The Centre of the Green (9 page)

“Oh Christ! You don’t want to hear about that. It’s so boring.”

“Go on.”

“Well, there’s no point in it anyway. You can’t go
anywhere
without money nowadays, and I’m just bloody poor. Washed up. Played out. Finished.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a lousy scientist. Christ, I’ve written five books now, and you needn’t pretend you’ve read any of them, because I know you haven’t. You needn’t pretend you’ve even heard of me before, if it comes to that. Five books. I’ve been all round the world…. Morocco…. Sumatra. I’ve lived with one tribe of Maoris for weeks—really lived with them, just like one of the family, not because I’m a bloody anthropologist, but just because I happen to enjoy doing that kind of thing. I’ve eaten food that would turn
your
stomachs rotten; you don’t worry about germs out there, you know. I’ve slept on the ground … in trees. I’ve had malaria, dysentery—been rotten with it, raving, saying all sorts of stuff, not that they could understand. Yes, I’ve lived. And now, just because I’m not a specialist, people say I’m washed up. If you want to write travel books nowadays, you’ve got to bring something back in a bottle. Writing—it has to be a hobby now, like fretwork; you can’t even afford to do it unless you’ve got a steady job. It’s the end of travel writing as an art, I’ll tell you that. Journalists, biologists, even commercial travellers—any bloody fool who gets
sent
somewhere can write a book about it, and if you just go because you’re born to travel and to write, you’re classed as a tourist, and expected to pay for it. Well, I can’t afford it any more. I’m finished. You know how much my publishers wanted to give me as an advance on my last book? A hundred and
twenty-five
quid. You couldn’t go to the Channel Islands on that.”

Waters, who had not yet been known to ask a question,
and who had replied only briefly to those put to him, now asked his first. “You reckon you’re a failure then?” he said.

“I told you—I’m finished.”

“You reckon you’ve failed?”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘failed’. You can’t say it’s my fault if things have changed.”

“Ah, but you didn’t make the grade, did you?”

Ethel said angrily, “Some of my books have done very well. Nobody lost any money on me, you know. I mean, Christ—it’s a crowded field; we all know that.”

Waters said in a satisfied way, “You’re not what they call a best-seller, are you? You’d get more than a hundred and twenty-five quid if you were. I reckon it’s what they thought you were worth.”

“I had my own public. I used to get a lot of letters from all sorts of people.”

“You’ve failed. You might as well admit it.”

Charles said, “Have
I
failed, Waters? Is that my trouble?”

“I’d say you have. Not got very far in your job as far as I can see. And then trying to kill yourself. That’s a confession of failure, if you like.”

Myra said, “What about me?”

“Ay.” He nodded at David, and then at Anne. “And him. And her with her two changes and all. I’ve seen her on the District line get into the same train as me, and she’s still half an hour late. It’s my belief she goes on past the stop. As for him——” at Curly, “—I’m surprised he’s let mix with us at all. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known.”

“Why did you come?”

“Just to watch. I thought I’d just watch for a bit, and see what it was like.”

“Have
you
failed, Waters?”

“You’re not supposed to ask me that.”

“But we do ask.”

“Well, don’t think I’m afraid to tell you, because I’m not.” He drew himself up, and looked sternly round the circle of faces. “Yes, I consider I have.”

“How?”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about this while you’ve all been talking your heads off, trying to hide things as often as not. I consider that I have not fulfilled my purpose in life. I’ve let myself drift.”

“What purpose in life?”

“To have my own market garden, and not work for other people.”

“You’re a market gardener? Here in London?”

“I’m a commercial artist.”

Peter made one of his rare interventions. He said gently, “Didn’t you take evening classes at the Poly for a bit?”

“That’s right. They were very pleased with me there —said I had a flair for it, you know. One of the
instructors
there said he thought I’d do very well for myself if I ever got started on my own. I’ve got green fingers. But there wasn’t much point in going on with it, when I knew I’d never have the money. You need a lot of capital. My wife says that just having the garden at home makes more than enough work. I grow much more than we can eat as it is; we give a lot away. I wanted to sell it, but of course she won’t have that. After all, we do own our own house. We’ve got a position to keep up.”

