by Paula Byrne
The turning point of his past life had been the winning of the coveted scholarship that gave him the free place at the great public school on the edge of London where teachers were ‘beaks’, a term was a ‘half’, and lessons were ‘hashes’. Soon after he and Lisa had become lovers, he had explained to her about the sixth-formers’ blazer, with one button on the cuff for normal boys, two for prefects, three for house captains, four for the head of school and the captains of sport, and five for a boy who was both head boy and a captain of sport. As elected head boy and captain of the cricket team – he was a mean fast bowler – Edward had been the first founder’s scholar in history to have five buttons.
Lisa saw his delight in learning about Blagsford traditions and turns of phrase. The deputy head was called the ‘usher’, the matrons of the boarding houses were all called ‘ma’, the head of sixth form was called the ‘ancient’, said to be a variant of the Elizabethan term ensign, meaning the commander’s right-hand man. The chapel bell was called the ‘bong’, the hatch through which the Indian takeaway deliveryman passed in his wares was called the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’. That was the one name that Edward swiftly abolished, on pain of detention. One evening, soon after their arrival, Edward told Lisa that she was expected to give out the Supreme Bosh Cup.
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘It’s the inter-house competition. There’s a competition for everything – rugby, hockey, cricket, drama, musical recitals, chess, even Jenga. You’re going to have to give a silver cup and a kiss to the captain of the house that wins the largest number of competitions.’
In honour of the school’s Tudor origins, each boarding house was named after an Elizabethan hero. The arty boys were concentrated in Shakespeare and Marlowe, Tallis and Byrd (Balls and Turd, as the Marlovians put it). The hearties were allocated to Drake, Raleigh, and Essex – one of which was always the winner of the Rugby Bosh. Boys with potential for a future in politics or public service were allocated to Burghley, who always won the Debating Bosh.
‘Nobody knows what “bosh” stands for. The Marlovians think it means Bugger Off Shakespeare House, their great rivals. Others think it’s a variant of “bash”. The Blagsford creed is that everyone should have a bash at everything, however lacking in talent they are. But some people think that it’s really a reference to the First World War – fighting the Boche.’
Lisa loved to wind her husband up.
‘Edward, I can’t believe you take this crap seriously.’
‘I know I have mixed feelings about the British Empire, but a lot of Blagsford boys lost their lives in the Great War. That’s not crap, it’s history. I’m going to have to read the Roll of Honour on Remembrance Sunday, and I’ll expect you to be there, dressed in a suitably dignified style. No cleavage.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that’s a moving thing, darling – you know how I love First World War poetry. I meant the slang. Bongs, Blacks Holes and Bosh.’
‘The slang’s a form of bonding. It creates a sense of community, of people not being left out.’
She had to admit, though, that Blagsford was beautiful, with its mock Oxbridge quad, its cloister, and the Arts and Crafts chapel with its frescoed walls, triptych of pale oak, and metal furnishings of bronze, hand-beaten to the patina of pockmarked skin. Lisa loved to run her hands over the bronze. Edward insisted that the whole family attend chapel during term time. ‘So they can all have a good nose,’ she muttered to herself.
The Headmaster’s House had a large garden, with mature deciduous trees. Best of all was the sunken White Garden, which was laid out immediately behind the house. It was inspired by the famous example at nearby Hidcote Manor, also designed in the Arts and Crafts style. A bronze statue reproducing Michelangelo’s David, no less, overlooked beds of scented old English white roses, white lavender, aquilegia, and penstemon. The roses flowered for just five weeks in June – a riotous, exuberant and blowsy show, fading all too fast from white cream to curling brown. Their own private White Garden. She didn’t know it then, but one day that garden would save her sanity.
She got on well with most of the staff, with the exception of the housekeeper. She was dumpy and lazy, and she began by telling Lisa all the duties that she refused to undertake, such as making the beds and doing the laundry. ‘Mr Camps was a very particular gentleman, didn’t like me going into his bedroom, and insisted on washing and ironing his own shirts. We’re set in our ways here at Blagsford, Mrs Chamberlain. I had my list of duties for Mr Camps, and them’s what I’ll do for Mr Chamberlain.’
