A Fatal Attachment (2 page)

Two boys, one fair and one dark, in shorts and summer shirts, were wheeling their bicycles up the hill.

A
NDY
Hoddle went to catch the bus into Halifax as soon as he had finished his breakfast. Nothing else to do. Nothing else to do most days, though he was conscious that, as an unemployed professional person, he ought to have plenty of interests, both intellectual and practical, with which to fill up his day. It was a question of being bothered to take them up. It was the same with breakfasts: Andy regretted the New Breakfast of fibrous cereal and brown toast, and he would have reverted to the old style If he could have been bothered to cook it, or persuaded Thea to. But he couldn't, so he just went along with the new dispensation. Because there was also the fact that sausages and bacon and eggs and mushrooms cost money. He and Thea had to save their pennies these days. Alcohol cost money too.

He had had the letter from the Department of Social Services two days before, and it was burning a hole in his pocket now. It had sounded ominous. Probably for that reason he had said nothing about it to Thea. As far as she was concerned this was one more day on the long, unsignposted road of his unemployment.

Of course once he got to Halifax there was nothing much to do there. He bought the ream of A4 for Lydia and immediately regretted it. Bloody heavy, typing paper—he'd forgotten that. He mooched around the shops, a balding, paunchy man in a suit that needed dry-cleaning. He bought himself a packet of ten cigarettes, and then made a systematic tour of the supermarkets, noting which ones had whisky on special offer, and which brands. He went to buy coley for their dinner, and got irritable with the fishmonger for trying to sell him too much. I'm becoming the typical pensioner, he thought: convinced that everyone is trying to swindle me.

It was eleven o'clock. Over an hour before his appointment at the Department. He ambled down to the Piece Hall, to sit in the central square, enjoy a
cigarette and ease the weight of the paper. Bloody Lydia! She could have jumped into her car, fetched herself a ream of paper, and been home within the hour. Didn't even consider it, probably. Couldn't interrupt the great work of historical scholarship, no doubt. And Andy's got nothing to do, has he? He racked his brain to decide who she was writing about this time, but he couldn't remember.

Strange to think how happy they had been, the three of them, not so long back. Twenty-five years ago they'd been near-inseparable, it wasn't just the closeness of the sisters: he had been genuinely fond of Lydia himself then. Those wonderful holidays in France, year after year. Thea and Lydia had been Francophiles ever since they'd gone on exchange holidays there just after the war. As they toured around, first by train and bus, later by car, he had provided the bourdon of dissent: “The trouble with France is it's impossible to get a decent meal.” “What do they call this wine? Château Clochemerle?” “If I want beautiful scenery I'll get it on the television, where it's always sunset and there's lovely music in the background.” The self-conscious comic grouser, a role he had relished. His common touch had counterpointed Lydia's already rather middle-class persona. It had sometimes felt, then, as if he had married the two sisters, not just one.

Then the boys had grown too old and boisterous to be left with their grandparents, there had been Lydia's brief marriage—or was that earlier? Anyway, and crucially, there had been the fact that Lydia had started to . . . to
take the boys over.
There was no other way of describing it. And then Gavin had died, a ball of fire on the
Sir Galahad
, and since then Andy had somehow felt childless. Unfair to Maurice, but there it was—childless and empty. Redundancy had been no more than a confirmation of that emptiness, one more brutal kick at the expiring corpse of his happiness and self-esteem. Bloody Lydia! She had robbed them of their boy, and then killed him. And left him and Thea empty shells of their former selves.

He had a sudden vision of himself from the outside, as it might be any old layabout or drunk whiling away the day on a city bench, bemoaning his lack of the price of a pint, and compensating by mulling over all his ancient grievances.

He ground his cigarette stub angrily into the grass and got up.

