Suffocation
DR. JUDITH KAHN entered her home. It was a modest two-bedroom on Covey Lane, a ten-minute walk from school. It had been her father’s home (her mother had died when Judith was young), and she had redecorated it completely in a desire to make the place her own, to avoid that feeling that she was still living in her parents’ house. New paint, new furnishings. But that had been thirty years ago. Now the place looked battered in its own right. Scuffing on the walls, papers on the desk, too many picture frames on bookshelves and windowsills, her old comfortable caftan flung over the back of her favorite chair. She was proud she had avoided becoming old-lady-cozy; she could live with being bohemian-shabby. Her father had taught her how to manage money. She owned the houses on either side and rented them, as well as one of the nearby storefronts at the corner of Dudley Gardens and Lower Road. If the swaggering aristos of Harrow knew how much their school archivist had put by, they would have a shock.
The message light blinked on her phone. She saw its winking orange from where she stood by the front door. She punched the code into the burglar alarm (a concession to living alone), then crossed the room in the dark, illuminating a lamp along the way, to hear the message. It was Fawkes. He sounded both drunk and excited. She smiled. Everyone needed a Fawkes. A fountain spilling over with ideas. Or was that an overbrimming bathtub, threatening to flood the house: lately she had sensed, in addition to his usual narcissism, a careening, out-of-control quality, and it worried her. His message tonight was more garbled than usual. Could you help us once again? Fawkes asked. They had found a hidden room in the Lot; did she know anything about it? He thought it all linked back to Byron’s time, and suspected an element of the bizarre. Those were his words: element of the bizarre. Dr. Kahn frowned. Fawkes’s voice cracked when he said the words. Like he was trying to be comical, to cover up for something that upset him, and the strain was too much for his voice. Dr. Kahn picked up the phone to return his call.
Her finger never touched the buttons. Her senses tingled and she became aware of another person in the house. Whether it was through some small, scarcely detectible sound or true instinct she could not say, but she knew it instantly. She went to the hearth, attempting to remain calm, not to startle anyone. She wrapped her fingers around the heavy poker, then turned, and carried it in front of her like a bayonet. Her strategy lacked finesse—what would she do when she’d cornered the intruder?—but she was scared, and curious, and outraged. How did they get past the alarm? And what on earth would anyone want to steal? Books? Dr. Kahn edged into the corridor.
“Hello?” she called. Her voice was weak. You can do better than that, she told herself.
But she didn’t. Her senses more than tingled now. Something had changed in the house: she felt an oppressive cloud on her, a thickness in the atmosphere. It made breathing difficult. Her movements dragged, as if a weight lay upon her limbs. Even her thoughts came sluggishly.
She stepped forward into the first-floor corridor. She had only turned on one lamp in the living room, so the far end of the hall was bathed in shadows. The door to her bedroom stood halfway open. She had not left it that way, she was certain. It was as if someone had pulled the door closed, just enough to conceal themselves as they stood behind it.
Dr. Kahn felt a presence.
A body, somebody, waited there behind that door. Then she heard it. An irregular wheezing; a gurgle. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and neck. She stood frozen, unnerved at last. Was it an animal? Had she cornered some beast? She heard a sharp intake of breath—human breath, shaped by lips, but ghastly, ragged, popping—that struck a note she knew. The deep inhalation before somebody started a nasty task, say, beating to death the old lady they were robbing. She saw four white orbs appear on the rim of the door. What were they? Her heart thrummed a beat before she realized. Fingertips. She felt something at her feet. She looked down. Now she screamed.
Rats had gathered at her feet, greasy, swarming. Dozens of them, there in the corridor, her corridor. One stood up on its hind legs, staring at her with eyes glowing orange in the reflected light. Then she felt a rush of motion behind her. She realized her mistake.
She had turned her back on the bedroom door.
SHE DID NOT know how long she lay there, but she came to, to the sound of the telephone ringing. It rang and rang. She took stock. Felt her head—no injuries. The hall was free of rats. Free of anyone. Her bedroom door was open wide, the way she’d left it that morning. The poker stood by the hearth. But the greatest shock came in the words she heard, projected from her answering machine:
Judy, it’s Piers. Listen, we’ve made something of a discovery in the Lot. A room, like a cistern, that had been blocked up. Could you help us once again? To learn more? It’s all related. Tied up with Byron, I think. There is an element . . . of the bizarre about it. More when we speak.
