Facing the Tank (23 page)

It was soon after midnight and Crispin was breaking a school rule for the first time by being away from his bed after the master switch had been thrown to plunge all the dormitory block save the prefectural floor into darkness until soon after dawn. According to a relatively recent Tathamite custom (dating from the late nineteenth century) the youngest scholar could exempt himself from a
Lingua
exam if he could commit an outrage that the head of house found sufficiently diverting. Jermyn had reminded Crispin’s
magister
, David, of this when the latter was bemoaning the hopelessness of teaching an
oik
of such weak memory. Jermyn was proving to be something of a friend. Crispin had leapt at the idea, less from any hope of escaping the
Lingua
exam (the head of house was a notably humourless young woman called Marsden-Scott who, when not writing a book called
Why God Is Not
, played herself at three-dimensional chess and took notes on her technique) than from a superstitious belief that a sufficiently daring outrage might spare him and his dog the wrath of the gods. After an afternoon of mooted plans for encasing live kittens in a pie crust or painting a giant chess board on the quadrangle, the three of them had decided on something simpler. Crispin would creep into chapel late at night and change all the carefully prepared hymn boards so that they announced hymn three hundred and one although there were only three hundred hymns in the book. Feeble though the jest might seem to the average man, this was thought at once sufficiently numerical and untaxing as to appeal even to Marsden-Scott.

Crispin had had to set his alarm to wake him at twelve-fifteen. The prefects were allowed to play rock music until eleven and there were numerous traditional sayings and responses requiring a loud delivery which could be heard being bandied about by those still abroad downstairs. Scholar’s House, the dormitory block, had no carpets or curtains so four or five seventeen-year-olds climbing the stairs to their bedsits in the attics was enough to wake even the heaviest-sleeping junior. As on most nights, Crispin had slept for half an hour then been kept wide awake from ten until nearly midnight. The alarm clock was therefore redundant and he had been able to turn it off, slip his scholar’s gown over his pyjamas, pull on some gym shoes and creep out of the dormitory disturbing as few people as possible.

The quadrangle was all in darkness save for the great lamp over the dining hall steps. He scurried through the gloom to the main chapel doors then let himself into the organ loft staircase through the second door immediately inside the porch. David was clattering away at the keyboard and pedals, white stick hooked on the rail behind him, practising with the power turned off.

‘Who’s that?’ he asked, hands and feet stopping at the sound of Crispin’s gym shoes on the spiral steps.

‘Ssh,’ said Crispin. ‘It’s only me. I’m doing my outrage.’

‘Splendid,’ said David. ‘Carry on.’ He should not have been there either so returned to his silent voluntary without a further word.

There were two hymn boards dangling by chains, one from the organ loft and one from the gallery, while a third, painted on the wall, faced into the gallery to inform latecomers, and a tiny fourth faced the chaplain and choir. Crispin altered the organ loft one from fifty-two to three hundred and one then bade David goodnight and went to change the choir’s board. This was the most important as it ensured that the chaplain, who was tone deaf and never bothered to find his page until midway through the first verse, played his part in the outrage by announcing the non-existent number. Then he left the chapel and made for the cloisters.

Vespers were held every evening in the chapel gallery and this was reached from the cloisters up a narrow side tower. Along with playing human alarm clock, junior scholar had to turn off all the lights after these evening prayers. For once, Crispin was grateful of this; he knew where the switches lay for lighting both cloisters and staircase and so could dispel with a finger’s touch all the unpleasant feeling of the place. He had never been afraid of the dark – well, not for a great many years – but the darkness of the cloisters was somehow thicker than everywhere else. He raced up the stairs, already well-versed in their unevenness and occasional small holes. He no longer cared whether his absence was noticed. The all-important thing now was bed; a warm bed in a preciously silent dormitory. He hurried across the gallery, hoisted the hymn board by its chain and changed the numbers then did the same for the board mounted on the gallery wall. At this distance, the gallery light barely reached the organ loft. David and his softly thudding manuals seemed to float in the pitch black. Back in the cloisters, Crispin flicked out the lights, then frowned. The light in the chantry was on. He checked all the switches. They were all in the off position. Candles!

