Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

  Grandfather drew himself up to his full height. He was a big man, over six feet tall and broad-shouldered; in his best Sunday black, with his gaunt face and thick head of silver hair, he was a daunting sight.

  ‘How dare you lie to me!’ His voice, which could fill the chapel, echoed fearsomely around the flagstoned hall. ‘Don’t you know it is wicked to lie? I will ask you again – where have you been?’

  ‘With Mary.’

  ‘Mary. You mean Mary O’Sullivan?’ He uttered it with the same distaste he might have said ‘Lucrezia Borgia’.

  She nodded, unable to look at him.

  ‘And where have you been with Mary O’Sullivan?’

  ‘We … went for a cup of coffee.’

  ‘And where did you have this cup of coffee?’

  She could not answer. Her mouth had gone dry. Grandfather took hold of her shoulder, shaking her.

  ‘You’ve been to that coffee bar, haven’t you? Haven’t you?’

  She was looking down. All she could see was Grandfather’s shoes, shiny with polish.

  ‘Look at me when I am speaking to you!’ he ordered. ‘You and that hussy have been to that evil place, and on the Lord’s Day too. I am ashamed of you, Dinah, ashamed and disappointed. You do know, don’t you, that what you have done is wicked?’

  ‘But … it wasn’t!’ she protested weakly. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘There was music, I suppose? So-called pop music?’

  ‘Well – yes, but …’

  ‘On a Sunday! Why do they need pop music on a Sunday? It’s rubbish at the best of times, inciting young people to do things they shouldn’t, have thoughts they shouldn’t have. But on a Sunday!’ He broke off, beside himself with rage. ‘The place should not be allowed to open on the Lord’s Day. If I had my way I’d close it down altogether but I suppose there is a call for it from a certain type of person. But not for you, Dinah. You will never go there again. Not on a weekday, and certainly not on a Sunday. Now, wipe that lipstick off your mouth, go to your room and remain there until it is time to go to chapel. Do you understand?’

  She nodded and fled, shaking, ashamed, confused. She knew deep down that she had done nothing wrong, but the habit of respect for Grandfather was too strong to break. Honour thy father and thy mother, the commandments said. Here in the manse it had been expanded to include Honour thy grandfather and grandmother. Dinah had not yet learned to argue.

  But how had he known? How had he known she had not been for a walk as she had pretended? As she asked the question his voice seemed to echo in her head: ‘Be sure your sins will find you out.’

  Dinah’s face burned with shame. It was a long time before she rebelled again.

  ‘You’ve got to tell him,’ Mary said. ‘ You’ve got to tell him you’ve got a boyfriend. You’re sixteen years old and this is nineteen fifty-seven. He can’t keep you locked up forever like some Victorian virgin.’

  ‘I can’t tell him! He’d kill me!’

  ‘Then don’t be surprised when Dave Hicks finishes with you. He will, Dinah, believe me. He won’t go on being satisfied with meeting you behind the bicycle sheds in the lunch hour for ever. And when he ditches you it will be your own fault for not standing up to that old ogre.’

  ‘He’s not an ogre,’ Dinah said, feeling honour bound to defend her grandfather. ‘He’s only the way he is because he thinks it’s for my own good.’

  ‘Rubbish! He just likes having you under his thumb. It gives him a kick.’

  ‘No, he’s a good man really. He must be – he’s a minister.’

  ‘Hah! A chapel bumper! He’s not a real priest.’

  Dinah said nothing. She hated arguing with Mary about religion. They didn’t often do it – it wasn’t a subject that interested either of them overmuch – but when it did arise, the divisions between them were so deep and entrenched they threatened the friendship.

  Once Dinah had been rash enough to tell Mary that Grandfather had said the trouble with Catholics was that they thought going to confession was a passport to doing exactly as they pleased – they could pay lip service to repentance, say a few Hail Marys and go out and do the same again.

  Mary had been furious and they had been bad friends for days. Now, because she could not bear to fall out with Mary, Dinah let the slur on her grandfather pass.

