Miss Carter's War

by Sheila Hancock

  ‘It’s not bloody funny.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. What did you say to that?’

  ‘I said, “Do you know what I would like? I would like to smash my fist into your self-satisfied, flabby, stupid face, you drivelling idiot.” ’

  Marguerite strode up and down the rabbit cages shaking her fist.

  ‘He must have been terrified.’

  ‘Not at all. He was astonished. He thought I would be flattered. Otherwise why did I “go to so much trouble with my lipstick and fetching clothes”. I threatened to report him and he just said, “You’re a very silly, hysterical girlie. I will merely say you are unsuitable for academic reasons. It’s my word against yours and I will win.” ’

  Marguerite sat down beside Mr Stansfield and shrugged.

  ‘And of course he would have done.’

  Mr Stansfield shook his head.

  ‘I see what you mean. It hadn’t occurred to me how disparaging my remark sounded. I apologise.’

  Marguerite touched his hand.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr Stansfield. I am an English teacher, so I am oversensitive to language.’

  ‘Tony, please.’

  ‘And I am Marguerite.’

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘Right. Let’s go for a look round the grounds.’

  He rose and put their cigarette butts in the back pocket of his shorts.

  ‘Get rid of the evidence.’

  He offered her his hand, and pulled her to her feet. She noticed that his blue Aertex sports shirt exactly matched the colour of his eyes, and his slender well-shaped legs were golden brown.

  She lands with a crash and the chute pulls her about 50 feet over the rough ground. She manages to detach it, sees beside her two muddy boots. Her eyes travel up the sturdy body to meet piercing eyes staring at her in the torchlight. The face is craggy, jaw sagging in surprise. ‘Vous êtes une femme.’ He bends to yank her to her feet. His body is hard and smells of sweat. He is very definitely un homme.

  Tony introduced her to the eight rabbits in the hutches.

  ‘My best friends here. They don’t answer back. Unlike the beastly girls.’

  They then circled the allotments, tended by a couple of young girls wearing Young Farmers’ Club badges.

  ‘They’d run a mile at the sight of a cow. This was all playing fields, until the school had to dig for victory.’

  He pointed out the remaining hockey pitch, and netball courts, hard and soft tennis courts, and cricket pitch.

  ‘Are the girls good at cricket?’ asked Marguerite.

  ‘My God, yes. They’re super at batting. Maybe because if they hit the ball hard enough it goes over the fence to the boys’ field next door, propelled by their rampant hormones.’

  Marguerite stopped and looked him in the eye.

  ‘You don’t sound as though you like the girls or the school very much.’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You’re a forthright little madam, aren’t you? Actually I do like both of them, but your indiscriminate enthusiasm brings out the cynic in me.’

  ‘Well, don’t let it. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Yes, miss. I’m sorry, miss.’

  ‘It makes you seem very flippant. Which I suspect you are not really. What about all that stuff in the staff room about Marx and reds. Are you a political animal?’

  ‘To some of the staff I am a raging Communist, whereas, in fact, I am just a member of the Labour Party.’

  ‘I was a member of the Socialist Club at university. It was one of the few clubs that allowed women to darken its doors.’

  ‘Is that the only reason you joined?’

  ‘No, of course not. I am totally behind all that this government is doing.’

  ‘Great. So if you want them to stay in power you need to get active. There is an election looming. And the Tories are desperate to get back in.’

  ‘They won’t, though, will they?’

  ‘They could very well. They are playing on the collective guilt about rejecting Churchill after the war. Times are hard, and he rescued them before. They are very persuasive. I tell you what, there is a Conservative campaign rally with the prospective candidate, and the deputy Party leader, Anthony Eden. Should be a good double act. Why don’t you come? Test the temperature. Have a bit of a heckle.’

  Marguerite demurred. She had a lot on her plate. She doubted if her life could encompass more commitment.

  Tony said, ‘What’s wrong with you? I am offering you a glamorous date. Dartford football ground with a lot of rabid Tories. What more could you want?’

