Dangerous Things

by Claire Rayner

  ‘The parents come as well of course,’ Edward said. ‘It’s as bad as those damned Open Days, I’m afraid. They pin you in corners and want to know how their little darlings are getting on, and it’s always the ones with the stupidest and laziest little darlings who get you first and you have to try and say something that won’t send them off in a huff and yet not tell lies because they’ll catch you out at the real Open Day. It’s really all very tiresome,’ he ended plaintively.

  ‘Then why do you do it?’ Hattie said and then shook her head. ‘No, don’t tell me. Headmaster likes you to. Do you ever do anything because you want to and not because of him? I know he’s the boss and all that, but he needs you as much as you need him, if you see what I mean. More, probably. What happens if you stand up to him and say you’ve got something else to do on the twenty-seventh? Would he fire you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that he’d do that. It’s just that he’d …’ He wriggled his shoulders uneasily. ‘It’s just that you tend to do what he wants you to do. It’s really easier. Don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t I what?’

  ‘Find it easier to do what he wants you to do?’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to care much what I do,’ Hattie said, and set down her coffee cup. ‘Seems happy enough to let me get on with what I’m here for. So what with the sessions I hold for the boys to patch them up and the times I’ve got with the girls — they’ve got free periods at all sorts of times, of course, because they’ve all got such different timetables, so I only get to work with two or three at a time, but that’s fine with me. I can have discussions into this and that with them and they seem to like it — I don’t have much time left over. And he seems happy to leave it to me what I do.’

  ‘Nice to be you,’ Edward said gloomily. ‘I wish he was the same with us. Mind you, it’s because we’re the English department, I suppose. It was his subject when he taught so I dare say — well, there it is …’

  ‘I still don’t see why you have to be lumbered with the charity thing if you don’t want to be,’ Hattie said. ‘I’ll do the teas because I said I would and anyway, it might be quite fun. I can bring my daughters, I imagine, and —’

  He looked alarmed. ‘Little ones?’

  ‘Quite little.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘You don’t want them here?’ Hattie said, and her eyebrows were up and she stared at him very directly.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said hastily. ‘Not me, personally, but —’

  ‘I know. Headmaster mightn’t like it. Well, blow that, I’ll bring ’em anyway.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’m getting out of here before the mob arrives. I’m in no mood for listening to Tully torment Bevan —’ She stopped then. ‘Does he turn out for this thing?’

  ‘Tully? Oh, yes. In a big way.’ Edward sounded enthusiastic now. ‘He organizes a stall where his A-level boys do fast portraits of people, and then he does them too and they’re very good and of course they get all excited, the parents, you know, and it’s usually worth at least three or four to him. Often much more.’

  ‘Three or four what?’

  ‘Commissions.’ Edward was at the door now. ‘I think it’s the only reason he works here. He gets his hands on the parents. Some of them are really stinking with it and Tully likes that sort best —’

  The door opened and almost pushed him over.

  ‘What does Tully like best?’ He was wearing crimson corduroy trousers today, cut low on the hips in a way Hattie thought rather dated, but which suited his leanness very well, and over them a black polo-necked silk sweater which set off his shaved head elegantly. He looked more than usually pleased with himself.

  Wilton had started to sweat and his face was patched with colour. ‘Uh — just — I was just explaining to Mrs Clements about the Charity Fayre, you know, and how there are stalls and you and the A-level Art boys do portraits and …’

  ‘And what do I like best?’ Tully said again and looked at Hattie with almost invisible eyebrows raised.

  ‘Rich parents,’ Hattie said, and sat very still, staring at him as directly as she could, determined not to let him force her to break eye contact. Ever since that first day when she had seen him with whoever it was — she had looked out for the boy afterwards but hadn’t been able to identify him among the horde — she had been suspicious of him. It was none of her business what the boys and masters did, she knew that. And who was she to make judgements? If girls of sixteen were considered to be at the age of consent for heterosexual relationships — and lesbian ones, come to that — why shouldn’t a boy of the same age be equally capable of making such choices for himself, no matter what the law said? So she had told herself, trying not to be censorious about Tully, but she hadn’t succeeded. She found him a thoroughly unsavoury person, unpleasant to be with; a man who made her feel deeply uncomfortable, as though she had been caught wearing just a shirt and no pants or skirt. A horrid feeling. Now she sat and stared at him, head up, and didn’t at all hide her lack of warmth for him.

