Song at Twilight (8 page)

When we arrived, quite early, at my brother's house we found Patricia in the kitchen. Victor had not yet come in from work. He seemed to come home later and later these days. Patricia rather supposed that it was in order to avoid Laurel. 

We went into the sitting-room and Patricia offered us a drink.

Eric gladly accepted a gin and tonic. I thought that I would wait and perhaps just have some wine with dinner.

Patricia said that she must go back to the kitchen and I offered to help her, supposing her to be anxious to speak to me in private.

Eric said that he would be quite happy with his drink and
The
Times
which was lying on the coffee table in front of him.

In the kitchen Patricia mashed potatoes whilst I vaguely stirred the soup and listened to her litany of despair.

There was no knowing what Laurel would do next. Mind you she could hardly get any worse unless she began to parade naked in front of outsiders.

That, we agreed, would constitute insanity.

“Where is she now?" I asked.

"In her bedroom," Patricia replied. "She spends most of her time in there. Thank God!"

At that moment I heard footsteps upstairs.

"Oh Lord," said Patricia, stopping what she was doing and standing, frozen, completely still.

"I hope she realises that you're here already. What if she went into the sitting-room naked… and found Eric… What on earth would he think?' said Patricia.

Patricia looked so pathetic and so silly and so hopelessly serious that I half wished Laurel would come downstairs naked and surprise Eric. I was suddenly infuriated by her absolute inability to have any control or influence over her children and her abject acceptance of their most idiotic stands. But I was in two minds. I hated the thought of Eric's salacious delight at the sight of Laurel.

All at once I heard a blood-curdling scream, and then pounding feet running across the hall. The kitchen door flew open and Laurel burst in. She was stark naked.

"There's an old man in the sitting-room," she yelled. And then on seeing me, "Oh, sorry, Aunt Prudence, I didn't realise you'd be here already." She turned and ran out of the room and when I next saw her at supper she was properly clothed. 

In fact I suspect that as far as her earlier visit to the sitting-room was concerned, she had merely put her head round the door, seen Eric and run away. Anyway I am much too proud ever to question Eric over the matter, but I can hardly believe that, had he seen her in her full naked awfulness, he would have taken quite such a liking to her as he did.

To my amazement the evening passed quite smoothly, despite the fact that Victor, who was a little jumpy, had contrived the most peculiar blinkers in the form of large circles of cardboard wired to the sides of his spectacles and designed to prevent him from catching sight of Laurel out of the comer of his eye.

But while I talked to Victor, and Patricia dithered around waiting on us all, Eric distracted Laurel by talking to her all evening in the liveliest possible fashion. As for Laurel, I have never seen her so communicative nor so agreeable and, oddly enough, Eric did not appear to be in the least bit disconcerted by the child's peculiarly unappealing bald head.

He even said to me on the way home that although she would be an extremely pretty girl with hair, Laurel had such a fine skull that her baldness was hardly offensive at all. As for the idea that she was a little on the pudgy side, that didn't worry Eric either. He did not subscribe to the modem opinion that women should be all skin and bone. He liked to see a woman with good, old-fashioned curves.

I wondered if he had had too much to drink. After all he was referring to a mere child.

"No, no, my dear," he said, patting my knee in what was, I thought, a somewhat patronising manner, "I speak of women in general." Then he added, "A nice child." And after a pause, "It's all go."

Then Eric told me, as we drove on home, that he liked young people and that he had found Laurel especially appealing, frank, interesting and likeable.

That is not the impression which I usually have of my niece.

Eric appreciated her enquiring mind. She had expressed, he said, a great curiosity about Hinduism. Jesus had apparently let her down badly recently and, as a result, she was thinking of abandoning her born-again Christianity in favour of a more meaningful religion.

I sighed. Poor Patricia, I thought.

Eric had some books on Hindu art which he had offered to show Laurel if she cared to come and see him, and she had promised to bicycle over at the weekend.

I gave Eric a sidelong glance. From what little I know of the matter, Hindu art is not a proper subject for perusal by an elderly man and a very silly adolescent girl.

By the time I had dropped Eric off at his house and returned home to find poor, abandoned Pansy welcoming me frantically after her long hours of solitude, I was quite exhausted. I fed my little dog who had indeed waited long enough, let her out for a run in the garden and finally fell exhausted into bed. It had been a long day and so much seemed to have happened. As I drifted into sleep I was haunted by a niggling feeling of unease. Was it Laurel? No, I didn't really care about her… Perhaps it was the dancing… that awful dancing in the garage… me in my coat… him in his mack…

That was Tuesday. Today is Thursday and today, before I sat down and took out my pen, Eric telephoned. He was, I thought, in a ridiculous state of excitement.

"Your little niece rang," he said.

Little niece, my foot!

