The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) (12 page)

nineteen

It
was one of those horrifying, bowel-weakening moments when you think that you
have just destroyed your whole life.  The Physics and Chemistry Labs could not
be any more out-of-bounds and we all knew that.  I would do literally anything
to avoid Behavioural School: whinge, lie, burst into tears, blame it all on
Freddie, play dead... anything!

“I’ve
got you now, haven’t I, you snivelling little turds?”

It
was Vanderpump still clutching our collars, and, judging from the moronic
sniggering behind him, he was not alone.

“Angus,
you take this one,” he commanded, pushing Freddie roughly away.  One of the
Bearbaiter twins took hold of him and wrestled him into a stiff headlock. 
“Amos, you hold this one still for me.”

I
was jerked backwards.  A pair of huge, hairy arms looped through mine from
behind me and thick meaty hands pressed on the back of my head.  I couldn’t move
my arms at all, my legs were dangling off the ground and I was wincing from the
pain in my neck.

“What
were you doing in there then, eh?” hissed Vanderpump.

“None
of your business,” I groaned through the discomfort as Amos Bearbaiter gave me
an extra squeeze.  

Vanderpump
didn’t like my defiance.  He thumped me heftily in the midriff.  I wanted to
crumple to the floor to try to regain my breath, but, unable to move, I dangled
there, gagging, desperate to get some air into my burning lungs.  But it was impossible. 
I began to panic.  I flapped my legs around wildly.  My head was pounding and I
was just beginning to think that I would never breathe again, when I managed a
shuddering half-breath.

Vanderpump
leant in close to me as I gulped in precious air, water welling unwelcome in my
eyes.  I could smell his breath.  A foul mixture of burnt rubber and rancid
meat.

“What
even
are
you?” he spat, flaring his nostrils as if the sight of me was
causing him nausea.  “Are you a Romany?  Look at these dishonest eyes.  They
look Romany to me.  Or maybe you are Tartar.  Or are you...” he screwed his
face up in disgust, “...
a Jew
?”

I
stared at him and he slapped me firmly about the face, catching me painfully in
the left eye with his finger.  “
Answer me,
boy
!” he shouted
angrily.

 I
could taste the blood gurgling from my nose, but I wasn’t going to humour him. 
It was probably stupid, but all I wanted to do was anger him even more with my
defiance.  I could hear Freddie struggling to shout out, but I had stopped
caring what Vanderpump might do to me.

 “I
don’t care what I am,” I wheezed.  “Maybe I
am
a Russian gypsy Jew!  Maybe
you should
inform
on me again, you coward!  Maybe you should tell your
Jerry-loving father...”

“
My
father,” he shouted and smashed me again in the stomach.  This time Amos let go
of me and I crouched down on the floor, doubled over in agony.  “
My
father is a hero!”

“He’s
a traitor!”

He
kicked me brutally in the ribs.  Tears were streaming down my cheeks and I was
choking for breath.  Freddie’s Swiss Army Knife slipped from my pocket and onto
the floor.  I reached out for it, but Vanderpump trod heavily on my hand.

“At
least I
have
a father,” he hissed.  “Who knows where
yours
might
be?  Who knows what they do to Resistance Terrorists?  That’s what he was,
isn’t it, eh?”  He reached down and picked up the knife.  “What have we here?”

He
grabbed a handful of my hair and wrenched my head back so that I was staring
straight at the knife, a couple of inches from my eyes.

“Ever
wondered what it might be like to be blind?” he asked.

“Whoa
there, Hector!” warned one of the Bearbaiters.

“Shut
up!” he shouted.  “I’ve had enough insolence from this... this sub-Aryan vulgarian. 
I’ll teach him a lesson he’ll never forget!”

I
heard Freddie choke and splutter.  Suddenly I wished I could take back
everything I said, I wished the floor would swallow me or that I could be
safely wrapped up in my bed.  I closed my eyes as tightly as I could, but I
knew it was futile.  This was it.

“
Vanderpump! 
Drop the knife at once!” 

Caratacus. 
Thank God!

Vanderpump
released my hair and I faced the floor, ashamed of the floods of relieved tears
that were streaming from my eyes, still intact.  I wiped them hurriedly and
looked up.

