Gentlemen and Players

1

St. Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys

And here it is at last, in all its killing glory. Anarchy has descended on St. Oswald’s like a plague; boys missing; lessons disrupted; many of my colleagues out of school. Devine has been suspended pending further enquiry (this means I’m back in my old office, though rarely has a victory given me less joy); and Grachvogel; and Light. Still more are being questioned, including Robbie Roach, who is naming colleagues left, right, and center in the hope of diverting suspicion away from himself.

Bob Strange has made it clear that my own presence here is merely an emergency measure. According to Allen-Jones, whose mother is on the Board of Governors, my future was discussed at some length at the last Governors’ meeting, with Dr. Pooley, whose son I “assaulted,” calling for my immediate suspension. In the light of recent events (and most of all in the absence of Bishop) there was no one else to speak for me, and Bob has made it clear that only our exceptional circumstances have deferred this perfectly legitimate course of action.

I swore Allen-Jones to secrecy about the matter, of course—which means it will be all over the Middle School by now.

And to think we were so anxious about a school inspection only a few weeks ago. Now, we are a school in crisis. The police are still here and show no sign of ever being ready to leave. We teach in isolation. No one answers the phones. Waste bins remain un-emptied, floors unswept. Shuttleworth, the new Porter, refuses to work unless the school provides him with alternative accommodation. Bishop, who would have dealt with it, is no longer in any position to do so.

As for the boys, they too sense an imminent collapse. Sutcliff came into registration with a pocketful of firecrackers, causing the chaos you’d expect. In the world outside, there is little confidence in our ability to survive this crisis. A school is only ever as good as its last set of results, and unless we can pull back this disastrous term, I have little hope for this year’s A levels and GCSEs.

My fifth-form Latin set could probably manage, given that they finished the syllabus last year. But the Germans have suffered terribly this term, and the French, who are now missing two staff members—Tapi, who refuses to come back until her case has been resolved, and Pearman, still absent on compassionate leave—have little likelihood of catching up their lost ground. Other departments have similar problems; in some subjects whole modules of course work have not been delivered, and there is no one to take charge. The Head spends most of his time shut up in his office. Bob Strange has taken over Bishop’s duties, but with little success.

Fortunately, Marlene is still here, running things. She looks less glamorous now, more businesslike, her hair pulled back from her angular face in a no-nonsense bun. She has no time for gossip nowadays; she spends most of the day fielding complaints from parents and questions from the press, wanting to know the status of the police investigation.

Marlene, as always, handles it well—of course, she’s tougher than most. Nothing throws her. When her son died, causing a rift within her family that never healed, we gave Marlene a job and a vocation, and ever since, she has given St. Oswald’s her total loyalty.

Part of that was Bishop’s doing. It explains her devotion to him and the fact that she chose to work here, of all places. It can’t have been easy. But she never let it show. In fifteen years, she’s never had so much as a day’s absence. For Pat’s sake. Pat, who pulled her through.

Now he is in hospital, she tells me; he had some kind of an attack last night, probably brought on by stress. Managed to drive himself to Casualty, then collapsed in the waiting room and was transferred to a cardiac ward for observation.

“Still,” she said, “he’s in good hands. If only you’d seen him last night—” She paused, looking sternly into the middle distance, and I realized with some concern that Marlene was close to tears. “I should have stayed,” she said. “But he wouldn’t let me.”

“Yes. Hum.” I turned away, embarrassed. Of course it’s been a fairly open secret for years that Pat has more than a simply professional relationship with his secretary. Most of us couldn’t care less about this. Marlene, however, has always maintained the facade, probably because she still thinks that a scandal might damage Pat. The fact that she had alluded to it now—even obliquely—showed more than anything else how far things have come.

In a school like St. Oswald’s, nothing is insignificant; and I felt a sudden acute lurch of grief for the ones of us who are still left; the Old Guard; valiantly keeping to our posts while the future marches inexorably over us.

“If Pat leaves, I won’t stay,” she said at last, turning her emerald ring round and around her middle finger. “I’ll take a job in a solicitor’s office or something. If not, I’ll retire—in any case I’ll be sixty next year—” That too was news. Marlene has been forty-one for as long as I can remember.

“I’ve also considered the retirement option,” I said. “By the end of the year I’ll have scored my Century—that is, unless old Strange gets his way—”

“What? Quasimodo, leave the Bell Tower?”

“It had crossed my mind.” Over these past few weeks, in fact, it has done more than cross it. “It’s my birthday today,” I told her. “Can you believe it? Sixty-five years old.” She smiled, a little sadly. Dear Marlene. “Where did those birthdays go?”

With Pat gone, Bob Strange took this morning’s Middle School Assembly. I wouldn’t have recommended it; but with so many of the management team either absent or unavailable, Bob has decided to take it upon himself to bring our ship back into calmer waters. Rather a mistake, I thought at the time. Still, there’s no arguing with some people.

Of course, we all know that it isn’t Bob’s fault that Pat has been suspended. No one blames him for that; but the boys dislike the effortless ease with which he has slid into Bishop’s position. Bishop’s office, always open to anyone who needed him, is now shut. A buzzer device like the one on Devine’s door has been installed. Detentions and other punishments are dealt with bloodlessly and efficiently from this administrative hub, but the humanity and warmth that made Pat Bishop so acceptable is noticeably lacking in Strange.

The boys sense this and resent it, finding ever more ingenious ways to show up his failings in public. Unlike Pat, our Bob is not a man of action. A handful of firecrackers thrown under the Hall platform during Assembly served to demonstrate this; with the result that the Middle School spent half the morning sitting in silence in the Hall while Bob waited for someone to confess.

With Pat Bishop, the culprit would have owned up within five minutes, but then, most boys aim to please Pat Bishop. Bob Strange, with his cold manner and cartoon-Nazi tactics, is fair game.

“Sir? When’s Mr. Bishop coming back?”

“I said in silence, Sutcliff, or you will go and stand outside the Headmaster’s office.”

“Why, sir? Does he know?”

Bob Strange, who has not taught Middle School for over a decade, has no idea of how to deal with such a frontal attack. He does not realize how his crisp manner betrays his insecurity; how shouting simply makes things worse. He may be a fine administrator, but in the field of pastoral care, he’s shocking.

“Sutcliff, you’re in detention.”

“Yes, sir.”

I would have mistrusted Sutcliff’s grin; but Strange didn’t know him and simply went on digging himself deeper. “What’s more,” he said, “if the boy who threw those crackers doesn’t stand up right now, then the whole of the Middle School will be in detention for a month.”

A month? It was an impossible threat. Miragelike, it descended on the Assembly Hall, and a low, slow sound rippled through the Middle School.

“I shall count to ten,” announced Strange. “One. Two.”

Another ripple as Strange demonstrated his mathematical skills.

Sutcliff and Allen-Jones looked at each other.

“Three. Four.”

The boys stood up.

A moment’s silence.

My entire form followed them.

For a second, Strange goggled. It was superb; all of 3S standing to attention in a tight little phalanx: Sutcliff, Tayler, Allen-Jones, Adamczyk, McNair, Brasenose, Pink, Jackson, Almond, Niu, Anderton-Pullitt. All of my boys (except Knight, of course).

Then 3M (Monument’s form) did the same.

Thirty more boys standing in unison, like soldiers, looking straight ahead without a word. Then 3P (Pearman’s form) stood up. Then, 3KT (Teague). Then, finally, 3R (Roach).

Now every boy in the Middle School was standing. Not a word was spoken. No one moved. All eyes were on the little man on the platform.

For a moment he stood.

Then he turned and left without a word.

After that there wasn’t much point in teaching anything. The boys needed to talk, so I let them; popping out occasionally to calm down Grachvogel’s class next door, where a supply teacher called Mrs. Cant was having a hard time keeping order. Of course, Bishop dominated the conversation. There was no polarization here; no doubt at all of Pat’s innocence. All agreed that the charge was absurd; that it wouldn’t even make it past the magistrate; that everything had been a terrible mistake. That cheered me; I wished some of my colleagues could have been as certain of it as these boys.

