He didn't turn his head. 'I just got back from Julian's house,' he said, in a monotone.
I sat down. 'And?'
'The place is shut up. He's gone.'
There was a long silence.
'I find it very hard to believe he's done this, you know.' The light glinted off his spectacles; beneath the dark, glossy hair his face was deadly pale. 'It's just such a cowardly thing to have done. That's why he left, you know. Because he was afraid.'
The screens were open. A damp wind rustled in the trees.
Beyond them clouds sailed over the moon, fast and wild.
Henry took off his glasses. I never could get used to seeing him without them, that naked, vulnerable look he always had.
'He's a coward,' he said. 'In our circumstance, he would have done exactly what we did. He's just too much of a hypocrite to admit it.'
I didn't say anything.
'He doesn't even care that Bunny is dead. I could forgive him if that was why he felt this way, but it isn't. He wouldn't care if we'd killed half a dozen people. All that matters to him is keeping his own name out of it. Which is essentially what he said when I talked to him last night.'
'You went to see him?'
'Yes. One would hope that this matter would've seemed something more to him than just a question of his own comfort.
Even to have turned us in would have shown some strength of character, not that I wanted to be turned in. But it's nothing but cowardice. Running away like this.'
Even after all that had happened, the bitterness and disappointment in his voice cut me to the heart.
'Henry,' I said. I wanted to say something profound, that Julian was only human, that he was old, that flesh and blood are frail and weak and that there comes a time when we have to transcend our teachers. But I found myself unable to say anything at all.
He turned his blind, unseeing eyes upon me.
'I loved him more than my own father,' he said.1 loved him more than anyone in the world.'
The wind was up. A gentle pitter of rain swept across the roof.
We sat there like that, not talking, for a very long time.
The next afternoon at three, I went to meet the new teacher.
When I stepped inside Julian's office I was shocked. It was completely empty. The books, the rugs, the big round table were gone. All that was left were the curtains on the windows and a tacked-up Japanese print that Bunny had given him. Camilla was there, and Francis, looking pretty uncomfortable, and Henry. He was standing by the window doing his best to ignore the stranger.
The teacher had dragged in some chairs from the dining hall. He was a round-faced, fair-haired man of about thirty, in turtleneck and jeans. A wedding band shone conspicuously on one pink hand; he had a conspicuous smell of after-shave. 'Welcome,' he said, leaning to shake my hand, and in his voice I heard the enthusiasm and condescension of a man accustomed to working with adolescents. 'My name is Dick Spence. Yours?'
It was a nightmarish hour. I really don't have the heart to go into it: his patronizing tone at the start (handing out a page from the New Testament, saying, 'Of course I don't expect you to pick up the finer points, if you can get the sense, it's okay with me'), a tone which metamorphosed gradually into surprise ('Well!
Rather advanced, for undergraduates!') and defensiveness ('It's been quite a while since I've seen students at your level') and, ultimately, embarrassment. He was the chaplain at Hackett and his Greek, which he had mostly learned at seminary, was crude and inferior even by my standards. He was one of those language teachers who rely heavily on mnemonics. ('Agathon. Do you know how I remember that word? 'Agatha Christie writes good mysteries.'') Henry's look of contempt was indescribable. The rest of us were silent and humiliated. Matters were not helped by Charles stumbling in – obviously drunk – about twenty minutes into the class. His appearance prompted a rehash of previous formalities ('Welcome! My name is Dick Spence.
Yours?') and even, incredibly, a repetition of the agathon embarrassment.
When the lesson was over (teacher sneaking a look at his watch: 'Well! Looks like we're running out of time here!') the five of us filed out in grim silence.
'Well, it's only two more weeks,' said Francis, when we were outside.
Henry lit a cigarette. 'I'm not going back,' he said.
'Yeah,' Charles said sarcastically. That's right. That'll show him.'
'But Henry,' said Francis, 'you've got to go.'
He was smoking the cigarette with tight-lipped, resolute drags.
'No, I don't,' he said.
'Two weeks. That's it.'
'Poor fellow,' said Camilla. 'He's doing the best he can.'
'But that's not good enough for him,' said Charles loudly.
'Who does he expect? Fucking Richmond Lattimore?'
'Henry, if you don't go you'll fail,' said Francis.
'I don't care.'
'He doesn't have to go to school,' said Charles. 'He can do whatever he fucking pleases. He can fail every single fucking class and his dad'll still send him that fat allowance check every month '
'Don't say 'fuck' anymore,' said Henry, in a quiet but ominous voice.
'Fuck? What's the matter, Henry? You never heard that word 1 before? Isn't that what you do to my sister every night?'
I remember, when I was a kid, once seeing my father strike my mother for absolutely no reason. Though he sometimes did the same thing to me, I did not realize that he did it sheerly out of bad temper, and believed that his trumped-up justifications ('You talk too much'; 'Don't look at me like that') somehow warranted the punishment. But the day I saw him hit my mother (because she had remarked, innocently, that the neighbors were building an addition to their house; later, he would claim she had,| provoked him, that it was a reproach about his abilities as wage earner, and she, tearfully, would agree) I realized that the childish impression I had always had of my father, as Just Lawgiver, was entirely wrong. We were utterly dependent on this man, who was not only deluded and ignorant, but incompetent in every way. What was more, I knew that my mother was incapable of standing up to him. It was like walking into the cockpit of an airplane and finding the pilot and co-pilot passed out drunk in their seats. And standing outside the Lyceum, I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which in fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at twelve, sitting on a bar stool in our sunny little kitchen in Piano. Who is in control here? I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane?
And the thing of it was, that Charles and Henry had to appear together in court in less than a week, because of the business with Henry's car.
Camilla, I knew, was worried sick. She – whom I had never known to fear anything – was afraid now; and though in a certain perverse way I was pleased at her distress, there was no denying that if Henry and Charles – who practically came to blows each time they were in the same room – were going to be forced to appear before a judge, and with some show of cooperation and friendship, there could be no possible outcome but disaster.
Henry had hired a lawyer in town. The hope that a third party would be able to reconcile these differences had granted Camilla a small measure of optimism, but in the afternoon on the day of the appointment, I received a telephone call from her.
'Richard,' she said. 'I've got to talk to you and Francis.'
Her tone frightened me. When I arrived at Francis's apartment, I found Francis badly shaken and Camilla in tears.
I had seen her cry only once before, and then only, I think, from nerves and exhaustion. But this was different. She was blank and hollow-eyed, and there was despair in the set of her features.
'Camilla,' I said. 'What's wrong?'
She didn't answer immediately. She smoked one cigarette, then another. Little by little the story came out. Henry and Charles had gone to see the lawyer and Camilla, in capacity of peacemaker, had gone along. At first, it had seemed as if everything might be all right. Henry, apparently, had not hired the lawyer entirely from altruism
