He forced himself out into the corridor down which he had once skipped so lightly and swallowed hard to keep his gorge from rising. The phrase ‘choked on his own vomit’ came to mind. It had always struck him as singularly silly. Who else’s vomit could one possibly choke on?
Here were the doors already. The top halves were inset with thick, bubbled glass. Opaque but the shape and outline of those within could be seen, especially if they were in motion. Brian brought his face to the glass and squinted. Nothing. It was unnaturally quiet, too. Usually he would hear laughter and coarse shouts of aggro long before he’d reached the place itself. A great wash of relief left him trembling all over. He was reminded that the idea of blackmail was entirely his own. As for sending the photographs, that was probably no more than a malicious joke intended to frighten him. To get their own back for some imagined slight. Whatever the reason, they seemed to have chickened out. Best to make sure though. He pushed open the door.
Everyone was there. Down at the far end by the parallel bars. They were sitting cross-legged with stern, carved faces like warrior braves at a council of war.
Brian remembered explaining once that an empty space could be anything the actor cared to make it. Today there was no doubt about its function. It had become an arena.
As he began to make his effortful way over the vast expanse of gleaming parquet Brian’s legs seemed to be attached to lead weights. He marched on and the gap between himself and the others seemed hardly to shrink at all. But finally this mysteriously slow and humiliating journey came to an end. Resisting the craven urge to tuck himself on to the more harmless tip of the semi-circle, in other words next to little Bor, Brian sat down alone and en face.
He immediately regretted this realising, just too late, that he had surrendered a great advantage. Namely the opportunity to look down at everyone from a five-foot-six vantage point. Still, he could hardly scramble up again.
Brian took a deep breath and tried to select from the frantic and tumultuous chatter in his head a few pertinent and cutting opening remarks. He still hadn’t looked at anyone, which he recognised as another mistake, for the longer he refused to do so the more silly and cowardly must he appear.
Denzil said, ‘You got here, then?’
‘Yes, oh yes.’ Brian laughed. At least that was his intention. But it was a poor patched shred of a thing. A mere tatter of the old hyuf, hyuf.
He braced himself to meet their collective regard, but at the last moment his nerve failed and his eyes slid across to where Edie sat, close to her brother, her face hidden against his shoulder. They were completely still, but Brian felt their concentrated self-perpetuating energy. They were all the same, waxing fat on group bravado. His mother would have called it ‘egging each other on’.
‘Well you lot,’ began Brian and was shattered at the lack of authority in his voice. He sounded like a querulous child. He gave a little neigh, hoping thereby to release a deeper and more commanding timbre. ‘What’s all this about?’
Then, when no one replied: ‘If it’s some sort of joke I must confess I don’t think it’s very funny.’
‘Joke, Brian?’ Denzil frowned deeply. The movement tugged at the skin on his shaven skull and the spider wriggled. ‘Joke?’
‘Seems to me,’ said Collar, ‘there ain’t nothing even remotely funny about raping a fifteen-year-old girl.’
‘Rape!’ Brian nearly fainted. He remained upright only by placing his hands flat on the floor behind him and transferring his weight. There was a roaring in his ears and, though the beginnings of anger kept him conscious, his heart felt as if it was being sucked out of his chest by a vacuum pump.
‘That’s ... Not ... True ...’
‘You seen the evidence ain’cha?’
‘The pitchers.’
He would never stop seeing the pictures. Her anguished triangular face staring directly at the camera. The slender figure crouching submissively on the edge of the settee as if awaiting further punishment. Brian recalled with much bitterness his earlier conclusion that Edie couldn’t act for toffee.
‘Edie? Look at me. Please.’
As if even the sound of his voice was a threat she burrowed even more deeply into the protective crook of her brother’s arm. They sheltered together like orphans.
Brian, consumed with exasperation, cried, ‘There was no rape. It wasn’t like that.’
‘You calling her a liar?’ asked Collar. ‘On top of everything else what you done.’
‘No. Well. Yes, actually.’
‘Oh sweet Jesus.’ Edie began to cry. Soft moany little warbles, like a wounded pigeon. Her brother stroked the fiery floss of her hair, glaring at Brian in disgusted disbelief.
‘Edie ...’
‘Leave her alone,’ said Tom, his glance as cold as charity. ‘We’re looking after her now. I’m only sorry I never saw the need of it before.’
‘We had no warning, Brian, you see,’ said Denzil. ‘No hint that you were like that.’
‘I am not like that!’ The calm contempt in their eyes, their brazen hypocrisy, was driving him mad. When he tried to speak he almost gagged. ‘I would never have ... She asked me round ...’
‘You do that, Edie?’
‘Ask him round?’
Her response, though muffled in the folds of Tom’s coat, was perfectly audible. ‘He just turned up.’
‘See? You’re out your cranium, Bri.’
‘You’ll be saying next,’ Denzil spoke through bared teeth, ‘that you’re going to refuse to compensate her for that terrible ordeal.’
Brian saw Edie whipping off her top, rolling down her tights, guiding his tentatively erect member with expert fingers, striking a match against her thumbnail.
‘Too bloody right I am,’ he cried.
‘That’s not very nice,’ said Collar. ‘Swearing.’
‘Funny sort of example for a teacher to set.’
‘Yeah, but he’s a funny sort of teacher.’
‘All them extra-curricular activities.’
‘That he don’t wanna pay for.’
‘’Course it’s entirely up to him.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘If he can handle the consequences.’
‘Now let’s talk about this calmly and with—’
‘He can handle anything.’
‘A natural leader.’
‘A born leader.’
‘Plenty of bottle.’
‘Where it matters.’
‘That’s not the way I heard it.’
‘So. How does five thou strike you, Bri?’
‘Five smackaroonies.’
‘Five grand or all those juicy Awayday piccies turn up on Hargreave’s desk.’
‘He’s fallen over.’
‘I have not.’ Brian picked himself up. Lifted his skin-and-bone haunches and adopted a trembly negotiating posture identical, had he but known, to that of the chacma baboon on finding itself up a similar gum tree. ‘Look - can’t we talk this through? Go over the pros and cons, as it were.’
‘Them two words could be seen as highly insulting,’ said Tom. ‘Given the present circs.’
Brian mentally re-ran his last speech. He could see nothing in it to cause offence. Perhaps they were playing with him. Setting out to deliberately mishear or misinterpret everything he said as the secret police in totalitarian states were said to do. He really didn’t think he could bear that.
‘Don’t try trashing us about.’
‘Or pretending you got no money.’
‘’Cause this is serious shit we’re talking here.’
‘I certainly haven’t got that sort of money.’
‘You can raise it.’