A Perfectly Good Man

by Patrick Gale

  She was claimed by a gang of girls right after the class. This was inevitable because she was new and pretty and he’d noticed how girls liked to collect girls who raised their own currency. But she smiled at him as they surrounded her, and he saw other girls notice and glance between them because such information mattered to them and would need to be discussed and analysed.

  The next class was English, reading As You Like It out loud around the class, which was a kind of torture to him, and he didn’t actually think about her at all, even though the scene they were reading was all about love, because he was either busy counting ahead to work out which speech he would have to read and hoping it would be a tiny one, or daydreaming about the rugby XV and whether he was happy to continue as one of the backs – speedy and getting to score tries and show passing skills – or whether he should be trying to bulk up his muscles in weight training in the hope of becoming a forward instead. Hooker would suit him, he reckoned. Nimble but in the scrum, with all the kudos that carried. Girls didn’t like their boyfriends in the scrum, he had heard, because they didn’t want their ears or noses spoiled and didn’t like them getting so up close and personal with other blokes, which was reason enough to want to be in the thick of it in case the alternative was soft by association, tainted by feminine approval.

  Dr Curnow, their English teacher, separated them into boys’ and girls’ teams when they did Shakespeare. This was because it was a play, she said, about masculinity and femininity and she wanted to emphasize that and encourage them to think about their gender differences. But Lenny knew it was also to make it easier when they were reading round the class, one speech at a time, to avoid the riot that would have ensued if a boy found himself having to read a girl’s speech.

  Lenny quite liked this novelty. It made the class feel more like sport, with opposing teams and all the excitement and competitive banter that engendered, and he’d enjoyed the lesson where they did the wrestling scene and she’d taken them all down to the gym and encouraged them, girls as well as boys, to have a go at Cornish Wrestling, for which she said St Just used to be notorious as miners wagered large chunks of their pay on the matches there.

  But then, as he was wheeling his bike out of the school gates, there was Amy, unmistakably waiting for him.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Come and say hi to my mum.’ And she led the way to a parked car before he had a chance to think of excuses for not following her. It was far newer than his mother’s old beast of a Volvo, which had mortifying pinky-grey plastic and soiled beige upholstery. Quite possibly this car was brand-new, but it had plainly been chosen with only economy in mind. ‘’Lo, Mum,’ Amy said, getting in. ‘This is Lenny Barnes.’

  Lenny stooped to say hello through the open window. He remembered to do as his mother had told him and held out a hand. She resembled Amy, only older, and sun-aged, like his mother, so that she looked like a smoker although she almost certainly wasn’t. Unlike his mother, who had sly fatties in the studio which she thought Lenny knew nothing about.

  ‘Lenny. Hello. Thanks for making Amy so welcome. It sounds like a happy school.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. It’s just school,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. Are you cold after Africa?’

  ‘No,’ she said crisply. ‘Just comfortable. Lenny, would you like to come for lunch on Sunday?’

  He calculated rapidly, cancelling any plans he might have had for a long bike ride with Tobes, glancing in Amy’s face for disapproval and finding none. ‘Sure. What time?’

  ‘After church.’

  ‘Er. OK.’

  Amy had seen him wondering and added, ‘Quarter to one.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  ‘We’re at Pear Tree Cottage. Down to Kelynack then left along the lane that heads up the valley from the side of the old chapel. We’re on the right a little after the campsite. The house with the big blue gates. I hope you wear a helmet and visibility strip on that thing.’

  ‘They’re in here.’ He jolted his bag. ‘I just haven’t put them on yet.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to sit there in the car and watch him till he put the hateful things on but she gave a brisk wave and drove off. He was raising a discreet hand to Amy, who was grinning over her shoulder, when he saw they had one of those Christian fish stickers fixed to the left of their rear numberplate. He assumed it was theirs as the car was so new.

