Gentlemen And Players Part 22

'You know why I'm asking, don't you, Julia?'

'Yes, sir. You think he was there last night.'

'He was there,' snapped Straitley. He cleared his throat and said, in a softer voice, 'I thought maybe you'd seen him too.'

'No, sir.' Once more I shook my head. It was too funny, I thought to myself; and yet I wondered how he could have failed to see me. Was it because I was a girl, perhaps? A slapper, a pram-face, a toerag, a prole? Was it so impossible to believe such a thing of Julia Snyde?

'Are you sure?' He looked at me sharply. 'Because that boy's a witness. He was there. He saw what happened.'

I looked down at the shiny toes of my shoes. I wanted to tell him everything then, just to see his jaw drop. But then he would have had to know about Leon, too; and that, I knew, was impossible. For that I had already sacrificed so much. And for that I prepared to swallow my pride.

I looked up at him then, allowing my eyes to fill with tears. It wasn't difficult in the circ.u.mstances. I thought of Leon, and of my father, and of myself, and the tears just came all on their own. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't see him.' And now old Straitley was looking uncomfortable, huffling and shuffling just as he did when Kitty Teague had her little crisis in the Common Room.

'Now then.' He pulled out a large and slightly grubby handkerchief.

My mother glared. 'I hope you're happy,' she said, putting a possessive arm around my shoulders. 'After everything the poor kid's already been through--'

'Mrs Snyde, I didn't--'

'I think you should go.'

'Julia, please, if you know anything--'

'Mr Straitley,' she said. 'I'd like you to leave.'

And so he did, reluctantly, caught between bl.u.s.ter and unease, apologies on one side, suspicion on the other.

Because he was suspicious; I could see it in his eyes. He was nowhere near the truth, of course; but his years of teaching have given him a second sight where pupils are concerned, a kind of radar that in some way I must have triggered.

He turned to go, hands in his pockets. 'Julian Pinchbeck. You're sure you've never heard of him?'

Mutely, I nodded, grinning inside.

His shoulders slumped. Then, as my mother opened the door for him to leave, he turned abruptly and met my eyes for what was to be the last time in fifteen years. 'I didn't mean to upset you,' he said. 'We're all concerned about your father. But I was Leon's form-tutor. I have a responsibility to my boys--'

Again I nodded. 'Vale, magister.' It was no more than a whisper, but I swear he heard.

What was that?'

'Goodnight, sir.'

AFTER THAT, WE MOVED TO PARIS. A NEW LIFE, MY MOTHER had said; a new start for her little girl. But it wasn't that easy. I didn't like Paris. I missed my home and the woods and the comforting smell of cut gra.s.s rolling over the fields. My mother deplored my tomboyish manners, for which, of course, she blamed my father. He'd never wanted a girl, she said, lamenting over my cropped hair, my skinny chest, my scabbed knees. Thanks to John, she said, I looked more like a dirty little boy than the dainty daughter of her imaginings. But that was going to change, she said. All I needed was time to blossom.

G.o.d knows, I tried. There were endless shopping trips; dress fittings; appointments at the beautician's. Any girl would dream of being taken in hand; to be Gigi, to be Eliza, to change from the ugly duckling into the gracious swan. It was my mother's dream, anyway. And she indulged it now; crowing happily over her living doll.

Nowadays, of course, little trace remains of my mother's handiwork. My own is more sophisticated and definitely less showy. My French is fluent, thanks to four years in Paris, and although I never quite made the grade as far as my mother was concerned, I like to think I have acquired a certain style. I also have an abnormally high sense of self esteem, or so my a.n.a.lyst says, which at times verges on the pathological. Maybe so; but in the absence of parents, where else is a child to seek approval?

