Song at Twilight (2 page)

"What a name to go to bed with!" came the reply.

I refrained from saying that no one ever has, since I regarded that as being no business of his.

To make up for this particular lack in my life, I have, over the years fallen in love with endless characters from fiction, starting with the obvious ones like Mr Rochester and Mr Darcy, and moving on to giants like Mitya Karamazov and Prince André.

Or sometimes I have fallen in love with the writers themselves so that Albert Camus and Molière may have found themselves vying for attention in my mind with Heathcliff or Henry Esmond. Such has been the substance of my dreams and these the frequent companions of my solitary hours. Surrounded by men like Heathcliff and Henry Esmond I suppose I could barely hope to find a real one who came anywhere near the required standard. And to be perfectly honest, I am quite sure that neither Albert Camus nor Mitya Karamazov would have given me a second thought had either of them ever met me. So there it is.

Despite this lack of a man in my life I have never really been lonely because I have always had a fairly large number of friends and acquaintances. The common room of a school is not a lonely place for among the mini-Hitlers and other misfits to be found there, one or two sympathetic characters are sure to lurk. In any case, the little Hitlers and misfits themselves provide company if one is desperate. But I have never really been one to seek company for company's sake. Perhaps partly because there is never any shortage of it in a school, whether one likes it or not.

In any case I have, over the years, managed to make a few true friends and in addition to them there is, of course, my family. So I have no good reason to complain of loneliness.

Nevertheless, I soon realised that without the school to fill my days and despite the fact that I am not only able, but happy, to spend large stretches of time alone, I would need to make new friends in the village where I now live. For one thing most of my friends no longer live nearby and although they come to visit me from time to time, one does need in life someone on whom one can drop in with impunity, someone to ring up when a storm has brought a tree down and the lights are out all over the village.

I am not especially shy but I do have, as I have said, this rather unprepossessing, pedestrian manner which means that people are not instantly drawn to me. At the same time, I am aware that a certain amount of excitement is engendered by the arrival of a newcomer in a quiet country village.

"Who," everyone will be asking each other, "has bought the Old Forge?" 

And I know, of course, that their faces will fall when they hear that it is a retired school-mistress. They hope in their romantic, optimistic hearts to be told that Elizabeth Taylor’s sister, or the mistress of someone on
EastEnders
, a criminal on the run, or Princess Margaret's butler – anybody, anybody but a retired school-teacher – has bought the Old Forge.

I must be bold, I tell myself. Go to church. In the parish church, at Mattins, I will not find Princess Margaret's butler, nor will I find many criminals on the run, but merely people like myself. Retired professional folk some of whom will be ready, I trust, to make friends with me, or at least to turn a kindly, enquiring glance in my direction.

So, when I arrived in the village, I went to church. I have to say that this was not an entirely cynical move. I have been a church-goer on and off throughout my life and have, if not a very strong faith, at least a desire to believe which at times becomes a firm conviction. Most of all I hate the certainty of disbelief and the pride that knows best.

Be that as it may, I went to church and there, as I had anticipated, I met, among others, the Postmistress, the Colonel and his lady, the Major and his lady, the Commander and his lady, and of course, the Vicar. I was politely invited to drinks, the Vicar came to call and within a short time I knew most of the village community, church-goers and others. They were all very polite and amiable, and all lived according to the roles in which they had cast themselves. None seemed particularly likely to become a close friend, but then it is not so much close friends as friendly neighbours which I seek.

On the other hand, I could say that my closest neighbour is not merely friendly, but almost too friendly. I suppose the poor old boy is lonely.

As soon as I moved in, Eric was at my front door introducing himself, pointing in the direction of his cottage just along the road – I had already noticed the immaculate neatness of his garden – and offering his services. How kind and considerate I thought he was. I invited him in and gave him a cup of tea and some home-made shortbread and the very next day he came round again to invite me back to his house for a glass of sherry and, he said, he would love to show me his garden. Was I interested in gardening? Of course he would be only too prepared to come round and give me a helping hand in my garden any time.

It was September and my garden had been somewhat neglected over the past few months while the house had been for sale and then while I was moving in. I glanced around at the late summer mess, a clump of straggling Michaelmas daisies in one corner, an ugly group of docks in another and a great bush rose – perhaps
Frühlingsgold
– spreading its arching stems in every direction, but almost swamped by head-high nettles all going to seed, and then I glanced back at the frail, bent figure in front of me. But, it occurred to me, he somehow manages his own garden.

