A Deep Deceit (10 page)

For almost a year, three times a day, I endured this. Finally I cracked. Even wimps and natural-born victims have a breaking point. Perhaps especially wimps and victims. Pushed off once too often, I ran to the back of the line, wrapped my arms round my head, leaned my body forward and charged. I did it well, finding a strength I did not know I had. The worm really turned. I was, I suppose, beyond fear by then. Twenty-eight small bodies went flying and landed in a crying, screaming heap. There were no broken bones or other serious injuries, but plenty of grazed and bleeding arms and legs, bumped heads and even, I believe, a chipped tooth or two. It was a totally chaotic scene and, for just a moment or two, I remember being quite pleased with myself.

Then the trouble started. I was sent immediately to the headmistress, having been unceremoniously shopped by my dear little friends who certainly did not share my tendency to be tongue-tied. She gave me a corker of a telling off, which reduced me to tears. I knew none of it was fair but, as ever, could not find the words to explain myself. Ultimately the head told me to wait in the corridor outside her office. I was still standing there snivelling when Gran arrived two hours later, having been summoned to the school.

Gran had to walk past me on her way into the headmistress's office. I was a complete wreck by then, of course, and I saw the corners of Gran's mouth turn down and a flash of anger in her eyes. At first I thought she was angry with me, which she probably was, but she seemed to be even more angry with the school.

She was, of course, as calm and controlled as ever. She told me to stop crying, that she was there and that everything was going to be all right – typical Gran, never emotional but always strong and reassuring. Then she took me by the hand and led me back into the headmistress's office.

She listened in silence while the headmistress ranted for some time about my ‘appalling behaviour', but did not seem to be overly impressed.

‘And you think that gives you the right to leave a six-year-old child to cry alone in a corridor, do you?' she asked eventually in an icy tone.

Gran really was my champion, bless her.

‘She has to learn her lesson; what she did was very dangerous,' said the headmistress. ‘Somebody could have been badly hurt.'

‘I think it would be best if I took her home for a few days, don't you?' enquired Gran, but in a firm tone of voice, which made it clear she was not really interested in the headmistress's opinion, but was merely telling her what she intended to do.

Gran had spoken and there was little more discussion. But it was already the end of the school day when we left together after what would turn out to be my last appearance at St Justin's. Pupils were waiting outside for buses and parents as Gran led me out through the big wrought-iron gates. ‘Straight back, eyes forward,' she murmured.

I did my best to comply. Because I was with Gran, none of the other children dared approach me, but I was aware of dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me. And I knew that I had blushed bright crimson as I always did when nervous or embarrassed.

At home, Gran tried to get me to tell her exactly what had happened and why. I still could not find the words. She was not pleased with me, of course, but she was more disbelieving than anything else. Gran knew well enough that the last thing I had was an aggressive nature. Maybe her years as a schoolteacher had given her some insight into the behaviour of children, which the staff of St Justin's did not seem to share.

Gran had never stopped battling with the local authorities in order to do what she thought was best for me, but after that incident she doubled her efforts.

‘This child must be taught at home,' she wrote to the local director of education. ‘She is a disturbed and physically weak child, quite unable to cope with the rigours of day-to-day life in a school and all the rough and tumble that entails.'

She was, of course, quite right. But what never occurred to Gran, I am sure, and what I did not consider until many years later, was just how much I had become the child that she had made me.

The same schools inspector eventually returned to re-evaluate the situation.

‘Look at her,' commanded Gran, ‘and tell me that child should be sent back to school.'

I stood trembling before them both, desperately trying not to cry. I had never been confident but when I had been confronted by the inspector previously I had certainly not been afraid. This time I was terrified of him, of all strangers, and of being forced to go back to the school that had caused me so much misery.

I don't know how much he noticed the difference in me, or whether it was just that Gran was such a formidable woman, but she won the day. A few weeks later she was given official permission to teach me at home and I never did return to school following the incident of the platform.

Over the years we were inspected regularly by education officers from the local authority, but academically Gran's education of me could not be faulted. I might have more or less missed almost a year of learning because of my inability to function at St Justin's, but under Gran's tuition I quickly caught up. Throughout my schooling with her I was at a much higher standard in almost all subjects, particularly English Literature and History, than the average for my age. And I will always be grateful to Gran for nurturing my love of books. Nor did she totally neglect the more practical side of my education, teaching me to cook, to sew and to type.

Gran studied public examination syllabuses and I studied with Gran. I re-entered the public domain only to take my GCSE examinations at the nearest state secondary school. I effortlessly passed all the arts subjects with high grades and managed to scrape through maths. Only in the sciences did Gran's teaching perhaps not quite pass muster and of course there had been little or no opportunity for practical experiments.

My upbringing was about as sheltered as you could possibly get, I suppose. Yet I was happy enough – except during my time at St Justin's – if only, maybe, because I knew no better. Gran saw it as her mission in life to look after me and I always liked being looked after.

I accepted that I needed looking after much more than most children. Indeed, I accepted, as I grew older, that I would always need looking after. I never seemed to have the ability to make decisions for myself. I read newspapers and watched TV – our small portable set, which was a reluctant concession from Gran who did not really approve but eventually gave in to my pleas for one on the grounds that there was so much to be learned from it – and as I grew into adolescence realised that I was reaching an age when many young people chose to rebel. I had no such desire. I was contented with my lot. I would not have known how to rebel, or whom to rebel against. Gran was the kindest, cleverest woman in the world, I thought, and I felt so safe with her.

Gran and I had few friends and rarely went out, except to church on Sundays and a fellowship meeting once a week. Gran was very religious and I naturally grew up accepting her standards and beliefs. I certainly never questioned her simplistic conviction that God was as real as she and I were. I think she actually did believe in an old bearded guru sitting on a cloud somewhere up in the sky.

