Song at Twilight (10 page)

Sometimes Timothy and his problems seem so far away and at other times, I sit and think about him and wonder how he is now and what he is up to and whether I will ever see him again, and then it seems like only yesterday that he was eating crumpets and cake in my old kitchen.

Of course he is quite grown-up now, and no doubt very good looking.

It is true that I was really relieved to see Timothy back at school after those summer holidays although he seemed definitely to have grown even further away from me. At first I put this down to the awkwardness he must feel at having told me about his mother and Leo, and to the discomfort of having been on holiday with them both. Naturally I was dying of curiosity about that holiday and hoped very much that Timothy would soon come round to tea and tell me all about it.

In fact Timothy did not come to see me for about three weeks by which time I was beginning to be seriously worried about him. In his French lessons he sat silently at the back of the class, rarely raising his eyes from the desk in front of him. He exchanged as few words as possible, certainly with me, and as far as I could see, with everyone else as well.

He walked about the school with his shirt tails hanging out and his shoelaces untied. He looked scruffy and dejected and vacant. His work was nearly always handed in late and was of poor quality when it appeared. His housemaster had had words with him and even he, for all his insensitivity, wondered if the boy were worried about something or if he were just suffering from what he called typical schoolboy indolence and bloody-mindedness.

Once or twice I had suggested that Timothy might look in for tea, but he had not turned up. I decided that the time had come for me to bring authority to bear. I would tell him that I wished to speak to him about his work. Then he would have to come.

So on the Friday of the third week of term Timothy came to my house at five o'clock in the afternoon. I had not baked a cake.

"I asked you here," I told him rather curtly, "to talk about your work."

He stared at the floor.

I told him strictly how important it was for him to work. I said all the things which school teachers say to children. I told him that he was letting himself down; I asked him to think of the future; I told him that he must learn to grow up and I told him that he was letting down his parents who, after all, were spending a great deal of money to give him a good education and that he might regret the wasted opportunities for the rest of his life.

He waited patiently for me to finish and then looked up and stared me straight in the eyes.

"Don't talk about my parents," he said. "You know what I think of them. Of my mother anyway." He looked at the ground again.

"The holidays were foul," he went on. "Sometimes I just wish I were dead." And then he said, looking at me again, "Have you ever wished you were dead? Have you ever walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over, and wished you had the courage to jump?"

My blood froze.

"Timothy," I said, "you mustn't, you really mustn't talk like that." I had stretched out my hand to touch him and was holding him firmly by the wrist.

"Don't worry," he said, "I don't suppose I'd ever dare."

Of course I was worried. I was worried sick.

"I'll make some tea," I said. "You'll find some biscuits in the cupboard. I'm afraid," I added, lamely apologising, "I haven't made a cake today." I wished I had.

"You've always been kind to me," he said stiffly, "and I am very grateful."

I felt my eyes pricking and turned away to pour the boiling water into the pot. 

Timothy stayed with me for a long time that day. He missed evening prep but I was in a position to see that he wouldn't get into trouble about that.

For the first time since I had known him, Timothy talked a great deal about himself. Once he had started it was almost as if nothing would stop him.

He told me how lonely he was and how pointless everything was. Sometimes he would sit down in his room or in the library with every intention of doing some work, but he would soon find himself staring vacantly out of the window or at the floor, or sometimes he would fall into a deep sleep and wake hours later still feeling exhausted with nothing achieved. He didn't know why, but he just seemed quite unable to make himself work. He had even stopped writing poetry.

He used to think that things would be better when he left school, but then he wasn't really looking forward to that either because he didn't know what he would do. He didn't want to go to university and he didn't want to be shut up in an office all day, he didn't want to join the army and anyway he didn't have any particular talents.

In some ways school, which was hell, was better than home. Home meant either Jeddah which he hated, a father with whom he appeared to have little understanding and his father's mistress whom he didn't like at all, or it meant his mother and Leo. Leo was still always hanging around his mother and it made him sick.

Leo made him sick. Couldn't his mother see that Leo was much more interested in Timothy than in her?

And Leo wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. He was forever pestering Timothy.

I didn't care to go into the details of what that pestering might entail, but I decided that at the very next possible opportunity I would have to have a word with Leo. It would be both difficult and embarrassing but I must do it. Had I not just heard a young boy talking of death and suicide? Indeed I could not wait for an opportunity to present itself, I would have to make a point of seeing Leo.