Vanderpump
was red faced.  His mouth was hanging open and his eyes darting around,
searching thin air for excuses.  He started blabbering; words like “insolence”,
“treachery” and “snivelling little communists”.  The Bearbaiters stood by,
their heads hanging in shame.  Freddie was slumped on the floor, rubbing the
back of his neck and looking to see that I was alright.  My ribs were
throbbing, my stomach was aching, my neck was creaking, my eye was stinging, my
nose was bleeding, but I was safe now.

Caratacus’
face wore an expression that I had never seen before; his jaw was set with
annoyance, but his eyes were wide and his brow contorted by bewilderment.  Thank
God for Caratacus! 

“Enough,
Vanderpump!” he boomed.  “
Enough
!  Save your pitiful excuses.  You are
coming with me.  You two,” he pointed to the Bearbaiter twins, “go and
reintroduce yourselves to the Headmaster.  If you do not, or if you fail to
tell him exactly what I have seen, you will certainly be expelled.”  The
Bearbaiters shuffled off.  “You, Strange, help Turnpike and go directly and
wait outside of my Private Room.  I will be with you shortly.”

twenty

Caratacus’
Private Room was located among the cobwebs of the Top Floor of the school
building.  The Top Floor, like all of the most exciting places in the school
grounds, was entirely out-of-bounds on account of there being no classrooms,
dormitories, changing rooms or other places for boys.  In fact, it occurred to
me that I had been to the Top Floor only once.  It was on my very first day at
Talltrees when I had come here with my mum to select a hand-me-down blazer from
the moth-eaten Second-Hand Clothes Room.  While many of the other boys had been
bought brand new ones from the school supplier, my mum, of course, picked out a
blazer which was far too big for me so that I might have grown into it by the
time I left the school. 

But
since my previous visit to the Top Floor had been such a long time ago and when
the whole place was still bewilderingly big to me, it felt now as if I was seeing
a place for the first time.  It was drab and threadbare, with grime trodden
into the tired carpets and tatty etchings hanging listlessly from the walls,
depicting wretched scenes from rainswept urban backwaters.  The doors here,
along the dusty gallery overlooking the Main Hall, were, for some reason, apparently
made with the same material as they use to make the sacks for sack-races,
nailed onto wood.  Each door bore a number and a name:  “11 – Col. Barrington;
10 – Mrs. Stowaway; 09 – Mr. Molyneux; 08 – Mr. Caratacus...”

The
Masters had Private Rooms for the nights when they were on duty and unable to
get home before General Curfew.  I was pretty sure though that for some of them
- Mr. Molyneux, the French teacher with sellotaped spectacles and the nervous
disposition, sprung immediately to mind - their Private Rooms served very well
as a retreat from nagging spouses. 

“Vanderpump
will say whatever he can to get us into trouble, you know,” said Freddie,
anxiously chewing his fingernails.  “He’s got nothing to lose.”

“I
know,” I said, spitting on my handkerchief to wipe the crusting blood from my
face.

Caratacus
emerged from the Spiral Staircase with a stormy expression on his face.  “You
alright?” he asked me perfunctorily, scarcely looking at me as he pushed open
the door to his Private Room to usher us in.  I nodded.

Freddie
and I trooped in single-file behind Caratacus.  We both sensed that our careers
at Talltrees were teetering on the brink of a treacherous precipice and that
the faintest activity by either of us, such as speaking or even looking at one another,
could just nudge them over the edge and into bottomless doom.  Best thing in a
precarious situation such as this is keep quiet, eyes down, speak when spoken
to and, above all, say “Thank you, Sir” whenever possible.

“Thank
you, Sir.”

“Thank
you, Sir.”

“I
think the two of you had better take a seat.”  He pointed towards a ramshackle
sofa whose springs had retired a long while ago.

“Thank
you, Sir.”

“Thank
you, Sir.”

We
sunk down into our seat with our knees up around our chins and waited while
Caratacus filled his kettle from a sink in the corner of the room and prepared
three cups of tea.

“Thank
you, Sir,” we chimed.

His
room was a menagerie of knick-knacks, baubles and trinkets.  Much of the
wall-space was occupied by shelves groaning under the weight of classical
texts, philosophical treatises and piles and piles of weathered paper.  There
was so much scholarship in here that it had also overflown onto the coffee
table next to me:  Apocolocyntosis by Seneca, La Monadologie by Gottfried
Leibniz...  I could scarcely imagine how to pronounce many of the words written
on the spines, so imagine what the words between the covers must look like!