About the only outside influence we had came from the little chapel we were members of, not far from our Hounslow home. Gran was strictly chapel, predictably unimpressed by the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic church and even the Church of England. The pastor was a tall, handsome, rather aloof man called Robert Foster. Gran adored him. He was the only person she had ever met, she told me, who knew the Bible better than she did – and that included an awful lot of clergymen, Gran said.

I was eighteen and had just taken my A levels – English, History, and Art – when I began to realise that Gran was not well. She looked tired all the time and seemed to be in some pain. Eventually she went to the doctor, something that didn't happen often in our house. Gran usually reckoned that an aspirin and an early night were a cure for almost anything. When she came home after her visit to the surgery – I had not been allowed to accompany her, which was rare because Gran and I usually went everywhere together – she seemed anxious and distracted.

I tried to find out what was wrong but she wouldn't tell me. The Reverend Foster came to the house, and he and Gran spent more than an hour closeted together. Eventually she came out of the dining room where they had been talking behind closed doors and told me she had something to say.

It seemed she was dying of cancer.

I could barely take it in. Gran was my world. I knew nothing else. Selfishly, perhaps, I didn't think at first in terms of her pain or even of my own loss. I thought at once only about how I would survive. I simply did not know how to cope without her. But I might have known she would have thought of that.

‘You're my biggest worry, child,' she told me. ‘My only worry. I am happy to go to my Maker, I've always tried to serve Him and I don't doubt His promise of eternal life,' she announced predictably. ‘But you, girl. You need looking after . . .'

Gran paused and the Reverend Foster stepped forward.

‘Robert has agreed to take you on,' said Gran, clutching the clergyman by the arm and sounding as if she were talking about an old horse or a broken-down motor car rather than a teenage girl. ‘Robert needs a wife and I'm sure you'll make him a good one. I know he's twenty-odd years older than you, but I think you will be helped by the stability of an older man.'

I remember gazing at the pair of them in amazement. The whole thing was such a shock. ‘B-b-but, we barely know each other,' I stuttered.

The Reverend Foster stepped forward and positioned himself directly in front of me. He placed one big hand firmly on each of my shoulders and peered down at me. His eyes, staring directly into mine, were a piercing blue and I was aware of them having an almost hypnotic effect. ‘We will have a lifetime to get to know each other, my dear,' he said. His voice was pleasingly soft, but I knew from his sermons from the pulpit that it was not always so.

I glanced uncertainly at Gran. ‘I don't know, I-it's j-just so much to take in,' I stammered.

Gran tried to smile reassuringly. She looked so ill and weary. ‘I don't know what else to do,' she said, and she spoke very quietly and slowly. ‘I just feel sure it's for the best.'

I trusted Gran with my life. She seemed to have no doubts. I don't remember either her or Robert Foster being all that interested in what I thought of the plans they had made for me and I went along with them. I seemed to have no choice. I don't think I really thought about the magnitude of what I was doing. I had no sense of committing myself to another person for the rest of my life.

Our brief courtship was barely worthy of the name. I only saw Robert Foster when he came to the house and Gran was usually with us. He never took me out anywhere, or introduced me to his friends or family. He did present me with an engagement ring, a single diamond in a narrow gold band, which I thought was rather lovely, and sometimes he brought flowers, although I was never entirely sure whether they were meant for me or for Gran. Everything between us was stiffly formal and distant.

We were married within two months. Gran didn't have long to live and her last wish was to be at the wedding. This was held at Robert's church, of course, with his bishop officiating. Gran and I had almost no friends or family worth mentioning, but half the congregation were there to see the pastor wed. I got through the day in a kind of a daze. My wedding dress, traditional ivory white, had been hired for the occasion. Two little blue-eyed blond girls I did not know at all, but who reminded me disconcertingly of Janet Postings and appeared to be of almost exactly matching height and colouring, were my bridesmaids. They had been drafted in from the Sunday School.

‘I'm just so proud and happy,' Gran croaked.

Even her voice was fading. I suppose that was all I cared about, really, making Gran happy and I hadn't thought much beyond that. For myself I felt nothing, really, just a great emptiness.

Among strangers and wearing somebody else's dress I married a stranger. Robert Foster and I had barely been alone together. I had never had even the most casual and innocent boyfriend. I barely knew what to expect even of our wedding night – Gran had been an excellent tutor of Shakespeare, the Magna Carta and trigonometry but, predictably enough, sex education had not featured on her curriculum – let alone our life together.

I just knew that this marriage was what Gran wanted, that she thought it was the right thing to do and she had never let me down. But, of course, she had a blind spot when it came to Christianity and those who represented it. She honestly thought she could do no better thing on earth than to marry off her awkward unworldly granddaughter to a clergyman – and, more than that, the pastor of her own chapel.

The truth was that she had never really looked beyond the pulpit at the man himself. And, slavishly following her wishes as I always had done, neither did I until it was too late.

Gran died within six months of the wedding and after that there was no one in the world for me to turn to apart from my new husband.

And he turned out to be a monster wearing a dog collar.

I dread to think what might have happened to me were it not for Carl.

Six

I could not travel. I certainly could not go abroad. I had never been abroad in my life. I did not even have a passport.

But Carl used to take me with him to his homeland. Through his wonderful stories I felt as if I had toured the Florida Keys, driven over the Seven-mile Bridge, drunk in the bars of Key West, visited Hemingway's house, ridden the Conch Train, basked in the tropical sun and even danced in the streets after dark in the hazy hippieland of Carl's childhood.