Schooling

by Heather McGowan

  23

  Some Notes on Comedy. Beginning with the Unfortunate Predilection for the Literal. These days, so-called realism moves us further from truth than a Restoration piece ever did. Or a Farce. Two days ago in the staff room, Gilbert holding court among Stokes and some administrator types. Buffoon, Fool, Clown, Shepherdess. The Hero either misunderstood or out-of-his-element. Contrasts between the rustic & the estate & the pastoral escape where time is the enemy as I broached the coffee urn Gilbert waved his cup toward me in a lavish gesture of chumminess. Mistaken Identity, the Disguise. Patrick, he said with false gaiety, I was about to tell of our conversation last night in the POD room. The staff, huddled about the tea tray like tapirs at a watering hole, were eager to hear as they hoarded their tepid cups to their chests. The Handy Interruption. Turning back to his audience with studied theatrics, Gilbert said, Patrick and I were arguing about Realism. The teachers hung on his Hoax. Abstractedly, Genevieve Araigny reached for a biscuit. Coincidence. I stood to one side, fiddling with the blasted ceramic handle on the urn which always sticks. Repetition (often in threes). I refilled my coffee cup. Michael repeated in his whinny, Dramatic Realism. Another weighty pause. I was for it. They thought that terribly funny. Hoah Hoah. The Surprise of the Inevitable. Stokes laughing so hard tears gushed from his good eye. Percival didn’t seem to think it funny and moved away. The Absurd in the Plausible World. Percival knows a fraud. Then Stokes found me watching him. Well I must admit, with some disgust at the way his eye let forth a steady stream of tears. Instead of tragedy’s Catharsis we get the Clarification. Stokes wiped away his tears, I believe Michael offered him a handkerchief. Stokes said, By the way Patrick, what is it that has Simon Puck from 3X wandering about the school with some sort of proboscis attached to his face. A Misunderstanding. Leaving it to me though Percival was standing directly beside me nibbling his Rich Tea like a mouse. Why me, given as I was not the one chosen to direct a school play. Not enough time allotted to address the Play within the Play, that would mean devoting a large portion of my lecture to Shakespeare. Percival, I said as nicely as the situation allowed which wasn’t so very nice at all, I think Percival will alert you to the fact that young Puck’s become taken with the Aristophanes. I laughed because Stokes did but then he instantly stopped, leaving me laughing alone. A Subtle Melancholia. Get the beak off that boy , Stokes said in a steely undertone. With that, he turned back to Gilbert and some story Gilbert was always telling about his father. The comic moment born of self-delusion or cross-purpose. Concluding with the idea that the hero often becomes the villain, the villain emerges as the hero.

  24

  On Saturday afternoon he finds her by the lily pond.

  Catrine Evans . . . he sounds pleased . . . Well hello Evans.

  Looking up from her idle kick for flat stones she paints him in the dim light. Crooking back his suit jacket, a jacket once loaned to her, with the same elbowed stance as his lab coat, he stands in front of her. Not as she has seen him these past five weeks, at the fishmarket, Lawrence of Arabia, taking her face in his hands, Some Might Think You Older.

  Are you better?

  Much recovered . . . Gilbert comes next to her to help assess the pond . . . How were your holidays?

  We looked for a house.

  I swear I never left my own house it was so cold.

  Did you do any painting?

  I did not, but I understand you’ve been making some art of your own.

  She says These days I’m turning my mind to science she says I’m supposed to have talent in that area. She’s incoherent.

  I made an effort to attend the Committee meeting. Some teachers have alarming ideas as to what constitutes fair punishment.

  Maggone, right? Wanted to flog me?

  Flog? How cynical you are . . . for lack of lab counter, Gilbert bounces on his heels . . . Tell me those photos weren’t your idea. You would have chosen a more compelling background than the cricket pavilion.

  The light meter wasn’t reading . . . kneeling . . . I didn’t have the time . . . a dark clot in the water . . . Still, I’d like to see if the pictures came out.

  Not likely you’ll get the chance.

  She looks up to laugh with him, the afternoon sun nice on her face. Gilbert stops bouncing. Takes his hands from his pocket to scoop a rock, settling on his haunches next to her.

