Dangerous Things Read online

  ‘They’d have shopped me by now if it was. Anyway, they don’t come into my room, do they?’

  ‘How do you know?’ Harry sounded very reasonable. ‘Might do. Perchance they creep on airy-fairy pointed toe to search among the pots for pot —’ He smiled round then. ‘Now that really is witty. If accidental.’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Dave said, scowling at him. ‘Gimme that joint, for Chrissakes. How long does it take, a week? No one looks around in my room without me knowing.’

  ‘Someone did. You said the little buggers did,’ Harry said reasonably, and handed over the fresh joint after lighting it with great care, holding his head back to avoid the flare of the paper. ‘So maybe you’d better find a new place.’

  ‘It’s you!’ Dave said and glared at him and Harry laughed. ‘You bastard —’

  ‘You’re not just stoned, you’re boiled,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Talk about it tomorrow. Listen, I’ve got a couple of Gerry Mulligan records here. Sound fabulous when you’re well away. Listen to this.’

  So they listened to Gerry Mulligan and didn’t think any more about the stolen pot. Not that night, anyway.

  Thirteen

  The dress rehearsal had started very well; ‘Too well,’ opined some of the cast who believed fervently in every theatrical superstition they could set tongue to, working hard at not whistling in dressing rooms or wishing each other good luck and so forth, and who were therefore certain that a good dress rehearsal meant a disastrous first night. The costumes had worked out better than anyone had hoped, since Martin Collop had decreed that they would eschew the obviously Elizabethan and wear instead simple outfits of black tights and close-fitting black sweaters; the boys’ enlivened where necessary by such additions as crimson ruffs, red feathered hats and swords, and the same of the girls apart from the addition of white tulle skirts and, occasionally, crimson collars and cuffs. The set was little more than crimson drapes with swathes of white tulle to dress the back and to mark out various seating areas, and the total effect of black, red and white was really remarkably interesting. Or so Hattie thought, though she wouldn’t have told Martin Collop for the world. He was already far too pleased with himself, in her settled opinion.

  As far as The Taming of the Shrew was concerned, however, he had every right to be: a fact she had to admit, much to her chagrin, for, apart from the look of the piece, he had managed to fire his cast with enormous speed and energy. He had bullied, shouted, nagged, sneered and hectored at them, frequently reducing the girls to tears and making most of the boys — with the exception of Harry Forster — almost incoherent with rage and frustration at times. But his technique had worked, and Hattie sat at the back of the hall, watching with genuine delight as Shakespeare’s misogynistic play unpleated itself before her, and laughed aloud more often than she would have thought possible.

  In spite of some hold-ups for technical reasons — the boys handling the lights were less deft than Collop required them to be and were told so with such force that one of them almost walked out altogether — Act Three was reached by six o’clock and Hattie relaxed a little. She’d arranged with Judith’s Inge for babysitting, but she knew the girl got restless after ten o’clock. That was when she went out to meet her boyfriend — ‘A jazz trumpeter, no less,’ Judith had crowed proudly, as though such a person having an attachment, however tenuous, to her household added lustre to her own importance — and Hattie had promised Inge she’d be home as close to ten as she could. At this rate, she told herself, sneaking a look at her watch, she’d be well on her way by half past eight, or even earlier. Marvellous.

  ‘Fiddler, forbear,’ bawled Lucentio from the stage as the music jangled wickedly — a most useful contribution from one of the boys in the fifth form with a gift for composing — ‘you grow too forward, sir. Have you so soon forgot the entertainment Her sister Katherina welcomed you withal?’

  Someone at the back of the darkened hall had opened the big main door to slip out and left it partly open, and Hattie hugged her coat around her a little closer, for in spite of the very hot lights beating centre stage, the hall was a great cold echoing space, with its high vaulted ceiling and the overhanging balcony that trapped what heat there was up there in the dust and refused to return it for recirculation. A draught whistled round her ears and she sank her head into her neck to protect them, and then lifted her chin sharply, as the faint smell drifted into her nose.

