by David Storey
She tapped out a cigarette in an ashtray; a new habit, and one, curiously, not discouraged by her doctor: ‘Only two a day. It brings me, I can assure you, a lot of relief.’
Leaning back to cross her legs and, at the same time, to puff out a cloud of smoke, she said, ‘You never consider that anything she may feel or think has any validity whatsoever.’
‘I can’t understand your complacency where Benjie is concerned,’ he said. ‘Many of the things she has are stolen. To the extent that she’s accepted them as gifts she’s an accessory after the fact.’
‘You’ve no proof of that.’
‘She told me.’
‘That’s still no proof.’ She closed her eyes: the cigarette trembled in her hand. ‘You’re not going to dissuade her from what she’s doing by hammering at her morning and night, running down blacks, running down Moslems, running down anyone who doesn’t fit in with your particular plans.’
‘I don’t hammer at her morning and night, and I don’t run down Benjie because of his colour. Nor do I run him down because of his parents’ religion. If I do run him down it’s because he’s a thief.’
Crossing her legs, and puffing once more at the cigarette, she said, ‘It’s because he is what he is that he does what he does.’
‘What if he ends up in prison?’
‘He’s been to Borstal once already.’
She got up from her chair, crossed the room, gazed out through the window and said, ‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’
‘No thanks,’ he said.
‘She has to work through these things herself. I have more faith in her than you have.’
‘Cathy,’ Attercliffe said, ‘is still a child. Despite her intellectual achievements, she’s not much more than an infant.’
Framed by the window, she couched one elbow in the palm of her hand, the cigarette smoking by her ear. In much the same manner he’d pictured her over the previous two and a half years standing at one of the ground-floor windows of Maurice Pickersgill’s mansion, gazing out at the gardens, and had thought then as he was thinking now: ‘She’s stepped from the frying-pan into the fire.’ Getting up, he said, ‘It might be better if you take her side. What I represent is crystal clear and, if she feels animosity to me, there’s always you she can turn to.’
‘Are you going?’
‘I’m waiting for a man to come.’
‘Here?’
‘It’s the house he’s coming to look at.’
Her elbow propped in her hand, the instep of one foot turned over, her weight on her other leg – her clothes neat, her hair freshly-styled, her face carefully if not austerely made-up (lipstick, rouge, mascara) – she smiled.
‘Who is he?’
‘A house agent.’
The cigarette was lowered.
‘I won’t let him in.’
‘You didn’t let him in before,’ Attercliffe said. ‘Which is why I’ve had to come over.’
‘I never heard him.’
‘He rang the bell.’
‘I didn’t hear it.’
‘He saw you moving about.’
She stubbed the cigarette out.
‘You have no right to sell it.’
‘It is my house.’
‘It’s also my home.’
‘It was also mine.’
‘I have more rights to it than you have.’
‘You have equal rights,’ Attercliffe said. ‘The fact is, we can’t afford to keep it.’
‘Doctor Morrison said you’d behave like this. She told me you’d try to exact your revenge. She told me I’d have to be resolute. That woman,’ she went on, ‘is a god-send.’
‘We’ll have to sell the house. You’ll have half the proceeds,’ Attercliffe said, ‘plus what I can provide to keep the children.’
‘This is your way of getting back.’ She paced to the door and back again.
‘I’ll help you all I can,’ he said.
‘I have more right to the house than you have.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘I’m telling you, Frank, this is all I have. This is the only thing that keeps me together. I have nothing else to fall back on.’
‘You’ve got the children. You’ve even got me as a moral support.’
‘Moral!’ She added, ‘It’s not fair. It’s always you who dictates the terms.’ She turned to the window. ‘I knew you’d get your own back.’
‘If I were Maurice,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t have minded.’
‘I’ve been waiting all along for that.’
She turned back to the room.
‘For you to bring up Maurice.’
‘It’s someone,’ Attercliffe said, ‘with whom you’ve spent the better part of the past three years.’ He added, ‘It’s only natural he should be, not only a part of your life, but also of mine.’
