Wicked Women (17 page)

“Sir,” said Timothy, “isn’t it the snakes who do the mesmerising, and the rabbits who get mesmerised?”

“Take a detention, lad,” said Mr. Hobbs. “Have it your own way. Your father is a snake and the Council are rabbits. And it is thanks to your snake of a father that the PE wing is flooded and I am teaching History to Form 13, a class well known throughout the school to be composed of spastics and pygmies.”

“Sir,” said Timothy, “I really must protest. You shouldn’t call people pygmies. Say rather people of restricted growth, or the vertically challenged.”

“Another detention, boy,” said Mr. Hobbs. “I call you lot what I like and so long as it’s not racist and I don’t lay a finger on you, no one can say me nay. Spastics and pygmies, the lot of you!” Mr. Hobbs left the class to check the basement’s pumps in case the central heating blew.

“If you tear Timothy Bagshott limb from limb, class,” said Mr. Hobbs, “you’ll only get probation. Why don’t you have a go?”

Form 13, so familiarly called because it was understood to be unlucky in that its members had Mr. Hobbs as year tutor, personal counsellor and careers officer, turned to stare at Timothy, undecided as to its group response. The toilets in both school and home were so often out of order that even the young ones had noticed—it is one thing to defecate in lifts and corridors out of choice, in a spirit of defiance, quite another to have nowhere else to go. And there always has to be someone to blame, and how seldom is that person not just in the room with you, but on the same scale? Mr. Hobbs had given permission to hate, and to not a few in the class Mr. Hobbs was a hero. The oppressed soon learn to lick the oppressor’s boot. It was, in other words, a tense moment.

“I expect,” said Timothy, “you get quite a few days off because of the structural difficulties inherent in the rehabilitation of any educational institution.”

Jaws dropped.

“That is to say,” said Timothy, “if you ask me, my dad cocked up this sodding school on purpose. My dad hates schools.”

The moment passed. Ordinary mayhem broke out, and Twitcher was its target, not our Timothy. Twitcher got his glasses broken but that was nothing unusual. All knew Twitcher’s father was an optician, the only dad not in prison, and could easily acquire more. Form 13, the other side of their culture and conditioning, were quite reasonable and thoughtful lads, whose habit it was to take justice into their own hands, since society afforded so little evidence of it. And pleasure likewise, since so much of what they did was frowned upon.

Up at the Bagshott Arms the while, Rupert Oates wrestled with the soul of Audrey Bagshott.

“So what if I ran off with the chauffeur?” cried Audrey. “I chose love, not money, didn’t I? Isn’t that what a girl is supposed to do? And don’t tell me Jim turned criminal when I left; he was born like that: devious, greedy and grungy. And he always did the plumbing himself, liked to turn his hand to a real man’s job, so Amanda was always awash with water. My built-in cupboards filled up with the stuff. Drip, drip, drip, off my shoes and my furs. And I couldn’t take Timothy with me: the chauffeur didn’t like kids. You know what kids are like in cars, never at their best.”

“He’s thirteen now,” said Mr. Oates. “I had him in my own car. He made no trouble.”

“But I’m with the landlord now,” said Audrey, “and you have to be eighteen to get in for a drink. And I know those boys from Bagshott Comprehensive. Nasty, thieving little hooligans, lacing their Cokes with rum if you so much as look the other way.” It is always hard to reason with the not altogether reasonable, but on the other hand the least reasonable make the warmest mothers, so Mr. Oates persisted, and on hearing that the lad lived in a block of flats named in her memory, and perceiving that Jim Bagshott’s heart was still tender towards her, she consented to visit both her child and her husband.

And Mr. Oates was relieved, because he knew only too well for any child to be in Mr. Hobbs’ class was a strain upon that child’s source of cheerfulness, and cheerfulness in Bagshott Towers was the rarest and most precious of all commodities. “Sticks and stones,” said Rupert Oates in his heart, “may break my bones, and words can always hurt me. And who it is who says they don’t can only mean to bruise me. Flesh and bones will heal at last, but insults past stay with me.”

Mr. Oates did not like Mr. Hobbs. Neither did Mr. Korn, but Mr. Hobbs was on a fixed contract, and could not be fired other than for gross professional negligence, which he took care not to show. And, besides, Mr. Hobbs was a dab hand at keeping the boilers going. Disgraceful people often develop very rare and precise skills, so that others will be obliged to put up with them.

