‘And since then?’
‘Since then I haven’t been Goody Two Shoes. I tried now and again, wanting very much to be a real woman, instead of something and nothing, the way it had to be all that time, but… well, nothing sparked. The few men I met wanted to use me, and I soon came to the conclusion that I would be using them, and that wasn’t me, for roughly the same reasons as you held off.’
‘You mean it might be different with me?’
‘I know it would be. You don’t need me in particular but you need affection even more than I do, and that’s saying a hell of a lot. Well, there it is, except that you can say “Thanks very much but…” and walk right out of here, with no hard feelings.’
He noticed then something that touched him deeply. Her voice was very level but the hand clasping his as his arm rested on her shoulder, shook in a way that was painfully familiar to him, the tremor betraying the careful flatness of her voice. He said, kissing her cropped hair, ‘I should like to stay very much, Julia. And I wasn’t fishing for it, if you can believe that.’
The hand stopped shaking, and she lifted her face to him, laughing like a girl. ‘You never went fishing in the whole of your life. You wouldn’t know how. Give me five minutes,’ and she got up, turned off all but the centre light, and put the guard in front of the fire.
He gave her ten minutes, then went across to the bedroom and knocked. She was sitting up in bed, the pinkish light of the bedside lamp glowed on her white shoulders and neck, throwing a shadow across her full breasts in a way that made him catch his breath. He said, standing looking down at her, ‘Why did you get your hair shingled? You had lovely hair. It was one of your best features. The first thing I noticed about you.’
‘You didn’t notice me at all until you convinced yourself I was seducing one of your ewe lambs.’
‘That’s what you think. Well?’
‘It was the fashion. Up here you have to stay in the fashion. It cost me a pang or two, until I got used to it. Shall I turn off this light?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not for a minute,’ and he sat on the edge of the bed, took her face between his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. He noticed aspects of her that seemed new to him, the clearness of skin, the vivid flecks in the grey eyes, the regularity and delicacy of her features that added up to a stillness and dignity that was singular and striking. There was character behind her prettiness, but warmth, too, and fleetingly he remembered his wife but without guilt.
She reached out and extinguished the bedside light and he undressed in the glow of the street lamp outside but when he laid himself down beside her and ran his hand across her breasts, she seemed to hesitate a second and said, turning to him, ‘You’re sure, David…?’ and he said, impatiently, ‘I’m sure. We’ve both had more loneliness than anyone deserves,’ and then her arms went round him and she came to him not merely joyously but with a spontaneity that confirmed his guess about her desperate loneliness over the years. He said, when they were still, ‘You’ve been through as tough a time as me and learned more.’
‘Tough, David. But not as tough as yours.’
‘With me there was always someone around to lend a hand,’ and the admission had the effect of redoubling the tenderness he felt for her at that moment.
It was a bright day when he awoke to find her smiling down at him, with a breakfast tray resting on her forearm. She was wearing an Oriental dressing gown, embroidered with dragons and pagodas. ‘What time is it?’ he asked, sitting up.
‘Why should you care what time it is? That dreadful bell is out of earshot.’ She gave him the tray and sat on the bed. ‘God, how I hated that damned bell! I always thought of it as the equivalent of a prison siren,’ and he laughed, saying one got used to it in time.
‘I don’t think I would, not in a century. But then, you like a well-regulated life, don’t you?’
He considered, stirring the excellent coffee she had brewed for him. ‘I suppose I do. I hadn’t thought of it but I like predictability and you get plenty of that at a place like Bamfylde. Within a framework of chaos, of course.’
‘By God, they’ll be fools if they don’t grab you while they have the chance, Davy! Dr Arnold, in the splendour of his youth! What more could they ask?’
‘Arnold died getting on for a century ago.’ he said. ‘All his disciples are dead too, and I sometimes wonder if there’s any place in the post-war world for their gospel.’
