‘But we must look at the bigger picture, surely?’
‘Go to the cinema,’ she says, ‘if you’re after the big picture.’ There is a nervous ripple of laughter. Jasper’s pallid face colours.
‘I was just saying … there are implications.’
‘We’re here to be effective teachers, to be of use. You won’t find much interest among your pupils in discussing the how and whys of their illiteracy. We’re not here to nurse their grievances, we’re here to do a job of work. They want to be able to read and write. End of story.’
There’s always one, Ruth thinks, a show-off, a waffler.
Mr Polgar entered them for the Junior Duets at the Feis – girls, singing pairs, under-twelves. He sprang this on them after several months of classes together. ‘The Ash Grove’ was the set song. He had the sheet music ready and after their warm-up scales he handed them a copy each. Normally he would give them a new piece at the end of the class and tell them to throw their eye over it for next week. A curious turn of phrase for a blind man. So this was a departure. He played through the piece twice, humming along in his grating voice. Ruth watched Bridget. She seemed fidgety; distracted, somehow.
‘Got it?’
The girls nodded in unison. An old habit. Anyway, there were some silences Mr Polgar could read.
‘Ruth, why don’t you start, you can sight-read. Bridget, you’ll pick it up, as we go along. Key of G.’
Ruth launched forth. By yonder green valley where streamlets me-an-der … She muddled through it to the end.
‘Good, now let’s try it together. You take the tune this time, Bridget; Ruth, you try the seconds line.’
Bridget held the tune, of course. But after the first couple of words she resorted to singing la-las.
‘Lovely,’ Mr Polgar said. ‘This time, Bridget, let’s have the words as well.’
Ruth, standing beside Bridget, noticed her hand first. It was trembling. She was holding the sheet in front of her with one hand, while with the finger of the other hand she was tracing the shapes of the letters as if they were in Braille, as if by running her fingers over them they would come to life.
‘Them’s hard words, aren’t they?’ she said quietly.
‘A bit arcane, I’ll grant you,’ Mr Polgar said. ‘And by the way, note how it is to be sung, Bridget. What does it say above the clef?’
Bridget was a clenched ball of concentration.
‘What does it say?’ Mr Polgar repeated.
Bridget shook her head sadly.
She can’t read, Ruth realised. It’s not that she can’t read music. She can’t read. Ruth felt a weak swell of triumph. She glanced over at Bridget and caught her eye. There was panic there, a terrible naked fear, a pleading for help. Cover for me, the look said; help, the look said.
‘Girls?’ Mr Polgar asked.
Silence.
Ruth and Bridget were locked in that glance, fear meeting refusal. Neither could break it.
‘Girls?’ Mr Polgar repeated in that lost voice of his as if he weren’t sure if they were still there.
Neither of them moved.
‘Bridget?’
If he had said Ruth’s name, she might have relented. She might have volunteered the words that could have saved Bridget. Four little words. But no, it was Bridget, it would always be Bridget first. So it was really Mr Polgar who had decided.
‘I seem to remember asking a question, Bridget,’ Mr Polgar said in that sarcastic tone he used when he was uncomfortable. ‘Or is nobody bothering with the blind old teacher?’
He tinkered idly at the keys, playing the opening phrase of the melody.
‘What on earth’s the matter, Bridget? What’s the problem here?’
Bridget snuffled noisily, but that was nothing unusual. She seemed to suffer from a permanently running nose.
‘Ruth, we seem to have lost Miss Byrnes for the present. Why don’t you try it?’
Ruth sang as she never had before, strong and clear, the words perfectly enunciated. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see Bridget standing there, vanquished. When she opened them again, Bridget had disappeared. She had fled, closing the door silently behind her. Mr Polgar didn’t even realise she was gone.
‘Lovely,’ Mr Polgar purred at the end. ‘Maybe we’ll give you the melody line this time. And why don’t you inform Miss Byrnes how this piece should be sung?’
‘Gracefully,’ Ruth read to the empty room, ‘not too fast.’
Ruth pads between the aisles passing out pieces of paper. On each sheet is the musical notation of ‘Three Blind Mice’.
