Silent Noon (13 page)

“Tennyson,” said Ivor.

“Is it about his wife?”

“Not exactly.” The candle hurt Morrell’s eyes. He took it from her and placed it on the ground.

“Who died?”

“I put it there after someone went away. A friend back home. His family worked for us, but we had to let them go when Pater came back from Crete. It was a stupid idea.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t,” said Belinda, in a tone more bossy than pitying. Then, “I like this place. It feels like somewhere you’d plan things. Like a
Resistance.”

“No one bothered with a Resistance here,” said Ivor. “They let the Boche in without a fight and turned a blind eye to a labour camp right under their noses. No matter what the
plaques in chapel say, they’re only there to make us wonder if we’d have been braver.”

There was a brief, chastened silence.

“Swift fought in the Resistance in France,” said Barney at last.

“Who gives a shit?” said Ivor.

“I’m just saying.”

“I know Swift,” Belinda said. “Mother likes him. I can tell.” She was undoing the ribbon from the toffee box, flattening the twisted sections against her lap.

“He’s a tosser,” said Ivor.

“A brave tosser,” said Belinda, and Barney thought how foreign the word sounded coming from her. She tied the ribbon in a bow around her ponytail. “He’s very handsome.
His eyes are so blue—”

“I shall tell him you think so.”

Even in the dim light, Barney could see the girl turn red. “Don’t you dare.”

“He’s Holland’s deputy housemaster, you know. And my personal tutor.”

Belinda was already thinking how much she’d like it all to come tumbling down: the school, the shelter, the cliffs themselves crumbling into the sea. She looked away, at the door.

“Pax?” Ivor’s hand hovered in the empty space, waiting for hers. “Of course I shan’t tell.”

“Die on oath?”

He crossed his heart. “Die young, if I’m lucky. Like Chatter-ton and Keats.” They shook, and Ivor felt the small bones of her hand, which was hot and smooth. “Come on,
Holland,” he said. And so Barney placed his hand on top of theirs, and they stood there like that for a moment in silence, until at last Belinda stifled a self-conscious laugh and the other
two withdrew their hands, not looking at each other.

They decided to leave the basket and boxes and tins in the shelter, to clear out the next day. As Ivor drew the door closed, the other two stood in the forest gloom feeling the cold air and the
darkness. The rumble of bus engines sounded like distant drums, and Barney thought of the abandoned pumping station at the other end of the forest, and how the river was at once here, under their
feet, and elsewhere, flowing into the sea.

“Next time we should go down to the rock pools,” said Ivor. “I’ll find a way to bring proper meat, not this tinned crap.” It was the “next time” that
made Belinda look at Barney, who was at that moment grateful that the darkness concealed the guilt in his face.

Before either of them could reply a peal cut through the silence, and a second later a lone rocket exploded above the treetops, bathing the forest in silver and lighting their hands and faces
white. Barney thought he saw something move through the trees – something near, something terrible – and then he realized that it could only have been his own shadow, thrown long
against the ground by the light of Ivor’s torch. In the distance there were cheers from the boys and yelps of delight from the departing girls, but Barney remained as still as Ivor and
Belinda, making no sound as they lifted their eyes to the crackling sky fire, watching the last embers fizzle into the darkness like so many falling stars.

Half an hour after Shields accused Percy of stealing his cocoa from the common-room cupboard, four boys were committed to the San complaining of stomach cramps. The youngest, a
first-former called Bellamy, had been reduced to tears by the pain. His howls could be heard from across the green as Swift carried him from the boarding house to the main building.

“It was the limpets,” Robin told Barney over lunch. “Those idiot juniors don’t know that you have to build up slowly. I saw three gobbling them last night behind Ormer as
if they were chocolates.”

“I heard even Morrell’s succumbed. Odd business, that,” said Cowper.

Barney looked over at the Medes’ table. Sure enough, there was a space on the bench where Ivor should have been.

“Shields took your last spud,” said Robin, as Barney turned around.

“Shut your mouth, Littlejohn,” groaned Cowper.

“Shut your own – it’s closer.”

In the half-hour that they were supposed to spend packing their bags, Barney asked Mr Runcie if he might be allowed to visit one of the boys in the San. The housemaster nodded and said of
course, provided he asked permission from Matron.

