Paid Servant

by E. R. Braithwaite

  The children were all at school, but were expected in soon after four o’clock; the youngest ones came in first—they were at the local junior school. The others attended school in the town, so they travelled by bus. She invited me to stay to tea, when I would be able to talk to them.

  She was a cheery, ample person, with a broad face and short, pale hair. She chatted on about the children in her care, what they did, how they were progressing at school, the easy ones, the difficult ones; but she spoke as if they were all her children, her own flesh and blood.

  “I’ve just taken over the Cossons, and I’m hoping to see their father soon, to discover if he still plans to send them to British Guiana,” I said.

  Immediately some of the warmth seemed to evaporate from our easily established rapport. “I heard that Mr Cosson had thought about it,” she replied, “but I took it for granted, after all this time, that he had given up the idea. After all, these children were born here in England, they grew up here, and I don’t think they would like it in Africa. I mean, it won’t be fair to them.”

  “British Guiana is in South America, not Africa,” I said.

  “It’s still foreign, isn’t it?” she replied. “They’re comfortable here, they live in a house, go to school, and I take care of them. It would be cruel to send them to a foreign country, where you don’t know how they’ll live or what they’ll eat or anything. They’ve been talking to me about it and I know they didn’t like the idea of being sent away to any foreign place.”

  It was clear that she didn’t like the idea at all; and I suspected that whatever talking had been done on the matter was initiated by herself.

  “I’m merely looking into it. Whatever is decided about the children’s future must be their father’s responsibility.”

  “If what the papers said about him is true, then they’re better off here, without him. They’re lovely kids, and it’s a shame their father has to behave like that.”

  “How are they getting on at school? The older ones?” I thought if safer to keep away from discussion of the children’s future until I knew more about Mr Cosson’s plans.

  Once again this set her off in lively praise of the girls; both were at the local Grammar school, and to hear Miss Bancroft tell it, they were the double-distilled quintessence of intelligence and good conduct.

  “And the others?”

  “That Victor is a card.” The way in which she said it clearly indicated that the boy occupied a very special place in her heart. “He’s not as clever as the others and he can be so stubborn when he chooses! But he’s a lovable child.”

  We chatted about the other children in her charge and got along fine until the children arrived. I was introduced to them as a friend of their father, which I thought was going it a bit steep, especially as this caused the Cosson children to ask me a million questions about their father, most of which I tried to parry, with evasive replies. Desperately I exploited my forthcoming visit to him, and suggested that they each write a letter which I promised to deliver.

  Miss Bancroft had not exaggerated in her remarks about the children; they were sturdy, bright and well-mannered; Victor, the youngest, was inclined to show off in order to attract attention to himself; but this is a normal characteristic for the smallest member of any family group. Diane, the eldest, was a lovely, shy child; like the other two girls, she wore her wavy brown hair in two thick plaits which hung halfway down her back. Her skin was pale café au lait, and her large brown eyes shone behind long, curling lashes.

  “Is my Daddy still too ill to write?” she asked me.

  “He has been, but he is recovering and I’m sure you’ll get a letter soon from him.”

  It sickened me, having to lie to these children, and I made a mental note to say a few things to their father when I met him; he could, at least, write to them through Miss Bancroft, and thus avoid whatever embarrassment he feared from a prison postmark.

  When tea was ready we all sat down, ten of us; the Cossons, four other children, Miss Bancroft and myself. The conversation was lively and very entertaining. The housemother asked them about the day’s events in school and encouraged them to express themselves. The more I listened to the group, the more I began to appreciate the truth of an observation someone had made at the Kinsmans’. “Put an adult and some children together in a congenial atmosphere and you’re well on the way to creating a family.” This was a family; furthermore, any attempt to disrupt it would not be happily received. Miss Bancroft was a paid servant, but the Council was receiving something from her which it could not buy, and, watching her, it occurred to me that she too was receiving something—perhaps the affection and love which the children might otherwise have given to their parents.

  When tea was over the children collected the dishes and formed wash-up and drying teams while I had a further chat with Miss Bancroft.

  “What do you think of them?” she asked.

  “I’d like to congratulate you, Miss Bancroft; you’re doing a wonderful job with them.”

  “It’s easy.” She was evidently pleased with my remark.

  “I’m sure Mr Cosson will be very pleased to know they are getting on so well.”

  “I don’t suppose he cares, or he would surely have written to them or something.”

  Outside the very air had changed; now it was jocund with the laughter and shrill cries of children at play; safe, happy children. On my way to the main gate I saw them in groups, boys and girls, skipping, playing football, rolling about on the grass or juggling rubber balls expertly against a wall.

  Next morning I wrote a letter to the Welfare Officer at Strangeways Prison, Manchester, explaining the situation and asking permission to visit Mr Cosson; at the same time I wrote to Mr Cosson, introducing myself as the Welfare Officer dealing with the case, and indicating that I would soon be calling to see him. In this way, I thought, he’ll either see me, or he’d have to give the prison Welfare Officer a damn good reason for declining ….

