Prosperity Drive (6 page)

Ruth suspected that this girl had got here under false pretences. That she had duped Mr Polgar in some way. That she had taken advantage because he was blind. Ruth, however, had been brought up to be polite so she said hello in an icy bright voice.

Every second week, Bridget came to Ruth's lesson and they practised together. She had a clear, high voice which relegated Ruth to singing harmony.

‘Your strength, Ruth,' Mr Polgar said, though Ruth saw it differently. She was the background, the plodding undertone
to Bridget's soprano. Ruth was going to piano lessons at the College of Music so she could read notation but Bridget relied on her ear. She spoke about music in a totally different way.

‘That bit in the middle, where it goes up, like going upstairs,' she would say in her flat, hard accent, so at odds with her singing voice.

‘The bridge,' Ruth would offer.

‘There's a watery piece towards the end, like the bath tap dripping.'

The run of semi-quavers, Ruth thought.

‘Well,' Bridget added, ‘that's just like our bath tap. Drips something rotten and there's a big green stain on the bath from it.'

So, Ruth thought, they do have running water.

‘She's so instinctive,' Mr Polgar would say admiringly of Bridget, ‘such a feel for the music, and perfect pitch with it.'

He often talked about her to Ruth. At first, she was quite flattered. It gave her a pre-eminence; it was
some
kind of recognition.

‘I know you won't mind sharing your class with Bridget. It's just she hasn't had all the advantages you've had. I know what it's like to struggle for your talent. When my parents came to this country they were outcasts … much like Bridget.'

Ruth wondered if the Polgars had been like the Frank family, locked up in an attic. But she couldn't fit Bridget into this picture. Bridget hunted? On the run?

She didn't tell her parents about sharing her classes. She suspected they wouldn't approve. Her mother would only go round to Mr Polgar's and protest vociferously, helplessly. Her father would say they weren't a registered charity. She knew, too, that being compliant about Bridget's presence was one way to please Mr Polgar. Maybe the joint lessons wouldn't last, maybe they'd just enter a few competitions and then it would be over. In the meantime, she was pleasant, if offhand, with Bridget. She noted assiduously any further signs of
impoverishment, and there were plenty. Bridget never had her own sheet music, for one, nor did she have a music case, whereas Ruth considered her slim leather wallet with the chrome handle proof of the seriousness of her vocation. Bridget didn't press for friendship either. She seemed nervous to Ruth, or was it shifty? Her crooked smile was placatory and sometimes when Mr Polgar was losing his rag – as Bridget called it – she would throw her eyes to heaven in a comradely fashion. But Ruth treated such overtures with disdain. It was alright for her to pull faces right under Mr Polgar's nose, but the two of them doing it would have smacked of collaboration. And betrayal.

For Bridget singing seemed effortless. She never had to look at the music, she just took a deep breath and out it came, pitch-perfect, sweet, tuneful, whereas Ruth, stuck with the more sombre line, felt she had to struggle to be heard. Sometimes she was distracted by the beauty of the melody line, though in truth it was Bridget's voice that distracted her, so clear, so uncluttered, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to open your mouth and just … sing. It wasn't natural for Ruth; it was practice, it was work.

Jasper Carrott puts up his hand.

‘If, as you say, (Ruth bristles) literacy is a right, then aren't we doing the state's job for them? I mean, these people have been let down by the education system. Aren't we just applying plasters here?'

‘That's as may be,' she replies. ‘But we're not here to discuss the rights and wrongs of the system, Malachy.' She has scanned the register and decided that he must be Malachy Forde. If she doesn't get to know his name she might end up calling him Jasper to his face.

‘But we must look at the bigger picture, surely?'

‘Go to the cinema,' she says, ‘if you're after the big picture.' There is a nervous ripple of laughter. Jasper's pallid face colours.

‘I was just saying … there are implications.'

‘We're here to be effective teachers, to be of use. You won't find much interest among your pupils in discussing the how and whys of their illiteracy. We're not here to nurse their grievances, we're here to do a job of work. They want to be able to read and write. End of story.'

There's always one, Ruth thinks, a show-off, a waffler.

