The studio at Rosemount was a converted barn a little way away from the house. It was used for dances and had a radio-gramophone, which was played all the time during art lessons. It was blaring away, and Mervyn and Wanda were doing a Samba among the easels when Daniel came in for his first class. “Shut off that ruddy noise!” he shouted. He was learning fast how to talk to his pupils.
“Let’s make it a dancing lesson instead,” Wanda pleaded, jigging up to him and raising her left hand to his shoulder.
He brushed her off. “You’ve come here to draw, and draw you damn well will. Now get on those chairs, everybody, and pick the easels up and let’s see what we’re going to do.”
Gabriel always let them draw what they wanted. He insisted on it, in fact. They must paint to express themselves.
“It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t look like anything,” he said.
“Draw the inside of your brain.”
So they splashed on blocks of mad colour and explosions of zigzag lines, and women with two heads, and men like playing cards with eyes in the wrong place. You could paint on the walls if you wanted to, or draw caricatures of the Helpers. That was Observation.
Pamela always wanted to draw neat little pictures of cape gooseberries, or kingcups in a green glazed vase, with the reflection of the window highlighted in squares on the bulge. But/when she drew flowers that looked like flowers, Gabriel ran “his hand through what there was of his hair and said: “What do you think this is—a botany class?”
“I’ve been told I can let you draw what I like,” Daniel said.
“What we like,” they corrected him, lolling. John Birch was sharpening pencils with a Japanese dagger with which he was making great play this term, even eating his meals with it and using it on onions in the cookery class.
“We’ll start with the human form not so divine,” Daniel said. “One of you sit out here. You—girl with the red hair— come on.” He put Eileen on a chair in the middle of the room and arranged her arms and legs, which she rearranged as soon as his back was turned.
“Now you others get on and draw her. Draw, I said,” as Mervyn began to flourish a brush. “No colour until I see how you can use your pencils.”
While they began, with sighings and groans, he went to look out of the window where the grassland dropped downhill to the village among oak trees stunted by wind and pulled at odd angles by the slope. Pamela liked the view, but Gabriel would never let them paint it. He said it was bucolic, and made them look out of the other window and paint the slag-heaps instead.
Perhaps Daniel would let her paint the rolling green view. He seemed to like it, and dragged himself away reluctantly to walk round the room and quell the scufflings that were breaking out as people got bored with drawing Eileen.
“Good God,” he said, as he looked at the drawings. “What is all this—spirit drawing? None of them are anything like.” He picked up Mamie’s drawing, tried it’upside down, turned it round again and said: “Ghastly.”
“Well, it’s how I see her,” said Mamie, who fancied her art, and was going to design materials for her mother’s shop.
“If that’s how she looks, God help her,” said Daniel, and Eileen stuck her tongue out at him.
“We’re always allowed to draw how we like,” said Mamie smugly. “You mustn’t repress us.”
“It’s just a waste of my time,” he said, flinching at what he picked up from Mervyn’s easel. “You could scribble that nonsense in the playroom.”
“Ah, but we haven’t got a playroom, and it isn’t nonsense. It’s the expression of our inner selves, Daniel.”
“If that’s the expression of yours,” he said, tossing the paper back to Mervyn, “I don’t want to know it—and don’t call me Daniel. I’ve never been a schoolmaster before, but my impression is that I should be called Mr. Brett, or even Sir.”
“Oh no, not here, Daniel,” they chorused.
When Daniel came to Pamela’s sketch, which had a head, two arms, two legs, buttons down the dress, and was just possibly recognisable as Eileen, he said: “Ah now, this is better. Here’s something sane at last.”
“Oh, her,” Mamie said scornfully. “She doesn’t count. She’s not been here very long. She hasn’t progressed as far as us.”
“Anyway,” said Babette, “she’s wet.”
“I’m not!” Pamela picked up a ruler and fell on her. She had progressed far enough anyway to fight in class. Most of the others joined in, and Daniel wandered over to the gramophone and began to look through the records.
“Oh, look,” he said, “if you’re going to scrap, you might as well go and do it somewhere else. What time is this class supposed to end?”
“We go when we like,” they said.
“Well, you can go when I like today. Scram.” ’ When the others went out, Pamela was left behind snivelling in a corner. Someone had hacked her on her weak ankle and it still hurt too much to walk, so Daniel said: “Sit down and finish your drawing. It’s not bad, you know. Those others— ye gods! How old are those dead-end kids?”
“About fourteen or fifteen, this class. Babette’s sixteen, but she’s backward.”
“Hardly the word I’d have used.”
“They say I’m retarded,” Pamela told him, limping over to her easel, “because I still like playing games. But I can’t see the point of being grown up too soon, can you? After all, you’ve got to be it all the rest of your life.”
“Too true.”
Pamela was surprised to find she could say such things to him. The other Helpers would have told her to get wise to herself, or given her a little lecture on infantilism.
Daniel played the gramophone and wandered round looking at the pictures on the walls, while Pamela put shadings into her drawing of Eileen. She was quite pleased with it. At the High School, when her cape gooseberries were successful, she used to take them home for Aunt Winnie to hang in her bedroom, but Estelle would not want Eileen on the candy-striped walls of her bedroom, which had just one picture that Pamela thought must be the wrong way up.
