'I was about to suggest it,' Neil said grimly. 'Good night, Miss Birch.'
At least she had given him an exit line. Inwardly, he raged a his own clumsiness. He should never have let his self-control slip like that. To tackle her in front of the class - a cad's trick. And to drag in that junior school stuff from his early days of school mastering. No. Walk in, shake hands, glance at the register and out again. And tomorrow the dread summons to his office. That was the way such a situation must be handled. Lord, how he'd bungled it!
Sharon Birch didn't accompany him to the door. She stood very quietly near the table, watching him go. He knew she was wishing he would drop dead.
Outside in the dark, he said aloud with withering contempt: 'Egg-cosies!'
Classes ended at nine o'clock and the night suddenly came alive with home-goers. They arrived in dribbles and left in an army! Feet crunched on the gravel, young voices shouted and whistled in release, transistors gave forth pop music, bicycle bells tinkled and car horns blared. Car Maintenance, Neil's first innovation, had attracted by far the largest enrolment of the session and the class of fifty-eight had to be accommodated in a long room still gruesomely known as the senile ward.
The success of this one class had elated him. But tonight, nosing his own car out into the main road, he saw nothing but futility and muddle. Egg-cosies. Women cramming hips and haws and dead leaves into a jug. Sausages sizzling over a bunsen burner… All these people - teenagers in jeans and fancy jackets, housewives with baskets, brisk middle-aged chaps carrying briefcases, coming here for new skills and knowledge, hoping for advancement in their jobs or simply to learn the use of leisure: what did they really get out of it? They were part of the two million who enrolled every winter in evening classes all over the country, to learn wine-making, judo, a foreign language or the mysteries of stocks and shares. Perhaps elsewhere they received value for money; but here at Roxley it seemed to him Samuel Cragill had turned the whole thing into a farce and he'd be a fool to stay on, putting in a gruelling twelve-hour day, wrecking his health and breaking his heart as he tried to sort out something worth while from the chaotic muddle.
One thing he could do and must do. He would make a personal approach to the local firms employing juvenile labour and prick their conscience over this day release business. He made a jotting in his notebook as he had his usual small whisky and soda in the bar of the Raven. Then he said good night to the landlord and went up to bed.
He had taken a room here on special monthly terms. It was a pleasant enough place which still kept the atmosphere of a country inn. The ancient abbey drew pilgrims of one sort or another, a sprinkling of artists and archaeologists and foreign tourists. There was good company for the seeking. He had a room overlooking the river, his own corner table in the dining room, friendly service and good food. But tonight all this seemed futile. It wasn't the place to come home to at the end of such a long and discouraging day. His depression deepened as he stood at his window, hearing the river, swollen with recent rain, and the tossing branches which made a changing pattern against the starry sky.
The idea had been that when he found a house which took his fancy, his parents would come over and vet it. Hitherto, and ever since his college days, he had lived with them in his childhood home. For two years, up to last spring, he had gone round noticing houses, critical of window-frames and lawns; because, when he found his dream house, it was to be the setting for the most wonderful girl in the world.
God, how he missed her. In his dreams she came running to him, all that soft fair hair about her face. She clung to him and wept. He could hear her heartbroken weeping now in the sound of the trees. Just wishful thinking, he reminded himself. Folly upon folly. But he could not endure to believe that she had found happiness away from him.
In bed, staring at the ceiling, faintly lit by the stars, he forced his thoughts into another channel. The old memory game by which he had trained his powers of observation. Damned smug that sounded, but at least it was a release from his dreams of Jennifer.
The old path lab. Tall, dingy cupboard, bare floor, blackboard and three tables. Sewing machines on two of them. On the third a blue jug spilling over with orange, crimson and gold. He could remember eight things there had been in the jug, he could see the exact shade of blue. It couldn't just be chance. Believe it or not, she had bought a jug to match her eyes! Just like a woman…
CHAPTER TWO
'I had such hopes,' said Sharon. 'But the man's a bully and a tyrant.'
Miss Frith dabbed at her eyes.
'We must remember he's a stranger to Roxley and not yet used to our ways.'