"Look Eric," I said rather sharply, "I'm afraid I'm busy. I'm writing you know." Suddenly I felt embarrassed, even by Eric. "I mean it's nothing important, and you would probably think it very silly – it is I know – but it helps me to sort out my thoughts. A diary you know. A memoir. Just a few things I want to get down."

I have no idea why I should have felt so apologetic towards Eric of all people. Perhaps I was just annoyed to be interrupted by thoughts of Laurel.

Laurel had telephoned Eric to confirm her intention of bicycling over to see him at the weekend.

And I had meant to spend this morning writing about Timothy.

Perhaps Eric put me off my stroke. Instead I seem to have dwelt in great detail on the events of the past few days.

*

In fact, after Leo came to see me at Blenkinsop's that Sunday afternoon, there were no new developments concerning Timothy for a long time.

The boy took to coming to see me as he had done before but rarely spoke of Leo. He did occasionally mention his mother, always with the same quality of bitterness and when I tried to draw him on the subject, thinking that it might relieve him to talk, he withdrew into himself. I could not help but suppose that Leo had something to do with Timothy's apparently ever increasing dislike of his mother.

Neither could I help the intense, caring feeling which I had for Timothy, and yet the closeness of the relationship which I felt I had with the child created an awkwardness and a tension around me which lasted throughout the term and which made me feel constantly nervous and as though I were under some kind of observation.

I will never understand what it was that lay at the root of this tension unless it was merely the foolish insensitivity of some of my colleagues who persisted in making the most futile allusions to my friendship with Timothy.

No doubt I loved Timothy a little more than I should have done under the circumstances, but to suggest that I was 'in love' with him was perfectly idiotic. Had I been 'in love' with one of my pupils, which would have been highly unlikely, I could not have allowed myself to see him as frequently as I saw Timothy, nor to invite him constantly to my house.

During the Easter holidays that year Timothy flew out to join his father who, with a new wife or mistress, had returned to Saudi Arabia. He did not want to go and I was saddened at the thought of his being so far away, but glad for him to be removed from the claustrophobic atmosphere of his mother and Leo.

Neither did I see Leo during those holidays and by the time the school reassembled for the summer term I had begun to think that I had been allowing myself to get worked up over nothing and that I had become almost obsessional about Timothy.

But for some weeks my mind was turned to other things. I had been to London and to France with a colleague from the French department. I had redecorated my bedroom, tidied my small garden, prepared the remaining syllabus for the 'O' and 'A' level candidates, entertained Victor and Patricia for the night, visited a friend in hospital, been to the cinema, knitted a cardigan. Indeed I felt that I had altogether stopped thinking about Timothy and Leo, and Leo and Timothy and Mrs Hooper, and Mrs Hooper and Timothy. I could just look forward to the beginning of term with no undue feelings of discomfort.

And yet, as the first day of term drew near, I began to find myself wondering how Timothy had enjoyed staying with his father. I hoped that his father had been kind to him, for Timothy was a sensitive boy. I could not bear to think of him being hurt. I longed to know how he was, and I began to ask myself which were his favourite cakes. I hadn't made a cake for weeks. I checked my larder for the ingredients.

Yes. I was looking forward to seeing Timothy again. I had missed his lanky figure sprawled on my sofa. I had missed him sitting at my kitchen table eating bread and Marmite, his pale sensitive face, his green eyes, and I had missed his company. That was all.

He would soon be back.

Chapter 8

May 2nd

The Summer Term is always a busy one and that Summer Term was no exception. We in the staff room were naturally preoccupied with the 'O' and 'A' level candidates, and there were athletics, and tennis matches, and concerts and plays and school outings to be organised as well. Everyone had something extra on their plate.

In the third week of term one of the French teachers fell ill and had to go into hospital which meant extra teaching all round for the rest of us. As a result I hardly had any time left over for poor Timothy although I was, as ever, conscious of his presence. He of course would not be sitting his 'O' levels until the following year when he would be sixteen.

Timothy had returned from Saudi Arabia looking taller, suntanned and healthy but he seemed to have withdrawn more than ever into his shell. He still came to see me, but not quite so often as before, partly, I suppose because I was so busy, but partly, no doubt, precisely because he was becoming more withdrawn.

I could not contemplate this withdrawal of his without a bitter twinge of fear. I felt that my friendship with Timothy was threatened, but I feared too for his sake. He was at a sensitive age, an age at which children can often crack up.

Or had I myself somehow offended him I wondered – given him cause to avoid me? I thought not. Perhaps he was quite simply bored with me. I truly hoped not. But there was no doubt about it that, even when he did come to see me, his conversations had become more stilted so that I was beginning to feel that I knew him less well rather than better than I had done before.

His work which had briefly improved under my tutelage seemed to have slackened off again and there were complaints about this from other members of the staff. There was no doubt about it. Timothy was not a happy boy.

