Essay Club, Part II
THE HILL BUZZED at nightfall.
THE DAY HAD been almost entirely useless. Classes were held, true. But it seemed like a repetition of the day after Theo Ryder died, weeks prior; the boys full of rumors and unanswered questions. Only this time it was worse. The beaks merely went through the motions. Any wild rumor or false bit of gossip, introduced however arbitrarily, became cause to stop class and discuss what everyone wanted to discuss, which was the rumor of a TB outbreak in the Lot; the rumor that school was closing; the rumor that four students had gone to hospital and would soon be dead like Theo Ryder. In the small classroom spaces, sneezes brought severe glances; coughs could cause ejection from class. (You’d better go back to the house and see Matron, Seabrook. You don’t sound well.) The queue in Dr. Rogers’s infirmary filled the waiting room chairs and strung halfway down the stairs. Most distressingly, no one was even bothering to deny the rumors. Which could only mean, of course, that the worst and wildest of them were true. Harrow School—as the school gossips were happy to repeat—was shutting down.
In the headmaster’s office, the telephone call Colin Jute had been waiting for came a little before three in the afternoon. It was from a doctor at Royal Tredway Hospital. The news was good—at first. The boys’ tests are negative. Rhys Davies and Andrew Taylor were free of the mycobacterium tuberculosis. The headmaster rose, elated, standing at his desk, ready to hang up and take action: to send word around that the crisis had been averted; there was no danger; no risk to the other boys; no need to close the school for the first time in its history. He felt a flush of victory.
But the doctor seemed to be reading from notes, and he was not done. He informed the headmaster that the condition of the two Harrow students in treatment—Slough and Vine—was deteriorating. Jute sat back down. The parents had already been informed, the doctor said; but he assumed that the school would be interested. Of course, Jute replied. Yes, quite. To his credit, the headmaster felt several moments of pure sympathy before hanging up the phone and wondering what the hell he was going to do.
If those two went, that would make three dead students.
God, it would be national news.
He went to his calendar, and felt a pang of dread. He had dinner in London, that evening, with the governors. It began at six (his car would be there shortly); their quarterly review of the finances with the accountants, followed by a meal. What horrible timing. He reached for the plastic binder with the financial statements. They seemed remote, meaningless. Then again, he thought to himself, perhaps this was a good thing, an opportunity. Yes, it could be a lucky stroke, in fact . . . if things got ugly, which they very well might, he would need the governors’ support. He would need to appear to manage the situation—not of his making—with clarity and strength. Right. He would call the key governors now—his “core four,” Hovey, Gorensen, Brothers, and Jeffery—and prime them; then use the occasion of the dinner to put things in context, to prepare the governors, proactively . . . Jute began scribbling notes for himself. He called for Margaret and asked for the mobile numbers of the core four. Then he would shower; change; get battle-ready. He had just enough time.
HOURS LATER, AS Colin Jute’s town car swerved through Piccadilly traffic to the columned portal of the Cavalry and Guards Club, throngs of Harrovians began returning to their houses.
They climbed the slope from the dining hall in clusters, buzzing with excited chatter. Anyone watching might have assumed that these were students returning from a long holiday, energized to be back together, to tell the jokes and anecdotes they’d been saving that they knew would amuse their friends. Yet this show of camaraderie came not from long separation, but from nerves. From gratitude that they had survived, that the school had not been shut down; and while more disaster and bad news might arrive tomorrow, it was unlikely anything more would happen today. Time to spend several unsupervised hours in the houses doing absolutely no work and burning off their copious nervous energy. Sixth Formers mentally calculated their beer allowances. Shells took inventory of celebratory candy supplies. A kind of fin de siècle giddiness overtook them. They would have fun tonight, as if it were their last together.
There were exceptions. Four boys checked their watches, ducked the curious glances of their peers, and headed to their rooms to change their clothes. These boys, all Sixth Formers, were not missed in the common rooms; they weren’t the hell-raisers anyway. They hurriedly slipped off their greyers and pulled on the thicker striped trousers. They strapped the black silk waistcoats over their white shirts and black ties. They slid on tailcoats, adjusted the flaps behind them, and gave their hair an extra combing. Then, from the various directions and houses across the Hill—from far-flung Rendalls, coming up the ivy-covered Grange Road; or clattering down the stairs from Headmasters—they made their ways to the Classics Schools, for Essay Club.
Father Peter walked with Fawkes. The priest carried a briefcase, which held a small booklet bearing the seal of the Diocese of Worcester; a Church of England prayer book; a bottle of water; and the soft green twig of a fir tree, snapped off and pocketed that morning during his 6 A.M. run.
