Into the River (26 page)

“Where is he?”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Where’s Steph, Devon? Someone saw you two heading off together.”

“He’s gone to the shops I think. I’m not his secretary.”

“Bullshit!” Briggs’s face was bright red, which made his acne even more lurid.

“Steady, Briggs” said Devon, shielding his eyes. “They’re going to blow.” It was the standard anti-Briggs jibe about his acne.

“Fuck you, Devon, y’black cunt,” he screamed, then stormed off.

“My God!” said Wade, “What was that all about? He looked as though he was going to kill you. What have you been up to? And where is Steph, anyway?”

“Yeah, well Wade, I’ve only been back in this place a couple of hours and I’m sick of it already.”

When Steph did arrive, he got Willie to sign him in at the duty room, went to the prep room looking for Devon.

“I’ve got a cunning plan. Do you want to hear it?”

Devon was trying to do a week’s prep in an hour.

“Fire away but I’ll keep working.”

“I’ll help you with that but I can’t talk here …” Steph made a movement with his eyes to where one of the uni student tutors, supposedly supervising, was playing with a PSP.

They wandered down to the pen but it was no good there because Wingnut was holding court to some of the other country boys about farm stuff.

“We’ll take the laundry bags over.” This was a duty for third
formers but it had been neglected during the break and sat in huge sacks in the corridor.

They both struggled with the big sack down through the duty room where they met with Mr Simmonds.

“What’s this? Attempting to lay up a few brownie points?”

“You know me, Mr Simmonds. Always eager to please.”

The irony on both sides was not something Devon felt like participating in.

Simmonds held the door open for them and they struggled out into the quad. It was dark, quiet and deserted so they sat on one of the benches outside the laundry.

“It’s Briggs,” said Steph. “It seems he’s gone completely bonkers.”

“Tell me about it. I had a row with him in the dining room. Over you, by the way.”

“How so?”

“He demanded to know where you were. I was talking to Wingnut. I wasn’t going to tell him anything. I made the volcano joke and he went berserk.”

“Yeah? Well, it seems that he’s launched a jihad and Willie’s on the receiving end. Willie’s actually scared.” As Steph was, clearly. “That’s why Willie’s packing it in. That’s what’s behind the Australia thing. I’m going to have to do something about Briggs.”

“Like what? Kill him?”

“Maybe. But I’ll try money first. You know he’s really poor?”

“I think everyone in the school knows that. It’s a running joke.”

“Well, I have a slush fund that I’ve never got round to spending. I’m going to see if I can put it to good use.”

“You are going to buy his silence?”

“Something like that. Let’s get back. I don’t want Simmonds on my case.”

For the next few days things seemed normal, or as normal as could be expected. Steph made sure that Devon’s homework was of a high, but believably high, standard. Devon wanted nothing else but to get lost in the safety of school work for a while. Briggs kept away from the pair of them.

Then it was the final dress rehearsal for
Original Sin
.

For a while everything seemed calmer and less pressured than it had been before the midterm break. Dianna resumed control, and this time over the whole production, with Willie acting as music director only.

The first inkling of suspicion Devon had that something weird was happening was when he noticed that Briggs had taken to wearing Armani aftershave. Most of the guys at Barwell’s wore Lynx or one of the cheaper brands with movie star names, but Briggs had a fancy spray bottle which he carried in his pocket. At first there was a wave of envy, because it was well known that expensive aftershaves were babe magnets, but then there were the questions.

Where had it come from? He was famously poor and he sure as hell didn’t have any secret admirers. And then there was the way he wore it. He was so strongly scented you could track his progress all over the boarding house. The other boys in the dorm made a point of dropping dead in their tracks whenever he passed. They would lie on their backs and wave their legs in the air like dying flies. Briggs became uncontrollably angry when his exclusive scent was treated like fly spray. The angrier he became, the more determined the others became. A code word was invented and if anyone yelled the word “flies” everyone within earshot would drop to the ground and wave their legs in the air.

