by Janet Tanner
When it was done she felt almost bereft, but also proud. She clipped the drawing between two pieces of card to keep it flat and took it to Mr Robinson.
He didn’t lard her with praise; that wasn’t his way, even though he was perhaps more aware than most of Dinah’s fragile self-confidence and her desperate need of encouragement. But he let her see that he was impressed.
‘You know, Dinah, we should be thinking about getting you into art college,’ he told her.
Dinah’s heart leaped. She was so surprised she did not know what to say. Art college – when all her friends were aiming for secretarial courses and teacher training! It didn’t seem real – it was like a dream. But as the first euphoria began to wear off there was the old familiar sinking feeling lying in wait for her. She knew very well what Grandfather, and even her mother, would have to say about such a plan. It would be stamped on as firmly as coffee bars on Sundays and dates with boys had been.
‘I couldn’t,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Dinah, you could! You have real talent. Oh, you’ve got a lot of hard work to put in, of course, but you don’t mind hard work, do you?’
‘No, it’s not that …’ She hesitated, feeling disloyal. ‘It’s my family. They wouldn’t let me go.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘They just wouldn’t.’
‘In that case perhaps I ought to have a word with them,’ Mr Robinson said. He was excited by the prospect of getting her into art college; after years of teaching indifferent youngsters who looked on his classes as a ‘skive’from ‘real work’, Dinah, with her wonderful gift, was a joy to him. He didn’t want her to waste that gift, and he didn’t want to lose this chance, this one chance, of seeing just one of his pupils go on to success. ‘Will you ask your mother to come and see me, Dinah?’
‘I’ll ask,’ Dinah said. ‘ But I don’t think it will make any difference.’
As she had expected, Ruth poured scorn on the idea and Grandfather thundered warnings about the moral standards of colleges of art.
‘Dens of vice!’ he proclaimed. ‘What put such an idea in your head? And what would fooling around there fit you for?’
‘Mr Robinson says there are all kinds of things I could do. I could even teach art like he does.’
‘If you want to teach there are plenty of other subjects. What about English? You’ve always liked that. Or religious instruction.’
‘I don’t want to teach religious instruction. I want to do art. Oh please, Mum, won’t you just come and talk to Mr Robinson about it?’
‘Dinah, there is nothing to talk about. And in any case the whole discussion is academic. I don’t suppose for one moment you would get in.’
Deflated, though not in the least surprised, Dinah reported back to Mr Robinson and saw a look of mulish determination come into his eyes.
‘All right, Dinah, just leave it with me,’ was all he said.
A week later Miss Derby telephoned the manse.
‘Mrs Marshall, I’d like to talk to you about Dinah.’
‘Oh no!’ Ruth wailed. ‘She hasn’t been fooling about with that boy again, has she?’
‘No, it’s nothing like that. It’s Dinah’s future I want to discuss. When could you come in to see me? Would tomorrow afternoon be convenient?’
‘Oh … yes, Miss Derby, of course!’ said Ruth, who was almost as much in awe of the senior mistress as her daughter was.
Dinah always considered it a minor miracle that the hated Miss Derby should have been the person who persuaded her mother to allow her to try for a place at art college. In reality, of course, it was Mr Robinson she had to thank for it. He had realised that the formidable senior mistress carried far more authority than he did, and he had gone to her with the problem. Miss Derby, who was more susceptible to his bohemian charms than she would have been willing to admit, agreed with him that it would be a feather in the school’s cap to have a pupil succeed in such an unlikely ambition, and with her forceful manner Miss Derby quickly talked Ruth round.
‘She thinks you should be given the chance to try for a place at one of the really good colleges,’ Ruth said to Dinah, placing the emphasis on the ‘good’ as if that had been the deciding factor. ‘She says it would be a crime to let your talents go to waste. So I have agreed – as long as you are sure it is what you really want to do.’
‘Oh I am!’ Dinah said, hardly able to believe her good fortune.
From the moment Ruth announced her decision the atmosphere in the manse became terrible. Grandfather remained firmly opposed to the idea – and Grandfather was not used to being thwarted. When his first protests went unheeded his fury seemed to harden so that even his silence was eloquent. He went about the manse like a huge black thundercloud shutting out the sun. He refused to talk to Ruth or Dinah; when it was necessary for him to speak to them he barked in tones that clearly displayed his displeasure. Mona, Dinah’s grandmother, became more mouse-like than ever, scuttling about with a look that said she might burst into tears at any moment and doing her best to persuade Ruth to change her mind.
‘Your father is very upset. You shouldn’t go against his wishes like this, after all he has done for you.’
‘Mother, Miss Derby says it is in Dinah’s best interests.’
‘Your father says these places are … terrible. Full of sinners. He can’t bear to think of Dinah there and neither can I. He’ll be ill with the worry of it, Ruth. Can’t you see how grey he looks? It could bring on a stroke or a heart attack or anything and then how would you feel, knowing you and Dinah were responsible?’
But astonishingly Ruth remained firm. For once in her life she had been forced to choose between two figures of authority and for some reason best known to herself she had decided to go along with Miss Derby.