‘To understand the plight of those who cannot read, we must first of all know what it feels like,’ she says, putting on her reading glasses. ‘Now, Miss Furlong, isn’t it?’
‘Marianne,’ the Swiss barometer girl says pleasantly.
‘Well, Marianne, you’ll notice some musical notation on the sheet in front of you. I’d like you to sing the piece of music. It’s quite a well-known tune, you probably sang it on your mother’s knee, so you shouldn’t have any difficulty.’
Marianne paws the paper timidly. There is an uneasy silence in the class coupled with relief that it is she who has been put on the spot.
‘I don’t read music, actually,’ Marianne says smoothly with a self-deprecating look. ‘You’ll have to ask someone else.’
‘But I’m asking you, Marianne.’
‘I told you, I don’t read music.’
‘Come on, Marianne, you must make an attempt.’
‘But how can I?’
‘Everybody’s waiting, Miss Furlong.’ Ruth takes off her glasses slowly and sets them down deliberately on the table in front of her.
‘You mustn’t badger me like this. I told you I can’t read music. Ask someone else.’
‘But I want you to do it.’
‘But I can’t …’ Marianne begins, her voice rising to a wail.
‘Exactly, Miss Furlong, my point exactly. Now, how does that feel?’
Bridget did not return. Mr Polgar was baffled.
‘I thought I was giving her an opportunity here. She has a real talent. I wanted her to make use of that, to better herself.’
He had taken to confiding in Ruth. He would reach for her hand, looking for consolation, reassurance. He was like a man scorned in love. Even Mimi was getting short shrift, pushed impatiently off his lap and sulking now in her basket. Mr Polgar rubbed Ruth’s fingers thoughtfully. He seemed to need her to make sense of it.
‘Have you any idea?’
Ruth shrugged, then remembered that Mr Polgar couldn’t see shrugs.
‘Maybe her parents couldn’t afford it?’
‘It wasn’t a case of money,’ he said sharply. ‘It was never a matter of money.’
The mother of two asks a question. Her name is Jean Fleming.
‘What should we use for materials? I’ve got primers at home from my own kids but that’d be insulting, wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t like to be faced with those Dick can run books at my age. Didn’t much care for them even when I was four.’
Ruth smiles. She likes this woman; she gets it.
‘All that business about Mummy in the kitchen making endless sandwiches. And all Daddy seemed to do was wash the car.’
A titter runs through the classroom.
‘I’m glad you raised that,’ Ruth says. ‘Every pupil is different and often you’ll have to adapt to their needs, which can be quite specific. It means making up your materials as you go along. Word games, picture cards and the like. You can use the labels on household goods, cereal packets, cans. Everyday stuff.’
‘How do they manage?’ Jean muses, as if she’s thinking aloud, as if she and Ruth are friends chatting over a cup of coffee, trading confidences. Her forehead creases quizzically. ‘How do they get by? They must be terrified, afraid all the time of being discovered. Always covering up, covering their tracks. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who couldn’t read. But then, how would I know?’
‘I remember the first person I met who couldn’t read.’ Ruth discovers herself talking, taking up Jean’s reflective tone. Stop, stop. ‘I remember her name, even, Bridget, Bridget Byrnes …’
Ruth falters, remembering the advice she always gives her trainee tutors. People don’t want to hear how much you love reading, what prompted you to get involved, my first illiterate and all that. This is about them, not you.
‘Now where were we?’
It was a sin of omission, a lesser offence. If she had told Mr Polgar that Bridget couldn’t read, what difference would it have made? She had protected Bridget from exposure by saying nothing. She wondered idly how Bridget had managed to hide it for so long. Someone at home must have been able to read. She must have memorised the words between classes. Sooner or later, though, Bridget would have been unmasked. Better that Mr Polgar thought her ungrateful than for him to know her secret. The shame of that! This way Bridget’s secret was quite safe, stowed away in Ruth’s hard, competitive little heart.
All it bought her, in the end, was time. Another year of solo lessons unencumbered by Bridget’s better voice, more instinctive feel for the music, her bloody perfect pitch. She remembered the day she arrived for what was to be her last class. She had just turned twelve and Mrs Polgar steered her into the front parlour instead of guiding her upstairs, which was unusual. Mr Polgar came down presently. He had Mimi in his arms.
