Miss Purdy's Class (25 page)

Siobhan pulled away from her brother and Joey heard her go out of the room.

‘Siobhan!’ John’s nasal voice called.

‘It’s no good – you’ll not stop her.’ Christie spoke softly, and his tone was despairing. ‘Not when she’s like that.’

Hands still over his ears, Joey drifted gratefully into sleep.

Over the following days as Joey recovered his strength, he began to make sense of where he was. There was never full daylight inside because all the windows were boarded up and only fragments of light crept in between the boards. The room seemed very big and he wondered if he was in a school, as he’d never seen such a large room anywhere else. Houses, so far as he knew, were tiny and cramped, though apart from the size this one felt familiar: boarded windows, the walls reduced to bare, crumbling plaster, bare, rotten floorboards and the stink of damp and smoke.

‘Whose house’re we in?’ he asked Christie, that first morning when he was truly conscious.

‘It’s no one’s.’ Christie turned to him from the fire, into which he was poking sticks. ‘We’re just borrowing it for a little while – like birds of the air looking for a place to rest. And we want to keep it that way.’

Joey experimented with moving his body. He wanted to get off the prickly mattress. It felt as if he had been lying on it for years. His body felt weak and shaky, but he managed to get to his hands and knees.

‘You ready to get up now?’ Christie was beside him in the gloom, lifting him over to the fire. ‘Come on over here.’ Joey found he was sitting on the man’s coat. It made him think of Mr Simmons’s coat which had been stolen from him. There was a pan of water heating over the flames. Christie squatted beside him. Something about him felt safe.

‘You’re looking grand now this morning! I’m just making a hot drop of tea. It’s Sunday today – did you know that?’

Joey enjoyed sitting looking into the flames. He didn’t feel like running away any more, now it was quiet and he was by the fire. His days spent sleeping in cold parks and wandering the streets alone already felt a long way in the past. He peered round the room. The sound of snoring aroused his memory of arriving. It was coming from a big, dark shape lying over to his left.

‘That’s Micky.’ Christie saw him looking. Joey could just make out a bearded face with thick, frightening-looking features. The other man wasn’t there and he wondered where the woman called Siobhan had gone, but a moment later saw that she too was asleep across the room. He remembered her crying and dread gripped him for a moment. But she was quiet now.

He watched Christie as he tipped tea leaves into the pan of hot water and stirred them in with a sliver of wood. The man was thin and didn’t look very strong. His clothes were black, his hair was dark and curly and he hadn’t shaved for days, but his beard was nothing like as bushy as John’s or Micky’s. Joey noticed that he was hugging himself, shivering as if cold. He thought the man had sad eyes.

‘Here now.’ Christie handed him tea and a piece of bread torn from a loaf. His face was kind and gentle and Joey felt soothed by his company. ‘You get that down you.’

Twenty-One

‘Millie – you’re looking ever so well!’

Gwen found Millie waiting for her as she came out through the school gate. Millie smiled bravely. It was a day of showers and she was sheltering under an umbrella.

‘You’re not looking so bad yourself. In fact –’ she peered at Gwen – ‘you look like a cat that’s got the cream! What’s come over you?’

Gwen laughed. ‘I don’t know – must be the spring weather!’ How could she possibly say what was making her glow from the inside with love and happiness and excitement?
Daniel
, she thought, hugging the very sound of his name inside herself.
My beautiful Daniel!
He was busy this afternoon, she knew that, or she might have been rather less pleased to see Millie waiting for her.

‘Got time for a cuppa?’ Millie asked.

‘Yes, of course. Come on – let’s get away from here. Agnes Monk’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Oh Lord – I can’t say I’m longing to see her!’ Millie grimaced.

They went to a little place along Wellington Street and ordered tea and currant buns. Gwen examined Millie as she took off her mac to sit down. She was wearing a green skirt and neat cream blouse with frills on the collar and cuffs.

‘You really do look better,’ Gwen said, trying to be encouraging. Millie’s freckly skin had some of its bloom back and she looked a little healthier, though tired and strained. As Gwen spoke Millie’s eyes immediately filled with tears.

‘Sorry.’ She wiped them with her hanky. ‘Keeps happening. I don’t know what’s come over me.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Gwen eyed her anxiously.

‘As it’ll ever be,’ Millie said gloomily.

