Skippy Dies: A Novel Read online

  ‘Between the crosses, row on row,That mark our place, and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, fly,Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived –’

  At this point the bell rings. In a single motion the daydreaming and somnolent snap awake, grab their bags, stow their books and move as one for the door. ‘For tomorrow, read the end of the chapter,’ Howard calls over the melee. ‘And while you’re at it, read the stuff you were supposed to read for today.’ But the class has already fizzed away, and Howard is left as he always is, wondering if anyone has been listening to a single thing he’s said; he can practically see his words crumpled up on the floor. He packs away his own book, wipes clean the board and sets off to fight his way through the home-time throng to the staffroom.

  In Our Lady’s Hall, hormonal surges have made giants and midgets of the crowd. The tang of adolescence, impervious to deodorant or opened windows, hangs heavy, and the air tintinnabulates with bleeps, chimes and trebly shards of music as two hundred mobile phones, banned during the school day, are switched back on with the urgency of divers reconnecting to their oxygen supply. From her alcove a safe elevation above it, the plaster Madonna with the starred halo and the peaches-and-cream complexion pouts coquettishly at the rampaging maleness below.

  ‘Hey, Flubber!’ Dennis Hoey scampers across Howard’s path to waylay William ‘Flubber’ Cooke. ‘Hey, I just wanted to ask you a question?’

  ‘What?’ Flubber immediately suspicious.

  ‘Uh, I was just wondering – are you a bummer tied to a tree?’

  Brows creasing, Flubber – fourteen stone and on his third trip through second year – turns this over.

  ‘It’s not a trick or anything,’ promises Dennis. ‘I just wanted to know, you know, if you’re a bummer tied to a tree.’

  ‘No,’ Flubber resolves, at which Dennis takes flight, declaring exuberantly, ‘Bummer on the loose! Bummer on the loose!’ Flubber lets out a roar and prepares to give chase, then stops abruptly and ducks off in the other direction as the crowd parts and a tall, cadaverous figure comes striding through.

  Father Jerome Green: teacher of French, coordinator of Seabrook’s charitable works, and by some stretch the school’s most terrifying personage. Wherever he goes it is with two or three bodies’ worth of empty space around him, as if he’s accompanied by an invisible retinue of pitchfork-wielding goblins, ready to jab at anyone who happens to be harbouring an impure thought. As he passes, Howard musters a weak smile; the priest glares back at him the same way he does at everyone, with a kind of ready, impersonal disapproval, so adept at looking into man’s soul and seeing sin, desire, ferment that he does it now like ticking a box.

  Sometimes Howard feels dispiritedly as if not one thing has changed here in the ten years since he graduated. The priests in particular bring this out in him. The hale ones are still hale, the doddery ones still dodder; Father Green still collects canned food for Africa and terrorizes the boys, Father Laughton still gets teary-eyed when he presents the works of Bach to his unheeding classes, Father Foley still gives ‘guidance’ to troubled youngsters, invariably in the form of an admonition to play more rugby. On bad days Howard sees their endurance as a kind of personal rebuke – as if that almost-decade of life between matriculation and his ignominious return here had, because of his own ineptitude, been rolled back, struck from the record, deemed merely so much fudge.

  Of course this is pure paranoia. The priests are not immortal. The Holy Paraclete Fathers are experiencing the same problem as every other Catholic order: they are dying out. Few of the priests in Seabrook are under sixty, and the newest recruit to the pastoral programme – one of an ever-dwindling number – is a young seminarian from somewhere outside Kinshasa; when the school principal, Father Desmond Furlong, fell ill at the beginning of September, it was a layman – economics teacher Gregory L. Costigan – who took the reins, for the first time in Seabrook’s history.

  Leaving behind the wood-panelled halls of the Old Building, Howard passes up the Annexe, climbs the stairs, and opens, with the usual frisson of weirdness, the door marked ‘Staffroom’. Inside, a half-dozen of his colleagues are kvetching, marking homework or changing their nicotine patches. Without addressing anyone or otherwise signalling his presence, Howard goes to his locker and throws a couple of books and a pile of copies into his briefcase; then, moving crab-like to avoid eye contact, he steals out of the room again. He clatters back down the stairs and the now-deserted corridor, eyes fixed determinedly on the exit – when he is arrested by the sound of a young female voice.