‘Dr Chamberlain,’ said Lisa curtly. She listened patiently as Doris rambled on about her bad back and the good old days when the masters wore gowns all the time, not just for special occasions. Then she fired her.
‘We mustn’t be accused of victimizing the loyal retainers,’ said Edward. To avoid any fuss, he moved Doris over to fill a cleaning vacancy in one of the boarding houses. Lisa brought in a lovely young Polish girl called Bianka, who worked tirelessly, didn’t speak too much English so didn’t want to chat, and moved gracefully around the house like a blonde, ethereal house sprite. And she could drive, unlike Doris. So morning and evening she ran Emma and George into St Gregory’s, Blagsford’s Catholic primary school. Lisa did not want to get into yummy mummy school-gate gossip.
The pupils at Blagsford were hard-working, and, on the whole, polite. Edward soon found that the parents were the problem. They were paying the school fees, and, by God, they wanted their money’s worth. They really believed that they were giving away their little darlings to come back at the age of eighteen as fully formed, charming, and intelligent human beings. The parents didn’t know about the drugs, the feral behaviour in the dorms, the vomiting into the lake, and the escapes into town for supplies of cider. Some things were best left unsaid.
*
Back at SJA, Chuck became acting head until a new one was appointed. Edward wrote a judiciously worded reference on behalf of his old deputy. But once again Chuck was thwarted. Another outsider was appointed, a safe pair of hands with a solid track record in Lancashire.
When the news was announced, Edward called to commiserate. Chuck clearly didn’t want to talk about it, so Edward turned the conversation to Blagsford.
‘So was I right in guessing that they’d be spoilt and over-privileged brats?’ Chuck asked him.
Edward – he had decided to dispense with ‘Ed’ – replied, somewhat testily, ‘Well, that depends on how you define privilege.’
‘Come on, Ed, you can’t pretend your new toffs can be compared with the SJA kids. They wouldn’t know their kale from their cabbage.’
‘They told me that last Christmas one of our boarders was put into a taxi at the end of term. As soon as he arrived at his Hampstead home, his mother put him straight back into the taxi and sent him back to school. We then sent him to his father’s penthouse flat in Clerkenwell, but he didn’t want him either. Finally located a grandparent who agreed to take him in.’
‘Aww, my heart just bleeds. I’m sure he cheered up when he was flown to St Moritz by his folks for the holidays.’
‘They’re not all wealthy, Chuck. Some of our parents really make sacrifices to send their children here, because they believe in the importance of a good education, with the best teachers.’
‘Bullshit, Edward. They want their kids to have social connections. To mix with the right sort of people. The good old British school tie, old boys’ network – it’s still alive and kicking. Nothing like that in the States.’
‘Hmmm, but you can’t buy your way into the best universities like you can in the Ivy League Schools. Anyway, Chuck, Lisa’s longing to see you, so you should come down and see us some time.’
‘And I’m dying to see Lovely Lisa, too. She doing OK?’
‘Yes, and no. She misses the warmth and friendliness of the north. And her family, of course. But she’s a chameleon. She can settle anywhere and make it home. She’s bought six chickens, playing at be
ing a real countrywoman. Anyway, as long as Emma’s health remains stable, she’s happy. Some of the staff don’t know what to make of her, but she seems to be adapting well. Enough about us. How are you, Chuck? You sound a bit strained.’
‘Oh, nothing really. I’ve got to go into hospital for something. Just a routine test. A sore throat I can’t seem to shift. I’m fine. We all miss you guys so much.’
As when he had first arrived at St Joseph’s Academy, Edward was determined to hit the ground running. One of his friends who had got a headship had announced his intention to spend the first year just watching and waiting, seeing how things worked, getting his feet under the table before making any changes. By the time it got to the second year, it was too late to do anything about a staffroom full of teachers stuck in their ways. Within another year, the governors had persuaded him to move on. Edward wasn’t going to make that kind of mistake.