  ‘Put like that, how can I resist?’

  There was a convivial atmosphere as the crowd, wearing their Sunday best, poured into the football ground, to the sound of the Callender Company Works band. Tony greeted Marguerite at the turnstile, with obvious approval of her figure-hugging costume, and high heels, and especially her bouncing hair, released from its prim pleat.

  ‘I knew there was a woman beneath that grey school mouse. You look lovely. Very chic. Very French.’

  The event started with community singing of patriotic songs, to which everyone knew the words, ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’, ‘Rule, Britannia!’ ‘There’ll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover’, ending with ‘There’ll Always Be An England’:

  ‘ “There’ll always be an England,

  While there’s a country lane,

  Wherever there’s a cottage small

  Beside a field of grain.” ’

  Tony hissed, ‘Or a terraced house, with no bath, and one outside lav between four houses, like the one my mum and dad live in. Thanks to you. You Tory bastards.’

  If Tony was surprised by her off-duty appearance, Marguerite was even more taken aback by the change in him. He revealed a profound rage that took away all traces of his usual jocularity.

  The crowd sang the heartfelt last chorus:

  ‘ “There’ll always be an England,

  And England shall be free

  If England means as much to you

  As England means to me.” ’

  To which Tony shouted loudly, ‘Yes, free of you lot.’

  There were a few desultory cheers from other hecklers, and much shushing and disapproving looks from the Party faithful.

  Marguerite roared with laughter.

  ‘I can’t believe this. You are actually growling. Going grrh and baring your teeth.’

  Tony didn’t laugh,

  ‘Well, I hate them. Look at them. Up there. Pompous idiots.’

  On the platform, at the top of the field, about twenty men in dark suits, some with Homburgs and some with bowler hats, and sporting mayoral chains or various service medals, were settling onto the benches. They rose and doffed their hats when the willowy, moustached Anthony Eden arrived, courteously ushering before him the only woman in the group of notables. She was a frumpy blonde, young with a middle-aged walk, dowdily dressed, head down, as if afraid that people would notice her sex and throw her off the stage. She was introduced by a nervous branch chairman as the prospective Conservative MP for Dartford, Miss Margaret Roberts. Sensing not wholehearted approval of this unmarried woman candidate, Eden started his speech by saying that he thought Miss Roberts would make a great name for herself. He then went on, with shouted interjections from Tony, to condemn the Labour government’s handling of the economy with its wholesale nationalisation, urging Party members to fight hard for Miss Roberts’ election. He worried that people were not aware of the dangers ahead.

  ‘The working man is not a bad chap, but he is easily led astray.’

  Tony let out an exasperated yell.

  ‘What! How dare you patronise me. You supercilious Tory toff.’

  To Marguerite’s delight Tony was now actually jumping up and down with fury.

  ‘We as a party are a barrier to Communism, we never toyed with that creed, we never sang “The Red Flag”.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ asked Marguerite.r />
  ‘The Labour Party members sang it on the first day in the Commons after their landslide victory. Those that knew the words, that is. Let’s give ’em a blast, shall we?’

  There was no stopping Tony now. At the top of his voice he sang:

  ‘ “Then raise the scarlet standard high,

  Within its shade we’ll live and die,

  Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,

  We’ll keep the red flag flying here.” ’

  Marguerite and a few brave souls in the crowd joined in, only to be drowned out by a counter-song sortie of ‘God save the King’.

  When order was restored, Margaret Roberts sweetly, if slightly squeakily, thanked the shaken Anthony Eden.

  ‘Anthony Eden, our deputy leader, is a great man, great not only in our time, but great in all times.’

  Marguerite made a mental note to discuss the misuse of hyperbole with her pupils.

  There was then a more reverential rendering of the National Anthem, sung by the whole assembly, during which everyone on the platform stood, and all the men in the crowd took off their hats and caps, and many saluted, including, Marguerite noticed, a suddenly solemn Tony. As the crowd drifted away it began to rain. One or two people quietly congratulated Tony on his heckling. One man grasped his hand and shook it vigorously. ‘I don’t agree with your opinions, but my son died to give you the right to express them. Good luck, mate.’

