She's Leaving Home (62 page)

Her father’s attitude had been more ambiguous than her mother’s. Annie had set ideas of a woman’s role, which on the whole was not to swan about and study but prepare for wedlock and motherhood. Helen feared that it would indeed prove tricky to combine a home and a career – but if it were remotely possible, she would try. That would be her aim.

But Daniel? Helen rubbed her fingers on the mirror as if hoping his image might appear to help her, but the steamy glass was blank. Her father would have been clever enough to go to college, she had no doubt; that he was prevented by lack of means was so obvious it didn’t need explanation. Poor boys from Liverpool’s slums didn’t get near. Poor boys got TB and were judged unfit even for war service, as her father had once commented with some bitterness. Yet he was an enigma. All the family stories – Gertie’s among them – hinted that he had once been energetic and optimistic. Somewhere along the line he had had the stuffing knocked out of him. He had become the passive character she knew, unwilling to do more than argue superficially over the headlines after supper. He’d chosen to let the world pass him by. It was not his fault but it was his fate: and he had long since abandoned the struggle.

So he would warn her about the pitfalls and wistfully if half-heartedly pressurise her into giving in. Maybe he wanted to legitimise his own choices. If his clever daughter, generally reckoned to take after her father, turned her back too on the temptations of the outside world it would make his failures less acute. Yet somewhere deep down he must ache for her to fly. If only he could have brought himself to enthuse and support her. If only he could dredge up some of that positive approach to life he must once have had. But it was lost, or he was unable any more to put it into words. The tiniest scrap of encouragement would have sufficed, and would have made Helen love him dearly.

Instead her father sat at the gate like a blind man who could not see beyond his nose. His role as guide had been filled by substitutes like Miss Plumb and Michael. Except that Michael was not a substitute for anyone.

‘I am my father’s daughter, and I am not,’ Helen murmured to the blurred face in the glass. ‘I am Michael’s girlfriend and I am much more than that. I come from my mother but I will never be my mother, nor much like her.
Never
. I am of Jewish blood but I wasn’t born in Lvov or Frankfurt but England; I am English, but I am not a Christian. I am from a class which is disappearing anyway, so I am not alone. I am a child of the past but I am not a prisoner of it. I’m – I’m – Oh, Lord.’

She stopped and pointed at the mirror. ‘What am I? Who am I? I’m Helen Majinsky, that’s who, sufficient unto myself, and I’m about to walk into the most important fifteen minutes of my life with my head held high. Right! Here we go.’

And with a big grin, but her heart beating fast, she marched out of the washroom and headed
down the corridor.

The Fellows of St Margaret’s College raised their heads from their folders and examined the young woman who had quietly presented herself. The brow of the Hon Maud Sheppard furrowed as the Dean Dr Swanson acknowledged the newcomer and motioned her to a chair.

Majinsky, H. Aged seventeen, just. A bit young. Hair damp at the edges. Not yet taken her A levels. Not a single higher qualification to her name, yet. The Liverpool Institute for Girls: Blackburne House. The Hon Maud flinched inwardly. So this was one of the northern
grammar-school
girl scientists pushed forward by an overly enthusiastic Dean (one could not criticise the Principal). One had to be modern, but there were limits. Barriers should not be reduced unnecessarily. Protective walls once breached might lay the entire edifice open to destruction.

Majinsky was of medium height and build, open-faced and brown-haired with large dark eyes. Semitic blood. The Hon Maud privately acknowledged that that augured well, strangely enough, better than were the child a simple Liverpudlian with an accent redolent of pop music and bad comedians. The university was littered with erudite men and a few women who had escaped the Holocaust and found sanctuary. Their guttural accents added spice and their academic quality was generally superb – they were quite a gain, in fact, as were their emerging offspring. More of the same was not absolutely undesirable.

Beyond the windows rain pattered fitfully. The light had taken on a searing quality as if the sun were trying to break through. The young applicant was seated, her head up, her hands clasped steadily before her, at the far end of the table facing the Principal. Number twenty in a heavy day.

The Dean commenced. ‘Good afternoon, Helen. Welcome to St Margaret’s. Your entrance papers reached a high standard. Now we want to ask you some questions.’

