"What? Yes. But then they all say that."
"Did David say anything to you that you particularly remember?"
She gave the question some thought before replying. "He'd come into the infirmary sometimes – with one excuse or another – and if there wasn't anyone else there he'd chat about this and that. Nothing I particularly remember."
"Did he ever talk about his mother?"
"Only in the same way that you and she were part of the same time – the old days, he used to say, as if he were Methusalah."
The old days. Ruth. During the time in Gloucestershire she had been well. The marriage had been strong then, too, slipping a little perhaps, but not perceptibly.
"Did he ever mention London?"
"He said you had a flat in London – that he went there with you for holidays – when he wasn't travelling around with you. You took him to some exotic places."
"Only in the line of business – selling electronic equipment to a worldwide market. He did a lot of waiting around. Measles once in a hotel in Florence… Did he mention that?"
"No. I think he was selective. He remembered the good things. Who chose Marristone Grange for him?"
"His mother – during the last few months of her illness. Her brothers went to Marristone. In those days, I gather, it flourished. At any rate they survived." It was bitter.
She contemplated him silently. Waiting for it.
It came. "Tell me about Marristone – Marristone today."
A vision of Brannigan rose up to haunt her. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything I don't already know. When I went to see it, it seemed to be adequate. The age range was wide. It catered for single parent families insofar that it didn't close down at holiday time. David was too old for prep school and he didn't have his name down for any of the better public schools. Ruth's brothers had done well there academically. The fact that the school is smaller now seemed a point in its favour. It was a convenient solution to a difficult problem. Obviously I didn't look deeply enough. David seemed happy. He didn't complain. Was there reason for complaint?"
She didn't answer straight away but got up and lit herself a cigarette and then offered the box to him. He shook his head.
Did ebullient children grow into quiet children? she wondered. The infirmary had been sanctuary for David – but not only for David. A quiet room- a little mothering. Was he any different from the rest? That look about the eyes – some of the others had it, too, the introspective ones. The only time he had been with her for a longish period was recently when he had mumps. And that had been a genuine physical illness. At the end of it some of the old ebullience had bubbled up again, until the very last day when he was due back in the main school. But the infirmary was a holiday – no child liked work. They all reacted in the same way – well, perhaps not in quite the same way. He had become white and very withdrawn. Reason for complaint?
She drew on her cigarette. "Children endure boarding-school. It isn't a natural way of life. Some of them endure it better than others. When the young ones come – the seven-and eight-year-olds – they cry. If the housemaster's wife is any good at her job she mops them up and pets them a bit and makes them feel better. When they're David's age – eleven going on twelve – they don't cry. They put up with it. They make themselves as tough as their nature lets them. When they're older than that they start to get important – they boss the other kids around – they're part of the hierarchy then, the upper part. When the time comes to leave they say 'Good old Marristone, wouldn't have missed it for the world'."
"You haven't answered me. We're talking about David, not the children in general."
She sighed. "I know. I don't think I can answer you. If I had taught him every day in class I might be able to answer you. I'm a matron. My duties are limited. I saw David when he was sick with mumps and I patched him up once or twice after rugger." She hesitated. "And once after a fight about rugger. He'd been to the States with you and told one of the boys that baseball was better. The boy thumped him. I thought he'd thumped him too hard and I told Brannigan. Brannigan said it was too trivial to report to him – that I should have told Hammond, David's housemaster."
Brannigan, Fleming thought, was probably right. David had been thumped in his other schools for one reason or another and had done some thumping back.
"There isn't a fag system, is there?"
"No."
"No organised bullying?"
"If there is it's undercover."
The answer perturbed him. "Who thumped him about the baseball?"
"A boy called Durrant."
"How old?"
"Fifteen."
"Three years older. Three years heavier. What did Hammond do about it?"
Some of her ash had fallen on her jeans. She brushed it off. "He dealt with him suitably – whatever that means. He wouldn't allow Durrant to bully David."
"Wouldn't he? He doesn't impress me as being competent."
She spoke with some sharpness. "You're beginning to sound like a prosecuting barrister. It breaks my heart that David is dead and if I thought there was any fault anywhere then I'd say so. He fell. It was an accident. It can't possibly be anything else. You've got to believe that or you'll drive yourself crazy."
"Then you'd say he was happy in school?"
"As happy as any of them. You know how it is."
Her words had consoled him a little and some of his own guilt went. It might have happened in any other school. It might have happened anywhere.
It was while they were eating the steak some while later that Jenny remembered the sketch. David had drawn it for her while he was convalescing from the mumps. He had been sitting near the window with the sketching block on his knees. It had taken him a.bout half an hour to do it. He had handed it to her without a word, watching her face for a reaction. She had quite spontaneously laughed and been surprised that he hadn't laughed with her. It had seemed to her a funny drawing. She had kept it in case he asked for it back. Boys – especially the younger ones – tended to test her loyalty by asking her if she still had whatever treasure they had bestowed on her. Treasures included conkers, a rat's tail, a magnet, love poems. They all went into a duffel bag and remained there for a safe period. The duffel bag was in the kitchen drawer. She fetched it. The drawing was creased and grubby and she touched it for a moment with tenderness before handing it over. "Something David drew for me when he had mumps."
Fleming took the folded drawing from her, opened it up, and put it on the table.
"Good Christ Almighty!" He sat rigid, fighting nausea.
She was astonished by his reaction, alarmed at his pallor. "It's a joke drawing. He gave it to me dead-pan. Just fun."
He didn't hear her. He was six years back in time. Ruth and he returning at one-thirty in the morning after the car had broken down on a deserted country road. The holiday cottage in darkness. David screaming. The babysitter had left at midnight. He had woken in the dark alone. The tiger moth caterpillar had dropped on his pillow from a bowl of flowers near the bed. He had wakened to feel its slow furry crawl across his cheek. A strange inimical room – silence – and an appalling creature on which to vent his terror.
There had followed two years of nightmares in which the caterpillar, man-sized, was the beast. On each day that followed a disturbed night he drew the caterpillar and then hid the drawing, but in obvious places where it could be found. He and Ruth had made a point of finding the drawings and tearing them up. It had become a ritual. He watched whilst appearing not to watch. In time the drawings and the nightmares stopped. There hadn't been a nightmare or a drawing for four years.
Until this drawing now.