CORLEY'S ABSENCE, AS Corley himself had anticipated, wasn't discovered until breakfast-time. Travers, one of Sherborne's senior prefects, brought the news to Sherborne. Sherborne, after a quick search of the premises went over to the school house and informed Brannigan.
Brannigan, still breakfasting with Alison, exploded, "Christ, that's all I need!" He had spent a restless night trying to reassure an insomniac Alison that all would go well at the inquest on Friday.
At Sherborne's news her face took on a yellow pallor and she sat silently looking at him, her breakfast plate pushed to one side. Brannigan tried to control his own reaction. "He said to her abruptly, "He can't be far." And to Sherborne, "I'll walk back, to school with you." In passing Alison he dropped his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it gently, "Just a prank, probably. Stop worrying."
On the way over to the main building Sherborne gave him all the details as he knew them. "My wife and I went to bed shortly after eleven. She had made the dormitory check at ten – it didn't seem necessary to do it again. All the lads were in bed then."
Brannigan said sharply. "Or perhaps seemed to be – you know the old trick with the pillow."
"Well – damn – she didn't go round prodding the lads.
This isn't a Borstal, Headmaster. What is there to escape from?"
"That's what we have to find out." Sherborne's tetchiness began bordering on belligerence.
"I may be in loco parentis, but I'm not God the Father. My wife and I have never spared ourselves in caring for the boys.
There isn't a better run House in the school. I have been here longer than anyone else. Experience counts for something.
Corley couldn't have had better care."
They walked up into the main hallway. Brannigan said, "I'm not criticising you. If he's gone, he had a reason for going. It's a pity he didn't confide in you, or Mrs. Sherborne." He remembered Mrs. Sherborne's deafness. Sherborne wasn't a 'particularly approachable housemaster, from the boys' point of view, and his wife, well-meaning as she undoubtedly was, was hard work getting through to. On the whole she was better than Mollie Robbins in Hammond's. Alison's father would, no doubt, have had no qualms about re-staffing more suitably. The incompetent and the deaf would have been told to quit. Sherborne, at nearly sixty, would have gone too, of course. In the few minutes it took to cross the main hall and go into his study he had re-staffed the school in his mind with the young, the brilliant, and the caring. In his pipe-dream there was always money to pay them, and the school building itself rose strong and uncracked on solid un-subsiding foundations.
He sat behind his desk and made Sherborne go through it again. "Did he leave a note?"
"No."
"Did he get into the locker room to get his suitcase?"
"I hadn't thought of looking."
Well, bloody look, Brannigan thought, but phrased it more politely.
He called in all the housemasters and the senior prefects and sent them to search the school and the grounds. In the meantime Sherborne returned to say that he had left without his suitcase. "All his clothes are here – except his daytime clothes and his mack. He left his bed unmade. It's quite likely he's hiding somewhere in the grounds." His voice, rough with anxiety, spoke without conviction.
"Why, should he do that?"
"Why do small boys do anything?"
"He's eleven. Not an infant. Old enough to reason out his actions."
Sherborne felt a vascular pain in the back of his left leg and was forced to take the nearest chair and sit for a few minutes. When the pain eased he reminded Brannigan that Durrant had gone home twice without reason. "Nobody bullied him."
Brannigan thought, nobody would dare, but didn't voice it. Durrant was a step outside the circle and always would be. Corley was an ordinary, normal, small boy.
David Fleming had been an ordinary, normal, small boy.
Had been.
The anxiety that had been building up like water against a dam began treacherously to break through. He forced ''himself to contain it.
The search parties returned in half an hour without success.
At nine-fifteen he put a call through to Corley's father at Bridgwater. Alison came into his study and sat in the chair in the window recess as he made it. Blame the boy, she willed him silently. Don't break the news so gently, so defensively.
Let your anger come up. The boy betrays you, not you the boy. He's lucky to have the chance to be here. If he throws that chance back at you then he's a stupid, idiotic, little brat. My father would have taken the hide off him, but you won't, will you – if he's caught. You'll speak sweet reason at him, as you do with all of them. You're soft – that's your trouble. You can't run a school like a young ladies' dancing academy, or a nursing home. Pity is your undoing. Why pity anyone? No-one pities you… The words hurtled through her mind so that she couldn't hear what Brannigan was saying and then she forced herself to listen.
