Dangerous Things Page 15

  They heard it at the same time, the boy stiffening in Hattie’s arms as she lifted her head to listen. Footsteps outside, a clatter of voices, doors opening and closing. And then Dave Tully was there, staring round at his room, as some of the fifth-formers clustered behind him, peering over his shoulder.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on here?’ he said loudly, and one of the boys behind him sniggered.

  ‘There was a fire,’ Hattie said in a loud tone. ‘I put it out. No need for any worry now.’

  ‘You can smell it for bloody miles.’ He pushed his way into the room, looked about him and then headed for the pile of grey mess beneath the laden table. ‘Is this it? Christ! Not much of a mess to make a stink like that.’

  His eyes moved, saw the surface of the table, and slowly his face reddened. It was almost funny to watch it, Hattie thought, still sitting with her arm round the boy’s shoulders. He looked as she imagined a turkey cock would.

  ‘These are some of my canvases!’ he roared. He picked them up one after another, peered at them, and set them on edge on the floor, leaning against the table. ‘Christ, if these had gone, I’d have —’

  He whirled then. ‘What are you doing here, Spero? What the fuck are you doing sitting there like a great baby cuddling his mummy with my canvasses on a table over a fire? Did you do this? Did you? Because if you did, I’ll murder you. You hear me? I’ll bloody murder you —’ And he hurtled his way across the room towards Hattie and the boy, and she sat there and watched him coming and couldn’t move at all.

  Fourteen

  ‘You had no right to go, you know,’ Hilary Roscoe said. ‘You took rather more upon yourself than was required.’

  ‘I don’t see it that way,’ Hattie said, and looked down at her hands which were folded on her lap. I will not behave like a child in trouble, she thought fiercely. I will not let him do this to me. I will not let him bully me. But it didn’t help. She felt just the way she had when she was twelve and had committed some minor peccadillo. ‘The child was deeply distressed, and I had some understanding of his situation. His parents needed to —’

  ‘His parents needed to know nothing!’ Hilary Roscoe said. ‘The matter would have been dealt with here and there need have been no trouble at all.’

  ‘No trouble at all?’ She lifted her head to stare at him. ‘How can you say so when a child was so desperate that he —’

  ‘A boy,’ murmured Hilary. ‘A boy.’

  ‘I don’t care what his sex is! At barely fourteen he’s a child and he was distressed and so I —’

  ‘Here at the Foundation, Hattie, we treat our pupils as the young men they are and will eventually have to be in greater strength. That’s what’s wrong with so much of the education offered at the comprehensives, you know. They provide the soft option all the time, make it too easy for the people they deal with to loaf around and make themselves useless. We have a different ethos here. We could have dealt with Spero and you should not have involved the parents as you did.’

  ‘He couldn’t cope! He couldn’t talk to his form master. He got no help at all from the subject masters who taught him. He was desperate enough to try to hurt himself!’ Hattie cried. ‘How can you say his parents shouldn’t be told, given the chance to take him away somewhere he’d be happier, better able to cope?’

  ‘My dear Hattie.’ He was suddenly all charm. ‘I can’t run this school successfully if I let the boys decide whether or not they can cope! They have to learn how to cope. Their parents send them here at considerable expense to make something of them and it costs me a great deal in effort to ensure they get their money’s worth. If members of my staff take it upon themselves to run to parents and advise them to take their boys away, how long do you suppose we can keep going? Of course the boy’s a dullard, I knew that from the start! But his father’s doing very well for himself, wanted something better for his lad than he had himself, so he sent him here. He’s been a considerable benefactor so far.’ He sighed. ‘Now I’ve had to expel the boy, since you let the story out, so that’ll dry up. I really must ask you never to behave so — shall we say impulsively — again. Come to me. Let me deal with these matters —’

  ‘You’ve expelled him?’

  ‘I had to, much to my regret. As I said, the story’s outside the school. If I didn’t expel him, pour encourager les autres, you understand, future parents would be fearful. Had it remained in house — well, no point in dwelling on that. And I have to say we’d have made some sort of a fist of getting him through, you know. I have ways of dealing with these lazy dull boys and —’

  ‘He isn’t lazy,’ Hattie cried. ‘Just overstretched. He was desperate!’

