Mainlander. Will Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ of ‘Mr Tambourine Man’.

      ‘I can’t believe you’re standing me up to hear a bunch of men boast about boats.’ She gave him a playful nudge with her elbow, to which he was rigidly unresponsive.

      ‘I’m not standing you up. I mean, I’m not your boyfriend, Debbie.’ This was not a morning on which to flirt.

      Debbie stopped, and he turned towards her, bewildered that he seemed to have stumbled into another major row within a mere twenty-four hours. This time, though, he could see there would be no row. Not just because they were surrounded by pupils and staff but because she had turned pale and seemed to crumple, not knowing where to look.

      ‘What? Where did that come from?’

      He froze as she all but limped off, wishing away the words, wishing away the people around them, wishing he could explain that his lashing out had stemmed from his anger at his own desire, that she had done nothing he had not encouraged, that she felt nothing that he did not feel a hundredfold, and that he would rather hurl himself off a cliff than hurt her as he had just done.

      Colin’s stupor was interrupted as Aidan Blampied roared into the quadrangle in his open-top Jaguar E-type, using the odd rev of the throaty engine and toot of the horn to clear a path through the throng of students loitering towards registration. He cut a cool dash in aviation shades as he parked, but Colin found him a supercilious, selfish jerk. Not just because he usually turned up late, wanting to be noticed. At last summer’s Activities Week Blampied had run a course titled ‘Boat Maintenance’, in which eager pupils had given his modest yacht a new coat of varnish.

      Colin approached him. He wasn’t his first choice of counsel when it came to Duncan’s well-being, but he had to unburden himself and get a second opinion, and Blampied was the boy’s form teacher. It was the appropriate place to start.

      ‘Morning, Aidan. Have you got a moment?’

      ‘That depends,’ came the surly reply, as Blampied looked at the sky. ‘Running late, but what do you reckon? Looks like rain?’

      ‘Um, the forecast says not, but those clouds look like they might be heading over.’

      ‘Give me a hand, will you?’

      As Colin helped heave the canvas roof back on and line up the poppers, he pushed on with his enquiries. ‘How do you find Duncan Labey?’

      ‘Good kid. You’ve got him for English, haven’t you?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Any problems?’

      ‘No, he’s a very capable student. It’s just I bumped into him last night …’

      The roof was reattached and Blampied had walked round and was now face to face with Colin, but the sunglasses made him feel as if he was being unfavourably observed. He couldn’t read Blampied’s eyes.

      ‘Where?’

      ‘Grosnez?’

      ‘Grosnez? What were you doing there? Arsehole of the Island, isn’t it?’

      ‘Don’t you mean the nose? Big nose. That’s what it means.’

      ‘All right, Mainlander, you’ve done your research. What were you doing there?’

      ‘I was looking at the sunset. So was he.’ Colin looked around. The last stragglers were entering their classes. He would be late, but this was important, and no one was around to overhear. ‘He was acting strangely.’

      ‘Strangely?’

      ‘He was near the edge of the cliff.’

      ‘So? He’s a teenage boy. That’s the sort of thing they do. They like going fast down hills and leaning out from heights.’

      ‘I might be wrong – it was getting dark – but it looked like he was going to jump. I wanted to let you know in case he’d been acting in any way out of the ordinary.’

      ‘Other than looking at sunsets, no. I see him for five minutes at the beginning of the day. You see more of him than I do. How does he seem to you?’

      ‘Fine. He’s a good student.’

      ‘Did you say anything to him?’

      ‘It didn’t feel right.’

      ‘Then trust your instincts. If you really had seen someone about to do a header off a cliff, you’d know.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘Well, they’d probably have done it. I’m guessing they don’t normally pause to enjoy the view.’

      ‘Will you speak to him?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘What do you want me to say?’

      ‘I just think we have a duty of care to do something.’

      ‘This school is full of hormonally rampant adolescents. The thought of topping themselves probably pops into their brains once a week because their football team’s gone down, or they’re late with homework and can’t avoid a detention, or their parents won’t let them watch late-night films on Channel 4. They’re not going to do anything about it.’

      ‘Is it worth taking the risk?’

      ‘There’s no risk, trust me. Duncan Labey is fine.’

      They started walking towards their classes.

      ‘What about you?’ continued Blampied.

      ‘Me?’

      ‘What were you doing out there?’

      ‘I told you, looking at the sunset.’

      ‘But why? Everything okay with you?’

      ‘Yes, of course.’

      ‘There you go. That’s what he’d say too. Trust me, he’s fine.’

      After registration Colin and his form made their way up to the main school assembly, which, as predicted, was a monotonous affair. The headmaster, Gerald Le Brocq, gave two addresses each term, the rest being delivered by other members of staff, local vicars and pupils. He tended to draw from one of three rotating talks, and today’s was a humdinger about how Jesus was like an invisible parachute we were all unwittingly wearing. Colin was getting close to memorising the addresses verbatim, the other two being a self-penned parable about a bear sharing his food with a field mouse, and an anecdote about the time Le Brocq had sat next to Jeffrey Archer on a train, which he tried to stretch into a lesson about fate: ‘If my wife had not burnt my toast that morning, I would not have missed my usual train and I would not have had the pleasure of sitting next to the Dickens of our time and drinking deep of his wit and wisdom.’ Colin occasionally performed versions of these for Debbie’s amusement. He’d ridiculed the Jeffrey Archer story to Emma, but she had missed the point and wanted to know the details of the СКАЧАТЬ