You gave a light laugh. ‘Very fine freckles they are, too.’
I was still holding my nose.
‘And your lovely red hair,’ added Tom, with an apologetic look in my direction. ‘I’d remember that.’
As we left the place, you helped me with my coat and murmured, ‘Your hair is very arresting, my dear.’
It’s difficult, now, to remember exactly how I felt about you on that day, after all that’s happened since. But I think I liked you then. You talked so enthusiastically about your ideas for the museum – you wanted it to be an open place, democratic was the word you used, where everyone would be welcome. You were planning a series of lunchtime concerts to bring in new people, and you were absolutely set on getting the schoolchildren into the gallery, doing their own work. You even suggested I could help you with this, as though I had the power to change how the education system worked. You almost made me believe that I could do such a thing. I was sure, back then, that you didn’t fully appreciate the noise and mess a group of children could make. Still, Tom and I listened, enthralled. If the other men in the café stared at you, or craned their necks at the fulsome note your voice often struck, you merely smiled and carried on, confident that no one could take offence at Patrick Hazlewood, whose manners were impeccable and who himself took no individual at face value. That’s what Tom had told me, early on: He doesn’t make assumptions just because of how you look. You were too gracious for that.
I liked you well enough. And Tom liked you, too. I could tell he liked you because he listened. I suspect that’s how it always was between the two of you. Tom was full of concentration as you spoke. He was immensely focused, as if afraid to miss a key phrase or gesture. I could see him swallowing it all down in great gulps.
When we left you that lunchtime, we stood in the doorway of the museum and Tom slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Isn’t it funny?’ he said. ‘You started all this, Marion.’
‘All what?’
He looked suddenly shy. ‘You’ll laugh.’
‘I won’t.’
He pushed his hands in his pockets. ‘Well – this sort of self-improvement. You know. I’ve always enjoyed our chats – about art and books and all that – with you being a teacher, and now Patrick’s helping me too.’
‘Helping you?’
‘To improve my mind.’
After that, for a few months we became quite the threesome. I’m not sure how often you saw Tom alone – I suspect once or twice a week, depending on what his police duties allowed. And what Tom said about self-improvement was true. You never laughed at our ignorance, and you always encouraged our curiosity. With you we went to the Dome to hear Elgar’s cello concerto, we saw French films at the Gaiety Cinema (which, generally, I hated: so many beautiful, miserable people with nothing to say to one another), Chicken Soup with Barley at the Theatre Royal, and you even introduced us to American poetry – you liked e. e. cummings, but neither Tom nor I went that far.
One evening in January you took the pair of us to London to see Carmen, because you were keen to introduce us to opera, and you thought this story of lust, betrayal and murder a good place to start. I remember Tom was in the suit he’d worn to his sister’s wedding, and I wore a pair of white gloves I’d bought especially, thinking these were obligatory for the opera. They didn’t quite fit and I kept having to flex my fingers, as they felt constricted by the rayon. My palms were sweating, even though it was a frosty night. On the train, you had your usual conversation with Tom about money. You always insisted on paying the bill, wherever we went, and Tom always protested noisily, getting to his feet, rummaging in his pockets for change; occasionally you would let him pay his way, but it was with a droop of your mouth and an impatient wipe of your brow. ‘It’s common sense that I should get this, Tom, really …’
Now Tom insisted that he was in full-time employment, albeit still in his probationary period, and he should at least pay for himself and for me. I knew it was useless to get involved in this conversation, so I fiddled with my gloves and watched Haywards Heath slip past the window. At first you shrugged him off with a laugh, a teasing comment (‘You can owe it to me, how’s that? We’ll put it on the tab’), but Tom wouldn’t leave it alone; he pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket and began counting out the notes. ‘How much, Patrick?’
You told him to put it away, not to be absurd, but still he waved the money in your face and said, ‘Grant me this. Just once.’
Eventually you raised your voice. ‘Look, they cost almost seven pounds each. Now will you put that ridiculous thing away and be quiet?’
