The History Room (7 page)

This evening Simon looked tired, even if his grin when he opened the door to me was as warm as usual. Perhaps it had been his turn to accompany a team to an outlying school for rugby yesterday.
Some of those coaches hadn’t returned until seven because of a motorway hold-up.

As we walked into the living room his laptop gave a bleep. ‘Ignore it,’ he said. ‘It’s the instant messenger. I forgot to sign out.’ He pushed down the lid.
‘I was doing some work on the history of the house.’ He’d been researching Letchford’s past for a book he hoped to publish.

I hadn’t thought of Simon using an instant messenger. He gave the impression of being the kind who’d handwrite postcards from interesting art galleries. I couldn’t even
remember the slick new laptop being a feature of his life before this summer. He’d written his lesson plans by hand, to the mirth of his colleagues.

‘Still on for a run over to Burford to look at bookshops and antique shops?’

Only six months ago the prospect would not have appealed. ‘Definitely,’ I replied. ‘But why Burford?’

‘Lots of shops. And tea rooms. I’ve been looking on the net.’

I eyed the sleek laptop. ‘May I have a peep?’

‘Help yourself. I saved what I found in a folder. The kettle’s still boiling.’

I found the folder and browsed the antiquarian bookshops. I hadn’t been near my email this afternoon. Sunday night. There was a chance that . . . But I probably shouldn’t be too
hopeful. ‘OK for me to check my email?’ I called.

‘Feel free.’

Nothing for me. I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment. Simon brought over the tray with the teapot and cups set out on it. I showed him the list of bookshops I’d found.

‘Great. I’ll just pull the set out.’

My mobile trilled as he bent down to retrieve the backgammon box from the cupboard beneath his television set. ‘Can you come and talk to Tracey Johnson in the kitchen?’ my father
asked me. ‘I’m not sure what the problem is but she sounds worried. I’d go myself but I need to call a parent.’

Sunday night was Dad’s night for ringing round parents who needed reassurance about exam grades. Or a warning that their offspring were in danger of funking GCSEs or being suspended. There
always seemed to be a student or two each year who found alcopops to consume behind the cricket pavilion. My mother would have been the one who’d go to the kitchens to talk to Tracey.
Housekeeping and catering were her domain. I blinked hard.

At least Dad credited me with enough common sense to resolve this problem; I should be grateful for his trust. It showed he’d put the memory of my lost week behind him. All the same, I
looked at the tea tray and the backgammon set and sighed. ‘I’ll be about ten minutes.’ I pulled on my jacket.

‘I’ll put the tea cosy on, then.’ I’d always mocked Simon’s crocheted tea cosy and I rolled my eyes at him now as he pulled it over the china teapot.

‘I won’t be long,’ I said. ‘It’s just to see Tracey in the kitchens.’ The teapot rattled in Simon’s hands. ‘Don’t worry, there’ll be
plenty of time left.’

Tracey Johnson was one of the chef’s assistants. She was about the age of the oldest sixth-formers but looked older. And more beautiful than most of them. Despite the lack of holidays in
the sun and hours of healthy sport, her skin was clear and flawless. She wore heavy eye make-up and her mouth was usually turned down into a near-scowl. My mother had once told me that Tracey had
won a scholarship to the school at thirteen. ‘Your father offered her a full bursary. But she went to the high school instead.’ At sixteen she’d come to work part-time here in the
kitchens, attending technical college for part of the week. Although we had a fully qualified cook Tracey had taken on an increasing amount of the work at Letchford.

I was used to seeing her in whites so her appearance, in skinny black jeans and a jersey tunic top, was a surprise. Something about the air at Letchford made it hard to imagine people here
having an existence outside the school. It was as though we were sealed underneath a glass dome, breathing some rarefied air. Occasionally I ran into day pupils in the town on Sundays or in the
holidays. Dressed in their own clothes they seemed quite separate from the boys and girls I taught in schooltime.

Tracey gave a little start when she saw me. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be you.’ She always addressed me with a near-bluntness. With my parents she’d always been polite,
almost warm. Something about me seemed to make her uncomfortable. Perhaps she was resentful at how my job and comfortable accommodation had been laid on by my family. Or she knew about my broken
husband. I’d failed to fulfil some basic biological female role: I couldn’t nurture my man.