Fawkes walked upright, with an aspect that very nearly resembled self-esteem. When he had found a bottle of gin mysteriously at hand that morning, he had struggled—his heart thrumming with desire as if some naked and very available woman had just minced into the room—but he had defeated the urge and poured its contents down the drain, his nose wrinkled half in disgust, half regret.
The two men—Father Peter in his clerical collar, Fawkes in a tie—arrived at the Classics Schools, the lights of far-off London at their back, and opened the broad door to Mr. Toombs’s Latin classroom, lit by candles, with only a few faces around its oval table. Out of eight boys they saw four—Antoniades, Askew, Wallace, and Christelow—and out of three faculty advisors, they saw two. Dr. Kahn igniting the last of the candles. Mr. Toombs laying out the silver goblets. Wallace, with his slouch, peeled the plastic wrapper off a new bottle of Madeira and prepared to pour.
Fawkes hung there in the lintel. “No Andrew?” he guessed.
Dr. Kahn shook her head.
“Isn’t Andrew one of the chaps who was sick?” noted the lanky, forelocked Rupert Askew in his sleepy Sloane drawl, from his seat at the oval table. “Maybe he can’t come.”
“He’s coming,” Fawkes replied.
“Is that a good thing?” persisted Askew, looking from face to face. “There are a lot of rumors. About him in particular, I mean.”
“What sort of rumors?” asked Mr. Toombs.
“Well, that he brought the disease with him from America. Basically, he killed Theo Ryder. And now these others too. . . .”
“That’s quite irresponsible!” Mr. Toombs interrupted. “Nothing but gossip.”
“Sir, you asked me what the rumors were!” Askew defended himself. “And it’s not just me. That’s why Harris stayed away from tonight’s meeting.”
“And Turnbull, and the others,” added Christelow. “They were talking about it at supper.”
“It can’t be true, can it?” said Mr. Toombs. “Piers?”
“It’s not true,” said Fawkes. “Andrew is not sick. He was tested.”
“Andrew is leaving,” announced Scroop Wallace as he leaned over the first goblet and filled it with Madeira.
“Leaving?” said Mr. Toombs. “Leaving school?”
“I emailed him earlier, about a lesson, and he said he wasn’t doing it. When I asked him why, he said it’s because he’s being removed from school.”
“Do we have to stay, then?” asked Askew.
“Essay Club is a voluntary activity,” Mr. Toombs replied tartly. “Removed by whom?” he demanded.
“His parents,” Wallace replied. Wallace had a slight hunch and pasty skin, and when he spoke people had the shivery feeling he was manipulating words the way sadistic children toy with bugs. He seemed to take cold delight in this news.
“They’re frightened, I suppose,” offered Askew, knowingly. “With all the disease and death in the Lot. It’s only natural.”
“Are you leaving, too, Mr. Fawkes?” asked Nick Antoniades.
Nick was head of Headland House, Fawkes recalled. Sir Alan must have let something drop. “I am, yes.”
“Really, Piers?” gasped Mr. Toombs.
Askew leapt on this. “What—the school?”
“That’s right.”
“This is all mad!” he laughed. “Honestly, Mr. Toombs—why are we here? The speaker’s not coming, and even if he were, he’s leaving Harrow. The masters in the club are leaving. No one here’s even part of the school!”
“You’re being extremely rude, Rupert. I’m seriously considering asking you to leave the club altogether,” lashed out Mr. Toombs. Askew assumed a hurt expression. The other boys grinned. “Our chairwoman has called a meeting. Until she says otherwise, Essay Club is on. Andrew wrote his essay on short notice, I’m told. In all—and especially given what I’ve heard here tonight, he deserves a few extra minutes. . . .”
At that moment the door opened. The candles fluttered. Andrew Taylor stood in the doorway with a bleary expression, hair flattened on one side, holding a sheaf of papers.
HE FELT IT at once. Almost as soon as he walked into the room. That full-of-water feeling. That living pressure, that surface tension, so strong it almost ejected him forcibly from the room. He felt them on him: eyes. Even though he was not in position yet, he felt those eyes staring across the table, drilling into the spot—at the head—where he would soon be sitting, in a high-backed chair, with its fan of blond-wood spokes. It was as if those eyes were ahead of time: already fixed: an inevitability. He felt them as he gripped his pages, as he turned sideways to slip past Christelow, as he greeted Fawkes with a nod and noticed Father Peter with a raised eyebrow, as he heard Mr. Toombs say and here we are very good of you to come Andrew I was just saying what short notice you received for your preparation as if they were words spoken from a boat deck high above, and he was sinking into dark water . . . but not yet. Somewhere in the murk stood Dr. Kahn, watching him—aware and empathic, here among the jostling boys.
