Chestnut Street (12 page)

Week by week he’d worked at it. He gave himself tests. Sometimes he failed them; mainly he passed. Go to an audition. Never mention size, shape, weight
once
. Let the other guy tell you that you can’t have the part because you’re too fat. Go into restaurants, order what you want, no jokes to the waitress about the doctor saying you must build yourself up. Ask people to dance, don’t apologize, don’t explain. Seven months he had been doing it. It was really working.

And tonight. Tonight. That was really a triumph, the more
you thought of it, a beautiful society-type model, as thin as a whip, asking
him
to a fashion show in Park Lane. No, it wasn’t pity. It had been at the beginning, the first ten minutes after she saw him, but not anymore. And she hadn’t been a bad girl at all, that Joyce, very bright, really. He was half sorry he had made up that lie about Grace and the read-through of her play. It wasn’t Friday at all; it was Thursday. Still, it wasn’t an excuse made from fear or inadequacy—it was part of being like an ordinary fellow. It was the kind of thing a lean, handsome young actor might have done, play hard to get. But he hoped he would meet her again with Leonard and Sally; she had been very nice.

And in the little bijou house, Joyce was walking around. She wasn’t tired; she couldn’t go to bed yet. She wished she had gone back to Leonard and Sally’s. He was a funny fellow, that Norman. There was some strength there in him that she didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand why she had begun the evening pitying him in some way. It was probably because he had been fat. She was very sorry he wasn’t coming on Friday. She would have liked to talk with him afterwards. He was very clear-sighted about things. She would like to know what he thought of posh charity do’s anyway—were they dishonest, were they a means to an end and therefore justified? She didn’t like him having his head together with this Grace person instead of being with the rest of them. Grace was probably a girlfriend of his, she thought, slightly annoyed.

She picked up the television magazines to see what they said about his play. There was a picture of Grace and a little story about it being her first play. Grace looked a hundred. She could be Norman’s mother, or his grandmother. For no reason at all, Joyce found herself smiling, and went to bed quite happily.

Everyone assumed that Libby Green had been born and christened “Elizabeth.” What else could “Libby” be short for? And when she was growing up, everyone read the Crawfie diaries, about the little princesses who were called Lilibet and Margaret Rose. Princess Margaret had not been able to pronounce her elder sister’s name. It was very endearing, and people thought it must be the same with Libby. Couldn’t get her tongue around a big word like “Elizabeth.” Wasn’t it sweet.

After a while Libby never bothered trying to explain. It was too complicated to say that she had been called Liberty. It sounded like the name of a shop, or one of those funny little bodices you wore to keep your chest warm and flatten it at the same time. Or the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. All in all, it was much easier to say it was short for “Elizabeth.”

And it was not a matter of being unfaithful to her parents’ dreams for her; they talked about little else but freedom and liberty in their house when Libby was growing up. The American Declaration of Independence was framed in the dining room, the words of the French national anthem had been stuck on a piece of cardboard on the back of Libby’s door for as long as she could
remember. All over the house the walls were hung with extracts from Paine’s
Rights of Man
and the Magna Carta.

In other families during the war, children remembered talking about the Blitz, the blackout, the Morrison shelters, digging for victory and careless talk costing lives. In Libby’s house on Chestnut Street they talked about equality and freedom and the Spanish Civil War, and the conscientious objector.

One of her grannies said that the most important thing in the world was having an aired vest and never sleeping in a damp bed. The other granny said that having clean socks and being regular were life’s two priorities. Libby knew that this couldn’t be right, because Mother and Father thought it was all to do with meetings and posters and standing up for people’s rights.

There were always refugees staying during the war, and even after it. People were coming from different lands where they weren’t free. Libby knew that this must be the most important thing. Specially since the bathroom was always full of nonfree people, and sometimes she had to share her bedroom with girls or women who came from faraway places where things weren’t run properly.

Libby was very bright and hardworking. Miss Jenkins told Mother and Father that she would certainly get a place in the grammar school. They were pleased for her but worried because it was rather faraway; it would mean two bus trips each way, each day.

“Lots of people do that,” Libby said, afraid that she might be going to lose an education because they were afraid to let her take two buses.

“It is her key to a whole new world,” Miss Jenkins said, astounded that so many parents raised objections when their children were offered the chance of a lifetime. There was always something, like the cost of the school uniform or the fear of their moving into a different class system. She was surprised at the Greens; they were usually such forward-looking people. How
strange that they should feel so mother hen–ish about letting their daughter travel what was not a great distance. Surely they, of all people, would realize the freedom that a child would get from a good education. And they should be able to give a bright twelve-year-old the freedom to take a bus, for heaven’s sake.

But then Miss Jenkins didn’t know what Libby’s life was like at home and, out of loyalty to Mother and Father, Libby didn’t tell her.

It would be hard to explain that she didn’t go out to her friends’ houses after school because Mother and Father were so uneasy until she got back. It was often simpler to stay home. She could invite people in, but then it always seemed odd that she couldn’t accept their hospitality, so she didn’t encourage friendship; it gave her more time to study, of course, but it was all a bit lonely. Not so much fun getting high marks if you didn’t have a great friend to giggle with in between, and to rejoice or sympathize with over all the adventures of the world.

