Miss Carter's War

by Sheila Hancock

  She started to pick up the washing, when the front door flew open.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing? Get out.’

  A scarecrow of a man stood in the doorway. As she approached slowly to explain, he went inside, slamming the door behind him.

  A man appeared in the next-door garden.

  ‘Take no notice of him. He can’t help it, poor soul. He won’t hurt you. What did you want?’

  ‘I am Irene’s teacher. I want to talk to her parents about something.’

  ‘I’ll go round the back and tell his wife.’

  The man went through an archway between the houses.

  Marguerite stood her ground, and a few minutes later, a woman in an overall came to the door, holding a baby in her arms. Clinging to her skirt was a small child, who Marguerite guessed was the baby Irene had mentioned in that first sonnet class.

  The woman looked terrified.

  ‘What is it? Is Irene in trouble? Has something happened? Has she done something wrong?’

  Marguerite assured her that the opposite was true. After a lot of reassurance, the woman reluctantly let her into the house.

  In the living room was a scrubbed table with two wooden chairs pushed beneath. A battered armchair stood by an unlighted single-bar electric fire and an old pram was pushed into a corner, where Irene’s mother now laid the screaming baby and rocked it to quieten its cries. And that was it. No ornaments, no rugs on the cracked lino floor, no signs of comfort, apart from a bottle of HP sauce on the table. The half-shut curtains were made of blackout material. Marguerite wondered where on earth Irene had managed to do her homework. Presumably at the table, where the man who shouted at her was now poring over a football coupon. When he saw Marguerite, he snatched it up, and rushed into the scullery.

  ‘I’m sorry. You scared him. He thought you were from the council. Come about the state of the garden or something. They’re always round here.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  Marguerite waited as the woman rocked the pram until the baby’s weeping subsided, and there being no obvious place to sit she stood talking to the woman, loud enough for the man to hear. She could see him clinging to the handle of the back door, staring at her. He was wretchedly thin and wild-eyed.

  Marguerite explained why she had come. How clever Irene was, what a future lay ahead of her if she persevered with her education. How it was possible to get a State Scholarship that would pay her university fees, and something towards her maintenance.

  ‘Will she have to go away then?’

  ‘Well, yes, of course.’

  ‘But I need her here. I’d be at my wits’ end coping with the two kids and him on my own. And I need help with the rent and everything. When she gets a job.’

  ‘But that shouldn’t be Irene’s responsibility, surely? What about your husband?’

  The woman lowered her voice.

  ‘He can’t do anything. He was in a Japanese camp, worked on the Burma Railway. Didn’t speak for a year after he returned. His mind is hurt. He tries. He takes in bikes to repair, but he can’t concentrate.’

  Marguerite looked through at the man, who was staring into the room. She could understand why Irene had been so distressed by the Siegfried Sassoon poem. There, in her father’s eyes, was ‘the hell where youth and laughter go’.

  Suddenly his face lit up. He rushed into the room to embrace Irene, who had come in behind Marguerite.

  ‘Don’t leave me, girl, don’t let them take you away. Let me keep you safe.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not going anywhere.’ She took his shaking hands firmly in hers.

  Over his head, she looked at Marguerite.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here, Miss Carter. But perhaps it’s just as well. Now you see why I have to stay. There are more important things than education, miss. There’s real life. This is mine.’

  Marguerite could think of nothing to say. The hopelessness of the trap that the girl was in silenced her; the trap of poverty and other people’s weakness. How could a young girl survive in this hell-hole? Marguerite had seen rural poverty in France, but it had seemed beautiful, even in wartime, with the smell of the ever-present stockpot on the black stove, the warmth of the sun, the chickens and dogs. She was shocked that anyone should have to live in this barren place with its miasma of want, least of all Irene, with her burgeoning imagination. On the walk back to school, she racked her brain to find a way of releasing the girl from her prison. She longed to discuss it with Tony. Or rather the old Tony she had known.

  When the news of Marguerite’s visit reached Miss Fryer, she was summoned to her study.

  ‘You have overstepped your authority, Miss Carter. You are not a social worker, you are a teacher.’

  ‘But surely I have a responsibility towards my pupils?’

  Miss Fryer sighed.

  ‘Sadly, as I have pointed out many times, the most important influence on a girl’s future is her background. Without parental support she will seldom succeed. But – and this is the salient point, Miss Carter – we cannot change that background. Despite what the Labour government may have thought, the schools cannot bring about a classless society. It is not our task to socially engineer equality. It is other people’s duty to ensure everyone has decent housing, stable jobs, good health, so they are ready to seize their right to the equal opportunities – very different from equality – offered to them and their offspring.’

  ‘But in the meantime, until we have Utopia, Irene is thrown on the rubbish heap? It didn’t happen to her at eleven. It was just postponed till she was sixteen.’

  ‘I think that is a preposterous insult to Irene. She now has a good grounding. Who knows what she will make of herself? Or, and this is perhaps more important, her children? The next generation. At the very least, I doubt, thanks to you, that their home will be devoid of books, as their mother’s has been.’

