Jonathan Barnes - The Domino Men

“He promised us his flesh and blood,” said Hawker.

“And we were ready and waiting on the day of your father’s accident.”

“Accident!” Hawker crowed. “Oh, my little lambkin, now you know the truth of it.”

“We peered into the tangled wreck of his car as he lay dying and we jeered and laughed and poked him with a very big stick.”

The monsters were doubled up with laughter now, jack-knifed in hilarity.

“The look on his face,” said Boon, “as he lay there sobbing! He thought we’d come to save him!”

“Do you remember,” Hawker gasped, forcing the words out amidst eruptions of laughter, “how we poured petrol on his legs?”

I did my best this time. I didn’t holler or scream or beat my fists fruitlessly against the glass walls of the cell. Nor was I tempted to blunder into the circle. Instead, I simply walked calmly over the door and knocked for the guard to let me out.

“Ta-ta!” one of the Prefects shouted. “Come and see us again soon, won’t you, sir?”

“Better luck next time, Mr. L!”

More laughter. I heard the television blunder back into life, heard those brash inaugural chords, the old soundtrack to my life, before anything evil had entered in.

As I stumbled back out into the corridor, my only hope was that the bastards hadn't seen that I was crying.

When I got home, Abbey was waiting for me, sitting at the table in the front room, dressed in a man-sized T-shirt and nursing a hot blackcurrant squash.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” I said carefully and, after a few seconds of trying to guess what sort of a mood she was in, decided to chance a smile.

To my relief, she smiled tentatively back. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“I saw you with that girl… I suppose I just overreacted.”

“Honestly,” I said, taking off my jacket and throwing myself onto the sofa. “I’m not interested in Barbara.”

As Abbey grinned, I noticed how thin her T-shirt was, how it seemed to accentuate and draw the eye to the curves of her chest.

“How was your work thing?” she asked. I wondered if she’d noticed the way I’d been looking at her.

“Oh, you know,” I said. “A bit knackering.”

“Let me get you a drink, then.”

“A glass of water would be lovely,” I said, and I heard her pad away into the kitchen.

When she came back, she passed me a glass, but no sooner had I raised it to my lips than I felt her hands in my hair, her breath on my skin.

“Abbey?”

The water was forgotten, hastily abandoned on the table, and all at once she was kissing my neck, my cheeks, my temples. For an instant, her tongue flicked inside my left ear and I shuddered in pleasure.

“I’m sorry,” she breathed. “Poor Henry.”

She maneuvered herself in front of me, then sat down on my lap.

“Abbey?”

“Shh.” She kissed me hard on the lips and I responded in kind (as best I knew how).

“I didn’t expect to feel this way,” she said, once we’d come up for air. “Not so soon. But there’s something about you…”

Giddy with the moment, I risked a joke. “I’m irresistible.”

“Don’t spoil it,” she chided, placing her hand on mine, guiding it beneath her shirt as somewhere deep in my stomach I felt the same lurch of panic I’d felt the first time we’d kissed, the awful anxiety of performance, the insidious terror that one might not measure up.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

She kissed me again, I kissed her back and I was just beginning to relax and enjoy myself when my mind was wrenched back to that terrible cell, to the gargoyles in the chalk circle and the relentless cackle of the Prefects.

The next thing I knew, Abbey was no longer sitting on my lap but standing over me, concerned, disappointed, smoothing down her T-shirt.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really wanted to-”

“It’s fine.”

“I hate to let you down.”

“You’re not,” she said, although I would have been deluding myself not to recognize the frustration which tinged her voice.

“It’s just that I’ve had a long day. A lot’s happened.”

“Of course.”

“And… Oh God-” Something halfway between a sob and an irresistible urge to vomit began to force its way up my body — the great, indigestible tumor of the truth.

Abbey stroked back my hair, held me close, whispered in my ear. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“I’m sorry.” I was gulping back tears. “But there’s something I can’t stop thinking about. Something in my past.”

Abbey kissed me on the forehead. “Let it out.”

“I need to tell you…” My nose had started to run and I could feel grief and rage take hold. “I need to tell you how my father died.”

The heir to the throne woke the next morning to find Silverman standing over him holding a breakfast tray, a large pot of tea, a sheath of correspondence and a fresh edition of the Times , all of it balanced with the kind of dexterous skill one can acquire only through decades of experience.

“Your Royal Highness. Good morning, sir.”

Arthur wriggled up in bed. “Plump the pillow for me, would you, Silverman?”

Obediently, the equerry patted the pillow into place.

“I have sleep in my peepers,” said the prince.

With great tenderness, Silverman teased out the granules of dust which had accumulated overnight at the edges of the prince’s eyes. He walked over to the wardrobe and laid out his master’s outfit for the morning — crisp gray suit, starched white shirt, underpants emblazoned with the prince’s crest and a choice of half a dozen ties, all of them varyingly somber shades of mahogany.

Once the equerry was done, the prince asked: “What do the papers say? Be a good chap, would you, and summarize the headlines.”

Silverman scanned the front page. “The prime minister is flying home from Africa,” he said, and at the mere mention of the man, the prince rolled his eyes in exasperation. “A new health secretary has been appointed. And a rock musician has been arrested for punching a traffic policeman.”

“What else, Silverman? What aren’t you telling me?”

The equerry cleared his throat discreetly. “There is a small article about your mother, sir.”

“My mother?”

“Some wholly unfounded piece of speculation about the state of her health.”

“What are they saying, Silverman?”

A moment’s hesitation, then: “It would appear, sir, that the headline is: “At Death’s Door?”

“How do they know? It’s not like anyone’s even seen her for months.”

“It’s only a newspaper, sir. They are peddlers of exaggeration and hyperbole.”

“I do wonder when she’ll show her face again. You know, of course, that she never liked me all that much?”

“I’m sure you must be mistaken, sir.”

“Never like Laetitia either, come to think of it. Of course, that’s why Mother won’t see me anymore. She thinks I’m weak. She thinks I’m squeamish. And I suspect the public tend to concur. It’s really most unfair.”

Silverman cleared his throat. “Will that be all, sir?”

Arthur took a sip of his tea and eyed his breakfast. “Thank you, Silverman. You may go.”

The equerry backed toward the door.

“There’s just one more thing.”

“Sir?”

“What do you make of this Streater fellow? Seems a rum sort.”

He does not appear to be a man in whom I would be altogether happy to place my faith, sir.”