Into the River (27 page)

After the show everyone hurried off to the classroom where the post-show feast had been laid out. A number of teachers had been drafted in to act as security and exclude those not in the show. One of these was Mr Faull, who seemed so excited he failed to note that Steph had smuggled Jeremy in with him.

Once inside, everyone stood around the long tables not hungry or not daring to begin this last part of the theatrical ritual. Vanessa had managed to hook up with Devon while Sina, keeping tight with a different group of girls, just flashed him the occasional evil glare.

“It’s holidays soon. My family have a little place at Opoutere. You must come over and stay.”

“You reckon?” Devon had no illusions that this was anything more than a drama fling.

“Oh yes, I’ve told my family about you and they are dying to meet you. Where will you be?”

“I haven’t thought about that yet.” Then he added, “My family have a little place on the East Coast too.”

Suddenly his arm was wrenched out of Vanessa’s grip. It was Steph. He hauled him over to a small space away from everyone else.

“Have you seen Willie?” His urgency startled Devon. “Someone said that he went off with the headmaster and another man as soon as the show finished.”

Devon looked around. It was true, there was no sign of him. “I’ll ask Mr Faull.”

He found Farty standing just inside the door, blocking any further people from coming or going. There was something cold and authoritarian about him now. Not his usual breezy Christian self.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that,” he announced,
and then noting Devon’s disappointment at this brush-off, he leaned over, almost whispering in Devon’s ear, “Go off and enjoy the party, Devon. Leave that stuff to the adults.”

“What stuff? Is there something happening?”

Mr Faull looked as though he had already said too much. He glanced around furtively, nodded, and said, “Off you go. Make the most of it.”

Devon had the ominous sense that even now, when they were supposedly enjoying the fruits of their success, it was already over.

Across the other side of the room, Steph was forcing chocolate éclairs into Jeremy’s mouth, mashing the cream and chocolate all over his face at the same time. Devon longed to rush over, exploding with this new scrap of information, ready to foment a drama after the drama … but he didn’t. Something held him back.

Mr Simmonds appeared at the door and he and Mr Faull went off together. Devon slipped out behind them, shadowing them as they made their way to the front of the school. In the driveway was a car with its door open and in its lit doorway a man in a suit crouched, muttering into a two-way radio. Mr Simmonds and Mr Faull chatted to the man briefly, then the housemaster walked quickly up the front steps. Devon scampered back as Mr Faull returned to the party.

Back in the safety of the throng, Devon had to lean against the wall to catch his breath. Through the frenzied mass of feasting cast members, he glimpsed Steph appearing and disappearing. Steph was in his element. This was something he had worked towards, something he was born for. He was gesturing extravagantly, making killer comments, receiving congratulations and tormenting his diminutive understudy. He was a star and all those around him seemed to be glittering and glowing with the light of adulation. Devon looked back at the door as if to run and never stop, but that option no longer existed. Mr Faull was back on guard. The noise in the room thickened and intensified. The individual voices
blended into an indecipherable clamour. Jeremy turned towards him for a moment as if to say something, then went back to stuffing himself at the big table.

“Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting!”

The sharp sound punctured the wall of noise, at first barely audible and then sharp and clear as the voices drained away like water down the plug hole. It was Steph holding a glass aloft and tapping it with a spoon. Next to him stood DD, recently re-coiffed, and ready to wrap up the proceedings.

“Thank you, Steph. Out of chaos comes order.”

She looked around, surveying the mess of food and disheveled bodies. “I know you are all excited. I know you are enjoying this feast; my goodness, some of you boys must be feeling sick.” She looked at Jeremy who was on the far side of Steph, cream and icing on his face, in his hair, and dusting most of his dark school pullover.

“I don’t intend to talk for long …” But she did. For the next ten minutes or so the cast were regaled with high and low lights from the past few months, with particular attention focused on her part in converting this rough libretto into something that gleamed. As she spoke on, Steph adopted poses of exaggerated interest that provided a visual accompaniment to the laborious detail she wallowed in.

“When I first saw the material I had to work with …”

“Sometimes the real drama happens behind the scenes …”

“As for the shenanigans on the mystical island of Motutapu …”

The room was filled with knowing looks and exaggerated embarrassment.

