Carl shrugged. Neither of us had any more to say.
I thanked Will and steered Carl towards the door. As an afterthought I turned back to Will. ‘Do you want to come to supper at the weekend?’ I asked.
Will was one of the few people we entertained. Apart from enjoying his company, it was the nearest Carl and I would ever get to networking, but we didn’t often formally invite him. Usually he just sort of turned up on the doorstep and we did our best to entertain him for a couple of hours.
Will’s face brightened at once. ‘Love to.’
Outside the gallery I took Carl’s hand. ‘C’mon, let’s go home,’ I said.
Carl shook his head. ‘I want to go to the Sloop, ask around,’ he told me.
‘Are you sure, Carl?’ I asked him. ‘It’s a dangerous thing to do, you know.’
He put a hand on each of my shoulders and rested his face against mine. ‘I know. I just hate doing nothing,’ he said.
I was well aware of that. ‘Sometimes it’s the best thing there is,’ I told him. ‘And the hardest . . .’
‘I know,’ he said again.
I grasped his arm. ‘Let’s go home, Carl,’ I coaxed. ‘Let’s leave it.’
And to my immense relief he agreed. For the time being.
Five
I relied totally on Carl. I was used to relying on people. That’s how I came to be trapped in my terrible marriage. I had not been brought up to have either a mind or a life of my own.
My parents were killed in a car crash when I was three years old. I had gone to live with my widowed grandmother. At the time I was happy enough. Indeed, in many ways a child couldn’t have been better cared for.
I had no brothers and sisters and no uncles or aunts that I knew of. Gran tried to be all of those things to me and succeeded pretty damn well, by and large.
There were drawbacks. Gran was definitely overprotective. She always wanted to shelter me from the real world, but that suited me perfectly because I was a timid child, introverted and unsure of myself. I never tried to break out of the comforting cocoon Gran created around us both.
Even at an early age I suffered from shocking nightmares. There was a recurring one in which terrible pictures used to fly around inside my head of bloody flesh and dismembered limbs. I used to wake in the night screaming, but it seemed I had good reason to.
As I grew older I learned how I had been strapped into my seat in the back of my father’s car when an out-of-control juggernaut had collided with us and crushed the entire front of the vehicle. My parents died instantly, their bodies broken and squashed beneath the tremendous weight of the huge lorry. Extraordinarily, the rear of the car was barely damaged and I escaped virtually without injury, but in severe shock. I was told later that I did not speak for several weeks, although I never had any memory of that nor – at least in my conscious mind – of the accident itself. I think my body’s defence mechanisms had clicked effectively into action. However, I had witnessed it all, seen my parents’ lives so violently torn from them, and Gran was always quite certain that it had been imprinted on my subconscious and had irrevocably affected the way I was. She believed in things like that, did Gran. And, of course, she was probably right.
For years she slept in the same room as me because of my bad dreams and when I had a nightmare she comforted me just as Carl was to do years later.
She used to sing hymns to me, of all things. Often Christmas carols, whatever the time of year, because so many of them were so gentle and soothing, she said. ‘Silent Night’ was a great favourite. Well, it could have been a lot worse. She might have treated me to regular renditions of ‘Abide with Me’.
One way or another, I was neither mentally nor physically strong. I had a weak chest and suffered from chronic bronchitis, a complaint that was to plague me into adulthood until I moved to St Ives. Cornwall, with its slightly warmer climate and wonderful fresh sea air, proved to be good for me in every way and I had suffered only a handful of minor chest infections in the six years I had been there. But throughout my childhood I had been a sickly, mixed up kid who caught every bug going and was afraid of everything that moved. Gran was always reluctant for me to mix too much with other children. She had been a schoolteacher by trade in her younger days and her years within Britain’s education system had left her with a pretty dismal opinion of it. Certainly, when I reached the age of five, she was most reluctant for me to attend school.
‘Schools reduce all children to the level of the lowest common denominator, both academically and behaviourally,’ she would pontificate.