  ‘Boys can’t be overstretched,’ Hilary said, implacable as ever. ‘Only the reverse. Well, there it is. He’s gone and his father’s potential support with him. Now someone else’ll benefit. I dare say the man’ll find a crammer to take him and any cash he’s got to spare’ll go to some other establishment. Pity …’

  ‘And what about the boy? What about his situation? You’ve expelled him. That was an awful thing to do …’

  He lifted his brows at her. ‘Hattie, my dear girl, do be logical. Here you are complaining he couldn’t cope, that you wanted his parents to remove him, and now you’re fussing because I expelled him? I know women and logic aren’t exactly the closest of bedfellows, but really —’

  She brushed that aside, refusing to be distracted. ‘There’s a hell of a difference between getting the boy’s parents to understand that they’re pushing him too hard and too far and persuading them to let the child leave and go to a school where he could cope and might even be happy, and chucking him out like a — a useless unwanted bit of rubbish. His self-esteem’s on the floor as it is. Now you’ve made it infinitely worse! His father’ll give him a dreadful time. I’ve never met anyone so — so stubborn. He couldn’t see what Daniel was feeling at all, couldn’t understand it was misery that made him do what he did and not wickedness. All the same, I believe I’d made a bit of an impact on him. But now you’ve expelled Daniel, he’ll go back to his old ways of thinking and probably punish him more. How could you do it to him? Poor little scrap …’

  He shook his head, watching her with amused eyes. ‘Thank heavens I’ve only got a dozen girls here. Imagine how life would be if I had more, and therefore more women on the staff. This place would be a shambles.’

  She still refused to rise to the bait he was trailing. ‘It could be a better place. Not so much unhappiness and —’

  ‘This is getting silly,’ he said, suddenly seeming bored. ‘There isn’t that much unhappiness here, and well you must know it! Of course some people get battered by the rush and tumble of the day; that happens everywhere. We’re not running a haven for the helpless, you know. We’re trying to educate boys to make them the sort of men who’ll achieve something in life, who’ll repay the investment in them their parents have made, and you can’t do that by treating them all like infants in need of coddling. These boys aren’t sick, you know, not hospital patients. They’re boys who have to grow up to live in a hard harsh world.’

  ‘It’s got to be a dreadful world if the only way you can prepare boys for it is by driving some of them to make their own funeral pyres,’ she said bitterly. ‘Daniel Spero wanted to kill himself in that fire. You know that? Of course it was a dreadful thing to do, of course he could have killed God knows how many others, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He was too far driven to think about it or about anything else. He just wanted to die. It’s got to be a rotten school that does that to the children in its care.’

  ‘Far from rotten,’ Hilary said, and a part of her was amazed at how silky he sounded. She was being incredibly rude to him; she knew that perfectly well, and was beginning to wonder how far she’d have to go before he threw her out of his office and out of his school. Part of her wanted to be thrown out; it would be easier than deciding of her own free will she wanted to be away from these boys and all their miseri
es (and the girls and theirs too, come to that, she thought fleetingly, remembering Genevieve). But how could she go and leave them all to the sort of adult attitudes they laboured under at present? Somewhere deep inside her was the conscience that had always made her life so uncomfortable in so many ways. It had been that conscience which had sent her to talk to Daniel Spero’s parents in their very handsome flat overlooking Regent’s Park, and had kept her sitting there, amid the deep cream pile of the carpet and the crumpled white leather sofas and glass-topped tables that spelled money wherever she looked, long after she knew they didn’t understand how desperately unhappy their son was and were concerned only with what people would think of him and therefore them; and it was that conscience that would keep her here at the Foundation unless this elegant man, sitting now and looking at her with that same amused look over his clasped hands, could be goaded into losing his temper with her.

