He has lost interest already, I see. This isn’t what I’ve been summoned for. He paces about a bit and surveys the area of his empire he can see from his window. With his back to me, he says, ‘I’m sorry to hear that you’re not willing to serve our community, Gina.’
And suddenly I know what this is about. Bloody Marcus Bright. ‘Community service?’ I say. ‘Don’t I have to commit a crime before I get that? I haven’t even had an ASBO yet.’
‘Always ready with the clever answers, aren’t you?’ he says and comes across to loom over me. ‘Local people need to feel that this college is at the heart of this community. They need to see us supporting local projects with our expertise. What better link could we make than with the town’s oldest educational establishment?’
‘By which you mean Marlbury Abbey School, I assume, and I also assume that Marcus Bright has come to you complaining that I’ve refused to go and teach his sixth formers.’
‘Bright, yes, that’s the chap. Head of sixth form. Said he’d seen my article in The Herald. So I want to know why you’ve turned him down.’
‘Well, I’ll give you the same reason I gave him: because I don’t regard Marlbury Abbey School as part of the community. It’s not there to educate Marlbury children. The boys there come from all over the country – all over the world, in fact – air freighted in for the English public school experience. And the local parents who send their sons there do so precisely to remove them from the local community – to save them from contamination – no rubbing shoulders with Marlbury’s grubby homegrown kids.’
He explodes. ‘Well that’s simply ridiculous. I’ve never heard such nonsense. That’s just socialist tosh.’
‘I’d be happy to give my services to any of the local state schools,’ I say. ‘Marlbury High, William Roper. I taught at William Roper for years. If they asked for me, I’d be quite willing to help out.’
‘Yes, well they haven’t asked for you,’ he snarls, throwing himself into the chair behind his desk, ‘but Marlbury Abbey have.’
‘And I’ve turned them down. Apart from anything else, I wasn’t sure my contract would allow me to be paid to work elsewhere on a working day.’
‘They wouldn’t pay you,’ he says, shuffling papers in search of something. ‘The college would bear the cost. You’d be seconded by us.’
‘And I’d be relieved of some of my teaching here? It’d be difficult to find anyone to cover for me.’
He finds what he’s looking for. ‘I’ve been looking at your teaching timetable. On the light side, I would say. I don’t think we need to relieve you of any teaching.’
‘So when you say, “The college would bear the cost”, you mean I’d do it for free?’
‘Wednesday mornings,’ he says, ‘that’s when these sessions would happen, and I see you’re free most of the morning.
‘Staff meeting,’ I protest. ‘That’s when we have our weekly staff meeting.’
‘Well, that’s easily rearranged.’
‘No! It’s not.’ I am shouting, I realise, and I think of Janet sitting next door. More quietly, I say, ‘All my staff are timetabled with a free hour on Wednesday morning. There’s no other time when we’re all free.’
‘I doubt anyone’s teaching at six o’clock,’ he smirks.
I get up. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘but I won’t do it.’ I start to move towards the door; he bangs the desk; I think again of Janet.
‘Come back here,’ he roars. ‘We’re not finished.’ In the interests of his blood pressure, I return to my seat. ‘I want this done, Gina. The Herald always makes a spread of those boys setting off for Nepal. This year, I want our name linked to that. And I won’t have any of my staff telling me they won’t do what I’ve asked them to do. Take a look at your contract,’ he says, leaning forward with all his sharky teeth on display. ‘I think you’ll find it says that you will “undertake such duties as the college authorities shall require.” I am requiring you to do this and you’re not in a position to say no.’
Unwisely, I laugh. ‘But you can’t require me to work somewhere else!’ I hoot. ‘Next thing we know, you’ll be sending staff out to be lollipop ladies or pick up litter in the park.’
‘OK.’ He sits back in his seat. ‘If that’s your last word, I shall have to ask a member of your department to take on the work.’
And now he’s got me. Why didn’t I see that coming? I have been outmanoeuvred and he’s laughing now. Because of course I can’t let him do that. They won’t be able to stand up to him and I can’t let any one of them get forced into taking this on just because I once spent a chilly, gropey May Morning in a punt with Marcus sodding Bright. Never gracious in defeat, I get up and head for the door.
