Present Times

by David Storey

  In the house, upstairs, a light went on as the car pulled into the drive.

  A further light appeared in the hall and Catherine, tapping on the kitchen door, called, ‘Mum? Are you there? It’s me.’

  The dressing-gowned figure of Sheila was silhouetted the other side.

  A bolt was drawn: the door swung back.

  Pale-faced, harrow-eyed, Sheila gazed out. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Catherine said. She stepped inside, went to the kettle, filled it with water, and switched it on.

  Closing the back door, Attercliffe said, ‘I had a call from Benjie telling me Cathy had been picked up by the police and taken to the City Station.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Fooling around.’

  Catherine sat down; she watched the kettle: Sheila, her back to a cupboard, stood by the door, uncertain whether she might reopen it and invite Attercliffe to leave.

  ‘What sort of fooling around?’

  ‘Breaking bottles.’

  ‘Why?’

  Catherine bowed her head, got up, and started to pace the kitchen in her plimsolled feet: the top of one shoe was worn in a hole through which, spreadeagled, Attercliffe could see her toes.

  ‘It seemed the sort of thing I ought to do.’

  ‘Breaking bottles?’

  Over a nightdress Sheila was wearing a dressing-gown, unfastened, the collar folded back to her freckled chest.

  ‘Throwing bricks.’ Catherine’s gaze was directed to the floor. ‘We were having fun. I realise,’ she continued, glancing up, ‘it looks ridiculous. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me, Cathy,’ Attercliffe said, ‘except to the extent that it bothers you.’

  ‘You didn’t stand up to that policeman very well,’ she said.

  ‘I thought flattery would be more productive than abuse,’ he said.

  ‘It certainly succeeded this time,’ she said, and added, ‘When I said I’d never do it again I meant it. If I ever have to go inside,’ she concluded, ‘it’ll be for something that’s really worth while.’ Putting a teabag into a mug she poured water from the kettle over it. ‘Do you want one, Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ he said.

  ‘Did they put you in a cell?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘Two. They had to move me from the first.’ She got another mug, put in a teabag, and poured in water.

  ‘Do you want one?’ she asked Sheila, who shook her head.

  ‘No thank you,’ she said, and looked to the kitchen window. ‘I heard the car and saw the lights. I couldn’t think what had happened.’

  ‘Didn’t you know she was out?’ Attercliffe asked.

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping well,’ Sheila said. ‘I lose track of when they come in. This place is like a hotel, with hardly a moment’s rest.’

  Her knees turned in to one another, pigeon-toed, her elbows at her sides, her hands clenched around the mug, which steamed, and to which, repeatedly, she dipped her head, Catherine sipped, swallowed, then sipped again.

  ‘It’s over now,’ Attercliffe said.

  ‘Over for you,’ Sheila said. ‘For me it’s just beginning.’ She turned to Catherine to ask, ‘What will your school say when you appear in court?’

  ‘I’m not appearing in court,’ she said. ‘Dad got me off. Soft-soaping that policeman.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare,’ Sheila said.

  She sat, her arms held to her.

  ‘What a mess,’ she continued. ‘What a failure I’ve turned into.’

  ‘I go my own way,’ Catherine said, and added, ‘I’m going up to bed.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to thank your father?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘I’ve thanked him once already.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’ll thank him again, if that’s what you want.’ To Attercliffe she added, ‘It was good of you to come and fetch me.’

  She stooped, kissed Sheila’s cheek, turned to the door, called, ‘Good night,’ and, stamping her feet, ran upstairs.

  ‘It’s our fault,’ Sheila said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And the company she keeps.’ She felt in her dressing-gown pocket. ‘She doesn’t see that boy again.’

  ‘You’ve always defended him,’ Attercliffe said.

  She took out a handkerchief. ‘He’s dragged her down to his level.’ She blew her nose.

  ‘Or she,’ he responded, ‘is raising him to hers.’

  ‘It’s not what you’ve said before.’