Tom had already told me, proudly, that he earned about ten pounds a week, and so I knew, of course, that he would have no answer to this.
We sat in silence for the rest of the journey. Tom shifted in his seat, gripping his roll of notes in his lap. You looked out at the passing fields, your eyes at first sharp with anger, then strained with remorse. As we pulled in to Victoria, you glanced at Tom every time he twitched, but he refused to catch your eye.
We pushed through the crowd clicking busily along the station, you following Tom, twisting your umbrella in your hands, licking your bottom lip as if about to venture an apology, but then thinking the better of it. As we descended the steps into the tube station, you touched my shoulder and said in a low voice, ‘I’ve gone and blown it, haven’t I?’
I looked at you. Your mouth was pulled downwards and your eyes were sharp with fear, and I stiffened. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I commanded. And I walked on, reaching for Tom’s arm.
London was noise and smoke and grime to me, that first time. Only later did I appreciate the beauty of it: the plane trees peeling in the sunshine, the rush of air on the tube platform, the crash of cups and the smack of steel on steel in the coffee bars, the hidden-ness of the British Museum, with its fig-leaved David.
I remember looking at my own reflection in the shop windows as we walked, and feeling ashamed that I was taller than you, especially in my heels. Next to you I looked gangly, overstretched, altogether too much, whereas next to Tom I looked almost a normal height; I could pass as someone who was statuesque, rather than slightly mannish.
Watching the opera, my mind slid about, unable to concentrate fully on the stage, distracted as I was by Tom’s body in the chair next to mine. You’d insisted that I sit between the two of you (‘A rose between two thorns,’ you’d said). Occasionally I sneaked a look in your direction, but you didn’t once take your eyes off the stage. I’d thought I would dislike the opera – it seemed so hysterical, like a pantomime with strange music, but when Carmen sang L’amour est un oiseau rebelle que nul ne peut apprivoiser, my whole body seemed to lift upwards, and then, in that final, awful, wonderful scene, Tom reached for my hand. The orchestra raged and Carmen swooned and died, and Tom’s fingers were on mine in the darkness. Then it was all over and you were up on your feet, Patrick, clapping and bravo-ing and hopping on the spot with excitement, and Tom and I joined you, ecstatic in our appreciation.
I’VE BEEN THINKING about the first time I heard the phrase unnatural practices. Believe it or not, it was in the staff room at St Luke’s, on the lips of Mr R.A. Coppard MA (Oxon) – Richard to me, Dickie to his friends. He was sipping coffee from a brown flowered cup, and, taking off his spectacles and folding one hand over them, he leaned towards Mrs Brenda Whitelady, Class 12, and frowned. ‘Was it?’ I heard her say, and he nodded. ‘Unnatural practices, the Argus said. Page seven. Poor old Henry.’ Mrs Whitelady blinked and sucked in her breath excitedly. ‘His poor wife. Poor Hilda.’
They went back to their exercise books, filling the margins with vigorous red ticks and crosses, and didn’t say a word to me. This wasn’t a surprise, as I was sitting in the corner of the room, and my position seemed to render me utterly invisible. By this time I’d been at the school several months, but still didn’t have my own chair in the staff room. Tom said it was the same at the station: a selection of chairs appeared to have the names of their �
��owners’ stitched somewhere in invisible thread – that must have been why no one else ever sat on them. There were a few chairs over by the door, with threadbare cushions or uneven legs, which were anybody’s; that is to say, the newest staff members sat there. I wondered if you had to wait until another member of staff retired or died before getting the chance to stake a claim to a ‘usual’ chair. Mrs Whitelady even had her own cushion, embroidered with purple orchids, on hers, so confident was she that no one else’s backside would ever touch her seat.
I’ve been thinking about it because I had the dream again last night, as vivid as it was forty years ago. Tom and I were beneath a table; this time it was my desk in the classroom at St Luke’s, but it was the same in all other respects: Tom’s weight on me, holding me down; the huge ham of his thigh on mine; his shoulder bowed and stretched across me like the bottom of a boat; and I’m part of him at last. There’s no room for air between us.
