Saving the Queen Page 9

  Leary seized it. Though it was addressed directly to Chase, he broke the seal without a moment’s hesitation, passing his eyes, unhurriedly, over the enclosure.

  He looked up.

  “Sit down, both of you.” And to Oakes, softly, with a hint of the hangman’s humor: “… while you can.”

  He opened the door on the left end of the room by his desk, closed it, and strode down the length of the dark library, past the single window, opening, without knocking, a door at the left, at the far corner.

  Dr. Chase was on the telephone.

  The inner sanctum of Greyburn College was not large. When Dr. Chase had more than two visitors, he would elect to sit with them in the roomy library next door. Here it was just the two chairs opposite his authoritative desk, a few shelves of books, one or two pictures, a door to a private lavatory, and, through a bay window, a fine view of the college quadrangle. But the light, in the winter, was weak, so that the lamp on Dr. Chase’s desk was lit, X-raying his long thin hand, outstretched, now, to receive the envelope his automated servant Leary had wordlessly extended to him.

  Whoever was on the line was doing most of the talking. By the time Dr. Chase had got around to saying, “Very well, then, we’ll meet in London rather than here, Your Grace,” he had read the missive Mr. Simon had handed him. He hung up the telephone and eased his chair forward into the light’s territory, no longer a penumbral figure with a disembodied hand reaching like a tentacle from under the rock into the lit spaces of the world to transact necessary business. His rhythm through it all was unbroken, from the shadow of his telephone to the operating-table brilliance of the appointments calendar on his desk.

  “Well, I suppose we shall have to have him come in after tea. No, dash it, I see I shan’t be here—a council meeting in the town … tomorrow seems too far away. Sunday is bad for this kind of thing. And anyway, it’s no way to placate old Simon. He is very riled, and”—Dr. Chase exposed for the first time his extra-perfunctory interest in Blackford Oakes—“I wouldn’t say I’d blame him, dealing with that cheeky American brat.”

  “May I make a suggestion, sir?” Leary was valuable not only for making helpful suggestions but for making suggestions of particular, though not obvious, appeal to Dr. Chase. “Why not do it now? Your appointment with Dr. Keith isn’t until eleven, and it’s only ten-twenty. You wouldn’t have to leave here for fifteen or twenty minutes in any case.”

  Dr. Chase reflected, primarily for the sake of appearing deliberate. He made decisions quickly.

  “Very well. But is there a prefect about?”

  “Mr. Simon thinks of everything,” Mr. Leary smiled. “He sent Anthony Trust along as an escort.”

  “Very well.” Dr. Chase was now the man of action. “Never mind bringing the boy in here first. We’ll omit that. Put him straight down. I’ll talk to him when he’s ready.”

  Mr. Leary walked back to his office, saying nothing to the boys as he opened the door of the antechamber and posted, on the permanent hook outside, the frayed cardboard notice, “PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB,” normally reserved for late Friday afternoons and for faculty meetings. Then he turned to the boys, who had risen respectfully on his entrance. “Follow me.”

  They went into the library. Sitting in a chair and leafing through a black-bound register, Leary addressed Anthony without looking up at him, standing across the way, selfconsciously, in the gray light, Oakes at his side. “Trust, it hasn’t been all that long since you were here on … official business. You do remember what is expected of a prefect?” Trust said nothing, from which Leary assumed he had the answer he wanted.

  To Oakes:

  “Take off your coat, put it on the chair over there”—he pointed to an upright chair all but hidden behind the window light—“and loosen your braces. It’s quite simple, Oakes, merely unbutton the buttons forward and back; or, if you prefer, take off your vest and slide the braces off your shoulders.”

  Leary went off to the corner of the room and lifted the two-tiered block from under the bookcases, depositing it up against the sofa. It reposed now directly under the window, the shaft of light sharply but severely illuminating the block, isolating it altogether from the shadowed arm of the sofa to which it was now conjoined.

  Oakes stood, coatless, not knowing, exactly, what to do. His trousers did not need the braces to keep them up, so his arms hung limp by his sides.

  “Come here,” Leary motioned.

  Oakes approached him.

  “Unbutton your fly buttons.” He waited.

