Wilberforce (41 page)

—Good night, sir, Pearl minor began.

John seized him by the collar and dragged him inside the Tower. At the bottom of the stairs, John surveyed him. Bruises were coming up around both eyes. Several cuts on his cheek required attention. The abnormal shape of his nose explained the gore insufficiently wiped from his face.

—If I ask who did this, John said, I don't suppose you'll tell me.

Pearl minor replied with steely silence. John took the boy's head and examined it quickly for lumps and gashes. None, thankfully. The nose, however … he steadied Pearl minor's head and positioned his hand against the boy's nose.

—Deep breath.

A snap. The boy yelped. John released him.

—That's better, John said.

Pearl minor was gasping in surprise and pain, but breathing itself seemed a trial. John took his shoulder and probed his rib cage. The boy yelped again.

—Please, sir, can't I go?

—You can go to Matron. That's one broken rib, at least.

The boy's face darkened with frustration and something like resentment. John started to leave, but then turned back and snatched Pearl's wrists. They were bruised, but the boy's hands showed no sign of trauma.

—Why didn't you fight back?

John kept his voice neutral, as if he were only inquiring into a choice of vocabulary for a composition. Pearl stared stubbornly at the floor. John released his wrists but blocked his escape.

—Why would a boy who took a thrashing like this not defend himself? John asked aloud. He might have been too afraid. But then, a boy who had the nerve to lie to S-K about the events I believe they call the Fags' Rebellion—

Pearl minor glanced up despite himself.

—That is not a boy who lacks courage.

He searched Pearl's face, imagining himself in the boy's place.

—Unless he held you down?

The boy replied with a fierce scowl, and John blanched. Whatever would drive Wilberforce to such savagery?

—You interfered with what he had planned, didn't you?

—Wilberforce
told
you?

John crossed his arms.

—Wilberforce didn't tell me. You did, just now.

Pearl minor looked at him with a mixture of horror, humiliation, and utter disorientation. John capitalized:

—Matron, now. Any detours and I'll hear of it. Go.

Miraculously, Pearl went.

*   *   *

The day could not get any worse. His head was still tormenting him, and he wanted more than anything to go rest in his classroom. Instead, he marched himself to the cloisters. A group of boys who'd stayed back from the Ramble were lounging there. Not seeing Wilberforce or Kilby, John barged into the washroom, where Wilberforce was drying his face. The blood had stopped. Aside from the redness on his cheek, no one would guess what had happened outside the barn.

—Kilby, I'll take over from here, thank you.

—Sir, I think I ought to—

—You've done a capital job, Kilby. Good night.

With that, John strode from the washroom, Wilberforce in tow.

Wilberforce let John drag him to Burton-Lee's House. John realized that he ought to have taken a moment to smarten himself up, but it was too late now. He knew he ought to say something to Wilberforce, something important and morally astringent, but they'd arrived at Burton's door. This was going to be unpleasant.

John reminded himself that since no one was poised to expire, the evening could not actually get worse. It would get worse for Wilberforce, but John and Wilberforce were not the same person, and in the last analysis—the first analysis!—Wilberforce deserved everything headed his way, up to and including expulsion.

He released the boy's arm. Wilberforce straightened his jacket and the tie he had produced whilst in the washroom. His hands shook. John's chest hurt. Would expulsion really be necessary? He knocked.

—Come!

Of course it was necessary. This boy had done appalling things. So appalling, John could not even connect them with the trembling boy beside him. He took a breath. Wilberforce took a breath. No one was dying. Things couldn't get worse. They stepped into the study.

*   *   *

Things got worse.

Burton greeted them jovially:

—Ah, there you are, Wilberforce. The Ramble's returned?

Wilberforce stood like an animal in the headlamps of an oncoming motorcar. Burton gave John one of his smiles designed to convey the maximum courtesy with the minimum warmth.

—Here you are, Grieves.

His tone made it clear John was intruding. Several of the gray gentlemen from the Board were still with him.

—I was delivering Wilberforce to you, John said.

Burton smiled again, puzzled, polite.

—Thank you.

He turned warmly to Wilberforce:

—And here is the hero of our XI. One or two people have been asking to make your acquaintance, young man.

As Burton drew an unwilling Wilberforce into the room, John saw that not only had things got worse, they had got much worse than he could have imagined.
Bad
and
worse
were mere words, but standing before the window, glass in hand, smiling curiously across the room was the person, the one John refused to think of, the dyed-in-the-wool catastrophe that now engulfed him.

—Stinging right arm you've got, said a gray man.

John struggled to recall which one he was. Chairman of the Board, or had that been another? They'd been introduced, so John couldn't possibly ask for a name now. Was it something to do with coveralls?

—Are you as much of a sergeant major in the form room as on the pitch? the man continued.

The other men chuckled. John sensed there had been a misunderstanding. An ice pick was boring into his skull.

—If that's everything, John said to Burton, I'll leave you.

—Don't be silly. What will you drink?

He could feel himself starting to panic. The room was hot and he couldn't breathe. Burton drew him aside.

—Are you quite all right?

—No. I mean of course, but not exactly. Something's happened.

—What?

John thought his throat might be closing up.

—It's Wilberforce. It's complicated.

—What? Burton demanded.

—It's awkward. I'll come back later once you're quite alone.

Burton drew him farther from the group.

—I sent for the pair of you. The Board wanted to meet the two who so impressed them this afternoon.

—You sent for me?

Burton was making no sense at all.

—What's he doing here? John blurted.

Burton didn't ask whom he meant. He drew the kind of breath that meant he was struggling to keep his temper.

—Awkward, Burton replied. But pull yourself together. I need you.

He led John back to the gray men, who were questioning a flustered Wilberforce. Then the person broke into their midst to hand Wilberforce a glass of lemonade.

