Unknown to Barney at the time were the consequences of an event that had shocked the city some weeks before. A disaffected student at a local high school had taken a handgun into the school during a break between classes, and shot a teacher he bore a grudge against in the doorway of his classroom, in the process wounding a female student he did not know who had happened to be talking to the teacher, before running away down the corridor and out through the parking lot. The teacher was killed instantly, and the injured student died later in hospital, hours before the killer himself committed suicide. This was long before assaults on school staff and students planned like military operations and carried out with ruthless efficiency by troubled students, like those in Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde, became common, and this isolated incident in a city known for its peaceable ways was traumatic. In the boy’s locker at school was a well-worn copy of a sensational book about the recent Charles Manson murders in California.
Ian knew no-one involved in the school killing, and nothing about the school itself. He was astounded to discover that his father knew the father of the wounded girl, how well he did not say, and for days as the teenager hovered between life and death, George appeared to dither about what to do to show his sympathy, apparently in the belief that the injuries were not serious. Ian was incredulous. He could not understand his father’s hesitation. When the news of the girl’s death became known, George told his family he would go to her parents’ house rather than to the funeral home where the wake was being held, as it was ‘more personal’ this way. Ian stayed up late that night, awaiting his father’s return. George entered the house quietly, and appeared ashen and agitated. To Ian’s questions, he answered only, “I couldn’t find the house. I… must have got the address wrong.” Ian stared at him without a word, and then went up to bed in the silent house. The next day, he decided not to go to Scouts, and he never went back. I should have known, he told himself; heroes are but idols with feet of clay. With a grief he did not really understand, he folded up his red and white scarf and stowed it away in a box of keepsakes with its woggle, the belt and the beret, in a deep desk drawer next to his Junior Jet Club certificate and Corgi Model Club badge. A man must put away childish things.
The next few years, his last in his parents’ home, were marked by what Ian later called ‘dissolution and disillusion.’ His mother’s mental health declined, and she required hospitalization. She emerged from a series of ECT shocks a sadly changed woman, apathetic, listless, and uncommunicative. George was forced to curtail his business trips, turn down a lucrative posting to yet another country, and attend to his wife, the strain of unrelenting work pressure and care for Evelyn mounting daily. Ian watched this happening clinically, dispassionately, as if he were a bored critic sent to review a sordid domestic drama put on by a woefully inadequate experimental theatre troupe. He did his duty by his family, as he was now immune to his usual fear of criticism, relieved to discover that his sisters, newly awakened to the crisis in the household, had discovered within themselves reserves of housekeeping skills, and admirably supplemented their mother when she could not cope. It was not, Ian told himself, that he was shrugging his shoulders about his father’s increasing difficulties. He had suggested to George that professional outside help of some sort should be sought, and that, just perhaps, Evelyn’s troubles were at heart spiritual in nature, and if so, the church might be able to ‘minister to a mind diseased’ or ‘pluck out a rooted sorrow,’ he offered, quoting Macbeth. ‘More needs she the divine than the physician,’ he quoted, in reference to Lady Macbeth’s torment, which came from the same physician’s speech.
