Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

“Honestly, don’t you think eating is meant to be, if not fun, then at least easy? How much mastication does that require?”

“It’s good for you; it’s just a bit… fibrous.”

“It looks like the wrong end of the digestion process.”

“You’re an unpleasant creature. Don’t know why I talk to you.” She steals a chip off my plate.

I stare up at the head table, frown. “Have you seen the Principal lately?”

“A day or so ago,” she says. “Why?”

“Just feel like they haven’t been around for ages.”

“That’d be your dodgy memory. Old trout will be here somewhere,” she says dismissively. “You can always talk to Candide, if it’s urgent.”

“No, nothing really. Just curious. Also, I don’t want to get trapped by the Deputy Head—last time I ended up listening to him recounting his thesis from 1972 on the evils of the Paris student uprisings of ’68.” Candide’s about sixty, but he seems older and dustier than he should. Fenella hooks her thumbs under the front facing of her academic gown, tucks her chin into her neck and looks down her nose at me, adopting a sonorous intonation.

“‘Bloody peasants, disrespecting their betters. It’s all one can expect from a nation that murdered its own royalty and has far too many varieties of cheese.’”

“Don’t make the mistake of mentioning Charles I and the thud his head made on the scaffolding. I learned that the hard way.”

We laugh until we’re gasping, and the older teachers are looking at us disapprovingly. We’ll be spoken to later about the dangers of hilarity in front of the students and letting our dignity visibly slip. Causes the natives to become restless if they think we’re human and we lose our grip on the moral high ground.

III

FEBRUARY 14TH

Lead me, I will wait for thee:

the King once summoned me into his chambers:

and I was glad and rejoiced,

I remember thy love more than life:

All tremble before thee.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who, when faced with a window two floors up, will immediately accept the limitations it places upon them; and those who instantly look for a way to subvert both the height and the threatened effects of gravity. This room is full of the latter. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching: the opportunity to find those who would chance a fall in the attempt to fly, rather than stay safely within bounds.

The buzz of conversation in my oak-panelled rooms washes over me. Stephen and Tilly are arguing about whether Ishtar is more or less powerful as a profligate prostitute goddess, or is simply a male wish-fulfilment fantasy; the other five watch the back and forth of a teen intellectual tennis match. The tipple of port has made them aggressive and I imagine sex will be the result at some point. Time to nip that in the bud. I give a slow blink, to moisten my dry eyeballs, and clap my hands.

“Enough, enough. You’re not talking history any more, you’ve slid into pop culture, which is Doctor Burrows’ area, not mine,” I say. “Look at the time. Off you all go.”

“Goodnight, Doctor Croftmarsh,” they say. The closing of the door and then the one student left, the one who always waits behind; the one who stands out, and frequently apart from, her fellows. Tilly, who thinks herself special, and is, I suppose. So much talent, so clever; she will do well when she goes out into the world.

“How are you?” she asks and I am a bit taken aback. She steps close, takes my hands in hers, begins stroking the palms, an intimate, invasive gesture. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. “Do you feel it yet? Has it begun?”

“Do I feel what, Tilly?”

Her face changes, the avid expression painted over by one of uncertainty, perhaps fear. What does the child mean?

“Tilly.” Thackeray’s voice is low but seems to affect the girl like the crack of a whip. She starts and looks guilty. I didn’t even hear the door open. “Tilly, don’t bother Doctor Croftmarsh. It’s late and time for you to be getting back to your room.”

Tilly drops my hands, and dips her head, blonde curls covering her blush-red face. She makes for the exit, then looks back over her shoulder before she leaves, smiling a sunburst at me and then throwing an odd glance at Thackeray, which I cannot interpret.

“Sleep well. Don’t forget to read the Roux,” I say after her as the door closes and Thackeray leans his back against it.

He grins, his thick lips smug, then he moves into the room without invitation and helps himself to the whisky waiting on the shelf, knocking one of the heavy crystal glasses against the other. He raises the bottle at me, and I nod. Beneath his black woollen academic robe he is still a rugby player, but slowly going soft and bloating in parts. His pale cheeks are shadowed with ebony stubble; the ruffian’s posture hides an acute, albeit lazy intelligence; sometimes I wonder how he came to teach at a place as exclusive as this.