Schooling (13 page)

40

He is standing at the library window creating her in every passing pupil. And when she will not be drawn in Hazel or Diandra he suffers the night she had. Troubles with Maggot sleepless night. He presses a foot against the window seat Mareka pulls away the curtain to sit on the sill he pulls out books touches spines notes how grey clothes form a shadowed jumble on her wooden chair. Moneybelt over rungs tuck key who did they belong to some girl who believed in Amsterdam. He begins to feel the night. Mareka brushing her hair sparking in the dark room. Drowsy black saucers under his eyes. A hand against the card catalogue to steady himself. Will you ever come. A spin of the globe. God if she would only lift him up. Truant muse pressing his forehead against the glass.

41

Never liked orchids myself. They always seem obvious. Still, they’re expensive enough. Isn’t it odd . . . Bea stops abruptly . . . How flowers can alternately smell of life or of decay. Can sicken or sweeten, depending. Nothing more brutal than the smell of dead flowers, including, and as a nurse I can attest, a dead person. But then there were lots of delays with medicine during those weeks. Oh how a war will focus though and I can tell you your predecessors up on the hill learned a thing or two when they went west. I had letters from them, little lord muckety getting mucky on his hands and knees in the victory garden. That’s the sort of empathy that destroyed the upper classes after the war having their lessons in what all, barns and pig stalls and falling into the Welsh river and through it all the undying nationalism. Mr. Mortimer, Stokes. That’s the sort of blindness, blind faith, that saves you in the end. Look at this darling bridge would that we could walk across it but it’s decorative only my sweet. Hurry hurry. Are you prepared for an increase in temperature and a jolt back in history . . . out the glasshouse . . . Tropical as always we save for last so hot in there like a bath in there. A quick trip through the Orangery which is boring in the winter but we must be methodical and onto the Succulents. There’s nothing not to like about the Succulents although I won’t say it again nothing compares to the Tropical which is like—

A hot bath.

A hot bath, I’m repeating myself. There you see, Roger doesn’t mind that sort of repetition. It’s all philosophy to a dog . . . Bea has dropped her hand in favor of propelling her by the small of the back through the Orangery . . . Keep your hands off the lemons.

Past fuchsia and citrus trees, out the back and along the path into another small glasshouse. The Succulents.

Bea again in the small of her back . . . Something disturbing about a cactus in England though I’m told there’s palm trees in Cornwall which I have my doubts about. When I get back to Marvelle road after a day in the glasshouses, I feel I’ve been to Morocco.

What’s Morocco like?

Morocco’s far away and mysterious and since I’ve never been that’s all I meant by that. So, Agaves. Nothing for fifteen or twenty years while they build up their reserves, then boom, a huge stem seven meters shoots out bearing hundreds of brilliant flowers . . . Bea points . . . Silence, then boom. The very effort exhausts it to death. But worth it don’t you think, see the photos?

A placard bearing the proof of twenty middling years, one grand moment, then death. A tweedy man in nineteen sixty-three standing next to the stem for a comparison of size.

What an ugly . . . Bea folds her arms . . . Why choose such an ugly cap on that particular day?

Down the way, a cactus bearing red flowers.

Crown of thorns . . . Bea unwraps a qualitystreet . . . Want one?

I don’t eat sweets.

They move to the living stones, camouflaged Succulents.

I shouldn’t . . . Bea looks at the chocolate as if they have an arrangement. Then she eats it . . . Why are you here?

My father came to Monstead when he was young.

Perhaps I knew him perhaps he came for tea to mock me in French.

Evans . . . lightly pressing both palms against the quills of a cactus . . . His name is Teddy Evans.

A flicker across Bea’s face, something in the eyes.

Did you know him? Bea?

Prickly pear . . . Bea points, smiling . . . I think. What about your mother, is she with him?

No. She ’s . . . words again words . . . Deceased.

There, I knew it was something. Those dark looks you give don’t come from nowhere. What a pity. We’ve all got death in the family. You know what I was during the war?

Nurse.

A nurse. So I know a few things about people and their conditions. Course, you haven’t had half your arm shot away. But that’s easier damage . . . Bea contemplates pebbles which are really plants . . . Your mother’s dead, then. Well don’t set any fires about it. If I were different, I’d be up the hill in two minutes, have a word with Armand Stokes. But I know my place . . . Bea scrapes at her lip with her teeth as if it is a struggle to know it.

