Half-Sick of Shadows (23 page)

My absence from Whitehead House had not gone unnoticed, of course, but it had been officially noted too late to do anything about it – such as contacting my parents or the constabulary. I like to think that Blinky procrastinated because he trusted me. Whether that is true or not, he opened his mouth and gave me the hair-drier treatment. Was I an idiot? Didn’t I know that he was responsible for my welfare?

I told him my reason for going home.

‘Mother is very ill. She might die.’

Had I taken leave of my senses? Why didn’t I consult him? How was my mother? Did I want more time off?

By the time I got back to my room I’d forgotten about Alf. He’d gone, of course, to wherever Alfs go.

My stature increased in the minds of both pupils and staff. They seemed to have raised me up a notch because of my absence without leave: clearly, word had got around. Blinky made known, to members of staff, the reason for my disappearance, and they, one and all, wished that their children – whether they had any or not – thought highly enough of them to perform such a disobedient but morally admirable action. So far as pupils were concerned, I became some kind of rebel hero.

18

Leaving Whitehead House For Ever

Exam week arrived – Physics, Maths, Chemistry, Psychology, English Language and English Literature. Modern History and Sociology spilled into a second week. After each exam, the teacher of that subject asked how I thought I did. In all of them, I thought I did all right, not great. Language and Literature were probably my strongest, Maths and Chemistry my weakest. As for Physics, my favourite subject – I feared I let myself down. The areas that I revised most did not show on the exam paper. There’s an element of luck in passing exams. When I’d finished them I was relieved, of course, but also deflated like a balloon. No one patted my back, no one celebrated; it was anticlimactic – like life itself, I suppose.

A month remained before school officially ended. Boys like me, whose exams were over, loitered unemployed. No reason remained for my presence. I simply packed my suitcase and thought about leaving. I sat on my suitcase and chanted, to the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’, for the courage to do it: ‘Going home, going home, going home today. Oh what fun to ride a train back home down Bruagh way.’

Someone knocked on the door to my room. ‘Come in,’ I called, and Alf did, armed with a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. I’d for gotten about Alf. Now I felt guilty for intending to leave without saying goodbye to him.

‘Hello, Alf. I was just about to look for you to say goodbye. I’ve decided to clear off early.’

‘I thought you might,’ he said, uncorking and pouring us a glass each, though it was a bit early in the morning, ‘which is why I want to propose a toast.’ He handed me my glass and raised his. ‘To you, Edward, my best friend. May God bless you and all who sail in you.’

He didn’t pour a second glass. Before leaving, he said, ‘Can I ask a huge favour, Edward?’

‘You can ask.’

‘I’d love to visit you at the Manse and meet Sophia. You’ve talked so much about her.’

I was taken aback. With both parents in poor health, Edgar coming home sometime soon, and Gregory on the prowl, I really didn’t want anyone visiting the Manse, not even harmless Alf.

‘Of course,’ I said, because I could not, realistically, say anything else. ‘Sophia never gets to meet new people. I’m sure she’d love to meet you.’

‘I’ll show up, then, whenever I can.’

‘Yes,’ I said, still reeling somewhat – as much as reeling is possible while sitting on a suitcase.

‘It isn’t goodbye, then.’ He dashed to the door, left my room, stuck his head back in, said, ‘Good! See you later,’ and vanished.

A visitor at the Manse: I needed a second glass of wine. I would probably fall asleep on the train, but what the heck!

As I sipped wine, standing at the window, I became agitated by not knowing when Alf would show up. Possibly he didn’t know either. A specific date would have been better. If that wasn’t possible, a general idea would do, such as before the end of August. I’d be starting university in October, if I passed my exams and got in, and I didn’t want Alf to visit in September because … because I just didn’t. July would be best, early July; that way Alf’s visit would be over with quickly and I could stop worrying about it. And did he mean that he wanted to stay for a day or two? I didn’t know that either. Suddenly,
I
was very unhappy with the arrangements for Alf’s visit to the Manse – or lack of them.

I was just about to hurry off in search of him – I didn’t even know for sure which dormitory was his, since he hadn’t been in any on the few times I’d looked over the years – when I saw him down below from my window, crossing the quadrangle. I sped after him, ran along the corridor and tripped down the stairs. The several boys I passed stood rigid, stunned, unable to believe their eyes. Was that Pike running?