  ‘It’s no use. He won’t let me go out with Dave. I know he won’t,’ she said, returning to the most important question.

  ‘Then say you’re going out with me. He’ll never know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ Dinah said, remembering the episode of the coffee bar. ‘ It’s as if he has second sight. Perhaps God really is on his side.’ She shivered.

  ‘The devil more likely,’ Mary retorted. ‘What about your mother? Doesn’t she have any say in it?’

  ‘Not much.’

  Since returning to the fold Ruth had also returned to the childhood habit of allowing her father to dominate her Dinah was too used to being told to ‘do as your grandfather says’ to have any real hope that her mother might prove to be an ally. When she was a child she had thought it was just that she was in cahoots with him, ‘the grown-ups’ lining up against her and inseparable in their rigid views and values. Now she was beginning to realise that, unlikely as it seemed, Ruth was just as afraid of Grandfather as she was. But it made no difference. She could not imagine Ruth ever admitting that her father might be wrong, even between themselves, let alone standing up to him on her behalf.

  Dave Hicks was in Dinah’s class, and she’d liked him for ages, experiencing little flutters of excitement when he looked at her, soaring on wings of happiness when he smiled. She had longed for him to like her back, but at the same time she had dreaded him asking her out because she knew she would either have to refuse or face the most dreadful rows at home. Now that it had actually happened she did not know what to do.

  So far she had made excuses why she couldn’t meet him in the evenings and gloried in the heady pleasure of simply seeing him in school time. The weather was hot and sunny, enhancing the dream-like aura that surrounded her, and each day after school he walked part of the way home with her, sometimes carrying her satchel, tennis racket or cookery basket, but never holding her hand and certainly not putting his arm around her because teachers often passed by in their cars and such boldness would not only have been frowned upon but punished.

  He had kissed her – in the dark corner behind the cycle sheds – and it had been wonderful. Even the fear of being caught could not spoil the trembling excitement, the romance, the sheer intoxicating happiness that had filled her, and ever afterwards the smell of sun-warmed tarmac, the feel of rough cotton fabric beneath her fingers, even the sight of dust motes dancing in a ray of sunlight could evoke for Dinah the magic of that moment when he had held her uncertainly, his lips, clumsy and unpractised, pressing against hers. The problems had all seemed very distant then and she had wanted only to snuggle close and kiss him again and again.

  But forgetting the problems in the heat of the moment didn’t make them go away. All very well to say that what they had was enough for her – it wasn’t enough for him. He wanted a girl he could go out with in the evenings, sometimes at least. He was becoming impatient. And with a sinking heart Dinah knew Mary was right. Unless she did something about it he was going to ditch her and find someone else, someone not restricted by the rigid rules and regulations laid down by a dictatorial old man.

  Dinah bit her lip, feeling completely trapped. She couldn’t see how she could escape. Now – or ever.

  When she left the school dining hall two days later Miss Derby, the much feared senior mistress, was waiting for her.

  Miss Derby was hawk-faced, with iron-grey hair set in finger waves. She dressed in tweed suits and sensible shoes and lived with another woman teacher in a cottage a mile or so further along the winding road beyond the manse. It never occurred to any of her pupils that the pair might be anything more than two old maids gaining
comfort from each other’s company. They were frankly terrified of her. Sturdy teenage boys would choose to be caned by the headmaster any day rather than endure a tongue-lashing from Miss Derby, and being sent to ‘ Wait outside my room!’ was a torture that made the brashest tremble and reduced the faint-hearted to a jelly of terror.

  As the pupils left the dining hall and saw her standing there grim-faced they stopped talking and slipped silently by, but as Dinah attempted to do the same Miss Derby pulled her aside.

  ‘Does Mother know you have a boyfriend?’

  Dinah gazed at her, speechless with fear and surprise.

  ‘I have passed you in my car on several occasions walking with Hicks,’ Miss Derby continued. ‘He doesn’t live in your direction, does he?’

  ‘No, Miss Derby.’

  ‘So I conclude he is going out of his way to walk home with you.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Derby.’

  ‘I repeat – does Mother know about this?’

