Casey said she should do the reading because she’d been promised a Lessons & Carols reading since that time before. She was referring to the time fifteen Decembers ago when we went with M, Marky, & RP to visit M’s Public School. The students were on vacation, so we got to tour all his old haunts,  including the chapel. RP said Casey was doing one of the readings for College’s ¹ Lessons & Carols, and he made her practice it right there in the chapel. Ever since then, she’s been expecting to go.

When we left the house, Casey’s smile seized my face, the shy but irrepressible little smile she has, because she had dug out her clothes and was taking over my reading. We rode to church and changed into this hybrid outfit, Casey from the waist up, TL waist down. Then the parish-house whirlwind took over, and I forgot about Casey. At least, I didn’t feel her anymore; I was too focused on where I had to go and what I had to do.

As I went about my preparations, I started getting compliments on my outfit. The Rector said good morning and then stopped as if something about me had distracted him. He said he liked my tie, and then he paused, searching for words. “You look like… a young Etonian,” he finally said. Her school tie, shirt, and jumper look nothing like an Eton uniform of any era, so why did he say that? It felt at that moment as if he had glimpsed something unexpected, yet entirely familiar, but couldn’t find a way to describe it adequately.

An unprecedented number of people commented on our wardrobe. They liked the tie. They liked the look. My mother’s friend said I looked “like a little schoolboy.” I looked “about twelve.”

I am over 40. My hair is shoulder-length and not at all boyish. I was wearing a 3/4 length black skirt and TL’s dress shoes. But these were the kinds of comments I got all morning.

My only conclusion—Casey is visible, and she’s recognized, if not by name. Apparently, it’s obvious.

I told the story to get a grip. Stories were just that, short prose compositions to be read in a single sitting with a beginning, middle and end. The story listened patiently, but then gave me that look–the look that said But I really really long to be a novel. It is my heart’s desire. I am passionate about my novel-hood and long only to develop myself over a hundred thousand words. Anything less will stifle my glorious potential.

Even though the story was looking at me in cliches, I realized I had a rebellion on my hands. Fear gripped me.

I consulted the twittisphere and received wise counsel from the likes of Adele Haze, who advised me to force it into a short form and then lie to it and say it might grow up to be a novel one day. I tried this. My story pretended cooperation, but I think it saw through my ruse and decided to persist secretly in its ambition. And so we contended, this story and I, on an off over the months between The Promise and now.

Procrastination and incomplete projects weigh heavily on my conscience. They inspire me to hate myself, and they suck my energy like vampires. I’m old enough to realize that the to-do list will never be empty, but I am nevertheless trying to clear the decks for NaNoWriMo, which begins Monday. Yes, I am doing it again. Yes, once again I propose to be a NaNo Rebel (don’t faint from surprise). I’m planning to continue and try to finish my current novel, roughly from the point I left it after last year’s NaNo. If you check back in a few days, hopefully the Nano widgets will be working and you’ll be able to monitor my progress.

All of which is a long way of arriving at this confession: I am not currently capable of making Mija’s story into a proper story. So instead of hang on to it indefinitely, I have decided to give it in its current fragmentary form. Naturally, this feels awful, but TL says it is salutary to submit to human limitations, and good preparation for a month of daily humiliation in pursuit of 50,000 crappy words.

Right, navel gazing over. National Novel Writing ahead. Non-novel below. Mija, sorry it isn’t quite as promised.

Georgie/George

© Casey Morgan 2010

The Baron poured out the brandy for himself and his visitor, drawing his own chair closer to the fire against the bitter winter evening.

“I suppose,” the visitor said after tasting the brandy with approval, “this is when we ought to discuss what we have so assiduously avoided discussing.”

A tension left the Baron, one only palpable in its departure. Delahay had not changed after all. “You’ve always been ruthless in the face of delicacy,” the Baron said.

“And you’ve always appreciated it,” Delahay replied. “Well, almost always.”

They shared a smile over the memory of their encounters, many years before, at school. The Baron (then known simply as Merlingham, or Basil to his intimates) had first encountered Paul Delahay at their Public School in Hampshire. Delahay was some five years the junior, and their relationship had its roots in that of prefect and “difficult” junior. Many years had passed since then, many experiences on both sides. Delahay’s physique displayed those years less plainly than the Baron’s. His ash-blond hair showed no signs of the gray which streaked through the Baron’s. Both men were fit, but Delahay’s figure cut the sportsman. While fate had been kinder to Delahay in looks, it had smiled more warmly on the Baron in fortune. Delahay’s ascendancy at university had not been followed by material success. He now found himself nearly forty, childless, widowed, and between appointments as a tutor. It had taken little to persuade him to accept an invitation to the Baron’s chateau in Switzerland to offer consultation on what the Baron termed “an awkward project,” no further explanation forthcoming.