“I can only compare my dilemma with that of Prospero from Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
, burying our collective transgressions full fathom five …”

“Now our revels all are ended, so finally, on behalf of myself and Mr Willis who would have loved to be here with us tonight
but has been detained on urgent business …”

At this moment, Steph seemed to became aware of something. His jaw dropped and his hands came up and hovered around his face. A moment later his wild eyes hunted for Devon.

Meanwhile, his little entourage, still reading his impromptu mimes, all scanned the room, hands on brow as if this was a “searching for Devon” exercise from Theatre Sports.

Dianna’s speech ended with everyone thronging in search mode and the noise once again rising to a dense hubbub. By the time Steph located Devon, he was almost frantic.

“What’s happened?” Steph asked.

“Farty knows but he’s not saying anything, that’s why he’s on guard here I think. There’s a cop car in the driveway …”

He watched as Steph talked desperately to Mr Faull. Mr Simmonds appeared in the doorway, said something to Steph, and then led him away. After this, Devon felt ill. He couldn’t eat, or talk, or do anything but worry. He knew now that the ship he had been sailing on all this time was not just doomed, it was already heading straight to the bottom. Then it all ended. The girls were herded together, the boys sent home or back to Marsden House.

Mr Faull held Devon back until everyone else had left and then led him to the duty room. Mr Simmonds was waiting in his office.

“Something’s happened, Santos, and I believe you’re part of it.”

He was taken to the headmaster’s office. There he was questioned by three men: the headmaster, the school lawyer, and a detective from the youth section of the Newmarket police station. He was asked about money, about the drugs, about whether he had been given vodka by Mr Willis. About his relationship with Steph and the role he had played in the tormenting of Briggs. He was even asked if he had anything to say about the theft of Mr Simmonds’s money box the previous term.

At first Devon offered full and detailed answers as best he could so that no one else was incriminated, but as the cross-examination began he was exposed. First he was told his story was “inconsistent”, and then later, as they grew more impatient, this changed to “liar”.

He looked at the clock in the cabinet opposite. It was nearly one-thirty a.m. He was so tired by now, that it was difficult to
remember
what he had said earlier. Finally the policeman read back his earlier statement slowly and deliberately, pointing out ‘things just didn’t add up’.

Devon knew he was beaten. He knew he couldn’t hold out for much longer. Silence was his last defence. He folded his arms and stared straight ahead. He refused to answer any questions at all, even mundane ones like, “Would you like some water?” Or, “Would you like to go to bed?”

He could see their frustration mounting. They were tiring too. All he had to do was to stay schtum.

The headmaster began his last gambit. “I have one request for you now and I would like you to think about it, hard and long. Remember in the Bible, John 8, “the truth will set you free”. You can stay silent, protecting the guilty, the people who have damaged
this school and hurt the people in it, or you can speak up.”

Devon stared at his feet.

“Speak up and you can stay with us, be one of us, and keep everything you have worked so hard to achieve. Silence will mean that you will leave on Monday for the last time and you will have nothing. All we can do is give you back to your people and say we tried, but it was no good. What do you say to that?”

For a while the only noise was the ticking of the clock. Devon felt the eyes of the three men boring into him. He was sure that in a moment he was going to scream and then the headmaster made a ‘brushing away’ gesture and a noise like the release of steam. The interview was over.

That night, Devon was to sleep in the sick bay: a bleak little room up on the top floor. He was taken to the pens briefly to get his pyjamas and a book but he was escorted by Mr Henderson, the tutor from England. The few boys remaining in pens were fast asleep and all Steph’s clothes lay out neatly organised on the bed, as if he might come back at any moment. Where was he? When would he be brought back to the house?

Back in the sick bay, Devon was locked in. He peered out the tiny window above the toilet. Even if he could fit through, the drop to a concrete path below was thirty feet. He wasn’t going anywhere. The bed was hard, and had a waterproof sheet that crackled each time he moved. It was impossible to sleep. He lay there for hours, replaying the events of the last few weeks, going over the details. He had been around Barwell’s during crises before, but this was different. Every noise, every stirring in the corridor outside, made him sit up. This surely must be Steph, returned from some prolonged interrogation, triumphant once again. Steph was much too clever to get nailed for this, Devon was certain of that.

The following day was Sunday. He could hear the boys moving around in the corridor. At about nine o’clock there was the sound of a key in the lock. Mr Henderson, the tutor who had locked him in the previous night, appeared in the doorway.

“You awake, mate?” His English accent was faintly reassuring.