  Mr. Gilbert . . . she throws a pebble into the pond . . . Did you lie about me being good at Chemistry? Headmaster’s about to have me take A levels.

  Gilbert finds a cigarette end on the ground . . . You’re clever enough . . . he throws it into the pond . . . Don’t waste it.

  What does that mean.

  Whups . . . Gilbert fishes out the cigarette. He gestures with it to the sky and playing fields . . . Monstead’s an odd school . . . a fine mist from the sodden filter . . . Very good in some ways . . . noting her wrinkled nose, he sets it down next to him . . . But we’re hardly Winchester. Children get lost here. School’s falling apart a bit. You must sense that.

  The wet cigarette marking a putty sky. Ocher grass burned with winter. Her first day here under the arch Father described Da dropping him in the same spot. Now it’s all falling to bits Father said but left her anyway.

  My father went here.

  Your father? Here?

  During the war.

  Your father lives—

  In London.

  Yes, you said once I think—

  I never said. Where’s your father?

  Dead. The story of my father’s not an interesting one. He died in Clapham. You might know it as the city of fallen idols. Aegeus was a man I hardly knew. Rosie and I were raised by my mother in a shaky hut among grape arbors. I ran there as a boy, playing the lyre. My father was a banished man.

  My father was a banished man.

  These are the things we have in common.

  Picking up another pebble. In the murks of the lily pond, Gilbert’s father packs a bag, through the door without looking back.

  Daily, wordlessly, my mother boiled roots into nutritious paste. Aegeus mistook her silence for reprimand. He left home because he couldn’t put food on our table because there were four of us to face every morning with angry open beaks. If I’m to tell you these things, Catrine, you must promise not to get depressed because it doesn’t mean anything anymore. You’re not mourning anything real.

  Scraping dirt from a knee with the pebble . . . Your father left because of money?

  There were many reasons. I had a sister and she died, that’s one. Catrine.

  What?

  You promised.

  I didn’t. How did your sister die?

  Rosie died of lightning, a bolt to the chest. Cracked her heart. They have a word for it, Leukemia, they say.

  You survived.

  But Rosie was my father’s favorite. And the day Aegeus disappeared he buried a fountain pen and his handkerchief out behind the privy. I was to use them when I was grown. They would save my life.

  Betts hurries by, bowed against some hurricane . . . Afternoon! Bit cold to loiter.

  Don’t worry about us . . . Gilbert waves him on.

  How do you get that? Leukemia?

  Bad luck I suppose . . . Gilbert turns to her.

  Suspect shapes in the lily-clumped water, fishes or frogs.

  Years passed. One day while I was at university, the hospital in Clapham found me. Aegeus had tried to push a woman into the path of a speeding car. Fortunately, she was too fat to be shifted.

  A sad story.

  You shouldn’t be affected so dramatically by things . . . looking out to the sky, Gilbert presses his shoulders to his ears . . . Is it this cold where you’re from?

  Up at the dun sky . . . Much colder. In Maine where I lived it doesn’t stop snowing from about November to March. But you skate and it’s—not as wet. Didn’t seem as cold.

  Well what are you roaming out by a dirty pond for?

  They all went away this weekend.

  A
nd what will you do when I leave?

  Sit by the pond.

  Gilbert laughs . . . Well you can’t stay out here forever . . . he doesn’t think she’s too cynical too silly or too affected by things . . . What time is it? Nearly two. I’m signing you out for tea, it’s ridiculous on a Saturday to sit by a pond all day.

  And the winding roads scroll up school. Toward a new town with new buildings. Where Gilbert leads her down a cobbled street into a courtyard through a large wooden door . . . Watch yourself now this is heavy . . . up a flight of carpeted stairs . . . That’s where my favorite tutorial took place . . . down a hallway . . . A brilliant, oh look here . . . stooping to find himself in a long photograph . . . Here’s me. Rather handsome don’t you think?

  A woman passes, swamping them with a particularly noxious scent. She slows, turns . . . Gil?

  They straighten.

  Dido . . . flustered, Gil kisses this woman on her cheek.

  What are you doing here? . . . Dido rocks her ankle back and forth in its heel.