He was still apologising, still soothing. "Try not to worry. Boys sometimes act on impulse – perhaps a row with another lad – I don't know… Yes, of course I intend calling in the police… No, I don't think it would be wise of you to come over. He probably hasn't got very far, but there's always the chance he's making for home. You'd be wiser to stay there and let me know when he arrives… Yes. naturally, I'll keep you informed. I'm sorry I had to give you such disturbing news. It will be good news soon, I hope… Yes, I agree, he's a very level-headed, pleasant child… No, I'm, sure he wouldn't have left without a reason… I assure… Naturally, you're upset… Try to keep calm about it for the lad's sake… When he does turn up keep it in a low key… Give my regards and sympathy to Mrs. Corley and assure her that everything is being done to find the boy… to find Neville."
He put the phone down, sweating slightly. He had juggled the conversation, carefully avoiding using the lad's name until Corley senior had mentioned it. Neville. The name had escaped his mind. It didn't speak so highly of the quality of care when a lad's Christian name was as elusive as a dandelion seed on the breeze.
He wished Alison would stop looking at him like that. She made him feel like Uriah Heep. What did she expect him to do – beat his jackboots with a horsewhip while breaking the news?
"And now – what?" she asked tiredly. "The police?"
"The police – and afterwards Colonel Goldthorpe."
"And the rest of the governors, too, I suppose? It's like living in the days of the inquisition. Why drag them into it?"
"It's better they should hear about it directly from me."
"It's better no-one should hear about it at ali. You could have waited another hour before telling the boy's father – before calling in the police."
He held on to his patience. "A child is missing – a child is at risk."
"And the school is at risk. It has been ever since the Fleming child died."
He ignored her and began dialling the number of Marristone police station. Detective Inspector Grant came on the line and from him he at last got the support he needed. The school would be searched – this time professionally – and the surrounding countryside would be searched. All patrols would be alerted as soon as he had personal details of the lad. He would be up at the school in fifteen minutes. In cases like these the child was usually found quite quickly. He made it sound very easy and ordinary. Brannigan imagined a Pied Piper line of young Corleys making their way through the countryside and coming up against Grant's substantial midriff one by one. He had been very cool and phlegmatic about David Fleming, too. That time he had been presented with a fait accompli – this time there was a chance of doing something about it.
As soon as he put the phone down it rang again almost immediately..
"Is that the headmaster, Mr. Brannigan?"
"Yes." He thought it was Mrs. Corley and felt a lurch of dismay. Speaking to the lad's father had been bad enough.
"This is Lorena Durrant – Steven's mother." The raucous voice should have been familiar and now that he heard it again it jogged his memory of several irritating conversations he had had with her in the past.
"Good morning, Mrs. Durrant."
His eyes met Alison's and for the first time that day sympathy was mutual.
"Good morning." She pushed out the greeting as if she were dropping a wasp through a window, and then got on quickly with what she had to say. "It was my birthday on Tuesday. I had a most extraordinary present from Steven. I really can't get over it."
Jesus God, Brannigan thought, she's on about the Keats. He remembered Durrani's embarrassment as he had stood at the study door and asked for permission to go down to the town to buy it. Why in the name of sanity was she ringing him up to complain about it? Especially now.
He tried not to speak irritably, but failed. "Some people like that sort of thing. The boy was trying to please you."
"Oh, so you knew about it, then? I thought perhaps you did."
"Yes – he asked my permission to go down to the town to buy it."
The words, like bullets leaving a gun-barrel, cracked out sharply, "And where did he get the money from, Mr. Brannigan? Answer me that?"
She was using up valuable telephone time and he was tempted to put the phone down, but if he did she would ring him back and keep ringing him back.
"I'm busy, Mrs. Durrant. Do you think you could come to the point?"
"The point – oh yes, Mr. Brannigan, I can come to the point. The point is the amount of money my husband sends to Steven – and doesn't send to me. What is he trying to do – buy the boy's affection? Inveigle him away from me?"