  ‘But Irene—’

  ‘No more, Miss Carter, We must get back to our work, which I will allow is vital.’

  Miss Fryer gave one of her rare smiles.

  ‘You are now learning one of the hardest lessons for a teacher. We have to let the fledglings fly the nest. You must let go, even of your favourites – and every teacher has them. They are free to make their way in the world, well or badly. Your job is done.’

  It was impossible for Marguerite to accept Miss Fryer’s sanguine attitude to the girls’ destinies. Her whole method of teaching was to engage with their psyche; to bring it into their study of literature. She wanted to inspire them, to nurture them, to love them. Anything less seemed cold and insufficient. She regarded the Irene incident as an abject failure on her part. She did not want to adjust her approach to Miss Fryer’s more detached formula.

  This deep disappointment, without the old solace of her companionship with Tony, made life very difficult for a while, but then her natural ‘bloody optimism’ returned, and she decided to focus her talent to transform on Elsie.

  Chapter 11

  Elsie’s parents were easier to circumvent than Irene’s, as they took little or no interest in their daughter. In the past the welfare people had investigated them, and decided there was no actual physical cruelty towards the children, just casual neglect, with which the girl and her siblings were apparently coping. Their family life was chaotic. The neighbours reported that the father, when drunk, was violent towards his wife, but nothing could be proved, and each incident was deemed by the police to be a ‘domestic’. Unlike Irene, Elsie had no household duties – they were just not done. As her parents did not care what time she came home, her habit was to do her homework in the local public library after school. The girl was self-sufficient, relying on free school dinners, where her gluttonous table manners were a source of distaste to her fellow pupils. She would eat anything, including the vile frogspawn tapioca they all loathed. She cleared the other girls’ plates into a tin she kept for the purpose, to take home for her tea. Brea
kfast was unknown to her.

  The girl was a fighter, a survivor. There was no softness in her personality. Her eyes blazed and her tongue lashed out, as did her fists, if she deemed it necessary. The rest of the staff recognised that she had an exceptional mind, she excelled in Maths and Science as well as English, but they could not warm to her constantly challenging personality. Marguerite went out of her way to encourage the girl, but her compliments were always shrugged off or ignored. Although she was disruptive in other teachers’ lessons, she did not cause trouble in hers, but maintained a brooding silence, despite which her written work was consistently brilliant. After Irene left Elsie drifted around the school on her own, isolated by the loss of her only real friend. Then came an unexpected breakthrough.

  In the course of a lesson on Tennyson they were looking at his ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Elsie started groaning and laughing in turn. When Marguerite asked her if she felt ill, she replied, ‘Yes, this poem is making me feel sick.’

  ‘Perhaps you could elucidate your criticism,’ replied Marguerite, whereupon Elsie took from her satchel the book of war poetry that Marguerite had given to Irene, who presumably had handed it on to Elsie, thinking that her academic friend would have more need of it than she.

  ‘I think Tennyson’s poem is patriotic bull. Now this is a real description of battle, from someone who was actually there.’

  Chancing Miss Fryer’s disapproval, Marguerite was not going to pass on the opportunity of getting Elsie’s active participation in a lesson, so she did not stop her reading out Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Elsie gave the description of a First World War gas attack a searing clarity, and snarled out the final sardonic challenge:

  ‘ “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

  Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

  Pro patria mori.” ’

  The class was silent. Marguerite waited. Then she said, ‘Yes, Elsie, perhaps that poem speaks to us, these days, more than Tennyson,’ and as she looked at their youthful faces, it agonised her that it was so.

  Then Pauline, never one to miss a campaigning opportunity, piped up, ‘And that was what it was like in Hiroshima, so bloomin’ well join the World Federation of United Nations Associations, all of you.’

  Having once broken the ice, Elsie started to read pieces out to the class, frequently asked to by the girls themselves. When absorbed in a poem or piece of Shakespeare, her usual aggressiveness disappeared, and a dormant sensitivity revealed itself. Marguerite had toyed with the idea of producing a school play so, seizing on the chance to engage Elsie, she chose George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. Saint Joan seemed an ideal role for the girl – a pugnacious, outspoken, brave young woman. There was only one other female role in the play and, as Marguerite’s request that the boys from the grammar school should be involved was flatly rejected as too risky, the play was a somewhat perverse choice for a girls’ school, but Marguerite’s obsession with encouraging Elsie overrode any misgivings she might have had. In any case, the other girls seemed to relish portraying male authority and power.

  Her belief in Elsie’s ability was justified in the rehearsals. She was soon word-perfect, not only with regard to her own role, but everyone else’s. One day she started playing the part with a Somerset accent. She explained that, as Joan was a country girl, she would use the voice of the man she was billeted with as an evacuee. She doubtless also used the abject dread she had felt as a three-year-old child, at the mercy of the sixty-year-old predatory widower, in the scene where Joan loses her nerve in the face of the male hierarchy that tries to destroy her.