‘Why don’t we sit here for a while, Ruth?’ he said.
She got to sit – finally – on one of the big armchairs. He perched on the edge of the other one, fondling Mimi’s ears.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. The expression on his face was candidly sorrowful, but his glassy eyes seemed blankly evasive. ‘About your lessons. And your voice.’
‘My voice?’
Mimi leapt off his lap and scampered away, pushing the door open with her nose. Ruth could hear her nails clicking on the tiled hallway outside.
‘Well, you see, often at your age the voice changes, modulates because of …’
Because of breasts and periods was what he wanted to say, she suspected, but couldn’t.
‘And sometimes it’s best not to train the voice during puberty, to let it develop in its own way. Then in a couple of years, if you’re still interested we can work with what will be a fine, mature voice, I hope.’
The room was dark, shadowy. It was winter, the clocks had just been put back. The lights should be turned on, she thought, but the mood was gloomily in tune with Mr Polgar’s mortifying verdict. Somehow, she thought, somehow he has found out.
‘But it’s been fun, hasn’t it?’ He said this with a false brightness, the brightness he used to jolly things along.
He was absolutely wrong about that, she thought vehemently. The singing classes had been a lot of things for Ruth Denieffe. But fun, never.
* * *
The piano lessons petered out too, though she managed to get as far as Grade 5 before, three years later, she simply gave up. It wasn’t that she lost interest; it was Mrs Bradley who changed. Towards the end, Mrs Bradley – stout, whiskered, irritable – seemed content to let her play on, faults and all. Once she would have stood over Ruth; drumming time on the lid of the upright, stopping Ruth so often that in an hour-long lesson she would never get through a piece from beginning to end. But latterly she had taken to sitting by the window looking out dreamily over the roofs of the city. She seemed sunk in a kind of trance so that Ruth would have to cough loudly when she had finished to attract her attention. Ruth could read the signs, indifference as a prelude to rejection.
Meanwhile all around them music flourished – the brash din of the college orchestra, the smooth and fluid bow of some bright young violinist, the urgent arpeggios of a soprano yearning towards cadence.
‘Well,’ Ruth says, gathering together her papers. ‘I hope I haven’t put you off completely.’ She’s taking bets with herself that Miss Furlong and Mrs Longworth will not be back next week. It’s better this way, to weed out the faint-hearted at the start before they can do any harm.
The students heave themselves out of their miniature traps, and file out. The drinker at the back is the last to leave. Perry is his name. Robert Anthony Perry. The furnishing of a full name gives him away, its titular pretension, its striving self-importance. Anthony is probably his Confirmation name. He pauses at the desk smiling in a gamey way; an old reflex, Ruth imagines, drawing on some ancient source of shabby charm. After-class approaches like this are usually a form of special pleading, a false frankness. Between you and me, the hanger-on is saying, I’m different, not part of the common herd. I’m worthy of your individual attention.
‘So what does it mean, then?’ He gestures towards the motto on the blackboard.
Ruth has forgotten about it; usually she asks the class to guess at the end, to lighten things up a bit, but something has distracted her with this group.
‘Oh that,’ she says distractedly, hoping to put Mr Perry off. Jean Fleming saves her. She bounces back into the classroom having left her gloves behind.
‘Oh, by the way, I meant to ask,’ Jean says on her way out. ‘Are you the same Miss Denieffe who used to teach at St Ignatius’s? My niece went there and spoke so highly of you.’
Jean Fleming is lying. With merciless adolescent judgement, Marie used to call Miss Denieffe a total bitch. Jean’s sister Molly, hushing her daughter, would concede that Miss Denieffe had a reputation for standing no nonsense; she could face down a class of unruly boys with the set of her shoulders and the fix of her stare.
‘You should see her, Jean,’ she used to say, ‘she’s tiny, five foot nothing, mop-top ginger hair like Shirley Temple, or one of those other child stars.’
She was a great loss to the school when she went, Molly said. Played the piano for all the school operettas and would gladly do Beatles numbers and ragtime during the intervals at concerts and open days though she wasn’t even the music teacher. No one was surprised, though, when she moved into Adult Ed; she was always a bit of a crusader, Molly said.
