Treasures of Time (17 page)

While Nellie, in her room, sits, equally absorbed, before her own extracted evidence. Here are all the notes on pottery sequences, and yes, she thinks with gathering energy that it might well be possible to work up something publishable. She too reads and makes notes, but for her the job is dramatized by recollection with all its shifty tricks: what was and what one thought was and what may have been.

Tom, also, sits at a desk. I am almost ready to start writing, he thinks. Another few weeks. He contemplates his card-index boxes and his tidy piles of notes, clipped together in a Boots file that he has had since sixth form days. William Stukeley and his contemporaries: a study… I am almost ready to pronounce judgement. I have read everything that ought to have been read and given proper thought to all that should properly be thought of. Now I must sit down and write history.

‘Warriner Park. Some vast comprehensive.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Help you heave all that stuff around.’

‘Well,’ said Kate doubtfully, ‘if you like, but…’

‘All right, all right. I know when I’m not wanted.’

‘Oh, don’t be
silly
, Tom. It’s just you’ll be bored stiff. Birmingham’s not the most attractive place in the world. There’ll probably be no end of bother finding the right teachers and getting it all set up.’

‘All the more reason for giving you a hand.’

Kate’s ‘Island Heritage’ travelling exhibition was now complete and ready for release. Its debut was to take place in a Birmingham school which had been among the first to express interest, and Kate, anxious about the security and proper display of this valuable and painstakingly assembled collection, had decided to take it herself to the school and supervise its initial arrangement. An official from Birmingham Museum, who was to be responsible for its transfer to the next school on the list, was to meet her there.

They drove up the motorway in pouring rain, the back of the Fiat crammed full of the boxes housing Roman lamps, coins and tiles, and facsimiles of pages from Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History
, the Caxton Bible, the Lindisfarne Gospel, the earliest edition of Chaucer, a First Folio Shakespeare and selected passages of the Paston letters. A specially constructed case, lined with plastic foam, held some Celtic metalware and a Viking shield, buckle and sword: these were the real thing and causing Kate much anguish. ‘Just the job for a bit of aggro on the football terraces,’ said Tom cheerfully. ‘You’re going to have to make sure they put double padlocks on this lot.’ Kate groaned. There was also an assortment of more homely articles of domestic use, ranging from prehistoric to medieval, some costumes and a fourteenth century tapestry, some very fine blown-up photographs illustrating early vernacular architecture, with explanatory notes, and a huge wall-chart explaining the provenance of cultural influences from the Iron Age to the end of the sixteenth century, by means of maps, differently coloured arrows, simplified chronological tables and diagrammatic symbols. Kate and various colleagues had devised this and agonized over it for months. It had come out aesthetically satisfactory but perhaps rather confusing. ‘The trouble is,’ said Kate, ‘it
is
confusing. There’s no two ways about it.’ This enormous scroll now stuck into the middle of Tom’s back, as they approached Birmingham. Above him, swathed in plastic sheeting and tied to the roof-rack, was a full-size replica of the Bewcastle Cross in expanded polystyrene of quite astonishing lightness. Periodically the wind would catch its protruding end, causing the car to rock alarmingly.

The school, when at last they ran it to ground amid Birmingham’s proliferation of ring-roads and fly-overs and dual carriage-ways, turned out to be spread out over a large area, and of fairly recent construction. It was light and bright, set down in blocks of sage green and dull orange amid playing fields and its own internal road-system of tarmac tracks with sign-posts about Language Blocks and Sixth Form Units and Remedial Teaching Centres. A satellite colony of terrapin buildings suggested a staged expansion. The windows snapped in the sunlight and children drifted about the place, many of them West Indian and Pakistani. There were motor-bikes and scooters among the push-bikes in the sheds alongside the car park. They went into what appeared to be the main building, in search of the teacher who was supposed to be expecting them. When he appeared – young, bearded and jeaned, looking, Tom thought, more like an actor than anyone’s stereotype of a schoolmaster – they followed him to the room set aside for the display of the ‘Island Heritage’. Kate inspected the doors and windows. ‘Can it be locked? Sorry, Mr – er – Mr Sanderson, but some of the exhibits are real, you see, and quite irreplaceable.’

‘Ron. It’ll be bolted and barred, yes, don’t worry.’ Kate relaxed a little, and entered into a discussion about trestle tables and pin-boards. Tom volunteered to start bringing the boxes in.

