by Bill James
‘Her teacher asked Matilda’s class to write a kind of very personal pen pal letter to a Third World child, describing their lives in Britain to someone ignorant of our ways,’ Ms Norvenne said. ‘Ah, this is Matilda’s.’ She held up a couple of A4 sheets.
‘It sounds so interesting,’ Manse said at once. Oh, what the fuck!
‘We have to teach them how to write a formal letter, because the skill is disappearing, owing to e-mail. And the art of description is called for when the letter cannot assume the recipient knows anything at all of the writer’s circumstances and setting. So, it’s a doubly useful exercise, you see.’
‘Very, very true.’ Although Manse felt scared, it delighted him to hear that things got planned here, not just catch-as-catch-can. When you read Daily Mail reports about ordinary comp. schools, in what people called ‘the state system’, you saw how teachers and heads used most of their time making sure kids didn’t strangle or rape one another or the staff, or spend all the French lesson screening porn on mobile phones under the desk. But if you paid out lavish for your children in a school like this one, Bracken Collegiate, you expected plenty of good schemes to do with true education, such as this Third World idea. Although he thought they might of stolen it from a movie called About Schmidt, where Jack Nicholson writes to a lad in Africa, telling him about America, Manse would not say this to Ms Norvenne because he liked her confidence and the way she got words, big and small, to line up for her without no trouble, like an army drill squad.
He still thought it must be awkward to bring her into a stay at the rectory for a while, but, if he did, he could tell she would be great for conversations when he felt like it on many subjects. To reach Bracken Collegiate from the rectory was simple – just go left out of the drive, on to the Spoor roundabout, third exit and then more or less a direct bit of country road. This would be a plus if he did ask her.
‘We supplied each of them a name to call their pen pal by, so as to make it seem vivid, you see. A one-to-oneness, the essence of good letters. I don’t know whether you’ve come across the letters of the poet, John Keats, for instance, Mr Shale.’
‘You don’t get more one-to-one than him.’
‘Matilda’s pen pal we named Dauda.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there are people called that over there.’
‘Well, yes, there are. We took names from government lists in Whitaker’s Almanack.’
‘This makes it seem truly real,’ Shale said.
‘That was the idea. Verisimilitude.’
‘Yes.’ Manse enjoyed all this, watching her enthusiasm and the playful way she fingered a proper, fully nibbed fountain pen, not a Biro, on her desk. But, also, Manse did worry about the real real, instead of someone from this fucking Whitsun Almanack. Where did Matilda go in the lunch hour? It was not to see Third World Dauda, and Dauda didn’t bring her back and drop her where it would be secret. He had the car number and make, but the lad who used to sell info from the police computer had been picked for an accelerated promotion course. The replacement officer seemed short of talent, and was scared of Harpur and Iles, so would not play. ‘I see this Dauda idea as really exciting,’ he said. It all showed Manse again that people had different aspects, and these could be present at the same time. One part of him felt thrilled to think of Matilda writing to somebody cooked up, with a genuine foreign name. But another part of him wanted a good long sight of that genuine woman driving the Astra and, of course, not Syb. He must decide whether he could ask Matilda about this. He did not like the idea of making her uncover things in her life if she wanted them private. That was the wrong way for a father to treat a daughter.
Manse had thought Ms Norvenne would give him the letter, but, no, she read it to him. He liked her voice. Some voices did not suit the faces they came out of but her voice did. This was a voice he wouldn’t mind listening to now and then or even oftener. It didn’t have that sickening boominess and clatter some women’s voices did. It was just a voice that told you things, like serving up a fair meal on a warmed plate. She said: ‘Here goes, then: “Dear Dauda, I’m going to let you know first about my house, which was once upon a time a rectory. That’s where a clergyman used to live but my father bought it although he is not really a clergyman at all at this moment in time.” ’
At this moment in time. Did she think Manse would want to become a clergyman one day, so it would be more suitable for him to live in the rectory? Or, probably, she’d just heard that saying, ‘at this moment in time’, and liked sticking it in. ‘It’s clever to tell Dauda about the house, because it could be absolutely different from where he lives, such as a mud hut in one of them villages,’ Shale said.
