Miss Carter's War

by Sheila Hancock

  ‘This is our culture, Miss Carter. It’s an interesting phenomenon, don’t you think?’

  The brilliant Miranda was eager to demonstrate the academic approach that had won her a state scholarship to Cambridge.

  ‘We have even got a sociological-group name – teenagers.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that word has been around for some time, Miranda.’

  ‘But now it’s used for commerce. Records, make-up, magazines – all for us teenagers.’

  ‘Yes, well, we ancients buy records as well.’

  ‘Yes, Beethoven and stuff.’

  ‘I’ll have you know I bought a Lonnie Donegan LP the other day.’

  This was greeted by silence.

  ‘Oh dear, does that make me old hat?’

  ‘Well, a bit, but he’s great too,’ exclaimed Hazel and broke into a spirited rendering of:

  ‘ “Now the Rock Island line

  She’s a mighty good road . . .” ’

  Some were now jumping and clapping and jiving. Marguerite reflected on how they had all blossomed from the cowed girls they once had been, and how she wished Irene and Elsie were here to join in the fun.

  Suddenly the dancing and singing stopped. Miss Fryer was standing by the entrance.

  Marguerite blew her whistle.

  ‘All right, girls, break is over. That was very entertaining. The grammar of the song leaves something to be desired, but I can see the attraction. Get in the queue now.’

  Silently they formed into class formation, and filed back into the building. Helen Hayes’ voice rang out, ‘See you later, alligator.’

  ‘In a while, crocodile,’ a bold chorus replied.

  As Marguerite walked down the corridor to the staff room, Miss Fryer appeared at her study door and asked to speak to her.

  ‘Miss Carter, you are a teacher who is naturally gifted with children. Therefore I am curious as to why you allowed a situation to develop that caused such a rumpus that I was forced to come out of my office to investigate.’

  ‘I’m sorry you were disturbed, Miss Fryer. They were only singing and dancing.’

  ‘The break periods should be used for them to rest and gather their thoughts for the next session of study.’

  ‘But they are young and exuberant, trapped behind their desks all day. Don’t you think perhaps it does them good to let off steam?’

  ‘Miss Carter, it is not all that long since the end of the war. The eighteen-year-olds who started this commotion in the playground, as far as I could see from my window, have had disrupted childhoods. The younger ones too. Many of them have been rendered dysfunctional by the instability they have had to cope with in their families. What these children need to be given is order.’

  ‘But Hazel and Helen and Pauline and their friends are no longer children, they are young women.’

  ‘And is that really how you think young women should behave?’

  ‘But you make it sound as if they have done something dreadful. They were just having fun.’

  ‘Fun? You may think I am an old dodo, Miss Carter, but I do keep up with what is going on in the world. I have heard this new music that is being sold to them. What about taste and judgement? Are those hip-swivelling ignorant creatures really worthy of their devotion?’

  ‘Some of the lyrics are not entirely without merit – “Heartbreak Hotel” for instance. But popular music has, down the ages, always been banal.’

  ‘Miss Carter, I have been a teacher for many years now, and I have never felt quite like this before. I am fearful of the future for my girls. The old order changeth, and I am not sure where the new one is heading.’

  ‘Miss Fryer, I truly believe the world is becoming a much better place. You have to trust that good will prevail.’

  ‘Sadly, I do not share your optimism. You see, and this will sound harsh, but I believe it to be true, I do not think children are naturally good. They have to be taught proper standards and values.’ Marguerite thought uneasily of Mrs Schneider’s sons. ‘That to my mind is the duty of teachers, and above all parents. If we allow the wrong people, the merchants, the unprincipled, the ignorant, to set the standards, we are in for trouble. Mark my words.’

  ‘I will think about what you say, Miss Fryer, and I’m sorry that the incident, which I thought was quite innocent, has so disturbed you.’

  ‘I will be retiring soon, Miss Carter, and not before time. Truth be told, I am no longer relevant.’