Mrs. Ooster, in spite of the wild and aggressive mien of her very large sons, was an agreeable person indeed. Angus cuts gratefully away from Rupert Oates’ light verse musings—which Angus feels are somehow happy Paul’s fault, and totally out of order, considering the overall style of the piece—to Aunt Annie’s new home and the arrival of Mrs. Ooster with a daintily pale pink TV set with a built-in aerial like a leaping dolphin. “So kind of you, Maisie,” Aunt Annie is saying. “The only people who ever came up to Amanda were those bearing writs and solicitors’ letters. No one ever seemed to like us, for all Jim was forever throwing parties. Why did you say the TV didn’t have a back, Maisie? It seems to me to have a back. I imagine one could get quite a shock if it didn’t. All those nasty wires.”

“Things which fall off lorries,” said Mrs. Ooster enigmatically, “don’t have backs. Never mind. You’ll learn, now you live in Audrey Tower. Would you care to come to Bingo with me tonight?”

“I’ve never gambled in my life,” said Auntie Annie. “It’s not a gamble,” said Mrs. Ooster. “The Caller is a very good friend of mine.”

And Aunt Annie was glad that Mrs. Ooster had a very good friend, because she’d had a glimpse of Mr. Ooster and thought him a surly and miserable fellow indeed.

Angus prefers to look through his viewfinder at Audrey, who, although into her forties, is blonde, well-bosomed and high-heeled, rather than at staid (so far) Auntie Annie and vast Mrs. Ooster—agreeableness is a quality that can get you lost on the cutting room floor, but sexiness keeps anyone in shot. So visiting hours at the open prison are here and Audrey’s sitting opposite Jim, who doesn’t seem one bit pleased to see her. The Rupert Oateses of this world, in spite of the harmonies inside their heads, can be naive, believing that others are as they are: that is to say, really nice if a trifle power-hungry.

“I’ve come all this way,” says Audrey, “and you aren’t one bit pleased to see me.”

“Because I know what you want,” says Jim. “And it’s the same as everyone else wants.”

“What’s that?” asks Audrey.

“Money,” says Jim. “The only thing I’ve ever had to offer. So now you come running to me for the fees, so your boy can go to boarding school and be a little gent.”

“Such a thing never crossed my heart, Jim,” says Audrey. “Then it should have,” says Jim. “What sort of mother are you? Running out on your own child. That boy’s going to spend the rest of his life searching for an absent mother figure.”

“What’s got into you, Jim?” asks Audrey. “Psychology classes,” says Jim. “There’s nothing else to do round here. I wasn’t much of a father myself. He’ll be searching for an absent father figure too. Not much of a husband either. A workaholic like me leaves a trail of personal disasters behind.”

“You go on saying things like that, Jim,” says Audrey, “and I’ll be on the step waiting when you come out.”

“As to the fees,” says Jim, “I’ll see what I can do. I haven’t been fair to him. Bringing him up posh, then pushing him in the deep end.”

Audrey expresses admiration that a man in prison could still get his hands on money; Jim expresses his anxiety about the swimming pool at Bagshott School—chlorine might eat away at the new-style insulation of the underwater electrics—and suggests Timothy be warned not to take a dip. And so love, affection and trust is re-established between the two. Angus makes a note to establish a heart-shape frame around the pair in post-production.

Aunt Annie has packed a very special lunch for Timothy today. He eats it in the safety of the Art Room. Twitcher is there, together with a small group of boys in need of quiet and protection. The Art Room door affords some protection against the clanging and banging, the shouting and screaming, the pushing and shoving in the corridors outside.

“Anyone care for a chicken leg?” enquires Timothy. “Seasoned with salt, and lemon, roasted in butter and basil. Only 40p the piece, and a bargain at the price.”

“Sounds foreign to me,” says Twitcher. “Then how about a cigarette?” asks Timothy. “Twenty-five pence each or three for a pound.”

“Why are three more expensive than one?” asks Twitcher. “Because I have my father’s blood in me,” says Timothy. “He’s inside, isn’t he?” says Boy 1.

“He is indeed,” says Timothy. “Left to rot by a corrupt authority, a society indifferent to the Tightness of his case.”

“Open prison?” asks Boy 2.

“Of course,” says Timothy.

“Then it doesn’t count,” says Boy 3. “My dad’s doing thirty years in high security, and not even a political.” Boys 1, 2 and 3 will have to double as prison attendants (trainees, of course; they will have to age down for the one, age up for the other). This is not a lavish production, and extras are expensive. The producer can see no merit in having Boys 1, 2 and 3: the dialogue could have been accomplished with just the one bit part player. But Angus says the way to look lavish is to be lavish. “Besides,” says Boy 2, “it’s not fathers that count in here, it’s mothers. How’s yours?”