  ‘We may not be the best of the boys’ schools in London,’ Hilary said then. ‘Our standards have fallen academically over past years — before I arrived here, you must understand — which is why the Daniel Speros of this world are pupils here at all. They can’t get into any of the others, so they have no choice: it’s us or the State system, which is the last thing their ambitious parents want. But we’ve got potential, and it’s that I’m working on. I’ll lift this school till it really is in competition with the big ones and then there won’t be any more problems like young Spero because we’ll be in a position to turn away the dullards the way all the other big schools do. Our entrance exam’s a laugh at present, you know that? Everyone knows it in the trade and everyone thinks it’ll go on like that for always. Well, it won’t. Once I’ve got enough cash to keep me safe against the local authority and its hostility, I’ll shake this place up — just you wait and see! We’re not very good yet, but we will be.’

  ‘There’s a lot of unhappiness here,’ Hattie said. ‘Don’t you care about that?’

  ‘Oh, of course I do, what little there is. I deny it’s that major an issue. Anyway, I’ve appointed you, haven’t I? You’re the carer here. You’re the one who’ll deal with the tears and tantrums. I’ve seen how things have gone and I’m really most impressed. You came because of the girls, but the boys are finding you very helpful too. It’s splendid that, splendid.’

  She shook her head in puzzlement. ‘Then you aren’t throwing me out? After the things I’ve said to you this afternoon? After my going to see the Speros and —’

  ‘Throw you out? My dear girl! Why on earth should I do that? You must understand you’re needed here. I repeat, you’re the caring face of the Foundation, a warm reassurance to those parents who worry about such things.’ He smiled even more widely then. ‘Mostly mothers, I have to say. No, I wouldn’t dream of letting you go. You behaved wrongly, and I’ve said so and there’s an end of it. Leave it at that. Don’t do it again and —’

  She lifted her chin: ‘I will if I think it’s necessary,’ and she remembered Genevieve again and wondered whether this was the time to tell Hilary that she’d already spoken to her parents about her and would do so again, almost certainly. But what was there to tell? The conversation of the autumn fair hadn’t really gone very far. So she pushed the thought away. ‘I won’t compromise on that. I couldn’t.’

  ‘Well, perhaps a small compromise is possible.’ He smiled charmingly. ‘At least do me the courtesy of coming to tell me what you’re doing before you do it. I can’t stop you, I know. Short of locking you up here and I wouldn’t do that! But at least you can do me the courtesy of warning me. The Spero affair came as quite a shock — having that man come roaring in here as he did was not very agreeable. And after all, I might have information you don’t have.’

  She thought for a moment and then said a little unwillingly, ‘That sounds reasonable enough, I suppose.’ And then suspicion filled her and she went on sharply, all the same. ‘Any other man who’d been spoken to as I just spoke to you would have chucked me out neck and crop.’

  ‘But I’m not any other man,’ he said, and now he made her think not of silk but of a purring cat. ‘I’m the man you see, who has great plans for a great old school which has potential for a great new future.’

  ‘What sort of a boy were you?’ she said suddenly, not sure whether she hoped to catch him out or whether she genuinely wanted to know, but deciding it was the latter, and tilted her head to stare at him. ‘Can you remember? Was it easy being you, when you were fifteen or so?’

  ‘Aha! A little light parlour psychology, is it? Well, forgive me, Hattie, but I really haven’t time for that. At present. Some other day, perhaps. Over dinner at Judith and Peter’s possibly …’

  ‘Another amnesiac,’ she said, pushing at him again, wanting to crack that carapace of charm and good manners. ‘That’s the trouble with every one of the people in this school as far as I can tell — well, most of them,’ she amended, suddenly seeing an image of Sam Chanter in her mind’s eye. ‘They’ve forgotten what it feels like to be a boy.’

  ‘Parents forget too,’ Hilary said, and got to his feet. ‘That’s what being a parent’s all about. Shall I quote Philip Larkin at you?’

  ‘You will whatever I say.’

  He laughed. ‘You begin to understand me. I shall bowdlerize for your feminine ears. “They muck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra, just for you.”’

  Hattie, who had heard it before, stood up. She had to; he had gone over to the door and was holding it for her courteously.

