No Talking after Lights Page 17

  On Saturday morning the girls dressed with unusual care, wearing everything clean, from white knicker linings and white ankle socks to freshly laundered dresses. Charmian, who usually spent hours doing her parting and combing through her bunches, dressed hastily and sped downstairs, leaving behind her the trail of a half-heard explanation.

  She walked sedately past the staff-room in case anybody was in early, but once beyond the Covered Way she flew up the drive towards Pets. She was late; the postman must already be on his way down the drive. Concealed behind a bale of straw for the rabbit hutches she had kept her hoard of stolen things. All that was there now was the postcard album, Peach’s string of seed-pearls and her titchy little silver cross and chain. Charmian grabbed the brown paper and string which she’d hidden a couple of nights ago. Using one of the pens (she gave it a good shake, and then unscrewed it and squeezed the rubber bulb, for the ink had dried up) she hastily inscribed in capital letters on the brown paper the address of Dr Barnardo’s Homes; no return address. Impatiently, clumsily, she wrapped everything up and knotted the string round the parcel. Then she waited at the edge of the drive, praying that she wasn’t too late to intercept the postman. He had already delivered the school’s post and was wheeling his bicycle back up the hill. When he saw her, he stopped.

  ‘Morning, Miss,’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen you these last few weeks. Doing good works again, eh? Good lassie. Not such a tidy parcel this time. Think it’ll hold together?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Charmian breathlessly. ‘Here’s half-a-crown. Will that be enough? I’ve got to rush. It’s our Speech Day today.’

  ‘Half-a-crown’s plenty, Miss, don’t you worry. I’ll give you the change next time I see you. Off you go now.’

  Silly old fool, thought Charmian, as she bounced lightheartedly down the hill, and then, Phew! What a relief. She went into her class-room and fiddled with a few books before emerging to join the breakfast queue forming in the Covered Way. Nobody had noticed her. They were all too preoccupied with Speech Day, jabbering away about their mothers and fathers. Constance had noticed, though, and caught her eye, but Constance didn’t matter.

  The morning was taken up with final adjustments to the class-rooms and setting the chairs out in rows on the lawn in front of the portable dais that had been brought down from the gym. The prize books were piled on the table and covered with a cloth. Each had a slip of paper inside bearing the girl’s name and what the prize was given for, written by Mrs Birmingham in her clear, round hand. Pasted on the flyleaf was a bookplate with the school crest and motto. Under another cloth, like a Communion set, was a row of silver-plated cups. All these the bishop would bestow in due course.

  Lunch was early, and almost before it was over, parents started to arrive. They were directed by beautifully mannered prefects to seats in front of the dais. Sheila was sitting beside her father, stoical and out of place. Charmian, saw her and, slipping along the line of parents with a murmured, ‘Scusie … Scusie,’ she put her arm round her and said, ‘Sheil! How wizard to see you, what a surprise! Nobody said you were coming. Gosh, I like your dress!’

  ‘Your mother was kind enough to send us a very nice letter,’ said Sheila’s father. He looked equally ill-at-ease. ‘I have written to thank her, but if she is here today perhaps you would introduce me?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Charmian, thinking, No fear. She sidled back along the row of parents’ knees again and made her way to sit beside Constance.

  Finally the staff processed in, followed last of all by the Head and her Deputy escorting the bishop between them like a giant performing seal. He grinned wetly at the expectant rows and, after a complicit glance at Mrs Birmingham, who nodded, he said ‘Shall we begin with a prayer? Almighty God …’

  Heads were bowed and Speech Day began.

  When the prizes had been distributed and the bishop, the Head, and the Head Girl had made speeches and rendered thanks, people went to change into their costumes and be made up for the play. They emerged unnaturally garish, smooth cheeks encircled with rouge, eyes emphasized with blue shadow and crudely outlined in black. Girls playing men’s parts had moustaches drawn in over complexions darkened with Leichner stage make-up. They looked like marionettes and their behaviour had the same disjointed quality. They moved self-consciously among the parents, who were being served tea on the lawn in a parody of an Edwardian house-party. Some mothers sat on jackets on the grass, relaxed, absorbed in their children, bright-eyed with pleasure. Some stood in stiff, formal groups, making polite conversation with other parents.