And I’m coming to realise, writing this, that perhaps what worried me all along was what was inside me. My own unnatural practices. What would Mr Coppard and Mrs Whitelady have said if they knew how I felt about Tom? What would they have said if they knew I wanted to take him in my mouth and taste as much of him as I possibly could? Such desires, it seemed to me back then, must be unnatural in a young woman. Hadn’t Sylvie warned me that she didn’t feel much beyond fear when Roy touched her between her legs? My own parents were often stuck together in a long kiss in the scullery, but even my mother would slap my father’s hand away when it went somewhere it shouldn’t. ‘Don’t bother me now, Bill,’ she’d say, shifting away from him on the sofa. ‘Not now, love.’
In contrast, I wanted everything, and I wanted it now.
February 1958. All day at school I kept as close to the boiler as possible. In the playground I barked at the children to keep moving. Most of them did not have proper coats and their knees were bright with cold.
At home, Mum and Dad had begun to talk about Tom. I’d told them, you see, about our visit to the museum, the trip to London, and all our other outings, but I hadn’t mentioned that Tom and I were not alone. ‘Don’t you go dancing together?’ asked Mum. ‘Hasn’t he taken you to the Regent yet?’
But Tom hated dancing, he’d told me that early on, and I’d convinced myself that what we did was special, because it was different. We weren’t like other couples. We were getting to know one another. Having proper conversations. And, having just turned twenty-one, I felt a bit old for all that teenage stuff, jukeboxes and jive.
One Friday evening, not wanting to go home and face the silent query that hung over the house about Tom’s intentions towards me, I stayed late in the classroom, drawing up sheets for the children to fill in. Our project at the time was Kings and Queens of England, which I was beginning to think quite a dull topic, and I wished I’d done sheets on Sputnik or the Atom Bomb or something the children could at least get a little excited about. But I was young then, worried about what the headmaster would think, so Kings and Queens it was. Many of the children were still struggling to read the simplest of words, whilst others, like Caroline Mears, were already grasping the rudiments of punctuation. The questions were straightforward, with plenty of space for them to write out or draw their answers however fulsomely they wished: How many wives did Henry VIII have? Can you draw a picture of the Tower of London? and so on.
The boiler had gone off and even my corner of the classroom was cold, so I wrapped my scarf about my neck and shoulders and put on my bobble hat in an effort to keep warm. I always liked the classroom at this time of day, when all the children and the other teachers had gone home, and I’d straightened the desks, cleaned the blackboard and plumped the cushions in the reading corner, ready for a new morning. There was such stillness and silence, apart from the scratching of my pen, and the whole place seemed to soften as the light outside disappeared. I had that lovely feeling of being brisk and organised, a teacher in control of her lessons, fully prepared for the work that lay ahead. It was during these moments, sitting alone at my desk, surrounded by dust and quiet, that I would convince myself that the children liked me. Perhaps, I thought, some of them even loved me. After all, hadn’t they been well-behaved that day? And didn’t every day now end with a triumphant story time, when I read aloud from The Water-Babies and the children sat around me, cross-legged on the rug? Some, of course (Alice Rumbold was one), fidgeted, plaiting each other’s hair or picking at the warts on their fingers (Gregory Sillcock comes to mind), but others were clearly gripped by my narrative, their mouths open, their eyes wide. Caroline Mears would position herself at my feet and look up at me as if I held the keys to a kingdom she longed to enter.
‘Isn’t it time you went home?’
I jumped. Julia Harcourt was standing in the doorway, looking at her watch. ‘You’ll get locked in if you’re not careful. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t relish a night with a blackboard.’
‘I’m going in a moment. Just finishing off a few things.’
I was ready for her response: Isn’t it Friday night? Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the pictures with your boyfriend?
But instead she nodded and said, ‘Freezing, isn’t it?’
I remembered the bobble hat and my hand flew to my head.
‘You’ve got the right idea,’ Julia continued. ‘It’s like a larder in this place during the winter. I sometimes sneak a hot-water bottle under the cushion of my chair.’