“Why does that make you a failure?” David said. “I don’t own my own house. I don’t own anything.”

“I’m forty-seven. It’s too old to start again. I haven’t what you might call achieved anything, you know. It’s like I say, I just drifted into things. I never really had any strong ideas of what I wanted to be, you see, so I just did
what was suggested. It wasn’t until very late in my life, when we moved to Southfields and found we had this piece of garden, that I discovered, and then it was too late. Forty-seven! I’ll be sixty soon, and not done
anything
, not made anything.”

“But most people could say the same thing.”

“That’s right. It’s all failure, isn’t it? Just living, and then after a bit, sort of dying. I get very sad, just thinking about it—really melancholy, if you know what I mean. I had the headaches for a long time, and that was bad enough, though of course you have to put up with it when you’re my age. But then I got these crying fits, and that wasn’t natural.”

“Do you still get them?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Only the once at work. It’s in the evenings mostly. Even when I’m working in the garden, which is strange when you think of it. Mowing the lawn, and the tears pouring down. My wife doesn’t understand it at all.”

Anne said, “I do travel past my stop, but it isn’t because I want Peter to notice me. I’m just rather frightened; that’s all.”

Peter said, “Is this going to open something up? Because I think we’ve had our ninety minutes for now.”

As they left the Institution, Waters fell into step with Charles. “You can call me Bill, if you like,” he said. “I didn’t want to get too familiar at first, not knowing
anybody
, but it does seem more friendly.” And when the group reassembled three days later, they found that Waters had brought each of them a pound of tomatoes from his garden.

*

Garrett St. Angus Primary had once been a church school, the educational focus of several scattered villages.
The Education Act of 1944 changed its name, but left its character unaltered. It was a small, squat building of grey stone, with a very small asphalt playground, a large garden and four primitive and draughty privies in a row. Although the children were divided into five classes, the school had only four classrooms, and Julian found he had to share a room with the headmaster. There was no
staffroom
at all. Indeed, since the members of the staff had no free periods, there was no need for one, and they met in the Infants’ Room to drink Nescafé during the morning break.

Julian was the only teacher with a degree; the others were what is called “certificated”. The headmaster had been teaching at Garrett St. Angus for most of his teaching life, and expected to go on doing so until he retired, in ten years’ time, at the age of sixty-five. He believed that if you could teach “these children” the three Rs, that was enough; for the rest, their time would be better spent in the school garden. His own class consisted of those boys and girls who had failed the 11-Plus
Examination
; since the nearest Secondary Modern School was too far away to be easily reached, they stayed where they were until they reached the leaving age. Julian’s pupils were the next in age. Some had taken the 11-Plus that year, others would take it next year, and there were two mental deficients, rather older than the rest, who would never take it. The two classes were combined for History, Geography, Religious Instruction and Gardening. Julian was expected to teach the first two of these subjects, since the headmaster considered them unnecessary. Both Religious Instruction and Gardening, however, were a kind of extension of the school disciplinary system, and the headmaster taught those subjects himself.

When this teaching arrangement was first explained to Julian, he asked what if both he and the headmaster
should be talking at once. But the headmaster said that there would be no difficulty about that; it would not happen. “Don’t bother with trying to explain things in front of the class,” he said. “You just set them problems, and when they can’t do them, they come up to your desk. You’ll find they’re all on different pages of the book, so it’s much the best way. Reading’s the only thing that makes much of a row. When yours do reading, mine do sums.”

So that is how it went. Julian discovered that Reggie and Donald, the two mentally deficient boys, could neither read nor do sums, but they were quiet
well-behaved
boys, perfectly happy if they were left alone to share a desk at the back of the room, and draw pictures of ships. During History lessons Julian read aloud from an old-fashioned textbook with large print and half-tone pictures of Nelson at Trafalgar, Sir Richard Grenville on the deck of the
Revenge
, Alfred driving back the Danes and other stirring subjects. For Geography, he made the class copy maps from the atlas. Since the headmaster remained in the room with him, he had no difficulty in keeping order.