  Marguerite was astonished at the range of the girl’s emotions and her ability to express them. As rehearsals progressed, the other girls acknowledged her superior talent, and deferred to her opinion as to how a scene should be played, never minding that Miss Carter set the moves in such a way that Elsie was always centre stage. Two of the younger girls developed a crush on her, and would bring in hard-to-find sherbet fountains for their star.

  Such gestures were rejected gracelessly by Elsie.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You had to queue for that. Keep it.’

  But when Julia, who had a bad limp as a result of her polio, brought her a bunch of wild violets she had laboriously gathered, Elsie managed a muffled, ‘Thanks. Nice smell.’ And Marguerite saw her walking home later, carefully balancing the flowers in a jam jar of water.

  Finding herself the object of admiration had a salutary effect on her personal hygiene. Her clothes were occasionally washed, although the concept of ironing was foreign to her, so she still appeared fairly crumpled, a look which some of the juniors began to emulate, by rolling their nicely pressed blouses into a ball when they got to school. Even her impetigo began to improve, probably because her fellow thespians shared their healthy packed teas, provided by loving mothers to tide their daughters over their after-school rehearsals. Marguerite persuaded her that she could use less gentian violet on her face.

  ‘Perhaps the audience’ll think it’s woad, miss.’

  ‘That might confuse them, Elsie. She’s French, not an ancient Briton.’

  Marguerite had to enlist Tony’s help in staging a sword fight that would look effective without causing damage, especially as Elsie, not known for her reticence in battle, was one of the protagonists. He was happy to help. She watched him carefully drilling their moves with admiration for his gentle handling, in particular of Elsie. All thoughts of their shared secret were pushed out of her mind. It was a relief that they could relate in a professional manner. They were polite and respectful to one another, whilst avoiding eye contact.

  The performance of the play was open to staff and pupils from their school as well as, great excitement this, from the adjacent boys’ grammar school. And, of course, the parents. After the first performance there would be a party, to which each child was allowed to take two guests, whose names were to be submitted to Miss Carter. When, a week before the show, Elsie had still presented no names, Marguerite reminded her that time was running out.

  ‘I don’t want no one to come.’

  ‘Why on earth not? You’re going to be wonderful. Don’t you want people to see that? What about your parents?’

  ‘It’s not really their cup of tea. Plays and that.’

  ‘Did you ask them?’

  ‘My mum said she’d try, but she’s very busy.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Things.’

  Marguerite dared not pursue it further. On the evening of the first performance she went onto the stage before curtain-up to check that the rudimentary set for the first scene, a wooden cut-out tree, made by the art department, was in place. She found Elsie peering round the edge of the stage curtain, scanning the buzzing audience. She gently said the girl’s name. Taken by surprise, Elsie wiped her hand across her eyes.

  ‘This stupid make-up makes my eyes water.’

  Marguerite dabbed at her eyes with her hanky.

  ‘Do it for yourself, Elsie.’

  ‘No, I’ll do it for Irene. She’s coming. And you, miss.’

  Whatever motivation it was that propelled her performance it was effective. Whilst the rest of the cast were never anything more than schoolgirls dressed up, reciting lines, she simply became Joan. Only once did Elsie’s own anger take over. The girl playing the Dauphin forgot her lines. After an endless pause, Elsie grabbed the girl and shook her violently, managing to make it look as if it was Joan’s rage that prompted the action, as she said, ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ and did the quaking girl’s lines for her. The audience were convinced it was part of the scene, and continued to be enthralled. Parents who had come to cluck over their daughters
found themselves caught up in the story, and profoundly moved by the dedicated, mistreated young Frenchwoman. Elsie’s fellow pupils stopped giggling at the boys in the audience, and their friends’ baggy tights and homemade doublets, and willed Joan to save herself from her appalling death.

  As the light faded on Elsie saying Joan’s last line, ‘ “O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long?” ’ there was a silence before the applause started.

  Marguerite looked around and realised something very special had taken place. Tony was shaking his head in amazement and gave a solemn thumbs-up sign as he caught her glance. The applause was tumultuous, there was even the odd ‘Bravo’, despite the august presence of Miss Fryer in her academic gown. She nodded her head, and smiled appreciatively at Marguerite. As for Elsie, she at first seemed startled at the acclamation as the rest of the cast generously pushed her forward for a solo bow, then her face lit up, radiant: for the first time in her life she was appreciated and admired. At the party afterwards she had a look of shy disbelief as people patted and praised her. Marguerite was particularly pleased to observe that the head boy of the boys’ school, the focus of all the girls’ fancy, shook her hand, and talked to her for some time. Although he did most of the talking.

  The very next day, Marguerite extricated Elsie from an admiring flock of chattering girls in the playground, and struck whilst the iron was hot. Irene had got herself a job in a local solicitor’s office, and Marguerite realised that the lure of a regular salary, however paltry, would be tempting to her friend, not to mention Elsie’s parents. Marguerite led the girl into a classroom and sat her down.

  ‘Well – I hope you’re feeling proud of yourself, Elsie.’