  Was one of these wretched boys smoking? It had become one of her personal campaigns, the stopping of smoking among the boys. Many of the masters closed their eyes to it, as heavy tobacco users themselves, but Hattie had spent too many hours nursing people dying of lung cancer, watching them drowning in their own self-inflicted disease, to be so tolerant. So she stared around the dim hall, trying to see the tell-tale glow that would pinpoint the miscreant so that she could bear down on him.

  ‘Preposterous ass!’ cried Lucentio, in high feather on the stage, ‘that never read so far To know the cause why music was ordained!’ And Hattie tried to ignore the smell, and to concentrate on a finely tuned performance from a lively fifth-former. But she couldn’t. The smell of smoke was stronger and it wasn’t, she now decided, due to a cigarette.

  The rehearsal went on smoothly, the warring suitors on stage dancing their way round the blissfully happy Bianca, and she couldn’t interrupt that; but she was alarmed in a way she remembered well. Fear of fire had been dinned into all of the nurses in her year, because there had been a disastrous and badly mismanaged one in the summer before they had entered the nursing school, which had resulted in the death of several patients. So she had never been able to rid herself of the edginess that filled her at the smell of smoke and she stopped trying to do so now.

  No one noticed her go out of the hall; they were all intent on Bianca’s attempt to circumvent the Latin of her wooing scene (‘Now let me see if I can construe it. “Hic ibat Simois …”’) and she let the door close softly behind her and stood for a moment in the empty corridor outside, sniffing.

  It was stronger now, a definite if distant smell of burning wood, and she felt the tight clutch of fear and wanted to run back into the hall to cry the alarm; but had a sudden vision of Collop’s face — and behaviour — if she created such an interruption. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she was half walking, half running along the corridor, her head up as she sniffed the air like a dog.

  The smell got thicker as she moved towards the fourth- and fifth-form blocks in the Victorian part of the building, still called New School by everyone, and she stopped trying to control her fear and ran, pushing open the double doors that had been set at intervals along the long corridors to act as firebreaks, reckless of any danger. There were children here, her mind was shouting at her, a hall full of children, and there might be other boys still around in other parts of the building; at six o’clock there were still music lessons, club meetings —

  The last pair of double doors opened to send a wave of heat on to her face which would have been welcome when she’d been sitting frozen in the hall; now it made her feel sick. She was in the fourth-form block, facing the Art Room, and on the other side of the glass door she could see a faint flickering glow and stood for what seemed like an eternity of a second while she tried to decide what to do. And then remembered her training in the old days.

  The fire extinguisher was an antiquated one and she suspected it hadn’t been checked for years, but it worked at first blow as she thumped it down on the floor and aimed it at the blaze which was small and indeed cheerful, busily burning away under a long table on which a large number of paintings and canvasses seemed to have been piled higgledy-piggledy. She’d done all the right things so far, she told herself over and over again as she played the jet of the heavy extinguisher on the outer edges of the blaze. She’d closed the outer doors in the corridor. Opened the Art Room door to the minimum needed to get in and then closed it again. Had the fire extinguisher ready and used it at once. Now all she needed w
as for the damned thing to last long enough for the fire to be put out; there was one of them outside every classroom, she knew, but how long it would take her to get to the nearest classroom for a replacement and back again, she couldn’t be sure. The whole building could have caught by then, and all its occupants —

  The blaze drew in on itself, lowered what had been a proud and even beautiful orange head and sank into a skulking crimson glow and then the hissing created by the foam became louder than the crackling that had been so terrifying, and finally the thing subsided with a disgruntled sigh, leaving behind it a heap of sodden grey mess. She stared at it for a long moment, marvelling that something that had been so malevolent should now look so pathetic, set down the fire extinguisher which seemed to weigh more now than she did herself, and leaned against the table behind her, trying to catch her breath.