He had heard the rumours about black masses, naturally, but had discounted them as horror stories for new boys – sorry,
men
. He sensed, with the opportunism that became first nature to the smallest, youngest person in a school, that if he could see such a desecration with his own eyes, he would hold something over his seniors. Leaving the lights off in case the Satanists were alarmed, he clambered through one of the cloister arches and padded silently across the grass. The dew splashed up on to his bare ankles and made him shudder. The door was open a crack. He manoeuvred into the right position but could still see nothing. He could hear nothing either. Perhaps someone was at genuine prayer. Feeling awkward and pagan, Crispin turned to go. His gym shoes squeaked on the dewy stone. At once a woman’s voice called out,

‘Madeleine Merluza, first-generation woman, first female scholar and I’m very very sorry.’ Crispin froze. The voice went on in a different tone. ‘Well, come in. I’m surprisingly decent.’ He pushed open the door and slid round it.

She was lying between the two lit candles on the altar with a half-bottle of whisky open beside her and she was smoking. She sent up a jet of smoke towards the painted ceiling as he came in.

‘Sorry,’ said Crispin. ‘I just wondered what the light was.’

‘Hello,’ she said, turning her head. She had lots of bushy, blackish-brown hair which she had evidently enjoyed arranging across the stone beneath her. ‘You’re fearfully young. Is it just you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shouldn’t be up this late.’

‘I know. You see, I left my watch in the gallery after vespers and I needed it to set my alarm clock by,’ he lied easily.

‘Poor thing. And you didn’t dare ask anyone the time in case they gave you the wrong one?’

‘No. Are you waiting for a black mass to begin?’

‘I’m not a virgin.’ She chuckled. ‘You have to have a virgin to use as an altar.’

‘I’m a virgin,’ he confessed. ‘I think.’ He came a little closer. ‘Are you drunk?’ he asked.

‘Just a little,’ she said. ‘I went to a
wonderful
dinner with one of your Latin
gods
Dr Feltram. I hadn’t seen him since I was your age – well, a bit older than you – and he let me keep the rest of my nightcap for old time’s sake. Want some?’ she sat up and held out the bottle.

‘No thanks. I hate whisky. Could I have a cigarette, though?’

‘Be my guest.’ She offered the packet. He made no move. She grinned and wiggled the cigarettes. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I don’t bite. Not often.’

He smiled shyly back and came forward to take a cigarette. She lit it for him then patted the altar stone. He hesitated then jumped up beside her.

‘Why do you only
think
you’re a virgin?’ she asked.

‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.’

‘Secret?’

‘Sort of.’ He pretended to inhale and saw that she was smiling. His sisters had made him smoke once and he had been sick. He did not feel sick now. Perhaps this was growing up.

‘You can tell me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’ll never see me again, because I don’t know who you are and because my secrets are far worse and bigger than yours can possibly be.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’

‘Try me.’

Could he trust her? Suddenly he felt he could.

‘Well …’ he began. ‘Do dogs count?’

When Madeleine had got over her surprise she asked him to explain and he told her everything. She was very kind, not laughing. When she told him that he could have gone ‘much further than that’ with Lottie without making her pregnant he was so relieved, however, that he laughed and then she joined in.

‘Are you
very
relieved?’ she asked, but he merely blushed. ‘I envy you,’ she said, ‘my secret isn’t half as simple.’ Then he recognized her.

‘You were in the paper,’ he said. ‘You’re the one that had an affair with the Cardinal in London.’

‘Direct little boy, aren’t you?’ she said.

‘I’m fourteen in November.’

‘My my.’ She sighed and screwed the top back on to the nearly empty bottle. She took a drag on her cigarette and blew a few smoke rings. Crispin was impressed.

