by Cathy Kelly
She was back in her childhood bed with nothing to show for it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mrs Devlin’s art classes were different from any other lesson in the school, agreed all the girls in the sixth year. For a start, Mrs Devlin herself was not exactly your average teacher, although she was older than many of the others. Even her clothes bypassed normal teacher gear, whether she wore one of her long honey suede skirts and boots with a low-slung belt around her hips, or dressed down in Gap jeans and a man’s shirt tied in a knot around the waist. Compared to Mrs Hipson, headmistress and lover of greige twinsets and pearlised lipstick, Mrs Devlin was at the cutting edge of bohemian chic.
Most of all, the girls agreed, it was her attitude that made her different. The other teachers seemed united in their plan to improve the students whether they wanted to be improved or not. But Mrs Devlin, without ever exactly saying so, seemed to believe that people improved themselves at their own rate.
So on May the 1st, with just weeks to go to the state exams and with the whole teaching body in a state of panic, Mrs Devlin’s assignment to her sixth-year class was to ‘forget about the exams for a moment and paint your vision of Maia, the ancient pagan goddess who gave her name to May and who was a goddess of both spring and fertility’.
‘As today’s the first of May, it’s the perfect day for it.’
She stopped short of pointing out that the exam results probably wouldn’t matter in a millennium. Not the way to win friends and influence people in a school. ‘You’ve all been working so hard with your history of art,’ Christie added as she perched on the corner of the desk at the top of the class. She rarely sat down at the desk during art practicals, preferring to walk around and talk to her students: a murmured bit of praise here, a smile there. ‘I thought it might be nice to spend one hour of the day enjoying yourselves, reminding yourselves that art is about creativity and forgetting about studying.’
The class, who’d come from double English where they were re-butchering The Catcher in the Rye for exam revision, nodded wearily.
The most art they got to do these days involved colouring in their exam revision timetables with highlighter pens – generally a lot more fun than the revision itself.
‘Maia is the oldest and most beautiful of the seven stars called the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades,’ Christie continued. ‘The Pleiades are part of the constellation of Taurus, which is ruled over by Venus, for those of you interested in astrology. Maia is around five times larger than our sun.’
It was such a sunny morning that flecks of dust could be seen floating on shafts of light filtering in from the second-floor windows. St Ursula’s was an old building, with decrepit sash windows and huge sills perfect for sitting on between classes and blowing forbidden cigarette smoke out into the netball court below.
‘In art, spring is represented, as you know, by the sense of sensuality and passion,’ Christie went on. ‘Can anyone remember any artists who painted spring in such a way?’
‘Botticelli,’ said Amber Reid.
Christie nodded and wondered again what Amber had been getting up to on Wednesday. The way she’d been dressed and the joy in her step made Christie damn sure that Amber had been on her way to some illicit activity.
‘Yes, Amber, Botticelli is a good example. Remember, girls, artists didn’t have television to give them ideas, or films. They looked at their world for inspiration and got it from nature. Keep that in mind during the exam, they were influenced by their times. By war, poverty, nature, religion. As we discussed in art history last week, religion is important as an influence on artists. Remember the puritanical Dutch schools with their hidden messages.
‘Today’s the pagan festival of Beltane, which is why May is called Bealtaine in Irish, and it’s a celebration of spring, warmer days, blossoming nature and blossoming of people too. Of course, the Church wasn’t too keen on pagan festivals, but they’re part of our history too, so it’s interesting to know about them. You paint, I’m here if you need me.’
The class were silent as they considered painting a fertility goddess. At St Ursula’s in general, sexuality was given a wide berth by the teaching staff. Even in sex education classes, the concept of passion was diluted, with scientific words like ‘zygote’ giving students the impression that it was a miracle the human race had gone on for so long considering how boring procreation sounded.
‘Is it true that Titian only painted women he’d gone to bed with?’ asked Amber suddenly, her eyes glittering.
