Skippy Dies: A Novel

The phone rings shortly after dawn, the bland electronic tinkle exploding the quiet of the bedroom like a bomb blast. Howard, though he’s been waiting for it all night, doesn’t move; instead, deferring the moment until there is absolutely no way out, he lies with his eyes closed, listening to Halley’s murmurous protest, the rustling crash of the sheets as she reaches over to the dresser. ‘Hello… yes, Greg…’ Her voice burrs with sleep, like her mouth is full of leaves. ‘No, that’s fine… no, sure, I’ll just get him for you…’ The bed creaks as she rolls back to him. ‘It’s for you,’ she says. He opens his eyes to meet hers, just awoken, incandescently blue and bright, quizzing him.

‘Thanks,’ he says, taking the phone from her and turning away with it. ‘Hello?’

‘Howard?’ the voice crackles tersely in his ear.

‘Greg!’ He tries to sound like this is a pleasant surprise.

‘Howard, I want you in my office in exactly one hour.’

‘Of course,’ Howard says smilingly, and continues to smile as the line goes dead in his ear. ‘See you then.’ He swings his legs out of the bed and begins to put on his clothes, attempting to comport himself as though nothing is out of the ordinary. Halley props herself on her elbows, squinting against the day.

‘Are you going out?’ she says. In the morning light her bare breasts are like silver apples, the fruit of a fairy-tale land already disappearing out of his reach…

‘Oh, yeah, did I not say? I promised I’d go and talk to Greg about the programme notes for this concert of his.’

‘But it’s Saturday.’ She rubs her nose. ‘And it’s the holidays.’

Howard shrugs woodenly. ‘You know what he’s like. Everything has to be just right.’

‘Okay,’ she yawns, drawing the covers back up over her, claiming his abandoned share too. Her voice is muffled by eiderdown: ‘I think it’s good the way you’re taking part in school activities more.’

‘Yeah, well, you get out what you put in, don’t you.’ Howard buttons up his coat. ‘I shouldn’t be too long. Keep a spot for me.’ He winks at her as he passes through the door, realizing as he does so that this is the first time he has winked in the whole span of their relationship.

The roads are eerily deserted, as though they have been cleared by decree to hasten his journey. A single car – Greg’s – waits in the school car park; inside, the empty classrooms and corridors seem nothing more than an elaborate façade, a huge, byzantine foyer to the single occupied room. Mounting the stairs, every footstep clangorously echoing, Howard feels like some unfortunate in a Greek myth sent to do battle with the Minotaur.

Outside the Principal’s Office, on the bench known to generations as Death Row, Howard finds the lone figure of Brian ‘Jeekers’ Prendergast. He is chewing his nails and has a stranded look about him, as though he’s been here for centuries, some minor fixture in a legend.

‘Mr Costigan in there?’ Howard points to the door; but before the boy can even reply, a voice comes booming from within, ‘Get in here, Howard.’

Howard finds the Automator poised pugilistically in the dead centre of the room, as though ready to defend it against all comers. He is in his weekend wear – pale blue cotton shirt with a yellow sweater slung over the shoulders, beige slacks and brown Hush Puppies; it looks totally incongruous, like Godzilla in sweatpants.

‘I’m afraid he’s in a meeting at the moment, may I take a message?’ Trudy, phone trapped between cheek and shoulder, leans and writes a name at the end of a list of names on the desk. ‘Yes… we think a tummy bug is going round… Thank you, he’ll call you later this morning…’

‘Damn it,’ the Automator mutters, pacing back and forth, scratching his jaw, and then, raising his voice, ‘Well, damn it, Howard, sit down, man.’

Obediently, Howard seats himself on the other side of the desk from Trudy. The transformation in train on his last visit is now nearly complete: the high-backed African chairs have been replaced by ergonomic office models, and the aquarium by the door, where the multicoloured fish continue serenely to drift, oblivious to the changes, is now the only reminder of the room’s previous incumbent.

‘Would you like anything, Howard?’ Trudy whispers solicitously. ‘Tea? Coffee? Juice?’

‘Damn it, Trudy, don’t offer him juice! We have a very serious situation here!’

