Darkness Visible Read Online Free PDF Page A

window. They pushed and shoved against the great bar that ran from one end to the other at boy-height, and held the verticals that were less than a boy’s width apart. Fifty yards away and fifty feet down a boy limped quickly towards the forbidden tree. Two little patches of blue did indeed show above the wall opposite it on the girls’ side. The boys along the window were so entranced they never heard the door open behind them.
    “What on earth is all this? What are you men doing up here?”
    Mr Pedigree stood in the doorway, nervously holding the doorknob and looking from one end of the row of laughing boys to the other. But none of them minded old Pedders.
    “I said what’s all this? Are there any of my men here? You, the lad with the lovely locks, Shenstone!”
    “It’s Windy, sir. He’s climbing the tree!”
    “Windy? Who’s Windy?”
    “There he is, sir, you can see him, he’s just getting up!”
    “Oh you are a feeble, nasty, inky lot. I’m surprised at you, Shenstone, a fine upstanding lad like you—”
    Scandalized, gleeful laughter—
    “Sir, sir, he’s doing it now—”
    There was a kind of confusion among the leaves of a lower bough. The blue, sexy patches disappeared from the wall as if they had been knocked off by shot. Mr Pedigree clapped his hands and shouted but none of the boys paid any attention. They went cascading down the stairs, and left him there, flushed and more agitated by what was behind him than in front. He looked after them down the well of the stairs. He spoke sideways into the room and held the door open.
    “Very well my dear. You can run along now.”
    The boy came out, smiling confidently up at Mr Pedigree. He went away down the stairs, assured of his own worth.
    When he had gone Mr Pedigree stared irritatedly at the distant boy who was coming unhandily down the tree. Mr Pedigree had no intention of interfering—none whatever.
    The headmaster heard from the Mother Superior. He sent for the boy who came limping and spotty and anxious. The headmaster was sorry for him and tried to make things easy. The episode had been described by the Mother Superior in such words as hid it behind a veil which the headmaster knew he must lift; and yet he viewed the lifting of a veil with some apprehension. He knew that lifting any veil was liable to uncover more than the investigator bargained for.
    “Sit down there, will you? Now. You see we’ve had this complaint about you. About what you did when you climbed that tree. Young men—boys—will climb trees, that’s not what I’m asking you about—but there may be considerable consequences coming from your action, you know. Now. What did you do?”
    The unmended side of the boy’s face became one deep, red flush. He looked down past his knees.
    “You see, my dear boy, there’s nothing to be— frightened of. People sometimes can’t help themselves. If they are sick then we help them or find people who can help them. Only we must know !”  
    The boy neither spoke nor moved.
    “Show me, then, if that’s easier for you.”
    Matty glanced up under his eyebrows then down again. He was breathing quickly as if he had been running. He took his right hand across and took hold of the long lock dangling by his left ear. With a gesture of absolute abandon he ripped the hair across and exposed the white obscenity of his scalp.
    It was perhaps fortunate that Matty did not see how the headmaster shut his eyes involuntarily, then forced them open and kept them open without any change of expression in his face. They both said nothing for a while until the headmaster nodded understandingly and Matty, relaxing, brought the hair back across his head.
    “I see,” said the headmaster. “Yes. I see.”
    Then for a while he said nothing but thought of phrases that might go in his letter to the Mother Superior.
    “Well,” he said at last, “don’t do it again. Go along now. And please remember you are only allowed to climb the big beech and even