'Don't make excuses for him,' Sharon said sternly. 'He was abominably rude to you.'
'The new broom…' faltered Miss Frith.
'He has no right to sweep people aside as if they were dead leaves!'
Ahead of her in the lane where she was walking with Miss Frith and Miss Frith's little dog Barbiole danced and scurried the throng clad in russet and scarlet; and under every wayside tree autumn had piled its treasure in different textures and colours: the horse-chestnut leaves like splayed fingers, the small glossy beech, the crimson of mountain ash, the wood-brown oak leaves and the huge, curled-up leaves of sycamore, many already rotted down to fine lace. In the tangle of birch and small, twisted oak-trees that sloped steeply to the river there was a flash of living colour as a jay and a red squirrel noisily disputed a secret hoard of acorns. An autumn carpet, thought Sharon. But to design a repeat of leaves, however varied their form, would be too trite. You'd have to do it in abstract, muted and melancholy; and against such a carpet a room would have to glow out in golds and brilliant blues and splashes of red - just as the sky now showed intensely blue between bare branches and the banks were ablaze with their hips and haws and autumnal gorse.
The beauty of it ached in her throat and in her heart Then a harsher gust turned the dance of the leaves into a rout, reminding her of Neil Haslam and the wind of change he had set blowing through the valley.
'Poor Barbiole, he's shivering,' said Miss Frith. 'I mustn't bring him out without his little tartan jacket again.'
'Almost October! And I still have a few roses in the garden.'
'They'll come to nothing now, dear. If I were you I'd bring them indoors and enjoy them.' But she couldn't keep off the topic uppermost in her mind. 'It was so unexpected. In front of the students he was quite agreeable. He apologized for not visiting the class before. It seems Mr. Cragill left quite a backlog of paper work and I'm sure that young girl in the office isn't much help… Well, I could see the students liked our new Principal. He's a very personable young man and his smile is most attractive. But later on, in his private office, he wasn't smiling at all. He had my register on the table in front of him and he said he was disturbed to see how the numbers were dropping off.'
'All evening classes drop off,' stated Sharon positively. 'It's one of the facts of life. People are dead keen at the start of the session. But it only needs a really wet week or some special event in the town, or even a new series on television… Adam Kershaw is having the same trouble with the Music Appreciation class.'
'Then he is doomed,' said Miss Frith in a hollow tone. 'I tried to explain the difficulties to Mr. Haslam. But he looked at me very hard and said, "Are you sure the students aren't leaving because they find the class deadly? They don't want grammatical exercises. They want to order drinks in a bar or chase their lost luggage and give the porter hell".'
'Oh, how brutal!'
Miss Frith stood holding her funny little bare dog. The wind blew strands of faded hair across her face and her eyes were full of distress.
'Sharon, I'm well qualified to take that class. I use my French every day in the correspondence at Sutcliffe's - it's surprising how far afield our tools are known - and I've often described to you how I spent five years as governess in a silk family in Lyons. The dear boys still write at Christmas, even now they're grown up, and call me their chere Mademoisell
e Amelie. But when it comes to oral tests the night class people go all tongue-tied and really they're quite content to work through a set of exercises and take a piece of dictation. Mr. Haslam threw visual aids and language laboratories at me till I was dizzy… Sharon, I'm too old to learn new tricks and I believe I must resign. Perhaps that's what he's after.'
'Don't give him such a cheap victory.' On the question of teaching methods he could be right; but the way he put his ideas over was intolerable. Sharon felt a burning compassion for Miss Frith who led such a dull life with her sister and spent tedious days translating business letters and documents for Sutcliffe's Machine Tools. Her life had held just one short period of adventure and romance: the rich silk family in Lyons with their Riviera holidays and their five different glasses for wine at dinner. Amelia Frith relived a little of that glory when she trudged up the hill to take her class at the Institute. She taught with love, and that was something Neil Haslam wouldn't understand in a million years. 'He can't build up Roxley Institute into something fine by bullying his staff and closing half the classes!'