Christie had a sudden flash of knowledge: a picture of Amber and a dark, moodily dangerous young man came into her mind, entwined on a childhood bed doing grown-up things. Christie knew exactly what Amber had been up to the day before. She blazed with burgeoning sexuality. To embody Maia, Amber just needed to paint a self-portrait.
Christie felt a rush of pity for poor old Faye who probably hadn’t a clue that her teenage daughter had just taken one of the giant steps into womanhood. Having sons was definitely easier than daughters, she thought gladly. Sons were rarely left holding the baby.
‘So I believe,’ said Christie carefully. ‘Paint, Amber,’ she whispered, ‘don’t talk.’
‘I swear Mrs Devlin’d bring in nude life models if she was let,’ groaned Niamh to Amber. Niamh was struggling with art in general and was sorry she hadn’t done home economics instead. How was she going to embody a fertility goddess? Couldn’t they please do a still life instead – a couple of bananas or a nice simple apple?
‘I wish she did bring in nude models,’ said Amber, glaring at Niamh. ‘It’s impossible to learn to draw people properly with their clothes on.’ At least in art college, she’d be able to study line drawing properly with nude models…
But she wasn’t going, was she? She was going to New York with Karl, before the exams, and she had to tell her mother all this, and soon.
‘It’s not as if you haven’t seen a man with no clothes on, Niamh,’ added the girl on the other side of Amber with a wicked grin. ‘You’ve been going out with Jonnie for a year now, don’t tell me he’s kept his boxers on all this time.’
It was Niamh’s turn to grin. ‘He’s worth drawing, all right. And he’s got a bigger you-know-what than all those Michelangelo statues!’
The back of the class dissolved into filthy giggles, but were sure Christie, who was walking sedately around the art room, couldn’t have heard the remark.
Silvery-white hair was a fabulous disguise, Christie thought as she managed not to smile. Schoolgirls appeared to think that white-haired equalled deaf, which meant she overheard all manner of things she mightn’t have heard otherwise. These girls probably would have been stunned to think that their esteemed art teacher had made the same jokes once, a lifetime ago, when she was as young and when men’s heads turned to look at her.
Young people always imagined that sex and passion had been invented by them. Christie fingered the gold and jasper scarab necklace that James had once bought for her in a market in Cairo, and smiled.
When you were over the age of sixty, if you hinted at a moment of wildness in your youth, people smiled benignly and imagined you meant a reckless time when you’d sat in a public bar and drank a pint of Guinness when such a thing was frowned upon. But she’d known plenty of passion. Still did. Being a stalwart of the local church didn’t mean she was dead from the neck down, no matter what the youngsters thought.
That holiday in Cairo had been before the children were born, when she and James had been able to take advantage of a cheap week-long trip. They’d sighed with pleasure over the treasures of the Egyptian Museum by day, and lay in each other’s arms in their shabby hotel by night with the overhead fan not quite doing its job.
Despite that, they’d made love every night, caught up in the sensuality of Cairo with its iconic sights, and the heady perfume of the spice markets.
The heat was an incredible aphrodisiac, James said, on the last night of their holiday, as he lay back against the pillows,
sated, and watched his wife standing naked in the moonlight in front of the hotel-room mirror.
‘Just as well we don’t live here all the time, then,’ Christie teased, admiring the necklace that lay between her full, high breasts. ‘I love this,’ she said, holding it tenderly. ‘Thank you.’
‘You do understand that I’ll want to rip your clothes off every time you wear it?’ he asked.
‘Even in the supermarket?’
‘We’d probably have to wait till we got to the car park,’ he amended. ‘Wouldn’t want to bruise the avocados.’
‘How about we introduce a one-hour rule? Once you notice the necklace, we have one hour to get to bed.’
James grinned lazily. ‘Sounds good to me.’
No, she thought now, watching her class concentrating on their drawing boards: young people thought that old age was at best fifteen to twenty years older than they were, and reckoned your life was over once you hit forty. They’d learn one day.
