Dangerous Things Read online

  Again the boy tried to speak, and this time managed to get a few words out. But it was difficult and his voice was husky.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all — got a bit of asthma —’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said strongly. ‘This isn’t asthma! You’re not wheezing. You’re just in a panic state. Come on now, do as I tell you. We can get you out of this. Lean forward — that’s it. Now, slow deep breaths with me. In, out, in, out; that’s the way, deeper. No, don’t pant, in, out, in, out —’

  It took fully five minutes to get the rhythm right and she wished heartily that she had the statutory paper bags about her person to use to help him rebreathe his own air, a technique that would have shortened the process of calming him down very considerably, but even without one at last her efforts worked and the shaking began to ease as the boy went on breathing more slowly. She let him lean back against her arm and sat and watched him, still sitting with her arm about him. Some of the colour had come back into his thin face now and the sweating seemed to have eased. Certainly he looked far less ill than he had, and she nodded at him in some satisfaction.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘Now, tell me. What upset you so much? That was a panic attack, a real textbook job. You were overbreathing, the lot. What brought it on?’

  He shook his head wearily. ‘Nothing. It just — it happened.’

  ‘Does it happen often?’ she pressed him as he sat silent again. ‘Does it?’

  ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No need to apologize.’ She was brisk again. ‘Better to sort out what caused it and see if we can prevent it happening again. Panics can turn into habits unless you deal with whatever triggers ’em early. Now, did someone say something to you, do something to you —’

  ‘No!’ His voice was so loud that it was almost a shout and she jumped. ‘Sorry,’ he said again, in a quieter tone. ‘No, I mean it’s nothing. I’ll be all right now. Please may I go, miss?’

  ‘How are you feeling?’ She looked at him thoughtfully. His colour was now almost normal and the desperation she had seen in his eyes had gone, to be replaced by a sullenness that she recognized as habitual in him. This was how he usually looked as he went scuttling around the school with someone or other sure to spot him and shout loudly, ‘Wotcha, Arse! Want something to wipe yourself with?’ or something equally felicitous. Poor Arse, she thought. Born to be a victim, by the look of him. Even now, concerned for him though she undoubtedly was, she could have shaken him in frustration at the wooden way in which he sat slumped in front of her with his eyes down and no evidence of any response in him.

  ‘Botham,’ she said. ‘What’s your first name? Calling people by their surnames the way you all do here is dreadful. Vivian, isn’t it? Yes, Vivian. All I want to do is help you. I’m not into dishing out detentions or order marks, you know. I’m not a member of the teaching staff. I’m a nurse here to look after the girls and to give you boys whatever help you might need. Now, obviously you were feeling really rotten there, and I’d like to help you avoid feeling so bad again. So, tell me what it was that alarmed you so much.’

  He looked up at her now and though his eyes were still as opaque as pebbles she felt a warming to her in him, and she waited hopefully to see what he would say; but the moment passed and he stood up, shakily, but managing to hold himself to a sort of attention, and said only, ‘Please, miss, I’m fine now. Can I go?’

  She shook her head, sitting staring up at him in the poor light of the dusky cloakroom, and sighed. ‘Oh, I suppose so. But you are silly, you know. I could be useful to you, if you’d let me. It’s obvious someone or something scared the living daylights out of you, and the least you could do is tell me what it was so that I could stop it upsetting someone else, even if you’d rather deal with it alone for yourself.’

  She waited, hoping his natural altruism would rise to the bait, but he made no response and she shrugged and got to her feet.

  ‘Oh, all right then. Go. But remember I’m here if you ever want to talk to me. As I said, a tendency to panic attacks needs to be dealt with fairly firmly, fairly quickly. Otherwise it gets to be a lifelong habit. And I doubt you’d want that.’

  He looked at her again with what she thought for just a moment might be a willingness to talk at last, but the moment vanished as fast as it had come and he just nodded awkwardly and turned and half scuttled, half slithered out of the cloakroom, and she followed him to see him going along the corridor towards the exit to the quadrangle as though he were being chased, feeling flat and angry. If she couldn’t get the confidence of a child who was obviously feeling as dreadful as that boy had been, what use was she to anyone?