  It appears that, although the bell for the end of the school day rang a good five minutes ago, class in the Geography Room is still in full swing. Crouching slightly, Howard peers through the narrow window set in the door. The boys inside show no sign of impatience; in fact, by their expressions, they are quite oblivious to the passage of time.

  The reason for this stands at the head of the class. Her name is Miss McIntyre; she is a substitute. Howard has caught glimpses of her in the staffroom and on the corridor, but he hasn’t yet managed to speak to her. In the cavernous depths of the Geography Room, she draws the eye like a flame. Her blonde hair has that cascading quality you normally see only in TV ads for shampoo, complemented by a sophisticated magnolia two-piece more suited to a boardroom than a transition-year class; her voice, while soft and melodious, has at the same time an ungainsayable quality, an undertone of command. In the crook of her arm she cradles a globe, which while she speaks she caresses absently as if it were a fat, spoiled housecat; it almost seems to purr as it revolves langorously under her fingertips.

  ‘… just beneath the surface of the Earth,’ she is saying, ‘temperatures so high that the rock itself is molten – can anyone tell me what it’s called, this molten rock?’

  ‘Magma,’ croak several boys at once.

  ‘And what do you call it, when it bursts up onto the Earth’s surface from a volcano?’

  ‘Lava,’ they respond tremulously.

  ‘Excellent! And millions of years ago, there was an enormous amount of volcanic activity, with magma boiling up over the entire surface of the Earth non-stop. The landscape around us today’ – she runs a lacquered fingernail down a swelling ridge of mountain – ‘is mostly the legacy of this era, when the whole planet was experiencing dramatic physical changes. I suppose you could call it Earth’s teenage years!’

  The class blushes to its collective roots and stares down at its textbook. She laughs again, and spins the globe, snapping it under her fingertips like a musician plucking the strings of a double bass, then catches sight of her watch. ‘Oh my gosh! Oh, you poor things, I should have let you out ten minutes ago! Why didn’t someone say something?’

  The class mumbles inaudibly, still looking at the book.

  ‘Well, all right…’ She turns to write their homework on the blackboard, reaching up so that her skirt rises to expose the back of her knees; moments later the door opens, and the boys troop reluctantly out. Howard, affecting to study the photographs on the noticeboard of the Hillwalking Club’s recent outing to Djouce Mountain, watches from the corner of his eye until the flow of grey jumpers has ceased. When she fails to appear, he goes back to investi–

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry.’ He hunkers down beside her and helps her re-amass the pages that have fluttered all over the gritty corridor floor. ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you. I was just rushing back to a… a meeting…’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she says, ‘thanks,’ as he places a sheaf of Ordnance Survey maps on top of the stack she’s gathered back in her arms. ‘Thank you,’ she repeats, looking directly into his eyes, and continuing to look into them as they rise in unison to their feet, so that Howard, finding himself unable to look away, feels a brief moment of panic, as if they have somehow become locked together, like those apocryphal stories you hear about the kids who get their braces stuck together while kissing and have to get
the fire brigade to cut them out.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says again, reflexively.

  ‘Stop apologizing,’ she laughs.

  He introduces himself. ‘I’m Howard Fallon. I teach History. You’re standing in for Finian Ó Dálaigh?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘Apparently he’s going to be out till Christmas, whatever happened to him.’

  ‘Gallstones,’ Howard says.

  ‘Oh,’ she says.

  Howard wishes he could unsay gallstones. ‘So,’ he rebegins effortfully, ‘I’m actually on my way home. Can I give you a lift?’

  She cocks her head. ‘Didn’t you have a meeting?’

  ‘Yes,’ he remembers. ‘But it isn’t really that important.’

  ‘I have my own car, thanks all the same,’ she says. ‘But I suppose you could carry my books, if you like.’

  ‘Okay,’ Howard says. Possibly the offer is ironic, but before she can retract it he removes the stack of binders and textbooks from her hands and, ignoring the homicidal looks from a small clump of her pupils still mooning about the corridor, walks alongside her towards the exit.

  ‘So, how are you finding it?’ he asks, attempting to haul the conversation to a more equilibrious state. ‘Have you taught much before, or is this your first time?’

