THE CLIMBING FRAME

by MARY HOCKING

  The old woman looked at her, and Maggie saw that the understanding was still there, but that it was not a personal understanding of Maggie Hester’s immediate predicament. The quiet voice said, ‘My dear, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘They say we have to lose ourselves, don’t they?’ Maggie said. ‘I don’t understand that.’

  ‘We lose ourselves in order to find ourselves?’ The old woman shook her head, the very faintest of movements. ‘An immortal paradox. But I have never been able to resolve it myself.’

  There was something steadying about the quiet voice that refused the easy answer. There was something else, too, in that bare room; no thrusting evangelical force, but something still and fixed, promising no panacea for present ills, yet offering more than comfort. It was not what Maggie was seeking now; although something touched her, she did not at that time feel that it was love. Resentment burnt within her, an angry throb of life. She said:

  ‘I wish that I could be like you. Reverend Mother.’ She said this without humility, thinking that it must be good to be safe, beyond the reach of pain.

  ‘But I did not want to be like this, child.’ The face turned to her, concerned but withdrawn, encouraging no emotional involvement. ‘I am no example to you; you see, I don’t know the answers either. I can only say, don’t despair because you are not happy; if you don’t strive for happiness, you may find in the end that you have been given something else, not less valuable.’

  Maggie recalled the words that she herself had written: ‘. . . the strong hands quietly folded indicate an acceptance not easily arrived at . . .’ She had been full of admiration then; but now, the fear of what the old woman’s words seemed to imply acted as a kind of shock treatment. She was not going to travel this path: if that was what God intended for her, she would fight him every painful inch of the way. When she got home, she said to her mother:

  ‘I’m going to leave the office. I’ll put in my notice tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll have to find another job first,’ her mother said. She thought that it was a good thing for Maggie to leave, but she was not going to encourage her to stay at home feeling sorry for herself.

  ‘I feel tired,’ Maggie said. ‘I need time.’

  ‘We need the money,’ her mother said firmly. ‘You go to the agency and get another job before you put in your notice. A part¬time job, if you like, then you will have more time to write.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to write.’

  She was not going to settle for that: a creative gift as a writer in lieu of happiness. Rhythm instead of the pulse of life, a metaphor for passion, fulfilment within the framework of a sonnet! God was not going to make that kind of bargain with her.

  Her mother said, ‘Then if you’re not going to write, get a full¬time job.’

  They left it at that. The next day, Maggie went to one of the employment agencies during her lunch hour.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Schools Sub-Committee met at four o’clock on Thursday afternoon. In deference to Wicks’s repeated criticism, the only officers present were Chatterton, Punter, Crocker and Maggie Hester. Maggie’s presence displeased Rudderham.

  ‘Is it really necessary to have that young woman here?’ he said to Punter.

  ‘Crocker’s a bit deaf,’ Punter hissed. ‘He needs assistance.’

  ‘Nothing functions properly,’ Rudderham fumed. ‘Office management, that’s what we need.’

  His blood pressure was up and the slightest irritation taxed his patience beyond breaking point. He looked at the clock, and pulled the minute book towards him. ‘Is it your wish . . .?’

  Wicks said, ‘Before we begin the meeting, Mr. Chairman, I have a few words to say.’

  Rudderham’s hands shook as he flicked the pages of the book and tears of exasperation stung his eyes. Wicks’s smooth voice was about as soothing as molten lava.

  ‘Mr. Chairman, we have been under attack lately and this disturbs me as much as anyone here. In particular, I feel very angry about the unjustified criticisms made in the press, many of which have been levelled against you personally. You have occupied this chair for a long time, sir; we all know what a strain this has involved, and we appreciate the tireless energy which you have expended and your refusal to spare yourself.’

  Rudderham shifted a little uneasily in the heavy chair; there was, he felt, something of the funeral oration in all this. One or two lady members chirped ‘Hear! hear!’ looking awed, because they had not been aware that Rudderham had been singled out for criticism until Wicks drew their attention to it.