"Well, that would be very kind indeed," I said brightly.

I don't think that I am a particularly irritable person nor do I think that I am unfriendly, but I do find that I treasure my privacy.

I can imagine that a newly widowed or divorced person may find living alone very difficult. It is something which they have to leam to do, but since I have lived alone all my adult life, I can no longer really imagine any other form of existence, and although I love company, I do not require it all the time.

Eric, who has been a widower for a couple of years, clearly does not understand this, as, after I had been for my glass of sherry with him, and admired his garden, he took to calling not just once a day, but sometimes as often as three times. I find it extremely difficult to be rude and have no idea how to discourage him without offending him as he doesn't appear to react to the merely gentle hint.

Ever since I met him, several months ago now, I have become accustomed to hearing the latch click on the garden gate and to glancing out of the window to see him shambling up the garden path, clasping a bunch of flowers, a basket of hazelnuts, an enormous marrow which it would take me a month of Sundays to consume alone, a Christmas pudding or a book which he thinks I absolutely must read. 

Eric is becoming a problem. I do not want him in my house all the time although I have to admit to a certain liking for him and I would very much appreciate his company occasionally – but not every day.

Naturally Eric can hardly be expected to know that I am engaged in writing. I haven't told anybody about that yet, and it is, not surprisingly, very difficult to concentrate when one is permanently interrupted, and I find that I need to concentrate very carefully if I am to put things down honestly and, as far as is possible, from an objective point of view.

I do hope that in these first few pages I have managed to do just that and above all to give a true picture of myself as it has always been a matter of utmost importance to me to avoid self-deception of any kind. I flatter myself that, on the whole, I have managed all my life to see myself as I really am, and to see my motives for what they really are, and I sincerely hope that I shall be able to maintain a rigorous clarity of vision throughout the account which follows.

Chapter 2

February 6th

It may be a truism to remark that in a school you see the world in microcosm, but truism or not, it is something which has struck me repeatedly and forcefully throughout my life. Even in the early days, when I worked in a single-sex school, there were the rulers and the ruled, the obedient and the rebellious, the warring factions, the sick, the needy, the strong, the weak, the generous and the greedy and, of course, as I have already mentioned, the little Hitlers. There were always plenty of those.

When Doble's, the girls' school in which I taught, joined with the neighbouring boys' school to become Blenkinsop's, none of that changed very much. There was simply added a rather unpleasing sexual element, an element which produced yet one more field of competition. Not that I believe competition to be by any means always bad, but I was distressed by the appalling spectacle of over-made-up teenagers vying for the attentions of the loudest, most swaggering boy in the school, and it was a tragedy to see sensible girls whom I had always considered to be quite pure becoming little tarts overnight.

Of course I am not so foolish as to suppose that those girls who look sensible, always act sensibly, nor do I suppose that their minds are always pure. After all, even I have had my dreams. But what I do maintain is that, generally speaking, a girl who looks sensible is a girl who in her heart of hearts wishes to be sensible. Just as everyone in the outside world dresses and behaves and speaks in such a way as to define the role which he or she wishes to play, so does the schoolchild. Only the role that the schoolchild chooses for him or herself is bound to change, sometimes with terrifying frequency before it is finally set, in young adulthood, almost never again to be diverged from.

Who knows to what extent the final choice of role is decided by environment or heredity, or a mixture of both? Who can tell, in the long run, what part free will plays in the whole thing? I like to think that it does play a part and that we are not all mere puppets of fate, whose destiny is decided by such arbitrary things as the name our parents choose to give us at birth.

In any case, over the years, I watched the children at Blenkinsop's grow and develop and flit from role to role as they floundered their way through what some people describe as the happiest days of their lives. Days in which insecurity breeds competition – often of quite the wrong sort – and competition of all kinds breeds yet more insecurity. Let me hasten to add that I am quite at a loss to know how any of this could be avoided since it is all, I am sure, quite simply a part of the human condition.

It is just that, as an onlooker, and to a certain extent I was not only an onlooker at Blenkinsop's but am also a mere onlooker in life itself, one becomes fascinated and horrified by all the role-playing, so that one develops at times a profound dislike for those who cast themselves as heroes and an almost painful sympathy for the unhappy misfits. The ones with walk-on parts which they have created for themselves out of some dark recess of their psyche, often provoke as much sympathy as the obviously tragic. It depends to what extent they are content to play that part. Sometimes they are dissatisfied with it and long for greater things. It is precisely here that I feel that I have myself come to terms with life, even succeeded in it. I have a walk-on part, a small part which I have to some extent shaped to suit myself and with which I am not unhappy.

