As Charlie lies there, listening to Julius’s words, it is as though they surround him, standing in the darkness, not a yard away: here, the great bulk of the dog, its snout pressed into the schoolmaster’s waistcoat, a wet spot spreading from button to pocket; there, the head boy, first sprawling insolently in the armchair, then leaping up to march his strange disquiet back and forth between fireplace and door. And, superimposed on this scene, Charlie sees once again the tall, rigid form of his teacher, bending down over him, feeding him salt water.

Talk to me.

Help me.

Why won’t you trust me?

The hole in the gag affords Charlie but a spoonful of air with every breath. He lies in darkness and breathes hard through the nose.

ф

There is a change of light. The room is so dark now that its only features are the window, the door, the subtle leakage of the floor. Even so, Charlie’s senses register the change long before he can actually see her, standing by the side of the bed. Eleanor. The only part of her that has any colour is one eye, the right, which catches the night glow from the window and soaks it up into its green-and-white. She is not looking at him but into the distance. It comes to Charlie that she, too, is listening, straining to understand what is happening beneath their feet. A moment later, her hand slips into his. It happens very naturally, she simply moves forward, and searches the bedding for his palm. Manacled as he is, all Charlie can do is squeeze Eleanor’s fingers with his own. The girl does not respond.

Again the voice draws them into its spell, softer now, oddly suspended between heckling and wheedling as though two voices were speaking in unison, their timbres matching but their moods at odds.

“I know what you are thinking, Master Renfrew. ‘This cannot be happening.’ Or: ‘I will report him to my friends in New Westminster. We shall put him on trial.’ I can just see it! A week of debating the principles of liberalism. And then you put a rope around my neck. From reason, naturally, with regret. You might not even show. Do you know, Master Renfrew, that I have lain awake many a night, there in my dormitory bed, wondering what it would take to get you to smoke?

“But talk, Master Renfrew, talk, I beg you. If you keep to your silence, I must don this mask. We will both smoke then. Is that how it must be? You, my Judas, my Gethsemane? Oh, I love a metaphor these days. It’s the Smoke, speaking in pictures. Look at you frown! I bet you’ve never used a good metaphor in all your life.