Schooling (4 page)

11

DONG Morning assembly in the great hall waiting for masters black capes open like crows eyes still slow still DONG puffy from sleep to file past the statues mustached Giles Dupré Raynes founder in bronze Apollo a broken Cromwell and Queen Victoria that one just a bust DONG up the aisle between the rows of students standing in carved pews to the first row DONG the row of velvet Simon Puck goggling his eyes fingers reading his scalp for scabs. Morning light through the stained glass plays on her hand. A yellow circle in the design appears to be a fried egg but is in fact a sun.

Headmaster stands to lead the prayer.

The light stipples Gilbert’s bowed head. If no one ever visits clearly the paintings are hidden from himself.

Oh God we have heard with our ears

Yesterday, after the nurse took Catrine’s temperature and informed her that there was hardly time for playacting, what with students who were actually sick, what with winter coming on, she was sent to Tea.

Our fathers have declared unto us

Taking her tray, she received the benediction, pink meat pie wedge, hard-boiled egg staring from its center, noble

noble works that thou did

There were no empty chairs

in the old time

near Sophie or anyone so she had to sit with first years. The younger girls wanted to know about America and she told them. Lies until Brickie passed by on his way to the bread giving her a look that made her go quiet.

World with . . . damn . . . As it was in the beginning

She doesn’t try to locate the back of Gilbert’s head but it seems to float wherever she looks.

World with . . . damn . . . Is now and ever shall be

Gilbert

World without end.

Headmaster stands . . . You may sit . . . patch over his one eye, three black strings plastered across his globe . . . Later this week we will be lucky enough to hear excerpts from Mr. Spenning’s travels in Borneo.

Father on the telephone, Good news But we will continue this morning with Dr. Thorpe’s insights Extremely good news On Man’s rise from the innocence of brutehood. Man sold their house in Maine. They were to find a new one over the Christmas holidays. Questions of morality arise in A new house where Alternatives are offered of better lives. Did they need a house did they need. Understanding the distinctions between good and evil. What about Conscience. What about Hopes of spiritual ascendance. What about in Maine the day the movers came. Finding that bird’s nest with Mother’s hair wound in the twigs. No chance of finding something like that in any new house.

It is only after ages fraught with despair . . . Dr. Thorpe mimes despair . . . Hopelessness and grinding . . . his teeth . . . Misery that. Moral law becomes dominant. So
Ariise
. . . Thorpe trills . . .
Ariise
from a bestial to a moral plane of existence.

Across the courtyard with Sophie and Ness. Sophie singing Boring boring boring laddering a scale the sun coloring everything sharply the morning—

Yank . . . he moves in bestial, thin, the height of a man.

They have reached the door to School House. So close. One step up through the heavy oak door four steps down the short corridor to History. Sophie stops singing thunder rattles in the distance voices halt across the tennis courts pupils stop to watch clouds speed across the sun casting the group in shadow then lighting them again. The school cat flashes by. From far off comes the faint sound of a drum.

Look at me.

Well she won’t she’ll reach for the door past Sophie’s protective arm Sophie telling Paul You Bore Us and here’s her own voice apologizing no less for spilling on his—

Jumper you mean?

A movement in the shadowed doorway. Brickie steps out. He doesn’t register Paul only at her his shifting bastard hair an old tired light in what she can see of his eyes.

Paul leans one shoulder slowly against the wall. Silence. Vanessa gives a little cough. Something has happened between Brickie and Paul.

You saw what she did . . . Paul finally comes away from the wall . . . Leave this.

Why does Gredville plead like that. What does Brickie have on him. Sophie’s arm on her back. In this world without end, when does she begin to protect herself.

Brickie pushes back through the door toward History. Watching the door ease closed, Paul snorts, walks away. Then lopes across the courtyard tracking new springbok.

That low tone of distant thunder grows loud and ominous. Louder, louder, it becomes a rattling vibration, resting at the height of an unbearable scream. The noise threatens deafness when suddenly a silver motorcycle appears spinning around the corner of School House. Ploughing through a flowerbed, it roars across the courtyard, heading straight for her and Sophie. At the last minute, the motorcycle jerks to a stop, spraying gravel. A helmeted figure cuts the motor and flicks down the kickstand. Sophie sucks in her breath, starts backing away. The driver’s tall, seventeen? Eighteen? He pulls off his helmet. Sophie goes ashen, the dust settles. The boy grins.

