!”

“Maybe some people are just not cut out to be with other people,” he concluded.

They both reached for their tea and sipped.

“Well,” she said, after a silence, “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Their gazes met, and held. Fawkes’s frown melted into a reluctant smile.

12

Essay Club

“TAYLOR.”

The voice was a commanding tenor, nasal, even though it came from the great round rib cage of Sir Alan Vine. The other boys cast sidelong glances at Andrew, as they might at a traffic accident, before they filed out of the Leaf Schools classroom with their hats cocked and their green-and-white Harrow-issue notebooks in hand. Andrew watched them enviously.

“Sit.” Sir Alan held out a hand toward an empty desk.

Andrew squeezed into it. The desks were designed for your average fourteen-year-old. Sir Alan remained standing. He leaned against the podium on the shallow dais from which he taught. He wore a grey suit under his black beak’s robes.

“I don’t know you well, Taylor,” he began. “But I’d like to have a talk.” He crossed to the classroom door and closed it. “Just the two of us, for a moment.”

Andrew gulped. Persephone. Sir Alan had found out about their plans for Saturday, he was sure of it.

The night before, Andrew had received a series of texts:

My mum’s house in Hampstead will be empty this weekend. Care to join me? Discretion, discretion. Sir A need not know. Her name so you don’t cock it up is Fidias. Don’t call her fiddy-ass in your American accent. Fee THEE ES.

He had read the texts voraciously, reading each one as if it were a novel. Begun an obsessive imagining, of seeing Persephone boldly naked, of wrapping up in sheets with her like man and wife, of exercising independence in ways such as: watching a DVD; ordering takeout; not having seventy-nine boys tussling around you, sharing your table, crapping in your toilet, leaving scum on the bathroom floor for you to rub your toes in as you shower. He knew she would be better alone, not furtively ducking in and out of classrooms and dorm rooms but romping around in a whole house. Letting her great eyes blink at him the way they did, letting that strange womanly quality pour over him . . . Anyway. Fuck. Now it was ruined. They were busted.

“Sure, what’s up?” Andrew asked, trying to sound braver than he felt.

Sir Alan winced at the familiarity of his tone, but shrugged it off. “I’m concerned,” he said. “About you.”

“Why?”

“It’s an adjustment coming to a new school, a new country. And you’ve come to it in most unusual circumstances. It’s not every day a Sixth Former dies at Harrow.”

Andrew looked down.

“I knew Theo Ryder,” Sir Alan continued, pensively. “I taught him for his O-Levels. Not the best scholar. But a good temperament. He would have done well. Despite what we project to our students here, being proficient in lessons is not always the greatest indicator of success. Sport is better. Means you’re competitive, you like to win, you can handle being bruised and buffeted. It means you can be a leader. There are others here, and not just the students, who fail that same test.”

Andrew waited. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? That I should get more involved in sports?”

Sir Alan’s eyebrows rose. Andrew’s tone was even, but there was something insolent about his question. “Not sport. I want to talk to you about your housemaster. Piers Fawkes.”

Andrew looked up in surprise.

“Mr. Fawkes is a poet.” Sir Alan let that hang there, his pause casting a shadow over the word. “Which is all very well. I was a solicitor before I became a teacher. We each have our crosses to bear.” He grinned a wide, yellow smile. Andrew tried to smile in return but instead found himself noticing the tiny grey hairs growing along the bridge of Sir Alan’s nose, and the thicker ones tufting in his ears. “I am evaluating his performance as a housemaster.”

“Mr. Fawkes’s performance?”

“After Theo’s death, we have to inquire. Too much at stake, with eighty boys in a house. One chief concern, frankly, is his stability. It’s hard, when one of your boys suffers a tragedy like that. I have a daughter. As you know. And the thought of anything happening to her . . . well, it can undo even the strongest. I see that. But . . .” His tone rose higher, as if to disguise the significance of what came next: “I understand there is some business between you two, and . . . something about the Lot ghost. Can you explain that to me?”

Andrew stalled for time. “Business?”

But Sir Alan was too practiced a solicitor to fall for that. He clamped his mouth shut and stared fiercely back at Andrew, waiting for him to answer the original question.

“People in the house told me about the Lot ghost . . . ,” stammered Andrew.

“People?”

“Matron.”

“Go on.”

“So that’s how . . . that’s how I know about it.”

“Everyone knows about it,” persisted Sir Alan. “I want to know what you have to do with it. In particular.”

Andrew felt his face flush. “On my first day,” he said, “Matron gave me a tour of the Lot, and I thought I felt something in the basement.”

