Ladies From Hell (15 page)

She had put her school things on, not thinking. She heard a car coming up the lane, moving fast. She ran downstairs. Pamela said, “Don’t go outside, darling. Not till it’s safe.”

The policeman sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee. It was the sallow one, the one she didn’t like. She was sorry, obscurely, that Pam had left the dinner things in the sink. He said, “Oh, tearaways I should reckon. Been a whole spate of it. Two last night over at Dinsley, ’nother the night before. Anything of value out there, Mrs. Manley?”

Pam put a hand on her shoulder. She said, “Only my daughter’s bike.”

The policeman grunted. He said, “I expect the insurance will cover.”

The fire was out now; it had mainly been old sacks and boxes. And a bed Pamela had stored. But for a time the house had seemed full of men.

Pam went to the sink, refilled the kettle. She said, “What was it? What did they use?”

He shrugged. He said, “Could have been anything. Can of weedkiller, and a detonator. Anything goes these days. They nicked a box of detonators from the Tech College last month. Had ’em for demo.”

The side door opened. The other man was the fair one, the one she had seen at the Properjohns’. Sheba growled, and she put a hand to her collar. She could feel the big dog still trembling with rage. The policeman at the table said, “Anything?”

The other shook his head. He said, “Asked for a vehicle check. Won’t do any good. Reckon they’re away.”

Pam folded a fresh filter into the coffee pot. She said, “But why us? Why bomb us? We haven’t done any harm.”

The sallow man said, “You don’t have to. Not any more. They call it progress.” He closed his notebook with a vaguely satisfied air. He said, “No ideas at all then? Who it could
have been?” Pam shook her head, and he grinned. He said, “How about the young lady?”

Pamela said quickly, “She doesn’t know anything either. Liz, get that other chair.”

The second policeman took his coffee non-committally. The sallow man said, “That’s about it then. Somebody’ll be along in the morning. We can finish the statements then.”

Statements. Of course. She’d been meaning to make some sort of statement, it had nearly slipped her mind. She opened her mouth; but what came out was a question. She said, “Where’s Ian tonight? Isn’t he on?” Silence at that; and she thought they looked at her oddly. She wondered why she had spoken. Her ears were still singing; she thought perhaps she was in shock.

Pamela said, “Bunny, don’t bother now.” Then to the policeman, “She’s very upset. She wasn’t well at all last week. Now this …”

They were standing. The sallow man put his cap on, the flat cap with the chequered band. They moved into the passage, stood talking again. There seemed so much to say. But surely it was all so simple. No need for words at all. She swallowed, hard. The singing didn’t stop.

The side door closed. She heard Pam shoot the bolts. She came back into the kitchen. She thought how tired she looked. She said, “It stopped the clock.”

Pam said, “What?”

“The clock. Look, it’s stopped.”

Pam said, “Bunny, you ought to go back to bed. You can still get an hour.”

She yawned. She said, “Will you be OK?”

Pam said, “I’ll just do the cups. Go on, bun. And don’t worry. He’ll be all right.”

She had her foot on the stairs. She turned back, puzzled. She said, “Who? Who do you mean?”

Her mother looked confused. She said vaguely, “I thought you heard … Go on up now. It’s nothing.”

She came back into the room. She said, “What happened to him? Where is he?”

Pamela said, “Go to bed now, Liz. Be
a good girl.”

“What happened to him?”

Pam took her by the shoulders. She said, “I didn’t mean …” She swallowed. She said, “They took him to hospital. He was … well, he was hurt.”

Liz said, “Where? Was it tonight?”

Pamela said, “The policeman told me. The one who took the statements. He shouldn’t have, really. They … somebody knocked him out. I don’t think it’s very bad.”

“Where was it?”

Pamela sighed. She said, “As a matter of fact … it was at the School. The night men found him.” She smiled. She said, “I expect you’ll hear all about it tomorrow.”

Liz said, “We’d better go and see him.”

Pamela said, “Don’t worry now, bunny. Up to bed, go on. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

The Patricia girl was on the bus that morning. She’d got a new pair of jeans. Stretch-yellow, very low. They showed nearly everything. She stood by Liz a minute when she first got on, she couldn’t help but see.

The rumours were buzzing already. She wondered how they had got to know. D Block it was where they had found him, the Fourths seemed sure. They said there had been a huge great pool of blood.