‘Yes, dear,’ she apologizes, setting down the phone, which immediately begins to ring again. ‘Hello, Acting Principal’s office?’

‘Damn it,’ the Automator repeats preparatorily, like a chain-saw warming up, and then, in a louder voice, ‘Howard, what the hell? I mean – what in the name of God?’

‘I –’ Howard begins.

‘In all my days as an educator, never once, not once have I witnessed anything that comes close to what I saw last night. Not once. Damn it – damn it, I put you in charge! Didn’t I give you strict instructions as to – I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, one of those instructions wasn’t to let the thing descend into a Roman orgy, was it?’

‘N–’

‘You’re damn right it wasn’t! And yet here we are with this on our hands – ’ he points to the phone ‘– parents ringing me all morning, wanting to know why little Johnny came home from an official supervised school Hop covered in puke and even more slack-jawed than usual! What do you think I should tell them, Howard? “You should have seen the shape he was in a half-hour before?” God damn it, do you have any clue what kind of a mess you’ve dropped us into here? I mean, what the hell happened in there?’

‘I…’

‘You don’t know, of course, nobody knows, it’s the Bermuda Triangle. Well, let me tell you something, Howard, somebody knows, and when I find out, believe me, heads are going to roll. Because if those people –’ pointing to the phone again ‘– my God, if they had any idea what actually happened…’ He grasps at his hair, pacing back and forth distractedly like a deranged pastel-clad robot, then, taking a deep breath, comes to a stop in front of Howard. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I suppose we’re not going to get anywhere by flying off the handle. I’m not trying to pin this whole thing on you. All I’m looking for is an explanation. So you just tell me, in your own words, exactly what you saw last night.’ He folds his arms and settles back against the sideboard, a vein twitching furiously in his forehead.

Twelve hours ago, Howard was lying supine on the teacher’s desk in the Geography Room. From the wall the happy miners of the Rhine-Ruhr Valley grinned down at him, and looking back up at them, his head tilting back into empty space, Howard was half-dreaming he’d fallen down a mineshaft – or was it a trench, could they be soldiers, faces blackened for night-patrol…? On top of him lay Miss McIntyre, her hands folded into him, her hair spilling over the floodplain of his chest, the borders of their bodies porous, liquid, indeterminate. The storm thundered at the window; intermittently, the room lit up with flashes of lightning so quick you couldn’t be sure you hadn’t imagined them; the last dregs of satiety buzzed through his blood like fortified wine. And then, with a sharp intake of breath, he felt her body stiffen against his, and before he could ask her what was wrong, he felt it too, the same irrefutable chill.

The drumbeat hit them as soon as they left the room, still scrabbling for buttons and zippers, and grew louder with every breathless hastening step down the deserted halls. Outside the door to the gym they found Wallace Willis, the Hop DJ, trembling from head to foot, with a look of grubby tearstained distress, like he’d spent three days locked in a drain. ‘They’re playing the wrong songs,’ was all that he would say.

When they opened the gym door, the music was so deafening that for a moment it precluded any other sensation; but only for a moment, and then the full horror of the situation was upon them.

Discarded costumes strewed the floor. A Viking helmet, a gilt-trimmed bustier, a pirate’s eyepatch, a pair of butterfly wings, as well as more conventional items such as trousers, T-shirts, stockings and undergarments – all lay blithely crushed beneath the feet of former wearers as they rocked in the bare flesh of each other’s arms. Somehow, the invisible barriers separating them at the start of the night had come crashing down. Goths were with jocks, dweebs with bimbos, studs with skanks, blimps with waifs – everyone was with everyone, indistinguishable, propping each other up or collapsed in nearly naked heaps; as if the germ of Howard and Aurelie’s secret moment in the Geography Room had been caught by an internal breeze and, as in some nightmarish morality tale, blown down here, where in the hothouse atmosphere it had grown ten feet tall and spread like a weed over everything, so that now wherever they looked they saw it reproduced in monstrous, magnified form, stripped, in the lurid circus colours of the lights, of everything but mindless carnality.