He edged to his seat but did not raise his eyes. The boys settled down. Mr. Toombs made more polite remarks, something about a swan song very sad to hear about your departure it feels as if we had just got to know you and were very glad to have you among our number. Andrew was surprised that at least one voice—okay, two—let loose a modest but a clear Hear, hear. (Wallace and Antoniades. Unexpected.) But at least we are able to partake in your essay . . . very fortunate . . .
Mr. Toombs’s voice trailed off in order to yield the floor to the speaker. And that was Andrew. He shuffled his papers, then arranged them to catch the maximum of the candles’ peachy glow.
he could not raise his eyes or he would see Harness
Harness was here
His pulse raced. What would happen if he did look? If he did greet those eyes? And whose chair was Harness sitting in? That empty one there, at eleven o’clock?
you know whose
He was glad he had written out the essay, instead of merely typing out notes—Dr. Kahn had been correct—because without his script he would have been lost. His mind sloshed and spilled, like someone running with a bucket. Sleep deprivation had unbalanced him.
and that presence
He felt as if he were on a slope, tipping forward
into the figure; crouched, pounce-ready
Harness—he knew—glared at him. Harness no longer felt any resemblance of love, lust, or desire. Just hate. Harness knew that Andrew, Fawkes, and Father Peter had come here to do battle. The room stank of it. The musk of a fight. And Harness was swelling his chest and limbering for combat.
I dare you even to extend yourself I dare you even to show yourself because if you do I will smash you
I know you are here to extinguish me but I have reserves you cannot underestimate ferocity and fierceness of life you know me too well to think you can
Didn’t you see what I did to the girl to your friend
How could Andrew continue his pretense of normalcy, in the face of this hostility? Yet there was Mr. Toombs, looking at him expectantly, with his pink cheeks and spectacles. Couldn’t Mr. Toombs, and the others, feel it as well? How could Andrew do something as refined as read aloud in such an environment? Like playing a violin recital on the prow of a rushing train. He felt nauseated, gripping the sides of the paper with his fingertips. He just wanted to crawl away, to sleep.
Andrew had watched the dawn come and had ended his essay abruptly. He had returned to his room in the Lot and packed his large suitcase. He lay there and thought of Persephone, tried to think about what the next day would bring for her—for them—but he could not project his exhausted mind into past or future anymore. This tortured mental cycling lasted until midafternoon, when a fit of last-minute stage nerves attacked, and he frantically retyped the final pages of the essay. Printed, stapled, and then, at last, napped . . . then an oh-shit wake-up . . . followed by a frantic run across the Hill, at 7:04 P.M.
Ahem.
The Truth About the Lot Ghost.
Lord Byron, he read, fell in love with John Harness when the latter was what we would call a Remove
The presence swelled. The others must feel it now, he was sure of it. He thought he saw Fawkes shuffle, suddenly uncomfortable, and Dr. Kahn pull her shawl around her as if a chill had descended.
Andrew read, automatically. Homosexual love at Harrow. Lord Byron and John Harness. Their love letters. The jealousies, the sexual predation, followed by the swoons of Cambridge. He was aware of the discomfited fidgets of his Harrow classmates. Askew in particular twisted in his seat, searching, frantically, dying to meet someone’s glance: Can he really be writing about this? This is gay porn! Are we really sorry this fellow is leaving school?
But Andrew sensed the presence fierce and close.
Eyes boring into him.
Teeth gritted.
Animal.
Waiting.
DO NOT LOOK UP
“Byron and Harness’s affair at Cambridge was thrown into sobering relief,” Andrew read slowly, as Fawkes had coached him, “by the death of one of Byron’s close friends, Charles Skinner Matthews, who—aside from being regarded as one of the most brilliant and intellectually daring of the Cambridge set—was the closest to an ‘out’ homosexual that Byron knew. Matthews’s death itself, in addition to being sudden, and therefore shocking, possessed elements of horror and scandal as well. While publicized as an accidental drowning in the Cam River, Matthews more likely had killed himself—a suicide, by gripping the weeds in the river bottom until he was overcome. This incident may have been the turning point for Byron and Harness. If the brilliant Matthews had decided he could not face life as a homosexual in England, how could they? He had executed upon himself the sentence of England’s Bloody Code: homosexuality deserves death. It was enough to persuade them that England held no future for a gay couple, however they might cloak their true emotions as friendship.”