It was Piers Fawkes, leaving the same voicemail she had heard when she first came into the house.
She struggled to her feet. She felt like someone over whom a wave has crashed: battered, but with all evidence of that violence dissolving into sand and sea.
She flipped lights on in the kitchen and with shaking hands made herself tea to calm down. She thought of Fawkes’s message. Could you help us once again? The us tripped her up. But the first hot sip of tea brought the answer. The American boy.
The one who had told her he had seen a ghost.
IT TOOK ONLY twenty-four hours after the expedition into the basement.
Fawkes received a note, shoved through the mail slot. No postage, hand-delivered; even he could not miss it. (Clearly this was the intent.) See me after lessons tomorrow, it said, in Colin Jute’s angular script.
And here he sat, in Jute’s long, polygonal, well-windowed headmaster’s office, like the captain’s quarters on an old ship. Sofa and chairs on one end; vast desk on the other; view of the Harrow park beyond. It lay at the center of the school: at the crest of the High Street; Headmaster’s House built all around it.
Nervous about this meeting, Fawkes had drunk too much the night before. Gin before dinner, wine during, gin again after. A horrible idea in retrospect, but he had kept pouring it down, as if his nerves were a blocked pipe he could flush out. He’d been fighting nausea all day.
Jute stood at his desk, shuffling papers, his jowls bobbing under a dangerous-looking scowl. He spoke without raising his eyes to Fawkes. “Word has reached me about your incident in the basement.” He spat out this last word as if a basement were the moral equivalent of a strip club.
Fawkes suddenly knew exactly where this was going, and how it had happened.
The boys. It would have been the boys, the Shells, standing in the stairwell while the workers with sledgehammers bashed through the walls of their own dormitory. Not enough happened in the school in the average day—the average week—that such an incident would pass unremarked. Those boys would have emerged with reports, and distorted explanations, and spread these around—passed them from boy to boy in dining hall and classroom and High Street and tuck-shop like flu germs. And, of course, there was Matron, who would have complained to the assistant housemaster, Macrae, within the half hour.
“You seem to have lost your way, Piers,” said Jute. “Your house needs you more than ever. And you literally go about destroying it.”
His tone was not even angry, Fawkes observed ruefully, but calm and cutting. Fawkes, it seemed, no longer merited anger, or even bluster.
“The reason I wished to see you was the story I heard. That the American had seen a ghost down there. That true, Piers? The Lot ghost?” Jute’s nose wrinkled. “Wives’ tales?”
Fawkes’s face went red. “The boy suspected,” he stammered, “there was a . . . a bit of the old house . . .”
“So you took the archeology upon yourself? With sledgehammers?”
“I didn’t know what I would find. I didn’t know . . .”
“Were you drinking?”
Fawkes nearly choked. “I beg your pardon?”
“My question was clear enough.”
“The . . . it was four-thirty.”
Jute stared balefully.
“No,” Fawkes responded. An instinctive, self-protective lie. “May I inquire why you asked me that?”
“You drink, Piers. Don’t act so bloody shocked. The school, once upon a time, tolerated such behavior. And I suppose, as a writer you think it’s part of your mystique. But those days are gone. We hold everyone to professional standards.” He sighed. “It’s written on your face, Piers,” he said. “Your eyes. Nose. Blood vessels and cobwebs. People notice. I notice. Boys notice. In lessons, I’m told,” he added, with a note of outrage.
“Never.”
“Other times, then?” Jute asked, his voice now reclining into certitude. Fawkes realized his grave mistake in answering that last charge—to deny one instance was to acknowledge others. “House meeting? Check-in? You missed all your lessons on the day in question,” he said, referring to his notes.
Fawkes opened his mouth, but waited a second too long to speak.
“I’ve heard enough,” Jute concluded firmly, disgusted. “You’re on probation. Those boys had one of their fellows die, man. A Sixth Former, a popular one. They need reassurance, not excavations. Or bloody . . . ghost stories. I don’t want any more disruption to them or to the school. And I won’t have a drunk in charge of eighty boys. I have asked Sir Alan Vine, as one of the more senior housemasters, to monitor your performance. In four weeks’ time he will make a recommendation to me about your continued employment. That is all.”
