better: authoritative, reassuring. Something the boys could pass on to their parents.
Was the body to be buried on campus, in a special memorial?
No, the parents had arranged transport back to Johannesburg. . . .
Would any further school days be canceled?
Their goal was not to disrupt the boys’ lives any more than necessary. . . .
The headmaster relaxed. Much better. They were on the homestretch. He counted the minutes until he could wrap up. He pointed to boys’ raised hands with the aplomb of a talk-show host, almost enjoying himself. Until he pointed at the skinny fellow in the back.
“It sounds like tuberculosis,” the boy shouted.
It wasn’t a question; it was a hand grenade. The room froze. The headmaster puffed up like a bullfrog. It . . . you . . . he stammered.
Now it was the doctor’s turn to come to the headmaster’s aid. Tuberculosis, he drawled, had an extremely low rate of incidence in England. At Clementine Churchill Hospital, they see zero cases per year . . . virtually unknown. . . .
“But Theo was from Africa. There are millions of cases in Africa,” belted the boy. “I was there last summer. There were public warnings about spitting.”
A nervous rumble from the crowd. Theodore Ryder did not have tuberculosis. You just heard from the inquest doctor. Thank you, Mr. Ross-Collins, that is the end of that line of questioning , stormed the headmaster. He nearly hip-checked the doctor back to his seat. Shifted to housekeeping. The school would send the family a wreath and make a contribution to a charity in the boy’s name. Classes would resume tomorrow. Mr. Moreton would take a group tomorrow to Hairspray, playing on the West End; sign up in the Classics Schools. Thank you all. Dismissed .
WHEN THEY EMERGED, the morning sky cast its first fat drops of the day like stones, whacking the boys’ hat brims as they spilled onto the Speech Room promenade. The throng buzzed about the strange meeting and the provocative final exchange. And before the first boys had walked fifty yards, the drops came fast and hard and heavy, drumming the Hill in all-out artillery fire. The boys scattered, holding their boaters and their notebooks over their heads and darting for their houses. Andrew hung back, taking refuge in a basement-level doorway. But the rain did not relent. It came down in sheets. At last he bolted out into it, alone, isolated in the spray and the torrent, and finally arrived at the Lot sopping wet. The Lot lobby was packed. Boys gathered in clusters, steaming in the warmth, vigorously debating the events of the school meeting. Voices rose and chattered; eyes cast around uncertainly, as if expecting someone to pop through the door with more news. Though they could not articulate it, they all felt it: No one, not even the top man, had seen the doctor’s explanation coming. Lung volume? Suffocating? They shivered and wiped the rain from their faces.
Seeing Andrew enter, Vaz fell silent, and the others around him took his cue. Andrew stopped, feeling the pierce of Vaz’s black eyes. Andrew should have felt triumph. See? I told you it wasn’t drugs! I told you it wasn’t me! But it didn’t matter, he now realized. In Vaz’s eyes he was a scumbag. A stooped, shifty drug dealer. Andrew’s past had come out, and it now defined him. He did not belong at Harrow, those eyes told him. He was an undesirable. An interloper.
Then Vaz’s glance shifted, leading the room’s with it. Something behind Andrew attracted their attention.
Andrew turned and saw what they saw: Piers Fawkes, in a raincoat, damp and unhappy-looking. He led two oversize adults into the foyer. A bearlike man with a creased, overtanned face in a black raincoat. A woman with sun-bleached hair, carefully curled but damped by the weather. Something in the woman’s face was hauntingly familiar. An avian nose and deep-set eyes. Theo’s eyes.
The two groups stared at one another for a moment. One by one, the students
Was the body to be buried on campus, in a special memorial?
No, the parents had arranged transport back to Johannesburg. . . .
Would any further school days be canceled?
Their goal was not to disrupt the boys’ lives any more than necessary. . . .
The headmaster relaxed. Much better. They were on the homestretch. He counted the minutes until he could wrap up. He pointed to boys’ raised hands with the aplomb of a talk-show host, almost enjoying himself. Until he pointed at the skinny fellow in the back.
“It sounds like tuberculosis,” the boy shouted.
It wasn’t a question; it was a hand grenade. The room froze. The headmaster puffed up like a bullfrog. It . . . you . . . he stammered.
Now it was the doctor’s turn to come to the headmaster’s aid. Tuberculosis, he drawled, had an extremely low rate of incidence in England. At Clementine Churchill Hospital, they see zero cases per year . . . virtually unknown. . . .
“But Theo was from Africa. There are millions of cases in Africa,” belted the boy. “I was there last summer. There were public warnings about spitting.”
A nervous rumble from the crowd. Theodore Ryder did not have tuberculosis. You just heard from the inquest doctor. Thank you, Mr. Ross-Collins, that is the end of that line of questioning , stormed the headmaster. He nearly hip-checked the doctor back to his seat. Shifted to housekeeping. The school would send the family a wreath and make a contribution to a charity in the boy’s name. Classes would resume tomorrow. Mr. Moreton would take a group tomorrow to Hairspray, playing on the West End; sign up in the Classics Schools. Thank you all. Dismissed .
WHEN THEY EMERGED, the morning sky cast its first fat drops of the day like stones, whacking the boys’ hat brims as they spilled onto the Speech Room promenade. The throng buzzed about the strange meeting and the provocative final exchange. And before the first boys had walked fifty yards, the drops came fast and hard and heavy, drumming the Hill in all-out artillery fire. The boys scattered, holding their boaters and their notebooks over their heads and darting for their houses. Andrew hung back, taking refuge in a basement-level doorway. But the rain did not relent. It came down in sheets. At last he bolted out into it, alone, isolated in the spray and the torrent, and finally arrived at the Lot sopping wet. The Lot lobby was packed. Boys gathered in clusters, steaming in the warmth, vigorously debating the events of the school meeting. Voices rose and chattered; eyes cast around uncertainly, as if expecting someone to pop through the door with more news. Though they could not articulate it, they all felt it: No one, not even the top man, had seen the doctor’s explanation coming. Lung volume? Suffocating? They shivered and wiped the rain from their faces.
Seeing Andrew enter, Vaz fell silent, and the others around him took his cue. Andrew stopped, feeling the pierce of Vaz’s black eyes. Andrew should have felt triumph. See? I told you it wasn’t drugs! I told you it wasn’t me! But it didn’t matter, he now realized. In Vaz’s eyes he was a scumbag. A stooped, shifty drug dealer. Andrew’s past had come out, and it now defined him. He did not belong at Harrow, those eyes told him. He was an undesirable. An interloper.
Then Vaz’s glance shifted, leading the room’s with it. Something behind Andrew attracted their attention.
Andrew turned and saw what they saw: Piers Fawkes, in a raincoat, damp and unhappy-looking. He led two oversize adults into the foyer. A bearlike man with a creased, overtanned face in a black raincoat. A woman with sun-bleached hair, carefully curled but damped by the weather. Something in the woman’s face was hauntingly familiar. An avian nose and deep-set eyes. Theo’s eyes.
The two groups stared at one another for a moment. One by one, the students
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