  Wandering. Wandering. Decided to show Miss Evans here how handsome I once was.

  Coyly . . . Handsome days behind you, are they?

  Indeed. I’m a shabby corpse now.

  Dido glances down at the papers she cradles . . . You should be here, Gil.

  Don’t say that, Mr. Gilbert.

  I’m happy where I am. Pardon, Catrine? Don’t say—?

  Corpse. It’s not funny.

  Sorry. We’ve been having a little chat, Catrine and I, or rather I’ve been warbling the hymn, My Dear Departed. We’re melancholy.

  Now, Dido notices her. Takes her in as if she is a child yes but as if she is suddenly more important as if she sucks up some air in this dim university hallway instead of being the smallest person of the three. Dido, hazy. Harbor lights. No, more like something unfocused. Drunken baubles.

  An attempted smile though it is more of a grimace.

  Melancholy? You don’t seem very melancholy.

  The woman confuses, should she argue the point.

  I was telling Catrine about my father.

  Do you find Gilbert’s stories funny, Catrine?

  Does she does she . . . Yes?

  Doesn’t Catrine have lovely hair? . . . Dido remarks . . . Quite the pre-Raphaelite.

  More of a Medusa, this one.

  Dido laughs.

  I left my brush in London. By mistake.

  In any case . . . Dido is back to Gilbert . . . There’s work for you here. You’re needed.

  Gilbert puts a hand to the back of his neck . . . Needed. Now I doubt that.

  Think about it. I would help you . . . an ill perfume and wafting it too, Dido pats Gilbert’s arm . . . I should get back . . . pat pat . . . It seems that Cockett has misplaced a visiting lecturer.

  Ah, it’s all go, then.

  Nice meeting you and gestures of good-bye all around.

  Gilbert watches Dido walk to the end of the corridor . . . University life.

  Seems boring to me . . . stooping back to the photograph to find him.

  Dido . . . he calls.

  Now what. The woman stops, turns.

  Gilbert shrugs . . . Visit some time.

  Dido nods, backing up against the door, pushing through it, waving with her free hand.

  Gilbert walks backwards across the bridge pointing . . . That’s the old boathouse where many a—debauched night unfolded. Over there you can see a rather famous tree. It was crucial to climb this tree at some point or hum never mind that. You see the precarious building over there, the one on the verge of falling in the river, that’s the refectory oh and come here . . . he pulls her to him to point . . . Can you see through those trees, that’s the spire of the Cathedral. No, we have to go in, it’s no good simply seeing it from here. I have to show it to you.

  Show her a church will he when he pulls her to him with no thought to how she can smell his shampoo and tweed. Will he tell her what he prays for standing in divine blades of light running a thumb over tallies of the dead. In a pew slide out the prayer stool not to pray but to admire the stunning embroidery never to pray but to kneel hands clasped to feel what it might be like to pray. And if you did if you did pray would she come running would it be back to the old house would it be autumn trying to scrape up leaves before it rained thwarted by gusts of wind would you turn to see her reading at the kitchen window coiling hair around one finger. Had a day like that ever happened in the past.

  But questions for outings are Shall we have sandwiches Shall we have bicycles hired from a shop buildings fly by oh trees four skinny roosters in black jackets collages of blue orange past a crowded tea shop on down a hill teeth rattling from the cobbles. This is how her hair comes unbattened. This is why she shouts, Slow down Pleeease while he’s shouting back, University museums offer wonderful oh now look out there Catrine you’ll do us all some damage. And swinging joyfully off the hired bikes, look at the fun they’re having, she accidentally kicks out the cane of an elderly man. He totters this way two steps. Now that way, three. Breaths held as the bewildered gent sways. At the last moment, the man lurches for the railing and regains his balance.

  Good god child you’re not safe but they are laughing up the back steps down the hallway into the entryway laughing so hard that the woman selling tickets shushes them but they won’t be stopped laughing and laughing because they are friends, Gilbert whispering, She didn’t work here when I was a student of course that was a hundred years ago, propelling her by the elbow, Or was it only twelve.

  So you’re thirty-two or—

  Might as well be a hundred.