  Chapter

  Seven

  BY ARRANGEMENT THE TAMERLANES picked me up at my office soon after two o’clock on Saturday afternoon, and we drove out to Franmere. I sat in front beside Mr Tamerlane; behind me the two girls were like jumping beans in their excitement, asking all kinds of questions about Roddy, to which I could not possibly give answers. It seemed as though they wanted quickly to bridge the gap between not knowing and knowing him, to draw him into the family circle with the least possible delay. I rather suspect that their parents were equally excited, especially Mr Tamerlane. He was just too concerned with other things—the sparkplugs needed cleaning, time to change the oil in the crank-case—anything except what lay at the end of the trip.

  Matron was waiting for us and ushered us into her office. She chatted with them about the Home and the children, and the usual pattern of visiting.

  “We like the parents to come here and be with the child for an hour or two at first; then, as they get to know and accept each other, the child can be taken out for an afternoon, then later for a weekend visit, to see how he’ll settle in at what is likely to be his new home. We like this to be quite unhurried, so that it could be discontinued without too much bother if there’s any indication that it might fail.”

  Mr and Mrs Tamerlane were listening quite patiently to this; I could hardly refrain from laughter as I watched the girls trying bravely to restrain their impatience, sitting there, well-mannered and outwardly quiet. I knew that Matron was carefully watching them all, getting the ‘feel’ of them, so to speak. She chatted a little with the girls, about school, then said: “Roddy’s outside with the rabbits; I’ll take you to him.”

  I followed them as far as the doorway to the backyard, then watched as the group converged on Roddy who was squatted on the rough lawn feeding two tame rabbits with lettuce leaves; momentarily he looked pathetically small beside them, in spite of the wide-legged stance
which he assumed on rising to meet them. I walked away in the opposite direction, through an alley and down a narrow walled lane. Later I returned to see him squatted in the same place with the girls, all three in serious discussion about something closely related to their private world.

  Indoors I found John and Ella in Matron’s office; Ella looked quite pleased and excited, “He’s marvellous,” she said.

  To put some slight curb on their enthusiasm I mentioned that there were a few difficulties likely to be encountered with the Middlesex Council, but assured them that the Supervisor was working on that end.

  “One thing I should mention,” Matron said. “Recently Roddy got himself a foster-aunt, as you might say. A Miss Keriham. Would you have any objections to her visiting him occasionally? They seem to get on quite well and I feel sure she’d like to keep in touch with him even after he leaves here.”

  They both said they had no objections, and Ella added: “What’s she like, Miss Keriham?”

  “Very nice,” Matron replied. “Ask Mr Braithwaite, he brought her.”

  Without replying I excused myself and went out to the children, who greeted me with loud excited cries, each wanting to tell me something. Before long I noticed that Roddy too was calling me ‘Uncle Ricky’, quickly following the pattern set by June and Jacqueline. Looking at the three of them I wished desperately that nothing would occur to spoil this chance, but everything was working so smoothly that it worried me somewhat.

  Before leaving, we told Roddy that the Tamerlanes would take him to their home for tea the following Saturday; that was to give him something pleasurable to think about and also to assure him that he’d see his new friends again, soon.

  I telephoned Olga that evening to inform her of these developments; at least that, I argued to myself, was my reason for telephoning. I told her about the Tamerlanes and anticipated her queries by assuring her that there would be no objections to her continued visits to Roddy even when he left Franmere.

  On Monday I received a reply from the Welfare Officer at Strangeways Prison. I would be welcome to visit Mr Cosson; enclosed was a short note from Mr Cosson thanking me for my letter and expressing his wish to see me. I travelled to Manchester the next morning. In the same compartment were three men, two of whom were, from their conversation, representatives of an important firm of industrial engineers, on their way to a conference; the other person’s face was quite familiar, and after a little while I remembered seeing it regularly on television; he was one of a panel of experts who, each Sunday, discussed questions of topical interest. The rest of the week he was a Member of Parliament for a constituency not very far from London. Both he and I tried to read our newspapers, and I suspected that we experienced the same difficulties of concentration because of the uninhibited way in which our dynamic fellow-travellers reviewed recent occasions on which they had managed to impose their views on resistant but less imaginative colleagues. Between bouts of reading and gazing through the window at the same grey, dull, flitting scene, I slept fitfully, and had not realized that the two engineers had left, until I felt the protracted silence.

  Opening my eyes I met those of the M.P., who smiled and said: “Rather quiet, don’t you think?”

  I got his meaning and we both laughed. From there on we fell into conversation. I told him I recognized his face and we talked about television and its effect on public information, entertainment and taste. He made his observations with the same suave, slightly detached professorial air which I had remarked so often, and which was rather pleasing at closer quarters.

