The Apothecary

Chapter 18

The Opera Game



School was just getting out when we got back to St. Beden’s to recover the Pharmacopoeia, and students were streaming out into the grey afternoon, released for the day. They were all going about their lives, heading off to field hockey practice or choir rehearsal, and I felt that an enormous, unbridgeable gulf had opened up between us. Wearing the wrong clothes and not knowing Latin seemed like enviable problems to have.

Pip stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked up at the tall, imposing Victorian building, and shuddered. “I’ll just wait out ’ere,” he said.

It struck me as funny that Pip had no problem running across a peaked roof three stories off the ground, or attacking a monstrous cat as a tiny bird, but when confronted with a school, even after hours, he looked scared. It was as if someone might come after him with a butterfly net and pin him inside a case.

“But school’s out,” Benjamin said. “It’s safe.”

Pip looked doubtful.

“They’re not going to kidnap you and make you go,” I said. “No one will notice one more kid.”

Benjamin and I started up the stone steps, but Pip hung back.

Then Sarah Pennington came out the front door, and the February clouds momentarily parted—they really did. I’m not making this up. A shaft of sunlight caught her golden hair as she stopped at the top of the steps.

Pip stared, openmouthed, at this paragon of schoolgirl beauty. A few strands had escaped from Sarah’s long braid, and they sparkled around her face. She blinked her long eyelashes in the unexpected light.

Then her eyes met Pip’s bright hazel ones. I doubt she could have avoided it, given the intensity of his unconcealed longing. She seemed startled by what she saw, and she glanced at me, then at Benjamin, then back at Pip. We were all standing on the steps below her, like acolytes before the queen. I thought it might be good for Pip that she couldn’t see how short he was.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Pip said, as if in a dream.

“How do you do?” she asked.

He nodded, paralysed with love.

“This is our friend Pip,” I said.

“Pip?” she asked, tilting her head fetchingly. “As in Great Expectations?”

“Why not?” Pip said.

She smiled. “Do you have great expectations?”

“I do now.”

“Do you go to this school?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But if you go here, I will.”

I noticed that he had pronounced the h in “here,” and wondered how much he changed his accent to suit his situation each day.

Sarah blushed, flustered. Having started the flirtation, she didn’t seem to know how to keep it up. “My car is waiting,” she said, and she skipped lightly past us, down the steps, ignoring Benjamin and me but glancing one more time at Pip.

Pip gazed after her. Then he scampered down to the black car that waited at the kerb, slid in front of the chauffeur, and opened the back door for her, saying something I couldn’t hear.

“Is that a limousine?” I asked Benjamin.

“A Daimler,” he said. “It picks her up every day.”

As the Daimler pulled away, with Sarah safely inside, Pip clutched his heart and staggered backward, with the mock-clumsiness of a vaudeville performer. Then he ran back up the stairs.

“I think I should go to this school,” he announced.

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She told me ’er name. Sarah Eleanor Pennington!” He sighed.

“She told you her middle name?” Benjamin asked.

“Benjamin fancies her, too,” I explained.

“I do not!”

“Yes you do. You know how she leaves school every day.”

“I don’t fancy her,” Benjamin said. “I did.”

Pip sized up his new rival, then shrugged. “May the best man win,” he said.

Benjamin stalked into the building, letting the door swing closed behind him, and I wondered if he was pretending not to like Sarah because he envied Pip’s success, or if he really meant it.

“What was that she said about great spectations?” Pip asked.

“It’s a novel,” I said. “Great Expectations. About a poor boy named Pip who falls in love with a beautiful rich girl.”

“And the girl falls in love with ’im, too?”

“I can’t give away the ending.”

“Huh,” Pip said. “Then I’ll ’afta read it.”



We found Sergei at chess club in one of the history classrooms. Six unassuming boys sat at chessboards set up on three desks. Sergei was across from the pimply kid from our Latin class, about to make the first move, but he jumped up from the desk when he saw us.

“Benjamin! Janie!” he said. “I have your—”

He caught Benjamin’s look of displeasure.

“Oh!” he said. “Sorry! But it’s only chess club. They’re my friends!”

Benjamin drew Sergei to the back of the room, out of earshot, and Pip slid into the vacated chair.

“Is this game like checkers?” he asked the pimply boy.

The boy rolled his eyes. “No. Well, only superficially.”

“What’s superficially?”

The boy thought about it. “On the surface.”

“Aright,” Pip said. “What do you play for?”

“Nothing,” the boy said. “For pleasure.”

“Pleasure,” Pip said. “That’s daft. Let’s say half a crown. Can I move this little round-headed one?”

I left them to their game and followed Benjamin and Sergei to the back of the room.

“I have the book right here!” Sergei whispered. “I’ve kept it with me! I was worried. Where did the police take you?” His face was flushed with excitement.

“Has anyone asked you about the book?” Benjamin asked.

Sergei thought about that. “No! What should we do next?”

“Nothing,” Benjamin said. “I just need it back.”

Sergei reluctantly handed over Benjamin’s satchel. “I didn’t even get to look at it,” he complained.

“I also need to borrow your Latin book.”

Sergei dug in his bag and produced Kennedy’s Latin Primer. “Can’t I help you? Please? I’m good at Latin.”

“We promised your father we’d leave you out of it,” Benjamin said.

“He doesn’t have to know!”

“Is he okay?” I asked Sergei. “I mean, did he get in trouble for what we said in your house?”

“I don’t think so,” Sergei said. “And he can talk again.”

“You should tell him to be careful,” I said. “He’s in a lot of danger.”

“Really?” Sergei asked.

Across the room, Pip said, “Checkmate!”

His pimply opponent was staring down at the board. He looked up at me in protest. “He asked if the game was like checkers!”

“That’s half a crack, please,” Pip said smugly.

“I don’t have half a crown.”

“S’all right,” Pip said. “I’ll take your marker. I think you’re good for it.”

We stood over their chessboard and Sergei studied it for a moment, then looked at Pip with respect. “Is it the Opera game?”

“The what?”

“It’s outright thievery!” the pimply boy said.

“The Opera game was played in sixteen moves,” Sergei said, “by an American master against two amateurs, in an opera box. Where do you study chess?”

“I don’t study it,” Pip said. “My uncle taught me down the pub.”

“Will you join our chess club?”

“Don’t let him!” the boy said. “He tricked me!”

“He can’t join chess club,” Benjamin said. “He doesn’t even go to this school.”

“I will soon!”

“Let’s go,” Benjamin said, and he nudged Pip towards the classroom door.

Sergei caught my arm. “Please take me with you.”

“I’m so sorry, Sergei,” I said, and gently pulled my arm free. “We can’t.”

So we weren’t, as you see, very good at being sneaky. We’d interrogated our own ally in a bugged house, and turned into birds in front of the entire population of Turnbull Hall, and now we’d hustled the St Beden’s chess club in the space of five minutes. We left Sergei looking brokenhearted, the pimply boy looking fiercely indignant, and the rest of the club looking like they weren’t sure what had hit them. If we were going to do anything unseen and unnoticed, we needed help.