Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Are you saying you want me out?’ I asked. My voice must have betrayed how stricken I felt.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Are you saying other people want me out? Because of one attack?’

  ‘It could have been very serious,’ he said, staring at his blotter. ‘It wouldn’t just have hurt you.’

  ‘It could have hurt Winston,’ I agreed. ‘And if I hadn’t been here to open it, it would have hurt anyone who tried. And if someone had thought of popping it into the post for me at home, it might have hurt them or the postman or whoever.’

  ‘Are you saying it might be more risky for us if you weren’t here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I did. I couldn’t have some of that coffee, could I?’

  For the first time he smiled and gestured to the percolator. Then he dug in his drawer and produced a box of expensive-looking – and expensive-tasting – chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Do you want to get rid of me, Richard?’

  ‘You always have been more trouble than you were worth,’ he said, his smile broadening to take the sting out of what he was saying. ‘And oddly enough – though this may not comfort you, Sophie – I wonder if we’re safer with you here. A target, true. But at least if you’re here the nutter isn’t going to hold a class of kids hostage until we reveal your whereabouts.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. And I suppose the said nutter isn’t going to know I’m not here – not unless you hire one of those planes with a banner to tell the whole of Brum I’ve moved out.’

  ‘That’s roughly what I shall say to the Chief when I see him this morning. There’s no doubt he finds you an embarrassment. I thought you and I might want to sing the same song. But if you want to disappear, I’ll say that’s the best thing for the college.’

  I stared at the coffee as if it might provide some answer. At last I shook my head. ‘I wish I knew. I think I’d go off my head sitting around at home. And I’d hate to give up my exam classes now. And there’s a student I’m very concerned about – she’s important too. But I don’t want to harm anyone here. Tell you what,’ I said, taking another biscuit, ‘why don’t we talk to Chris Groom? He mentioned police protection the other day. I turned it down flat at the time. But if it’ll enable me to stay here and get on with my job, I could grovel a bit –’

  ‘You grovel? Come off it, Sophie! You’ll make it seem as if the man’s doing you a favour. How’s your word-processing coming on? Did you chose WordStar or WordPerfect?’

  I had to postpone my next meeting – the one with the union rep – until after my class, and I was actually on my way to her staff room when I ran into Manjit. Her lip was indisputably split. I said nothing, but stood still, waiting for her to respond to my inquiring look. A second or two later she was crying in my arms.

  Break. Kids and staff would be swarming along here any moment. The only safe place I could think of was the staff loo. I unlocked it and pushed her in. No, there was no one in the only cubicle. I locked the outer door. If only there were a chair for her! She turned from me and leaned against the washbasin.

  ‘Manjit?’ I prompted at last. Someone might try to come in at any moment.

  Her response was barely audible. But it might have been, ‘My brother.’

  ‘Your brother did this?’

  She nodded. ‘Because I wouldn’t let him –’ And she broke off, sobbing.

  ‘Let him?’

  ‘You know, miss. You know …’

  ‘But that’s against the law. And surely, surely, Manjit, it’s against your religion?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Can’t you tell someone? Surely your mother or father’d be appalled?’

  ‘I can’t tell them. I can’t.’

  ‘But someone at your temple? There must be elders, community leaders, who’d –’

  ‘I can’t tell them.’

  ‘The police?’

  She shook her head. She shuddered so violently I thought she might be sick.

  I was completely out of my depth. Sure, I’d been on counselling courses, sure, I’d had ten years’ experience dealing with students’ problems. But incest – that was out of my range.

  ‘Is there anyone you can tell, love?’

  Another shudder. Then she was back in my arms, crying.

  I waited, feeling the thin bones shaking against mine. All I could do was stroke her hair and mutter useless words meant to comfort her. But at last I’d have to do something: I had a classful of students waiting for me, and though everyone would be very pleased I’d been nice to one student, they’d still hold me responsible if anyone in that group put a chair through the window or set fire to a bin. Most of all, I knew I wasn’t doing Manjit any good. She needed an expert. And expert I was not.