  Tony insisted on going on the bus with her to Wilmington. When they were huddled on the seat he opened up his coat.

  ‘Here, get inside. You’re all damp.’

  Marguerite hesitated for a moment. Miss Fryer would not approve of such intimacy but damn it, she was cold. It was cosy nestling inside his duffel coat, against the warmth of his body. She had enjoyed herself. Tony was diverting company. He made her laugh a lot. It had stopped raining when they got off the bus. He walked her to her flat, or rather he danced along the road doing a reasonable impersonation of Fred Astaire, casting her and the odd lamp-post as Ginger Rogers. At the door, breathless, he pulled her close, stroked her hair, and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  ‘See you on Monday, you lovely creature.’

  She was glad that he didn’t suggest coming in. It would be a step too far, too soon. Besides, she had not yet had time to make the flat into a home. It had a bedroom, bathroom, sitting room and kitchenette – the ‘ette’ meaning there was just a rudimentary Baby Belling cooker and larder – and little in the way of furniture. She sat on her one armchair, gazing at the rain through the window and wondering at the whirlwind of the last week. After the turmoil of the past it seemed her future was set fair. She was also aware that she was looking forward to seeing Tony the next day. She fell into a contented sleep, curled up in the armchair.

  Chapter 5

  Over the next few months Marguerite enjoyed making her flat into a comfortable refuge. Money was tight on her teacher’s salary, but she overcame sentimentality, and sold some of her mother’s jewellery that was too ostentatious for her to wear. She had visions of inviting guests to civilised dinners, where wine and conversation flowed, although wine was a rare commodity in the austerities of English shops. Also, she discovered that civilised dinners were not a form of recreation customary in post-war Dartford. After the conviviality of her childhood in Paris, where her father’s job in the British Council necessitated entertaining visiting artistes and writers, and the fun and fierce exchange of ideas at Cambridge, this was difficult for her to adjust to. Everyone was friendly in a polite, distant sort of way but social gatherings did not seem to take place even amongst her colleagues at work. Anyway, to begin with, she had little time for leisure, what with lesson preparation, teaching, playground and dinner duty; and out-of-hours activity, the redoubtable Tudor-Craig’s choir on Tuesdays, some French-conversation coaching to help out the French department, parents’ evenings, staff meetings and the endless marking.

  As she settled into a routine she had more free time, and this she began to spend with Tony. The rest of the staff were older than her, with established friendships, and she found Tony more fun to be with. He occasionally went away for the weekend to visit ‘a friend’, so Marguerite assumed he had a serious relationship with someone and she settled for merely enjoying his companionship. They were merry in each other’s company. He lightened her life with laughter. As at the Tory rally, he had a knack of drawing attention to himself. At first she felt embarrassed by this, but she could see that people were amused by his extrovert behaviour. Having, of necessity, always inclined towards reticence, she found herself enjoying being on the sidelines of his escapades. He could turn an everyday occurrence into an event. For instance, shopping.

  Miss Fryer had hinted that his apparel for Parents’ Day – a pair of the newfangled blue-denim Levi’s and a Fair Isle jumper – was unsuitably casual, so Marguerite dragged him to the local department store to buy something more appropriate, despite his protests that he was a PT teacher, not a bank clerk, and the jeans, as he called them, were the latest thing. The whole shop was brought to a standstill by his howls of horror at his reflection in the mirror now that he was wearing a dark grey-flannel suit, complete with waistcoat and stiff-collared shirt and tie.

  ‘I can’t move. Arggh! I’m choking. I feel done up like a dog’s dinner. I wouldn’t be seen dead in this.’

  Marguerite encouraged the gathering group of laughing staff and customers to reassure him.

  ‘You look very smart, son,’ said the lady on the glove counter.

  The ‘A real gentleman’ from a passing Brylcreemed customer in an identical suit didn’t help, but the two saleswomen from corsetry did. The elderly one, her ramrod stiffness a credit to her department, ventured, ‘You look like a film star.’