All the boys from Marsden House were invited along as audience for the final rehearsal. It was the first time that the wider school would see what they had been working on. By the time
Wednesday rolled around there was a festive air. The excitement was heightened by the thought of being in close proximity to the girls. The cast were allowed an early tea so they could go down to the auditorium to have their make-up applied. Willie, who had been a bit subdued, seemed to have found his old exuberance. He wore some sort of antique dinner jacket for the occasion. Dianna was wearing her characteristic black outfit with vivid red shoes.

The entire cast was assembled in the stalls for a pep talk. DD was joined by the headmaster and Mr Simmonds. The heavy brigade. They gave their brief version of the “you are Barwell’s ambassadors” speech, then disappeared. Devon wondered what was up: Marsden House was hardly a public audience.

It wasn’t until the performance was about to begin that someone noticed that Briggs was missing. There was an immediate inquisition. He had certainly been seen earlier in the evening but for the last hour or so he had disappeared. Steph put up his hand and said he would go and find him but Willie vetoed the idea.

“No. No one’s bigger than the show.”

He glanced at Dianna. “We’ll start without him. I’ll play his part and conduct from the piano stool.” He was in no mood to be argued with.

Backstage, Devon saw that Steph was looking anxious and asked if he knew what was going on.

“Oh yes, Briggs has gone mad. I saw it coming but everything that’s happened in the past few days has made it worse.”

“The Armani …”

“Yeah, that was me. Seemed a good idea at the time but he’s become so weird and unpredictable. He’s probably fixing bombs to the building as we speak.”

The idea had too much credence to be funny.

From in the wings they could hear the overture strike up. The piano piece, in Willie’s hands, became more flamboyant than it ever was when Briggs played it, and those waiting to go on slipped into the focused state that distinguishes a performer from someone
who is merely “on stage”.

By half time there was a heady mist of triumph hanging over everyone. Sure, there had been a few slip-ups and missed cues, but for the first time there was a clear understanding of the power of theatre, and the intense feeling of being part of something spectacular … of being admired and adored.

The green room was packed to overflowing at half time when Dianna came down to praise them for doing so well and to exhort them to lift their performance even higher in the second half. Devon was sitting with Vanessa and Sina. The awkwardness of their island adventures melted away as they relaxed into the concept of being players in a bigger drama.

As they assembled in the wings for the second half, they became aware that something was happening at front of house. The words weren’t clear but the tone carried past the thick curtains. There was an argument going on. Devon peeped out and saw Briggs trying to push Willie off the piano stool.

“This is my part. You’re not taking this from me.”

“Briggs, you’ve missed the start and you’re holding up the show. Go now. Don’t make things worse for yourself.”

Voices from the audience of juniors were beginning to yell things out.

“Sit down, Briggs!”

“Don’t be a knob!”

“Loser! Loser! Loser!”

Briggs’s voice rose to a yell. “You’d like that wouldn’t you? You’d like me out of the way so you can do your dirty stuff with whoever you want.”

At this point someone in the audience yelled, “Flies!”

Instantly there were boys falling all over the theatre, lining the aisles with their waving, twitching legs and death rattles.

For a while Briggs ignored everything going on around him.

“So you can stick your filthy hands …”

But gradually it seemed to sink in. He paused mid-sentence
and then climbed out of the orchestra pit and, after picking his way through writhing bodies, ran up the endless steps to the exit.

At the doorway he turned for a final high-pitched shriek.

“Fuck you! Fuck you all!” Then he disappeared.

A stunned silence descended over the auditorium. The boys in the audience realised they had gone too far. What they thought was merely ragging had driven Briggs to a state where something terrible might happen. Something for which they might have to accept responsibility. The tormentors looked around nervously, hoping that some adult would wrench back order to the proceedings.

Willie stood up in the pit and announced, “I’m sure he feels much better for having that off his chest, but we have work to do.”

He seemed totally unrattled by what had gone on. “Ladies and gentlemen of the orchestra, it’s time for a reprise of the overture. On two. One …two …”

Music flooded the auditorium and the second half of the production swung into operation.

