Pure as the Lily (15 page)

He had heard old Dixon, the Latin master, say, “ War or no war, it would never have happened in my day. “

It was a sore point with some of them that the products of the Teachers’ Training College were getting a foot in. He would like to bet he could teach better than half of them on the staff; he had proved it with these fifth-formers.

He had been given the fifth form because Watson had been called up, and they were hard put to get someone to fill his place, but he knew that the Head was pleased with the progress that the lads were making. He himself knew his own worth as a teacher. He knew he had the knack of drawing them out; he never used sarcasm and didn’t hold with the theory that thirty-five silent and solemn boys formed a disciplined class. Yet he stood no nonsense. Oh no! They knew how far they could go. That is, all except Crockford. But there was always a Crockford in a form, there was always one whom you detested.

The class was silent now, still bright-eyed, and waiting. He looked at his watch. There was ten minutes to go. Should he? Crockford was holding him with that hypnotic stare of his; he could not go on ignoring him for ever, the others would notice. He moved his book slightly to the left on the broad, flat table, wetted his lips, reached out for a pencil as if about to write something further on a sheet of paper already half-filled with notes, then lifted his head and, looking at the boy sitting in the third desk from the front, said, “Ah yes, Crockford. What did you select?”

There elapsed ten whole seconds before Crockford rose to his feet.

“Forty-three, sir.” The voice was thick and deep, like that of a man.

“Well, carry on.”

There was a silence now, such as an actor might create before delivering some profound oratory. Then in modulated tones the boy quoted:

“When most I wink, then do my eyes best see, For all the day they view things un respected But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed; Then thou whose shadow shadows doth make bright, How would thy shadow’s form form happy show To the clear day with thy much clearer light, When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed made

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By looking on thee in the living day, When in dead night thy fair imperfect shade Through heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay?

All days are nights to see, till I see thee, And nights, bright days, when dreams do show thee me. “ The complicated rhythm, the sense, and only sense to those acquainted with Shakespeare, had been mastered by the speaker. The eyes of all the form turned in admiration on Crockford, but Crockford’s eyes were looking into the master’s, laughing into the master’s.

Since he had taken over the form he had suffered, and the word was suffered, Crockford’s own and particular way of hitting back, which took the form of laughter, clever, vicious, secret laughter. and insolence.

For all the day they view things un respected

They were waiting for him to make a comment on the performance. He tapped his pencil on the table, put his head back as if thinking, then said, “Well now, what about my own contribution; I am sure you would want to hear something from me.”

The giggle that went round the class was almost girlish. They knew Willowy Walton wrote poems. It was said that he had done a book of them and that they would have been published if it hadn’t been for the war. There were cries from the boys now of: “Yes, sir!”

“Oh yes! sir.”

Jimmy held up his right hand for silence and, placing his left hand in the vent of his coat, in Nelson fashion, and taking an exaggerated stance, he began, in the voice of an indignant child:

“He said it was a..................... BLUEBOTTLE, I said it was a.....................FLY.

He said it was a. BLUEBOTTLE, And then I asked him. WHY

“Just ‘cos” he said, “Just ‘cos That’s all.

Wasn’t any answer, was it? At all. “

The class was convulsed. He let them have their way for a moment or so, then brought it to a teetering stop by saying, “That’s all, joke’s over! Clear up.”

He kept his eyes away from Grockford. He supposed it had been a mean trick, ignoring such a performance, then stealing the boy’s thunder, even ridiculing it with a few lines of childish jibberish.

Aw, he was glad it was Saturday—tomorrow. Yet was he? Didn’t he always long to get back on Monday morning?

A boy now called, “Please, sir, please sir. What will we have to get ready for next week?” He was gathering up some books from his desk when he stopped and looked at the boy. He would like to give them The Rape of Lucrece or Venus and Adonis, and he would and could if it weren’t for Crockford.