Naturally it took me some years before I was able to mould my part as I wanted it and before I could really say that it suited me. I have heard of young actors and actresses who imagine themselves playing the great tragic roles but who eventually discover that their real talent lies in comedy. So children can have little idea which part will best suit them and some will have greater difficulty than others in finding one at all.

This was the case with Timothy Hooper. Funnily enough I well remember the day when Timothy first appeared at school. And I remember thinking, as I looked at him on that very day, that he was surely destined for one of life's walk-on parts.

It was about a week after the beginning of term – eight years ago now – and I was in the school secretary's office at the time, discussing arrangements for the French play which was to be on at the end of term. Letters had to be sent to parents encouraging them to support the effort.

Timothy was ushered into the secretary's office by his mother, a smart, remarkably young-looking woman who was, I thought, to say the least, over-dressed for the occasion.

"This," she said, pushing the child forward by the shoulder, "is Timothy. He's had chicken-pox. That's why he's come to school late. What shall I do with him?"

While the secretary made arrangements for someone to come and fetch the child and take him to see his dormitory, I looked at him. Poor little thing. He appeared frightened to death, small and frail and hesitant beside a glamorous, confident, pretty, impatient mother. It was as though she couldn't wait to be rid of him. Perhaps, I fondly thought, she is eager to return to some lover from whom she has been separated by the child's prolonged stay at home.

I have always thought and have sometimes been told that I should write novels, but lacking the necessary confidence, I have eventually decided instead to set down this account of Timothy's life at Blenkinsop's. Life is, after all, as they say, stranger than fiction.

Little Timothy who was then, I suppose, thirteen years old, had a face which could only be described as nondescript. He was also rather small for his age. I felt very sorry for the child, but, having a class to teach, I was unable to stand around any longer and so, with one last glance at the boy and his elegant mother with her tiny waist and high-heeled shoes, I left the room and made my way down the corridor to confront the fourth form and the
passé
simple
.

Some days later I heard from Timothy's form teacher that she was worried about the boy. He was very quiet indeed, even for a new boy.

Most of the children in the first year at Blenkinsop's arrived in the school having already been to school together and therefore knowing each other, but Timothy, whose parents had just returned from ten years in Jeddah, had been to school out there until now. That, combined with his coming late to a new school, was enough to make any child quiet, I thought. But I agreed that he did not look like the sort of child who might settle in and make friends quickly. I had noticed him occasionally over the preceding few days, wandering alone and disconsolate along the school's endless corridors, all of which smelt of boiled cabbage and disinfectant. He had dark circles under his eyes and usually looked as though he had been crying.

Once I stopped to ask him if he could find his way, and smiled at him in what I hoped was a kindly fashion. He muttered an inaudible reply and shuffled off down the passage, dragging his hand behind him along the wall.

I turned and watched him go just in time to see a large seventeen-year-old who was coming in the other direction with his spiky hair and his collar turned up and with the cockiest of cocky swaggers push him roughly over and say rudely,

"Out the way, squit."

I called the boy over to me and gave him a piece of my mind, but as is the way with cocky seventeen-year-olds, he lied his way out of the situation, swearing as he gazed sincerely into my eyes and, dare I say it, with an impudence that was almost sexual, that I had misheard him and that the whole incident had been a mistake. I glowered at the lout and walked away musing as I did so on the pungent smell of unwashed boy half drowned by the reek of cheap after-shave which had greeted me.

That year I did not teach Timothy's class and so any encounter which I had with him was purely accidental but I did, for some reason – from curiosity perhaps, or compassion, or stifled maternal instincts – watch that child from a distance, enquiring occasionally from his teachers about his progress.

On the whole his teachers seemed to be quite pleased with him. He was not especially clever, but neither was he stupid. He tried hard and turned his work in on time.

I wondered how he fared on the rugby field. He looked to me like the sort of boy for whom the mere thought of a game of rugby on a frozen pitch might bring tears to the eyes and so I was quite surprised to be told that, although not naturally a sportsman, he was plucky enough and by no means a shirker. To my mind it was surprising that any but the toughest and the most insensitive of boys should care for rugby especially since I had learned by the grapevine that the rugby coach had a habit of running his hand inside the shorts of the younger boys to check that they weren't wearing underpants which were forbidden during sports for reasons which I shall never understand. I have sometimes thought that only women should become teachers. There are, of course, many bad women teachers but the behaviour of some of the more inadequate men who are drawn into the profession is nothing short of depraved.

