No one seems to be able to remember the young woman’s face, although it is true that I have no daughter, or any relative fitting that description. In any case, the woman never returned, and the watch is just an ordinary watch, rather old and slightly tarnished, but keeping excellent time in spite of its age and with a face that, if not precisely handsome, is certainly full of character.
It is not the only gift I have received this week. I’ve never seen so many flowers; you’d think I was a corpse already. Still, they mean well. There’s a spiny cactus here from my Brodie Boys with the impudent message: Thinking of you. An African violet from Kitty Teague; yellow chrysanthemums from Pearman; a Bizzy Lizzy from Jimmy; a mixed bouquet from the Common Room; a Jacob’s ladder from the sanctimonious Nations; a spider plant from Monument (perhaps to replace the ones Devine removed from the Classics office); and from Devine himself, a large castor-oil plant that stands at my bedside with a kind of shiny disapproval, as if asking itself why I’m not dead yet.
It was close, so I’ve been told.
As for Keane, his operation lasted several hours and took six pints of donated blood. He came to see me the other day, and though his nurse insisted he remain in his wheelchair, he looked remarkably well for a man who has cheated death. He has been keeping a notebook of his time in hospital, with sketches of the nurses and caustic little observations on life on the ward. There may be a book in it someday, he says. Well, I’m glad it hasn’t stifled his creativity, at least; though I’ve told him that nothing good ever comes of a teacher turned scribbler, and that if he wants a decent career he should stick to what he’s really good at.
Pat Bishop has left the cardiac ward. The pink-haired nurse (whose name is Rosie) professes to be heartily relieved. “Three Ozzies at the same time? It’ll turn my hair gray,” she moans, although I have noticed that her manner has softened considerably toward me (a side effect, I suppose, of Pat’s charm), and that she spends more time with me now than with any of the other patients.
In the light of new evidence, the charges against Pat have been dropped, although he is still under a suspension order signed by the New Head. My other colleagues have a better chance; none of them were officially charged and so may well return in due course. Jimmy has been reinstated—officially for as long as it takes the school to find a replacement, but I suspect that he will continue to be a permanent fixture. Jimmy himself believes that he has me to thank for this second chance, although I have told him several times that I had nothing to do with it. A few words to Dr. Tidy, that’s all; as for the rest, just blame the approaching school inspection, and the fact that without our dim-witted but mostly capable handyman, a great many of St. Oswald’s small but necessary cogs and wheels would have long since seized up completely.
As for my other colleagues, I hear that Isabelle has gone for good. Light too has left (apparently to begin a business management course, having found teaching too demanding). Pearman is back, to the secret disappointment of Eric Scoones, who saw himself running the department in Pearman’s absence, and Kitty Teague has applied for a Head of Year’s job at St. Henry’s, which I have no doubt she will get. Further afield, Bob Strange is running things on a semipermanent basis—though the grapevine tells me he has had to bear with a significant amount of indiscipline from the boys—and there are rumors of a redundancy package being put together (a generous sum) to ensure that Pat stays away.
Marlene thinks Pat should fight—the Union would certainly back his case—but a scandal is a scandal, regardless of its outcome, and there will always be people who voice the usual clichés. Poor Pat. I suppose he could still get a Headship somewhere—or better still, a post of Chief Examiner—but his heart belongs to St. Oswald’s, and his heart has been broken. Not by the police investigation—they were just doing their job, after all—but by a thousand cuts; the phone calls left unreturned, the embarrassed chance meetings; the friends who changed sides when they saw the way the wind was blowing.
“I could go back,” he told me as he prepared to leave. “But it wouldn’t be the same.” I know what he means. The magic circle, once broken, can never quite be restored. “Besides,” he went on, “I wouldn’t do that to St. Oswald’s.”
“I don’t see why not,” said Marlene, who was waiting. “After all, where was St. Oswald’s when you needed help?”
Pat just shrugged. There’s no explaining it, not to a woman; not even one in a million, like Marlene. I hope she’ll take care of Pat, I thought; I hope she’ll understand that some things can never be fully understood.
Knight?
Colin Knight remains missing, now presumed dead by everyone but the boy’s parents. Mr. Knight is planning to sue the school and has already thrown himself into a number of muscular, well-publicized campaigns—calling for a “Colin’s Law” to be passed, including compulsory DNA testing, psychological evaluation, and stringent police checks on anyone planning to work with children—to ensure, he says, that whatever happened to his boy can never happen again. Mrs. Knight has lost weight and gained jewelry; her pictures in the newspaper and on the daily TV bulletins show a brittle, lacquered woman whose neck and hands seem barely capable of supporting the many chains, rings, and bracelets that hang from her like Christmas baubles. For myself, I doubt her son’s body will ever be found. Ponds and reservoirs have yielded no trace; appeals to the public have raised a great deal of well-meaning response, many hopeful sightings, much goodwill—but no result. There is still hope, says Mrs. Knight on the TV news, but the reason the television is still running the story is not for the boy (whom everyone has written off) but for the riveting spectacle of Mrs. Knight, rigid in Chanel and armored in diamonds, still clinging to that delusion of hope as she stiffens and dies. Better than Big Brother; better than The Osbournes. I never liked her in the old days—I have no reason to like her now—but I do pity her. Marlene had her job to sustain her as well as her affection for Pat; more importantly, Marlene had her daughter, Charlotte—no substitute for Leon, but all the same a child, a hope, a promise. Mrs. Knight has nothing—nothing but a memory that grows ever less reliable as the days pass. Already the tale of Colin Knight has grown in the telling. Like all such victims, he has become a popular boy in retrospect, loved by his teachers, missed by his friends. An outstanding student who could have gone far. The photo in the paper shows him at a birthday party, aged eleven or maybe twelve; smiling brashly (I don’t think I ever saw Knight smile); hair washed; eyes clear; skin as yet unblemished. I barely recognize him, and yet the reality of the boy no longer matters; this is the Knight we will all remember; that tragic image of little-boy-lost.
I wonder what Marlene thinks of it all. After all, she too has lost a son. I asked her today, in passing, as Pat was collecting his things (plants, books, cards, a barrage of Get Well balloons). And I asked her too a question that has remained unasked for so long that it took another murder to give it voice at last.
“Marlene,” I said. “What happened to the baby?”
She was standing by the bed with her reading glasses on, scrutinizing the label on a potted palm. I meant Leon’s child, of course—Leon and Francesca’s—and she must have known it, because her face became abruptly still, taking on a careful lack of expression that reminded me briefly of Mrs. Knight.