‘My father’s busy with a call.’

She put a hand to the back of her head and pulled at her hair, neatly done up in a bun, plucking at the strands until the whole mass came down over her shoulders. She looked like a girl in a
Pre-Raphaelite painting. Once again I admired Tracey’s glossy hair and fine-boned features.

‘What’s up?’ I asked, sounding almost as terse as she did.

‘It’s the oven again. Loose wire. Keeps taking out the circuit.’

‘Have you called the electrician?’

‘He can’t come out until nine tomorrow. Which means no cooked breakfasts.’

‘What about the hobs?’ I nodded at the stove.

‘They’re on the same circuit. It’s all down.’

‘Could we bring up that portable hob we use at the summer fete?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll need the key to the cellar.’

I went upstairs to my father’s office. Dad was on the phone. On his desk lay a lumpy long shape, covered with a tea towel. The reborn doll. In the white shroud it looked even more like a
small corpse. I resisted the temptation to pull back the tea towel and meet its blue gaze. It was only plastic and enamel paint, I reminded myself.

‘. . . if it happens again I can’t be quite so lenient . . .’ Dad said, raising an eyebrow at me. I made the motion of turning a key and he pointed to his top right-hand
drawer. When I opened it, something metallic glinted at me. A small blade. I recognized it as the paperknife stabbed into the reborn doll. Underneath the knife three gold coins sat in a small
display box with a perspex cover. Dad had brought the coins with him from Czechoslovakia. I closed the drawer and took the keys back to the kitchen.

‘Strange about that reborn doll,’ Tracey said when I handed the bunch to her, as though she knew what I’d seen in my father’s office. She sounded not curious but
reflective. ‘Something like that takes some planning.’

‘I suppose it does.’ I made the words as non-committal as I could.

‘I mean, finding a time to get into Mr Radcliffe’s cupboard.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He locks the door when he leaves the room.’

‘Does he?’ I thought about it and remembered how he’d always turn a key in the lock after lessons. Some of the books and papers relating to the house were valuable. I wondered
how Tracey knew about the lock.

Tracey was twiddling the keys I’d just given her. ‘Makes you think. Those dolls are expensive.’

‘Are they?’ She seemed to have placed me in the role of hapless questioner.

‘Hundreds of pounds, according to what I’ve heard. There was something on the TV a while back. Wonder who it’s based on,’ Tracey went on.

The question must have been in my face. ‘Often they give the dolls real babies’ features. Especially if a baby’s died. It’s a way of remembering them.’

I swallowed but couldn’t clear the moisture in my throat. ‘Thanks for sorting this out, Tracey. Book the electrician in for as early as you can.’ I heard something of my
father’s authoritative tone in my voice.

The wind had picked up and leaves blew around me as I walked back down the lane to Simon’s. Another year on the turn. I shivered slightly in the cool air, glad I was going to have company
for the rest of the evening. Mention of the doll had made me feel unsettled. Just a prank, I reminded myself, silly teenagers, meaningless. All the same, I wished my father would put the damn thing
away.

The pot of Lapsang tea was sitting on Simon’s table, clad in its crocheted wool hat. He was sitting on the sofa, laptop on his knees. I could ask him whether he’d left the cupboard
door in the history room unlocked. The question didn’t seem to want to be asked. Simon closed the laptop. ‘Let’s get cracking, the evening’s nearly gone.’

I gave him a watery smile and sat down to play backgammon.

When I went over to help in the morning Tracey was flipping rashers of bacon, apparently unruffled. A younger girl stood beside her, spooning baked beans onto plates. Tracey
acknowledged my arrival with a nod at the newcomer. ‘My cousin.’

‘Thanks for coming at such short notice.’ The girl looked as though she ought to be at school herself.

‘She’s seventeen,’ Tracey said, forestalling my question. I wondered about our employee liability insurance and decided not to. Instead I grabbed a laden plate.

‘Where are the trays?’

Tracey waved towards a rack, surprise softening her features. She’d probably assumed that I considered myself above helping in the kitchen. ‘Normally we wheel the food into the hall
on the heated trolleys.’ She flipped two rashers onto a plate. ‘But there wasn’t time to set them up this morning. Anyone who wants cooked gets beans and bacon. No
choices.’