She leaned back on her hands, relaxed and smiling. They might have been lovers for years instead of hours. ‘What exactly was that gospel? Was it the academic version of Victorian muscular Christianity?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘That’s only how the cynics think of it… Carter, and all the other modern pushers. It was more fundamental than that. Algy Herries both understood and practised it, and he laid it out for me, the first day I met him. The war was still on then.’
‘But what was it exactly?’
‘In its day it was an entirely fresh approach to the word “education”. Or a rediscovery, maybe. Two thousand five hundred years ago the Greeks had the golden key, but it was lost somehow, when their civilisation crumbled. I suppose it concerned itself with a search for truth. Not simply truth about the universe but about us – ourselves. To see things and ourselves as they and we really are, not as fashionable trends and fashions project them, generation by generation. Get that across to kids in their formative years and there’s hope for everybody. It always was important but now more than ever.’
‘Why now particularly?’
‘You ask me that? After what the war did to you?’
‘Then it’s teaching the young how to learn from the mistakes of the past?’
‘That’s part of it, an important part, but you can’t begin searching out truth until you know yourself, and getting to know yourself demands a reasonable amount of self-discipline.’
She was laughing at him now but not in a way that he resented.
‘You shouldn’t have much difficulty in that respect, Davy.’
‘As much as anyone else. That’s why professionals have to lean heavily on a system, symbolised by that bell you hated. There’s got to be a system, an organisation, a chain of command. Like the army, the church or a well-run business, come to that. And you have to work within that system, even though it’s far from perfect and needs adjustment all the time. Here, what the devil am I doing. Pontificating at this time of day, and with you sitting there half-naked? You aren’t thinking of taking another teaching job, are you?’
‘God forbid!’ she said, and got up, hitching her dressing gown.
‘Take the tray and come back to bed,’ but she said, ‘I’m sorry, Davy. I’d like to very much but I can’t. I’m off to work as soon as I’m dressed and I’m late now. How about you?’
‘I’d better go home, I suppose. They’ll wonder what I’m up to and fear the worst. But I can see you again, can’t I? I’m here for another ten days.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘When are you going to get it through your head that my bones aren’t chalk and there’s no watered-down ink in my veins?’
‘Oh, I never did suppose that,’ she said, kissing him swiftly and relieving him of his tray, ‘even before you accepted my invitation last night.’ She laughed again. ‘I say, I really have seduced Bamfylde this time, haven’t I?’
‘Never mind that. Where do we go from here, Julia?’
‘That’s up to you, Davy. I’d love to see you again, so long as you’re on the run from that gaol on the moor. But how about your little girl?’
‘I planned to take her to Hampton Court on Sunday. Why not come with us? I’d like you to meet her, and you’ll find she’s very easy, growing up among all those ruffians. In any case, I have all my evenings free and we could do a few shows. You don’t have to catch up on what’s happening in the outside world, but I do. What are your hours at that teashop?’
‘Nine-thirty to six, with Wednesday afternoons off. Look in and h
ave tea about five today and I’ll go through the theatre guide and find something you’d like. I’ll take you up on that Hampton Court invitation too; in fact, we could strike a bargain. You pilot me round the tourist spots, guide services thrown in, and I’ll show you post -war Gomorrah.’
‘It’s a deal,’ he said, climbing out of bed. ‘See you at five. What’s the place called?’
‘The Maypole,’ she said. ‘Very significant, don’t you think? I’ll have to fly now. Bathroom’s over there but watch the geyser, it’s temperamental. Let yourself out. I’ll be gone by the time you’re ready.’
He caught her by the arm as she turned, whisking her clothes from the dressing-table stool.
‘Julia!’
‘Well?’
‘No regrets?’
‘None at all. Quite the contrary. And you?’
‘That’s a silly question.’
‘No sillier than yours, sir!’ and she plumped herself down before the mirror, applying make-up at what seemed to him phenomenal speed.
3
It was one of the gayest intervals of his life, certainly the most carefree since the time he and Beth and the twins had moved into Havelock’s, after Ferguson’s death.
