Song at Twilight (12 page)

But this was more easily said than done. I had taken to sleeping badly, waking regularly at one, or two, or three, and in the haunting loneliness of the small hours my fears for Timothy were only exaggerated. Then, as day broke, I would fall into a deep sleep, only to be woken shortly afterwards by the hurtful shrillness of my alarm clock. As a result of these wretched nights I became tetchy and tearful, a condition which my friends most annoyingly and embarrassingly put down to my age.

As I walked around the school in the daytime, I felt weary and distracted and was all too often confronted by the new Timothy, laughing hand-in-hand with Natalie. He affected not to notice me and never came to see me. Sometimes he skipped his French classes and when he attended them he sat silently in the back of the classroom, barely listening. The work he handed in usually arrived late and was of the poorest possible quality. The time had come for the headmaster to have a word with him.

*

June 22nd

Eric has come back at last, I am happy to say.

He rang me yesterday evening to say that he was home and horrified by all the weeds in his garden. He has been away for over two weeks. Two long weeks during which time I have managed to get on with some writing and a little gardening, but during which time he has been sorely missed.

Laurel came round to see me one day. Her 'A' levels have started and that morning she had had a paper which she hated. I was surprised at her coming as she and I have never really had much to say to each other. But I was glad to see her in a way, but not because she took my mind off Eric She certainly didn't do that since she talked about him ceaselessly. So much so that I began to wonder if she doesn't have some kind of a crush on him. But I dismissed the thought as ludicrous. She merely likes to be the centre of attention and he, extraordinarily, is prepared to listen to her nonsense. 

She was furious, she told me, with that woman's husband for dying. I could have said that I wasn't too pleased about it myself. She had been planning to go up to London for the day as Eric had promised to take her to the British Museum.

I thought it was just as well that she hadn't been able to go, the week before her exams started being hardly the time to go gadding about the country visiting museums.

Laurel didn't agree. Anyway, she had a new project in mind which she wished to discuss with Eric as soon as he returned.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Never you mind," she said, reverting to her former rude self.

"Well, I hope it's nothing too foolish this time," I said tartly.

As she left I watched her back view disappearing through my garden gate and was suddenly moved by the pathos of the big bottom and the fuzzy head. Poor child, she doesn't have much chance with parents like hers and with a sour spinster schoolmistress for an aunt. Perhaps inside that bulky body there is a spark of originality and a free spirit which is striving to escape. I, of all people, should know how she feels.

"Good luck with the rest of your exams," I called faintly after her retreating form.

The day after his return Eric came to supper with me. He refused to come to lunch, saying that he had so many things to catch up with. Letters to write, and he must spend some time in the garden. So I had to wait for him all day. Never has a day seemed longer and when at last I heard the latch click on the garden gate, I felt my heart pounding and my palms sweating.

I opened the door, and there he stood on the step, an old man, weary, white-haired and slightly bent. Just a quite ordinary man who usually speaks in cliches. What on earth is it, I wonder, that makes him so dear to me?

"Eric," I said with unusual warmth and with what I hoped was a touch of softness in my voice, "I am so pleased to see you! So pleased."

To celebrate his return I had bought an especially good bottle

of white wine. He certainly looked as though he needed something to cheer him up as his face was drawn and the bags under his eyes seemed to have grown heavier.

I had lit the fire as, despite the time of year, it was a cold evening, and as we sat on either side of the hearth, sipping our wine, I looked at Eric and was happy. Pansy lay at my feet purring like a cat as only Pekineses know how to. But all the while there lurked in the back of my mind a dreadful fear that as soon as Morag returned from Vancouver, Eric would be gone again.

'"When she gets back," he said as though to confirm my worst fears, "I shall have to go to London again. She'll be rather lost at first, you know, and I do feel responsible for her in a way."

To myself, I wondered why.

Morag was to stay in Canada for three sweet weeks. I passionately hoped that she would like it there so much that she would stay. Perhaps her sister might even encourage the idea.

"She's a very old friend you see," Eric said, and then, for no apparent reason, "None of us is getting any younger."

Then he told me that Laurel had telephoned him that morning, wanting to come and see him at the week-end.

She had certainly lost no time in finding out that he was back and in pushing herself forward. I wondered at her audacity but, remembering her pathetic dumpy figure leaving my garden the other day, I felt I couldn't be too cross. Besides there was no need to be cross now that I had Eric sitting there opposite me, sipping his wine.