I remembered with a pang the relaxed, friendly, out-of-school Timothy who had come to supper with me and Joan at Christmas time. How he had changed since then! And yet then it had seemed to me that we were on the brink of a very close friendship. Poor Timothy. It was sometimes almost as though I could feel the pain for him, but not knowing how to approach him, all I could do was to continue to invite him to tea and to hope that my house might at least provide some sort of a haven for him.

No doubt Timothy was upset by his parents and by his continued inability to find a niche for himself at school. I only wished with all my heart that I could somehow lessen the anguish for him. At times I would look at him and long to be able to put my arms around him and hug him. He looked like a young man crying out for the affection which his mother almost certainly never gave him.

Once as he sat at my kitchen table, his head dejectedly held in his hands, I stretched out my hand, almost inadvertently, to touch his thick golden hair. But I just withdrew it in time. Perhaps he would not have minded. I don't know. He was at that moment preoccupied with complaints about his housemaster.

It was during that Summer Term that I became convinced that, despite his earlier protestations, Leo had become the lover of Mrs Hooper. And I fear that he had done so for the sole purpose of getting nearer to Timothy.

Laughing, the two of them came to Blenkinsop's. Almost every other week. They swept around in that terrible motor-car. He at the wheel, she grimacing and gesticulating at his side. They never came to see me and when I happened to bump into them which I did on more than one occasion, Leo was embarrassed. He avoided catching my eye. 

I was quite ashamed of Leo's behaviour and Timothy was no doubt ashamed of his mother's. The whole thing could not but create an awkwardness between us which partly, no doubt, explained Timothy's distancing himself from me.

Patricia told me on the telephone that Leo never bothered to come home any more. He hadn't even telephoned for weeks. She wondered if perhaps he had a girlfriend in London? Probably a fellow student. Had I heard anything from him?

No I hadn't. And indeed, I hadn't. I saw no reason for telling Patricia that although I had not heard from him, I had seen her son. She would have been horrified.

Once when Timothy came to tea, he complained very bitterly about the kind of people who steal other people's friends. Something really horrible ought to happen to them. I wondered if he were referring to his mother and Leo, he spoke with such feeling.

Timothy's housemaster remarked to me one day in the common-room that Mrs Hooper had been down again at the week-end, with her boyfriend.

"Looks more like some sort of a bloody queer than a gigolo to me," he said spitefully.

I supposed that he was unaware of the fact that he was speaking about my nephew. With a shameful feeling of treachery, I refrained from enlightening him.

Happily our conversation was interrupted by a member of the English staff, a man renowned throughout the school for his cultured refinement, not to mention the notorious passions with which he engulfed some of the better looking male pupils.

"I've decided on a production of
’Tis
Pity
She's
a
Whore
for next year's fifth form," he said. "Wharton would make a perfect Vasques."

I looked at him askance. Wharton was a particularly unintelligent Greek god of a rugger player. I doubted his ability to memorise even the smallest part.

"What a funny play to choose," I said, "for teenagers." And added, "What's wrong with Shakespeare?"

The English master gave me a withering glance. 

"If we can't get up enough enthusiasm for
The
Whore
" he said, "we'll do Beckett's
Endgame
."

"Not many parts for aspiring Thespians in that," I ventured.

As the bell rang for the end of break and the English master stalked away with his nose in the air, I wondered if the whole world were mad. What a ridiculous role
he
was playing.

As the term progressed I grew tenser and more anxious. Friends asked me repeatedly if I was unwell. I had lost weight and to a certain extent my appetite. I cannot explain, even now with hindsight, why it was that I felt so peculiarly unreal at that time. But then things which would formerly have seemed trivial took on an unwonted importance and other things which should have mattered to me, dwindled into insignificance.

An old friend's husband died of cancer. She rang me to tell me when the funeral would be. I remember spending hours poring over the road map to see if I could go to the funeral in Hemel Hempstead at midday and be back at school in time for Timothy's afternoon French lesson. Of course it wouldn't really matter if I missed that lesson, although I felt at the time that Timothy somehow needed someone, not so much to supervise him, as just to be around.

In the event I did miss Timothy's class that day. I had to go to the funeral and there was no way in which I could be back at Blenkinsop's by 3 o'clock.

At half term I went to stay with Victor and Patricia. I felt that I needed to get away from school although I am not sure that I was really right to go and stay with my brother.

Leo was there, moody and petulant, with purple hair. Patricia was out of her mind with anxiety about him, which seems strange now when I think of Laurel. Laurel at that time was a mere child. She must have been about eleven or twelve years old. Round and chubby and even quite appealing then.

Where, Patricia wanted to know, had she gone wrong, for her son to have done something so outrageous to his hair? She knew nothing then of green – of sage and privet and avocado and olive and apple…

The weekend was dull and, for me, fraught with tension. 

