A Prodigal Child

by Storey, David;

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Misbehaviour in Mr Hepplewhite’s class,’ the figure said.

  Miss Lightowler flushed.

  ‘I trust we shall have no repeat of it here.’

  ‘No, Miss Lightowler.’

  The four figures seated themselves on stools and stooped to the table.

  ‘You have a natural facility, Bryan,’ Miss Lightowler said, watching Bryan’s pencil move across the paper then, as a consequence of her scrutiny, come to a halt. ‘If you’ve achieved eighty, I shall expect you,’ she added, ‘to aim for a hundred.’

  ‘A hundred what?’ one of the other three said.

  ‘The proverbial hundred,’ Miss Lightowler said. ‘Which is what,’ she concluded, ‘we all aspire to.’

  Her eyes were cast in shadow from the attic window which in turn looked out to a chimney protruding from the roof of the adjoining buildings; tins of paint were assembled on a nearby table and, after examining each sheet of paper, Miss Lightowler began mixing colours in a variety of jars.

  ‘I want you to get on to paint,’ she said from the shadow of the room.

  They drew in silence; periodically from below came the sound of someone shouting, the occasional slamming of a door, while, from outside, and across the adjoining roofs, came the distant roar of traffic.

  A spire was visible beyond the window; clouds of smoke loomed across the sky. The woodwork of the rafters creaked.

  Thin strands of dust gyrated in the pool of light which fell from the four-paned window.

  ‘My parents, Miss Lightowler, wanted me to do Greek,’ one of the figures said, its arm stretched out across the table.

  ‘I understand art was recommended, Phillips,’ Miss Lightowler said.

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘An unexpected bonus,’ Miss Lightowler concluded.

  Her eyes glowed from the darkness; disproportionately positioned over the corners of her thin-lipped mouth, their size ensured they were the most prominent feature of her thin-boned face. Her hair, dark-brown, was swept back from a central parting and tied with a ribbon at the nape of her neck.

  ‘I’d prefer to do Greek, Miss Lightowler.’

  ‘Doctor Beckerman’s selection of classicists is invariably restricted,’ Miss Lightowler said. ‘Whereas art,’ she continued, ‘is accessible to all. It is not technique alone that counts, but feeling.’

  The door of the attic room reopened and Parkinson’s half-bent figure came inside.

  Miss Lightowler paused.

  ‘I trust Doctor Beckerman has given you permission to come up,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Miss Lightowler,’ Parkinson said, his head thrust forward. ‘He said I could.’

  ‘I hope you are in a suitable condition for sitting down.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘I understand,’ Miss Lightowler said, ‘you have been subjected to chastisement by Doctor Beckerman.’

  ‘He telephoned my father,’ Parkinson said.

  ‘What did your father say?’

  ‘He said he’d see me when I got back home.’

  ‘Of the two chastisements, I imagine the domestic rather than the pedagogical will be the more severe.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ Parkinson said and, stooping to the table, thrust his legs beneath it, dislodging, as he did so, a tin of paint.

  SIXTEEN

  The light from the fire illuminated the low-ceilinged room and Mrs Spencer, who had been dozing by the flames, got up, yawning, then looking about her in some confusion. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said to Margaret, glancing at her as she took off her boots, and adding, ‘Look at his shoes,’ as Bryan stooped in the porch and scraped off, on a metal grill, the mud around his heels. ‘I thought you’d walk on the roads at least.’

  A cloth was already set on the table; bread stood on a board and, beside it, a dish of butter and a bowl of jam. Several scones, recently baked, stood on a wire-mesh tray: a smell of baking filled the kitchen.

  ‘If God doesn’t exist, and there is no ultimate purpose, what’s the point of living?’

  Margaret stood at the sink, washing her hands, and directed this inquiry to the mirror hanging on the wall before her.

  ‘That’s not a problem to solve on a day like this,’ Mrs Spencer said. A kettle was simmering on the fire and, as she poured the water into a teapot and the steam rose in a cloud about her head, she added, ‘Certainly not at tea-time, either.’

  ‘Why not?’ Having washed her hands and dried them, Margaret added, ‘When the light is fading, and the fire dying down, and the cows come in for milking.’