She was trying to think; but her head still seemed to be ringing. At School, at night. She wondered why he could have gone there. Perhaps to see one of the security guards, talk to him. It had been a security man that found him, one of the dog patrols. She wondered if he’d been Pursuing Private Enquiries. He’d told her a lot from time to time about how policemen worked.

She rubbed her face, pushed her hair back. She remembered how he had been, that day at the Properjohns’. He’d tried so hard to make her talk. But she hadn’t dared. So he’d talked to David instead—to the Minister. And David had
believed it had to do with School.

It was no use. She stared out the window, not seeing the sunlit buildings moving past. She knew why he had gone there. And whose fault it really was.

The last hope left her late that afternoon.

She had opted earlier in the year for a course in Social Studies; not so much from interest as because that Group was usually taken by Bomber Hughes. He didn’t look impressive; a stocky, square-set man, moustached and with bright, cornflower-blue eyes. But he’d been an officer, a pilot in the RAF, and ran his group with an iron hand though he seldom raised his voice. There was the usual crop of silly stories of course; that he was a Black Belt, that he was an unarmed combat expert, that he had once taken on a dozen men singlehanded and disabled all but two. But true or false, no pupil seemed keen to cross him; not even the worst of the Fifths. His classes were havens of peace.

The afternoon seemed at first unexceptional. Three other Groups were sharing the Study Area; but for once no pop was being played, and there was relatively little din. Liz found herself a place to one side, content as usual to remain unobserved; but the session had scarcely begun when the double doors at the end of the hall swung back.

Macanulty was the first to enter, tranny slung and with a girl clinging to his arm. Three lesser lights appeared soon after, with Sheila Brent and Patricia. She had changed since the morning; she was wearing a belly necklace now and a nearly seethru top. The Group quietened a little; but when Osgood and Kolaszynski slouched in even the twelve-year-olds grew silent. They took up places to either side of Liz, and Kolaszynski took the notepad from her knee and began to draw.

She knew the Duke had followed, though she daren’t raise her eyes. She was wondering, disjointedly, why she had ever imagined she understood terror till now. Her eyes were fixed
on a point on the pale, bright floor; the sweat was starting, and she was having difficulty getting her breath. Last night had been the warning; now they had come for her. All of them. They had found her out.

The Bomber stood awhile surveying the additions to his Group. “Well,” he said finally, “good afternoon, gentlemen. And ladies. To what do we owe the pleasure of this undistinguished company?”

Nobody else, certainly no staff member, would have dared address the Duke and his gang like that; not with their broads in the room. Somebody tittered; the noise was silenced instantly by a glare from Osgood.

The Bomber rubbed his hands. “I take it,” he said, “that we are now all met. Or are we to expect further reinforcements? In which case, I shall be happy to wait.”

Her ears were singing; and she was thinking how any second they would smell that she was afraid. She’d read somewhere, or heard, that fear can be smelled.

“No reinforcements,” said Mr. Hughes. “Good. Then perhaps we can start.”

He took three paces from the Group, turned on his heels to face them. “First, an announcement,” he said. “Which will no doubt be honey to your ears. This is the last chance you’ll have to witness my ’andsome visage. Tomorrow I am leaving this seat of culture for another position; one I’m happy to say, unconnected with teaching.”

The expected chorus of cheers and jeers; he raised a hand, and it was stilled. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I’d like to tidy up what we’ve been talking about this term; and maybe leave you with one or two thoughts.”

He was teaching nearly in the old way, voice low but pitched to travel; she sensed the other Groups in the Hall were listening too.

“Over the past few weeks,” said The Bomber, “we’ve had a look at the origins of this Welfare State of ours. We’ve glanced at the various benefits it offers, we’ve tripped delicately over the processes of local and national Government; and
we’ve examined the development of education. Now I want to put a question to you. What’s education for, do you reckon? What actual end purpose does it serve?”

The Group seemed puzzled. Then a freckled, bespectacled girl called Jarvis spoke up. “It’s sort of … well, for children,” she said. “Must be. To … you know. Broaden their minds.”

“Education is for children,” said The Bomber. “An interestin’ hypothesis. Who’ll back it?”

Kolaszynski had finished his drawing. He showed it surreptitiously to somebody behind him. There were giggles; but she dared not turn her head.