Presently Daniel said: “Don’t you want to go?”
“Not particularly. It’s not Sociology till after lunch, and there’s nothing to do. We’re supposed to fill in our own time between classes. I wish we had them all the time. I get so bored. When we do have classes or lectures, you can’t hear, even if it was worth hearing, because the others make such a row, or get the Helper sidetracked into some discussion about sex or something.”
“Not in my classes they won’t,” Daniel said. “I’m going to bring a new régime to this reformatory.”
“Oh do, Daniel. I’m sorry, would you like me to call you Mr. Brett?”
Feeling much happier, she went away to strum on the piano in Peter’s room, until he told her for God’s sake if she didn’t know anything else but the Jolly Farmer to go and drown herself. She banged down the piano lid and went into the garden, where some of the younger ones were having secrets under the weeping birch and would not let her in. She didn’t mind. She felt happy. She believed she was going to have a crush on the new Helper.
She was, and it made all the difference to her. Life now had some purpose. Having crushes on people kept you very busy, for you had to scoot about all day trying to see them as often as possible. Her life revolved round Daniel’s. In the morning she dressed quickly and hung about outside his room until she heard him drop his shoes on to the floor—one, two—which meant he was going to put them on. When he came out, she would be casually sauntering by and they would walk to breakfast together. If he had been late getting up, Pamela was in a fever, in case there might not be two seats left next to each other. If she could sit by Daniel and pass him things, it was a propitious day and she knew that she would see him often, and he would talk to her and perhaps ask her to run an errand, having learned already that it was a waste of breath to ask any of the others.
She dogged his movements all day, not following him about, but always managing to turn
up at strategic places; and when he walked down to the village through the park Pamela would sit on the terrace wall and watch him appear and disappear among the trees. It was worth waiting about for a glimpse of him coming back, although she would get down from the wall before he could see her, for she was terrified of annoying him. If he was cross with her, she was suicidal. If he was nice, she burst out of her skin with happiness. She did not know how to contain herself, and people asked her why she was going about with that silly grin on, and had she been to Peter’s drink cupboard?
Every word that Daniel said to her was printed on her brain, to be gone over and over in bed at night. Sudden sights of him made her breath catch and her heart hammer, and his day off was as flat and forlorn as the third act of the Chekhov play they were rehearsing. It was a real, slap-up crush all right. Just as good as the one she had had on Miss Parkins.
The summer term footled itself away, and Peter bought a set of ribbons and bells and instituted morris dancing on the lawn. He tried to make Daniel teach it, and quarrelled with him when he refused. Selina, who was in Peter’s room mending his socks, heard it all and reported to the others some of the things Daniel had said about the school.
“You could be sued for saying things like that,” Brian said. “I admire the man’s mastery of language though, if he really put all those words you said into one sentence.”
“He’s shockingly reactionary,” Mamie said. “I can’t think why he came here.”
“That’s what Peter said,” Selina told her, “and Daniel said he was a snooper from the education authorities and had come here to bust this place wide open.”
“Haw, haw,” went the boys, but Eileen, who lacked thyroid and always took things literally, said: “I say though, suppose he were? He’d spoil everything.”
“Of course he’s not,” Pamela said. “I think it’s mean of you to suspect him.” They looked at her slyly, and Bobby whistled “Love Is The Sweetest Thing”.
We all know what you think, O foolish virgin,” Brian said. “Thank God you’re growing up at last.” She did not know what he meant. Getting up, she parted the curtains of the weeping birch and left them, for it was time to go and offer to help Mrs. Harvey with the vegetables, so that she could be in the kitchen when Daniel came in for his coffee.
In July there were fewer and fewer lectures, because everyone had to help with the haymaking. Even Peter, who had recently discovered Outdoors, toiled in the heat in a yellow shirt and orange linen trousers, his peeling nose reddening like a slowly boiling lobster, his spectacles perpetually misting up with sweat. John Birch was working on an invention to fit them with little windscreen wipers, although Peter, who was a man of brief enthusiasms, would have given up working in the sun long before it was finished.
Pamela, whose new cotton dresses were still in her trunk, wore an old shrunken gingham, and got Selina to cut her hair very short with Kathryn’s cutting-out shears. She worked as near as she could to Daniel, standing with him on top of the stack, raking the next row to his, or riding on top of the cart when he was leading away, so that she could watch him from above. He wore khaki shorts and a white shirt and his skin was browner than anyone else’s and his hair blue-black in the sun. She thought he looked very romantic.
When the rain came they retired to the house again and got on each other’s nerves. It soaked down for three days and no one would go to the studio because it meant a dash through the wet. Peter revised the curriculum to keep them quiet with more lectures, because he was trying to finish his novel, which was called I and Not /, and took place entirely in the mind of a schizophrenic postman.
Kathryn gave some talks on ballet, which she called bal-lée, and Humphrey intoned in his usual half-hearted way about modern music, illustrated by a gramophone which he always forgot to wind until it ran down with a groan. Alice, who had once done two years’ medical training, gave some snappy little talks on the reproductive system, which Pamela could not understand, and Daniel organised a Brains Trust, which would have been quite fun if only people would stick to the point and keep off insults. Daniel was question master, which meant sitting at the middle of the table smoking and saying:
“Shut up, boy,” or: “One at a time, girl.”
