Silent Noon (7 page)

“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.

“Copped it in the war?”

“Hardly. The old devil deserted on Crete.” Hughes sucked his teeth. “The Stukas start bashing up the airfields, right? And he’s so busy picking off the Kraut paratroopers
tangled up in olive trees that he misses the evacuation to Egypt. Spends the next three years with a Greek family and comes home after the liberation. Finds out that his first-born son got killed
in Normandy, so he takes to drink, just like his missus, and finally croaks of a heart attack.”

“Not very edifying,” said Robin, using a word unfamiliar to Barney for the second time that day.

“Mrs Morrell is drugged up all the time now,” continued Hughes with indifference. He pressed the back of his spoon into the yellow lump on his plate. “Religious
nutter.”

Shields nodded at Cowper’s fork. “Your turn today, Cowper.”

“Bollocks. I took one the day before last. And I’m running out of space.”

It had been Shields’s idea that they should take turns smuggling an item of cutlery out of the dining hall after each meal, a prank they were determined should acquire the status of school
legend before the end of term.

“Old Baggage checks our drawers, you know.” Cowper slid the fork into his sleeve. “
Va bene
. I can’t keep wrapping them in socks for ever.”

“Come on, Holland,” said Robin, who was now able to pretend that he was tired of the conversation. “There’s a load of fellows going into town this afternoon. If
we’re quick we can nip in to catch the second half of whatever’s on at the Palace.”

“
The Cruel Sea
,” said Cowper. “Saw it last week.”

“Good thing I didn’t ask you, then.”

Robin had stored enough pennies in a sock under his mattress that he was able to make up the difference with Barney. “We can get in upstairs for one and three,” he said. “If
there are still a few Medes in town by the time it ends we can catch the beginning of the second show before coming back. It’ll make a change from all that mummy talk, anyway.”

They cut across the playing fields and followed the river to the towpath. As he clambered over the wall, Barney realized that this was the first time he’d been off school grounds. He was
surprised not to feel anything like liberation. The main road was framed by earth-bank hedgerows, and although it was possible to hear the churning of the North Sea, there was nothing to see but an
arc of slate-grey sky.

The cinema was in St Arras, half an hour’s walk away.

“It didn’t get bombed like Port Grenen,” Robin said. “London never told Fritz the island had been demilitarized, so the Huns dropped some whoppers before the invasion.
Boom!” He mimed an explosion with his hands – palms up, fingers splayed – in front of Barney’s face. “Body parts everywhere. Turned the sea red.”

“Anyone from school?”

“Of course not. Except for Swift, they all ran back to England to be scout masters at the first sign of a Stuka.”

Where the hedgerow began to thin some farm buildings came into view, huddled in the crook of a windswept hillock. There was a wooden barn and a stone farmhouse with a thatch roof. The buildings
were hardy but graceless, hunkered into the land like barnacles.

They were standing on a ridge that scarred the northern half of the island. Far below lay sand dunes and a rocky precipice. The patchwork of crofts ended abruptly in pearly sky where the cliff
dropped to the sea. Between the ridge and the farm buildings, grey-green scrubland shelved down towards the water, pockmarked with tiny canyons.

“Those are the chalk pits where the Wehrmacht put their prisoners of war to work.” Robin pointed at a grey bump rising out of the sea. “And that’s St Just, where the Yids
and the Wogs were sent.”

“Who lives there now?”

“Inbreds, I suppose.”

When they reached the high street, Robin pointed out the sweet shop and the post office and the café that sold the best iced buns on the island. The café windows were large and
undressed, and by each one was a table and two chairs. A man was wiping one of the tables, while at the other a solitary woman sat with both hands laid, palm down, before her.

“There, see?” Robin said, pulling Barney to a halt. “That’s Flood’s missus.”

Cowper, in his crudeness, had overstated her looks, thought Barney. She was nicely dressed but too thin, and pale. Her nose was red and her eyes puffy.

“Come on – we might make it in time for the start if we’re quick.”

In the musty darkness of the cinema, Barney stole a glance at his friend in the next seat, outlined in profile against the glow of the screen, and thought that perhaps they weren’t so
different after all – that perhaps they had more in common than their shared vulnerability.

“Here we go,” whispered Robin, as the lights dimmed and the projector crackled.

So there had been POWs here too. Barney tried to concentrate on the film, but soon – because he couldn’t help it – he found himself thinking of the military
cemetery in Rangoon and all the war graves filled with composites of more than one soldier. After VE Day, no one had wanted to talk about the prisoners still languishing in jungle camps in the
East: the thought was too depressing, and by that point people were desperate for something to celebrate. Mum had told him she had danced in Trafalgar Square with a tall Italian-American –
and that night, listening through the thin walls to the sounds of laughter and tomfoolery, Barney had felt as if he was the only one who did not know how or why to be glad.

On the walk home Barney left the talking to Robin, encouraging him with grunts of agreement whenever the tide of conversation began to wash in his direction. Now Robin was saying that the mummy
could be a Polish baby, perhaps even a Russian one. The school groundsman, Krawiec, was a Pole, Robin said. Last year Krawiec had been invited to speak to the First Form about how he’d been
interned on St Just. He and twenty others had been abandoned there to starve. Because there were no guards – the island was trusted to do the Germans’ dirty work for them – five
of them had tried and failed to escape on a raft. That was two weeks before the end of the war. When peace was declared, he’d gone to America, but no one had told him he’d have to share
a room with his employer’s Negro footman – so Krawiec had spat in the face of the American Dream and come back here, to work at a school where there weren’t any blacks. Barney
asked Robin why Krawiec would return to the island, and not to Poland.

“I don’t suppose Poland was much better,” said Robin. “And Pleming had told him that the job was his, if he ever wanted it.”

A riot of seagulls wheeled about the cliffs, and Barney thought how strange it was that their cries only drew more attention to the surrounding silence. They were bigger than any seagulls he had
seen before, with longer wings and necks and heads that were slightly yellow.