'Is the meeting official?' Sharon asked. 'Mr. Haslam didn't sign the notice.'
'How could he? He's been at County Hall all day and I bet they've torn their hair out in handfuls over this new examination set-up,' said Betty. At moments of excitement she blew her fringe out of her eyes with a curious whistling sound. She did it now. 'Miss Gorple and Mr. Topliss have commandeered the senile ward. Miss Gorple will be in the chair and Mr. Topliss is going to take the minutes of the meeting.'
'Mr. Principal wouldn't like it,' fretted Percy.
Sharon thought this was putting it mildly, especially if Mr. Topliss's minutes appeared as news in tomorrow's Gazette!
'Have you tried to phone him?
'You may be sure I have, Miss Birch. But there's no one on the switchboard at County Hall at this hour of night and I couldn't get him at the Raven, either. He was feeling 'fluish when he left this morning and I had an idea he'd go straight home to bed.'
'The chairman of the governors?'
'It's the big Council meeting tonight - the housing estimates - and they'll be at it till late. That accounts for Alderman Foxways and the other councillors on our board. Another two are down with 'flu.'
'Have you tried Ben Hallsworth?'
'I tried him first, knowing he's on Mr. Principal's side in most things,' said Percy with a hint of reproach. 'But he's in Manchester on business and staying there overnight.'
'Bother! I'd forgotten.' As a last resort Sharon said: 'Mr. Cragill?'
Percy said stiffly: 'Mrs. Cragill answered the phone. He's indisposed. He hasn't fallen a victim to the 'flu epidemic. Just indisposed.'
In other words, he knew there was trouble afoot and he was lying low.
Betty's grievance was that Miss Gorple's students had typed the notice and taken it round. This was mutiny! But the prospect excited her. 'Would you call it a sit-in? Coo, I wish I'd brought a flask of coffee and my slimming biscuits.'
Sharon said tersely: 'There's a real grievance. Term has been cut short, courses interrupted, to make a silly little economy. They mean to pass on their complaint in a businesslike way to the board of governors and perhaps that's not a bad thing.'
But the businesslike meeting which consisted in the main of evening staff and adult students ready to discuss ways and means of completing their courses before
Easter, even if it meant taking a room in the town or meeting in one another's homes, began to get out of hand. Sharon was standing at the back of the long room when Betty came to her in tears.
'Word has got round the town through people who didn't stay for the meeting. The apprentices are coming.'
In fact, they were at that very moment swinging up the long drive, fifty making enough noise for an army: the crunch of feet on the gravel, the shouts and catcalls and bursts of laughter, and, like an actual tangible thing, the reckless mood of a mob out to make mischief and taking courage from one another and the darkness. Suddenly they were all over the place, swarming into the senile ward and shouting down Miss Gorple and Mr. Topliss. Some of them were certainly apprentices from the engineering shops in town. Sharon recognized a couple, too, from the carpet mill. There was a lad straight from the bakehouse, moon-faced and ghostly in his floury clothes. But somewhere along the way they had been joined by the young layabouts of the town. The sight of them filled Sharon with revulsion. On the corridor she came face to face with a long-haired pair who had recently been in trouble with the police for sleeping rough in the brick kilns. She seemed to remember their latest exploit had been to try and make off with a cask of beer from the wire works.
Against this jostling, shouting crew Raikes, the caretaker, tried vainly to bar the way. She saw him pushed roughly aside and fall to the ground. Percy ran into the office to phone the police, locking the door behind him. But at one mighty heave the door splintered and with a yell of triumph they were in, hauling Percy out and bundling him off into the darkness.
Sharon slipped down a side passage and down a flight of dark stone steps into the basement, past the boilers, up more steps into the paved yard behind the main building. She heard thumps and muffled cries from the path lab and found Percy locked in the tall cupboard. When she released him he fell out, all entangled with straw. She helped him to a chair where he sat looking sick and dazed.
'Just wait there quietly. I'm away to the phone box at the bottom of the hill. I'll get the police.'