  Constance avoided the welcoming smile of Mrs Simpson, which was contradicted by a scowl from Mick and Flick, and piled her plate with mushy triangular sandwiches and lumps of school cake. She walked a little distance away and sat by herself on the edge of the lawn, barely visible behind a rhododendron bush whose brilliant flowers and stamens littered the grass. She minded very much that her parents were not there to admire all her exercise books, which were displayed in the forefront of the Lower Fourth’s work. Auntie Marjorie had arranged to come, but had cancelled at the last moment. ‘HARRY’S DOWN WITH MEASLES DARLING WHAT A BORE FOR YOU SO SORRY CAN’T COME BIG HUG MARJIE,’ the telegram had said. It sounded so like her aunt’s breathless, eager voice that Constance felt sharply homesick and conscious that she had been separated from her family for ten weeks, which was too long.

  It was not the moment to be a tree, so she tried once more to summon up a happy time from her past that she had stored to use later, when she really needed it. She remembered squatting on her haunches beside a rock pool at Eastbourne, staring into a net held underwater and filled with tiny transparent shrimps with black eyes like those of the glass animals in the dormitory. She would tip them out of the net into her bucket to watch them dart about. Quick and miniature under her moonlike gaze, the shrimps zig-zagged to and fro, flicking in the bucket like fireflies. Grains of grey sand drifted down to the bottom. She found a ribbon of damp seaweed and some shells and dropped those in too, while her toes sank deeper into the wet sand at the edge of the pool, creating a mysterious drier, paler patch that followed the shape of her feet. Beside her, Daddy and Uncle Neil had been building an elaborate sand-castle, with a tunnel spiralling through the middle and emerging on the outside, so that you could start a ping-pong ball rolling and it would vanish inside the castle and then reappear, having gathered speed, on the outside, to plop into the moat of salt water. Her mother had been sitting on a towel nearby, with her socks and sandals off and her feet stretched out, very white and bony, half watching them and saying from time to time, ‘Connie, darling, don’t get cold. Let me put your cardigan on …’ But Constance knew she didn’t really mean it and then …

  Thank goodness I’ve found you!’ said Sheila’s voice. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I’ve got to talk to you.’

  Sheila was wearing a grey checked dress with a white collar, very much like the school summer dresses, with long white socks and black patent button-up shoes. Constance guessed that she had been bought lots of new clothes. She looked thinner, but her face was the same round, spotty face, and her hair was still greasy. Sheila’s eyes were comically wide open as she gazed fiercely at Constance, who said, ‘Are you OK? I didn’t know you were coming.’

  ‘Daddy said I had to because I’d won a prize. In the end it was for the garden and Charmian went and got it anyway. Gogs, listen, it’s important and I haven’t got long. You’ve got to tell on Charmie. I will, too, if you do. It’s because secrets are wicked. They can kill people. She said something awful would happen and it did, but now it’s happened and you’ll be safe. I’m going to tell Old Ma B about her stealing and I’ll say she’s got you into it too and then it’ll all come out.’

  Constance stared at her for a moment, then shook her head.

  ‘What’s the matter, Gogsy? Why won’t you? What’s wrong? Go on.’

  ‘I can’t. She’s really wicked, don’t you know that? Charmie’
s the wickedest person I’ve ever met. She’s all sweet and loveydovey on top, but underneath that she’s awful. She scares me to smithereens. If she doesn’t steal, she might do something worse.’

  ‘Like what?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest. How should I know? It’s all right for you - you’re out of it. I’m the one who’ll get it’

  ‘No, you won’t. Charmie will be expelled and that’ll be that. Now that my mother’s dead there’s nothing more she can do. It’s time she got into trouble, anyway. She always gets away with things, because she’s pretty.’

  ‘Boo!’ said Charmian, jumping between them from behind the bush. She was grinning triumphantly.

  ‘I knew I’d find you together. I just knew Sheil would want to come and be pathetic all over you. Cry baby bunting! You looked daft sitting there on your big fat BTM in the middle of the grown-ups. You’re putrid and feeble. Feebile!’

  ‘Well, you’re much worse. I hope you heard what we were saying because it’s true. You are wicked,’ said Sheila with unexpected determination.