On the first floor, the San door had been left ajar, a sign screwed to its centre insisting “Strictly No Talking”.

“Don’t just stand there, you dunce – come in and shut the door.”

Ivor was in the closest bed, propped up against two pillows and looking not at all unwell. There were ten bays in the room, which was large and bright, and all but one was occupied. Another boy,
the editor of the school magazine who was rumoured to be writing a book, was propped up in the bed opposite Ivor. Barney recognized a chronically homesick first-former by the name of Pike reading a
smuggled copy of the
Beano
at the far end. The others lay curled beneath starched sheets, feverish or asleep. Motes danced in a beam of sherbet sunlight which sliced the room in two, and
shadows from the mottled-glass windows lapped against the wall behind Ivor’s head.

“We were playing Name that Underground Station,” said Ivor. “Potts here got stuck on the one between Hammersmith and Stamford Brook – and for the life of me I can’t
be sure whether it’s Ravenscourt Park or Turnham Green.”

Barney considered the unwaxed forelock feathering into Ivor’s eyes, the top two buttons on his pyjama top undone, and saw him for the first time as a boy like himself. Suddenly he wanted
more than anything to be able to clamber into the vacant bed, to cocoon himself in this drowsy world of sunlight shapes playing on the walls and gentle games whispered between the sick bays.

“Aren’t you ill, then?” he asked.

“As far as old Baggage is concerned I am,” replied Ivor, running his knuckles across his chest. “Thank the Lord for syrup of ipecac. Made a nice mess in my set, but it
convinced her I wasn’t bluffing. At least I shan’t have to go home tomorrow.”

Barney’s mind shot to the photograph of Ivor’s tight-lipped mother and absent-looking grandmother. “It wasn’t the limpets, then?” he asked.

“Don’t be an idiot. Limpet-gobbling is a stupid game for stupid little boys to play. For God’s sake, take your hands out of your pockets when you’re talking to a senior,
Holland.”

“So why can’t you go home?” pressed Barney. Then he noticed Ivor’s jaw tighten, and he realized that this was not the way to be seen talking to a Mede. He glanced at
Potts, who was watching them both with interest.

“Ours is not to reason
why
, ours is but to do and die!” Ivor said. “Life’s a lingering fever, and all that. Isn’t that so, Potts?”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself, Morrell.”

“Do you have any of that stuff left?” asked Barney.

“What stuff? The ipecac? Sorry, old boy – I polished off the last drop.” Ivor was still grinning, but his jeering tone had softened. “What’s your excuse?”

“I can’t go home. Runcie is sending me to stay with some old woman on a farm. I didn’t know you could stay in the San over half-term.”

“Sagartians and Medes are allowed to keep on in their sets if they like. Baggage will telephone Mater and Pater to explain that I’m simply not up to the ferry ride. Chin up, old man.
Once I’m up and about I might wander down to watch you pitching hay – how’s that?”

Potts snorted, but Barney could tell that Ivor had meant it. “That’d be all right,” he said. He wanted to say something about the night before – partly to show Potts, and
partly to convince himself that he hadn’t dreamt the walk through the forest, behind the girl and ahead of Ivor, who had lighted their way with his torch – but he knew he
shouldn’t, and in the end he didn’t, because at that moment Matron’s footsteps sounded on the landing.

“You’d better make yourself scarce,” said Ivor.

Barney let himself out, closing the door behind him.

A cracking noise drew him towards the window, where he saw that the flag which had been lowered at half-mast since the start of term was now snapping in the wind. It was the first time
he’d had a chance to get a proper look at the emblem: a warship teetering atop a coat of arms that was set against two fat stripes of orange and blue. The flag danced against the grey sky,
and the ship bobbed on its orange sea, and it seemed to Barney that the window pane was humming:

The woman on the farm wasn’t as old as Barney had expected. Having been told she had poor eyesight, he had imagined an ancient crone with bunions and an ear trumpet. But
Miss Duchâtel was the same age as his mother, more or less.

