I smiled. ‘I didn’t know you cared. Why don’t you come in for a cup of tea?’
He sniffed. ‘I won’t, thank you for asking. But I thought maybe you might enjoy these.’ He opened his briefcase and handed me a small box of Black Magic chocolates, cellophane-wrapped, with a red bow, and labelled in his fussy script:
To Roy,
Get better soon.
‘Why, thank you, Dr Devine,’ I said, touched.
He gave a final, percussive sniff. ‘I think that after all these years, we could probably consider being on first-name terms.’
I was almost too surprised to speak. First-name terms? I mumbled some kind of agreement, but, to be honest, I couldn’t recall whether I had ever known his full name – to me, he’d always been Sourgrape.
Chocolates, forsooth. And now, this. How ill did the idiot think I was? Did he not know I’m unbreakable?
‘Right. That’s that,’ said Dr Devine. ‘Must be on my way, I suppose.’ He turned on his heel and made for the gate. Then, turning back for a moment, he said – with the tiniest of smiles: ‘It’s Malcolm, in case you were wondering.’
And then he was gone, except for the receding outline of his charcoal suit through the dusty privet hedge.
6
King Henry’s Grammar School for Boys, April 28th, 1989
These little victories. They make us feel as if we are invincible. For the next two days, I walked King Henry’s corridors like a conqueror. Scoones watched me with the air of a man who expects a violent outburst at any moment; Sinclair with new and grudging respect. The lecherous Higgs; the cold Lenormand; even the boys themselves – all seemed to have realigned and moved towards acceptance. No one disrupted my lessons, or called me ‘Asda Price’ in class. There was no sign of the blond-haired boy – if indeed he had been there at all. There were no rattling, sucking sounds from the pipes in the boys’ toilets. Even the Banda machine behaved. For two days, I believed I had won.
But life has a way of pulling down the victories of women. It was a lesson I learnt that Friday, at my very first Chapel Assembly.
Sinclair’s Book had made it clear: Chapel is on Fridays, and is mandatory for all staff. It was mandatory for all boys too, irrespective of religion. I’d managed to miss it until then, but Sinclair’s eye was on me now, and I was keen to maintain my advantage. There was a reason I’d been avoiding going into the chapel; there was a memorial to Conrad there, and I had never seen it.
I suppose I was too young when he died to follow all that happened. I do remember certain things; the searches all over Malbry; hundreds of people with flashlights and dogs, combing the waste ground, calling his name; the journalists who came to my school; the tabloid reporters at our house. None of it interested me very much, and so mostly I ignored it, lost in a little world of my own. But now, I began to understand what the scandal had done to King Henry’s; the uproar his disappearance had caused; the inevitable loss of revenue. My brother had disappeared from school. Most likely, he’d been abducted. That kind of thing leaves a shadow on any school, but for a fee-paying school like King Henry’s, which prided itself on its superiority, it must have been a terrible blow.
I wondered how many parents of third-year boys had decided to withdraw their sons after the Conrad Price affair – after all, there were other grammar schools, all eager to pick up the pieces. I wondered how long that shadow had lingered over the school’s reputation. Maybe this was why they had chosen to create a memorial; as an act of contrition, a gesture of faith, or perhaps in the hope of moving on.
You’ll probably have seen it, Roy. It’s actually quite famous now. Based on artwork by Frazer Pines, it features in several of the school’s brochures. Time has elevated my brother’s disappearance. Once a grubby scandal, filled with gossip and speculation, now his death has become a part of an artistic legacy. That day as I came in, and took my place at the end of a row of boys, I found myself staring directly at a stained-glass window opposite, and realized almost at once what it was.
The design is simple; a plain white dove above the King Henry’s emblem (a fleur-de-lys, a Tudor rose) and the words, inscribed in copperplate:
CONRAD PRICE
(1957–1971)
OUT OF THE STRONG CAME FORTH SWEETNESS.
I felt a sudden, stinging shock of memory at reading the words. I knew the Biblical reference, of course, although it had been a long, long time since I’d thought of it. But I associated it most with the Golden Syrup that I took with my porridge on winter mornings: a green tin, with a picture of a lion, and that inscription.
Now at last, I remembered how Conrad had told me the story. It had been late, one winter’s night, and I had had nightmares afterwards. It was the story of Samson and the riddle of the bees who had made their nest in the dead lion’s body. Out of the eater came forth meat: and out of the strong came forth sweetness.
Who had chosen that epitaph? Surely not my parents. What was it supposed to mean, and why did it make me feel so strange? And it came with a burst of memories; seemingly unconnected, but buzzing like a swarm of bees. Out of the sink hole they came, and I remembered my childhood bedroom, and my shelf of toys, and my high-sided cot, and my favourite nightdress; it was pink, with a pattern of little blue birds. Conrad’s pyjamas were black, with a yellow piping. Conrad often told me stories at bedtime; but the stories were often scary ones. I remembered the way he used to hold his pocket torch under his face, making his round, rather chubby face look unexpectedly ghoulish.
Voices from a haunted room: Conrad can put you to bed tonight. Won’t that be nice? He’s so good with her.
And then came the stories, all of them filled with monsters and ogres and demons and ghosts. Be a good girl or Awd Goggie will come. That sound you heard was the Trapper-Lad, walking the buried coal seam. And of course, Mr Smallface himself, squeezing through the smallest of pipes; peering out from the toilet bowl; always on the lookout for meat. And yet those nights must have been precious to me. I remember how excited I was when it came to bedtime, and the way my heart used to flutter and pound when he said: How much do you love me, Becks? And I would shout: This much! This much! – and fling my arms wide.
Eric Scoones was glaring at me. He’d never liked me, of course, but on that day his hatred was tangible. I wondered why. As far as I knew, he was not devout. I looked away from the window and tried to concentrate on the service.
The Chaplain announced the first hymn: ‘When a Knight Won His Spurs’. I turned my attention to my hymn book, but the words on the page were dancing. Not far from me, Persimmon and Spode were mouthing along to the words of the hymn. From their furtive expressions, I guessed that they were singing some unauthorized, probably obscene lyric. I tried to concentrate, but I felt as if the ceiling were about to crash down. The words from the Golden Syrup can had started to release the swarm.
Try to be strong, I told myself. Only thirty minutes to go. I could survive thirty minutes, I thought, as long as I kept my eyes on the page, and not on the stained-glass window. I tried to breathe; my chest was tight. I wanted to sit down, but the hymn – the hymn seemed to be interminable. How many verses could there be? In spite of myself, I glanced up again at the window. And there I saw him, at the far end of the row, right under the stained-glass window. His hair was illuminated by the sun, the lenses of his glasses reflecting the scarlet of a Tudor rose –