In a Good Light (2 page)

In spite of this attack of self-doubt, I must have looked like a legitimate authority figure because before I'd advanced very far a small boy accosted me and asked if I could peel his satsuma. I found this rather touching, so I put down my
baggage, and was presently besieged by half a dozen other petitioners wanting me to open packets of crisps, or prise plastic straws from the back of drink cartons. I couldn't remember this sort of free-range snacking being encouraged when I was at school. On the contrary, milk was just coming off the menu. The only source of refreshment was a crippled drinking fountain on the outside wall of the toilets, which yielded a slow drip of metallic tasting water which swelled to a trickle when someone inside pulled the chain. In any case, our mother would never have stooped to crisps: she would have sent Christian and me to school with something nutritious and embarrassing like a hard-boiled egg or a stick of celery.

Somewhere a bell rang and the crowd around me melted away, leaving me with a handful of orange peel. I put it in my suit pocket and picked up my boxes again. The teacher blew her whistle and two hundred children stood rooted to the spot. For a second I froze too, and then I remembered that I was an adult, and therefore not bound by the same rules, and I picked my way self-consciously between the little statues to the door, my progress followed by two hundred pairs of eyes.

I had over-prepared for the event of course. Having fixed on the notion that I would need to fill the time with chat and avoid awkward silences at all cost, I had rehearsed an hour-long lecture, written up on twenty cue-cards as if I was addressing the Royal Society. I had the confused idea that eight-year-olds might be withdrawn and uncooperative creatures like the teenagers they would one day become, but I couldn't have been more wrong. They were still buzzing from their workout in the fresh air; at least half a dozen hands shot up before I'd even unpacked my case. Everyone wanted to ask a question, or just tell me what they'd had
for breakfast. Half the time they were repeating the point made by the previous speaker, but I found their enthusiasm and lack of inhibition totally disarming. Pretty soon I abandoned my notes and the lesson descended into an amiably anarchic free-for-all, only loosely tied to the subject of illustrated books.

The teacher, Miss Connor, who looked as though she was straight out of college, had withdrawn to the back of the room to listen. Occasionally she threw out a warning cough if any of the children became too boisterous but, after a while, even she began to relax, when it was clear I wasn't going to dry up altogether and need rescuing.

Quite often, having almost dislocated a shoulder in the process of stretching up to secure my attention, some poor kid would then forget what it was he wanted to say and collapse back into his seat, mumbling in confusion. It was at this stage, when I had stopped feeling nervous and was beginning to enjoy myself, that instead of addressing my remarks to Miss Connor, or the back wall, I started to pick out individual faces.

‘Has anyone any idea what this book might be about?' I asked, holding up a painting done in acrylics, which had formed the cover of my last book. It showed, from above, but with a skewed perspective, a summer garden full of trees and flowers in full bloom. In the middle of the lawn was a greenhouse, from which a cloud of butterflies, balloons and parrots was emerging.

Whoosh. Up went thirty hands.

‘Yes?' I singled out a boy with white-blond hair and colourless eyelashes. He reminded me of a hamster I'd once known.

‘Um . . .' He subsided, covering his face. I could see the
veins on his arms, thin blue tributaries through the skin. ‘A garden,' he finally spluttered, inspired.

‘Good idea,' I said. ‘Any other offers?'

‘A garden,' said the next contributor, a scruffy kid with a number two haircut.

‘Ye-e-es,' I replied smoothly, moving on to his neighbour, a girl.

‘Oh. I was going to say garden too.'

‘Was anyone not going to say “garden”?' Miss Connor put in, and several hands fell.

‘Football?' came a suggestion from the back.

‘Football,' I said, looking over at my painting as if I couldn't remember what was in it. ‘Interesting. Why do you say that?'

‘Because I always play football in the garden.'

There's no arguing with the logic of personal experience.

Only one hand remained up, but its owner, a girl with dark, shoulder-length hair, had her head down, writing, which was why I hadn't noticed her earlier.

‘Yes?' I addressed the top of her head as her neighbour gave her a terrific nudge.