Through lunchtime I stayed in my room with a sandwich and some marking, avoiding the crowded Common Room and the usual comforts of tea and the Times. It’s a fact that all the papers have been full of the St. Oswald’s scandal this week, and anyone entering the main gates must now pass between a shooting gallery of press and photographers.

Most of us do not stoop to comment, though I think perhaps Eric Scoones spoke to the Mirror on Wednesday. Certainly, their short piece had a ring of Scoones about it, with its depictions of an uncaring management and its veiled accusations of nepotism in the higher echelons. However, I find it impossible to believe that my old friend might be the egregious Mole, whose mixture of comedy, gossip, and slander has captivated the readers of the Examiner for the past few weeks. And yet his words gave me a distinct sense of déjà vu; as if the author were someone whose style I knew, whose subversive humor I understood—and shared.

Once again, my thoughts returned to young Keane. A keen observer, in any case; and, I believe, a writer of some talent. Could he be Mole? I would hate to think so. Damn it, I liked the man; and I thought his remarks in the Common Room the other day showed both intelligence and courage. No, not Keane, I told myself. But if not Keane, then who?

It was a thought that nagged me all through the afternoon. I taught poorly; lost my temper with a group of fourth-formers who seemed incapable of concentration; gave detention to a sixth-former whose only crime, I admitted later to myself, had been to point out an error in my use of the subjunctive in prose translation. By period eight I had made up my mind. I would simply ask the man, openly and honestly. I like to think I’m a fair judge of character; if he were Mole, then, surely I would know.

When I found him, however, he was in the Common Room, talking with Miss Dare. She smiled as I came in, and Keane grinned. “I hear it’s your birthday, Mr. Straitley,” he said. “We got you a cake.”

It was a chocolate muffin on a saucer, both raided from the school canteen. Someone had put a yellow candle on top and a cheery frill of tinsel around the outside. A Post-it note attached to the saucer read HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. STRAITLEY—65 TODAY!

I knew then that Mole would have to wait.

Miss Dare lit the candle. The few members of the Common Room who still lingered at this late hour—Monument, McDonaugh, and a couple of freshers—clapped. It was a measure of my distraction that I almost burst into tears.

“Dammit,” I growled. “I was keeping it quiet.”

“Whatever for?” said Miss Dare. “Listen, Chris and I are going out for a drink this evening. Would you like to come? We’re going to see the bonfire in the park—eat toffee apples—light sparklers.” She laughed, and I thought for a moment how very pretty she really was, with her black hair and pink Dutch-doll face. Notwithstanding my early suspicions regarding the Mole—which possibility seemed quite out of the question to me at that moment—I was glad she and Keane were getting on. I know only too well the pull of St. Oswald’s; how you think there’s all the time in the world to meet a girl, get hitched, have children, maybe, if she wants them; and then suddenly you find that all of it has passed you by, not by a year but by a decade or two, and you realize that you are no longer a Young Gun but a Tweed Jacket, irrevocably wedded to St. Oswald’s, the dusty old battleship that has somehow swallowed your heart.

“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “But I think I’ll stay at home.”

“Then make a wish,” said Miss Dare, lighting the candle.

“That I can do,” I said.

2

Dear old Straitley. I’ve come so close to loving him these past few weeks, with his incurable optimism and his idiotic old ways. It’s funny how catching that optimism can be; the feeling that perhaps the past can be forgotten (as Bishop has forgotten it); that bitterness can be put aside, and that duty (to the school, of course) can be as much of a motivating force as (for instance) love; hate; revenge.

I sent my last few e-mails this evening, after school. Roach to Grachvogel, incriminating them both. Bishop to Devine. Light to Devine, in tones of escalating panic. Knight to all, threatening, weeping. And finally the coup de grâce; to Bishop’s mobile and to his PC (I’m sure the police will be monitoring that by now); a last, tearful, imploring text message from Colin Knight, sent from his own mobile phone, which should in due time confirm the worst.

All in all, a job well done, with no need for further action on my part. Five staff members destroyed in one elegant strike. Bishop, of course, could crack at any time. A stroke, perhaps; or a massive heart attack, brought on by stress and the certainty that whatever the outcome of the police investigation, his time at St. Oswald’s is finished.

The question is, have I done enough? Mud sticks, they say; and all the more so in this profession. In a sense, the police are superfluous. The merest hint of sexual impropriety is enough to sink a career. The rest I can confidently leave to a public weaned on suspicion, envy, and the Examiner. Already I’ve started the ball rolling; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone else took over during the next few weeks. Sunnybankers, perhaps; stout-minded folk from the Abbey Road Estate. There will be fires; attacks, perhaps, on lone colleagues; rumors heated to scandalous certainty in the pubs and clubs of the town center. The beauty of it is that from a certain point I no longer have to take any direct action. One little push, and the dominoes begin to fall all by themselves.

I’ll stay, of course, as long as I can. Half the fun is being here to see it happen—though I am prepared for every eventuality. In any case, the damage must surely be irreversible by now. A whole department in ruins; many more staff implicated; a Second Master hopelessly tarred. Pupils leaving—twelve this week—a trickle that will soon become a flood. Teaching neglected; Health and Safety poor; plus an imminent inspection, which cannot fail to close them down.

The Governors, I hear, have been holding emergency meetings every night for the past week. The Head, no negotiator, fears for his job; Dr. Tidy is concerned about the potential impact on school finances; and Bob Strange covertly manages to turn everything the Head says to his own advantage whilst maintaining the appearance of complete loyalty and correctitude.

So far (barring a couple of disciplinary faux pas) he has managed to take over Bishop’s job quite nicely. A Headship may follow. Why not? He is clever (clever enough, in any case, not to appear too clever in front of the Governors); competent; articulate; and just bland enough to pass the stringent personality tests applied to all St. Oswald’s staff.

All in all, a nice little piece of antisocial engineering. I say it myself (because no one else can), but actually I’m very pleased with the way things have worked out. Remains one small, unfinished piece of business, and I plan to deal with that tonight, at the community bonfire. After that I can afford to celebrate, and I will; there’s a bottle of champagne with Straitley’s name on it, and I mean to open it tonight.

For now, though, I am idle. That’s the worst part of a campaign such as this; those long, charged moments of waiting. The bonfire starts at seven-thirty; by eight the pyre will be a beacon; thousands of people will be in the park; there will be music booming from loudspeakers; screaming from the fairground; and at eight-thirty the fireworks will start; all smoke and falling stars.

Just the place for a quiet murder, don’t you think? The dark; the crowds; the confusion. So easy here to apply Poe’s law—stating that the object that is hidden in plain sight remains unseen longest—and to simply walk away, leaving the body for some poor baffled soul to discover, or even to discover it myself, with a cry of alarm, relying upon the inevitable crowd to shield me from sight.

One more murder. I owe it to myself. Or maybe two.

I still have Leon’s photograph, a clipping taken from the Examiner, now leaf-brown and speckled with age. It’s a school photograph, taken that summer, and the quality is poor, blown up for the front page into a grainy mess of clustered dots. But it’s still his face; his cockeyed grin; his too-long hair and scissored tie. The headline stands alongside the picture.

LOCAL SCHOOLBOY IN DEATH PLUMMET.

PORTER QUESTIONED

Well, anyway, that’s the official story. We jumped; he fell. Even as my feet touched the other side of the chimney I heard him go—a gutter-rattle of broken slates and a squeal of rubber soles.

It took me a moment to understand. His foot had slipped; perhaps a moment’s hesitation; perhaps a cry from below had spoiled his leap. I looked, and saw that instead of landing squarely beside me, his knee had caught the edge of the gully; he’d slip-slid down the slimy funnel; bounced back; and now he was trapped across the mouth of the drop, holding on to the edge of the gutter with his fingertips, one foot stretched acrobatically to touch the far side of the chimney, the other hanging limply into space.

“Leon!”