  ‘I am sorry, too,’ Wicks continued, ‘that one of our own members should have seen fit to attack you. I notice that she is not present this afternoon and I shall take care to make my views about her behaviour known to her; behaviour which, I am sure, most of us would wish to repudiate. I think I shall be expressing the feeling of many people round this table when I offer you my sympathy and tell you how much I have respected your fortitude in bearing this heavy burden.’

  Bunce contrived to look sceptical and tolerant of human folly at the same time. Jacob Horam, far to the left of Bunce, said in a bored voice, ‘I dissociate myself from that.’

  Wicks said, ‘I always feel that anything from which Alderman Horam has dissociated himself has been given the seal of respectability.’

  Rudderham cleared his throat preparatory to thanking Wicks and suggesting that they should now devote themselves to the business of the meeting. But Wicks had only just begun.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he spoke softly to the table, one eyebrow raised at some flaw in the grain of the wood which roused his reluctant attention, ‘nevertheless, however much one may deplore the usual irresponsible attitude of the press—and no one deplores it more than I do—there are some aspects of this case which I feel we cannot ignore. Matters which have, in fact, been ignored for too long because they were not drawn to our attention by the proper quarter.’

  The little flutter of noise attendant on the start of a meeting—the shuffling of papers, the easing back of a chair, the snapping shut of spectacle cases, the click of a ball-point pen—all these noises ceased abruptly at the same moment. It was as though the people sitting round the table had suddenly realized that, in spite of an unfamiliar prologue they were witnessing the beginning of a much- heralded dramatic event. ‘This is it,’ they said to themselves in that moment of silence. ‘This is the scene where . . .’ One or two heads ducked and their owners studied the agenda with ferocious intensity; Rudderham looked up, his hand arrested in the act of reaching for a cigarette; Bunce looked at Horam and raised his eyebrows. Only Crocker, waiting petulantly for the minute book to be signed, seemed unaware of any menace greater than a possible rewording of his prose. Chatterton had taken off his glasses and was polishing the lenses with a handkerchief; his eyes had a blank look without them, like windows from which the panes have been removed.

  Wicks hunched over the table; his auburn hair seemed to draw colour from his face, leaving the dry lips cracked and bloodless. He stared at the flaw in the table with the clinical detachment of one about to perform a major operation.

  ‘There are times when we must not shirk saying harsh things. I have kept very quiet during this recent affair, Mr. Chairman, because I did not want to do or say anything that would lessen the confidence of the public in the education authority, a confidence which in almost all respects is well-deserved—whatever Alderman Horam may think about it. But although it is one thing to keep quiet in public, there are things which must be said in the confidential atmosphere of this room.’

  He paused: with the exception of Crocker, obsessively shuffling through papers to make sure that nothing was missing, he held his audience spellbound; it was as though he had touched them all and drained from them the energy to resist.

  ‘Over the last few weeks I have tried by every means in my power to indicate the problems and to get them resolved, but I have been baulked at every attempt. I am now left with no alternative but
to state my misgivings with brutal frankness. Believe me, I don’t like doing this. But I was voted on to this Council by the electorate, and my first duty is to them, and anyone who imagines that I shall forget this duty, that I shall treat my membership of the County Council as something for my comfort, as though I had joined an exclusive club, is very much mistaken.’ People around the table sat very still, afraid to draw attention to themselves by so much as the flick of an eyelid, in the way that people will suddenly freeze when a drunk gets into a railway carriage, fearing to become his target.

  ‘And so, I feel it my unfortunate duty to tell you, Mr. Chairman, that I am seriously concerned about the running of the Education Department.’

  ‘I think we all have our doubts.’ Rudderham’s voice was hoarse. ‘But whether this is the right time . . .’ He had hoped not to be in at the kill.

  ‘Oh, come now, Mr. Chairman!’ Bunce intervened with the air of one throwing wide a window and letting in God’s good fresh air. ‘If this isn’t the right time, I should like to know what is the right time.’

  One or two people, grateful to fill their lungs, inhaled deeply and said, ‘hear! hear!’

