The Disappeared Read online

  ‘You dinna ought to ask me nowt, sir.’

  ‘But I’m your teacher, Sharon. And your friend.’

  ‘There’s school, see, sir, where you are. And there’s Hell, where they are. You inna ’lowed to talk about Hell. If you do, man, they kill you, see.’

  ‘Maybe it is time you talked about it, Sharon.’

  She uttered a little cry.

  ‘Then they’d kill you too. It’s simple, see.’

  She stood in the doorway. He must do nothing. She must be free to go, free to stay. He was the one who watched and comforted, who pitied, but did not desire. A hollow feeling arose within him. He remembered so many mistakes, so many wrong turnings. And now he had put his life in the hands of a child.

  ‘It never harms to talk, Sharon, with someone who cares about you.’

  Her hands on the satchel relaxed a little, and she took a step back into the room.

  ‘Do you mean that, sir?’

  ‘Of course I mean it; if you don’t talk about your fears, they destroy you.’

  She was looking at him steadily.

  ‘I mean you caring about me, sir.’

  He looked back in silence, and then he nodded. She did not move, but let her satchel drop to the floor.

  ‘I wunna be no trouble to you, sir.’

  Her words recalled the dying Dido: ‘May my wrongs create/ No trouble, no trouble in thy breast’. Purcell’s music sounded in Stephen’s ear. He tried to fit Queen Dido’s mature and womanly love to the waif who stood before him. How absurd! For a moment he felt able to talk down to her.

  ‘Troubles come, Sharon. But let’s try to avoid any new ones, yes?’

  He at once regretted the words, which sounded weak and disrespectful. And how strange it was, that this girl who stood as though pencilled on the air before him should demand respect. In her pale face and trembling lips, in her featureless clothes and uncared-for looks, he saw something proud, as though she were protecting what was best in her, refusing to allow it to be destroyed. He pointed to the chair.

  ‘Sit down a moment, Sharon, and drink your tea. No need to talk about things if you’d rather not.’

  She came forward, again falling into the chair as though thrown there. She lifted the mug to her lips and then held it away with an expression of distaste.

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘Tastes weird, dunnit, sir?’

  She put down the mug and then sat without moving, like a patient in a doctor’s surgery. There was a stillness in the room. From the car park came the sudden noise of car doors slamming and engines starting, as a nearby office disgorged its staff at the end of their day. Stephen released the back of the chair and went across to the girl. He brushed her hair with one hand. She seized the hand, kissed it, and then let it drop. With an effort he moved away. People passed his door on the stairwell, men speaking gruffly in some Slavic tongue. He noticed she had left the door ajar, and went across to shut it. He turned to address her.

  ‘Now that you know I care about you, Sharon, won’t it be easier to talk?’

  She was looking at him with wide uncertain eyes. Again she had reached for the satchel and was clutching it convulsively.

  ‘Dunna you spoil things, sir.’

  ‘How can it spoil things if we share our troubles?’

  ‘I better go, sir. Thanks reelly for inviting me in.’

  ‘Won’t you at least tell me whether I should be worrying about you?’

  They were face to face, and their eyebeams locked. How pale and serious and vulnerable she looked. He pressed his hands to his sides, so as not to reach out to her.

  ‘There’s two of me, sir. You dunna have to worry about the one what’s yours. And the one what’s yours canna talk about the other one, see. And… and if they come asking you, you just tell them you dunna know nowt, right?’

  With an abrupt movement she skipped to one side of him and seized the handle of the door.

  ‘Thanks anyway, sir,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It was great being here.’

  And before he could reply she had run to the bottom of the stairwell and out into the street.