I spun round the quadrangle looking for him. Someone laughed. ‘What’s wrong, Pike? Is your arse on fire?’ Realizing that I was indeed panicking, or seeming to panic, and without good reason, I made an effort to stop spinning. Noticing Alf, however, or what looked like one of his legs following the rest of him into the main junior school building, I set off in pursuit as rapidly as my legs would carry me.

Indoors, I walked swiftly; running wasn’t allowed. The leg had definitely belonged to Alf. There he went, turning corners into new corridors some distance ahead of me. I couldn’t call him without some teacher coming down on me and telling me to be quiet, and that would only lead to further delay. Now and then, I trotted a little.

Alf went to the junior changing room, where I, so long ago, used to undress for sports, dreading the hour of physical torture to come.

I had Alf now, trapped. What his business might be in the junior changing room, I had no idea.

Inside, the junior changing room echoed with rain, steam and squeaky, hollow voices. There was Alf, his back to me, opening one of the grey steel lockers and … and stepping into it? Good grief! He didn’t close the door behind him. I stepped up to the locker. Tentatively, I peeked round the door and looked inside.

Nothing. Not clothing. Not sports equipment. Not Alf. Nothing.

There was nothing to see except the inside of a locker, which looked like … a locker’s inside. I almost went in, as Alf had done.

As Alf could not possibly have done, since he wasn’t there.

The hollow, squeaky voices of two dozen junior boys were upon me. Out from the communal shower they’d come, wet and pink, bare-bottomed, bald-pubed, twenty-four little cocks running towel-ward like an army of snails without their shells. And the junior sports master, whom I didn’t know – fully clothed, of course.

He viewed me with suspicion. ‘Can I help you?’

Quick thinking saved the day.

‘Recently finished my final exams, Sir. I’ll be leaving soon. Just having a look around the old place. Nostalgia.’

He asked how I’d enjoyed my time at Whitehead House. We chatted for a good ten minutes while the semi-clothed juniors whipped each other with towels. Then he wished me good luck with my exam results and I left the changing rooms, left the junior school – Alfless.

I could have hidden in my cupboard like a mouse until lunchtime, and travelled back to the Manse on a later train. Every lunchtime, except when there were deluges of Noah’s Ark proportions, the quadrangle teemed with sweaty, screaming, fighting boys. They were camouflage. I could have crept in the shadows of walls, then dashed through the throng. Feeling at least six inches taller than usual, I did neither. Instead, at twenty past ten, in time for the ten thirty-five train, I strode boldly across the centre of the empty quadrangle, suitcase in hand, as though I owned the place. I passed through the gates of Whitehead House half expecting a hand on my collar to drag me back inside: ‘Where do you thing you’re going, boy?’ ‘Home,’ I would say, ‘and there’s diddly-squat you can do about it’, or ‘so there!’ or ‘so put that in your pipe and smoke it’.

Crossing the quadrangle, I resisted the temptation to look behind me. No masterly hand fell on my shoulder. I listened, but no masterly voice called my name. Blinky, however, watched my exit from his window. Boys watched from other windows, wishing they were as
brave
as me. I saw them, and Blinky – his face inscrutable – through the eyes in the back of my head. How eerily strange leaving Whitehead House felt – and leaving without official sanction – knowing I would not be going back, ever.

Outside the gate, my limbs loosened but my confidence decreased. I walked faster. As I approached the railway station, only the awkward suitcase banging against my leg prevented me from jogging. The train had arrived early. It waited for me and my grubby student’s ticket. I climbed on board, took a seat and avoided eye contact with anyone on the other side of the window. ‘If you’re up there, God,’ I muttered in prayer, ‘make this bloody train move … Move. Move.’

But the train did not.

I grew hot and sweaty all over as my heart tried to escape through my ribs. What could I do but sit and wait?

An era had ended. It had lasted for twelve years – a quite lengthy era when measured against a human lifetime. Now, as I sat in the train, waiting for its journey to begin, the era seemed much less long, significantly shorter: from boy to man in the wink of a rusty eye. Would I never again suck one of Blinky’s boiled sweets? I almost shed a tear for my cupboard-sized room and the smell of the library. I should at least have shaken Blinky’s hand. After all he had done for me, Blinky would think me an ungrateful little escapee.