The secretary poked her head into the office. The headmaster’s scowl broke into a sunny smile. What is it Margaret? Fawkes got the message—loyal servants treated kindly; bad ones punished. He did not need to be dismissed. He shouldered out past the spindly Margaret, who, sensing the headmaster’s mood, sniffed at him as if he were a dog that had rolled in something.
Fawkes burned as he left Headmaster’s House. He had been expecting the worst. He had been expecting consequences. But not this humiliation. Who had talked to Jute about the ghost? And that shit about drinking? Every master drank at school. Look at Blakey, soused at every holiday dinner. The beer allowances, the Sixth Form pub, the leavers’ parties . . . the place flowed with booze.
He shuffled down the High Street, letting the drops pelt his face. More rain. It never stopped, not since Theo died. Drowned in his own lung fluid, and then the school goes soggy for a month. No wonder Jute was edgy. The place did feel doomed, cursed. Fawkes would be lucky to leave. And given all his daydreaming about life after Harrow, Fawkes should have been elated. His employment agreement ran for a full academic year. He would be paid through July if he were sacked. Ten months. He could write a magnum opus in that time. Getting fired from a job he loathed, and which he performed poorly? Getting paid for not working? Getting time to write? This was his lucky day.
A wave of self-pity crashed over him. The play. He could take all the time in the world on it, and no one would want it. It wasn’t publishable without his association with the school. He felt a grasping sense of panic. And what about Andrew Taylor? What about John Harness; the cistern in his basement? Fawkes would lose his source material. For a few days, Byron’s life had come into focus for him, from this weak, two-dimensional prison (diaries, letters, who gave a shit; it was like listening to recordings of people’s phone calls; who cared about the everyday minutiae; give me the friction; take me inside the hour you became miserable, lost your soul, changed your life) into stark, three-dimensional reality; it rose before him like a fleshy pop-up book, in the form of the staring, sorrowful eyes of this American kid. Fawkes had been given access. As if—mopey as he was—Andrew Taylor were a member of an exclusive club that Fawkes, a born nonjoiner, was now desperate to enter. He wanted to spend time with this boy. And not just because of the play, he reluctantly admitted to himself. He actually liked Andrew. Their mutual discoveries had been the most . . . fun . . . he had had in a long time. Between teaching, and emailing parents, and administrative duties, and writing, Fawkes had had very little fun of late.
Probation. Four weeks. He didn’t know how long he wanted or needed to complete his unfinished business at Harrow. But he knew it would take longer than four weeks.
He reached the Lot and found the front door of his apartment standing open.
Fawkes stood in the rain staring at it. Not because he was afraid—of burglars, or of someone breaking in. But because he had forgotten to close his own damned door.
He’d forgotten an umbrella, too. The rain dripped down his nose.
Small things. They made him suddenly furious.
Forgotten to close his own door! If Jute needed more evidence of a man not fit to care for others . . . well, here it was. Get it together, Fawkes fumed at himself. He kicked the door wide, beheld the miserable heap of cigarette butts and mess inside. All other thoughts were crowded out by immediate, visceral, disgust. Fawkes gritted his teeth in anger. At Jute. At the school. At himself.
“Get it together,” he growled, this time aloud, stamping inside and slamming the door behind him. “Get it together!”
DOWN IN THE cistern room, it had been worse than Andrew feared. When he first saw the handkerchief, Andrew merely felt dizzy. He did not want to show it, with Reg there, in his work boots and paint-spattered trousers. But then Andrew nearly toppled over. He caught himself against the ladder. A strange sensation flooded him, as if some narcotic had been squeezed into his veins. He tried to shake it off. He ascribed it to the descent down the ladder. To the disorientation brought on by pitch blackness. Pretty . . . pretty weird down here, he muttered nonsensically to Reg, hoping to conjure cold reality back, through conversation. Reg merely grunted. When Andrew ascended a few minutes later to the light and the conviviality of his curious housemates in the basement corridor, the feeling, instead of dissipating, grew stronger.