Devon just nodded.

“That’s the spirit. Here’s your breakfast. You’re going to have to stay here a bit longer until all this has been sorted. Okay? Come on through, Jem.”

He stepped back and Devon was surprised to see Steph’s understudy Jeremy with a tray of breakfast stuff. As he lay the tray on the table next to the bed he appeared to be mouthing something. A single word. Devon had no idea what it was, but it gave him hope.

An hour or so later, Mr Faull appeared in the door way.

“Come with me now, Devon. It’s time.”

Devon shook his head.

“Actually Devon, I’m not suggesting. You will come, and you’ll come now.”

They strode vigorously around the perimeter of the school. The sky was a heavy roof of thick, grey rain cloud and there was not a breath of wind. There were a few people about: some boys
practising
place kicks on the rugby field, and farther on, a couple of neighbourhood kids doing something behind the gym, who scattered as Faull and Devon approached.

As they neared the chapel it finally began to drizzle.

“Well, look at that, how handy, a chapel that just happened to be here when we needed shelter from the storm.”

“I wouldn’t call this a storm,” said Devon, the effort of speech almost too much for him.

“Oh, but it is, Devon, and you’re slap bang in the middle of it.”

“Here it comes,” thought Devon, “poor old Farty is going to reach out and save my soul.”

The interior of the chapel was gloomy and distinctly chilly compared to the air outside. They sat side by side in a pew near the back and said nothing. Slowly Devon’s eyes adjusted and he
could see flowers on the altar from the morning’s service. It occurred to him that he had slept through Sunday chapel. What was that about? Why had no one woken him? Maybe he was already gone, like poor Steph.

After a while, Mr Faull chuckled. The noise rang out in the quiet space with all the stridency of breaking crockery. Mr Faull turned to face him with a sort of stupid smile on his face. “I just remembered something that happened to me in this very chapel years ago.”

He waited for encouragement to continue, but Devon gave none.

“I was in the choir of Barwell’s, like you, but we were a very different sort of outfit in those days. The music teacher was called Mr Healy and he ruled with a cane and a hymn book. For minor offences, like poor timing or singing out of key, he would sail into our ranks and crack the offending boy on the head with an old
edition
of
Hymns Ancient and Modern.
” He turned to Devon with a benign grin. “A book we all knew weighed more than two pounds in the hard back edition.”

He paused again, waiting for some sign of interest.

“He wasn’t the most co-ordinated of men, Mr Healy, so often he whacked the wrong head or ended up hitting the tuneless boy on the side of the face. It might seem a bit barbaric to you, but we put up with it.”

Pause.

“Do you know why we put up with it?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Devon.

“We put up with it because every fourth Sunday there was a combined service with the girls from Saint Leonard’s. You see, Devon, boys were the same then as they are now, and we did the same things.”

Devon immediately thought of the things that he and Steph had got up to with Willie and wondered how much Farty had been told.

“Anyway, at the Easter service one year there was a tall
Rarotongan
girl in the opposite choir stalls. I felt myself overcome by powerful emotions.”

Devon and Mr Faull exchanged looks.

“I wrote a brief note to her during the service on one of the blank pages at the back of my hymn book, and carefully tore it out during the sermon. Towards the end of the service the two choirs combined on the steps facing the congregation for ‘Gaudeamus igitur’ and I took my chances and passed my note to this girl. What do you think of that?”

“Pretty extreme.”

“Sarcasm isn’t called for. It was a harmless sort of thing. Wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow these days but it was quite out of line, in those times. We were all held back afterwards by Mr Healy. This usually meant he was going to praise our efforts or give us a few tips. The girls were asked to leave with their teacher, and then Healy stared at me and went white with rage.”

Mr Faull adopted a theatrical voice beginning with little more than a whisper and ending with a roar: “How dare I use the sacred duty of choir for such a carnal purpose? What sort of person would rip a page from a hymn book? Did I have no care for how Barwell’s was going to be viewed by the young ladies of Saint Leonard’s? Was this a meat market?”

“I don’t get that last one.”

“Never mind. Next thing, without any warning whatsoever, he had me bend over one of the front pews and he gave me six on the arse. He was furious. It was a crazy rage, no sense in it. He capped it off by having me gated over Easter so I couldn’t go home for the hols like the other boys. Do you think that was fair, Devon?”

