The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [121]
“Come and see me after school tomorrow. Think about it. Bring me the black cane, after school tomorrow. Don’t forget, now, will you? And you can get the oil off my dressing-gown first thing tomorrow.”
The next morning, Hunter waited in vain for his butt. He sent scouts out to look for him—he was probably shaking somewhere, in some hidey-hole, paralysed with terror, he had no guts. He wasn’t found by class-time, and was marked absent in the register. He did not appear to receive his beating after school. He was not in the dorm at night. Hunter sent Fitch down to search the cellars, but he was not there.
• • •
The next day, the headmaster asked the whole school if anyone had seen Wellwood. Hunter had shown his bruise and cut to the Head, saying curtly that Wellwood had caused it, by throwing a hot lamp, when he was caught reading after lights out. The Head said the boy was probably hiding. In his mind was a sick memory of an earlier beautiful boy, swollen-faced and no longer beautiful, hanging from a hook in the coal-cellar. He told Hunter to set about finding Wellwood. He instituted a search of the grounds. After another two days, he called in the police, and telegraphed Humphry Wellwood.
Humphry and Olive got on a train, and went North. Humphry was partly annoyed to be missing a deadline for the Evening Standard. Olive was trying to hold on to several story-threads, from The Outlaws to Tom Underground. At the same time, exactly, as they experienced normal continuing irritation, they found themselves, somewhere else, alien, frozen by fear, staring at raw shapes through the window of smoke, steam, looming vegetables.
When they arrived at Marlowe Tom was still lost. Humphry counted the days during which Tom had been missing and he himself had not been informed. He expressed indignation. Olive said Tom’s letters had been perfectly placid. With hindsight, too placid, not like Tom at all. They met Hunter, who assessed them insolently, curtly displayed his bruise and cut. Olive asked him how he had come by it. Hunter explained that Tom had been using a lamp to read a heap of nonsense in the dark, and had thrown the lamp at him, when discovered. A hot lamp is dangerous, said Hunter. He stared coolly, and apparently unperturbed.
Olive suggested, when Hunter had gone away, that it might be worth talking to Julian Cain, who knew Tom outside school, and might be in his confidence.
Julian was fetched, and said he knew nothing. He said, under questioning, that he thought Tom was finding it hard to settle in. He said cautiously, to Humphry, that Jonson’s was famous for discipline, and newbutts—new boys, that was—sometimes found it hard, at first. Humphry understood the unspoken message, but it did not help. There was no sign of Tom, and after a few days in an inn, Humphry and Olive went home again, to their other children, and to wait in case Tom got in touch, which he did not.
Todefright became terrible. Phyllis cried a lot, and got smacked frequently. Humphry drank whisky, and talked to the police. Olive walked. She walked from end to end of the house, as a woman in labour walks, to use the contracting muscles to distract body and mind from the pain. After three weeks, walking, walking, occasionally sinking into the nearest chair and pulling at her fingernails and hair, she took some of Humphry’s whisky, and then some more. At first late at night, and then, in small slugs, in the evening, and then in the day, still walking, walking. After six weeks, her bright black hair was dull and bushy, and her eyes—though she did not weep—were puffed by whisky.
Violet managed everything. Meals, letters to editors, the little children, who had not been told,