I
noticed that on the back of Caratacus’ door as he pushed it shut there hung a
small wooden cross, but with a kind of loop at the top of it, where Jesus’ head
would have been.  I had never really thought of Caratacus as an especially
religious man.  In fact, I had supposed that he was more of a modern man than
that, but also, in what wall-space there was between the bookshelves, there
were three mediæval pictures of religious figures with halos – not so many as
to make the room feel like a shrine or an altar, but enough to make the message
clear!

Mr.
Caratacus sat on a stool in front of us and pushed shut his desk drawers in
order to make room for his knees.  Freddie and I clutched our mugs of tea
nervously, not knowing whether to look downwards in shame or up towards
Caratacus with self-assurance.

“What
were you doing in the Science Labs?” he asked simply.

With
Caratacus, I thought, we at least had a glimmer of a chance of getting
ourselves out of this predicament.  If it were Barrington or Wilbraham or
anyone else, our fate would certainly have been sealed without any opportunity
for feeble excuses.  Caratacus was far more likely to listen to our feeble excuses
and consider them before passing judgment.  There was only one thing for it and
Freddie was clearly one step ahead of me:

“Sir,”
he began frantically, “Sir, we were... there’s this awful thing happening, Sir...
well, going to happen... Monday night, Sir... Colonel Barrington’s got this
terrible plan, Sir... and we have to stop it... everyone’s in terrible danger
and we were trying to do the right thing, Sir, I promise...”

“Strange,
pipe down for Heaven’s sake!  Turnpike, can you translate what Strange is
trying to tell me into
English
?”

“Sir...”
interrupted Freddie.

“
Pipe
down, boy!
” he boomed.  “Turnpike, what you are about to say had better be
damned
impressive.”

I
looked at Freddie and Caratacus, both of whom were red-faced.  I took a deep
breath.  In spite of my instincts, I knew that only the whole truth could help
us now.

“Sir,
we’ve uncovered an evil plan and we realised that none of the Masters would
believe us unless we had good evidence of what is happening.  We
had
to
break the rules you see, Sir, because we are certain that a lot of people’s
lives are at risk...”

“Turnpike,”
he said, slightly more calmly.  “You are, unlike Strange here, at least
speaking in complete sentences.  But you’re going to have to do better than
that because at the moment this sounds like nothing more than Boy’s Own
nonsense.”

“Sir,
that’s just the problem you see.  We need to be able to prove that this isn’t
just nonsense,” I began.  I realised now that I would have to mention the
Z-word even though I knew it would sound even more like Boy’s Own nonsense than
what I had already been saying.  This was my last throw of the dice.  “And now
we think we’ve got the evidence we need, Sir.”  I pointed to Barrington’s
research log, which Freddie was clutching tightly to his chest.  Freddie glared
at me urgently to tell me that we didn’t know that it contained any good
evidence, but I knew that we would just have to pray that it did. 

“What
is it?” asked Caratacus.

“Sir,
it’s evidence that proves that Colonel Barrington has been kidnapping boys –
the boys who have been taken ill over the past couple of weeks – and is
planning to turn them all into...”  I looked down at my feet and my voice
tailed off pathetically because now I could hear how childish my excuse must
have sounded.

“
What
,
boy?”  Caratacus asked, rubbing his eyes exasperatedly with his forefinger and
thumb.

I
cleared my throat.  “... Into zombies, Sir.”

I
looked upwards sheepishly, hoping at best for an outburst of laughter, but fully
expecting to be whisked off to Wilbraham’s study for a thrashing.  Instead,
Caratacus froze still for a few seconds with his fingers paused, pinching the
bridge of his nose.  I could not gauge at all what it was that he might be
thinking.

“What
did you say, boy?” he whispered intently.

I
looked at Freddie for moral support.  “I said “zombies”, Sir.”

He
lowered his hand to rub his chin.  He looked at Freddie and then down at
Barrington’s logbook.  His facial expression softened and his brow unfurrowed
suddenly and I recognised again the kind, childlike eyes.