Brannigan, at a loss, waited. There was no affection from either parent, and there wasn't much in the way of money either. Durrant senior gave the boy mighty little in either hard cash or fatherly interest.
Not getting a response, she went on. "At first I didn't think anything of it. I'm not well up in these things. And then one of my friends saw it and read the name on it. Would it surprise you to know that it didn't cost Steven a penny less than eighty pounds?"
It surprised Brannigan very much. The woman must be mad. The local bookshop didn't go in for first editions.
He spoke mildly, "Your friend must have misled you. Steven spent less than five pounds."
"Not on that camera, he didn't. My friend's an expert.
He's done model photography for the high quality artistic market. If Steven's father is giving him that sort of pocket money then he's earning a sight more than he tells me he's earning."
Brannigan, about to say it wasn't a camera, stopped himself. If she said it was, then it was. Even Durrant would know better than to send his mother a book of love poems – but why tell him he was going out to buy a book of Keats when he wasn't? And where did he get the money from? Obviously if not from his mother then from his father. His father might have had a win on the horses or something. But if he had he wouldn't send it to the boy. Or would he? Hammond might know. As housemaster he was responsible for the boys' money.
He told Mrs. Durrant he would put her through to Hammond and then remembered that Hammond was taking a class. "Or rather – I'll ask him to call you back as soon as he's free."
"And I want to talk to Steven, too."
"Naturally. I'll arrange that as well."
It was after he put the phone down that he remembered that Durrant had come to ask him for the money – and that he had given him six pounds. Eighty? The silly woman was sleeping with a porn photographer who was either cretinous or as high as a kite.
Alison asked, "What was that all about?"
"Rubbish. Lorena Durrani's bed companion is a crass idiot."
"It's a pity," Alison said, "that you can't use that tone of voice all the time."
After the police had come and gone and left him with the feeling that he could lean back against a solid, professional and very comforting wall, Goldthorpe came and effectively kicked it away again. He spoke much as Alison had spoken and told him he should get in touch with Lessing forthwith. He had even used the word 'forthwith'. 'Substantial financial loss" occurred frequently, too. David Fleming's death was a wounding – Corley's disappearance a possible deathblow. Brannigan, tiring of him, told him crisply that his military metaphors were completely out of place. A child had disappeared; he was concerned for the safety of that child. At this moment his concern was focussed there and nowhere else.
Goldthorpe, surprised, climbed down a little. "All the same, it would do no harm to have Lessing up here, Headmaster. As an old boy, he has the welfare of the school very much at heart."
"And I haven't – is that what you're implying?"
Goldthorpe took his leave huffily. "I'm not implying anything of the sort. What a ridiculous thing to say! I'll be in touch with you again when you're calmer."
Brannigan saw Goldthorpe to the door and noticed before closing it that Jenny was on her way to the stairs. He called after her. "Nurse Renshaw – could you give me a moment or two please?"
"Yes, of course." She had been informed about Corley's disappearance and was as worried as he was. She said impulsively, "I'm terribly sorry. I know what you're feeling."
He told her to sit down. "Jenny – do you know Corley's Christian name?"
The question surprised her. "Yes – don't you? It's Neville."
"You didn't even have to think about it, did you?"
She didn't understand where the question was leading and he didn't explain.
He said, "He's a small red-headed child of eleven with buck teeth and a Somerset accent – I'm right, am I not?"
"You're right."
He had put the child's face together slowly in his mind after going through a mental putting-together of all the other children in his House – like a slowly-formed identikit picture Corley had finally emerged. A school photograph that Sherborne had unearthed had confirmed it. The police were working from the photograph.
"You know the lads pretty well, Jenny."
"I've had most of them in the infirmary at one time or another."
"Tell me about Corley." He corrected himself. "Tell me about Neville."
The question found an echo in her mind. Tell me about David.
She answered thoughtfully. "He's introverted. A worrier. He says he's fine when he isn't because he's scared he'll be told he's worse than he is." She paused wondering if that made sense and decided it did. She tried to clarify it more. "When I took his temperature once I caught him putting the thermometer in a glass of cold water before handing it to me."
"So what do we deduce from that? That he wouldn't go to anyone for help… not even to you?"