‘My uncle can do those,’ he said.

‘I
must
meet him’, she replied. ‘Is he tall, dark and handsome?’

‘Quite.’

‘Pity. I seem to prefer them stooped, white and wrinkled.’ Crispin swung his legs and coughed. ‘Don’t cough. You mustn’t cough,’ she commanded, raising an admonitory finger. ‘If you cough you’ll cough again. Breathe. That’s it. Relax and breathe. Inhale.’ He inhaled properly for the first time and the coughing stopped.

‘Thanks,’ he said, hoping he would not be sick now.

‘
Nada
,’ she replied.

‘Are you going to keep the baby?’ he asked.

‘What business is it of yours?’

‘Well, we’re having a debate about you in Deb Soc tomorrow.’

‘A debate all about me? I’m honoured.’

‘It’s not really about you. The motion is, “This House Believes That the Contents of a Mother’s Womb Are Her Own Affair,” but Jermyn – she’s a friend of mine – is proposing and it’s fairly obvious that she has you in mind.’

‘And you think that it would be impressive if you could stand up and produce evidence from the horse’s mouth?’

‘Just a bit. Well,’ he stubbed out his cigarette on the back of the altar. ‘Yes.’

‘It’s a deal. I’ll tell you what I intend to do with my baby if you remind me how to get out of here after lock-up.’

‘Done.’

So they swept the cigarette butts under a pew, snuffed the candle and left the chantry. No sooner were they out in the pitch-black cold again than the enormity of his new freedom made him start to shiver. Madeleine sneezed heavily.

‘Damn,’ she said. ‘That’s what comes from reclining too long on cold stone. Have you got a hanky?’

‘No,’ said Crispin. ‘Well, yes, actually, but it’s not mine and it’s not very clean.’

‘Never mind,’ she replied. ‘I’ll give it back when I’ve washed it. Promise.’

After he had fished out his godmother’s handkerchief for her and admitted that he had no idea who F stood for, Crispin showed her the way out through the warden’s garden. Having tucked three more cigarettes into the breast pocket of his pyjamas and given him the remains of the whisky as a bribe if he ran into a prowling prefect, Madeleine told him what she intended to do with her baby.

Endeavouring to ignore the bad way in which Friday morning had found her, Madeleine pulled on a sociable face as she knocked on the granny flat door.

‘Come,’ he called, so she came.

‘Evan, Mum says you’ve finished your research.’

‘Hi.’ He was drying glasses at the sink and waved a tea towel in greeting.

‘Hello.’

‘Sit,’ he told her and she sat. She took a fig roll from a packet on the table.

‘Yes I have. No more gaps to fill. But it’s so great here and my agent’s elderly cousin has invited me to lunch tomorrow so I thought I’d stay on a few more days and do the tidying up on the text here.’

‘Who?’

‘Emma Dyce-Hamilton.’

‘That’s the one who brought the charity gâteau. She was at Tatham’s with me.’

‘Don’t tell me any more. I’ve got to give her a sporting chance.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t bully me. I’m not your mother.’

‘Thank God.’ She laughed. ‘Have you got all the manuscript with you?’

‘Bet your sweet locks I have. I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I left it somewhere else. Some of Jeremy’s other clients – sorry, that’s Jeremy Barker, my agent – some of them are so nervy that they actually hand over each draft as it’s written, for him to put in a safe. He admitted to me, though, that he just shoves them in a file along with everything else. There’d be hell to pay if ever his place burned down – hysterical romance novelists on the warpath.’

He laughed then subsided and stood there cracking his knuckles. Madeleine grinned and offered him a cigarette which he turned down then rapidly accepted. She made him nervous for some reason, which was a shame; he was more attractive when serious. When he was trying to be funny he reminded her of someone anxious for the stability of his toupee, but when he was frowning or deep in thought or, better still, angry – as when he had locked out the bastard hacks the other morning – he looked like an ageing Gary Cooper.

