by Marie Joseph
It was the truth. It was a typical Carrie gesture, the self-effacing Carrie who was used to fetching and carrying.
But Mr Eccles waved her explanation aside with a downward motion of his long thin hand. ‘And you, Mr McDermot? What is your excuse?’
Mungo gave an eloquent, all-revealing sideways glance at the trembling girl who looked as if she might faint at any minute. The truth was that he had seen Carrie through the glass panels of his classroom door, hurrying on some errand, and decided it was too good an opportunity to miss. Telling his class to read over the poem they had been analyzing, he had simply followed her. Now his mind was too numb with the implications of what was happening to attempt any alternative explanation. So he remained silent . . . a silence that grew and lengthened as Carrie lifted her head to stare at him in bewildered terror. Surely Mungo would admit that he was to blame? Even though it almost certainly would not help, surely as a gentleman he would at least try to absolve her from some of the blame?
Mr Eccles’s mind was made up. As well as his genuine disgust at the scene he had just witnessed, there were wider issues to consider. For instance, an almost forgotten meeting of the town’s Rotarians when Oliver Peel, with a few snide remarks, had made him look like a fool. The fact that at the last meeting of the board of governors he had been advised to cut his staff or raise the school fees to an unacceptable level. His instinctive dislike of Mungo McDermot, who had refused to fight in the war whilst the headmaster’s eldest son had been wounded. And lastly, the seconds he had stood there down in the basement cloakroom, a Peeping Tom, enjoying a vicarious thrill at the sight of the man and woman locked together, writhing together in what appeared to be an embrace of such unbridled passion that his own loins had tightened with an almost physical pain. For that alone they stood before him damned.
‘You can get your things and go,’ he said quietly. ‘You will be hearing from the authorities in due course, but I will not have either one of you in my school again. In another minute the children would have seen the disgusting spectacle, and I will not have their minds sullied by your depravity. The rumours will be bad enough as it is, but for the time being I will take your form, Mr McDermot, and Miss Clayton will see to your pupils, Miss Peel.’ He jerked his chin towards the door. ‘Now go! Do what you have to do in a field or behind a hedge somewhere, but leave my school. Now, this minute!’
As Carrie turned to obey, Mungo came suddenly to life. As she looked back for a brief moment she saw him leaning across the wide desk, mouthing incoherent words lost to her. Then she ran across the wide landing into the mercifully deserted staff room. She collected her coat and hat from the cupboard, then ran back down the stairs and out into the damp cold of the November morning.
She was not, she told herself, a totally innocent party. What had happened was only the culmination of what had been going on during the long summer afternoons when she had lain with Mungo in the summer house, responding to his caresses. If this was to be her punishment, then she would face it as bravely as she could. No, let Mungo plead to be forgiven, let him grovel before Mr Eccles and beg to be reinstated. She, Carrie Peel, would leave with dignity.
Then, as the tram clattered its way towards her and she moved into the middle of the road to board it, the terror she had held in check suddenly exploded inside her. Groping her way between the rows of seats like a blind woman, she sat down to find she was shaking so much that she could hardly get her fingers round the coins in her purse.
Somehow she would have to find the courage to tell her father. That same night she would have to face him and say, ‘Father, today I was sent home from school because the headmaster, Mr Eccles, found me down in the basement cloakroom in the arms of one of the teachers, a married man.’
She made small sideways movements with her head as if to shake the inevitable from her as the tram clattered and rocked away from the town, dropping off its passengers, leaving her at the end to sit there alone, head bowed, too terrified even to cry.
‘You must tell Father the truth.’ Libby put an arm round her sister’s shaking shoulders. ‘You must tell him how this man has been making your life a misery for a long time. How he has been following you round at school and forcing his attentions on you, and how he overpowered you this morning so that the headmaster jumped to the wrong conclusions. You must get that all out before Father has a chance to shout you down.’
Carrie’s voice filled with bitter scorn. ‘But it wouldn’t be true, Libby! Oh, yes it was exactly like I said this morning, but Mungo wouldn’t have pounced on me if I hadn’t been going with him all the summer. He’s not a maniac.’ She started to cry again. ‘He’s gentle, really, and, oh God, it’ll be even worse for him. He has a wife and child to support. How will he get another teaching post now? He’s finished, Libby – this will finish him. I know.’