Dinah got her place on a foundation course at a college of art in the next county, ‘digs’ were found for her with a middle-aged widow in a terraced house just a bus-ride from the college – Ruth had insisted Dinah should stay with someone who would look after her properly – and at the beginning of term Grandfather, still glowering, still churlish, drove her there in his ancient Morris Oxford.
‘I just hope,’ he said, as Dinah unloaded her battered suitcase, her canvas hold-all and her brand new portfolio, ‘I just hope, my girl, that you will not live to regret this.’
‘Oh Grandfather, please! Be happy for me!’ Dinah begged, but he turned away. In the September sunlight the long creases in his hawk-like face were deeper and more pronounced than ever; his mouth, set and hard, refused to smile.
‘I hope you will have the good sense not to bring shame and disgrace on us,’ was all he said.
Dinah’s year as a foundation-course student passed fairly uneventfully. Away from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the manse she began to blossom in a dozen small ways. She changed her style of dressing from the prim and proper school-and-Sunday clothes and took to wearing casual jeans and sweaters, though when she went home for weekends she always dressed in a skirt long enough not to offend her grandfather. She spent what little spare cash she had on records of Elvis Presley and Billy Fury and played them on an ancient record player that she had acquired at a rummage sale. She grew her hair long and wore it loose, and once, in a fit of daring, put on a brown rinse just to see what she would look like with dark hair. She hated it and spent the next week washing and washing it, again and again, until it was gone. She also began to acquire a certain measure of independence, asking Mrs Meadows, with whom she lodged, to buy muesli for her breakfast instead of cooking the bacon-and-tomatoes or poached eggs on toast which her mother had requested as part of the deal. Occasionally she went out with some of the friends she made on the course, to coffee bars or the cinema, even, once or twice, to a dance hall, but she was certainly not engulfed by the wild lifestyle her grandfather had predicted. She was still too inhibited by her upbringing to want to indulge in the smoking, drinking and drugs that existed on the periphery of art-school life – and
there was simply no time for leading the wild life anyway.
The course was a good deal more demanding than Dinah had ever imagined it could be; there was so much work to be done that she often had to stay up late at night to finish one project or another, and the circles under her eyes owed more to her efforts on some piece of coursework than to gay living.
The course was a varied one and Dinah found she enjoyed the creative tasks she was set most of all. Designing and making a receptacle to hold all her artistic bits and pieces was one she particularly enjoyed – she made hers from hessian and bits of leather and it was held up to the rest of the students as brilliantly innovative – and a nursery rhyme mobile made from wood was chosen to donate to the local children’s hospital.
Towards the end of the year Dinah had to choose which course to apply for to take her over the three-year span of degree studies. She was still undecided by the time the students held their annual fancy dress ball. But the excitement – and the accolades she received as a result of the Red Indian costume she made for herself out of two or three huge chamois leathers – made up her mind for her. Better even than drawing she loved working with materials.
There was a fashion degree course on offer at the art college. Dinah applied for it and to her delight was accepted.
If the foundation course had been hard work, the fashion course was even harder. Project followed project, and because the materials were so expensive Dinah had to take a part-time job as a waitress to help pay for them. Mrs Meadows began to complain about the hours she was keeping and the electricity she burned working in her room late at night, and Dinah began to scour the college notice boards looking for alternative accommodation.
At last she found what she had been looking for – a group of five students who rented a flat in a large house near the college wanted a sixth to help them pay the rent. Dinah went along to meet them. She was still a little shy but the students – two boys and three girls – seemed friendly in an expansive, if somewhat offhand, way and the flat was big and cheerful, though shockingly untidy, with dirty dishes and pans piled in the sink and used coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays scattered about the floor.
Dinah already knew the girl she was to share a room with – her name was Lynne Beckett and she was a second-year student. But she soon discovered that the arrangement was not quite as ideal as she had expected. Seduced by the thought of freedom she had overlooked the practical snags – no room of her own, however small, where she could leave her work and know it would be undisturbed, a bathroom where the water was more often lukewarm than hot and was almost impossible to get into in the mornings anyway, five other people using her milk and her orange juice, five other people leaving their dishes unwashed and their dirty clothes where they dropped them. Dinah was naturally tidy, she hated a mess, but no matter how often she cleared up the kitchen, next day it was as bad again, and she realised she had to choose between putting up with it or becoming a full-time skivvy.
The flat was always noisy too, music going full blast, doors banging, people laughing and talking too loudly. When she wanted an early night she was inevitably woken up by Lynne swarming in, failing over the bed or even switching the light full on.
Dinah began to long for the peace of her digs with only Mrs Meadows complaining occasionally to disturb her, but it was too late to go back. Mrs Meadows had a new lodger, a sober young man who worked in a bank, and besides, the new flat did have one rather special compensation.
His name was Neil Meredith and he was a third-year graphics student. He was tall and slimly built with brown wavy shoulder-length hair and just the hint of a beard. He also had warm brown eyes fringed with long dark lashes and a County Durham accent that fascinated her.