‘I can’t allow you to victimise my staff,’ I say over my shoulder as I go, ‘so obviously, I’ll do it.’
‘Will you speak to Mr Bright or shall I?’
‘Oh I will,’ I call, as I swing through the door. ‘You can count on it.’
I see Janet flinch as I let it slam behind me.
My last task of the day is to drive over to Surrey to collect my mother from the convalescent home where she has spent the past week. Ellie and Freda appear at the college gates at four o’clock and we set off. I’ve calmed down since lunch time. I rang Marcus Bright as soon as I got back to my office after seeing the principal. I intended to be cold and cutting but he was so bloody smug I ended up screaming at him. ‘Underhand,’ I shouted, ‘cowardly and dishonest.’ He changed tack and got all apologetic, but it was too late. It was ‘against natural justice,’ I yelled, that I should be forced to teach at his absurdly over-privileged school for nothing, and if he had any decency he would see that the school made a substantial donation to The William Roper School PTA funds. He agreed instantly but he is an untrustworthy creep and I shall believe it when I see the colour of his money. Anyway, I felt better when I came off the phone and went about my afternoon session in the language lab quite cheerfully.
Now, in the car, I have a bit of a conversation with Freda about her day (she mainly tells me about lunch) and then I ask Ellie, ‘How about you? How was it being back?’
‘Fine, really,’ she says. ‘I had a good rehearsal at lunch time and the kids seemed pleased to see me back. Someone in the office had crossed out Marina’s name in the register and that gave me a bit of a wobble, but I was all right.’
So, we’re all right, it seems, and I sit back and close my eyes in preparation for my mother. The traffic isn’t bad and we make good time, so we end up eating our packed supper in the car park at the convalescent home (They eat early there, so my mother will already have had her meal). Our picnic is not as elegant as the one I provided yesterday – ham rolls, crisps, cartons of juice – but it does also include the remainder of the grapes, plums and fruit cake.
Replete, we go up to the front door of the once stately home and my mother is produced. She is looking a great deal better than she did in hospital and she is escorted not only by the matron but by a couple of nurses and a young man who carries her bags. She performs introductions as though she were hosting a cocktail party and they all address her as Dr Sidwell and tell me how wonderful she is. One of the nurses runs ahead with her camera and we pose at the front door with our medical entourage for all the world as though she were royalty. I am panicked at the thought of the problems she may have with re-entry to the all-too-real world of home chez nous.
Then Matron turns to me with the hint of a tear in her eye and says, ‘She has been so delighted that you were all coming to collect her – daughter, granddaughter and greatgranddaughter. It’s lovely to see you all. We have so many lonely patients here.’
So here we are, a model family, and there I was thinking we were a shambles. Well, maybe what you see is a kind of truth. We are all here, after all, and Ellie and I have laboured to turn the dining room into a welcoming bedroom, lugging Annie’s bed and dressing table downstairs just last night and adding flowers, books, and pictures by Fr
eda. What is also true is that Freda and my mother are holding hands and Freda is hopping up and down with delight. So, for once, I just smile and don’t tell Matron that she doesn’t know the half of it.
My mother sits in the front on the way home and I sit in the back with Freda. We are all quite quiet, except for Freda, who feels we are in need of entertainment so keeps up a running commentary on what she can see in the rapidly deepening dusk: ‘Car, car, nuvver car, lorry, bikishel, car, car’ and so on.
When we get home, we put the old and the young to bed, Ellie tussling with Freda and I devoting myself to my mother, though she is even more resistant to help than Freda is. Eventually, Ellie and I sit down at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and Annie rings. She says she just wanted to say that the undies are lovely, and she tells me everything’s great – brilliant – but her voice wobbles a bit and she sounds a long way away, so I take the risk of saying, ‘It all gets better, you know’ as we say our goodbyes and she doesn’t bite my head off.
And so to bed.