My father crossed the hall as I carried my laden tray in. He frowned at Tracey’s cousin. ‘That tray looks far too heavy for that girl. But I’m not going to ask any
questions.’ He sounded weary, too weary for early morning at the beginning of the school year. ‘As long as breakfast is satisfactory.’ He pulled out the notepad he always carried
with him and wrote a few words in the looped and twirled handwriting that gave him away as having been brought up abroad.

I went back to my apartment. The first two periods were free for me. I could fit in a quick dog walk before I returned to school. Teachers were supposed to remain in the staff-room during free
periods but a blind eye was usually turned. The answerphone was blinking. Hugh. My heart raced. A message for me. I pressed the play button.

‘Meredith,’ my sister’s voice said. ‘There wasn’t a chance to talk at the weekend. But I’ve been thinking things over. I’m in the office all day. Ring
me if you have a free period.’

It was already ten past eight. My sister would be in her smart city office with its view of St Paul’s, in one of her sharp black suits, laptop switched on, a brought-in espresso on her
desk. Nothing frothy and milky for Clara. I dialled her mobile.

‘Thanks for getting back to me.’ She sounded just as you’d imagine a law partner would. ‘It’s about Dad, well, about the school really. Things can’t go on
like this.’ She might have been discussing a recalcitrant client.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, things are starting to get to him, aren’t they? Even Marcus said so. He’s quite flustered.’

‘It’s been quite a week.’ I wondered if she had any idea how derailing the doll business had been, how much time it had taken up, how unsettling it had been at the beginning of
term when things were still fluid.

‘It’s more than that, Meredith. He hasn’t been finding it easy. Every year it’s been getting harder to keep the school financed. We’ve trimmed things back, but
there’s always more pressure to do this or that. Letchford isn’t the school it used to be.’ Her voice quietened. ‘Even without Mum’s death. We’re only just
finding out how much she did.’

I’d known. Dad had known.

‘There’s bound to be a period of readjustment.’ I sounded like something from a self-help booklet.

‘I’m talking about more than just the short term. I don’t think Dad can carry on like this indefinitely. He’s exhausted already and it’s not even
half-term.’

My mouth opened to dispute this. But then I thought about it and my protest died inside me. When we’d been growing up there’d been a relaxed feel to the school. Teachers had seemed
to teach pretty well what they wanted or what they felt their pupils ought to know. Judging by the numerous boards on display in the hall, listing scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge, this
laissez-faire attitude hadn’t done much harm. And my father’s role had changed. Twenty years or so back he’d spent a lot of time simply talking to people. Pupils. Parents.
Teachers. The groundsmen who mowed and rollered the playing fields. I’d spot him on the move all day long: appearing at classroom doors, standing at the head of the stairs at break to watch
pupils streaming out. At hockey and rugby matches he’d pace the sidelines, pleasure radiating from him every time there was a win, even though part of him thought that too much competitive
spirit detracted from the liberal atmosphere he wanted for Letchford. He’d been the eyes and ears of the school. Little by little over the last decade a pile of paperwork had kept him in his
office for longer.

‘He’s older, I suppose.’ It wouldn’t be fair to expect him to be as active as he’d been when he was young.

‘Exactly. Sixty.’

‘There’s no fixed retirement age for teachers,’ I reminded her. ‘He could go on for years yet.’

‘As head? Would that be best for him, Merry? For the school?’

I pictured my father without the school. What would he do with himself?

Sadness drifted over me. I’d been so caught up in my own grief and anxiety I’d failed to think all this through. ‘But if Dad stopped being head what would happen to
Letchford?’ I thought of my apartment and blushed. What would happen to me, I’d meant. Dad might wish to move in here himself, as he and Mum had planned for their retirement years. The
thought of more change made me swallow hard. Outside the window chestnuts and oaks blew in the breeze. Soon they’d be shedding copper and gold leaves with each sway. Beyond them the Downs
curved like the back of a sleeping brown-and-grey beast.

‘I think he should sell the estate to the trust.’ An educational trust owned the school itself now, as opposed to the buildings and grounds. ‘Take the money and go and live
somewhere away from the school. While Dad’s within fifty miles of the place he won’t be able to let it go. You know what he’s like, he’d always be popping over to tell them
they’re mowing the games fields wrongly or something.’