Hang in there.
Now came Mary Cameron, the sixteen-year-old prostitute, Byron’s slutty, gritty, street-smart fuck buddy; and Andrew Taylor the essayist could not help but grin to himself because he could tell through his peripheral vision that Askew was hooked; almost open-mouthed. Gay porn . . . now straight porn? What an essay!
“After Harness left Cambridge, Byron struck up what we might call a ‘rebound’ love affair with none other than a teenaged London whore, whom he bought from her madam—like someone paying down the lease on a car—for twenty-five pounds . . .”
Byron impregnated Mary. Brimming with guilt over abandoning Harness to London and poverty, he intended to do the right thing by this waif: marry her. His friends were outraged. It was a stupid, impulsive move; they piled on the letters and advice to get rid of her; Byron refused; but Mary herself, confused, and acting on her own professional instincts, sat down one afternoon in the Durant Street hotel and chewed hundreds of sulfur match heads until she became ill, and aborted the fetus in a pool of blood. This was especially awkward for the doctor called to the scene because Mary Cameron at that moment was dressed as a boy. “Byron had been disguising her, so that a normally socially unacceptable companion—a Cockney hooker—could become, for lack of a better term, socially portable. He could take her with him anywhere, as long as he called her his cousin, sometimes even his brother.”
The marriage talk ended. But the sexual liaison with Mary Cameron didn’t. Byron’s poetry of these months spoke of tender, physical intimacy:
Can I forget—canst thou forget,
When playing with thy golden hair,
How quick thy fluttering heart did move?
the rage builds
a great fist
“All the while,” Andrew swallowed, fear nearly overcoming him, “John Harness was aware of the liaison. But tricked by the swirling rumors, Harness was aware only that a mysterious young man had replaced him as Byron’s consort. This gives rise in Harness to a murderous rage. This rage climaxed here at Harrow School, at Speech Day in 1809. Byron was staying—my research suggests—at the Three Arrows Inn, where the murder took place.”
Andrew could hear the breathing. It was wet and lungy.
“What precisely happened at the Three Arrows, is, of course, impossible to know.”
Andrew afforded himself a glance at Fawkes. Fawkes stared, so frozen-looking that Andrew stammered and lost the train of the sentence. They must feel it, too, now. He looked around the table. All the other faces, uncomfortable.
“What?” he asked, breaking his flow.
“Go on, Andrew,” croaked Fawkes.
because the icy bath of the presence had touched them all—they were pale, rigid, all of them, shadowed over with death
The only thing to do was to keep reading and
NOT TO LOOK UP NOT TO LOOK AT THE SEAT ACROSS
“Due to the fact that certain original letters of Harness’s were found at Harrow School,” he continued with monumental effort, now reading in a gale wind, “it can only be assumed that Harness and Byron met at their old house, the Lot. There they had a confrontation in a basement cistern room, a former secret meeting place of theirs. Harness had returned to Harrow to confront Byron about his change in loyalties. Byron met Harness to try and stop his obsessive stalking once and for all. This argument resulted in Byron returning Harness’s letters and, significantly, the carnelian ring that Harness had given Byron as a love token, a symbol of their union. In the aftermath of this fight, Byron goes out on a social call and leaves his mistress at the inn. John Harness, overcome by a jealous rage, seizes his opportunity.
“During Byron’s absence, Harness steals to the lovers’ room. He finds Mary Cameron and attacks her with his remaining strength. He manages to suffocate her to death. He has a moment of triumph: he has vanquished his rival. In this moment, carried away by his victory, he decides to leave a token: he pulls Byron’s carnelian ring from his own finger and places it on that of the dead girl. Now Byron—and only Byron—will know who has committed this murder. (These are the days before fingerprints.) Yet he has a horrible surprise: the corpse is a woman’s. Harness was expecting a male rival. Recognizing his mistake, he slinks off to die, unsure of whether he has killed his true rival, or some stranger who happened to have been in Byron’s room by mistake.
“Byron returns. He is astonished to find a dead body in his room. He is stricken to find . . .”
ALMOST INEVITABLY—IT was an instinct—Andrew now raised his eyes to meet John Harness’s. Andrew had to catch his breath. He had never seen such malice. A shapely nose with long, flared nostrils; thin lips; small, babyish teeth; high cheekbones and forehead. It was at once a face of dignity and intelligence, and the devil’s own face, curled and singed with murderous, white-hot hate. Andrew felt a pang of tragedy; perhaps in some other world, John Harness might have blossomed. Yet here he was, still imprisoned by the purity of his own venom.