They had reached Miss Frith's gate and Barbiole was yapping frenziedly at something by the roadside. It turned out to be a dead hedgehog and Miss Frith exclaimed in dismay.
'So many of them get killed crossing the road! Instead of running for safety, they curl up when they see car headlights and it's fatal.' She gave Sharon a sideways glance. 'Perhaps there's a lesson in it. We are very foolish to curl up and bristle when Mr. Haslam approaches us.'
There's no question of being friends with the man,' said Sharon. 'Oh, where he's concerned, I'm all prickles!'
Head tilted, Miss Frith considered her and suddenly smiled.
'Do you know, I'd feel quite sorry for him if he had a go at you.'
Tingling colour came into Sharon's cheeks. She waved a hand and went briskly on her way to work. Cowardice, she thought. Why didn't I tell Miss Frith that we've clashed already when he came barging into my class last night? Oh, the man was odious! She resented him with all her being and was astonished at the violence of her own feelings. As she had told Miss Frith, there was no question of being friends; but in a small place like Roxley where you couldn't help bumping into people, it was awkward, even ludicrous, to be on terms of armed neutrality, to put the situation at its mildest! Well, he had only himself to blame if he was left out in the cold, treated as an 'off-comed-un' by the valley folk.
Beyond the annoyance there was curiosity. Why pick Roxley ? What was there here for an ambitious man with his foot already firmly on the ladder? She would like to fancy he had some dark tormenting secret; but it could hardly be anything more dramatic than the need to seek fresh woods and pastures new because he had made himself thoroughly unpopular in his last post! Suddenly she recalled his face when the path lab cupboard yielded up its skeleton: a multitude of little felt egg-cosies. Her lips twitched. Delightedly, in spite of herself, laughter bubbled up.
What was there about this morning? She felt keyed up, restless, almost with a sense of being poised on the brink of momentous events. She couldn't settle to work, though her new design was at a critical stage.
Her studio at the carpet mill was in fact a narrow width cut off the main designing room by glass partitions. She worked at an extremely long desk sloping up towards the windows. In front of her was propped the watercolour sketch: a conventional pattern based on a little park she passed every day on her way to work. Flower beds in geometrical shapes, rounded and pointed shrubs, a crisscross of paths and even a bandstand. Working it out had been fun, but now she loathed it - the delicate whimsy of a moment shrunk to something trivial and ordinary. It had to be laboriously plotted out on an immense sheet of paper, four yards by four, the actual size of the finished carpet. The paper would eventually be cut into half-yard strips for the machines; and when she saw her little green park with its bandstand again it would be lying on the showroom floor and Mr. Ben and the chief designer, Frank Roberts, would be walking on it, pointing out faults in the design. That was a moment she dreaded, though still an age away.
Using a hogshair brush with the point cut off, it was easy to fill a square in one movement of the hand; but today the work went slowly. She couldn't get her colours right, there was too much gum arabic in the medium, her position on the stool was awkward; and she was aware of the copyists beyond the glass partition, perched up in pairs at their long tables and twittering like a treetop love-in of starlings. This autumn morning had burst upon the valley in glory, but all she could see through her window was the pointed glass roofs of the weaving sheds, leading the eye to a very high, very black wall hung with shabby ivy. Suddenly it was a view through prison bars, not to be endured at all.
A sort of panic seized her and she scrambled from stool to table to windowsill, pressing her face to the dingy pane. Now she could see the river, leaping down in quicksilver brilliance from the fells which shut the valley in; and the red sandstone of Roxley Abbey blazing amid greenery - tiger, tiger, burning bright - as the faith of the Benedictine monks had blazed when they built it. Lifting her eyes higher still, she saw spears of light glancing off the windows of the Institute at the top of the long winding drive edged by shrubberies of rhododendron and golden privet.
Spears of knowledge piercing the darkness of men's minds. The treasures of the past, the secrets of the future, cunning technical skills and the gift of tongues. What a power the Institute could be in the life of the valley!
She heard no footsteps, but an instinct made her turn quickly. It was too late. The two men had caught her in this ridiculous situation, balanced precariously on the windowsill, one foot groping wildly for the table.