"I don't know if he needed help. If he did, he didn't come to me."
"Have you heard anything from any of the other boys about him?"
"No. He was a loner. He'd carry whatever it was by himself."
"I see." He sat back in his chair and looked at her. "And now tell me about Fleming – Fleming senior."
She looked away from him. "I don't know what you mean."
"Jenny – you're living in a small community within a small town. The wife of one of the housemasters told me she saw you in a blue car with John Fleming the night before last." He hoped she wouldn't guess that the wife of the housemaster was Alison. Alison had gone on about the undesirability of a member of staff associating with Fleming "as he's so damnably hostile". He had irritated her by answering lightly that these days collaborators didn't have their heads shorn.
Jenny, knowing full well that it was Alison, decided not to say so. Brannigan was suffering enough.
"Are you forbidding me to see John Fleming?"
He knew it wouldn't make any difference if he did. "No. You're free to do as you like – and to see your loyalties whichever way you want to see them."
"Loyalties aren't flags you carry, one in each hand. I'd do everything I could to help him. If the school is to blame for anything, you wouldn't hide it. If I thought differently I would have resigned long ago."
He took it for the compliment it was and was grateful.
She said, sensing that the time was right to ask it, "I should like to have time off to be at the inquest tomorrow afternoon."
He could see that she was stiffening into a defensive attitude expecting him to refuse.
"Of course you may go. Alison will be sitting on her own while I give evidence I can't persuade her not to attend. She's extremely nervous and worried. Your being with her will help."
To hold Alison's hand hadn't been her intention, but there was no way out of it.
He told her that Lessing was representing the school. "And I'm told there's to be a jury." Lessing had told him this. "Seven local tradesmen," Lessing had said, "all rooting for the Grange. They feed it, they plumb it, they paint it and they wash its windows They're not likely to pull the plug out." Brannigan had commented acidly on Lessing's code of ethics and Lessing had taken it for the joke it wasn't.
A couple of hours later, during lunchtime, Lessing arrived at the school house. He walked straight through into the dining room, meeting Alison in the doorway as she was on her way to the kitchen to fetch the coffee. She offered him some, but he declined. "I can't stay. I have an appointment with a client in twenty minutes."
After she was out of earshot he said aggnevedly to Brannigan, "You should have informed me, you know."
"I gather Goldthorpe did?"
"Yes – but after I'd heard it in the town first."
"Damn!" Brannigan made a fist of his right hand and then uncurled his fingers slowly Where gossip was concerned the school was like water running through a colander.
Lessing shrugged. "The place is crawling with police. What do you expect?… Any news of the lad yet?"
"No." He had been ringing the police station every hour on the hour and Corley's father had been ringing him at even more frequent intervals. The phone bell was like the rubbing away of insulating tape over an electric wire He wondered if the child would be found before his own personal flashpoint seared his control Lessing said, "Sit down I have something to say to you It isn't pleasant"
Brannigan's face seemed visibly to thin so that the bones were prominent "Go on "
"I think the child who's disappeared had good reason to disappear – if he's the child I saw here the other day "
"Describe him "
"About ten or eleven, small build, red hair. He had been frightened to the point of throwing up " He went on to tell Brannigan about the boy running from the direction of the hollow "I went to investigate, but I saw no-one. I have no doubt at all that there was someone there Does the description fit the boy who's gone?"
"Yes."
"Then you've a problem on your hands – a nasty one. I didn't tell you because you've worry enough with the Fleming case. I intended telling you after the inquest. That was a misjudgment on my part. I'm sorry."
Brannigan said heavily, "Obviously there was a reason for his going. It's not.pleasant having it confirmed. You say he vomited?"
"Yes – with fright. And his hands had been tied. He managed to loosen the knot" He didn't add that he had dropped the tie in the bushes – a temporary tidying away of a disturbing situation "It's more than normal bullying. I thought you were fussing too much over Fleming's accident Now I'm not at all sure that it was an accident. I won't say so at the inquest, of course, but I'm telling you. Praemomtus, praemumtus. Forewarned is forearmed. You see, I haven't forgotten my Latin." He smiled wetly, but with genuine sympathy. "Damned good school this."