  She was shaking, every muscle that she had seeming to dance to its own piper, and gingerly she let herself slide down the corner of the table until she was sitting on the floor, leaning back gratefully against the heavy wooden leg. Ahead of her and almost at her eye level the remains of the fire lay sulkily, a few wisps of smoke still rising from it, and she stared at it almost sleepily, amazed at her own success. There’d been a fire and she’d put it out; and suddenly she was filled with a great surge of delighted joy and she lifted her chin and let out a yelp of relief and pleasure and excitement, all mixed up into a shrill high sound; and somewhere on the other side of the room it was echoed, but not joyfully. More of a whimper, rather, and Hattie turned her head and peered around her, looking further.

  From this angle the room looked strange, much larger and certainly dirtier. There was a drift of paper around and wood shavings under what seemed to be a wood-carver’s bench and pots and tubes of discarded paint as well as dollops of hard clay. Somewhere at the back of her mind she thought, Christ, I’ve been lucky. Another little while and all this would have been burning too. I’d never have managed to put it out.

  She went on looking and then saw, right in the corner, what seemed to be a bundle of clothes or discarded school uniform, and she shuffled herself on her bottom over towards it. Would it have been easier to get to her feet and walk over there? Perhaps. But she wasn’t going to try it. Her muscles were still shaking and she doubted she could trust her legs.

  The little sound came again, a low choked yelping sort of sound, and she leaned nearer to the heap of clothes and poked it, and the bundle leaped convulsively and moved away from her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked and was surprised at how husky she sounded, and coughed to clear her voice and then tried again. ‘Are you all right?’

  This time there was only silence and, suddenly angry, she reached forward and took a firm handful of the bundle of clothes and tugged, and it came towards her, and unwound itself, and she sat and stared at the face that was now close to her, a boy’s face, very young and smooth, eyes swollen with weeping, sitting glaring at her.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, peering at him, for the light was poor here under the tables. The overhead lamps sent great shadows everywhere and anyway he was sitting with the light, such as it was, behind him.

  The boy seemed to consider for a moment and then went sliding away from her, half crawling and half slithering on his belly across the floor towards the door, and she caught her breath in surprise and pain as one foot in the heavy school shoe skidded over her hand and caught the knuckle.

  It was the pain as much as anything else that galvanized her and she was on her feet and running across the room to the door to cut him off before she knew she was doing it, and then, as he reached the door a matter of a second after her, stretched out and grabbed his shoulder.

  ‘Listen, you little ass! I asked you what your name was. You don’t have to go kicking me from here to Christmas for that. Who are you?’

  He shook his head and whimpered and lifted his hands to his eyes to push his knuckles into them and she thought with swift confusion, Poor little devil. He’s worn out. He was very pale and swaying a little and almost instinctively she leaned across and set one arm round his shoulder and the other hand against his cheek, so that she could lead him to a tall stool beside one of the tables. It was all she could see to put him on and it was awkward lifting him into place, but she managed it and then stood there, her arm still around his shoulder, and her other stroking his cheek.

  They stayed there a long time, it seemed to her, though it was probably barely longer than a minute or two; and then he stirred and said, ‘It wasn’t my fault, miss.’

  ‘Did I say it was?’ she said, and put a hand beneath his chin to turn his face towards her so that she could look at him. ‘I only asked you who you were. I also asked how you were. You didn’t answer either question, so let’s try again. How are you?’

  ‘All right, miss.’ It came automatically, as though that were his answer to everything.

  ‘Try again, I said. Have you been burned? Hurt yourself in any way? Or just very scared? Like me?’

  He looked at her then and seemed about to say something and then stopped and said only, ‘I’m all right, miss. Can I go, miss?’

