The Disappeared by Roger Scruton Page B

staff room, Sharon thrust out a sheaf of paper, saying ‘done another one,’ and held his eyes for a moment anxiously. She looked grimy and dishevelled, as though she had slept in her uniform, and when she turned away and walked quickly down the corridor, he noticed that the school jersey, which she pulled low over her narrow hips, had begun to fray along the bottom, so that tassels of wool waved behind her as she walked. He felt a piercing shaft of pity, which quickly turned to fear and then to love, as she ducked out of sight into the library. Jim Roberts had warned him that trouble always comes from Angel Towers; he had not warned him, however, that it could come in this way.
    There was only one place in St Catherine’s Academy where Stephen could retire with Sharon’s essay, and that was the chapel, which was kept locked except for special occasions. The Local Education Authority regarded this place as an anachronism that it would happily have demolished, had it not been mentioned in Pevsner’s
Buildings of England
as a quirky but significant example of Victorian Gothic. The key was kept in the staffroom, and Stephen frequently borrowed it.
    He sat in a box-pew of dark oak, facing a plain stone altar under a stained glass window, which portrayed St Catherine of Siena in the style of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The saint, clothed in Dominican habits, held a bouquet of lilies and a crucifix, which she contemplated with downturned sorrowful eyes. No furnishings remained in the chapel, and the light from three lancet windows in the North wall fell evenly, in a soft, gauzy haze that left the barest traces of shadow along the sparse mouldings of the stonework. Clusters of slender pilasters along the walls flowered into a curious vault, where painted angels curled up between the ribs like grazing insects. In the middle of the day, when the distant sounds from the playground were pin-pricks in a tapestry of silence, Stephen felt the trace of troubles far greater than his own, which had sought relief in this place and also found it. Taking Sharon’s essay from his briefcase, he glanced up at the serenely sad St Catherine, and felt that he was entrusting his anxiety not to the saint only, but to the vanished congregation over which her image once presided.
    Whatever peace he had gleaned from the surrounding atmosphere was shattered at once by what he read. In the neat girl’s handwriting that had so often thrilled him Sharon told the story of Miranda and Caliban.
    Miranda came to the island with Prospero. And while Prospero was there what could she fear, since he was king over all enchantments? She could save herself for the days of peace and knowledge, the days of Ferdinand, because she felt in her heart that one day Ferdinand would come. Why did they take Prospero away? She never knew; she was a child; her only friend was Ophelia and Ophelia too was a child. No one had warned them against Caliban, and often they would play with the brute, who gave them sweets and toys. Miranda pitied him, took pains to make him speak, taught him each hour one thing or other; when he did not (savage) know his own meaning, but would gabble, like a thing most brutish, she endowed his purposes with words that made them known. And what purposes were they? First, to lie with Ophelia, with which purpose Ophelia agreed because she loved him; and then to lie with Miranda, which Miranda would not do. So Caliban was angry with Miranda, and vowed revenge against her. Now Caliban had friends and family. They lived in their own cave in the same tall cliff-face where the girls were housed. People came from many places to this cliff, and often they made their holes especially dark and mysterious, so as to pursue in secret the customs that they had followed back home.
    One day Caliban invited the girls into his cave. Through the door Miranda saw Caliban’s fellows, three of them, waiting to make use of his trophy. They were gabbling in