The girl’s eyes were bright. ‘Yes, I’m ready.’

‘But first – did you have a good journey? What were you reading?’

The inquiry was delivered with a deceptive smile. Helen blinked. ‘Bertrand Russell.
The History of Western Philosophy
.’

‘Really? But I thought you were a scientist.’

‘I am. I’m also interested in the universe beyond science. Anyway, there’s a lot about the philosophy of science in it.’

‘Are you finding him enjoyable?’

Helen grimaced then shrugged. There was no mileage in pretence. ‘Enjoyable is not exactly the adjective I’d use. But he makes me think, it makes me better informed, and I like that.’

Nods of approbation all round. A neat start. Notes were made in margins. The Principal turned to the mathematics tutor.

‘Well,’ the don drawled, ‘now for the obvious question. Why do you want to come to St Margaret’s?’

‘Because it is there, is the obvious answer.’ The crisp reply drew a laugh. Everyone began to relax. ‘I mean, because this college is among the top-rated in the finest university I could aspire to. And like asking a mountaineer why he climbs mountains, I’d say that I want to obtain the very best education I can. So – I was advised to come here. If you will allow me.’

‘Then why science?’

‘That’s harder to answer, because I suppose I might have chosen something else. Partly because I find it relatively straightforward – my maths are OK and my grades have been fair straight through. I enjoy studying what is not common knowledge: most people know so little about science that it’s like a secret garden which I feel privileged to be able to explore. And it’s useful. Plus I shall be able to get a job.’

The prosaic conclusion brought a further ripple of laughter. Helen frowned. The Principal
signalled her to continue.

‘My family don’t have any money so to be employable afterwards does matter. But that’s not my prime intention, as I don’t know what I’ll do when I finish – that’s too far ahead to tell. What I especially like about science, though, is the quality of certainty it conveys. The world is changing so fast, but an aldehyde is an aldehyde, an atom is an atom. That’s set, once it’s discovered and described. The laws of nature can’t be bent or twisted. And I like that.’

‘You find it comforting, do you?’ This from the chemistry don. In the strange light her hair shimmered about her head, but her expression was intense. ‘Yet the process of discovery is uncertain, is it not? And much of that process unpicks what we believed to be certainty before.’

‘That’s true,’ Helen countered, and thanked her lucky stars that a similar discussion, much of which she had but dimly grasped at the time, had been part of Miss Plumb’s tutorials for the scientific quartet. The don’s observation about the effects of the process of discovery also reflected something of which she was suddenly quite sure in her own mind:
it did unpick certainty, but could not be prevented for all that.

‘But were I to read politics or history, for example, the situation would be far more fragile. There, nothing’s fixed. Human behaviour alters under different pressures – research into what were believed to be historical facts turns them upside down. The very process of observation changes things – the existence of a free press, for example, makes a huge difference. Whereas in science there’s no argument about, say, Newton’s Law of Gravity. You can’t have competing viewpoints on it. It’s fixed and other laws revolve round it. So science gives us something absolute to hold on to, which history doesn’t.’

Eyebrows were raised. Mrs Rossotti murmured, ‘I think you may revise your views once you commence particle physics,’ but indicated that she had finished.

The Dean, one of the scientific illiterates at the table, opened her mouth. ‘But surely there are absolutes of human behaviour. Don’t you believe in anything absolute?’

Helen pondered. Her pulses were racing, but she was conscious that every eye was on her. ‘No-o. I don’t think so. Except absolute zero. You can’t get temperatures below that.’

‘Capital!’ The chemistry don slapped her palm on the table as if she had won the point herself.

The discussion ranged more widely for several moments over those who had challenged the accepted order. Helen promptly brought in both Darwin and Galileo; it was as if Michael’s spirit sat on her shoulder whispering. Her acquisition of myriad facts and surmises, seldom understood first time but retained and pondered over, settled into steady patterns of thought and response. Her brain felt cool and deliberate, her speech a well-honed implement. Back in the washroom the child had entered and vanished for ever; the new Helen had emerged, outwardly calm, assured, self-confident, womanly.