  “Now, kneel on the lower step, and bring your arms over the arm of the sofa.”

  Blackford did so. He felt, then, the cold hands of Mr. Leary taking up his shirttail and tucking it, tidily—was there an unnecessary motion there?—under his vest. And then, with a snapping motion, Leary yanked down the shorts, leaving Oakes with naked posteriors, cold, and—he thought in his fright and amazement—trembling, as they jutted up at a forty-five-degree angle, as exquisitely postured as any guillotine block to oblige the executioner.

  “Ready, Head,” Mr. Leary sang out without actually approaching the headmaster’s door.

  Dr. Chase did not materialize instantly. There was a long minute’s wait before Blackford could hear the steps approaching. He looked up as best he could at the tall and silent face of this man who ruled thus conclusively over the bodies and minds of 625 boys. Dr. Chase moved to a long cupboard directly opposite from that part of the sofa over which Black’s head was suspended, took a key chain from his pocket, located the right key, and opened the cupboard. At that moment, back in the study, the telephone rang. Leaving the door open, Dr. Chase walked resolutely, unhurriedly, back into his study, and though the sounds of the brief conversation reached the library, the words did not. Meanwhile Black, bent over, stared at the contents of the open closet. Two or three bundles of birch rods, several bamboo canes, and what appeared to be a collection of slippers, sitting at the bottom. Dr. Chase returned, selected, after some deliberation, a particular birch rod, withdrew it, laid it on the table by the far end of the sofa, sat down opposite Oakes, and took the black leather register handed to him by Mr. Leary, opened at the right page. Dr. Chase spoke for the first time.

  “Oakes. O-a-k-e-s. I have a good many complaints here about you, Oakes, though I have not previously acted on any of them. My mistake, I can see now. Tell me, sir, have you ever been beaten?”

  Blackford was hot now not only with fear but with rage. But he knew that nothing—no threat, no punishment—would deprive him of the imperative satisfaction of answering curtly. “No,” he said.

  Dr. Chase seemed to grow whiter, but then the same chalkwhite shaft of light that shone on Oakes’s rear end now flooded Dr. Chase’s face as he bent over his register, scribbling on the page reserved for O-a-k-e-s, B., a record of the forthcoming ministration.

  “Perhaps, sir,” Dr. Chase said icily, “that accounts for your bad manners?”

  Oakes said nothing.

  “We have a great deal to accomplish, here in Britain, during the next period. But we are not unwilling to take time for a little foreign aid. Perhaps America is not prepared to help Britain. But here at Greyburn, Britain is prepared to help America”—he stood up, handed the book to Mr. Leary, and walked over toward the rod—“even if our aid is administered to only one American at a time.”

  The moment had come, and suddenly Oakes found Trust’s hands grabbing him at the armpits, forcing his head down. Now, his face on the leather cushion, he could see the bottom half of Dr. Chase, walking over toward the executioner’s position.

  “You will receive nine strokes.”

  Black could hear Anthony gasp.

  Again there was a pause, and the whistling sound of the rod as Dr. Chase limbered his arm. After that, a moment such as, Oakes thought—in the furious state of his mind, recalling the war stories he had read so avidly that summer—the soldiers experience just before beginning their charge: the whole body and mind frozen in anticipation.
What happened then he could not have anticipated. The rod, the instrument of all Dr. Chase’s strength, wrath, and resentment, descended, and the pain was indescribable, outrageous, unforgettable. Oakes shouted as if he had been hosed down by a flame thrower. His legs shot out from the block. “Hold him tight” Dr. Chase hissed at Trust, who applied his whole body’s strength to holding Blackford down. The rod descended again, and Oakes’s lower body writhed in spastic reaction, but could not avoid the descending birch, which came down, again; and again; and again. There was a slight, endless interval between the strokes—five, ten seconds—during which Dr. Chase, grim satisfaction written on his face, studied Oakes’s movements like a hunter the movements of a bird dog, the better to anticipate, and connect the rod to, the buttocks with maximum effect. Oakes’s screams were continuous, uncontrollable, an amalgam of pain, fear, mortification. But when the ninth stroke was given he suddenly fell silent, as Trust’s grip relaxed. The room was noiseless. Dr. Chase, breathing heavily and drawing back his rod, red with Blackford’s blood, said raspily:

  “Courtesy of Great Britain, sir.”