  But then her commonsense pulled her out of that and she followed Arse to get back to the quadrangle herself. She’d have to leave it to the boy now. If he wanted help he’d come for it, no doubt, but meanwhile she’d keep a wary eye on him. No more. Just an eye, she told herself as she ducked in under the tent flap to find Judith and the children. He’s a pathetic scrap and it’d be pleasant to be able to help him. The time would come.

  On the underground, going home with Judith as the children rushed from one side of the carriage to the other to peer out of the windows at the blackness and the swooping dust-laden cables which were all there was to be seen, whooping as they went, she and Judith talked about the afternoon. Or at least Judith did. Hattie contented herself with listening and throwing an occasional hush at the children in response to the noisiest of their sallies.

  ‘What an incredible afternoon, darling,’ Judith cried above the rattle of the train wheels. ‘I never saw such dodos, did you? The woman in the frilled georgette or whatever it was, the one you were talking to, made me think of the one in the poem, do you remember? “Why do you walk through the fields in gloves … O, fat white woman whom nobody loves.” Not of course that she was fat, rather scrawny really, in a saggy sort of way. Stepped straight out of one of those awful black and white movies you get on the box on Saturday afternoons in the winter. And those masters, darling, how you must laugh. I talked to all of them, I swear. Made up my mind I would, though they’re bent as corkscrews, some of ’em. That French teacher …’ She giggled. ‘What a waste of a face, that tall one, what was his name — Richard? — yes, Richard, quite fanciable, I’d have thought, but there you are. If he’s one of those there isn’t much you can do, is there? Then I talked to Wilton, when I could pin him down — what a worry guts! I can’t recommend him. Too anxious for words. He’d drive you bonkers. Then there was a perfectly hateful fat man who cut me as dead as mutton, and I think he’s bent too; well he must be, he was so off me, and I didn’t even start with the chap in the purple scarf. Does his haircut with hedge clippers, I dare say. I know his type. Not so much a man-lover as a woman-hater, I’ll bet you. As far as I could tell the only piece of real talent around is the bushy one. The one with all the hair, you know? I couldn’t get round to finding out if he was married or not — you’ll have to ask some leading questions, darling — but if he isn’t, well, I’d make a bit of effort in that direction if I were you …’

  Hattie hadn’t been listening properly, letting the words flow over her and thinking about Genevieve and Arse in a confused sort of way, but now she stirred herself and said, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said the bushy one — I thought I heard someone call him Sam — he’s worth a bit of an effort, I’d have thought.’

  ‘What sort of effort?’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, don’t be coy, for heaven’s sake! One of the reasons I was so heartset on getting you to work at the Foundation was because it was all so butch there. Crawling with men! Now I’ve had the chance to give them a good looking over, I’d have to disqualify quite a few, but it’s not all hopeless. As I said, the bushy —’

  ‘Judith!’ Hattie said wrathfully. ‘If you think I’m there to manhunt, you can just think again! I’m not even remotely interested in men and —’

  ‘So you say,’ Judit
h said with a highly sapient air. ‘But I know you better than you do. Or at least I know better what’s good for you. It’s high time, ducky. Oliver was, we all know, the greatest man who ever lived, he really was. But ever lived is the key word. Or words. It’s been a long time since he died and really you —’

  ‘Stop it, Judith!’ The tone in Hattie’s voice was dangerous, and Judith shot her a sharp little glance, no longer laughing. ‘I won’t have any match-making going on. Not now or ever. Do you understand? I’m just not interested.’

  ‘Then why did you ask me to bring the girls to school, if not to look over the available scenery?’ Judith opened her eyes wide. ‘Darling, it never occurred to me I’d upset you if I said — well, I mean, I thought you wanted an opinion.’