‘Oh!' She looked up at me with wide, grey eyes, and the moment I saw her face an electric jolt went right through me, and I thought
I know you
. But of course I didn't know her at all. I'd never seen her before in my life. What startled me wasn't just a striking resemblance to someone I'd once known: it was more complicated than that. It was Penny I had recognised, not as she was now, or as I'd ever known her, but
as she must once have been
. It was the strangest feeling, remembering something I'd never actually experienced, and I was still recovering when she spoke again.

‘I think it's about a magic greenhouse,' she said, meeting my eyes, and I felt the ripple of another strange current between us.
The Magic Greenhouse
had been my title for the book, ditched at the last minute in favour of
Gordon's Garden
.

For the rest of the session I tried not to stare at her, but felt my gaze pulled in her direction time and again. Her answers, it seemed to me, were always the most perceptive, the most intelligent. The dinner bell took me by surprise. I had meant to wind up in plenty of time, possibly set them a little task – a drawing competition or something. But Miss Connor stood up and told the children to leave their things exactly as they were on their desks, and then she thanked me for coming and they all gave me a short round of applause before stampeding for the door.

While Miss Connor tidied up, I packed my things away, and then on the pretext of admiring the displays – a whole wall of papier-mâché humpty-dumptys and stuffed sock puppets – I had a quick look at the exercise book on the dark-haired girl's desk. A chewed pencil lay in the fold of the open pages, which were covered with laboriously joined-up writing. I flipped the book shut with one finger and read the name on the front. Cassie Wharton-Smith. That surname alone, long since expelled from memory, settled it, but I remembered, too, right back before everything went wrong, when Penny and Christian were still together and happy, Penny used to say, ‘If I ever have a daughter I'll call her Cassandra.' And Christian, who used to cringe at the thought of children, even hypothetical ones with sensible names, would cringe even harder and say, ‘People like you should be sterilised.'

‘She's a bright little thing,' I said to the teacher, pointing to the desk Cassie had recently occupied.

‘Oh yes, she's a lovely girl,' she replied, shouldering her handbag and opening the door for me. ‘She's got a wonderful imagination.'

She locked the classroom, one of those Portakabins reached by a flimsy wooden staircase. The tiny, grey lobby in which I stood waiting was cold and cluttered. Padded jackets ballooned from a double row of pegs on either wall, almost meeting in the middle. Through a chink in the floor I could see the grass below. When I stamped my foot experimentally, the whole structure seemed to quake.

‘You don't know the parents, do you?' I said, as Miss Connor caught me up. ‘I only ask because I used to know her mother. Ages ago.'

Miss Connor shook her head. On the top of her open handbag lay a packet of cigarettes. She was obviously dying to escape for a smoke. ‘I don't think the father's around any more,' she said, and then stopped, blushing at this indiscretion.

‘You couldn't let me have her address, could you?'

She gave an apologetic grimace. ‘Sorry. Not allowed to do that. You understand.'

‘Of course. It doesn't matter,' I said, embarrassed to have asked. For all she knew I could be some mad stalker with a grudge. ‘It was so long ago. I don't know what I'd say to her, anyway.'

I was taken back to the staffroom at lunchtime and introduced to those few teachers who were in there eating their sandwiches. Someone fetched me a plate of cheese flan and potato croquettes from the canteen and everyone
laughed at my gratitude, which was genuine. I must be the only person alive who likes institution food: I find spam fritters comforting in a way that rocket leaves can never be.

The staffroom was even more of a hovel than the wobbly Portakabin I'd left behind. The chief comforts were twelve low, padded vinyl chairs without arms, arranged around three square tables, the tops of which were exactly level with the seats, so it was impossible to draw up to the table – to reach your coffee for example – without kneecapping yourself. The rest of the staff, already wise to this, were sitting back, eating off their laps and using the table as a footstool. The workbenches around the edge of the room were buried beneath sloping piles of paper and books and ring-binders. The draining board of the aluminium sink was crowded with unwashed cups. On the floor, the carpet tiles were starting to curl up at the edges, like stale slices of bread.

