Death Drop Page 2

  She didn't answer straight away but got up and lit herself a cigarette and then offered the box to him. He shook his head.

  Did ebullient children grow into quiet children? she wondered. The infirmary had been sanctuary for David – but not only for David. A quiet room- a little mothering. Was he any different from the rest? That look about the eyes – some of the others had it, too, the introspective ones. The only time he had been with her for a longish period was recently when he had mumps. And that had been a genuine physical illness. At the end of it some of the old ebullience had bubbled up again, until the very last day when he was due back in the main school. But the infirmary was a holiday – no child liked work. They all reacted in the same way – well, perhaps not in quite the same way. He had become white and very withdrawn. Reason for complaint?

  She drew on her cigarette. "Children endure boarding-school. It isn't a natural way of life. Some of them endure it better than others. When the young ones come – the seven-and eight-year-olds – they cry. If the housemaster's wife is any good at her job she mops them up and pets them a bit and makes them feel better. When they're David's age – eleven going on twelve – they don't cry. They put up with it. They make themselves as tough as their nature lets them. When they're older than that they start to get important – they boss the other kids around – they're part of the hierarchy then, the upper part. When the time comes to leave they say 'Good old Marristone, wouldn't have missed it for the world'."

  "You haven't answered me. We're talking about David, not the children in general."

  She sighed. "I know. I don't think I can answer you. If I had taught him every day in class I might be able to answer you. I'm a matron. My duties are limited. I saw David when he was sick with mumps and I patched him up once or twice after rugger." She hesitated. "And once after a fight about rugger. He'd been to the States with you and told one of the boys that baseball was better. The boy thumped him. I thought he'd thumped him too hard and I told Brannigan. Brannigan said it was too trivial to report to him – that I should have told Hammond, David's housemaster."

  Brannigan, Fleming thought, was probably right. David had been thumped in his other schools for one reason or another and had done some thumping back.

  "There isn't a fag system, is there?"

  "No."

  "No organised bullying?"

  "If there is it's undercover."

  The answer perturbed him. "Who thumped him about the baseball?"

  "A boy called Durrant."

  "How old?"

  "Fifteen."

  "Three years older. Three years heavier. What did Hammond do about it?"

  Some of her ash had fallen on her jeans. She brushed it off. "He dealt with him suitably – whatever that means. He wouldn't allow Durrant to bully David."

  "Wouldn't he? He doesn't impress me as being competent."

  She spoke with some sharpness. "You're beginning to sound like a prosecuting barrister. It breaks my heart that David is dead and if I thought there was any fault anywhere then I'd say so. He fell. It was an accident. It can't possibly be anything else. You've got to believe that or you'll drive yourself crazy."

  "Then you'd say he was happy in school?"

  "As happy as any of them. You know how it is."

  Her words had consoled him a little and some of his own guilt went. It might have happened in any other school. It might have happened anywhere.

  It was while they were eating the steak some while later that Jenny remembered the sketch. David had drawn it for her while he was convalescing from the mumps. He had been sitting near the window with the sketching block on his knees. It had taken him a.bout half an hour to do it. He had handed it to her without a word, watching her face for a reaction. She had quite spontaneously laughed and been surprised that he hadn't laughed with her. It had seemed to her a funny drawing. She had kept it in case he asked for it back. Boys – especially the younger ones – tended to test her loyalty by asking her if she still had whatever treasure they had bestowed on her. Treasures included conkers, a rat's tail, a magnet, love poems. They all went into a duffel bag and remained there for a safe period. The duffel bag was in the kitchen drawer. She fetched it. The drawing was creased and grubby and she touched it for a moment with tenderness before handing it over. "Something David drew for me when he had mumps."

  Fleming took the folded drawing from her, opened it up, and put it on the table.

  "Good Christ Almighty!" He sat rigid, fighting nausea.

  She was astonished by his reaction, alarmed at his pallor. "It's a joke drawing. He gave it to me dead-pan. Just fun."