“You remember my sister, Miranda?” the Baron essayed.

“How could I forget the delicious harpy?” Delahay revealed a smirk at the reference to one summer holiday spent at Merlingham Hall. The Baron had only been present for a week of it, but he was fairly confident Delahay had seduced Miranda (a year Delahay’s senior) as well as their brother, Tom (two years Delahay’s junior and his close associate at school).

Over three brandies, the Baron recounted Tom’s death on the autobahn; Miranda’s marriage, estrangement from the family, and disappearance at the hands of South American dictators; and, finally, the existence of a niece, whose sole relation the Baron had proved to be. This niece was in fact the awkward project. Orphaned for all intents and purposes, mis-educated, difficult, thirteen years of age.

Delahay’s eyes betrayed curiosity . “Mis-educated how?”

The Baron summarized the month since his niece had arrived. She was the product of ludicrous parents. They had carted her around the globe on a feverish career of Jellybyism, educating her (if indeed their methods merited the term, which he doubted) in a way that made the Baron want to fall upon them with fisticuffs, if they had been within thrashing distance. She spouted a disconnected jumble of history, politics, and folklore; she read voraciously and uncritically; she knew little of mathematics, something of modern languages, nothing of Latin or Greek, and while she cut a figure in verbal debate, her skills with pen and paper could most generously be described as primitive.

“She can’t write?”

“Not that one can decipher.”

Delahay’s face assumed the expression of a professional who knew his work: “In short, she is intelligent but undisciplined.”

“Quite.”

Delahay’s gaze drifted to the fire. “It does sound a desperate case,” he said. “Unfortunately, I am a tutor of boys.”

“Exclusively?”

Delahay hesitated. “She’s thirteen, you say?” The Baron nodded. “Girls that age belong with other girls, with schoolmistresses, or at least governesses. Not with tutors who specialize in preparing boys for Public School.”

“That’s the thing of it,” the Baron said. “The child has had a most unconventional upbringing. Conventional strategies are, I fear, useless.”

“Nevertheless,” Delahay began, but the Baron interrupted him in the blunt manner he once employed in the face of Delahay’s thirteen-year-old cheek:

“Do you imagine I haven’t tried all that?” the Baron demanded. He went on to narrate the disaster of his niece’s two-day attendance at the nearby school for young ladies, as well as the rapid departures of the governesses he had subsequently engaged. In the Baron’s untutored opinion, his niece was yet too uncivilized for female society. It was as much as he could do to keep her in a frock. He had come to the conclusion that nature ought not to be fought as much as engaged. And it was his fervent hope—his only hope—that Delahay might accept that engagement.

Delahay finished his brandy in silence, contemplating the Baron’s account. “My methods,” he said at last.

“Are quite traditional,” the Baron rejoined, “as my correspondents attest.”

“Correspondents?”

“You don’t imagine I’d attempt to engage a tutor I hadn’t thoroughly researched?”

“Ah.”

“I’d have thought, Delahay, that you would recall my thoroughness, if nothing else.”

Delahay had the grace to blush at the memory.

“I grant you a free hand,” the Baron continued. “If you’ve any qualms dealing directly with my niece, perhaps you will feel freer addressing yourself to my nephew.”

Delahay blinked, and continued to blush. “There’s a nephew as well?”

The Baron rang for a servant, who quickly appeared. “Bring Georgie here, please.” The servant bobbed and departed. The Baron refreshed their drinks. He said nothing further, but shortly the library door banged open, admitting a child flushed from the outdoors. The child looked to Delahay in the neighborhood of eleven. It wore wool trousers, layers of wool jumper, wet boots, as well as muffler, cap, and mittens covered in snow.

“Gracious, child, what do you call—”

“Rose said you wanted me at once,” the child interrupted.

“Have you only just returned?” the Baron asked, concerned. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t to be skiing in the dark.”

“It’s only just got dark,” the child retorted.