  ‘Yes, I did, and a jolly rotten friend you are. But I heard Gogsy sticking up for me. Good old Gogs. Come on, the play’s probably started and I’m on in the second scene. ‘Bye Sheila. Thanks very much I don’t think!’

  I didn’t stick up for her at all, thought Constance, as she let herself be dragged away.

  The play was over. The setting, in the sylvan glade of the amphitheatre, overhung by whispering silver birches, had been magical, but the performance was self-conscious. Several children, word-perfect until the day, had forgotten their lines. Only in the songs did their voices gather strength and confidence, pouring into the semi-circle of their audience. At the end they were rapturously applauded, since each mother had watched only her own child. Fathers found it hard to concentrate, and many dozed off in the warm afternoon. The cast called for three cheers for Miss Valentine, and one of the squits presented her with a bouquet of flowers. There were tears in her eyes as she accepted it, looked round at the children who were clapping her, started to speak, and then threw out her arms with an all-embracing, shaky smile. Everyone smiled.

  ‘It was grand,’ said the mothers afterwards, emotionally. ‘Grand!’

  By supper-time the last of the parents had gone. Some would return to take their daughters out for a picnic the following day, sitting around their cold food spread out on a tablecloth, awkward and uncomfortable on the bumpy ground. Mothers and daughters would unwrap sandwiches or cold meat pies and talk, a little out of touch, uneasily aware of the changes of the last few weeks, while fathers listened to the cricket on a portable wireless. At the end of the afternoon, with something like relief, parents and children would part. There were only exams still to come and then the school would wind down towards the long holidays.

  At bedtime, up in the dormitory, one girl was unconsciously humming a tune from the play. Others picked up the song. ‘We’re going home … we’re going home … We’re on the road that leads to home,’ they sang as they bounced on their beds.

  Thoroughly over-excited, all of you,’ said Peach. ‘No more bouncing. Singing’s over. Lights out.’

  She shut the door behind her, and as her shoes squeaked away down the corridor Charmie wheedled, ‘Go on with the story, Gogsy. Good old Gogs, go on.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Anne. ‘I want to know what happens to the horse.’

  Constance remembered Anne and Fiona silhouetted against the pale midnight sky of high summer. I bet you do, she thought; ugh, you give me the creeps.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m tired and I’m going to sleep now and I don’t care what you say so shut up.’

  ‘Spoil-sport,’ said Charmian, sulkily, but Constance knew she wouldn’t insist. Got you under my thumb, she thought, because you’re scared now, aren’t you? Only trouble is, I’m scared, too.

  ‘Good night,’ she said and rolled over, her face turned away from them all.

  It was nearly midnight in the cottage. Sylvia had been drinking. As the evening darkened and the bottle emptied she had railed against the hypocrisy of Speech Day, the pantomime of text books laid out for parents; castigated the bishop; reviled the play; mocked Ginny Valentine. She was not mellowing or blurring into tiredness, nor becoming repetitive or mawkish. On the contrary, she was filled with clarity and an energy which drove her anger on, goading her brain to lash her tongue.

  She is like an Amazon, Diana thought. She is a Valkyrie; she is wonderful when she’s like this. Not self-pitying, as the uncles always were after their one bout of self-indulgence at Christmas, but high-coloured and flashing-eyed. She is everything I never dared to be; she is not in the slightest bit respectable or ladylike or proper, and she doesn’t give a fig for convention. What would my mother make of Sylvia? Poor Mother, who has slipped through her days apologizing for living, trying only to be as inconspicuous as possible. Diana laughed.

  The laugh brought Sylvia up with a jolt. Good God, does she have so little notion of who I am that she finds me funny? Makes a change, anyway. I’ve seldom been thought a wit. Even as a girl I wasn’t sociable. I grew up ugly and disagreeable, a loner and a swot. I knew I had to do well to get out, and that meant a good enough matriculation to get me to university. So I swotted, and was never asked to their tea-parties, or trips to the cinema.

  I started early to crave the younger, pretty girls; always the same type as Hermione - fragile and airy, passing dreamily across my path and into my fantasies. But they laughed at me, heavy and awkward as I was, and turned away from my longing glances to whisper and giggle, not bothering to hide their contempt. I got out, though. I did manage that. Some of them are still there, crabbed Welsh housewives now, their beauty pinched and weather-beaten.

