Mr McDowell, the boarding housemaster, was waiting for him in the hall. 'Come into the study,' he said. 'I think we should have a talk before you see Chancellor.' Inside the study he said, 'I think the boy is in some kind of trouble. He may confide in you. I can't get anything from him. I have to put his case to the head. It will not be overlooked.'
'Where is he?'
'I'll send for him. You can talk in here.'
Ian went to stand with his back to the fire, and was still there when Chancellor came in. He said, 'Sit down!'
'I'd rather stand.' Ray was pale but his hands were curled tight and there was an aggressive edge to his voice.
'Anything troubling you? Want to tell me anything?'
'No. Not particularly,' Ray said.
The insolence in Chancellor told Ian that the kid gloves were a waste of time. He'd go straight to the point. 'You forged my signature.' He was no good at soft-soaping. Perhaps others would handle it differently. He had no patience with cheats and liars. 'Your excuse?'
Chancellor hesitated then evidently made a decision to come clean. 'Listen,' he said, 'I'm having a rough time in my personal...'
'Your personal problems are of no concern to me,' Ian said. 'Individuals are of smaller account than the team they are members of. You are a member of the rugby team and a representative of the school.'
'Don't give me all that,' Chancellor said in his former, fighting way. He changed again and in a whining tone said, 'It's about this trouble...'
Ian could not deal with it. He felt only contempt for the fellow. He said, 'It's not! It's all about honour. Integrity. Doing the right thing.'
'You have no idea what I'm going through...'
‘No. I have not. I don't want to. But you are going to tell them. You have to face the team. Give them your excuses. See what they make of you. They are waiting for you down at the field. Be gone!'
Chancellor's hands closed into fists. He gave Ian a murderous look, then quickly left the study. Ian heard the outer door bang and McDowell came back. 'Well? Did he tell you?'
'No.'
'Pity. He'll not last long here, I'm afraid. He sits his Highers next month then I think he will have to go.'
'Good.' The housemaster shrugged in a helpless little gesture.
'Maybe we could have helped, shown some understanding. If only he would tell.'
'I don't pretend to understand,' Ian said coldly. 'He has money, health, brains, and has had everything handed to him on a plate.'
'I think it's a girl. I think he's seeing a girl, in Edinburgh.'
Ian snorted. 'He would. He's the type!'
On his way home he tried to work up some sympathy for Chancellor but it was difficult. When he was with them in Macclesfield he tried not to let his dislike show, but he couldn't share his cousins' liking for the fellow. If Chancellor had got himself somehow involved with a girl, then he was in real trouble. It was one of those rules, a code you had to learn, that until you had something to offer a lady you made no attachments.
He was prepared to wait. If he were to meet her tomorrow and he would know if she were the girl for him, he would wait. There were ways of dealing with perfectly natural urges. The way of dealing with them was to work hard, involve yourself in sport, sailing, playing team games. Chancellor was of a lower order altogether.
Chapter Nine
Mam had taken up smoking to help her digestion, which was troubling her a bit, and recently had handed over to Lily the money and duty of buying the food and cooking the dinner.
Lily enjoyed the responsibility. Mam was not much of a cook, wasting money on fish and chips and hot pies. Lily managed to have a little over every week from the housekeeping money. She put it in a tin, against emergencies and took pride in the fact that since she’d been in charge there was always enough to eat. But it was a struggle. She cycled home from the Central School at midday, because she did not want to pay for school dinners - and she wanted to make sure that Mam ate.
It was a long cycle ride. She would walk to school this afternoon. There was an uphill drag in each direction and today she pushed her bike up the steep Mill Street. It was an icy-cold March day, windy and wet. Her face was stinging and she was out of breath when she reached home and put her bike in the entryway.
Calling out, 'It's snowing, Mam! All the daffodils have keeled over. You wouldn't believe it!' she went through the shop to the kitchen, where Mam was taking from the range the dish of hotpot Lily had made yesterday.
