Sing Like You Know the Words (11 page)

Friends noticed something hard
developing in her character. She became prone to sarcasm. It would
have been easy to conclude that the cause was related to the
contrast between hers and David’s experiences. Her brilliant
academic career had led to humiliation and begging for work, while
David, who’d never studied seriously, seemed to rise without
visible effort. If there was any tinge of jealousy to her
frustration, she would never allow David to see it. Other people
close to her, Matthew for example, caught occasional glimpses of
suppressed rage that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her calm
exterior.

None of them saw much of Tim in
those days. The army had sponsored his studies and now, as he said,
he had to repay his debt to society. He thought that he would spend
another year with the army of the Rhine, perfecting his German with
as many girls as would speak to him and researching local brews. He
came back on leave from time to time and didn’t seem much changed.
Apart from the short hair there was nothing military about him
without a uniform: just the same skinny imp with dark eyes and a
malicious sense of humour. It was the rest of them who were
changing.

Matthew was still ever present
in their lives. Like David and Patricia, he had stayed in the city
after college. More accurately he’d never left. His family lived on
the poorer south side of town, so going to university had only
moved him a few miles north of home. He seemed less a leaf in the
stream than a leaf in a flat becalmed pond. Matthew himself said
that anything that happened to him resulted less from his conscious
decisions as from his constant indecision.

An unspectacular version of good
fortune attended Matthew even when character failed him. When it
had come to choosing colleges, he’d not wanted to stray far from
home, preferring to be near to his mother. That had led to a
problem about his grant, but somehow Mrs James had settled that
with the education authority on his behalf. His father was long
gone; dead so far as Mrs James was concerned, so an exception was
made. He seemed reasonably intelligent and he applied himself
moderately. At the end of three years he was duly certified
Bachelor of Arts, but that left him with very little idea of what
he might do next.

For a while, Matthew drifted,
until someone from the faculty who remembered his name put him
forward for a work experience vacancy with the local newspaper. It
was an unusual kindness, but Matthew seemed to provoke a general
goodwill in others without inspiring anything so positive as
friendship. He put it down to the general air of haplessness that
he supposed attached to his person, making others feel sorry for
him.

The idea was that he would spend
a few weeks at the paper finding out whether he might be interested
in going on to journalism school, but when his placement expired,
it happened that the paper found itself short of a junior writer,
so instead of returning to school, he stayed on as junior
reporter.

It wasn’t much but it was a real
job. So long as he was careful to avoid being noticed enough to be
singled out for promotion or dismissal, he might keep at it for
years without his inner life being too much disturbed. It was
enough that he had to contend with a vague competitiveness that he
didn’t understand and preferred to deny, without the outside world
getting in the way of his wish to lead a quiet life.

When it was known that he would
be staying on at the paper, his boss told him that he should spend
some time with Tuttle and Grayson, who would show him the rudiments
of the craft. Up to then he had been doing mostly odd jobs. Mr
Elliott explained to him that Richard Tuttle and Ralph Grayson were
the senior staff reporters.

-Does that mean that they are in
charge of the news?

-No, it bloody well does not,
and don’t let them tell you otherwise.

Mr Elliott assured him that he
would learn a lot from the senior reporters, who had a many years
experience between them. They would be great fun to work with, he
said. He led Matthew to the doorway of their office from where he
made rudimentary introductions and left rather hurriedly. It seemed
that Mr Elliott was not entirely comfortable in the presence of
these two.

Ralph Grayson looked at the new
boy and grunted with disgust. Ralph was a tall spidery man in a
tweed jacket with elbow patches. He had greasy dark hair and what
remained of it on top was roughly combed over the bald patches. His
face was long and thin, but it seemed that the top and bottom did
not match, the high forehead was so narrow and the powerful jaw so
pronounced. It was fascinating to see, a face composed of features
that were ordinary in themselves but combined to make something so
ugly. Matthew had to will himself not to look so directly at Ralph
as to stare, without actually avoiding looking at him: it was an
effort.

Richard seemed quite ordinary in
comparison: short grey hair, slightly paunchy, a bit of a beard and
reading glasses pushed well down a broad nose.

-Don’t expect us to waste our
time showing you anything, were Ralph’s first words, and don’t get
in my way. That ass Elliott told us to expect you, but I don’t
suppose you will stay around very long. Most of them don’t. In too
much of a hurry to land a job in radio, or one of the nationals, or
maybe television. Anything they can get that doesn’t require more
than a vague grasp of the English language. If they fail at that,
some of them even leave to get proper jobs – working for a living,
ugh. I suppose you have ambitions to work in television.

He didn’t wait for an answer to
this, but continued.

-Anyway, I have never liked
being around children and please don’t expect me to make an
exception in your case. In particular do not expect me to correct
your grammar, syntax or spelling; although in all fairness I should
warn you not to rely on our fool of an editor in that respect
either. In fact probably you should avoid writing anything so far
as that’s possible, as your likely to embarrass yourself. The best
advice I can give you, as long as you’re here; observe, reflect,
and be silent.

-Richard grinned at Matthew and
offered his hand.

-Welcome, lad to the National
Union of Journalists, Trappist monk section, he said.

***

It wasn’t an auspicious start,
but soon Matthew decided that he might make a go of being a local
newspaperman. He quickly got used to the slow rhythms of Richard’s
soft Pennine accent and the harsher tones of Ralph’s acidic version
of BBC English. It was easy to follow Ralph’s instruction to be
quiet around these two: they seemed to have so much to say, not
about the world as it should be, but the world as it was. He felt
dull and stupid in comparison. For the first time (perhaps because
no one joked about it) he was conscious of feeling shamed by his
own brutal Leeds accent, rather than being aggressively defensive
of it.