  ‘Manjit, love, could you tell another woman? If I found you a counsellor, could you talk to her? She might even find somewhere safe –’ I’d meant to say, ‘somewhere safe to talk’.

  ‘Somewhere safe to go?’ She stared at me, her eyes bloodshot with tears and mascara but also at last showing hope.

  I found myself nodding. And having a glimmer of an idea.

  When we got to it, the Counselling Room was locked, but I let her into it, and locked it behind her as I went in search of Frances, the counsellor. Flu. She was at home with flu. And one of her team was in Leeds on a course, the other nowhere to be found. There was a kid here being abused, and no one to help. I could have screamed. And suddenly I was afraid, again. I was hurtling around the building as unprotected as if no one had ever tried to blow me up. And someone else’s safety was very much in my hands. I found an empty staff room and reached for the phone.

  Chris. Chris might have an idea.

  Ten minutes later I was greeting a woman about my age in the foyer. As we went up in the lift – the lift, now restored to service – I gave her the bones of the situation. She nodded, anonymous, professional. That was it. She’d be in touch via Frances, she said. They’d worked together before. No, of course I didn’t know. That was what it was all about wasn’t it – confidentiality. I unlocked the door of the Counselling Room, introduced her briefly to Manjit as a friend of a friend, and left them to it. Back to a classroom full of loud kids and paper darts.

  I was glad at lunchtime I was still in the dark about Manjit. The meeting with the Chief, remember. The Principal. He was an ex-Navy man who liked to be addressed as Principal Worrall. God knows how he’d ended up at William Murdock. He’d have been at home, perhaps, in a protocol-ridden public school. Here he might have been merely an anachronism. But he was implementing changes directed by the government with the enthusiasm of one used to obeying and giving orders, whether the lower ranks liked them or not.

  His message to me was apparently coded. It had nothing to do with yesterday’s bomb. It had to do with community relations. Staff should not take it upon themselves to criticise community customs, he said. And that was all.

  I gaped.

  ‘You have to remember that we draw our clients from a wide variety of social, cultural and ethnic backgrounds,’ he continued eventually, at last gesturing me to a seat. ‘It is important at all times not to be judgemental.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I refer, of course, to that potentially serious incident the other day. The college does not need bad publicity, Miss – ah – Miss Rivers.’

  I nodded, and got to my feet. ‘Message understood,’ I said. But I could not bring myself to call him ‘sir’.

  During the afternoon break there was another meeting in Richard’s room. Chris was there, this time. The two men were deep in conversation by the time I arrived, talking about geraniums, some of which grew rather thinly on Richard’s windowsill. But we had gathered together to discuss not flowers but me, and it seemed they’d arrived at the same conclusion some minutes ago. I was to stay in college, provided I had protection. The safety of the staff and students was after all paramount.

  ‘OK, yours is quite important too,’ said Chris.

 
‘I told the Chief the flu epidemic had left us so short-staffed I didn’t see how we could possibly ask you to take leave. And the budget for VTs – part-time staff –’ he said to Chris, ‘is almost exhausted at this time in the financial year. He did suggest unpaid leave –’

  ‘Did he indeed!’

  ‘But the union rep said that was out of the question.’

  So there had been other meetings about me. My future was being manipulated without me. It was what we did to the students all the time, of course – talk about them behind their backs but the excuse was that we knew best.

  ‘You didn’t want to consult me?’ I said, not entirely mildly.

  ‘The rep said she’s asked to meet you but you hadn’t turned up. And we needed a fast response for the Chief.’

  I pulled a face. ‘OK. And how will we explain to the kids why I’m being trailed by six foot of cop?’

  ‘I mentioned Tina the other night,’ said Chris. ‘And Richard thought she’d be ideal. Young. Knows the place. Gets on well with you.’

  ‘I thought we could say she was shadowing you. Work experience or something,’ said Richard.

  ‘So it’s all decided then,’ said Groom.

  ‘Fine,’ I said, backing out and shutting the door on my irony.