‘Oh my God,’ Miss McIntyre crooned, in a voice cracking with self-disgust; Howard tried to think of something comforting or exculpating or purposeful to say, but found nothing.

The two of them did their best to restore order. But the kids simply didn’t listen. It wasn’t defiance; rather they seemed in a kind of erotic trance. They would stare, moon-eyed, at Howard, as he wagged his finger in their faces, threatened them with suspension, letters home, police, and then as soon as he had turned his back resume whatever it was he had interrupted.

‘This is hopeless!’ Miss McIntyre exclaimed, at the brink of tears.

‘Well, what do you suggest we do?’ Howard said, feverishly gathering up a long coil of toilet paper at the end of which a priapic mummy was groping the breasts of a girl who, although standing upright, appeared to be asleep, a rainbowed shiver of fabric, once a mermaid’s tail, lying balled at her feet. ‘Stop that!’ He bundled the toilet paper into the mummy’s hands. ‘Here, cover yourself up, for God’s sake!’

‘We have to call Greg,’ Miss McIntyre said.

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘We have to – get away from me!’ leaping, with a wail, from the extended paws of a mysterious pink rabbit.

‘Surely we don’t need to involve him…?’ Howard pleaded, though all the evidence pointed to the opposite.

But it was academic, because somehow the Automator was already there in the doorway. For a moment he did not move from it – looking on stony-faced as Dennis Hoey, shirt unbuttoned, tie flung back over his shoulder, staggered by him flapping his arms and raving hoarsely, ‘Study your shirtsleeves! Tuck in those notes!’ and over the PA a gangsta rapped:

I chop off your head bitch

And jizz on your grave –

Then he swung into action. Striding onto the dancefloor, sundering any couples he encountered by grabbing both parties by the neck and literally flinging them in opposite directions, the Acting Principal cut a path to the wall-mounted fusebox – of course, why hadn’t Howard thought of that? Abruptly the music ceased; a moment later, the house-lights came up, and all but the most abandoned of the revellers paused, blinked, murmured to themselves uncertainly.

‘All right!’ the Automator bellowed over their heads. ‘I want everyone lined up against that wall, this minute!’

The effect was not immediate, but some dim ember in their minds recognized his voice, and gradually they began to obey, stumbling and ragged in the bright light. In five minutes they were marshalled into a row, those not capable of standing kneeling or squatting on the floor, all gazing at the Automator with stuporous, unfocussed eyes. For a time he did nothing but stare, as if his fury was such he could not trust himself to speak. Then finally he said, ‘I don’t know what’s got into you people tonight. But let me assure you of this, there are going to be repercussions. Serious repercussions.’ Standing at his left hand, Howard cringed interiorly. ‘It is now –’ the Automator flourished his watch ‘– exactly twenty-two thirty-three and thirty seconds. In twenty-six and a half minutes, at twenty-three hundred hours, I am going to open those double-doors, and you are going to proceed directly to your parent or guardian. None of you will mention any aspect of what transpired here. If they ask, you will say that you had fun, but now you are feeling tired and would like to go to bed, goodnight. What will you say?’

‘Hahfuhhhtiguhnight,’ the zombified horde mumbled piteously.

‘Good. In a moment, I am going to direct you to put on your clothes. At my word, I want you in blocks of ten, starting at this end with you, giant ant, to make your way in an orderly fashion to your costume. In the event that you cannot find your –’

He stopped. Near the door a very thin girl dressed only in an olive-drab brassiere and khaki cut-offs had stumbled out of the line, clutching her stomach.

‘At my word, missy,’ the Automator said. But the girl paid no attention: instead, doubled up, she emitted a long, painful moan. There was a loud shuffling noise as her two hundred peers adjusted their position to get a better look. The girl coughed delicately, as though about to make an announcement, and then – after a moment at once infinitely prolonged, and inexorably doomed – the inevitable multicoloured torrent came gushing from her mouth.

‘Eeeeeewwwwwwww!’ the zombies exclaimed in revulsion.

