The History Room (6 page)

Susan was restless. Got up from the chaise longue. Strode around. Fingered the pitted wall in the front hall. Someone had attempted to whitewash over the crude paintings left by the GIs but the
paint they’d used had been too thin and watery. He could still make out the outlines of inflated female body parts and attendant annotations. His English was now good enough for him to grin
at the latter. The soldiers had mis-aimed darts at a board on the wall and the surface was pockmarked.

He studied the light falling on its surface. It would be almost constant, emanating both from the windows halfway up the stairs and from those looking onto the gardens. At the moment the dirty
white wall seemed to sum up the hopelessness of Susan’s situation.

‘You need something here in the front hall,’ he said. ‘To signify a fresh start. A mural.’ The idea was taking shape in his mind now. ‘You need to set the tone for
your new school.’

She blinked. ‘I haven’t decided that I am starting a new school yet.’

He smiled.

‘You don’t understand.’

‘You don’t want to sell your house. What else are you going to do with this place?’

She still looked unsure.

‘You should tidy up that wall, anyway.’

‘I do like the idea of a mural. Would you paint it for me?’

He thought about it. Hadn’t painted much these last years. Apart from during a primary school placement, and that had been more about keeping paint off the floor and clothes and directing
some of it to the paper.

‘Yes. But I’d need you,’ he said.

‘You want me in the mural?’

He walked towards her and looked her up and down, as though he were going to paint a still life. ‘But not in that dress.’ If she was going to run a new school she needed to look the
part. This lunchtime she was dressed in a thin-strapped sundress. Her posture was very straight, very correct. You could tell she was the daughter of the house, but the frock was all wrong.
‘Do you have anything else you could wear?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t dress up much.’ Why should she? It was 1973. No young and idealistic teacher wore formal fitted dress.

‘Are there any other clothes here?’ He pictured her in something long, hair tied back. Not too constrained, but dignified.

‘There’s an old trunk up in one of the attics.’ She sounded doubtful.

‘Shall we look?’ He was up the three flights of stairs almost in a single bound, suddenly thrilled at the thought of what he wanted to do. He’d paint her on the wall with an
image of the house itself behind her.

In the attic they found dresses from every decade going back to the late Victorians. ‘They’re all so fusty and moth-eaten.’

He held up a blue velvet evening gown that looked as though it had last been worn before the First World War. Perhaps it hadn’t been worn at all. Karel thought of a girl ordering the dress
for a dance and then finding out her brother or fancé had died in the trenches. Telling the maid to pack the dress away; she never wanted to see it again. ‘You’d look right in
this.’

Susan wasn’t looking at the dress; she was looking at him.

‘What is it?’

‘You’ve learned to speak English so quickly and so well. How long’s it been now?’

‘Five years since I arrived in England.’

‘Your accent is getting better and better.’

‘I am working upon it.’

‘
On
it.’ She made the correction lightly. He listened to conversations in pubs, on trains, in the school corridors. At night he practised putting the muscles of his mouth into
the strange positions English required. He repeated pronunciations over and over again.

‘Milk and no sugar, please. Half of best. A return to Paddington. A pound on number five in the three-thirty.’

Susan was looking at the silk gown again. ‘I suppose it might do.’

‘Put it on and come downstairs.’ He sounded abrupt when he asked people to do things in English. He made a mental note to himself to remedy that.

When she came downstairs she’d tied back her hair with a black velvet ribbon. A single lock fell over her right shoulder. She looked very beautiful in that proper English way. Only now was
he seeing her as someone he might possibly be interested in. Something about this realization made homesickness strike him cold in the stomach. He didn’t want this old house, this English
girl with the pale skin and the good manners. He wanted what he’d left behind.

‘I’ll need to buy paints in Oxford. Then we’ll start tonight. While I’m gone you should start washing down the wall.’

Surprise flickered across her face.

‘Sorry,’ he added. ‘I become – what’s the word? – bossy, when I am excited by an idea.’