  Then my father died during the war, not in the war, nothing as gallant and glorious as that. He was nearly fifty by then, still teaching in Gower, bitter and shrivelled into angry taciturnity. He developed varicose veins on his legs, walking and bicycling became difficult for him, and standing up for long, but it was an embolism that killed him.

  I went to his funeral. I was nearly twenty and had already left home but I went back. I felt sorry for my mother. It was a shock to realize that she’d miss him. I didn’t want her to have to see him buried alone, so I travelled back to Gower on one of the long, slow wartime trains, with endless changes at obscure stations, and got there the evening before the funeral.

  If we were ever going to talk, it would have been then. She was raw and vulnerable. He had died from one moment to the next, without having been properly ill, and she wasn’t prepared for it.

  She gave me supper when I arrived, and then a cup of tea. We sat in the parlour together, conscious of his body lying upstairs. Probably she expected me to have a last look at him, but she didn’t suggest it.

  Before I could break the silence she looked up and said, ‘He was a good man, your father. Never forget that, Sylvia, out there in your big world of clever people. A good man.’

  Yes, I nodded, yes, a good man. She closed her eyes and the silence resumed.

  Side by side we followed his coffin into the chapel. A lot of his pupils were there, and some parents, and stupid old Mrs Powell, snivelling. The minister orated about his achievements in the life of the community and then we processed out again and stuck him in the ground.

  My mother shook hands numbly and sat, dignified and widow-like, over the Welsh tea laid on for the mourners. There was no sin-eater to consume his wickedness and send him safely to a better world. It was all so solemn that I was overcome by a desire to laugh. I left the room and they all snuffled sympathetically.

  In the bathroom I looked at myself in the mirror as I grew red-faced, choking down my inappropriate glee. I lit a forbidden cigarette and smoked it to calm myself down. I struck several matches, one after the other, watching them flare and shrivel blackly and die. I was tempted to blow out the pilot light on the Ascot and, holding down the bi-metal strip, let the hot water run
. If I then lit a match it would all go bang with a most satisfying whoosh. I looked at it for a long time, imagining the splash of light. There was a knock on the door and Mrs Powell’s ingratiating voice said, ‘Sylvie, dear, are you all right? You lost your dada, is it? We all feel lost without him.’

  Next morning I caught the train back again.

  Diana sits grinning, waiting to be entertained again.

  ‘Good old Monks, or shall I call you Monkey, ho ho ho! “Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh … Gay your life must be!” Share the joke, Monkey, come on, let’s all laugh.’

  ‘I was thinking how indescribably shocked my mother would be if she could see us now.’

  ‘Well, poor old Mothah. A daughtah who’s sharing her living quarters with a mad teacher, pissed as a newt as well. Drunk as a lord. Sober as a judge - no, wrong one - sloshed, Monkey, and stewed as a prune. Not like that pulpit-faced bunch this afternoon … Fat-arsed fathers and po-faced mamas, all with their hands up each others’ skirts and down each other’s trousers. God they make me sick, shick, thick. And their prissy, virginal, precioush little daughters!’

  ‘Come upstairs, Sylvia,’ said Diana, low-voiced and breathless. ‘It’s time we both got to bed. It’s been a long day. I’m dead beat.’

  ‘Oh, sensible, level-headed, sober as a monk you are! Righty-ho then, off to bed we go, ho ho, ho ho …’ And singing like the Seven Dwarfs, Sylvia climbed the lino-covered steps towards their separate bedrooms.

  ‘Did it go well?’ asked Lionel Birmingham. ‘Bishop do his stuff?’

  ‘The bishop did his bit. Not fearfully inspiring, I’m afraid. Too much cosiness and not enough gravitas. It’s a mistake to try and ingratiate yourself with children. Up there in his purple shirt and dog-collar: it’s not his role to talk to them like an equal. Moral guidance, that’s what they need. They don’t expect a bishop to make them laugh. Girls are terribly susceptible, en masse like that. I told him they needed a bit of a pep talk and instead he waffled on about his schooldays. Great pity. Oh, well, never mind, listen to selfish old me grumbling. It went all right. The important thing is: what about you? How are you feeling? Did you manage to eat your supper? The strawberries were from the kitchen garden. I asked the under-gardener to pick them specially.’