‘Stop that!’ the Automator commanded. But she could not stop, and the hall filled instantly with the acrid miasma of stomach acid and alcohol and too-sweet fruit punch. Along the line, mouths bulged; chests lurched. ‘All right, maybe we should get some fresh air,’ the Automator said hurriedly. ‘Howard, open the – ’

But it was too late. First at intervals, then, in seconds, en masse, with a noise like nothing Howard had ever heard before, what seemed like all two hundred teenagers were throwing up: pale, half-naked bodies in various attitudes of expulsion, a vast and hellish deluge washing over the floor…

‘So much vomit,’ the Automator recollects now, from the safety of his office.

‘Yeah,’ Howard says miserably. He was the one who mopped most of it up: two hours with an aching back, the Automator grim and unspeaking at the other end of the hall, a solitary black balloon the only other company, Miss McIntyre having gone home ashen-faced and wordless shortly after they’d discharged the kids, leaving him, as the clock tower tolled one, to climb into his car alone and drive in complicated elaborations of circles through the darkened suburbs for another hour, till he could be absolutely sure that Halley would be gone to bed, and then sit in the kitchen reeking of disinfectant in front of an undrunk glass of water as the panelled surroundings, at once familiar and secretly changed, sparkled at him complicitly; he lowered his head like he didn’t know what they meant.

‘I don’t know what happened, Greg,’ he says as sincerely as he can. ‘They just suddenly seemed to… transform. I can’t explain it. I don’t know if there even is an explanation.’

‘There’s always an explanation, Howard. In this case the explanation is that the punch was spiked.’

‘Spiked?’

‘Punch’d turned blue, meaning probably sleeping pills of some kind, your standard date-rape set-up.’ The Automator examines his nails thoughtfully. ‘The results aren’t back from the lab yet, but from the symptoms – loss of inhibitions and motor control followed by acute nausea – my guess is a large quantity of benzodiazepine.’

‘Back from the…?’

‘Couple of old boys working on the force, Howard. Simon Stevens, class of ’85, Tom Smith, class of ’91 – you might remember Smithy, couple of years ahead of you, decent prop-forward, lot of potential but never quite made the cut. Got them on the case this morning. Had to. All it takes is for one parent to figure out what happened in there and it’ll be raining lawsuits. And when it does we’d better be ready.’ He turns on his heel and circumnavigates the room, tapping thoughtfully at his lower lip. ‘I’ve spoken to the boy in charge of the punchbowl but I don’t think he has anything to do with it. Most likely someone distracted him while his partner slipped the mickey into the vat. What with the disco lights the colour-change wouldn’t have been noticed. Though frankly some of these kids, first whiff they got the punch wasn’t kosher they’d be queuing round the block for it. That doesn’t explain how, with two supervisors in the room, the situation escalated to the level it did.’ He wheels round: his gimlet eyes, and Trudy’s doe-like ones, fix on Howard. ‘How was that possible, Howard,’ he says.

‘It just seemed to… happen,’ Howard says in a strangulated voice. The Automator waits without responding, and then says, ‘When Wallace Willis called me, he said that you and Miss McIntyre did not appear to be in the hall.’

‘Oh yes… that is…’ Howard stutters, and then, as though it has just occurred to him, ‘well, Miss McIntyre and I did both briefly leave the hall at one point.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes, we did, briefly.’

‘Uh-huh.’ The Automator scratches his ear, and then roars, ‘God damn it, Howard, what the hell were you thinking? Rule one of education: never leave the kids unattended for a second, not for a second! I specifically told you, someone in the room at all times – damn it, there’s your lawsuit right there! Flagrant neglect of duty! Flagrant!’ The vein is back, hammering a tattoo in his temple.

‘I know,’ Howard wheedles, ‘but what happened was, you see, Aurelie, Miss McIntyre, discovered a large quantity of alcohol in the toilets, too much for her to carry, and we wanted to store it out of harm’s way, so we briefly went to the Geography Room, because that seemed like the safest place…’

‘And how long were you briefly gone for, would you say?’ The Automator’s gaze bores into Howard; Howard uplifts his eyes to the ceiling, as if for inspiration: ‘Um…’ He squeezes them tight shut, then half-opens just one. ‘Ten minutes?’