He nodded at their questions, faked a smile at Fawkes, and climbed the stairs to his room. Each step brought him closer to unconsciousness: a warm, welcoming, drowsy feeling, like the sleep arctic explorers reportedly feel as they slip into a freezing death. And now he did not have the strength to deny what he did feel down below: the lustrous atmosphere of physical desire, so overwhelming as to be sickening. An overdose of furtive pleasure in that cistern room.
BACK IN HIS room, undressing, he swam in unbidden associations.
If any fellow bully you I’ll thrash him if I can
Andrew saw the prefect’s bath.
It is steamy here.
A white-haired boy rises from the water: pale, perfect, fragile, his pectorals shapely but soft. His skin slick. He rises, coming for him. . . .
Andrew staggered and lay down. He needed to go to bed. Didn’t feel well. He drowsed in the fading light, forgetting supper, only distantly aware of the crunching gravel and chatter below his window, the sound of boys heading to dining hall.
And at last it came when the sun faded. The breathing. Undoubtedly real now. The moisture and motion of lips, inches from his ear. Panting, desirous, ragged. Andrew wrestled with his senses for a few seconds, resisting—I am alone in the room, he recited, there is nobody here—but he could not stop it. He could not move his limbs. He could not escape, and did not have the will to, anyway. He lay there, in his boxers, passive and as full of dread as a drugged prisoner awaiting captors.
You came for me.
A hand gripped his chest, icy cold. Andrew convulsed, gasped, his back arching am I being attacked or caressed is this fear or some kind of he could not say it, some kind of thrill, an involuntary moan. The cold spread from his chest, penetrating his thorax. It swelled inside him. He let go.
He heard it first.
The thundering noise he had heard—when? In that dream. Weeks ago.
Hrr hrr hrr hrr hrr hrr
The one where he had woken screaming.
The sound changed.
Krch . . . krch . . .
Hrr hrr hrr hrr hrr hrr
He had at first thought it was some external noise, a crashing or a booming, like he was being overtaken by a thunderstorm. Now he realized it was something else. Something smaller, more ordinary, only tremendously amplified:
The breathing he heard on the Hill.
The baying gurgle of the gaunt white-haired boy.
Only closer. No, not just closer. Inside.
Hrr hrr hrr hrr hrr hrr . . . inhale
Krch . . . krch . . . exhale
And then the vision came.
He is back in the stairwell.
The thin red carpet is the same. The spindly railing, the candles.
He rounds the corners of the stairwell. He is climbing, vigorously. The noise continues. The light is dim.
He is hot, angry. Lubricated with sweat. He is ready to do something terrible but so exciting he trembles. No time to stop. He turns the last corner.
The figure.
There he is.
Like last time. Standing at the end of the corridor.
There are many doors here, at regular intervals. The figure leans forward, toward one of the last ones, at the end. It is an odd gesture.
There must be a key tied around his neck, Andrew concludes. He is unlocking a door.
The figure straightens, opens the door, and enters.
Andrew’s chest tightens seeing the figure disappear through the door. Andrew lunges forward to follow.
Is it the right door?
He knocks. The noise grows louder.
To his delight, the door pushes open under his hand. It had not been relocked. His heart pumps.
Andrew steps inside. He looks around the room—a bedroom, with a small writing desk and a washbasin in the corner. It is hazy in the premature twilight, shaded by heavy drapes.
The figure is there. Turns, surprised.
Oo ’er you?
Andrew freezes. For a split second the notion comes to him: he cannot kill another person. Then the notion is gone. In two steps he’s on him. Andrew reaches for his throat. A quick cry of protest. Andrew’s fingers clutch the larynx and squeeze. His own lips bare his teeth. He surrenders to a primitive, animal pleasure—fighting winning—until the real battle begins. A person does not give up life so easily. He scarcely notices the face: boyish, fine-featured, pretty, made ugly by the struggle.
The boy thrashes. A swat close to the boy’s eye draws blood. A new strategy: the boy flings himself backward. A table goes over.
Someone will hear!
Andrew casts about for a way to end it faster. He sees the answer: a pillow on the bed. He snatches it. Puts his weight on the figure
How light and small he is
and shoves the pillow over his face. Now comes the kicking. Flailing. Knees and fingernails. Andrew grits his teeth. His fingers and arms are numb. The vigor is draining from him. He cannot hold on much longer. He puts all his weight on the pillow. Slowly, the thrashing yields to twitching. Andrew leans in and presses.