  ‘You thought nothing of the sort.’ Hattie got to her feet as the train slowed ready to pull into Charing Cross station where they had to change to the Northern Line. ‘I wanted to let the children see where I worked. I thought it’d help them to be, well, more comfortable with me having a job if they could see where I was when I wasn’t with them. That was why I asked you to come, and that was it. Nothing more. The rest you made up. You know you did.’

  ‘Well,’ Judith was laughing again now. ‘I meant it kindly. I do adore you, you know. You’re such a lovely mix of up-front and stuffy, you know what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ Hattie said shortly and she shepherded the children off the train.

  ‘Well, take it from me, you are. Someone one day is going to be very lucky to get you, though he’ll have his work cut out to get rid of the stuffy bits. No, not another word. What is it, my angel? No, not a comic, not now. That man only sells evening papers, not comics. When we get home perhaps, if you’re good. We’ll see. Come on! They’re signalling an Edgware train! Run for it —’

  So Judith wasn’t someone Hattie could talk to about her confusing afternoon. It would have been comforting to share her anxiety about Genevieve and her parents, and to talk about the way that poor boy Arse had behaved; but Judith, who couldn’t keep her mind above the level of a very mediocre soap opera, Hattie told herself with some acid, wasn’t the person to provide that comfort. All she could do was keep her mouth shut and her eyes and ears open and watch what went on at the Foundation. And maybe, somehow, intervene in a useful sort of way when necessary.

  Up-front and stuffy? she thought then, as they settled the children in their seats to complete the journey to Hampstead in the stifling air of the deep tube train. What sort of a description is that, for heaven’s sake?

  At first he made up his mind not to answer the phone. No matter what, he wouldn’t. It had to be him ringing. He knew that he was alone on Friday evenings, that she went out on Fridays and left him to do his dinner in the microwave. He’d told him that almost at the beginning of it all, pleased and excited, thinking it would be fun for them both, a chance to be really alone, and at first it had been. Now of course it was different, and he sat at the kitchen table, the steak and kidney pie from M & S congealing on his plate in front of him, and listened to the phone, feeling the shaking start again deep inside.

  But then he had to answer it. It could be for her, after all, and if he didn’t answer it and whoever it was told her afterwards, said, ‘Where were you when I phoned on Friday? No answer,’ then she’d come and go on at him about where he’d been and why he hadn’t answered it, and it’d be no good saying he was in the bath or something like that, not now they’d got the new sort of phone you could take with you —

  ‘Oh, shit, shit, shit!’ he shrieked at it, and picked it up from the tablecloth and pulled up the aerial and answered it. And knew at once he’d been right the first time. Because there was only silence to hear at first.

  ‘Well, well,’ the voice said at last. ‘Well, well, well, well. So you are there. And here’s me thinking you’d popped off with someone else. “He’s left me-ee for another,”’ the voice sang and then giggled. ‘Not that you’d do that to me, would you? No, of course you wouldn’t. So what’s the time then? Half past eight? Gives us a couple of hours, at the very least. Make sure everything’s ready. And don’t forget to make certain the lights are out this time, or you know what’ll happen.’

  The phone clicked and died and he sat there with it held to his head, his hands sweating so hard that it was slippery, and began to cry again. There was nothing else he could do.

  Ten

  The term moved on its stately way, punctuated by rugger matches and a few running fixtures, and she was busy, not only with the girls who, though they were used to the school now, still had their problems in dealing with life as part of a small minority in a very male environment, but also with the new intake of boys for the first and third forms. Hattie spent some teaching periods with the youngest of them, much to the relief of the hard-pressed first-form master, Jerry Dakins, who never had time to come into the staffroom, and so was a comparative stranger to Hattie. She taught them simple first aid, which they adored, and some basic lifestyle skills (much to Dr Bevan’s loud scorn when he heard about it) and took the chance to get to know them, and enjoyed their company. And they seemed to enjoy hers and found her a comforting person to talk to, for taking it all round, she complimented herself, the first-formers coped rather well, though they produced a sizeable crop of bruises, grazes and cuts for her attention. But the eleven-year-olds were bewildered by the newness and the size of the school, as children in the first weeks of a new school always are, and showed it by getting bellyaches and headaches, especially at games times and when faced with classes with some of the more bad-tempered men on the staff. It was a rare day when Hattie didn’t have a couple of them curled up pathetically on the sofas she’d managed to scrounge for her room, or when one or other of them didn’t come to talk to her, ostensibly about mundane matters like the loss of a pair of football socks or a vital exercise book, but really to get a chance to catch their breaths in the daily hurly-burly of the place.