  ‘Oh, really?’ Tully said and looked sideways at Wilton. ‘What am I supposed to do with them, mmm, Wilton? Knock ’em down and take their wallets?’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Wilton muttered and escaped, and Tully laughed and came across the room to the coffee pot.

  ‘Christ, if he were any wetter he’d turn into a patch of mildew and that’d be that. I suppose he told you I only work here so that I can get my hands on rich parents in order to screw commissions for portraits out of them?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, still staring at him.

  ‘Then he told you the truth. That is why I’m here. And for one or two other things, of course.’ Again his eyes slid sideways at her, mocking her, daring her to ask.

  So she dared. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, the hell of it,’ he said, and took his coffee cup and went to lean against the wall near her chair, so that he could stare down at her. ‘It amuses me to torment the likes of Bevan. I like having a go at some of the boys too — nasty sprigs of middle-class idiocy who wouldn’t know a decent bit of painting if it bit their ears and who have the brass nerve to make comments on my work. Oh, I put them through one hell of a hoop.’ Still he stared at her, daring her to object.

  ‘No boy, however stupid, could possibly be upset by anything you said to him, I imagine,’ she said steadily. ‘You’re such a poseur he surely has to see you for what you are.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Not very pleasant.’

  There was a silence and then he smiled widely. ‘Do you know, there’s more meat on your bones than I’d thought. Got a mind in there somewhere, have you? A bit more than a womb on legs, trembling with compassion for the poor little girlies trapped in this evil morass of masculinity? Who’d have thought it, looking at you —’

  ‘Don’t you dare patronize me!’ she flared and again he laughed.

  ‘Patronize? It’s the in-word for your sort these days, isn’t it? It’s what all women accuse men of doing, as though the men are likely to give a shit what women think — those who can think, that is. Patronize? My God, if I wanted to patronize you you’d really know it. But I don’t want to. You’re really quite entertaining, aren’t you?’

  ‘Thank you for nothing,’ she snapped, and got up and collected her little pile of books together. She’d promised to get copies of a new publication on assertiveness training for three of the girls and she had the copies with her now. He looked down now and saw the covers, and laughed.

  ‘Assertiveness training? For those madams you’ve got there in the sixth? That’ll be the day. I’ve seen ’em, through a man’s eyes remember, I’ve seen ’em. The one with the lank blonde hair she keeps flicking at everything in trousers that’s as high as her shoulder, wearing the thinnest clothes she can find to show us what pretty titties she’s got — what do that sort need with assertiveness training?’

  She looked at him and then, not knowing quite why, began to laugh, and for the first time he look
ed taken aback. She let the laughter continue, made the most of it.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said. ‘Scared of them, are you? Well, well. So that’s why you’re here in a boys’ school. Because you find women alarming. Well, I’m kinder than you. What was it you said? Oh yes, I’m trembling with compassion for you. So I won’t patronize you. I’ll just say that your secret’s safe with me.’

  And she walked up to him, reached up and tweaked one cheek between her thumb and forefinger, pinching hard. Her grandmother used to do it to her when she was a child and she’d hated it. Now she took a delight in doing it to him.

  She walked out of the room steadily enough, letting the door bang behind her, and got down the stairs and along the corridor halfway to her own little room before reaction set in, and set in so hard that she had to perch herself on a window sill, waiting for the trembling to ease off. Her legs, her back, every part of her shook with it and she felt slightly sick for a moment.

  But exhilarated too. Maybe he’d go to the Headmaster and complain of her bad behaviour and maybe the Headmaster would tell her to go because he wanted peace and tranquillity at the Foundation, not nasty brawls of this sort, but even if he did — and her commonsense told her that was exceedingly unlikely, even if Tully complained to him, which was more unlikely still — it would have been worth it. She could still see the look of incredulous fury in his eyes when her pinch on his cheek had made them water with the sharpness of it, and she let her head droop forward and giggled softly. That’ll show the bastard, she thought, and then took a deep breath as suddenly the bell, that hateful raucous bell, shrieked the time over her head.

