by MARY HOCKING
Chapter Four
The leaves of the lime trees were turning yellow and the wind rustled through their branches with a dry sound as though it was wrapping up what was left of summer in tissue paper. Soon, the children would be scuffing through mounds of fallen leaves. Somewhere in the distance several blasts were blown on a whistle; Tom craned his neck but he could not see the playing field which lay beyond the screen of trees.
The speaker, under the impression that Tom was having difficulty in hearing him, raised his voice. ‘Pupils mature so much earlier now. Is the school environment the right one for them at sixteen? This is something I have been asking myself for some time. . . .’
Ever since you realised that comprehensive education was something you had to live with, Tom thought. The speaker was the headmaster of a grammar school. Tom looked round the room. The tables in the big, sombre library had been placed end-to-end to form one long table down the centre of the room and seated at this table, betraying many of the symptoms of their more disturbed pupils, were eleven head teachers. It was no accident that the grammar school heads were grouped together. The head teachers had come to Squires Bay Grammar School to discuss plans for the introduction of comprehensive education with the chairman of the education committee. But it was not education with which they were concerned; it was their own future. The questions which most exercised their minds were, what type of school will offer me the greatest satisfaction as a teacher? and, where am I most likely to obtain a headship? The grammar school head teachers had one answer to this question. They put their views courteously, but with the faint surprise of people who have been asked to defend an inalienable right. They favoured the establishment of sixth-form colleges which would cater for pupils from sixteen to eighteen, who, freed from the constraints of the more orthodox school setting, might conceivably evince a desire to learn. To a man, they believed their own school was singularly suited to development as a sixth-form college. The secondary modern head teachers, more overtly aggressive, had other ideas. They had for a long time been second-class citizens in the educational world and they were not prepared once more to see the prestigious advanced-level work hived off to another establishment; accordingly, they argued for ‘all-through’ schools for pupils from the ages of eleven to eighteen. Each side accompanied its arguments with passionate expressions of concern for the well-being of the pupils. But that was just window-dressing: caught between the self-interest of teachers and the dogmatism of the politicians, the children stood little chance.
The chairman, who had made up his mind that sixth-form colleges were not the answer, listened poker-faced and made notes on his pad. This greatly encouraged the head teachers all of whom felt that here was a man who was completely impartial and who must, therefore, see the justice of their argument. The most vociferous of the secondary modern heads said that she spoke for every person in the room ‘when I say how gratifying it is to us, Mr. Chairman, that someone as busy as yourself is prepared to come here. . . .’ The chairman gravely acknowledged this tribute and scribbled a note which he passed to Tom, ‘Did I appoint this woman?’
There was, however, one subject on which the teachers were unanimous. Whenever an opportunity arose they complained to the chairman about the shortcomings of the education office staff.
‘Mr. Norris is the only officer who ever comes near a school nowadays,’ one of the grammar school headmasters said. He was not a man who normally had praise for anyone.
The chairman let them talk, pulling the lobe of his left ear and gazing at each speaker with an air of shrewd appraisal which always made people feel that an exceptional mind was being brought to bear on their problems. He did not interrupt any of the speakers, but once he turned to whisper to Tom, ‘When is old Taylor due to retire?’
Tom supposed that the criticism of the office staff was a part of the teachers’ campaign against Mather. Mather was an autocrat. His dictates came as though from Olympus, but he was more remote than Zeus himself, not deigning to descend from time to time to meddle in the affairs of mortals and seduce the occasional woman teacher. When the Southern Counties Commission decided that the South of England should have one less administrative county, it followed that there would be one less chief education officer, and the teachers were determined that in this game of musical chairs, the man left unseated should be Austin Mather. Tom, however, was wrong in assuming that their efforts this morning were directed to this end. The head teachers had awoken to the fact that under the new set-up, South Sussex would be divided into two divisional areas, one under East Sussex and the other under West Sussex; and they were anxious that they should not be left to the mercies of a stranger unacquainted with the problems which they considered to be peculiar to their own schools. The teachers in this particular group had decided that the person most likely to look after their interests was Tom Norris. Norris visited schools frequently and had a good idea of the problems with which teaching staff had to cope; if he sometimes failed to translate his good intentions into action, the teachers, who were naïve about administrative matters, blamed his lack of success on other officers whose approach was less sympathetic. They intended to lobby for Norris’ appointment as divisional Education Officer for the South Sussex area.
Tom, unaware of this, and sickened by their self-interest, was at pains to defend his colleagues.
‘There is a lot of work to be done on the reorganisation,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t possible for officers to get out to schools as often as they would like.’