It was still early for his appointment at (summons to, more like) the Department of Social Security. As he went out into the streets again he passed a pub with the doors open to let in the odd summer breeze. He could do with a
drink. He looked in, caught the fug of beer fumes and tobacco smoke, heard the metallic chink of the fruit machine dispensing money to the mugs. Before he could turn into the Public Bar the juke-box started up, the bass charging into his head like a gang of football hooligans. He turned and went on his way. He didn't much like town pubs these days. Only rarely went to his local village one, come to that. If a man's got to get stinking drunk, he said to Thea, he should have the decency to do it in the privacy of his own home.

He was lucky, really, that he could still say things like that to Thea—say them and laugh over them, say them without feeling shame-faced.

He was early at the D.S.S. Inevitably he was early, He sat around waiting with the other people who were early like him, other people who had nothing to do. Promptly at 12:10 he was called in to Mrs Wharton's office and found she was someone whom he had talked to briefly before: cool, down-to-earth, almost academic. He felt relieved. Like many another long-term unemployed person, he could cope with everything except sympathy.

She was a busy woman, and came straight to the point.

“You've probably read in the press that the government is clamping down on people claiming unemployment benefits in the upper-age group,” she said, looking at him through large spectacles, grey-eyed, unsentimental. “This means they can no longer expect an automatic continuance of benefits, and are going to have to go on retraining courses to—”

“It's a con,” broke in Andy Hoddle. “A PR con to try and convince the public that people like me are shysters who don't want to work.”

There was a pause, then a tiny smile from across the desk.

“Strictly off the record, and I'd deny it if quoted, I agree. For most people in your age group in this area the chances of finding a job are virtually zero. But not for all, Mr Hoddle, how long is it since you applied for a job?”

“Oh God, years, I'm afraid.” He shook his head, unable to remember. “For about eighteen months or two years after I got the push I did, then . . . Well, it just got too depressing.”

“Exactly. And I suppose you just applied for jobs in your own field?”

“Well, of course, I wasn't very likely to get one out of it, was I? I was an industrial physicist with Haynes, the electronics group. I thought in my naïveté that there were firms that would grab someone with my experience and expertise. Instead of which they went for the younger man every time—wet behind the ears, and with not an ounce of practical experience.”

“It's the old story.”

Andy shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

“I may not have put my best foot forward in the interviews. I'd recently lost my son.”

“I'm sorry. And are you over that now?”

“Yes . . .
No.
No, I'll never get over it. But to some extent I've put it behind me.”

“Do you drink too much?”

Andy was under no illusions that it showed. He grinned, liking her a lot.

“What's too much? It depends on the person. on the circumstances—what you're trying to drown. Yes, I drink too much. A doctor would certainly say so.”

“Would it impair your ability to do a job?”

“No, it wouldn't. A lot of it comes from the fact that I don't have enough to do. But as far as I'm concerned this job is a myth. If I couldn't get a job seven years ago, who's going to give me one now, when I've been out of the research field all that time?”

“The schools are crying out for science teachers.”

“I am not a teacher.”

Andy heard a sharpness in his own voice, and wondered whether it was caused by fear. Was it fear of failure as a teacher, fear of having a job at all? Unemployment robbed a man of confidence. He determined to pull himself together.

“The need is so desperate that the Department of Education is trying to attract people from outside teaching. There is a sort of on-the-job training and assessment programme.”

“Flannel.”

“Probably.”

“Get in just anybody from the streets to massage the figures.”

“Maybe. But you're not just anyone from the streets, are you? You're a well-qualified scientist with valuable experience. Do you think you could teach?”

Andy sat pondering, assessing himself.

“I don't know. I'm not trained. . . . I wouldn't want to let the children down.”

“Or do you mean you wouldn't want to let yourself down?”

“I don't know. . . . The short answer is: yes, I do think I could teach.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I used to coach my own boys. I've never had any problems with children.”

Except that I lost my own, something screamed inside him.