Mr Polgar entered them for the Junior Duets at the Feis – girls, singing pairs, under-twelves. He sprang this on them after several months of classes together. ‘The Ash Grove' was the set song. He had the sheet music ready and after their warm-up scales he handed them a copy each. Normally he would give them a new piece at the end of the class and tell them to throw their eye over it for next week. A curious turn of phrase for a blind man. So this was a departure. He played through the piece twice, humming along in his grating voice. Ruth watched Bridget. She seemed fidgety; distracted, somehow.

‘Got it?'

The girls nodded in unison. An old habit. Anyway, there were some silences Mr Polgar could read.

‘Ruth, why don't you start, you can sight-read. Bridget, you'll pick it up, as we go along. Key of G.'

Ruth launched forth.
By yonder green valley where streamlets me-an-der
… She muddled through it to the end.

‘Good, now let's try it together. You take the tune this time, Bridget; Ruth, you try the seconds line.'

Bridget held the tune, of course. But after the first couple of words she resorted to singing la-las.

‘Lovely,' Mr Polgar said. ‘This time, Bridget, let's have the words as well.'

Ruth, standing beside Bridget, noticed her hand first. It was trembling. She was holding the sheet in front of her with one hand, while with the finger of the other hand she was
tracing the shapes of the letters as if they were in Braille, as if by running her fingers over them they would come to life.

‘Them's hard words, aren't they?' she said quietly.

‘A bit arcane, I'll grant you,' Mr Polgar said. ‘And by the way, note how it is to be sung, Bridget. What does it say above the clef?'

Bridget was a clenched ball of concentration.

‘What does it say?' Mr Polgar repeated.

Bridget shook her head sadly.

She can't read, Ruth realised. It's not that she can't read music.
She can't read.
Ruth felt a weak swell of triumph. She glanced over at Bridget and caught her eye. There was panic there, a terrible naked fear, a pleading for help. Cover for me, the look said; help, the look said.

‘Girls?' Mr Polgar asked.

Silence.

Ruth and Bridget were locked in that glance, fear meeting refusal. Neither could break it.

‘Girls?' Mr Polgar repeated in that lost voice of his as if he weren't sure if they were still there.

Neither of them moved.

‘Bridget?'

If he had said Ruth's name, she might have relented. She might have volunteered the words that could have saved Bridget. Four little words. But no, it was Bridget, it would always be Bridget first. So it was really Mr Polgar who had decided.

‘I seem to remember asking a question, Bridget,' Mr Polgar said in that sarcastic tone he used when he was uncomfortable. ‘Or is nobody bothering with the blind old teacher?'

He tinkered idly at the keys, playing the opening phrase of the melody.

‘What on earth's the matter, Bridget? What's the problem here?'

Bridget snuffled noisily, but that was nothing unusual. She seemed to suffer from a permanently running nose.

‘Ruth, we seem to have lost Miss Byrnes for the present. Why don't you try it?'

Ruth sang as she never had before, strong and clear, the words perfectly enunciated. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see Bridget standing there, vanquished. When she opened them again, Bridget had disappeared. She had fled, closing the door silently behind her. Mr Polgar didn't even realise she was gone.

‘Lovely,' Mr Polgar purred at the end. ‘Maybe we'll give you the melody line this time. And why don't you inform Miss Byrnes how this piece should be sung?'

‘Gracefully,' Ruth read to the empty room, ‘not too fast.'

Ruth pads between the aisles passing out pieces of paper. On each sheet is the musical notation of ‘Three Blind Mice'.

‘To understand the plight of those who cannot read, we must first of all know what it
feels
like,' she says, putting on her reading glasses. ‘Now, Miss Furlong, isn't it?'

‘Marianne,' the Swiss barometer girl says pleasantly.

‘Well, Marianne, you'll notice some musical notation on the sheet in front of you. I'd like you to sing the piece of music. It's quite a well-known tune, you probably sang it on your mother's knee, so you shouldn't have any difficulty.'

Marianne paws the paper timidly. There is an uneasy silence in the class coupled with relief that it is she who has been put on the spot.

‘I don't read music, actually,' Marianne says smoothly with a self-deprecating look. ‘You'll have to ask someone else.'

