by MARY HOCKING
The governors’ meeting proceeded much as he had anticipated. Each family unit was interviewed separately. Most of the boys were by now uneasy and said little; their parents were suitably grave. Colin Everett, unaccompanied, was insolent. Giles Kerr, white-faced and husky of voice, determinedly insisted that he saw nothing to regret in the whole affair.
‘You appreciate,’ Harry said, gently feeding out rope with which Giles could hang himself, ‘that we have to consider whether it would be in your own best interests to allow you to return next term?’
Giles said nothing.
‘We should have to be satisfied that your attitude was such that you would benefit from a further year at Mansfield.’
The opportunity was too great to be resisted this time, and Giles said, ‘What would be the benefit of adopting a special kind of attitude for one year?’
The governors registered this remark by some heavy breathing and the vice-chairman, already angrily scribbling on his agenda, said, ‘You realise we are making every effort to be fair to you?’
Giles twisted his mouth in a faint sneer, but could not hold the grimace for long because his lips were trembling. These people had decided what they would do with him before he entered the room; he wanted to denounce their hypocrisy but was short of breath. It fell to his mother to do the denouncing.
‘Do you realise how little support parents get from the school in bringing up their children?’ she burst out, as though it was her behaviour as a parent, and not Giles’s as a pupil, which was under discussion. ‘If we complain that there is something wrong, we are told we make too much fuss, that it is natural for young people to be rebellious, that this is the finest generation there has ever been. You said that, Mr. Hicks’ (stabbing a finger in the direction of the vice-chairman), ‘at the last open day. You said they were so concerned. Then, when something happens, and you’re involved, you don’t like them being concerned, and you don’t try to understand, the way you are always telling parents they should, you just wash your hands of them.’ At this point she became very agitated and fumbled in her handbag for sun glasses, tumbling out a comb, a broken wrist-watch, a tube of frozen eau-de-Cologne, and two safety pins. ‘You talk about doing what is best for my son, making sure whether he will benefit. But it isn’t true. You don’t care about him. All you want is to punish him.’ She extracted the glasses, shattering face powder over the pale grey carpet. ‘You keep on at them, telling them to examine the world they live in, encouraging them to find things wrong with everything, and you never give them anything to appreciate, or tell them what is good. And then, when they try to do something about the wrong things, you don’t like it! It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me, so I’m sure it can’t to them.’
Harry watched her. She had entered the room looking attractive in a robust way; but now it was as though a brightly painted mask was flaking away, revealing a woman no different to the other middle-aged women who found their way into his office at a crisis in their lives, confused, insecure, wounded by life. In a couple of years’ time, he might be mayor and he would need a helpmate who was socially well-adjusted. He looked down at his notes, feeling tired and dispirited.
‘The boy obviously has his problems!’ one of the governors remarked sardonically when Giles and his mother had left the room.
‘A well-meaning woman, though.’ Harry wished he had not sounded so valedictory.
Under his guidance, the governors decided that Colin Everett’s university award should be withdrawn and that Giles Kerr should leave at the end of the present term. The other pupils were to be given another chance. Erica was very distressed, but Giles accepted the situation philosophically: arrangements were made for him to transfer to the technical college where he switched to a science course.
Daniel Kerr’s appointment was terminated forthwith. As chairman of the governors, Harry made it known that Kerr had exercised an undesirable influence on pupils who were at an age where they were particularly susceptible to more extreme doctrines – ‘tolerance is a late gift, and comes with experience’.
The council withdrew its opposition to the proposed by-pass, while expressing the forlorn hope that some of the quiet villages, such as Cobbett’s Bridge, might be spared.
It was all over. At first, Harry had been afraid that Daniel would protest, but he did not do so. The boys had started this on their own, and must be allowed to see it through on their own; they had come well out of it, and any intervention on his part could only serve to diminish their achievement. This decision was not reached easily, and had to be renewed, not daily, but hourly. ‘This is not my affair,’ he constantly reminded himself. ‘It is not even a case of taking a back seat since it seems that I was never in the same vehicle!’ He kept to his resolution, but was far from reconciled to the situation.
‘I wanted to make them question their way of life, look at things from a different angle, re-examine their values,’ he said to Dorothy. ‘And what happens? I am instrumental in getting a scheme for a by-pass approved. And I didn’t achieve that intentionally!’
‘The by-pass will make quite a difference to the town,’ Dorothy said.
‘Maybe. But it wasn’t what I planned.’
There was no place for him here. He would leave Yeominster in August.
