‘I’ll put him on in a minute. You know, Honor, if you ever want a few days in London, to do whatever you want to do, you have only to say – we’d love to have you.’
She wondered if this open invitation had been generated by her sister, or whether he’d only just thought of it.
‘Thanks, that’s really kind.’
‘I mean it. You could be a free agent.’
‘Thanks.’ She couldn’t picture herself as a free agent, least of all in London where she was sure she’d be a fish out of water. What exactly would she be free to do, that she wanted to do, and couldn’t do here?
‘Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Good. Now here’s your little brother …’ There was a brief silence, then Bruno’s voice.
‘Hi.’
‘How are you?’ She was smiling, it was good to hear his voice.
‘Very cushy.’
‘Is Robin still there?’
‘No, he’s gone to get the film started. The rug rats are in bed.’
‘Have you found somewhere to live?’
‘Actually I may have done.’ Honor thought she detected something slyly suggestive in his tone, but just then Marguerite appeared, so rather than follow this up, she signed off and passed over the receiver.
Hugh was in the drawing room, reading the current scurrilous political memoir. As Honor came back in, he closed the book and looked up.
‘I’m glad he finally saw fit to get in touch, your mother’s been fretting.’
‘I spoke to Robin first – I think he applied some pressure.’
‘Good man.’ There was a glass of whisky on the table next to Hugh, and he took a sip. ‘Where was our Fliss?’
‘At her book club. The kids were in bed.’
‘It’s high time we saw that lot,’ mused Hugh. ‘They change so rapidly at that age, particularly the little girls. Remember? Cecilia will be ruling the world in no time.’
Honor wondered if he’d thought that about her. She could easily see how it might have been true of Felicity and Charity.
‘Not you so much, my girl,’ he went on, reading her thoughts. ‘You looked after the rest of us from the moment you could walk.’
She tried to work out if this was a good thing and decided that on balance it was. She would definitely rather look after people than rule them.
Marguerite came back into the room with a brisk step and a cheerful expression.
‘Gosh, that’s a relief. Why do I worry?’
‘No idea,’ said Hugh comfortably. ‘Why do you?’
‘He thinks he may have found somewhere, but he won’t be able to move in for a week or so.’
‘Any details?’
‘No, you know Bruno. “Just a place in North London with a couple of other guys” – one he used to be at school with apparently.’
‘Dear God.’
‘No, come on, that’s a good thing. Much better than strangers.’
‘Better for who?’
‘Stop it, Daddy,’ said Honor. ‘You’re stirring.’
Ten
Mac didn’t often get into London these days. The school was over sixty miles from the city, and the local village station not particularly easy to get to. Nor (infuriating this) was there anyone in the ticket office except at ‘peak times’, i.e. between seven and eight thirty in the morning. Driving in was out of the question – he was fond of his car, a classic Mercedes, and was old enough to remember when he’d have liked nothing better than a spin into town with the prospect of enjoyable hours ahead – but now the traffic and the hassle and expense of parking rendered the whole thing a trial.
However, this fine September Saturday he was ‘bunking off’, leaving Mrs Lewis the deputy head at the helm, and catching the ten o’clock to town. This was almost unprecedented. Mac was a dedicated man, and Brushwood was his calling – his raison d’etre. He had no wish to escape the school, it was his home and where he most wanted to be. He knew the school’s regime was described disparagingly in some quarters as ‘laissez-faire’, but those who used it were ignorant of his ethos. The children (they were all children to him) must be listened to, and they must also learn self-reliance. That could only be learnt in the context of reasonable freedom – that is, as much as was consistent with their safety and wellbeing, which he also took seriously. But presiding over such a delicate balance, whilst providing an education, and assuming all the responsibility that even his pupils’ parents had a right to expect, was tiring, and he was no longer young.
So this day out was a treat, and he was quite heady with pleasure and excitement as he stood on the platform and saw the yellow light of the London train appear in the middle distance, closing fast, full of promise.
He had worked out a schedule for this outing. The main focus of the day was lunch, but it would have been a pity not to make the most of the trip to town. He was going to spend a couple of hours in the V & A and then, depending on how things went and if there was time before the rush hour, perhaps the British Museum in the afternoon. These side attractions had the added benefit of making the lunch less freighted with importance.
Being free and at leisure in the city was so exhilarating that when he emerged from the tube at South Kensington he didn’t go into the V & A right away but walked up Exhibition Road to the park. The Albert Memorial glittered magnificently in the sun, the trees of the park many textures of greenish-bronze, like verdigris. At the sand track he had to wait for a couple of riders to pass, smart girls who tipped their caps as they went by. He liked that – these little niceties, neither expected nor encouraged at Brushwood, were a sort of guilty pleasure. Basic politeness based on consideration for others was of course essential, but the school’s no-frills, self-determining ethos meant Mac would rather the children’s energies went into areas other than social window-dressing. He touched his own finger to his forehead as the girls trotted past.