Drugs, he thought, that’s where I begin. He announced in his first assembly that in his previous school he had instituted a zero-tolerance drug policy and that he was going to do the same at Blagsford, with immediate effect. He was well aware that most public schools were hiding their problems with drugs, and he was determined that he would shine a spotlight on the great modern blight of the independent school system. Somewhere along the way, he would need a sacrificial lamb: enter Bertie Cole. Bertie was handsome and charming, an only child of wealthy parents. His father, Max, a hedge fund manager, had donated significant sums of money to build a new sports hall at the school.
Bertie’s mother, an attractive, thin blonde, always dressed head to foot in Boden, had run off with another woman (though somehow she had still managed to keep the family home, an old vicarage in a beautiful village just outside Blagsford). The affair had been the talk of the common room.
Bertie had always had a penchant for drugs. He had been dealing cannabis (not skunk, he had some morals, he said), and then moved on to MDMA. It was small-time stuff, and he was careful not to get caught, until he got caught. He was the ringleader of a group of five, and Edward caught them online halfway through his first term there as head. The fools had set up a Facebook page called ‘Drugs Chat’. Why would you do something if you couldn’t boast about it online?
Edward saw his opportunity to make his mark. He called in all five sets of parents and told them that he had no choice but permanent exclusion. It was an ugly scene, but Edward was determined. It was his first challenge at Blagsford, and he knew that he had to maintain his tough line. Of all the boys, Bertie was the one he was sorry for, he really was. He always felt a kinship for lonely, only children, like himself, and the boy had suffered. But there it was. The exclusion letters were sent out, though with the standard provision that an appeal could be lodged with the governors.
Bertie’s mother Frederica (Freddie to her friends) was not going to give in that easily. While her husband instructed his lawyer to prepare the appeal letter, she adopted another strategy. She had read the school’s announcement about the appointment of the new headmaster, and pored over the photograph of Edward Chamberlain and his pretty wife, ‘the well-known fashion historian Lisa Blaize’, and their two sweet-looking children. Freddie had female intuition. She could immediately tell that this was a man who was still in love with his wife. Probably too much in love. Get to the wife and that will get to him, she thought.
She went online to Amazon and bought Lisa Blaize’s Lipstick and Lies: Reassessing Feminism and Fashion. The jargon was impenetrable, but she liked the illustrations, and read enough to see that Lisa was not some dull academic. Freddie was also a fan of Lisa’s new column in City & County.
She emailed Lisa, saying how much she admired her writing, and how she wondered if Lisa could possibly give her some advice about enrolling as a mature student for a fashion degree, since her life had been through a lot of upheaval and she needed a new start.
Edward shared everything with Lisa – that was one of their rules – so she knew all about the ‘Drugs Chat’ group, and Bertie was one of the boys she had got to know and rather liked. She was also curious about Freddie and her late-flowering lesbianism. She agreed to the meeting, which took place in The Coffee Bean, a cosy, independent coffee house in Blagsford town.
Freddie, who had driven her Range Rover in from her village home at breakneck speed, came in wearing dark, oversized shades. It was a bitterly cold late November day. Lisa, being a clothes snob, despised the Blagsford Boden-wearing yummy mummies. She also hated the way that these women lived off their husband’s earnings. Yes, marriage is, and has always been, a form of legal prostitution, but these skinny cows didn’t even put out to their chinless husbands. That’s why the husbands took mistresses. Who could blame them?
And they were all such snobs, so entitled. Soon after arriving at Blagsford, Lisa had agreed to join Edward and the braying parents on the touchline for a rugby match. He took every opportunity to show off his pretty young wife. She had got into conversation with one of the posh mummies, who had asked about her accent. She told her she was from a two-up two-down in Bootle. ‘What’s that?’ she had asked. Lisa had laughed it off, determined not to sound chippy: ‘Do the maths, two rooms upstairs, two rooms down.’ But she had not gone to any more matches.