‘The wedding’s still on and everything?’

Millie rallied. ‘Look – sorry. I’m being such an old grouch. Yes, of course it’s still on. That’s what I’ve come to tell you about – to invite you. It’s going to be the second Saturday in May and I’d love you to come.’

‘Oh, how lovely!’ Gwen realized as she spoke that she sounded just a little over-enthusiastic, as if she was humouring Millie. ‘I mean – how do you feel about it?’

Millie shrugged. ‘What choice do I have?’ She lowered her voice, leaning across the table. ‘I don’t exactly want to bring a bastard child into the world, do I?’

Gwen was appalled by the bitterness she saw in her friend’s face.

‘I just have to be grateful that Lance is prepared to stick by me and do the right thing.’ Millie sat back and fiddled with the spoon on her saucer. ‘We’ll have enough money and the baby’ll have a proper family. I’m lucky really when you think what happens to some people. My mother’s been ever so kind and reasonable, and stuck by me. I won’t be thrown on the streets. What more could I want?’

‘Oh, Millie.’ Gwen sat back, looking at her. She could scarcely think what to say to be of comfort. ‘It’ll be all right. You
do
love Lance, don’t you? You must’ve done to . . . to . . .’ She had been going to say
to get into this situation
, but she couldn’t finish. Immediately the thought of Edwin came to her. Wasn’t she supposed to love him? And look how she was behaving! But somehow Edwin and her feelings for Daniel felt like two completely different worlds. Edwin was her fiancé, of course he was! But as for love – heaven knew, she hadn’t known what love was until she met Daniel.

As she spoke to Millie, trying to cheer her up, she was all the time guiltily aware of her hands in her lap under the table. With her right hand she kept feeling the third finger of her left. In the chest of drawers in her room at Ariadne’s house was a little dark blue box, and in its silky interior nestled her engagement ring with its tiny sapphires. She had slipped it off the morning she went out with Daniel. It had been in the drawer ever since, and her finger felt bare and strange – and guilty.

‘The other thing I was going to ask you . . .’ Millie hesitated. ‘Mum thought we’d live with her, at first anyway. But Lance is dead set against it. Says we need our privacy and all that. He’s already found us a flat to rent – just the upstairs rooms of a house in Hands-worth. The thing is, it’s still quite a lot of rent, what with me not working, and then there’ll be the baby. So we thought if there were three of us to share, it would all be easier. I just wondered if you’d think of having the spare room. You seem pretty fed up where you are now.’

‘Oh, Millie, that’d be perfect! I keep thinking I ought to look for somewhere else, but I’ve been so idle about it. I’m sure that woman’s going to poison me in the end if I stay there – entirely by accident, but even so. And that Mr Purvis creeping about all the time with his flaming trumpet . . .’ She had given Millie a toned-down version of what went on in the Soho Road house. ‘Are you sure you can stand having another person around? Married bliss and all that?’

Millie looked earnestly at her. ‘Gwen, I think if I don’t have other company apart from Lance, I shall go right off my rocker.’

‘Come round to ours and see us, any day,’ Daniel had said as they parted at the tram stop that Sunday.

She felt dazed, and as if she was dreaming after an afternoon in his arms, with his kisses. They had stood in the woods, wrapped round one another. Daniel was not full of gentlemanly reserve in his embraces, unlike Edwin. He pulled her tightly to him, his tongue feeling its way gently, then more urgently between her lips until both of them were alight with desire, kissing each other’s face, neck, lips, breaking away for a few minutes to walk, before they were drawn together again like magnets. By the end of the afternoon her cheeks were tingling after the chafe of his skin against hers, his dark stubble prickling her, and the feel of his strong body was imprinted on her as if she knew him through and through, had somehow always known him. It was a wrench to separate and to say goodbye. But his invitation to come to the house, to see more of him and his family, was compensation.

‘Won’t your mother mind me dropping by?’

‘No, course not.’ The serious look he gave her further affected her. ‘With the shop there’re always people coming in anyway. And she likes you. Lucy talks about you and Ma’s liked talking to you when you came. She said you were . . .’ He glanced at the sky as if for inspiration. ‘What was it now?’

‘Stop teasing me.’ She poked him and he jumped.