He lifted up the books and walked towards the door, then stopped and, covering the whole class with the sweep of his eyes, he said, “Walter de la Mare next Friday.

Three jolly gentlemen In coats of red Rode their horses Up to bed.

^Study, but do not try to emulate, this writer. “ He then walked briskly out.

A rippling murmur followed him into the corridor, which pleased him.

Modestly, he prided himself on the quality of his exits . and entries, and he felt flattered by the knowledge that this fifth form in particular waited expectantly for them

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He decided not to go into the Common Room; there was no need. Anyway, he hadn’t much time, he was on Home Guard duty tonight. But first, he wanted to look in on Mary. If he were slippy he would likely have half an hour there;

that would get him home about a quarter past five and he’d be in time to get something ready for Betty coming in at six. He hurried out of the gate, thrusting his way between groups of boys, hurried to the end of the road and jumped on a bus. Fifteen minutes later, he was going up the back staircase to the rooms above the shop and breathing a sigh that again he had managed to get in without his mother detecting him.

“Oh, hello there.” Mary had heard his step on the stairs and met him in the hall.

“What a day! You look frozen.”

“I am.” He took off his coat and was about to go towards the sitting-room when she said, “Come in here,” and pushed the dining-room door open; “Ben’s just popped up for a cup.”

“Hello there, Jimmy.” Ben looked up from the table.

“Hello, Ben. By! it’s a snifter.” He stood before the fire, his knees bent so that his buttocks should be nearer the heat.

Ben now asked, “Well, what kind of a week has this been? Murdered anybody?” He laughed.

“No, not quite, but I had the strong inclination to this afternoon.

I’ve got a kid in my class called Grockford. I just can’t stand him, he gets under my skin. “

“Dim?”

“No, no.” Jimmy tossed his head.

“Dim, no. Just the opposite, a very bright boy. Perhaps that’s the reason I don’t like him, competition.” They laughed together now.

“Here, sit down. Have this cup of tea.” Mary motioned him to the table, then said, “I’ve got a bit of beek-steak pudding left from dinner time, not corned beef she pulled a face ‘the real stuff.

Would you like it? “

Would I like it! “

“Well, drink your tea. It won’t take ten minutes to heat; I’ll put it in the oven. “

“Ta, Mary.” They exchanged a warm and intimate smile before she went into the kitchen.

Mary was not, naturally, the girl of ten years ago; she was now a fully developed woman, a beautiful woman. If her mirror didn’t tell her so, Ben told her, at least once a week, and that, she considered, after ten years of marriage was something.

When she looked back it didn’t seem that she had been married to Ben and living in this house for ten years. Strangely, compared with those early months in 1933, nothing much seemed to have happened in the past ten years, except that the war had started and was still going madly on. Inside herself, too, she seemed to have remained stagnant; her resolute outside appearance was only a facade, for underneath she still carried the burden of fear and doubt, and remorse.

Although she had become used to looking at Ben’s disfigured face, there were times when she was bowed down with the responsibility of his changed appearance and the effects it had had on him. Ben was still kind, still thoughtful, still loving, oh yes, still loving, but there was a bitterness in him that hadn’t been there before her father had crashed the bottle of sweets down on to his face. But the bitterness was a subtle thing; it wasn’t evident to anyone but herself. She doubted if Ben himself realized it; perhaps because he had given it the outlet through an ambition to make money.

Before they had married she had learned about his hobby, the thing called Stocks and Shares. His father, he said, had started him on it.

His father and his cousin Annie had been at it for years. Even the shock of Clarence Hatry, the millionaire financier, going broke in 1929 about the same time as the New York Stock Market crash, hadn’t deterred them. Hang on, his father had said; the end of the seesaw that was down was sure, by the very length of the plank, to

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come up top on the next swing. And he had been right, for most of their shares at least.