‘I thought you said you’d stopped loving him?’
‘I have!’ Carrie wailed. ‘I don’t know how I even thought I loved him! But that doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry for him. ‘She shivered. ‘Oh, that awful Mr Eccles! When I heard his voice, all the blood inside me froze. I’ll never forget that moment for as long as I live!’
When she saw Libby turn away, her shoulders shaking, she thought at first her twin was crying in sympathy. Then to her amazement she saw that Libby was laughing.
‘Oh, Carrie . . .’ Libby turned round, tears of laughter brightening her brown eyes. ‘Don’t lose your sense of humour, love. It isn’t the end of the world. You’ll get another teaching post in a better school, one like mine, where you can give the kids a peep at a world they never knew existed. Not teaching kids who are only passing time till they marry the son of one of their father’s friends, or go straight into father’s firm.’ She came and knelt down by the side of the bed, putting her hands on Carrie’s knees. ‘Oh, I can just see that dried-up little man standing there with his little prissy mouth wide open and his eyes standing out like chapel hat-pegs. He hasn’t got a bottom has he? When I saw him on your last Sports Day I couldn’t believe it, but I swear that underneath his pants and his combs – he’s sure to wear combs – there’s nothing, just a flat, empty nothing.’
Carrie drew a shaky breath. ‘I’ve often wondered myself what he sits on,’ she said. Then as they rocked together, Libby added, ‘and if Father goes too far – if he goes on about morals, then I’ll remind him of what I saw that night. “And just which pot is calling the kettle black?” I’ll say. I will! I’ll be away from this house soon anyway, so what does it matter?’
When Oliver Peel, without knocking, banged back the bedroom door with a slam that almost jerked it off its hinges, he saw two faces turn to him. Two identical faces, with the laughter he had heard as he stood outside wiped from them as if their old nanny had taken a damp flannel and washed the merriment clean away. Straddled in the doorway like a huge black bull, nostrils dilated, face flushed to an apoplectic purple, he bellowed, ‘Where does he live? That’s what I want to know!’ He took a step forward as the two faces registered first dismay, then a cringing terror. ‘That was Eccles on the telephone, feeling it was his duty, the sod, to break the news to me first before we get what he called the official letter. But he thought it unethical to give me the name and address of the man responsible for this filthy humiliation.’
With one movement he shot out an arm and flung Libby to one side. ‘And you can keep out of this, madam! This is one time when you don’t speak for your sister. One time when she stands on her own two feet, instead of acting like your bloody shadow.’ Taking Libby by the arm he frogmarched her towards the door. ‘But she’s not your bloody shadow, is she? Tarred with the same brush she might be, but she’s capable of getting up to her own nastiness, isn’t she?’
Furiously Libby tried to break free from the iron grip, only to hear Carrie’s voice ring out loud, clear and commanding. ‘Go, please, Libby. I want you to. Please . . . please.’
Oliver’s whisky-laden breath fanned hot on her face as Libby immediately stopped struggl
ing, but before the door was slammed in her face she called out, ‘Don’t tell him, Carrie! Whatever you do, don’t tell him!’
Then she was outside on the landing, breathing hard, clenching her fists and muttering to herself. ‘If he lays a finger on Carrie I’ll kill him myself. I swear it. He isn’t fit to live! He’s cruel, vicious, and I hate him so much I wish he was dead! If he dropped dead right this minute I would jump on his dead face, then go down and enjoy my dinner! I would! I swear it!’
‘Your sister isn’t coming down for her meal.’ Oliver took his place as usual at the head of the table. Libby pushed her chair back and half rose to her feet, but he motioned her back with a wave of the hand holding the carving knife.
‘Oh, dear . . .’ Ettie Peel took a long, deep breath, then held a hand to her heart. ‘What has Carrie been doing?’ She gave a piteous glance in her husband’s direction. ‘I heard shouting, but I thought it was Libby. It’s not like Carrie . . .’ Her voice wavered.