Cannot give up
Then the twitching ceases.
Finally—stillness.
He rolls off the body, spent. Sweat slicks his face, neck. His gasps threaten to split his chest. That terrible thunder comes louder than ever. He coughs. It racks his ribs and tears at his throat. But the struggle is over. The face. He must see it. He staggers to the window, pulls the curtains back. The room swells with a white glow. He grips the corner of the grey, worn linen pillow. He tugs.
ANDREW SAT UP, clamping both his hands over his mouth, suppressing a scream.
He could not let them hear him again. They would think—they would know—he’d gone crazy.
I am seeing it again.
It was as if Andrew was growing closer and closer to the real event.
My God this time I saw the whole thing.
Not just saw it. Did it.
He was that much closer to what had really happened. A strangulation. Or, technically, suffocation. Just like he had seen with Theo, on the hill.
It was as if the white-haired boy, John Harness, had dragged him halfway to the Lot of another time. Andrew’s existence in twenty-first-century Harrow suddenly seemed tremulous. It was as if—the walls to the cistern room opened—it had become so much easier for Harness to drag him all the way down, down into that cold dank room
that’s what he wants
and maybe not just the cistern room, maybe farther below, maybe into that hole and into whatever black hell produces faces like the one he saw on the hill
gaunt sunk-eyed
full of rage, full of a regretful horror at its own actions
it’s why he is showing me, he can’t even stomach it himself.
Andrew’s shirt was sweat-soaked. A chill seized him. He wrapped himself in his damp sheets, and he shook.
PIERS FAWKES ANSWERED his door in jeans, a white T-shirt, and bright green, elbow-length rubber gloves on both hands.
“I’m not sure I’ve come to the right house,” said Dr. Kahn after a stunned pause.
“Judy, come in.”
Night had fallen. Orange streetlights had engulfed the Hill. The scent of cooking oil and beer were borne by a crisp autumn breeze sweeping the Hill. A nice night to be out. No rain.
Dr. Kahn unwrapped her scarf and entered Fawkes’s apartment. Then she turned around in place, unbelieving. The floor had been mopped. The ashtrays had been emptied—and washed. The magazines and newspapers had been stacked. The dirty plates were no more to be seen, and beyond, in the kitchen, stood rows of dishes in a drying rack, and a bucket and mop. The stereo thumped a song by the Police, high-pitched and driven.
“Now I’m certain this is the wrong house,” she repeated. “What’s gotten into you? Is someone coming for a visit?”
“Sir Alan Vine.” He held her gaze. “I’m on probation.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head.
“They’re not blaming you for the boy dying?”
“Not directly, of course. But if I had been more vigilant . . .”
“That’s horribly unfair!”
Fawkes shrugged, turned down the music, and went to the kitchen to put on a kettle. Dr. Kahn flung her coat on the sofa and followed him.
“Who did it—Jute?”
“Who else.”
“Why did he wait so bloody long, then?” she said, indignantly. “It’s been weeks.”
“There were other contributing factors of more recent vintage.”
“Such as?” she asked.
“Let’s see . . . the fact that I smashed down the walls of my own house, and frightened the boys.”
“Yes, I received your message.”
“Were you able to find out anything?” he asked. He went to retrieve a box of tea bags from the cabinet. Dr. Kahn watched as his hands shook violently.
“Piers, are you ill?” she interrupted. “Shall I come back another time?”
He looked at her in surprise. “No, not ill. Please, stay.” His expression turned plaintive.
“All right. Well. I did some cursory reading,” she said. “The Lot is actually constructed around the core of the old house. On the same spot. It was done a hundred and fifty years ago, to save money on demolition and reconstruction, I suppose. What you found is no doubt part of that original house.”
“So this is not a discovery,” he said, disappointed.
“Still, it’s fascinating. I’d like to see it.”
“Jute thinks I’m spreading hysteria.”
“Hm,” she said, taking another look at Fawkes and his spotless kitchen, which had scrubbing powders and paper towels and garbage bags flung about. “I’m still trying to understand all this cleaning, Piers. You’re not yourself.”