Gran had a way of speaking that defied contradiction. Like most of our family she was a small woman, slightly built, but she had a presence which defied her stature. Her ex-pupils, the more devoted of whom visited us occasionally, told stories of how she would walk into class, write on the blackboard that she had a sore throat and did not intend to speak, and still conduct a lesson, using written instructions and keeping a class of otherwise unruly children working away in perfect order by virtue of little more than a slight frown or a raising of the eyebrow.
She was an old-fashioned sort of person, my Gran. She wore twinsets, tweed skirts with their hems well below the knee and flat lace-up shoes. Her hair, which I believe had been the same iron-grey colour from her early thirties, was held in a neat bun and I don’t think she ever wore make-up, not even a dusting of face powder or a hint of lipstick. Although a Londoner born and bred, she had married a Devonian, also a schoolteacher, and had taught most of her working life in a school in the little market town of Crediton. Her name was Mrs Theresa Eddie and one of her old pupils told me that, with the wonderfully convoluted logic of children, a nickname had been chosen for her deriving from combining her initial and her last name – Teddie, West Country slang for potato. Gran then became known as Spud – a name that creates the impression of a certain vulgarity and could not have been less appropriate, which doubtless added to its attraction.
Gran did not have a vulgar bone in her body. She was well-spoken and well-mannered, and expected all around her to be the same. In addition, everything about her was ordered, including her memory. She had quite an intellect and I used to imagine as a child that she had a filing cabinet of some kind in her brain from which she could extract almost any piece of information at will.
Nowadays I suppose you might think of her as a kind of computer on legs. She rarely showed emotion, that was for certain, and she never lost control.
I thought she was indomitable. She was certainly not to be trifled with and she was fiercely independent. She did not doubt for one second that her opinion of the negative effect of formal schooling, reached with so much first-hand knowledge, was correct and she did not expect to be challenged on this. For two terms she kept me at home, without anyone in the state education system seeming to notice, and quite effectively taught me the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, and a lot more besides.
But eventually the authorities caught up with us and an inspector called. Gran fed him tea poured from a silver tea pot into china cups. The teaspoons were also silver and the sugar came in lumps. I was stood in the middle of the living room, all dark-brown furniture and dark-cream walls adorned with those kinds of Victorian reproduction paintings that have each matured to the same indecipherable murkiness, and asked to recite my multiplication tables, the alphabet, and various rhymes and homilies I had already learned by heart. So well rehearsed was I that I managed to do so without faltering and Gran rested triumphantly back in her brown velvet armchair.
Whether or not the inspector was impressed by my performance we never discovered. He certainly was not dissuaded from his course of ensuring that I was sent to school. The weight of the law came down upon us, and even Gran had to give in to the inevitable so I was duly despatched to our local state primary school. By this time I was thoroughly terrified of the prospect and from the start the horrors of school lived up to all my expectations. I shall never forget my first day at St Just
in’s, a soulless red-brick building just a couple of streets away from where Gran and I lived. The other children in my class had already been together for two terms and I was an outsider in more ways than one. I was convinced that I wouldn’t fit in and I was right.
I was undersized and painfully thin, and not only did all the other five- and six-year-old children seem to be years older than me already, they were also much bigger. Although there was no uniform at St Justin’s, Gran had kitted me out in a grey gymslip, which flapped around the calves of my legs. Ever sensible and practical, she had allowed plenty of room for growth. I also wore old-fashioned black lace-up shoes and ankle socks. The other children all had on brightly coloured sweaters and shirts, tracksuits, jeans and sneakers. Even I realised that I stood out like something off the pages of Billy Bunter.
There is always a leader, at every stage and in every walk of life. And all too often, I did not learn until much later, the leader is whoever is most inappropriate. At St Justin’s the leader of the pack was a staggeringly precocious six-year-old called Janet Postings and she took it upon herself to make my life a misery from the moment I arrived.
