Listen to the Voice

by Iain Crichton Smith

  He noticed that their leader was a girl called Tracy, a fairly tall pleasant-looking girl to whom they all seemed to turn for response or rejection. Nor was this girl stupid: nor were any of them stupid. He knew that he must hang on to that, he must not believe that they were stupid. When they did come into the room it was as if they were searching for substance, a food which he could not provide. He began to study Tracy more and more as if she might perhaps give him the solution to his problem, but she did not appear interested enough to do so. Now and again she would hum the words of a song while engaged in combing another girl’s hair, an activity which would satisfy them for hours, and indeed some of the girls had said to him, ‘Tracy has a good voice, sir. She can sing any pop song you like.’ And Tracy had regarded him with the sublime self-confidence of one who indeed could do this. But what use would that be to him? More and more he felt himself, as it were, sliding into their world when what he had wanted was to drag them out of the darkness into his world. That was how he himself had been taught and that was how it should be. And the weeks passed and he had taught them nothing. Their jotters were blank apart from the words of pop songs and certain secret drawings of their own. Yet they were human beings, they were not stupid. That there was no such thing as stupidity was the faith by which he lived. In many ways they were quicker than he was, they found out more swiftly than he did the dates of examinations and holidays. They were quite reconciled to the fact that they would not be able to pass any examinations. They would say,

  ‘We’re the stupid ones, sir.’ And yet he would not allow them that easy option, the fault was not with them, it was with him. He had seen some of them serving in shops, in restaurants, and they were neatly dressed, good with money and polite. Indeed they seemed to like him, and that made matters worse for he felt that he did not deserve their liking. They are not fed, he quoted to himself from Lycidas, as he watched them at the check-out desks of supermarkets flashing a smile at him, placing the messages in bags much more expertly than he would have done. And indeed he felt that a question was being asked of him but not at all pressingly. At night he would read Shakespeare and think, ‘There are some people to whom all this is closed. There are some who will never shiver as they read the lines

  Absent thee from felicity awhile

  and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

  to tell my story.

  If he had read those lines to them they would have thought that it was Hamlet saying farewell to a girl called Felicity, he thought wryly. He smiled for the first time in weeks. Am I taking this too seriously, he asked himself. They are not taking it seriously. Shakespeare is not necessary for hairdressing. As they endlessly combed each other’s hair he thought of the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens and the line

  wi gowd kaims in their hair.

  These girls were entirely sensuous, words were closed to them. They would look after babies with tenderness but they were not interested in the alien world of language.

  Or was he being a male chauvinist pig? No, he had tried everything he could think of and he had still failed. The fact was that language, the written word, was their enemy, McLuhan was right after all. The day of the record player and television had transformed the secure academic world in which he had been brought up. And yet he did not wish to surrender, to get on with correction while they sat talking quietly to each other, and dreamed of the jobs which were in fact shut against them. School was simply irrelevant to them, they did not even protest, they withdrew from it gently and without fuss. They had looked at education and turned away from it. It was their indifferent gentleness that bothered him more than anything. But they also had the maturity to distinguish between himself and education, which was a large thing to do. They recognized that he had a job to do, that he wasn’t at all unlikeable and was in fact a prisoner like themselves. But they were already perming some woman’s hair in a luxurious shop.

  The more he pondered, the more he realized that they were the key to his failure or success in education. If he failed with them then he had failed totally, a permanent mark would be left on his psyche. In some way it was necessary for him to change, but the point was, could he change to the extent that was demanded of him, and in what direction and with what purpose should he change? School for himself had been a discipline and an order but to them this discipline and order had become meaningless.

  The words on the blackboard were ghostly and distant as if they belonged to another age, another universe. He recalled what Morrison had said, ‘You must find out what they want to do’, but they themselves did not know what they wanted to do, it was for him to tell them that, and till he told them that they would remain indifferent and apathetic. Sometimes he sensed that they themselves were growing tired of their lives, that they wished to prove themselves but didn’t know how to set about it. They were like lost children, irrelevantly stored in desks, and they only lighted up like street lamps in the evening or when they were working in the shops. He felt that they were the living dead, and he would have given anything to see their eyes become illuminated, become interested, for if he could find the magic formula he knew that they would become enthusiastic, they were not stupid. But how to find the magic key which would release the sleeping beauties from their sleep? He had no idea what it was and felt that in the end if he ever discovered it he would stumble over it and not be led to it by reflection or logic. And that was exactly what happened.