  ‘No, Miss Derby.’

  ‘I thought not. I’m sure she would agree with me that something like this could seriously interfere with your studies. You are in the fifth year – you should be concentrating on passing your examinations, not fooling about with boys.’

  ‘But Miss Derby …’

  ‘I don’t intend discussing this with you, Dinah. But I think Mother should know what has been going on, don’t you? I shall have a word with her.’

  ‘Miss Derby – please …’

  ‘That will be all, Dinah. Off you go now, you are causing an obstruction. Oh – by the way, it’s high time you had your hair cut. It’s brushing your collar in a most untidy way. And don’t think you can get away with it by tying it up in one of those so-called pony-tails either. They prevent your beret from sitting properly. Come and show me next week that you have obeyed my instructions.’

  She marched off, her gown – immaculate black, not chalk-stained and ragged like some of the other teachers’ – swirling out behind her.

  When Dinah arrived home that evening she knew at once that Miss Derby had already carried out her threat. There was no mistaking the look on Ruth’s softly crumpled face, and when Dinah went to her room to change out of her uniform her mother followed, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Dinah, I have had Miss Derby on the phone. She tells me you have been seeing a boy. Is this true?’

  Dinah’s heart had begun to beat very fast. ‘Well … sort of …’

  ‘You mean it is true! I told Miss Derby I was sure she must be mistaken. How could you be so deceitful and underhand?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong in it! He only walks home with me …’ She drew a deep breath. ‘But he has asked me to go to the pictures with him.’

  ‘Well, I hope you told him no!’

  ‘Mum – please! He’s in my year and he’s very nice …’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Dinah, I had hoped you’d have more sense than to bother with boys at your age. As Miss Derby said, you should be concentrating on your schoolwork. There’s plenty of time for all that other nonsense when you have your exams behind you.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make any difference to my exams. We could go to the pictures on a Friday or a Saturday. I’d work really hard the rest of the week to make up for it …’

  ‘You’d be distracted. You’d be thinking about him when your mind ought to be on your studies. And besides, it isn’t just that. You’re not old enough to be going out with boys. You don’t know what he’s like.’

  ‘I told you, he’s really nice!’

  ‘He may seem nice,’ Ruth said darkly. ‘The trouble is that all men are the same; young or old they can think of only one thing. Particularly young men.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well.’ Ruth’s face became flushed, her voice flustered. It was the same way she had looked when she had had to tell Dinah about periods – nature’s way of getting rid of too much blood, she had said, and Dinah, in her innocence, had wondered why such a seemingly natural, if rather unpleasant, occurrence, should cause her mother so much embarrassment. Now, of course, she knew the truth and felt a little scornful that Ruth should have lied to her. ‘Well,’ Ruth said now, ‘they want to do things. Things that aren’t nice, like touching you where they shouldn’t. You wouldn’t know about that, of course, but I am afraid it’s true.’

  Dinah felt the colour rise in her own cheeks. She did know about boys wanting to touch – there had been a time when it hadn’t been safe for a girl to be on her own in the classroom after school because the boys would gang up and grab her, pushing their hands up under her jumper. A stop had been put to that, thank goodness, when a teacher, hearing screams, had come in and caught them at it. The boys concerned had been sent to the headmaster and the poor unfortunate girl to Miss Derby, who had accused her of inciting them. Oh yes, Dinah knew all about boys wanting to touch, but she could not imagine Dave treating her like that. What they shared was special, not dirty and horrid.

  ‘He wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘He’s not like that.’

  Ruth laughed mirthlessly. ‘He would want to, Dinah, and you’d be putty in his hands. I don’t want you going out with boys until you’re older and that’s all there is to it. Now promise me you’ll stop this silly business and we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘But Mum …’

  ‘Keep your voice down, Dinah. I don’t want your grandfather to know about this. He’d be very angry to think you were behaving this way. I shall ring Miss Derby tomorrow and ask her to let me know if she sees you talking to this boy again, so don’t even think of it. Do I make myself clear?’