Soon after this, Mr Simmonds and the headmaster reappeared and sat near the back, watching the rest of the show. The second half rolled through flawlessly. The orchestra sounded like something more than they were, the players precise in their every gesture and movement.

At the end of the show the headmaster hurried off, but Mr
Simmonds
made a lengthy speech of congratulations, referring to his own formative theatrical experiences when he was merely a “callow youth”.

Although the dress rehearsal finished just after ten p.m., it was nearly one a.m. by the time the last of the excited thespians was cleared from the theatre. Steph stayed to the very end, soaking up the adulation and feeding off the waves of excitement generated by his part in this momentous performance.

It was not until they got back to the dorms that they learned about the dramas that had taken place outside the theatre: Briggs’s angry histrionics, his fight with one of the other seniors: a fight in which, predictably, he had come off worse. Then there was the bottle of vodka that he had drunk immediately afterwards and finally the arrival of an ambulance which had taken him off to the emergency ward. Everyone was buzzing with excitement.

In Briggs’s absence Neeson was appointed head of house and fed them regular bulletins about his recovery.

“Briggs has had his stomach pumped.”

“Briggs is in the psych ward … with all the loonies.”

“Simmonds claims that Briggs is the first genuine suicide attempt on his watch. Man, is he pissed.”

“Briggs is being released tomorrow, but he’s being kept away from everyone else while they keep him under observation.”

It was true. When Briggs returned, he was confined to his room for a number of days. His only visitors were his mother, who came briefly on the first day, staff members, and a man Neeson claimed was an ‘Education Department shrink’. It wasn’t clear what the fall-out from all this was going to be, but for the days that he was away, a happiness descended over Devon and Steph that was as near to perfection as either of them had ever known.

All the cast were accorded high status, in Steph’s case almost hero status. This was unprecedented for an activity that normally carried little kudos at this sports-mad school. It was if single-handedly they had brought about a change in the whole ethos of the school and for a few days the arts were triumphant. Even Mr Simmonds, who normally adopted a haughty aloofness, was eager to discuss some of the niceties of what he referred to as “the dramaturgy on display”.

As the nights progressed, theatrical hugs became the currency
backstage, and no one received more of these, from both boys and girls, than Steph. Devon, the lesser player, nevertheless enjoyed the reflected stardom of being in his glittering wake. With each night Steph managed to add more privileges to his star experience. He enlisted a tame third former to act as his personal batman. When he arrived for make-up he was trailed by ‘my boy Jeremy’ who seemed to enjoy the role, carrying a personal effects bag and dressing in similar clothes. Steph had a hauteur which admittedly had always been there but now was exaggerated and came with his carefully crafted ‘sayings of Steph’, plus a full range of personal tics. Devon was given a new nickname, ‘Helloo Crunty Paws!’; Steph’s approval of others was invariably accompanied by ‘Good idea! I was just about to think of that myself’; and Jeremy was introduced with ‘You have met my P.S.P?’ ‘What?’ ‘My pint-sized pal?’ All of this was made infinitely more enjoyable thanks to the removal of Briggs from their midst.

On the night of the final performance everyone in the cast only had one thing on their minds. The ‘After Party’. Rumours of the wild abandon at these events made all the other boys desperate to be included. The chance of finally achieving that elusive goal of every Barwell’s boy, doing the deed with a SLAGS girl, seemed to be a definite possibility. The girls, it was said, were in such a state that they would give themselves to anyone.

“Anyone?”

“Sure?”

“Me?”

“Why not?”

“A one-legged leper?”

“In with a chance.”

“Briggs?”

“Don’t even go there.”

The momentum gathered by each successive performance meant that the last night was packed out. Many of the boys who had been to the show several times already were now standing up
in front of their seats, singing along with the choruses. By the time the last big song came, everyone was on their feet and it had to be performed a number of times as an encore because no one seemed ready to leave the auditorium.