  ‘General Purposes, Establishment . . .’ Rudderham cast about him despairingly.

  ‘I am talking about educational matters, Mr. Chairman,’ Wicks said sharply. ‘And whatever the Clerk or anyone else may tell us about the powers of a committee, I shall refuse to believe that any committee is more concerned with the administration of the education office than the Education Committee, and of all the sub-committees of the Education Committee, the Schools Sub-Committee is the one most directly concerned . . .’

  ‘If you’re talking about the running of the office this is a matter for the General Purposes Sub-Committee.’ Rudderham tried to hold Wicks at bay. He glanced at Chatterton. Surely the fool could help himself? But it was immaterial to Chatterton at which committee he should be arraigned, and so, for the last time, Rudderham got no help from his chief officer. Chatterton sat back and looked around the table, wondering which of these people with whom he had always lived on civilized terms would speak for him. But even those who wished him no harm were by this time anxious to cap one another’s grievances or eager to score off a rival. Some of them did not look in his direction the whole evening.

  Wicks said, ‘Very well, then. Let us talk about educational matters. Once more, I will spell out my misgivings. I am concerned at the conditions which the Crossgate affair has brought to light. In the first instance, we have a class in the playground, and upon inquiry I find that there were forty-three children in that class.’

  ‘Forty-three! Terrible, terrible!’ exclaimed a woman in a bright pink hat. Others drew in their breath sharply and shook their heads. All of them could have discovered this fact quite easily from the returns which were issued to them from time to time, but, hypnotized by Wicks’s manner, they all behaved as though some secret information had been discovered.

  ‘Over a year ago,’ Wicks said, ‘I recall that this Sub-Committee resolved to make a serious attempt to cut down the numbers in primary school classes. It was agreed that over a period of three years we should try to reduce numbers to thirty-five per class. And I personally felt very strongly about this, more strongly than I feel about anything else in our educational programme.’

  Chatterton said, ‘We put a scheme to you for the revision of the catchment area for Crossgate Primary School, but it was not approved.’

  Bunce, who had been the prime mover in defeating the scheme, because many of his constituents would have been concerned, broke in angrily, ‘Mr. Chairman, may I say how tired I am of having any criticisms which we have to offer turned against us in this way! The revision of the catchment area was only one way of dealing with the problem . . .’

  ‘The only way,’ Chatterton said. ‘We must admit children when they are of statutory school age, and if we can’t divert them to another school . . .’

  ‘It was not the only way!’ Bunce was red in the face and thumping the table. ‘We could insist that the Head gives up the library and puts a class in there. A library is a luxury that many primary schools can’t afford, so why should this school have one? Just because it has families in the area who can afford to present the school with books, why should it be favoured?’ He raised his voice to drown murmurs of dissent. ‘I consider this remark of the Chief Education Officer’s about catchment areas to be a personal attack on my integrity, Mr. Chairman, and I must say that my patience is completely exhausted. One has to battle, yes battle, for every. . .’ He floundered, impeded by a limited vocabulary and a temper no longer under control. Wicks, who was ice cold, said:

  ‘One has, in fact, to battle to get co-operation at every level and on every issue. We want a site for a school; in a predominantly rural area this should not be difficult, yet whenever we consider a site we are told that it is not going to be easy to acquire . . .’

  ‘Because we are a rural area,’ Chatterton said, ‘and predominantly agricultural . . .’

  ‘Or it is wrongly sited,’ Wicks went on with imperturbable malevolence, ‘it will not serve the area where the children come from . . .’

  ‘Country children are used to travelling long distances.’ Other members were joining in the fray, jostling to voice their own complaints. One buxom woman boomed:

  ‘Mr. Chairman, recently I was told that I couldn’t be given a child’s scores in the 11+ test. Is this really true? It seems incredible that a member can’t be trusted with this kind of information. I don’t want to seem critical, but . . .’

  ‘When I asked for the number of grammar school passes at each primary school I was told that this kind of comparison was invidious . . .’

  ‘. . . Governor of the Kingsley School and I wasn’t even informed that the craft room had been deleted from the minor works programme . . .’