18
WEDNESDAY 13th OCTOBER
And the rain it raineth every day
Life speeds up in the next couple of weeks, what with my mother, the sessions at Marlbury Abbey, two Chinese students running off to London, the measuring up of the Twelfth Night cast for their costumes and further dealings with the delightful Mr Driver. Ellie is dogged by directorial difficulties: in the space of a few days, Sir Andrew Aguecheek leaves school and gets a job in Curry’s; The Count Orsino is made captain of the football team and the Lady Olivia misses so many after school rehearsals that one day Ellie leaves the cast under the care of Ben Biaggi, drives down to Olivia’s home on the scary Eastgate estate and hauls her away from the television. ‘Her mother’s daughter after all,’ my mother comments gnomically.
Meantime, in contrast, DCI Scott and his investigation seem to have gone into hibernation. I can glean no news of any progress: there is nothing in the local paper; Ellie hears nothing at school and though Eve and I achieve a rapprochement of sorts, she has no gossip she’s willing to pass on either. I don’t know whether David heeded my advice to turn his attention to Driver and Cunningham, but they’re still down there at the theatre, charming as ever.
And David himself, you ask? Where is he? Your guess is as good as mine. Whatever he thought of our jaunt to Cumnor, he hasn’t been moved to suggest a replay. He has been out of radio contact – and every other kind. I sent him a text, thanking him for the outing, and got a brief, polite reply. Since then, nothing. Like a teenager, I started to convince myself that he’d lost his phone, and hence my number. But he knows where I live, doesn’t he? So that doesn’t work. I have to conclude that he just doesn’t like me, hard though that is to believe.
In other ways, however, life is surprisingly satisfactory. Eve seems to have forgiven me. We went out for a drink, had a big hug, said nothing about our falling-out and now seem to be all right, though I do have the feeling that I’ve been shown the yellow card. (Have I got that right? I really shouldn’t use metaphors I don’t understand). I also still have the feeling that there’s something odd about Colin’s behaviour that afternoon when Marina was killed, but I shall not open my lips so wide as a bristle may enter on that subject.
My mother has settled in well and is remarkably uncritical of my domestic arrangements. It’s not surprising, I suppose: she was never keen on domesticity herself and is unmoved by dust along the picture rails, lime scale round the taps, cat fur on the carpets and general stickiness engendered by Freda. She doesn’t even seem to mind that the contents of kitchen storage jars don’t always coincide with their labels. Her only beef is with the garden, which is, admittedly, rampantly overgrown. I’ve never been a gardener and I have relied, over the years, on a series of weather-beaten men on bikes who turned up at random intervals and hacked, lopped, tugged and mowed the garden’s most egregious excesses. Since the last one departed without warning, the forces of nature have had it all their own way. I do understand my mother’s frustration at not being steady enough on her pins to go out and give the place a good seeing-to. As it is, the highlight of her day is supervising Freda’s bed-time and they are developing an ever-extending routine involving stories, rhymes and games I didn’t realise she knew. Were they part of my childhood and have I suppressed them in my conviction that I was a martyr to my mother’s job? I don’t know.
The only fly in my ointment – and it is a very large bluebottle – is my first session at Marlbury Abbey School. This is, in so many ways, worse even than I expected. It takes place some ten days after my being routed by the principal and it gets off to a bad start with the porter at the lodge gate.
The school backs onto the abbey and is hidden from the vulgar eyes by hefty stone walls. Above these, the abbey is visible, calm and grey; its ruined end, where Henry VIII knocked it about a bit, offers great stone window embrasures, open to the sky. Embedded in the thick wall is a large, studded oak door and inside that a small pedestrian entrance. I lean my bike against the wall and go inside. The brief interlude of good weather departed the day after the Cumnor trip and it has been raining ever since, so I have arrived this morning looking less than impressive in my wet weather gear.
‘Good morning,’ I say to the porter, dripping onto the lodge floor. ‘I’m here to teach a sixth form group. Where can I leave my bike?’
He looks me up and down over the top of his glasses and says, ‘Other entrance for the bike blocks.’
‘What other entrance?’
‘Minster entrance. Through the precincts, down Dark Entry.’
‘Well, I haven’t got time to go all round there now.’
He says nothing.
‘OK,’ I say, ‘I’ll just leave it outside chained to a gargoyle or something, shall I?’