  ‘Oh’ – she blows upwards at a wayward strand of golden hair – ‘I’m not a teacher by profession. I’m just doing this as a favour for Greg, really. Mr Costigan, I mean. God, I’d forgotten about this Mister, Miss stuff. It’s so funny. Miss McIntyre.’

  ‘Staff are allowed to use first names, you know.’

  ‘Mmm… Actually I’m quite enjoying being Miss McIntyre. Anyhow, Greg and I were talking one day and he was saying they were having problems finding a good substitute, and it so happens that once upon a time I had fantasies of being a teacher, and I was between contracts, so I thought why not?’

  ‘What’s your field normally?’ He holds open the main door for her and they step out into the autumn air, which has grown cold and crisp.

  ‘Investment banking?’

  Howard receives this information with a studied neutrality, then says casually, ‘I used to work in that area myself, actually. Spent about two years in the City. Futures, primarily.’

  ‘What happened?’

  He cracks a grin. ‘Don’t you read the papers? Not enough future to go around.’

  She doesn’t react, waiting for the correct answer.

  ‘Well, I’ll probably get back into it someday,’ he blusters. ‘This is just a temporary thing, really. I sort of fell into it. Although at the same time, it’s nice, I think, to give something back? To feel like you’re making a difference?’ They make their way around the sixth-years’ car park, a series of Lexuses and TTs – and Howard’s heart sinks as his own car comes into view.

  ‘What’s with the feathers?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ He sweeps his hand along the car’s roof, ploughing a mighty drift of white feathers over the side. They pluff to the ground, from where some float back up to adhere to his trousers. Miss McIntyre takes a step backwards. ‘It’s just a… ah, sort of a gag the boys play.’

  ‘They call you Howard the Coward,’ she remarks, like a tourist inquiring the meaning of a puzzling local idiom.

  ‘Yes.’ Howard laughs mirthlessly, shovelling more feathers from his windscreen and bonnet and not offering an explanation. ‘You know, they’re good kids, generally, in this place, but there’s a few that can be a bit, ah, high-spirited.’

  ‘I’ll be on my guard,’ she says.

  ‘Well, like I say, it’s just a small percentage. Most of them… I mean, generally speaking it’s a wonderful place to work.’

  ‘You’re covered in feathers,’ she says judiciously.

  ‘Yes,’ he harrumphs, swiping his trousers summarily, straightening his tie. Her eyes, which are a brilliant and dazzling shade of blue custom-made for sparkling mockingly, sparkle mockingly at him. Howard has had enough humiliation for one day; he is just about to bow out with the last shreds of his dignity, when she says, ‘So what’s it like, teaching History?’

  ‘What’s it like?’ he repeats.

  ‘I’m really liking doing Geography again.’ She gazes dreamily around at the ice-blue sky, the yellowing trees. ‘You know, these titanic battles between different forces that actually created the shape of the world we’re walking around in today… it’s so dramatic…’ She squeezes her hands sensually, a goddess forging worlds out of raw matter, then fixes The Eyes on Howard again. ‘And History – that must be so much fun!’

  This isn’t the first word that springs to mind, but Howard limits himself to a bland smile.

  ‘What are you teaching at the moment?’

  ‘Well, in my last class we were doing the First World War.’

  ‘Oh!’ She claps her hands. ‘I love the First World War. The boys must be enjoying that.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ he says.

  ‘You should read them Robert Graves,’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He was in the trenches,’ she replies; then adds, after a pause, ‘He was also one of the great love poets.’

  ‘I’ll take a look,’ he scowls. ‘Any other tips for me? Any other lessons you’ve gleaned from your five days in the profession?’

  She laughs. ‘If I have any more I’ll be sure and pass them on. It sounds like you need them.’ She lifts the books out of Howard’s arms and aims her car key at the enormous white-gold SUV parked next door to Howard’s dilapidated Bluebird. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she says.

  ‘Right,’ Howard says.

  But she doesn’t move, and neither does he: she holds him there a moment purely by the light of her spectacular eyes, looking him over with the tip of her tongue tucked in the corner of her mouth, as if she is deciding what to have for dinner. Then, smiling at him coyly with a row of pointed white teeth, she says, ‘You know, I’m not going to sleep with you.’

  At first Howard is sure he must have misheard her; and when he realizes that he has not, he is still too stunned to reply. So he just stands there, or perhaps totters, and the next thing he knows she’s climbed into her jeep and pulled away, sending white feathers swirling about his ankles.