  Marguerite was saddened by this usually confident woman’s declaration, because, in her heart, she knew it to be true.

  Chapter 15

  Something was stirring. By the late 1950s London was full of iron balls lunging into bomb-damaged buildings, which crashed down, making way for construction of the new. It felt exciting, although as they walked round the city not everything pleased Marguerite and Tony. They were upset when an ancient mews near Trafalgar Square with gas lights, and ghosts, was flattened to make way for a bland office block, and they were angry that the indestructible dome of St Paul’s, that had been such a comfort during the Blitz, was gradually being hemmed in by buildings not worthy of it. After years of choking smogs they were delighted that the air was now cleaner, so that the buildings they had come to believe were black emerged revealing white stone, or in the case of the Natural History Museum, terracotta tiles in an amazing palette of various creams and pale blue, with sculpted animals and flowers.

  Now that she had nearly ten years’ experience behind her, Marguerite was confident she was a good teacher. All her pupils had done as well as they were able, and she was learning to accept that the circumstances that could hinder their progress were beyond her control. Her failure to persuade Elsie and Irene to fulfil their potential still pained her, but it taught her to resist being too emotionally involved in her pupils’ lives. She gritted her teeth, and followed Miss Fryer’s advice to allow them to ‘fly the nest’ unassisted, concentrating all her energy on making the most of the time she had with them. An increasing number of her girls were getting into universities and, gently prodded by her, considering a career rather than just any old job until they fulfilled their destiny as good wives. She once saw Irene, in the distance, walking along Bexleyheath Broadway, with three young children in tow. The rush of rage Marguerite felt towards the shiftless mother who had apparently landed her brilliant pupil with yet another debilitating burden made her turn and walk in the other direction, knowing that she would not be able to contain her frustration if she spoke to Irene; she would be tempted to say things that would only unsettle her.

  She heard through Pauline that Elsie had a very good job in London, though she didn’t know what it was, or what had happened to the baby. Pauline and Hazel had obtained coveted places at the London School of Economics, from where they inundated Marguerite with leaflets and invitations to various meetings. She was proud of her ex-pupils’ continued activism and wanted to encourage them, especially now that she could no longer be accused by Miss Fryer of political influence. One meeting in particular she decided to attend.

  Since the test explosion by the Americans of the hydrogen bomb, even more ferocious in destructive power than the two atom bombs that had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Marguerite was convinced that this was the biggest issue of the age, probably the biggest since the start of civilisation. The human race was now capable of wiping itself out.

  His head explodes. The blue eyes blown away. The three other men in the car sprawl grotesquely like her childhood dolls thrown into the toy box. Yet the grenade had fitted into the palm of her hand and all she had done was pull out the small pin and throw it like a ball.

  Tony, too, who had been at that first anti-bomb meeting of the United Nations Association in Dartford, was deeply concerned about the legacy of this admittedly amazing scientific achievement. The two of them were in accord that the world must rid itself of these weapons, before it was too late. The problem was how. Tony had been for the unilateral option, particularly when he heard
Margaret Thatcher opposing it, but when he came back from a Labour Party conference he told Marguerite how his idol Aneurin Bevan had made a typically brave speech, saying that, if the Party voted for Britain alone to ban the bomb regardless of other countries, they would be ‘sending the next Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber’. He derided their idealism. ‘I call it an emotional spasm.’ Although he was outvoted, many people, including Tony, saw his point.

  ‘If all the big boys have a bomb they’re not going to listen to a little squirt with no weapons.’

  ‘We are not “a little squirt”. We are a much respected force in the world,’ Marguerite argued.

  ‘Marguerite, we are a tiny country that is losing its empire, and has already lost its credibility since the Suez nonsense.’

  ‘We stood alone and virtually unarmed against the Nazis.’

  ‘We were just lucky that Hitler didn’t have the sense to cross the Channel.’