‘Reorganisation!’ Aylwyn Taylor sighed wearily: reorganisation, he indicated, was just another tiresome excuse for inefficiency at the education office. When he, in his turn, was caught up in ‘reorganisation’ resulting from the introduction of comprehensive education, it would be the death of him. ‘And I,’ Tom thought, ‘will dance on your grave!’ The violence of his reaction surprised him, but he did not see it as a warning and he allowed himself to relax. He looked out of the window again.
‘. . . introduction of a house system . . . pastoral care. . . .’
‘. . . very nice in theory, but does it ever produce that sense of being one community. . . .’
The children were coming in from the playing field now, scampering between the trees and being exhorted to keep quiet with a degree of firmness which one sensed was unusual. The headmaster had no doubt made it clear that no untoward noise should reach the library this morning.
‘Mr. Norris,’ the chairman said, ‘will draw Mr. Mather’s attention to these points.’
Like Hell he will! Mr. Norris is more interested in other things. The golden days of childhood. . . . Why do we try to create a glow of nostalgia for the joys that have never been? Is this what primarily motivates the children’s writer, a need to reconstruct the past in more bearable terms? Had not he himself written many books in which the father was depicted as a gentle, tolerant, and, above all, affectionate man?
‘. . . some difficulties for the first few years. . . .’
‘. . . a whole generation of children. . . .’
‘Come now! They are surprisingly resilient, as we all know, and they very soon adapt. . . .’
‘These are little human beings we are talking about.’
Who was that, with a note of genuine pain in his voice? Someone here cared for children. Tom looked round the table, but another voice had taken over and he could not identify the speaker.
Outside, the children had gone. How quick they were! There was just the wind stirring gently in the trees. It was peaceful. Autumn is so much more peaceful than spring; less painful, too. . . .’
Suddenly, there was a great wave rushing forward into the room. It sang in his ears and he could only just hear a faint voice saying ‘. . . taking away from the secondary school its older and more responsible members. . . .’
Now he was a part of the wave, it was within him; there was intense pressure against the walls of his skull. But that tiny thread of sound from another world pers
isted, ‘. . . destroying that sense of continuity which can give stability at a time when the adolescent . . . .’
Never before had he paid such attention to platitudes. The effort was agony; it would do him irreparable physical damage to withstand the force of the wave. Yet he strained to listen as though the tired jargon was the last whisper of a dying civilisation and he its sole recorder.
‘. . . appear very mature, but underneath it all, they are desperately uncertain and in need of. . . .’
He picked up his pen. He had not had to leave a meeting yet; once he did leave, it would happen more and more often until he could not summon the courage to attend any gathering which tied him to being in one place for any length of time. Nor could he expect any pity from his colleagues who now saw another’s downfall as the very means by which they might climb. He listened until he felt his mind must crack. The wave receded, but only to reform and surge forward again, blacker and stronger; alarm signals triggered off throughout his body and he knew he was about to cross the threshold from which he had held back for so long. The fear almost lifted him off his feet. He gripped the edge of the table with his left hand. His right hand moved across the sheet of paper in front of him. The people were a long way away now, like stars in another solar system. Yet they spoke and he wrote words. But all the time he was writing, someone was clawing and thrashing about inside him, crying, ‘Get out! Get out! This is too strong for you! Get out! Run!’
At the moment when the voice of this panic-stricken prisoner quite drowned the voices of the people in the room, there was an ominous rumbling in the corridor. Someone said, ‘Coffee!’ as though he, too, had reached the last gasp.
Tom said to the man next to him, ‘Is that the tumbrel? Refreshment for the blood-drinkers?’ He was faint and exhausted; it was possible the man did not hear him, because he only smiled and said, ‘You bear with us so patiently. I feel ashamed of my colleagues sometimes.’ Obviously communications had not been properly re-established yet.
The chairman whispered to Tom, ‘You’ll make something of all that, won’t you?’
On the sheet of paper, Tom had written in a cramped but legible hand, ‘All-through schools, too large, age range too wide, ditto ability, needs of adolescents. . . .’ He said, ‘Yes, I think I’ve got the salient points.’ After he had taken a sip of coffee, he said to the headmaster of Squires Bay Grammar School, ‘I wonder if we could have a few more windows open?’
He had established contact this time. The headmaster said, ‘Yes, it is stuffy in here.’
No one took much notice of Tom. His head had caved in, his ribs were crushed; he was drained, hollowed out, a husk of a man. But no one was interested. They were too absorbed in their own problems to care about anything else; you would have to come to a meeting stark naked before anyone noticed anything amiss. Nudity was the one thing which still made an impact.
He was glad of the fresh air; but the wind in the tissue-paper trees was louder and more insistent. It seemed to have a message for him. There were three thousand, nine hundred and fifty million people in the world, but the wind had a message for Tom Norris. How was that for self-absorption?