  He didn't hear her. He was six years back in time. Ruth and he returning at one-thirty in the morning after the car had broken down on a deserted country road. The holiday cottage in darkness. David screaming. The babysitter had left at midnight. He had woken in the dark alone. The tiger moth caterpillar had dropped on his pillow from a bowl of flowers near the bed. He had wakened to feel its slow furry crawl across his cheek. A strange inimical room – silence – and an appalling creature on which to vent his terror.

  There had followed two years of nightmares in which the caterpillar, man-sized, was the beast. On each day that followed a disturbed night he drew the caterpillar and then hid the drawing, but in obvious places where it could be found. He and Ruth had made a point of finding the drawings and tearing them up. It had become a ritual. He watched whilst appearing not to watch. In time the drawings and the nightmares stopped. There hadn't been a nightmare or a drawing for four years.

  Until this drawing now.

  A crude, immature, thickly shaded, heavily furred caterpillar, hugely out of proportion, sprawling over a small bed. At the bottom of the picture in big uncontrolled six-year-old letters: WOLLY BEAR ON D'S BED.

  Woolly Bear had been Ruth's name for it when she had picked it off his face. Woolly Bear. Wolly as the six-year-old David had spelt it. Wolly as the twelve-year-old David had spelt it now.

  Two

  "MAY i HAVE permission to go into Marristone Port, sir?"

  Brannigan looked in some irritation at Durrant who had knocked at his study door and been told brusquely to enter. He didn't like the boy and tended to over-react in his favour in an effort to appease his conscience. Any other boy he would have told sharply to take his request to the appropriate quarter and not presume to waste his time. He said much the same thing to Durrant but with more restraint.

  "You know the procedure, Durrant. If you need to go into Marristone Port for any reason, you ask your housemaster."

  Durrant licked his thick lower lip. "I can't find Mr. Hammond, sir. I don't think he's on the premises."

  Brannigan glanced at his watch. It had just gone four. Hammond wouldn't be back, if he had any sense, until a lot later. He had forgotten momentarily that Durrant was in Hammond 's House. • "Why do you want to go into Marristone Port?"

  "It's my mother's birthday, sir. I want to get her a card and a present."

  Brannigan wondered if it were a variation of the grandmother's funeral theme and decided it wasn't. Durrani's mother didn't give a tuppeny damn for Durrant, but Durrant cared quite deeply for her. During his first year at the Grange he had found his way home twice. The first time to an empty house and he had walked the night streets of Leeds until the police had picked him up. The second time to a house which had been far from empty. His mother had returned him personally the following day. Her anger had been greater than her discretion and it hadn't been difficult to imagine what the boy had walked in on. After that he had stayed put. Whatever illusions he had left he clung to. His father, with less tenacity, had long since ditched his and taken himself off. He wrote to the boy once or twice a term and the boy wrote a duty letter back. Their relationship was polite and distant.

  "When is your mother's birthday, Durrant?"

  "Tomorrow, sir."

  Brannigan felt the boy's anxiety coming across the room in almost tangible waves. He was expecting to have his r
equest refused. He had probably spent a lot of time in a fruitless search for Hammond and in desperation had come at last to him. The shops closed at six.

  He tried to remember Durrani's Christian name and at last it came to him. "Unless you're a lightning shopper, Steven, you're likely to miss the post."

  "I have my bike, sir. It won't take me long to get into Marristone Port and I know what I want to buy."

  "Something you can parcel up quickly?"

  Durrani's stoop became almost more pronounced. He was five foot eleven when he stood straight, but in moments of embarrassment lost several inches. "A book of Keats' poems, sir." It came out as a mumble.

  Brannigan looked down at the blotter on his desk and positioned it more centrally. When he looked up his face was expressionless, amusement quenched.

  "Mr. Hammond normally acts as banker for the House. As he's not around what are you using for cash?"

  Durrant shuffled his feet. "I was wondering if you could spare the time to come across to the House office, sir, and get me five pounds from my account?"