But there was no need. Neil's car was drawing into the yard at that moment. He got out, supporting himself against the bonnet. If he had been 'fluish this morning, he looked terrible now. He stared from one to the other of them and then turned his head, listening to the din inside the main building.
'What the hell is going on?' He glared at the clerk. 'I found your message waiting when I got in. An orderly protest meeting, you said.'
'That's how it started out, Mr. Principal.' Percy brushed off a wisp of straw and set his glasses more firmly on his nose. 'But then these lads came raging up the hill.'
'And it turned into a riot.'
'Raikes got a nasty bump on the head, but the rest is just noise. Shall we charge in, sir, and clear them out?'
This Percy was a very Hotspur, impatient to 'pluck up drowned honour by the locks', thought Sharon with delight. She would never forget the sudden uneasy silence which fell upon Roxley Institute when Neil appeared in the doorway: gaunt, flushed with fever, scarcely able to stand upright. Nor would she easily forget how the town troublemakers sneaked off into the night, leaving a shamefaced huddle of young people in the entrance hall and corridor against a background of faces peering fearfully from Room 28 (S.W.). He stood where he was, slowly taking in the scene. Then he said with blistering contempt: 'I hope you're proud of yourselves.'
Two young men near the back began to edge away. His raised hand stopped them.
'Oh, no. You're not going home till everything here is put in order. You've broken down the door, kicked the paintwork and there are papers strewn everywhere. In fact, the office is a shambles. You two at the back, you attend Mr. Smart's class, I think. Right? We'll see what sort of job you make of the door. And I'll have a couple of volunteers - you and you - to touch up the paint. We have all the materials on the premises. Then the furniture is to be moved back where it belongs and the floor swept and scrubbed. Raikes is in no state to tackle it. By heaven, you'll be lucky if you're not charged with common assault!' He turned to Percy. 'Close the door. Then show them where the stuff is kept.'
Someone muttered that he had no right to 'shove them around.' That was all he needed. He just flayed them.
"You're talking about rights. Where do you think I've been all day? At County Hall, defending your rights. Oh, yes, you have a case, a genuine grievance, and I'm fighting on your side. That also goes for the people who attended Miss Gorple's meeting. I can't reverse the authority's decision to cut short the term. But I can and will see that the time lost is made up after Easter. And they'll discontinue the major summer courses over my dead body.'
His fierce glance raked the crowd of youngsters again.
'But are you worth it? Is this a real protest or just a challenge to authority for the hell of it? Let me tell you this: nothing we can teach you chaps on day release or at the evening classes will be a ha'porth of use to you later on, unless you learn discipline first. I don't mean discipline imposed from outside with a boot or a leather strap or some fancy scheme of rewards and punishments. I mean self-discipline. I mean the dignity of thinking human beings. I mean man stretched to his utmost, using every talent, every resource, and glorying in the adventure. Why, an institute like ours should be the spearhead of the new age. And just look at you! You make me sick at heart.' His arm dropped; he was staggering. He said wearily: 'Now get on with it.'
Later, much later, with the place quiet as the grave, neat as a new pin, and the smell of paint and wood shavings lingering, he locked up and ran Percy home. Sharon was seated beside him in the front seat of the car. It had simply been taken for granted
. First they had made sure Raikes needed no help. His wife had given him first-aid - cold compresses to the swollen jaw and a hot toddy. They dropped Percy and from there it was only a couple of hundred yards to Sharon's gate. She sat very still for a moment, and then she said in a low, unsteady voice: 'You were magnificent.'
'Let me tell you I feel like death!'
'You must get to bed quickly and stay there - and please send for Doctor Eastwood.'
'The man has an epidemic on his hands.'
'But you're important!' She had this sudden terrible longing to touch him, to comfort him, to draw his head against her breast. She knotted her hands tightly together and stared at the windscreen. 'I just want to say this. They weren't fighting you tonight. I do hope you understand that? They think you've had a raw deal and they're for you.'
'An undisciplined rabble. I can see this wretched affair plastered across the front page of the Gazette. SIT-IN BECOMES WORK-OUT.'
'You won, anyway,' said Sharon stubbornly.
A long moment hung between them.
'Such empty victories,' said Neil.