This was not quite true, but the Baron declined to pursue the matter. Instead he drew the dripping child over to the fire. “Say good evening, please, to Mr. Delahay.”

The child removed a snow-caked mitten and extended a cold, pink hand. “How do you do?” it inquired, with almost repugnant self-confidence.

“Quite well—”

“Delahay,” the Baron interrupted, “please meet my niece, Georgiana.”

read the rest of the story

written, directed, etc. by cdm

The scene in question arose out of some joint story-telling about a certain unpleasant prefect in the House by the name of Martin Halstead. Arrogant, sadistic, scornful, he was not to be trifled with. Via some confusion on my part about the way the hot-water storage worked in that flat, Casey managed to get on the wrong side of Halstead by using up all the hot water one morning before he got to have his bath. More out-of-scene storytelling floated the idea of being “sprung” into a scene first thing in the morning. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to this, but I wasn’t against trying. I think I didn’t know if he’d actually go through with it.

But he did.

Malcolm McDowell's character in If never beat anyone, but he looks like Halstead here.

Early morning, I found myself awakened by a very nasty specimen in College school uniform. Martin Halstead demanded that I report to the Houseroom in full uniform in five minutes. Exit.

I hauled myself from sleep, feeling 1) a combination of scared/excited that this scene was actually happening, and 2) violated, because I’d been descended on when I was asleep, wholly unprotected. At any rate, I put on Casey’s preferred uniform (gray trousers, blazer, tie) and reported to the Houseroom.

There Halstead lit into me.

MH (with profound scorn): Just what do you imagine you’re wearing, girl?

cdm: My uniform.

MH (with even greater scorn): Girls at this school wear skirts.

cdm: We’re allowed to wear the boys’ uniform, too!

MH (witheringly): Go and change. Now. And be quick about it unless you want more than you’re already getting.

I/she went off and changed, feeling uneasy and slightly gross. Not only did a skirt afford only one layer of protection, but it also made it much easier for a creep like Martin Halstead to… I wasn’t sure what. I/she was also incensed at the injustice of it. Girls were allowed to wear the boys’ uniform. It was perfectly legal, and here he was saying I couldn’t do it! I have a tendency to get overwrought about injustice I am powerless to affect. This is why torture films, like the spate of political dramas that came out in the 1980s about South Africa and South America, squicked me. Here was Martin Halstead already demonstrating his unjust authority, and the scene had not even properly begun. I felt desperate.

I returned to the Houseroom, feeling under-dressed in skirt and gray knee-socks. Halstead delivered a searingly condescending ticking-off about my insolence at having used his bath water (as if water were reserved). I needed taking down a peg, he declared. And, he informed me, that was precisely what he intended to do.

from "The Moral Reformers"

I should say that this was in most respects an authentic prefectorial scene. School literature was full of these kinds of despots, as was M’s actual Public School. By Kipling’s standards, Martin Halstead was a pussycat. Up until this moment, I had loved reading stories like this, chapters like “The Moral Reformers” in Stalky, or even the war with Flashman in Tom Brown. Now that it was happening, however, it was having a very different effect. It was pushing my powerless/injustice buttons and winding me up dangerously.

Then the sentence: Halstead announced I would be receiving 18 strokes of the cane. I can’t remember the arithmetic, but this chilled me to the bone. I had never before taken that much in one go. The most I’d ever taken was nine (I think, though possibly 12). But what really filled me with dread was the character I was facing. Martin Halstead was going to hit as hard as he could. He cared nothing for my feelings. Nothing would make him back off. He hated me and wanted to see me suffer. He intended to break me.

I removed my jacket as instructed and stood before the Houseroom table. I don’t remember now whether he announced the protection then or half-way through, but I was to get nine over underpants and nine unprotected. It was unheard-of in severity. Also, the lack of protection struck me as obscene. Here I was a 5th form girl with this Upper 6th form boy, and he proposed to cane me unprotected, without witnesses? There was no arguing with him, however; and perhaps I was beyond arguing. I was moving rapidly into survival mode.

I bent over, and the first stroke confirmed my suspicion that there would be no holds barred. It was uncompromisingly hard, and it was delivered with complete hostility. It was by far the hardest whacking I had ever received.