‘You see,’ she said, ‘if you weren’t doing anything in particular this morning, I wanted to ask you a favour.’

‘Sure,’ he said, leaning against the wall in front of her, suddenly the rangy cowboy. ‘Anything but put my footnotes in order.’

‘’Cause I’ve got to borrow Mum’s car and drive out to a clinic a few miles outside town, and I could do with some moral support.’

‘Of course. It would be interesting to see something beyond all the quaintness. When do you want to leave.’

‘Now-ish?’

‘I’ll be with you in two minutes.’

‘Thanks.’

For the first time since either of them had been in Barrowcester it was not a brilliantly sunny day, indeed the weather showed every sign of turning ugly. There was an unpleasant, skirt-lifting wind from the south, the kind that brought summer colds on its breath, and the sky was oppressive with low clouds. As she left to open her shop, her mother remarked that it was the kind of day on which old people gave up the struggle. The private clinic, where the ‘poor Stepfords’ girl’ had been sent after her disastrous French exchange lay two or three miles to the north of Barrowcester in an undistinguished hamlet. Madeleine took the Clough road as far as the by-pass then turned off that on to a country lane. She heard Evan draw breath as if to speak, so cut in first, in case his chosen topic were gynaecological.

‘I had supper with Dr Feltram, one of my old Latin teachers, last night,’ she said.

‘Yes. Your ma said. How did it go? Was he pleased with how you’d turned out?’

‘He was terribly tactful about steering clear of anything to do with Edmund.’

‘Who?’

‘My Cardinal.’

‘Oh. Him.’

‘Yes, him. He didn’t mention him at all, even though I know that they used to be quite good friends. We just talked about things like work, and people in Barrowcester who had died. He got me terribly drunk because there wasn’t much to eat. Since his wife was put away he seems to have been living off crackers and Stilton.’

‘Wise man.’

‘It palls after an evening of nothing else. Anyway, around eleven o’clock he announced that it was long past his bedtime, but he felt so guilty for turfing me out that he made me take the half-bottle of whisky we were finishing. It’s so nice walking in Barrowcester after dark because all the old trouts have gone to bed and the streets are safe. I ended up doing things I’d wanted to do for ages.’

‘What?’

‘Boozing in the school chantry after lock-up and encouraging a small boy to smoke while telling him the facts of life.’

Evan laughed. She could tell that he did not take this seriously and she was struck again by the New World innocence of the man. Far from closing their age difference this reversed it, making her feel the older by far.

‘Did going to Tatham’s affect you very much?’

‘When I was a pupil, you mean?’

‘Yup.’

‘I suppose it must have done. I don’t see how you can imprison children of that age in buildings of that beauty and spend five and a half years telling them how special they are, and not leave some kind of mark. I’ve never felt guilty about it, because I did the whole thing as a scholastic free-booter. I was definitely one of the lucky ones, though. I was a fat little thing who enjoyed her work a lot and I’ve managed to hide away in sunny Academe ever since. But there are plenty who aren’t very bright, just disgustingly rich, and who are thrown out into the world at the other end completely unfit for anything except poncing up and down feeling special and wondering why no one will throw a job at them.’

‘Will … Would you send a child of yours there?’

‘No,’ she said without hesitation. The amount of smoke they had generated was giving her a headache on top of the one she already had. She opened her window a fraction to suck the cloud away and improve the visibility. ‘Would you?’

‘I … er …’

‘Oh. I’m sorry. Bugger.’ Swallowing this stupid mistake, she fell silent, as did he. They arrived in the clinic’s crowded car park after five minutes of brooding. ‘It’ll only take twenty minutes,’ she told him. ‘Do you want to come and sit in the waiting room? There’s probably a coffee machine. Otherwise you could go for a walk through the village. It’s not very thrilling, but the church is quite sweet.’