Julia and Grace got along splendidly, and he was quick to notice that Julia adjusted almost at once to the maturity of the child and did not make the mistake of talking down to her, as some of his relatives were inclined to do. He enjoyed himself so much that he spent the entire Easter holiday in town. Every Wednesday and Sunday the three of them made excursions, to Hampton Court, the Tower, down the Thames to Greenwich on a launch, and to St. Paul’s for morning service. Every evening, save for an odd one or two he spent with Beth’s folks, he took her somewhere, and on several occasions he called in at her sedate teashop where, on one occasion, he met the owner, Hiram Ulysses Sprockman, taking an immediate liking to the breezy, outward-looking man of about forty-five, with his genial approach to all his employees, even the junior waitresses, but what seemed to David a steady admiration for his manageress, whom he treated with elaborate courtesy. On one occasion he took Sprockman to Westminster Abbey to show him the Coronation Chair, and the tomb of Elizabeth, renowned for the superbly modelled hands on the effigy. Sprockman had an enthusiastic approach to all things English and said he had half a mind to retire here. ‘My part of the States has a past,’ he said, ruefully, ‘but not beyond the late sixteen-hundreds. I never forget what that guy Rupert Brooke said, when he paid his first visit to the American continent.’
‘What did he say?’ David asked, and Sprockman seemed mildly shocked that he had to ask. To him Rupert Brooke epitomised England. He quoted, ‘ “The breezes have nothing to remember and everything to promise. There walk, as yet, no ghosts of lovers in Canadian lanes… It is possible, at a pinch, to do without gods. But one misses the dead.” ‘
‘That’s pretty good,’ David said. ‘I’ll try it on the Upper School when I get back. We’ve got two Canadian boys in the Sixth.’ It was easy to see why Julia Darbyshire liked Sprockman, and why she had found security and repose in her job.
They were lovers on several other occasions, rather dismally on her part the night before he was due back to Bamfylde for Algy’s last term, but by then he had quite made up his mind, remembering Howarth’s advice on the subject of remarriage. Physically she attracted him very strongly but he knew himself well enough to admit that he was not in love with her, that he could never love as he had loved Beth. But he had no doubts about their compatibility, and tremendous respect for her courage and fundamental honesty, towards himself and everyone else. His one lingering doubt, involving Grace, was erased by the pleasant, undemanding relationship they formed during their jaunts about town. Grace, for that matter, could adjust to anyone who gave her half a chance. Growing up among four hundred boys, all of whom she knew by their Christian names and nicknames, she was the most adaptable seven-year-old in his experience.
They were half-dozing in front of the fire when he proposed, very soberly in the circumstances, for they had been in one another’s arms a few moments before and this time, aware that there was no prospect of seeing him until July at the earliest, she seemed as fully committed as himself. It was this that helped as he said, ‘Julia, suppose I land that headship. Or if I don’t, and aim higher at some bigger school, would you like to think about marrying me? I don’t expect you to decide right away, of course. You’ve made your own life here, and it’s a very pleasant one, so long as you work for Sprockman. But you’ve made all the difference in the world to me and I’m sure you and Grace would get along fine.’ But, to his dismay, she did not even wait for him to finish, saying sharply. ‘No, Davy, my dear! That’s something I don’t have to think about. I’m very fond of you, and always will be, but marriage… that simply wouldn’t work, not for us.’
‘But why not? I’m not saying it would ever be quite the same for me again. I’d look after you though, and I daresay we’d have a lot of fun together. Children, too, if you wanted them. And neither of us are beginners, so we’d each make allowances. At least think about it until I come up again at the end of the term.’
She said, with shattering finality, ‘As I say, Davy, there’s no point in that. For two reasons. In the first place, you’re not in love with me… and bed isn’t the kind of love that’s essential to you.’
‘What’s the other reason?’
‘I couldn’t come back to Bamfylde and you’ll realise that if you think about it.’