I don’t remember the stroke-by-stroke details (this was almost 15 years ago now), but I remember that I stayed in place; and I remember that my body was yelping involuntarily through most of the second half. What I remember most is what happened to me mentally. Pushed to my limit, I found myself very calm, and very cold. I was a million miles away from crying, breaking, or even actually caring. Under attack, I retreated into a concentration-camp-like deadness. I could never win in this situation; I could only hope to survive it intact. And the only way to keep myself intact was to hide that self very far away. My body might have been yelling, but the real me—the real Casey—was not there. This was happening to someone else, someone not-us. Martin Halstead got his licks, but he didn’t get us. He would never touch  us.

When it was over and I stood up, I think he was disappointed. I was utterly dry-eyed, neutral, and stony faced. Robotically, I gave the replies he wanted. I only pretended to look him in the eye when he demanded it. He did his best at a devastating after-jaw, but eventually he dismissed me.

Unperturbed, I left the Houseroom. And Casey, wearing her entire uniform—blazer, shoes, and all—got back into bed and crawled under the covers, where she stayed most of the morning in a kind of suspended animation.

I think M kissed me goodbye before leaving for work, and I think I faked it enough to reassure him. I can’t remember very well.

Later in the morning, Casey got up, and I say Casey because the adult me was nowhere to be found. She had taken charge and no amount of pulling myself together could have ejected her. Casey, still stony, got up and wrote a long and measured letter to Dr. Malcolm (the Headmaster) registering a formal complaint about what had happened that morning. She was well aware that complaining wasn’t Done. She did not care. At this point, she took a perverse pleasure in violating School Practice.

The thrust of her complaint was that it had been unseemly for Halstead to have caned her unprotected without any witnesses. She also argued that, while she may have deserved punishment, the punishment given was out of proportion to the crime, and that a common understanding of uniform had been contradicted. She appealed to Dr. Malcolm to uphold justice.

She and I went out later, around the time M was due home, so that he could find her letter and figure out what to do about it. I seem to remember later that evening (right after we got back, or later?) Casey being summoned to see Mr. Prior. She went, still dead-in-heart, figuring he, too, could do whatever he wanted to her. She was beyond caring.

But Mr. Prior was no Martin Halstead. He was distressed to have learned what had happened. In fact, he informed her, Martin Halstead had been stripped of his prefect status. He would not be tormenting anyone else. Casey, gobsmacked. Furthermore, Mr. Prior wanted to apologize personally to Casey, for having failed to keep a sufficient eye on her. It shouldn’t have happened, he told her. It wouldn’t again.

This was not the end of the trip, and we played many more scenes, though none that hostile or that severe—not then, and not, that I recall, ever (at least with me bottoming). There wasn’t any blame on either side for this scene, but we both learned something about me, and about the ice-cold survival instinct I appeared to possess.

I have read a lot, then and today, from people who achieve a kind of release or catharsis from very hard scenes, from being taken beyond their limits. It always sounds appealing in theory, but M and I both learned in that early scene that it would never work that way with me. He, as a bottom, had cravings to be pushed like that, but as a top, he concluded that a) I would never respond that way; I would merely go dead; and b) if by some extraordinary action I ever was pushed that far, the results would be utterly destructive.

I know many people are different from me in this regard, but knowing this about myself has saved me from thinking I might enjoy playing with hostile authority. Despite having organized myself around it as a child, it was, and still is, a place with nothing but damage to offer me.

And connected with this—in my retrospective mind—is RP’s instinct, sharpened over time, generally to give Casey less than she asked for. She had, and has, an enormously provocative streak, and in the beginning he sometimes mistook it for a request for lots of whacking. As previously discussed, there were times in that first year when she would bring home a pile of dockets from an absolute train-wreck of a day. Pretty soon, he cottoned on to the fact that this was an expression of anger, a self-destructive impulse, like her impulse to break things or tear up her punishment book. Pretty soon he got to the point where he would leaf through her pile of dockets, chuck them aside, and proceed to deal moderately but non-legalistically with her, giving her just enough to stop the downward spiral and not a touch more. Sometimes he refused altogether to whack her and would simply grab her and hug her against her angry will.

Where, dear Lord, is another man like this?

A notable exception was Mandy, by Julie Edwards (Julie Andrews). Mandy imprisoned my imagination and my heart, but on some level made me uneasy, perhaps because it was in fact closer to me than the hostile authority orphanage. Mandy is about an orphan (named Mandy!) who has lived her whole life in a small, kind, homey orphanage. She’s allowed freedoms, has friends, and is beloved by the orphanage matron. But, she longs irrationally for something else. She climbs over the orphanage wall, finds a cottage in the woods, and secretly begins fixing it up. Long story short, in a moment of crisis, she is rescued by the landowner on whose property the cottage stands (a man on a horse, no less) and taken to recover at his big house. The man and his wife (?) fall for her. Then she gets better and goes back to the orphanage. Except now, even though she’s back with her friends and people who love her, she misses the man and his wife. It’s enormously conflicted and sad. Eventually, they adopt her. Mandy pressed somehow on a loneliness I felt as a child, even though I was growing up within a loving, caring family. In many ways, I was unable to deal with this feeling. The hostile orphanage was easier.

My orphanage (which I imagined most nights while falling asleep, which I attempted to draw in my notebooks) was called St. Peter’s. It was a special admissions type place. I (my character, whose name varied) was brought there one dark, rainy night by a priest of slight acquaintance. My mother had been an actress (the real kind, not an “actress”) but had died and left me alone, à la Tatum O’Neal in Paper Moon. This priest had presided over the funeral and out of pity brought me to St. Peter’s, knowing of its sterling reputation. I was about nine.

This orphanage was run by a grossly exaggerated and fictionalized version of Mrs. R, my children’s theater director, with the other children as avatars of my children’s theater friends. And in fact the children at this orphanage were chosen for their talents, and Matron made money taking us around and having us perform for people. So, even though we lived a horrible, hard life and had to scrub floors and do every kind of difficult chore and were subject to the meanest discipline, after dinner every night we were sent to the dining room and told to get on with our rehearsals. We kids organized our own shows and practiced them together. Sure, there might be rivalries amongst us, but we were absolutely united against the orphanage authorities: Matron; her scary (and retarded) brother, Jack; and the other people in her employ, who could also punish us as they chose.

There was of course a Bench at the orphanage, but you could be whacked at any time for any reason. We comforted each other in our misery and always—always—had our minds on the future when we would Run Away. Of course we would fail many times, and be severely punished for our efforts, but one day, my cadre and I would make it. We would escape, and after a period of thrilling, Faginesque adventures in The City (which would naturally include theatricals), I would happen upon the Perfect People, who would adopt me.

The promise of the Perfect People was essential, but my fantasies rarely left the orphanage. Something about the harshness and despair, coupled with the camaraderie and resistance comforted me. The dynamic with authority was important. You couldn’t win against Matron, not openly, so your only option was to resist her internally, to obey her, but not in your heart, to pretend compliance while secretly plotting your escape. The hostile authority was intoxicating for a Good Girl like me, naturally. As a Good Girl, I depended slavishly on the good opinion of the authority, unless of course the authority was a Bad Authority. Then, I could resist it, disobey it, undermine it, hate it. No wonder the orphanage was like crack to me. There I could transgress, break bounds, get into trouble and still be heroic and good. There, punishment was a badge of nobility. The heroine always suffered punishment, and yet she was always good. Win, win and win!

Perhaps you are feeling like you might be sick now. I am, too. But the interesting point is what happened once I actually began to play at age 26.

When I first started to play, APD, I wanted to be in the English school world. It was a nice blend of hostile, but not fully hostile authority. I would call it detached authority. Ideally, they were fair and not abusive, but stoicism was certainly called for. I enjoyed exploring the extent of my stoicism, and I felt a particular buzz because I had, for so much of my life, been so very fearful, particularly of physical challenges.

But—but. M’s instinct with Casey tended towards the domestic, and towards the firm and compassionate end of semi-con play. We imagined the orphanage together, but we never played it, at least not with me as the bottom. Actually, we played Casey at the Perfect People once or twice, and that “Casey” turned out not to be much fun; she was so traumatized, she scarcely spoke. She wasn’t very robust. So, whether through observation or instinct, M realized, I think, that although I had come out of the orphanage, it would not be a good place for me to visit, now.

We did one scene early in our relationship with him as a hostile top. It taught us a lot, not least because it was such a disaster. But that is another story…

M’s first visit lasted four days. On the last day we drove out of town and went on a hike in the woods. Afterwards, I remember being in my kitchen, him shaving at my kitchen sink, the smell of his shaving foam, and this overwhelming desire to be back in that relationship between Casey and Mr. Prior. I secretly got my hands on M’s pack of Marlboroughs, and as he was shaving, I went through to the study.

Picture my apartment as it was then: a four room railroad-style flat with no doors between the rooms, kitchen at the back, study at the front. It was August. Casey sat down in the “kid” chair, which was tucked out of the sightline from the kitchen. She lit a cigarette and pseudo-smoked it, ashing into a candle on the bookshelf. There was a box fan blowing a cross-breeze, and she took care to blow well into the fan so that the smoke would be visible, even if she wasn’t.

It seemed to go on a long time, this mouthing of cigarette smoke, the noise of the fan. And then suddenly, there he was: Mr. Prior.

“Morgan!”

She jumped six feet in the air, it seemed, having heard nothing, seen nothing. Stubbed out the cigarette. Stood up. He was gob-smacked by what he was seeing. How was it that this girl, this American girl, new to College just a few days hence, had decided to use his study, of all places, to smoke a cigarette? I don’t recall the dialogue, but it was brief. She was instructed to change into her uniform (she was wearing blue cotton shorts, sneakers, t-shirt) and report back in ten minutes.

In the dressing room, I put on her newly cobbled-together uniform. He had brought me a patch for my blazer. I’d found the blazer, grey flannel trousers, and Casey’s school shoes at the sadly now-defunct Domsey’s Warehouse. The patch had finally been stitched onto the blazer. I dressed, she dressed, trembling. We paced in the hallway. Scared. Frustrated. Confused.

On top of all this was another thread that had emerged in their earlier scene, and this was about Casey’s father. Carl Morgan was in military intelligence and was stationed somewhere dangerous, hence her being shipped off to College (parents divorced). But, she assured Mr. Prior, he was coming to visit her for half-term. He had told her so. In fact, she wasn’t going to be staying at College very long. She was pretty sure she’d be going home soon. Her dad had said so. This is what she thought about in the corridor waiting for the ten minutes to be up.

When she approached the study, RP was seated at the desk [my desk!]. He noted with grim approval her finally-arranged blazer, but got straight to his flabbergasted outrage.

“I just beat you yesterday!” he complained. What on earth could she possibly have been thinking?

“I wasn’t really smoking,” she said.

He almost did not know what to make of this. She explained that she’d only been stage smoking.

“Where did you get the cigarettes?” he asked.

Oops. Thou shalt not peach. “I’d rather not say, sir.”

RP was a Public School man and a gentleman and was prepared to accept this, for the moment. But he wanted to know why on earth she did it. It simply made no sense to him. “Were you trying to get yourself beaten?” he asked.

“No!” She struggled to explain, even to herself. “I just wanted… to be in here.” She dried up.

A silence full of so very much. And then somehow, through some genius of his, or grace, he seemed to get it, even though she didn’t. Even though I didn’t.

This time there was no choice of lines. It would be eight strokes. I can’t remember the technicalities of it, why eight, what they were apportioned for, but he told her to meet him in the Houseroom.

And so in the Houseroom [kitchen] she waited, sick and shaking before the Houseroom table. Pretty soon he came through, carrying the cane. Imagine, a man walking into my kitchen carrying a cane as if he knew what to do with it. He took off his jacket and instructed her to do the same. He took her jacket from her hands and told her to bend over the table. When she was in position, he pulled the tail of her shirt out of her gray school trousers [as previously discussed, purely for theatrical value!].

And it began.

She saw right away that he’d been going easy the first time. This hurt a good deal more, on top of the (first ever) four the day before. She was getting twice as many. He was hitting harder. I think she yelped.

Afterwards, when told to stand up, she gave the customary thank you. They shook hands. He met her eye and said, “Well stuck, Morgan.” It was sincere. There was that palpable but restrained love and care. My chest was melting like lava. I wanted more than anything to say there, with him, in that.

A little later there was a short scene in which he said good-bye to her. Mr. Prior had to take a short leave from College to sort out a personal situation. Miss Lincoln would be in charge. But, he told Casey, he would be keeping a particular eye on her. Again, the lava melting bones. Like heartburn in all your cells at once.

And one more thing, he told her. He had managed to reach her father on the telephone.

“When’s he going to get here?” she interupted, suddenly happy, hopeful, plunging entirely into that blind confidence in a rock-solid good thing.

“I’m afraid he isn’t able to come,” Mr. Prior said gently.

Imagine a tidal wave, searing, crushing, destroying.

“What do you mean?” said a small voice.

“He was sorry not to be able to talk with you himself,” Mr. Prior told her. “And he is very sorry he can’t come visit you as he said. He will see you at Christmas, though.”

Her lip was trembling. She blinked back tears.

“Oh. Right.”

“So,” RP continued, “it looks as though you’ll have to put up with us for a while longer.” She nodded, trying not to let the tears show. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Casey,” he said calling her by her Christian name for the first time, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she whispered. “It’s no big deal.”

When the scene was over, she went away and sobbed.

Writing about this now, especially having read other people’s scene accounts, I can see how odd it must look. The tgi gives focus to the scenes, but it isn’t really the center, or even the most powerful force. The most powerful force, perhaps, is Casey’s heart. How it longs to be with Mr. Prior in his study, somehow. How lascerated it is by her real dad, who loves her very much but cannot help but let her down. How much of a cataclysm the whole visit turns out to be, how much she loves him (M, Mark, Mr. Prior) by any name, as she has never loved anyone or conceived of loving.

He had to get on a plane later that night. I collapsed in bed and passed out from the ordeal of his visit, from overstimulation, from a kind of grief. He promised to come again, soon, October. Ten thousand years away.

But then came, as so often with him, a lucky strike extra, a gift of grace. At eight AM, my phone rang. I dragged myself from unconsciousness to answer it. His flight had been teched. He was still here. He wasn’t leaving until that evening. We had a whole extra day.

I am so grateful I never knew—then or even the morning before he died—what was coming. I knew, then, that we needed the extra day. What I didn’t know was how much we needed it. How very much.

I wrote Vice as revenge for the first story Mark wrote me, The Benefit of the Doubt here. Also mentioned is Mark’s story The Fishing Trip, discussed here. Dixon and Tremlett are his friends in The Fishing Trip, Mr. “Big Tim” Harrison is Housemaster in question, and Dr. Malcolm Headmaster.

This is yet another story written before I had ever experienced the cane or any RL play. Trivia: it appears that this is where I acquire my middle name, ha ha!

Vice

© Casey Morgan 1995

1.

MI6 was getting good. After months of failure, they’d finally begun to crack the Finnish anonymous remailer and thus zero in on some chief offenders in their own green and pleasant. A stray pervo in Birmingham, a hoard of terrorists in London, some Wilde imitators at Oxford. But even Morley, who headed the investigation, was surprised to unearth a user at the School. He was familiar with the place. And he knew the master in charge of its computer systems. So, rather than file the appropriate reports, he got on the train and paid a personal visit, in hopes of resolving the situation on the qt.

Mr. Harrison–housemaster and English scholar–was a man of many talents. After his former student had left him, he went directly to the Media Centre. In no time he had traced the account in question: Mark Hastings. Well, who else would it be? So it was that after Vth form English, Big Tim loped across the playing fields to Dr. Malcolm’s house.

“I might have know it.”

“It would seem he’s quite an accomplished documentarian,” Tim added. “I took the liberty of photocopying one or two examples.”

He dropped on the desk something called ‘The Fishing Trip.’

“And this particularly vulgar waste of good paper…”

‘The Benefit of the Doubt’ fell beside its sibling. The remainder had been tucked away in Mr. Harrison’s very secure filing cabinets.

“I suppose he must be summoned, formal interview and the rest of it.” Dr. Malcolm sounded weary. Ever since booking his summer holiday to Tangier, this all too human headmaster had been having difficulty concentrating. In particular, he was fed up with Mark Hastings and was running out of resources to meet him creatively.

“Ever since Hastings came here, he’s done nothing, it seems, but try to get himself beaten.” Tim looked at his friend obliquely.

“Hmm.” Dr. Malcolm stuffed his pipe between his teeth and bit hard. “Perhaps he hasn’t received a sufficiently strong dose.”

“Hmm.” Irony and understatement seethed on the carpet between them, though to an eavesdropper, the words would have fallen flat. These two men understood one another perfectly.

“I believe,” Dr. Malcolm murmured at last, “I know just the thing. Something to ensure he won’t be rushing back for more.”

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He’d been told her name was Thomasina, but she introduced herself as Tommy.

“With a Y or an I?” he’d asked.

She had paused, as if he’d committed an audacity, then contracted her lips and eyes faintly and let slip a hint of a smile: “What do you think, blue-eyes?”

A grin had spread across his face before he could stop it. She leaned against the window casement as if she belonged there, the Garden Quad blazing green beyond, a lock of her auburn hair falling out of its clasp and across her forehead, like a boy in need of a haircut.

“I think,” he replied, “that it’s hard to imagine you reading maths.”

Her brow raised, slender and accusatory. “Oh, yes? Over my head?”

“Not a bit,” he answered. “Only, too circumscribed. You look more the secret agent. Languages, ancient and modern.”

“I suppose you’re pondering some witticism re. cunning linguists.”

“Never,” he smiled.

The host, his friend, interrupted to introduced two other boys, sincere drips passionate about philosophy. He could see Thomasina’s gaze detach. She pretended to converse with them, but he could tell she was putting up a front. He caught her glancing at the clock on the mantel, and an image crossed his mind—her hair cut properly, wearing a fifth former’s uniform, standing at the window of his former study and answering to the name of Tommy.

“I’m sure Lenin was the most thrilling raconteur,” she said, her irony too suppressed to disturb the drips. She turned, as if to include him in the conversation: “I always go weak at the knees around zealous Russians, don’t you?”

He stood up straight, his heart speeding at the unexpected attention. For she was indeed paying him attention, and had been, though he’d only just noticed. He lost control of his grin again as he recognized it, that quality he encountered so rarely – the fascination with figuring people out.

It was one of his hobbies, and he missed so painfully those evenings in his Housemaster’s study discussing the boys. His Housemaster had learned much under his tutelage, and he himself had enjoyed the challenge and satisfaction. Now, half-way into his third term at Varsity, he longed, suddenly, for that companionship, that common purpose. Other people seemed to accept the surface of things so readily.

“Heavens!” she exclaimed when one of the drips identified him as the star batsman everyone was wittering about. He suppressed the urge to administer a clip round the ear. “I’d no idea,” she said, turning to consult their host’s bookcase.

The drips waffled away, but his heart still labored. He’d heard the mockery in her remark even if they hadn’t; and he recognized it for what it was, barely suppressed boasting from one who not only had every idea about him, but had known long before the party.

He rested his elbow on a shelf above her head, boxing her elegantly into the niche by the cupboard. “I stand by secret agent,” he said in an undertone. “What fascinates me is which side you’re playing for, and who your grandmaster is.”

She flicked through a book as if he weren’t there. “What makes you think I’m not playing both sides, or all of them?”

“You’re doing what I’m doing, I think.”

“Yes,” she replied, still apparently absorbed in the volume. “There’s more to you than leg-before-wicket, we think.”

He turned away, surveying the room. The punch-bowl balanced on a table beside the drips. A simple jostle would introduce a most wicked diversion, the kind he hadn’t exercised in… he couldn’t recall precisely. Once, he would have weighed certain amusement against the threat of of the cane. Now, what price beckoned, and what reward?

She re-shelved the book and tucked the strand of hair behind her ear, sighing wearily and allowing her sleeve to graze his hip. He felt it, then, the unnerving arrival of irrational notions. He knew nothing about her save mathematics and her name, but he was certain, suddenly, of this: she liked people who made their own scrapes for themselves before they fell into them, and then got out without being fished for.

Come read the other folks writing this week:

• Rafi
• Tom

Who was the one to show you what cocks are for? As our changing rooms are worlds apart, you never got to appraise mine. One doesn’t like to boast, but it’s worthwhile I’m told. Some rather incendiary reading material has come my way of late. I can’t seem to stop thinking of it, and you, and what would happen if the two were combined.

I watched you and Rees the afternoon before that night, though you didn’t know it. I still can’t believe it – not what you did, but that you did it with him. I never got to ask you what you saw in him. He’s such a dreary cold shower. The perverseness of it (if you’ll forgive my choice of words) has, since then, driven me slightly mad.

I want to forget your body when they carried you back that morning. I want to forget everything about you. It’s hopeless when I’m asleep, like now. Dreams are the most unforgiving of traitors.

Read other missed connections this week:

• PapaTomLA

It was tradition, Antony said, for a new band of prefects to make an example of one boy from each form. Their handiwork had been on display in the changing rooms all week. The IIIrd always got it last.

It was going to hurt. He had to relax. Now.

What is Flash Fiction Friday?

Read other folks writing this week:

• Rafi
• PapaTomLA
• Nettagyrl