26. I Will Have This Dance
A thirty-minute shower can’t wash away Briar’s hangover or soothe the manifold horrors in their heart, but it’s a good start.
They sit on their bed afterwards looking out the window, the letter burning in their pocket, watching for Bastian.
When the eleventh scholar in a tux and a mask strolls out from one of the other dorms, Briar finally realises why.
The summer formal.
There are a few posters up around campus advertising a masquerade ball, printed in full colour on thick, glossy stock, but as the whole affair seemed to be nothing to do with Briar, they’d ignored them completely.
Even if their friends had been the type to go to official school parties, Briar was under no illusions that staff would be allowed to attend.
What had the scholar in Hawthorn said? That Bastian was ‘getting ready’?
He’ll be there, then. That means Briar needs to be, too.
Once they’re dressed in a black shirt and jeans, they join the crowds of latecomers out on the lawn.
It seems that only the upper years are invited to partake; nobody out there looks under the age of fifteen.
The few girls are wearing simple, expensive sheaths of pale-toned silk, their hair up in buns or cascading in loose waves, with far less frills and flash than Briar might have guessed.
Some of them have rosebuds in their hair, but they’re a far cry from the polyester flower crowns the girls at Briar’s school used to don for festival season.
The boys are practically identical in white tie, although some are wearing the Temple house pin, and fewer still have pinned sprays of pale flowers to their lapels.
The boys favour plain eye masks in black or white; the girls are wearing silk and velvet, Venetian florals and avian feathers.
Briar is criminally underdressed. They approach the door to the hall anyway, where fresh summer garlands have been pinned to the frame and lintel, and the guy checking tickets just laughs.
‘I need to . . . fix something,’ Briar tries. ‘I work here.’
‘Don’t care,’ says the scholar. ‘You can fix it in proper shoes and a tie.’
Briar stands there picking their nails as a perfumed crowd of girls are let in with a sweeping arm of welcome. Then they turn and head for Griffin.
Tate is in his room, although it takes him a long time to come to the door.
‘I was sleeping,’ he says miserably. ‘Why aren’t you sleeping? Everyone should be sleeping. It’s the middle of the night.’
‘It’s eight p.m.’
‘Ugh, come in.’
Tate’s weekend bag is open on the floor, a shirt spilling out, an uncharacteristic moment of chaos in the otherwise bright and orderly room. On his desk, Briar finds a stack of ancient Temple yearbooks, and picks one up to have a look, momentarily distracted.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Tate says, grabbing a vending machine sandwich from his bedside table and tearing it open.
‘Got those from the library. They’ve got all sorts of old Temple crap in one of the annexes.
I’m on the yearbook committee, and I was doing the layout for the teacher’s pages and I suddenly thought about our tower guy.
Robert. Thought we might find him in one of these. ’
‘Yeah?’ Briar flips to the neatly tabbed page at the back and finds a whole section for the faculty, a photograph and paragraph on each of them written by a scholar. There’s no page for Robert Parker. The yearbook is dated 1998.
‘So he wasn’t teaching here by the end of that year,’ Tate says, between mouthfuls of chicken salad, ‘but what’s weird is, he’s not in 1997, either.
And I think someone’s taken a page out. Same with 1996, 1995.
But I did find this.’ He rummages in a pile by his bed and then hands Briar a faded group photo, scholars in their formal finest, teachers at the back. ‘There he is, at the back.’
He taps the page. Briar looks down at a fuzzy, smiling guy with a beard and glasses. He’s got a husky build and a friendly expression, and he’s wearing a very ugly blue tie. There’s something vaguely familiar about him, but Briar can’t put their finger on it.
‘That’s from 1994. So he’s not a ghost. I did try to run a search on him on the way back from Westby’s, but there are ten million Robert Parkers, and about half of them seem to be teachers.’
‘This is cool,’ Briar says. ‘I can’t believe you found it.’
‘If I had any control over my own life,’ Tate says, ‘I’d want to be an investigative journalist. Instead, I will be a lawyer, and be rich and miserable. At least I’ll have nice clothes.’
‘I wonder what happened.’ Briar squints at the photo again, then remembers the task at hand with a brutal tug of nerves. ‘Actually. Speaking of clothes. I need a big favour. I need to get into the formal, and they won’t let me in like . . . this.’
Tate finishes his sandwich, wipes his hands fastidiously with a tissue and sighs. ‘I can’t give you a makeover. I don’t have it in me. Go and borrow one of Westby’s hideous argyle vests.’
‘I can’t, it’s white tie.’
