Chapter 3
Some
New Developments
“Carolyn, I would like
to have a word with you please.”
“Coming in a minute,
Mum. Let me finish this call with
Andrea,” Carolyn requested.
“Not a problem,” Mrs.
Marshall replied.
“Andrea, let me call
you back later. Mummy wants to talk to
me.”
“Okay, Carolyn, but
don’t forget to call back. There is a
question I want to ask you about a certain someone.”
“Who is the certain
someone?” Carolyn enquired.
“I can’t tell you right
now but I will if you call me back.”
“Okay, just give me a
little clue.”
“No Carolyn, but I
promise that if you call back, I will tell you who it is and what the question
is.”
“Okay, bye Andrea!”
“Bye, Carolyn!”
“Yes Mummy, you wanted
to talk to me.”
“Carolyn, we had a
little thing going this morning. I am
not too sure but did you not promise to tell me who the rumour was about?” Mrs. Marshall asked.
“Oh no Mummy, I did no
such thing. I was expecting this drill
to continue but I really do not plan to say any more on that matter. As a matter of fact, I think I have let on
too much already. Mummy, please leave it
alone.”
“If you hadn’t started
I would not be forcing you to complete.
Child you need to learn that when you start something you must see it
through to the end. So come out with it
and let’s have the ending.”
“I will not fall for
that one, Mummy. Here’s Carson now. Why don’t you ask him?” Carolyn was happy that Carson had chosen that
exact moment to come through the door.”
Ask me what?” he asked.
“Apparently there is
some rumour going around that there is someone else who is showing an interest
in you,” his mother said getting straight to the issue. That was the kind of person she was. She never beat around the bush but always got
straight to the point.”
“Mummy, you know as
well as I do that when you hear a rumour, you try to get as much information
from the source as you can. The only
person I know of that has shown an interest in me is June. And, to be quite frank, I am not even too
sure if that interest still exists. I
must also confess that right now I am not even worried about that,” he added.
“Did you say that you
are not even worried? Boy, are you
crazy? That girl practically grew up in
this house. You know her inside out and
you would let some stranger come into your life and upstage you? Boy you would have to be crazy! Come here let me check you out! You would have to be running a temperature.”
By this time Carolyn
had retreated to her room. Given the way
her mum had raised the matter, she was quite sure that Carson felt that she was
the source, and what is more, that she must have told his mother all that she
knew. She would have liked to tell him
that it was not so but right now she felt that her room was the safest place to
be.
“Listen to me,
Mummy. At this stage of my existence I
am not all that concern about that kind of relationship,” he lied. He knew deep down in his heart that someone
else was occupying his quiet moments even though he had not shown it
openly. And besides, here of late June
had behaved somewhat like if she and he were a done deal. He did not like the idea of being owned.
“So what are you
telling me?” Are you telling me that you
have parted ways with June? Did you tell
her as much? Cause I mean if that is the
case, the decent and manly thing to do would be to tell her.”
Suddenly Carson felt
like he had chosen the wrong time to come through the door. He wished he could change that aspect but he
knew this was real time and not some play that he was writing. “Mummy, I did not say that June and I were
finished. What I mean is that right now
we have a little misunderstanding, but I have got some other stuff on my mind
and we have not sorted out that little matter as yet. But don’t you fear, Mummy, I will get back to
it sooner or later, perhaps sooner, since it appears to be of grave importance
to you.”
“You had better, boy!”
She ended her conversation with Carson but continued to mutter under her
breath. “I can’t understand what must
have gotten into the head of that boy. A
nice girl, a lady if you please, and he’s playing around. He really needs his head examining. I will have a few words with his father when
he arrives home. He really needs to have
a man to man talk with that boy of his.”
She was resolute about this final decision. “I really don’t understand what has come over
Mr. Marshall’s child.” This disclaimer
was always used when there was some behavior from any of the children that she
found puzzling. Suddenly that child was
Mr. Marshall’s child.
Carson went to the room
he shared with his younger brother, Carlisle.
He lay across his bed with his legs dangling over the side. He steered at the ceiling as if he felt he
could find some answers there. He wished
that nobody would knock on or push the door for at least an hour. He just needed to thaw out and put all these
happenings in perspective. First there
was June’s annoyance with him. Next
there was the phone call and thirdly, his mother had cross-examined him as
though he was the accused and she was the lawyer for the defendant. Actually, as he reflected on the day, he
realized that this was the second cross-examination. Ralph had done the same when he had related the
matter of the mysterious phone call.
His hope for at least
one hour free of anyone interrupting his thoughts did not even last ten
minutes. There was a knock on the
bedroom door. It was his mother. “There is some strange sounding person on the
phone requesting to speak with you,” She said, holding her hand over the
mouthpiece as she gave him this description.
