“Remembered him? Perhaps they would. Certainly I’ve never known anyone to leave so many casualties behind him. Poor Marlene. She knew the truth, but he was her son and she loved him, whatever he did. And that teacher at his old school. Metalwork teacher; a married man, a fool. Leon destroyed him, you know. Selfishly; on a whim, when he got bored of his attentions. And what about the man’s wife? She was a teacher too, and in that profession it makes you guilty by association. Two careers down the drain. One man in prison. A marriage ruined. And that girl—what was her name? She can’t have been more than fourteen years old. All of them victims of Leon Mitchell’s little games. And now me, Bishop, Grachvogel, Devine—and you, Miss Dare. What makes you think you’re any different?”
I had stopped for breath, and there was silence. Silence so complete, in fact, that I wondered if she had gone away. Then she spoke in a small, glassy voice.
“What girl?” she said.
4
Bonfire Night, 9:45 P.M.
He’d seen her in the hospital, where I had not dared go. Oh, I’d wanted to; but Leon’s mother had been there at his bedside the whole time, and the risk was unacceptable. But Francesca had come; and the Tynans; and Bishop. And Straitley, of course.
He’d remembered her well. After all, who wouldn’t? Fifteen years old and beautiful in that way that old men find so inexplicably heartbreaking. He’d noticed her, first for her hair and the way it fell across her face in a single swatch of raw silk. Bewildered, perhaps, but more than a little excited by the drama of it all; the real-life tragedy in which she was a player. She’d chosen black, as if for a funeral, but mostly because it suited her, for after all, Leon wasn’t actually going to die. He was fourteen, for pity’s sake. At fourteen, death is something that only happens on TV.
Straitley hadn’t spoken to the girl. Instead he’d gone to the hospital cafeteria to bring Marlene a cup of tea, whilst waiting for Leon’s visitors to leave. He’d seen Francesca on her way out—still fascinated perhaps by that hair as it moved like an animal across her lower back—and it had crossed his mind that the roundness at her stomach looked more pronounced than the usual adolescent tubbiness; in fact with those long, slim legs and narrow shoulders, that weight around her abdomen made her look more than a little—
I breathed deeply, using the method my analyst had taught me. In for five beats; out for ten. The scent of smoke and dank vegetation was very strong; in the mist my breath plumed like dragon fire.
He was lying, of course. Leon would have told me.
I said it aloud. On the bench the old man lay very still, denying nothing.
“It’s a lie, old man.”
The child would be fourteen years old by now, as old as Leon when he died. Boy or girl? Boy, of course. Leon’s age; with Leon’s gray eyes and Francesca’s dappled skin. He wasn’t real, I told myself—and yet that image refused to be dismissed. That boy—that imaginary boy—with a hint of Leon in the cheekbones, a hint of Francesca in the plump upper lip . . . I wondered, had he known? Could he possibly not have known?
Well, what if he had? Francesca didn’t matter to him. She was just a girl, he’d told me so. Just another shag, not the first, not the best. And yet he’d kept this secret from me, from Pinchbeck, his best friend. Why? Was it shame? Fear? I’d thought Leon above those things. Leon, the free spirit. And yet—
“Say it’s a lie and I’ll let you live.”
No word from Straitley; just a sound like that of an old dog turning over in his sleep. Damn him, I thought. Our game was practically over, and here he was trying to introduce some element of doubt. It annoyed me; as if my business with St. Oswald’s were not simply a matter of pure revenge for my broken life, but some altogether messier, less noble affair. “I mean it,” I said. “Or our game ends now.”
The pains in my chest had subsided now, to be replaced by a deep and languorous cold. In the darkness above me I could hear Miss Dare’s rapid breathing. I wondered if she was planning to kill me now, or whether she meant simply to let nature take its course. As it happened I found I wasn’t especially interested either way.
All the same, I wondered dimly why she cared. My assessment of Leon seemed hardly to have slowed her down; but my description of the pregnant girl had stopped her in her tracks. Clearly, I thought, Miss Dare hadn’t known. I considered what this might mean to me.
“It’s a lie,” she repeated. The cool humor in her voice was gone. Now every word crackled with a lethal static. “Leon would have told me.”
I shook my head. “No, he wouldn’t. He was scared. Terrified it would affect his university prospects. Denied everything at first, but his mother got the truth out of him in the end. As for myself—I’d never seen the girl. Never heard of the other family. But I was Leon’s form tutor. I had to be told. Of course both he and the girl were underage. But the Mitchells and the Tynans had always been friendly, and with support from the parents and the church, I suppose they could have managed.”
“You’re making this up.” Her voice was flat. “Leon wouldn’t have cared about any of that. He’d have said it was banal.”
“Yes, he liked that word, didn’t he?” I said. “Pretentious little oik. Liked to think the normal rules didn’t apply to him. Yes, it was banal, and yes, it frightened him. After all, he was only fourteen.”
There was a silence. Above me, Miss Dare stood like a monolith. Then, at length, she spoke.
“Boy or girl?” she said.
So, she believed me. I drew a long breath, and the hand pressing against my heart seemed to give way, just a little. “I don’t know. I lost touch.” Well, of course I did—we all did. “There was some talk of adoption at the time, but Marlene never told me, and I never asked. You, of all people, should understand why.”
Another silence, longer, if anything, than the previous one. Then, softly and despairingly, she began to laugh.
I could see her point. It was tragic. It was ridiculous. “It takes courage sometimes to face up to the truth. To see our heroes—and our villains—as they really are. To see ourselves as others see us. I wonder, Miss Dare, in all that time you say you were invisible, did you ever really see yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
She’d wanted the truth. And I gave it now, still wondering for what stubborn purpose I was putting myself through all this, and for whom. For Marlene? For Bishop? For Knight? Or simply for Roy Straitley, B.A., who had once tutored a boy called Leon Mitchell with no more or less favor or prejudice than to any other of my boys—or so at least I fervently hoped, even with the drag of hindsight and that small, persistent fear that perhaps some part of me had known the boy might fall—had known but had factored it into some dark equation, some half-considered attempt to slow down the other boy, the boy who pushed him.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” I told her softly. “That’s the truth. You pushed him, then thought better of it and tried to help. But I was there, and you had to run—”
For that was what I thought I’d seen, as I peered shortsightedly from my aerie in the Bell Tower. Two boys, one facing me, the other with his back turned, and between us the figure of the school Porter, his wavery shadow flicking out across the long rooftop.