“ . . . his own lover, dead upon the floor, strangled. He finds the token. He immediately understands. And his heartbreak is doubled, since he has lost two lovers now: one to death, another to the sickening betrayal of this act. His beloved John Harness is a murderer.”
Andrew met the eyes again.
The room plunged into cold.
Andrew . . . Mr. Toombs spoke; nervous; his voice catching . . .
Andrew began to fade away, overwhelmed by those eyes
“No records we could find ever accuse Byron of murder—and such a report, surely, would have survived history, given Byron’s later fame and talent for scandal. Byron, in the moment, must have done the prudent thing and preserved his own reputation. He would have waited until the dark of night, dressed Mary Cameron in her women’s clothing once again—her whore’s clothing—and carried her through paths he would know well (didn’t he compose “Lines Written Beneath an Elm in the Churchyard of Harrow”?) to Church Hill, and dumped her body there. The corpse would be found in the morning, in the spot very near to where our own friend, Theodore Ryder, was found . . . by me . . . earlier this school year . . .”
Andrew’s voice cracked.
THE BOYS AND masters in the room later recalled hearing, at that point, a sound like an animal growling.
“Andrew.” Now it was Dr. Kahn who spoke. She was warning him. But he heard it, too.
The growling
He looked up at the face
It was smiling; or was it snarling? Harness had risen from his chair. His teeth were bared.
You’re in for it now
I am not the growling animal you hear
I have conjured him in time
You know whose chair I am sitting in
The door to Mr. Toombs’s classroom opened. A figure stood there—a real figure. Pale. Rumpled. Grey stubble on his cheeks. Face transfigured by misery; a stuffed black overnight bag on his shoulder. The nine seated figures in the room turned to the door. There Sir Alan stared back at them, eyes vague and watery. His glasses—usually bright and sharp as a weapon on his face—were for once off-center, greasy. His glance searched the room, then fell on Andrew.
“You’re here,” he said, “reading an essay.”
Fawkes stood, rousing himself from the spell. On instinct, he blocked any clear passage Sir Alan might have toward the head of the table. Dr. Kahn pushed out her chair on the other side. The only way for Sir Alan to reach Andrew was over the table.
“You’re here,” he repeated, his voice growing in volume and anger, “reading an essay!” The candles guttered, as if blown by the grieving father’s breath.
Andrew saw Harness now, standing, crouching, ready to pounce
Or was it Sir Alan the two were one
“Persephone is making a sound, now,” Sir Alan lamented, his eyes streaming tears, “like nothing a human should produce. It’s a slow . . . gurgle. It sounds like air eking through a water pipe. Which, in a way, is exactly what it is. You see, she is so weak,” he choked, “she’s so weak she cannot even spit out the blood and . . . secretions . . . in her chest. She can’t even cough anymore. I thought that was the worst. Expectorating her own blood. But the worst, I know now, is when she stops. The doctors have a name for this . . . Mister Taylor,” he spat the words with fury. “They call it the death rattle. When the death rattle comes, they say, she has fifty-seven hours to live. On average. Fifty-seven! How would you like to spend two of them, coming back to tell my daughter to her face that you murdered her? Or better yet, how would you like to be locked away, as you deserve?” He fished a mobile phone from his pocket and thrust it in the air. “Shall I call the Health Protection Agency?”
“Andrew was tested,” Fawkes said. “He does not have tuberculosis.”
“Shut up, you ass,” snarled Sir Alan. “I know what he did.” Then his voice quieted unnervingly. “And you’re here . . . reading an essay.”
The body language of the others in the room eased with this falling cadence; Sir Alan was calming down, they told themselves; he was rational. The room of listeners wished very badly for something to appear normal, if even for a minute. But they soon discovered it was just the ocean receding before a wave.
“To hell with you!” screamed Sir Alan, and he lunged across the table. And Andrew Taylor saw him
John Harness
in midair; John Harness an inch from his face; John Harness, in a shocking, final trump—oh the irony, young Mister Taylor, you who wished to defeat your enemy with a story—Andrew saw Sir Alan Vine fly across the table, at him; and in that flight
Vittoria Corombona
The barking strangling sunken-cheeked killer on the hill
The limber pale lover
Harness overtook Andrew’s body, making him gasp as a man does plunging into arctic water. Wind swept through the open door. The candles flickered, and went out.