Dan Vyleta: Smoke

“I don’t know,” says Charlie, thoughtful. “If it is, it better come today. If they have to postpone the Trip, they might end up cancelling it altogether.”

He cuts a piece of gammon like it’s wronged him somehow, spilling peas on all sides. Thomas curses and turns to his own lunch. Leaving food on your plate is against the rules and carries its own punishment, as though it is proof of some invisible type of Smoke.

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They send for him after vespers.

It’s Julius who comes for him, smirking, Thomas can see him all the way down the corridor, an extra flourish to his step. Julius does not say anything. Indeed he does not need to, a gesture is enough, a sort of wave of the hand that starts at the chest and ends up pointing outward, down the length of the hall. Ironic, like he’s a waiter, inviting Thomas to the table. And then Julius leads the way, walking very slowly now, his hands in his pockets, calling to some boys to open the door up ahead.

Making sure everyone knows.

Keeping pace with Julius, trapped behind that slow, slouching, no-haste-no-worry-in-the-world walk: it’s enough to make Thomas’s blood boil. He can taste Smoke on his breath and wonders if he’s showing. A dark gown covers his shirt but he will soon be asked to remove it, no doubt, and expose his linens. He attempts to calm himself, picks Soot out of his teeth with the tip of his tongue. Its bitterness makes him gag.

Julius slows down even further as they approach Dr. Renfrew’s door. The Master of Smoke and Ethics. It’s a new post, that, no older than a year. It used to be the Master of Religion was in charge of all the moral education, or so Charlie’s told him. When they arrive at the door, Julius pauses, smirks, and shakes his head. Then he walks on, faster now, gesturing for Thomas to keep pace.

It takes Thomas a minute to understand what’s just happened. He is not going to see Dr. Renfrew. There will be no dentist’s chair for him. It’s worse than that. They are heading to the headmaster’s quarters.

There’s to be a tribunal.

The word alone makes him feel sick.

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Julius does not knock when they reach the headmaster’s door. This confuses Thomas, until they’ve stepped through. It leads not to a room but to a sort of antechamber, like a waiting room at the doctor’s, two long benches on each side, and an icy draft from the row of windows on the right. They are high up here, in one of the school’s towers. Beneath them, the fields of Oxfordshire: a silver sea of frozen moonlight. Down by the brook, a tree rises from the snow-choked grounds, stripped of its leaves by winter. A willow, its drooping branches dipped into the river, their tips trapped in ice. Thomas turns away, shivering, and notices that the door back to the hallway is padded from the inside, to proof it against sound. To protect the headmaster from the school’s noise, no doubt. And so nobody can hear you scream.

Julius stands at the other door, knocks on it gently, with his head boy’s confidence and tact. It opens after only a moment: Renfrew’s face, framed by blond hair and beard.

“You are here, Argyle. Good. Sit.”

Then adds, as Julius turns to leave: “You too.”

Renfrew closes the door before Julius can ask why.

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They sit on opposite sides, Thomas with his back to the windows, Julius facing them, and the moon. It affords Thomas the opportunity to study him. Something has gone out of the lad, at this “You too.” Some of the swagger, the I-own-the-world certainty. He is chewing his cheek, it appears. A good-looking boy, Thomas is forced to admit, fair-skinned and dark-haired, his long thin whiskers more down than beard. Thomas waits until Julius’s eyes fall on him, then leans forward.

“Does it hurt? The tooth, I mean.”

Julius does not react at once, hides his emotions as he does so well.

“You are in trouble,” he says at last. “I am here only as a witness.”

Which is true in all likelihood, but nonetheless he looks a tad ruffled, Julius does, and Thomas cannot help gloating a little over his victory. They looked for the tooth late last night when Charlie and he were trying to clean his shirt, but it was gone. Julius must have picked it up himself. It would have made a nice souvenir. But that was then and now he is here, his hands all sweaty, casting around for bravado. Waiting. How much easier it would be to fight, even to lose: a fist in your face, a nosebleed, an ice bag on your aches. Thomas leans back, tries to unknot his shoulders. The moon is their only light source. When a cloud travels across it, the little waiting room is thrown into darkness. All he can see of Julius now is a shadow, black as Soot.

It must be a quarter of an hour before Renfrew calls them in. Rich, golden gaslight welcomes them; thick carpets that suck all sound from their steps. They are all there, all the masters. There are seven of them — Renfrew-Foybles-Harmon-Swinburne-Barlow-Winslow-Trout — but only three that count. Renfrew is tall and well-built, and still rather young. He wears his hair short, as well as his beard, and favours a dark, belted suit that seems to encase him from neck to ankle. A white silken scarf, worn tight at the throat, vouches for his virtue.

Trout is the headmaster. He is very fat and wears his trousers very high, so that the quantity of flesh between the top of his thighs and the waistband dwarfs the short sunken chest, adorned though it is with fine lace and ruffles. What he lacks in hair, Trout makes up for in whiskers. His button nose seems lost between the swell of his red cheeks.

Swinburne, finally: the Master of Religion. Where Renfrew is tall, Swinburne is towering, if twisted by age. He wears the cap and smock of his office. The little one sees of his face is mottled with broken veins, the shape and colour of thistles. A beard covers the rest, long and stringy.

Renfrew, Swinburne, Trout: each of them, it is said, entangled in affairs that reach from school to Parliament and Crown. Thomas has often thought of painting them. He is good with a brush. A triptych. He has not decided yet who belongs at the centre.

It’s Renfrew who bids them sit. He points to two chairs that have been pulled up into the middle of the room, making no distinction between them. Compared to the theatricality of Julius’s examination last night, the gesture is almost casual. The masters are standing in clusters, wearing worsted winter suits. Some are holding teacups; Foybles is munching a biscuit. Thomas sits. After a moment’s hesitation Julius follows suit.

“You know why you are here.”

It is a statement, not a question, and Renfrew turns even as he makes it, reaches into a basket, retrieves something. It affords Thomas another moment to look around the room. He sees a leather settee and a brass chandelier; stained-glass windows with scenes from the Scriptures, Saint George with his lance through the dragon’s throat; sees a painting of a fox hunt under a dappled sky; sees cabinets, and doors, and a sideboard with fine china; sees all this, but takes in little, his mind skittish, his skin tingling, nervous, afraid. When Renfrew turns back to them he is holding two shirts. He places one over the back of an unoccupied chair, spreads the other between his hands, displaying the Soot stain; runs his fingertips through it, tests its grit.

And launches into lecture.

“Smoke,” he says, “can have many colours. Often it is light and grey, almost white, with no more odour than a struck match. Then there is yellow Smoke, dense and wet like fog. Blue Smoke that smells acrid, like spoiled milk, and seems to disperse almost as soon as it has formed. Once in a while we witness black Smoke, oily and viscous; it will cling to anything it touches. The variations of texture, density, and shade have all been carefully described in the Four Books of Smoke: a taxonomy of forty-three varieties. It is more difficult to establish the precise cause for each type of Smoke. It is a question not only of the offence but of the offender. The thoroughly corrupt breed darker, denser Smoke. Once a person’s moral sickness is sufficiently advanced, all actions are coloured by its stain. Even the most innocent act will—”