  Brannigan took out his wallet. "No, I haven't time. You can return this later when you've seen Mr. Hammond." He took out a five-pound note. "Is it a small book?"

  "Yes, quite light, sir."

  Brannigan took out an extra pound. "If you have any change – and any time – go to the chemist and get yourself a razor… or have you already got one?"

  Durrant pocketed the money. "Thank you, sir. No, sir."

  Brannigan's smile, though forced, came out with a little warmth. "You haven't a full-blown moustache yet, but it's coming along. You know the rules about that, Steven."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then see to it."

  As Durrant turned to go he called after him. "At fifteen you're old enough to go into Marristone Port without a prefect, and you're old enough to ride that bike of yours with due care and attention. Just a warning."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, go on then, or you'll miss the shops."

  And for God's sake heed the warning, Brannigan thought. It would have been easy to have refused permission, but he couldn't wrap the boys up in cotton wool and shield them from all possible hazards. It was high summer now and light until well on into the evening. The roads were reasonably quiet. There was a slight thickening of the traffic between five and six, but no real rush hour. If Durrant finished up under a bus it would be one chance in an imponderable number of chances. The odds had been the same with young Fleming. The pall of anxiety that had oppressed him since the accident settled more heavily on him.

  Once off the school premises Durrant rode his bike with panache. He had no illusions at all about Brannigan's apparent friendliness towards him. He didn't like him either. He saw him as commandant of Colditz and had several enjoyable fantasies in which he, Durrant, in the role of a British officer, led an uprising against him and had him hanged, shot, or less often poisoned. Poisoning lacked drama, but it was a variation of a theme. His fantasies about his mother's lovers were more up-to-date. They were vague shadow figures not fully known and not understood. He saw them as space creatures emerging from some far nebulae – creatures of doom – to be contained and liquidated in vast chemical vats or electrocuted into oblivion.

  Now, as he rode his bike towards Marristone Port, he was at the controls of an interplanetary space machine. The glimpses of the coast as the road wound downhill towards the town were Martian scenes hazed over with red. The occasional glitter of the sea was the, shine of enemy space craft approaching faster than light. The overtaking cars were capsules under his control and sent on as an advance combat force. Oncoming traffic was so much debris in space to be carefully avoided.

  He looked briefly at Jenny's car as she drove it up the hill towards the school, but it didn't register in his mind as a car driven by Jenny. She raised her hand in greeting, but he stared blankly and pedalled on.

  Unfriendly little beast, Jenny thought. She was glad Fleming wasn't in the car with her. After seeing the sketch all his prejudices against the school had become stronger than ever. He had phoned Brannigan requesting an interview just as soon as Brannigan could make it. Brannigan had suggested six o'clock. It was policy that Jenny should return on her own and that he should follow in a couple of hours in a taxi. On parting he had made it plain that he wanted to see her again. "You're the only person in the whole goddamned set-up who meant anything to David."

  "I wouldn't say that. You can't write off all the staff like that. They're ordinary caring people."

  "Then why the hell didn't they see what was happening to him?"

  "But you can't be sure what was happening to him… this sketch…"

  He interrupted her. "Shows six years' regression – what sort of mental agony brought that about?"

  She was silent. If he were right then she would fight his battle with him, and resign from the school if that was the only way to do it. In the meantime she had to keep everything balanced and await events. Brannigan couldn't very well sack her for giving him the sketch in the first place, but he wouldn't exactly commend her for discretion. Had she known the sketch would have upset him so much she might well have withheld it. David was dead, what good did it do? But if she had withheld it, it would have been to spare him pain, not to have glossed things over for the school. One David had died. There were other Davids.

  She parked the car in the parking space next to Hammond 's which was still empty. She wondered where he had gone to and couldn't help feeling sympathy for him. He was a competent teacher – or so the others said, she didn't know much about the academic side of the school – and though he was a strict disciplinarian he was more tolerant in his attitude to the boys than some of the others. The word 'kind' summed him up as well as any other.