  He asked his mum what home education was over supper and she went into a rant about judgemental middle-class parents, usually extreme Christians she reckoned, managing to screw up bright children and undermine perfectly good local schools at the same time. Why did he want to know? He gave her a studiedly off-hand account of Amy and said he was going to her place for Sunday lunch. Apparently he hadn’t fooled her because she came around the table to give him a quick, winey hug and promised not to pry the way her mother would have done.

  ‘If you like her, I’ll like her. If you still like her after meeting her folks, bring her here whenever you want so I can get a good look at her.’ Later she knocked on his door as he was doing his English homework and said, ‘I know I said I wouldn’t pry but I don’t have to tell you about condoms and shit, do I?’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘You don’t want to end up having to be stuck here because you got some local girl up the duff.’

  ‘She’s not like that. And she’s not local.’

  ‘Yeah. Well. She’s going to Cape Cornwall School so she’s local now. You be careful.’

  On one of their bad evenings, he’d have said, ‘So she doesn’t end up like you?’ and they’d have shouted at each other and she’d have slammed his door or he’d have slammed it in her face. But they’d had a nice, quiet evening and he knew she meant no harm by it. So he resisted the temptation to rile her by waving the condom packet he’d been carrying in his wallet for months now in case anyone teased him for not having one, and simply groaned, ‘Mum, please? Shakespeare …’ which made her ruffle his hair and sigh and leave him in peace so he could go back to Googling Amy’s lane to work out exactly which house was Pear Tree Cottage.

  He had started to picture their place as some nightmarishly tidy bungalow with everything in its place and crucifixes everywhere you looked, even in the garden, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was an old cottage, with gnarled fruit trees around it and the car wasn’t in the garage because the garage was still full of overflowing packing cases, and there was unmown grass jewelled with fallen apples.

  Amy was helping her mum in the kitchen. They greeted him cheerfully, like an old friend, and then in came her dad, who was in trainers too, so that was all right, and said he wanted a closer look at Lenny’s bike so led him back outside out of their way.

  He didn’t look like Amy. He was darkhaired, with a pointy chin. He wasn’t scarily big, definitely a fly-half not a prop, but there was something about his very short hair and insistently shiny wedding ring and precise, confident way of speaking that made Lenny wary. This was a man who was never contradicted, even by his crisp wife. Even as he was admiring how Lenny had fixed up his bike and asking questions about the gears and saddle he reminded Lenny of the PE coach they had for a year, Mr Bailey, who had been in the Commandos and used to say that when they were old enough he would show them seven ways to kill a man with their bare hands. When Mr Bailey entered a room you felt his own personal thundercloud had come in with him and whenever he left, people laughed and joked, even grown-ups, as it felt as though a weight had been lifted. Amy’s father, Mr Hawker, felt similar: definitely one of those fathers that made Lenny glad he didn’t have one. There were birds singing in the tree over their head but he felt certain if Mr Hawker told them to, they’d have fallen silent.

  ‘Lunch is ready, boys,’ Amy’s mum called out to them.

  ‘Here we come,’ Mr Hawker said but instead of going in, he appeared to carry on admiring the bike. ‘So how old are you, Lenny?’

  ‘Fifteen,’ Lenny told him, because it would soon be true and fourtee
n-and-three-quarters sounded a bit pathetic.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The same as Amy. Well, I’m sure you’re a nice lad and your heart’s in the right place but you need to know that Amy’s not allowed a boyfriend until she turns sixteen. Friends is fine but nothing more than that. Do I make myself clear?’

  And Lenny knew he meant condoms and stuff and nodded and said, ‘Friends is fine,’ and nearly called him sir.

  ‘Good lad. I know you country boys grow up fast and I didn’t want any misunderstanding.’

  Amy came out then to find them and her father said, ‘We’re coming, we’re coming,’ in a silly, cartoony voice even though she hadn’t said a word. He ushered Lenny in before them and pointedly planted a kiss on Amy’s cheek as Lenny passed them. Lenny wanted her to flinch or pull away or complain but she seemed entirely content, like a kitten being washed.

  They said Grace, which was totally weird. Lenny had made to sit down but Amy had caught his eye and jerked her head to tell him to keep standing while her father said bless oh Lord this food et cetera.