He had dressed rather formally for his day out, in the lighter of the two massive suits he had had tailored for himself in the distant past. He was proud that both suits still fitted – Brushwood democracy demanded that everyone, pupils and staff, do their bit in maintaining the kitchen garden, the livestock and the games field, so he was fit. Outside the classroom he often wore a boiler-suit, but the world was a smart-casual place these days, and he owned little that would have come under that heading. He hoped that formality was an error on the right side.
He had almost forgotten the particular pleasures of a London park. When he’d been here as a young man at the LSE, parks had not featured in the student repertoire, but they had been a big part of that brief period when he’d been an impecunious young married teacher. Adele had missed her native Lyons, but she had enjoyed the green spaces and they’d spent hours strolling, picnicking, feeding ducks, listening to the band concerts, people watching … In fact this was the part of his fleeting marriage that he chose to remember because even though they both (he suspected) knew they had made a dreadful mistake, they had been happy walking arm in arm under the trees. It was back in the tiny second-floor flat in Paddington that the tension had pressed in on them, forcing them to confront their differences. And then, when Adele had lost the baby – a stillbirth for which she had to endure a terrible dry labour, and both of them a pathetic funeral – that had been the turning point. No more strolling side by side, pretending. Now they looked straight into one another’s wide and terrified eyes and saw the truth staring back. Adele had returned to Lyons, and after due and distant process the marriage was over.
Mac sat down on a seat overlooking the Italian garden. Perhaps that was when the seeds of his philosophy had been sown. You had to know yourself, your own mind, for self-determination to happen. And that was far from easy. Self-awareness had to be learned. Many people – probably the majority – if they knew anything about Brushwood, thought the regime slack, lacking in rigour, that the children just ‘did as they liked’, but such was not the case. If a pupil made a wrong de
cision, then he or she had to live with the consequences, at least for a while. The school council, composed mainly of peers, with one or two members of staff, assessed situations as they came up, and its judgements were surprisingly sound. This system had the added advantage that those under scrutiny were far more likely to accept the outcome.
There were some instances, naturally, when Mac had the power of veto, or when he simply had to make a ruling.
On the very instant that he thought of Bruno Blyth, he saw him. And since there was little doubt Bruno had seen him too, there was no option but to keep going. Not that Mac had any qualms about encountering past pupils, even troublesome ones, but it was a question of context, and today’s was delicate. The freedom he’d accorded himself felt compromised by this chance meeting. Still, since the encounter was now inevitable it must be taken by the scruff.
‘Good grief, is that Bruno?’
‘Hi there.’
Mac held out his hand and after a split second Bruno took it and they exchanged a brief, manly tug.
‘How’s everything going? I hear you got in.’
‘Yes, term starts next week.’
‘Those were good A Levels.’
‘Thanks. They were alright.’
‘Bragging rights for Brushwood, anyway.’ Mac made a split-second decision. ‘Are you hurrying off somewhere, or can I buy you a coffee? There’s a hotel opposite the gates.’
‘Sorry, thanks, but got to go.’
Mac was relieved. ‘Good to bump into you, Bruno.’
‘Sure. Bye.’
‘All the best.’
Mac walked the next couple of hundred yards at speed, before sitting down on a bench. Bruno Blyth would have been most surprised to know how discombobulated he felt, and the reason.
He set off again, turning east towards the Round Pond and the bandstand, from where he could cut through to Kensington High Street and walk along to the restaurant. He had abandoned all ideas of going to the V & A. A girl in bright pink Lycra zoomed past on a skateboard, swerving and swooping like an exotic swallow. A jogging couple overtook him, one on each side and very close, making him flinch. A football bounded across the path ahead, chased by a youth with dreadlocks, holding up a hand with a ‘Sorry mate!’ Mac felt his age. Relative fitness notwithstanding his reactions were not the same, and nothing to be done.
Was he, he wondered, about to make a massive fool of himself?
Bruno had been a bit startled too. What the f …? That was parks for you, serve him right for taking a short cut, but he had a hangover which had made him nearly heave on the bus, and he certainly couldn’t face the Tube. He wasn’t at all sure now why he’d agreed to meet this girl, Camilla, Priscilla, whatever, in Kensington, at an hour on a Saturday he barely recognized. He’d fancied her ferociously last night and she was the kind of posh confident girl who was going to make you work for it, so coffee in Ken Market it was. Coffee! He grimaced. Even the head’s offer had brought the taste of it into his mouth. He reminded himself that in a few days’ time he would have moved in with Sean and this particular state of mind and body – dehydrated, queasy, disaffected – would become the norm.
Mac walked briskly along the broad walk, then round the pond with Kensington Palace to his right, and south towards the high street. The prospect of Bertorelli’s restored his confidence and energy. Generous platefuls of aromatic pasta, blizzards of parmesan and black pepper, seeping chunks of garlic bread, all served in the surroundings he remembered and was fond of, with murals of the Italian lakes, pepper grinders like small cabers, and rough, quaffing red by the litre … He could almost taste it already. The Brushwood menu, while wholesome and largely organic, was not exciting. Perhaps they should do something about that …
He had been walking fast, and was perspiring under his suit jacket by the time he arrived, half an hour early. He should have checked his watch sooner, then he could have wasted some time in the park. There was a coffee shop, one of the new chains that had sprung up everywhere in recent years, and he crossed the road and went in. It was surprisingly busy, with people having what he supposed was lunch – wraps, sandwiches, cakes and salads in tubs. Queueing, he confronted the bewildering array of options. What in God’s name was a caramel frappuccino? It was trumpeted as New! so perhaps he could be forgiven. He found a space by the window. The tall stool didn’t look inviting, but there wasn’t room to stand, so he hauled himself up and perched, his boots resting awkwardly on the bar which didn’t seem to be at the right height for anyone of a normal build. His ‘medium white Americano’ would have done three reasonable people, and the handful of tiny packets of sugar weren’t nearly enough, so he could scarcely taste it.