  During the sleepless nights that followed Stephen resolved to go as soon as possible to the Council’s department of social work. This resolve was strengthened a week later when, suddenly appearing in front of him as he walked from the lecture hall to the staff room, Sharon thrust out a sheaf of paper, saying ‘done another one,’ and held his eyes for a moment anxiously. She looked grimy and dishevelled, as though she had slept in her uniform, and when she turned away and walked quickly down the corridor, he noticed that the school jersey, which she pulled low over her narrow hips, had begun to fray along the bottom, so that tassels of wool waved behind her as she walked. He felt a piercing shaft of pity, which quickly turned to fear and then to love, as she ducked out of sight into the library. Jim Roberts had warned him that trouble always comes from Angel Towers; he had not warned him, however, that it could come in this way.

  There was only one place in St Catherine’s Academy where Stephen could retire with Sharon’s essay, and that was the chapel, which was kept locked except for special occasions. The Local Education Authority regarded this place as an anachronism that it would happily have demolished, had it not been mentioned in Pevsner’s Buildings of England as a quirky but significant example of Victorian Gothic. The key was kept in the staffroom, and Stephen frequently borrowed it.

  He sat in a box-pew of dark oak, facing a plain stone altar under a stained glass window, which portrayed St Catherine of Siena in the style of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The saint, clothed in Dominican habits, held a bouquet of lilies and a crucifix, which she contemplated with downturned sorrowful eyes. No furnishings remained in the chapel, and the light from three lancet windows in the North wall fell evenly, in a soft, gauzy haze that left the barest traces of shadow along the sparse mouldings of the stonework. Clusters of slender pilasters along the walls flowered into a curious vault, where painted angels curled up between the ribs like grazing insects. In the middle of the day, when the distant sounds from the playground were pin-pricks in a tapestry of silence, Stephen felt the trace of troubles far greater than his own, which had sought relief in this place and also found it. Taking Sharon’s essay from his briefcase, he glanced up at the serenely sad St Catherine, and felt that he was entrusting his anxiety not to the saint only, but to the vanished congregation over which her image once presided.

  Whatever peace he had gleaned from the surrounding atmosphere was shattered at once by what he read. In the neat girl’s handwriting that had so often thrilled him Sharon told the story of Miranda and Caliban.

  Miranda came to the island with Prospero. And while Prospero was there what could she fear, since he was king over all enchantments? She could save herself for the days of peace and knowledge, the days of Ferdinand, because she felt in her heart that one day Ferdinand would come. Why did they take Prospero away? She never knew; she was a child; her only friend was Ophelia and Ophelia too was a child. No one had warned them against Caliban, and often they would play with the brute, who gave them sweets and toys. Miranda pitied him, took pains to make him speak, taught him each hour one thing or other; when he did not (savage) know his own meaning, but would gabble, like a thing most brutish, she endowed his purposes with words that made them known. And what purposes were they? First, to lie with Ophelia, with which purpose Ophelia agreed because she loved him; and then to lie with Miranda, which Miranda would not do. So Caliban was angry with Miranda, and vowed revenge against her. Now Caliban had friends and family. They lived in their own cave in the same tall cliff-face where the girls were housed. People came from many places to this cliff, and often they made their holes especially dark and mysterious, so as to pursue in secret the customs that they had followed back home.

  One day Caliban invited the girls into his cave. Through the door Miranda saw Caliban’s fellows, three of them, waiting to make use of his trophy. They were gabbling in their
brutish language, and looking Ophelia up and down as though she were a bargain. There was strange music and a sweet smell, and Miranda warned Ophelia not to enter. Be not afeared, said Caliban, the cave is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. And Ophelia was enchanted and crossed the threshold into that place, from which she emerged silent and trembling. Only on the next day did she cry. But she would not speak of what had happened, and still she would lie with Caliban, who had promised to marry her when she came of age, and who meanwhile gave her those special sweets for which the craving always increases as the pleasure declines.