  The lowing of the cattle came from the yard outside.

  Bryan washed his hands at the sink; beneath his raincoat he was wearing his light-blue blazer and light-grey trousers: a uniform neither Margaret nor her mother had seen him in before. After cleaning his shoes he had taken them off at the door and now stood on the stone paving of the kitchen floor in his stocking feet.

  Perhaps it was this transformation in his appearance that distracted Mrs Spencer, for she was gazing across at him as if, having expected one person to come in the door, someone entirely different had entered. ‘Who’s this?’ her look inquired while, wearily, she asked, ‘What’s so special about this time of the day that questions like that have got to be answered?’

  Margaret sat at the table; having taken off her coat she was wearing a roll-necked jumper: it made her look older, as if she, and not the mother, were running the house. ‘Don’t you remember when you and Daddy first moved here?’ She glanced round her at the room. ‘You were told there’d been a farm on this site for a thousand years and, previous to that, in Ten Acre bank, they’d found arrow-heads from when the fields by the river were still a lake and neolithic men, after the last Ice Age, hunted along its shore.’ She glanced at Bryan. ‘Beneath this kitchen, men with only hair for protection sat, like we are, and had a meal.’

  The bread was being cut: the impression created by Bryan’s light-grey shirt, his blue-striped tie, his blue blazer with its yellow beading, by the badge with the one word ‘Independence’ embroidered underneath, was reflected in the bright-eyed gaze of Margaret; her cheeks flushed from the walk, her forehead, with her drawn-back hair, more boldly marked than ever, her blue eyes, so much like her father’s, gleaming in the light from the fire, she examined him for a while in silence: ‘Who is this?’ her look inquired.

  Mrs Spencer’s eyes were animated not only by a look of curiosity but, he thought, by apprehension; the pot of tea trembled as she filled the cups, Margaret taking over the task of slicing the bread. ‘How many?’ she asked, and passed them on the knife, adding, ‘So not only is it the time for speculation, but also the place.’ She pointed the knife first at the stone-paved floor and then at the ceiling.

  Mrs Spencer sat down at the table. ‘Mr Spencer’s out, Bryan,’ she said. ‘There’s just the three of us at present.’

  ‘No one comes back from the dead to tell us there’s a life hereafter,’ Margaret said. ‘Since the last war anyone can see that the whole of human life could be wiped out without God, if there is one, intervening; so what value do we put on anything and, if there is a value, why do we go to the trouble of doing anything about it?’

  ‘Self-interest,’ Mrs Spencer said.

  Margaret bit her lip: ‘I don’t see why, if we’re here like animals, we shouldn’t do anything which expands our lives in whatever way we choose,’ she said.

  ‘With the proviso,’ Mrs Spencer said, ‘that it does no harm to others.’

  ‘Irrespective of whether it causes harm.’

  ‘You can’t murder someone,’ Mrs Spencer said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The law wouldn’t allow it. Nor,’ she added, ‘would your conscience. It would tell you you were wrong.’

  ‘What if your conscience says you should?’

  ‘Common sense,’ Mrs Spencer said, ‘would intervene.’

  ‘Common sense,’ Margaret said, ‘is only a substitute for a lack
of courage.’

  The fire crackled in the grate: the lowing of the cattle in the yard had faded. Two dogs, lying by the hearth, got up, stretched, then, after glancing at the table, lay down again.

  ‘If you abandon law, then there’s nothing to stop anyone doing anything.’ Mrs Spencer, gazing at her plate, drew several crumbs together.

  ‘Not everyone would abandon law, and most people would struggle to uphold it,’ Margaret said. ‘But there must be people in every age who question what their lives are for. With people like that,’ she concluded, ‘anything is possible.’

  ‘What do you think, Bryan?’ Mrs Spencer asked.

  ‘I don’t know what she means,’ he said.

  ‘Of course he understands,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s him I’m talking about,’ she added.

  Mrs Spencer smiled. ‘The scones are for tea,’ she said, moving the metal tray towards him.

  ‘He’s ideally placed.’

  Mrs Spencer smiled again.