  ‘I’m trying to keep,’ he said, ‘an open mind.’

  ‘To think of her,’ she said, ‘in a prison cell.’

  ‘She isn’t in a prison cell,’ he said.

  She asked, ‘Don’t you care about your daughter?’

  ‘Whatever values she has, she’s acquired them,’ he said, ‘from living with us. When we’ve sold the house and bought two establishments she can come and live with me,’ he added.

  ‘I’m not selling this house,’ she said. ‘It’s all I’ve got. I’m not living in anything smaller.’

  ‘We can discuss that,’ he said, ‘another time.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve decided,’ she said. ‘I’m staying here.’

  She didn’t come to the door when he left; when he called good night all he heard, after an interval, was the sliding of the bolt and the turning of the key – followed, after a further interval, by the switching off of the light.

  18

  ‘Some homes,’ Miss Harrington, the Deputy Headmistress announced, ‘are not equipped for the children living there to do homework in the evenings. I know of one such house where each room is occupied by sixteen people. How can we set homework and expect it to be done by a child,’ she concluded, ‘living in those conditions?’

  The library of the school with its racks of books and magazines and its rows of tables, several of which had been pushed to one side, accommodated an audience of thirty or forty people: their attention was focused on the figure of Miss Harrington herself and Mr Mainwaring, the Headmaster, seated behind a desk at one end.

  A plain-featured woman in her early thirties, Miss Harrington was wearing calf-length boots and, above a knee-length corduroy skirt, a blouse to the breast pocket of which was clipped a row of pens.

  Mr Mainwaring smoked a pipe which, at the beginning of the Deputy Headmistress’s introduction, he had slowly filled and which, as she drew to the close of her speech, he finally lit. ‘Why should the least able of our children,’ Miss Harrington continued, ‘be penalised? Homework,’ she added, ‘would benefit only those who are already catered for, and those who are not so fortunate would be the only ones to suffer. The principle behind this school is that the opportunities we provide should be distributed without favour to all our children. A capacity to exercise one’s faculties, after all, may be experienced in any one of a variety of ways. Education,’ she concluded, ‘is a two-way business.’ She smiled. ‘If there are any questions,’ she drew her skirt behind her, ‘Mr Mainwaring and I will be glad to answer them.’ She sat.

  A man stood up.

  He said, ‘I’d like to endorse what the speaker has said. It’s why we send our children here. In a society where privilege can still be purchased – and it is a privilege,’ he turned to address the room, ‘to buy an education, since it isn’t a right for those who can’t afford it – this school sets an example which the rest,’ he went on, ‘could do well to follow. The divisions that exist out there,’ he gestured to the windows set high on one side of the room above the bookshelves, ‘are not reflected inside this building and,’ he raised his arm to indicate the opposite wall which adjoined the main structure of the school itself, ‘if, at this early stage in their lives, we can instil in our children the values which the world out there denies, then there’s a real chance, when they leave, that the world out there may be changed to accommodate their enlightened aspirations.’

  Several people applauded; Miss Harrington got to her fee
t.

  ‘Although,’ she said, ‘it isn’t a question, I couldn’t agree with you more. Which brings me to an additional point, the value which this school attaches to the co-operation of its parents. Without that,’ she sat, ‘we couldn’t succeed to the degree we do at present.’

  ‘What I’m worried about,’ a woman’s voice called out, ‘is that they never seem to learn anything.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ another voice inquired.

  ‘In the Maths lesson my children say they spend most of their time making paper darts.’

  Mr Mainwaring, smiling, got to his feet.

  ‘If I’ve learnt one thing as a headmaster,’ he said, ‘it’s that you can never generalise from one specific example. Dart-making was the fashion, one or two months ago.’ His smile was extended to the room in general. ‘Now it’s moved on to other things. Why,’ he continued, ‘I used to fire pellets in Maths myself,’ and, sitting down to a burst of laughter, concluded, ‘And I wasn’t so bad at it, I can tell you.’

  ‘They never learn anything,’ the same voice continued.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ said a voice from the opposite end of the room.