When Timothy eventually left me that evening, I felt that although talking must have helped him, he was in a very bad way indeed. Apart from confronting Leo, I was not sure what the best course of action might be. Timothy had promised me that he would try to work, but I could hardly see how he was going to be able to change his ways overnight. He also promised to come and see me on a regular basis. He needed, I felt sure, to be in everyday, fairly close contact with somebody, and that contact was at least something which I could offer.

So for the next few weeks I did see Timothy regularly. He came to see me two or three times a week, if not more, and I made biscuits and baked cakes for him and listened to his troubles which seemed to go round and round in circles and which were apparently insoluble. The only solution that I could see to them lay in his being able to make himself work. But the ability to work continued to elude him. I was beginning to grow desperate on his behalf and on his behalf I felt tense and nervous; and because of him I became abstracted and found difficulty, myself, in concentrating on my work.

All my emotions and all my thoughts were involved in caring for that boy. For the first time I began fully to understand the desperation of a mother with an unhappy, difficult child.

I tried to contact Leo, but with little success. He never answered my letters and when I rang Patricia she said that he hadn't been in touch for a long time. She had almost begun to wonder whether she still had a son. But, on the whole, it was better for Leo not to come home. Victor was quite put out with him and if he did come, Patricia was sure the atmosphere would be most uncomfortable. She sometimes envied me for having no children.

"You can have no idea, Prudence," she said, "how lucky you are…,"

I thought of poor Timothy and sighed. She couldn't conceivably love Leo more than I loved Timothy. She certainly didn't care for him so much.

"If you do hear from Leo, please ask him to get in touch with me as soon as possible," I said. 

Patricia appeared to have no curiosity as to why I wanted to speak to her son, which was just as well.

In the event I had to wait a few more weeks before he suddenly turned up at Blenkinsop's, without Mrs Hooper this time, and came to call on me.

During those weeks something of great importance had occurred. Natalie had appeared on the scene.

Chapter 10

May 28th

Natalie had been at Blenkinsop's for as long as Timothy and although I had never taught her, I was, like every other member of staff, aware of her presence in the school, mainly because her name was all too frequently among those on the detention list which was pinned up in the staff room regularly at the end of every week. She was a small, dumpy child with a round face and straight mousy hair. From her appearance no one would have supposed her to be a naughty girl and yet she was for ever in trouble. She skipped lessons, failed to hand in her work, climbed out of school at night, answered the teachers back, was flagrantly disobedient, played practical jokes, smoked, probably drank, raised petitions for the sacking of the headmaster and generally made a nuisance of herself. She was usually to be seen leading a gang of silly, admiring girls around the school. Girls who obeyed her every command.

It seemed to me that Natalie walked on very thin ice indeed and I was often amazed that, if the stories one heard about her were true, the headmaster was prepared to tolerate her in the school at all. I imagined that he did not in fact expel her because she was very clever. Oxbridge material. She would one day bring honour to the school. She would win a scholarship – or at least an exhibition – to Balliol and her name would go up in gold letters at Blenkinsop's, a school which was hardly famed for its academic success, and all her misdeeds would then be forgotten.

When Natalie returned to school that Autumn Term, there was more than the usual amount of talk about her in the staff common room.

"Have you seen Natalie Knight this term?" a lugubrious chemistry teacher enquired. He was looking rather less lugubrious than usual. "She's changed completely during the holidays."

Indeed she had. She had changed so much that some of us even failed to recognise her at first. For one thing she had shot up. She must have grown at least two inches and in doing so, she had slimmed down. She even had quite a pretty figure. Her face seemed less round, her neck longer, her nose bigger, and her mousy hair had been given a vivid henna rinse. It stood on end and shone, a luminous, purplish red. She had plucked her eyebrows to two fine arches and her large, light brown eyes were coated with purple and blue mascara. A pair of very large gold rings hung from her ears. Those, of course, were not allowed at Blenkinsop's but that would hardly have bothered Natalie.

There was no doubt about it, Natalie Knight had, during the course of one summer holiday, turned from an ugly duckling into a lovely young swan.

"There's hope for us all," said the lugubrious chemistry teacher.

I glanced at his bald head and the bags under his eyes and wondered what chance he had at so late a stage of turning into a swan. He must have been sixty if he was a day.

