Markham and I, concerned with the lighting of our tobacco, heard this pronouncement in silence.
‘It may be,’ Williams went on, ‘that I shall learn in time to roll the leaves together myself. The female thigh, I understand, is just the instrument for such a chore.’
‘Williams will make an excellent lawyer,’ Markham remarked.
‘Certainly he will be splendid beneath his wig,’ I said.
‘And what,’ Williams asked, ‘do you intend to do with your years, Markham?’
‘Oh, they are well numbered. I shall hang quite soon for the slaughter of my father.’
‘Would you not wait a while that I might defend you?’
‘It is not an action you could readily defend surely? I am guilty already. I would prefer not to die, but I would not wish to dissociate myself from my crime.’
Williams, puffing hard and with the cigar clamped in the centre of his teeth, said:
‘Markham’s a bloody madman, eh?’
‘Damn it, isn’t it correct that I should be hatching schemes of vengeance? Wasn’t it my own mother? Would you do less, Mr Williams? Answer me now, would you do less?’
‘Ah Markham, I wouldn’t go about with the noose around my neck before it was time for it. I’d hold my peace on that account.’
‘Puny, Williams, puny.’
‘But wise, none the less.’ He kicked a piece of coke across the floor, following it with his glance. He said: ‘Anyway, Markham will never do it. Markham is all talk.’
‘This is a good cigar,’ Markham said. ‘May we enjoy many another.’
‘Yes,’ said Williams agreeably enough. ‘A fine drag.’
We smoked in silence. Looking back on it, it seems certain that it all began that afternoon in the boilerhouse. Had I not met Williams on the way to his toasting session, had Markham not later shared his cigars with us, how different the course of events might have been. My friendship with Markham might never have come about; Williams might never have been transformed from a cunning nonentity into a figure of mystery and power; and Markham, somehow, might have dodged the snare he had already set for himself.
Becoming friends with Markham was an odd thing, he being so silent, so unforthcoming on any subject except the death of his mother. Yet he was sunny rather than sullen; thoughtful rather than brooding. We walked together on the hills behind the school, often without exchanging more than a dozen words. In spite of this our friendship grew. I discovered that Markham’s father and stepmother were now in Kenya. Markham saw them only once a year, during the summer holidays; he spent Easter and Christmas with a grandmother on the south coast.
The other odd aspect of this new relationship between Markham and me was the attitude of Williams. He hung around us. Often, uninvited, he accompanied us on our walks. He took to sidling up to us and whispering: ‘Markham will never do it. Markham’s just a madman, eh?’ Markham rarely replied. He stared at Williams with a puzzled expression and smiled.
When he came on walks with us Williams would ask Markham to tell us about the shooting accident in Florence, and this of course Markham never tired of doing. He didn’t seem to resent Williams. I think he was more generous than the rest of us about people like Williams. Certainly he was more generous than I was. Frankly, Williams used to set my teeth on edge. I found him alone one day and asked him bluntly what he was up to. He sniffed at me and asked me what I meant.
‘Why do you follow Markham and me around?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you leave Markham alone?’
Williams laughed. ‘Markham’s an interesting bird.’
‘What are you up to, Williams?’
But he wouldn’t tell me. He said: ‘I’m an unhealthy personage.’ He laughed again and walked away.
This exchange had no effect on Williams. He still haunted our movements, chattering of his future in the legal world or retailing the fruits of an hour’s eavesdropping. When we were alone together Markham no longer repeated his famous story or made any allusion to this particular aspect of life. I came to realize that although he truly hated his father it had become a joke with him to talk about it. I was the first close friend Markham had known, and he was quite unused to the communication that such a relationship involved. It was only very gradually that new topics of conversation developed between us.
But there was always Williams, devotedly determined, it seemed, to wrap Markham and his story closer and closer together. We formed, I suppose, an odd kind of triangle.
At the beginning of the autumn term the headmaster, Bodger, addressed us at length about this and that, announcing the names of the new prefects and supplying us with fresh items of school routine. When he had finished this part of his peroration he paused for a suitable moment and then he said:
‘There are times, boys, in the lives of us all when we must display the ultimate bravery. When we must face the slings and arrows with a fortitude we may perhaps have never had call to employ before. Such a fearful moment has come to one of our number. I would ask you to show him kindness and understanding. I would ask you this term to help him on his way; to make that way as easy as you may. For us it is a test as it is for him. A test of our humanity. A test of our Christian witness. It is with the greatest grief, boys, that I must report to you the sudden and violent death of Ian Markham’s father and stepmother.’
Markham had not yet returned. During the fortnight of his absence speculation and rumour ran high. Neither Bodger nor his henchmen seemed to know about the threats he had been wont to issue. Only we who were in their care questioned the accuracy of the facts as they had been presented to us: that a Mau Mau marauder armed with a heavy knife had run berserk through the Markham farm in Kenya. Was not the coincidence too great? Was it not more likely that Markham had finally implemented his words with action?
‘Markham’s a madman, eh?’ Williams said to me.
When he did return, Markham was changed. He no longer smiled. Waiting expectantly in the dormitory for a new and gory story, his companions received only silence from Markham’s bed. He spoke no more of his mother; and when anyone sympathized with him on his more recent loss he seemed not to know what was being spoken of. He faded into the background and became quite unremarkable. Pointedly rejecting my companionship, he
