Virtue

by Serena Mackesy

  ‘And besides a group of silly people indulging in hysteria,’ said Grace, ‘what impact will this have?’

  ‘Godiva Fawcett,’ I said, ‘was a popular figure with many people across the world. She was a prominent spokesperson for many charitable causes, and the organisations involved will have difficulty in replacing her with as charismatic or as energetic a figurehead.’

  Believe me, this really was how I talked back then. Compressing words, non-sentences – anything more than the mildest deviation from grammatical laws was rarely tolerated under the Waters roof.

  Grace folded her arms, stared grimly at me across the table.

  ‘And what is the function of a charitable figurehead?’

  I thought. ‘To bring the public’s attention to an issue. To promote an emotional involvement that might not otherwise exist.’

  ‘And why does the public need to have an emotional involvement with issues that affect strangers? What purpose does this serve?’

  ‘Well, obviously—’ I started, then winced. That’ll be another point off the total. ‘Sorry. I believe that the purpose is to emphasise the importance of charitable giving. I believe that it has been established that those who feel they have an understanding of an issue are more likely to donate funds to its solution.’

  ‘Feel they have an understanding, or have an understanding?’

  ‘Feel – have – either …’ Whoops. Not a full sentence. Seventeen and a half.

  ‘And how do you feel that this benefitted Godiva Fawcett?’

  ‘Gosh. I don’t. I was under the impression that charity figureheads take on their roles in an attempt to give something back to the world.’

  This didn’t please her at all. ‘Give something back? What, precisely are they giving back? Are they donating funds? Are they donating skills? Does a single individual benefit directly from their actions?’

  By now I was close to tears. I knew what I had seen on the television, and it had upset me as much as it upset everyone else who saw it. Grace excepted, of course.

  ‘Yes!’ I snapped, losing two points for direct contradiction. ‘Didn’t you see it? She saved five children! Didn’t you see?’

  ‘What I saw,’ said Grace, ‘was a silly and egotistical woman taking an unnecessary and ill-advised risk and losing her life as a consequence.’

  Sort of true. But what are acts of courage other than unnecessary and ill-advised risks? If a man charges a machine-gun post, would he do it if he stopped to weigh up the risks first? Do we refuse injured firemen their disability allowances? I found myself, not for the first time in my life, speechless. Lost a point. Fourteen and a half.

  ‘And what I also saw,’ continued Grace, ‘was a fading actress, who had been exploiting other people’s misfortunes to bolster her own popularity for years, take advantage of a situation to ensure that she would maintain her popularity in perpetuity.’

  ‘Mother!’ I cried. Lost half a point for raising my voice. ‘You can’t say that!’ Fourteen.

  ‘Direct contradiction,’ she said. Thirteen and a half.

  ‘But—’ Thirteen. You don’t start a sentence on a conjunction. ‘I know what I saw. I saw an act of extreme courage and self-sacrifice. I saw someone who didn’t care about the consequences to her own life as long as other people were in danger. I saw something I will never forget, and I don’t think anyone else will either.’

  Sadly, no one ever deducted points from Grace’s score. ‘Oh, very reasoned,’ she said. ‘Such an impressive argument. Have you listened to nothing I have taught you? Or are you simply obtuse?’

  I stopped mid-flow, apologised. ‘Sorry, Mother.’

  ‘And the reason for your apology?’

  ‘I allowed emotion to dictate my reasoning.’

  ‘Exactly. And why is this particularly appropriate to the debate in hand?’

  Good Lord, I’m only eleven. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Because,’ she explained, ‘Godiva Fawcett represented the emotion-over-reason brigade. All of her public work consisted of direct appeals to the emotions. She never asked her audience to think, merely to feel and act accordingly.’

  ‘But—’ I began. Stopped. Too late. Twelve. ‘If the outcome is desirable, should the means of bringing it about matter?’

  ‘What,’ she replied, ‘makes you believe that the outcome was desirable?’