I threw myself down, but I couldn’t reach him; I was on the wrong side of the chimney. I didn’t dare jump back in case I dislodged a slate. I knew how brittle the gutter was; how nibbled and scalloped its edges.

“Hang on!” I called, and Leon looked up at me, face blurred with fear.

“Stay there, son. I’ll get you.”

I raised my head. John Snyde was now standing on the parapet barely thirty feet away. His face was a slab; his eyes holes; his entire body shook. Now he edged forward with clockwork movements; his fear rolled off him like a stench. But he was moving. Inch by inch he crept closer—his eyes screwed almost shut in fear—and soon he would see me, and I wanted to run, I needed to run, but Leon was still down there, Leon was still trapped—

Below me I could hear a low cracking sound. It was the gutter giving way; a piece of its scalloped edge broke off and fell into the space between the buildings. There was a squeal of rubber as Leon’s sneaker slid a few more inches down the greasy wall.

As my father approached I began to back away, farther into the shadow of the Bell Tower. Red-blue lights strobed from the fire engines below; soon there would be people all over the roof.

“Hang on, Leon,” I whispered.

Then suddenly I felt it in the nape of my neck, a distinct sensation of being watched. I turned my head and saw—

Roy Straitley in his old tweed jacket, standing at his window not twelve feet above me. His face was gaudy in the lights; his eyes were startled; his mouth drawn down into a tragicomic mask.

“Pinchbeck?” he said.

And in that second came a sound below us—a hollow, ratcheting sound like a giant penny stuck in a vacuum cleaner pipe—

Then—crunch.

Silence.

The gutter had given way.

3

I ran then, and kept running, with the sound of Leon’s fall at my heels like a black dog. Here my knowledge of the roof came into its own; I loped, monkeylike, across my rooftop circuit, cat-leaped from the parapet onto the fire escape, and from there regained the Middle Corridor by the open fire door, and thence, the open air.

I was running on instinct by then, of course; everything suspended but the need to survive. Outside, emergency lights still strobed mystically red and blue from the fire engines parked in the Chapel court.

No one had seen me leave the building. I was clear. All around me, firemen and police, cordoning off the area against the little group of gawkers that had collected on the drive. I was clear, I told myself. No one had seen me. Except, of course, for Straitley.

Cautiously now, I made for the gatehouse, avoiding the parked fire engine with its bank of red-blue lights and the hopeful ambulance sirening its way up the long drive. Instinct drove me. I made for home. There I would be safe. There I would lie under my bed, wrapped in a blanket, as I always had on Saturday nights, door locked, thumb in mouth, waiting for my father to come home. It would be dark under the bed; it would be safe.

The gatehouse door was wide open. Light came from the kitchen window; the lounge curtains were open, but light shone from there too, and there were figures standing against the light. Mr. Bishop was there, with his megaphone. Two policemen were standing by the patrol car that blocked the drive.

And now I could see someone else there, a woman in a coat with a fur collar; a woman whose face in the lights seemed suddenly, fleetingly familiar.

The woman turned, full face to me, and her mouth dropped in a great lipsticked Oh—

“Oh, sweetheart! Oh, love!”

The woman, running toward me on kitten heels.

Bishop, turning, megaphone in hand, as a cry went up from the firemen at the far side of the building. “Mr. Bishop, sir! Over here!”

The woman, hair flying; eyes wet; arms like batwing doors to scoop me in. A sensation of shrinking; a tickle of fur against my mouth; and suddenly there were tears; tears boiling out of me as everything came back in a tidal wave of memory and grief. Leon, Straitley, my father—all forgotten; left far behind as she gathered me into the house, to safety.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, love.” Her voice was shaking. “It was going to be a surprise.”

In that second I saw it all. The unopened plane ticket. The whispered conversations on the phone. How much? Pause. All right. It’s for the best. How much for what? To give up his claim? And how many scratch cards, how many six-packs and takeaway pizzas did they promise him before he gave them what they wanted?

I began to cry again, this time in rage at their joint betrayal. My mother held me in a scent of something expensive and unfamiliar. “Oh sweetheart. What happened?”

“Oh, Mum,” I sobbed, sinking my face into her furry coat, feeling her mouth against my hair, smelling cigarette smoke and Cinnabar and the dry, musky scent of her as inside something small and clever slipped its hand into my heart and squeezed.

4

In spite of Mrs. Mitchell’s insistence that Leon would never have gone on the roof alone, her son’s best friend—the boy she called Julian Pinchbeck—was never found. School records were searched; door-to-door enquiries made, but to no avail. Even this effort might not have been made if it had not been for Mr. Straitley’s insistence that he had seen Pinchbeck on the Chapel roof—though sadly, the boy had got away.

The police were very sympathetic—after all, the woman was distraught—but secretly they must have believed poor Mrs. Mitchell to be slightly off her rocker, forever talking about nonexistent boys and refusing to accept her son’s death as a tragic accident.

That might have changed if she had seen me again, but she didn’t. Three weeks later I went to live with my mother and Xavier at their home in Paris, where I was to remain for the next seven years.

By that time, though, my transformation was well under way. The ugly duckling had begun to change; and with my mother’s help it happened fast. I did not resist it. With Leon dead, Pinchbeck could not hope or wish to survive. I disposed rapidly of my St. Oswald’s clothes and relied upon my mother to do the rest.

A second chance, she had called it; and now I opened all of the notes, the letters, the unopened parcels waiting in their pretty wrappers under my bed, and made full use of what I found inside.

I never saw my father again. The investigation into his conduct was only a formality, but his manner was odd, and it aroused the suspicion of the police. There was no real cause to suspect foul play. But he was aggressive under questioning; a Breathalyzer test revealed he’d been drinking heavily; and his account of that night was vague and unconvincing, as if he hardly recalled what had happened anymore. Roy Straitley, who confirmed his presence at the scene of the tragedy, had reported hearing him shout—I’ll get you!—at one of the boys. The police later made much of this, and though Straitley always maintained that John Snyde was running to help the fallen boy, he had to admit that the Porter had had his back turned to him at the time of the incident, and that he could not therefore have known for sure whether the man was trying to help or not. After all, said the police, Snyde’s record was hardly untarnished. Only that summer he had received an official reprimand for attacking a pupil on St. Oswald’s premises; and his uncouth behavior and violent temper were well known around the school. Dr. Tidy confirmed it; and Jimmy added some embellishments of his own.

Pat Bishop, who might have helped, proved strangely reluctant to speak on my father’s behalf. This was partly the fault of the New Head, who had made it clear to Pat that his principal duty was to St. Oswald’s, and that the sooner the Snyde fiasco was cleared up, the sooner they could distance themselves from the whole sorry affair. Besides, Bishop was beginning to feel uneasy. This business threatened both his new appointment and his growing friendship with Marlene Mitchell. After all, he was the one who’d befriended John Snyde. As Second Master, he’d encouraged him, believed in him, defended him, knowing that John had a history of violence against my mother, against myself, and on at least one documented occasion against a pupil of St. Oswald’s—which made it all the more plausible that the man, goaded to breaking point, had lost his head and had chased Leon Mitchell across the rooftops to his death.

There was never any real evidence to support the claim. Certainly Roy Straitley refused to do so. Besides, wasn’t the man afraid of heights? But the papers got hold of it. There were anonymous letters, phone calls, the usual public outrage that accumulates around any such case. Not that there ever was a case. John Snyde was never formally accused. All the same he hanged himself, in a bed-and-breakfast room in town, three days before we moved to Paris.

Even then I knew who was responsible. Not Bishop, though he was partly to blame. Not Straitley, not the papers, not even the Head. St. Oswald’s killed my father, just as surely as St. Oswald’s killed Leon. St. Oswald’s, with its bureaucracy, its pride, its blindness, its assumptions. Killed them and digested them without a thought, like a whale sucking up plankton. Fifteen years later, no one remembers either of them. They’re just names on a list of Crises St. Oswald’s Has Survived.

Not this one, though. Last time pays for all.