  Then there came to the island a new band of savages, sailors from the Baltic Sea, speaking another brutish language, and offering miraculous gifts of trade. Their goods were people – those imported to begin a new life, and those exported, to work as slaves across the seas. How excited Caliban was to meet them, and for days he strutted up and down on the cliff-face, singing ‘Ban’ ’ban Cacaliban has a new Master, got a new Man’. For the first time money was within his reach, and as luck would have it he had a most precious thing to sell. Just how much they paid for Ophelia there is no knowing. But she went with one of them, who promised her a new life in a place where Caliban would come to join her, and where she would meanwhile be safe. For they had told her that she was in danger: not only for her bad habits, but for breaking so many of the rules that other children – those lucky enough to have parents to look after them – have no difficulty in obeying. Ophelia was frightened, too frightened even to say goodbye to her friend Miranda, or to warn Miranda against evil spells.

  So now was the time for Caliban’s revenge. Often he waited for her on the cliff-face, enticing her with smiles, saying that with his long nails he will dig her pig-nuts, show her a jay’s nest and instruct her how to snare the nimble marmoset. Miranda scorned these promises. At first the woman they had appointed as her mother defended her, shut the door against the monster, told her to resist his temptations, to turn instead to her books so that one day she might flee this place of vile enchantments. But then this woman she called Mum found a new man, a drunken sailor who had come with his crew to install themselves in that place where lodging was free and all the bills were paid. This sailor made no secret of his lust, so that the woman she called Mum pushed Miranda away. She wandered with her books in distant places, visited parks and libraries, wondering all the while how to rescue the true Miranda. A very shallow monster, she thought this Caliban to be. Afraid of him? A very weak monster, a most poor credulous monster… But then winter came, it was cold outside, and where could she go when the door was locked against her?

  Setebos forbids his worshippers to touch their women, or his women to be seen with men. He tells the women to stay hidden in their caves, in those dark corners full of spiders’ webs and whispers. But girls who do not worship him, girls who have never enjoyed a family to protect them, girls like Ophelia and Miranda, who go unsheltered to school and come unsheltered back again, to a place that is no home – such girls can be captured, either by love as Ophelia was captured, or by force. It happened only twice, that the true Miranda, drugged and despairing, watched the false Miranda squirm in their forced embraces. But she struck a deal with them all the same. Leave her alone, and she will keep quiet about it. Now there are two of her, and the one who keeps quiet is not the one who was defiled. The one who keeps quiet still can say ‘by my modesty (the jewel in my dower) I would not wish any companion in the world but you.’

  Stephen sat shaking in the cold chapel, his tears dropping onto the paper and smearing the ink of Sharon’s fountain pen. Above him St Catherine of Siena gazed at the cross on which the god of pity died. And surely, thought Stephen, that god was never resurrected.

  ‘So it has happened,’ he said aloud. ‘It has happened, and the fault is mine.’

  He recalled the first essay she had given him, about Catherine and Heathcliff. It was obvious now that the essay was an appeal for rescue, and he had let it fester on his desk through the long Christmas holidays. She had tried again, and this time with a declaration of love. But because he had done nothing what he dreaded most had already happened, and the damage to Sharon’s heart was damage to his. Groaning aloud, Stephen wandered in the cloister and the corridors, clutching the key to the Chapel in one hand, and Sharon’s essay in the other.

  Chapter 11

  Farid Kassab and his brother walked with slow and reverent steps to school, it being seven years to the day since their mother died. In the evening they were to gather around her photograph and recite the Surah Ya Sin, saying ‘exalted is He in whose hand is the realm of all things, and to Him you shall be returned.’ Meanwhile, their father suggested, it is fitting to pass the day with cheerful thoughts, to be grateful for life and its troubles, and to know that the light that shines brightly on Jamila shines softly also on you. Farid had taken this advice to heart and was looking forward to the lunch-break, when he had resolved to show some of his poems to Mr Haycraft and to enjoy the mysterious solidarity that radiated towards him from his teacher’s kind brown eyes.