  She stayed where she was, as the tide of boys erupted from form rooms and began its usual hammering way along every corridor in the school as people changed classes, and she watched them go, glad that one or two of them smiled at her as they charged past, and waited. And then, as the first couple of sixth-formers came into view, marked out by their lack of uniform, sharpened her scrutiny. Now she was more sure than ever that the boy she had seen with Tully that first lunchtime was not a willing participant in whatever there was between them. She could still see in her mind’s eye the way the boy had stumbled back under the impact of the man’s kiss, and she tried to convince herself it had been dismay that had caused that recoil, rather than a loss of balance. It had to be; no boy could possibly want a relationship with a man as hateful as David Tully, of that she was sure; and she watched the boys as they passed her, trying to see some likeness in their shapes to the one in her memory.

  But it was an impossible task. That had been her first day, before she’d set eyes on any of the sixth-form boys. She knew most of them now at least by sight — or almost knew them — but then he’d just been an anonymous boy of sixteen or seventeen or so, in a sports shirt and grubby grey trousers; there had been no highlights she could fix in her memory.

  Well, she thought as the flow of boys receded and she could go on her way to her own room, I’ll just have to watch Tully, then. And brightened.

  The ill-spelled autumn fair, that surely was the place where she’d be able to see what was happening? The boys would then be able to be with whom they liked, because, although it was a school event, it was happening outside normal school hours, and if one of them particularly liked to be with the repellent Tully she’d be able to see for herself. And if Tully made a set at one of the boys, surely she’d be able to see that too.

  And she lifted her chin and hurried on, as though moving fast would bring the autumn fair date nearer. Because now she really was looking forward to it.

  Seven

  The Friday of the Charity Fayre was traditionally a half-holiday which no one at the Foundation took. Some of the boys risked sloping off well before four in the afternoon and the occasional master had been known to develop a mysterious allergic ailment that kept him away, but generally speaking the school turned out in force, a fact which everyone drummed firmly into Hattie as the newest recruit to the staff.

  But she didn’t mind being there in the least because of her own feelings, quite apart from her still lingering curiosity — or was it anxiety? She wasn’t quite sure — about David Tully and his involvement with the boys. She wanted to bring the two halves of her life, home and the Foundation, together. She didn’t know why it mattered that she should, just that it did.

  So she had arranged for Judith to bring the girls straight from school when they came out at three o’clock, and she was absurdly excited at the prospect of showing them where she worked, and even more of showing them off to some of the people she worked with. She could imagine the girls of the sixth cooing over Sophie in particular, for she had Oliver’s dark curly hair and ridiculously large and shining eyes with very long lashes, but Jessica would get her share of attention too, for she was a pretty child even if she lacked some of her sister’s more obvious charms. Thinking about how it would be when they arrived greatly enlivened what would otherwise have been a day of considerable drudgery for Hattie, because she and the sixth-form girls had been told firmly that their task was to feed the multitude, and that meant the making of vast numbers of sandwiches and the arranging of even vaster numbers of small iced cakes bought cut-price from a bakery in Watney Street market.

  That the girls had been furious was inevitable. ‘Why do these bloody men always shove us into kitchens?’ Bonnie snapped when she was told what they were expected to do, and Dilly Langham had flatly refused, until Hattie had pointed out that offensive though it might seem on the surface to be treated as ‘little women’ and made to act as feeders and carers, it would be infinitely more agreeable than having to work with the boys who were making heavy weather and a great deal of noise over putting up the various stalls and amusement booths for the afternoon.

  ‘We’ll be able to do what we want to do in our own time,’ she said, and the girls had seen at once what she meant and stopped fussing. Even Dilly agreed it was worth being a mere sandwich-maker to avoid the company of the male mob, and they settled to a pleasant enough if effortful session of boiling and mashing eggs, slicing cucumbers and chopping watercress into cream cheese, chattering contentedly as they worked.

  By the time they had finished, their tea room, which was in one of the biggest tents set in the corner of the quadrangle, looked very attractive. Long trestle tables had been fetched from the school dining room and set up all round the canvas walls and draped in white plastic cloths on which their trays of sandwiches, plentifully strewn with mustard and cress, had been displayed. The cakes were set with equal care on white paper lace doilies in a row behind the sandwiches, and between each plate stood a cup in which chocolate fingers had been arranged by Bonnie. There were piles of paper plates and stacks of plastic beakers and three great chrome urns borrowed from the school kitchens, and quantities of cardboard cartons full of irradiated milk and tea bags stood ready behind each urn.

