Miss Carter's War

by Sheila Hancock

  A shrug. Marguerite remembered the Mistress of Girton’s advice to her.

  ‘Elsie, stop that. Allow yourself to enjoy what you have achieved. Relish the feeling of a job well done.’

  ‘I can’t, miss.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Well, you must learn. Because this is the beginning of a very exciting professional life.’

  ‘But what use is it? I can’t be an actress.’

  ‘You could. But you don’t have to be. It’s too early to decide that. At university you will be able to join drama societies and see what that leads to, but whatever degree you do, English or one of the sciences, there will be all sorts of jobs open to you. The world is your oyster.’

  The girl’s eyes were beginning to show interest.

  ‘You are exceptional, Elsie. Last night proved that. You brought intelligence and understanding to your role and showed an amazing ability to reach out to people. Those qualities could take you far. Why, you could be our first lady prime minister.’

  Elsie roared with laughter.

  ‘No, don’t laugh. Women are getting into politics.’

  Marguerite could see that a chink of light was breaking into the girl’s gloomy expectations for herself.

  ‘See how the girls admire you? And I understand Miss Fryer saw you this morning to congratulate you.’

  ‘And the head boy of the grammar school asked me to their school dance.’

  ‘Well there you are. Fame indeed. What more could you want?’

  ‘I can’t believe it, miss. Will you show me how to put that make-up on my scabs?’

  ‘I will, Elsie, I will. If you will promise me to work hard for your A levels so we can get you a state scholarship and you can go to university. Bargain?’

  ‘Bargain, miss.’

  And she was as good as her word. The staff universally enjoyed teaching the crème de la crème that made it through to the upper school. They regretted the loss of those bright girls, like Irene, who were forced to leave by circumstance, but, on the whole, the girls that survived were the cleverest and a joy to lead forward to greater heights of knowledge. This was the reward for their teachers’ diligence and dedication. They all agreed that Elsie had changed radically, and her colleagues were generous in their praise of Marguerite’s tenacity with her, and only too willing to join in the mission to push this exceptional girl to her limits.

  Now it seemed that Marguerite’s entire life revolved around school. She had tried attending a few concerts and plays on her own, but she missed discussing them with Tony. Watching him work on the fights for Saint Joan, laughing and joking with the girls, reminded her of what fun he was and how much she missed him. But Elsie’s progress was her compensation for any loneliness.

  The seniors had the use of a room in the tower to read and study, as their syllabus involved more coursework. Leaving the staff room at the end of the day, Marguerite would see Elsie hard at work in the room below. She was producing essays of startling originality, and Marguerite found herself challenged by the freshness of the girl’s approach to criticism of standard classics. She had no shadow of a doubt that Elsie could get into an Oxbridge college. The interview would be the only stumbling block. Her grammar had improved, but not her Dartford accent, and she was still prone to allow her inferiority complex to render her inarticulate, making her seem sulky and introvert. Marguerite organised weekly conversation-practice sessions with Elsie, and some of the other aspirants, to help them towards the self-confidence of the privately educated girls against whom they would be competing.

  It was during these sessions that Marguerite noticed Elsie was not as focused as she had been earlier. She was reverting to her old truculent manner, and her work was sometimes slovenly and ill-thought-out. Marguerite brought up her worries at a staff meeting, and several others agreed that her work had deteriorated. Miss Fryer maintained that she lacked stamina, and her burst of enthusiasm after the success in the school play was unsustainable without family support. Marguerite was delegated to give her a pep talk.

  She invited her into the holy of holies – the staff room – after lunch, when the rest were all teaching. She offered Elsie a cup of tea, which she accepted, but she rejected a chocolate biscuit, because she said she felt sick.

  A surge of fear gripped Marguerite.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Not really, miss. I’m just up the duff.’

  Chapter 12

  ‘Oh no.’

  Marguerite abandoned the tea-making and sat beside Elsie. She took her hand.