Fawkes flung open one of his cabinets and stood aside to show his guest that the white wood box stood empty. “Notice anything?”
“I notice nothing.”
“Exactly. This cabinet used to contain gin, vodka, eau de vie, whiskey, bitters . . . calvados . . . Filfar . . .” He took in Dr. Kahn’s questioning look. “My sobriety was called into question,” he explained.
She pursed her lips. “I see.”
“I know, I know. You’ve been warning me.”
“Jute said this.”
“He said the boys were noticing.”
“Did he suggest some sort of program?”
Fawkes snorted. “Jute is not the program type.”
“No.”
“He said we must uphold professional standards. He wants me out, obviously.” Fawkes slammed the cabinet door shut. “So I’m stopping.”
“Stopping drinking!” she declared. “You?”
“Don’t make fun, Judy. I’m about to fucking fall apart as it is.” He put a hand to his forehead and used the other to lean against the counter. “I feel like a badly made toy. Like I’m about to sproing all over, my gears falling out . . . like I’m held together by tape.”
“Your metaphors are suffering as well,” she observed wryly, but he gave her such a mournful glance that she broke into a pitiful laugh. “Oh, Piers, I’m only teasing. I’m relieved. You were drinking far too much. You would have been dead by sixty.”
He grunted. “I can’t write.”
“You’ll readjust.”
“I can’t sleep.”
Dr. Kahn chewed her lip. “Piers,” she said at last, in a gentle tone of voice.
“Hm?”
“Your kettle’s boiling.”
“Ah!” Steam had been billowing and frothing from the spout. Fawkes grabbed the kettle and promptly burned his hand. He leapt back, sucking the wound, then thrust it under cold water in the tap. Dr. Kahn calmly turned off the gas and watched her friend in pity.
THEY SAT AT Fawkes’s kitchen table with two steaming mugs of tea in front of them. Fawkes spooned four teaspoons of sugar into his. Then, after a moment, a fifth. He smoked. He hugged himself with his arms. His foot tapped the floor. He offered Dr. Kahn milk for the third time.
“The fact is, I couldn’t write before, either,” he said suddenly.
Dr. Kahn waited.
“I was frozen on the bloody play for nine months. Not until the American showed up did I have the slightest whisper of inspiration.”
“Why him?”
“He’s the picture of Byron! Well, Byron at that age. Angry, needy. Also, there’s something . . . skittish about him. Have you noticed? Like if you don’t feed him the exact morsel of attention he needs, he’ll fall apart. Do you know what I mean?”
She nodded. “At the library, two nights ago, he became quite unhinged.”
“He’s got me back on track, somehow. Like giving me a sitter, to paint. Emotionally Starved Orphan. Oil on canvas.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Hm?”
“Why do you think meeting Andrew inspired you?”
“The ghost story, for one thing. He told you?”
“He did.”
“What did you think?”
“Credible,” she said after a pause.
Fawkes gave her a look of surprise.
“I felt something strange when I came home the other night,” she said, explaining herself. “When you called. It was extremely unpleasant.”
“You, too?” Fawkes described what he and Andrew had experienced in his study. “I wondered if it was just me. Just us.”
“Us meaning . . . ?”
“Andrew and me.”
“Hm,” she grunted. Then ventured: “I think there’s another reason why Andrew Taylor is inspiring you.”
“What’s that?”
“I think he’s a reflection of you. Because you’re the one who’s emotionally starved.”
“Are you going to psychoanalyze me?”
“Why did you start drinking so much?” she countered.
“Because I’m thirsty,” he said. “Not because I’m starved.”
“Be serious.”
“Because a bloody teenager died in my house!” Fawkes burst out. “Because every family within a hundred miles is emailing me, wanting answers, wanting explanations. Because the head man, and Theo Ryder’s parents, are blaming me! They say, Oh, sure, it’s an undetectable disease,” he said, flatly, “and you’re not a doctor. But underneath, you can tell. It’s the way they look at you. Somehow, if you were doing your job right, it wouldn’t have happened. But of course! How could I have forgotten my Handy Housemaster Undetectable Disease Kit! I could have saved the day!”
“Quite right,” said Dr. Kahn, coolly.
“You’re humoring me. I did everything I could for him, Judy,” he said. “I took him to the bloody morgue.”