On his return to Letchford with the paints and brushes on the back seat of the Mini he’d saved up to buy, he reminded himself of all that he had. A job. A car. A girl, perhaps. Susan, it
seemed likely, would probably allow him to sleep with her tonight. There was no reason for him to pine. He’d had word from his mother, sent via a friend in Switzerland. She was well but was
moving to the north of the country, near the Polish border. More work up there. And she needed to work. There was no longer a place for her in the commune established in her own house. He’d
tried not to worry about the kind of work she’d be doing now.

His mother hadn’t mentioned anyone else in her letter. He hadn’t told her what had happened as he’d left Czechoslovakia. It was all gone.
Forget it. Concentrate on this.
Become the perfect Englishman
.

John Andrews, who’d taken him in when he’d arrived in ’sixty-eight, had advised him to become a teacher. ‘They always need good language teachers over here,’
he’d said. ‘They’re bloody useless at speaking other people’s languages. I’d go for German if I were you, Charlie.’ Karel – Charlie – spoke the
language fluently; it was his mother’s language, though she hadn’t spoken it for years. Earlier on, before they’d driven him off to the uranium mine, his father had taught him
English, too, shutting the windows so that no passers-by could overhear.

‘I never think I end up teaching German,’ he told John.

‘I never
thought
I’d end up teaching German . . .’ he corrected him. ‘Art is all well and good but you can always do that kind of thing in your spare
time.’

Something deep inside Karel rebelled at that but he’d quashed the sentiment. ‘I know you know best. I do as you say.’ Besides, he had no real wish to take up the brush again.
Karel Stastny, artist, would metamorphose into Charles Statton, teacher.

As he’d watched the assistant put the paints, white spirit and brushes into the paper bag Karel had felt the old pull. He almost wished that Susan wasn’t going to be in the house on
his return and that he could be alone with the blank wall: a silent, uncritical, welcoming repository. But of course he needed Susan as his model. He’d already painted the mural in his mind.
He’d place her in front of the house and the oaks.

Susan met him on the steps. She wore navy overalls, rolled up at the legs. ‘I’ve already sanded the wall,’ she said, looking pleased with herself. ‘I filled in the holes
with plaster, too. We’ll be able to put the white coat on.’

She’d done a good job. When they’d painted the wall its white undercoat was as smooth as the sides of one of those wedding cakes the English liked. Even the obscene images seemed to
have faded. They cooked omelettes in the kitchen while they waited for the paint to dry. Susan changed back into the velvet dress and he drew half a dozen sketches of her sitting outside on one of
the stone lions beside the door.

‘I look like Britannia,’ she said, peeping over his shoulder at the pad. ‘All I need is a helmet.’ She pushed her damp fringe off her forehead. ‘Won’t you get
some sleep now? I could make up a bed for you.’ A pause. ‘Or you could share with me?’ She let the question unfold in a way that seemed quite natural. He hadn’t slept with
her before. His skin prickled in anticipation.

‘I’d like to sleep with you,’ he said in his blunt, central-European manner. His body throbbed at the thought of her slender form next to his. ‘I’ll come up
soon.’ He ran his finger down her soft cheek. She smelled of warm, clean girl. The other one had smelled of something more dangerous: bubbling sugar, or spice. ‘I just want to finish
the plan for tomorrow.’

A note of doubt flashed over her face, gone almost before he could register it. She didn’t find him attractive. No, it wasn’t that. She was wondering why this mural was so important
when the whole house needed attention. And if they were serious about turning it into a school they needed to be talking about teaching staff, equipment, books. How to explain to her why the
painting mattered?

‘I feel it’s like, what’s the word? An emblem. A symbol of a new start.’

Something seemed to shift in her expression. She nodded. ‘I’ll be waiting for you, Charlie.’

Charlie
. He heard the other girl’s mocking laugh.
You’re not
Charlie.
You’re still Karel. And you’ll never be an Englishman
.’