By the time I was fourteen, my mother had realized that I would never be a beauty. I wasn't the type. Un style tres anglais, as the beautician (the b.i.t.c.h!) repeatedly pointed out. The little skirts and twin-sets that looked so pretty on the French girls simply made me look ridiculous, and I soon forsook them for the safety of the jeans, sweatshirts and trainers of my earlier youth. I refused make-up and cut my hair short. I no longer looked like a little boy, but it had become clear that I would never be Audrey Hepburn, either.

My mother was not as disappointed as she might have been. Despite her high hopes, we had failed to bond. We had little in common, and I could tell that she was tired of making the effort. More importantly, she and Xavier had finally achieved what they had hitherto thought impossible *-.-.& miracle baby, born in the August of the following year.

Well, that clinched it. Overnight, I became an embarjftosment. The miracle baby - they called it Adeline - had basically priced me out of the market, and neither my mother nor Xavier (who had few opinions of his own) seemed interested in an awkward teenager. Once more, in spite of everything, I was invisible.

Oh, I can't say I cared. Not about that, anyway. I had nothing against Adeline - who looked like nothing more to me than a squawking lump of pink putty. What I resented was the promise; the promise of something that had been barely offered before it was s.n.a.t.c.hed away. The fact that I hadn't wanted it was irrelevant. My mother's ingrat.i.tude was. I had made sacrifices for her, after all. For her I had left St Oswald's. Now, more than ever, St Oswald's beckoned to me like a lost Eden. I forgot how I'd hated it; how for years I waged war against it; how it had swallowed my friend, my father, my childhood at a single gulp. I thought about it all the time, and it seemed to me then that it was only in St Oswald's that I had ever felt truly alive. There, I had dreamed; there I had felt joy; hate; desire. There I had been a hero; a rebel. Now I was just another sullen teen, with a stepfather and a mother who lied about her age.

I know it now; it was an addiction, and St Oswald's was my drug. Night and day I craved it, finding poor subst.i.tutes where I could. Rapidly they bored me; my lycee was a dull place, and the most daring of its rebels only dabbled in the most adolescent of misdemeanours: a little s.e.x, a little truancy and a number of basically uninteresting drugs. Leon and I had covered far more exciting ground together years before. I wanted more; I wanted misrule; I wanted everything.

I was unaware at the time that my behaviour had already begun to attract attention. I was young; angry; intoxicated. You might say St Oswald's had spoiled me; I was like a university student sent back to kindergarten for a year, smashing toys and turning over tables. I delighted in being a bad influence. I played truant; I mocked my teachers; I drank; I smoked; I had hurried (and, for me, joyless) s.e.x with a number of boys from a rival school.

The crunch came in a most distressingly ordinary way. My mother and Xavier -- who I'd a.s.sumed were too goggle-eyed over their miracle child to care much about the down-to earth kind - had been watching me more closely than I had thought. A sweep of my room had provided the excuse they were seeking: a five-gram block of workaday resin, a packet of condoms and four Es in a twist of paper.

It was kids' stuff, that was all. Any normal parent would have forgotten all about it, but Sharon simply mumbled something about my previous history, removed me from school and - the final indignity - booked me in with a child psychologist, who, she promised, would soon bring me to rights.

I don't think I am a naturally resentful person. Whenever I have lashed out, it has always been after almost unbearable provocation. But this was more than anyone could stand. I wasted no time in protesting my innocence. Instead, and to my mother's surprise, I cooperated as best I could. The child psychologist -- whose name was Martine and who wore dangly earrings with little silver kitties -- declared me to be progressing rvicely, and I fed her every day until she got quite tame.

Say what you like about my unconventional schooling, but I do have quite an extensive general knowledge. You can thank St Oswald's library, or Leon, or the films I've always watched - in any case I knew enough about mental cases to fool a kitty-loving child psychologist. I almost regretted the ease of the task; found myself wishing they had given me more of a challenge.

Psychologists. They're all the same. Talk to them about anything you like, it always gets down to s.e.x in the end. After an impressive show of reluctance and a number of nicely Freudian dreams, I confessed; I'd been having s.e.x with my father. Not John, I said; but my new father, which made it all right -- or so he said, although I myself had been having second thoughts.

