The Country Life (33 page)

‘Started what?' I said, following Martin through a doorway at the end of the reception area and down a long corridor.

‘Discussion,' he said. ‘That's how they kick off. You're not supposed to miss it.'

The corridor, like the reception area, was hung with drawings. From the far end, I could hear a growing rabble of voices. Although it didn't particularly resemble mine, the place reminded me unpleasantly of school. I was conscious, strangely, of my physical size, and of the freedom of my own clothes as I walked. We reached the end of the corridor, and Martin pushed open a door directly ahead which stood slightly ajar. The noise I had heard from the corridor was abruptly silenced. I followed behind him, and as the door swung shut I was confronted by an extraordinary scene. The room was large and very light, with windows all along one wall; and in the centre of it, the sun glancing off them in blinding flashes of steel, was a throng of wheelchairs.

‘Well, look who's here!' said a woman's voice.

For a moment I could not work out which among the blank, mute faces which stared at us from within the vast metallic tangle of apparatus had spoken. Looking up, my eyes met a pair level with my own, and I realized that the woman who stood at the centre of this curious circle must be the teacher.

‘Hello,' I said, addressing myself to her. ‘I'm Stella.'

‘Hello, Stella!' she replied; not, I felt, entirely convinced by my attempt to communicate with her as one adult to another. She looked down at her blood. ‘Say hello to Stella, everybody!'

There was a dissonant chorus of ‘Hello, Stella,' which began as a rumbling groundswell and tailed off into fluting chirps of welcome. Martin wheeled himself towards the group and took up a position on its fringes. His face was sullen. I lingered awkwardly, looking around for a chair.

‘Stella, why don't you sit over there?' said the woman, pointing to a chair by the wall.

‘OK,' I said.

‘Why can't she sit with us?' interposed a boy's voice gruffly. The words were slightly slurred.

‘Yes! Yes!' chorused some of the others in agreement.

‘
I
see.' The woman laughed ingratiatingly. I sensed that she was not pleased by this minor uprising. ‘Who thinks Stella should come and join our group?'

There was an immediate bristling of raised arms and straining torsos.

‘OK,' she said, looking around the group with an expression of concentration, as if conducting a serious calculation of votes. ‘Well, it looks as if you're very popular today, Stella! Do you want to draw your chair up just there?
That's
it.'

I moved my chair and sat down again. Raising my eyes, I saw that every face was turned towards me and I smiled stiffly. From where I sat, I could only see Martin's shoulder and the side of his head.

‘Martin!' said the woman, raising her eyebrows and opening her eyes wide. ‘Would you like to tell us why you were late again?'

She spoke very clearly, as if there was some danger that he wouldn't understand what she said. The portion of Martin I could see didn't move.

‘Sorry,' he mumbled.

‘We talked about this last week, didn't we? I think we all felt that your lateness was a problem, and that the others felt undermined by it. I think you said that you were going to make an effort to be on time, didn't you?'

‘It was my fault!' I interrupted, horrified by the woman's remarks.

‘Stella says it was her fault,' said the woman after a pause, never taking her eyes from Martin. ‘Is that true?'

‘I was supposed to drive him and I got delayed,' I insisted.

At this the woman turned to look at me. Her expression was steely.

‘We like to let the children speak for themselves here, Stella,' she said. ‘Is that true, Martin?'

‘I suppose so,' said Martin.

Trying to distract myself from the extreme dislike I was taking to this woman, I looked around at the group. There were about thirty of them, in roughly equal numbers of boys and girls. Most of them seemed considerably younger than Martin; several were barely more than children. It was very odd to see in replica the features I had come to associate with Martin's singularity. In numbers they took on the look of a species; and realizing this, I am afraid to say that I found myself in strong disagreement with the whole character of this convention, and not merely with its leader. The notion that Martin's misfortune should be promoted to the status of a characteristic struck me as wrong. It did not now surprise me, given the indignity of his qualification to attend it, that he disliked the centre so intensely.

