My Policeman (10 page)

The boiler had gone off and even my corner of the classroom was cold, so I wrapped my scarf about my neck and shoulders and put on my bobble hat in an effort to keep warm. I always liked the classroom at this time of day, when all the children and the other teachers had gone home, and I’d straightened the desks, cleaned the blackboard and plumped the cushions in the reading corner, ready for a new morning.
There
was such stillness and silence, apart from the scratching of my pen, and the whole place seemed to soften as the light outside disappeared. I had that lovely feeling of being brisk and organised, a teacher in control of her lessons, fully prepared for the work that lay ahead. It was during these moments, sitting alone at my desk, surrounded by dust and quiet, that I would convince myself that the children liked me. Perhaps, I thought, some of them even loved me. After all, hadn’t they been well-behaved that day? And didn’t every day now end with a triumphant story time, when I read aloud from
The Water-Babies
and the children sat around me, cross-legged on the rug? Some, of course (Alice Rumbold was one), fidgeted, plaiting each other’s hair or picking at the warts on their fingers (Gregory Sillcock comes to mind), but others were clearly gripped by my narrative, their mouths open, their eyes wide. Caroline Mears would position herself at my feet and look up at me as if I held the keys to a kingdom she longed to enter.

‘Isn’t it time you went home?’

I jumped. Julia Harcourt was standing in the doorway, looking at her watch. ‘You’ll get locked in if you’re not careful. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t relish a night with a blackboard.’

‘I’m going in a moment. Just finishing off a few things.’

I was ready for her response:
Isn’t it Friday night? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the pictures with your boyfriend?

But instead she nodded and said, ‘Freezing, isn’t it?’

I remembered the bobble hat and my hand flew to my head.

‘You’ve got the right idea,’ Julia continued. ‘It’s like a larder in this place during the winter. I sometimes sneak a hot-water bottle under the cushion of my chair.’

She grinned. I put my pen down. She obviously wasn’t going to leave without a chat.

Julia was in the privileged position of having her own chair in the staff room; she was pleasant to everyone, but I’d noticed that, like me, she tended to eat her lunch alone, her eyes rarely leaving her book as she took careful bites from her apple. It wasn’t that she was shy; she looked the male teachers – even Mr Coppard – in the eye when she spoke, and she was also responsible for organising school field trips to the downs. She was famous for walking the children for miles without stopping, and for convincing them that this was the most enormous fun, whatever the weather.

I started to collect my worksheets into a pile. ‘I hadn’t realised the time,’ I said. ‘I’d better be going.’

‘Where is it you live?’ she asked, as if I’d mentioned it before now.

‘Not so far.’

She smiled and stepped into the room. She was wearing a woollen cape, bright green, and she carried an expensive-looking briefcase made of soft leather, and I thought how much better it was than a basket. ‘Shall we face the weather together?’

‘So how are you getting on?’ Julia asked as we walked briskly down Queen’s Park Road. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d survive that first day. You looked absolutely petrified.’

‘I was,’ I said. ‘I thought I might be sick on your shoes.’

She stopped walking and looked me in the face without smiling. I thought she might be about to bid me good night and head off in the other direction, but instead she moved closer and said, gravely, ‘That would have been a disaster. Those are my best teaching shoes. I’ve attached metal taps to
the
heels to warn the children I’m coming. I call them my hooves.’

For a moment I wasn’t sure how to respond. But then Julia threw her head back and gave a loud roar, showing her straight teeth, and I knew it was all right to laugh.

‘Do they work?’ I asked.

‘What?’

‘The hooves.’

‘You can count on it. By the time I’ve reached the classroom, they’re silent as the dead. I can ride roughshod over them and they don’t make a squeak.’

‘I could do with a pair of those.’

‘Giving you gyp, are they?’

‘Not really.’ I paused. ‘Alice Rumbold is a little …’

‘Shit?’

Julia’s eyes were bright and narrow. She was daring me to laugh again. So I did.

‘You definitely need the hooves with Alice,’ she concluded.

When we reached the corner of my street, Julia squeezed my arm and said, ‘Let’s do this again.’

As spring approached, I began to feel more impatient. Tom had kissed my cheek and held my hand, and every week we saw each other at least once, usually in your presence. But this was no longer enough. As my mother was given to reminding me, it was not yet too late for me. Not yet.