‘ “There are a lot of pictures on the walls in the rectory. Many people have pictures on their walls because of the colour and scenery. The other day when I wasn’t there my father changed them all round. It was terrible, Dauda. I came home and had a bad shock. It made the house seem like somebody else’s house. I don’t know why he did that. I became upset. I felt like lost.” ’
‘Sensitive, you see,’ Shale said.
‘ “Then, when I went to my bedroom I could tell someone had been in there, a stranger. I don’t know how I could tell but I could tell. Also, my father tripped up on the stairs and spilled sauce. When I say stairs I mean for going up from the hall to where the bedrooms are.” ’
‘She got to show what stairs are, because a mud hut wouldn’t have no upstairs,’ Shale said.
‘ “We soon removed that sauce by ordering new wallpaper and a new stair carpet. My dad put the pictures back right. I began to feel better then. But a man came to the house and I knew he was the one who had been in my bedroom. I don’t know how I knew this but I did. I’m telling you this, Dauda, so you will see the kind of person I am. I know some things but I don’t know how I know. Is it the same for you? I think you might have magic and witch doctors where you live and I think this might be magic for me, also. My name is Matilda. Well, that’s all for now, Dauda. I hope it is not too hot for you in your country. It is raining here. My dad doesn’t usually carry sauce when he is going upstairs or coming down but he did this day, honestly. He doesn’t usually move the pictures about either, but he did this day. Perhaps everyone has days that are not usual, not just about pictures and sauce but all sorts. I don’t know if you have heard of a conservatory, but we have one. It is like a glass room on the end of the house in the garden. It has eight sides. Many flies and insects get in there because of the warmth. In your country I expect there are flies and insects, anyway, without a conservatory, because of the sun. With many best respects, Matilda Shale.” ’
‘I should think conservatories over there would get really steamy,’ Manse said, ‘what with the Equator.’
‘I wonder how this letter – supposed letter – strikes you, Mr Shale.’
‘Them pictures – she was upset.’
‘That’s why I asked about special factors, you see. Her teacher and I both detect in this piece of writing an almost overwhelming sense of insecurity, of sudden rootlessness. Matilda thinks the house has become like someone else’s house, because you’d moved the pictures around. That might appear an extreme reaction. I suggest it is possibly symptomatic of something wider – Matilda’s general sense of bewilderment, of alienation. She believes the privacy of her bedroom has been abused and even believes she can identify the invader, and now, according to her, this invader has returned to the house. She feels terribly menaced. Her home, which should offer protection and safety, can no longer do that. She is battered by the loss. Her mind cavorts: she ends the letter with “that’s all for now” but then has to get back to the matter of the sauce and pictures and, finally, the conservatory tacked on to the letter, as, indeed, a conservatory is tacked on to a house, the conservatory colonized by flies and insects. She feels she does not belong anywhere, you see, Mr Shale. The house is not her house because switching the pictures means it looks different. Her bedroom and the cons
ervatory have been taken over. Whereas the flies and insects might be natural in Dauda’s country, they are incursors here. All these factors amass to bring her abnormal stress. I see in Matilda’s work a cri de coeur. She seeks support. I said they were asked to do a personal letter with some background about the British scene, but Matilda’s is exceptionally revealing, exceptionally autobiographical.’
Manse really loved all this heavy chatter, including French. Most likely you would never get talk of such quality from the head of a comp. Some of the words twinkled in his memory – ‘rootlessness’, ‘alienation’, ‘cavorts’, ‘amass’, ‘incursors’. This woman must be almost worth half the cruel Bracken Collegiate fees on her own. She could truly jaw. And yet she went careful, also. He knew what she really wanted to say. What she really wanted to say was that the uncertainties about Sybil had begun to get at Matilda and confuse her. Did the children’s mother belong at the rectory or not? Would she remain now or skedaddle again when the itch came? Perhaps Ms Norvenne knew this itch herself, personally. This was why Manse thought she might like a season at the rectory.