The stare has not gone away. ‘Ten minutes?’

Cold sweat breaks out under his collar. ‘Roughly that, I would say, yes.’

The steely eyes narrow – and then are averted. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much what Aurelie said – Trudy?’

Trudy leafs through a manila folder: ‘That’s what I have here – confiscated alcohol from girls’ toilet, left to store in Geography Room, gone ten to twelve minutes.’

‘Although it sounds like you and Aurelie have overestimated slightly, because Trudy and I timed it and it takes just under four minutes for a person walking at average speed to get from the hall to the Geography Room, and four minutes back is eight minutes,’ the Automator comments.

This information, however, and the good fortune of Miss McIntyre’s lie corroborating his, are drowned out by the mention of her name. ‘She was here? Aurelie – I mean, Miss McIntyre?’

‘First thing this morning.’ The Automator wags his head solemnly. ‘Whole thing has shaken her up pretty badly. She’s an investment banker, she’s not used to that kind of unbridled depravity.’

Howard descends into a momentary reverie of Aurelie unbridled, bare, on the other side of those twelve tumultuous hours, and wonders, at the same moment that his stomach churns with guilt, just how he can recross them, get back to her.

‘Let’s call it ten minutes,’ the Automator resumes. ‘Whatever our doper used, it must have packed a heck of a wallop for the effects to take hold that quickly. A heck of a wallop.’ He rounds on Howard, who looks back with a gesture of helpless imbecility. ‘Well, the boys in the lab will be able to clear that up for us. The bigger question is, who’s responsible?’ He picks up a paperweight from his desk, roughly the size of a hockey puck and vaguely weapon-like. ‘I think we both know the answer to that one. This has Juster’s fingerprints all over it.’

‘Juster?’ Howard wakes abruptly from his Aurelie-reverie. ‘You mean Daniel Juster?’

‘You’re darn right I mean him, Slippy or Snippy or whatever he wants to call himself.’

‘But what… I mean, what does he have to do with it?’

‘Well, damn it, Howard, do I have to draw you a picture? Just look at the facts. One week ago we have this kid, in contravention of all classroom protocol, throwing up in his French lesson. Next thing we know, an ordinary school Hop turns into a mass vomiting spree. The connection’s unavoidable.’

Perhaps it is, but Howard’s brain is struggling to make it. ‘I really don’t see Juster drugging the punch, Greg,’ he says. ‘I just don’t think he has it in him.’

‘Okay, Howard. To me the vomiting seems incontrovertible. But I’m going to let you play devil’s advocate. God knows we don’t want Juster’s parents dragging us into court either. Try this on for size, then. We’ve definitively placed Juster at the Hop last night. Father Green remembers him arriving. But when I lined the kids up against the wall, guess who wasn’t there, Howard? Guess who’d already made his exit?’ He bounces the paperweight up and down on his palm, and continues theatrically, ‘But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe he just went to bed early. Maybe he came to you and asked for special permission to leave. Did he do that, Howard? You were in charge of the door. Do you remember him asking your special permission to leave?’

‘No,’ Howard admits.

‘So already we’ve got him breaking one of the house rules, viz. leaving without notifying a supervisor. What’s to stop him breaking another? Breaking all of them? It’s open and shut, Howard. Open and shut.’

That the Automator has a scapegoat for this debacle is certainly good news for Howard; at the same time, something seems not quite right with this version of events. He struggles to marshal his thoughts against the crashing guilt-hangover that tugs him floor-wards like a massive psychic drain – and then he remembers. ‘Greg, Carl Cullen tried to get into the Sports Hall last night. He knocked on the main door around 9 p.m. He seemed… agitated.’

‘Did you let him in?’

‘No, it was after the curfew so I turned him away.’

‘Then I don’t see what he has to do with our situation, Howard, if you didn’t let him in.’

‘Well, what if he didn’t go home? What if he, you know, if he decided to take revenge – sneak in and… and do this?’

The Automator stares at the floor for a long time. Trudy gazes at him, her pen poised over the page for the moment he recommences speaking. ‘You say you sent Carl away at what time?’