‘Tell her.’ Oliver ran the carving knife up and down the sharpening steel. ‘Tell her if you wish. The matter is out of my hands now until I choose to do something about it. Go on! Make your mother ill. It’s up to you.’
Libby held her anger tight inside till she felt her blood must surely be at boiling point. She saw the way her mother’s lower lip trembled and the faint bluish tinge to her lips, and pity, overcoming the anger, forced her back to her chair again.
‘It’s nothing, Mother.’ To her own surprise, her voice came out quite calm. ‘Carrie had a bit of an argument with the headmaster at school today, so she’s thinking of changing to another teaching job. It was time, anyway. She’s far too good for that tinpot private school where parents too well off to know better send their kids.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Ettie Peel helped herself to one small boiled potato. ‘But it will be nice to have Carrie at home till the wedding. There’s so much to do. Oh, I wish she could meet someone like Harry.’ She dribbled a spoonful of mashed carrots on to her plate. ‘The man who is going to be your best man, Libby – he’s not married, is he? Wasn’t he at university with Harry years ago?’
‘He’s married to his mother,’ Libby said clearly, venting her anger by being deliberately provocative.
‘Oh, dear,’ her mother said, refusing the gravy. ‘I see,’ she said wistfully, not seeing at all.
‘I don’t know what Father said to her, but she didn’t tell him Mungo’s name or where he lived.’ Libby ran out to the car as Harry drove up to the front of the house. ‘But we’re going there now. We have to warn him that Father is on the warpath. Otherwise there’ll be murder done.’ She climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Come on then. I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but it has to be done. Father will get his address somehow, and the sooner Mungo McDermot knows what to expect the better.’
Harry raised his eyebrows. ‘But what about his wife? He’s a married man, isn’t he? You can’t just barge in and confront him, Libby. His wife won’t know anything about his . . . dalliance with Carrie. Surely you see we can’t interfere? It’s none of our business, love.’
‘What happens to Carrie is my business. What happens to Carrie happens to me.’ Libby’s small chin jutted forward. ‘Carrie told me that Mungo’s boy is kept at home because he’s deaf and dumb, so if we can’t get Mungo alone I’m going to say I’ve come about the possibility of the boy attending school.’ She nodded twice. ‘But we have to get Mungo alone. It will all blow over in time, but for the moment he has to lie low.’
‘You can sit outside in the car if you would rather,’ she added as they drove down the long tram route to the town, turning left eventually at Libby’s direction. ‘It’s off here, I think. Number twenty-two. I used to come down here for piano lessons when I was a little girl.’
‘I didn’t know you played the piano.’ Harry said this with the air of a man who had long ago accepted the fact that he did not know much about anything at all.
‘I don’t. It was a complete waste of time,’ said Libby, peering through the car window at the numbers on the doors of the terraced houses set behind tiny front gardens.
‘Heaven preserve me from bossy women,’ Harry whispered fondly as they stood on the short paved path waiting for an answer to their knock.
‘Why? Do you know any?’ Libby answered sweetly, as the door opened almost at once.
Ten mintutes later Harry started the car and drove back down the street. ‘So where did that get us?’ he asked. ‘That woman had been drinking, did you know that? Brandy, I would guess, and by the colour of her I would also guess that her liver is part rotted. She’s going to be in trouble if she doesn’t watch out.’
Libby wrinkled her nose fastidiously. ‘She was awful, wasn’t she? Grotesque. I thought hard drinkers stopped eating? But there wasn’t much evidence of that – she must weigh at least fourteen stones.’
‘Glands.’ Harry was more relaxed now the mission was completed. ‘But the boy was pathetic, wasn’t he?’ He signalled to turn right. ‘You know, you could be right about that child needing help. He isn’t mentally retarded, not at all. He was taking it all in. He was lip-reading, that lad, and making sense of it too. And don’t ask me how. A child born deaf like that is only dumb if he is never taught to speak, and if that boy has never learned to speak then how could he lip-read?’ He stopped to allow a man and a woman to walk out into the road to board the tram. ‘But his mother soon put you in your place when you tried to suggest schooling, didn’t she?’