Thanks to Gran I could already read and write better than any of the other girls and boys in my class, but this did not seem to work in my favour. In fact, just the opposite. I was asked to read aloud on my first morning.
‘Let’s see what you can do,’ said the teacher. Reading aloud was no problem for me. That was the way Gran taught. And the book was actually similar to the reading material I was already used to. I read clearly and fluently, the way Gran had always insisted upon, and when I finished I was all too aware that the entire class were staring at me. And they weren’t very friendly.
The trouble started at morning break. Janet Postings broke off from whatever activity she and a small group were involved in at one end of the playground and ran across to where I had sat down alone on a wooden bench, eating the apple Gran had provided me with.
‘Do you want to join in our game?’ she asked. Janet Postings was fair-haired, blue-eyed and very pretty. In fact, she looked quite angelic. And I had yet to discover that looks can be very deceptive, particularly in children.
My hearted lifted. ‘Oh, yes,’ I said eagerly.
‘Well, you can’t,’ she replied. ‘It’s my game and I don’t like you. I think you’re a show-off.’
I felt my face turn crimson. How often over the years I was to loathe myself for blushing so easily. That was just the beginning. It seemed that if Janet Postings didn’t like you at St Justin’s, then neither did anyone else.
My hair was long and straight, and tied back in bunches. A constant leisure activity for the rest of the class was to pull at them. It’s the kind of damn silly thing you read and hear about in schools, and you think it probably doesn’t really happen because it’s too stupid – even for five- and six-year-olds – but it happened to me, that’s all I can say.
In addition, my books and gym kit would go missing, and I would find things broken and dirty. Then I would get into trouble with Gran, who would lecture me on how I should look after my belongings. Somehow, I could never tell her what was really happening.
On one occasion a group of girls, who had apparently been lurking in a gateway waiting for me to pass by, jumped on me as I walked home. They snatched my satchel and emptied my books into a puddle.
There were sixteen girls and thirteen boys in my class. Funnily enough, the boys weren’t really a problem. They just used to ignore me. It was the girls who seemed to hate me. I suppose it was a classic case of habitual bullying, but nobody seemed even to recognise that as a problem in schools in those days. I had no idea why I was picked on so relentlessly. I certainly did nothing to provoke it, or I thought I didn’t, and I had no ability whatsoever to deal with it. I just could not cope with other children in any way.
I retreated into myself. I kept my eyes cast downwards and hardly spoke at all, except to the teachers and then only when spoken to. They seemed to notice nothing amiss, even though I think I can honestly say that during my time at St Justin’s I added absolutely nothing to the learning Gran had already instilled in me.
My nightmares grew worse and took on whole new dimensions. Sometimes I was chased by hordes of chanting children who cornered me and then, just as they were about to pounce upon me, turned into howling, teeth-baring wolves.
Things reached a crisis one day after I had endured this daily torture at St Justin’s for almost a year. Every day after each playtime, at morning break, lunch and afternoon break, each class had to line up in alphabetical order on a raised platform alongside the north wall of the school building to wait to be collected by their teacher. My surname was Adams then, so, inevitably, I was always at the front of the line and it seemed to greatly amuse those behind me to push me off the platform until our teacher arrived. They were a clever lot, St Justin’s Class Two. They never shoved hard enough to hurt me, just sufficiently to ensure that I repeatedly had to half jump off the platform and then clamber back up again.
For almost a year, three times a day, I endured this. Finally I cracked. Even wimps and natural-born victims have a breaking point. Perhaps especially wimps and victims. Pushed off once too often, I ran to the back of the line, wrapped my arms round my head, leaned my body forward and charged. I did it well, finding a strength I did not know I had. The worm really turned. I was, I suppose, beyond fear by then. Twenty-eight small bodies went flying and landed in a crying, screaming heap. There were no broken bones or other serious injuries, but plenty of grazed and bleeding arms and legs, bumped heads and even, I believe, a chipped tooth or two. It was a totally chaotic scene and, for just a moment or two, I remember being quite pleased with myself.