‘Around nine.’

‘And you left for the Geography Room at what time?’

‘Maybe… half past nine?’

‘So, would he have had time to go home, load up on dope and come back here in that time,’ the Automator muses. ‘Yes, he would. But that’s assuming he knew you’d go off on your little excursion and leave the hall unsupervised, which he didn’t. Even if he had the mickey with him from the get-go, would he have hung around outside on the off-chance he’d somehow get in? For a half-hour? In the rain? The boy’s wild, but he’s not a masochist. No, this smells to me like an inside job. Someone watching you all night, waiting for his opportunity. He doesn’t need much time. A few seconds, that’s all it takes. The moment you step outside, he makes his move. Maybe even before you step outside. Either way, he makes the drop, then he’s out of there, home free.’

‘But there’s no proof it was Juster,’ Howard argues, knowing that it is futile. ‘I mean, it could have been anyone in that room, couldn’t it?’

‘Well, sure, it could have been anyone. It could have been mischievous pixies. It could have been the Man in the Moon. But all the available facts are pointing to this kid Juster.’

‘But why –’

‘Exactly, Howard! Why? That’s what we have to get to the bottom of.’ He taps the ballpoint pen against his teeth. ‘You get any change out of him when you talked to him?’

‘Well… uh…’

‘You did talk to him?’

‘Of course, yes…’

‘And? He give anything away? You get any kind of a fix on where he’s coming from?’

Howard claws frantically through his memory of his encounter with Skippy, but cannot remember a single thing the boy said; only Miss McIntyre’s hand on his arm, her perfume in his nostrils, her teasing smile. ‘Well, uh… he largely just seemed like a fairly normal young…’

‘Maybe you should just tell me verbatim what he said to you – Trudy, are you getting this?’

‘Yes, Greg.’ Trudy’s pen hovers expectantly over the pad.

‘Hmm…’ Howard frowns effortfully. ‘Well, the thing is, it was less of an actual formal conversation, and more a sort of a… letting him know the door was open? So that if in the future he had any problems, he could –’

‘If he had…?’ the Automator splutters. He bangs his palm on the desk, as though to jog himself back into motion. ‘Jesus H Christ, Howard, we know he has problems! Any kid throws up all over his pals in French class, yes, he has problems! The whole point is that you were supposed to find out what those problems were! To avoid exactly the kind of scenario we’re looking at now!’ He sinks heavily into one of the new swivel-chairs, pressing the peak of his steepled fingers to his forehead, and issues a sigh that sounds like a sheet of flame crisping everything in its path.

‘Well, why don’t I go back to him?’ Howard says hastily. ‘I’ll talk to him again, and this time I promise I’ll find out what’s wrong with him.’

‘Too late for that,’ the Automator mumbles into his hand. Then, spinning in the chair, ‘Time to send in the big guns – Trudy, make an appointment for Juster with the guidance counsellor, as soon as he gets back. Father Foley’ll get to the bottom of this.’ He gets up and goes to the window, his back to Howard, his hand on the beaded cord of the Venetian blind.

‘Have you had a chance to, ah, speak to Juster?’ Howard asks huskily.

‘We did have a very brief chat last night, while you were at your janitorial duties,’ the answer comes, dripping with false brightness. ‘Found him upstairs brushing his teeth. All innocence. Told me he hadn’t been feeling well, so he’d gone out for a walk. The door was open, he said, so he thought it was all right. Didn’t know anything about anything.’ The light greys as the louvres of the blind close, and brightens as they part again. ‘A nice little walk, all on his own, in the middle of winter, dressed like a goddamn hobbit. Kid might as well have given me the finger. The bitch of it is, I’ve got no one to gainsay him. No one can remember a single thing that happened. Some kind of anterograde amnesia brought on by the mickey, maybe. Or maybe this Slippy of yours got to them first.’

For a long moment there is only the dimming and brightening of light, the blind pulley squeaking in the Automator’s hand. And then: ‘I might as well tell you that this collective memory loss has probably saved your ass as well.’