Neil had a girlfriend, Angie, who was in his year on the graphics course, and who looked amazingly like him. They might have been twins in their ripped jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, with their hair, almost identical in colour and length, falling over their shoulders. Angie spent a lot of time at the flat and Dinah couldn’t help envying her, especially when she and Neil disappeared into his room and shut the door. But when Angie was not there Dinah fancied he paid quite a lot of attention to her. It wasn’t anything she could put her finger on, just a smile that made her fold up inside or an enquiry about her work. But it was enough to make Dinah feel alive and excited, as if something very good was just around the corner.
One night when the others were all out he came into the big sitting room swinging a bottle.
‘Want some?’
Dinah, who was leafing through magazines looking for material for source sheets, looked up, flushing with surprise and pleasure.
‘What is it?’
‘Vino. Only plonk, of course, but it all goes down the same.’
Dinah brushed her hair back behind her ears, her flush deepening.
‘Thanks – but I don’t drink.’
‘Don’t drink?’ He sounded genuinely surprised.
‘No. Well, at least, I never have.’ She broke off, unwilling to explain about the strict taboo on alcohol with which she had been brought up and a little ashamed of the narrowness of her background and experience.
‘Ah, I remember now. You’re a strict Methodist, aren’t you?’ he said, wagging a finger at her.
‘How did you know that?’
He grinned. ‘I make it my business to know these things. Oh well, if you don’t want to I won’t force you. But you don’t know what you’re missing.’
Dinah bit her lip. She didn’t want to appear a bore, and besides, where was the harm? Already her more relaxed lifestyle was making her question some of the rules with which she had been indoctrinated, and now she found herself remembering a conversation – argument, really – that she had once had with Mary on the subject of what her grandfather called, in his most censorious tones, ‘ strong drink’.
‘Why is he so against it?’ Mary had asked in her bouncy way. ‘I don’t understand, I really don’t.’
‘He says it’s the path to damnation.’
‘That’s ridiculous! If it’s so wicked why did Jesus turn the water into wine at the wedding feast? And you drink wine at Communion.’
‘No we don’t. Not wine.’
‘Don’t you? Really?’
‘No!’
‘No wonder my father says you Methodists are weird! In fact he says not drinking wine is almost blasphemous – setting yourselves as being holier than Christ.’
At the time Dinah had been shocked, but now she found herself remembering and thinking that Mary had a point.
‘Well …’ she said hesitantly. ‘ Perhaps I could have just a little. Just to see if I like it …’
‘I don’t want to tempt you.’ He was still standing there smiling at her, holding the bottle just out of reach. For a spooky moment she wondered if this was how the devil had looked to Jesus when He was in the wilderness, offering Him the kingdom spread out beneath Him, and she seemed to hear her grandfather’s resonant voice: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan!’ Then the moment passed and she made up her mind.
‘No, there’s no harm in it, is there? Only don’t give me too much.’
He poured some into a cup and handed it to her. She tasted it, half expecting not to like it, and discovering that she did. Before she knew it the cup was empty. She held it out to him.
‘Can I have some more?’
He laughed. ‘ You take the biscuit, Dinah Marshall! Yes, you can have some more if you like, as long as you don’t accuse me of getting you drunk!’
She sipped more slowly, feeling her head becoming a little swimmy but liking the warm glow that might have been due to the wine and might have been because of the way Neil was looking at her, half smiling, his big brown eyes very deep and thoughtful.
They sat chatting over the rest of the bottle of wine, and when it was time for bed her project was still unfinished but she felt wonderfully, singingly happy. Perhaps after all there was a chance for her with Neil.
But n
ext day Angie was back on the scene and Dinah had to dust down her dreams and get on with her life.
There was no telephone in the flat, only a coin-box type on the wall in the communal hall downstairs. But it did take incoming calls and when it rang it was answered by whoever happened to hear it.
One spring morning it began ringing at about seven o’clock. It rang and rang but no one answered it. Afterwards Dinah, who had been up early finishing off a design project, felt sure she had heard the distant shrilling, but their flat was two storeys up and she had not registered what it was or that it might be for her.
An hour later the doorbell rang. This time several of the others were up, stumbling about trying to kick-start themselves into getting ready for college. It was Henry, one of the fine-art students, who answered it and moments later he was knocking on Dinah’s door.
‘Dinah – are you there? You’re wanted. It’s the police.’
‘The police!’ Dinah repeated, shocked.
The constable was quite young and rather good-looking.
‘Dinah Marshall?’
‘Yes.’
‘Could I come in?’
Dinah glanced over her shoulder. The living room was in total disarray, Lynne was sitting on the floor eating yoghurt and wearing nothing but a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and the other fine-art student was wandering about clad in a faded towel.
‘Well, not really … What’s it about?’
‘I have a message for you. From home. They’ve been trying to telephone but couldn’t get any reply.’
Dinah felt her knees go weak. ‘Has something happened, then?’
‘Well … yes. Are you sure we can’t go inside?’
Dinah gripped the doorpost. ‘It’s Grandfather, isn’t it? He’s had a stroke. Grandma always said he would. Is he … dead?’