  The door swings open with a creak and you step inside, into the Great Hall. Spiderwebs cover everything, drifting from floor to ceiling like veils from a thousand left-behind brides. You look at the map and go through a door on the far side of the hall. This room used to be the library; books cover the floor in dusty piles. On the table is a scroll, but before you can read it the grandfather clock bursts open and there are one, two, three zombies coming at you! You swipe at them with the torch and duck round the other side of the table, but more appear in the doorway, drawn by the smell of someone alive –

  ‘Skippy, this is totally boring.’

  ‘Yeah, Skip, do you think someone else could have a go, maybe?’

  ‘I’ll just be a second,’ Skippy mumbles, as the zombies pursue him up a rickety staircase.

  ‘What do you think these zombies do all day?’ Geoff wonders. ‘When there’s no one around they want to eat?’

  ‘They order pizza,’ Dennis says. ‘Which Mario’s dad delivers.’

  ‘I told you a thousand times, my father is not a pizza deliveryman, he is an important diplomat in the Italian embassy,’ Mario snaps.

  ‘Seriously, though, how often is anyone going to call into their creepy house? Like, what do they do, just wander around it all day long, moaning to each other?’

  ‘They sound sort of like my parents,’ Geoff realizes. He gets up and stretches out his arms and staggers around the room, saying in a sepulchral zombie voice, ‘Geoff… put out the garbage… Geoff… I can’t find my glasses… We’ve made great sacrifices to send you to that school, Geoff…’

  Skippy wishes they would stop talking. Heat coils round his brain like a fat snake, tighter and tighter, making his eyelids heavy… and now just for a second the scre
en blurs, enough time for a raggy arm to fling itself around his neck – he shakes awake, he tries to wriggle free, but it’s too late, they’re all over him, pulling him to the ground, crowding around till he can’t even see himself, their long nails slashing down, their rotten teeth gnashing, and the little spinning light that is his soul whirls up to the ceiling…

  ‘Game over, Skippy,’ Geoff says in the zombie voice, laying a heavy hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Finally,’ Mario says. ‘Now can we play something else?’

  Skippy’s dorm, like all the other dorms, is in the Tower, which sits at the end of Our Lady’s Hall and is the very oldest part of Seabrook. In days of Yore, when the school was first built, the entire student population ate, slept and sat through classes here; nowadays, day boys form the majority of the pupils, and out of each year of two hundred there are only twenty or thirty unlucky souls who have to come back here after the bell has gone. Any Harry Potter-type fantasies tend to get squashed pretty quickly: life in the Tower, an ancient building composed mostly of draughts, is a deeply unmagical experience, spent at the mercy of lunatic teachers, bullies, athlete’s foot epidemics, etc. There are some small consolations. At a point in life in which the lovely nurturing homes built for them by their parents have become unendurable Guantánomos, and any time spent away from their peers is experienced at best as a mind-numbing commercial break for things no one wants to buy on some old person’s TV channel and at worst as a torture not incomparable to being actually genuinely nailed to a cross, the boarders do enjoy a certain prestige among the boys. They have a sort of sheen of independence; they can cultivate mysterious personae without having to worry about mums or dads showing up and blowing the whole thing by telling people about amusing ‘accidents’ they had when they were little or by publically admonishing them to please stop walking around with their hands wedged in their pockets like a pervert.

  Unarguably the best thing about being a boarder, though, is that the Tower overlooks, in spite of the feverish tree-planting efforts of the priests, the yard of St Brigid’s, the girls’ school next door. Every morning, lunchtime and evening the air rings with high feminine voices like lovely secular bells, and at night-time, before they close the curtains, you can see without even needing to look through the telescope – which is a good thing, because Ruprecht is extremely particular about what his telescope is used for, and always keeps it pointed into the girl-less reaches of the sky above – your female counterparts walking around in the upper windows, talking, brushing their hair or even, if you believe Mario, doing naked aerobics. That’s as close as you’ll get, though, because, while it’s the constant subject of plans and boasts and tall tales, no one has ever verifiably breached the wall between the two schools; nor has anyone conceived of a way past the St Brigid’s janitor and his infamous dog, Nipper, not to mention the terrifying Ghost Nun who legend has it roams the grounds after dark wielding either a crucifix or pinking shears, depending on who you talk to.