The School of Night: A Novel by Alan Wall Page A

moans and squeals, why the great beast was hurting as it howled its way through the gears. He had also become involved in the shipment of furs. This had been going on for some time, and would have continued for longer except for a dispute that had arisen between himself and his partner, who had appropriated from Simon some of the furs which had so recently been appropriated from others elsewhere. Simon, Dan explained, was a big boy. Having realised after a while that the proceeds of the night were not being fairly divided between the two furriers, he had gone round to see his partner, taking with him the baseball bat he had acquired during a brief enthusiasm for American sports.
    It had been argued in his defence in court that his temper might not have become as frayed as it did, had he not arrived in time to see his partner’s girlfriend, who had not long before been his own girlfriend, trying on a pile of furs one by one. She was apparently wearing very little else. Hardly pausing to express his displeasure, Simon had brought the bat down with such force on his partner’s right hand as it rested on the table that five different bones had smashed simultaneously. And as his colleague howled with the pain of it, pulling his hand instinctively into his belly, he had shouted ‘You’ve broken my hand, you mad bastard’, which had only made Simon crosser.
    ‘You’ve still got another hand though, haven’t you?’ he had said, then the bat had whistled through the air once again until it found his partner’s knee. His left knee. One smashed right hand; one broken left knee. Simon obviously liked to leave a job looking symmetric. Even then, the matter would not have come to the attention of the police had it not been for the girlfriend. She had become hysterical and had remained hysterical for some time, all the while ever more determined to see Simon behind bars. During the investigation the whole story had come out, including the use of Dan’s lorries. Dan refilled his glass from the bottle.
    ‘Remember what our old headmaster used to say, Sean, just before he belted us: that the use of violence is always and everywhere an admission of failure.’ Dan was staring at Dominique and smiling. She never took her eyes off him, but she wasn’t smiling.
    ‘Now what moral would you draw from this episode?’ he asked her and she shrugged. The more I had told her of Dan in our informal analysis, the more she had seemed to disapprove of him, particularly his relationship with me.
    ‘Sean?’ he said, and I thought for a moment.
    ‘Take care in picking your mechanics?’ I said. Dan snorted.
    ‘What an unimaginative fellow. You must work for the BBC. No, the lesson to be drawn is simple. People only buy fruit during the hours of daylight. But transportation is needed twenty-four hours a day. Even when darkness descends, the work continues.’
    That night in bed Dominique rolled over towards me and said, ‘Do you ever think of someone else when you’re making love to me?’
    ‘Yes,’ I replied truthfully.
    ‘Does she have a name?’
    ‘Sally Pagett.’
    Who had given birth two weeks before to her second son.

3
     
    Years went by like this. Dominique finally qualified as an analyst and began her practice in the spare room where I had once sat and stared down at the traffic. And I edited news for the BBC, seeming to hear from time to time Dan’s sour query: ‘Why not make some instead?’ The truth is I had no great wish to, not that sort anyway. I was not seeking my own promotion and it soon enough became apparent that no one else was either. Simply being in the BBC had seemed a sufficient achievement when I left Oxford. I still remembered my grandparents’ faces when I told them where I was soon to be employed. They had smiled, both of them, small smiles of wonder, that one of their own should have passed at last through the looking-glass: I was about to join those on the other side of the radio, the invisible ones who