‘I guess I’ll come in with you. I’m afraid I haven’t given you much in the way of moral support.’

‘Yes you have. I needed someone to chat to.’

‘What are you coming in for?’

He had been bound to ask in the end. Hating her coyness, she muttered,

‘Oh nothing much. Just something sordid and female.’

‘Oh,’ he said, as they locked up the car. ‘Good luck, anyway.’ He reddened a little and his hair seemed whiter. They never got as far as the waiting room. They were barely into the anonymous red-brick porch of the building when the glass doors swung open and a horde of journalists and photographers were upon them.

‘Oh,’ said Evan.

‘Run,’ said Madeleine.

‘What does the Cardinal think about you getting an abortion, Madeleine?’ shouted a reporter with a face already familiar.

‘Does he even know?’ yelled another, as they fled back towards the car.

‘Who’s your new boyfriend?’

‘How long have you been on private medicine?’ called a third and a fourth in a cloud of flashing bulbs.

She barely gave Evan time to sit down beside her; he was still struggling to free his seatbelt from the door when she drew away like a maniac and drove, horn blaring, through the wildly scattering crowd. She thudded her clenched fist one more time on the horn button as they swerved out on to the road home. Some of the journalists seemed to be cheering. She let out a grunt of frustration.

‘Could you drive just a little slower?’ asked Evan.

‘Sorry,’ she said and slowed to fifty.

‘How do you think they found out?’

‘I don’t know. It’s only two hours since I made the appointment and I only gave them my surname. I suppose the receptionist must have made a few calls.’

‘No. You misunderstood; I mean, how did they find out you wanted an abortion?’

‘They didn’t,’ she said, accelerating.

‘They did. One of them asked what your Cardinal thought about it. I heard.’

‘Well I don’t know. What business is it of yours anyway?’ she snapped. She had been trying to light a cigarette but it slipped out of her fingers on to the floor. She swore, stamping on it briefly with her brake foot so that they lurched going down a hill. She saw Evan’s hands whiten as he gripped his knees and that irritated her further.

‘Well, none really, I guess,’ he said slowly. ‘But I just don’t think you can have thought about it long enough.’

‘I’ve had nearly a week. Sometimes these decisions are surprisingly straightforward.’ She heard her voice take on the high, strange pitch which signified impending loss of temper.

‘I just think … well … I suppose I wouldn’t want you to do anything that might hurt you or that you might regret because … well … This’ll sound stupid but I care about you a good deal, Madeleine.’

Foghorns blared in a headache that was now bordering on white-knuckle migraine.

‘OK,’ she squeaked, stopping the car. ‘That’s it. I … I … That’s it.’ She could never think of anything to say when she lost her temper so she reached for her cigarettes, her lighter and the door handle. ‘Can you drive?’ she asked, unable to see his face now that she was outside the car.

‘Well, as a matter of fact I can’t. But look, I’m …’

‘There’s a bus every half hour or so. I think there’s a stop just round this corner.’

She closed the door then pulled out a cigarette, held it in her teeth and strode back to a nearby gate which gave into a broad, boring square of overcropped grass.

‘Madeleine,’ she heard him call. ‘Madeleine?’

She stalked across to a distant hedge, taking fierce deep drags and kicking dried-out cow pats when they came within reach. Once the fresh air started to clear her head and she began to detect an element of pleasure in the scene she was making, she turned and stalked back to the car. Evan had gone. She drove as far as the next bus stop but he was not there either. Cursing him and cursing herself just a little too now, she gritted her teeth and headed for Barrowcester again, and Saint Boniface’s Infirmary. An hour and a half later, she was facing a woman doctor who miraculously failed to recognize her or who was too considerate to appear to do so.

‘I’m four, maybe five weeks pregnant,’ she told her, ‘and I haven’t had a check-up in ages so I wondered whether you could run some tests to tell me if it’s OK to go ahead and become a mother.’