The Hiding Place(31)

I slip the package inside my satchel (along with my notebooks and some essays I should probably be marking right now). I buckle the satchel up, stand and walk more briskly back around the church. I’m almost at the gate when I realize I’m not alone. A figure is sitting on the church’s only small bench, beneath an aged sycamore. A familiar skinny, hunched figure. My heart sinks. Not now. I need to get back to school. I need to open the package. I don’t need to play the concerned teacher or the good bloody Samaritan.

But then, another part of me, the irritating part—the part that actually gives a shit about kids and got me into teaching in the first place—gets the better of me.

I walk over to the bench. “Marcus?”

He starts and looks up, flinching slightly. The reaction of someone who only ever expects an insult or a blow.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

He shifts, embarrassed, red-faced. “Nothing.”

“Right.”

I wait. Because that’s what you have to do sometimes. You don’t push to get kids to tell you things. You pull back, let them ease it out on their own.

He sighs. “I come here to eat my lunch.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask why, but that would be stupid. Why did Ruth Moore eat her lunch in the bus shelter down the road from school every day? Because it was safer. A place to hide from the bullies. Better a urine-stinking shelter or a damp bench in a cold graveyard than the ritual humiliation of the cafeteria and the playground.

“Are you going to scold me for being off school premises?” Marcus asks.

I sit down beside him, trying not to grimace at the fresh twinge in my back. “No. Although I’m curious as to how you found a way past the security gates.”

“Like I’d tell you.”

“Fair point.” I look around. “Isn’t there a better place to hang out?”

“Not in Arnhill.”

Also a fair point.

“Are you here to avoid Hurst?”

“What d’you think?”

“Look—”

“If you’re going to give me some lecture about how I should stand up to Hurst because bullies respect you if you stand up to them, then you can take that crap and stuff it right back in your stupid satchel, along with your copy of the Guardian.”

He glares at me defiantly. And he’s right. Bullies don’t respect you if you fight back. They just beat you harder. Because there are always more of them. A simple equation of numbers.

I try again. “I’m not going to tell you that, Marcus. Because it is crap. The best thing you can do is keep your head down, keep away from Hurst, and get through as best you can. You won’t be at school forever, even though it feels that way now. But you can come to me. I’ll deal with Hurst. You can count on that.”

He stares at me for a moment, trying to decide whether I’m feeding him a line or he really can trust me. It could go either way. Then he gives a very small nod:

“It’s not just me. Hurst picks on loads of kids. Everyone’s shit scared of him…even the other teachers.”

I think about what Beth said in the pub. About Hurst being in Julia Morton’s form group. About Ben going missing.

“What about Mrs. Morton? She was his class adviser last year, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t scared of him. She was more…like you.”

Bearing in mind she killed her son and blew her own head off, I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment.

“Did you know Ben Morton?” I ask.

“Not really. He was only a first-year.”

“What about Hurst? Did Hurst bully Ben?”

He shakes his head. “Hurst didn’t pick on Ben. Ben was popular. He had mates—” He hesitates.

“But there was something?”

He throws me a sideways glance. “A lot of the younger kids, they want to impress Hurst. Be on his good side. Be one of his gang.”

“And?”

“Hurst would make them do stuff…to prove themselves.”

“Like an initiation?”

He nods.

“What sort of stuff?”

“Just stupid dares and things. Pathetic, really.”

“On school premises?”

“No. There’s this place Hurst knows about…up on the old colliery site.”

My blood slows and chills.

“On the old colliery site? Or under it? Did he find something up there—tunnels, caves?”

My voice has risen. He stares at me. “I don’t know, okay? I never wanted to be one of Hurst’s fucking gang.”

I’ve pushed too hard. And he does know. He’s just not ready to say yet. I already have a pretty good idea anyway. For now, I let the moment slide. We can come back to it another time. With kids like Marcus there is always another time. Hurst might be indiscriminate in his bullying but, like parents, every bully has a favorite, even if they don’t say so.

I glance around the graveyard again. “You know, when I was a kid we used to hang around here sometimes.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, we’d…” vandalize angels “. . . drink, smoke, other stuff. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“I like to look at the old graves,” he says. “The people’s names. I like to imagine what their lives were like.”