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.