  Miss Harrington got up.

  She asked, ‘Were there any specific questions?’

  ‘My daughter,’ a voice announced, ‘has been put down for four ‘O’ Levels and she needs a minimum of five to get into a sixth form.’

  ‘Anyone can get into a sixth form.’ Miss Harrington straightened her skirt behind.

  ‘To go to university out of the sixth form she’ll need,’ the same voice went on, ‘a minimum of five.’

  ‘We can take up your daughter’s situation later,’ Miss Harrington replied. ‘Though the point I would like to make is that an individual’s qualities cannot be itemised on a sheet of paper, nor by the marks they receive in a particular exam. One day, arbitrarily chosen, in any one year, must not be seen to be the deciding factor in determining the success of any one child’s education.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said a voice followed, at the front of the audience, by the nodding of several heads.

  ‘I’d like to ask,’ Attercliffe got to his feet, ‘why, since our children, later in life, will be competing for jobs and university places with children from schools where homework is an established part of the curriculum, the school is so complacent about the setting of homework.’

  The Headmaster got up as Miss Harrington sat down.

  ‘I thought we’d answered that question,’ he said. ‘Our view is that the setting of homework, outside the individual teacher’s discretion, is discriminatory.’

  ‘Can’t the school set a room aside for children who have difficulty doing the work at home?’ he asked.

  ‘That too is discriminatory.’ The Headmaster held his pipe in his hand, smiled, and waved it in the direction of the adjoining wall. ‘If, for instance, we do as Mr Attercliffe suggests, what will be the attitude of some of our children to those who are stigmatised by disadvantageous home conditions, and are obliged to do their work in there? What will be the attitude of the children themselves when they, staying behind, watch their more fortunate colleagues leaving for homes where this privilege is accepted as a matter of course?’

  ‘That’s up to the school,’ Attercliffe said, ‘to enlighten its pupils to the significance of these arrangements, in the way that, bearing in mind the divergencies of culture present here, and the need for mutual recognition, Miss Harrington has already outlined.’

  ‘It’s our school’s ambition to be a happy and not a divided school.’ Turning to the room, the Headmaster added, ‘I recall an incident that happened only the other day when I went to the school toilets to observe the degree of illicit smoking and to issue the appropriate reprimand. Three boys were talking behind a partition. “Everyone,” I overheard one of them say, “in Walton Middle School Mixed may not be clever, but everybody’s happy.’”

  A burst of applause, starting at the back and moving to the front of the audience, continued for several seconds.

  The Headmaster and Attercliffe sat down.

  ‘Homework,’ from a seated position Miss Harrington drew her skirt across her knee, ‘is the one element that most parents are concerned about, because it’s the part of their children’s education that they can see for themselves. On the other hand, apart from egalitarian considerations, which are fundamental to the argument, I’d like to make it plain that the school does not consider the setting of homework as an essential ingredient of the education we provide.’

  ‘My children never learn anything,’ came the moaning voice again.

  ‘Neither do mine.’ A man stood up; he was short and stocky, with greying – almost whitish – close-cropped hair: his ears were large and red, and so, at the present, was his nose – more than red, Attercliffe reflected – crimson. ‘They never learn anything because they can never hear the teacher. And they can never hear the teacher because all the other kids are mucking about. They set off each morning keen to learn, and come home in the evening,’ he went on, ‘totally disillusioned. And not only disillusioned,’ he continued, ‘but apathetic. Like all the kids round here.’

  ‘Our children are not apathetic.’ Mr Mainwaring glanced at Miss Harrington to decide which of them should answer.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ came a voice at the back, followed by a burst of applause.

  ‘I’m afraid, as Mr Mainwaring says, to generalise from one example, and that probably an exception, is always a mistake,’ Miss Harrington said.

  ‘Why can’t they keep discipline?’ the man inquired.

  ‘They do keep discipline,’ Miss Harrington said. She crossed her legs: one booted toecap swayed above the other.