  A shaft of pale January sunlight shone on the brick and grey-stone houses that lined the road to St Catherine’s Academy, pointing like a finger to the gate of the school. Farid enjoyed the cold, which reminded him that he lived now in a safer place, that he had a future before him and would pay back his debt. He recalled the oven-heat of Basra, the surges of fear, the angry fighting, the shouting crowds, the noise and fret of their street with its jumbled houses of concrete blocks and corrugated iron. How serene, dignified and self-confident by contrast were the streets of Whinmoore, and even the Angel Towers, which he admitted to be, by English standards, something of an eyesore, compared favourably with the tower blocks of Basra, piled one on the other in defiance of every regulation, and smelling of garbage, urine and fear. Entering the school by the side door, he took those thoughts into the classroom, saying goodbye to his brother who was in the class below. Without a doubt, Farid believed, he was lucky to live in Whinmoore, and only in two respects had life disappointed him – the death of his mother, and the disappearance of Muhibbah Shahin. And from both of those events he took inspiration too, since they concerned the realm of angels.

  One of Farid’s poems bore the title ‘Angel Tower’. ‘In the tower of darkness,’ he wrote, ‘shines the angel. In your room the heart’s rose opens to her light.’ He described her as a falling star, as the moon drinking sun-wine, as the sun’s rays focused in a glass, as a burn etched in the heart, as the wand whose touch brings sight to sightless eyes. He borrowed shamelessly from Hafiz and Rumi, spun images together like candyfloss, piled rhyme on rhyme – towers, flowers, hours – all the time seeing her enthroned in a realm of purity from which she looked down tenderly on his efforts.

  Mr Haycraft stopped him in the corridor. He was looking pale and his eyes veered from side to side disconcertingly.

  ‘Farid,’ he said. ‘Do you have a moment?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I was hoping we might read together.’

  ‘We’ll go somewhere private.’

  Mr Haycraft had the key to the chapel, and when he had ushered Farid through the door he locked it behind them and gestured to a pew.

  ‘Is it OK to read the Koran in a Christian church, sir?’

  ‘Of course it is. But actually that’s not the reason I brought you here.’

  Farid blushed, mentally rehearsing all the ways in which he might have incurred his teacher’s displeasure.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s about Angel Towers. We, that is to say the staff, are concerned about something.’

  ‘About what, sir?’

  Farid felt a shiver of apprehension, as though his teacher would discover in him some crime of which he himself had not been aware.

  ‘About girls who live on the estate.’

  ‘Girls who live on the estate,’ Farid repeated quietly.

  ‘Are they entirely safe there, I mean safe from people who mig
ht abuse them, capture them, force them to do things against their will? I apologize for asking this, but I am fond of you, Farid, and I know you will tell me the truth.’

  It was obvious that his teacher was referring to Muhibbah Shahin, though for what reason Farid could not guess, since the girl had left St Catherine’s three years ago, when Mr Haycraft was not yet on the scene. Farid’s instinct was to protect her honour, to deny that the angel of light could be captured, abused or forced against her will into anything, and certainly not into marriage with some diseased old geezer in Waziristan. Here in his satchel, along with the Koran, was the sheaf of poems he had written in proof of her purity. In his confusion he looked down at his hands in silence. It was quite wrong of Mr Haycraft to intrude in this way on something so sacred, something that concerned only Farid, who would protect his angel from all polluting ideas.

  Mr Haycraft shifted nervously for a while and then got to his feet and walked up and down the aisle of the chapel. Only once before had Farid visited this place, when Mr Haycraft had given some of the juniors a guided tour, recounted the stories of St Catherine of Siena, and said learned and touching things about the Gothic architecture. Farid particularly remembered his teacher’s way of describing the mouldings around the pointed windows, as ‘crystallised light’. How he had loved Mr Haycraft then, and how he resented him now. All of a sudden one adoration had been put in question by the other, and the contest was unequal. If he must choose between Muhibbah Shahin and Mr Haycraft he would choose the angel above the man.

  Farid looked up at last. A feeling of desolation rose through his body and gathered on the rim of his eyes. He had struggled hard with the Arab habit of weeping, and knew that there were many tears to be shed that evening – sweet, soothing tears, unlike those that were seeking an exit now. He swallowed, tried to speak, and the words would not come. At last the tears flowed, and the words with them.