Julian took little interest in his pupils; after all, they would be his for so short a time. He did not know their mothers and fathers as the headmaster did; he had not watched them grow. They were just country children, some clean and some sour-smelling, some with spots and a few with sores. Some of his own class had the charm that most young animals do have, but the older boys were just louts, as far as he could see, and the older girls kept close together, giggling and sharing secrets. The members of the staff were dull too, with their endless talk of
plasticine
and paper cut-outs and what this child had done, that child said, as if they had no interests beyond their own charges. Just dull, all three of them, the spinster
with spectacles and the married woman with a sniff, and Wotcherd, who was just out of Training College.
Wotcherd
had straw-coloured hair and eyes like pale blue beads set in egg-white; he called Julian “old chap” and helped the headmaster with the gardening lessons.

By the end of his second week of teaching, Julian had made no personal connection with either staff or pupils at Garrett St. Angus Primary, and when he was
approached
at the end of the day by one of the older girls, he did not even know her name. It was Shirley, she said.

“Shirley what?”

“Paverstock.”

“You’re all called that.” It was true. The school had seven Paverstocks.

“She’s
Shirley
Paverstock. Her dad’s blind. He lives near the crossing.” Already Shirley’s friends had begun to drift into the conversation, and Julian found that he was standing in a ring of seven girls. “Let her answer for herself,” he said.

“Shirley’s shy.”

“What does she want then?”

“She wants to know if you’ve got any books. To read.”

“I didn’t know you were fond of reading, Shirley.” It seemed unlikely. If Shirley liked reading, why wasn’t she at the Grammar School?

“It’s not for her. She
hates
reading. It’s for her dad.”

“But if he’s blind——”

“
She
reads to him.”

“Oh. But isn’t there a library van or something that comes round every week.”

Shirley spoke. “He don’t like library books. He likes women’s books.”

“Women’s books?”

“
Red Star.” “Real-Life Love Stories.” “True Confessions
”

Julian had never heard of these titles, but supposed
them to be the names of magazines. “I don’t see why you think I have any of these books,” he said.

“You’re a teacher. Mrs. Bates gives Shirley all
her
books after she’s read them.”

“I see. Well, I’ll ask my mother, and see what we can do.”

Ridiculous, he thought as he left the village; it’s like
A Handful of Dust
. The wretched girl didn’t even enjoy reading. Probably because she read so badly—you could see she wasn’t the type for it. And such stuff!
Real-Life Love Stories!
—he could imagine the sort of thing. He
remembered
how at Oxford, a member of his own college had gone once a week to read Milton to a blind
shoemaker
; he’d been a member of the O.I.C.C.U. and had rather an unpleasant, nasal voice. Of course there wouldn’t be any such magazines at the cottage. Perhaps he might find back numbers of
Blackwood’s
or even
Argosy
if he scouted around, but he supposed those wouldn’t do.
True Confessions
—an odd taste for a man, but perhaps his wife had read to him during her lifetime, and he knew no other sort of reading. How old would Shirley be? All these girls were so well-developed that it was difficult to tell. On an impulse, noticing that the village shop in Garrett Under Moor was open, he dismounted from his bicycle and went in. “Have you got anything called
Red Star
?” he said.

“No.”

“
True Confessions?
”

“No.”

“
Real-Life Love Stories?
”

“No. I’ve got these.” They were about half a dozen paper-covered novelettes, printed on coarse paper, and bound rather after the manner of the Sexton Blake series which Julian remembered from his boyhood. He picked up the top one. It was called
The Inn of Lost Love
. “I’ll
take this,” he said, and put it in the pocket of his jacket.

“Mother,” he said at supper that evening, “I’ll be back late on Monday. I’m going to read to a blind man.”