Mam carried it carefully, for she was dressed in her navy-blue two-piece; unusual for a Monday. She placed the dish on a thick raffia mat and said, 'You had best put your winter coat on this afternoon. Have you seen the letter from Magnus? It came this morning.'
Lily took off her wet mackintosh, put it over a chair to dry and saw the letter propped against the mantel clock. It stood next to the photograph of her father and the invitation to the mayoral inauguration. She gave her father a wink, as if they were great pals, then caught sight of herself in the big mirror.
'I'll read Magnus's letter later.' She pushed the long dark hair back from her forehead and pulled down the bow at the nape of her neck. She used to wish she had straight hair, envying girls who could make smooth, silky plaits or have it cut in a fashionable bob and fringe. The more damp hers became, the more it curled.
Her face was wide at the temples, with high cheekbones that were bright red from the ride down Jordangate in the wind and sleet. Her grey eyes had little gold flecks in them. Her chin was pointed like Mam’s, but her mouth was different. Mam's mouth was wide for her face, with long, strong teeth. Hers was smaller and fuller with square teeth in a very straight line. She was proud of her teeth and scrubbed them with salt and Kolynos every night. She thought her teeth were her best feature. Mam said it was her eyes.
'Sit down!' Mam said. 'Stop admiring yourself.'
'I wasn't. I was thinking of the medicals this afternoon. At least Doreen Grimshaw goes before me because it's alphabetical order.'
'Scared of Doreen?' Mam said. 'I thought you'd got over it.'
'I'm not scared. I don't trust her.'
'Soon you'll be able to avoid her,' Mam said. 'Her mother says Doreen isn't going to sit her RSAs. She wants to leave when she's fourteen.'
'I avoid her now. She's boy-daft. After school she runs off to town, hanging about the station in Waters Green. A lot of the lads from the King's School go on that line.'
'The advanced little monkey!'
'She likes people older than herself.' Lily loaded a dollop of hot pot on to her place; 'She hangs round the Andersons' bakehouse as well, dropping by to have a chat with Shandy.She's taken a fancy to Shandy's brother, Cyril. Shandy and I are too young for: Doreen.'
'She'll get herself a bad name,' Mam said, but she was smiling. Then she said, 'Howard's coming this afternoon. He sent a telegram.'
That would account for Mam's being dressed so smartly. 'Again?' Lily curled her lip. 'He was here last week.'
Mam never took her dislike of Mr Leigh seriously. Mam brought him into Lily's clean, shining kitchen these days and let him sit at the table, drinking from the china cups they had borrowed from Nanna, as if he, not Mr Chancellor, owned the house.
Lily said, 'Are you going to Mr Chancellor's inaugurationwith Mr Leigh?'
Mam's bantering mood changed swiftly. 'I'm not going with anyone,' she snapped. No sooner had Lily finished her meal than Mam began siding the table, in a hurry for her to go. Normally she liked to gossip for a bit, over a cup of tea. 'Take your letter. Get a move on.'
'Are you dressed up for Mr Leigh?' Lily took down her winter coat from behind the door. The wind was whistling round the back yard. She pulled the warm scarf about her head and tied it. 'You think he's keen on you, but Nellie Plant says that he has a woman in every town.'
'Nellie Plant will find herself in court answering a summons one of these days,' Mam said. 'Spreading lies…!’
Lily held the scarf to her throat as she left the shop
. The wind that yesterday had blown mild and soft was icy. It took the hem of her navy-blue Melton cloth coat and whipped it to and fro against her thick black stockings. Her leather boots were slipping all over the narrow pavement as she slithered down Jordangate to Shandy's house on Brock Street. Shandy was watching out for her and ran down the entry between the bakehouse and their house. Freckle-faced and bubbly, Shandy was the only daughter in a family of four older brothers, who all worked at the bakery.
'Come on. We'll have to run all the way!' Shandy grabbed her arm and they went, laughing, helter-skelter down Hibel Road on their short cut.