“Something like?”

“Just . . . a shiver. Gave me the creeps, that’s all.”

“Did you see a ghost?”

“I was jet-lagged,” Andrew said quickly. “I guess I got kind of scared.”

“How did Fawkes get involved?” he asked.

“I told him. He was concerned.”

“You told him about the ghost?” Sir Alan grew animated. “Did he believe you?”

“Sir?”

“You said he was concerned. Is that why? Because he believed you had seen a ghost?”

“He thought I was stressed from . . . you know . . . from Theo dying.” Andrew added: “He was concerned about me.”

“He thought you saw the ghost . . . because you were stressed from Theo dying.”

“That’s correct, sir.” It was a darned good version of things. Andrew was proud of himself for packaging it up this way.

“But the first day,” Sir Alan continued, “Theo was not dead yet.”

Andrew opened his mouth.

“So you did not see the ghost due to stress.”

Andrew hesitated. “Well, I told Mr. Fawkes later. After Theo died.”

“You had continued to see a ghost all that time, then?”

“No,” Andrew mumbled. “Just . . . you know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

Andrew said nothing. Sir Alan chose a new approach.

“Explain to me how you both came to smash the walls of the basement in the Lot. Before you answer, you should know I have accounts from six different boys in the Lot that you and Fawkes were chasing a ghost.”

“Chasing a ghost? What does that mean?”

“You tell me.”

“
You
said it.”

Sir Alan smelled blood now and did not back down. “The two of you ordered workmen to smash down a wall. Why?”

“I had heard there were some old underground rooms in the Lot.”

“
You
had? And then you told Fawkes?”

Andrew desperately tried to think of all the angles—why he should or shouldn’t answer this. But there wasn’t time. “Yes,” he said, his face growing hotter.

“And this wall smashing was linked to the ghost.”

“No.”

“You heard there were old rooms in the Lot. Heard from whom?”

“M-Matron,” Andrew invented.

“Do you think if I asked Matron to confirm what you’ve just said, she would do so?”

Andrew swallowed. “I don’t know.”

Sir Alan fell silent. “You’re lying, Taylor,” he said after a moment. “My daughter tells me you have a dodgy reputation in the school already, and now I see your character for myself.”

Andrew’s world was rocked. Persephone had told her father, about him? Told him bad things?

“You’re a practiced liar, the worst to catch out. Not because the facts are so very hard to track down, but because of your demeanor. You more than half believe what you say, because you feel you need to to survive. And you’ll cling to the lies until the last moment. I’ve seen it many times. A sign of a character that’s already compromised. I’ve heard about you. About the drugs.” He paused. “Seen the record. You know we have a zero tolerance policy. You know that if you were to touch drugs here, you would go
straight home
.” Sir Alan leaned over Andrew now, his face close enough for Andrew to smell his coffee breath. “It’s unfortunate that you feel you need to lie to me. But that’s how it is sometimes. Boys don’t respect a master’s authority. After all, we’re just the staff to them. One might, as a master, feel inclined to phone home, to parents, to procure the extra backing required. But even that is a slippery slope. Boys can be so spoiled, you see, the parents so deluded as to their character, that the power balance can go the other way. Then it’s two against one.”

Andrew had a hard time imagining his father taking sides against Sir Alan; Sir Alan seemed like his father’s kind of guy.

“I’ve made that mistake, and I won’t again,” Sir Alan was saying. “I prefer a different approach. Serve a letter of warning first. That the boy in question is a proven
liar,
and as such, that boy faces expulsion from the school. Then wait for the parents to become engaged. A blot on their dear boy’s record! Oh, they get to the heart of the matter very quickly, and I either have a problem student to worry about, or I don’t.” Sir Alan sneered at Andrew triumphantly. “I will send that letter to your parents, Andrew. I will have you thrown out of this school.”

“For what?” Andrew replied, frustration and anger growing.

“For lying,” he thundered. “For destroying school property. For ruining morale. For frightening the youngest boys. This isn’t America, where students sue their schools. I have maximum discretion.”

Andrew saw himself getting off the plane at JFK.

