The Secret History

Finally, my plea finished, and my handwriting a passionate scrawl, I fell down on my bed and went to sleep. At eleven o'clock I woke, made some changes, and headed for the all-night study room to type it up. On the way I stopped at the post office, where, to my immense gratification, a note in my box informed me that I had got the job apartment-sitting in Brooklyn, and that the professor wanted to meet with me sometime in the coming week to discuss my schedule.

Well, that's the summer taken care of, I thought.

It was a beautiful night, full moon, the meadow like silver and the housefronts throwing square black shadows sharp as cutouts on the grass. Most of the windows were dark: everyone sleeping, early to bed. I hurried across the lawn to the library, where the lights of the all-night study room – The House of Eternal Learning,' Bu

Then, through the window, I saw a dark figure in a black suit, alone. It was Henry. Books were piled in front of him but he wasn't working. For some reason, 1 thought of that February night I had seen him standing in the shadows beneath the windows of Dr Roland's office, dark and solitary, hands in the pockets of his overcoat and the snow whirling high in the empty arc of the streetlights.

I closed the door. 'Henry,' I said. 'Henry. It's me.'

He didn't turn his head. 'I just got back from Julian's house,' he said, in a monotone.

I sat down. 'And?'

'The place is shut up. He's gone.'

There was a long silence.

'I find it very hard to believe he's done this, you know.' The light glinted off his spectacles; beneath the dark, glossy hair his face was deadly pale. 'It's just such a cowardly thing to have done. That's why he left, you know. Because he was afraid.'

The screens were open. A damp wind rustled in the trees.

Beyond them clouds sailed over the moon, fast and wild.

Henry took off his glasses. I never could get used to seeing him without them, that naked, vulnerable look he always had.

'He's a coward,' he said. 'In our circumstance, he would have done exactly what we did. He's just too much of a hypocrite to admit it.'

I didn't say anything.

'He doesn't even care that Bu

'You went to see him?'

'Yes. One would hope that this matter would've seemed something more to him than just a question of his own comfort.

Even to have turned us in would have shown some strength of character, not that I wanted to be turned in. But it's nothing but cowardice. Ru

Even after all that had happened, the bitterness and disappointment in his voice cut me to the heart.

'Henry,' I said. I wanted to say something profound, that Julian was only human, that he was old, that flesh and blood are frail and weak and that there comes a time when we have to transcend our teachers. But I found myself unable to say anything at all.

He turned his blind, unseeing eyes upon me.

'I loved him more than my own father,' he said.1 loved him more than anyone in the world.'

The wind was up. A gentle pitter of rain swept across the roof.

We sat there like that, not talking, for a very long time.

The next afternoon at three, I went to meet the new teacher.

When I stepped inside Julian's office I was shocked. It was completely empty. The books, the rugs, the big round table were gone. All that was left were the curtains on the windows and a tacked-up Japanese print that Bu

The teacher had dragged in some chairs from the dining hall. He was a round-faced, fair-haired man of about thirty, in turtleneck and jeans. A wedding band shone conspicuously on one pink hand; he had a conspicuous smell of after-shave. 'Welcome,' he said, leaning to shake my hand, and in his voice I heard the enthusiasm and condescension of a man accustomed to working with adolescents. 'My name is Dick Spence. Yours?'

It was a nightmarish hour. I really don't have the heart to go into it: his patronizing tone at the start (handing out a page from the New Testament, saying, 'Of course I don't expect you to pick up the finer points, if you can get the sense, it's okay with me'), a tone which metamorphosed gradually into surprise ('Well!

Rather advanced, for undergraduates!') and defensiveness ('It's been quite a while since I've seen students at your level') and, ultimately, embarrassment. He was the chaplain at Hackett and his Greek, which he had mostly learned at seminary, was crude and inferior even by my standards. He was one of those language teachers who rely heavily on mnemonics. ('Agathon. Do you know how I remember that word? "Agatha Christie writes good mysteries.'") Henry's look of contempt was indescribable. The rest of us were silent and humiliated. Matters were not helped by Charles stumbling in – obviously drunk – about twenty minutes into the class. His appearance prompted a rehash of previous formalities ('Welcome! My name is Dick Spence.

Yours?') and even, incredibly, a repetition of the agathon embarrassment.

When the lesson was over (teacher sneaking a look at his watch: 'Well! Looks like we're ru

'Well, it's only two more weeks,' said Francis, when we were outside.

Henry lit a cigarette. 'I'm not going back,' he said.

'Yeah,' Charles said sarcastically. That's right. That'll show him.'

'But Henry,' said Francis, 'you've got to go.'

He was smoking the cigarette with tight-lipped, resolute drags.

'No, I don't,' he said.

'Two weeks. That's it.'

'Poor fellow,' said Camilla. 'He's doing the best he can.'

'But that's not good enough for him,' said Charles loudly.

'Who does he expect? Fucking Richmond Lattimore?'

'Henry, if you don't go you'll fail,' said Francis.

'I don't care.'

'He doesn't have to go to school,' said Charles. 'He can do whatever he fucking pleases. He can fail every single fucking class and his dad'll still send him that fat allowance check every month '

'Don't say "fuck" anymore,' said Henry, in a quiet but ominous voice.

'Fuck? What's the matter, Henry? You never heard that word 1 before? Isn't that what you do to my sister every night?'

I remember, when I was a kid, once seeing my father strike my mother for absolutely no reason. Though he sometimes did the same thing to me, I did not realize that he did it sheerly out of bad temper, and believed that his trumped-up justifications ('You talk too much'; 'Don't look at me like that') somehow warranted the punishment. But the day I saw him hit my mother (because she had remarked, i