Should I take it? I wonder.
Pinchbeck would have jumped at the chance. Of course, Pinchbeck was content, if not happy, to pass unseen. But I am not he.
What do I want, then?
What have I always wanted?
If it were simply a matter of revenge, then I could simply have set fire to the main building instead of just the gatehouse and let the whole wasps’ nest go up in flames. I could have put arsenic in the staff tea urn or cocaine in the first eleven’s orange squash. But there wouldn’t have been much fun in that, would there? Anyone can do those things. But no one can do what I have done; no one has ever done what I am doing. Still, one thing is missing from the victory tableau. My own face. The face of the artist among the crowd of extras. And as time passes, that small absence looms larger and larger.
Regard. In English it implies respect and admiration. In French it simply means “a look.” That—to be seen—is all I ever wanted; to be more than just a fleeting glimpse, a twelfth man in this game of Gentlemen and Players. Even an invisible man may cast a shadow; but my shadow, grown long over years, has been lost among the dark corridors of St. Oswald’s.
No more. Already it has begun. The name of Snyde has already been mentioned. Pinchbeck too. And before it ends, as St. Oswald’s spirals to its inevitable fate, I promise you: I will be seen.
Until then, I am content, for a time, to be an educator. But there are no exams to be passed in my subject. The only test is survival. In this I have a certain experience—Sunnybank Park must have taught me something, after all—but I like to think that the rest comes from natural talent. As a pupil of St. Oswald’s, that skill would have been refined out of me, to be replaced by Latin, Shakespeare, and all the comfortable assurances of that very privileged world. For most of all, St. Oswald’s teaches conformity; team spirit; playing the game. A game in which Pat Bishop excels; which makes it all the more appropriate that he should be the first real casualty.
As I said before, the way to bring down St. Oswald’s is a blow to the heart, not the Head. And Bishop is the heart of the school; well meaning; honest; respected and loved by boys and staff. A friend to those in trouble; a strong arm to the weak; a conscience; a coach; an inspiration. A man’s man; a sportsman; a gentleman; a man who never delegates a single task but works tirelessly and with joy for the good of St. Oswald’s. He has never married—how could he? Like Straitley, his devotion to the school precludes a normal family life. Base persons might suspect him of having other preferences. Especially in the current climate, where simply the desire to work with children is seen as legitimate cause for suspicion. But Bishop? Bishop?
No one believes it; and yet the staff room is already curiously divided. Some speak with bold indignation against the unthinkable charge (Straitley amongst them). Others (Bob Strange, the Nations, Jeff Light, Paddy McDonaugh) converse in lowered voices. Scraps of overheard cliché and conjecture—there’s no smoke without fire; always thought he was too good to be true; a bit too friendly with the boys, know what I mean— overhang the Common Room like smoke signals.
It’s astonishing, once fear or self-interest has stripped away the veneer of comradeship, how easily one’s friends may turn. I should know; and by now it must have begun to dawn on him too.
There are three stages of reaction to such an accusation. One, denial. Two, anger. Three, capitulation. My father, of course, acted guilty from the start. Inarticulate; angry; confused. Pat Bishop must have given them a better performance. The Second Master of St. Oswald’s is not a man to be intimidated easily. But the proofs were there, undeniable. Logs of chat room conversations conducted after hours from his password-protected station at St. Oswald’s. A text message sent from Knight’s phone to Bishop’s own mobile on the evening of the fire. Pictures stored in his computer’s memory. Many pictures, all of boys: some showing practices of which Pat, in his innocence, had never even heard.
Of course he denied it. First, with a kind of grim amusement. Then with shock; indignation; rage; and finally a tearful confusion that did more to condemn him than anything else the police had found.
They’d searched his house. A number of photographs had been removed as evidence. School photographs; rugby teams; Bishop’s boys throughout the years, smiling from the walls, all unaware that they would one day be used as evidence. Then there were the albums. Dozens of them, filled with boys; school trips, away matches, last-days-of-term, boys paddling in a Welsh stream, boys bare-chested on a day by the sea, lined up, limbs sleek, hair unkempt, young faces grinning at the camera.
So many boys, they’d said. Wasn’t that a little—unusual?
Of course he’d protested. He was a teacher; all teachers keep such things. Straitley could have told them that; how year after year no one is forgotten, how certain faces linger unexpectedly. So many boys, passing like the seasons. It was natural to feel a certain nostalgia; more natural still, in the absence of family, to develop affection for the boys one taught, affection and—
What kind of affection? Here was the dirt. They sensed it, despite his protests, closing in like hyenas. He denied it with disgust. But they were gentle; spoke of stress; a breakdown; an offer of help.
His computer had been password-protected. Of course, someone else might have learned the password. Someone else might have used his computer. Someone else might even have planted the pictures. But the credit card that had been used to pay for them was his. The bank confirmed it; and Bishop was at a loss to explain how his own card could have been used to download hundreds of pictures onto the hard drive of his office PC.
Let us help you, Mr. Bishop.
Ha. I know the type. And now they’d found his Achilles’ heel; not lewdness as they’d suspected, but something infinitely more dangerous—his desire for approval. His fatal eagerness to please.
Tell us about the boys, Pat.
Most people don’t see this in him at first. They see his size, his strength, his giant devotion. Underneath all that he is a pitiful creature; anxious; insecure; running his endless laps in an eternal effort to get ahead. But St. Oswald’s is a demanding master, and its memory is long. Nothing is forgotten, nothing put aside. Even in a career such as Bishop’s there have been failures; errors of judgment. He knows it, as do I; but the boys are his security. Their happy faces remind him that he is a success. Their youth stimulates him—
Dirty laughter from the wings.
No, that wasn’t what he’d meant.
Then what exactly had he meant? Crowding round now, like dogs around a bear. Like the little boys around my father as he cursed and swore, his big bear’s rump hanging off the seat of the Mean Machine as they squealed and danced. Tell us about the boys, Pat. Tell us about Knight.
“Talk about daft,” said Roach today in the Common Room. “I mean, how stupid can you get, using your own name and credit cards?”
Though he does not know it, Roach himself is in imminent danger of discovery. Several threads point to him already, and his intimacy with Jeff Light and Gerry Grachvogel is well established. Poor Gerry, so I hear, is already under investigation, although his excessively nervous state makes him a less than reliable witness. Internet pornography has also been found on his workstation, paid for on his credit card.