  He handed the rod to Leary, disdaining to return it himself to the closet, walked rhythmically to his office, and closed the door. Oakes did not change his position for a minute or two during which he was convulsed with a silent sobbing. Leary busied himself for a moment with unimportant details, shutting the closet door, replacing the register in the drawer; and then, finally, left to go to his own office, leaving the library to Trust and Oakes.

  “You’d better try to come along now, Oakes.” Trust discreetly pulled up the shorts, and gently prodded him by the shoulder, first to lean back, and, finally, to stand up.

  “Now, try raising your pants. Easy.”

  Blackford’s blond face was ashen, but his eyes had dried. He struggled to lift up his pants. Without bothering to fasten his suspenders, he reached for his coat, and Trust helped him put it on. He groped his way to Mr. Leary’s back door, opened it, and passed through the antechamber without comment to the assistant to the headmaster, walking, as best he could, down the staircase. As he passed through the front door, held open for him by Trust, he detected the gaze of the two ladies in the administrative office, who no doubt had stopped their work to pity or—who knows?—perhaps to celebrate the youthful screams, which must have penetrated the ceiling like a burglar alarm. He felt like flinging open the side door and shouting out, “Would you like a repeat performance tomorrow, ladies? Same time? Same place?” But his imaginary resilience proved very nearly nauseating, and he felt he had to stop to swallow, or be sick. Trust stayed with him, saying nothing as Oakes, head down, waddled, which was all he could manage to do, in the direction of his dormitory. He didn’t know exactly why he was headed there, but at that point Trust’s voice, rather shakily, but in unequivocal accents of pity and shared outrage that gave a moment’s life to Oakes’s spirit, said, “We’ll go to the lavatory. Cold water will help a lot, and right away.”

  Trust brought up two empty wooden cases from the store closet opposite the empty lavatory, on which Oakes’s feet could perch. Then he poured cold water into the large washbasin, and once again Oakes pulled down his clothes, and sat. The relief was immediate, overwhelming, blissful. He perched there while Trust kept running cold water. They said nothing, as Blackford’s mind settled. It did so quickly. In ten minutes, he said, “Can I call you Anthony?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I have to leave Greyburn.”

  “Don’t. Chase has got it out of his system. Now Grey-burn is secure.” Suddenly Trust was less positive. “I don’t think they’ll keep after you.”

  Blackford went on without comment. “Anthony, I want you to do one thing for me, which I can’t do for myself.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to use the telephone in the prefects’ lounge to order a taxi to meet me outside Caulfield Hall at one o’clock. I can’t approach the housemaster and ask permission to use the telephone at this point.”

  Anthony’s orthodoxy collapsed. Suddenly, willingly—enthusiastically—he was the co-conspirator, sharing the wrath Blackford felt at the sadistic and xenophobic episode in which, the guilt began to assault him, he had somehow served as co-executioner. He wondered, should he have refused? Told Dr. Chase that no, he, Anthony Trust, declined to pinion down a fellow American to accommodate one Briton’s vindictiveness? But, he reflected—Anthony was always judicious—the anti-American animus was not really all that transparent until just before the punishment began, and on through the ferocity of it and the hideously redundant final blows.… There was that premonitory crack, at the beginning, about foreign aid.… For a wild moment Anthony thought of taking off with Blackford; but reality quickly overtook him, as he tabulated the arguments, and reckoned that from such a flight he had everything to lose and nothing to gain, except a moment’s satisfaction.

  What Blackford had to gain, or lose, Trust could not know. But Anthony, unlike Blackford, was an unqualified success at Greyburn. He was elected prefect as a fifth-former and as an American. A slight, dark boy, with unspoken thoughts always obviously on his mind, he was, in a taciturn way, an enthusiast, whose paradoxical detachment, however, was always an unshakable presence. He made his mark early by singling out the house bully and challenging him, notwithstanding the disparity in size and experience. Anthony was trounced, and a week later he challenged the bully again, and again was trounced, and a third time, to meet the same fate. But soon the young oppressor appeared to lose his appetite for bullying, and Anthony, only a few months later, was named prefect by the boys in an overwhelming vote and found himself exercising formal authority over the bully, which he did not abuse. He occupied himself by quietly excelling in everything—his academic work, athletics, the maintenance of his privacy. He was a comfortable and respected member of the Greyburn community. He would remain in it.