I'd brought two boxes of books along with me to sign and sell at the book fair in the afternoon. This was meant to be a golden opportunity for me to make a profit. I'd envisaged a hall full of affluent, book-loving parents, eager to demonstrate their support for the school's literacy programme, but I had sadly misjudged the market. Most of the children seemed to be picked up by au pairs, who naturally carried no spare cash and were deaf to the demands of their little charges. I was in any case having to compete with the tie-ins for some new cult Japanese cartoon movie, which took care of most of the boys. One of my first customers, though, was Cassie. She was unaccompanied, and produced a crumpled-up ball, which turned out to be a five pound note, from her cardigan
pocket. She spelled out her name without waiting to be asked, and I dutifully inscribed it on the title page.

‘Do you like reading, Cassie?' I asked, looking up at her serious face.

She nodded. ‘I like Roald Dahl.'

‘Well, this will probably be too easy for you then.'

‘That's all right. I like easy books too.'

‘Do your mum and dad read to you at bedtime or do you read to yourself?'

‘Mummy does. Daddy doesn't live with us any more.'

‘Oh.' Just as Miss Connor had surmised. I was on the point of asking what her mummy's name was, but I lost my nerve. It seemed creepy somehow, to be prompting a strange child to divulge personal details. For all I knew it could be a criminal offence. Besides, once she'd spent her money Cassie didn't linger to chat, but said goodbye with one of those frank, appraising stares that children often deploy to make adults squirm.

When the rest of the browsers had melted away I did a quick tally of my takings. The results were as follows: Sold – fourteen. Misappropriated/nicked – five. I reckoned the day's receipts would amount to a loss of £2.50. Rather than lug the boxes of unsold books back to the car I told the teacher on duty I was donating them to the school – proceeds to the staffroom refurbishment fund. She laughed gaily as if I was joking. I don't know why I suddenly came over all charitable. It must have been something of my mother rising to the surface at last.

I drove straight from school to the restaurant since there wasn't time to go home first. I've worked five nights a week as a waitress at Rowena's in Crystal Palace ever since
it used to be the Grill Rooms. Back in those days there was sawdust on the floor and the music was so loud I used to wear cotton wool in my ears and lip-read the orders. I got quite proficient at it until the manager told me I could stay away until the infection had cleared up because I was putting people off their food.

There was live comedy on Friday nights, and live music on Saturday. It would be pleasing to think that I had seen some of today's great comic turns in their infancy, but unfortunately none of the Friday night acts from the Grill Rooms has ever to my knowledge made it onto the TV. One old chap who used to do daft things with a sliced loaf was a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe about five years on from his Grill Room debut – I think he won a ‘Best Newcomer' award, but I haven't heard of him since. The murky waters of obscurity must have closed over his head soon afterwards.

Nowadays Rowena's serves pizzas and pasta and plays light opera. The comedians have gone, along with the rock bands and the cocktails. There's more light, and less smoke and no sawdust. It's a different clientele. Or maybe it's the same clientele, now ten years older, married with children. We don't get stag nights any more and I can't say I'm sorry. Even lavish tips didn't feel like adequate compensation for the harassment and groping.

Waitressing may not seem like a great job, but evening work suits me fine. I can be at home during the day if Christian needs me, and I can paint in the mornings when the light is good and I'm at my best. It's physically tiring being on my feet from six until midnight, but my mind is free to wander and there's no stress. Even when there's been a scene and a customer has got drunk or belligerent it
doesn't carry forward to the next day. I sleep well and every morning's a new beginning. The money's terrible but I can usually double it in tips, and I'm an optimist by nature: I try to look at it as a wage-packet half full rather than a wage-packet half empty. Since I don't have to pay for my accommodation my living expenses are small, and I'm not extravagant. Sometimes when I'm turning the pages of
Vogue
in the hairdressers I might find myself hankering after a pair of fuchsia pink beaded slingbacks for £600, but the moment soon passes. It's the long reach of my mother again, jangling the charity tin under my nose and turning my thoughts to the Less Fortunate.