“I know.”
“And still I get the blame! What am I doing wrong?”
“You’re being,” Dr. Kahn said, in answer, “a selfish, narcissistic prick.”
He sat up straight, stung.
“Really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Would you be so kind as to explain?”
“A boy died, Piers.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“What do we do when other people die?”
“We drink ourselves silly.”
“Yes. And we make it all about us, and we make it a big drama involving the headmaster, and we spend a lot of time whinging about how it’s going to affect our poetry,” she said acidly.
“Ouch,” said Fawkes.
“What do other people do when their loved ones die?” She repeated the question rhetorically.
“I haven’t the foggiest. Weep. Ululate. Tear their hair out.”
“No one close to you has died?”
“My dad, some years ago.”
“And?”
“I went on a bender. I drank and fucked everything in sight for six weeks. I gained ten pounds. I got herpes,” he added. “So I’m maturing.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “The word I’m searching for is mourning, Piers.”
“I’ll be that light, unmeaning thing,” he intoned, “that smiles with all, and weeps with none.”
“Quotations. You’re a bag of them. But you’re all ashes and straw inside.”
“Ashes and straw. I’m going to use that.”
“To mourn is a transitive verb. You should appreciate that, at least. You mourn someone. Have you mourned Theo Ryder?”
“I barely knew him,” he grunted.
“He was a boy in your house.” Dr. Kahn watched him. Fawkes’s face hung slack. Puffy, pale, spotty. He did look ill, and miserable. “You cared for him. In every sense.”
“Did I?”
“You did,” she said emphatically. “You did a fine job.”
“Thank you, Judy.”
“But we’re still talking about you, aren’t we?”
“I barely knew him!” He threw up his hands.
She changed tack. “When Jute put you on probation, why did you decide to stop drinking? Why not just go on another bender?”
“I need to finish the play,” he mumbled.
“Because you’re better than Jute thinks. You said it yourself. You did everything you could for Theo, and if you quit now, you’re the housemaster who let a boy die in his house, who couldn’t cope. And that’s not you. And you’ve got boys relying on you now, who need you. Andrew Taylor. What did you call him? A beggar? An urchin?”
“Orphan.”
“He’s Oliver Twist, holding out his bowl, begging. You’re not the kind to walk away. You think you are. But you’re not, really.”
“Andrew Taylor is merely a means for me to understand Byron better,” Fawkes said coldly, stubbing out his umpteenth cigarette of the day. “I want this ghost business to pan out. I want to use it for the play. If not in the actual plot, then to get the play published. Andrew is the lynchpin.”
“Surely even you are not that mercenary?” Dr. Kahn eyed him searchingly. “Are you?” He did not answer. “Tell me you’re joking, Piers. That’s a despicable way to treat someone.”
He avoided her gaze. “Of course I’m joking.”
“Are you helping him?”
“I’m helping him with his research,” he said.
She shook her head. “You need to do more. He’s suffering. He’s your next Theo, Piers. But this one, you can save.”
“Me? Save someone else?”
“I know. It sounds improbable.”
Fawkes slurped the sugar sludge from the bottom of his teacup and set the cup down with a shaking hand.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a drink?” she asked, with sympathy.
“Forty-six hours.” He glanced at the clock. “And forty-one minutes.”
“You made that decision on your own, Piers. You knew you had to change. That means you’re doing it already. I have faith in you.”
“I feel a hundred years old.”
“You look awful,” she acknowledged.
“Thanks,” he drawled sarcastically. Then added: “Cunt.”
She smiled. “Give me one of those.” She reached over and lit herself a cigarette.
“What if I’m not cut out for it?” he said at last.
“Cut out for what?”
“For being . . . you know. Caring. Being a human being.”
“Of course you are. We all are.”
“You’re not,” he said accusingly.
“What an awful thing to say!”
“You and your archives,” he continued. “Barking at your assistants, frightening the boys to death. Guarding your library like an ogre.”
“You’re calling me an ogre now!”
“Maybe some people are just not cut out to be with other people,” he concluded.
They both reached for their tea and sipped.
“Well,” she said, after a silence, “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
Their gazes met, and held. Fawkes’s frown melted into a reluctant smile.