Oh . . . Sophie whispers . . . Owen Wharton.

12

Handel floats across the courtyard. Chorus rehearsing The Messiah. We Like Sheep, they profess. We Like Sheep, they baa.

Their adoration of sheep carries down to practice room 9 in the basement of School House. She begins again. Carols against the din of radiators. Deck the wrong note Deck the. The? The halls with—

A shadow falls across her music. She glances up. The boy from the motorcycle is crouching at her window, sliding it open . . . Fa la la la la . . . he jumps into the room.

She splits a reed.

You’d do better to improvise. God that sill’s filthy . . . the boy sets down a clipboard, dusts off his hands . . . School’s a muckheap. Never play a clarinet sitting down. It constricts the muscles in your throat. Besides, I want your chair.

You can’t be in here . . . but she stands.

Can’t? Let’s make it up as we go along, shall we?

Who are you?

Introductions! . . . he straddles her chair dramatically thunk thunk his boots one either side . . . Owen Wharton, Upper Sixth, taking three A levels including Theatre Arts . . . the boy has odd vowels . . . Passed only four O levels year before last bit embarrassing but consensus was that the Biology questions were absurd . . . is he American . . . I think you’ll find I’m intelligent enough for the job.

What job?

Assistance. It’s come to my attention that Paul Gredville—

Paul Gredville?

Yes, has made certain threats, certain overtures, if you’ll excuse the pun—

I don’t need your help.

Oh God. One of those. Something to prove. It’s trying, it really is . . . the boy checks his clipboard . . . Let me see . . . Owen leans back, throws open the door . . . Sophie Marsden!

Down the hall, a piano stops playing midscale.

There’s a POD . . . warning him . . . Right down the hall, Madame Araigny—

Sophie Marsd—

But Sophie’s in the doorway, breathless . . . Yes, Owen.

Tell her . . . and Owen’s up and back out the way he came, the window shuddering down behind him.

She turns to Sophie . . . What the hell? You’re not to go out alone. Especially at night.

13

Alone. At night. After Prep’s sonnet debacle. Memorizing for Betts. Sad. Mortality, a fearful meditation! Or was it sad meditation! Death loop. Follyfield chapel Brinton boys’ dorms past the sunken lair of Cyclops. And then French too, the verbs, Araigny’s odd vocabulary. Provocation. Insight, what was insight. Enceinte means pregnant. Such a calamitous Prep. Inkfight in the back, a random compass stabbing. Brickie disappeared for twenty minutes and when he returned Annie said, If you’re not constipated I’ll send you to the Head. But there was no way of proving it. What strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Not Annie’s. Eyeglasses at a rake, sweating those tidy diagrams, sharpening, sharpening. Tennis courts. Out by the old swimming pool. La piscine. Or le. Was swimming pool masculine—

YANK out of the darkness like a cat like a life lived under a bush.

A sudden blow. Fearful mortality. She staggers. Elle stagges. It will be done, soon, yes finis.

Bonjour. She doesn’t say that because Paul Gredville already has her by the arm beak nearly meeting around an insufficient bicep. Pulling her off the path skinny legs well who can choke down the food here the pink slabs with eyes. Yank he declares Yank he recalls Has anyone ever told you how you sound like you’re chewing a brick?

No one had mentioned it.

Didn’t you think I was serious when I told you what would happen. Where are you looking? Do you really think someone’s going to save you?

No clever answer battered by the smell of his underarm pinned against the tree how the trees go there colors here among the finest chest curves the wrong way concave or convex can he smell her fear or hair washed for Chemistry does he know she has a father or what she ate for tea. Even with his arm down she can smell him worse than that day in breakfast. The night is still there is no one they took the tire dug it out from the worms and dirt held it between them before launching down into the road into the motorcycle into the man flying the man into the bushes into the grass into the hospital. And he is going to teach her some manners is what he is going to do because how would you like bacon here or here or down

Stop it.

Stop what?

How could she not have realized that this is what it would be her with her stupid lab man with hands on blue lady paint a good night ki the motorcycle jerked like it was attached to string he was a helmet in his astronaut back of her head pencils jabbing her at night biting his dirty cigarette palm fingers vague head scraping as he pulls her kinetic against the trunk yelling but there is no one into a bush what kind of bush why doesn’t she know bending under her weight their mass his hands slipping under her sweater pressure of his wings against her skirt feathers and hands everywhere over layers of sweater and blazer over her fighting for air ripping kinetic spitting up at him a pathetic mist not the blinding glob she hoped for but suddenly he stops.

