The White Devil (10 page)

8

The White Devil

FAWKES CROSSED THE
gravel drive, biting a nail, worrying about gin and sleep. When would he get any?

His hands trembled. He yawned. He could scarcely remain conscious during his lessons. The boys called him out on it, in that insouciant, arrogant, yet unerringly perceptive way:
Sir, are we boring you?
(Any disrespectful slur, he noted, could be made acceptable with the amendment of a
Sir
.) He needed to finish the play, and he would never be able to, at this rate. Words didn’t come when he couldn’t sleep. He would sit there, the windows black in the predawn, staring at the page with nothing in his mind—no music, no driving rhythm—merely the twitchings of a brain laid bare. He had been lying awake for hours, thinking about Theodore Ryder once again.

If he could have done more. If he had stopped in the boy’s room. If he had lingered after that first house meeting, instead of scuttling off like a cockroach, and had seen a tinge of pallor in the boy’s face and said,
Ryder, I think you should go to the infirmary. . . .

Instead he recalled the family’s utter misery. The crushed expressions. The hopelessness. The great blond paterfamilias who was gracious enough to tell him
of course it is not your fault.
That “of course” made it a wounding blow. If only Tommy Ryder had known what ruin his choice of words had visited upon Fawkes.

And so, time and again, he had reached for the gin: after writing in the morning, to gain equilibrium; at three, to keep the momentum for his four o’clock class; at five-thirty and beyond, to anesthetize, and to sleep.

But it never worked. He did not sleep.

Walking now, he bit the nail off too close to the root, and it bled.

He needed to finish the play.

The day before he had called his editor, giving her his best impression of health and confidence. He had even grinned as he spoke, hoping she could hear him smile.

Tomasina, it’s Piers Fawkes.

Piers Fawkes!
He could hear her multitasking; sense her drawing her attention away from email to the phone; mentally opening his file as she did so. Her Italian accent rang as she grasped for some idiomatic English to greet him.
This is a blast from the past!

(
Cunt
. It hadn’t been
that
long.)

He had pitched her the whole Byron project, the play, his own story about teaching at Harrow—how it had brought him extraordinary insight into the material.
And a play
, he said, unsuccessfully trying to wring the desperation out of his voice.
I think it would be a thrilling publishing project.

(
You’re overdoing it
, he warned himself.
Since when do you call publishing poems “projects” . . . or call anything but cold, dry gin “thrilling
.
”
)

A play, you know: something different
, he continued
. A bit of a comeback. Like Auden and Isherwood. Only no Isherwood.

I didn’t know Auden ever needed a comeback
, she said matter-of-factly.

(
Double-cunt
, he cursed her.)

They had hung up with her avoiding any commitment to publish the play or even to read it. She had done it in the way of publishing people, making her refusal sound nice, even sensible. And it
was
sensible. For her. Tomasina—a long-legged, olive-skinned Oxonian, always in some simple dress that showed leg and cost five hundred pounds, sitting behind her piled-up desk; she had a rich husband, some private banker type who spent his horde supporting green causes and Tomasina’s pay-nothing editorial career—had been a lifeline for him in the past. She’d published his last two collections, treated him like he mattered, after everyone else lost interest. But now . . . she had casually listened to him flounder. Fawkes suppressed panic. He would drink. He would think of something. He would finish the play and
show
Tomasina how good it was. Or find another publisher. What did she know about poetry anyway.
Trifler
.

“Hi.”

He jumped. A boy stood on his porch.

“Hello, Andrew,” he said, forcing cheer. “Waiting for me?”

“Yes, sir,” he muttered.

“Spare me the ‘sir’ today,” Fawkes sighed.

“Sorry, sir. I mean, sorry.”

The American stood, gripping his schoolbooks tightly. His usual surliness had been replaced by a nervous edge.

“Everything all right?” asked Fawkes. “You look how I feel.”

“I’d rather talk inside, if that’s okay.”

St. John Tooley bounded through the front gate from the High Street, leading a crowd of rowdy boys. They fell silent when they spotted Andrew and Fawkes together.

“All right, sir?” hailed St. John with a note of mockery.

“Yes, thanks, St. John,” grumbled Fawkes. He unlocked the door while Andrew and the cluster of Lottites traded glares.

FAWKES HAD FORGOTTEN
to straighten up that morning. Smoke still hung in the air, heaviness that stirred when he opened the door. He pulled open the blinds and windows. He dumped a full ashtray in the garbage and dunked two cocktail glasses in the soapy water still sitting in the sink.

“What’s on your mind, Andrew?” Fawkes said, glancing sidelong at his visitor. The boy continued to clutch his schoolbooks; he took a seat but sat up straight, like someone facing an examiner. Nervous. “Are you coming for advice about the role? About Byron?” Fawkes, not finding a kitchen towel, wiped his hands on his trousers. “Difficult, playing a legend, isn’t it?” he said, reentering the living room. “Difficult writing about one. You must force yourself to remember: Byron was an individual human being, who went to this school, lived in this house, just like you. You have as much perspective on him as anyone. More.” Fawkes lit a cigarette and sat down in a chair across from Andrew. He pontificated. “What motivated him? Perhaps he did not even know himself . . .”

“Mr. Fawkes,” Andrew interrupted. “I have something to talk to you about.”

Fawkes liked
Mr. Fawkes
even less than
sir
. “Why don’t you call me Piers,” he suggested frostily.

“I wasn’t sure whether I should come see you.” Andrew was talking to his lap.

“You’re here now. Out with it.”

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Andrew asked.

“Sorry? Do I . . . ?”

“That’s a weird question, isn’t it?”

“That depends,” said Fawkes. “Why are you asking?”

“I, er . . .” He stopped. Regrouped. “If I tell you something, can we keep it between us? Or maybe, like . . . talk about it hypothetically? Sort of, just, a situation? And you can give me advice on it?”

Fawkes lit another cigarette.

“It would be the sensitive and kindhearted thing to say, to say yes, and let you burble on until you were satisfied that I could be trusted. But I’m really not smart enough to talk in code, Andrew. You’ll leave, and I’ll still be working it out next week. So why don’t you just tell me in plain English. What’s going on?”

ANDREW SLUMPED IN
his chair, trying to hide from himself. In the short time he had been at the school, he had observed the many dozen epithets for “homosexual,” the abuse heaped on those boys unlucky enough to already show it (Hugh, or that skinny one in Rendalls, a member of the Guild for his piano scholarship). The abuse was public; there was no check on it; the
mrrrowww
s and mocking were hurled at them right there in Speech Room, in full view of the masters, like stones in a public square. These boys just simply
were gay
, had developed the feminine mannerisms, the sibilant voices, that host of signals of gesture and voice that indicated
I am speaking a different language than you
. Andrew, searching himself, did not feel he was one of them. Yet he felt no special pride, or sense of belonging, to the alternative tribe—the square-shouldered rugger stars in their Philathletic gear, or those boys distinguished by their lack of sensitivity, the St. Johns and the Vazes, who were, therefore, presumably, the definitions of straight. And, caught in between, he felt a gnawing anxiety.

And then Andrew’s mind started skidding around a closed track.
Maybe this fear I feel is the natural fear
anyone
feels when confronted by the truth about themselves. Maybe this is denial.
If he would only charge through, he would emerge the other side . . . the person he was meant to be!

But this, quite simply, did not feel right. Andrew’s body had been touched by the fierce and lithe boy, but it was his spirit that was wounded.
I am a person who let other people do things to him
. He was merely a receiver (the physical details of the white-haired boy’s tactics notwithstanding); a vessel; he had no tribe.

And then there was the stark fear of being outright odd. Of being the kid who
saw things
. Mentally ill. Or so traumatized as to be damaged goods.

All of this passed through Andrew’s mind as Fawkes stared at him, squinting against the smoke of his own cigarette.

“I’ve been having these, sort of, nightmares.” Andrew’s mouth felt dry.

Fawkes grunted. “I’ve been having troubles sleeping myself. Not sure what it is, really. The play, the beginning of term. Same for you?”

“Ah . . .” Andrew’s faced writhed. As if half his face were trying to force the words out, and the other half to rein them in.

“Is it Theo?”

Andrew’s face opened wide.

“Yes, I thought so.”

“You rode with the body, didn’t you? To the morgue?” countered Andrew.

“We were talking about you.”

“Yeah, okay,” Andrew sighed. “After last night,” he said, “I need to tell someone.”

“What happened last night?”

“I had this dream.”

“Ah. One of these sort-of nightmares. Can you be more specific?”

“I’ve been seeing things.
Like
in a dream? But some of it seems . . . too real. More than real.”

Fawkes frowned skeptically. “And last night?” he prompted.

“I saw . . . that’s not true,” Andrew corrected himself. “I
felt
. . . a, a murder. Felt it was going to happen. I woke up, screaming. Rhys and Roddy came. I felt . . . it was . . .” He gestured.
It was right there
.

“Imminent?”

Andrew nodded.

“That’s . . . alarming,” Fawkes said, not knowing what to make of this story. “A murder, in the Lot?”

Andrew explained: He had wandered around a place he felt certain was the Lot—but in the past.

He had seen a white-haired boy in a strange basement room.

He had been transported to a scene where, he was certain, a murder was going to take place. It was as if the white-haired boy was showing him the murder.

“And this white-haired boy is . . . what? Some kind of ghost?” Fawkes asked.

Andrew shrugged and nodded.

Fawkes chewed on this, far from satisfied. “Showing you something from his life, I suppose,” he went on. “The white-haired boy . . . was he the murder
ee
or the murder
er
?”

“Murderer.” Andrew answered quickly. Then he involuntarily shivered.

Fawkes watched him carefully. “You seem very certain of that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

Andrew’s eyes pleaded for understanding.

“You’ve seen him before?” Fawkes guessed.

Andrew nodded.

“You’re scaring me a little, Andrew. Saw him when? In dreams, or reality?”

“Reality.”

“This same boy?”

“Yes,” he answered hoarsely.

“And he seemed . . . the violent type?”

“I saw him kill Theo,” Andrew said at last.

Fawkes froze, mouth open. “I’m sorry. You saw . . .”

“On the hill. That morning. When I found him,” Andrew explained, in a torrent. “The white-haired boy was there. I saw him, suffocating Theo. But he was different there. His face was all . . . sunken. I saw him and then he was gone. I couldn’t tell the police. But now . . .”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m afraid something else will happen, if I
don’t
tell someone.”

“Something else? Like what?”

“Another murder.”

The ash on Fawkes’s cigarette had grown very long. He crushed it in the dirty ashtray on the coffee table. The housemaster suddenly felt very, very thirsty. His mind filled with the taste of the clear liquid in the cabinet in the kitchen. When iced it acquired a marvelous sluggish quality, and when you put it to your lips, the cold seemed to kiss you back. . . .

To shake off these images, Fawkes rose, then paced.

“The most obvious explanation is that you’re traumatized by Theo’s death. Your mind can’t handle the anxiety, so your subconscious invents this figure—this boy with white hair.
He
becomes the focal point for your anxiety.”

“But I didn’t know Theo was dead yet, when I saw him,” Andrew argued.

“Hm.” Fawkes raised his hands in surrender. “All right. I’m crap at this sort of thing. We should call your parents.”

Andrew started. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“They’ll pull me out of school.”

“Ah. The proverbial overprotective American mom and dad. You don’t think they’d understand an old-fashioned English haunting?”

“They wouldn’t try to understand. They’d blame me and take me home.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t exactly a model student at my old school.”

“No? You seem pretty on top of it.”

“I made a few errors in judgment.”

“At seventeen?” said Fawkes. “Hard to imagine.”

“If I screw up one more time, they’re going to throw me out of the house.”

“Parental rhetoric?”

“Not this time.”

“What did you
do
?” asked Fawkes.

“I had some problems with controlled substances,” Andrew admitted.

“Right. So they catch you with a few joints, and they put you in this posh detox clinic masquerading as a school. And they say, ‘One more mistake and we wash our hands.’ No proud visit at Speech Day. No graduation trip to France. Nothing but tough love.”