What will happen to Aurora?

Oh, yes, change of topic, good idea. Aurora’s parents will take her to a place where others are paid to pay attention to your children.

They shot her horse.

I’m sure they had their reasons . . . Bea steers her out of the Succulents now off the crowded path now briskly across the sharp lawn sidestepping the Do Not Step On The Grass sign for That Do Not Pertain to Us and on toward Tropical which you will remember is hot as a bath.

42

God how he sweats. Globe stopped in Tonga and he’s overdressed for the occasion. Tooshort cuffs don’t provide enough ventilation. Sweat coats the skull he holds causing it to slip from his hand. Yorick crashes to the floor bounces once rolls to join dust under a bookcase. Gilbert throws himself to the windowseat gazing dreamily up under the mosquito netting out at palms lining the Avenue searching for her among children listing to lessons bearing schoolbooks on their heads.

A wave of heat reduces Bea to a coughing fit as they enter, spectacles off, hanky conjured from sleeve to tend to tearing eyes.

The house is thick with leaves, the heat indeed a bath. They move sluggishly, navigating a thick clump of ferns, stopping before a large fern with fronds like antlers.

So your father was at Monstead during the war.

Yes . . . absorbed with the staghorn of the genus
Platycerium
. An epiphyte.

Parasite of the plant world. Or is that symbiosis I don’t know. You might. Are you . . . Bea pushes at her glasses . . . Good at the sciences?

Not plants.

Ah . . . Bea looks out the window, back toward the ticket booth . . . What sorts of stories does your father tell you about his days at Monstead?

Boarding school stories. Stealing cake, swinging through the roof on a rope, arson.

Doesn’t that sound thrilling. Nothing else?

He never talks about evacuation.

Not to fear it was mostly peeling vegetables by the sounds of it. Oh I had the letters from Wales. Dear Bea how we miss your fire and your garibaldis. Well I barely came home in those days. I was on nights at hospital. After the war I never wanted to see any of them from the Monster. These days, they pass on their way to town.

Did you know Cyclops back then?

Cyclops? How cruel you are. To call people names like that. God but children are cruel.

Betts rose like a misanthropic moon.
God you make me laugh when
you tell stories like that
Aurora would have said
What happened next?
Betts edged over the craggy hillscape of English primers through a mist of chalkdust for it was the end of English and I was waiting for Sophie who told me she needed to fill her pen but did in fact appear to be stealing something from a duffel bag under the lockers.
Go on
Aurora would clamor
Go on Go on
. Betts bent down for a dropped board eraser, then up he popped like a character in a comedy.
And what
did you do, Kid? Well, to divert attention from Sophie’s law-breaking, I concocted a question on rhyme. Betts balanced himself to standing—
Well Diverted
Aurora always interrupted stories
Well done
—inadvertently smacking the board eraser on the desk and in the process giving himself a coughing fit. Evans, he told me, You’re not as bad as you might be at the English Language. Now, I had a friend in university by the name of Mahesh and though he was not born in this country, he had the finest command of English I had privilege to hear. What I mean, at this point Betts was trying to get the chalkdust off his suit, By this anecdote is that some day you too might speak as well as Mahesh.
He didn’t say that
. Yes, he did, then ended the speech by saying, Perhaps we are not divided by a common language after all.
That
Aurora would be pouring a compound down the drain
Is fucking hilarious, Kid, a comedian is our Bettsy. Then what?
We left him looking up the quote in a book. To see who said it originally.
Isn’t that just like old
Betts
Aurora would say
To steal the words of another
. Aurora always had a comeback.

Betts blinked then as if he had not just said It Could Be That You’re Not Such A Heathen After All. And she left, pulled along by Sophie. They were late for break, all the bread might be taken but Sophie wanted to stop by the tennis courts to spin out the stolen yoyo in a great vortex. I need bread, she told Sophie, Come on. Sophie untangled the string, Go on then. Well there was little point to bread without Sophie’s vegetable paste so she stayed. Sophie spun out the yoyo, up it sailed up up and there was Simon Puck in the fork of a tree watching them with beaky curiosity. Owl-boy, Sophie said, annoyed the yoyo would not go in a perfect circle.