  ‘But if he’d had a hydrogen bomb, don’t you think he would have used it? You talk about having to negotiate from strength. You overlook the odd madmen that crash into history. You can’t negotiate with them. Once they get one, we’re done for.’

  ‘Even madmen will realise that, if they drop one, they too will be annihilated. It will stop them.’

  ‘It didn’t stop the Americans.’

  ‘That’s just my point. It would have done, if Japan had had the bomb.’

  ‘But it was wicked, wicked. We cannot be compliant in such criminal acts.’

  ‘It is war. Appalling crimes always have and always will be committed in the name of “a just war”.’

  ‘Tony, I can’t believe this is you saying these things. What’s happened to you? What happened to us “not doing nothing”? We have to make a stand.’

  ‘Oh, you mean like the people in Hungary? Slaughtered by Russian tanks? Khrushchev turns out to be as bad as Uncle Joe Stalin.’

  ‘And, yes, imagine if he gets the bomb. We can change things, Tony. We can. Please come to this meeting at Westminster Hall. There are all sorts of people speaking who can put the case better than me.’

  ‘No, my love—’

  ‘Tony, please. This is so important for me. I can’t bear not to have you with me.’

  ‘Oh my dear little cockeyed optimist. When you look at me like that, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I can’t resist you. I’ll be there.’

  And there Tony was, among the four thousand others crowded into Central Hall and spilling over into three extra rooms, with a stage full of the great and the good from all walks of cultural, political and religious life. The atmosphere was electric to begin with, but some rather overlong speeches began to dampen the fervour and people started drifting away. Then the historian A.J.P. Taylor stood on the platform, gesturing only occasionally with relaxed hands, calmly describing in minute detail the horrifying injuries and agonising death caused by atomic radiation.

  He ended by saying quietly, ‘So now, which of you will press the button?’

  Silence. ‘Is there anyone here who would want to do this to another human being?’

  Again silence.

  Then for the first time in his speech, showing passion, he shouted, ‘Then why are we making the damned thing?’

  The crowd erupted into cheers.

  Marguerite hugged Tony.

  ‘Wasn’t he wonderful?’

  Tony looked solemn amidst the rejoicing.

  ‘An emotional spasm, I fear.’

  He did not go with Marguerite and her two protégées on the spontaneous march to 10 Downing Street after the meeting, and when they met the next day at school, he tried to explain his reticence.

  ‘I’m truly frightened, Mags. These are perilous times that need pragmatism rather than idealism.’

  Marguerite covered her ears.

  ‘Don’t, Tony, don’t. I don’t want to hear this from you. I would rather we were blown to smithereens than take part in this obscene arms race. We must do what is right. Never mind the consequences. Remember, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” ’

  ‘Well, I’m not particularly good, and it’s a case of tactics, not doing nothing. Anyway I seem to remember in one of A.J.P. Taylor’s television lectures he said Burke didn’t actually say that. It’s a misquote.’

  When, the following Easter, a march of protest was organised from Trafalgar Square to Aldermaston, where nuclear warheads were being manufactured, Tony declined to accompany her, but the day before she left, he put a note in her letterbox.

  Dear Maggie Pankhurst,

  This is what good old Eddie Burke actually said. ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.’ Not sure what it means, or who are the goodies and who the baddies, but take care of your pretty feet in ‘this contemptible struggle’.

  I love you.

  Standing in Trafalgar Square with Pauline and Hazel and about two thousand other enthusiastic supporters, Marguerite missed Tony. It was the first time she had been at such an event without him by her side. Representatives of the new Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a pipe-smoking J.B. Priestley, a befrocked Canon Collins, a dishevelled Michael Foot, and a cerebral Bertrand Russell, made rousing speeches under an indifferent Nelson, and she would like to have heard Tony’s wry take on the proceedings. When the march took off, through the deserted streets of London on this Good Friday morning, she needed his quick wit to respond to the occasional shouts of abuse.

  ‘Go back to Moscow.’