I’m not sure exactly when the terrible moment used to fall, the moment at which a woman was judged to have been left on the shelf. Every time I thought of it, I thought of an old clock, ticking away the days. Many of the girls I’d known at school were already married. I knew I had a few years still to go, but if I wasn’t careful, the other teachers would look at me
in
the same way they looked at Julia, a woman alone; a woman who has to work for her own living, reads too many books, and is seen out shopping on a Saturday with a trolley instead of a pram or a child in tow, wearing trousers and obviously in no hurry to get home. In no hurry to get anywhere, in fact.

I know it seems incredible now, and I’m sure I must have heard rumours of the existence of that fantastic beast, the career woman, at the time (it was almost 1960, for God’s sake), but I’m also sure that I dismissed them, and that the last thing I wanted was to be one of those women. So there was a panic rising in me as I stood in front of the class and told them the story of Persephone in the underworld. I got them to draw pictures of Demeter bringing the spring back with her daughter, and I looked out at the bare trees in the playground, their branches like veins, black against the grey sky, and I thought: enough of this waiting.

And then the change happened.

It was a Saturday night, and Tom was coming to the house to pick me up. This was the first change. Usually we met at the pictures or the theatre, but on this Saturday he’d said he would come to the house. I hadn’t told Mum and Dad about this, because I knew what would happen if I did: Mum would spend the whole day cleaning the place, making sandwiches, deciding which of her best frocks to put on and asking me questions, and Dad would spend the whole day silently preparing his questions for Tom.

All afternoon I pretended to be reading in my room. I’d hung my faux-silk pale blue dress on the back of the door, ready to step into, and it looked full of promise. I had a little blue cardigan, too, with angora in it; it was the softest thing I’d ever touched. I didn’t have much in the way of fancy
underwear
– no sateen bras or frilly knickers or lacy camisoles – so I couldn’t select anything particularly alluring, although I wished I could. I told myself that if Tom kissed me again I would get straight down to Peter Robinson’s and buy myself something in black, something that would speak for itself. Something that would allow me to become Tom’s lover.

Several times I was on the brink of going downstairs to announce the fact that Tom was coming over. But I couldn’t decide which would be most delightful: sharing the knowledge that he was picking me up, or keeping it a secret.

I managed to wait until five to seven before positioning myself at the window in Mum and Dad’s bedroom so I could watch for him. I didn’t have to wait long. He appeared at a few minutes to the hour, looking at his watch. Usually Tom took long springy strides, but today he almost dawdled, glancing into windows as he passed. Still, there was something liquid about him as he moved, and I clutched the curtain to my face and breathed in its mustiness to steady myself.

I peeked out of the window again, half hoping that Tom would look up and catch me spying on him, but instead he straightened his jacket and reached for our knocker. I had a sudden wish that he’d worn his uniform, so my parents could open the door to a policeman.

Looking at myself in my mother’s glass, I saw that my cheeks were flushed. The blue dress caught the light and flashed it back to me, and I smiled at myself. I was ready. He was here.

From the upstairs landing, I heard Dad answer the door and listened to the following conversation:

DAD (coughing): Hello. What can I do for you, then?

TOM (voice light, polite, every syllable carefully sounded): Is Marion in?

DAD (pause, a bit too loud): And who might you be?

TOM: Sorry. I should’ve said. I’m Tom Burgess. Marion’s friend. You must be Mr Taylor?

DAD (after a long pause, shouting): PHYLLIS! MARION! Tom’s here! It’s Tom! Come in then, boy, come in. (Shouting up the stairs again.) It’s Tom!

I took the stairs slowly, aware that both Tom and Dad were standing at the bottom, watching me descend.

We all looked at one another without speaking, then Dad showed us into the front room, where we sat only at Christmas and when Dad’s posh sister, Marjory, came down from Surrey. The place smelled of polish and coal, and it was very cold.

‘Phyllis!’ Dad shouted. Tom and I looked at one another for a moment, and I saw the anxiety in his eyes. Despite the coolness of the room, his forehead was gleaming with perspiration.

‘You’re Sylvie’s brother,’ Dad stated.

‘That’s right.’

‘Marion tells us you’ve joined the police.’

‘’Fraid so,’ said Tom.