  ‘I came up here the other day and walked past the classroom.’ The man gestured to the wall of the library adjacent to the school. ‘I couldn’t hear myself speak. All I could hear was someone shouting, “Silence!” and that wasn’t the loudest noise going on. And not only in one classroom,’ he went on, ‘but several.’

  ‘Anyone who has any experience of teaching,’ Miss Harrington said, ‘and hasn’t heard the circumstances you’ve described from time to time, must be a very unusual person. We like,’ she drew down her skirt, ‘to keep a liberal atmosphere inside the building, one in which the children do not get to feel that education is being inflicted upon them, and one in which, too, they feel their own contribution plays a vital and a welcome part.’

  ‘If half of what I hear goes on,’ the man continued, ‘went on when I was at school, those responsible would get a lathering. We learnt in those days. There was no screaming out in front of a class. If anyone misbehaved they knew where they stood, and if anyone was responsible for stopping the rest of the children working he was, within minutes, standing outside the door of the Headmaster’s office.’

  Mr Mainwaring puffed out a cloud of smoke, smiled, removed his pipe from his mouth, and announced, ‘I don’t believe in corporal punishment. It belongs to the past. We have other methods of dealing with recalcitrant children.’

  ‘Like letting them off,’ the man replied. ‘Why, half the kids in this school are delinquent. They get the biggest beatings of their lives if they misbehave at home, whereas here they’re allowed to muck up our children’s lives and we’re supposed to sit in here and do nothing about it.’

  A distant car could be heard outside and, from a closer distance, the sound of a baby crying.

  ‘We’re supposed to listen to all this guff while our children are dragged down to a level which my parents never even knew about, and they, I might tell you, were illiterate. My father started down a coalmine at the age of eleven and my mother in a mill at twelve. But they had more dignity and self-respect, and more discipline, than all these yobs who are not only messing up their own lives but messing up our children’s. It’s a crime. It’s not what I, for one, fought for in the Second World War, nor what my brother died for in Burma, nor what other relatives of mine died for at Dunkirk. They didn’t sacrifice their liv
es for us to give up our civilisation, our values and traditions, particularly the tradition of self-discipline and service, for a bunch of blacks and Asiatics. If they want to foul up their own education let them go back to where they came from. Why should we ruin one good thing, and one good country, because we haven’t the courage of our own forefathers, who gave their lives to make this a better land?’

  Still a baby cried, perhaps from a corridor outside and, after a moment, a woman tiptoed out.

  Feet paced up and down: the crying stopped.

  ‘I’m sure the questioner is entitled to his opinion.’ The Headmaster tapped out his pipe on the heel of his shoe.

  ‘I am entitled. You,’ the man continued, ‘did no fighting in the war. I did. I’ve earned my opinion. I’ve fought for my values, and I’m not going to see you, and people like you, at no expense to themselves, foul them up.’

  The redness spread from his ears to his temples; it deepened to purple: it infused his cheeks.

  ‘You have, after all,’ the Headmaster said, ‘a choice of schools.’

  ‘You mean a native of this country, who has fought for it, and whose relatives have given their lives for it, has to take his children away if he wants them to have a decent education, while all the blacks and orientals who owe nothing to this country and see it only as something to exploit can stay and foul up the place as much and as often as they like? If these cretins here think that’s what their children want it’s not something I go along with. In ten years’ time they’ll look at their children, find them out of work, because their qualifications are indistinguishable from the coloureds and the blacks they were taught with, and begin to wonder whatever happened. I’m not staying around to see it. I’m taking my children away from Walton Middle School Mixed right now. I only came this evening to see what sort of excuses you’d come up with and everything I’ve heard in here, from parents who don’t know how to complain, to teachers who’ve given in to being amateur sociologists – a cop-out, to me, if ever there was one – has only confirmed what I’ve already suspected from the bits I’ve seen walking round this school and the even bigger bits of what I’ve seen of what my children haven’t been and, let’s face it, in this place, can’t be taught.’