He was harassed enough to misunderstand her. ‘Good God, woman – that nonsense with Blades? Nobody knows about it except the three of us. And even if they did what the hell does it matter now? Knowing you, I see it wasn’t even important at the time.’
‘I wasn’t meaning that. Something else that’s very important to both of us, if we were stupid enough to confuse our physical needs with all the other essentials.’
‘But I could leave Bamfylde and get another school…’
‘Any school, no matter where it was, would be the same for me and the same for you. You’re as dedicated a man as I ever saw. But me…? A job is a job, a means of getting the things I want, and keeping boredom at bay. No matter how much I cared for you or you for me I wouldn’t make out as a housemaster’s wife, still less as wife of a headmaster. I’m the wrong material, Davy. I’d hold you back and you wouldn’t be held back and we’d fight. We’d fight like hell, the job, and the boys, would always take precedence with you, and I might come to accept that. But I’d fall down on what was expected of me and in the end you’d have a straight choice – hating the sight of me or compromising, as most husbands have to when they’ve made a bad choice and are wrapped up in their jobs. That would be damnably unfair and I’ll have no part of it.’
She was so explicit that there seemed no point in arguing with her just then, so he said something about writing as soon as he got back, and of putting it all on paper, but this only made her laugh. She said, kissing him, ‘Now don’t go off down to that barrack on the moor looking like the wrath of God. Everyone will think the cares of headship have settled on you in advance. And don’t spoil our last evening, either.’
‘You don’t know me if you think I’ll give up that easily. I’ll see how that application of mine fares and if I’m lucky I’ll pop up in that teashop of yours when you least expect it.’
‘You do that, Davy,’ she said, equably, ‘but face the risk of wasting your railway fare. I mightn’t be there towards mid summer.’
‘You’re not thinking of switching jobs again?’
‘Sprockman has been talking about sending me to the States. He’s hoping to open a chain of Ye Olde English Tea-Shoppes in New Jersey, Maine and Connecticut.’
‘You mean you might be gone permanently?’
‘No. He just wants me to survey the towns and report on sites and locations. And why not? Do you know, I’ve never been abroad in my life? Not even across the channel. I thought it might be fun.’
‘How lo
ng would you be gone?’
‘Oh, not all that long, five to six weeks, maybe.’
He tried to extract more information but failed. There were areas of Julia Darbyshire she preferred to keep fenced off and he left her with a sense of complete bafflement. But then he took a more philosophical line, thinking how much good she had done him in the last four weeks, and telling himself that one had to make allowances. Bamfylde was not the ideal place for a woman like her, city-bred, and earning good money (more than he earned, he suspected), at the hub of affairs. Clearly Julia Darbyshire and Bamfylde, as it existed, would not mix, but this was not an insurmountable obstacle to marriage. If he got the headship he could do a great deal to improve Bamfylde’s image in her eyes, refurnishing and redecorating Algy’s quarters, and buying a car that would give them local mobility and easy access to the tourist areas in the West. If he was rejected, as he felt certain he would be, then he would assault the agencies for a post in a more civilised area, and wait until she was disenchanted with a five-and-a-half day week in the West End. Such a time would come with a woman as mercurial as Julia and there were advantages in delay. He had no doubts but that she approved of him as a lover, and could also evaluate the security he offered as a husband. She was not the kind of woman who could do without a man for long, the little she had told him concerning her previous relationships indicated that. As for himself, he was more and more certain as the days passed, and he picked up the rhythm of his life, that he stood in sore need of her cheerfulness and brisk common sense. The memory of her lying in his arms unsettled him and made him impatient with fools, and the guerilla tactics of The Lump in Middle School, so that the more observant boys began to notice a tetchiness about him that had not been there in the past.
It was Winterbourne, who missed very little, who reassured them all concerning Pow-Wow’s uncertain temper as the term got into its stride, saying, ‘Go easy on him. He’s tensed up these days, on account of Algy leaving and a new man taking over. They’re all on edge, he and Carter more than the others, seeing they’re both lined up for the job.’
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