  ‘You most certainly cannot!’ Hattie snapped with a spark of anger. ‘I find you in a room with a blaze going merrily and you hiding in a corner and you think I’m going to say, “Oh, fine, OK, no problems. Just cut along then”? Be reasonable! Why didn’t you raise the alarm? I only smelled it because I’m neurotic about fire and notice it long before anyone else does.’ She lifted her head then and looked at the door. ‘Though, come to think of it, you’d think someone else would’ve noticed by now.’

  The boy yelped again and she hugged him closer, almost without thinking.

  ‘It’s all right. I won’t let anyone hurt you —’ She frowned briefly, as the thought struck her. ‘Is there any reason why anyone should hurt you?’

  He sat there lumpishly staring down at his feet and this time she noticed his hands, which were dangling limply between his knees, and reached down and picked up one of them.

  ‘Here, are you hurt, you silly child? Why didn’t you say so? Those are burns, I should be treating them. Come on.’ And she dragged him off the chair towards the big butler sink in the corner of the Art Room and began to wash the hand beneath cold running water, scolding him all the time as she did it, to distract him from the discomfort.

  ‘Yes, I know it hurts, but it’s no good flinching like that. Burns hurt much more when they aren’t dunked in cold water than when they are, so you’ll just have to put up with it. How on earth you managed to —’

  She stopped then and stared down at the hand which was cleaner now and showed the broad red cicatrice that spread across the thumb and forefingers and the back of the hand.

  ‘I think, you know, we really have to talk sensibly about this,’ she said, turning the tap down to a trickle so that it went running over the injury though less strongly, and held him fast. He couldn’t have got away, however hard he tried, and whether it was awareness of this fact or sheer exhaustion that held him she didn’t know, but he remained still.

  ‘Did you start that fire?’ she said, keeping her tone conversational.

  Silence.

  ‘Other people will ask the same question, you know. It’ll be easier if you tell me first. I could be on your side. You could tell me why. I think you did, you see. If you hadn’t you’d be denying it like mad. Added to that, this burn is the sort you get when you put a match to something that’s soaked in meths and flares back on you. I know. I’ve done it on barbecues. I’m not very good at barbecues. So, let’s have another go, shall we? I know you set that fire. Now tell me why.’

  He took a long shaky breath and then said in a high frightened voice, ‘I couldn’t think of anything else.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s the end-of-term things. Tests. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.’

  ‘You lit a fire under a table in here because of the end-of-term tests?’ />
  ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ He sighed, a long soft sound of the sort made by a child who has been crying for hours and is at last beginning to calm down. ‘There wasn’t anything else. I tried getting ill but they always know. I thought I could take poison, only I couldn’t find any, and then I thought, If there’s a fire they’ll have to wait till next term to do them and maybe, in the holidays …’ His voice drifted away and then strengthened. ‘Not that it’ll make any difference. I can’t do it, no matter how long I take over it. I never can and I never will …’

  ‘You started the fire because you wanted to avoid the end-of-term test?’ Hattie said, staring down at him. ‘Are they that bad?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said simply.

  ‘Have you told your form master you’re worried?’

  The boy lifted his chin and looked directly at her and now she could see him clearly for the first time. A rather plain face, long and horsy, an effect heightened by the huge front teeth of the new adult, grey eyes very narrow and bloodshot between the puffy lids and a face that was slightly spotty. He looked, Hattie estimated, thirteen or fourteen. A fourth-former.

  ‘Mr Tully’s my form master,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know what it’s like with Maths and English Grammar and History …’ His voice drifted away again and he stared into the middle distance, his eyes blank. ‘And Geography. And French. All of them. You can’t tell people it’s all of them, can you?’

  ‘Your parents? Have you told them you can’t cope? Maybe this isn’t the school for you.’ She could have wept for him. The boy was sunk in despair; it showed in every line of his face, the way his shoulders slumped and his mouth drooped open.

  ‘My dad says it is the school for me. He says I’ve got to go to university. He never did, so I’ve got to —’ The boy began to weep, big oily tears that slid down his face unchecked, and Hattie leaned forwards and held him close, rocking him a little. It seemed the only thing to do.