The Hole [antikvár]

Chapter One In the last Easter term, before the Hole, life was bright and good at Our Glorious School. Charged with the fresh self-confidence that steps in on the brink of adulthood, we all knew our futures as we walked out our lives under the arches and below the walls. The story begins, though, a little later than that; and perhaps it is still not finished. At least, I have not yet felt in me that the Hole is finished. But telling this story will, I hope, move me a step further away from it, and maybe help me to forget some of what happened. It was a clear, unseasonably warm day when the six figures made their way across the sunwashed flags of the quad to the side of the English block. Down there, in the dark hollow of a buttress, a rusted iron stairway circled its way into the ground. One after another, they followed its spiral and disappeared into the triangular shadow. A long time passed, and the sun shifted in the sky and slipped its light through different classroom windows, briefly illuminating battered leather briefcases and untidy stacks of paper. The accumulated and forgotten detritus of the spent term grew warm for a while, and then a thin cloud began to draw over from the east and the classrooms were dulled. A single figure appeared at the head of the iron staircase and paused, looking carefully around the