  One morning he happened to be late coming into the room and there was Tracy swanning about in front of the class, as if she were wearing a gown, and saying some words to them he guessed in imitation of himself, while at the same time uncannily reproducing his mannerisms, leaning for instance despairingly across his desk, his chin on his hand while at the same time glaring helplessly at the class. It was like seeing himself slightly distorted in water, slightly comic, frustrated and yet angrily determined. When he opened the door there was a quick scurry and the class had arranged themselves, presenting blank dull faces as before. He pretended he had seen nothing, but knew now what he had to do. The solution had come to him as a gift from heaven, from the gods themselves, and the class sensed a new confidence and purposefulness in his voice.

  ‘Tracy,’ he said, ‘and Lorna.’ He paused. ‘And Helen. I want you to come out here.’

  They came out to the floor looking at him uneasily. Ο my wooden O, he said to himself, my draughty echo help me now.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. It’s quite clear to me that you don’t want to do any writing, so we won’t do any writing. But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do instead. We’re going to act.’

  A ripple of noise ran through the class, like the wind on an autumn day, and he saw their faces brightening. The shades of Shakespeare and Sophocles forgive me for what I am to do, he prayed.

  ‘We are going,’ he said, ‘to do a serial and it’s going to be called “The Rise of a Pop Star”.’ It was as if animation had returned to their blank dull faces, he could see life sparkling in their eyes, he could see interest in the way they turned to look at each other, he could hear it in the stir of movement that enlivened the room.

  ‘Tracy,’ he said, ‘you will be the pop star. You are coming home from school to your parents’ house. I’m afraid,’ he added, ‘that as in the reverse of the days of Shakespeare the men’s parts will have be to be acted by the girls. Tracy, you have decided to leave home. Your parents of course disapprove. But you want to be a pop star, you have always wanted to be one. They think that that is a ridiculous idea. Lorna, you will be the mother, and Helen, you will be the father.’

  He was astonished by the manner in which Tracy took over, by the ingenuity with which she and the other two created the first scene in front of his eyes. The scene grew and became meaningful, all their frustrated enthusiasm was poured into it.

  First of all without any prompting Tracy got her school bag and rushed into the house while Lorna, the mother, pretended to be ironin
g on a desk that was quickly dragged out into the middle of the floor, and Helen the father read the paper, which was his own Manchester Guardian snatched from the top of his desk.

  ‘Well, that’s it over,’ said Tracy, the future pop star.

  ‘And what are you thinking of doing with yourself now?’ said the mother, pausing from her ironing.

  ‘I’m going to be a pop star,’ said Tracy.

  ‘What’s that you said?’—her father, laying down the paper.

  ‘That’s what I want to do,’ said Tracy, ‘other people have done it.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ said the father. ‘I thought you were going in for hairdressing.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Tracy.

  ‘You won’t stay in this house if you’re going to be a pop star,’ said the father. ‘I’ll tell you that for free.’

  ‘I don’t care whether I do or not,’ said Tracy.

  ‘And how are you going to be a pop star?’ said her mother.

  ‘I’ll go to London,’ said Tracy.

  ‘London. And where are you going to get your fare from?’ said the father, mockingly, picking up the paper again.

  Mark could see that Tracy was thinking this over: it was a real objection. Where was her fare going to come from? She paused, her mind grappling with the problem.

  ‘I’ll sell my records,’ she said at last.

  Her father burst out laughing. ‘You’re the first one who starts out as a pop star by selling all your records.’ And then in a sudden rage in which Mark could hear echoes of reality he shouted,

  ‘All right then. Bloody well go then.’

  Helen glanced at Mark, but his expression remained benevolent and unchanged.

  Tracy, turning at the door, said, ‘Well then, I’m going. And I’m taking the records with me.’ She suddenly seemed very thin and pale and scrawny.

  ‘Go on then,’ said her father.

  ‘That’s what I’m doing. I’m going.’ Her mother glanced from daughter to father and then back again but said nothing.

  ‘I’m going then,’ said Tracy, pretending to go to another room and then taking the phantom records in her arms. The father’s face was fixed and determined and then Tracy looked at the two of them for the last time and left the room. The father and mother were left alone.

  ‘She’ll come back soon enough,’ said the father but the mother still remained silent. Now and again the father would look at a phantom clock on a phantom mantelpiece but still Tracy did not return. The father pretended to go and lock a door and then said to his wife,

  ‘I think we’d better go to bed.’

  And then Lorna and Helen went back to their seats while Mark thought, this was exactly how dramas began in their bareness and naivety, through which at the same time an innocent genuine feeling coursed or peered as between ragged curtains.

