Part 24 (1/2)

And if I killed him now, it would not feel like victory.

A draw, then, magister. I can live with that.

Besides, there was one last thing that troubled me; one question left unanswered before I could declare an end to the game. It occurred to me then that I might not like the answer. All the same, I needed to know.

'Tell me, sir. If you saw me push Leon, why didn't you say so at the time? Why protect me when you knew what I'd done?'

I knew, of course, what I wanted him to say. And silently, I faced him now, squatting low enough at his side to catch even the smallest of whispers.

'Talk to me, sir. Why didn't you tell?'

For a time, there was silence, but for his breathing that rattled slow and shallow in his throat. I wondered then if I'd left it too late; if he planned to expire out of sheer spite. Then he spoke, and his voice was faint, but I heard him well. And he said: 'St Oswald's.'

She'd said no lies. Well, I gave her the truth. As much of it as I could, anyway, though I was never sure afterwards how much of it I had spoken aloud. That's why I kept the secret for all these years; never told the police what I'd seen on the roof; allowed the business to die with John Snyde. You have to understand; Leon's death on School premises was terrible enough. The Porter's suicide made it worse. But to involve a child - to accuse a child - that would have catapulted the sorry affair into tabloid territory for ever. St Oswald's didn't deserve that. My colleagues, my boys - the damage to them would have been incalculable.

And besides, what precisely had I witnessed? A face, glimpsed for a split second in treacherous light. A hand on Leon's shoulder. The figure of a Porter blocking the scene. It wasn't enough.

And so I'd let the matter lie. It was barely dishonest, I told myself - after all I hardly trusted my own testimony as it was. But now here was the truth at last, returning like a juggernaut to crush me, my friends - everything I'd hoped to protect - beneath its giant wheels.

'St Oswald's.' Her voice was reflective, barely audible across a cavernous distance.

I nodded, pleased she'd understood. After all, how could she not? She knew St Oswald's as well as I did; knew its ways and its dark secrets; its comforts and its little conceits. It's hard to explain a place like St Oswald's. Like teaching, you're either born to it or you're not. Drawn in, too many find themselves unable to leave - at least until the day the old place decides to spit them out (with or without a small honorarium taken from Common Room Committee funds). I have been so many years in St Oswald's that nothing else exists; I have no friends outside the Common Room; no hopes beyond my boys, no life beyond-- 'St Oswald's,' she repeated. 'Of course it was. It's funny, sir. I thought maybe you'd done it for me.'

'For you?” I said. 'Why?'

Something splashed against my hand; a droplet from the nearby trees, or something else, I wasn't sure. I suddenly felt a surge of pity - surely inappropriate, but I felt it nevertheless. Could she really have thought that I had kept silent all these years for the sake of some unimagined relations.h.i.+p between us? That might explain a number of things: her pursuit of me; her all-consuming need for approval; her ever more baroque ways of gaining my attention. Oh, she was a monster; but in that moment I felt for her, and I reached out my clumsy old hand towards her in the darkness.

She took it. 'b.l.o.o.d.y St Oswald's. b.l.o.o.d.y vampire.'

I knew what she meant. You can give, and give and give - but St Oswald's is always hungry, devouring everything love, lives, loyalty - without ever sating its interminable appet.i.te.

'How can you bear it, sir? What's in it for you7.'

Good point, Miss Dare. The fact is I have no choice; I am like a mother bird faced with a chick of monstrous proportions and insatiable greed. 'The truth is that many of us -- the old guard, at least - would lie or even die for St Oswald's if duty demanded it.' I didn't add that I felt as if I might actually be dying there and then, but that was because my mouth was dry.

She gave an unexpected chuckle. 'You old drama queen. You know, I feel half inclined to give you your wish - to let you die for dear St Oswald's and see how much grat.i.tude you get for it.'

'No grat.i.tude,' I said, 'but the tax benefits are enormous.' It was a lame quip, as last words go, but in the circ.u.mstances it was the best I could do.

'Don't be an a.s.s, sir. You're not going to die.'

'I'm turned sixty-five, and can do as I please.'

'What, and miss your Century?'

'It is the game,' I misquoted from somewhere or other. 'Not he who plays it.'

'That depends what side you're on.'

I laughed. She was a clever girl, I thought, but I defy anyone to find a woman who really understands cricket. 'I need to sleep now,' I told her drowsily. 'Up stumps and back to the Pavilion. Scis quid dicant--'

'Not yet, sir,' she said. 'You can't sleep now--'

'Watch me,' I said, and closed my eyes.

There was a long silence. Then I heard her voice, receding now like her footsteps as the cold drew in.

'Happy birthday, magister.'

Those last words sounded very distant, very final in the dark. The Last Veil, I told myself glumly - at any point now I could expect to see the Tunnel of Light Penny Nation's always talking about, with its celestial cheerleaders urging me on.

To be honest I've always thought it sounded a bit ghastly, but now I thought I could actually see the light - a rather eerie greenish glow - and hear the voices of departed friends whispering my name.

'Mr Straitley?'

Funny, I thought: I'd expected celestial beings to be rather less formal in their address. But I could hear it clearly now, and in the green glow I could see that Miss Dare had gone, and that what I had taken for a fallen branch in the darkness was in fact a huddled figure, lying on the ground not ten feet away.

'Mr Straitley,' it whispered again, in a voice as rusty and as human -- as my own.

Now I could see an outstretched hand; a crescent of face behind the furred hood of a parka; then a small greenish light, which I recognized at last as the display screen of a mobile phone, illuminating his face. And it was a familiar face; the expression strained but calm as he began, patiently, still holding the phone with what looked like an agonizing effort, to crawl across the gra.s.s towards me.