‘Pathetic!’ She turned aside, walked past him and, after hesitating in the hall, went out to the kitchen.
When he followed her she was stacking pots in a cupboard.
‘You let him walk right over you.’
‘It was you who did the walking,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Pathetic!’ She glanced at a cup, ran her finger around the rim, then set it down. ‘If I were a man I’d have killed him.’
‘If I’d have murdered him,’ Attercliffe said, ‘I might have got off with six or seven years, on the grounds of justifiable homicide, but I would,’ he continued, ‘still be in prison. Not only would you have had to move from the house but I wouldn’t have had any severance pay.’
‘Like you,’ she said, ‘to see everything before, during and after in terms of cash.’
‘I see part of it in terms of cash since I have no alternative,’ Attercliffe said.
‘My whole life is determined not by what I choose but by what other people,’ Sheila said, ‘choose for me.’
‘I’m tied down by this as much as you are. It wouldn’t be my choice,’ he said, ‘to live in a slum. Nor,’ he added, ‘do we have to.’
‘We can go on as we are,’ she said. ‘I live here with the children. You,’ she went on, ‘can live in a room.’
‘How can I live with the children?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘You live in a room which costs very little and come here, say, on Saturday night, or, if you like, on Sunday, and I sleep there. It’s the perfect solution to all our problems.’ She added, ‘You’re punishing me because of Maurice. And punishing the children, too. They don’t want to move. All their friends live here. It isn’t fair.’
‘Away from here,’ Attercliffe said, ‘things will fall into place in a way in which, at present, you can’t imagine.’
‘You haven’t changed a bit,’ she said. ‘You’re exactly like you were before. Cathy feels the same. People like me don’t stand a chance.’
There was a knock on the door: it was followed, a moment later, by the ringing of the bell.
‘There he is now,’ Attercliffe said. ‘I shan’t be a minute.’
She remained standing by the kitchen table and was still standing there when, a few moments later, Attercliffe returned with a dark-suited, youthful-looking figure who, a brief-case under his arm, shook Sheila’s hand, and asked, ‘Do you mind if I look around? It shouldn’t take a minute.’
‘I don’t mind at all,’ she said.
Having declined a cup of coffee, he returned to the hall, glanced in the cupboards, stepped through to the living-room, then started upstairs.
The floorboards creaked above their heads.
‘Strange his name being Morrison,’ Attercliffe said.
‘Is it?’
‘Must be an omen.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Your doctor having a positive influence on your life, perhaps he’ll have the same on mine.’
His feet came down.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee now?’ Sheila asked when he came back in the kitchen.
‘I wouldn’t mind, Mrs Attercliffe,’ he said.
He sat at the kitchen table.
‘We can go through to the living-room,’ Sheila said.
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ he said, ‘in here,’ and, opening his brief-case, added, ‘Mrs Attercliffe,’ once again.
He took out a paper.
‘The market, of course, at the moment, with this type of house is very depressed.’
‘Why this type especially?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘The ones most hit in the private sector are the lower to middle management. You’d be amazed how many houses of this description are coming on to the market. I shouldn’t count,’ he added, ‘on a very quick sale.’
‘We’ll lower the price,’ Attercliffe said.
‘I shouldn’t advise it.’ He glanced at Sheila who smiled. ‘It’s unusual to have someone who is asking us to lower it.’ He laughed, nodded his head, and added, ‘Instant is fine with me, Mrs Attercliffe,’ as Sheila, still smiling, held up a jar.
They sat at the table discussing the prospects and, after the agent had named a price, considering how much they might lower it.
‘You have to think of a time-span,’ he said, ‘of something like a year. If the market doesn’t pick up,’ he added, ‘it could be even longer.’
‘It may, in that case,’ Sheila said, ‘be more economical not to sell it.’