Don't get me wrong. I had nothing (as such) against Xavier. It was my mother who had betrayed me; my mother I wanted to hurt. But Xavier was such a convenient tool, and besides, I made it sound mostly consensual, so that he would get off with a lighter -- maybe even a suspended -- sentence.

It worked fine. Too fine, perhaps; by then I'd been working on my routine and incorporated a number of embellishments to the basic formula. More dreams - I don't dream, as I said, but I do have quite a vivid imagination -- a number of physical mannerisms, a habit of cutting picked up from one of the more sensitive girls in my cla.s.s at school.

Physical examination provided the proof. Xavier was duly ousted from the family home, a generous allowance was promised to the soon-to-be divorcee and I (thanks in part to my brilliant performance) was stuck in an inst.i.tution for the next three years by my loving mother and the kitty-wearing Martine, neither of whom could be convinced that I was no longer a danger to myself.

You know, there is such a thing as doing a job too well.

MATE.

Friday, 5 th November Bonfire Night, 9.15 p.m.

'well, then,' he said, 'i suppose that's that.'

The fireworks were over and the crowd had begun to disperse, shuffling slowly towards the exits. The cordoned area was almost empty; only the smell of gunsmoke remained. 'Perhaps we ought to find Marlene. I don't like to think of her waiting alone.'

Dear old Straitley. Always the gent. And so close, too; certainly he'd come closer to the truth than my mother, or my a.n.a.lyst, or any of the professionals who had tried to understand my teenage mind. Not quite close enough - not yet -- but he was almost there, we were in the endgame now, and my heart beat a little faster at the thought. Long ago I'd faced him as a p.a.w.n and lost. Now, at last, I challenged him as a Queen.

I turned to him, smiled, and said, 'Vale, magister.'

'What did you say?'

She had turned to go; in the glow of the embers she looked very youthful under her red beret, her eyes pinned with dancing firelight. 'You heard,' she said. 'You heard me then, didn't you, sir?'

Then? The invisible finger prodded me gently, almost sympathetically. I felt a sudden urge to sit down and resisted it.

'You'll remember in time,' said Miss Dare, smiling. 'After all, you're the one who never forgets a face.'

I watched him as he worked it out. The mist had thickened; now it was hard to see beyond the closest trees. At our backs, the bonfire was nothing but embers; unless it rained it would continue to smoulder for two or three days. Straitley frowned, burnished like a wrinkled totem in the dim light. A minute pa.s.sed. Two minutes. I began to feel anxious. Was he too old? Had he forgotten? And what would I do if he failed me now?

Finally, he spoke. 'It's - it's Julie, isn't it?'

Close enough, old man. I dared draw breath. 'Julia, sir. Julia Snyde.'

]ulia Snyde.

Such a long time since I'd heard that name. Such a long time since I'd even thought of her. And yet here she was again, looking just like Dianne Dare, looking at me with affection - and a touch of humour -- in her bright brown eyes.

'You changed your name?' I said at last.

She smiled. 'Under the circ.u.mstances, yes.'

That I could understand. She'd gone to France - 'Paris, was it? I suppose that's where you learned your French.'

'I was an apt pupil.'

Now I recalled that day in the Gatehouse. Her dark hair, cut shorter than it is now, the neat, girlish outfit, pleated skirt and pastel sweater. The way she'd smiled at me, shyly then, but with knowledge in her eyes. How I'd been sure she'd known something-- I looked at her now in the uncanny light and wondered how I could have failed to miss her. I wondered what she was doing here now, and how she had changed from Porter's girl to the a.s.sured young woman she was today. Most of all I wondered just how much she had known, and why she had hidden it from me, now and all those years ago.

'You did know Pinchbeck, didn't you?' I said.

Silently she nodded.