Silence. Scrabbling echo held in the trees. Paul lies on his side. Puking? Crying? She backs out of the bush. He presses his face deeper into the dirt but she’s

Fuck Brickie.

Hurtling down the path.

Evans.

Her hands white enough to see by. Through the night she runs and Just one minute.

She is one flight up the marble stairs valleyed in the center when Catrine Evans.

Yes? . . . not turning smoothing hair yes behind ears go to hell the gesture’s her own.

What on earth . . . his voice from outside the Duty Office under the stairs . . . Why the racket?

Not moving . . . Racket, sir?

You sound like an advancing army. Come down here at once.

14

The POD office hardly bigger than the desk it contains. Hooking her heels on the rung. Sitting on her hands. Opposite, a crack in the plaster runs into the calendar and out the other side. Like what. The Seine, a graph. Stocks are up.

Right . . . Gilbert folds his hands . . . Mind telling me what you’ve been on the losing end of ?

She does mind. She has a sonnet to memorize.

Catrine.

I tripped. I fell.

You’re lying.

And then he puts his arms around her lightly he touches the wings—

Don’t lie to me . . . Gilbert taps his pen on the desk, leaning back in the chair.

You’ll tip over.

Perhaps you’d rather tell the Head first thing in the morning. I’m sure Mr. Stokes will be fascin—

Keeled right over, so dark I couldn’t—

I’m not interested in stories.

The light fixture overhead is clogged with moths.

Right, first thing after breakfast—

Paul Gredville—

Ah, the boy you threw breakfast on. He’s reappeared, has he?

Paul is. Very patriotic. And thought spilling like that was bad manners. It wasn’t cricket to waste food. Anti-English, in fact. He shoved me into the bushes. It was nothing. A push. Then he. Ran away.

Don’t lie to me, Catrine, I can see it was more than that. I thought we were friends.

So That as Betts would say Is How It Will Be. The POD rooms gets very quiet. Gilbert’s chair stops squeaking his pen stops its jittering dance against the table. Even the wind settles. Really, it does.

He tore at my clothes

Gilbert stands up but no room to . . . Aargh . . . so sitting again . . . I’ll—

No, no. He stopped.

Of course. Someone appeared. Another boy? Owen Wharton? Or was it a teacher, Spenning, Devon?

No. No one was there . . . this is the truth . . . All of a sudden he rolled over. Rolled into a ball and started. Crying.

He didn’t hurt you?

She shakes her head.

Gilbert studies her . . . I don’t know whether to believe you.

I’m fine.

Paul Gredville is. A peculiar lad. He’s. A bad apple

I wish he’d disappear.

We’ll leave the Head to come up with something.

The Head?

Come on, I’ll drive you around to the San.

Please don’t tell Mr. Stokes. Please.

Gilbert picks up his coat shaking it to assure the jingle of keys. Mr. Gilbert?

You need to get those cuts seen to.

I saw your paintings . . . her face tight, the scratches swelling . . . The ones you hid.

You should have something put on those scrapes . . . leading her outside.

Why are you always trying to get rid of me.

Come on now . . . opening her door then the back door to throw his duffel on the seat.

Running her hand on the notsheep next to her. Last time she thought it was real.

Slams the door he pushes back the driver’s seat then he waits. In the cold car together. She looks where he does at School House the top three floors lit classrooms below dark.

What? . . . why does he say her name like that . . . What, Mr. Gilbert?

You must speak to someone.

I’m talking to you aren’t I?

You’re not crying.

I don’t feel like crying.

Still staring up at the school . . . You’re stronger than you realize . . . now down at his hands ready on the steering wheel steering her . . . Some might think you older than you are.

What does that mean?

Hum?

No . . . she won’t let him . . . What does that mean?

Gilbert won’t answer. After a moment she pushes her head into his shoulder his delicious sweater the two of them like this in his woolly car looking out at the night and school this waist-embracing chemist with hidden paintings and a nearly fourteen American who smells the lab man’s warm sweater and through it feels the swallow high in his chest.