To drive her away he went back to the kitchen and found the remains of the Chianti they’d drunk with the omelettes. The wall was nearly dry now, the last remaining streaks growing thinner
by the second. Karel had always found it soothing to watch paint dry, despite what people said. The grandfather clock in the corner chimed midnight. Upstairs all was quiet. His hand went into his
trouser pocket and he extracted three coins. Valuable coins, they were. So the collector in Charing Cross Road had told him. He could have sold them but they’d become lucky charms. He jiggled
them in his palm and put them back in his pocket. Through the still-open front door came the scent of stocks and roses from the overgrown garden. His eyes were on the blank wall. Images started to
paint themselves over the pristine surface. Not Susan with her pale English face. Another girl. Chestnut hair. Hazel eyes.
Draw me
, she demanded. His hands were moving, mixing paints,
selecting brushes. Then he was standing in front of the wall.

Each sweep and dab of the brush across the white surface filled her with more life. First the outline of her slim body, then the reddish-brown rush of hair, the pink of her lips. He could hear
her sigh. Karel took time over her face. Those eyes, that full mouth, they were hard to capture. He stood back for a few minutes until he saw them in front of him. The rest was easy; she might have
been standing there, displaying herself, encouraging him. Her face was complete now. He wanted to paint the print on her tunic dress now. But it was intricate, one she’d hand-blocked herself.
He strained his memory for the details of the print and thought he remembered. Above him, somewhere in the bedroom with its four-poster bed, Susan waited for him to go to her. But how could he when
this other girl stood so close to him he could almost feel her breath on his skin, feel the silky swish of her hair against his chest, her voice murmuring to him? She pulled him back to her and he
picked up the brush again.

It was all happening so quickly. He’d never worked this fast before. It was as though he’d been working on this image in his head without realizing, long before he’d suggested
a mural to Susan.

The years apart hadn’t meant a thing. An owl hooted outside in the garden, warning him that these summer nights were short; he needed to hurry. He felt himself emerge from his trance. With
a critic’s eye he surveyed his work. Probably the best thing he had ever done. He knew it without vanity or even particular pride. Vivid. Unusual. Disturbing, almost, in the way it juxtaposed
such a modern-looking young woman in front of the smooth honey walls of an English country house. It wasn’t finished; it couldn’t be in such a short time. The dress was incomplete.
There was no background. But the essence of the girl was all there.

The owl hooted again. If it hooted a third time he’d know what he had to do. It was cockerels, wasn’t it, with St Peter?
Before the cock crows three
– or was it two?
–
times you will have betrayed me thrice
. It was a long time since Karel Stastny had attended Mass. Religion had not been encouraged in his previous life.

He sat on the faded chaise longue and looked at her. There was reproach in her eyes.
You left me
. Not impossible to find her again. Difficult, perhaps. Dangerous, too. A labour camp at
worst; menial work for the rest of his life at best. But not impossible. It wasn’t a large country.
Don’t betray me again, Karel
.

The owl hooted for the third time. He knew he’d have to paint over the girl on the wall.

Meredith

I spent the rest of Sunday afternoon finishing lesson plans, taking my time, trying to parcel out each lesson into ten-minute slots, even though I knew I’d never want to
stick to such rigid timetabling when I stood in front of my classes. I managed to drag out the task until it was time to go over and play backgammon with Simon. We’d established the Sunday
evening tradition last school year, abandoning it over the summer months in favour of croquet and a jug of Pimm’s. But I was almost pleased it was well and truly autumn now and I could bury
myself in Simon’s little living room with the curtains drawn against the darkness outside. He’d light his fire and make us a huge pot of tea, to be replaced at an undefined but
discernible hour with a bottle of red wine. I’d laugh and argue in favour of books and films I liked and Simon didn’t; be the woman I’d once been.

I walked across the lawn to the drive, feeling a sense of release at the same time as I felt guilt. My father would be alone in his office tonight, dealing with admin, trying not to think of my
mother, who used to sit sewing in the sitting room, just visible through the open door, ready to offer advice if it was requested, or to dissect the psyches of teachers or pupils.

Simon lived in a small cottage rented by the school just off the school grounds down the lane leading to the village. The sun had all but set now. On the ridge of the Downs to the south a line
of trees was backlit by an orange slash of light, dark clouds massed above. Almost enough to make me wish I could paint. My attempts were always so pitiful in comparison to my sister’s work
that I’d given up.