—Scotch, Grieves? the person asked.

Was there no way he could escape, even for a moment to use the toilet? Burton turned the brooking-no-refusal look on him. John decided to ignore the person and instead address Wilberforce.

—Did you say good evening to these gentlemen?

This prompted a flurry of introductions. John listened carefully as the gray man gave his name. Overall! He'd been close. He was the Chairman, then. Burton had the grace to slip around to the sideboard and pour John a lemonade. That disposed of the person. How dare that person offer John scotch, as if he knew John's drink, as if John were the same person he had been when he did drink scotch?

John took the lemonade and pretended to sip it. As the men quizzed Wilberforce on his batting, his father, and his people, John concentrated on his breathing, remembering to do it, regularly, and to an appropriate depth. He glued his gaze to the faces of the gray men, avoiding Wilberforce, avoiding the person. He simply couldn't fathom what the person was doing there, and without that knowledge, he had no way of guessing when the person might depart. Was it possible the person was included in Burton's supper party? Clearly it was possible. The last trains had gone.

Conversation stopped. They all looked at him. The person laughed:

—You haven't changed a bit, John. Not a single bit.

—I've changed immeasurably.

The person laughed again. They all laughed.

—Sebastian tells us you were at Marlborough together, Overall said.

—Grieves was a year above me in the House.

—And did he bowl like that when you were boys?

—He's improved.

Burton refilled their glasses.

—And are you Housemaster of that House? Burton asked the person.

John's teeth twinged to their roots. Surely everyone could hear the acid in Burton's question? Instead of ruffled feathers, however, another laugh and obsequious echo.

—That would take some getting used to, the person replied. No, I'm at—

He named another House at their former school. Overall carried on in this vein, quizzing the person about his post as if for the purpose of enlightening John. Burton was nodding as if he had heard it all before, his jaw set so tight that John wondered how the enamel on his teeth was faring. Evidently the person was a Housemaster at Marlborough. He was the youngest Housemaster since someone in the past century, whose name John promptly forgot. His reputation, Overall informed them, preceded him. Before Marlborough he'd been at Trinity. It was all so exceedingly satisfactory that John wondered why Burton was acting as if it were taking every ounce of his strength not to hurl his glass at someone's head.

—So, Overall said, what do you think of our humble Academy, Sebastian?

—It's delightful.

Revived by lemonade, Wilberforce joined the conversation, demonstrating full command of the names in the room:

—Mr. Overall, is Dr. Sebastian joining the Board?

Sebastian laughed again, as did his minions.

—This simply makes no sense, John blurted. Whatever you're playing at, I've had enough.

Burton looked aghast, but John realized that he was indeed tired of being knocked about by other people's whims. He'd done everything asked of him in managing the wretched Old Boys. He'd bowled one of the best games of his life, not that they'd any notion, and probably given himself arthritis doing it. He'd been dragged against his will into the second-most-sordid debacle in the history of the Academy and still faced the ordeal of unfolding it to Burton, if only he could extricate the man from the demonic Board. Now to be forced to stand about Burton's study drinking lemonade beside Morgan Wilberforce—the most compromised boy in the county, at least!—beside a cluster of tedious old men, and beside Jamie Sebastian, who had no business there whatsoever and who appeared to be part of an elaborate, unhumorous cod—it was more than anyone could or should endure.

—May I have a word? Burton asked Overall.

The chairman of the Board stepped with Burton into a quiet corner. The other two gray men began speaking at once, addressing themselves to Wilberforce and probing his opinion of Hobbs and his centuries. Wilberforce's discomfort seemed to dissolve once asked to comment on cricket. John squinted at the intruder, as if glowering would provoke an explanation. Sebastian dropped the light, easy manner and replaced it with something more tentative. He sidled near to John and spoke in an undertone:

—I was most terribly sorry to hear about your father.

John flushed to the core.

—I beg your pardon!

—I would have come to the funeral, but we were told it was family only, so …

John choked on air. For Sebastian to speak of matters that had been so thoroughly banned! How could he even respond? And what was this subterfuge growing within him: the temptation to speak of it with someone who had known his father, someone who had in fact seen his father alive more recently than John had himself, someone who'd known his father before everything went wrong.

—We didn't know what had become of you, Jamie continued outrageously.

It wasn't clear whether the first-person plural stood for Jamie alone, or if it signified himself and the Bishop, or perhaps himself, his sisters, and the Bishop.

—I'm alive and well, you'll be chagrined to learn, John said bitterly.

Jamie smiled slightly, an expression full of sadness, regret, and an unendurable pity.

—Overall says you came here after the War?

John nodded mutely.

—Until I read your father's obit, I wondered if you hadn't perhaps died in it.

Jamie hesitated, realizing his gaffe, for if he had not known whether John was alive or dead, then John's father must never have spoken of him after he became a conscientious objector. John knew from the maiden aunts that his father had retained ties with the Bishop after severing them with John. Jamie tried to recover:

—So you see it was a great surprise when I arrived today and learned that the Common Room included you of all people. It's made deliberations easier.

—What deliberations?

Jamie looked abashed again, having apparently stepped into another quagmire.

—Look, John said severely, this has been a most appalling day. I don't like being toyed with. It's inhumane.

Jamie winced, nearly:

—I'll have to leave explanation to our esteemed Chairman.

Overall and Burton were returning, Burton looking yet again as if he would explode like an overblown balloon. He detached Wilberforce from the group and dismissed him for the evening.

—No, John interrupted, wait—there's—can I speak to you, please, for a moment?

Burton sighed heavily and allowed John to buttonhole him.

—Can you send this lot off to look at the chapel? John asked. Wilberforce needs a quarter of an hour of your undivided attention.

—No, I cannot send them off—

—Do you have any idea where I found him, and with whom?