He left the Bewcastle Cross until the final journey. It was awkward to carry, and he set off across the car park with it aslant his shoulders at first until it struck him that his appearance was perhaps in rather bad taste, so he shifted it to an irritating position under one arm from which it banged into each of the many swing doors that had to be negotiated
en route
to the exhibition room, where Kate and Ron were now busy setting up the display. With relief, he leaned it up against the wall. Ron said, ‘What on earth’s that?’ Kate explained. Children, curious, clustered at the door, also asking questions. ‘Buzz off,’ said Ron. ‘You’ll find out, all in good time. It’s a super exhibition,’ he went on, ‘we’re awfully grateful to have had first crack at it, as it were. Knowing it was in the offing, of course, we’ve tried as much as possible to tie it in with ordinary class teaching. Even so, I’m afraid it’s going to seem baffling and maybe a bit irrelevant to a lot of our children.’ ‘Irrelevant?’ said Kate, wrestling with drawing-pins and the cultural scroll. ‘We have a large immigrant quota.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, smoothing down a corner that showed Angles, Saxons and Jutes, pink-arrowed, emanating from northern Europe; under her left elbow, Normans, blue, surged out of Cherbourg. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ ‘What would be marvellous,’ Ron continued, ‘would be if one could get together the same sort of thing but pertinent to their own cultural groupings – you know, on the West Indies, say, or India.’ ‘Mmn,’ said Kate, turning her attention to Roman coins. ‘I suppose it could be done. Not my province, though, I’m afraid, you’d have to talk to someone in that field at the B.M.’ ‘Some of us feel strongly that they don’t have nearly enough in the curriculum that’s geared to their own cultures – we’d like to see classes in Urdu and that kind of thing, options on Indian history and art. But it’s not popular with the educational establishment. Not sufficiently exam-oriented. Not vocational.’ ‘This isn’t very vocational either,’ said Kate, positioning the Viking sword and shield on a display board. ‘Well, maybe I don’t mean vocational, quite. Mainstream.’ Outside, faces – pink, brown, yellow and whitish, bobbed against the glass of the door; feet rushed in the corridor; a bell rang. ‘But,’ said Tom, ‘they live here now, that’s a plain fact. They live here and they’re going to work here and probably die here. So it is relevant, it has to be. Maybe they were better at this in America.’ ‘Oh dear,’ said Ron, ‘saluting the flag and all that. I think not.’ ‘I wasn’t going to propose that. Just that you can’t suggest that this is irrelevant and propose classes in Urdu one moment and then wonder why people don’t adapt themselves better the next.’ ‘Ever lived in Birmingham?’ said Ron. ‘No, but I don’t need…’ ‘Just chuck me that ball of string, will you,’ said Kate. ‘Or taught?’ ‘No, nor that neither, and I daresay you’re in the thick of it and I’m not, but the simple fact remains that…’ ‘Sorry,’ said Kate, ‘can I just get at the scissors? Thanks.’ ‘I’m not,’ Tom went on, ‘proposing some kind of identity massacre, it’s just common sense dictates that you must…’

The door, which Ron had closed against the intruding children, now opened.

‘Can I have a preview?’ said Cherry Laker. And then, ‘Good Lord! Tom! Whatever brings you here?’

‘Cherry! Well I’m blowed!’

‘Didn’t you know I taught here?’

‘No, I swear. Oh, this is Kate – Kate Paxton. Cherry Laker. Martin’s sister, you know.’ Kate said, ‘Hello,’ stiffly.

‘Of course,’ said Cherry, ‘now I get why you’re here – the “Island Heritage” exhibition. What fun. Let’s all go and have some lunch somewhere – you won’t be wanting school dinner.’ She looked extremely fetching and, like Ron, rather far removed from one’s concept of a school teacher. Kate had turned back to her display board and was saying something in a very offhand tone about having to stay here until Mr Wilmot from the City Museum arrived.

‘Actually,’ said Ron, ‘I’ll have to push off now. I’ve got a class. Here’s the key. Would you drop it in at the school office when you go?’

‘I can help,’ Cherry offered, ‘I’ve got a free period. I say, what a splendid diagram. Even I can understand it, so the kids should be all right.’ She giggled. Tom said, ‘Cherry teaches Art.’ He saw Kate’s suspicious glance swerve from the Viking shield to Cherry’s full, red cotton skirt and tight, black T-shirt; she nodded and pointed at a pot of glue. He handed it to her; Cherry was admiring the Celtic pins and brooches. ‘Look, he’s awfully late, this Wilmot bloke. Why don’t we leave a message in case he comes, and go and have something to eat, like Cherry says, I’m starving.’ ‘You go, if you want,’ said Kate, in a cool, distant voice. ‘I’d rather wait for him.’

When, after another ten minutes, Wilmot had still not come, Cherry said, ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have something to eat I shan’t get through the afternoon. Couldn’t we leave a…’ ‘You two go,’ said Kate. ‘Go on.’ She scowled at the pin-board, aligning the architectural photographs. ‘No,’ Tom began, ‘I tell you what, we’ll…’ ‘Go
on
.’ Cherry said, ‘I’m just going to get my purse, I’ll pop back and see who’s coming, if anyone.’ She went.

‘Look’ said Tom, ‘he’s presumably made a mistake about the time. He’ll show up this afternoon. Let’s…’

‘Now I know why you wanted to come.’

‘What?’

‘I said, now I know. So much for all that let me help you heave the boxes around stuff.’

‘Look, what exactly are you getting at?’

‘You
knew
she worked here.’

‘I damn well didn’t. At least yes I knew she worked in some Birmingham school, she said something about it at Martin and Beth’s, but there are dozens of schools in Birmingham. Don’t be ridiculous, Kate. And anyway, what the hell makes you think…’

‘At Martin and Beth’s. You didn’t tell me she’d been there.’

‘Well, why should I? It wasn’t worth mentioning.’

‘I thought you hadn’t seen her for years.’

‘I hadn’t.’

‘Not since you were – involved with her.’

‘What a stupid prissy word. I wish I’d never mentioned it. Too bloody honest, that’s my trouble. Look, Cherry is the kind of girl who frequently gets – involved – as you so quaintly put it. She’s just an old friend, now, neither more nor less. So stop being so silly. And I hadn’t the faintest idea she taught here.’