Then the trouble started. I was sent immediately to the headmistress, having been unceremoniously shopped by my dear little friends who certainly did not share my tendency to be tongue-tied. She gave me a corker of a telling off, which reduced me to tears. I knew none of it was fair but, as ever, could not find the words to explain myself. Ultimately the head told me to wait in the corridor outside her office. I was still standing there snivelling when Gran arrived two hours later, having been summoned to the school.
Gran had to walk past me on her way into the headmistress’s office. I was a complete wreck by then, of course, and I saw the corners of Gran’s mouth turn down and a flash of anger in her eyes. At first I thought she was angry with me, which she probably was, but she seemed to be even more angry with the school.
She was, of course, as calm and controlled as ever. She told me to stop crying, that she was there and that everything was going to be all right – typical Gran, never emotional but always strong and reassuring. Then she took me by the hand and led me back into the headmistress’s office.
She listened in silence while the headmistress ranted for some time about my ‘appalling behaviour’, but did not seem to be overly impressed.
‘And you think that gives you the right to leave a six-year-old child to cry alone in a corridor, do you?’ she asked eventually in an icy tone.
Gran really was my champion, bless her.
‘She has to learn her lesson; what she did was very dangerous,’ said the headmistress. ‘Somebody could have been badly hurt.’
‘I think it would be best if I took her home for a few days, don’t you?’ enquired Gran, but in a firm tone of voice, which made it clear she was not really interested in the headmistress’s opinion, but was merely telling her what she intended to do.
Gran had spoken and there was little more discussion. But it was already the end of the school day when we left together after what would turn out to be my last appearance at St Justin’s. Pupils were waiting outside for buses and parents as Gran led me out through the big wrought-iron gates. ‘Straight back, eyes forward,’ she murmured.
I did my best to comply. Because I was with Gran, none of the other children dared approach me, but I was aware of dozens of pairs of eyes staring at me. And I knew that
I had blushed bright crimson as I always did when nervous or embarrassed.
At home, Gran tried to get me to tell her exactly what had happened and why. I still could not find the words. She was not pleased with me, of course, but she was more disbelieving than anything else. Gran knew well enough that the last thing I had was an aggressive nature. Maybe her years as a schoolteacher had given her some insight into the behaviour of children, which the staff of St Justin’s did not seem to share.
Gran had never stopped battling with the local authorities in order to do what she thought was best for me, but after that incident she doubled her efforts.
‘This child must be taught at home,’ she wrote to the local director of education. ‘She is a disturbed and physically weak child, quite unable to cope with the rigours of day-to-day life in a school and all the rough and tumble that entails.’
She was, of course, quite right. But what never occurred to Gran, I am sure, and what I did not consider until many years later, was just how much I had become the child that she had made me.
The same schools inspector eventually returned to re-evaluate the situation.
‘Look at her,’ commanded Gran, ‘and tell me that child should be sent back to school.’
I stood trembling before them both, desperately trying not to cry. I had never been confident but when I had been confronted by the inspector previously I had certainly not been afraid. This time I was terrified of him, of all strangers, and of being forced to go back to the school that had caused me so much misery.
I don’t know how much he noticed the difference in me, or whether it was just that Gran was such a formidable woman, but she won the day. A few weeks later she was given official permission to teach me at home and I never did return to school following the incident of the platform.
Over the years we were inspected regularly by education officers from the local authority, but academically Gran’s education of me could not be faulted. I might have more or less missed almost a year of learning because of my inability to function at St Justin’s, but under Gran’s tuition I quickly caught up. Throughout my schooling with her I was at a much higher standard in almost all subjects, particularly English Literature and History, than the average for my age. And I will always be grateful to Gran for nurturing my love of books. Nor did she totally neglect the more practical side of my education, teaching me to cook, to sew and to type.
A Deep Deceit Page 7