But when she got to grammar school, it was different, and Libby met another marvelous teacher, as nice as Miss Jenkins; it was a Mrs. Wilson. She watched out for Libby, ensured that she became part of the debating team, that she was allowed to go to sports events.

“What do they think will happen to you?” Mrs. Wilson snapped once, in exasperation. “You are fifteen.”

Libby hung her head.

“It’s their way of showing me how fond of me they are, I think,” she said in a low voice.

“The greatest way to show people how fond you are of them is to give them some freedom,” said Mrs. Wilson.

Libby said nothing; the teacher was immediately ashamed.

“Don’t mind me—maybe I’m jealous; no one cared enough for me to watch out on the road until I came home,” she said.

But Libby knew that wasn’t true: Mrs. Wilson thought her parents were gaolers, and foolishly repressive. At times Libby
thought that too, but she hated other people thinking that about them. They were her parents; she could see how much they loved her, and worried about her. She knew all the things they did for her. How her father painted her grazed knee with iodine, how her mother brought her cocoa in bed, how they listened when she told them tales about school. How her father worked long hours as a clerk in a solicitor’s office, how her mother took in typing and bookkeeping work to help with the expenses. And she, Libby, caused a lot of the expenses: shoes were always wearing out, and there were school trips to places, and pocket money. She was as protective of them as they were of her, and she loved them.

There was a half-term camp. All the other sixteen-year-olds were going, but Libby’s parents said no, truly, they couldn’t spend a whole weekend wondering was she all right, had she fallen into a swirling river, had one of the rough boys forced himself on her, had their bus driver got drunk, had their teachers been careless.

Libby gave in without very much of a struggle, and that night, as she was looking sadly out of the garden shed towards the west, where the others had all gone, singing on their bus tour, only a few tears of self-pity came down her face. As she wiped them away she saw a struggling pigeon trying unsuccessfully to launch itself. It had a broken wing, and its round eyes looked anxious, its cooing sound had no confidence. Libby put it in her cardigan and took it indoors. She watched the scene almost as if she were outside. The three of them calmed the pigeon and put it in a box of shavings. Her father made a delicate splint for the wing and her mother helped him, so they could support the broken wing. They got bread and milk for the bird, and a few cornflakes. They put a lid on the box and cut holes in it. Its muffled, rhythmic cooing sounded much less agitated, Libby thought, and she saw her mother reach for a purse.

“Go and get it some birdseed, Libby. We know it would like that.”

How could you not love people so good and generous as this just because they wouldn’t let you go on the school outing?

For days she stroked the pigeon’s head and admired its feathers. She had never really looked at a pigeon close up before. A wonderful white line on the bend of each wing, a bill that was nearly orange, its big chest, which trembled less as the days went on, was purple-brown with underparts of creamy gray.

“Lovely little Columba,” she said to it over and over.

“Why do you call it that?” her father wanted to know.

“It’s Latin for a dove or a pigeon too, I think,” she said.

He looked at her with undisguised admiration. “To think a daughter of mine would know the Latin for things,” he said, delighted. “But it’s nearly time to let Columba go, I’d say.”

“Go?” Libby didn’t believe it. This murmuring, cooing bird had got her over the disappointment of half-term, it had brought her back to school without any hard feelings about the parents who had deprived her of a great trip. And now they were going to send it away.

“You can’t talk about freedom, Libby, and then not let a wild animal fly away free,” her father said.

“There’s no use in preaching one thing and practicing another,” said her mother.

They went out to the little back garden and stood near the shed where she had found Columba and watched the bird soar away. As she looked up into the sky Libby felt that she grew up. She joined the people who understood things rather than those who just learned things and accepted them.

She knew that her parents would never let her go free because they had no idea she was a prisoner. She watched them shading their eyes in the evening sun and looking on, delighted that their work had restored a bird to the wild, just as they had been happy to look after displaced Europeans immediately after the war; as they had brought tea to old tramps under bridges when neighbors
said that the tramps should be taken into care, washed and tidied and minded for their own good; as they took the unpopular position opposing fox hunting; and had written letters to the royal family about shooting parties on their estates, and to film stars about fur coats. Libby’s parents had looked happy when they had come back, cold and tired, from their protest marches with their banners, from their committee meetings, from their fund-raising for causes. All of these had been good things. They were just blind to her need to be free.

So in that moment of growing up, Libby decided she would look after her own freedom. She linked arms with them back to the house.

“I wonder what Columba will have for his tea?” she said cheerfully. “Nobody to hand him a plate of birdseed tonight.”

They looked pleased, as if they had feared she would make more fuss.

“Come on. I’ll make your tea for you anyway—I’ll do beans on toast,” said Libby. “
And
I’ll cut off the crusts.”

“Nobody had such a good daughter,” her mother said, squeezing Libby’s arm.