'But then - what about Keane?' She smiled. 'As I said. He had to go.'

Well, serve him right, the little sneak. Him and his notebooks. My first glance should have warned me; those lines, those drawings, those whimsical little observations on the nature and history of St Oswald's. I remember asking myself then whether it wouldn't have been better to deal with him straight away; but 1 had a lot on my mind at the time, and anyway, there wasn't much - besides that photograph - to incriminate me.

You'd think a budding author would have been far too busy with his Muse to go messing with such ancient history. But he had -- plus he'd spent time at Sunnybank Park, though he was three or four years ahead of me, and wouldn't have made the connection immediately.

I hadn't myself for a while, you know; but somewhere along the line, I must have recognized his face. I'd known it before I joined Sunnybank Park; remembered watching as a gang of boys cornered him after school; remembered his neat clothes -- suspicious for a Sunnybanker - and, most of all, the library books under his arm that proclaimed him a target. I'd known right then it could have been me.

It had taught me a lesson, watching that boy. Be invisible, I'd warned myself. Don't look too smart. Don't carry books.

And if in doubt, run like h.e.l.l. Keane hadn't run. That had always been his problem.

In a way I'm sorry. Still, after the notebook, I knew I couldn't let him live. He'd already found the St Oswald's picture; he'd talked to Marlene, and most of all there was that photograph, taken from G.o.d knows what Sports Day at Sunnybank, with Yours Truly at the back (the Thunderpants mercifully out of sight). Once he'd made that connection (and he would have done, sooner or later), it would have been a simple matter of going through Sunny bank's photo archive until he found what he was looking for.

I'd bought the knife some months before - 24 pounds 99 from Army Stores - and I have to say it was a good one; sharp, slim, double-edged and lethal. Rather like myself, in fact. A pity I had to leave it, really - I'd meant it for Straitley - but retrieving it would have been a messy business, and besides, I didn't want to be wandering around a public park with a murder weapon in my pocket. No chance of finding any prints on the knife, either. I was wearing gloves.

I'd followed him to the cordoned area, just as the fireworks were starting. Here there were trees, and in their shelter the shadows were doubly dark. There were people all around, of course; but most of them were watching the sky, nd in the false light of all those rockets, n.o.body saw the I quick little drama that played out under the trees.

It takes a surprising amount of skill to stab someone ; between the ribs. It's the intercostal muscles that are the I trickiest part; they contract, you know, so that even if you don't strike a rib by accident, you have to get through a layer of tensed muscle before you do any real damage. Going for the heart is equally risky; it's the breastbone, you see, that gets in the way. The ideal method is through the spinal cord, between the third and fourth vertebrae, but you tell me how I was expected to locate the spot, in the dark, and with most of him hidden under a great big Army Surplus parka?

I might have cut his throat, of course, but those of us who have actually tried it, rather than just watching the movies, will tell you that it's not as easy as it looks. I settled for an upward thrust from the diaphragm, just below the wishbone. I dumped him under the trees, where anyone seeing him would a.s.sume he was drunk, and leave him well alone. I'm not a biology teacher, so I can only guess - blood loss or a collapsed lung -- as to the technical cause of death, but he was pretty d.a.m.n surprised about it, I can tell you.

'You killed him?'

'Yes, sir. Nothing personal.'

It occurred to me that perhaps I was genuinely ill; that all this was a kind of hallucination that said more about my subconscious than I wanted to know. Certainly I'd felt better. A sudden st.i.tch dug painfully into my left armpit. The invisible finger had become an entire hand; a firm, constant pressure against my breastbone that made me gasp.

'Mr Straitley?' There was concern in Miss Dare's voice.

'Just a st.i.tch,' I said, and sat down abruptly. The muddy ground, though soft, seemed astonishingly cold; a cold that pulsed up through the gra.s.s like a dying heartbeat. 'You killed him?' I repeated.

'He was a loose end, sir. As I said, he had to go.'