Alison waited until he had gone before returning. "What did he want?"
He decided not to tell her. "He'd heard about Corley – through Goldthorpe."
"And by the look of you made you see how serious it is. The school's good name is being ruined by an irresponsible little brat… Where are you going?" He was walking over to the door.
He nearly said, To breathe – to get away from yon. "To my study. Durrant can make his phone call to his mother from there."
"Durrant? You're bothered about Durrant – now? At a time like this?"
Yes, lie thought, he was particularly bothered about Durrant at a time like this.
He sent for Hammond first. He had asked him to make the phone call as quickly as he could. "Or she'll keep hogging the line." He hadn't bothered asking him the result of it. He asked him now.
Hammond said mildly, "She's crazy. I told her the boy had started the term with eight pounds in his account – and that if any more money had come through he would have given it to me to bank for him. She wanted to know if I opened his letters. I said my duties here were to teach not to run a censorship department."
Unwise, Brannigan thought, but didn't blame him.
"She didn't take that kindly. She even had the gall to talk about a moral duty to open his letters. Moral duty! Mrs. Durrant!" It was the only funny thing that had happened to him for days.
"And then?"
"And then one of the new lads – Wilkinson – ran down the corridor in a pair of football boots, with one of the other lads after him. You know the rule about that. He dislodged a piece of parquet – the bit that's just been repaired where the damp was getting through."
"And you cut Mrs. Durrant off and attended to it."
"Quite."
"Do you think the lad's father sent him any money?"
"No, Headmaster. Do you?"
"No," Brannigan said, "I don't. But I intend asking him about it."
It took Hammond nearly half an hour to find Durrant and in that time Brannigan got through to the police again. There was still no news of Corley. Minutes afterwards Corley's father rang Brannigan. He had no news either and his tension was coming out as barely concealed aggression. Brannigan listened to his criticisms tiredly. On the whole, he thought, they were just. At that moment he would have gladly handed over the school to Corley's father and told him to run it -just to see how easy it was. He had a vision of a bothy in Scotland set miles from anywhere with not a single human being in sight.
Durrant knocked at the door and came in. "You want to see me, sir?"
In some odd way some of the boy's obsequiousness had gone. He had never exactly grovelled before Brannigan, but he had tended to stoop and mumble. Brannigan, catching a look from the boy's eyes, felt uncomfortably as if he were being measured up and found wanting. It was a familiar enough look from Alison – especially during the last few days – but he had never noticed it in Durrant before.
He came crisply to the point "How much money did you spend on your mother's camera, Durrant?"
The question visibly took the boy off-balance. "What do you mean, sir? What camera?"
"Don't stall. I haven't time for that. The camera you gave her for her birthday. It was to have been a book of Keats – obviously you changed your mind."
Durrant lost an inch or two. "Not very much, sir. I had meant to buy her the book of poems, sir. But I saw the camera in Franklin's – the nearly new shop at the corner of Brook Street."
"How much did you give for it?"
"Four pounds fifty." His voice became ingratiating. "And then I bought the razor, sir. The one you told me to buy." He rubbed his chin. "It does a good job, sir."
"Have you a receipt?"
"For the razor?" He saw Brannigan's expression and went on hastily, "For the camera? Yes, sir, I did have a receipt. But I don't keep them, not unless they're for a lot of money. I threw it away."
"Have you a lot of money? From your father – for instance?"
Durrani's surprise was genuine – so much so that he didn't answer. He seemed to be casting around in his mind for the reason behind such a stupid question. At last he thought he'd found it. "That money you advanced me, sir. You did get it back, didn't you? I told Mr. Hammond about it and asked him to give it back to you."
"Yes, I did get it back. Have you had a substantial sum of money from anyone recently?"
"Chance would be a fine…" Again he caught Brannigan's eye. "No, sir."
"Your mother seems to think you have. She phoned me this morning and wants to speak to you. You might as well make the phone call now." He indicated the brown leather armchair. "Go and sit over there and take the phone with you. I have this paper-work to see to." He implied that Durrant would disturb him less if he didn't make the phone call at the desk. Durrant hesitated. Brannigan lied irritably, "I won't listen."
