Song at Twilight (6 page)

Suddenly the telephone rang. Ah… I sprang to my feet. That must be they, I thought, ringing to find out if I am in.

It was one of the assistant French teachers wanting to know how the third year was coping with the syllabus.

At half past seven I decided that it was too early for supper. I began to open all the cupboards in the kitchen to see if I had any food to offer Leo – Timothy – Timothy's mother – whoever might turn up. There wasn't very much.

By half past eight I was beginning to feel a little angry. I should not have spent the whole evening at home. I had not finished the job I had been doing in the language laboratory and besides, under normal circumstances, I would have been in the common room. Not only pupils, but other members of staff often used to look for one on the first evening of term. I could still go back to school, but then I hadn't yet eaten and I really didn't want to miss Leo, if he turned up. He must surely turn up, but I did wonder what on earth he had been doing since arriving at school several hours ago.

Patricia, it occurred to me, would have had a fit if she had seen the way Leo drove that Porsche.

No one came to see me that night. The telephone rang once more. It was the headmaster with some trivial, self-important request; and the television went on the blink. I went to bed crossly a little after eleven and tossed and turned until I finally fell asleep in the small hours.

I was hardly in the best of moods the following morning. More than anything else, I felt hurt. It seemed quite inconceivable to me that Leo should have come to the school without having made himself known to me. The fact that he had come with Timothy and Timothy's mother only added insult to injury since, after all, it was I who had introduced him to Timothy.

The best interpretation which I could put on the whole affair was that they had called on me early in the afternoon, and found me out. I still felt that they should have tried again later.

Leo, I felt, was very much to blame, but in my heart I longed to let him off the hook, so I partly excused him on grounds of his youth and also because he probably felt that, since he was driving her car, he was in Timothy's mother's hands.

As for Timothy's mother, I had no time for her. She must have known how concerned I had been over her son and that I had indeed taken him under my wing. It seemed to me that the least she could have done would have been to make herself known to me.

As I went into the common room I was feeling particularly irritable and the first person I saw was Timothy's housemaster who looked at me with what can only be described as an insolent stare and said,

"Your little toy boy's back, Prudence – I met his mother yesterday. Quite a corker."

The tastelessness of the man was unbearable. In fact it was the first time that I had heard the expression 'toy boy' and have to admit that I had, then, no idea of the connotations of the phrase.

I said good-morning to one or two other colleagues before the headmaster came in dressed in a gown, ready for assembly.

He cleared his voice and spoke to the room in general.

"It has come to my notice," he said, "that there is too much sexual activity going on in the school – particularly among the fourth formers." He paused. "This must not," he added, "be discussed outside these walls as I should not like prospective – or indeed present – parents to become aware of the problem. I shall be taking serious steps to curb this unfortunate trend, and so with this in mind I propose to announce at Assembly that from now onwards the six inch rule will be extended to ten and a half inches."

There was a school rule which forbade pupils of the opposite sex from walking within six inches of one another.

"That's bound to do the trick, Headmaster," I said drily.

The Headmaster stared at me balefully over his half-moon spectacles and said,

"How else would you deal with the problem, Prudence?"

I was not really interested in sexual intercourse in the fourth form at that moment for I was far more concerned about Timothy whom I would be teaching later that morning, and his mother and Leo.

"I sometimes just think good luck to them," I said with a weary sigh. And the bell rang for Assembly.

*

Patricia is in a terrible state. Her daughter, Laurel, has shaved off all her hair as a sign that she disapproves of men and has no intention of attracting them.

If only Laurel knew how hard it is in life to attract the ones you want, she might not do anything so rash. Quite apart from that she is scarcely an appealing child and should not really have any problems in that direction. I hardly imagine that she is surrounded by a flock of unwanted admirers.

Be that as it may, Patricia was in floods of tears on the telephone. I did my best to console her. Laurel's hair would soon grow again, more luxuriantly than ever, I assured her.

"Why can't my children leave their heads alone?" Patricia wailed. She begged me to come over and talk to Laurel as she felt that I might have some influence where she had failed.

Since Laurel had already shaved her head I could hardly see what use there could be in my talking to her. But Patricia was determined that I should come. Even if I had no effect on Laurel, I might be of some consolation to Victor who, in disgust at his daughter's behaviour, now not only refused to eat his meals with her, but closed his eyes whenever he saw her.