  ‘He has ambition, he has ability when he wishes to use it, as you have pointed out yourself.’

  ‘Bryan has everything to gain by upholding values which people rely on,’ Mrs Spencer said and, reaching across, placed a smaller bowl in front of his plate. ‘There’s cream to go on the scones as well.’

  ‘Bryan has everything to lose by upholding accepted values,’ Margaret said. ‘It’s people like us who gain by behaving in the same old way. After all,’ she concluded, ‘he doesn’t wish to end up like us.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He wants to be someone special.’ She glanced at Bryan.

  Mrs Spencer took a scone herself. ‘Aunt Fay is doing her best by Bryan, very largely for reasons you despise,’ she said.

  Margaret laughed. ‘Whatever the motives of Aunt Fay, the fact remains that Bryan has the means as well as the ambition to do anything he likes.’

  ‘Within reason.’

  ‘Excluding reason.’ Margaret clattered her knife against her plate as, suddenly, rising in the hearth, the dogs began to bark.

  ‘There’s your father,’ Mrs Spencer said, yet a moment later only a knock came on the kitchen door and when Mrs Spencer went to open it the figure of a labourer was standing there, a cap in his hand, his jacket open, a torn pullover and a collarless shirt visible underneath.

  ‘We’ll be off now, Mrs Spencer,’ the man said, calling inside and glancing in, as he did so, at the table.

  ‘Right, Finnegan,’ Mrs Spencer said.

  ‘Good night,’ the man called.

  ‘Good night, Finnegan,’ Mrs Spencer said. ‘I’ll make a note of the time.’

  The man nodded into the open door then turned and walked back across the yard.

  A draught of cold air and the smell of the cowsheds came in before the door was closed.

  For a moment Bryan had thought it might have been his father.

  ‘You’re making too much of Bryan,’ Mrs Spencer said, glancing at the clock then taking her place once more at the table.

  ‘Only because others make too little of him,’ Margaret said. ‘Your instinct is to protect him, whereas mine is to encourage him all I can.’

  ‘This comes from watching too many films,’ Mrs Spencer said. ‘Was she like this on your walk?’

  ‘We were talking about Mrs Corrigan,’ Bryan said.

  ‘She and her aunt have never seen eye to eye,’ Mrs Spencer said.

  ‘We get on handsomely,’ Margaret said. ‘Each of us sees,’ she added, ‘what the other is about.’

  Mrs Spencer got up from the table. ‘You won’t mind if I sit by the fire?’ she said. ‘The two of you go on without me.’

  Margaret, too, got up; she began to collect the plates.

  ‘There’s so much I ought to do,’ Mrs Spencer said, ‘yet I’ve scarcely energy to do anything today.’

  ‘What has the doctor said?’ her daughter asked, splashing water at the sink.

  ‘To rest. But how can you rest,’ she added, ‘in a place like this?’

  ‘I’m surprised you have so much sympathy for Aunt Fay when she has nothing to do with her time but waste it.’ Margaret held out a tea-towel and called, ‘Will you dry these, Bryan?’

  The dogs stirred by the fire and, a short while later, from the bowing of her head, Bryan assumed that her mother was asleep.

  ‘She isn’t well but no one does anything about it,’ Margaret said. ‘Least of all my father.’

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’ came Mrs Spencer’s voice, dreamily, and Margaret called, ‘You rest, Mother. Bryan and I are only talking.’

  The table was cleared and the pots put away.

  ‘I’ll walk with you to the stop,’ Margaret said. ‘She’ll be all right on her own.’ She got their coats; outside, the yard had darkened.

  ‘Are you going, Bryan?’ Mrs Spencer called.

  ‘I’ll walk with him to the bus, Mother,’ Margaret said.

  ‘I hope tea wasn’t disappointing, Bryan,’ Mrs Spencer said, without raising her head. ‘Come again, won’t you, whenever you like. We’re always glad to see you.’

  In the yard, with a yellowish glow from the opaque glass panes in the cowsheds illuminating the mud and the pools, Margaret said, ‘She takes medicine which makes her sleepy but I think, although she doesn’t say so, she suffers a lot of pain.’