  ‘She raised huge sums of money. People made charitable donations as a direct result of her appeals. Of course the outcome was desirable.’

  Definitive statement based on generalisation. Eleven out of twenty.

  ‘Were I less controlled,’ said Grace, ‘I would be angry about this idea that the world is made better by charitable donations.’

  ‘What?’ Ten and a half.

  ‘The world is made better by action,’ said my mother.

  ‘Surely—’

  She interrupted. I lost half a point.

  ‘It is not people like Godiva Fawcett who change the world,’ she said. ‘It is not people who give themselves a glow of self-satisfaction because they’ve given something away. It is the thinkers. It is people such as myself who set themselves goals and work to attain them. Those of us who work exhaustively and without asking for thanks or affirmations. These emotional gestures are meaningless. They are a waste of time. They are an insult to those of us who are really changing the world.’

  Suddenly I noticed that there were little spots of colour on the point of each of her cheekbones, and I realised something I had never seen before. The great Grace Waters, icon of reason, is driven by emotion after all, and it’s one of the basest emotions imaginable. My God, I thought, you’re jealous. Despite all her prizes, and accolades and affirmations, the votes of thanks, the standing ovations, she was eaten up with jealousy of a dead woman.

  Of course, I didn’t say anything. By then I had learned which thoughts to share and which to hug to myself, which would keep things simple and which would bring cold and unreasonable punishments down upon my head.

  ‘You’re right,’ I admitted. ‘You win.’

  And by conceding, which I always did, I brought my points down below the halfway mark, so I would be assigned another essay to write on the subject at the weekend. It would have happened one way or another, whatever I did; might as well get it over with.

  But you see, even I owe something to Godiva Fawcett, even though time and acquaintance have taught me that the manner of her death was little reflection of the manner of her life. She meant many things to many people. To some she was a role model, a figure of admiration, someone to emulate. To some she was a miracle worker, the figure who came to them in a dream and cured them of their sciatica. To some she was a joke, a B-lister who came to surprise us all. To Harriet she was the mother who, though she was scarcely there, left a gaping void by her departure. Some see her as a saint, some as a sinner, some as an expert manipulator and queen of spin.

  And me? The day Godiva died was the day that the small seed of doubt within me that my famous mother might not be infallible after all finally felt the blissful touch of rain.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Princess Incognita

  A recently uncovered A++ essay from 1952, found among a bundle of others in the basement storerooms of Warrington Primary School (formerly Warrington Church of England First School) and currently on display as part of the lottery-funded ‘Warrington Education: Past Successes, Future Principles’ exhibition at Warrington Central Library. The exhibition has been a remarkable success, attracting some thirty visitors over a six-week period.

  My Family by Geraldine Pigg aged 12

  Once upon a time, I was born. My father was a king and my mother was a queen, and I was called the Princess Incognito. But my mother had a fairy godmother and they forgot to ask her to the chrissaning. Fairies get very cross when they are not asked to things they should be asked to, so my mother’s fairy godmother turned up all in black and stood over my cradle. And she said, ‘You have forgotten to ask me and
now I have to have my revenge. The Princess Incognito will die within ten days.’ But my father’s fairy godmother was able to undo some of the curse but not all of it and she said, ‘The Princess Incognito will not die but you will never see her again as she will have to go and live with another family and they will change her name and however long you search you will never find her.’

  So then she took me and put me with the family I live with now and they are called Mr and Mrs Pigg. My ‘father’ is called Stanley and my ‘mother’ is called Irene and her name was Mimms before she got married and before they had me they could not have children before so they are very pleased to have me and they called me Geraldine. They own a butcher’s shop on Corporation Road and we live above the shop and they had enough meat to eat even during the war when no one had meat except when they had rashers and then it was mostly offle and mince most of the time. Sometimes we go to the seaside and on Saturday afternoons we go to the park after the shop is closed except when it is raining and we go to the cinema.

