"Tell me what?"

"About young clever-boots here – the record-breaking, tooth-breaking, marble-sucker extraordinaire."

Sanders' sob squeaked upwards into a ragged gasping laugh. "What would have happened?"

"If it hadn't lodged where it had? You'd have swallowed the flipping thing – that's what would have happened."

"And been cut open to get it out?"

"Yes."

"And been sent home to get better?"

"Oh no, my lad, been sent right back here to the infirmary to me."

Sanders, breathing almost normally now, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then allowed Jenny to wipe both mouth and hand with a clean towel. She finished up gently mopping his eyes and was rewarded with the glimmer of a smile.

"Am I sick enough to stay in the infirmary now?"

"All right-just for tonight. Could you drink some warm milk.'?"

"Yuk!"

"Chocolate flavoured?"

He beamed, "Super."

Hammond said irritably, "You spoil them." He waited impatiently in the treatment room while Jenny took the child through to the small kitchen and let him help her make the drink. The infirmary dormitory held six beds and was adjacent to her own room. She settled him into bed and then returned to the treatment room and picked up the house-phone. Hammond listened to her side of the conversation as she spoke to Mollie Robbins.

"Six marbles in the child's mouth… A dare, I suppose. You know what they're like – they won't say… No, no damage – at least not much. He'll have to see a dentist… Yes, I know you have… Yes, I know you do. Anyway, I'll keep him tonight… A report? Well, yes – I have to… No – no harm done… No blame at all… Of course you can't." She glanced at Hammond. "He's back now. I thought you'd told him about Tim Sanders… Well, someone did. He's not psychic." She handed the phone to Hammond. "She wants to speak to you."

He made a negative gesture with his hand and then shrugged and took the phone. "It's all right, Mollie. Not a major disaster. Have the rest "of the lads settled down again?"

He could hear her heavy agitated breathing. "Yes. There wasn't any sort of rumpus. I just happened to go in. He was gagging – his mouth wide open – I thought he had lock-jaw."

"Well, he hasn't. He's had some hot chocolate from Jenny and been put to bed. You can have him back in the morning."

He put the phone down before she could say any more. Her panic was out of proportion to what had happened. Normally she would have said something scathing about the awful child or the silly little brat. His own nerves, already taut, were on the point of snapping.

He explained that Sherborne had told him. "And he gave me a garbled story about David Fleming and a drawing. Brannigan wants to see me. Put me wise, Jenny. What's it all about?"

She found it difficult to explain. She was very much in the middle of a no-man's-land with a bias towards Fleming and sympathy for Hammond. The last few days had aged him. His thick fair hair fell untidily over his heavily lined forehead and he kept pushing it back with impatient nervous gestures as she told him about the drawing.

"Are you trying to tell me that the boy had a history of mental illness?"

"No, I'm not." She felt herself swing over wholly to Fleming's side. "The word is regression. I've never done any psychiatric nursing – but you know and I know that David was absolutely normal."

"So he just drew it for fun?"

"That's what I thought, but his father didn't. And when Brannigan saw it he didn't think so either. They saw it as a cry for help."

"To be rescued from the tortures of the damned."

She was startled. "What?"

"Sherborne's words – not mine."

She said quietly, "He could have had a shock. Brannigan asked me if he had. I said no. I think it's more likely he was bullied. And if I had to pick out anyone from your House who was likely to put the thumb-screws on him then I know who I'd pick."

"So you'd set up young Durrant as scapegoat, would you?" His anger was rising.

She answered with equal heat. "I'd set no-one up – and I'd say nothing unless I knew – but if I did know then I wouldn't protect him from his come-uppance. There are other kids still around – kids who need protection – those are the kids I'd think about."

"It's not like you to take an unfair dislike of any child."

"Child? At fifteen? When he looks at me his eyes undress me."

"Your job takes you amongst adolescent boys – he's not alone in that."

"Maybe. But none of the others makes my flesh creep." Her cheeks were hot with annoyance and she was breathing quickly.

He made a conscious effort to cool the argument. "I'm only asking you to be fair. Durrant, as far as you know – as far as I know – had that one fight with David. If you're going to start putting ideas about Durrant into Brannigan's head – or worse, into Fleming's head – they'll fasten their teeth into him like a fox's into a rabbit. If there's got to be a scapegoat – then at least I'm man-sized."

"I've no intention of putting ideas into anyone's head. I'm just telling you what I think. What I feel."

He went on quietly. "The boy is unprepossessing. His mother's a tart. His father dutifully acknowledges his existence – nothing more. Whatever stability he has we provide. Don't go kicking the floor from under him."

"But I've told you…" She gave up trying to justify herself. He was right to defend Durrant. She would have thought less of him if he hadn't.

After he had gone she looked in on Tim Sanders. He was sleeping peacefully. She remembered that it was the bed that had once held David. At twelve she hadn't tucked him in as she tucked this child in now, but she had felt the same affection for him as she had seen him sleeping. There was a little blood and saliva at the corner of Tim's mouth. She took a tissue from the bedside table and wiped it. What had he been trying to prove, she wondered? That his capacity for holding marbles in his mouth was greater than anyone else's? Or had someone forced them in against his will? Why didn't boys talk? Why did they perpetuate the myth of the honour of silence? Why didn't they split on each other? Why didn't they holler for adult help good and loud when they needed it? Why had David drawn a picture and thrust it at her? Why hadn't he screamed and cried and stormed and let the whole world know?

Obeying an impulse she couldn't resist she went back to the treatment room and found the telephone directory. It was almost half past eleven – there might not be anyone at the desk of The Lantern to receive the call – there might not be a telephone extension in Fleming's bedroom – there were a dozen good reasons not to make the call, but she set them all aside and made it.

He was sitting up in bed with David's book of essays when the phone rang.

The sound, like a bridge between two worlds, forced him back into the present time after wandering in another planet that had held his son. The essays, at times revealing, at times guarded, showed him a David he scarcely knew. A conformist David in a herd seeking the anonymity of what he believed to be the norm. Favourite author: Scott. Untrue. Any literary work older than the mid-century bored him to tears. Favourite holiday pastime: Climbing the Cairngorms. Untrue. On the one occasion he had taken him he had been so white-lipped with vertigo and fear that he had never taken him again. Why hadn't he mentioned pony-riding on the farm? He had loved the pony as much as he had loved his gerbil and he hadn't considered the latter too childish to mention. Did he really want to go in for scientific research – spelt resurch – when he grew up, or was that just a respectable idea grabbed out of the air?

When did the' Navy start losing its appeal? Equally respectable. The airline pilot and the Naval officer – and now recently the scientist. The first two enthusiasms he had been in on and had bought him books with the appropriate backgrounds. In the normal way – if he had really meant it – the next holiday would have been spent with an embryo scientist. In what field? His own, perhaps. Electronics. A need to know – and the realisation that he would never know – frustrated him to the point of physical pain. He felt not only bereaved, but deprived. Others had walked with his son right up to the edge of oblivion. They had known his more recent thoughts. They had watched him, heard him, touched him. Several weeks of his life were to him, his father, clouded over, unguessable, never to be known.