Eventually, much against my wishes, I agreed to go and spend a long week-end with Victor and Patricia.

There was no doubt about it that Laurel looked perfectly dreadful with her head shaven like Yul Brynner's.

When I first saw her, she had just come in from school and I have to admit that if I had not known it was she, I would not instantly have recognised her.

I decided to make no comment.

Victor, who was sitting with me at the time, watching the six o'clock news on television, immediately rose from his chair, put his hands over his eyes, and without further comment stumbled out of the room, tripping over a footstool and bumping into the door jamb on his way. Throughout the four days in which I stayed with my brother, he continued to avoid his daughter in just this manner.

'What,’’ he said to me in private, "have we done? Leo a few years ago had a shock of purple curls, and now Laurel is as bald as a coot." For a moment I thought he was going to cry.

Patricia did cry – at regular intervals throughout the weekend. Neither she nor Victor could see that all was not lost, that Laurel was surely just going through a phase, and nor did they think it in the least little bit funny when two of her girlfriends called to see her on Saturday, both of whom had taken the same drastic measure.

For me it was a dreary week-end. The outing I had been planning with Eric for the Saturday had to be cancelled, which did not really matter except that I felt I was letting him down, and I was certainly achieving nothing with Victor and Patricia.

When I eventually came home, free at last from Patricia's hysterical moaning and from Victor's idiotic despair, I telephoned Eric only to find that he was out. I rang again a few hours later and still there was no reply.

It is ridiculous that I should in any way depend on Eric – and far be it from me to suppose that I do – but there is something slightly annoying about a person being out whom one rather expects to be not only in, but urgently awaiting one's call.

Eric has been away for three days now and I do vaguely wonder where he can have gone. 

Chapter 6

April 12th

With Eric not here to interrupt me, I have all the time in the world to get on with my writing.

*

It was with a remarkable feeling of inadequacy, as if I were setting out on some unknown, perilous trail, ill-equipped for what might lie ahead, that I approached the classroom where Timothy and some twenty-five others were awaiting their first French lesson that term. In some indefinable way the balance of power between Timothy and myself had shifted, leaving me insecure and uncertain how to behave next. No one, least of all a member of the teaching profession, likes to find himself in this position.

I could not, of course, discuss my nephew, nor the holidays, nor anything else pertaining to life outside school, in the classroom. I had to behave as though nothing untoward had occurred and try to teach the class with my habitual authority.

That class seemed to last for an eternity and I did not, I know, teach it with anything like my habitual authority. I kept forgetting what we were doing, I made elementary blunders and whenever a child put a question to me, I had to ask him or her to repeat it as I seemed to have the greatest difficulty in comprehending the simplest enquiry. I avoided catching Timothy's eye and was at the same time hurt by the certainty that he, too, was avoiding catching mine. I longed for the class to come to an end, and yet I dreaded it lest I had not managed to speak to Timothy before the bell rang. If I were to speak, I wondered if I would dare to suggest that he come round for tea.

When the bell did eventually ring, the children all gathered up their books with the usual banging and clattering and, like an untidy bunch of unkempt puppies, they pushed and shoved their way out of the room.

I sat for a while at my desk, carefully replacing the lid of my fountain pen, neatly piling my books, folding my spectacles and putting them away in their case.

Timothy left the room with the others, without so much as a backward glance.

The next day I taught Timothy's class again. And the next. And by Saturday, which was the fourth day, I still had not managed to have a private word with him. I was angry not so much with him as with myself. It seemed quite ridiculous to me that a middle-aged school teacher should find herself in such a ludicrous position vis à vis a pupil of some fourteen or fifteen years.

I could no longer sleep at night and lay awake for hours wondering exactly why it was that Timothy had not been to see me and why it was that he had so obviously avoided me.

And what about Leo?

I went over and over and over the question of Leo until the whole episode had assumed gigantic proportions in my imagination. It seemed as if, all at once, everyone was turning against me. Even my own kith and kin. I almost felt as though I had no friends. Certainly those in whom I had always trusted would probably think me most peculiar were I to confide in them my worries concerning Timothy. After all, what exactly were those worries? What precisely was the problem?