The Bomber was talking again. “In the bad old days,” he said, “say the middle of the last century, we had what was called the public school system. If you were a young feller at a public school, you’d ’ave a whackin’ great cold bath every morning. If you got your prep wrong, you’d get the skin took off your backside. What was behind all that, d’you reckon?”

The Group was giggling. Somebody said, “That was all class though. Privilege and that.”

“Funny sort of privilege, when you think about it,” said The Bomber. “Don’t you think though, it might have been to toughen ’em up? Make ’em fit enough to trot up and down rulin’ India?”

Kolaszynski pushed the rough book back into her lap. On one page was a crudely-scrawled figure with a cock’s comb of hair and what looked to be a leather jacket. Its penis, which was monstrously overlarge, was dripping at the tip. Opposite, a roundfaced girl with plaits stood with her legs apart. The details of her anatomy were unpleasant. Over her head a stylized explosion framed the words BLAT and POWEE. Liz made her hand move, turn the page and press. She left a sweat mark where her palm had been.

“Take the Board Schools,” said The Bomber. “The old three R’s. Came along just when there’d started to be a massive demand for clerks. Funny, isn’t it?”

Sue Jarvis said uncertainly,
“You mean it’s sort of … society. Making the schools it wants.”

“Very good indeed,” said The Bomber. “You’re catchin’ on fast. What about today though?”

Sue said, “Well, we’re best off, aren’t we? No, you know, special schools and that.”

“Ah,” said The Bomber, “special schools. Privilege by class; privilege by money;
privilege by intelligence
. How about that?”

The Group didn’t answer.

“Let’s ’ave a few home truths,” said The Bomber. “Here we have a School of roughly four thousand pupils. Set up like all the rest with the best possible intentions, nobody’s disputin’ that. Of that four thousand, approximately a quarter—including some of you in this room—can neither read nor write with fluency. You are what the old system—the bad old system—would have called illiterates. Another couple of thousand have attained a certain proficiency in simple communication. ‘Love’ on one fist and ‘hate’ on the other, that sort of thing. You are the semi-literates. The remainder for the most part go in fear. Fear of the rest, of what might happen if their superiority was detected. Intelligence isn’t fostered, not any more. It survives, as best it can. D’you reckon that was the will of society too?”

Beside her, Kolaszynski was drumming his fingers. She thought, ‘They won’t put up with this much longer.’

“I’ll put it to you this way,” said The Bomber. “Think about an ants’ nest. Thousands of little creatures all scurryin’ this way and that, up one path and down another. All collectin’ sugar. Now what do you think would happen if all those ants started developin’ minds of their own? What if one said to another, “Ere, Charlie, or Bill, or Fred or whatever, I don’t fancy runnin’ all that way back again. How about puttin’ our sugar down here? Startin’ another pile, see.’ Wouldn’t be too good, would it? All the sugar scattered, ’stead of bein’ in one nice big shiny heap. Now supposin’ you were runnin’ that anthill, which would you prefer? Ants that couldn’t think too good on their own, or ants that started quarrellin’ with the management?”

Sue Jarvis said, “I don’t see what ants have got to do with
people.”

“They shouldn’t have anything, agreed,” said The Bomber. “But we live in a small, crowded, would-be egalitarian society. No harm constructin’ a Model, is there? Seein’ where it leads.” He shook his head. “You’ll learn, all you bright ones,” he said. “You’ll all take up window cleanin’ one day. Those that don’t emigrate. We shall have the most sparklin’ glass in Europe.”

Sue Jarvis said stubbornly, “It isn’t like that though. I mean, it isn’t what Mr. Horrocks told us. About getting rid of, you know, other sorts of schools. He reckoned it was the best thing that had happened.”

The Bomber stroked his moustache. “There’s a very old and very true saying,” he said. “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Osgood had become bored. He raised a leg indolently, and emitted a long and contemplative fart.

“Ah, democracy,” said The Bomber. “And come upon its cue. The fag end of the egalitarian process. The true
vox humana
.”

He walked forward. “What fascinates me about people like you,” he said, “is you’re not even evil. You’re nothing. There was a man once, smashed the Michelangelo Madonna because he didn’t like the idea of God. You’d smash her just because somebody gave you the hammer. No imagination, see? You don’t exist really though. You’re just my bad dreams.”