Laurel had a really important plan afoot according to Eric, but he didn't think it sounded particularly sensible. She had been gabbling so excitedly on the telephone that he could hardly make out what she was going on about, but it seems as though, already disillusioned with her newly discovered faith in Hinduism, she has decided to found a new religion of her own.

Just as we had finished our supper and were settling back by the fireside with our coffee there was a tremendous banging on

the front door, followed by the harshest and most importunate ringing of the bell.

Who on earth could it have been at that hour, I wondered, as I rose to my feet to go to the door, intensely irritated at the interruption of my cosy tete-a-tete with Eric.

Eric rose too.

"Let me go," he said. "You shouldn't be opening the door at this time of night. You never know who it might be."

It was Laurel. Laurel who had come on her moped and who stood there with, for once it must be admitted, a crash helmet on her head, quite delighted to have tracked down Eric.

I could not allow myself to show my annoyance but neither could I have been more annoyed. The child was becoming a most dreadful nuisance and should not be encouraged to come calling whenever the mood took her.

I tried by various subtle means to convey this message to her without Eric realising that my intentions were anything but friendly. I know how kindly he feels towards Laurel and did not want to upset him.

Laurel, it turned out, had come to the village to look for Eric for whom she had an important document. It was, she explained as she handed him a large brown envelope, the synopsis of her plan.

"But say no more," she added, touching the side of her nose with her forefinger. "Aunt Prudence might not approve."

When she found that Eric was out, she had immediately concluded that there was only one place where he was likely to be and so came straight to my house.

Laurel's behaviour and her manners were frankly intolerable. I decided that sooner or later, preferably sooner, I would have to take her aside and give her a talking to. As it was, my various subtle hints fell on stony ground so that instead of disappearing as soon as she had delivered her missive, she removed her crash helmet, asked for a cup of coffee and sat on the floor in front of the fire, monopolising Eric with her idiotic conversation whilst I sat silently stroking Pansy.

Eventually when Eric said that he was tired and must be

going, he had had a busy day, Laurel too, decided that the time had come for her to be getting home. Her mother, she said, would be out of her mind.

The two of them left together and so ended my longed for evening with Eric.

Chapter 12

July 2nd

When Eric and Laurel had gone I set about clearing up the supper, piling the dishes in the sink as I was weary and sad and had not the heart to wash up. All I wanted was to go to bed and nurse my private grief.

Didn't I deserve a little sweetness after a lifetime of stern spinsterhood? But I must not be, and have always tried not to be self-pitying. Besides, for what was I, or am I, to pity myself? I cannot honestly suppose that at our time of life Eric and I are to enter on a whirlwind romance leading to the altar. The very best that I can wish for which would indeed make me happy is that we should continue as we have been up to now, close friends and good companions with perhaps an ever increasing bond of love and affection between us.

Of course I would like Eric to be nearly as fond of me as I am of him. I would like to be needed by him and to have a special place in his heart.

And all these things are still possible despite Laurel and Morag. After all I cannot truly regard an immature and silly teenager as a threat to my happiness even though Eric does appear to have a rather foolish, old man's weakness for her. It is hardly likely that he is actually in love with her.

As for Morag, she presents a threat of an entirely different kind, and a much more real one. But I must try not to dwell too much on the matter. I must try to remain cheerful, friendly and busy. 

But I have to admit that as I lay in bed that night I felt my courage fail me. I have been alone for a very long time and as I realised only too well during the weeks of Eric's absence, without his kindly presence I feel very lonely indeed. Without him I would quickly turn into a sad and perhaps rather bitter old lady.

In the morning I felt a little more robust and certainly happier for as I was washing the dishes Eric rang to thank me for supper and to suggest an outing and lunch in a pub. He needed cheering up, he said, and what with Laurel turning up the evening before, he had hardly had time to talk to me properly. My heart soared. Live fvor the moment, I thought.

"I'm so glad you rang," I said, "I really feel like getting out of the house today. I've been rather down lately. Old age I suppose." There was a lightness in my voice which surely, at that moment, did not reflect my age nor in any way suggest that I was 'down'.

"We're only as young as we feel," said Eric and then rang off.