‘It works both ways, Mrs Attercliffe,’ the agent said. ‘If,’ he went on, ‘you’re buying another. Prices,’ he continued, ‘have never been as advantageous to the purchaser as they are at present and, after all,’ he gestured round, ‘we mustn’t take too gloomy a view.’
‘Still, we might have to think of a year,’ she said. ‘Or longer.’ She smiled at the agent again. ‘It’s all the capital we have. I wouldn’t want to throw away my share.’ She added, ‘Whether my husband would wish to throw away his share or not.’
‘Oh, we’ll set a fair price,’ the agent said, and added, ‘I’ll take my measurements now, if I may,’ finishing his coffee, ‘then do my sums and come up, I hope, with an appropriate answer.’
After he had gone Sheila went upstairs: she returned with her make-up freshly done. She smiled, tidied the kitchen, then, fetching her coat from the cupboard in the hall, called, ‘You can give me a lift into town, if you like.’
‘I’m going the other way,’ Attercliffe said.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I can catch a bus.’
He dropped her off at the end of the lane and, as she got out, she added, ‘We could still be here this time next year.’
‘I doubt it,’ Attercliffe said.
‘I don’t see why.’
‘We’ll lower the price till we sell it.’
‘I won’t lower mine.’
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I’ll lower mine.’
He watched her frown before, turning, she smiled again.
‘See you soon,’ she added.
He drove off in the opposite direction: a circuitous route brought him back into town – in time to see Sheila descending from a neighbour’s car outside the Buckingham Hotel: she glanced at her reflection in the window of a shop, then, her shoulders straight, her head erect, walked briskly through the doors of the Brasserie Bar which flapped to for several seconds behind her.
17
‘What I don’t understand,’ Attercliffe said, ‘is why the exercise books are never marked.’
‘They’re marked at regular intervals,’ the teacher said.
‘Keith’s hasn’t been marked for over two months.’
The teacher – in appearance, not much older than Keith himself – opened his file: he ran a bitten-down finger along a row of inked-in figures.
‘Every two weeks, according to my records.’
The hall was crowded; queues of parents stood at the tiny desks: to the lid of each was attached a teacher’s name. ‘Mr F.N. Perkins’, in a decorous red script, was fastened to the lid of the one on the opposite side of which Attercliffe was sitting: long-haired, pale-featured, acne-cheeked, leather-jacketed, Perkins consulted his figures again.
‘When it is corrected,’ Attercliffe said, ‘more mistakes are left uncorrected than the ones you’ve underlined.’
‘I’ll look into it,’ the teacher said.
‘The appearance, too, of his work is scruffy. Nowhere in the book is there any comment either on his spelling, the lay-out of his work or the tattiness of its presentation. Large parts of it are illegible, most of what you can read is misspelt, and a lot of it is poorly constructed.’
‘You’ll have to allow me,’ Perkins said, ‘to judge his work.’ He glanced at the parents waiting in the queue behind Attercliffe’s back.
‘I’ve left you,’ Attercliffe said, ‘to make judgments for the best part of a year. I’m capable of coming to my own conclusions.’
‘If you wish to make a complaint it may be better,’ Perkins said, ‘to put it in writing.’
‘I’ve come to the parents’ meeting instead.’ He indicated the crowded hall at the far end of which, on a curtained stage, the headmaster was talking to a group of parents. ‘I’d prefer to hear the excuse first hand.’
‘I’ve made my remarks on Keith’s work. If,’ Perkins said, ‘you’re not prepared to accept them I’d take it up with someone else. I’m doing,’ he concluded, ‘the best I can.’
‘Why isn’t he set any homework?’
‘He is set homework.’
‘When do you mark it?’
‘It’s marked in class.’
‘His book hasn’t been marked for the past two months.’
‘I give out the answers: they mark it themselves.’
‘Of this homework,’ Attercliffe said, ‘which isn’t set.’
‘If you’ve any complaints,’ he said, ‘you know where to take them.’
‘Before I do,’ Attercliffe said, ‘perhaps you could tell me which work you set in his book to be done at home.’