So I spent the first week-end of term closeted in my house with Pansy. She sat on my knee and I entrusted my anxieties to her whilst she, as is the custom with Pekineses, alternately snored and allowed me to feed her with chocolate drops.

As I stroked Pansy's head and fed her yet another chocolate drop, the thought occurred to me that I was being completely idiotic. Here I was, a middle-aged professional woman living alone with a Pekinese in whom I had lately, although never before, taken to confiding.

And of what stuff were these confidences? Anyone reading my mind might have supposed that I was in love with Timothy. I blushed as I dared so much as to formulate the thought to myself. In my embarrassment I stood up and paced nervously around the room.

The very idea was, of course, utterly absurd. It is quite inconceivable that a woman in her mid-fifties, as I was then, should fall in love with a mere child. The fact that I had even allowed the denial of such a supposition to flit through my mind was deeply upsetting and acutely uncomfortable.

There are times in one's life when one is more than usually glad that no one, not even one's dog, can read one's thoughts. This was just such a moment.

Of course I have, in my lifetime, fallen in love other than with the fictional characters I have mentioned. When I was only about thirteen or fourteen I developed a tremendous passion for a handsome older cousin who must have regarded me as a mere child and who was later killed in the war. Then at university I fell very much in love with one of our lecturers, and there have naturally been other moments when my heart has missed a beat, but, as I have already explained, love, or at least the expression of it, is something which, on the whole, has passed me by.

I know perfectly well that I was not 'in love' with Timothy. How could I have been?

And yet from this time onwards I was beleaguered by people who supposed that I was. Or, if they did not suppose it, they thought it amusing to pretend that they did and to make distasteful jokes at my expense on the subject.

By the end of my solitary week-end with only Pansy for company, and in fact before I had been greeted by the full horror of public opinion, I had decided that I must pull myself together, as it were, stop being so negative, and invite Timothy to tea. When he came, as he surely would, I could casually ask him about Leo, and even mention the fact that I had seen Leo from the language laboratory window on that first evening of term.

On Monday morning I happened to come across Timothy in the corridor. I stopped to talk to him and, as I did so, was infuriated to hear a vulgar wolf whistle coming from a passing lout. 'Lout' is the only word I can think of suitably to describe such a boy. The lout's companion, another uncouth creature, sniggered and the two of them walked on.

I, of course, pretended to have noticed nothing.

Timothy, whom I had somehow expected to be embarrassed when confronted by me, smiled a disarming smile and promised to come and see me that very afternoon.

When he arrived I was not altogether surprised to find him more than usually despondent. He sat limply on the sofa.

The holidays, he said, hadn't been bad. Leo had been jolly kind to him, but, and he looked down at his long legs stretched out in front of him and shuffled his feet awkwardly, he hated being back at school.

I could never really get to the bottom of why Timothy was so unhappy at school. He should, in my opinion, have overcome his initial shyness and begun to make friends.

He claimed that he could never fit in. Somehow – and he seemed to have an amazingly mature understanding of the situation – he had got off to a bad start. People had begun by being vile to him, perhaps because he had arrived late his first term, or perhaps just because they didn't like his face. It had become a habit.

He had thought at first that if he tried at games he would be better liked, but the only result of his efforts in that direction was that he seemed to become even more unpopular. A group of two or three bullies had systematically rifled his locker in the changing room and peed on his Rugby shorts and even into his Rugby boots.

I was appalled. Why hadn't he reported the incident?

Such incidents, he said, staring at me gravely from under a lock of red-gold hair, always go unreported. The only thing to do is to keep quiet, mind your own business and hope to pass unnoticed. He consoled himself by writing poetry. He had always done that and now he was writing a short story. One day perhaps he would be a professional writer.

He looked at me again and said,

"You know, they even tease me for coming to see you."

"That is ridiculous," I said sharply, and shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

"It's just that here it's like a proper house," he said by way of explanation. "Not like school. It doesn't smell of disinfectant and school food."

Well, that was at least something, I thought.

I decided to take the plunge.

"Did Leo bring you back to school on Tuesday evening?" I asked suddenly.

"No," said Timothy frankly, looking straight at me. "Why should he have?"

"I have no idea why he should have," I said, "But I merely thought that I caught sight of him in the car park."

Timothy looked at his hands and picked at what was probably a wart.