Ben Hallsworth boomed out: 'What will the girl be up to next? If you want the window open, why don't you ask Bernard?'
Neil Haslam said nothing. He had her by the waist and was swinging her down to the floor before she could even protest. His mouth had a sardonic twist which absolutely infuriated her.
'Man of action. That's what I like to see,' said Mr. Ben with his rich chuckling laugh. 'Well, Sharon, your new boss has been checking up on you.'
Sharon's head went up. She darted a furious look at the younger man, and Mr. Ben laughed again.
'I'm joking, of course. He has come down on me hard for not releasing our lads and girls to take day courses at the Institute. I hope I've convinced him that we're keen enough, though our young people are not. It's to his credit that he's doing a bit of poking and prying. Cragill never bothered.'
Sharon said quickly: 'But Mr. Cragill has lived here all his life and he knows the valley.'
'Perhaps it's high time a stranger took a look at us,' said Mr. Ben drily. He clapped a friendly hand on the younger man's arm. 'Now you'll have to excuse me. You picked a busy morning. My chief designer is just back from Paris - he's been taking part in this so-called "outward mission" sponsored by our Federation and the British Export Council.'
Neil Haslam said guardedly that he knew a little about
it.
The manufacturer surveyed him with shrewd, twinkling eyes. 'That's not good enough, young man. You'll have to know all about it if your Tech classes are to be a ha'porth of use to our people. This was a very big thing: an eight-day tour in which twenty-one of the top British carpet designers took part. Roberts has come home bursting with new ideas - and I want to hear them. So I'll leave Sharon to show you the department, then Bernard will take you downstairs and hand you over to the foreman of the weaving shed. Right? If you're not pressed for time, drop into my office for a drink before you leave.'
He shook hands briskly and went away. Watching him go, Sharon raged inwardly. Naturally she was longing to hear about Paris, too. And she was stuck here with a rude, intrusive stranger who came poking and prying, throwing his weight around. She braced herself.
'About last night. I'm writing out my scheme for the course and I'll leave it at your office. You see, Mr.
Haslam, embroidery has quite changed. Of course, we still do
hand embroidery, but there's a lot of machine work and stick-ons. And tapestry, of course. That's all the rage. It isn't a question any more of women sitting in a cosy circle making… well…'
'Egg-cosies.'
She gave him a guarded look. 'I'd never opened that cupboard. You must please believe me. Perhaps Mr. Cragill could tell us something about the egg-cosies.'
'The same thought had occurred to me,' said Neil grimly.
'Please don't be too hard on him. He inherited an awful lot of junk when the cottage hospital was closed. These inconvenient buildings.'
'And still, after ten years, makeshift! An old path lab is an appalling place for art classes!'
Sharon was silent, considering his words. She ventured : 'It's quiet. No one disturbs us.'
Neil felt exasperation rising. Her acceptance of intolerable conditions annoyed him. She would put up with anything rather than acknowledge him in the right! She even felt called on to defend that old humbug, Cragill, though an intelligent girl must have seen through him in two minutes flat.
'As for the flowers we were arranging,' she went on valiantly, 'we must always go to Nature for embroidery designs, even if they end up stylized or abstract. I start the students off on basic design - lines and dots - and then show them how to build up a pattern. It's a matter of training the eye and establishing a colour range. When we're pleased with our flower arrangement each student will make a watercolour sketch and work it out on squared paper for a tapestry.'
Neil mumbled: 'I can see I owe you every sort of apology.'
'Don't mention it,' said Sharon politely. 'I quite understand.'
Some imp of perversity made Neil remark: 'I barged into your class last night and blew my top. You understand - but you don't forgive.'
She lifted her head and the dark blue eyes blazed away at him.
'What I really can't forgive is that you're closing Mr. Smart down. Just like that - after only the third week of term!'
Neil blinked. Mr. Smart. Joinery. Sausages… By golly, the grapevine was far and away the most efficient thing he'd struck yet!
Margaret Baumann - Design for Loving (1970) Page 2