  Meanwhile his enthusiasm for Blackford’s resolution had become a commitment, at whatever risk to his own standing.

  “Okay. I’ll call Leicester Drivers. But why one o’clock? It’s only eleven-fifteen. If you want to slip away earlier, I’ll help you pack.”

  “I don’t want to slip away. I can pack in fifteen minutes. Then I’ll go to lunch.”

  “You must be nuts! Go to the refectory and advertise the fact that you’re running away from school because you were beaten?”

  “I am not running away from school. I am leaving school.”

  “Great God.” Anthony wondered: Would the school forcibly stop him? He could think of no real precedent. Last year one of the boys in the Lower School ran away, but he sneaked off at night, taking the bus from Grey-burn Town. He was back in two days, driven to the school by his irate father, was soundly beaten, and—Anthony vaguely remembered being told—was doing very nicely this term. Anthony could not conceive of a protracted, let alone ceremonial, departure from Greyburn when the departure was itself utterly illicit. He was certain only of this: He could either co-operate with Blackford or desert him; nothing in between. Anthony had not been invited by this strangely independent fellow-American to help formulate his plans, merely to help execute them. The boy sitting half-naked in the washbasin gave off a nearly regal sense of rectitude and authority. Anthony had only to see how it would all proceed. He was not there to interpose.

  “We’d better get moving. I’ll help you up. It’s going to hurt again in a matter of minutes, after the cold wears off. After I call the taxi, I’ll bring you some stuff I have left over from last year, which you can apply. It’s for burns, and it dulls the pain.”

  Blackford stood up, shakily, stepped off the wooden cases, and drew up his trousers. The pain resumed, intensely, and his eyes were once more hot with pain.

  He tried walking naturally. It was very difficult, but by the time he reached the staircase, he was managing a kind of deliberate and synthetically symmetrical gait.

  “I’ll make the call, then I’ll come to your dorm—what number are you?�
�and help you. Five minutes.” Anthony streaked out, and Blackford, his hand on the railing, moved himself, the left foot up, the right following, the left foot up again, the right following. He reached the landing and walked toward his little cubicle, along the neat row with the white hanging curtains drawn, the beds, the window sills on which personal belongings were permitted, pictures of parents and sisters, school photographs. He came to his own, halfway down the corridor, closed the curtain behind him, and, leaning against the dresser, wept convulsively. He must stop, he thought. Quickly. He leaned over, painfully, to open the drawers of the dresser, to take out his clothes. His suitcases were stored in the locker room, inaccessible. He would leave them there and pile his clothes into two laundry bags. He had already begun to do this when Anthony slipped through the curtains and whispered, “The taxi is all set.” He helped Blackford stuff his clothes into the bags. Suddenly he stopped.

  “Blackford, you’d better change your pants.”

  Blackford moved his hands behind him, felt nothing, and asked, “Why?”

  “Because. Take them off.”

  Blackford did, and saw the spots. He removed his shorts, gazing with awe at the streaky bloodstains. He accepted from Anthony the proffered tube. With great care he applied the unguent first on one buttock, then on the other. He took fresh drawers and stepped into them. Then another pair of pants, and suddenly, the balm taking hold, he felt better, and his appetite increased for a last lunch at Greyburn College.

  By the time he reached the refectory, promptly at 12:15, the word had obviously traveled to all corners of the school—it is so in schools—that the problem of Blackford Oakes had been disposed of, and all eyes were on him as he filed silently (the boys were not permitted to talk until the presiding master had said grace) to his customary place at the table. After grace, everyone sat down, except Blackford, who in any case could not have done so. Freshly birched boys routinely ate off the mantelpiece for a day or so, and it was expected he would go there, where a plate would be brought to him, and where he could chat with several survivors of Bleak Friday, the afternoon before. Instead he turned to the boy on his left, stretched out his hand, and said, “Good-by, Dodson. I’m leaving Greyburn. It has been very good to know you.”