  ‘How far gone are you?’

  ‘Three months.’

  ‘Who’s the father?’

  ‘Jeremy Addison.’

  ‘The grammar head boy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why on earth did you let this happen?’

  ‘He said it was safe if we did it standing up.’

  Marguerite was dumbfounded.

  ‘How could you be so stupid?’

  ‘I didn’t know, did I?’

  ‘But you must have heard about birth control?’

  ‘Yes, I heard about it, so when he wanted to go all the way, I went to my doctor for his help, and he said he’d tell my mother if I did it, and I’d better behave myself or he’d also tell the police. I went to the council offices to see if there was a family planning clinic and they said Kent County Council doesn’t have one as they consider they lead to loose morals. Then I saw that newsreel with that important man opening some clinic in London. Bloke with the glasses and a funny hat. I wrote down where they said it was, and got a train to London, and found it. I hung about outside for a long time trying to pluck up courage to go in. I shouldn’t have bothered.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They said I had to go with my fiancé, and have a letter from my vicar saying we were getting married, and then they would give us something four weeks before the wedding. Well, there is no wedding. There’s not even an engagement.’

  ‘Have you told Jeremy Addison about the baby?’

  ‘No, he’d go off me. He read somewhere about the standing-up thing – knee trembling, it’s called – so that’s what we did. We’d only done it twice. It’s my fault. But nobody ever told me anything. My friends didn’t know either. Mrs Conway in Hygiene just talks about reproduction in frogs and rabbits, and Miss Lewin in Science talks about dogfish doing it.’

  Marguerite was dismayed but she tried not to show her panic.

  ‘Elsie, I am so sorry. Everyone’s let you down. Do you love Jeremy?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss. He was nice to me after the play and at the school dance he said he was proud I was with him. He thinks I am pretty and clever. I can’t believe it. I don’t want to spoil it.’

  ‘But, Elsie, be sensible. What’s going to happen to your future? You can’t go to university with a child. What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss.’ Elsie’s face crumpled.

  Marguerite held her tightly, desperately trying to think of a solution.

  She ventured, ‘I know this is awful but have you thought about an abortion?’

  ‘I tried that, miss. My doctor said they were only allowed for medical reasons. Not social ones. Didn’t feel very social. Being crushed against a pebble-dashed wall.’

  ‘Your doctor doesn’t sound very helpful.’

  ‘He isn’t. He told my mum, and she told me my dad will throw me out when he finds out. He probably won’t notice anyway. He’s always drunk as a lord.’

  ‘There must be something we can do. We can’t let this ruin your life.’

  ‘It won’t, miss. I’ll survive somehow.’

  The girl looked lost.

  ‘It’s a pity though, ent it, miss?’

  The next day Marguerite took the news to Miss Fryer, who insisted there was no alternative but for Elsie to leave school before the pregnancy began to show. The rest of the school must not know about it, partly for her sake, and par
tly because of the bad example it would set.

  ‘But what about her education?’

  ‘There are correspondence courses. Perhaps she can do one in shorthand and typing. There are good secretarial posts.’

  ‘But she’s better than that. She could have a brilliant career.’

  ‘Well, she should have thought of that before she went astray. This time I will not be persuaded, Miss Carter. She is a wayward girl and a not a good influence – as soon as possible she must disappear.’

  Marguerite knew it was useless to plead for understanding. Women who succumbed to desire must be punished. Banished to mental homes, convents, or just a life of drudgery, which was probably now Elsie’s destiny.

  The two women cling to their crying babies as the crowd manhandles them out of the village into the waste land beyond. An old woman shouts after them, ‘What are the bastards? German or American?’

  Elsie had only two choices. Either to have the child and drag it up, supported by whatever menial job she could fit in with caring for it, or she could have the baby adopted at birth, a heart-rending sacrifice that Marguerite could not imagine the love-starved Elsie being able to make. She would not be able to find a husband with an illegitimate child, and Jeremy Addison’s respectable middle-class family would move heaven and earth to deny their son’s responsibility, should she decide to tell him.