5

Friday, 5th November, 6:30 P.M.

I passed by the hospital after school, with some flowers and a book for Pat Bishop. Not that he reads much, though perhaps he should; besides, as I told him, he ought to be taking it easy.

He wasn’t, of course. I arrived to find him engaged in a violent discussion with the same pink-haired nurse who had dealt with my own problem not long before.

“Christ, not another one,” she said, on seeing me. “Tell me, are all St. Oswald’s staff as awkward as you two, or did I just get lucky?”

“I tell you, I’m fine.” He didn’t look it. He had a bluish tinge, and he looked smaller, as if all that running had impacted him somehow. His eye fell on the flowers in my hand. “For God’s sake, I’m not dead yet.”

“Give them to Marlene,” I suggested. “She could probably do with cheering-up.”

“You could be right.” He smiled at me, and I caught sight of the old Bishop again, just for a moment. “Take her home, will you, Roy? She won’t go, and she’s tired out. Thinks something’s going to happen to me if she gets a good night’s sleep.”

Marlene, I discovered, had gone to the hospital cafeteria for a cup of tea. I caught up with her there, having extracted a promise from Bishop that he wouldn’t try and check himself out in my absence.

She looked surprised to see me. She was holding a crumpled handkerchief in one hand, and her face—unusually clear of makeup—was pink and blotchy. “Mr. Straitley! I wasn’t expecting—”

“Marlene Mitchell,” I said sternly. “After fifteen years, I think it’s time you started calling me Roy.”

Over polystyrene cups of a peculiarly fishy-tasting tea, we talked. It’s funny how our colleagues, those not-quite-friends who populate our lives more closely than our closest relatives, remain so hidden to us in the essential. When we think of them, we see them not as people, with families and private lives, but as we see them every day; dressed for work; businesslike (or not); efficient (or not); all of us satellites of the same lumbering moon.

A colleague in jeans looks strangely wrong; a colleague in tears is almost indecent. Those private glimpses of something outside St. Oswald’s seem almost unreal, like dreams.

The reality is the stone; the tradition; the permanence of St. Oswald’s. Staff come, staff go. Sometimes they die. Sometimes even boys die; but St. Oswald’s endures, and as I have grown older I have taken increasing comfort from this.

Marlene, I sense, is different. Perhaps because she’s a woman—those things don’t mean so much to women, I’ve found. Perhaps because she sees what St. Oswald’s has done to Pat. Or perhaps because of her son, who haunts me still.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, wiping her eyes. “The Head told everyone . . .”

“Bugger the Head. It’s after hours, and I can do what I like,” I told her, sounding like Robbie Roach for the first time in my life. It made her laugh, though, which was what I wanted. “That’s better,” I said, inspecting the dregs of my now-cold beverage. “Tell me, Marlene, why does hospital tea always taste of fish?”

She smiled. She looks younger when she smiles—or perhaps it was the absence of makeup—younger and not so Wagnerian. “It’s good of you to come, Roy. No one else did, you know; not the Head, not Bob Strange. Not a single one of his friends. Oh, it’s all very tactful. All very St. Oswald’s. I’m sure the Senate were equally tactful with Caesar when they handed him the hemlock bowl.”

I think she meant Socrates, but I let it go. “He’ll survive,” I lied. “Pat’s tough, and everyone knows those charges are ridiculous. You’ll see, by the end of the year the Governors will be begging him to come back.”

“I hope so.” She took a sip of her cold tea. “I’m not going to let them bury him, as they buried Leon.”

It was the first time in fifteen years that she had mentioned her son in my presence. Another barrier down; and yet I’d been expecting it; that old business has been more than usually on my mind in recent weeks, and I suppose she felt the same.

There are parallels, of course; hospitals; a scandal; a vanished boy. Her son was not killed outright by the fall, although he never regained consciousness. Instead, there was the long wait by the boy’s bedside; the dreadful, lingering torment of hope; the procession of hopefuls and well-wishers—boys, family, girlfriend, tutors, priest—until the inevitable end.

We never did find that second boy, and Marlene’s insistence that he must have seen something was always taken as a hysterical mother’s desperate attempt to make sense of the tragedy. Only Bishop tried to help; checking school records and going over photographs until someone (maybe the Head) pointed out that his persistence in clouding the issue would almost certainly damage St. Oswald’s. Not that it mattered in the end, of course; but Pat was never happy about the outcome.

“Pinchbeck. That was his name.” As if I could have forgotten—a fake name if I ever heard one. But I’m good at names; and I’d remembered his from that day in the corridor, when I’d found him sneaking about near my office on some unlikely excuse.

Leon had been there then too, I thought. And the boy had given his name as Pinchbeck.

“Yes, Julian Pinchbeck.” She smiled, not pleasantly. “No one else really believed in him. Except Pat. And you, of course, when you saw him there—”

I wondered if I had seen him. I never forget a boy, you know; in thirty-three years I never have. All those young faces, frozen in time; every one of them believing that Time will make the exception for them alone; that they alone will remain forever fourteen . . .

“I saw him,” I told her. “Or at least, I thought I did.” Smoke and mirrors; a ghost boy who dissolved like the night mists when morning came. “I was so sure—”

“We all were,” said Marlene. “But there was no Pinchbeck on any of the school records, or in the photo files, or even on the lists of applicants. Anyway, by then, it was all over. No one was interested. My son was dead. We had a school to run.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It wasn’t your fault. Besides—” She stood up with a sudden briskness that was all school secretary. “Being sorry won’t bring Leon back, will it? Now it’s Pat who needs my help.”

“He’s a lucky man,” I said, and I meant it. “Do you think he’d object if I asked you out? Just for a drink, of course,” I said. “But it is my birthday, and you look as if you could do with something a little more substantial than tea.”

I like to think I haven’t lost my touch. We agreed to an hour, no more, and left Pat with instructions to lie down and read his book. We walked the mile or so to my house; it was dark by then, and already the night smelled of gunpowder. A few early fireworks popped over the Abbey Road Estate; the air was misty and surprisingly mild. At home there was gingerbread and sweet mulled wine; I lit the fire in the parlor and brought out the two cups that matched. It was warm and comfortable; by the light of the fire my old armchairs looked less shabby than usual, and the carpet less threadbare; and around us, on every wall, my lost boys watched with the grinning optimism of the forever young.

“So many boys,” said Marlene softly.

“My gallery of ghosts,” I said, then, seeing her face, “I’m sorry, Marlene. That was tactless.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling. “I’m not as sensitive as I used to be. That’s why I took this job, you know. Of course in those days I was sure there was a conspiracy to hide the truth; and that someday I’d actually see him, walking down some corridor with his gym bag, those little glasses slipping down his nose . . . But I never did. I let him go. And if Mr. Keane hadn’t brought it up again, after all these years—”

“Mr. Keane?” I said.

“Oh, yes. We talked it over. He’s very interested in school history, you know. I think he’s planning to write a book.”

I nodded. “I knew he’d been taking an interest. He had notes, pictures—”

“You mean this?” Out of her wallet Marlene drew a small picture, clearly scissored from a school photograph. I recognized it at once—in Keane’s book it had been a poor reproduction, barely visible, where he’d circled a face in red crayon.

But this time I recognized the boy too; that wan little face, owlishly bespectacled, raccoonlike, the school cap crammed down over the floppy fringe.

“That’s Pinchbeck?”

She nodded. “It’s not the best likeness, but I’d know him anywhere. Besides, I’ve been over that picture a thousand times, matching names to faces. Everyone’s accounted for. Everyone but him. Whoever he was, Roy, he wasn’t one of ours. But he was there. Why?”

Once more, that feeling of déjà vu; the sensation of something slipping, not quite easily, into place. But it was dim. Dim. And there was something about the small unformed face that troubled me. Something familiar.

“Why didn’t you report this at the time?” I asked.

“It was too late.” Marlene shrugged. “John Snyde was dead.”

“But the boy was a witness.”