He must go to the doctor.
After the meeting, he was invited to stay to lunch at the school but he refused. The thought crossed his mind that he might go to Beth Vernon. Her studio was in a village quite near. But if she was painting she would be annoyed not so much by the interruption as because it would be yet another proof that he did not respect her separateness as an artist. She was quite right; he did not respect her separateness as an artist. He did not even like her as a person. She answered a need. Lately, she hadn’t done that very effectively. Even sex was beginning to stale. This made him feel old as well as ill.
It was ten past twelve. He decided to return to the office and have lunch in the canteen. He drove slowly through the country lanes. His experience this morning had shaken him. He would go to the doctor on his way home from work tonight.
What could he say to the doctor? In the case of physical ailments it was so much easier to be precise, and being precise was something on which his father had always insisted. If it was a physical ailment you could say, ‘I have a lump where there was only soft flesh before,’
‘I have a mole which has doubled in size.’ At least you had some idea of how you ought to be physically; you could see yourself, feel yourself, hear yourself, smell yourself. But take all that away and where were you? His father had always said that a man must know himself. Tom, who had seen resistance to his father as a matter of survival, had chosen to risk remaining an unrealised person rather than becoming the type of fully-conscious human being so energetically personified by his father. He had not sought to disturb his subconscious, and he had imagined it as a deep pool, pure and tranquil, in which something strange and beautiful was evolving. For many years nothing happened to challenge this conception; such communication as there was proved entirely acceptable and he received inspiration for books and poems which confirmed him in the belief that he had access to a submerged store of riches. Recently, however, there had been a change. Quite when it had started he could not have said, but at some point he began to receive ideas which would never find their way into a children’s book. It was not simply a case of discarding unsuitable material, rational thought was also affected. When he began to work on a story he was aware of hideous, distorted creatures lurking in the shadows, waiting the moment when they could take over. Something was happening to him that was as menacing as that lump in the side, that enlarging mole. The question ‘who am I?’ which had never troubled him when all was going well gradually became of the utmost importance as the signals from the subconscious grew more offensive. But how could he explain all this to a doctor of all people? He would be told he was mentally sick. Only people who are very sick, he argued, are willing to lay themselves open to such a diagnosis.
He had reached no conclusion by the time he arrived at the office, which was not surprising as he had spent a lifetime avoiding conclusions.
In the canteen he joined one or two of the older members of his staff. For once, the concerns of the larger world had ousted reorganisation as a topic of conversation. Another travel company had gone into liquidation. ‘There won’t be anywhere to escape to, soon,’ one woman said gloomily.
‘Chrissie Arnold only just got out of Cyprus in time and Angela Parker has cancelled her holiday in Rome because they say you aren’t safe walking the streets there now.’
‘Martin Smith’s parents have decided to sell their villa in Portugal because they don’t know which way things will go and either way it won’t be pleasant.’
‘Midge Williams isn’t going to Jerusalem after all because she’s afraid of a hijack.’
‘And Dandy Holland went up to London for the week-end and had to get out of Harrods because there was a bomb scare! You’re not safe anywhere, are you?’
The last remark was addressed to Tom. He said, ‘People will get used to it. People get used to most things. It’s the fact that we can remember a time when the world seemed fairly stable that makes it difficult for us to adjust.’
They stared at him in dismay and one of them said, ‘Well, you’re a Job’s comforter!’
The talk never picked up momentum after that. He did not usually have this blighting effect on conversation; in fact, someone had once said of him that conversationally he had perfect pitch.
He went to his room. His troubles were not over. He had forgotten about Miss Huber. She was waiting for him, sitting on the upright chair, poked away in a corner by the filing cabinet. For the occasion of her arrival in a new office she had put on a grey dress which, even in this age of fashion-freedom, contrived to give the appearance of being an unfashionable length. It had a cruelly tight bodice and a big, white collar, clinically starched to give it a knife edge which had chafed her neck. Her dark hair was strained back even more severely from the centre parting and neatly knotted in the nape of her neck. She remin
ded Tom of those pictures of the wives of the Pilgrim Fathers, dourly resolved to a hard life in an alien land, and it was a surprise to see that there was no Bible clasped between her folded hands.
She said, ‘Miss Conroy put me in here.’ Her tone exactly conveyed Madge Conroy’s antagonism and her own awareness of it. She had long ago accepted that her role in life was that of a victim. Such people invite persecution and Tom, who was usually considerate with the unfortunate, said sharply:
‘I forgot to tell Madge Conroy that you would be coming, so she had no alternative but to put you in here.’
Miss Huber smiled as though he had conceded a point: not only did Madge Conroy resent her arrival, but he himself had not wanted her.