Christie had no teaching in the period before lunch, so she headed for the staff room to mark the art history revision test the fifth years had handed in earlier. St Ursula’s staff room was in the original, 1940s part of the school, surrounded by small classrooms with creaky wooden doors, crumbling parquet floors and thick walls that you couldn’t hammer a nail into. The staff room itself was the biggest room in this section of the building and, in the fifteen years she’d worked in the school, Christie had decided it had a routine about it, an ebb and flow rather like a sea.
There was the calm of half past eight in the morning, when Christie sat at the long veneered table with its decoration of mug rings and drank green tea while she mentally prepared for the rest of the day.
By 8.45, the staff room would have filled up, the teachers all business, fuelling up on murderous coffee from the large catering tin.
By late afternoon, the tide had swept steadily out and no amount of coffee could raise the energy of the staff as the clock ticked on towards four and freedom.
Once, when an Italian teacher – Gianni, a man who looked as if he’d love to whip you off to bed and teach you how to roll your ‘R’s properly – had arrived to teach languages, there had been talk of buying a proper coffee-making machine.
‘This ees muck, this coffee,’ Gianni would say when he caught the rest of the teachers listlessly spooning brown dust into their mugs. ‘If we had a proper machine, then you would have coffee worth dreenking.’
A coffee machine collection had been started, not to mention a few diets, but then Gianni had decided that he missed the Italian climate too much, and had gone home to Florence.
Christie, who’d been immune to Gianni’s Paco Rabanne-scented charms and wasn’t as heartbroken as the rest of them by his abrupt departure, suggested they buy a small television with the coffee machine fund.
‘Not to watch junky soap operas on,’ insisted Mr Sweetman, who taught English.
‘What’s wrong with soap operas?’ demanded Mademoiselle Lennox, French.
‘You’re both so busy, you probably won’t get to watch much but the lunchtime news,’ Christie remarked gently and there was much muttering in agreement.
The news, yes, that’s what they’d watch. Keeping in touch with current affairs was vital, Mr Sweetman agreed.
The television was now a much valued part of the room, with the channel screening Who Wants to Be a Millionaire repeats being the favourite. Mr Sweetman was currently top of the league having got to the quarter of a million question four times, with Mrs Jones, physics and applied maths, in second place.
Today, the TV was off, though, and only Christie and Liz, who taught home economics and biology, were there. Christie pulled the uninviting pile of essays towards her.
She’d only had two classes that morning, but she felt tired because she’d slept so badly, waking three times in the clammy grip of a cold sweat after nightmares, one particularly horrible one involving a sea of giant black spiders which burned people they touched. She often had vivid dreams – the downside of her gift of intuition. But giant spiders? Very strange.
Eventually, she had stopped trying to sleep and did her best to lie quietly, eyes closed, amusing herself by imagining how useful the inside of her head might be to a roomful of psychiatrists.
Some people left their bodies to medical science – she might leave her brain because there was definitely something weird going on in there.
‘Are you all right, love?’ James had murmured drowsily at half five when Christie had given up on the psychiatrists, slipped out of bed and pulled on her jeans and a T-shirt.
‘Fine, I’m fine. You go back to sleep, pet,’ she’d replied, gently pulling the pale-blue sheet over his shoulders.
James’s nightmares had to do with losing his job or not having money to buy food for his family. Christie had long ago decided that he could do without hearing about her horror movie versions. Now her eyes felt gritty with tiredness and the nagging sensation of doom was still there.
‘Christie, how are you?’ A voice interrupted her thoughts.
Liz, the other teacher, plonked herself and her ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here but it helps’ mug down beside Christie and the untouched pile of essays.
‘Busy?’ she said, obviously hoping the answer would be no.
Liz was in her early thirties, attractive with dark curly hair, and had been a big hit with the pupils since she’d arrived at the school the previous September. She’d replaced eccentric Mrs Cuniffe who’d been at St Ursula’s for over twenty years and refused to be in the same room as a microwave because of a story she’d heard about a man cooking his liver by accident. Eventually, this had made her position as home economics teacher untenable and Liz had arrived to take her place.