She grinned. I put my pen down. She obviously wasn’t going to leave without a chat.
Julia was in the privileged position of having her own chair in the staff room; she was pleasant to everyone, but I’d noticed that, like me, she tended to eat her lunch alone, her eyes rarely leaving her book as she took careful bites from her apple. It wasn’t that she was shy; she looked the male teachers – even Mr Coppard – in the eye when she spoke, and she was also responsible for organising school field trips to the downs. She was famous for walking the children for miles without stopping, and for convincing them that this was the most enormous fun, whatever the weather.
I started to collect my worksheets into a pile. ‘I hadn’t realised the time,’ I said. ‘I’d better be going.’
‘Where is it you live?’ she asked, as if I’d mentioned it before now.
‘Not so far.’
She smiled and stepped into the room. She was wearing a woollen cape, bright green, and she carried an expensive-looking briefcase made of soft leather, and I thought how much better it was than a basket. ‘Shall we face the weather together?’
‘So how are you getting on?’ Julia asked as we walked briskly down Queen’s Park Road. ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d survive that first day. You looked absolutely petrified.’
‘I was,’ I said. ‘I thought I might be sick on your shoes.’
She stopped walking and looked me in the face without smiling. I thought she might be about to bid me good night and head off in the other direction, but instead she moved closer and said, gravely, ‘That would have been a disaster. Those are my best teaching shoes. I’ve attached metal taps to the heels to warn the children I’m coming. I call them my hooves.’
For a moment I wasn’t sure how to respond. But then Julia threw her head back and gave a loud roar, showing her straight teeth, and I knew it was all right to laugh.
‘Do they work?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘The hooves.’
‘You can count on it. By the time I’ve reached the classroom, they’re silent as the dead. I can ride roughshod over them and they don’t make a squeak.’
‘I could do with a pair of those.’
‘Giving you gyp, are they?’
‘Not really.’ I paused. ‘Alice Rumbold is a little …’
‘Shit?’
Julia’s eyes were bright and narrow. She was daring me to laugh again. So I did.
‘You definitely need the hooves with Alice,’ she concluded.
When we reached the corner
of my street, Julia squeezed my arm and said, ‘Let’s do this again.’
As spring approached, I began to feel more impatient. Tom had kissed my cheek and held my hand, and every week we saw each other at least once, usually in your presence. But this was no longer enough. As my mother was given to reminding me, it was not yet too late for me. Not yet.
I’m not sure exactly when the terrible moment used to fall, the moment at which a woman was judged to have been left on the shelf. Every time I thought of it, I thought of an old clock, ticking away the days. Many of the girls I’d known at school were already married. I knew I had a few years still to go, but if I wasn’t careful, the other teachers would look at me in the same way they looked at Julia, a woman alone; a woman who has to work for her own living, reads too many books, and is seen out shopping on a Saturday with a trolley instead of a pram or a child in tow, wearing trousers and obviously in no hurry to get home. In no hurry to get anywhere, in fact.
I know it seems incredible now, and I’m sure I must have heard rumours of the existence of that fantastic beast, the career woman, at the time (it was almost 1960, for God’s sake), but I’m also sure that I dismissed them, and that the last thing I wanted was to be one of those women. So there was a panic rising in me as I stood in front of the class and told them the story of Persephone in the underworld. I got them to draw pictures of Demeter bringing the spring back with her daughter, and I looked out at the bare trees in the playground, their branches like veins, black against the grey sky, and I thought: enough of this waiting.
And then the change happened.
It was a Saturday night, and Tom was coming to the house to pick me up. This was the first change. Usually we met at the pictures or the theatre, but on this Saturday he’d said he would come to the house. I hadn’t told Mum and Dad about this, because I knew what would happen if I did: Mum would spend the whole day cleaning the place, making sandwiches, deciding which of her best frocks to put on and asking me questions, and Dad would spend the whole day silently preparing his questions for Tom.
My Policeman Page 7