  Lunch was the sort of food his mum hardly ever made because so many of her friends had weird food needs: roast beef and gravy and Yorkshire pudding and incredible roast potatoes like chips only better. Amy’s mum seemed pleased when he praised it. ‘It’s food we had guilty dreams about in Ghana,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, and the last thing a growing girl needs is to turn veggie on us,’ Amy’s dad said, slipping an extra piece of juicy meat onto Amy’s plate which, to Lenny’s delight, made her flinch as the kiss had not.

  ‘So, Lenny,’ Mrs Hawker said. ‘We gather your mum’s a distinguished potter. Where could I see her work?’

  ‘In St Just is one place,’ he told her. ‘There’s usually some at the Great Atlantic, in the middle, across from the clock tower.’

  ‘I must take a look. Is it just a hobby?’

  ‘Er, no. She makes quite a good living from it, actually.’ Amy’s mum pulled a little face at this, as though it were not quite nice.

  ‘And what about your dad,’ Amy’s dad countered. ‘He potty too?’

  ‘Derek,’ she chided.

  ‘I don’t have a dad,’ Lenny told him, quite unfazed. ‘I mean, I must have somewhere but I’ve never met him and my mum’s not telling who he is. It’s no big deal. She’s Australian. Very independent. I’ve always assumed he was either just a donor or married to somebody else.’

  ‘Ah,’ Derek said. Derek! What a name! Lenny made a mental note that one day, quite soon, he would call him that and not Mr Hawker, just to wind him up really tight.

  Roast beef gave way to crumble made from some of the apples that littered the garden.

  ‘God’s bounty,’ Derek said.

  ‘And clotted cream,’ said Amy’s mum. ‘Another thing I dreamed about in Ghana.’

  ‘So were you teachers out there too?’ Lenny asked.

  ‘Well now I’m a music teacher and Derek teaches maths, but out there we taught everything,’ she explained. ‘We ran a mission school. It was a lovely place and a very good life.’

  ‘So why did you move back to the UK?’

  Lenny saw a glance exchanged between the parents and guessed this had been the cause of some disagreement.

  ‘We decided it wasn’t fair on Amy or her education,’ Derek said.

  ‘They didn’t want me having a black boyfriend,’ Amy explained.

  ‘Amy!’

  ‘She’s quite right,’ her mother admitted. ‘I’ve not got a racist bone in my body but there are limits to everything. Does your mother go to church, Lenny?’

  Amy giggled as though she knew what was coming.

  ‘Er. Well.’ Lenny thought, feeling slightly high and daring on sugar and delicious fat. ‘She had me christened when I was a baby, but now she says it’s all patriarchal rot for misogynist drongos.’ Amy stopped giggling and her eyes widened. And at that instant she looked so like everything he had never known he wanted and suddenly might never have, that he added, ‘But I reckon she’s completely wrong, which is why I plan to start confirmation classes this autumn.’

  There wasn’t quite an audible sigh but he had a definite sense of tension relaxed and then he felt Amy’s foot brushing his calf. He thought it was a cat, then realized it wasn’t and shuffled his chair a little further under the table, to make himself easier to reach.

  ‘So who will you go to for classes?’ her mother was asking.

  ‘Oh …’ He thought rapidly. ‘Father Barnaby. No question. He’s our parish priest. He baptized me. It would feel weird going to anyone else.’

  ‘Where does he stand on women priests?’

  ‘He has a curate who’s a woman. Tabby Morris. She’s my friend Tobes’ mum.’

  ‘Oh. Good. I didn’t want to send Amy to someone who thought women were unclean or whatever and I’d heard stories about some of the priests out here which is why we’ve been going into Penzance. Lenny, would you let Amy know when his classes happen?’

  Amy’s foot was wriggling like a happy puppy. ‘Sure I will,’ he said, hoping his voice sounded level. All too soon her mother was asking her to help clear the dishes away.