  I like films with Cary Grant in mostly and also ones where the princess is saved by the dashing cavalier as it reminds me of what my real life was like before I came here even though I should have been too little to remember. My mother likes knitting and my father smells of pork chops even when he has had his bath. But I do not think that they know that I know that I am not their real daughter or that I remember that I used to live in a palace and have silk sheets and baths every night in rose petals.

  Mother wants me to pass the higher certificate so that I get a good job as a secretary or even a teacher. All the girls in my class have no imagination and want to be shopkeepers and secretaries and some of them nurses. They call me Her Ladyship just because I have higher ambitions, and want to make something of myself and speak properly and that. They play praticle jokes on me and try to get my clothes dirty by tripping me up and throwing things, but I don’t care because it is beneath me to care. And anyway, I know that one day I shall be rich and famous and I can sweep past them in my golden carriage as I pass them on the street. In fact, I will go back to the life I used to live before I came to Warrington, and then they will all be sorry.

  Chapter Twenty

  Anna Gets Dressed

  ‘So I reckon you’re in for a bit of a spanking on Thursday, then,’ says Nigel, back from Ireland and two days ensconced in the tower. Well, in my bedroom. We made an effort to go upstairs once, but it didn’t last. He’s lying on my bed like a well-warmed cougar, arms behind his head, hair roaring across the red velvet cushion he’s using for a pillow.

  ‘You never know,’ I reply, ‘I might have got away with it. I’ve not heard a peep.’

  Nige snorts with derision. ‘I think a woman as intelligent as your mother will have worked it out by now.’

  ‘Ah, but you forget. Women like my mother don’t read the tabloids.’

  Early evening sun streams through the window and plays lovely little games with the golden hairs on his thighs. I reach out and run my finger over them, brushing them ever so lightly so that they bend like a cornfield in a breeze, and he grabs my wrist and pulls it away.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘but we hardly know each other, do we?’ Then he gives my left breast a caress and plants a friendly kiss firmly on my lips.

  Which turns into a longer kiss. And a hand on my arse pulling me hipbone to hipbone.

  Oh, bugger. I would so like to stay. I push him off.

  ‘Honey, it’s half past five. I have to be in the restaurant for six.’

  ‘Go on,’ says Nigel, like a man deprived, ‘just a bit longer.’

  I’ll tell you what: this boy was worth having back. He fucks like he’s rocket-fuelled. Give him the occasional bacon sandwich to keep his strength up, and he’ll keep a smile on your face all day.

  ‘Oh, honey, I can’t be late tonight. Roy’s pissed off enough as it is. Can’t you stay a bit longer?’

  ‘Wish I could,’ he mumbles, ‘but my ticket’s not refundable. Just a quickie, huh, Anna? You know you want to.’

  Of course I want to, but I can’t. Push him away with a firm but gentle hand on the chest, sit up.

  He turns onto his back, pulling another cushion over to cover the bulge under the sheet. ‘Ah, well. Worth a try. Can I come back and try again when I get back from Barcelona?’

  Reluctantly, I’ve got my feet on the floor already. ‘I’ll probably have to hunt you down and kill you if you don’t.’

  ‘Cool.’

  I’m pretty sure there are a couple of clean blouses still in my drawer. There should be twenty-odd coming from the laundry tomorrow. This isn’t the sort of job where you can recycle your uniform with a couple of squirts of Febreeze and a bottle of Chanel; it’s the sort of job that would make a washing-powder ad. Anna Waters talks about Raz Automatic, ‘Jam stains, custard stains, gravy stains: I get them all in my work, and they’re the worst stains to get out. I was in despair until I found Raz …’

  He watches me rummage, says, ‘So your guts will be garters, then.’

  ‘Probably. That’s why I live each day as though it were my last.’

  In the wardrobe hang four identical gymslips, striped ties pre-knotted round the neck of each hanger.

  ‘Anna?’