You make this good or we’re through with you

“But it needn’t come to that, Andrew,” sighed Sir Alan. He moved to Andrew’s side and squeezed his thick frame into one of the little desks next to him. “It needn’t. I become passionate defending my school because I feel a need to preserve it, improve it. We need the best people possible taking care of the boys. Fawkes,” he added, “is just wrong for the role. That’s all. I don’t want to ruin his career. He’s already more successful than I’ll ever be, as a poet,” he said, sounding disingenuous. “But a housemaster? I think not.” Sir Alan put a hand on Andrew’s arm. Andrew stared at it. “All you have to do”—
squeeze, squeeze
; Sir Alan had a mighty grip—“is tell me the accurate truth of what happened in the Lot with the ghost.” Three more squeezes. Then he leaned over and tilted his head so he could look Andrew straight in the eye.

“Is Mr. Fawkes in trouble, sir?”

“Possibly. I must find out the truth.”

“He’s a good housemaster,” said Andrew, not quite believing it. “For people like me, anyway.”

“What kind of people is that?”

“I don’t know. Artistic.”

“Wasn’t Theo Ryder artistic enough, then?” Sir Alan said heavily.

Andrew suddenly had had enough.

“I’ve got to go, sir.” He extricated himself from the desk. “I’ll try and remember more. I really will. What’s the best way to be in touch with you? Just come by Headland? Okay. I’ll be sure to. Thank you, sir.”

Andrew fled the Leaf Schools before Sir Alan could stop him, and trudged up the Hill in a blindness of worry and isolation.

“ARE THE WEALTH-CREATING
powers of a truly global economy now proved?” The upper-class English accent, rich and arrogant, plucked the words like the strings of a lugubrious harp. “Or do we merely live in a borderless world that allows contagion of all varieties to spread further, faster? The meltdown of the global banking system. Civil war and cross-border conflict. Pandemics such as AIDS, SARS, bird flu, swine flu. Or the more serious threats to civilization.” The voice paused for effect: “
Pop Idol
and its many spin-offs.”

An appreciative chuckle passed around the room.

They sat around the oval table. Twelve boys, men, and women. The boys—Sixth Formers—wore their tailcoats; the men and women wore suits. In the center of the table—an old one, its wood softened by decades of use—stood two candelabra. The flames stood tall. The faces around the table glowed a pinkish orange in that light, and their dark clothing seemed to thicken to a chiaroscuro black, as if the group had been gathered, not for a group photo, but for a group etching—and they quivered there together under a sketching hand and the flickering light. Before each member sat a silver goblet that had been filled with Madeira. At the head of the table, a boy with long limbs and fingers and deliberate movements that gave him the air of being a giant praying mantis with a forelock, read from a typed essay, flipping pages as he went.

Andrew found the candles mesmerizing. It was the same room he and Persephone had wandered into several nights before. But the room had been transformed, filled now with purpose, as if these figures sitting here were part of a brotherhood, a cabal, lined up against the darkness that lay below them in the wild green of Harrow Park, and they were the tenders of the light. A Madeira bottle, crusty and green, had been set on a silver tray to the side. Even the quotation on the board had changed:

NOCTES ATQUE DIES PATET ATRI IANUA DITIS

Essay Club is by invitation only
, Fawkes had explained, as they had walked together from the Lot, Fawkes in a suit, Andrew in his tailcoat;
for the more serious scholars. Members write essays, one hour in length, thoroughly researched. Judy’s the faculty advisor,
Fawkes added.
She told me to invite you. You must have impressed her when you came to see her at the library.
Andrew recognized the students from his classes: Scroop Wallace from Ancient History (with spiky hair and an eccentric’s hunch); Domenick Beekin from English (skinny-necked and tiny-headed, a human heron); Nick Antoniades, also from English (swarthy, compact, and confident); and Rupert Askew, the boy currently reading his essay in a plummy accent.

The adults included Sir Alan Vine, leaning his elbows on the table with his bald head held low, with his spectacles and his flared nostrils, like a lineman preparing to charge. Piers Fawkes sat two spots from Andrew. He had seemed jumpy on the walk over; his face was pale, his upper lip damp. He had waved off the Madeira when they first sat down, but doing so seemed to have deprived Fawkes of the benefit of the force of gravity. He clutched the table as if he might be sucked unexpectedly into the sky; he kept noisily unwrapping butterscotch candies and rolling them against his teeth. Sir Alan stared at him ferociously for this.
Do you mind, Piers?
he had snapped, at last. Mr. Toombs, the Classics beak—thin, kindly, nervous, sibilant—in whose schoolroom they all were, sat smiling, listening to Rupert Askew talk about mutating avian flu viruses. And next to the speaker sat Dr. Kahn. With Mr. Toombs, she was the host of Essay Club. She too had been attentive to Askew for a time. But now Andrew noticed her staring at him, peering as if she saw something she did not like.