The farmhouse where she lived was built low to the ground and had a round thatch roof. The clay floor was laid with horsehair. On that first night, Barney only noticed two items whose purpose
was purely decorative: a pair of porcelain bookends cast in the shape of the Babes in the Wood, and a painting of a woman that wasn’t his host, because she had long dark hair while Miss
Duchâtel’s was a brilliant red, shorn into a brush cut.

She was writing a history of the island, she told him, and she needed someone to help her organize four large boxes of papers into chronological order. Almost two decades’ worth of
accumulated scraps: some mercifully typed, many others written in a tight, sloping cursive, and a few in a hand that was small and square and thickly inked.

“But that can wait until tomorrow,” she told him. “Tonight, you’ll want to eat – and then you can tell me about yourself. Barney Holland,” she said. “A
good name.”

She spoke with an accent he didn’t recognize. She had a largish nose and a prominent chin: features which in a younger woman might be described as handsome, but which had become severe
with age. He had never seen a woman with such short hair.

She poured the bean jar into two shallow bowls and brought them to the table. He asked if she had always lived on the island, which made her laugh. When she smiled, her small green eyes turned
up at the corners like a Chinaman’s.

“My parents were from Paris. I used to play the accordion in the 18th Arrondissement. For a while I modelled for Pascin. I was so poor then, he used to pay me in beef skirt. You’ve
heard of him?” He hadn’t. “That was long before your time. After he died I came here.” She broke the stick loaf into four pieces and divided these between their plates.
“For the last ten years I’ve bred ducks and geese on this farm. You can meet them tomorrow, if you like.”

She wanted to know about his family, and he told her about London – about Spike and how he was going to front for the Tony Donegan Jazz Band one of these days. She said that she imagined
London must be a very exciting place to live. And he had nodded yes, not bothering to mention the shrapnel-scarred shopfronts or the smell of oatmeal burgers that lingered in the alley behind their
building – nor the corridor where the linoleum had begun to peel, the squat where it cost a shilling in the radiator slot to keep warm for two hours, and once you were out of matches that was
that. He didn’t mention the Jamaican family across the hall, the ones that had dog shit shoved through their letterbox every week for a month until they finally moved out.

She said the Carding House School had a very good reputation, did it not? He nodded and said nothing. She asked if he had made many friends, and he said one or two. He didn’t tell her that
Cowper and Hughes still wouldn’t let him take his place at the dinner table without double-punching him in the ribs, or that Shields routinely lingered over his shower when they were the last
ones in from games so there wouldn’t be any hot water left for him. She asked where his friends lived, if there were any islanders among them, and he said they were all from England. One of
them was in the San for half-term. She said that they must certainly have him come to visit, and Barney perked up at this a bit. He had second helpings of bean jar and then she said that
she’d show him his room.

“But first,” she said. “I have something that you might find interesting. Over there.”

It was the painting of the dark-haired woman. The face was not very good. More compelling was the fact that she appeared to have a horn growing out of the back of one hand.

“It’s called a cutaneous horn,” explained Miss Duchâtel. “Sunlight makes it grow.” She pointed to a plant in the foreground – its leaves translucent
discs like paper, their seeds visible within – and said, “In Denmark it is called a
Judaspenge
: ‘coins of Judas’.”

He stared at the picture. “What’s it doing here?”

“When your school moved onto the mainland they left various bits and pieces with the islanders to look after. I got the painting.”

“Why haven’t you given it back?”

“No one has asked for it. And I’ve grown fond of her. I’ve looked after her very well. If it had stayed in an empty school all this time, the mice or carpet beetles would have
had her by now.”

“Oh.”

“Now you have seen her, and that’s something the other boys can’t say.”

“No. Well, thanks.”

“You must be tired. Come, you’ll be wanting to see your room.”

When at last she left him, having explained where to find the outhouse – there was a chamber pot under the bed, he wasn’t to be shy, but if he preferred she would leave the kitchen
door unlocked – the first thing Barney did was draw the blackout curtains. He had never slept in a room of his own, and for the first time he saw just how dark the island night could be
without the protective halo cast by lights from the masters’ common room. The farm sat at the top of the ridge that ran down the middle of the island. Without any woods or fields or river
nearby, just a chequerboard of crofts leading to the edge of the cliff, the sighing of the sea was loud enough to rumble at the walls.