*…*…*
One of the classrooms had been made ready as a medical room and Lily saw, through a small plain glass panel in the door that the nit-nurse had set up two tables: one for herself and the other for the doctor.
It appeared that no classwork was to be done, for one of the prefects - the bossiest in the school - was in charge, and on each desk was a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress, the book for the RSA exam.
'One at a time,' the prefect said. 'Go into the cloakroom when your name's called. No talking.'
A window overlooked the cloakroom, behind the desk on the platform. 'I'll hand you your medical cards when you go in to get undressed.'
There was a long wooden box on the platform, containing big brown envelopes Lily had never seen before. 'Keep your knickers on and leave your bootlaces loose,' the prefect was saying. 'If you are cold, put your cardigans over your shoulders. It won't take long. When you've been examined come back quietly and sit at your desks.'
Lily hated taking off her clothes, hated anyone seeing the pale skin that was as white as milk and the little swollen bumps on her chest that were growing bigger and pinker every day but were nowhere near as big as some of the girls'. Thank heaven they were to be given some privacy. The prefect had said 'one at a time'. Lily lifted the book to read Magnus's letter.
Dear Lily, lam coming home next weekend as I have a dental appointment. I hope you can find a little time to spare for me.
Magnus wrote in a textbook style that made him sound old-fashioned and pompous. She tried to picture him in Edinburgh in the house he had described for her, the high, elaborate ceilings, tall windows with tapestry curtains and thick tasselled swags to hold them back. Only yards from Magnus's room, Edinburgh Castle loomed over the city, impregnable on top of an old volcanic rock.
I am under the care of Mr Meiklejohn, a famous Scottish physician, and am receiving a course of treatments and tests. They are not painful. They upset my digestion but I have spent no time confined to bed here. You ask how we amuse ourselves at weekends. I am afraid it is not very adventurous of me but I spend hours in my room, catching up with schoolwork. It is expected of me. My uncle expects. Ian to follow him into medicine and Rowena wants to be a nurse. Ian does everything well. He is captain of rugby and deputy head boy. I shall miss him when he goes to medical school.
Lily looked round the room. Half an hour had passed and they were well into the swing of things. The prefect sat at the desk, from where she could see the cloakroom and over the top of the frosted glass between the classrooms, into the medical room itself. Every so often she'd look up and call out a name, and as the girl went up to her she'd hand her a brown envelope and watch her go into the cloakroom to undress. Then, at a signal from next door, when that girl had been examined, she'd call to the next one on her list.
I am being strongly influenced by my uncle, who says that we are not on this earth simply for our own pleasure and insists. 'You have to put something back in, for all the advantages life has given to you.' One day I shall run the mill alongside Father, but I believe that God has a purpose for us all. I am afraid my contribution to His work is not going to come from deeds of valour. I have not been granted the stamina but I shall try always to do what is right and true. I want to be a good man and do good things
Another half-hour passed. Doreen went in and came back looking pleased with herself.
'Lily Stanway,' the prefect called out at last, and she went to the front and was handed an envelope. In the cloakroom she put it down on the lift-up long box under the coat rack. But before she could take her clothes off, the prefect put her head in at the door and said, 'Wait a minute. They aren't ready. I'll tell you when to get undressed.'
Lily sat down, her back to the classroom, and waited. She picked up the envelope and turned it over, wondering what kind of records a school might keep. Did they say if you were stupid or clever? Did they say if you had ever had nits or impetigo?
There was no sign of her being called. It was not allowed, but Lily slipped the contents of the envelope out a, little way. Inside was a big pink-coloured card, and attached to it, three long white sheets of paper. She took it right out. On the white sheets were listed all her marks, from every little test taken from the age of five, when she had gone to Beech Lane School.
Lily lifted the white sheets over the pink card; the medical record card. There were columns and in the columns, in different handwriting, were the records of all the medicals she had ever had. There were hieroglyphics, numbers over other numbers like fractions, and several single capital letters and words in Latin abbreviations.