  I put a hanger on the bed, take a clothes brush to my straw boater. I’m the best turned-out schoolgirl in London, though I say it myself. I look over at him, say, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why don’t you just tell her you’re a grown-up now and she’ll have to lump it?’

  I slump on the edge of the bed. ‘No way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m a coward, I guess.’

  He digests this.

  ‘You’ve got to stop some time, Anna.’

  I try a bright smile. ‘Not now, though, eh?’ Stand up and go in search of a push-up bra and some frilly white knickers.

  He pushes himself up in bed, pulls up his knees, wraps his arms round them. ‘It’s difficult, you know, for someone like me to understand someone like you. No one ever gave me a hard time when I was a kid. I don’t suppose it’s the same with you, is it?’

  I sit down again, with my back to him, shake my head. ‘Look, Nige, don’t get too heavy, huh? I’m having a good time now, and that’s what matters.’

  He’s quiet for a bit, then, ‘Still, I bet you did well at school, huh?’

  ‘Shut up, Nigel.’

  ‘Tell me. Teacher’s pet, were you?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘What’s the problem? Must have been great, passing exams with flying colours, everyone wishing they were you …’

  I turn round, glare at him. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. It was shit, if you want to know. It was absolutely shit. There wasn’t a single day when …’

  He starts back in mock fear. ‘All right! Keep your hair on! I was only saying!’

  ‘Well, don’t say! You don’t have the first idea what it was like being me! Being younger than everyone else in your year by two years so that no one wanted to be friends with you. Having everyone call you a suck-up because you always knew the answer to everything, and all the teachers thinking you were a smart-arse and being too scared of your mother to say so. It wasn’t fun at all!’

  ‘Okay,’ he says.

  ‘Well, you started it! Do you know what it was like being the unfashionable one, the one who never knew who Simon le Bon was, or Madonna, or what the difference was between a gym shoe and a trainer? I bet you were never the one who everybody groaned about when they were made to be your partner in a crocodile. I bet you got to go out and play with your mates after school. I wouldn’t have been allowed to even if I’d had any mates. All I had was bloody reading lists and maths tutors, and … and … and weekly reports from every one of my teachers, and a nightly hour where my mother and I discussed a nominated topic of conversation. Christ, I’d never even spoken to a boy when I went to university. No wonder I’m still living out my adolescence now. Why on earth should I tell her anything?’ />
  ‘Woah,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Raw topic. Should’ve thought.’

  As quickly as I got angry, it’s over. I collect a pair of holdup stockings from the bedside table, begin rolling them down to toe level to put them on.

  Nigel puts a hand on my arm. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘are we still mates?’

  I look down at him. You can’t be angry with someone as straightforward as the golden boy. At least, I can’t. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course.’

  ‘Gissa kiss, then.’

  I lean back, give him a kiss, let myself sink into his arms and accept a cuddle. He’s got nice arms, Nigel. I love men’s arms. I love most things about men. I still feel sad that I didn’t get to find out how much until I was nineteen.

  He takes a stocking from my hand, looks at it.

  ‘How do these things stay up, anyway?’

  I show him the sticky rubber bands inside the embroidered bit. ‘Perspiration.’ Nigel gets a naughty look.

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Will you let me dress you?’

  Now, this one’s new on me. ‘You couldn’t wait to get my clothes off a short while ago.’

  Silence.

  ‘All right, then.’

  He leaps eagerly out of bed, bears down on me, stocking in hand. Points at the armchair and says, ‘Sit!’

  I giggle, sit down, cross my legs at the knee and kick.

  ‘Stop that. Come on. Be serious.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Point your toe.’

  I point my toe. He drops to one knee, slips the stocking over my foot, runs his hand over my ankle, smoothing the black nylon on its way, up my calf, over my knee, spreads the top over my thigh and, licking his finger, runs it round the inside of the rubber bands.

  ‘You’ve done this before.’

  Nigel looks up, grins, snaps the stocking down on my thigh.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘No complaining. This is a professional service. If you want to register a complaint, do it to the management in writing. Other foot.’