A Fall from Grace (24 page)

“I bet. You don't need to blur the lines between fiction and reality for kids at that age—they're still finding it difficult to separate the two. How do you know all this?”

“Recently one or two of the children began to talk. Not to me, but to one of the other teachers.”

“I see . . . What did you think at the time? You didn't really think your life was in danger, did you?”

“No . . . except perhaps in the darker reaches of the night . . . But we have a child. She was a baby then. When I looked at that utterly helpless thing—”

“I know, I know,” said Charlie.

“And people never really understand the destructive potential of children, the vicious torments they inflict on each other. People may read a book like
Lord of the Flies,
but they don't take it seriously. Children take it seriously. And then you, the teacher, suddenly come across children like Anne Michaels. First she organizes the children in my class. She gets bored with that. Then she gets together a real little gang to parade around shouting insults and threats at newcomers to the area. That was what she did, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“Getting the idea from some of the lunatic right political parties. But then maybe she gets bored with that, and goes on to something else. It's possible, isn't it?”

“It's very possible. What sort of thing had you
in mind?”

“Blackmail, maybe. She sets up your father-in-law, then blackmails him to secure her silence.”

“Yes, I think that's possible,” said Charlie slowly. “So are other things. What I do think is that she got bored with having an army of younger kids and was moving into the adult world. But all her activities were of a piece.”

“Sadistic in a subtle way?”

“Yes. And concerned with power. I suppose all sadistic activities are connected with a lust for power. I think that with her the power is the major thing that appeals to her. Watching people squirming.”

After a moment's silence Ken Warburton said, “I hope what I've told you has been of some help.”

“It has, and I'm grateful. What I'm not sure of is how to connect it to the murder—no, let's say the death—of Rupert Coggenhoe.”

And when he put the phone down he sat meditating on that connection. He was beginning to think he had a picture, had a grasp on what had been going on in Anne Michaels's mind, and on what she had been doing to bring about a desirable conclusion to her plans. But there his picture stopped. When she had begun what should probably be called her relationship with Rupert, possibilities must have been going around in her mind: the sexual one, of course, which was in many ways the simplest, and therefore not necessarily the most appealing one to the girl's sadistic nature. There were other ways in which his father-in-law could easily have been trapped—by his vanity, his unconsciousness of other people's ideas and prejudices, his
total egotism—the usual state of many murderers and quite a few murder victims.

Somehow or other Charlie was going to have to step deeper and deeper into the picture of what had gone on in the last days of Rupert Coggenhoe's inglorious existence.

It was beginning to look like being quite a night. Like most good parties its origins were obscured in the mists of alcohol. At some point and for some reason several inhabitants of Slepton Edge had decided to go over to the Duke of Kent's in Shelf for a bit of a pre-Christmas piss-up. The Duke's had an enviable reputation for food, so anyone who wanted to combine the piss-up with a nosh-up could easily do so. Then someone remembered that Desmond Pinkhurst would be home that Sunday, so the whole occasion swelled in size and became an impromptu welcome-home for Desmond, though
The Wild Duck
was continuing until Christmas, when its strong-minded social vision would be succeeded in Sheffield by
Aladdin, His Cat and the Seven Dwarfs,
a satiric pantomime dreamed up by some bright spark who had failed to sell the idea to the BBC.

So there they all were—half the village, some with children, all with a healthy thirst that gladdened the
sight of the landlord. Charlie, sitting with his pint in a corner with a good view (Felicity was driving—one of the advantages of a pregnant wife, in Charlie's opinion), watched and listened and had to restrain himself from saying, “Shh! Go away,” when from time to time someone came up to talk to him. The only people lacking were the Carlsons, and Charlie missed them. They were making a joint appearance on local radio, a piece of disguised electioneering. But Charlie doubted anyway if this was the sort of occasion when Chris's agony aunt gifts would have been put to use, except perhaps by the very drunk in the half hour before closing time.

One voice predominated in the cacophony. Desmond Pinkhurst's, being trained to carry, carried.

“The
really
surprising thing is the offers I've been getting! Not a great wave or anything—not like that dreadful Far Eastern tidal wave with the name nobody can remember—but still a definite trickle, one after another, so that one can
choose,
which is a delicious feeling at my age.”

“What do you think you will choose?” asked the voice of Harvey Buckworth.

“Well, of course I don't have to choose anything!” Desmond said happily. “I can return to Slepton and go on just as before. And I shall have a
break,
no doubt about that . . . But I think I'm most tempted by the thought of Old Gobbo and the Globe.”

“Who in God's name is Old Gobbo?” came the voice of Belle Costello.

“Shakespeare, dear girl.
The Merchant of Venice.
A sheer comedy part, so in some ways a step
backward
for
poor old Desmond. But the thought of performing
at
the Globe, in just the conditions of Shakespeare's time, and so
close
to the audience you can see if they're getting the jokes—so unlike television, where I made my name! But there are other possibilities too. Sir Anthony Absolute at Richmond, Captain Shotover at Hull, even King Lear at Colchester. But that offer was Colchester's mistake, and I shan't compound it by taking them up on it. Giggled at by Essex girls. I couldn't bear it.”

“Have there been any television offers?” came the question from the little knot of people around him. Charlie thought he recognized the voice of Anne Michaels.