The first time I saw Natalie and Timothy together, I caught sight of them walking through the town one Saturday afternoon. I have to admit that I was quite surprised. They seemed to me to be a most unlikely couple at the best of times, and I could not for the life of me imagine what had brought them together. I was further amazed by the fact that they appeared to be deep in conversation.

I do not think that either of them spotted me on that occasion. In any case I, not wishing to meet them, crossed the road and disappeared into a shop. It would be perfectly true to say that since I had grown so fond of Timothy, he was never at the best of times far from my mind, but ever since he had spoken to me of his despair, I had found it very difficult to think of anything or anyone else at all. I spent hours worrying about him and his plight. I thought of him first thing in the morning and last thing at night. If I woke in the small hours, I thought of him then. I prayed for him in church, watched for him in school and counted the days and indeed the hours until he was due to visit me again.

He did come, as he had promised to do, regularly and although he never spoke again so explicitly of his despair, I could feel the weight of his depression in his languid movements and in the dull stare of his green eyes. I tried my best to give him hope, even to bring a smile to his sad face but it seemed as though it were beyond my powers.

It was inconceivable, I thought as I grilled a kipper for my supper that Saturday evening, quite inconceivable that Timothy could have taken a fancy to Natalie. I felt my heart constrict with fear. That would be a dreadful thing. Natalie could be nothing but a bad influence on Timothy. There must be some other explanation for their having walked into the town together.

I went to cut a slice of bread to make some toast. The loaf of bread reminded me of Timothy. It was white. I used always to buy wholemeal bread, but since Timothy had expressed a marked preference for white bread I had taken to buying that for his tea and now I too preferred it.

It was not just the white bread that reminded me of Timothy. As time went by more and more things had begun to remind me of him every day. Place names, like Ashford in Kent where he once casually mentioned that his aunt lived; Burton-on-Trent where he happened to have told me his father was born; London, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Mecca, Hampstead where his grandparents lived. Any mention of the colour green made me think of his eyes, fast cars made me think of him, the smell of a cake cooking, the smell of the school corridors, any reference to Christmas, to exams, to French lessons, to loneliness, laziness, beauty, despair…

I began to realise that I was in danger of becoming obsessional, and yet it was hardly surprising that the boy should be on my mind. After all I was probably the only person who had really cared for him at all over the last two years and now he was in a state of near suicidal despair which was not likely to be helped by an association with a naughty little flibbertigibbet.

Leo, too, in a way, had cared for Timothy. That I had to admit. But I was not sure that I particularly approved of his method of caring although it entered my head then to turn to Leo for advice.

By the time I had eaten my kipper and cleared away my plate, I was still thinking about Timothy and turning over in my mind what to do about him. Perhaps there was nothing to his being seen with Natalie and yet the very thought of Natalie caused my heart to constrict and a wave of awful dread to sweep through me.

I went to fetch a pile of books which needed correcting in the hope that they at least would take my mind off the problem.

The very next morning as I entered the staff common-room I heard the odious voice of Timothy's housemaster.

"Good-morning to you, Prudence." There was a hint of insolence in his tone.

"Good-morning, James," I said calmly.

"I hear your little toy-boy's going out," (his vowel sounds left much to be desired) "with the naughtiest girl in the school."

How I hated that man. I felt the blush which suffused me spreading over my entire body so that I should not have been surprised to find that even my knees had turned pink.

"A little rivalry, my dear Prudence," he said, "that's all," and put his great, square, freckled hand on my shoulder.

I shrugged it off and said angrily, "Can't you stop being so silly." Tears of confusion pricked behind my eyelids.

"Oh come on Prudence, don't take it so seriously. You know I'm only teasing," said James, and added almost kindly, "After all the boy should be grateful to you. You've been bloody good to him."

"I just worry about him, that's all," I said tensely.

"I only hope this love affair – if that's what you like to call it – won't get the boy into a bigger mess than he's in already," he said, and then left me to talk to a pretty young history mistress log who had joined the school that term and whose private life was a constant source of interest to those members of staff most concerned with tittle-tattle – indeed to the school as a whole. Some said that she was a lesbian, others that she was having an affair with a sixth form boy. I listened to none of it, but was infinitely grateful to her on that morning for diverting the attention of Timothy's horrible housemaster.

From that day on I began to notice that Timothy was to be seen everywhere in the company of Natalie who had abandoned her gaggle of acolytes in his favour.