Carson took the phone
from his mother and waited for her to retreat from the room before he said,
“Carson here.”
“You tried to trap my
accomplice this afternoon but you failed.
We are too clever for you. You
are in way over your head. It is going
to get worse if you and your friends do not back out of this foolish expedition
you have been planning. If you think it
is just two of us, think again. Just to
show you that we are not making sport, check your old man’s car when he gets
home. You will find a note scrawled on
the trunk lid. Read it carefully. He will be home shortly.”
The click at the other
seemed so loud it almost caused Carson to jump.
Just then he heard his father’s car pull into the driveway. He wondered
if he should go outside right away and check the car or whether he should do it
a little later and then sound an alarm.
He decided on neither. He would
let his father discover that for himself.
But then he thought the
matter over again. Maybe he needed to
see what the note stated. That might
help him better in deciding on a course of action. Yes, that is what he decided. He went out of the bedroom to put the phone
back on its base. Rather than going back
to the room at once, he delayed to greet his father when he came through the
door.
“Good evening to all
those in the house!” his father called out as if he expected all of them to be
in their rooms. In actual fact, Carson
was by this time sitting at the dining table, Mummy was in the kitchen
finishing preparations for dinner, Carolyn was in her room and Carlisle was
over at the next door neighbour.
Both Carson and his
mother responded together though they did not give the same greeting. Mr. Marshall made a beeline for the kitchen
and there he greeted his wife. He was
not much for displaying affectionate behavior but he thought he would surprise
her with a little peck on the cheeks.
Next he turned his attention to Carson.
“You have a choice. You could
either have a ten spot, meaning a ten-dollar note, or a kiss on the cheek. Which will it be?”
“I will settle for the
note any day, Dad.” They both laughed
but to Carson’s surprise, his dad handed him a ten-dollar note with the remark,
“I would prefer to give you the note too.”
“Now that you are in
such a generous mood, why don’t you have a man to man talk with your son?” Mrs. Marshall called out from the
kitchen. “It needn’t be long ’cause I
will have dinner on the table in ten minutes.”
Mr. Marshall whispered
in Carson’s ear, “What is this man to man talk all about?”
“It’s Mummy who
suggested it so I guess she knows what it is all about.”
“You mean that you do
not have the slightest clue?” Mr.
Marshall hit back.
“Dad, to tell you no, I
would be lying. You know I am not going
to lie to you but for right now, if I were you I would postpone the talk. Given what Mum is worked up about, it will
take much longer than ten minutes, more like the rest of the night.”
“All right, son, he
whispered again. In any case I know it
must be something to do with June,” he added.
“How did you guess,
Dad?” They were both whispering now.
“Write it down to
experience, son, as well as knowing the weather signs.”
“I can’t hear
anything,” shouted the lone voice in the kitchen.
There was no reply from
either father or son. They understood
one another perfectly and both understood Mother.
Carson woke early
Thursday morning. In any case he did not
sleep well and long before his alarm went off at 6:00 a.m., he was up and
moving around the house. As soon as
there was enough light outside he decided to go out to check his father’s car
trunk lid. Scrawled across it were the
words “We are not kidding.” Carson would
have like to call his two friends right away but he dared not for two reasons. One of these was, his friends were likely to
be asleep. The other was, there was no
place in the house where he could talk with the privacy that he would need to
keep this matter a secret. Regarding the
second reason he was right. However in
the case of the first reason he was wrong.
Ralph lay on his bed
and as he did so, he listened with the aid of his headphones to the recording
of the meetings they had held. He also
reviewed the videos for at least the fifth time. There was nothing more he had learnt except
that one of the three who had not belong to their form had a strange look on
his face. It was almost like while he
was showing some interest in the conversation among those in the group, his
mind was somewhere else. He had a somewhat
distant look on his face.
Ralph was aware that a
number of students from other sixth forms frequented their sixth form room but
he felt that this interchange applied to the other sixth forms as well. Consequently he did not make much of these
three students that showed up in the video shots. However, he found it difficult to easily
dismiss the look he saw on this student’s face.
He decided to view the
video shots one last time. “Well let’s
see what the number six viewing will reveal,” he thought to himself. This time around something else occurred to
Ralph. He was standing with both hands
in his pocket, even when he was contributing to the conversation. While the others were using their hands in
animated expression, his were consigned to his pockets all of the time. Ralph also noted that his left hand appeared
to bulge the pocket in a way to suggest that he was holding something. “I wonder what it could be. His mind went straight to Carson’s desk. “This might be far fetch,” he thought, “But
little is more than nothing.” He made a
mental note of this development.
Ralph only knew this
student by seeing him. He did not even
know his name. Other than seeing him in
the form room from time to time, he knew nothing more about him. He wondered about how he would go about
locating him now it was vacation time.
He wished that they had had another week before the school would go on
holiday.