  And into a skylit hall thick with the hush of silence or is it age an old how old statue stretches one hand toward the sky. Questions for outings are bold. Why does Gilbert talk differently in class? Because he feels counterfeit when it comes to imparting wisdom so he borrows a snooty voice from college boys he once knew and gripped by an abundance of feeling for Courbet he takes her hand asking, Don’t they seem very much like his own paintings. Well, no. But she chooses a mute nod which is not exactly a lie, more a gesture of preoccupation and directs his attention to a fine painting of a river.

  God that’s an awful painting don’t admire that, it’s prudish and nostalgic. Thomas Cole, very boring we don’t enjoy his work at all. The exact is never true, hum, no breathing room. Remember that. And furthermore Gil wants to be told exactly how they squash artistic enterprise at Monstead. So she provides nightmares of color wheels and fruit displays. And he shudders and can bear to hear no more.

  Please resist their inanity . . . he says as he strides away, out of the gallery, through the hallway . . . And I will take you painting. When it’s warmer.

  Away he goes and she follows in silence because comebacks never occur until later.

  25

  Translation. I am walking across the courtyard. The sky has darkened and threatens rain. The building before me is large and brown with many windows. A man passes and I ask him the time. What a fine man he is, tall and thin. He wears red socks, evident at the cuff. The man tells me it is half past four, he apologizes for grievances old and those yet to transpire. Then he takes me in his arms and tells me he cannot live without me. Oh he says my God have I longed for you. I need to breathe you in. Don’t mind my shirt I have others to spare. You are mine and that is all that matters. We go to a museum, he holds my hand. We walk through the country he lifts me up to watch a flock of birds plunder the sky. Winter ends. We go home.

  26

  Percival, Latin to the upper forms, Civilization to the younger, sits in the second row using a script to fan his irritation. Next to him, Owen Wharton has his legs slung over the row in front. Onstage, two boys appear to be flying but. Difficult to make out. Is that. Are they standing on some sort of

  Spying on rehearsal?

  Go away.

  Brickie squeezes into the hedge next to her. Inside, Owen directs a boy downstage. Simon Puck’s beaked and ready in the wings.

/>   Brickie watches Percival make a happy flapping motion . . . It’s undignified, it really is.

  Then don’t watch.

  All of a sudden, Owen whips around, staring in their direction.

  He can’t see us can he? . . . she crouches lower.

  Brickie steps away from the window, stubbing his cigarette against the wall. The embers flare in the dark . . . I don’t like him.

  Owen?

  Gilbert. Why’d he stop making fun of you? You’re out on the fields, taking lewd photographs, nearly suspended and if anything Gilbert’s—

  Well well.

  They both jump. Haven’t been paying attention. Owen Wharton. If only my actors were as interested in rehearsal as you two clowns . . . leather creaking as the boy shifts his toothpick . . . Certain I can’t tempt you? A small role? Two clever parakeets? Couple of comedic pigeons?

  They shake their heads in unison.

  Shame. There are incentives of course . . . Owen studies Percival through the glass. Oneself is often found through artistic creation.

  We have selves . . . uncertainly, Brickie offers Owen a cigarette.

  Owen ignores it . . . Nonsense. To know oneself one must know the other. Student, Hamlet, Vicar. Can you claim that?

  Brickie drops his matches. Owen stares at her.

  She looks away. Can she. Brickie unbends, clutching the matchbox, cigarette clamped in his teeth. Owen has disappeared.

  Mysterious bugger . . . Brickie strikes a match.

  What the hell is she doing here.

  27

  A cricket match was gearing up on the day they came to visit. In the middle of the second over, it would pour, sending boys, soggy in their oversized whites, under trees to assess the sky, on to make damp havoc in the halls of School House. But before the match, the boys were still listening to weather reports on the radio and Father led her across the pitch where heat rose in faltering swells and the breeze-borne stench of some sort of flower came at them again and again. Father went inside the pavilion turned around once and came out. Walking back he said how the stink of linseed snapped him straight back to the days with Treat and Darvish. Not that I’m into that old boy crap, he said, Won’t find me at sixty reliving dorm raids at nine as if the fifty years between were insignificant.