  So I had a shadow, but she was all too solid. Tina, as one of my ex-students, wasn’t such a bad choice. She’d been neither better nor worse than the rest of the group of YTS students aspiring to join the force. She’d put her most serious efforts into escaping the mandatory cross-country runs, as I recall, and had had a passionate crush on her Law lecturer, writing his name on every desk she sat at. I didn’t know whether she’d joined as a DC, or if that was some sort of promotion. She’d lost a stone or so since her time with us, and her hair was distinctly blonder, but she maintained her Black Country accent and a love of the louder and less tuneful forms of pop music, if the lifts she’d given me were any evidence. How we’d get on when she was living under my roof I’d no idea. As far as my social life was concerned, I was determined to keep her on the margins. She could drive me to the Friday choir rehearsal, and to the Music Centre on Saturdy morning, but that was that. I think she was relieved to avoid such unnatural musical activities – so relieved that I managed to talk her into a cycle ride on Saturday afternoon.

  ‘Cycle? You mean, on me bike, like?’

  ‘If you’ve got one. Nothing competitive. Nice and level. A good meal at the end of it.’

  ‘Real food? None of your fancy muck?’

  ‘How about chicken and chips?’

  With that, Tina became amazingly cooperative. She borrowed her sister’s machine, and then organised her boyfriend and his van to ferry the cycles to a suitable access point. She never addressed the boyfriend by name, and he had all the social graces of a Trappist monk. I can’t say I felt an instant rapport with him.

  As he pulled up, with a rather ostentatious tweak of the handbrake, he offered unenthusiastically to wait.

  ‘Not on your bloody life,’ said Tina. ‘You pick us up from wherever my bum gets tired – right?’

  So the boyfriend’s van had a phone. No ordinary boyfriend this, perhaps.

  He watched us unload the cycles and carry them down the steps. And then he drove away.

  For some reason people refer to the Midlands as the Venice of Britain. I suspect it’s because they’ve never seen the canals except on a map.

  I suppose ours have the same unlovely smell as the Venice ones. In fact, Venice on a hot day might have the edge on them. But Venice would probably score more points for views. In Birmingham there might be vistas, but any that we saw ended in sixties flats or the unkempt sides of churches or factories. Mostly factories. The odd brewery, of course. These days efforts were being made to smarten them up, not just round the Music Centre, and exploit the austere beauty of the blue brickwork. What was once a nice, cheap mooring in Gas Street Basin, for instance, was now being developed, much to the dismay of the narrow-boat owners. And the early-nineteenth-century bridges, elegant cast-iron affairs, were being lovingly restored and repainted.

  We got on to our particular stretch of towpath on Somerset Road, by way of an awkward set of steps, and I turned towards the city.

  ‘Are you sure this is OK?’ Tina demanded. ‘I know you managed to talk Chris into letting you out, but are you sure?’

  I gestured. We could see any would-be assailant hundreds of yards away, and if anyone wanted to ambush us from a bridge he’d have to know exactly which way we planned to go. And he’d have to have a thorough knowledge of Birmingham and its one-way streets.

  ‘It’s not what you’d call pretty,’ Tina muttered, and pushed off.

  We passed a couple of mattresses and black sack spilling out nappies. And a comprehensively dead fox.

  Tina stopped beside a particularly opaque stretch of water and pointed at something lumpy. ‘What d’you suppose that is, our Soph?’

  ‘Don’t even ask.’

  Grotesque odds and ends of wood and metal lodged half in, half out of the water: God help a careless navigator. A friend of mine who’s got a narrow boat claimed to spend more time freeing the propeller from sunken detritus than actually sailing. If you ever fell in, he would add, with a ghoulish smile, you had to be rushed to hospital to have your stomach pumped out. And a battery of injections.

  ‘My brother reckons there was this dog,’ said Tina, ‘and it went for a swim in the cut down Oldbury. Any road, it got out and shook itself dry. And blowed if it didn’t burst into flame – from the phosphorus or summat. My God, Soph, how much further? Me bum’s killing me. I’ve heard of being saddle-sore, but not on a bloomin’ bike.’