At the top of the card it said 'Lily Isobel Stanway. Jordangate, Macclesfield. Born 21 March 1919'.
Under that, 'Mother: Miss Elsie Stanway'.
Underneath ... She stared. She froze.
Underneath it said: 'Father unknown'.
What could it mean? She had a father. Tommy Stanway, Mam's first cousin from Stockport was her father. There was a photograph of him on the kitchen mantel shelf, to prove it. Lily stared again, hoping to find something else, something to explain it. There was nothing else, except that Mam was named as Miss, not Mrs Elsie Stanway. Miss Elsie Stanway! Father unknown!
She shoved the cards back into the envelope. Horror had become disbelief, and slowly that disbelief was sickeningly turning into the terrible realisation of her state. Everything fell into place, the evasions and Mam's refusal to talk about her father.
She went through the medical in a state of shock. The doctor merely glanced at the card. He would come across them every day. She was just another little Illy-Jitty. He added a few more marks, patted her on the head and sent her over to the nurse. And forever afterwards the smell of carbolic lotion would bring that afternoon back to her with shocking clarity. The nurse took a comb from the carbolic solution and slowly lifted and parted her hair, inspecting every strand.
Lily wanted to scream. She was a bastard! Mam had never married. They had lied - Mam, Grandpa and her trusted Nanna, who had taught her the need for truth. Her arms and legs shook.
'Are you cold?'
'Yes.'
'All right. Return and get dressed. Clean bead.' The nit nurse wrote on the vile pink card that told of her shame and, unsmiling, dismissed her.
Lily went back to the cloakroom. It was all very well for Mam to say nobody knew anything about her secrets. Lily had discovered the truth, as had at least two more people: the doctor and the nit-nurse. That was as well as Mam, Nanna and Grandpa.
And as she sat at the desk there came the realisation that there was at least one other. A child must have a father. She knew now how it came about. She'd seen Nanna's cats mate and give birth, seen the scarlet-combed cockerel crowing pride in his hens. Nanna had told her everything - and said that it was the same with people, only better, because God had made people better than animals. It was because of human love that people mated and babies were conceived and born. She could not concentrate on the book. She wanted to cry. She couldn't sit here. She had to get out into clean fresh air. All at once, she jumped up and barged to the front.
'I don't feel well,' she said to the prefect. 'I'm going…’
Then, before anyone could stop her, she dashed into the cloakroom, grabbed her coat and went out into the freezing street, away from the hateful official records. She ran like the wind down Byrons Lane, over the main road and rounded
a comer into Pitt Street. Then she leaned against a house and faced the wall.
Lily Stanway! You took the name of your father, not your mother. Her father was not Tommy Stanway. If she were brave she would demand the truth from Mam. But how could she ask if Mam had been a bad lot when she was young? It was always the girls who did wrong. The man was never to blame. Girls who let men do it to them were called trollops by respectable women.
Suppose Mam said she had never wanted her? Nobody wanted, a child born out of wedlock. There were girls who were whispered about -'easy meat', girls who disappeared from Macclesfield in disgrace, to have their babies given away or put into homes. The girls came back, pitied by some and talked about by all - an encumbrance to their parents, with no hope of marriage, their lives ruined. But Man had gone to great pains to give Lily a respectable background. Round and round the questions went, and always they came back to the central mystery of Who was her father? As she went through the windy, ice-cold streets, holding her coat tight against herself, she tried to imagine who he might be. Did she have any of his features? No, she was like Mam. Was he clever? Was he alive?
A shiver ran through her when she thought of it. She had to stop again and pretend to look in a shop window, but she could barely see for the blurring tears that blinded her. What if he were alive? What if she passed him in the street every day? What sort of a father would be able to see her and not let on? He could not be the sort of man she'd want as a father; a good man who protected his child. She could not bear to think that he was alive and must know how she had always longed for a Dad. He must be dead - killed perhaps in the war, before they had time to marry.
Wise Child Page 15