"If he'd been here," he said, still staring at his hands, "surely he'd have come to see you."

"I would have thought so," I said tartly, and added, "What did you do with him in the holidays?"

"Nothing much. We just used to hang around at his place quite a lot and watch videos. We went to a pop concert once."

"Did you invite him to meet your mother?" I asked.

Timothy looked straight at me again, almost suspiciously, I thought.

"Yes," he said, "he met my mother."

There was an awkward silence and then Timothy added,

"I hate my mother."

As he spoke he blushed and, for a moment, looked near to tears.

"How can you hate your mother?" I wanted to know, and added feebly, "I'm sure she's very fond of
you
."

I had no idea whether Timothy's mother had any fondness for her son or not but I had certainly never pictured her, since that first day in the Secretary's office, as epitomising mother love. All the same this was the first time in my life that I had heard a child articulate such a terrible emotion. When I was at school no girl would have dreamed of expressing herself in such terms. And, of course, these are not the usual terms in which a pupil speaks to a teacher.

"I've got to go," said Timothy, standing up suddenly. "But can I come again at the week-end?"

"Tea on Sunday," I said firmly, glad to be back on safe ground.

"Thanks a lot," he said, making for the door.

"Bring a friend, if you want," I offered.

He turned round and looked at me fiercely.

"I don't have any friends. Not here anyway," he said, "and I hate my mother. She's a cow."

I really felt rather relieved as I shut the door behind Timothy. What on earth, I wondered, had got into the boy that he should feel so much anger and resentment. He had always before given me the impression of a pained child who laboured certainly under some resentments, but nothing so extreme as this.

How could I help him, I wondered. And why the lies about Leo whom it almost seemed as if he was protecting?

It crossed my mind that there might be something between Leo and Mrs Hooper, but the idea seemed preposterous. She was a young and very pretty woman who could surely do better than to pick up an eighteen-year-old boy with purple hair, although there was no doubt about it that Leo was an extremely good-looking eighteen-year-old. But good-looking or not, he seemed like a baby to me; not at all grown-up. But then I had known him all my life and perhaps he managed to disguise his lack of sophistication when meeting outsiders. Whichever way I looked at it, though, it seemed absurd to suppose that there could be any kind of friendship between two such unlikely people.

I put the idea out of my mind but, in doing so, I have to admit that I allowed myself once again to dwell on the possibility of a homosexual link between Leo and Timothy. 

Something, I felt sure, was afoot and if it wasn't Timothy's mother and Leo it must be Leo and Timothy. Of the two possibilities, I am sorry to say that I inclined towards the second as being the likelier.

Then I spent a long time wondering which of the two liaisons I personally found more disturbing.

I have to admit that the idea of Siren Hooper seducing my innocent young nephew entirely filled me with horror, whereas I could well understand that Leo might have developed a, surely platonic, passion for young Timothy. The idea was disturbing but not totally distasteful as I could easily understand Leo's feeling. Timothy was such an innocent, clean boy, quite pure, unspoiled in his thinking, and physically pleasing. Neither could I help remembering, with a faint feeling of unease, the incident of Timothy's homosexual sonnet.

The frail, young child I had once seen in the Secretary's office, had turned into a nice-looking, sensitive youth. His green eyes and his red-gold hair lent him an almost angelic look, although I have to admit that lately his child's body seemed to have become more essentially male.

I must not, I thought, as I took out my pen to begin marking a pile of sixth form essays on Camus's
L'Étranger
, allow myself to become unduly preoccupied with the boy. And yet, as with half a mind I marked those papers, the haunting vision of Timothy kept reappearing in my imagination.

I saw him blushing, nearly crying as he announced his hatred of his mother.

I saw him as he was at the very beginning… small and frail.

I saw him eating crumpets, chocolate cake… roly poly pudding… pitta bread. I saw him cramming that silly diary into his pocket, thanking me for tea, smiling at me, looking at me from under his red-gold fringe, I saw him stretching his lanky legs out in front of him, taking a biscuit with his long, thin, pale hands, picking his wart, handing in his prep, clambering out of the back seat of a Porsche, singing in the choir… I could not get him out of my mind – and I cannot imagine why, for there was nothing really extraordinary about Timothy – except perhaps for his eyes, his eyes were very green. But then his eyes were hardly any concern of mine.