I tried to talk to Leo but found him distracted and more than usually excitable. The only thing which I did learn from him, to my consternation, was that he was going to Corfu in July with Mrs Hooper and Timothy.

What on earth, I wondered, would Patricia and Victor think?

Leo, it appeared, had not told his parents and he begged me not to do so for him. That is to say that he had merely told them that he would be going away with friends. They, he presumed, supposed him to be going with fellow students.

Why, I asked him – perhaps with an element of malice – did he need to be so secretive?

He waved an airy-fairy hand in the air.

'They're not understanding," he said. "Not like you, dear auntie." And he looked at me intently with his large, trusting brown eyes.

I was flattered, of course, and it wasn't until later that it occurred to me that perhaps he only told me because he presumed that if Timothy hadn't already done so, he would be bound to do so soon.

When I got back to school, the whole place was in a fever of excitement as it always was when exams were about to start. But for all that, I could only think of Leo and Timothy and Mrs Hooper and Corfu. I could not bring myself to approve of that holiday plan at all and decided that I must broach the subject with Timothy before the end of term. He had, not surprisingly, refrained from mentioning the plan to me at all.

Just before the end of term Timothy came to call on me. He came unexpectedly and said that he would not have time to stay for tea. He shifted nervously from foot to foot and refused even to sit down. He picked at his hand and gazed almost shiftily at the floor. His golden hair fell across his brow. I sensed a tremendous tension. I don't think he really knew why he had come nor what it was that he wanted to say.

"I'm going home early," he eventually said. "Before the end of term." Then he paused.

I said nothing, waiting for him to speak again.

At last he said, "My mother's taking me to Corfu." He looked up at me quickly and then back at the floor. "It's terribly embarrassing."

I wondered how he had managed to get permission to leave school early. The headmaster was usually most particular about pupils staying until the very end of term.

Timothy's mother was not one to kow-tow to headmasters. She would just come down and fetch him.

I looked at him sharply. I supposed that that meant that Leo would just come down with her to fetch him.

Timothy blushed.

"I've told you what I think about my mother," he said. "Well, I hate Leo too, if you want to know. He goes to bed with her." He paused. "With my mother."

I was dreadfully embarrassed.

'Oh Timothy, my dear," I said lamely, "I'm sure you've imagined it."

"That is not the sort of thing I go about imagining," he said with amazing ferocity, and burst into tears, sinking as he did so onto the sofa.

It hurt me to see him there, half man, half child, his head sunk in despair, tears rolling down his pale cheeks, his shoulders heaving. This time I went to him, put my arms around him and held him closely to me. His flesh smelt of sweet sweat, but I didn't mind. I went on cradling his head and God alone knows when I would have stopped if the telephone hadn't rung.

I turned to answer it – it was a wrong number – and when I turned back, Timothy had stood up, stopped crying and was blowing his nose on a rather grubby looking paper handkerchief.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said. "It's just that they both make me sick and I've got to go away with them. And if you must know, I think your nephew's a poof. I wish I'd never met him."

I felt appallingly guilty, but then I could hardly have imagined such an outcome when I originally introduced Leo to Timothy. I had only wanted to be kind then. I still only wanted to be kind.

Really I had no idea what to say. I had never been in such a situation in my life before.

"Have a cup of tea," I said, "and let's talk things over." I was sure that we would both feel better after a good talk.

But Timothy had said enough. He didn't want to talk about it anymore. He had to go. He would see me next term.

As he left I felt my heart contract in a feeling of inexplicable fear. I had done nothing to help him and it would be a very long time before I saw him again. He would change during the summer holidays; he would be sixteen by the time he came back, or very nearly – quite a young man. Suddenly it crossed my mind that he might not come back at all. I didn't know why he shouldn't but everything about Timothy seemed so desperate and so uncertain that I had no idea what to expect.

Those holidays lasted for an eternity. Unusually I had made no plans to go away and so was stuck in my house, right next to the school, for the whole of the summer. I spent most of my time gardening or walking Pansy although I did occasionally arrange to see friends, but so much of my concentration was devoted to worrying about Timothy and Leo and Corfu that I must have been poor company.

I longed for the Autumn Term and yet I dreaded it for I was terrified of learning that Timothy had left to continue his education elsewhere. He was so unhappy at school that it seemed quite possible to me that he might persuade his parents to take him away. Of course it would be a great mistake if they did – right in the middle of the 'O' level syllabus.

So I could almost say that it was with relief that I saw the Porsche sweep into the school drive on the first day of term. Leo was still at the wheel with Mrs Hooper beside him and Timothy, more or less in hiding, behind. I happened to be walking down the drive at the time, on my way to fetch some books which I had left at home. For one reason or another I seem to have spent a great deal of that afternoon walking up and down the drive.