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 lycée that succeeded it. No one else—teacher, parent, analyst—has ever taught me anything worth knowing. Perhaps this is why I let him live. Or perhaps it was to prove to myself that I have finally surpassed my old magister—though in his case survival carries 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 specter 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 favorite café (no, I won’t tell you where it is), with my demitasse 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, colors faded, now-comic images of fashions long dead—my God, 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 forever into who knows what new darkness. Can I bear it? I ask. And will I ever stop?
“Hé, la Reinette. Ça va pas?” That’s André Joubert, the café 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 notes on the table, and step out onto the boulevard, where my tears will dry in the gritty wind. Perhaps I will mention this to my analyst at our next appointment. On the other hand, perhaps I will miss the appointment altogether.
My analyst is called Zara and wears chunky knitwear and l’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 color of the light just over the far horizon.
My suburban lycée seems banal next to St. Oswald’s. My little project has been done before; and the prospect of settling down, of accepting the promotion, of fitting into the niche, now seems altogether too easy. After St. Oswald’s I want more. I still want to dare, to strive, to conquer—now even Paris seems too small to contain my ambition.
Where, then? America might be nice; that land of reinvention, where just to be British confers automatic Gentleman status. A country of black-and-white values, America; of interesting contradictions. I feel that there might be considerable rewards to be gained for a talented player such as myself. Yes, I might enjoy America.
Or Italy, where every cathedral reminds me of St. Oswald’s and the light is golden on the dust and the squalor of those fabulous ancient cities. Or Portugal, or Spain—or farther still, to India and Japan—until one day I find myself back in front of St. Oswald’s main gates, like the serpent with its tail in its mouth, whose creeping ambition girdles the earth.
Now that I come to think about it, it seems inevitable. Not this year—maybe not even this decade—but someday I will find myself standing there, looking in at the cricket grounds and the rugby fields and the quads and arches and chimneys and portcullises of St. Oswald’s School for Boys. I find this a curiously comforting thought—like the image of a candle on a window ledge burning just for me—as if the passing of Time, which has been ever more present in my thoughts these past few years, were simply the passing of clouds across those long golden rooftops. No one will know me. Years of reinvention have given me protective colors. Only one person would recognize me, and I do plan to wait until long after Roy Straitley has retired before I show my face—any of my faces—around St. Oswald’s again. A pity, in a way. I might have enjoyed a final game. Still, when I come back to St. Oswald’s I’ll make sure to look for his name on the Honors Board among the Old Centurions. I have a definite feeling it will be there.
7
14th November
I think it’s Sunday, but I’m not quite sure. The pink-haired nurse is here again, tidying up the ward, and I seem to remember Marlene here too, sitting quietly on the chair beside my bed, reading. But today is really the first day that time has run its natural course, and that the tides of unconsciousness, which have ruled my days and nights for the past week, have begun to recede.
Miss Dare, it seems, has vanished without a trace. Her flat has been cleared; her car was found torched; her last pay packet remains untouched. Marlene, who divides her time between the ward and the school office, tells me that the certificates and letters submitted at the time of her application have been revealed to be fake, and that the “real” Dianne Dare, to whom her Cambridge languages degree was offered five years ago, has been working at a small publisher in London for the past three years and has never even heard of St. Oswald’s.
Naturally, her description has been circulated. But appearances can be changed; new identities forged; and my guess is that Miss Dare—or Miss Snyde, if that’s still her name—may be a long time in eluding us.
I fear that on this subject I have not been able to help the police as much as they would have liked. All I know is that she called the ambulance, and that the medics on board administered the on-the-spot care that saved my life. The next day, a young woman claiming to be my daughter delivered a gift-wrapped packet to the ward; inside they found an old-fashioned silver fob watch, nicely engraved.