Devon shook his head wearily, eager for this talk to be wrapped up.

“Neither did I. So I was mooching around the school for a few days, sweeping the driveway and clearing leaves from the bike shed guttering, thinking it was the end of the world when the
groundsman, Bill Tucker, came up to me.” He changed to a more personal tone. “We were all a bit scared of Bill Tucker because he was an old jail bird and there were rumours that he’d murdered his wife.”

Devon was mute.

“Anyway, he came up to me and said this.”

Mr Faull put on some species of English accent unplaceable to Devon.

“Look ’ere lad, I know wot’s ’appened, wot’s bin did and wot’s bin hid. But know this my boy, things like this ’appen to everyone and all ye can do is rise above it. Rise above it, lad.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means this isn’t a perfect world, there isn’t perfect justice, so all you can do is make the most of things. Otherwise you’ll roam the world with some great chip on your shoulder. That’s been my philosophy ever since. Seize the moment, try to get some pleasure from little things. The things that happen which seem so unfair … well, maybe they aren’t. Sometimes you get nailed for something you never did but other times, maybe you got away with things and no one caught up with you.”

They waited for a while after this. Devon knew that this was his cue to open up to Farty and for the two of them to hug and become ‘mates’. But he wouldn’t. He was crying out for comfort, for some act of tenderness, but he couldn’t do it. It would be crossing the line. Joining ‘them’. Selling out.

“Do you have anything to say, Devon? You’re to give up everything, rather than just tell the truth?”

Devon had so much to say, but none of it to this man. Nothing now.

“No one can help you if you don’t help yourself. You’d rather throw it all away?” One last desperate attempt.

Devon knew only silence could save him.

Farty sighed and shook his head then the two of them headed back to the main part of the school.

The two of them sat in the outer room. He could hear the muffled sounds of talk in the headmaster’s office but it was impossible to work out who it was or what was being said. Next to him Mr Faull pretended to read some boring-looking education newspaper.

After about ten minutes the big door swung open. Mr
Simmonds
stood on the threshold, talking to the headmaster in the body of the office.

“Come through now, Santos, please.”

Devon walked through and stood next to one of the big chairs which faced the headmaster’s mighty desk. The shiny expanse of polished wood was clear except for a few sheets of paper which the headmaster was busily covering with his angry cursive scrawl. Next to the desk was the man who had been identified as the school lawyer. He looked over Devon with a practised eye and then handed the headmaster a few pages of typed paper. The head suddenly ceased writing and looked up.

“Santos! I’m not going to exhume every sordid detail of what you’ve been involved in. I think we have quite enough for our purposes. Mr Hammond here has prepared a statement I would like you to sign. Do this and it will be an end to the matter.”

He passed the paper across to Devon.

“Pick it up. Read it. Then sign it.”

Devon picked it up and skimmed the contents. It was a confession to being a party to the supply of drugs (cannabis, ecstasy and GBH) and alcohol (vodka) to other students. It identified “Mr Willis, recently employed as music master.” and another unnamed boy who was the victim of “drink spiking”. There was no mention of Steph. When he looked up they were all staring at him.

“What we are looking for here is damage control. Looking at what can be saved. Do you think you can be saved, Santos?”

Devon said nothing and placed the paper carefully on the desk.

“I know what you’re thinking, Santos!” the headmaster barked.

Devon was startled back into the moment.

“You’re thinking, ‘How can I do this and keep my honour? How can I avoid being seen as an informer?’ But I tell you, this is not the time for that. The damage is done. All we can hope to achieve now is to purge all the poison from our system. This is a chance to be part of the cure, or part of the poison. Now sign it.”

Devon shrugged and looked out the window.

“This is a simple decision: sign it and stay, or, if you refuse to sign, then I am afraid you have to go.”

A long minute slid by, then the mood changed to brisk and businesslike.

“I’m not prepared to waste any more time on you. What you have been involved in is a cancer to a school like ours. The only remedy is to cut it out, and that’s what we’re doing.”

There was another period of tense silence. Devon sat absolutely still, barely breathing. Finally the headmaster snapped. When he spoke this time he was shouting.

“We’ve given you everything we have to offer and you’ve squandered it on drugs and perversion. All we can do now is give you back to your people. Maybe they can do something with you.”

The headmaster looked up at Mr Faull.

“He will be kept away from the others until we can organise his return. Get him out of here.”