'Keane?' I said.

Paris. 5ieme arrondiss.e.m.e.nt Friday, 12th November I CALLED THE AMBULANCE. THERE'S ALWAYS ONE NEAR THE park on Bonfire Night in case of accidents, fights and general misadventure, and all I had to do was phone in (using Knight's phone for the last time), reporting that an old man had collapsed and leaving instructions that would be at the same time precise enough to allow them to find him and vague enough to give me a chance to get away in comfort.

It didn't take long. Over the years I have become rather an expert at quick getaways. I got back to my flat by ten; at ten fifteen I was packed and ready. I left the hire car (keys in the ignition) on the Abbey Road estate; by ten thirty I was fairly certain it would have been stolen and torched. I'd already wiped my computer and removed the hard drive, and now I disposed of what was left along the railway tracks on my way to the station. By then I had only a small case of Miss Dare's clothes to carry; I left them in a charity bin where they would be laundered and sent to the Third World. Finally I dumped the few doc.u.ments still pertaining to my old ident.i.ty into a skip and bought myself a night at a cheap motel and a single rail ticket home.

I have to say, I've missed Paris. Fifteen years ago, I never would have believed it possible; but now I like it very much. I am free of my mother (such a sad business, two burnt to death in an apartment fire); and as a result I am the sole beneficiary of rather a neat little inheritance. I've changed my name as my mother did hers, and I've been teaching English for the last two years at a comfortably suburban lycie, from which I have recently taken a short sabbatical to complete the research that will, I am a.s.sured, lead to my rapid promotion. I do hope so; in fact I happen to know that a little scandal is about to erupt (regarding my immediate superior's on-line-gambling problem) which may offer me a suitable vacancy. It isn't St Oswald's, of course; but it will do. For now, at least.

As for Straitley, I hope he survives. No other teacher has earned my respect - certainly not the staff at Sunnybank

Park,, or at the dull Paris lycie that succeeded it. No one K Wsc -- teacher, parent, a.n.a.lyst - has ever taught me any

thing worth knowing. Perhaps this is why I let him live.

3 pounds perhaps it was to prove to myself that I have finally pa.s.sed my old magister - though in his case survival ries its own double-edged responsibilities, and what his testimony will mean to St Oswald's is hard to tell. Certainly, if he wishes to save his colleagues from the present scandal, I see no alternative but to raise the spectre of the Snyde affair. There will be unpleasantness. My name will be mentioned.

I have little anxiety on that front, however; my tracks are well hidden, and unlike St Oswald's, I will emerge from this once again unseen and undamaged. But the School has weathered scandals before; and although this new development is likely to raise its profile in a most disagreeable way, I imagine it may endure. In a way, perversely, I hope it does. After all, a sizeable part of me belongs there.

Now, sitting in my favourite cafe (no, I won't tell you where it is), with my demita.s.se and croissants on the vinyl tabletop in front of me and the November wind snickering and sobbing along the broad boulevard, I could almost be on holiday. There's the same sense of promise in the air; of plans to be made. I should be enjoying myself. Another two months of sabbatical to go, a new, exciting little project to begin, and, best of all, strangest of all, I am free.

But I have dragged this revenge of mine behind me for so long that I almost miss the weight of it; the certainty of having something to chase. For the present, it seems, my momentum is spent. It's a curious feeling, and spoils the moment. For the first time in many years, I find myself thinking of Leon. I know that sounds strange - hasn't he been with me all this time? -- but I mean the real Leon, rather than the figure that time and distance have made of him. He'd be nearly thirty now. I remember him saying: Thirty, that's old. For Christ's sake, kill me before I get there.

I never could before, but now I can see Leon at thirty; Leon married; getting a paunch; Leon with a job; Leon with a child. And now, after all, I can see how ordinary he looks, eclipsed by time; reduced to a series of old snapshots, colours faded, now-comic images of fas.h.i.+ons long dead my G.o.d, they used to wear that gear? - and suddenly and ridiculously I begin to weep. Not for the Leon of my imagination, but for my own self, little Queenie as was, now twenty-eight years old and heading full-tilt and for ever into who knows what new darkness. Can I bear it? I ask. And will I ever stop?

'Hi, la Reinette. Ca va pas?' That's Andre Joubert, the cafe owner; a man in his sixties, whip-thin and dark. He knows me -- or thinks he does -- and there is concern in his angular face as he sees my expression. I make a shooing gesture - 'Tout va bien' - leave a couple of coins on the table and step out on to the boulevard, where my tears will dry in the gritty wind. Perhaps I will mention this to my a.n.a.lyst at our next appointment. On the other hand, perhaps I will miss the appointment altogether.

My a.n.a.lyst is called Zara, and wears chunky knitwear and I'Air du Temps. She knows nothing of me but my fictions, and gives me homeopathic tinctures of sepia and iodine to calm my nerves. She is full of sympathy for my troubled childhood and for the tragedies that robbed me, first of my father, then of my mother, stepfather and baby sister at such an early age. She feels concern for my shyness, my boyishness, and for the fact that I have never been intimate with a man. She blames my father - whom I have presented to her in the garb of Roy Straitley - and urges me to seek closure, catharsis, self-determination.

It occurs to me that perhaps I have.

Across the boulevard, Paris is bright and sharp around the edges, stripped raw by the November wind. It makes me restless; makes me want to see precisely where that wind is blowing; makes me curious as to the colour of the light just over the far horizon.