In fact, I chain it to a lamppost, where it’s probably an obstruction, and I return.
‘And you are?’ he asks.
‘Gina Gray. Marlbury College.’
He runs his finger slowly down a printed page before him and shakes his head. ‘No-one of that name here, madam,’ he says. He is small, portly, dark-suited and moustached – exmilitary or trying to look as if he is. I usually get on very well with support staff in educational establishments – porters, caretakers, cleaners, tea ladies – but I don’t think I can be bothered with this chap. I am tempted to cycle back to college and tell the principal that Marlbury Abbey wouldn’t let me in, but instead I say tersely, ‘Mr Bright is expecting me.’
‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘why didn’t you say so?’ He picks up the phone and speaks. ‘Morning, Mr Bright. I’ve got a lady for you here, sir, a Miss Gray.’ He has noticed my naked ring finger and despises me accordingly.
Two minutes later, Marcus arrives, damp, breathless and effusively apologetic: so sorry – held up – problem with a boy – should have given my name to Bill et cetera. ‘Mrs Gray will be coming in every Wednesday morning, Bill. She’s very kindly agreed to teach a general studies course for us. Ginn – Gina, this is Bill – keeper of the gate and of everything else.’
Bill and I nod at each other with polite hostility. Like a dog, I think he can tell that I’m not a friend.
It is break time and Marcus guides me through into a quadrangle, where groups of boys, apparently oblivious of the rain in their absurd little-gentlemen frock coats and wing collars, are milling about. Weathered stone walls rise on all sides of the quad, and we duck into a doorway on the far side where I’m led first to Marcus’s office, where I divest myself of dripping waterproofs, and then to a staff room quite unlike any other staff room I have encountered. Modelled on an Oxbridge common room, it is high-ceilinged and oak-panelled and exudes an air of maleness as tangible as cigar smoke. Most of the staff, including Marcus, are wearing gowns, though I notice one or two younger men who are not. The dominant impression is of begowned, male middle age. Just my kind of place.
Marcus offers me coffee, but where is the hot water urn with its permanent sediment
of lime scale? Where are the institutional tins of instant coffee? Where is the array of battered mugs? Here, coffee is waiting in pots on electric hot plates, flanked by jugs of hot milk and garnished with biscuits. Marcus pours coffee into charming china cups and introduces me to the senior master.
‘How do you do?’ he says. ‘I don’t think much of these biscuits they’re giving us now, Bright. You’re on the SCR committee aren’t you? Can’t you do something about it?’ Marcus undertakes to have a word and adds that he and I are old friends and that I was at St Hilda’s. A faint gleam of interest comes into the senior master’s eyes. ‘Ah, “the wenches of St Hilda’s.” What was it we used to say about the women’s colleges? “The women of Somerville, the ladies of Lady Margaret Hall, the chaps of St Hugh’s, the wenches of St Hilda’s.” Do they still call them that, I wonder?’
‘I should hope not,’ I say, ‘not now they’re admitting men.’
Our coffee dispatched, Marcus leads me across the quad to the Hertford Room, where I am to teach. This turns out to be a small lecture room with a carpeted floor, panelled walls and a dais at one end. There are no desks but chairs with flaps on the arms for taking notes. A group of about twenty are sitting there – mainly boys with a little huddle of girls to one side. Although I saw a lot of boys in gowns outside, only one of these is wearing a gown. They rise in a body as we enter. Marcus performs introductions and leaves. The atmosphere changes: bodies slouch, legs are stretched out, chairs are tipped back.
I survey them. I’ve decided to start by revealing their ignorance to them. Everyone thinks they can teach English – after all, they speak it, don’t they? – but it doesn’t work like that. Learners want to know why things are right or wrong; they’re not content just to parrot what a teacher tells them, especially if the teacher is only eighteen or nineteen years old. An inexperienced teacher without an arsenal of grammatical terms to reach for soon ends up digging a very deep hole and disappearing from sight. I do realise that revealing their ignorance to this lot is a high risk strategy, though. They don’t look like people who will take that well. Still, never mind. I’m not aiming to please them, after all.
All the Daughters Page 16