 “Boys,”
said Caratacus, his voice much calmer.  His only outward indication of emotion
was his right hand shaking slightly, causing ripples on the surface of his
tea.  “I think you need to get your story straight.”

I
began at the beginning.  And between the two of us, we told him everything,
even where it meant owning up to times when we had broken the rules:  Creeping
around the Dungeons at night, discovering the Hidden Library, rummaging through
Barrington’s wallet.

“Can
I take it, therefore, that Pickering and the Kitchen Boy are part of this too?”

I
looked at Freddie.  One of the first rules you ever learn at Talltrees is that
under no circumstances do you tell on another boy unless he has been conspiring
against the Party.  It’s like honour among thieves.  It was one of the basic
rules of the Youth Movement and I thought of it as so fundamental that you were
not really a boy if you broke it.

“You
need not answer that question,” said Caratacus, clearly sensing my concern.  “Continue.”

I
continued the account right up to the point when Caratacus caught us, including
an explanation of what we had read in Colonel Barrington’s research log and how
that connected to what we had read in the page that had fallen from the Witchdoctor’s
text and what we had found out from our research in Mr. English’s room. 
Caratacus gave nothing away with his facial expressions.  So I had no idea
whether my arguments were getting us anywhere closer to not being expelled. 
The only times he even furrowed his brow slightly were when I mentioned the Witchdoctor’s
text and the content of the logbook.

“So
you see, Sir, there is a real danger.  We had to break the rules to make people
believe that this is what the Party is planning to do.”

“Well,”
he said after taking a long slurp of his tea, “you certainly construct a
forceful argument, Turnpike.”

I
said nothing and waited anxiously for him to draw his conclusions.  Freddie
even took off his cap as if he were at a funeral.

“Well
now, I think it’s obvious that you two and Reginald Pickering and Samson Akwasi
have all got a bit carried away by Doctor Boateng’s talk at Prayers the other
morning.  But I can also see that there have been a number of coincidences that
have led you to draw your outlandish conclusions.  But,” he took a sip of his
tea, “but if you think about each of these coincidences in turn, you will
realise that nothing out of the ordinary has happened at all.  Think about
them:

The
conversation, or argument, as you say, that you heard between Doctor Boateng
and Colonel Barrington would no doubt have related to experiences they shared a
long time ago in a foreign country where everything is different.  As you have
discovered, the two of them are old friends and have been through a lot
together.  I must say, whatever you heard them talking about, if it related to
something from their Gold Coast days, I can well imagine that it would have
been something that you, or indeed anyone else for that matter, would have had
trouble understanding.  And what’s more, as you yourself have said, Tom, you
could not even hear them clearly.

Miss
Prenderghast’s tending for a particular plant in the Forest, poisonous or not,
and her giving Form Three a lesson in dissection cannot of themselves be said
to be noteworthy incidents.  She is, after all, a Biology teacher!  And though
we all know that she’s very strange – and you are not to repeat that to anyone
– you cannot automatically assume that she is therefore a
zombie
!”  He
forced a chuckle.

And,
as for this book you saw a part of... What did you call it?  The
Witchdoctor’s
text?”

“Yes,
Sir,” I said.

“Well,
I would certainly be interested to see
that
.  Do you know where it is
now?”

“No,
Sir.  I’m afraid not,” said Freddie.

“Hmm,
pity,” Caratacus said, frowning and scratching his chin.  “Well from what you
say, all you have really seen of that seems to make it sound more like an
astronomy text book in a foreign language than some sinister book of black
magic with instructions for creating mythical creatures, doesn’t it?”

“I
suppose so, Sir,” I said, starting to find what he was saying increasingly
convincing.

“Then
there’s your alleged disappearance of boys, and I know you’ve both been
concerned about that.  Well that is, of course, easily explained by the ‘flu
epidemic.  And finally, your dream about Milo, Tom.  Come now, can you really
be all that certain that the photo of his family really was on his chair and
not his bed when the lights went out?  I mean, do you really look around the
dorm before lights-out and remember where everything is?”

I
started thinking through what he was saying.  We had been so certain, but
everything he was saying sounded right.

“Yes,
Sir.”  Freddie blurted.  “
Absolutely
, Sir.  It does seem like we’ve let
our imaginations run away with us a bit.”