“Roy. I had a job to do. There was Pat to think of. It was over.”

Over? Perhaps it was. But something about that wretched affair had always felt unfinished. I don’t know where the connection had come from—why it had returned to mind after so many years—but now it had, and it wouldn’t leave me alone.

“Pinchbeck.” The dictionary gives its meaning as: (of jewelry) flashy, tawdry, counterfeit. A fake. “A made-up name, if ever there was one.”

She nodded. “I know. It still makes me feel funny, thinking of him in his St. Oswald’s school uniform, walking along the corridors with the other boys, talking to them, even being photographed with them, for God’s sake. I can’t believe no one noticed—”

I could. After all, why should they? A thousand boys, all in uniform; who would suspect he was an outsider? Besides, it was ridiculous. Why should a boy attempt such an imposture?

“The challenge,” I said. “Just for the thrill of it. To see if it could be done.”

He would be fifteen years older now, of course. Twenty-eight or thereabouts. He would have grown, of course. He’d be tall now, well built. He might be wearing contact lenses. But it was possible, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it possible?

Helplessly I shook my head. I hadn’t realized until that moment how much hope I had placed on Knight—and only Knight—being responsible for the recent mischief that has plagued us. Knight was the culprit; the sender of e-mails, the malicious surfer (if that’s the word) of Internet filth. Knight had accused Bishop and the others; Knight had burned the gatehouse; I’d even half convinced myself that Knight had been behind those articles signed Mole.

Now I saw the dangerous illusions for what they were. These crimes against St. Oswald’s went much further than simple mischief. No boy could have committed them. This insider—whoever he was—was prepared to take his game as far as it went.

I thought of Grachvogel, hiding in his closet.

I thought of Tapi, locked in the Bell Tower.

Of Jimmy (like Snyde), who took the blame.

Of Fallow, whose secret was revealed.

Of Pearman and Kitty, ditto.

Of Knight; Anderton-Pullitt; the graffiti; the gatehouse; the thefts; the Mont Blanc pen; the small acts of localized disruption and the final bouquet—Bishop, Devine, Light, and Roach—firing off one after another like rockets into the flaming sky . . .

And once again I thought of Chris Keane, with his clever face and dark fringe; and of Julian Pinchbeck, the pale boy who at twelve or thirteen had already dared an imposture so brazen that for fifteen years no one had believed it possible.

Could Keane be Pinchbeck? Keane, for gods’ sakes?

It was an astonishing leap of illogic or intuition; and yet, I saw how he could have done it. St. Oswald’s has a rather idiosyncratic policy on application, based on personal impressions rather than on paper references. It was just conceivable that someone—someone clever—might be able to slip through the network of checks that exist to filter out the undesirables (in the private sector, of course, police checks are not required). Besides, the mere thought of such an imposture is beyond us. We are like the guards at a friendly outpost, all comic-opera uniforms and silly walks, falling by the dozen beneath unexpected sniper fire. We never expected an attack. That was our mistake. And now someone was picking us off like flies.

“Keane?” said Marlene, just as I would have done if our positions had been reversed. “That nice young man?”

In a few words, I filled her in on the nice young man. The notebook. The computer passwords. And through it all, his subtle air of mockery, of arrogance; as if teaching were simply an amusing game.

“But what about Knight?” said Marlene.

I’d been thinking about that. The case against Bishop was built on Knight; the text messages from Knight’s phone to his; maintaining the illusion that Knight had run away, perhaps from fear of further abuse . . .

But if Knight was not the culprit, then where was he?

I considered it. Without the calls from Knight’s phone, without the incident at the gatehouse and the messages from his e-mail address, what, then, would we have assumed and feared?

“I think Knight’s dead,” I told her, frowning. “It’s the only conclusion that makes any sense.”

“But why kill Knight?”

“To raise the stakes,” I said slowly. “To make sure Pat and the others were well and truly implicated.”

Marlene stared at me, pale as pastry. “Not Keane,” she said. “He seems so charming. He even got you that cake—”

Gods!

That cake. Till then I’d forgotten all about it. Likewise I had forgotten Dianne’s invitation; to see the fireworks, to have a drink, to celebrate—

Had something alerted Keane to her? Had she read his notebook? Had she let something slip? I thought of her eyes, bright with enjoyment in her vivid young face. I thought of her saying, in that teasing voice: Tell me, are you a professional spy or is it just a hobby?

I stood up too fast and felt the invisible finger poke at my chest, insistently, as if advising me to sit down again. I ignored it. “Marlene,” I said. “We have to go. Quick. To the park.”

“Why there?” she said.

“Because that’s where he is,” I said, grabbing my coat and flinging it over my shoulders. “And he’s with Dianne Dare.”

6

Friday, 5th November, 7:30 P.M.

I have a date. Exciting, isn’t it? The first I’ve had, in fact, in years; in spite of my mother’s high hopes and my analyst’s optimism, I’ve never really been that interested in the opposite sex. Even now when I think of them, the first thing that comes into my mind is Leon, shouting—you little pervert!—and the sound he made as he fell down the chimney.

Of course I don’t tell them that. Instead I please them with tales of my father; of the beatings he gave me and of his cruelty. It satisfies my analyst, and now I’ve even come to half believe it myself, and to forget about Leon as he jumped the gully, his face freeze-faded to the comforting sepia of the distant past.

“It wasn’t your fault.” How many times during the days that followed did I hear those words? I was cold inside; wracked by night terrors; rigid with grief and the fear of discovery. I believe that for a time I genuinely lost my mind; and I threw myself into my transformation with a desperate zeal, working steadily (with my mother’s help) to eradicate every trace of the Pinchbeck that was.

Of course, that’s all over now. Guilt, as my analyst says, is the natural response of the true victim. I have worked hard to eradicate that guilt, and I think that so far I have succeeded rather well. The therapy is working. Naturally, I don’t plan to tell her the precise nature of this therapy of mine; but I do think she’ll agree with me that my guilt-complex is mostly cured.

One more job to do, then, before the final catharsis.

One more glance in the mirror before I meet my bonfire date.

Looking good, Snyde. Looking good.

7

Friday, 5th November, 7:30 P.M.

It usually takes fifteen minutes to walk from my house to the municipal park. We did it in five, the invisible finger urging me on. The mist had dropped; a thick corona surrounded the moon, and the fireworks that popped from time to time above us lit up the sky like sheet lightning.

“What time is it?”

“Seven-thirty. They’ll be lighting the bonfire any moment now.” I hurried on, skirting a group of small children dragging a guy on a trolley.

“Quid for the guy, mester?”

In my day, it was pennies. We hurried on, Marlene and I, through a night that was rich with smoke and shot with sparklers. A magical night, bright as those of my childhood and scented with the dusk of autumn leaves.

“I’m not sure we should be doing this.” That was Marlene, sensible as ever. “Shouldn’t the police be dealing with this kind of thing?”

“D’you think they’d listen?”

“Maybe not. But I still think—”

“Listen, Marlene. I just want to see him. Talk to him. If I’m right, and Pinchbeck is Keane—”

“I can’t believe it.”

“But if it is, then Miss Dare may be in danger.”

“If it is, you old fool, then you may be in danger.”

“Oh.” It actually hadn’t crossed my mind.

“There’ll be police at the gate,” she said reasonably. “I’ll have a quiet word with whoever’s in charge while you see if you can find Dianne.” She smiled. “And if you’re wrong—which I’m sure you are—we can all celebrate Bonfire Night together. All right?”

We hurried on.

We saw the glow from the road some time before we reached the park gates. A crowd had already gathered there; attendants were posted at each entrance to hand out tickets, and beyond the gates there were more people—thousands of them—a bristling mass of heads and faces.

Behind, the fire was already lit; soon it would be a tower of flame leaping at the sky. A guy, perched on a ruined armchair halfway up the pile, appeared to dominate the scene like the Lord of Misrule.

“You’ll never find them here,” said Marlene, seeing the crowd. “It’s too dark, and look at all these people . . .”