‘I ask them to complete their classwork,’ he said.
‘He completes it,’ he said, ‘in every lesson.’
‘He does his homework, in that case, in class.’
‘The point of the homework is to do it unsupervised,’ Attercliffe said, ‘so that you’re able to judge objectively how well he’s doing in class. It sounds to me that what you call homework is what any average child can accommodate in any normal lesson.’
‘This is a democratic country,’ he said. ‘Everyone has their chance. That applies,’ he went on, ‘to those least able to benefit from a formal education as well as to those who can accommodate it with a little less effort.’
‘You’re pacing your teaching to the slowest rate of learning?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘The homework I set is the completion of the work they start in class.’ He closed his file.
‘You won’t set homework?’ Attercliffe asked.
‘His classwork is sufficient,’ the teacher said.
‘You haven’t even looked at it for the past two months.’
‘If you’ve any complaints, Mr Attercliffe, you know where to make them.’
Attercliffe got up, consulted the sheet of subject-teachers and the cyclostyled map picked up on his arrival, and moved over to a queue at a neighbouring desk.
The murmur of voices echoed within the tall-roofed hall – an interior braced by metal girders and looking out, through glass-panelled walls, to a tarmacked playground on one side and a playing-field on the other.
Beyond stretched the houses of the town and, in the furthest distance, the spire of All Saints Church, the Town Hall tower, and the County Hall dome; darkness was setting in and reflections of the desks and the queues and the seated figures were mirrored in the windows on either side.
The queue moved up; the headmaster, after surveying the hall below, came down from the stage: he took out a pipe, filled it, struck a match, talked to a group of parents, first on one side, then on the other, then, smiling, moved off to a door at the rear.
Attercliffe lef
t his place in the queue and approached the stocky, square-shaped figure – tweed-jacketed, twill-trousered – and, after introducing himself, inquired, ‘Why do you not set homework?’
‘Generally, or specifically?’ The headmaster didn’t look up.
‘Both.’
He took out the pipe, examined his and Attercliffe’s reflections in the adjacent window – figures moving to the evening institute outside – and, turning, said, ‘Keith and Bryan are doing well.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Attercliffe said, ‘they’re doing badly.’
‘If you gave me a pound,’ the headmaster said, ‘for every parent who thought his child wasn’t doing as well as he should I’d most likely have a chauffeur waiting out there.’
He laughed.
‘Bring it up at the parent-teachers’ meeting. It’s impossible for one parent to judge from one example the situation that prevails throughout a school.’
He walked on, greeted another figure coming in at the door, directed it to the table in the foyer with its annual reports, its map of the hall and its list of teachers and, followed by a cloud of smoke, disappeared through the door at the rear.
‘We’ve become,’ Wilkins said, ‘a nation of spongers. If there’s one thing that being unemployed has done for me, it’s enabled me to see the situation as it really is. I couldn’t do that before,’ he added. ‘I was too much embroiled in the to-ing and fro-ing. Too much, in short, caught up in the racket.’
A mug of tea in his hand, the crumbs from his biscuit dropped across his chest, his legs crossed, his thickly-veined ankles bared, smacking his lips, he listened to Attercliffe’s response of, ‘The world has changed since the days of unorganised labour,’ and declared, ‘It hasn’t changed a bit. All that’s changed,’ he took a final drink from his mug, ‘is that human initiative has been devalued.’
Attercliffe turned back to the typewriter and tapped the keys.
‘Have you seen the streets round here?’ Wilkins went on. ‘The energy expended by one roadsweeper sweeping the road outside is obscured entirely by his effort in deciding which bits of rubbish he ought to leave and which he ought to pick up. People like me would willingly do a spot of useful work, yet we’re not allowed to because it’ll be doing the roadsweeper out of a job! Multiply that ten thousand times and you’ve got this country in a nutshell: subsidised inadequacy, incompetence, inefficiency and scrounging.’