And now I could hear his voice again; strong against the press of years. I’ll get through all the diaries eventually, but it will be slow reading. Harry’s writing is small and cramped, sometimes interspersed with little caricatures; boys, or sometimes Masters. Sometimes a line of writing straggles vertically up the page, like a climber on a rock face; or circles erratically, like a string of wagons around a campfire.

My eyes are not as strong as they were; after a while, my vision rebels. Still, I am certain that there is something in these notes for me to discover. Harry would not have left me them otherwise. He knew I would read them diligently; every note; every scribbled line. And so I shall. I will find what he left for me. All I need is a little time.

Chapter 7

7

Michaelmas Term, 1981

It was a cheerless end of term: dark, wet, and stressful. A number of the boys fell ill with a kind of intestinal flu, as did Eric, whose classes I was obliged to cover in his absence. Newman, still upset about the rabbits, took to crying in the Middle School toilets, from which defeatist behavior neither the Chaplain’s manly exhortations nor the Satanic Mr. Speight’s more sinister whisperings managed to dissuade him. After two weeks’ absence, Charlie Nutter had not returned, and when the final School bell rang, the boys all scattered like sparrows over the newly fallen snow, in search of roast dinners and mince pies and presents by the fireside.

I don’t enjoy Christmas very much. It’s a miserable time of year for people like me, who live alone, and even in those days, when I was young and my parents were still living, I felt the burden of the year’s end heavy on my shoulders. Now, in some ways, it’s easier. I have my books; my radio. I go to church or not, as I choose. I have no family commitments. My Christmas decorations are limited to a sparse length of tinsel on the mantelpiece, a log, and a few greeting cards on the window ledge.

But in those days, it was different. I spent Christmas at the Meadowbank old folks’ home, where my parents were residents. My mother was deep in dementia, and barely responded to anyone—except for the woman who came in once a month with a collection of small, docile animals—rabbits, cats, guinea pigs—which they would encourage the old folk to pet, believing it to be therapeutic. My father had Parkinson’s disease, and could no longer care for himself, or for her, which meant that they both lived in care: one able-bodied, but out of reach; the other proud and still rational in a body that was falling apart.