*

That term at Blenkinsop's seemed endless. After Leo went back to London I heard nothing from either him or from Mrs Hooper for a while. I was, as they say, eating my heart out, confronted by the permanently disturbing spectacle of Timothy and Natalie wandering around the school in blissful harmony as they both – and more particularly Timothy – trod the path of self-destruction.

Timothy, I knew, had been to see the headmaster who had talked to him at length and kindly about getting down to work and about conforming to school rules which, as we all know, are there for the good of everyone, for the good of the whole school community.

I spoke to the headmaster both before and after he saw Timothy. He told me that he found Timothy a reasonable and polite boy, if a little withdrawn, who had – and I was glad of that – admitted that he had let his work lapse seriously. Timothy had promised the headmaster that he would make a serious attempt to change his ways, saying that he was feeling more positive than he had been formerly.

I wondered if the headmaster had broached the subject of Natalie at all.

He had indeed, he told me. He had reminded Timothy that Natalie was always getting herself into trouble and had put it to him that he, Timothy, might be able to influence her to get down to some work too and to stop fooling around so much. The two of them could, he had suggested, do a great deal to help each other.

I was horrified.

"Help each other!" I cried. "That girl is terrible. She can do him no good at all."

"I think you are rather over-dramatising the whole thing, Prudence," the headmaster said.

I wondered if the headmaster had any conception of the sort of depths of depression to which Timothy had sunk.

"Well, he seems quite cheerful now," he said.

I was furious. Had the man no sensitivity?

"I think the only trouble is to get the boy to see that he must start to work at once if he is to have any chance of passing those exams."

The only trouble indeed. Had Timothy not told me that he was psychologically incapable of concentration at the moment?

In the headmaster's opinion, Timothy was a quiet, rather introverted boy who for obvious reasons concerning his background had found difficulty in making friends and being happy at school. This girl friend seemed to have cheered him up a lot. Given him a bit of confidence and some much needed affection.

Much needed affection! For the past year or more I had been giving Timothy all the affection I possibly could, but apparently to no avail. And now it appeared that a flighty girl was to be the answer to his problems.

I was appalled at the headmaster's lack of common sense and understanding.

Towards the end of that term I was so weary that I had almost given up caring what happened to anyone and was, I felt sure, no longer teaching with my usual efficiency and attention to detail.

This was bad as I hate to let my pupils down. Never until then, in all my teaching career, had I failed to mark work on time nor had I ever been so unenthusiastic in my approach. I needed the rest that the Christmas holidays would surely bring and I needed to sort out my thoughts and my feelings.

My heart still bled for Timothy in his new found bliss which I knew could not last. It hurt me to see him around the school with that hateful girl always showing off at his side, making silly jokes, standing on her head or waving her limbs about in affected attitudes.

Very occasionally Timothy would stop and talk to me in the passage, but he no longer came to tea and as term progressed I had the strange feeling that he had come to resent me. He seemed when he saw me to glower rather than to smile and gradually he ceased talking to me altogether except when obliged to in class. I have to admit that something the headmaster had said to him must have gone home, however, as he now handed work in regularly. Work which was not particularly brilliant, but which was certainly adequate.

So by the last fortnight of term I was in a very overwrought and nervous state and it was at about this time that I heard of Mrs Hooper’s imminent arrival. The headmaster told me that she was coming down to see him and that she would like to meet me at the same time. I was surprised by her unwonted concern for her son but thought that perhaps Leo had at last had some influence on her.

As the day of Mrs Hooper's visit approached, I began to grow exceedingly nervous. I could not imagine what she would have to say to me and did not even know whether she was coming as a friend or a foe. It could well be either.

I went over and over in my head what I would say to her along the lines of, 'I'll say such and such' and then she'll say 'so-and-so', then I'll say something else, and so on and so forth until I was utterly sick of all the imaginary conversations echoing through my head. 

My pupils must have found me unbearably distracted and they reacted accordingly. I found that I was allowing them to get away with things that I would never have tolerated before. Elementary mistakes of every kind crept into their work, agreements were forgotten, accents overlooked, irregular verbs unlearned. Shame on you, Prudence.

Next to his office, the headmaster had a sitting room which closely resembled a dentist's waiting room except that it had a drinks cabinet in the comer, but which was generally considered to be a more welcoming place in which to entertain distinguished guests, like visiting lecturers and some especially privileged parents. I was never quite sure exactly what the qualities were which made someone eligible for the sitting-room rather than the office. In Mrs Hooper’s case I think it was her amazing prettiness combined with that remarkable confidence in the power to attract which often makes others almost subservient to the very pretty. At least it makes others desperately wish to please them.