“Run off,” says Timothy. “That’s nothing,” says Boy 2. “It was to me,” says Timothy sadly.

All contemplate the truth of this. Angus studies each face at some length to get the value of their hiring and keep the producers in their place. The Ooster boys at this point lean on the Art Room door so it collapses inward, being made none too solidly, and deprive the already dismal group of their dinner: chicken legs, ham rolls, crisps, Ryvita and cheese slices, and a bottle of Montrachet Cadet which Timothy has been keeping to himself. Well, the Ooster boys have to live too, and Mrs. Ooster is too busy keeping Mr. Ooster happy in the mornings to do much in the way of providing lunch, nor does their father see why he should provide men younger, bigger and more energetic than he with funds simply because they are his sons. Rupert Oates’ voice shivers over the scene: “Children remember this, that childhood ends. When you grow up, at least you’ll choose your friends.”

Mr. Oates then appears in conversation with Aunt Annie, offering her a change of residence: he has organised it so that she and Timothy can exchange dwellings with a family living on the outskirts of town, almost in the country; Timothy can be taken out of Bagshott School and go to Parrot High, a smaller and altogether milder institution in a better area, so much so that it is soon to become a Direct Grant School. But Aunt Annie, to Rupert Oates’ surprise, will have none of it. She is happy, she says, as Mrs. Ooster’s neighbour: she’s on her way to Bingo and, besides, she’s come to fancy the view from the twelfth floor and Timothy no longer suffers from vertigo.

“But I’m offering you a thatched cottage,” says Rupert Oates, and all Aunt Annie says, pushing past, is, “Nasty, germy things, thatches.” Mr. Oates inhales the fetid air of the Ooster level, as it’s known at the Council offices, and marvels. The Ooster boys are active and healthy eaters and drinkers and seldom make it inside their home before being overtaken by the call of nature. The lift is so often out of order, their own door so seldom opened promptly to them (Mr. Ooster has the lock changed frequently) they can hardly be blamed for this lack of control. So far one can get, no farther. Requests to the Council by Mr. Oates that common lavatory provision should be made at the entrance to Audrey Tower convulsed the Supplies and Facilities Department with mirth. How many hours would such constructs survive the vandals? Let the corridors stink; there was nothing to be done about it.

Angus decided against attempting to dramatise this sorry state of affairs. Producers, viewers and indeed Les would resist anything too graphic, so Mr. Oates was merely left sniffing the air and wincing; Angus then cut away to a scene at Bagshott School, where the French class was in process, cheerful enough, if punctuated by cheers, jeers, Kung Fu kicks and the sound of breaking windows. A student teacher, pretty and eighteen, and in her first year at college, stood weeping in front of the class, who thought it best to tactfully ignore her distress. The lads were not unkind but no doubt thought the sooner she toughened up the happier everyone would be. That, or get out of teaching. Timothy sat at the back of the class, reading.

“Tim,” muttered the boy next to him, “what are you reading?”

“A book called
Teach Yourself French,”
said Timothy. At which point Mr. Hobbs erupted into the room, shouting, swearing, thwacking everyone in sight. “Dregs and rabble!” he shouted. “Form 13, the dross of the streets: what’s the point of teaching them French; they can’t even speak their native tongue. The sooner they’re out on the streets and on crack the better. Their mothers are,
et tes grand’meres.”
The class fell silent, shocked and stunned, and the student teacher ran from the room and out of the profession altogether. Had it not been for Mr. Hobbs, she would have toughened up perfectly well in her own good time.

It was this particular scene which causes the TV critic of
The Times,
who later became editor of
Punch
—a humorous magazine, now deceased—to become almost incoherent in his outrage: the film, he complained, was a vicious attack against the educational system of the nation. Schools such as Bagshott Comprehensive did not exist. A foul fabrication! Everyone knew schools were places where calm and kindly teachers, in an organised fashion, set about the business of teaching and socialising the docile and grateful young. Else what were the taxpayers paying their taxes for? But that is by the by. Just why
The Tale of Timothy Bagshott,
a play for TV, was never repeated and wiped from the BBC archives. Just as Les could not bring himself to turn his camera on what we had better call defecatory matter, nor could the critic of
The Times
face truth. Why should he be expected to do better than Les?