‘I think some of the others feel that by being late you're giving out strong messages that you don't want to be part of the group,' persisted the woman. ‘I think you felt that, Marie, didn't you?'

Her wide eyes described a significant arc, landing on a girl of about Martin's age sitting opposite me on the other side of the room.

‘Yeah,' said Marie. Her voice was high-pitched. She had long, fair hair and a tragic expression.

‘I think you felt that Martin was trying to seek attention, didn't you?' said the woman presently, when it became clear that Marie was to say nothing more.

‘Yeah,' said Marie.

‘What do you say to that, Martin?'

‘It's crap,' said Martin.

One or two people sniggered.

‘Miss!' said a younger boy with a thick basin of dark hair, his arm shooting up. ‘He said
crap
!'

‘I know he did, Stephen,' sighed the teacher. ‘Don't you remember that we agreed Martin could sometimes use that sort of language, because that's how they speak at home? Do you remember that?'

‘It's true,' I assented, nodding.

‘Martin, do you see now how distracting your late entrances are? Do you see why the others might think you're attention-seeking?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Good. So will you be making more of an effort in future?'

‘
Yes
,' said Martin irritably.

‘OK!' said the woman brightly, the musical cadence of the word signalling a change of subject. ‘Let's begin our discussion, shall we? This week I wanted to talk about
feelings
.'

‘Feelings,' repeated the group. There was something incantatory in the woman's tone which made the response automatic.

‘Now,' she continued. ‘Who can tell me what
feelings
are?'

Hands shot up into the air.

‘Let's see.' The woman pursed her lips and made a selecting motion with her hand, as if she were choosing a sweet. ‘Elizabeth.'

‘They're emotions,' said Elizabeth, an unfortunate-looking redhead.

‘Ye-es,' said the woman coaxingly, implying that the answer had been insufficient. ‘What
sort
of emotions?'

‘All sorts,' said Elizabeth quizzically.

‘That's right. Good and bad. Who can tell me a good feeling? Stephen.'

Stephen was straining again with his arm aloft.

‘Eating chocolate!' he cried.

‘Ye-
es
,' said the woman, even more doubtfully. ‘But that's more of a
sensation
, isn't it?'

‘When your team wins at football!' said another boy.

‘Good!' beamed the woman.

‘When your friend comes to see you!'

‘Good!
'

I was edging back in my chair in the attempt to catch sight of Martin. He was sitting with his head erect and his eyes closed, with an aspect of almost mystical contemplation. As I was looking, he opened his eyes and gazed at me.

‘Now,' said the teacher, when the volley of positives had subsided. ‘What about
bad
feelings?'

I sensed that of the two subjects, this one interested her more; and that she would not be so easily pleased by the children's answers concerning it.

‘What about
bad
feelings?' she said again, giving the word every nuance that facial expression and intonation could muster.

‘When you're sad,' chirped a little girl beside me.

‘When you're
sad
,' repeated the woman triumphantly, looking around at the group. ‘What makes you sad?'

There was a fidgeting silence.

‘Martin,' she said presently. ‘What makes
you
sad?'

‘Take your pick,' said Martin, shrugging.

‘Stephen, what about you?'

‘Dunno,' said Stephen in a small voice.

I had my eye on Elizabeth, being more articulate but less defensive, to supply the correct answer; and sure enough, when her forays among the male contingent had proved unproductive, the woman's gaze settled confidently on the girl.

‘Elizabeth?'

‘When people don't treat you as normal,' said Elizabeth reliably, her fleshy white face barely moving.

‘When people don't treat you as normal,'
echoed the teacher, distributing the phrase with her eyes over the whole group. ‘And how does that make you feel?'

‘Sad,' said Elizabeth, nonplussed.