Sure enough, there were more people at tonight’s bonfire than even I had expected. Families, mostly; men carrying children on their shoulders; teenagers in fancy dress; youngsters in alien antennae, waving neon wands and eating candyfloss. Beyond the bonfire was the funfair; arcade games, waltzers, and shooting ranges; Hook-a-Duck and the Tower of Fear; roundabouts and the Wheel of Death.

“I’ll find them,” I said. “You just do your bit.”

On the other side of the clearing, almost out of sight in the low-lying mist, the firework display was about to start. A cordon of children lined the area; beneath my feet, the grass was churned mud. All around me, a cocktail of crowd noise, several kinds of fairground music, and at our backs, the red pandemonium of the fire as the flames leaped and the stacked palettes exploded with the heat, one by one.

And now it began. There was a sudden scattered sound of applause followed by a whoooo! from the crowd as a double handful of rockets bloomed and burst, illuminating the mist in a sudden flashgun-flare of red and blue. I moved on, scanning the faces now illuminated in neon colors; my feet shifting uncomfortably in the mud; my throat harsh with gunpowder and anticipation. It was surreal; the sky was in flames; the faces in the firelight looked like Renaissance demons, forked and pronged.

Keane was among them somewhere, I thought. But even that certainty had begun to fade, to be replaced by an unfamiliar self-doubt. I thought of myself pursuing the Sunnybankers, old legs giving way as the jeering boys escaped over the fence. I thought of Pooley and his friends, and of my collapse in the Lower Corridor, outside the Head’s office. I thought of Pat Bishop saying you’re slowing down, and young Bevans—not so young now, I suppose—and the small but constant pressure of the invisible finger within. At sixty-five, I told myself, how long can I expect to keep up the pretense? My Century had never seemed further away—and beyond it, I could see nothing but dark.

Ten minutes in, and I knew it was hopeless. As well try to empty a bathtub with a spoon as try to find anyone in this chaos. From the corner of my eye I could just see Marlene, some hundred yards or so away, talking earnestly with a harassed-looking young police officer.

The community bonfire is a bad night for our local constabulary. Fights, accidents, and casual thefts are rife; under cover of darkness and the holiday crowd almost anything is possible. Still, Marlene looked to be doing her best. As I watched, the harassed young officer spoke into his walkie-talkie; then a swatch of crowd pulled across the pair of them, hiding them both from sight.

By this time I was beginning to feel quite peculiar. Perhaps the fire; perhaps the belated effect of the mulled wine. In any case I was glad to move away from the heat for a while. Nearer the trees it was cooler and darker, there was less noise, and the invisible finger seemed inclined to move on, leaving me a little breathless, but otherwise fine.

The mist had settled lower, made eerily luminous by the fireworks, like the inside of a Chinese lantern. Through it now almost every young man appeared to be Keane. On each occasion, however, it turned out to be some other young man, sharp-faced and with a dark fringe, who glanced at me oddly before turning back to his wife (girlfriend, child). Still, I was sure he was there. The instinct, perhaps, of a man who has spent the last thirty-three years of his life checking doors for flour bombs and desktops for graffiti. He was here somewhere. I could feel it.

Thirty minutes in, and the fireworks were almost over. As always they’d kept the best till last, a bouquet of rockets and fountains and spinning wheels that made a starry night from the thickest fog. A curtain of brilliant light descended, and for a time I was almost blinded, fumbling my way through the mass of people. My right leg ached; and there was a stitch running all the way down my right-hand side, as if something there had begun to unravel, gently releasing stuffing, like the seam on a very old teddy bear.

And then, suddenly in that apocalyptic light I saw Miss Dare, standing alone, some distance from the crowd. At first I thought I’d made a mistake; but then she turned, her face, half-hidden beneath a red beret, still lit in garish shades of blue and green.

For a moment the image of her stirred some powerful memory in me, some urgent sense of terrible danger, and I began to run toward her, feet slipping in the soapy mud.

“Miss Dare! Where’s Keane?”

She was wearing a trim red coat that matched her beret, her black hair tucked neatly behind her ears. She smiled quizzically as I arrived, panting, at her side.

“Keane?” she said. “He had to go.”

8

Friday, 5th November, 8:45 P.M.

I have to admit I was quite nonplussed. I’d been so sure Keane would be with her that I stared at her stupidly without a word, watching the red-blue shadows flicker across her pale face and listening to the giant beat of my old heart in the darkness.

“Is anything wrong?”

“No,” I said. “Just an old fool playing detective, that’s all.”

She smiled.

Above and around me, the last rockets flared again. Rain forest green this time; a pleasing color that made Martians of the faces that turned to watch. The blue I found slightly unnerving, like the blue lights of an ambulance, and the red—

Once more, something that was not quite a memory rose partway to the surface and dived again. Something about those lights; the colors; the way they had shone against someone’s face—

“Mr. Straitley,” she said gently. “You don’t look well.”

As a matter of fact I’d felt better; but that was the smoke and the heat of the fire. More important to me was the young woman standing at my side; a young woman who all my instincts told me might still be in danger.

“Listen, Dianne,” I said, taking her arm. “I think there’s something you need to know.”

And so I began. With the notebook at first; then with the Mole; with Pinchbeck; with the deaths of Leon Mitchell and John Snyde. It was all circumstantial when viewed piece by piece; but the more I thought and spoke about it, the more I could see a picture emerging.

He’d told me himself he’d been a Sunnybank boy. Imagine what that must have been for someone like Keane. A smart kid; a reader; a bit of a rebel. The staff would have disliked him almost as much as the pupils did. I could see him now, a sullen, solitary boy, hating his school, hating his contemporaries, making his life in the fantasy world.

Perhaps it had started off as a cry for help. Or a joke, or a gesture of revolt against the private school and what it stood for. It must have been easy, once he’d found the nerve to take the first step. As long as he wore the uniform, he would have been treated like any other of our boys. I imagined the thrill of walking unseen down the solemn old corridors, of looking into classrooms, of mingling with the other boys. A solitary thrill, but a powerful one; and one that had soon darkened into something like obsession.

Dianne listened in silence as I expanded my tale. It was all guesswork; but it felt true, and as I went on, I began to see the boy Keane in my mind’s eye; to feel something of what he had felt and to understand the horror of what he had become.

I wondered whether Leon Mitchell had known the truth. Certainly, Marlene had been completely taken in by Julian Pinchbeck, as indeed had I.

A cool customer, Pinchbeck, especially for such a young lad. Even on the roof he had kept his nerve; escaping like a cat before I could intercept him; vanishing in the shadows; even allowing John Snyde to be accused rather than admit his own involvement.

“Perhaps they were horsing about. You know what boys are like. A silly game that went too far. Leon fell. Pinchbeck ran. He let the Porter take the blame, and he’s been living with the guilt for fifteen years.”

Imagine what that might do to a child. I considered Keane and tried to see the bitterness behind the facade. I couldn’t do it. There was perhaps some irreverence—a whiff of the upstart—a hint of mockery in the way he spoke. But malice—actual malice? It was hard to believe. And yet, if not Keane, then who could it be?

“He’s been playing with us,” I told Miss Dare. “That’s his style. His humor. It’s the same basic game as before, I think, but this time he’s taking it through to the end. It isn’t enough for him to hide in the shadows anymore. He wants to hit St. Oswald’s where it really hurts.”

“But why?” she said.

I sighed, feeling suddenly very tired. “I liked him,” I said irrelevantly. “I still like him.”

There was a long silence.

“Have you called the police?”

I nodded. “Marlene has.”

“Then they’ll find him,” she said. “Don’t worry, Mr. Straitley. We might get to have that birthday drink after all.”