  Dinah nodded miserably. It never even occurred to her to rebel. It was not in her nature. When her mother left her alone she lay down on her bed and cried.

  She hardly slept that night, lying awake and wondering what she could say to Dave and if there was any way she could go on seeing him. But next day in school Dave was acting oddly. He seemed intent on avoiding her, his eyes did not meet hers once and after each lesson he turned away, laughing and joking a little too boisterously with his friends.

  It took all day for the truth to sink in, but when he left straight after school without waiting for her she could deceive herself no longer. She wasn’t going to have to tell Dave she couldn’t see him any more. He had taken matters into his own hands.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I, that he’d get fed up with the way you were going on,’ Mary said. ‘I warned you, didn’t I?’

  In that moment Dinah almost hated Mary, who was so bold and confident and seemed to have everything that she did not.

  A week later Dave was going out with Wendy Turnbull, who wore tight jumpers and giggled and primped when the boys whistled at her. Perhaps her mother had been right, Dinah thought. Perhaps that was what he had wanted.

  It was the end of a dream.

  Ever since she had been able to hold a pencil Dinah had been good at art. Her drawings were very fine, very detailed, though mostly she liked to copy other people’s pictures rather than compose her own. At five she had reproduced characters from her story books, at ten she attempted the glossy pictures from the family Bible – ‘Behold I Stand at the Door and Knock’ and ‘The Holy Family’. At fourteen she managed a detailed facsimile of the John Bunyan print and Ruth kept it on the sideboard for a week so that she could show it off to anyone who came to call.

  Dinah’s art teacher, Mr Robinson, had spotted her talent early on. Now he began to encourage her, though he told her it was time she gave up copying the work of others and set her own stamp on her efforts.

  ‘You must try to be original, Dinah. These copies are all very well if you want to be a forger, but I don’t think that’s quite what you have in mind, is it? You must learn to draw from life. Start with the hoary old chestnuts – a bowl of fruit or a vase of flowers. It may seem a bit boring compared to what you’ve been doing, but it’s all good practice.’

  Dinah did as she was told. There was a vase of roses on the dinin
g room table and she sat down with her pad to try and draw it. But her attention to detail meant she worked very slowly and the petals were dropping long before she had finished.

  The same thing happened with a bowl of fruit. An apple had been eaten and the orange was turning dry and shrivelled-looking and still she was working away trying to get the texture of the peel right.

  ‘It’s useless!’ she groaned, presenting the half-completed picture to Mr Robinson. ‘I just can’t do it!’

  ‘Of course you can!’ Mr Robinson encouraged her, though he did not add what was obvious to him – the reason Dinah was so dissatisfied with her work was because she had not only natural talent but also the ability to know good from bad and was setting her standards too high for her limited experience. Besides this, he knew Dinah lacked confidence in herself. That was why she so enjoyed copying the work of established artists – it absolved her of the need to bare her own soul and put her creativity on the line.

  ‘Perhaps you should draw something that won’t change shape before you finish it,’ he went on, rolling up the sleeves of his baggy fisherman-knit sweater. ‘What I would like you to do is to get a group of objects together that are connected in some way but which are all of different textures, and arrange them to form an interesting composition.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Anything you like. Use your imagination.’

  Dinah did. That night she gathered together a high-heeled shoe which her mother had once rather rashly bought but had scarcely worn, a feather boa, a leather belt with a huge shiny buckle, a pretty filmy scarf and an old trilby hat belonging to her grandfather. She borrowed a small occasional table from the sitting room and set it up in the window of her own room where the light was good. Then she sharpened her pencils, making sure she had a good range, from very soft through to hard, and began work.

  Looking back, Dinah often remembered that picture and knew it had marked the beginning of her love affair with materials of all kinds. Oh the joy of etching in the little fronds of the feather, catching the fibres in the hat, shading carefully so that the buckle on the belt appeared to shine! The shoe was the most difficult to get right; she worked patiently to capture the suede straps, twisted from having been squashed under other, more sensible shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe for so long, and the high pointy heel, which shone in a different way to the metallic buckle.