However, the massive coffee did mean he could legitimately stay in place for the required amount of time. He’d been there about twenty-five minutes when he saw her arrive at the restaurant, and go in. Damn, he’d particularly wanted to be waiting for her. But less than a minute later she came out again and walked briskly the few metres to a nearby bookshop.
He abandoned the last third of tepid khaki liquid, hurried out and just caught the green crossing light.
Charity had finished a paperback on the train and had dropped it off in the first charity shop she passed. Since it now appeared that she had arrived first and there was a bookshop more or less next door she took the opportunity to pop in and look for something else. The latest Black Swan paperbacks were prominently displayed near the entrance, and she took only a second to choose. She was rigorously selective with academic and work-related books, but when it came to fiction she was easy to please – she knew what she liked and needed to look no further. The particular author she was into at present specialized in writing about relationships, families in particular, and apart from the intricacies of the plots she enjoyed the author’s insights. It was reassuring to know that, in this writer’s view anyway, her own family’s idiosyncrasies were nothing out of the ordinary.
Happy that she had the return journey’s reading taken care of she popped the novel in her bag. In the restaurant, she saw that he’d arrived and was sitting at a table next to the wall, his head framed by a technicolour Mount Vesuvius. He was looking at the menu but not with great concentration because the moment she entered he looked up and rose to his feet.
‘Hello there! Excellent. Where would you like to be, on the chair or facing the action?’
Charity opted for the banquette and they changed places. She submitted to napkin flourishing and menu provision.
‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long?’
‘Three minutes at most. May I suggest we choose, and then we’re free to talk.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Carafe of cheerful red do you?’
‘Perfect.’
They made their selection – mixed antipasti for two, then liver and onions for her, lasagne and deep-fried polenta chips for him – and the carafe arrived and was plonked down on the table for them to do as they wanted. Mac poured two generous glassfuls.
‘Good health!’
They clinked. Mac’s spirits were lifting by the second. In fact he couldn’t believe his luck. This smart, good-looking, independent young woman was sitting across the table from him, talking animatedly and with every sign of enjoyment. She was telling him how fortuitous it was that there was a bookshop next door … that she was a fast reader, used to, as she put it, ‘hoovering up facts’, though what she had bought … she showed him … was the purest entertainment … He listened, enjoying her dry, slightly ironic way of talking and her thin, mobile face as she did so. It struck him that Charity Blyth was the sort of woman he hoped his female pupils turned out to be: self-confident, unfussy, plainly turned out though in his view far from plain, with clear and clearly-stated views. And (a surprise this) who chose fegato alla veneziana with fried potatoes. With a bit of luck they could pool the spuds and the polenta.
She had asked him something – the faint wake of her question still showed on her face. He’d
been caught out in daydreaming.
‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit’ – he tapped his left ear – ‘and it’s a convivial atmosphere in here.’
‘I said I don’t suppose you get much time off during term time?’
‘Well, I’m sure I could have more but l certainly don’t take it. The school’s not large and I feel, rightly or wrongly, that I should be there, taking care of things.’
‘Of course.’
‘But all work and no play … I owe myself an occasional treat, and this is definitely one.’
‘Just this?’ She gestured with her glass. ‘Or do you have any other plans for the day?’
Mac made a series of lightning decisions. But he had never been a player of tactical social games, and wasn’t about to start now.
‘This is why I’m in London,’ he said simply. ‘But I’ve made the most of it. I was going to look round the V & A, but it was such a glorious morning I walked round the park instead. If I have the time I might well do something else this afternoon.’
‘I know what you mean. Even if you live in the country a London park has a special charm. And just the’ – she waved the glass again – ‘the sense of everything being there if you want it. I love my work, but where I am is a cultural desert. And that’s not to imply I’d spend every spare moment in galleries and museums even if I could. But it’s nice to have the option.’
They talked a little about her work, and moved on to films – Mac seldom went to the cinema these days, so it was interesting to hear both her recommendations and her scathing critiques. They had a surprising amount in common.
Prior to Charity’s coming to collect the malefactor, Mac had only met the parents, who were charming. He’d liked them for selecting Brushwood for their youngest because it would be right for him as an individual, not because of some fixed ideology or determined objection to all other forms of education. He was glad of anyone who shared his views, but the Blyths were not his usual clientele. They had asked searching questions in a polite way, and made it clear that once committed they would be fully behind the enterprise even if (in Mr Blyth’s case especially he suspected) it was all somewhat alien.
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