  As the train crawled into the deeper gloom of Manchester Station we collected our macs and papers, preparing to leave, and he said: “This has been a most delightful chat, Braithwaite most delightful. Oddly enough, it is the first time I’ve sat and chatted with a Negro. I hope we meet again sometime.”

  Somehow, that spoiled it for me, and all the way to the prison his words kept repeating themselves in my mind. This suave, intelligent, informed man, an elected representative of the people, making a remark like that in the year of Our Lord 1958. I was not sure if it was intended as a boast or confession. I thought of the location of his constituency; I knew that many coloured families lived there. They were part of it; they very probably worked in it, their children were at school in it, some of them surely voted in it. Yet he had never talked with one of them. Probably because none of them had ever sought him out personally for help or advice on a personal matter. But was that the only basis for a relationship between the Member of Parliament and those who elected him? Should he always wait until some personal crisis forced them to seek him out? Was it not also his business and his responsibility deliberately to seek to know as many of his constituents as possible? Did he even know that there were coloured people among his constituents?

  Perhaps I was letting my imagination run riot, discolouring an ordinary pedestrian remark. But the idea persisted that, in spite of the deep social malaise which occasionally erupted in inter-racial violence and disorder, this man, and probably others, had not considered it worth his while to meet some of the people concerned, in an attempt to understand the root causes, because in the normal processes of his professional duties he would certainly find himself discussing the symptoms.

  Maybe, I further argued to myself, he considered his constituency sufficiently distant from the centres of reported troubles, to remain free and isolated from those ugly, dramatic circumstances. Perhaps if I had known earlier that our conversation represented something new in his experience, I might have put a flea in his ear, so to speak. Then I thought, that, after all, our conversation represented nothing more or less than a discourse between two men, conducted in terms of equality and respect; for whatever reason he made his parting remark, I should not attach too much importance to it. When we parted he had been smiling broadly, apparently really pleased about our encounter; yet I found myself thinking of the old days when elderly people in the East End of London reached forward to shake hands with me, just for the luck which they believed would result. Well, good luck to him too.

  At the prison I was shown to the Welfare Officer’s office; we chatted awhile, then he sent an orderly to fetch Mr Cosson. In the meantime the Welfare Officer spoke of Mr Cosson as a model prisoner during the eighteen months he had so far spent at Strangeways; if he continued in the same way he was likely to be released in a little over two years; he worked in the prison barber’s shop, in order to maintain his proficiency against the time of his release. As I listened to him I hoped that the standards in the prison barber’s shop were such that Mr Cosson would learn a few lessons on cleanliness.

  He had changed little. The drab prison uniform was worn with the same casual arrogance, though it hung loosely about his spare frame; but it was the same barber of the brief Brixton interlude. If he recognized me, he gave no sign. I introduced myself and we shook hands. The Welfare Officer said we could have our chat in his office; if Mr Cosson preferred it, he could leave us to speak privately. Mr Cosson quickly indicated that he would prefer the Welfare Officer to remain, reminding him that he already knew everything about his affairs, so there was nothing secret to be said. Hearing this I said my piece, stating first that the Council was concerned to know whether he intended to pursue his earlier plan to send the children to his parents in British Guiana; then I said that with no sign of the mother, and himself out of circulation for some time, the children were rather insecure, especially as he had, so far, refused to communicate with them.

  Watching him, as I spoke, I got the impression that he was watching the prison Welfare Officer, as if gauging his reaction to my remarks. When he finally spoke he completely surprised me. I suppose it is natural to expect that any period of imprisonment produces some change in a man or woman, but I was unprepared for the whining tone in which he attempted to defend himself. He blamed his wife for all his misfortunes, expressed his love for his children, claimed that he did not write
to them primarily for their own sake, because he did not want any taint of prison life to reach them, even through a letter. But he insisted that he missed them terribly, dreamed frequently of them, and missed them even more after each dream. He said that his immediate ambition was to see them; his good conduct record in prison would probably justify a short two-day parole to allow him to visit them, providing someone on the ‘outside’ would be willing to guarantee him accommodation for that period.

  Perhaps I do him grave injustice, but I had the feeling that his obsequious humility was completely phoney, put on for the benefit of the prison official and myself, in order to achieve the two-day parole. The ‘somebody on the outside’ was evidently myself, and his professed concern and love for his children was the lever. He had me nicely in a corner.

  “Is it true about the parole?” I asked the Welfare Officer.

  “Yes. Providing a prisoner’s conduct is satisfactory over a reasonable period of time, he may apply for such a parole on compassionate grounds. But some responsible person must give a written guarantee of board and lodging, and an assurance that the prisoner will return at the end of the parole.”

  It occurred to me that Mr Cosson knew all this, had been fully briefed about it, probably by prisoners who knew all the ropes. I said that, as a Council employee, I could not undertake to offer any guarantees without the Council’s express authority. Although it would be a pleasant thing to have Mr Cosson visit his children, my business was to discover whether he still intended to send his children to British Guiana, or, if not, what alternative plans had he got for them?