After the child was born he had spent more and more of his spare time reading papers that dealt with these shares, and then he had taken the small profits from the shop and spent them on buying more shares, and in 1938 when the slump was seen to be visibly easing itself out of the North he had opened another shop, which he managed himself, while she, with the assistance of young Teresa Bennett, had kept this one going and seen to the house. Then, just a week before the war had broken out, he had taken a third shop, mostly green grocery this one, and put a young fellow in as manager.

She had felt sad about him putting a manager in, thinking that if things had been different it would have been a wonderful opportunity for her da, for since Alee had come out of prison at the end of 1934 he hadn’t done a stroke of work, and, since the very night he had been let out, he had lived with her grannie and gran da That night, when he had gone home, her ma had told him that he’d have to sleep on a shakey-down in the front room because grandma McAlister and she were sleeping together, and she had got rid of . that one’s bed. On this, he had turned on his heel without saying one word and walked out, and gone to the home of his childhood. And there, like someone sucked dry of dignity, he had remained, living quite unconcernedly on the old couple, who could not, in the ordinary way of things, have supported him if it hadn’t been for the pound note Mary slipped into her grannie’s hand once a week.

Her da remained as a living recrimination that tainted even her happiest days. There was plenty of work for him to do now, if he could have done it; but the term of imprisonment, coming on the years of idleness which had sapped his manhood, together with his conscience, which had lashed at him all during his prison confinement, added to which the final degradation of being relegated to the floor in his own house, all combined to turn him into a sick man, both mentally and physically. He had never been big, but now he seemed to have shrunk to half his size, and he looked as old as his father.

When people talked about him they blamed him. He had no gumption, they said. These things happened to other people and they got over them.

Life had to be lived. Only Mary herself understood, because these things had happened to a gentle man, a gentle man who loved and trusted one person, and it was this same person who had betrayed him.

Now she knew she’d have to carry him for the rest of his days. Yet strangely, she did not feel the burden of him as she did that of Jimmy. Why this was so she couldn’t fully understand, for Jimmy had a good position, he was a school teacher. Her mother had done something here. Her mother was answerable for so many things, she was even answerable for warping Jimmy’s life. Yet she had this to her credit;

she had equipped him, or been the means of him being equipped, to earn his living at the one thing he wanted to do, teach.

He was clever was Jimmy, he would go far. So she thought. So why was she always worried about him? Was it because of his drinking? Not really; everybody drank these days. If you could manage to get it you bought it even if you didn’t really want it. It was like everything else: anything that could be eaten or drunk that was offered you, you bought. But the trouble with Jimmy was he couldn’t carry his drink, not like Ben. After a few whiskies Jimmy acted like a daft lad. But he had drunk hardly at all until he had married Betty.

Betty! Why, in the name of God, had he to take someone like Betty!

Hadn’t he had enough of their ma? Couldn’t he see that Betty was a replica of their ma? She mightn’t be half the size of their ma, being tiny, petite they called it; but the first time she had met Betty she had seen beneath that petite surface, beneath that smiling face and childish manner, to a cast-iron character that was every bit as hard as their mas.

She remembered their first meeting. It was on a Tuesday in September of ‘41. She remembered it because it had been given out on the wireless that the Shah of Persia had abdicated that morning and was to be succeeded by the Grown Prince, and that the Duke of Kent had returned from Canada on Sunday and that since he had left London he had travelled fifteen thousand miles by air. Little things like this always stuck in her mind when they were attached to events, and it had been an event meeting Betty, for she had acted baby-like and gushed and smarmed all over her. But her baby-days didn’t alter the fact that she was a lot older than Jimmy, seven years, in fact. She had longed to say to him, You’re mad, lad, you’re mad. “ It wasn’t so much Betty being older than him, as he not seeing that the front she put on was just an act.

Betty had clear grey eyes and a sharp little face, and both the eyes and the face had a cutting effect on Mary. In a way she could have been her ma’s daughter. Yet because of her skittish ways, Jimmy imagined she was the antithesis of their ma. He saw her as someone he could rule while at the same time love, and pet. How wrong he had been, and how he was paying for it now.