“Why don’t you call us by our names?” someone asked. “You’re damn rude.”
“Can’t be bothered to learn ‘em,” he said. “I shan’t be here much longer, thank the Lord. Now shut up and let’s get on with the next question. ‘Why does a woman-’er—no, I think we’ll skip that one. Which of you scum sent that in? O.K. I know the writing. I’ll deal with you later. Here’s a better one: ‘If you were a Russian and came to England-’”
Pamela was sitting in a daze of shock. She had never thought about Daniel not being here any more. It had been bad enough before; it would be impossible without him. He was the sun and moon and the only thing that made the days go round at all.
“Pam.” He was speaking to her. “Pam, wake up and answer this question. What’s the matter with you?”
“You upset her,” Mervyn said calmly from across the table where he had been watching her, “with your talk of going. Can’t you see? How blind men are… .” He hummed an airy tune and studied his fingernails. Daniel appeared not to have heard him.
When the lunch bell rang he went out, and the others clattered their chairs back or onto the floor. Someone blocked Pamela’s way before she could get to the door.
She was surrounded by sniggers. “Pam’s got a Thing about Daniel!” they chanted. “Ain’t love grand?”
“I’m not surprised,” Babette said. “He’s got something. I might take an interest myself if I wasn’t elsewhere involved.” She put her arm through Brian’s.
“Good old Pam,” Mervyn said. “Sex rearing its ugly head at last. You look out, kid. He’s the kind who likes ‘em young.”
“Has he kissed you yet? Oh bliss, girls!” cried Wanda and pretended to fall into a swoon.
Pamela did not go to lunch. When she got away from the others, she ran through the rain to Lady Torrin’s summer-house and wept. It was all spoiled. No one understood. Her glad, exalted crush was turned to Rosemount smut. Babette and her Brian—as if it was anything like that!
Or was it? Was it true what Mervyn had said, and her feeling for Daniel no more than the manifestations of adolescence about which she had heard so much? She hated herself. Her body was growing a shape and she didn’t want that. She wanted to stay a skimpy child always, never to have to grow up Sid get married. Everything was spoiled, and the romance of the summer-house was spoiled, too. Pamela had vaguely imagined that what Lady Torrin felt as she waited for her captain was the same innocent delight that Pamela felt when she waited to catch Daniel coming round the corner of the house to the studio. But if love was only what those others made of it, then Lady Torrin’s romance was only the sniggering she sometimes heard behind the cubicle curtains in the dormitory. There was only one pure affection, and that was hers for Daniel. She knew what it was, but no one else did, and they had wrecked, defiled and stamped on it.
She went out of the summer-house. Pushing through the polished rhododendron leaves, she nearly died of fright, as a voice said in her ear: “Whither dost thou wander, my pretty?” It was Peter, lurking like a wolf in Red Riding Hood.
“Oh—oh, hullo,” Pam said shakily and ducked under a branch to go on, but he caught her arm and held it behind her so that she had to turn round to untwist it.
“I was just going to the wigwam for five minutes’ peace,” he said. “Come, you shall share it with me.” He drew her towards the summer-house, but Pam hung back.
“No—if you don’t mind,” she said. “I want to go back to the house.”
“But I do mind. I want to recite poetry, and it’s no fun doing it to oneself.” As she still pulled away, he put his hand on her other bare arm, not holding it, but stroking the skin, and now he was not holding the other any more but stroking that, too, while Pamela stood petrified as a rabb
it before his intent look.
“Why,” he said in a funny purring voice she had not heard him use before. “My little schoolgirl’s getting quite grown up. Your flesh has the soft exciting promise of a woman’s. Come here, my dear…. ” He bent his head and she smelled his breath and the first cold touch of his glasses galvanised her into a wild shriek as she pushed him into the bushes and fled, with his chuckle following her through the clattering wet leaves.
Her instinct was to destroy. She wanted to beat his brains out against a wall, as she had seen Brian kill a rabbit. Without thinking, she ran through the french windows into his room, swept all the papers off his desk, pulled out the drawers and scattered what was in them, like a naughty child revenging itself in its mother’s bedroom. She found the manuscript of his book and stood stock still, with the package in her sans, calmed to deliberation.
Just what she wanted. I and Not I, his precious novel that was to shake the world. Gleefully Pamela threw it into the grate and set light to one corner, striking match after match to make the thick pages burn. When it was only a ©harred mess with little shreds flying off it round the room she dusted off her hands and pranced out, feeling as if she had taken a dose.
Pamela Ruelle was in trouble. It was epoch-making. Just like a real school. There was no proper punishment, however; that was against the system. She was just completely set aside. She had been odd man out before; now she was a pariah.
No one spoke to her, except Daniel, who said that he personally thought it was a good thing she had burned the book, for Peter would never have the guts to write it again, and there would be that much less paper wasted, and the world would be spared that much tripe.
Flowers on the Grass Page 23