But although Ms Norvenne sounded off brilliant about many matters, she knew she must not try to elbow her way into certain areas, for instance, Syb. Of course, Manse had that uncertainty, too. He could not be sure whether Sybil wanted to come back for good to the rectory. And he had another uncertainty on top of that. He did not know whether he wanted her to come back for good, although it might be best for the children. If your wife been over in Wales living with someone called Ivor who was a bus driver or charity shop manager or that kind of thing, you could not think of her as exactly like she used to be. Sorry, impossible.
The children said Ivor was really dull and ordinary. But for a while, anyway, Syb liked being with him better than she liked being with Manse. He felt injured by that. He did not think Carmel or Patricia or Lowri would go off with someone dull and ordinary in Wales, even though Lowri had a Welsh name. ‘Maybe I should of thought it out a bit more careful when I decided to move them pictures around just like willy-nilly,’ Shale said.
‘You were probably hoping to give the children a harmless, even amusing, surprise. You might have wondered – and quite reasonably wondered – if they were fed up with the way the paintings had been arranged for so long.’
‘Well, perhaps I did. All the same, I feel guilty. I ought to of remembered how sensitive she is.’
‘You were alone in the house, were you, when you did the swap around? Everyone away for a while, perhaps?’
‘Paintings can get to be like friends,’ Manse replied. ‘And you expect to meet your friends in familiar places. Otherwise, it’s as you remarked, “rootlessness”. Possibly one day you’ll visit the rectory and give us your view on whether the paintings are in the right spots on certain walls. That would be a treat. I don’t know if you might of come across the work of Arthur Hughes and Edward Prentis. The Pre-Raphaelites had what is known as “a Brotherhood”, which always seems to me just right for art.’
Ms Norvenne stood. ‘I agree with you,’ she said, ‘that it would be wisest if Matilda doesn’t hear about our meeting today, for fear of distressing her. But, of course, she or Laurent might have seen your car outside and wonder.’
He’d come in the Jaguar, with Eldon driving and wearing the cap, no fucking rebel arguments at all, the way there used to be from Denzil Lake. Although Manse did detest show, he thought that at Bracken Collegiate a quality motor and chauffeur would be normal for many parents. He felt he should keep up this standard, for the sake of Laurent and Matilda, known as ‘image’. A duty, really. Eldon was waiting outside in the playground with the car. He seemed more or less settled in the job, although he could not understand why they had to chuck the Laguna operation just because it would of been four not three. It truly irritated him. That might sound like simple, crude, blast-off thinking, but now and then Manse wondered if Eldon had things right.
After all, what was happening? As Shale saw it, this lout Chandor wanted a way into the business. He knew it would be hard going, so he starts by showing what he can do – lifting the pictures, dumping a body, the idea being to get Manse jittery, even scared, before Chandor makes the approach, like dropping them two atom bombs in 1945 and saying ‘Talk, or Tokyo’s next.’ The body could be a total unknown male as far as Manse was concerned. Chandor might even regard that as an extra bit of pressure. It showed he could do what looked like a random, meaningless killing, if this helped his case along. Oh, dear, a corpse on your stairs, Manse. Sorry about that slip-up. I wonder who’ll be next. And then he considerately removes the body, puts the pictures back – although any old how – offers compensation, to show he also has that kind of reasonable power and flair. Didn’t it all mean that pretty soon there would be either another bit of terrorism, or a formal approach to Manse by Chandor, asking for a slice of the trade? Talk, or Tokyo’s next. Oh, yes, the suggestion would be there that, if Manse refused him a share, the terrorism would restart.
