Free C by Tom McCarthy Page B

with her, hears shrieks and squeals each time she finds or breaks a cipher, mixed with Widsun’s deep roars of approval. Occasionally she passes him in the corridor as she emerges with her hair messed up and ink spattered and smudged across her face.

iii
    Pageant Day starts out unsettled. Clouds scud by swiftly; Carrefax monitors them anxiously, his head cranked back to watch them slide out from behind the house’s ivy-covered chimneys, elongating and unravelling as they drag patches of shade across the Mulberry Lawn—patches that wrinkle as they dip into the stream, then shorten as they make their way up Arcady Field, contracting right down to thin lines that slip away over the brim of Telegraph Hill. Staff and pupils lighten and darken as they move through these, hurrying from spinning sheds to schoolrooms, schoolrooms to Mulberry Lawn, house to spinning sheds and back again. The décor is being finished; women balance on the top rungs of stepladders, hanging leaf-tresses over wooden posts. In front of these, children lay out chairs in rows across the grass. Off to the side, Maureen and Frieda set up tea and coffee urns on trestle tables while their girls carry out plates laden with pyramids of cucumber and chopped-egg sandwiches, moving over lawn and gravel in an unbroken ant-like chain. Spitalfield slinks around among them, hoping for scraps. At the top of the lightly sloping path, Mr. Clair ties to the open gate a sign which bears, in both conventional and phonetic script, the text that most of Lydium’s tradesmen, clergy, civil servants, farmers, housewives, shopkeepers and misc. have already found slipped through their letter boxes in leaflet form during the past two weeks:
MR. SIMEON CARREFAX
cordially invites you to the
VERSOIE DAY SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF’S
ANNUAL PAGEANT
on
Saturday June 25th
1911
AT 3 IN THE AFTERNOON
for
ENTERTAINMENT and CLASSICAL INSTRUCTION , suitable for all Classes
    “Damn weather gods!” Carrefax snaps to Widsun. “Toying with us. Like wanton flies, in shambles—no, like wanton boys in sport. What was it … ?”
    “ ‘As flies to wanton boys are—’ ” Widsun begins, but Carrefax cuts him off:
    “I’m working on a patent for a way of using radio to sense the weather in advance. The waves travel through it, after all. Why aren’t you in your costume?”—this to Serge, who’s come to ask him something.
    “I don’t put my mask on till later. But Miss Hubbard wants to know what volume to set the amplification to.”
    “Amplification—what?”
    “Who’s this one meant to be, then?” Widsun asks.
    “Ascalaphus,” says Serge.
    “He’s the witness, isn’t he? Sees her eating grapefruit or something …”
    “Witness indeed,” Carrefax replies. “Pomegranate. Tell her to set it to medium and watch out for my signals. Go!”
    Serge scuttles back to Schoolroom One, where discarded clothes are strewn across a floor stripped of all its chairs save one, in which his mother sits stitching last-minute pleats and scales and feathers into costumes, turning their placid wearers one way, then another. Miss Hubbard stands beside the window, running the chorus through their lines, conducting them in unison while simultaneously getting individual actors to recite their phrases, the resulting cacophony flustering her into mixing up the words herself.
    “ ‘Near Enna walls—this damsel to—Pergusa is—’ No, start again. Where’s your owl head?” she asks Serge.
    Serge points to a corner. The mask is staring at him with large golden eyes whose centres are pierced by holes, like gramophone discs.
    “Father says to play it medium, and to watch for his—”
    “Not now, Serge. Take the mask out to the Mulberry Lawn. Set it with the other props behind the sheet. Don’t stop! ‘Near Enna walls …’ ” She leads the chant again. Behind her, through the window, Serge catches a glimpse of Bodner pushing a wheelbarrow full of flowers and foliage towards the