‘Well, you won’t fit into mine.’ Tate wavers, then gives in.
‘Look, it’s all in a garment bag on the end of the rail.
The shirt isn’t going to fit you, and I don’t think the waistcoat will button, but I do have one tail coat that’s too big in the shoulders, I’ve been meaning to get it altered . . .’
Despite his reluctance, he gets up off the bed to rummage through his wardrobe. ‘Have you got black trousers? I can lend you a different shirt and the tie, and then you just need shoes.’
‘I’ve got trousers,’ says Briar. ‘They’re cheap, but they’ll work.’
‘They won’t be the same shade of black, but what can you do?
’ Tate hands Briar a white silk shirt; up close, it’s decorated with appliqué butterflies, but as they’re the same shade as everything else, the effect is subtle.
‘That should fit. It’s totally wrong, but as long as nobody scrutinises your fabrics, you’ll be fine. ’
‘You don’t have a mask, do you? It’s a masquerade.’
‘I wish I could say no,’ Tate says. ‘But unfortunately I do. Second drawer down, with the ties.’
‘Thank you,’ Briar says. ‘Seriously.’
Tate waves them off, then climbs back under the covers, energy spent. ‘Why are you going to the formal, dare I ask?’
Briar clears their throat. ‘Just . . . never been to one before. Wanted to see what it’s like.’
‘Hope you know what you’re doing,’ Tate says, putting his pillow over his face. As Briar is on their way out, he adds, ‘And don’t get any blood on my shirt, it’s archive Valentino.’
Briar returns to their room to change and do something about their hair, and by the time they return, the party is in full swing and there’s nobody standing at the door.
Bolstered by their sheer good luck, they slip inside, and almost jump out of their skin when a girl in a neat black uniform says, ‘Champagne?’
There are six of them lined up in the antechamber like royal guards, holding black trays laden with glasses.
‘Um, no thanks,’ Briar says, but then they glance at the large, open doorway into the hall. ‘Actually . . .’ The woman hands them a glass with a smile, and Briar knocks it back as they walk into the formal.
The hall is part of the old house, medieval, with the kind of vaulted ceiling that’s been replicated throughout the years in the more modern buildings on campus.
The arched windows are very high up, and below them, wrapping all the way around the considerable length of the room, matching tapestries are hung end to end.
The effect is extremely striking, the room more alive than any of the other ancient stone chambers Briar has seen here; the subjects of the tapestries hunt unicorns through trees, duel each other in clearings and picnic in finely stitched glades.
Circular tables have been set up at one end of the hall, and an extravagant buffet has been laid out, the white tablecloth beneath it already stained with sauce and wine.
The other end has been left clear, presumably for dancing.
The lights are dimmed, candles burning on every table.
Just standing there with an empty champagne glass in hand, Briar feels something like French royalty, partying at Versailles.
Their outfit should look stupid, but glancing in the mirror in the bathrooms on the way out of Eden, Briar had thought they looked almost .
. . sharp. Cary Grant, but with much worse hair.
Then they’d put the white silk mask on; that certainly felt stupid.
It’s busy. Scholars are mostly sitting at tables with half-empty plates, or helping themselves to the bottles of wine in the ice buckets.
A few are standing around the edges of the room with their drinks.
Nobody’s dancing. Briar goes to the buffet for lack of anything else to do, then stares at the carefully labelled spread, overwhelmed.
There’s sushi studded with pink fish and bright cubes of avocado, tender wagyu crostini, a caviar station, venison and quail Scotch eggs laid in yellow sauce, a whole battalion of peachy salmon croustades; Briar tries one of the latter and feels ruined for all other food, forever.
‘I thought there were going to be more canapés,’ a nasal-voiced scholar says, picking at the blinis on his plate.
‘Well,’ says his friend, ‘they said hors d’oeuvres.’
‘What’s the fucking difference?’
‘Are you joking? Do you actually not know? Oh, wow. Okay. Canapés can be hors d’oeuvres, but most hors d’oeuvres aren’t canapés.’
‘How in the ever-loving fuck does that help me, Joshua? All, like, canapés can only tell the truth, and hors d’oeuvres can only tell a lie . . . I didn’t ask for a fucking riddle, I just want some cheese on a fucking cracker.’
Kay pronounces hors d’oeuvres as ‘horse divorce’. Briar really does miss her, especially at times like this. She’d dine out on this overheard conversation for months.
‘Have you seen Bastian Wolfe?’ Briar asks, and they both look slightly affronted.
‘No. What’s wrong with your shirt?’