  ‘There’s snow on your boots.’

  She knew he would have enjoyed it when a car passed them in Knightsbridge with honking horn, and a woman in a fur coat leaned out, and with a cut-glass accent shouted from the window, ‘Ostriches, ostriches.’

  The whole thing was pretty haphazard. The ardent young organisers were running up and down the slowly moving line, issuing orders with loudhailers, handing out limp daffodils to wear, and home-made banners to carry. There was a lorry for rucksacks and tents, as it was not clear if there would be indoor accommodation for everyone before they reached Aldermaston on Easter Monday. As they passed through London the mood was very good-natured. At the Albert Memorial they stopped for a picnic, and someone played a guitar for a sing-song and dancing, until the police politely intervened. As they proceeded the only bone of contention was between some youngsters, who wanted to hear the accompanying bands, and the organisers, who insisted on silence, in respect for the religious sensitivities of participants observing the solemnity of Good Friday.

  By the time they got to Hammersmith, the weather had changed for the worse. It was cold and it began to rain. Marguerite was glad that she had worn slacks and had her galoshes in her knapsack. Many of the great and the good had returned to their cosy beds, and only about two hundred stalwarts remained.

  One bedraggled marcher came up to her.

  ‘Excuse me, I’ve got blisters on my hands and feet, I am wet through, and suddenly I don’t give a monkey’s if the whole world goes up in smoke. Here, have this?’ She thrust a banner with a strange emblem on it into Marguerite’s arms.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ replied the young girl.

  A male voice intervened.

  ‘I think I can help you pretty ladies there.’

  Marguerite turned. A thatch of neatly cut, naturally curly, light brown hair, piercing blue eyes, square jaw, tall, sheepskin-lined ex-RAF flying jacket and polo neck, with Paisley scarf nonchalantly draped. An archetypal dish. His mouth was set in a lopsided smile, while his eyes appraised her face and body, then looked deep into hers.

  Marguerite stared him out, and his eyes faltered, darting momentarily to size up the alternative of the pretty erstwhile banner carrier, who hovered, simpering flirtily, then swivelled back to the challenge of Marguerite. The ex-banner bearer left in a disconsolate huff.

  The Dish continued, �
��Forgive me. I and my friend here’ – he indicated a tall buck-toothed man, also in flying jacket – ‘have been following behind you, and what a pleasure that has been, with you in those fetching slacks.’ His friend snorted. ‘And I couldn’t help overhearing your question.’

  ‘And?’ said Marguerite.

  ‘It is the semaphore for the letter N and D put together, standing for “Nuclear Disarmament”. Show her, Stan,’ he ordered.

  His gangly friend suddenly stood to attention and made the two signs with his arms.

  ‘Clever, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Marguerite.

  ‘And rather lovely – like you, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  Marguerite looked hard at the banner. ‘It could also be someone standing with his arms spread low in despair. Possibly at man’s inhumanity to man.’

  The Dish hesitated. ‘Er – I hadn’t thought of that.’

  His debonair veneer faded momentarily, and he said, ‘God knows it would be fitting.’

  ‘Yes.’ Marguerite fixed him with a steady gaze.

  He reverted to his charm offensive.

  ‘Has anyone told you that you have the most beautiful eyes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh really? You mean your boyfriend? Lucky bloke. Or husband perhaps?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘You. Just now.’

  ‘And your hair is the colour of—’

  Marguerite interrupted, ‘Oh please stop this nonsense. I feel like a drowned rat standing here, and we are dropping behind.’

  The man dropped his jaunty façade.

  ‘OK. I know when I’m beaten. Here, give us that. We’ll carry it.’

  And he and his friend hoisted the banner aloft and set off with Marguerite between them.

  ‘Oh, by the way, I am Jimmy and he’s Stan. Ex-RAF, now in Civvy Street, with nothing better to do than go for a freezing-cold walk to the country, carrying a banner that no one understands. You?’