‘I’m not! I think she said you were very sympathetic.’ He chuckled. ‘Oh – and very frightening.’

‘Frightening?’

‘No, she didn’t really say that! But come round.’ His face grew serious and he laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘Or I’ll have to come to the school every day and show all Miss Purdy’s class what I feel about their teacher.’

‘Don’t you dare! Of course I’ll come. As long as it’s all right.’

‘Oh, it’s all right.’ He held her close and kissed her forehead, just close to the line of her little waves of hair. ‘My lovely Gwen.’

That first week, she had left it for a couple of days before visiting, forcing herself to wait, to be measured in her behaviour, even though there was nothing measured in her feelings. Her emotions were in turmoil. Even in two days she had convinced herself that the walk on the hills was, if not a dream – she remembered it too vividly for that – an aberration, and that when she saw Daniel again everything would be different and the love and closeness would all be lost. He had been doing nothing but play with her. These thoughts almost made her afraid to go again because she could not bear to face the loss of him, the expression in his eyes when he looked down at her.

On the third day, when she knew she could stay away no longer, he was waiting for her. She caught a glimpse of him outside the gate as she came out of the school and her heart leapt with excitement. She hurried towards him, attempting to look poised and calm in front of the gaggles of children all trying to push through the gate at once, but a delighted smile broke over her face in spite of herself.

‘Hello, Miss Purdy.’ Even the sound of his voice brought her up in goose pimples. He was smiling, speaking with teasing formality.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Fernandez.’ They were surrounded by children. ‘Have you come to collect Lucy?’

‘That’s right. I don’t s’pose she’ll be first out, though.’

The Canal Street children dispersed quickly, leaving them standing alone. Gwen saw Lucy emerge from the girls’ entrance with Alice Wilson beside her.

‘I thought you were coming to see us?’ Daniel said.

‘I am – of course. In fact I was going to come today.’ The children were moving closer. ‘D’you see this little girl, with Lucy? This is Alice. The poor child can hardly see a thing.’

Daniel looked at Alice’s bedraggled figure. Her plaits were roughly tied and her clothes looked unkempt and messy. Nowadays she looked worse than some of the other children in the school. She didn’t look like the Alice who had arrived in January.

The girls parted and Lucy walked home with her brother and teacher.

‘Miss Purdy’s agreed to come and have a cup of tea,’ Daniel said.

‘Have we got anything to eat?’ Lucy asked eagerly.

‘Oh, I expect we can find something.’

Theresa was talking and laughing with a woman in the shop as they walked through, but she broke off and said cheerily, ‘Afternoon, Miss Purdy!’

On the table in the back, beside the brown teapot and cups, was a plate of homemade tarts. There was also a jam jar with a little bunch of pink tulips in it.

As Daniel and Lucy were making tea, the bell in the shop rang as the customer went out and Theresa came through to the back, a smile on her face.

‘That Mrs Harvey’s a character. Always gives me a good laugh, she does.’ She sat down at the table. ‘Help yourself to a jam tart, won’t you?’ Gwen, who was hungry, obeyed eagerly. ‘I hope those children have been little angels today?’

‘Well, yours has!’ Gwen laughed. Lucy blushed, carrying a bowl of sugar lumps to the table. ‘She’s as bright as a button. And you’ve been helping Alice, haven’t you? She can’t see what’s on the blackboard, you see.’

‘She can’t see
anything
, hardly at all,’ Lucy said.

‘I wrote to her mother weeks ago, suggesting she get the girl’s eyes tested,’ Gwen said indignantly. ‘She doesn’t seem to have done a thing about it.’

‘Can’t afford it, most likely,’ Daniel said.

‘But she’s one of the best-dressed children in the school. Well, she
was
.’ There was something about Alice that really perplexed Gwen. ‘I’m not sure what else to do.’

She finished her jam tart. ‘That was
so
nice. My landlady’s cooking is very peculiar. I hate to think what she’d manage to do to jam tarts.’

Theresa chuckled. ‘Have another one then, my love. I’ve made plenty.’

‘No, it was delicious, but I won’t. I’m sure they’ll soon go with all your family – let the children have them.’

They chatted on about the schools the other Fernandez children attended and Vincent’s first job. At fourteen he had just left school and acquired a job with a coffin maker.

‘He has to paint RIP on the side of each one!’ Daniel said.