So, perhaps Eldon’s ideas made the best sense, even if they would of involved knocking over a Detective Chief Superintendent. Or maybe especially if they involved knocking over a Detective Chief Superintendent, if the Detective Chief Superintendent had been taken aboard by Chandor as part of his operation. Harpur – supposed to be more or less straight despite his rank, but was that right? It could be that Eldon saw a situation not just simple, or too simple, but beautifully clear. It could be that Eldon brought Manse real possibilities. Not all chauffeur-bodyguards had to be as thick as Denzil. Manse remembered a great lad who worked that role for him a while ago, Neville Greenage, black and with a terrific brain. But he’d gone off to start his own commercial organization in Yorkshire or Austria or somewhere like that. Eldon might turn out to be in this class.
Manse thought Ms Norvenne’s point about the kids maybe seeing the Jaguar was sharp. ‘An idea. We’ll say I came to pay next term’s fees, if they ask, shall we?’ he replied. He made his voice cosy now, like adults getting together to fool a couple of kids, but in a nice way, such as telling them about Father Christmas. Manse had a couple of pocketfuls of used twenties and tens from trade around Valencia Esplanade the last two nights. They was not in rolls or rubber-banded but loose. He did not want to look like some fucking on-course bookie, did he? He counted out a stack of twenties on to her desk. ‘The story is, I was passing and my tailoring had got plumped out of shape by this build-up of business funds, as can happen so easy, can’t it? And so I think to myself suddenly, “Why, Mansel, here I am, near Bracken Collegiate, so I’ll just pop in, see whether the head’s around, and, if so, offload. She’ll do me and my jacket a good turn, I’m sure, and take it.” ’
‘In notes? This is very unusual, Mr Shale.’
He believed she would really prefer to call him Mansel, but her high post as head stopped this for now. Perhaps next time, or definitely if she ever came to stay at the rectory. He could tell the grubby heap excited her – not the amount, which would be the same if he’d written a cheque, but how he could produce a couple of thousand plus in raw spendables, sort of casual from his coat, as though just everyday cash flow for him. Shale felt sure about the word she would stick on him after this in a fond way – swashbuckling.
She’d be familiar with that word from tales of knights and squires when they used to get out and about doing gallantries. Manse didn’t mind it. From films he’d seen on TV he would say George C. Scott as General Patton was swashbuckling, and Tyrone Power when Zorro. Probably anyone called Tyrone would be bound to have a swashbuckling side. In the staff room with the teachers, on her way to the bank, the head would probably let them see the money in her briefcase and remark: ‘That Mr Shale, would you believe it, simply arrived at my room and, in his cheerful, swashbuckling style, flung this lot at me, not even asking for a receipt.’
She stopped playing with the fountain pen and instead put out her hand and touched the money, pressing it down from the top, making the column of paper tighter. T
hen she took her hand away so the pile slackened upwards again and grew higher. She did that three times. Some would think she didn’t believe the loot was real and had to check by touch. Manse saw it different. He reckoned she knew this must be grubby, street money but money just the same, and it thrilled her to get it against the skin of her finger. It gave her closeness to a world separate from her usual world of original-style fountain pens and kids’ letters to the Third World. Manse liked watching and stayed quiet. He thought of it as a kind of ritual, such as in church. He said: ‘The house itself is interesting, and the conservatory not just insects and flies, believe me! Some lovely plants and flowers, many from abroad. I think you’d enjoy a visit.’ She wrote him a receipt saying, ‘Prepayment fees, received with thanks.’
It always pleased Shale to know that some of the turnover from trade went into education here, like positive. This idea felt at its strongest today, because of the living currency. It made things more head-on, direct. Ralphy Ember’s children went to a school on the other side of the town, also private, naturally. Just like Manse, Ralph wanted to make sure his two stayed out of that comp. jungle. Shale wondered whether Ralphy had ever flung a wedge of money across the head’s desk there. Ralphy liked to think he was refined, so maybe not.
Not far from the Spoor roundabout, in a 40 mph limit length of road on their way back to the rectory, an old brown and beige VW camper van overtook the Jaguar, cut in hard ahead and suddenly slowed, a real tactic, making Eldon brake. ‘What the fuck?’ he said and took one hand off the wheel. He reached under his jacket, chest height.