  As they got to the road a car pulled up. ‘That you, Bryan?’ the farmer called. ‘Don’t see much of you these days.’

  ‘He’s just leaving, Father,’ Margaret said.

  ‘Stay and have some tea,’ the farmer said.

  ‘We’ve had some.’

  ‘Is your mother in?’

  ‘She’s fallen asleep.’

  The balding head gazed out at Bryan.

  ‘You’re looking smart.’

  ‘He is smart, Father,’ Margaret called, already several strides away. ‘Come on,’ she added. ‘You’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘Come down sooner,’ the farmer called. ‘Give Aunt Fay our love.’

  ‘I shall.’ He nodded.

  The car turned into the drive and disappeared.

  ‘Why do you argue with your mother?’ Bryan said as they walked up the lane to the road beyond the farm.

  ‘I don’t do it to upset her,’ Margaret said. ‘But I believe in what I told her.’

  ‘That certain people,’ Bryan said, ‘can do anything they like.’

  She looked away; the lane rose circuitously up the slope to the castle: something of the outline of the lake was visible below, like a misty imprint across which, in a thicker band of mist, coiled the broadening strand of the river.

  ‘Ruthlessness,’ Margaret said, ‘doesn’t exist, except for people like my mother.’

  ‘There’s such a thing as love,’ Bryan said.

  ‘What love?’

  ‘The love of another person that stops you from acting in the way that you describe.’

  ‘You wouldn’t let love stop you from doing what you wanted?’

  The lights of the main road appeared. A bus, in the far distance, was rattling down the slope towards them.

  ‘Not someone who wants to do something which he knows no one else can do.’

  He began to run.

  ‘You’re not going back on what you said?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Ages ago.’

  He reached the stop.

  ‘This special destiny you have, which licenses everything that happens.’

  ‘I haven’t given it up,’ he said.

  ‘Well?’

  She was panting; the light from the street lamp illuminated not only her features but the vapour from her breath.

  ‘I have to do it my way,’ Bryan said.

  ‘Oh, your way,’ she said. ‘Well, there’s only the one way. I might have known you’d cover it up. Though why with me,’ she added, ‘I’ve no idea. With me especially, Bryan.’

  The bus drew up, its lights amplifying the glow from the overhead lamp: she frowned, then said, ‘Give my love t
o my aunt. Tell her,’ she added, ‘I think of her,’ and as he mounted the bus she called, ‘As for you, I’m not sure what you’re really up to,’ standing there as the bus drew off so that, glancing back, he could still see her in the pool of light, gazing after him, and then – as he raised his arm – reminded, raising her hand and waving.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it,’ Miss Lightowler said. ‘Have you modelled with clay before?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  She turned the block of wood on the table before him to an angle at which the figure modelled on it might catch the light.

  Above the chest the shoulders rose to the curve of the elongated neck, above which, in turn, was suspended the minutely featured head, surmounted by a froth of sculpted curls, the face animated by what, even from a distance, could be identified as a smile – slight, unmistakable and – framed between two dimpled cheeks – beguiling.

  ‘Have you modelled a figure before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a considerable achievement.’ Miss Lightowler’s hand extended itself above the figure. ‘I like the features.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the smile.’

  Chairs creaked.

  ‘Is anything the matter, Gordon?’

  ‘No, Miss,’ Parkinson said.

  ‘Don’t you think it good?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  His blue eyes gazed out, blankly, from beneath his freckled brow.

  ‘Has anyone any comment?’

  ‘It’s naked, Miss.’

  ‘Any objection?’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  The faces were turned in her direction but the eyes in each face were cast towards the figure reclining on its wooden block.

  ‘The angle of the hips I like,’ Miss Lightowler added, ‘and the way,’ she continued, ‘the one shoulder is subtended from the other. The whole depiction,’ she extended her hand, ‘is true to art as well as life.’

  She raised her head.

  ‘We can cast it.’

  ‘How?’ he said.

  ‘We can make a mould. Meanwhile,’ she added, ‘we must keep it damp.’ She glanced at Bryan and smiled. ‘What do you usually do with your figures in order to preserve them?’

  ‘I throw them away.’