Pat Barker - Border Crossing

‘Danny was a bottomless pit. He wanted other people to fill him, only in the process the other people ended up drained. Some people were… I don’t know, mesmerized by the process, and so they kept going back for more. Or rather they kept going back to give more.’

‘You say they were mesmerized by the process?’

‘Or by him. This place is full of people wanting to help, that’s why we’re here. And most of the time you can’t help, so when you meet somebody like Danny who makes you feel you are helping, well… it’s water in the desert. And he was very, very good at making people think they were helping.’

‘He was probably desperate to be helped.’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Tom was feeling his way forward. ‘Do you think Mr Greene ended up drained?’

‘No.’ Very definite. ‘My husband is… well, devoted to the boys, as I’m sure you saw, but on the personal level he can be… quite impervious, as well.’

Tom found himself trying to translate that into terms that might have been used by somebody less admiring (presumably she was admiring) of Greene and his work, but the only phrases he could come up with were swingeing.

‘Bernard has a great gift. He can look at somebody and see the best person they could be, and somehow he manages to believe that person into existence. But the downside is that he’s actually rather naive about the way people are now. He’s not shrewd. In fact, I think he rather despises shrewdness, he thinks it’s cynicism.’

Tom was puzzled, and he took a moment to work out why. It was because he’d expected more resentment from this woman who was treated like a housemaid, expected to run and answer the door, sent off to make the tea, then dismissed, abruptly, although she’d taught Danny and might well have had something to contribute. But now, looking round the kitchen, he saw that this, not the study, was the power centre. Seen from this changed perspective, the study looked rather like a playpen.

‘And this suspension of disbelief worked with Danny?’

‘You tell me.’

Tom hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘They let him out.’

He saw her smile. Tom didn’t want to make the same mistake he’d made with Greene, closing down the conversation by focusing on a topic that produced a defensive reaction, so he asked the most open-ended question he could think of. ‘What was it like dealing with him?’

Silence: the silence of having too much to say. ‘I’m sure my husband told you he got no preferential treatment?’

‘He did, yes.’

‘The whole school was reorganized round him. Everybody thought he was bright, just talking to him, you could tell, but they did a battery of tests and realized he was very bright, so that meant an academic course. A lot of the time he was taught on his own, one to one. Most of the time here we’re coping with illiteracy.’

‘But that was inevitable, wasn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. And of course he was a child. People responded to him as a child. His housemother fell in love with him. I don’t think that’s putting it too strongly. No children of her own, and suddenly there’s this beautiful little boy. He was beautiful.’

‘But it didn’t stop there, did it? I think you’re… well, I think you’re implying Danny worked the system.’

‘Like otters swim. I think most of the time he was so good, nobody saw him doing it. In any relationship, but especially with an adult, he had to be in control. And — well, I think this is why he wasn’t spotted — it wasn’t control as a way of getting something, it was control for its own sake. Little things… it’s a rule the boys don’t call staff by their first names. Bernard’s a great believer in keeping a certain distance, he thinks it’s a mistake to start coming across as somebody’s best mate. Danny used everybody’s first name. And of course it didn’t matter. Except. Another rule: you’re not supposed to be alone with them. If you’re teaching one to one — and everybody who taught Danny did — the door’s supposed to be left open. Either that, or you do it in a corner of the library. With Danny the doors were closed. Not because anything… wrong was happening. It wasn’t. But he’d be telling them something, he’d be confiding in them, he didn’t want anybody else to hear, and they’d be flattered, they’d think: This is great, we’re making progress. I’m the one who’s broken through. And you see the reallydevilish thing? Danny wasn’t breaking the rules. They were. He was very, very good at getting people to step across that invisible border. Lambs to the slaughter.’

‘And one Aberdeen Angus bull.’

She looked surprised, but recovered quickly. ‘Yes.’

‘Did he do all this to women as well?’

‘He did it to everybody.’

‘Including Mr Greene?’

‘Yes. That’s when I first noticed him doing it. I don’t suppose you… no, you wouldn’t. My husband has a, well, a distinctive walk. Danny started imitating it. And there he was, bustling round the school like a miniature headmaster, it was… very funny to watch, and I think most people thought it was a good thing. Bit of hero-worship.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t like it.’

‘And where did Angus fit into all this?’

‘Oh, he came much later. Danny was fifteen.’

A short silence. ‘But the same thing?’

‘Plus.’

A long silence. Tom said, ‘Did he imitate Angus?’

‘The accent. Angus was very Scottish.’

‘And a good teacher?’

‘Very. Though whether he was suited to this sort of work…’ She seemed to come to a decision. ‘Danny started mimicking him, anyway that’s what Angus thought, and he cracked down on Danny pretty hard. He’d no experience with disturbed kids, he treated them as a normal class. Little sprog plays up. Crack down. But you can’t do that here. To any of them,but especially not Danny. You see, all the other kids were on a points system. The.more points for good behaviour, the sooner they got out. But not Danny.’

‘Danny wasn’t going anywhere.’

‘That’s right. Life. He didn’t know how long life was going to be, but he knew it was going to be a helluva long time, and he knew being a good boy in English lessons wasn’t going to get him out of anything. So when Angus cracked down, Danny freaked out. Bounced himself off the walls, tried to break the windows, threw things, generally went berserk. And suddenly it wasn’t a normal class.’

‘What did Angus do?’

‘Saw him afterwards. Alone.’

‘With the door closed.’

‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised.’

‘And then he got Danny writing about his childhood?’

‘Yes. I don’t think he was trying to get at the murder, though I don’t know where else he thought it was leading.’

‘You obviously think it was a bad idea.’

‘Well, from Angus’s point of view, yes. You do know Danny accused him of sexual abuse? He had to leave.’

‘No, I didn’t know,’

Tom was almost too surprised to speak, and the more he thought about it, the more baffled he became. Danny’s silence might be explicable, but what abouGreene’s? What about Martha’s? There was no way this wouldn’t be on the file. Unless… ‘Was there an inquiry?’

‘No. Angus was on a one-year contract. It all blew up towards the end of the summer term. He left a bit early.’

‘With references?’

‘That I can’t tell you.’

‘And the stabbing? Mr Greene said —’

‘Attempted stabbing.’ She shrugged. ‘Incidents like that happen here all the time.’

‘What caused it?’

‘The other boy said, “Everybody knows you’re MacDonald’s bum boy.” ‘

‘So it was about Angus?’