  ‘It’s bad enough that “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”,’ she said clearly. ‘Which was what Larkin actually wrote. Why do teachers have to do it too?’ And she went out of the room and he smiled at her as she passed the secretary’s desk and already his eyes had the vague look that comes of thinking of the next appointment, and she wanted to hit him; a rare impulse in her because she was not generally violent. But this man was enough to make anyone violent. And she went slamming out of the room and along the corridor, her face hot with anger.

  So much so that she didn’t see Sam Chanter coming towards her, and not until he put a hand on her arm and pulled her round to face him did she focus her eyes properly.

  ‘What on earth’s happened? You look as though you’ve had the devil of a shock or something.’

  ‘I’ve had the devil of a row.’ She let her shoulders relax, hoping that would stop the shaking in her muscles. She hadn’t spoken more than a few monosyllables to Sam since the last evening they had spent together at a concert and eating supper; she’d spent so much time at the Shrew rehearsals and he had been in a flurry of end-of-term tests and marking, so it was not surprising. Now she was a little startled at how comforted she was by his presence beside her, large and crumpled and calm.

  ‘Have you now?’ he said and laughed softly. ‘Surprise, surprise. Or rather not. I imagine that happens to you a good deal.’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ she said hotly, ‘I don’t go around —’ and then stopped and managed a smile of her own, albeit a weak one. ‘Well, I do go off a bit half-cocked sometimes, I suppose. It’s just that when I get upset or angry about something I’m not very good at keeping it in.’

  ‘I had suspected something of the sort. Having seen you comport yourself in the staffroom.’

  ‘Old Bevan, you mean? Well, he was being ridiculous. Huffing and puffing because I was already sitting in that chair when he came in! He doesn’t own it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘As you made very clear. Now, tell me about this one. You don’t usually look quite so ruffled.’ He bent his head to look a little closer. ‘Nor, I imagine, do you usually get so shaky in reaction. You must have drummed up a lot of adrenalin.’

  ‘Indeed I did,’ she said grimly, and then closed her eyes and winced as the bell for the end of afternoon school began to shriek its clamour above her head. As soon as it stopped he said, ‘Time to have a cup of coffee or something; tell m
e about it?’

  ‘I have to get home,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep dumping the kids on Judith. I use her Inge too much as it is, with the play in rehearsal —’

  ‘You can’t go home to them in this state,’ he said calmly. ‘Do them no good at all. You go and phone, I’ll pick up my gear and your coat and bag and see you at the main entrance.’

  ‘There’s a plastic bag from Sainsbury’s too. Tonight’s supper,’ she said, and he nodded and left her and she rubbed her face a little wearily and turned and went to the gate porter’s cubbyhole, which was behind her at the end of the corridor which held the Headmaster’s office, grateful to be told by someone else what to do. It was curiously comforting to be gently bullied that way, and she phoned Judith’s Inge, and then stood warming herself at the rickety electric fire while the gate porter ostentatiously ignored her, and waited for Sam.

  ‘I think something a little better than coffee,’ he said. ‘You need a calmer-downer rather than a stimulant. So a small gin and tonic.’

  ‘At this hour of the day?’ She was scandalized. ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ he said. ‘I recommend it.’ And he helped her into her coat and then hooked her bag over her shoulder and turned her firmly towards the open door. ‘On your way. Here you are, Edwards.’ And he handed a key to the gate porter who took it with a surly grunt. ‘I don’t want anyone to have that key but me,’ he said. ‘If one of the sixth-form set are early tomorrow and want it, say no. I’ve got some delicate experiments set up there and I’m taking no chances. Goodnight.’

  ‘Is this the one to the big biology lab, then? Or the little one?’

  ‘The little one, of course. We gave up locking the big one ages ago. No need. But that small one’s out of bounds unless I’m there. So don’t let any of the eager beavers get in.’

  He looked than at Hattie. ‘I’m growing some interesting yeasts, and some of them produce an alcohol. I don’t want anyone helping themselves to a sample and doing mischief with it. It was bad enough the year before last when someone set up a still in the big lab. They can’t do that any more and I’m not letting them even think about what they could do with the sort of yeasts I’ve got growing. Goodnight, Edwards. Come on, Hattie.’