18. Memory Is a Fickle Clown
‘You’re not a scholar of mine,’ the headmaster says, leaning back in his scarlet leather chair, ‘but you are an employee, and we hold our staff to certain standards. I think that’s more than fair.’
There’s something surprisingly normal about him.
He’s round in the face with an equal amount of white hair on his chin and pate, and he’s wearing a plain black suit with a grey tie, a cloak of some sort hung neatly from a hook in the corner of the room.
The office itself is less impressive to Briar than Robert Parker’s tower.
It’s large, rectangular, everything arranged in perfect symmetry so each side is mirrored: two tall potted plants, two bookcases, two burnished globular lamps perching atop two walnut side tables.
‘Well?’ he prompts.
Briar has nothing to say in their defence.
It has transpired that when Tate made it out of the building and realised that Briar wasn’t behind him, he’d kept running all the way to the staff quarters and woken Eugenia, who’d decided to summon Mr Ward.
The headmaster hadn’t mentioned Tate by name - he’d just said a scholar - but even with one hell of a headache, Briar can fill in the gaps.
Briar can’t blame Tate for panicking. Presumably he was worried that if he didn’t do something, Briar’s actual death might be on his conscience.
The real surprise is that anybody on the faculty here cares enough about the life of a staff member to get out of bed at one o’clock in the morning. Briar supposes they can thank Eugenia for that.
Not that she looks particularly receptive to Briar’s thanks right now.
She’s wearing a black sweatshirt over silk pyjama trousers, her hair in a neat plait, her expression dire.
Briar tries to look at anything but her, and accidentally catches Bastian’s eye in the next chair.
They decide to look at the desk instead.
‘I . . . I’m sorry.’ Briar says, taking a risk. ‘I told . . . um, I told my friend that I wanted to explore the grounds at night, to check out some of the old buildings. He warned me not to do it, but I had the keys, and then I . . . There are these urban explorer videos, have you ever seen them?’
The headmaster reacts as if Briar has just asked if he’s ever sat down at his laptop with a glass of wine and enjoyed an evening of scat pornography. ‘Urban explorer videos?’
‘Yeah. People explore abandoned buildings. I wasn’t going to take pictures or anything, I don’t even have my phone.’ This is true. Briar pats down their empty pockets as proof. ‘But I ran into . . . into Bastian, instead.’
It’s the first time Briar has said this new name aloud. Briar hates that they notice it, and that they notice Bastian noticing it.
‘This is very disappointing behaviour,’ Mr Ward says, running his hands in neat parallel lines over the mahogany of his desk, like he’s drawing the frame of a window. When he’s finished, he brings them together as if in prayer. ‘Eugenia, I thought things had been going . . . well?’
‘They have,’ Eugenia says, her tone full of regret for the day Briar ever cursed her inbox. ‘Jones is a good worker. Discreet. Gets things done. Doesn’t leave food wrappers in my car.’
‘Be that as it may, we cannot risk any more crossing of boundaries like this, can we? Not with so much at stake.’
‘No,’ says Eugenia. ‘We cannot. But . . . it would be hard to get someone new in now, with the job halfway done. They have signed the NDA. It would be a lot of paperwork, and the storage would not be ready by the start of Michaelmas.’
The headmaster frowns. ‘“They”?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Who else? You said “they” have signed the non-disclosure?’
Eugenia looks confused for a second. Briar isn’t confused at all. Comprehension dawns, and Eugenia shakes her head.
‘Sorry. Just - this one. Just Briar.’
‘Right. Well, it’s not just a matter of accessing buildings that are out of bounds. There was clearly some sort of . . . altercation. Physical violence is completely unacceptable on school grounds.’
Right, sure, fine. No punch-ups. Just ritual drownings and attacks with scissors in empty pools, apparently totally sanctioned by the staff.
Nobody’s asking what Bastian was doing out there, after hours.
Nobody needs to ask. The system here has closed ranks around him already, protecting him from scrutiny.
‘I cannot have any more of these sorts of incidents - our scholars know better, and if this cleaner is disrupting things—’
Briar is about to open their mouth in their own defence, probably guaranteeing their immediate sacking in response, but Bastian speaks first.
‘It was me,’ he says. ‘I started it.’
Mr Ward’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘You, Wolfe? Surely not, at a time like this.’
‘I’m afraid so, sir.’