At half past twelve on the day of Mrs Hooper’s visit, the headmaster summoned me to his sitting-room where he had already been entertaining her for a while alone.

"Ah Prudence," he said, "do come in."

Mrs Hooper was sitting in one of the beige upholstered chairs, her delicate legs crossed, her head tilted prettily to one side with what looked like a gin and tonic in one hand.

"Mrs Hooper," said the headmaster, "this is Miss Fishbourne."

Mrs Hooper did not rise from her chair but put down her drink, uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, her head still on one side, one bangled arm outstretched to offer me her hand.

I shook it perhaps rather awkwardly. She looked directly at me. Her eyes were large, and green like her son's.

"I'm very pleased to meet you – at last," she said in a pretty piping tone. And added, with a question in her voice, "I think I know your nephew, Leo?"

I thought she did too.

"Now Prudence, let me get you a glass of sherry," said the headmaster rubbing his hands together and leaning forward in a caring way, slightly gauchely I thought. 

"Sweet or dry?" he enquired from beside the drinks cabinet.

"Dry," I replied in a tone that must surely have been drier than the driest fino.

The headmaster handed me my drink and after a few desultory remarks about the approach of Christmas which seemed to come round more quickly every year, and the bitterness of the weather, he suggested that we might excuse him as he had a few things which needed his urgent attention and that we might like to have a chat.

He shook Mrs Hooper’s hand with unusual warmth, looking at her in just that way that I have, throughout my life, observed men looking at pretty women, half confident, half pleading for a special – however tiny – place in their hearts.

I, as is always the case at such moments, became acutely aware of my large nose, large feet, large frame.

When the headmaster had at last disappeared, I sat down gratefully in an armchair, took a sip of my sherry and wondered where we would go from there.

Mrs Hooper did not seem to be in the least bit antagonistic to me. Not that she had any reason to be, of course.

She thanked me for having been kind to Timothy in the past and told me how desperately worried she had been about the boy.

"Desperately!" she added in the tones of a bad actress who has no understanding of the concept of desperation.

"He has always begged me to take him away from the school," she said. "But things have been difficult at home." She waved her hand airily. "My husband and I are separated – our marriage didn't work out." She opened her green eyes in pained innocence.

"I'm very sorry," I said, wondering where the conversation was leading.

She leaned forward earnestly and tapped her chest with a long rosy-red fingernail. "I," she said, "am a very sensitive person. Timothy's father, on the other hand, is not at all sensitive. He could never understand my needs – in fact, I am afraid to say, he is an extremely selfish man. I, of course, would have loved nothing more than to keep Timothy at home with me. I am a particularly maternal woman you see, Miss Fishbourne. But my husband made life quite impossible for us at home and so there was no alternative but to send him away to school – well, he would have had to go anyway even if we hadn't lived in Saudi Arabia. I was heartbroken when Timothy went away for the first time – I didn't know how I was going to manage without him…"

And so she went on and on and on.

Eventually she came to the point.

"I have been talking to Leo," she said and for a moment had the good grace to glance at the ground. "He's such a kind boy," she went on, "and really worried about Timothy. He has persuaded me that the time has come for Timothy to leave school. That is to say he feels that Timothy is too old to continue boarding and besides it has made the poor darling so unhappy in the past. No. He shall come back to London and live with me and go to day school. Leo will be around to keep an eye on him…"

I gasped.

Leo would be around to keep an eye on him. Treacherous Leo.

And what would I do…? What indeed? I felt the bottom falling out of my world. My head spun.

Somehow I managed to pull myself together enough to plead with Mrs Hooper to change her mind.

To take Timothy away from school at this juncture would be fatal for his exams. He was beginning to work a little harder, to produce results, to be a little happier, he was settling in at last, and so forth.

But Mrs Hooper was adamant.

She was touched by my concern for Timothy but her mind was made up. She had told the headmaster of her decision and as soon as she returned to London she would confirm that decision in writing. Timothy would not be returning to Blenkinsop's in January.

"If you take him away so suddenly," I tried one desperate last attempt to sway her, "you may have to forfeit next term's fees." 

"Geoffrey," she said, rising to her feet, "can take care of that. He's got plenty of money." She laughed a silly, tinkling laugh and put out her hand.