  Distraught, Marguerite asked Miss Belcher to cover for her for the rest of the afternoon, and went for a walk in the playing field. The rain started to teem down so she took shelter in the rabbitry. She slid down the wall and crouched on her haunches in the corner, in despair at her impotence to deal with the situation. First Irene, now Elsie. The rabbits snuffled in sympathy as she looked at them, pressing their twitchy noses through the wire of their hutches. On an impulse she rose to her feet and started to undo the doors of the cages to set them free. Three of them were hopping in confusion on the ground, when Tony appeared at the door.

  ‘They won’t survive in the wild. They’re too tame.’

  He started to pick them up by their ears, supporting them gently underneath, and to put them back in their cages.

  ‘But Elsie will – she’s tough.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Belcher told me.’

  ‘Oh Tony. Everything’s gone wrong. It’s such a mess.’

  He took one of her hands, tentatively, gently.

  ‘D’you mind?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s life, my dear girl. It just happens.’

  ‘I feel so sad. And useless. And disappointed.’

  ‘You can’t force people to be as you want them to be. It’s called free will. Unless you put them in a cage like these poor creatures.’

  ‘But it’s not just Elsie. There’s Irene. You and me. Life. I had such high hopes of everything. I believed anything was possible. Remember that night at the Festival?’

  ‘I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘But even that ended in tears. The bloody Tories destroyed it immediately they took over. That lovely, silly Skylon we danced under was chucked in the Thames, or somewhere.’

  ‘Well, it would only have gone rusty. It was fun while it lasted. We carpe-ed the diem. That’s what you have to do.’

  He kissed her hand.

  ‘It was one of our treats.’

  ‘Oh Tony, our lovely treats. I miss them so much. I miss you so much.’

  ‘I tell you what—’

  He looked at her nervously.

  ‘Why don’t we have one now, to cheer us up?’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘A treat. I’ve got a new snazzy motorbike. It’s stopped raining. I’ll take you for a ride.’

  She wiped her eyes on his shirt.

  ‘Hey watch it, that’s clean on. Here, blow.’

  He held his hanky for her to blow her nose, then gently took a corner of it to wipe her face.

  Looking into his eyes for the first time in months, she said, ‘If I promise not to flirt with you, will you please come back to my place for supper? We could call in at the butcher, and I will use my womanly wiles to get some rabbit out of him.’

  Tony covered her mouth with his hand. ‘Ssh.’ He looked at the cages. ‘Don’t worry, no one you know.’

  He led her out of the rabbitry.

  ‘By the way, if you mean the butcher on Shepherd’s Lane, he’s more likely to respond to my wiles than yours.’

  ‘What? He’s married.’

  ‘Oh, my lovely innocent. Meet you at the bike shed.’

  The motorbike was a vision of shining silver and black, polished within an inch of its life. Tony now sported a leather jacket and a white silk scarf with his respectable teacher’s grey flannels. She mounted the pillion, and put her arms round his waist, laying her head against the cool leather, drinking in its smell and that of the diesel. He did a detour to the Heath, where the hillocks made for tank-training exercises still existed. He roared up and down them, sometimes propelling the bike off the top of a lump, both wheels in the air, landing with a wallop and roar. Marguerite found herself suspended off the saddle, with her bottom and legs afloat, and only her arms round his neck restoring her to her seat. She screamed with delight, the speed and manoeuvring making her heart pound, and taking her breath away.

  He shuddered to a halt and turned to look at her.

  ‘Better? Blown the dirty cobwebs away?’

  ‘Oh Tony, yes, thank you. I’d clean forgotten about laughter.’

  Windblown and dusty, they stopped at the shop, where she watched Tony charm both the butcher and his wife into producing a rabbit from behind the empty counter. Seeing Marguerite’s baffled face as he put the rabbit into the saddle bag he laughed.