  It seemed to Hattie sometimes that life was more tense now than it had been when she’d started at the Foundation two months ago. The Headmaster became an ever more remote figure, rarely available to talk to any of his staff, but spending a good deal of time in meetings outside the school.

  ‘Fund-raising,’ Edward Wilton said when she commented on it to him one afternoon. ‘The talk is that unless he raises enough dosh in the next twelve months the Council’ll be able to close us down.’

  ‘Could they do that?’

  ‘Of course they could. Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She was embarrassed by her own ignorance. ‘I mean, the place has been here for years, and I imagine it’s got a fair amount of money. The land and buildings have to be valuable and then there are bursaries and legacies and so forth, aren’t there, that people have left, old boys and so on?’

  Wilton laughed at that. ‘This place is mortgaged to the eyebrows! It ought to be worth a bomb of course, on this site, but it’s all listed stuff, so no one wants to buy it. All anyone could do is start a different sort of school here and that’s what the Council wants to do. And of course you have to remember we’re under the supervision of their Education Department. We get local government grants and so on; there are some assisted places. If we don’t come up to scratch all that money’s with-drawn, so we need enough of our own to fill in our shortfall and still satisfy the demands of the Education Act. It’s not easy. That’s why the Head’s so involved in fund-raising and why he keeps a watchful eye on the Council. They’d jump in so fast if they got the chance you wouldn’t see their wake. They’re dead opposed to decent schools like the Foundation, of course. Want to make ’em all into State ones —’

  ‘There are decent State schools, for heaven’s sake. It’s not only this sort of place that —’ Hattie began hotly but Edward shook his head.

  ‘Oh, please, don’t let’s get political! I couldn’t bear it. The atmosphere in the staffroom these days is hellish enough, everyone biting each other’s heads off. Don’t l
et us start. Just take my word for it. If the Headmaster doesn’t get some extra money soon and if we don’t manage to improve our exam pass rate and the science teaching in particular, then the Council’ll close us down. So we’ve all got to push like mad. Is it any wonder the place is tense, as you say? Not that I’d noticed particularly, I must say, much too busy, of course. Not like you, hardly any teaching to do, just those girls to fuss over.’

  With which acid and uncharacteristically unpleasant shot he went and she sat on in the staffroom alone, irritated and upset.

  The quiet time she was enjoying at the moment was far from usual; she’d started a series of regular sessions for the girls on living skills, which included dealing with all sorts of education material the girls never got from anyone else, like the workings of their own bodies and the various ways there were of dealing with relationships, and that in addition to her usual activities filled her day as full as any master’s. But she couldn’t argue with Wilton. As he had said, it was bad enough that everyone else was so tense without her adding to the pressure.

  She had pressures of her own, anyway, worries that would not go away. She had not forgotten the episode with Arse and made sure to keep an eye on him, but there was nothing to see and that in itself concerned her. He slipped around the school in his usual quiet fashion and showed no signs of ever being ready to talk to her, though she would greet him with cheerful smiles whenever she could (to which he never responded, being careful never to make any eye contact with her) and no one in the staffroom ever said anything about him. And that was significant, because they talked endlessly about the boys and their behaviour. However much the boys might gossip about their masters — and she imagined they did — it was as nothing to the way the men talked about the boys. But though she listened with sharpened awareness, no one ever seemed to add anything at all out of place about Arse. She hated the way she found herself listening for sexual innuendo in their conversation, but it couldn’t be helped. Her doubts had been alerted, especially now, about Arse, and it wasn’t possible for her to quell them.