But to return to Timothy, he apparently shone in one respect. He had a very beautiful treble voice and was soon co-opted into the choir where he sang like an angel.

During chapel I would sometimes glance at him singing in the choir stalls. Timothy looked at his best when he was singing, as is often the case with people who are doing something well, and concentrating on doing it. He stood with his shoulders back and his head up and sang with tremendous gusto.

After a while, perhaps during the second term of Timothy's first year, I noticed that he was often to be seen about with another boy. A fairly uninteresting looking child with the kind of face which is easily forgotten. But then Timothy, too, had a nondescript face. I was glad to think that the boy had made a friend and supposed that he had at last settled down and might even be quite happy at school. I could never quite explain why my interest in him remained so acute. Perhaps it was just because I felt so sorry for him when I saw him arrive on that first day.

*

I had been writing all morning and was quite engrossed with what I was doing when the telephone rang and I was surprised to discover that it was already after half past one. Gloomy Patricia was on the telephone inviting me to lunch on Sunday. Gloomy Patricia often asks me to lunch on Sunday. It is a day on which she feels that the solitary feel particularly lonely – and perhaps she is right. It is certainly kind of her to give me so much thought but I rather wish that she could find a more tactful way of phrasing her invitation.

"I always think it must be dreadful to have no family on a Sunday," she began with this time. "No one to cook a joint
for
."

Leo, she said, would be back for the week-end, so it would be a real family party.

Leo, I have noticed, very rarely comes home for the week-end and I agreed, quite sincerely, that it would be a pleasure to see him.

"I'm not sure that Victor feels the same way," said gloomy Patricia. "Leo and Victor never seem to see eye to eye…" her voice trailed away. "I think there may be something wrong with Leo's attitude to work," she added thoughtfully.

It seemed to me that there wasn't much wrong with Leo's attitude to work, so much as with Victor's attitude to life. Leo was an actor by profession. He had spent three years at L.A.M.D.A. after leaving school and, like most people in his line of business, he was generally out of work. That hardly seemed to me to be his fault. While unemployed as an actor, he frequently took odd jobs in pubs or on building sites. In my opinion he had rather a healthy attitude to work, but there was no point in discussing the matter with Patricia, and even less so with Victor who abhorred the fact that his son had gone on the stage. He was permanently terrified lest Leo, a handsome young man with a mane of golden hair, be seduced by some predatory homosexual director. Anyway, I rather think that it never, ever crossed Victor’s mind that his son's taste did not perhaps draw him towards that conventional marriage which he, Victor, longed for.

Schoolmistresses, especially elderly unmarried ones, are notoriously narrow-minded people, easily shockable and incapable of understanding the modem world, and yet, I am permanently dismayed by the blindness and lack of understanding displayed by Patricia, not to mention the ludicrous narrow-mindedness of Victor. I cannot imagine what would happen if anyone ever dared so much as to hint to my brother that Leo's sexual leanings were not absolutely conventional and yet I would have thought that it was quite obvious that Leo is not what used to be called the 'marrying kind'. Neither do I think that Patricia has woken up to reality as far as her son is concerned.

I thanked her for asking me to lunch and put down the telephone with a feeling of relief that Leo would in fact be there because it would make a change and enliven the atmosphere. Besides, despite everything, I am fond of my nephew and have not seen him for a while. Laurel, his sister, I have my doubts about.

Hardly had I put down the telephone when Pansy started yapping to be let out, so I put her in the garden thinking as I did so that I would give myself some bread and cheese and an apple perhaps before taking her for a little walk. She is too old now to go far. Then I might return for a lie down. I usually like to lie down for a while in the afternoon.

I was sitting at my kitchen table peeling my apple – well, to be perfectly truthful, I had peeled it in one piece, as young girls do, and thrown the peel over my left shoulder and had just turned to see what letter it would form as it fell on the floor when the doorbell rang. I looked hastily and embarrassedly at the peel lying on the floor. It could be a 'Z', I thought, but then I know nobody whose name begins with 'Z', so I decided that it must be a back-to-front 'S'. Apple skins, I thought as I hurried to the door, always land in the shape of a 'Z' or an 'S'. It's a very silly game really.