'And Knight?'

There was a pause. 'And Knight,' said Miss Dare.

For a moment, an awful moment, my breath caught. I hadn't liked the boy, but he was one of mine, and in spite of everything I suppose I'd hoped-- 'Mr Straitley, please. I can't have this now. Come on, stand up--' She put a shoulder under my arm - she was stronger than she looked - and hauled me upright.

'Knight's dead?' I said numbly.

'Don't worry, sir. It was quick.' She wedged a hip against my ribs, half-hoisting me to my feet. 'But I needed a victim, and not just a body, either. I needed a story. A murdered schoolboy makes front-page news - on a slow day - but a missing boy just keeps on giving. Searches; speculation; tearful appeals from the distracted mother; interviews with friends; then as hope dwindles, the dragging of local ponds and reservoirs, the discovery of an item of clothing and the Inevitable DNA testing of listed paedophiles in the area. You know how it is, sir. They know, but they don't know. : Vkad until they know for certain--'

The cramp in my side came again, and I gave a ^tenothered gasp. Miss Dare broke off at once. 'I'm sorry, sir,' %he said in a gentler voice. 'None of that's important now.

Knight can wait. It's not as if he's going anywhere, is it? Just breathe slowly. Keep walking. And for G.o.d's sake, look at me. We don't have much time.'

And so I breathed, and I looked, and I kept walking, and slowly we limped, I hanging like an albatross around Miss Dare's neck, towards the sheltering trees.

Friday, 5th November 9.30 p.m.

THERE WAS A BENCH UNDER THE TREES. WE STAGGERED there together across the muddy gra.s.s, and I collapsed on to the seat with a jolt that set my old heart tw.a.n.ging like a broken spring.

Miss Dare was trying to tell me something. I tried to explain that I had other things on my mind. Oh, it comes f us all in the end, I know; but I'd expected something tnore than this madness in a muddy field. But Keane was fc'iksad; Knight was dead; Miss Dare was someone else, and npw I could no longer pretend to myself that the agony at flared and clawed at my side was anything remotely embling a st.i.tch. Old age is so undignified, I thought. : for us the glories of the Senate, but a rushed exit in the : of an ambulance - or worse, a doddering decline. And still I fought it. I could hear my heart straining to keep moving, to keep the old body going for just a little longer, and 1 thought to myself; are we ever ready? And do we ever, really believe?

'Please, Mr Straitley. 1 need you to concentrate.'

Concentrate, forsooth! "I happen to be rather preoccupied at the moment,' I said. 'The small matter of my imminent demise. Maybe later--'

But now that memory came again, closer now, almost close enough to touch. A face, half-blue, half-red, turning towards me, a young face raw with distress and harsh with resolve, a face, glimpsed once, fifteen years ago-- 'Shh,' said Miss Dare. 'Can you see me now?'

And then, suddenly, I did.

A rare moment of overwhelming clarity. Dominoes in line, rattling furiously towards the mystic centre. Black-and white pictures leaping into sudden relief; a vase becomes lovers; a familiar face disintegrates and becomes something else altogether.

I looked; and in that moment I saw Pinchbeck; his face upturned, his gla.s.ses strobing in the emergency lights. And at the same time I saw Julia Snyde with her neat black fringe; and Miss Dare's grey eyes under her schoolboy's cap, the flashes of the fireworks illuminating her face and suddenly, like that, I just knew.

Do you see me now?

Yes, I do.

I caught the moment. His jaw dropped. His face seemed to slacken; it was like watching rapid decay through time-lapse photography. Suddenly he looked far older than his sixty five years; in fact in that moment he looked every bit the Centurion.

Catharsis. It's what my a nalyst keeps talking about; but I'd never experienced anything like it until then. That look on Straitley's face. The understanding -- the horror -- and behind it, I thought perhaps, the pity.

'Julian Pinchbeck. Julia Snyde.'