All on board! A whistle blew. Doors thudded shut. The station guard yelped an instruction to the driver. Steel wheels moved and jolted me back in my seat. The grip of the ghost-hand on my collar slipped, held on by a finger. As the speed increased, the ghost-finger let go. I breathed. And I might not have done that since leaving my room.

I felt sick as I watched the train leave Bruagh Halt, me on the platform, no longer a schoolboy. I went to Maud’s shop because I didn’t feel like walking home – not yet. At the door, I hesitated. The card in my pocket identified me as a student and qualified me for free
rail
travel; other than that, and a ballpoint pen, my pockets were empty. I had not even one small coin with which to buy Sophia a celebratory bar of chocolate.

Through the unwashed window, I saw Maud arranging dusty tins on an equally dusty shelf. She looked as old as ever but no older than a decade ago. Maud went on, and on, doing the same tasks daily – like everyone else, really. She existed to be there if somebody needed century-old baked beans or damp matches. If nobody needed anything, she might as well become extinct. I had nothing to buy from her, and nothing to say to her, nothing that would lift her, help her, enlighten or please her. Maud, the post office shopkeeper. Maud in her blue overall: there if needed.

Leslie had disappeared off the radar when I was about seven or eitht.

Did Leslie live with his mother?

Had he returned, the prodigal son, and been forgiven for whatever peculiar thing he did, or continued to do? Had Maud, like Victor Frankenstein, been damned by inescapable love for her creation?
Her
creation? What of a father? Did Leslie have one? Was Maud a virgin and Leslie Jesus returned? Did Leslie Christ drink wine and break bread upstairs with twelve others? Did Maud wash his feet with her hair? Did Alf attend?

As I turned away from the window: ‘Hello, Edward.’ Farmer Barry, an elbow poking out from the window of his lorry. I returned his hello. ‘I thought you were at school.’

‘My exams are finished.’

‘You came home early, then?’

‘There’s no point staying.’

‘No use hanging around with two arms dangling when there’s work to do elsewhere.’ He laughed. ‘I used to say that to your old man. I’d bark at him and he’d call me a slave-driver behind my back. Deep down it was all in good fun, and he knew that … You’ll be off to university next, then, according to your mother.’

‘If I pass my exams.’

‘Oh, you’ll pass all right. Jump in and I’ll drive you home.’

I did and he did.

‘I see that brother of yours has bought himself a motorbike. It’s not a big bike, just a wee moped. Fifty cc,’ said Farmer Barry as we wound along the Road.

My first thought was: where did Gregory get the money? ‘He must have got a job,’ I said. ‘I can’t picture Gregory on a motorbike.’

‘Spends his time in Maud’s, upstairs.’

Upstairs in Maud’s used to be a kind of social club for local husbands and wives. As the years passed, husbands lost wives and wives lost husbands. These days, upstairs in Maud’s was a gathering place for drinking poteen and smoking whatever kind of weed they grew.

‘I wonder what happened to Maud’s son, Leslie,’ I said, much more interested in his life than my brother’s death by motorbike.

‘Strange one, him.’

Farmer Barry did a U-turn at the obelisk, the leaning tower of toilet, before stopping to let me out. ‘Here, Edward.’ He dipped his hand in a pocket and pulled out a fat wad of notes without so much as an elastic band around them. He separated the wad and forced half on me. ‘Buy yourself and Sophia something for a treat. There might be some left over to buy your mother a wee treat too.’

Embarrassed, I thanked him and climbed out of his lorry. I raised a hand: a farewell wave, or a watery Fascist salute. Farmer Barry’s lorry, and his elbow protruding from the window, returned the way they came.

I remembered the body in the bog and was amazed that I could have forgotten. I went to our old outdoor toilet to check that nothing had been disturbed. To my horror, an unfastened lock hung from the latch. Indeed, rust made fastening the lock impossible. Had I hung it there? I had no recollection of having done so. I removed the lock, opened the door and looked inside. What a stench! It would
have
been much worse had our weather been less icy. The body sat exactly where I’d left it. It hadn’t decomposed much thanks to the temperature. I closed the door, replaced the lock, and went to greet Sophia while racking my brain to remember having placed the lock through the latch.