Libby wrinkled her nose again. ‘She smelled, Harry. Her clothes and the house weren’t dirty, but she smelled . . . urgh! No wonder her husband looks elsewhere.’ She turned sideways. ‘Where do you think Mungo is? She doesn’t know anything yet, does she? When she said he hadn’t been home from school, I didn’t know what to say. Heaven help him when he does decide to return. Carrie says she hits him, and I can well believe it. I wouldn’t like to meet her in a dark passage at night. I bet she packs a hefty punch.’
Harry, driving with his usual caution, was well content. This was the Libby he had fallen in love with and would love till the day he died. Bossy, outrageous, funny, taking up causes with enthusiasm, then dropping them as suddenly. Helping, caring Libby – naïve at times and immature, childlike even, though she would flare into instant indignation if he said so. But that didn’t come from inherited characteristics, but because of that man, her father. Harry sighed. If ever a man was in need of psychiatric treatment, then that man was Oliver Peel. he alone, with his Victorian ideas of how to bring up daughters, was responsible for the mess Carrie seemed to be in. Treat a woman like a child and she would behave like one. Deprive her of parental affection, and she would seek that affection elsewhere. And Libby . . . Harry gripped the wheel hard. He would never know what had caused her to try to break off the engagement a month or so back. All he knew was that, though quieter of late and less prone to dramatic outbursts, she was now anticipating their wedding day with a quiet serenity that made him love her more that ever – if that were possible. Taking one hand from the wheel he placed it on her knee, and was rewarded when she covered it with her own hand, answering his pressure with a loving response that made his blood rise until his farmer’s face was suffused with a ruddy glow.
‘Nearly home,’ he said.
Less than ten minutes later Harry was again at the wheel of the car with Libby beside him and Carrie seated in the back.
‘I’m sure I know where to find Mungo,’ Carrie was saying. ‘It’s not far. Turn left here, Harry. Now right. Here! This is the place.’
Stopping the car, he saw that they were beside a high hedge, and all at once he was remembering the old manor house, drooping into decay even when he was a boy. Now he supposed it was no more than a derelict ruin, cloaked in trailing ivy, with no future for it but the trundling rumble of bulldozers when the town council decided the time was ripe for development. Hardly the place for . . . He raised a resigned eyebrow as Carrie, getting out of the car, asked them to
stay where they were, promising she would be as quick as possible.
‘Let her go,’ he told an indignant Libby. ‘She knows what she’s doing, and as far as I can remember there’s a little summer house just inside that hedge. She won’t be going all the way to the house, not on a night as dark as this.’
‘So that’s where they met.’ Libby sounded smug. ‘I often wondered where Carrie met him when she was late home from school. Talk about a dark horse! Fancy that,’ she added.
‘Let’s forget Carrie for a little while.’ Harry put his arm across the back of the seat and drew Libby to him. ‘Oh, love. I’m just counting the days now, aren’t you?’
‘I hope she knows what she’s doing.’ Libby returned his kiss absent-mindedly. ‘If she’s not back in ten minutes I’m going in there after her. I am!’
Mungo was there, inside the summer house, in the dark, sitting on the edge of the chaise longue and smoking, flicking the ash on to the pile of spent cigarettes at his feet.
‘It’s all right, it’s only me.’ Carrie closed the door behind her and, guided by the red glow from what must have been his umpteenth cigarette, went to sit beside him, keeping her distance and speaking slowly and firmly.
‘You have to go home, Mungo. You have to go home now, and face her . . . face Beatrice. I’ve had to face my father, and you must face her. This is something you can’t run away from, Mungo, but . . .’ Her voice faltered. ‘You have to keep away from my father, for the time being. He will find out who you are, and where you live. Not from me. Never from me. But he will find out, and when he does he’ll come for you.’
She started to put out a hand towards the silent cringing figure sitting beside her on the rickety sofa, then drew it back. ‘What we did – what we were doing last summer was wrong, and this is our punishment. But running away won’t help. It’s not like running away from the war, Mungo, because the war was far away, but this is here. You have to be a man.’ She sighed. ‘Mungo! Are you listening to me? Are you?’