Silent Noon, page 5
Barney didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing.
“Is that Dolly’s daughter in your form?” asked Ivor.
Barney nodded. “Her name’s Belinda. She’s in my set for Maths.”
“Does Dolly teach you?”
“No, we have Doc Dower.” Barney decided to take his chances and sat down, even though Ivor hadn’t told him to. “Is it true he was tortured by the Japs in the war?”
“Not unless there were Japs fighting in Italy,” replied Ivor. “Honestly, do you believe everything those idiots in the Second tell you? They’ll say he bludgeons mice with a cricket bat for sport too.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Dower had me over to his set when I was in my first year.” He cast a scornful look at Barney. “He’s not a pederast. He taught me how to make spaghetti carbonara like they did in Rome. No cream, lots of pepper. It’s better with real eggs, of course. And bacon, not mutton.”
Barney struggled to imagine Doc Dower and Ivor Morrell cooking dinner in the master’s kitchen.
Ivor clenched his cigarette between his teeth and pulled a comb from his back pocket. “That Belinda goes walkabout at night,” he said, smoothing his hair on either side. “I’ve seen her wandering past Tern after lights-out.”
Barney stubbed his cigarette against the wall. “Where to?”
“I haven’t a clue. Perhaps to join a witches’ coven in the forest.”
“You could follow her one night.”
The older boy looked up at Barney with a look that was almost fierce. “Could I? And why would I want to do that?”
The shadows began to shift, and Barney glanced at the open door. The patch of forest floor outside the entrance had darkened. “That lot will be getting back soon,” he said.
“You go on. Wait at the hill, but make sure Swift doesn’t see you. Best to slip in behind him.” Ivor flicked his cigarette at the upturned drum. “Nice meeting you, Holland.”
~
Waiting by the mound of freshly turned earth, Mollie Flood reflected that the tree was a vulnerable-looking thing, dwarfed by the plaque emblazoned with Henry Cray’s name and the dates 1940–1953. One or two people had proposed a panel in the chapel, but the consensus had been that there simply wasn’t enough space – and besides, tree-planting supported irrigation, vital to managing the island’s water levels.
Next to the cakes table, a group of junior boys flapped restlessly in their still-too-large uniforms. At their first school tea the youngest ones always affected a toughness that disagreed with their tidy partings and round faces. Before the year was out they would be unrecognizable, transformed into loafish adolescents. This was the week in which several would fall victim to the Sagartians’ midnight dormitory raids: the smallest lashed to the wall bars in the athletics hall and left until morning. Her husband had been the one to discover them once: two boys hanging from the gym bars, pale and furious and exhausted. Both had refused to reveal their tormentors’ names. They would grow up to form cosy gangs and practise the same laughing cruelty in their own time.
Behind the juniors stood three larger lads drinking Kia-Ora. One was in a second-hand uniform, while the other two wore civvies: point-collared white shirts, wool blazers, shorts and knee socks. Mollie did not recognize the first, who was stolid and glooming, but the others – a red-haired boy with an obvious developmental problem and another with the face of a Fra Angelico seraph – she remembered from the previous year. The taller two were trading insults, while the delayed one grinned stupidly, revealing pointed teeth stained a bright orange.
Michael Swift had paused nearby to speak to them in a fellow-to-fellow sort of way. There were lines at the corners of his eyes now, drawn by the wind on long runs across the chalk ridge. Just five years ago, Mollie had mistaken the blue-eyed French master for one of the older boys.
“Got there in the end.” Her husband, spruce in a summer suit that had perhaps become just a little snug around the middle, appeared at her elbow with the tea and a plate of meat-paste sandwiches.
“Is that a new boy?” She settled herself on the blanket. The tea was lukewarm and weak.
“Ah, yes. Holland. Scholarship chap from London.”
“I see he’s hit it off with Henry Cray’s old friend.”
Her husband didn’t reply, focusing instead on blowing imaginary steam from his cup. He had never understood her questions about the boys’ private lives – his term for their friendships and personal interests – as if they were fully formed human beings worthy of considered discussion. He did not see the point in spending time analysing them as individuals, when it was the disordered mass that he was tasked with handling in the classroom and the dormitories.
“I thought I’d do a roast chicken tonight – the girls will like that.”
“Sounds lovely.”
Mollie waved a fly away. “Belinda’s been eating like an ox lately. I caught her chewing blotting paper the other day.”
“Must be another growth spurt.”
“I think she’s bored.”
Flood turned to look at his wife. “What on earth has she got to be bored for?”
“I suspect she misses her friends. There’s not much here for a girl of her age. She doesn’t make any effort to pretend to enjoy coming to the shops with me on the weekend. All she wants to do is have baths. I caught her running her third of the day last night. And she’s been hideous with Lucia the last few evenings…”
“That’s perfectly normal.”
Mollie peered into her teacup. A gnat was floating in what remained of her tea, drifting on the cloudy brown tide as it slapped against the sides.
“Is he awfully deprived?” she said. To look at him one might have thought they’d lost the war. She ignored her husband’s sideways glance as she tipped the dregs of her tea onto the grass. “He’s not at all troubled? Coming from London, I mean.”
“Not that I’ve been told.” The youngest boys in the school tended to be less complicated than the ones old enough to have experienced bewilderment or grief for fathers returned from abroad or dead in the war. They didn’t feel entitled to the same battle-weary attitude, these lads who had to be evacuated with their mothers, or in some cases hadn’t been evacuated at all. “You’d have heard about it if there was anything untoward in Belinda’s set.”
“Would I?” This was not the sort of place where word spread quickly: loose lips sink ships was a hard mantra to forget. The masters’ wives were friendly, of course – they hosted tea parties and knitting circles – but these were cagey affairs dominated by shows of unflagging loyalty to their husbands. Mollie didn’t understand their forced jolliness or the smiles that said Aren’t we lucky never to have left school? – but she tried to emulate their matter-of-fact pride at being too busy with their own families to bother trying to be substitute mothers for the boys. Mollie had never got along particularly well with the Head’s wife, although she pitied her for being married to a man whose overbearing solicitude concealed what Mollie considered to be a transparent contempt for women.
The three boys, meanwhile, were picking their way across the green, scattered with clusters of students enjoying their tea in the sunshine. Mollie noticed the young seraph nudge the new boy in the ribs, nodding in the direction of Ormer House. Her elder daughter was emerging from the side door: barefoot, in Peter Pan blouse and blue capris. Belinda ignored her mother’s eye as she cut across the green, making a beeline for the cakes. That morning, she had said she wouldn’t be attending the tea because she was stared at enough during school.
“You see, her greed won out,” Mollie remarked.
The three boys had finished eating, and now the seraph and the scholarship lad had begun to tussle on the grass. Belinda filled her plate with scones and a slab of crusted yellow cream before traipsing along the perimeter of the green to enjoy her spoils in privacy. Several of the students looked up at her with little interest: as a master’s daughter she was off-limits to them. Yet something about that lonely figure skirting the chattering crowds filled Mollie with pity, and also resentment at what she perceived to be unnecessary furtiveness. Without thinking, she called out after her.
“Darling!”
The cry made those standing nearby stop to look at the girl, who froze with a startled scowl. For a moment she seemed to stare straight through them all – before turning and continuing towards a copse of trees in the shadow of the abandoned east wing.
~
Swift was the next person to see her, an hour later, squatting on the steps leading up to the old kitchens with her head in her arms. He knew the girl by sight, but had not spoken to her since the drinks party at Flood’s five years earlier, when the French master had arrived as a new member of staff. She had been a recalcitrant only child at the time, and Swift had not warmed to her.
“What’s this?” he said – and by “this” he clearly meant her, here.
Belinda looked up. The fine, almost translucent skin around her eyes was blotchy. She stared at him with a closed look, pressing her palms onto the concrete step.
“Well, now? What on earth is the matter?”
The girl’s face turned even redder as he crouched on the ground in front of her. She shook her head, mouth crumpling to rein in fresh tears.
“If it’s to do with any of the boys, you must tell someone,” he said.
Again she shook her head – impatiently this time, angry.
“Shall I take you home? Perhaps it’s something you’d prefer to tell your mother?”
“She can’t do anything about it,” said Belinda. She nodded at the far side of the kitchen, where weeds grew among the rubble. “It’s too late for anyone to do anything about it.”
“About what?” asked Swift. Despite himself, he set off to investigate beyond the kitchen wall. Belinda stood up – but then she hesitated, hanging back while the master disappeared around the corner of the building.
What remained of the walled garden was now overrun with tall nettles and building debris: broken bricks, bits of tile and thick pieces of green glass mixed in with clumps of chalky soil. The ground was spotted with holes dug by small, burrowing creatures. He told himself that she had probably come across a snake, or a rat. Perhaps she had been stung by the nettles.
A trowel had been left on a ledge of wall, next to which was a pile of freshly turned earth. Over the ledge, something wrapped in a newspaper, preserved from the elements by a piece of patterned oilcloth. Brownish skin like leather, an open mouth, two arms folded like tiny wings.
By the time he returned to the kitchen steps, the girl had disappeared.
~
“What I don’t understand is how it could have taken this long to turn up,” said Pleming, handing the French master a tumbler and settling in the larger of the two armchairs. “Half the island buried their silver before the Germans arrived, and half the island dug the place up again once they left. You’d think somebody would have come across it long ago.”
“One would, yes.”
“Poor old Flood – as if they’d not had enough troubles already.” Pleming arched his back to get a better view of the window. “What are that lot doing?”
From where he sat, Swift could make out the tops of several heads still milling about the police car in the drive. “Medlar boys.”
“Get them to clear off, would you? On your way down.” This would be the second time this year that he’d have to be interviewed by the police superintendent. Pleming was tired of Hastings’s face: the sallow cheeks and petulant mouth. “I imagine he won’t be much longer with the girl.”
Recognizing Swift’s expression as he emerged from the main building, Robin tugged at Barney’s sleeve.
“Buck up,” hissed Cowper, who had also seen the French master approaching. Immediately the others began to drift away from the police car – all except Opie.
“Is it true, sir?” he said. “That there was a Jerrybag baby buried behind the old kitchens?”
“For Christ’s sake, Opie,” muttered Shields.
Swift planted himself in front of the group. In the excitement, Hughes’s rosacea had flared to a dazzling scarlet. Percy looked as if he was about to cry. Littlejohn was regarding him sourly, as usual. The new boy was more interested in peering into the police vehicle.
“Get away from there, Holland. Superintendent Hastings will be out soon, and he shouldn’t have to fight his way through your little mob to get to his car.”
“Well, sir?”
“Opie, whoever’s told you that is spouting a load of old rubbish.”
“Was it really a mummy, sir? Like the Tollund Man? Is it true that babies mummify if they’ve not eaten anything before they die, sir?”
“I shouldn’t think it’s any of your business, Cowper. All of you should have been back in Medlar half an hour ago. Where’s Mr Runcie?”
“He’s gone into town, sir.”
“It was Dolly’s daughter who found it, wasn’t it, sir?” said Robin.
“I shouldn’t think it makes the slightest difference who found it, Littlejohn,” snapped Swift. “The next person who asks about it will be put straight on the Head’s List. Get back to the house, all of you.”
Watching them slouch off, he was tempted to call after Cowper to pull his hands out of his pockets – but he resisted. And it was because he decided not to raise his voice that he heard Littlejohn mutter to the new boy, in a whisper that was meant to be heard, “Everyone knows a woman on board a ship is bad luck.”
~
The joint had been stewed and gave off a rotten smell that drifted from the head of the table where Mr Runcie, in the housemaster’s weekly ceremonial, carved. The blade struggled against the grain, working deep grooves into the meat before finally piercing down to bone. The meat was an anaemic colour and the size of a small dog or large cat, but without clear signs of rib or socket it might have been anything. Perhaps this was intentional: perhaps someone in the kitchen had realized that, under the circumstances, there would be little appetite for something identifiably dead before its time.
Next to Barney, Opie’s mouth hinged open in unconcealed delight, his tongue flat and red and shining. He was watching the plate now approaching, passed hand to hand down the table. “Lovely,” he murmured.
According to Cowper, it had been a collaborator’s child. “Either that, or it came from one of the French tarts the Jerries brought over.”
“Why shouldn’t it be one of ours?” asked Hughes.
“That’s what I said,” Robin reminded the others. “I said that before – didn’t I, Holland?”
Barney couldn’t remember, but he nodded anyway.
“It could have been one of the girls who work in the laundries,” said Shields. “Affairs and that, you know.”
“What do you know?” said Cowper. “Non molto, I’d say.”
“More than you do.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Shields leant across Robin to present Cowper with a full view of the contents of his mouth: a glistening, sticky mess of half-chewed brisket and mash.
“Stop that,” snapped Robin, who’d been in a mood all morning.
“We weren’t talking to you, so put that in your cake-hole,” said Shields.
Cowper reached across to grab the piccalilli. “With relish. The beef’s foul.”
“You should be grateful we have any meat at all,” said Opie. “When you think of all those poor orphans in Poland and Romania and Hungary.”
Shields snorted and bounced one leg beneath the table. There were pen marks scribbled on his knee, just below the cuff of his shorts, from where he’d been playing a game of noughts and crosses against himself during Latin.
“What I don’t understand is why anyone thinks it’s fair that we’re worse off now than we were before, thanks to all those poor orphans in Poland and Romania,” said Cowper. He cut a glance at the dark-haired figure at the end of the table. “Though some can go home whenever they like to be fed by Mummy. Cheese soufé and baked bananas with blancmange every day of the week.”
“Even Flood can’t get cheese off ration,” said Shields.
“With pins like that, his missus can get whatever she wants.”
Barney had only ever heard his dad’s friends talk about the black market. “I’ve heard she goes wandering in the woods after dark,” he said. Five pairs of eyes flickered up at him before consulting with each other in silence.
“Who told you that?” ventured Shields.
“One of the boys on the Tuesday run.”
Robin straightened. “Morrell, you mean,” he said. His face had a pinched look. “He does like to play with us, you know. Pretends to take a paternalistic interest, but really he’s just messing about.”
Barney didn’t know what “paternalistic” meant. “I don’t think he made it up,” he said. And then, feeling his confidence boost, he added: “Anyone can see she’s a queer kid. Perhaps she was looking for it.”
“Honestly, Holland, I wouldn’t take anything Morrell says too seriously.” Robin’s voice had acquired a high note of protest.
“I had him for a six-o’clock once,” said Shields. “When I found out he was on duty I considered asking Runcie for the lash instead. Morrell had us doing press-ups in the river.”
“One boy broke his arm trying to climb off the gym bars after Morrell tied him there,” said Percy. “If that wasn’t bad enough, when he came back to lessons he had to let Morrell sign his cast.”
“He should be in borstal after what happened last year,” said Cowper. “Psychopathic, that’s what. But because Ratty knows he’s the first boy in the school’s history to have a shot at Oxford, even the pig Hastings can’t touch him.”
“One day, he’ll be the chap with a finger on the button that will destroy us all,” said Hughes between inhalations of semolina. “Speak of the devil.” At the table opposite, the Mede had risen to return his plate to the kitchen. It was the first time Barney had seen him in his school blazer, and only now did he notice the black band stitched around one arm.
“It’s for his old man,” said Hughes, seeing him stare.
