Silent Noon by Trilby Kent Page A

gran made it.”
    “Is that what he told you?” Barney shrugged. “Come on,” said Belinda, making for Ormer House. “I don’t think I should come in,” said Barney. The
girl’s expression hardened, and Barney swallowed. “How about the shelter?” he said.
    ~
    It was the most protracted apology he’d ever known. Twice that week, Ivor summoned him to collect another bundle – a bag of pear drops, a tin of Wagon Wheels –
and between the end of lessons and first prep the new boy and the housemaster’s daughter met in the shelter behind Ormer House to divide the spoils.
    At first they ate in guilty silence, but by their third rendezvous the girl had realized that Barney was not as dull-witted as he looked and began to probe him for information about their
benefactor. She hadn’t noticed Morrell before, she said, because she’d always been away at school in term time.
    “He looks terribly old to be in the Fifth,” she said. “Out of school clothes he’d easily pass for twenty.”
    “I’ll be done for if he finds out you’ve been sharing his gifts with me.”
    “I can share what’s mine with Pleming’s dog, if I like.” She pulled on a liquorice whip, stretching the black lace between sharp teeth.
    “Makes a difference from the pig swill they serve us in hall,” said Barney. Lately, he had begun testing out Robin’s sneering tone. “The tapioca
yesterday—”
    Belinda made a face. “Frogs’ eyes in pus, you mean.”
    He was dying to ask her about the body she had discovered by the old kitchens, but every time he came close she started talking again.
    “Are they alive, do you suppose?” She was pointing at a cluster of black spots rising like a rash up the concrete wall.
    It seemed strange to Barney that a girl everyone said was terribly clever shouldn’t know what mould looked like. “I don’t think so,” he said.
    “Oh, but they must be, if it’s a fungus.” She touched the plaster with her fingers.
    “
Down in the dungeon six feet deep,
    Where old Hitler lies asleep,
    German boys tickle his feet,
    Down in the dungeon—
”
    “Very funny,” said Barney.
    Belinda considered the empty paper bags. “Why don’t we invite Morrell next time?” Barney looked doubtful. “For a proper feast. We could come on Wednesday.”
    There was to be a fireworks display that night: school would break for half-term the following day.
    “I promise I won’t tell him you’ve being sharing all along. God’s honour.” She unwound her scarf, licked her index finger and drew a sign of the cross on her
throat.
    “I’ll have a word.” It would be something to tell Spike over half-term when he asked to hear about all the fun things the boys got up to. Then, he had a thought. “But
first you have to tell us why you’re here.”
    “Because there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. Because Daddy—”
    “No secrets.” Barney crossed his arms, hoping that Morrell wouldn’t kill him for playing this game. “Not from us.”
    She stared at him as if trying to guess what he wanted to hear. In this light, the blue veins that travelled to her temples resembled branches caught in a flash of lightning, delicate and
perfect and pulsing with life.
    “Whatever the others are saying is probably true,” she said. “I pushed a girl down some stairs.”
    The admission filled him with a weird relief. “That doesn’t get people expelled.”
    “What did you expect?” She began to gather the empty bags. “If Cowper had hit me back, he’d get the sack too.”
    “That’s different.”
    “Is it?” She shoved the bags into her satchel.
    And then she told him about Minty.
    That spring, someone had left the gate to the coast road unlatched, and the headmistress’s little schnauzer had escaped. The headmistress had assumed that Minty was sleeping out of sight
until a craven-faced young man and his sobbing girlfriend were spotted traipsing up the drive carrying a limp bundle of grey fur. The dog had