  She tapped at Brannigan's door and he rose as she came in and drew out a chair for her.

  "I'm sorry I was away so long." It was expected of her and had to be said.

  "Not at all." He decided not to mention the phone call. "There's no limit on that sort of thing. Did you go into the mortuary with him?"

  She found it very hard to speak about. There was a thickening in her throat again. "Yes."

  He was aware of her distress and wondered just how bloody-mindedly Fleming had behaved towards her.

  "Was it very difficult?"

  "You mean distressing – yes."

  He accepted the rebuke. There had been some sort of rapport between them. "He didn't mind your being there?"

  "At the mortuary? He was scarcely aware of me. Sam Preston introduced me afterwards. I told him I'd drive him anywhere he wanted to go."

  "And he agreed to that?"

  "He hadn't a car of his own."

  He wished she would be more forthcoming. He didn't want the interview to sound like an inquisition. "And where did he want to go?"

  "Just driving around. We went up on the coast road. He wanted time to be quiet."

  "Did he talk to you about David – about the school?"

  "He had just seen David. He was very shaken and upset.' I had nursed David through mumps. I was – fond – of him. He sensed that. It helped."

  "I see," Brannigan relaxed slightly. Jenny had been a wise choice. He tried to sum it up, "He accepted that you were well disposed to David and he therefore accepted you – would that be the situation?"

  "Yes."

  "So he was able to talk to you without rancour?"

  "Yes."

  "To what extent does he blame the school?"

  Jenny said sharply, "I wasn't on reconnaissance in enemy lines, Mr. Brannigan. I'm sorry. I don't know."

  Brannigan understood her distress and quenched his own flare of annoyance. She was young. She had been exposed to an emotional barrage. He would find out soon enough from Fleming how much he blamed the school.

  Fleming's taxi drew up at the school house a few minutes before six. Brannigan came out to meet him as he paid off the driver.

  "Did you get fixed up at The Lantern – or didn
't it come up to your expectations? You're welcome to stay here with us as long as you wish."

  "Thank you, but The Lantern is perfectly adequate." He had returned there after leaving Jenny. A reporter had waylaid him in the hall and he had given him short shrift. He might have a story for the paper later, he had told him brusquely, but until he had all the facts he had nothing to say.

  The polite preliminaries over, Brannigan asked him if he would like to come into the school house for a drink, or would he prefer to go over to his study in the main building.

  "Your study. This is not a social call."

  "But I can persuade you to stay for dinner? My wife will be most disappointed if you don't."

  "I'm sorry. No."

  Brannigan imagined Alison's sigh of relief. So the gloves were still off. At least he would keep his own on as long as possible. There was nothing to be gained by belligerence.

  The walk to the main building was past the playing fields and the tennis courts. Four of the senior boys were having a game on the court near the shrubbery and a couple of the younger boys were acting as ball boys.

  Brannigan went over to the wire netting enclosure and called one of the older boys to him. "Have Eldridge and Macey permission to be out of prep?"

  Lambton rubbed a sweaty hand across his forehead. "Yes, sir. They finished early, sir."

  "And they're doing this voluntarily?"

  "Oh yes, sir. Of course, sir."

  Brannigan snapped, "It seems a singular waste of their time. It would be far more useful if you gave them some coaching in the game. But I suppose you intend to do that anyway." It was a command.

  "Yes, sir. As soon as we've finished this set, sir."

  "Which will be soon, I hope?"

  "After two games, sir."

  Brannigan turned back to Fleming. At any other time he doubted if he would have interfered. He felt very much on the defensive and a slow anger burned in him. He had run this school for a number of years and he believed he had run it well. If the economic recession was killing it, then he was not to blame. Neither was he to blame for the death of this man's son. If Fleming was determined to pin the guilt on him, he was not going to stand quietly to attention and let him get on with it. Last night on the drive back from Heathrow to the school he had been strongly aware of Fleming's pain and had tried to give him what support he could, but Fleming's wall of animosity had separated them and grown higher as the night wore on.