Howard starts. Squeak, squeak, goes the pulley. Trudy’s attentions are fixed deferentially on the manila pad, as though this part of the conversation is not for her ears. Impassive, the Automator’s silhouette fades and resolves. Howard begins to speak but stops, feels his shirt cling clammily to his back.

‘You like fish, Howard?’ The Acting Principal leaves the window abruptly and crosses the floor to the aquarium.

‘Do I like them?’ Howard stammers.

‘Old man used to sit up here half the day, watching the damn fish float around. Never saw the point of them myself. Fundamentally useless creatures.’ Crouching down, he snaps his fingers at one of the brilliant shapes that float tranquilly inside the tank. ‘Look at that. No idea what’s going on. In this office twenty-four seven, doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall.’ Turning to Howard again: ‘You know the difference between humans and fish, Howard?’

‘They have gills?’

‘That’s one difference. But there’s another difference, a more important difference. See if you can spot it. Come on, take a look.’ Obediently Howard rises from his chair and studies the variously sized fish in their heated limbo. He can hear the Automator breathing behind him. The fish flap their fins, placid and inscrutable.

‘I can’t see it, Greg,’ he says eventually.

‘Of course you can’t. Teamwork, Howard. That’s what the difference is. Fish aren’t team players. Look at them. There’s no system at work there. They’re not even talking to each other. How are they going to get anything done, you may ask? Answer: they’re not. What you see right there is fish at the height of their game. I’ve been watching them for a month now and that’s pretty much as far as it goes.’

‘Right.’ Howard feels like he is being assailed from all sides by an invisible enemy.

‘Might ask yourself what place they have in an educational institution. They don’t seem to have much to teach us. And by the same token, we don’t have much to teach them. Can’t educate a fish, Howard. Can’t mould a fish. Mammals, your dogs, cats, beavers, even mice, they can be trained. They know how to play ball. They’re willing to play their part and work towards the greater good. Fish are different. They’re intransigent. Loners, solipsists.’ He taps on the glass, again to no response; and then he says, ‘You screwed up last night, Howard. I don’t know how much, maybe I’ll never know. But it’s opened my eyes.’

Howard flushes. From the desk, he catches Trudy gazing at him with an expression of profound pity and compassion; quickly she reverts to the manila pad.

‘I had you pegged for a team player. Now I’m wondering if you aren’t more like one of these fish. You’d like to just float around on your own in the water, daydreaming. No law against that, you’ll say. True enough. But a fish isn’t much use to us here in Seabrook College. At Seabrook College, we’re interested in getting things done. We have goals to achieve, goals of academic and sporting excellence. We work together, we think things through. We’re mammals, Howard. Mammals, not fish.’

‘I’m a mammal, Greg,’ Howard hastens to assure him.

‘Can’t just say you’re a mammal, Howard. Being a mammal is about what you do. It’s reflected in the smallest of your actions. And the feeling I’m getting from you is that you haven’t decided either way.’ He straightens up, looks Howard in the eye. ‘Over the course of this mid-term break I want you to have a good hard think about where you’re going. Because either you start acting like a mammal and become part of the team. Or else maybe it’s time you found a new aquarium. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, Greg.’ Clear might be the wrong word; but Howard understands that he will walk out of the office with his job intact. A wave of relief rides through him as the spectre of a long, explanatory conversation with Halley recedes, for now, into the distance.

‘Okay, get out of here.’ The Automator goes to his desk and lifts the sheet of paper with the list of names.

‘Good morning, Acting Principal’s office,’ Trudy says to the phone, and Howard thinks he detects a thankfulness in her voice too.

Brian ‘Jeekers’ Prendergast is still perched on the edge of the bench outside the office with the same expression of incipient doom. ‘Hasn’t the Dean spoken to you already?’ Howard says.

‘He told me to wait,’ Jeekers says quaveringly.

Howard bends down, puts his hands on his thighs. ‘What happened last night?’ he asks in a lowered voice. ‘Did you see who got to the punch?’

The boy does not respond: he merely gazes back at him blankly, lips pressed together, as if Howard has uttered a string of nonsensical words.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Howard says. ‘See you next week.’ And he clatters away down the stairs.