Now that I was settled in my chair, and had more or less got the measure of my new situation, the frantic pressure which had been pounding in my chest all day began slowly to subside. My drive to Buckley underwent in my mind the miraculous reduction which time can effect on an unpleasant past event, while other anxieties, emerging from its shadow, grew correspondingly larger. While I had certainly succeeded in conveying myself and Martin to the centre without injury, my accomplishment accrued in my mind a debt to luck which I had not attributed to it at the time. Concerned only with the immediate problem of getting to Buckley that afternoon, I had failed to take into account a future regularly punctuated by these journeys; a future which must, given my reliance on chance rather than skill in the matter of driving, contain down one of its dark trajectories a horrible accident by which I would repay all that I had borrowed from fortune. Despite Martin's willingness to enter into my deception, I knew that by continuing to drive in this manner I would be taking unacceptable risks with his life; and yet his compliance was so tempting, given the consequences of an admission of truth to the Maddens, that I found myself as I sat there without the clear intention of
confessing the problem to them at the next opportunity. How could I confess to the Maddens, now that I had exposed not only their car but also their son to danger? Seen in this light, it seemed incredible that I had not been honest when honesty had come at a more reasonable price; but I was beginning to realize that no amount of calculation could cure what probity would have prevented.

‘Now just
calm down
everybody,' said the teacher, making leavening motions with her hands.

I realized, surfacing from my reverie, that some kind of argument had broken out around me. Its centre appeared to be Marie, the piercing register of whose voice rose in indeterminate squawks and exclamations above the waves of commentary sweeping the group. The teacher's face was a medley of triumph and fear, as if she were savouring the perils of her job and tasting her own competence as she negotiated them.

‘I've got the right to my own opinion,' complained Marie.

‘Marie's got the right to her own opinion,' confirmed the teacher above the noise.

‘That's like saying I've got the right to pick my nose,' said Martin clearly from the back of the group. ‘Everybody would prefer it if I didn't do it in front of them.'

Martin's comment detonated explosions of laughter all across the room.

‘I really don't think—' said the teacher amidst the pandemonium.

‘That's
typical
!' shrieked Marie. ‘That's
typical
!'

‘—that sort of remark is what we're all about here, Martin.'

Martin did not reply. A brief hush fell over the room. Then a boy with an oafish face and untidy hair put up his hand.

‘I support Martin!' he said loudly, looking to his hero for approval. ‘Marie talks too much. She's always complaining.'

‘Yeah! Yeah!' chimed a choir of variously pitched male voices.

‘Oh, for
Christ's sake
,' wailed Marie.

‘Now look.' The teacher's expression of bland geniality was momentarily dislodged by a flash of anger. I saw that her patience with the group was the result of some effort, and that a narrow margin separated it from her loathing. ‘Now look,' she said, more calmly. A thread of hysteria ran through her voice. ‘Let's all just
cool off
, shall we? This space is meant for discussion only. If you can't all discuss things without arguing' – she looked nervously around the group. I sensed that recourse to a more authoritarian style of leadership was imminent – ‘then we'll have to abandon these sessions. Is that clear?' Silence reigned, ‘Is that clear?' A grumble of assent rose sheepishly from the wheelchairs. The teacher surveyed the group at a level just above their heads, as if ascertaining the efficiency of their suppression. She wore a slightly vengeful expression as she guarded her painstakingly constructed democracy. ‘Now I think we'll end here. You can all go and find your drawings and carry on where you left off on Monday. Quietly!' she commanded, stemming an outbreak of chatter as the group broke up and its constituents began turning on their axes and spinning away to the far end of the room.

I was surprised to hear that more drawing was on the agenda, as from what I had seen so far the building already seemed replete with the group's artistic efforts. I immediately saw in the occupation the slender pretext of distracting the group with minimal effort on behalf of the teacher; a motive I was beginning to suspect underlay the whole character of the ‘sessions'. Now that the others had dispersed, I was left rather isolated on my plastic chair; and eventually I stood up and, having nothing else to do, busied myself with replacing the chair where I had found it.