As Durrant picked up the telephone and began to dial, Brannigan noticed his hands for the first time. They were large and bony with prominent knuckles. The nails were well shaped and well kept. Somehow he had expected them to be bitten to the quick. His overall appearance was scruffy, but that was mainly due to the way his hair grew over his collar and to the side-burns the razor had carefully avoided. He looked a strong young brute, but a strong young brute who showered daily without being told. He was a child in a man's body – but some of the time not a child at all.
He was a child now.
His whole attitude as he got through to his mother dropped years off him. His obvious delight as he heard her voice showed in the slight flush in his cheeks and in the relaxing of his attitude. He sat more comfortably in the chair, cradling the telephone base on his knee, stroking the flex absently with his left hand.
"Many happy returns for Tuesday. Did you like my card? And the present?"
Brannigan couldn't hear Lorena Durrant's side of the conversation, but he could see the effect of it. It was as if a cold, unexpected wind had caught the boy naked. His hand on the flex became still.
"What do you mean… my father?… Why should he?… What friend?… I don't think I know that friend (there was ice in his own voice now)… How would your friend know?… Eighty pounds (genuine surprise)… You think I spent eighty pounds?… If I had it, then I would – on you."
Brannigan looked away.
Durrant said bleakly, "No, I don't see my father much… No, he doesn't write much – and you don't either… I'm not changing the subject… If you want to believe your friend and not me… (A long unintelligible tirade which seemed to drive needles into Durrant's skin and leave small flushed areas of distress on his face)… All right, I know… I'm not criticising… Yes, you must have someone… I know you do… I wasn't trying to… It was just a present I thought you'd like… I'm sorry you don't like it… Why keep on about that? I know money's important… Yes, I will tell my father if he… No, I'm not lying about that… I haven't any… If I had I'd let you…" (the voice becoming dry, the words difficult to form).
Brannigan looked- back at him. The boy's face was set hard as if against the pain of a dental drill. Durrant was the first to hang up. He put the phone down because he couldn't take any more. He got up slowly and took it over to the desk. He looked at Brannigan as if he were an apparition at the end of a long tunnel. And then he knew him.
"Thank you, sir."
Brannigan said gently, "Women – mothers included – are creatures of many moods. She probably liked your present very much. Someone misled her about the price – that's all."
He had intended asking Durrant about Corley, but couldn't. It would be like putting the boot in after his mother's vicious heels had trodden all over him.
Durrant went straight from Brannigan's study to the store-room off the gym. The sun slanting down from the high window warmed the pile of new coir mats so that they smelt and looked like gingerbread. They were the only new items in the place. He pulled a couple of them into a corner behind the door and sat down. He couldn't face anybody yet. Brannigan's last few words were like fire in his chest. He was as near to tears as he had ever been.
Damn his mother, damn his bloody mother. And then because that was too unbearable he switched his mind off her completely and let the force of his pain and rage fall on the man she was with. A photographer. A mincing, mealy-mouthed, – misinformed, shitting photographer. Eighty pounds! If Corley's camera had been worth eighty pounds Corley wouldn't have handed it over so easily. Anyway -• who would give a kid of ten, or whatever he was, a camera worth that much? What sort of daft parents would do a thing like that? What was Corley's old man – a bank-manager or bloody Croesus?
He regretted now that he had gone to Brannigan for the postage money. If he hadn't he couldn't have posted the bloody thing. A fiver for a Keats had seemed a nice round sum and a bit of a joke, too. It wasn't a joke any more. It would be even less of a joke if Corley split on him.
He wondered where Corley had gone. If he was aiming for home, then a kid with any intelligence would have arrived there by now. It had rained during the night. If he had been out in that, the cold and wet would probably kill him. His chest rattled when he breathed – or perhaps he just breathed oddly. When he'd held him down in the hollow his breath had squeaked out of him like rusty bellows and his lips had turned blue. It had been disgusting of him to get sick all over him.
The memory was unpleasant and he switched it off.