  ‘. . . without a physics master for a whole term. Quite indefensible!’

  ‘. . . said he came to the office and was told there was no vacancy, and we’re crying out . . .’

  Wicks watched his avalanche gathering momentum, the stones beginning to fall fast.

  Chatterton took off his glasses and laid them on the table. He felt very strange, as though he was breaking apart, the individual parts of his body no longer representing the one total human being. It seemed to require a tremendous effort of will and bodily strength to keep himself decently in one piece at the head of the table and defeat this pressure to disintegrate, to spew over the table in front of all these people who were already disgusted enough as it was. In fact, one lady whom he could not properly recall, was saying:

  ‘And I really was disgusted to learn that the poor woman was seen by a quite inexperienced member of staff . . .’

  ‘A very competent member of staff,’ Punter squeaked. His face wore the astonished expression of one who has woken from a long dream of adolescence into a strange and hostile world.

  ‘We won’t go into that,’ Wicks said, ‘there are complications better not mentioned . . .’

  ‘But I should like to be assured that this won’t happen in the future,’ the disgusted lady insisted. ‘May I have such an assurance?’

  ‘I don’t think we are going to leave matters with asking for assurances, are we?’ Wicks murmured. ‘I think that we as members must stipulate certain things and be quite satisfied that they will receive attention. The attention they have not always received in the past. But as the Chairman has pointed out . . .’ It seemed to Chatterton that Wicks, too, was disintegrating, that something poisonous had to escape from his bloodstream and was gushing out through those cracked purple lips. ‘. . . we are not the committee to deal with this. And I think that what we need to do, as the Schools Sub-Committee, is to make our views known in as strong terms as possible—that is, to inform the General Purposes Sub-Committee, that we are most dissatisfied with the way in which this particular episode has been handled and that in our view it has been a culmination of a long and unhappy
period in our relations with the Education Department for which the Chief Education Officer himself must accept personal responsibility.’ He looked across at Crocker who was making no attempt to record his statement and said, ‘I hope that this is being noted.’ Crocker threw his pencil down; he was old and did not much care what they did to him now.

  ‘This amounts to a censure motion on your chief officer,’ Rudderham said. ‘Do you wish to pass such a motion? I’m not sure that it is in order . . .’

  ‘There is a reference under “matters arising from the minutes” to size of classes in primary schools,’ Wicks said. ‘With a little ingenuity on the part of the committee clerk, I would have thought it could be worked in there.’

  Punter put his arm round Maggie’s shoulders, ‘Would you like to go?’ he whispered. ‘It’s going to be a hell of a meeting.’

  She shook her head. She must stay because she must wait for the moment which would surely come when someone would denounce Wicks. She looked round the table at the faces, many of which had been averted during the whole of the discussion; they belonged in the main to people who were decent and had given long years of service in what they believed was a good cause. It was inconceivable that there should not be one voice raised in protest. If this could happen, anything could happen. Those terrible stories that one read in newspapers about people being beaten to death within earshot of neighbours who did nothing, these stories must be true.

  Horam, sitting opposite to her, watched the proceedings, amused and totally sceptical, seeing them as a political charade in which Wicks manoeuvred to gain control from Rudderham.

  Rudderham put the motion. It was carried with a number of abstentions, but with no vote against it.

  The agenda was a formidable one. After the usual report on staffing of schools, there was a further report on the plan to amalgamate the Eastgate boys’ and girls’ grammar schools and a mixed secondary school. As though anxious to absolve themselves of any lingering doubts, members examined the report with all the zeal of a publisher’s reader intent on justifying an adverse criticism. Ably led by Wicks, supported by Bunce who did not like to renounce the limelight, errors and omissions were soon noted. New arguments against the scheme were put forward by Horam and then there was a long argument about how to approach the Department of Education and Science. Should a group of officers and the Chairman go to the Department to discuss the scheme and obtain an informal view; or should the Department be asked to send representatives to a meeting of the Sub-Committee. At this point Rudderham drew attention to the time. He was promptly reprimanded by Bunce: