‘Ah. That,’ I said to Allen-Jones, assuming my most senatorial smile. ‘That’s currently being dealt with by the – er – relevant authorities, thank you.’
He looked at me. ‘You reported it, Sir? What did they say? Was it –? You know.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Was it what we thought it was?’
‘That I can’t tell you at present,’ I said, choosing my words very carefully. ‘Time will tell. Tests, and so forth. But thank you for coming to me, and now I think it’s best if you and the others refrain from discussing the matter, even with each other.’ I allowed my gaze to return to the group of second-formers clustered about the room. ‘Don’t want trouble in the ranks.’
He nodded, looking dissatisfied, and I went back to my marking. I hated to be so dismissive, but I didn’t want to engage in conversation. Allen-Jones may be lax when it comes to Latin grammar, but he is unusually bright when it comes to judging people. I’m not sure he would understand why I am so reluctant to act; or why the situation needs to be handled with such delicacy.
‘Sir, there’s one more thing,’ he said, lowering his voice a little more.
I sighed and looked up from my marking.
‘It’s about Ben,’ said Allen-Jones.
‘What about her?’
‘That’s the thing.’ Allen-Jones was watching me. ‘Remember when I first came to you and told you I was gay, Sir? You never asked me how I knew. You just asked me if I thought it was going to interfere with my Latin.’
I nodded. I remembered it well. The truth is, I’ve never been entirely comfortable around issues of sexuality. As far as I’m concerned, the less said about it the better.
‘Are you telling me she’s gay?’
Allen-Jones shook his head. He looked as if he were struggling with a difficult Latin phrase.
‘Then what?’ I was genuinely confused. It wouldn’t have surprised me. The short hair, the blunt manner, the outright refusal to wear a skirt. Today’s young people are so much more complicated than they seemed to be in the old days. Dick and Jane. Janet and John. Pigtails and puppy dogs. You never needed to ask yourself which was which, or why that was. When I was a boy, girls might well have been visitors from a different world.
‘What does Ben want to tell me?’ I said. ‘And why isn’t she telling me herself?’ Allen-Jones looked up at me. His blue eyes were very earnest. ‘He is, Sir. He’s been telling you ever since he came here. Telling us all who he really is. And when people tell us who they are, we really ought to listen.’
After Allen-Jones had left, I thought about what he had told me. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of a pupil claiming the opposite gender, but this was the first time with one of my own. I’m sure that, twenty years ago, I would have dismissed the claim out of hand. Even now, I am aware that I am one of the Old Guard: laden with the prejudices of my generation. And yet, a teacher of Classics should be aware of the concept of metamorphosis. Perhaps this will pass. I hope it will – surely any child must want to be like other children. But Ben never was; and, like Allen-Jones, seems more self-aware than most. When people tell you who they are, we really ought to listen. It might have been Harry Clarke speaking: the thought filled me with a poignant and unexpected melancholy. Harry tried so hard to be himself. But when our friends tell us who they are, do we ever really hear them? I sighed and reached in my desk drawer for a Liquorice Allsort. I wish I could believe that this essentially pastoral matter, like the remains by the Gunderson Pool, could be dealt with swiftly and according to the proper procedure. But already this term seems to be fraught with peculiar challenges.I put my hand in my pocket, and found the old King Henry’s Prefect’s badge, washed clean of dirt now, and starting to shine once more from repeated handling. A kind of punctuation mark on the reverse of the painted shield marked where the pin had broken off. I stropped my thumb reflectively against the ragged metal, wondering if it would turn out to be a full stop, or a colon, or maybe an ellipsis. Something must be done, I thought. A boy is dead. Not one of ours, and so long ago – but that should not affect the way in which we deal with his murder.
Tonight I will speak with La Buckfast. Explain to her that, whatever comes next, we must alert the authorities. And yet, I want to know her tale. I want to know what happened that year, at King Henry’s, with my friend Eric Scoones. Of course, there is as yet no hint that Scoones was even aware of the boy. Maybe I am flinching at shadows. And maybe La Buckfast’s undoubted charm is taking me down a dangerous route. Will you walk into my parlour?
No: whatever she tells me, I must talk to her tonight. Tonight –
Maybe tomorrow.
7
St Oswald’s, September 6th, 2006
My audience of one is restless today. I saw him at Break on the playing fields, ostensibly keeping pupils from the new site, his black gown flapping in the wind. He looked like a mournful graveyard crow. He tried to make another appointment with me through my Secretary, after school, but I already had two hours of meetings with the Bursar and the new Heads of Year, and therefore could say with no certainty when I would be available. He waited out in the corridor for an hour or so, nevertheless, then eventually gave up. The sound of his footsteps down the hall echoed like a ball and chain.
Straitley is looking unwell, these days. The new regime does not suit him. In his old black gown and his chalk-smudged suit, he looks like the last piece of dead skin left on a quickly healing wound. The new staff do not wear gowns, of course. The old guard – what remains of them – have made an effort to change with the times. Only Straitley stubbornly clings to the trappings and methods of the past. I wonder how long he thinks he can last on his hopeless quest to hold back the tide. But he was there at our meeting at five-thirty last night, on the dot: I poured him a cup of coffee and resumed my story.
‘I hadn’t made a good start,’ I said. ‘I’d embarrassed myself, and humiliated a member of King Henry’s staff. Mr Scoones wasn’t the type to laugh at his mistake and move on, so the atmosphere was already strained before I’d even started the job. If we had been at St Oswald’s, I might have contrived to avoid him, but King Henry’s is not like St Oswald’s, where teaching rooms are like islands, standing in a sea of boys. King Henry’s was run on formal, almost military lines, with a Headmaster’s briefing every morning in the Common Room, and a formal mentoring programme for the induction of new members.
According to this inaptly named ‘buddy’ system, members of the Department who did not have a form would be the first point of contact for any new members of staff. You can guess what happened next. I was a new member of staff. Mr Scoones did not have a form. Thus I arrived to find myself paired with Eric Scoones as my mentor. If I had a problem, I was to take it to Scoones. If I needed advice, Scoones. If anyone made a complaint, Scoones.’
‘I see. That can’t have been easy.’
You should know that: you were his friend. But I was everything you were not. Young; inexperienced; female. That, more than anything else, I think, infuriated him. The phrase ‘confirmed bachelor’ was created for Eric Scoones. Of course in those days it would never have occurred to me to ask, or even to think about a colleague’s sex life. And to my eyes, Scoones already seemed old. His hair was already greying. His manner was patriarchal, veering between condescension and the outright judgemental. His stiffness, his formality seemed to belong to another age. And like the other King Henry’s staff, he wore his academic robe over his charcoal suit and University tie. Later, it would occur to me that all this posturing was simply a means of concealing his very real insecurity (the university was Leeds, after all), but at the time I found him not only terrifying, but monstrous.