Erica was greatly relieved by this decision, life would settle down and become normal again. She did not intend to do anything which would endanger this, and re-marriage was not something she contemplated in the immediate future. At some time in this upheaval, at which precise moment she could not have said, she had lost her feeling for Harry Clare. Emma and Giles were hostile to him; Emma referred to him as Mr. Facing Bothways. Erica found that little splinters of hostility had worked beneath her own skin. Friends told her that he was going out with his secretary. She was glad to discover that far from causing a pang of jealousy, this information gave her a feeling of great relief; she had come near to making a mistake and was now secure from it. It seemed the only security she could count on at present, what with Giles leaving Mansfield and Dorothy leaving the country. Her heart chilled unaccountably when she thought of Dorothy’s departure, but when on one occasion Dorothy tried to talk to her about it, she said, ‘I don’t want to hear, not a word!’ She wanted life to settle down again, she could not cope with new developments. As she went about her many duties, she kept saying to herself, ‘It’s going to be all right . . . it’s going to be all right, sometime . . .’ But when it was dark, the feeling sometimes came to her that she was getting older, the effort of keeping her place on the moving staircase took more out of her and she seemed to be losing ground. Life made less sense, not more. But it would be all right, something would happen, something was bound to happen if only she could hang on a little longer. And there was always the psychiatrist. She was sure she was gaining great benefit from her visits to him, he was very charming and seemed to take a special interest in her; she even began to wonder whether a relationship might be developing there.
Emma took her father’s impending departure more calmly than Dorothy had dared to hope.
‘I thought when my father left, I’d leave, too,’ she said to Dorothy. ‘But I couldn’t do that. I’ve been thinking about things . . . us . . . I can see Mummy much more objectively now. She’s a damaged personality.’
Dorothy wanted to cry out, ‘And you think it is an improvement in your attitude to talk in this clinical way about your mother?’ But she had wanted Emma to grow up and realised she must not complain if the first indications were not to her liking. She contented herself with saying, ‘Being objective doesn’t mean just seeing the flaws, does it?’
‘No. But I think it was important for me to realise that – about her personality, I mean.’
There was a pause. Dorothy waited anxiously, but Emma seemed to have exhausted analysis. She said, ‘Mummy’s made an awful mess of this business of Giles’s, the way she always does; but at least she did stand by him. She’d always be on your s
ide, whatever you’d done.’
‘So you’ll stay here?’
‘I suppose so,’ Emma said without enthusiasm. ‘Until I go to university.’
‘And your father?’
Tears came into Emma’s eyes and she turned her head away.
‘Do you think he and your mother could live together?’
Emma shook her head. ‘Life is an awful mess, isn’t it?’ she said huskily.
It was on the tip of Dorothy’s tongue to say that it would sort itself out when Emma was older; but she realised this was an attempt to comfort herself rather than Emma, so she merely answered, ‘It certainly seems so sometimes.’
Emma gave her a wan smile, seemingly heartened by obtaining even this measure of support.
In August, Daniel heard that Aluwawa had reversed his previous policy regarding foreign nationals. The British Government was wary, but an American team was returning and would be starting up a hospital and laboratory. The unit was financed by a powerful trust. Daniel was offered a senior post. He was overjoyed and asked Dorothy to join him in the late autumn, by which time accommodation would be available for families.
‘Won’t it be dangerous?’ she asked, bearing in mind Aluwawa’s noted instability.
‘No, I’m sure not.’ He answered so cheerfully that she knew this was something he was not prepared to consider because, dangerous or not, he intended to go. ‘He won’t make the same mistake twice.’ And if he did make the same mistake twice, Daniel would pretend not to see the signs, because he intended to stay. She had read in the newspapers accounts of the massacre of American missionaries who had delayed their departure during Aluwawa’s last purge. She supposed she should have felt frightened, but she didn’t: she had jettisoned a lot of cherished ideas lately, so it was not difficult to dispense with the happy ending.
‘In fact,’ Daniel was saying, ‘I am afraid you may find it rather dull, there won’t be a lot for you to do at first; we shall be a long way from the nearest town, and by European standards . . .’
She said, ‘Whatever else may happen, Daniel, I promise you it won’t be dull.’
He was very moved. ‘That is wonderfully good of you.’
Good of me, she thought; it will be much more than that! Oh, my darling, you came here and turned life upside down so that I shall never see it in the same way again, or be the person I thought I was. Can you imagine I will do less for you when I come to Africa?
Mary Hocking
Born in London in 1921, Mary was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls School, Acton. During the Second World War she served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) attached to the Fleet Air Arm Meteorology branch and then briefly with the Signal Section in Plymouth.
Writing was in her blood. Juggling her work as a local government officer in Middlesex Education Department with writing, at first short stories for magazines and pieces for The Times Educational Supplement, she then had her first book, The Winter City, published in 1961.
The book was a success and enabled Mary to relinquish her full time occupation to devote her time to writing. Long before family sagas had become cult viewing, she had embarked upon the `Fairley Family’ trilogy – Good Daughters, Indifferent Heroes, and Welcome Strangers – books which give her readers a faithful, realistic and uncompromising portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times, between the years of 1933 and 1946.
For many years she was an active member of the `Monday Lit’, a Lewes-based group which brought in current writers and poets to speak about their work, an enthusiastic supporter of Lewes Little Theatre, and worshipped at the town’s St Pancras RC Church.
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First published in Great Britain by Chatto & Windus Ltd 1974
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