The Principal lowered her head and gazed at her. ‘But you must believe in something. What do you think underpins human behaviour?’

Helen spoke slowly. ‘Survival. Greed. Fear. Hate, if you consider the Nazis. The love of one’s family. Loyalty – blind loyalty, sometimes. Emotions like that. But I can’t answer for others, nor would I wish to judge them. For myself, I try to guide my own behaviour according to Aristotle.’

‘You do, do you? Which bit?’ The philosophy don sat up.

‘I think the exact quote is “The good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue.” From the Ethics. But I like President Kennedy’s version – “the full use of your powers along lines of excellence”. It’s a bit selfish, I suppose, but that’s what I try to do.’

As usual when she engaged in a conversation which stimulated and excited her Helen’s face had become faintly flushed, her eyes wider. Her hands would not keep still but flitted with the rhythm
of her words as if in independent agreement. One Fellow was scribbling rapidly but she had the total attention of the others.

The Principal intervened. Behind her the sky lightened; the rain had petered out. ‘What I would like you to explain to us, Helen, is how a pupil from –’ she placed her spectacles on her nose to check, then removed them ‘– the Liverpool Institute High School for Girls learned all that?’

The girl let her Scouse accent creep into play. If they were to accept her, it had to be for what she was. ‘I attend a remarkable institution. Blackburne House, its colloquial name, was the first girls’ day school in the country when it was founded in 1844. Our brother school started while King George IV was on the throne. It was philanthropic education of that kind that helped make Liverpool great. The successes of that great sea-port in turn made this country rich. And able to afford…’ She let her eyes roam around the room as a shaft of weak sunlight touched the gilded picture frames. ‘All this.’

She did not add, ‘So there.’ She did not need to, but gently softened the riposte with a smile.

‘Bravo,’ Dr Swanson murmured.

The mathematician decided to have one more try. ‘Then why not go to Liverpool University?’

Helen took a deep breath. ‘Because Cambridge is the best, as I said before. And because, if I am to be truthful to you, I would prefer to get away from what I have just described. I need to leave it behind. This is my way to – to escape, and to accomplish it with such dash that nobody could be cross with me.’

‘Really? So if we offered you a place you would accept it?’

Helen wanted to shout out – yes, yes, of course I would. But some devil was at work. It would not do to sound too eager. She put her head on one side, then smiled. ‘I could suggest something better.’

‘You could? What do you mean?’

The girl glanced about, slowly, from one adult face to another. An inner voice urged her on: the room seemed filled with rosy light and air, as if they were no longer in a cavernous room built on bare earth, but suspended above it, unbound and free. Her voice was low but clear.

‘Please: you need to understand. You are absolutely right – my parents would love me to stay close to home. A simple place here would not impress them much. But if you offered me – oh, heavens. If you offered a scholarship, they could not refuse.’

‘They couldn’t?’ The Principal’s mouth had dropped open. Nobody had ever bargained before.

‘No. ’Cause I’d have my photo in the
Liverpool Echo
, you see, and that’d convince them that I’d made it.’

And her smile widened, self-deprecatingly, but in complete accord with every person around the table. A slight hiss of breath, a glance here and there was exchanged, then silence reigned for a few seconds. The Principal beamed and closed her folder.

‘Well, Helen. Miss Majinsky. We will have to bear that in mind. Thank you for your attendance. You will be hearing from us in a couple of days.’

Later that evening she lay on the narrow bed in the student lodging. The ceiling overhead was covered in a maze of cracks, but the pattern was unfamiliar and lacked comfort. A brown patch betrayed a forgotten leak from the room above. A great lassitude overcame her. For the first time she knew loneliness, and the ache of despair.

Her performance, she could now tell, had been over the top: undignified, crass and stupid. She had overdone it. They must have found her ludicrous, with her silly answers, her parade of discordant scraps of knowledge. The shallowness of her comprehension, the superficiality of her ill-acquired veneer of education must have been painstakingly obvious. And all delivered in that unmistakable accent. The dons were probably laughing about her even as she dozed. Her antics would be the talk of
High Table for weeks to come.