  ‘Which one? Bela Lugosi?’

  But it was her sweet blonde colleague, a walking endorsement of their uplift brassieres, with her brazen, ‘I could fall head over heels for you in that,’ that quietened Tony’s wails. Pouncing on his hesitation, Marguerite wrested the money from his pocket, handed it to the manager of the store, who, on Marguerite’s insistence, stuffed it quickly into a container, and sent it whizzing along the overhead wire towards the cash desk, to the applause of the onlookers, who had thoroughly enjoyed the diversion from the usual solemnity of mahogany and hushed voices in the sedate emporium.

  Thenceforth, outings were classified ‘suit’ or ‘non-suit’. Definitely ‘suit’ were staff meetings with Miss Fryer, trips to the theatre, apart from the Royal Court, where his maligned jeans were de rigueur, concerts at the Wigmore Hall, but not Promenade Concerts at the Albert Hall. He and Marguerite always went up to the top gallery, where they were allowed to sit or lie on the floor, blissfully drinking in the music for which they shared a mutual love. Also ‘suit’ was a visit to the doctor’s surgery with his smoker’s cough.

  More ‘non-suit’ occasions were trips to the pub, and going up to town, wandering round the bomb-scarred city, usually ending up at Joe Lyons Corner House for an ice-cream sundae whilst listening to Ena Baga, resplendent in chiffon, playing popular tunes on the Hammond organ, to which Tony would sing along, sometimes joined by other customers, to the delight of the usually ignored Ena.

  ‘Semi-non-suit’ occasions were football and motorbike speedway races when the waistcoat and stiff collar were replaced by a pullover, and team scarves and rosettes permitted. Both sports were new to Marguerite but she loved watching the English abandon their reserve and sing and shout their support or good-humoured opposition.

  All political events, especially door-to-door canvassing, were definitely ‘suit’, to add respectability to the Labour Party members in the light of the patrician, born-to-rule image of the leading members of the Conservative Party. Sadly Aneurin Bevan and Ernie Bevin in their shambolic suits were no competition, in the sartorial stakes, for the relaxed elegance of Eden and Macmillan, or Churchill’s aristocratic eccentricity. Tony did his best with his flannel, but after a while it began to
look the worse for wear. He flatly refused to buy a new suit, arguing that the leather patches he stuck on the frayed elbows of the jacket were a good example of ‘make do and mend’ that the working class would understand only too well. He did not talk much about his childhood, but the odd comment made it clear that his personal experience of deprivation was what fuelled his ­left-wing zeal and devotion to a party that seemed, with its construction of the Welfare State, to be doing something about it.

  They were both bitterly disappointed when the Labour Party suffered a major decline in its majority in the 1950 election. Marguerite was torn in her allegiance, feeling a secret delight that Margaret Roberts seriously challenged the seat of the long-standing male socialist MP, despite her sex and inexperience. Both of them had to be careful to keep their political activity separate from their job. Many of the girls demonstrated passionate commitment to the parties they were representing in the permitted mock elections, but Miss Fryer was adamant that the staff should be apolitical within the school gates.

  Thus it had to be in a hidden corner of the school field that Pauline, a member of the Labour League of Youth, and Hazel a Young Conservative, cornered her with a leaflet about a meeting they were organising in the boys’ grammar school, united by their opposition to the hydrogen bomb. Marguerite identified with the two girls, having grown up listening to her parents’ political rhetoric and participated in their activism. She understood the passion for a cause that can consume a child.

  She promised that she and Mr Stansfield would attend. It was probably breaking the no-politics rule, but the cause was so crucial to her that she decided it was worth the risk. Marguerite had been horrified at the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Allies’ atom bombs; this meeting, jammed full of concerned youngsters, brought home to her how fear for the future, indeed the likelihood of no future at all, overshadowed the lives of these war-weary children.

  The diminutive Pauline, with pink-satin ribbons in her pigtails, opened the meeting by reading out in a shaky voice the constitution.