9

Needless to say my own birthday was a sad affair. I understood, however, that it was a necessary stage, and I opened my presents, still waiting under the bed in their gaudy wrappers, with gritted-teeth determination. There were letters too—all the letters I had previously scorned—and now I gave every word my obsessive attention, combing through the reams of nonsense for the few precious scraps that would complete my metamorphosis. Dear Munchkin, I hope you got the clothes I sent you. I hope they all fit! Children seem to grow up so much faster here in Paris, and I do want you to look nice for your visit. You’ll be quite grown-up by now, I suppose. I can hardly believe I’m nearly thirty. The doctor says I can’t have any more children. Thank goodness I’ve still got you, my love. It’s as if God has given me a second chance.

The packages contained more clothes than I’d ever owned in my entire life. Little outfits from Printemps or Galeries Lafayette, little sweaters in sugared-almond colors, two coats (a red one for winter and a green one for spring), and any number of little tops, T-shirts, and shorts.

The police had been very gentle with me. As well they might; I’d had a terrible shock. They sent a nice lady officer to ask me some questions, and I answered them with becoming forthrightness and the occasional tear. I was told several times that I had been very brave. My mother was proud of me; the nice lady officer was proud of me; it would be over soon and all I had to do was tell the truth and not be afraid of anything.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how easy it is to believe the worst. My story was simple (I’ve found lies are always best served as plainly as possible), and the police lady listened to it keenly, without interruption or apparent disbelief.

Officially, the school declared it a tragic accident. My father’s death closed the matter rather conveniently, even gaining him some posthumous sympathy from the local press. His suicide was put down to extreme remorse following the death of a young trespasser on his watch, and the other details—including the presence of a mystery boy—were rapidly set aside.

Mrs. Mitchell, who might have been a problem, was given substantial compensation and a new job as Bishop’s secretary—they had become rather close friends in the weeks that followed Leon’s death. Bishop himself—recently promoted—was warned by the Head that any further investigation of the unfortunate incident would be both detrimental to the reputation of St. Oswald’s, and a dereliction of his duties as Second Master.

That left Straitley. Not so different then as now; a man gray-haired before his time, delighting in absurdity, rather slimmer than he is now but still ungainly, a shambling albatross of a man in his dusty gown and leather slippers. Leon never respected him quite as I did; saw him as a harmless buffoon, likeable enough, clever in his way, but essentially not a threat. Still, it was Straitley who came closest to seeing the truth, and it was only his arrogance—the arrogance of St. Oswald’s—that blinded him to the obvious.

I suppose I should have been grateful. But a talent like mine begs to be acknowledged, and of all the casual insults St. Oswald’s has thrown at me over the years, I think it is his I remember most vividly. His look of surprise—and yes, condescension—as he looked at me—dismissed me—for the second time.

Of course I wasn’t thinking clearly. Still blinded by guilt, confusion, fear, I had yet to learn one of life’s most shocking and closely guarded truths: remorse fades, like anything else. Perhaps I wanted to be caught that day; to prove to myself that order still ruled; to keep the myth of St. Oswald’s intact in my heart; and most of all, after five years in the shadows, to finally take my place under the lights.

And Straitley? In my long game against St. Oswald’s, it has always been Straitley, and not the Head, who has played the king’s role. A slow mover, the king; but a powerful enemy. Even so, a well-placed pawn may bring him down. Not that I wished for that, no. Absurd as it was, I wished, not for his destruction, but for his respect, his approval. I had been the Invisible Man for much too long, the ghost in St. Oswald’s creaking machine. Now at last I wanted him to look at me—to see me—and concede, if not a win, then perhaps a draw.

I was in the kitchen when he finally called at the house. It was my birthday, just before dinner, and I’d spent half the day shopping with my mother, and the other half discussing my future and making plans.

A knock on the door—I guessed who it was. I knew him so well, you see—albeit from a distance—and I had been expecting his visit. I knew he, of all men, would never take the easy solution over the just. Firm, but fair, was Roy Straitley; with a natural propensity to believe the best of anyone. John’s reputation cut no ice with him; nor did the New Head’s veiled threats; nor the speculations in that day’s Examiner. Even the possible damage to St. Oswald’s was secondary to this. Straitley was Leon’s form teacher, and to Straitley, his boys mattered more than anything else.

At first my mother wouldn’t let him in. He’d called twice before, she told me, once when I was in bed and once more as I was changing my clothes, discarding my Pinchbeck gear for one of the Paris outfits she’d sent in her innumerable care packages.

“Mrs. Snyde, if you could just let me in for a moment—”

My mother’s voice, her newly rounded vowels still unfamiliar behind the kitchen door. “I told you, Mr. Straitley, we’ve had a difficult twenty-four hours and I really don’t think—”

Even then I sensed that he was uncomfortable with women. Peering through the crack in the kitchen door I saw him, framed by the night, head down, hands digging deeply into the pockets of his old tweed jacket.

In front of him, my mother; tensed for confrontation; all Paris pearls and pastel twinset. It disturbed him, that feminine temperament. He would have been happier talking to my father, straight to the point, in words of one syllable.

“Well perhaps if I could just have a word with the child.”

I checked my reflection in the kettle. Under Mother’s guidance, I was looking good. Hair neat and freshly styled; face scrubbed; resplendent in one of those new little outfits. I had removed my glasses. I knew I would pass; and besides, I wanted to see him—to see, and, perhaps, be seen.

“Mr. Straitley, believe me, there’s nothing we can—”

I pushed open the kitchen door. He looked up quickly. For the first time I met his eyes as my very own self. My mother stood close, ready to snatch me away at the first sign of distress. Roy Straitley took a step toward me; I caught the comforting smell of chalk dust and Gauloises and distant mothballs. I wondered what he would say if I greeted him in Latin; the temptation was almost too great to resist, then I remembered that I was playing a part. Would he recognize me in my new role?

For a second I thought he might. His eyes were penetrating. Denim blue and slightly bloodshot, they narrowed a little as they met mine. I put out my hand—took his thick fingers in my own cool ones. I thought of all the times I had watched him in the Bell Tower; of all the things he had unwittingly taught me. Would he see me now? Would he?

I saw his eyes flick over me; taking in the clean face, pastel sweater, ankle socks, and polished shoes. Not quite what he’d expected, then; I had to make an effort to hide a smile. My mother saw it, and smiled herself, proud of her achievement. As well she might be; the transformation was all hers.

“Good evening,” he said. “I don’t mean to intrude. I’m Mr. Straitley. Leon Mitchell’s form tutor.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” I said. “I’m Julia Snyde.”

10

I had to laugh. Such a long time since I had thought of myself as Julia, rather than just Snyde. And besides, I’d never liked Julia, just as my father had never liked her, and to be reminded of her—to be her—now was strange and puzzling. I thought I had outgrown Julia, as I had outgrown Sharon. But my mother had reinvented herself. Why couldn’t I?

Straitley, of course, never saw it. To him, women remain a race apart, to be admired (or perhaps feared) from a safe distance. His manner is different when talking to his boys; with Julia his easy manner stiffened a little; became a wary parody of its jovial self.

“Now I don’t want to upset you,” he said.

I nodded.

“But do you know a boy called Julian Pinchbeck?”

I have to admit that my relief was marred by a certain disappointment. I’d expected more of Straitley somehow; more of St. Oswald’s. After all, I’d already practically offered him the truth. And still he hadn’t seen it. In his arrogance—the peculiarly male arrogance that lies at the very foundations of St. Oswald’s—he had failed to see what was staring him in the face.

Julian Pinchbeck.

Julia Snyde.

“Pinchbeck?” I said. “I don’t think so, sir.”

“He’d be your age, or thereabouts. Dark hair, skinny. Wears glasses with wire frames. He may be a pupil at Sunnybank Park. You may have seen him around St. Oswald’s.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“You know why I’m asking, don’t you, Julia?”

“Yes, sir. You think he was there last night.”

“He was there,” snapped Straitley. He cleared his throat and said, in a softer voice, “I thought maybe you’d seen him too.”

“No, sir.” Once more I shook my head. It was too funny, I thought to myself; and yet I wondered how he could have failed to see me. Was it because I was a girl, perhaps? A slapper, a pram-face, a toerag, a prole? Was it so impossible to believe of Julia Snyde?