  ‘I know, I’m a shameless hussy. But if you’ve got it, flaunt it, I say.’

  ‘But the butcher, is he—?’

  ‘No he’s not a poof. He’s a bit of a closet queen, plays rugby with the local team and enjoys a frolic in the showers after, but he wouldn’t really do anything. He’s neither Arthur nor Martha. There’s a lot of men like him. Especially after being in the services during the war. Stuck in a ship for months on end in the Navy I had a ball, I can tell you. He does no harm, poor sod.’

  Once in the flat, Marguerite busied herself in the kitchenette, making a rabbit pie, whilst Tony looked around.

  ‘Nice view.’

  ‘Yes, they play cricket out there in the summer. I love watching it. It’s very English.’

  ‘But you’re French.’

  ‘Only half, remember. My father was English.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘Yes, they’re both dead. I told you.’

  ‘Where did they die? You never told me that.’

  ‘Paris. I think.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes. Do your parents still live in Oldham?’

  ‘Yes. We don’t know much about one another, do we?’

  Marguerite realised that was true. Their relationship before had been fun but necessarily superficial because, she now knew, both of them had a lot to hide. Marguerite opened a bottle of wine that she had kept for a special occasion. He poured them a glass.

  He leant on the door and watched her chopping and rolling, occasionally tasting or smelling an ingredient.

  ‘You’re good. Do you like cooking?’

  ‘Not for myself. But I enjoy cooking for others.’

  ‘Perhaps you should stop doing so much for others. Don’t risk all your eggs in other people’s baskets.’

  ‘You mean Elsie?’

  ‘And that other girl.’

  ‘Irene?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I meant to help them.’

  ‘And you did. But you can’t dictate what they do with your help.’

  ‘But I am a teacher. My job is changing children’s lives.’

  ‘No. It’s to teach them English, French, Sport, whatever. Their lives are their own. Take me. I was in a slum school, and a teacher moved heaven a
nd earth to get me to physical-training college. If it hadn’t been for him I’d be sweeping streets now. Mind you, they’d look bona if I did. He rescued me but, try as he would, he couldn’t stop me being queer.’

  Marguerite was embarrassed.

  ‘Are you sure you are? Maybe you’re like the butcher.’

  ‘ ’Fraid not, poppet. My teacher made me go to a doctor to be “cured”. He looked at me with revulsion and said, “You do know you’re breaking the law?” and prescribed aversion therapy, electric shocks, hormone injections, the lot. I refused all of it, but agreed to try therapy, and ended up making a pass at my butch psychiatrist.’

  Marguerite laughed on cue but hid her face as she put the pie in the oven. Tony chattered merrily whilst looking through her LP records stacked on the floor, a mixture of classical and jazz, like the George Melly and the Humphrey Lyttelton they had bought together after hearing them play in clubs. He held up the Judy Garland LP that they got after the concert at the Palladium.

  ‘Fancy a bit of Judy to celebrate what I hope is our reunion?’ He looked at her anxiously.

  ‘Yes, I’d love that.’

  As the familiar throbbing voice started, Marguerite remembered.

  ‘Those men that night. Were they your friends?’

  ‘Ships that pass in the night.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  He paused, looking out of the window, then turned to face her.

  ‘Marguerite this is difficult for me. I want to be honest with you, but I tread a dangerous path. Can I trust you?’

  Marguerite felt battered by the complexities of other people’s lives, but knew that to reject Tony’s offer of openness would sever any bond they might have.

  ‘Yes, Tony, you can trust me.’

  ‘Do you know where it’s from, that quotation? “Ships that pass in the night”?’

  ‘Yes, it’s Longfellow.’

  ‘An old actor laddie, a sad old queen, taught me it. I know it by heart:

  ‘ “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;

  Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;

  So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,

  Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.” ’