Nearly conked by the yoyo, Brickie arrived. Said Leave Simon to his trees and birds stop this playing at children you won’t have anyone believing these parts you assume, that revels with round plastic disks keep you amused. Puck flew. Sophie went in for bread. Brickie stood with the red globe in his hand. Man delights not me he told it. Brickie reeled her in. Don’t forget our unfinished business, Yank. Sounds from Break in the background, the rising bliss for bread, vegetable paste, application thereon. I’m here to trouble you he said. Puck walked by the arch with a flat piece of bread, exceedingly large it looked. It’s a ploy she said A ploy for suspense. Brickie shrugged, walked away. And Sophie spun out with slices of dry bread they dented with their thumbs then ate.

43

In the center of the Tropical glasshouse, through ferns and a thick set of climbers, a rectangle of water bears figments of reeds, papyrus. A tall boy sits on a bench, feet propped against the pool.

Scraping through the plants, she comes out next to him. Owen Wharton continues staring at the water, arms folded. Hunching under the ferns, she waits. Owen takes his hand from his pocket, blows on his wrist.

Mareka said you got those scars from a knife fight in New York City.

I’m not American, don’t think that.

No, but half-something.

From the other side of the pool, a woman’s voice rings across the water, the Comprehensive mother arguing with a hidden person.
Are
you ashamed of us?

Owen reaches out for a stick, trailing an oldsweat dankness as he does.

My friend left her dog tied up outside. Now she’s afraid he’s frozen to death.

Owen’s face is flushed from the heat. A fern droops above him, resting gently on his hair. Owen reaches up, breaks it off then looks at the attenuated branch in his hand . . . Shouldn’t have done that I suppose. Disturb the ecosystem . . . he points the plant at her . . . I saw Aurora Dyer leave in a black car.

Aurora burned the pavilion to the ground.

Hmm. A stupid hut . . . Owen sucks on the fern, studying the various trees under the globe . . . Look at this little world in here.

The cricket pavilion was there a long time. Almost fifty years.

What does it matter . . . preoccupied with thoughts of his enclosure . . . They take things so seriously at school.

Aurora should have known what would happen.

She never doubted it.

Staring at his shoes running a leaf ’s serrated edge against her fingertips Aurora’s hair uncoiling over a box of swan vesta there was no history for her it was only in the end result trying again and again for gain in the damp air.

So, Evans, you didn’t audition for The Birds. I expected to see you there.

I don’t like to act.

It’s good fun to make a dance of the unpalatable.

Rather be Stage Manager.

Need training for that. And you don’t know enough . . . Owen points his foot to a tree opposite . . . That’s a coffee tree . . . he considers his shoe this way and that, sets it down . . . Which of your parents is Welsh?

Father.

So your mother’s the American.

Was the American.

Your moth—

Wharton!

They both start. Mr. Betts comes thrashing through the greenery. Careful sir . . . Owen holds out a hand protectively . . . There’s water.

Sweating, Betts extracts a piece of bark from his sweater . . . Thought I might find you here. Caught sight of you from over there, the sugarcane . . . looking up from his extraction, he nods . . . Evans.

Betts discreetly tamps his brow with one sleeve. She moves to sit on the low wall. Trails her fingers in the water. Stalks and reeds lie in thick crosses.

Thank you . . . Betts takes her place with a sigh . . . How’s Hamlet?

Nearly done.

Good good we’ll be talking about the Polonius surprise tomorrow so you’ll you’ll . . . something catches his attention across the glasshouse.

You said you were looking for me, sir? . . . Owen takes his feet off the wall one at a time.

Without ceremony. Wednesday afternoon. What else am I to do . . . Betts waves a hand dismissively . . . Family’s about. Was driving by and thought. Wanted to sound you out on a theory of mine . . . turning to his coat he takes out some folded papers damp with heat.

Went well did it?

I’m beholden to you, Wharton, as always. I think you’re right, the place to pay attention is the fear of water . . . Betts taps on his pages . . . Alienation.

Across the pool, Bea appears between two banana plants, waving both hands.

Betts glances up from his notes . . . Why is that dreadful woman signaling aircraft?

Beatrice tells her she knew it, that Roger was halfway through a container of discarded yoghurt and looked none too pleased at the disturbance how dairy disagrees with him and how I’ll pay for leaving him so long but mostly Bea says again and again Like a Bath Like a Bath. When they leave for the train, after plants, cocoa and pineapple, the peaked-hat woman and her comprehensive daughter stand in the parking lot with Mr. Betts, blue notebook pressed to his chest.