‘But I'm asking you, Marianne.'

‘I told you, I don't read music.'

‘Come on, Marianne, you must make an attempt.'

‘But how can I?'

‘Everybody's waiting, Miss Furlong.' Ruth takes off her glasses slowly and sets them down deliberately on the table in front of her.

‘You mustn't badger me like this. I told you I can't read music. Ask someone else.'

‘But I want
you
to do it.'

‘But I can't …' Marianne begins, her voice rising to a wail.

‘Exactly, Miss Furlong, my point exactly. Now, how does
that
feel?'

Bridget did not return. Mr Polgar was baffled.

‘I thought I was giving her an opportunity here. She has a real talent. I wanted her to make use of that, to better herself.'

He had taken to confiding in Ruth. He would reach for her hand, looking for consolation, reassurance. He was like a man scorned in love. Even Mimi was getting short shrift, pushed impatiently off his lap and sulking now in her basket. Mr Polgar rubbed Ruth's fingers thoughtfully. He seemed to need her to make sense of it.

‘Have you any idea?'

Ruth shrugged, then remembered that Mr Polgar couldn't see shrugs.

‘Maybe her parents couldn't afford it?'

‘It wasn't a case of money,' he said sharply. ‘It was never a matter of money.'

The mother of two asks a question. Her name is Jean Fleming.

‘What should we use for materials? I've got primers at home from my own kids but that'd be insulting, wouldn't it? I wouldn't like to be faced with those Dick can run books at my age. Didn't much care for them even when I was four.'

Ruth smiles. She likes this woman; she
gets
it.

‘All that business about Mummy in the kitchen making endless sandwiches. And all Daddy seemed to do was wash the car.'

A titter runs through the classroom.

‘I'm glad you raised that,' Ruth says. ‘Every pupil is different and often you'll have to adapt to their needs, which can be quite specific. It means making up your materials as you go along. Word games, picture cards and the like. You can use the labels on household goods, cereal packets, cans. Everyday stuff.'

‘How do they manage?' Jean muses, as if she's thinking aloud, as if she and Ruth are friends chatting over a cup of coffee, trading confidences. Her forehead creases quizzically. ‘How do they get by? They must be terrified, afraid all the time of being discovered. Always covering up, covering their tracks. I don't think I've ever met anyone who couldn't read. But then, how would I know?'

‘I remember the first person I met who couldn't read.' Ruth discovers herself talking, taking up Jean's reflective tone.
Stop, stop.
‘I remember her name, even, Bridget, Bridget Byrnes …'

Ruth falters, remembering the advice she always gives her trainee tutors. People don't want to hear how much you love reading, what prompted you to get involved, my first illiterate and all that. This is about them, not you.

‘Now where were we?'

It was a sin of omission, a lesser offence. If she had told Mr Polgar that Bridget couldn't read, what difference would it have made? She had protected Bridget from exposure by saying nothing. She wondered idly how Bridget had managed to hide it for so long. Someone at home must have been able to read. She must have memorised the words between classes. Sooner or later, though, Bridget would have been unmasked. Better that Mr Polgar thought her ungrateful than for him to know her secret. The shame of that! This way Bridget's secret was quite safe, stowed away in Ruth's hard, competitive little heart.

All it bought her, in the end, was time. Another year of solo lessons unencumbered by Bridget's better voice, more
instinctive feel for the music, her bloody perfect pitch. She remembered the day she arrived for what was to be her last class. She had just turned twelve and Mrs Polgar steered her into the front parlour instead of guiding her upstairs, which was unusual. Mr Polgar came down presently. He had Mimi in his arms.

‘Why don't we sit here for a while, Ruth?' he said.

She got to sit – finally – on one of the big armchairs. He perched on the edge of the other one, fondling Mimi's ears.

‘I've been thinking,' he said. The expression on his face was candidly sorrowful, but his glassy eyes seemed blankly evasive. ‘About your lessons. And your voice.'

‘My voice?'

Mimi leapt off his lap and scampered away, pushing the door open with her nose. Ruth could hear her nails clicking on the tiled hallway outside.