  When the bell rang after the first scene was over he found himself thinking about Tracy wandering the streets of London, as if she were a real waif sheltering in transient doss-houses or under bridges dripping with rain. The girls became real to him in their rôles whereas they had not been real before, nor even individualistic behind their wall of apathy. That day in the staff-room he heard about Tracy’s saga and was proud and non-committal.

  The next day the story continued. Tracy paced up and down the bare boards of the classroom, now and again stopping to look at ghostly billboards, advertisements. The girls had clearly been considering the next development during the interval they had been away from him, and had decided on the direction of the plot. The next scene was in fact an Attempted Seduction Scene.

  Tracy was sitting disconsolately at a desk which he presumed was a table in what he presumed was a café.

  ‘Hello, Mark,’ she said to the man who came over to sit beside her. At this point Tracy glanced wickedly at the real Mark. The Mark in the play was the dark-haired girl who had asked for the records and whose name was Annie.

  ‘Hello,’ said Annie. And then, ‘I could get you a spot, you know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’s a night club where they have a singer and she’s sick. I could get you to take her place.’ He put his hands on hers and she quickly withdrew her own.

  ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘If you come to my place I can introduce you to the man who owns the night club.’

  Tracy searched his face with forlorn longing.

  Was this another lie like the many she had experienced before? Should she, shouldn’t she? She looked tired, her shoulders were slumped.

  Finally she rose from the table and said, ‘All right then.’ Together they walked about the room in search of his luxurious flat.

  They found it. Willing hands dragged another desk out and set the two desks at a slight distance from each other.

  The Mark of the play went over to the window-sill on which there was a large bottle which had once contained ink but was now empty. He poured wine into two phantom glasses and brought them over.

  ‘Where is this man then,’ said Tracy.

  ‘He won’t be long,’ said Mark.

  Tracy accepted the drink and Annie drank as well.

  After a while Annie tried to put her hand around Tracy’s waist. Mark the teacher glanced at the class: he thought that at this turn of events they would be convulsed with raucous laughter. But in fact they were staring enraptured at the two, enthralled by their performance. It occurred to him that he would never be as unselfconscious as Annie and Tracy in a million years. Such a shorn abject thing, such dialogue borrowed from television, and yet it was early drama that what he was seeing reminded him of. He had a quick vision of a flag gracing the roof of the ‘theatre’, as if the school now belonged to the early age of Elizabethanism. His poor wooden Ο was in fact echoing with real emotions and real situations, borrowed from the pages of subterraneous pop magazines.

  Tracy stood up. ‘I am not that kind of girl,’ she said.

  ‘What kind of girl?’

  ‘That kind of girl.’

  But Annie was insistent. ‘You’ll not get anything if you don’t play along with me,’ she said, and Mark could have sworn that there was an American tone to her voice.

  ‘Well, I’m not playing along with you,’ said Tracy. She swayed a little on her feet, almost falling against the blackboard. ‘I’m bloody well not playing along with you,’ she said. ‘And that’s final.’ With a shock of recognition Mark heard her father’s voice behind her own as one might see behind a similar painting the first original strokes.

  And then she collapsed on the floor and Annie was bending over her.

  ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she was saying. ‘I really didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’

  But Tracy lay there motionless and pale. She was like the Lady of Shalott in her boat. The girls in the class were staring at her. Look what they have done to me, Tracy was implying. Will they not be sorry now? There was a profound silence in the room and Mark was aware of the power of drama, even here in this bare classroom with the green peeling walls, the window-pole in the corner like a disused spear. There was nothing here but the hopeless emotion of the young.

  Annie raised Tracy to her feet and sat her down in a chair.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said, ‘it’s true that I know this man.’ He went over to the wall and pretended to dial on a phantom ’phone. And at that moment Tracy turned to the class and winked at them. It was a bold outrageous thing to do, thought Mark, it was as if she was saying, That faint was of course a trick, a feint, that is the sort of thing people like us have to do in order to survive: he thought he was tricking me but all the time I was tricking him. I am alive, fighting, I know exactly what I am doing. All of us are in conspiracy against this Mark. So much, thought Mark, was conveyed by that wink, so much that was essentially dramatic. It was pure instinct of genius.

  The stage Mark turned away from the ’phone and said, ‘He says he wants to see you. He’ll give you an audition. His usual girl’s sick. She’s got …’ A
nnie paused and tried to say ‘laryngitis’, but it came out as not quite right, and it was as if the word poked through the drama like a real error, and Mark thought of the Miracle plays in which ordinary people played Christ and Noah and Abraham with such unconscious style, as if there was no oddity in Abraham being a joiner or a miller.