Sharon tossed and turned for hours that night. Counting flocks of Hardwicks on the fells or calling to mind all her best-loved lines of verse wasn't any use; sleep stayed far from her. By now, Mr. Topliss had finished scribbling and was away to his bed, and the hot toddy had certainly done the trick for poor Raikes. But she fancied Neil was still awake, with a raging head and aching limbs.
Was his last thought every night of Jennifer Hyde? Did they write to one another or perhaps snatch a moment on the phone? No, Sharon's heart insisted. Neil would scorn anything furtive and underhand. Yet he had taken her in his arms. It is a sort of madness…
From what she remembered, they would still be in Scotland. Marty had foreseen that his business trip would last six weeks. 'It'll be go-go-go all the time, but we aim to be home for Easter. Can't have Aunt Ada pining away!' Oh, that Niagara of words! And Jennifer lived in its roar and spray!
They would fly back to Toronto and she would be out of Neil's reach for ever. Wasn't it natural that he should put all that heartache behind him and feel free to hope again and love again ?
She thought of herself and Adam. In low moments he found their situation hopeless. A formal engagement, he often said, would be just a farce. But for so long their lives and been intertwined and were like one thread in the fabric of the future. He had given her that sweet pretty ring. He counted on her absolutely, trusted her, needed her.
If your feelings about a person changed, she thought painfully, wasn't it honest to tell them so? But how could she?
Sleep caught her unawares with nothing settled.
How strange, how shocking, that an event which turned your life upside down should be made known quite casually, by chance, on a transistor radio in the copyists' room. It was the coffee break and Bernard had switched on the ten-thirty news. Through the chirps and twitterings of the girls as she passed through, Sharon heard the announcer report a serious accident on an icebound road in the north.
A lorry, approaching the main road from the left, had skidded, overrun the lights and crashed into a car travelling at speed across the intersection. The two vehicles, almost welded together by the force of impact now blocked the carriageway. The police gave warning of a traffic diversion. The car was an American model, a Pontiac, but the couple in it were believed to be Canadian. The left- hand drive meant that it was the driver, not the passenger, who had received the worst injuries. He had died in the ambulance on the way to a hospital where his passenger now lay unconscious.
'Will any witnesses of the accident…
CHAPTER TEN
It could have been, and was not, any other of the Canadian couples touring the north that spring in big American cars.
Neil, still shaky from 'flu, drove the hundred and twenty miles to see Jennifer in hospital and offer his services. It was he who undertook the cabling: to Aunt Ada Banstead and to Marty's firm after a laborious business tracking down his Newcastle associates.
'The car burst into flames only seconds after they were got out, and everything they possessed is gone,' he told Sharon, catching her at her gate the day after his return. 'That's why identification was difficult. And with Jennifer lying unconscious… Hyde's maple-leaf tiepin was the first clue.'
Sharon asked shrinkingly about Jennifer's injuries.
'She came off lightly. They suspected a skull fracture, but the X-ray shows nothing. The concussion is clearing up slowly. That leaves her with fractured ribs and pelvis and her face isn't pretty, but they'll tidy that up.'
Sharon had a hysterical desire to laugh. 'You call that coming off lightly!'
'Have you ever seen a crashed motorcyclist?' Neil asked grimly. 'Well, I have. One of our apprentices last term. I sometimes think of it when I see Adam Kershaw belting around on his.'
'He wears a crash helmet.'
'I should damn well hope so, if he really thinks anything of you.'
That was uncalled for and she hotly resented it. He was right back on form! But perhaps his rudeness was deliberate, to jerk her out of the shock and pity she felt for that girl with her wrecked face, her wrecked life. Something was puzzling her, too.
'Why should these tasks fall to you? Cabling to Canada, for instance. I'd have expected Jennifer's people to be the ones.'
'Her parents were at the hospital till she was declared out of danger. Naturally it has been a great shock to them. But when it comes to settling up Marty's affairs
Sharon understood. They would never forgive the broken engagement and that hasty Canadian wedding. They would have nothing to do with Martin Banstead Hyde, alive or dead. But how hard that would make things for Jennifer!