He began building an image of the photographer in his mind. He saw him as small, fat and frightened, but getting no satisfaction from that began building him bigger. An enemy had to be worthy of him. Fleming's father was worthy of him. His hatred made him ten feet tall. He tried making the photographer ten feet tall, but the imagery wouldn't work. He kept seeing him as small, fat and greasy, lying naked in bed with his mother. Despatching him would be like killing a pig. The blood would get on his mother and defile her. His inability at this moment to control his fantasies frightened him. He had always, until now, been able to walk the particular corridor in his mind he chose to walk. His own feeling of supremacy had never been shaken. Now he felt used – as if other hands were controlling the power-house and he couldn't pull them away.
There was someone crossing the floor of the gym and he sat quietly willing whoever it was to go away.
A small dark-haired boy with eyes as brown as pennies came and stood at the door. He hadn't seen this one before – or if he had he hadn't noticed him. He looked about seven.
"Excuse me…" The voice was high-pitched – very well bred. His mother would have mocked it as very "refained."
"Scarper!"
The boy looked as if he had heard, but didn't believe what he had heard. "I've come to fetch a rounders ball for Mr. Innis. I think I can see them in that basket over there."
He began treading delicately over Durrani's outstretched leg. Durrant raised it, tripping him. He came down heavily on his hands. His lips trembled. "I really can't go without it."
"No, you really can't, can you? Perhaps now you're here you can't go at all.".Durrant felt his dark mood lighten. "What's your name?"
The child, as still as a spider that is being watched from a vast distance by someone with a huge death-dealing foot, took a minute or two to answer. "Peter."
"You're not Peter here. You won't be Peter any more until you leave. What's your other name?"
"Christopher."
"Peter Christopher – what?"
"Nothing. Peter Christopher. My father owns the Christopher Potteries in Stoke."
"Oh, he does, does he? And what does he make in his pottery – piss-pots?"
The fair skin flushed. "He makes the best dinner services and tea sets in the world."
"He's rich – your old man?"
It was not done to speak about money. "I really don't know."
"You really don't know! You really aren't very bright, are you?" Durrant leaned over and pushed back the grey flannel cuff from the child's left wrist. He looked in disgust at the Mickey Mouse watch. "Is that the best your old man can give you?"
The tears were near the surface. "I like it."
"That's what I mean – you're dim."
"Mr. Innis will be wanting the ball… I really must get it."
Durrant raised his leg as a barrier. "I haven't finished talking to you yet. What did your old man give you for your birthday – a toy duck to put in your bath?"
"As a matter of fact," with great dignity, "he gave me a horse – a real one."
"Oh, I say – now isn't that something! So that piss-pot factory makes bread, does it?"
"I have already told you my father makes…"
"Piss-pots. You've ears like piss-pot handles, did you know that?" Durrant got on his knees and pressed the boy's ears back against his skull. "That's how they should be – flat."
"You're hurting me." As the ears whitened under pressure the child's eyes became bloodshot with tears. Fascinated, Durrant pressed harder and the tears spurted out and trickled down the sides of the tightly closed mouth. He wondered how hard he would have to press before the mouth gaped open and the kid began to bawl. His own pain was forgotten now and he began to feel euphoric. Dust danced in the beam of sunlight. The skin and gristle under his fingers were like organ notes – press harder and the noise would come.
Innis, at the doorway, snapped, "Durrant!"
Durrant, reorientating gradually, released the pressure and his hands dropped at his side.
The child, aware that the door of the torture chamber was open and that the liberator was beside it, began trembling softly from head to foot.
Innis said gently, "It's all right. Fetch the ball and go."
"Yes, sir."
As the child bent over the ball basket Innis saw that his ears under the fall of dark hair were scarlet. He waited for the child to leave the room before he rounded on Durrant. "What the hell's the matter with you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Be at my study tonight at seven sharp – and I'll tell you precisely what I mean."
Durrani's eyes became limpet soft. "Yes, of course I'll be there. What you saw just now might have seemed – well – rather harsh treatment – but the boy's attitude – he…"
"Keep your excuses until later. I've a P.E. class outside. Seven o'clock."
"Yes."
"Yes, sir!" Durrant looked at him in mild surprise. "Yes, sir. As you say, sir."
"And get out of here and back to your class."
"I was just about to go, sir."
He moved indolently past Innis and out through the gymnasium. Innis, grim-faced, watched him go.