  We’d hardly started!

  ‘Shall we just get as far as Gas Street? Could you manage that? Or, a bit further on they’re doing up an old pub. We might just reach that and it’d be nice and quiet.’

  ‘Ooh, I’d murder for half of mild.’

  Soon we reached Gas Street Basin, bright and clean and a good omen for the rest of the canal system. I could see Tina was tempted by the big pub dominating it, the James Brindley. But she had to admit it was far too public for us. We pressed on.

  We went under Broad Street, the tunnel rumbling with traffic, and on past the Music Centre and the indoor sports complex being built beside it. We took the route to Dudley, and there, after another unappetising stretch, was a low, brick-built pub – the Bolt ‘n’ Nut.

  ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs,’ said Tina, beaming with relief, ‘if it isn’t the good old Matthew Boulton. Looks good, mind you. Like Cornwall or summat.’

  She was right. A whole yuppie village was growing up with houses and flats mimicking the sort of artistic jumble you expect of a holiday resort. And it worked, probably because everything was brick-built. All the window boxes sprouted bulbs. You could believe it was spring. Particularly as the pub had a sheltered terrace on to which one or two couples had ventured to find sunny corners for private conversations.

  In one of them, the one furthest from the towpath, a handsome young man was leaning intimately towards a bulky young woman. The sun glinted on his hair and her muscles. Stobbard and Jools.

  At this point Tina’s chain came off.

  ‘Even the old bike needs a rest,’ she said. ‘D’you know how to fix it? ’Cos I’m blowed if I do.’

  I let my bike fall beside hers. It was a simple enough job, if messy.

  ‘There – all you need to do now is pull up the gear lever a little. OK?’

  ‘OK. But I reckon your hands aren’t. Still, I don’t suppose they’ll do a nail inspection when they pull us a pint.’

  I rubbed hard with a tissue. The last people I wanted to see me this afternoon were Stobbard and Jools. I put out a hand to stop Tina.

  ‘That man there – I’m supposed to have a date with him on Tuesday. And the woman’s the bassoon player –’

  ‘The famous Jools? Built like a brick shit-house, isn’t she? He’s a bit of all righ
t, though. Hey – you’re all right: they’re having a barney. If that don’t beat cock-fighting.’

  We watched as Stobbard stood up and pushed away from the table. He slammed his fist on the table, and Jools stood up too. I think she’d have hit him had he not seized her wrist. Then they flung away from each other, and went off in opposite directions. I’d have given my eyeteeth to know what they were arguing about.

  We too drank on the terrace. Tina wanted to hear all about Stobbard and the date for Tuesday. The idea of the ballet appalled her, until she reflected on all those young men leaping round the stage. ‘All them tights. All them bums. All them big thingies. Should turn you on nicely. You won’t want me around, that’s for sure.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You’ll have to square it with Chris, mind. I couldn’t take the evening off without his say-so. And I’d love to see his face when you tell him why.’

  ‘I may have mentioned I was going with a friend to the ballet.’

  ‘That particular friend? Thought not. Well, you’ll have to. And fix up about afterwards. I take it there’ll be an afterwards. You want to make sure of it, a bloke with a bum like that.’

  Maybe I could have coped with the eternal music if Tina hadn’t insisted on singing it tunelessly under her breath. And she thought it necessary to ask me where I was off to every time I left the room. By nine I could have screamed.

  I would retire to the loo. At least she couldn’t follow me there.

  There were three conversations I’d like to have. One with Jools, another with Stobbard, and a third with Tony. If Stobbard fancied me – and Tony had assured me he did – what was he doing with Jools, whom he pretended to loathe? All I could expect was reassurance, which I could get more easily from Tony. I found my fingers shaking as I dialled his number. I made a mistake and had to start again.

  I got his answering machine, of course. No, I did not want to leave a message. Then I realised: Saturday night. A gig. Worcester, as I recalled, in the Cathedral. Where Tony was, Stobbard and Jools would be too.