'She… knows?'
'Oh, yes, and she took it bravely.' He frowned. 'There are problems about the funeral. When Jennifer understood what had happened she said he would have wished to be buried here in Roxley.' His smile was one-sided and sardonic. 'She may have been lightheaded at the time, but she said a memorial service in Roxley Abbey would, to use his own phrase, lay him out cold.'
Sharon winced. 'But it's perfectly true. And I think Canon Wismer would be delighted.' She hesitated before suggesting diffidently: 'Perhaps Jennifer would like me to go and see him?'
He flashed her a grateful look. 'I'll tell her. I have a few things to see to at the Institute and then I'll be up north again for a couple of days.' He paused. 'She asked after you. She said she would always remember your kindness.'
Sharon quickly turned her face aside. 'I'd like to send her some flowers. They're just at their loveliest.' It seemed that spring sang everywhere but in her own heart!
'I'd be grateful if you'd drop her a note from time to time,' Neil urged. 'Anything to keep her from brooding on the accident. She'd enjoy bits of local news, details of your work. When the headache clears up I've no doubt she'll reply.'
But beyond the stilted, conventional things, what had they to say to one another, the two women who loved Neil Haslam?
The funeral had to take place without Jennifer, nor were her people present. Mr. Longford was well enough now to play at occasional services. The music rolled nobly through the abbey, the red stone glowed in the sun, the flowers were glorious, and Sharon had the feeling Marty would have enjoyed it all immensely. A huge wreath had come from Aunt Ada through Interflora and when Sharon read the inscription: To my dear boy she saw Martin Hyde for the first and only time as a human being whose passing was sincerely mourned.
Besides herself and Neil, Canon Wismer and the curate and as many choirboys as could be mustered on a weekday, there were only Neil's parents and two large, efficient men from Newcastle. At the last moment the Cragills crossed from their house wearing dark clothes, like a pair of ill-omened birds. They sat through the service and walked in the rear of the short procession to the graveside. Sharon afterwards heard Samuel explaining to the canon that though he and Mrs. Cragill had not met the Hydes personally, they had been aware of the
Canadian's interest in the abbey and had admired 'his intrepid lady', whom they had seen at the top of the tower on the morning of departure.
'And of course,' Mr. Cragill added, discreetly lowering his voice, 'we know the connection with Haslam. 'To think she's a wealthy young widow now!'
The canon, perplexed, said Mr. Hyde would have been touched to know that in so brief a visit he had made such good friends. He shook hands warmly with the Cragills and moved on to Marty's business associates, who were in some haste to catch their train back to Newcastle.
Sharon was delighted to meet the Haslams again; and as Neil had to dash off on County Hall business, they took her to lunch with them at the Raven. The talk was inevitably of Jennifer and her future plans.
'How sad to be bereft at such a hopeful time of year, isn't it?' said Mary Haslam, echoing the thought which had been so much in Sharon's mind for the past week.
'She's young enough to look ahead,' said her husband, adding drily: 'And she won't lack friends to offer distraction. I understand Hyde carried heavy accident and life insurance, and if he hadn't provided amply for her, his firm would. She'll be very comfortably off.'
'It's almost beside the point when you consider what lies ahead for her,' Mrs. Haslam replied, and Sharon agreed with her. 'The fractures are doing well and the concussion is clearing up, Neil tells us; but the treatment to her face is going to mean repeated visits to hospital even when she's convalescent from the other injuries. It won't be a happy time, considering how her people feel about Martin Hyde.'
Sharon exclaimed: 'How dreary for her! How terrible!' It shocked her to picture Jennifer, who had been bullied by Marty throughout their short married life, waking every morning to the reproaches of her family and screwing up her courage for another session of plastic surgery.
Matthew Haslam said practically that the sensible thing would be to return to Canada as soon as possible.
'There are excellent surgeons in Toronto.'
Mrs. Haslam gave him a look of reproach. 'What has she to go back to? No, she'll certainly make her home over here.' An uncomfortable pause. 'Well, we shall see how things work out.'
Margaret Baumann - Design for Loving (1970) Page 13