‘I’m not really busy,’ fibbed Christie. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ Liz began and stopped herself. ‘Awful. Sorry.’ Her eyes brimmed. ‘I only wanted to say hello, not burst into tears.’
Christie reached into the tapestry bag that served as her briefcase, rifled a bit and came up with a pack of tissues.
It transpired that Liz was in love with a man who loved her back but felt it was all moving too fast, and perhaps they should see other people.
‘He said he needs time,’ wept Liz helplessly. ‘We’ve been going out for a year. He’s never mentioned this before, why does he need time? I don’t know what to do, Christie. I love him. My sister says I should send him packing but she’s never liked him. She thinks I’d be better off without him. He says we’re still going to my brother’s wedding as a couple, so it can’t really be over, can it? What should I do?’
The hardest questions were often simplest, Christie thought. Stay and hope, or walk away to start again?
‘I can’t tell you what you should do, Liz,’ she said gently. ‘Only you know that.’
‘But I don’t.’
‘Close your eyes and tell me what does it feel like in there?’ Christie gestured at the place on Liz’s chest where her heart resided.
Liz obediently closed her eyes and instantly her face lost some of its tension. Her shoulders slackened.
‘I think it’s over. He’s being nice by saying he’ll go to my brother’s wedding with me and he thought it was all fun between us until I mentioned that I wanted a baby.’ She snapped her eyelids open and stared at Christie in misery.
‘Then it’s over,’ Christie said gently. She hadn’t seen the future for Liz, she’d merely let Liz reach out and think the unthinkable herself.
‘You’re right. I was kidding myself, wasn’t I? I think I always knew he wasn’t in it for the long term,’ Liz said sadly. ‘I kidded myself because I wanted it so much. Looking back, I can see it all now and I should have done everything differently.’
‘Looking backwards is a terrible thing,’ Christie added, smiling. ‘With the benefit of hindsight, there are lots of things we should have done and didn’t, and vice versa. But we learn from them and do better next time.’
>
‘You’re being kind,’ Liz whispered, getting up. ‘I bet you’ve never been as stupid as me. You think before you act, Christie. I blunder along and convince myself that everything’s fine when it’s not. I only wish I could stop myself doing that. I wouldn’t be in bits now if I did.’ She bent to give Christie a small hug. ‘You’re very good for listening to me. I know why everyone says you’re wise. You really are.’
The room was filling up again as lunchtime arrived. Liz took her cup and her folder and left Christie sitting at the table, frozen in thought.
For all the noise going on, all the chat about the third form’s behaviour that morning and the traffic being a nightmare, Christie might as well have been sitting in a room all on her own. She heard nothing, except Liz’s words. You think before you act, Christie.
Because there had been a few times when she’d acted before thinking, and one time in particular that haunted her. One stupid, awful thing she’d done and regretted ever since.
She thought she had put it out of her mind, filed in the memories best left forgotten box, and had tried to forgive herself ever since. And recently she had been thinking of it again and again and it was as red and raw as if it had all happened yesterday. How was it that she hadn’t been wise then, when Ana had been involved with Carey Wolensky and the world had been a different place? And why did the memories of that time keep sneaking into her mind, so many years later? She simply didn’t know.
Shane phoned her that afternoon as she walked home.
‘Mum, I’ve something to tell you,’ he said, after the how-are-yous.
Even in late-afternoon sun as she stopped on the footpath on Summer Street, Christie felt the shadow of fear over her again.
‘Yes,’ she said, dry-mouthed, thinking of all the terrible things that could happen to her beloved son.
‘Janet’s pregnant. We didn’t want to tell anyone until she was three months gone and then, the other day, we thought she was having a miscarriage but she didn’t and it’s all fine.’ Pride and joy sounded in every one of Shane’s words.