‘Yes,’ Ruth says, ‘that’s me.’
‘Still tickling the ivories, then?’ Jean asks brightly.
Ruth is suddenly furious. Furious about the years of practice, the tantalising promise of perfection, all that cruel vocational energy expended. For what? For this – tickling the ivories. Mr Perry is still standing there. He shuffles his feet conspicuously.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Jean says, ‘I interrupted you.’
‘No,’ he says, switching his gelid attention to Jean, ‘I was just asking Miss Denieffe about this.’ He points again at the blackboard.
‘Yes, what does that mean? I was wondering too, but to tell you the truth, I was a bit afraid to ask.’ Jean laughs nervously.
Ruth pushes past both of them. She hits the light switch as she reaches the door, plunging them both into darkness.
DIASPORA
Mo Dark is coming out of the Gents toilet in the terminal when he sees her. He’s left Keith looking after his trolley. Can’t be too careful these days. Security would nab it in a nanosecond and blow it up. He’s tucking his shirt into the drawstring waist of his shorts when she walks across his field of vision. Is it her? Or has he been smoking too much? The terminal is almost deserted. Through the huge plate-glass windows there’s a golden spear of light on the horizon that will become sunrise. Torpedoes of maroon clouds cruise the blanched sky like a Sunday painter’s vision of the Day of Judgement. Pathetic fallacy, he thinks.
She’s wearing a floral sundress and some silky kind of jacket the colour of mushrooms that breezes behind her as she hurries along. That was always her mode. Quick impatience. She looks prosperous; yes, that’s the word. Large pouchy handbag slung over her shoulder, and one of those wheelie bin cases on a stick. Her hair seems to be a different colour. It’s long now, copper tinted and rippling behind her like an ad for shampoo. The last time he saw her she’d had it short, a close shave growing out. (She was
going for the Sinead O’Connor look.) But despite her best efforts – the shaggy jumpers, the bolt in her ear – Trish could never have been anything other than pretty. Rinsed grey eyes, those pert delectable breasts. They’re still in evidence, he notices. A memory of her comes to him, in her school uniform. Navy blue tunic, designed to shroud sexuality, the regulation shirt and skewed tie, dishevelled white knee socks. Those socks really did it. Phew! Did the nuns not realise how girls of a certain age just – sprouted – out of that prison gear? The memory of Trish, rather than her presence 20 feet away, arouses him. Jesus! Stirring of the loins. Early morning job. Down, boy, down. Pathetic phallus, more like.
God, she’s going to miss her flight. She can’t believe it. Well, no, she can. Trish has missed dozens of flights. All that security business! She clings to a time before terror when you could just rock up with an hour to spare before a European flight and step aboard. The world may have changed, but Trish, in this one mulish aberration from her usual efficiency, baulks at the new demands. Cosmetic miniatures banished to see-through baggies, the pulling-off of coats, the shedding of shoes. Ridiculous! She’s lost count of the number of tweezers she’s forfeited, the bargain-sized shampoo containers she’s been forced to abandon. It’s a futile kind of defiance but she constantly runs the gauntlet, the last adrenalin rush left to the modern-day traveller. She halts under the board with its fluttering eyelids of information. Rome. Go to gate, it flashes furiously.
Hi there, he practises. Hi there. Trying to sound casual. He reaches for films – of all the gin joints in all the world … no, maybe not. Should he say Hola? Trouble is, he’s out of practice. Not used to talking to people. In any language. He talks to Keith and Manny but that’s not the same. Real people, he means. Anyway, talking to Trish Elworthy, with the distance of years yawning between them, would be immediately freighted with the need to explain. Explain this.
She was his first love, his childhood sweetheart. The vocabulary of the distant past sounds archaic to his ears. Childhood. Sweetheart. This is the foreign language for him now. And then there’s how he looks. Living like he does changes how you look, or how you appear to other people. Like being disfigured or emaciated by illness. Would she even recognise him? Would he want her to recognise him? Would he want her to peer at him and say questioningly, Mo? Mo Dark?
Prosperity Drive Page 5