She was determined to dislike Freddie, but there was something about the way she wore her zebra-printed coat with hot pink lining that suggested a mischievousness and sense of irony that the other mothers lacked. Not the Mumsnet type. Freddie had short blonde hair, and an elfin face: she looked like a boy-girl.
They ordered their coffees, and Freddie got straight to it. They both knew that they could dispense with the fiction about advice on a fashion course.
‘Mrs Chamberlain, or should I say Ms Blaize –’
Lisa interrupted, ‘Please call me Lisa.’
‘Lisa, I know that you are a mother, and I am appealing to you as a mother, to try to persuade your husband to think again about Bertie’s exclusion. He’s just a boy. This will ruin his life. He’s made a mistake. A big mistake, but everyone deserves a second chance.’
‘I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do to help. Edward has always been adamant about his zero-drugs policy. He’d exclude his own children if they were caught using drugs.’
Freddie smiled. ‘I understand. But Bertie has been through so much, lately.’ She blushed, ‘It hasn’t been easy for him … my situation.’
Lisa was intrigued that Freddie had introduced her ‘situation’ so quickly. She’s obviously out and proud, Lisa thought. She smiled warmly to show her support.
‘Walking out on my husband was the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m deliriously happy with my new … partner. Marriage is so hard for women, don’t you think? How many of us are really, truly happy?’
Crikey, Lisa thought to herself. She doesn’t pull any punches.
‘Well, I’m happy with Edward. And I love being a mother.’
‘But are you, really, really happy?’
‘Well, I’m not sure how to answer you. I think I am.’
‘Think?’
‘Yes, think.’
‘Anyhow, Mrs Cole, this is about you and Bertie, not about me. And I just don’t think that I can be of help. I’m so sorry. Edward is a stubborn man, and he has the bit between his teeth on this one. I will try to speak to him, but I can’t promise anything.’
‘Thank you, Lisa. I trust you. You’re not like the other mothers I meet. You’re very warm. I can see that you are a woman’s woman. And please, do call me Freddie.’
They chatted about other things, Lisa’s writing, and her children. Freddie’s phone pinged and her eyes lit up as the name flashed across the screen.
‘I’ll call you back in five, sweetie. Thanks for meeting me, Lisa. And, by the way, I really enjoy your column. Didn’t understand your book, but there are some really good jokes when you write for that magazine. You’re hilarious. You should share your talents with the world on Twitter.’
‘I’ve never
seen the point of social media – Facebook and all that.’
‘You really should try Twitter – you’ll meet some interesting people there, have some fun, and promote your writing.’
‘Thanks, but it’s just not my bag.’
As Lisa walked back to the school, she reflected on the meeting. Freddie was something else. Utterly charming, but there was iron there too. She was a strong woman and her situation was certainly unusual. I wouldn’t want to cross her, Lisa thought. Strange that she should mention Twitter – I guess she tweets herself.
It was obvious that Freddie had been trying to charm her. Good job I don’t swing that way, Lisa smiled. She wondered about the new woman in Freddie’s life. It took a lot of guts to leave a marriage and child. She must be something special. And who was on the phone? Bertie or the new woman? From the smile that had played across her mouth, and the light in her eyes, Lisa suspected the latter. Freddie was still in the first flush of romance. Those butterflies in the tummy, that all-consuming madness she had once felt for Edward. She had a tiny pang of regret that she would never have that feeling again. Marriage and motherhood were hard work, especially with a monthly column to write. It did not help that Edward had become entirely absorbed in his new job.
PART TWO
Guilt
CHAPTER 9
DMs
She was queuing in The Coffee Bean when she glanced down and saw a somehow familiar-looking pair of DM boots.
‘Hi, I don’t know if you remember me, but you saved my daughter’s life. May I buy you a coffee?’
He smiled at her. It was a strange smile, she thought. A professional, practised doctor’s smile, but there was someone else: as if he knew that he had a wonderful mouth and sensuous lips, and there was a hint of playfulness in the smile, too.