  There was no question of going up to her room with her, of course, the way they might have done a few years before, so he sat and drank extremely strong, black unsweetened coffee with her parents because he sensed a test of her father’s, that this was how he liked it, and looking at photographs of their life in Ghana.

  They were meeting colleagues of theirs to go for a walk to Land’s End and back and asked him to join them, but Lenny didn’t want to push his luck on a first visit so thanked them for everything but said he had promised to wash his mother’s car.

  Amy held open the gate while he wheeled his bike out and ostentatiously put on his helmet and horrible, yellow, Sam Browne belt. Even now they weren’t exactly alone because her parents were standing in the porch, like an advertisement for mortgages.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That was fun.’

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ she muttered through her smile. ‘Were you serious? About confirmation?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, feeling the coffee start to make his heart race. ‘I’ll have a word with Father Barnaby and let you know. He’s nice. You’ll like him.’

  ‘I bet I will,’ she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She said it in a way that went round and round in his head as he made himself cycle all the way up Carn Bosavern without either stopping or changing down to a gear so low that the pedals would whirl round at comedy speed while the bike hardly moved. He rode down into St Just, where he ignored the gang of boys he knew who were just mooching around in a way he’d have found irresistible during the summer holidays just past, just shouting hey so they wouldn’t think he was being standoffish. As he plunged down Nancherrow Hill, trying to get up enough momentum to see him at least halfway up No-Go-By Hill before he needed to make a serious effort, he thought of himself hanging around St Just or Botallack or Boscaswell with gangs of schoolmates, thought of the hours he had spent that way in his life so far, doing nothing in particular for hours on end with other boys, and wondered at how just having a pretty girl slide her foot beneath her parents’ dining table could so abruptly make all that seem like the irretrievable past.

  At Pendeen he swung right to the church, knowing the vicarage was next door. But a notice directed him back the way he had come a little and out to an old farmhouse. He had cycled across the yard, scattering chickens, and knocked on the door before he remembered it was a Sunday afternoon so probably everyone’s time off, even vicars.

  Mrs Johnson opened the door. ‘Hello.’ She smiled. She smelled of cake and looked like any Cornish grandmother. He was slightly disappointed as he’d heard lurid stories of her servicing the family car herself and knowing how to strip and reassemble a tractor engine. Perhaps he had her muddled with her daughter. ‘Are you after the vicar?’ she prompted.

  Lenny nodded. ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Won’t be a second. I
left him doing the general knowledge crossword.’ She had the immediately comforting lilting accent of his friends’ mothers, the accent that made him acutely conscious of his mum’s harshly Aussie voice and its influence on his own. She left him holding his bike and disappeared inside the rambling old house and he reflected that she must get callers like him all the time. He hoped his mother didn’t suddenly get religion. It happened. His mate Tobes had perfectly normal parents, if you counted a policeman as normal, and then suddenly his mother announced she was becoming a priest and Tobes’ home life had been in uproar ever since. If he wanted peace and quiet, he said, he had to go to St Just library because there seemed to be people around the kitchen table or out in the living room at all hours of the day and most evenings too. Tobes’ mum held prayer meetings and Bible study groups during which Tobes invariably took refuge with Lenny to watch horror films as a sort of antidote.

  An enormous tortoiseshell cat stalked through the open door, stared at him hard, unnervingly bold, held its ground on the doorstep, more dog than cat, tail thrashing and looking as though it might growl or worse if Lenny took a step further without an owner present. It melted as Father Barnaby appeared and wreathed around its master’s legs.

  ‘Lenny Barnes! What a delightful surprise.’ He greeted Lenny like a friend.

  ‘Hello. That’s quite a cat.’

  ‘That’s Abishag. She’s an arrant hypocrite. I know she’s a monster behind my back.’ He tapped the cat lightly with the side of his foot and it darted off and was chased into a barn by chickens. ‘Well leave your bike and come on in. We can have an early cuppa.’

  ‘Actually I’d better not. I’m meant to be washing Mum’s car and it’ll be dark fairly soon.’

  ‘OK. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Well … Do you give confirmation classes?’