  ‘Look at it,’ Dilly said disgustedly when they’d finished checking the small tables and chairs that had been arranged in the middle of the space, and were looking at the results of their handiwork. ‘Doesn’t it make you sick?’

  ‘Oh, come on, it’s not that bad,’ Bonnie said. ‘I didn’t lick my fingers once when I was making the egg sandwiches and they’re my favourites.’

  ‘I don’t mean them,’ Dilly said. ‘It’s that artificial-looking stuff. Plastics and irradiation — ugh! Whatever happened to real china and real milk?’

  ‘Luddite,’ Hattie said amiably. ‘It’s called convenience, this way. And don’t tell me you’d rather have to struggle with the sort of milk that goes off on afternoons as hot as this and that you want to wash up heaps of china cups and saucers instead of stuffing them dirty into plastic sacks.’

  Dilly grimaced and said no more, but she still looked surly and Hattie looked at her uneasily. She’d been snappy all day and particularly sharp with Genevieve who had worked with more enthusiasm than Hattie had ever seen her display, making twice as many sandwiches as everyone e
lse and going to a lot of trouble to arrange the cakes, which were iced in particularly virulent pinks and greens and yellows, with finicky care. If Dilly doesn’t lose her temper with someone before this afternoon’s out, Hattie thought, I’ll be a — And Genevieve; if she eats anything after all the trouble she’s gone to to make it ready, I’ll be another whatever it is. If she doesn’t — and I’ll watch her all the time — then I’m going to talk to her parents about her. If I get the chance. Because I’ll know I’m right about her.

  On the dot of two the groundsman, now almost incoherent with fury over the state of his lawn, opened the big gates and people poured in. Most of them were parents, dragged from all corners of London by sons who knew their form masters would make their lives hell if they didn’t turn out, and who themselves had only put on the screws because the Headmaster was harrying them, but there were also a few local people come to see what there was to be had. The Headmaster wanted them to show the visiting Council dignitaries how egalitarian they all were at the Foundation, but not so many that they would overwhelm the parents who were likely to look sideways at too many scruffy clothes and punkish hair styles. It was a matter of some pride to him that somehow each year he managed to get the balance just right, by inviting people from local churches and old people’s clubs to come in, and bribing his gatekeeper to turn away others on the grounds that they were too late and the place was full.

  Within fifteen minutes the quadrangle was alive with people. Hattie, standing at the door of the refreshment tent and looking at it all, had an odd sense of unreality. It was like being inside a 1950s Ealing film; there actually were women in shady hats and floaty dresses mixed up with men in the darkest and neatest of city suits and boys in well-brushed school uniforms and masters in their gowns; the occasional scruffy local managed to look like a country yokel circa 1955 rather than a Shadwell citizen of 1991. I’ll have to be careful, she found herself thinking. I could get as locked into the past as any of them. Because she now knew that was the engine which made the Foundation run. It clung to its anachronistic state as a dying man to a raft, the Headmaster most of all. Watching him now as he moved among his guests with so much urbanity he looked as though he’d been sprayed with gloss, she found herself pitying him. He looked so self-assured, so certain that he had a right to his position of eminence, when in fact he was just a shadow, a faintly ridiculous reminder of something that had once been important in England but had long ago ceased to matter in any real sense. Schools like the Foundation had significance only to those people who played parts in the charade. To the councillors and the Mayor, who had just arrived and were being purred over by the Headmaster and Dr Bevan, who was looking unusually affable as he hovered by the Head’s side being every inch the Deputy Head, the whole thing must seem a nonsense. They certainly looked bemused and on one or two of their faces there was a hint of scorn. It was almost as though Hattie could hear them thinking: What possible value can four hundred years of tradition have to the people who live in the surrounding streets and sprawling ugly blocks of flats and whose children have no possible hope of a place here? None, decided Hattie, and went back into the tent to check that the urns were boiling ready to make the teas that would soon be demanded by the wandering crowd outside. Better to keep herself busy than to think too deeply about what she was doing working in such a place.