“Are you sure?” He looked at me sharply. “Because that boy’s a witness. He was there. He saw what happened.”

I looked down at the shiny toes of my shoes. I wanted to tell him everything then, just to see his jaw drop. But then he would have had to know about Leon too; and that, I knew, was impossible. For that I had already sacrificed so much. And for that I prepared to swallow my pride.

I looked up at him then, allowing my eyes to fill with tears. It wasn’t difficult in the circumstances. I thought of Leon, and of my father, and of myself, and the tears just came all on their own. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see him.” And now old Straitley was looking uncomfortable, huffing and shuffling just as he did when Kitty Teague had her little crisis in the Common Room.

“Now then.” He pulled out a large and slightly grubby handkerchief.

My mother glared. “I hope you’re happy,” she said, putting a possessive arm around my shoulders. “After everything the poor kid’s already been through—”

“Mrs. Snyde, I didn’t—”

“I think you should go.”

“Julia, please, if you know anything—”

“Mr. Straitley,” she said. “I’d like you to leave.”

And so he did, reluctantly, caught between bluster and unease, apologies on one side, suspicion on the other.

Because he was suspicious; I could see it in his eyes. He was nowhere near the truth, of course; but his years of teaching have given him a second sight where pupils are concerned, a kind of radar that in some way I must have triggered.

He turned to go, hands in his pockets. “Julian Pinchbeck. You’re sure you’ve never heard of him?”

Mutely, I nodded, grinning inside.

His shoulders slumped. Then, as my mother opened the door for him to leave, he turned abruptly and met my eyes for what was to be the last time in fifteen years. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “We’re all concerned about your father. But I was Leon’s form tutor. I have a responsibility to my boys—”

Again I nodded. “Valé, magister.” It was no more than a whisper, but I swear he heard.

“What was that?”

“Good night, sir.”

11

After that, we moved to Paris. A new life, my mother had said; a new start for her little girl. But it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t like Paris. I missed my home and the woods and the comforting smell of cut grass rolling over the fields. My mother deplored my tomboyish manners, for which, of course, she blamed my father. He’d never wanted a girl, she said, lamenting over my cropped hair, my skinny chest, my scabbed knees. Thanks to John, she said, I looked more like a dirty little boy than the dainty daughter of her imaginings. But that was going to change, she said. All I needed was time to blossom.

God knows, I tried. There were endless shopping trips; dress fittings; appointments at the beautician’s. Any girl would dream of being taken in hand; to be Gigi, to be Eliza; to change from the ugly duckling into the gracious swan. It was my mother’s dream, anyway. And she indulged it now; crowing happily over her living doll.

Nowadays, of course, little trace remains of my mother’s handiwork. My own is more sophisticated and definitely less showy. My French is fluent, thanks to my years in Paris, and although I never quite made the grade as far as my mother was concerned, I like to think I have acquired a certain style. I also have an abnormally high sense of self-esteem, or so my analyst says, which at times verges on the pathological. Maybe so; but in the absence of parents, where else is a child to seek approval?

By the time I was fourteen, my mother had realized that I would never be a beauty. I wasn’t the type. Un style très anglais, as the beautician (the bitch!) repeatedly pointed out. The little skirts and twinsets that looked so pretty on the French girls simply made me look ridiculous, and I soon forsook them for the safety of the jeans, sweatshirts, and trainers of my earlier youth. I refused makeup and cut my hair short. I no longer looked like a little boy, but it had become clear that I would never be Audrey Hepburn, either.

My mother was not as disappointed as she might have been. Despite her high hopes, we had failed to bond. We had little in common, and I could tell that she was tired of making the effort. More importantly, she and Xavier had finally achieved what they had hitherto thought impossible—a miracle baby, born in the August of the following year.

Well, that clinched it. Overnight, I became an embarrassment. The miracle baby—they called it Adeline—had basically priced me out of the market, and neither my mother nor Xavier (who had few opinions of his own) seemed interested in a sullen, awkward teenager. Once more, in spite of everything, I was invisible.

Oh, I can’t say I cared. Not about that, anyway. I had nothing against Adeline—who looked like nothing more to me than a squawking lump of pink putty. What I resented was the promise; the promise of something that had been barely offered before it was snatched away. The fact that I hadn’t wanted it was irrelevant. My mother’s ingratitude was. I had made sacrifices for her, after all. For her I had left St. Oswald’s. Now, more than ever, St. Oswald’s beckoned to me like a lost Eden. I forgot how I’d hated it; how for years I waged war against it; how it had swallowed my friend, my father, my childhood at a single gulp. I thought about it all the time, and it seemed to me then that it was only in St. Oswald’s that I had ever felt truly alive. There I had dreamed; there I had felt joy; hate; desire. There I had been a hero; a rebel. Now I was just another sullen teen, with a stepfather and a mother who lied about her age.

I know it now; it was an addiction, and St. Oswald’s was my drug. Night and day I craved it, finding poor substitutes where I could. Rapidly they bored me; my lycée was a dull place, and the most daring of its rebels only dabbled in the most adolescent of misdemeanors; a little sex, a little truancy, and a number of basically uninteresting drugs. Leon and I had covered far more exciting ground together years before. I wanted more; I wanted misrule; I wanted everything.

I was unaware at the time that my behavior had already begun to attract attention. I was young; angry; intoxicated. You might say St. Oswald’s had spoiled me; I was like a university student sent back to kindergarten for a year, smashing toys and turning over tables. I delighted in being a bad influence. I played truant; I mocked my teachers; I drank; I smoked; I had hurried (and, for me, joyless) sex with a number of boys from a rival school.

The crunch came in a most distressingly ordinary way. My mother and Xavier—who I’d assumed were too goggle-eyed over their miracle child to care much about the down-to-earth kind—had been watching me more closely than I had thought. A sweep of my room had provided the excuse they were seeking; a five-gram block of workaday resin, a packet of condoms, and four Es in a twist of paper.

It was kid’s stuff, that was all. Any normal parent would have forgotten all about it, but Sharon simply mumbled something about my previous history, removed me from school, and—the final indignity—booked me in with a child psychologist, who, she promised, would soon bring me to rights.

I don’t think I am a naturally resentful person. Whenever I have lashed out, it has always been after almost unbearable provocation. But this was more than anyone could stand. I wasted no time in protesting my innocence. Instead, and to my mother’s surprise, I cooperated as best I could. The child psychologist—whose name was Martine and who wore dangly earrings with little silver kitties—declared me to be progressing nicely, and I fed her every day until she got quite tame.

Say what you like about my unconventional schooling, but I do have quite an extensive general knowledge. You can thank St. Oswald’s Library, or Leon, or the films I’ve always watched—in any case I knew enough about mental cases to fool a kitty-loving child psychologist. I almost regretted the ease of the task; found myself wishing they had given me more of a challenge.

Psychologists. They’re all the same. Talk to them about anything you like, it always gets down to sex in the end. After an impressive show of reluctance and a number of nicely Freudian dreams, I confessed; I’d been having sex with my father. Not John, I said; but my new father, which made it all right—or so he said, although I myself had been having second thoughts.

Don’t get me wrong. I had nothing (as such) against Xavier. It was my mother who had betrayed me; my mother I wanted to hurt. But Xavier was such a convenient tool, and besides, I made it sound mostly consensual, so that he would get off with a lighter—maybe even a suspended—sentence.

It worked fine. Too fine, perhaps; by then I’d been working on my routine and incorporated a number of embellishments to the basic formula. More dreams—I don’t dream, as I said, but I do have quite a vivid imagination—a number of physical mannerisms, a habit of small cutting picked up from one of the more sensitive girls in my class at school.

Physical examination provided the proof. Xavier was duly ousted from the family home, a generous allowance was promised to the soon-to-be divorcée, and I (thanks in part to my brilliant performance) was stuck in an institution for the next three years by my loving mother and the kitty-wearing Martine, neither of whom could be convinced that I was no longer a danger to myself.

You know, there is such a thing as doing a job too well.