Matthew found a one person flat
to rent, that was not too expensive, but for him as for his
friends, life centred on the house at Oakland Ridge.

As soon as the house was fixed
up enough for Patricia not to absolutely prohibit visitors, David
and his wife began to host social evenings for the ever growing
circle of friends and people who it would be useful for David to
know. As an old friend of the family, Matthew had a standing
invite. He joked that he was there to prove that the happy couple
had lived ordinary lives before they became aspiring yuppies. The
word was new; and its use made a few pained lines appear on David’s
otherwise untroubled face. But Matthew had a certain licence to say
uncomfortable things. Generally he behaved himself.

Sometimes he would bring Carol
with him, but more usually he’d be alone. Often Patricia would play
hostess, attaching him to whichever lone guest seemed to be feeling
out of place.

A character so easily given to
resentment as Matthew sometimes had to kick against becoming, as he
said, a stage prop in someone else’s social life; but the truth was
that he enjoyed these evenings, especially after the more stuffy
guests had gone. Everyone relaxed and the serious drinking began.
And although Matthew had felt ambivalent about alcohol as a
student, now he joined in with the rest. With drink in him, he
would feel less tongue tied, more able to talk to strangers. It
gave him a feeling of freedom.

David’s hospitality was lavish.
Few of the guests knew or cared that much of the upper floor of the
house was still in a condition that Patricia described as ruined.
Towards the end of the night, drinking wine that was
inappropriately good for the hour, one or other of the guests might
wonder aloud how someone so young as David could afford such a
fantastic home.

Then David would talk like a
wise estate agent for a few minutes, pointing out that the
neighbourhood was not great (cheap new homes crowded outside its
high walls and hedges). The house needed a lot of work and it would
be too big for most buyers. True he’d negotiated a good deal but in
all honesty the house would never sell for much (not that they
intended to leave). The guests would nod at his modesty which
didn’t alter the fact that the place was a mansion. Matthew knew
that the reality was that David could not afford the house. He was
gambling on being able to grow his income to match his outgoings
before his situation became too serious.

His friend’s finances were one
more thing for Matthew to worry about. Meanwhile, in the daytime at
least, he had the job of writing for the paper to occupy his
time.

He was offered plenty of advice.
Someone told him that a local paper never used more than eight
basic stories. The news was just these few standards, shuffled and
rehashed. Richard told him that the nationals were the same. Ralph
claimed that really there were only six stories not eight.

But there was more to it than
just writing. Early on, there was a boy who had been killed in a
horrific motorcycle accident and Matthew was assigned to get the
human interest story from his girlfriend.

-Richard, why would she want to
talk to a stranger about it?

-She won’t at first, that’s why
we’re sending you. You’re young and sympathetic. Imagine what she’d
think if Ralph went.

-But what can I say to her?

Matthew was deeply
uncomfortable. Richard’s smile was not unkindly.

-You don’t need to say much at
all. Just ask her if she wouldn’t want the lad to be remembered.
You could say “their love to be remembered” if you want to lay it
on thick. Then just get a few details. The story writes itself.

-What do you mean?

-It’s a dying young story.
Basically there’s two kinds. You can have promise unfulfilled or
doomed romance. Promise unfulfilled is about what a brilliant
person the victim would have turned out to be if he’d lived, so
with a biker you’re better off with doomed romance. Have a look at
some of my old clippings. You’ll get the drift.

-It seems wrong. Dishonest.

Richard saw his problem.

-Ah, ethics. You feel that we’re
intruding and trivialising? Well look at it the other way round.
The girl is going out with this boy and suddenly he’s smeared down
the road; there one day, gone the next. Makes no sense to her or
anyone else. She has the chance to say a few words about it to a
young lad like yourself who’s so sincere that he seems a bit dim.
Even if she thinks she’d rather not at first, it will do her good.
And later she reads your piece and life makes a little more sense,
because she understands her part. She’s the tragic bride to be.
She’s read that story before about someone else. Now she knows how
to behave; the facts have been given a meaning and a context.

-But it’s not her meaning. We’ve
reduced her to a conventional figure.

Richard sighed.

-I could be pretentious and call
it a shared narrative. The world repeats itself endlessly lad. The
same tale with different players. That’s what’s true, as you’ll see
soon enough. Individuality is not as important as you believe. It’s
stories that we need. Without stories we wouldn’t know how to act
at all.

***

Patricia had read about and
visited the great Inns of Court in London and knew their histories.
Lincoln’s Inn, Gray’s Inn, the Temple; names steeped in ancient
mystery. You walked through their courtyards and escaped from the
traffic of common humanity, into a little village of the intellect
sheltered against the more brutal world outside. You felt rather
than heard a song of old learning being sung by the weathered
bricks of chambers; the spirit of the place. In Patricia’s mind at
least, there was timeless magic in each of these places; each door
with its painted wooden board announcing the names of tenants in a
handwritten style. Only to read the names was to glimpse a
different world; hyphenated surnames of the educated upper classes,
exotic foreign sounding names. First names that would have been out
of date a hundred years ago in any other setting.

She had pictured herself in some
future time; a tenant of chambers in the Temple, meeting clients
and their solicitors in her own office that would be just shabby
enough to express a careless grace. She would pour tea into an old
and expensive set of plain thin china, and patiently explain her
subtle insights on the client’s case from behind a battered desk
that had given service to generations of counsel. In the summer, if
she had no lunchtime meetings, she would make her way down the neat
garden and slip through the small wrought iron gate to walk along
the Embankment and feel that standing on the bank of the Thames,
she was in the flow of history.

The dream had to change after
she met and allowed herself to be wooed by David, who saw
opportunities to make his mark in Leeds and had never even
considered moving to the capital. She had resigned herself to
working from provincial chambers, which provided an experience
quite different from what she had imagined.