“Dear lady . . . dear
young
lady, I should say. People always want to know that. There are other means of dramatic expression than that horrible little box. I may sound ungrateful, but think how much attention is paid to those flickering images on the screen—or how little, I should say. Half the nation is slumped before it, three parts asleep. The other half is just waiting to press the zapper to see if the other twenty channels they have on offer will have something more likely to arouse a scintilla of interest in their tiny minds. No, I'm for real people on real seats looking at things happening on a good old stage. Just like they did at the Globe. Why do we always imitate the worst and not the best things in the American Way of Life?”

The little group around him seemed to be shifting away as Desmond gave a battering to the cornerstone of the home and family existence. At least they didn't
pretend that they hardly ever watched it. Charlie noted Harvey Buckworth, previously on the edge of the group, now moving forward to have the chance of a word privately with the new Great Man. A minute or two later he pounced, sitting down tentatively beside Desmond.

“I was wondering, Mr. Pinkhurst, whether you'd—well, I expect you know that we have a drama stream here, at Westowram High, I mean, and I wondered if, one day when you're not too busy—”

For a drama teacher Buckworth had very little facility in special pleading. Desmond Pinkhurst turned to him with a dangerous smile on his face.

“Ah! A
drama
stream. A special course to teach the tiny tots and the teenage aspiring media darlings how to—”

“We don't have any tiny tots.”

“—how to ‘make it' in the world of soap operas, police dramas, reality TV—what can that mean?—and sitcoms. I speak as one who once sitcommed himself to professional extinction. I must say I fail to see why state education should be laying on special facilities—I presume you are a professional facility?—to prepare children for a life on the fringes of the acting trade. Is that kind? Is that realistic? Ask yourself what happened to the child stars of my youth. What is Hayley Mills doing these days? What became of John Howard Davis? The truth is that grown-up boy stars slide into something called management or do something with a high-falutin' title on the outskirts of the pop industry. And the girls ‘dwindle' into wives, as dear Millimant
describes it in a play you won't know.”

“
The Way of the World,
” said Harvey Buckworth bravely.

“Ah, you do know! Forgive me. But I pose the question: Is it kind to prepare children for a career in which there will be very little call for their tiny and specialized talents?”

“You could ask the same about the drama schools.”

“I could indeed. But there they would enjoy high-quality tuition and get career advice from professionals. But let me lay my cards on the table. This is not the reason why I am going to refuse the request that you have not yet made to come and talk to your ‘stream.' I was an actor for thirty years before my twenty years of sabbatical leave from it. I love the profession, the atmosphere, even some of the people. I would never try to put off budding actors with talent and the necessary survival skills to enter it. I am refusing you because some time ago—last year, I think—I picked up something said by one of your star actresses, the young lady who a few minutes ago was in the group around me here. I picked it up with these ears trained in the distant past to catch the still, small voice of the prompter. And what she said to her friend was: ‘Pinkhurst? Oh, Harvey says he's just a has-been. He says he'd only tell us things that are useless in today's acting market.' Now, if you'll excuse me, dear boy, this has-been will wish the never-was good evening and good night.”

And he got up, looking around, and perhaps regretting
that Chris Carlson was not there to have a really good heart-to-heart with, he rambled over to talk to Ken Warburton and his wife, the victims of the drama group's earlier attentions. Charlie sat for a moment admiring Desmond's style. He wished he could say “dear boy” with that wonderful diminishing effect. For the second time in recent weeks he had a tiny twinge of regret that he had not tried for drama school. He told himself sternly that he had opted for real-life drama instead of the manufactured kind. He thought of the grotesque unreality of
The Bill.
But he had to admit that the thought of an audience applauding him would have been a fantastic experience.

Then he heard his wife's voice and he went over to where she was standing. He soon realized that the couple she was talking to were the Michaels.

“Mrs. Peace, I think we owe you an apology,” said Mr. Michaels with a rather uncertain air, not quite knowing how to put what he wanted to say. “Well, not an apology exactly, but unfortunately we've found that some of the things we said when we talked before are not true, or at least not
quite
true.”

“Oh dear,” said Felicity with a straight face.

“I mean, we've learned a lot about Anne since then, not all of it . . . what we'd wish to hear, to be perfectly frank. And, looking back, we think you must have known a bit about the things that we've just learned. You were . . . reserved-like, when we talked.”

“I suppose I was. I heard her . . . and the little gang of children, not far from where we live, and I followed them.”

“That is what we've discovered,” eagerly said Mrs. Michaels. “Of course she put a stop to it when she became friendly with your poor father, and that's another thing we've got to be grateful for, but it sounds really horrible, what went on with those children, and them quite a bit younger than she was.”

“I think it was horrible.”

“Why didn't the school put a stop to it? They were all children from the Westowram High.”

“I think it was things they were doing at school that led to it.”

“Well, it must have been,” said Mrs. Michaels, seizing on it. “I mean, we're not prejudiced people. Live and let live, that's our motto. Wouldn't it be ridiculous if you couldn't move from town to town just as you pleased? It would be like the old Iron Curtain countries. But now a lot of things fit into place—questions Anne used to ask us, where people came from, and that.”

“Oh yes?”

“Like your husband here, I'm afraid.” Charlie nodded, with an appearance of amiability. “Whether he came from the West Indies or Africa. I said it was probably Brixton.”