Briar gives up on avoiding Bastian’s gaze and stares at him. What’s the play here? Does he want Briar to feel like they owe him? To get them away from this office where he can punish them more suitably? Or is he just so sick of this conversation that he’ll say anything to end it?
The headmaster sighs, folds his arms and leans back in his chair.
‘Fine. Fine. Jones, is it? You will place your mobile phone in Eugenia’s care until the end of your employment, unless you would like to have your contract terminated immediately.
You can use the House phones, if you need to make a call.
This is your first strike.’ He turns to Bastian, Briar already forgotten.
‘Wolfe, stay here and we’ll have a little talk.
I thought I’d made it perfectly clear to Mr Buckingham that there were to be no more disruptions . . .’
Consequences? For a scholar of Temple? Surely not.
Eugenia walks Briar out. The grand, sweeping staircase that leads up to the headmaster’s office is in part of the main building Briar has only ever walked past before, where the corridors are very wide, the polished wooden floors bisected by a strip of midnight-blue carpet.
The ceiling above them is coffered, each broad square painted a very confronting minty green.
‘I’m sorry,’ Briar says as they descend, hand ghosting the curved wooden railing for support.
‘Yes. You should be. I am very angry. And he does not know that this is actually your second strike. You only get two more.’ Briar does not correct this. ‘Look, I don’t care what you do. Go to parties, go inside an ugly old building for some reason, just don’t make me look bad, okay?’
‘Okay,’ says Briar, following Eugenia through the ground floor entrance and out onto the lawn. ‘Sorry.’
‘And stop saying sorry, because it is very annoying. Go to your attic. Think good, hard-working thoughts. Dream of making me nice, neat piles. And put some ice on your punching hand, because you must be ready to work again by Monday.’
‘I will.’
Eugenia grimaces. ‘You know your friend, Adams, told me a different lie about why you were at the pool. And when he came to me, he told me they were going to kill you. Don’t get killed by the malakes here, it would be . . . so embarrassing. And get your stories straight, next time.’
Briar wants to say sorry again, so instead they just nod, and Eugenia nods, and that’s that.
It’s two o’clock in the morning by the time Briar ascends the stairs into the attic room, but they’re too keyed up to go to sleep.
The room seems to be buzzing like a live wire, the light pulsing in time with the thump of Briar’s head.
They drink a warm ginger beer and sit on the steps that lead to their bed, engaging in a long face-off with the Folder.
It’s cracked open spine-out right where Briar left it, a glaring blue beacon on top of the dresser.
Eventually, Briar loses the war and fetches it.
In the comfort of the mussed nest of their bed, they flip to the end, to a bent and scratched plastic pocket that holds a letter in a crisp white envelope.
It’s the exact shape of Briar’s avoidance, the thing they skirted around for years after Seb left and Briar’s heart was irrevocably broken.
They slide it out, turn it over, and then pause: the letter had been taped shut once, fragments of sky-blue washi tape dotted with fluffy cartoon clouds still clinging to the paper, but it’s obviously been torn open since.
Briar frowns down at it. That can’t be right.
They had never opened this letter. They’d planned on throwing it into one of Sean’s big yard fires with the rest of the scrap, but had reconsidered at the last moment and shoved it into the Folder instead, thinking of one day chucking the whole thing away.
Briar’s mum wouldn’t have touched it. Sean would never open a folder willingly in his life.
The ragged flap of the envelope lifts easily, and Briar slides out the letter, written on a balloon-festooned thank-you note card, presumably bought for one of the childhood birthday parties Bastian’s mother had never remembered to throw for him.
They might not have sent yours yet but it doesn’t mean you didn’t get in Briar and I’m not going to go without you anyway.
I wouldn’t have any fun without you there and I wouldn’t have any friends and I wouldn’t have you so there’s no point.
I’ll go wherever you go so just let me know okay.
Your mum said you didn’t want to come to the phone and she said you were out when I came round.
But write me a letter back please so I know what to do. I love you.
Seb
Briar feels odd. Dizzy. They have seen this before.
Some trick of time had erased the opening of the note and its contents, but they remember that I love you, the strangeness of seeing it written down when they’d never said it out loud that way, even if it was true.
It had hurt then. It still hurts now. Why hadn’t they remembered?
Maybe because it hadn’t mattered in the end. Yes, Briar had sulked for a week, but a true friend wouldn’t have given up so easily. Regardless of what he’d written here, Seb had left Briar anyway.
I’ll go wherever you go.