I have to admit that he looked happier with her than he had done mooching around the school all alone. He and Natalie seemed to be permanently engrossed in conversation as they went about hand-in-hand, in blatant defiance of the six – or was it ten inch – rule. I cannot to this day imagine what they found to talk about.

Timothy's appearance changed at about the same time as he began to be seen with Natalie. He took to using some sort of gel on his hair so that it stood up in spikes all over his head, and he even walked with something of a swagger. This, one might think, was all very well, but his work did not improve. In fact I would go so far as to say that it actually deteriorated, if that was conceivably possible. To be more precise, he started to skip lessons, a crime which I regarded with the greatest concern. What on earth, I wondered, would become of the boy. I was worried sick.

I hardly need add that Timothy had stopped coming to see me. Indeed he seemed to avoid me.

It was imperative, I decided, that I speak to Leo. He might have some influence on Timothy, although, when I think of it now I cannot imagine why I thought such a thing since Timothy had declared his ardent dislike of Leo to me. But then I was at my wits' end. Here was a desperate boy, momentarily infatuated with a hopelessly silly girl, taking every day, one way or another, a further step towards self-destruction. And here was I, apparently the only person who cared for him, quite unable to approach him and completely lost.

At one stage I thought of having a word with Natalie herself, but I knew the sort of girl she was. She would have tossed her head in rude disdain, probably even told me to mind my own business and then, to add insult to injury, she would have laughed behind my back and boasted of her own impertinence, even made fun of me to Timothy. One thing I could not bear was to think of Timothy laughing at me.

I wrote to Leo, but again, he did not reply. I was desperate.

Then about three quarters of the way through term, by which time not only Timothy but Natalie, too, were running into serious trouble, Leo suddenly telephoned me. He wanted to see me. I was both amazed and glad. He arranged to come down the following Saturday. He would come alone, he said, and would like to stay the night. I was delighted.

*

On Tuesday morning I looked out of the window. It was a beautiful sunny day and Eric was ambling up the garden path. I watched him from behind the curtain. He couldn't see me, I was sure. Suddenly he turned and stepped on to the lawn, and stood quite still, staring intently in the direction of a group of shrubs.

I went on watching him for a while, wondering what it was that so absorbed his attention. It occurred to me that he looked quite charming, standing there engrossed in his own private world, unaware of being observed. He was nice looking and from where I was I could not see if he had done up his fly-buttons or not. Then, all at once, I felt ashamed of the spiteful way I laughed to myself about his inadequacies. Perhaps I, too, was prone to the weaknesses of age. Never mind his fly-buttons, he had a good, strong profile and a gentle expression on his tired face. If we were younger, perhaps I could have fallen in love with him. Perish the thought.

Perish the thought indeed, for no sooner had it crossed my mind than I realised that age is of no account. My guard was down and as I gazed unseen at Eric standing alone in my sunny garden, I suddenly felt intensely excited and young again. Oh dear, oh dear. I also felt rather foolish.

As I watched him Eric turned back onto the path and walked towards the front door. I moved quickly away from the window for fear of being seen and went to let him in.

I suppose that as I opened the door I must have been smiling broadly.

"You're looking very well this morning," Eric said brightly.

"So are you," I replied with unaccustomed warmth. "What were you looking at in the garden?"

"You've a pair of greenfinches nesting in your sumac," he said as he stepped over the threshold, and I could have hugged him.

So that is what has happened to me now. I have fallen in love with Eric and I am half ashamed and half excited.

I offered Eric a cup of coffee and fussed over him in the most ridiculous way as he drank it. I wondered what interesting outing he had come to propose today and hoped that he was not planning to include Laurel.

He stirred the sugar in his coffee. "I'm afraid I'll have to go to London for a day or two," he said.

My heart sank.

"Pity to go away just when the weather's turned nice – so much to do in the garden," he added.

"Must you really go?" I asked forlornly. What a shame, just when I've suddenly realised how much I need you here, I thought, and I gazed at the floor at a loss for words, amazed at my folly and terrified lest he guess what was in my mind.

"I shall miss you," I said curtly.

"Don't be silly, Prudence," he said. "I'll be back in a day or two and we'll climb into the old jalopy and be on the road again in no time. Where shall we go to? Exmoor? Dartmoor? The Quantocks…?" He gave a dry sort of chuckle as if he were laughing at some quite other, private joke, and patted my hand.

I felt confused and silly and altogether at a loss for words. I wondered if his chiropodist friend had anything to do with this sudden plan of departure, but dared not ask.