‘Nothing to apologise for, not in this house,’ said Dad, turning on the standard lamp. He glanced at Tom. ‘Sit down then, boy. You’re making me nervous.’

Tom balanced himself on the edge of a sofa cushion.

‘We kept saying to Marion, bring Tom home for his tea, but she never did. Still. Here you are now.’

‘We should get going, Dad. We’ll be late for the pictures.’

‘PHYLLIS!’ Dad positioned himself by the door, blocking our exit. ‘Let your mother meet Tom first. We’ve been waiting for this, Tom. Marion’s kept us waiting ages.’

Tom nodded and smiled, and then Mum came in, wearing lipstick and smelling of hairspray.

Tom stood and held out a hand, which Mum took and held, gazing at his face. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here you are.’

‘Here he is,’ echoed Dad, and we all looked at Tom, who suddenly let out a big laugh. There was a moment when no one responded, and I saw a frown begin to appear on Dad’s brow, but then my mother giggled. It was a high, tinkling sound, one we didn’t hear often.

‘Here I am,’ said Tom, and Mum giggled some more.

‘Isn’t he lovely and tall, Bill?’ she said. ‘You must be a good copper.’

‘I’ve hardly started yet, Mrs Taylor.’

‘They won’t get away from you, will they? And you’re a swimmer, too.’ She looked at me with wide eyes. ‘Marion’s kept you a secret for too long.’

I thought she might be about to bat him playfully on the chest, but instead she patted me on the arm and looked coyly at Tom, who laughed again.

‘We should go,’ I repeated.

As we walked down the street, I was aware of Mum and Dad looking after us as if they couldn’t believe such a man as Tom Burgess was by their daughter’s side.

Tom paused to light us both a cigarette. ‘They were impressed, weren’t they?’ he said, shaking out the match.

I took a jubilant drag and exhaled dramatically. ‘Do you think so?’ I asked, innocently.

We laughed. The Grand Parade was beginning to sing with people heading for town. I reached for Tom’s hand and held it all the way to the Astoria. I held it tight and I didn’t let go even as we approached the usual spot where we met you. But when we got there, you were nowhere to be seen, and Tom simply carried on walking.

‘Aren’t we meeting Patrick?’ I asked, hanging back.

‘No.’

‘Are we meeting him somewhere else?’

A man pushed past us, knocking Tom’s shoulder. ‘Watch it!’ he shouted, and the man – a boy really, younger than Tom, with a greased forelock – turned and scowled. Tom stood firm, glaring back, until the boy flicked his cigarette end into the road and walked on with a shrug.

‘Patrick’s in London this weekend,’ Tom said.

We’d almost reached the pavilion now. Its turrets glowed cream against the blue-black sky. I knew you had a place in town, Patrick, but I’d never known you to stay there on a weekend. You were always with us at the weekend.

I couldn’t help smiling as I realised what Tom was telling me. We were alone. Without you.

‘Let’s go for a drink!’ I said, steering Tom into the King and Queen. I was determined to do what normal young couples did on Saturday nights, and I pretended not to hear Tom say that he’d something else in mind. It was so loud in there anyway; the jukebox was cracking out a beat as we stood near the bar, looking into our drinks. The crowd crushed us up against one another, and I wanted to stay there all night, feeling Tom’s warmth as he stood next to me, watching the muscles in his arm move as he brought his pint of pale and mild to his mouth.

I’d hardly started my gin and tonic when Tom leant towards me and said, ‘Shall we go somewhere else? I thought perhaps—’

‘I haven’t finished my drink,’ I protested. ‘How’s Sylvie?’ I wanted to keep the conversation away from the topic of you, Patrick. I didn’t want to know why you were in London, or what you were doing there.

Tom finished his pint and put his glass down on the bar. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘We can’t talk in here.’

I watched him walk out of the place. He didn’t look back for me, or call me from the doorway. He simply made his wishes clear, then left. I gulped back the rest of my gin and tonic. A cool rush of alcohol sped through my limbs.

Until I stepped outside and saw Tom, I didn’t know I was furious. But in a second everything tightened and my breath came fast. I felt my arm going rigid, my hand drawing back, and I knew that if I didn’t open my mouth and shout I would slap him, hard. So I stood with both feet planted firmly on the pavement, and I yelled: ‘What the bloody hell is wrong with you?’