“I feel strongly about this, you see,” said Mrs Wharton, though still with her admirable coolness. “My own boy has had a succession of science teachers, all inadequate, and this is a subject that really interests him. I've been in touch with the local education people. There's a desperate need for someone at once at the North Radley High School.”

Andy sat quiet for a moment.

“I need to think it over.”

“I've been in touch with the head. He'll be in all afternoon.”

“I'll have to think it over, I say.”

“Do you know where North Radley High is?”

“I'll find it,” said Andy.

When he left the D.S.S. he went into the nearest pub and bought himself lunch. Steak and mushroom pie and a half of bitter—just a few pence change out of four pounds. He realized that just by buying it he was committing himself to this teaching job. His small pension and the dole did not allow him to buy the most basic meal out as a rule—not with the amounts he spent on booze. He had quite unconsciously decided to take it. He was part of the workforce again. As he ate he realized that the reason he felt shell-shocked was that suddenly he was forced to think about the future. It was years since he had done that—years that had been consumed by mulling over the past. And now, suddenly, it seemed that life might change, that there might be new activities, new people. An interest in life, in short.

He found the North Radley High School without difficulty. It was in fact just off the bus-route home—a sixties building, the paint peeling off in the heat, but with quite a lot of bustle and laughter in its corridors and on its playing-field. The secretary said the headmaster would see him at once, and he was received with a friendliness that was tinged with gratitude and relief. The headmaster did not beg him to take the job, but Andy had the impression that if he had shown more reluctance, he would have.

“The lass who's been doing the job is three months pregnant, and she's been ordered to rest until the baby's due.”

“There's only three or four more weeks of term,” Andy pointed out.

“That's right—and a hell of a lot to cram into them. Starting now would enable you to settle in, so that both sides could see if it suited. If it went well, there'd be a job till Christmas and beyond. I may say, in confidence of course, that the lass herself is no whiz-kid. Had two stabs at her degree—that's why she's only had the lower forms. I'd guess that whether she decides to come
back at all will depend on the mortgage rate at the end of the year. I've got a note from her here of what she's done with the various forms, and copies of the syllabus.”

He handed them to Andy, who took his time going through them carefully, feeling an odd sense of power.

“Child's play,” he said finally.

“Not to the children,” the head said warningly. “Especially if they've not been too well taught. You'll not be able to take anything for granted.”

“No, of course I realize that.”

“We have reasonably good facilities, but one thing politicians and administrators never realize is that facilities are no use whatever if the teaching is poor. I think you could make a good teacher. What about you? Do you have that confidence in yourself?”

Andy Hoddle took a deep breath.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think I could do the job.”

The headmaster took him round the school, showed him the labs, where classes were in session, showed him the classrooms and the staff common rooms. When asked if he could start on Monday Andy nodded as if it were the most matter-of-course thing in the world. The head said he'd go back to his office and put through the paperwork, and he shook Andy by the hand at the main door. Andy walked out into the playground with the unfamiliar feeling of being wanted. It almost made him light-headed. As he went towards the gate his step was buoyant: he had a job. He had something to do between nine and five. He had money coming in.

As he walked a bell rang and children started coming out of school. He saw two boys, one fair and one dark, come out and make their way to the bicycle sheds. They looked straight at him as if they knew who he was, and he thought they must be boys from the village. As he waited at the bus stop for the next bus home they cycled past him on the long, winding road to Bly.

• • •

On the day that Lydia first saw the boys wheeling their bikes—the Tuesday—she did no more than smile and say “Isn't it lovely weather?” as they passed her. Lydia's cottage was on the brow of the hill, and they smiled back as they got on their cycles and rode on.

The next afternoon was slightly overcast, with a light breeze, but Lydia found some weeding to do in a part of the garden that jutted out towards the
road and gave her a good view down the hill. When she saw two cyclists at the bottom of it she put down her trowel and went out on to the road to pick up some litter—two hamburger cartons, a cigarette-packet and several sweet-wrappings—that she had noticed there earlier.