A Ghost in the Machine

by Caroline Graham

  This downward spiral started with a television programme caught late at night and quite by accident. Mallory was on the point of switching off after Newsnight and going to bed when his attention was fatally caught by the opening credits of a documentary. The programme itself would show a secondary modern school in a desolate and deprived area in the North-East of England. Scarred buildings in a scarred landscape struggling somehow to contain and even attempt to teach scarred children. What the media called a “sink school.”

  Mallory recalled that, only the other day in the senior master’s common room, frivolous attempts had been made to define this term. The overall favourite, “the rubbish that’s left behind when the plug’s been pulled,” got several laughs and a round of un-ironic applause.

  Mallory sat for a long time, through the night in fact, after the programme had finished. He could not put the pinched, bitter, hopeless faces out of his mind. A sense of guilt, of shame even, began to pervade his thoughts. He remembered his youthful idealism, recalled the ferocious arguments with fellow students who had thought him mad wanting to teach at the rough end of the market. A waste of a Cambridge degree. Angrily he had demanded to know how it could ever be a waste to open windows in the minds of disadvantaged children, admitting light and hope, transforming their lives. This provoked both tears and jeers and the sincere hope that, when the film was made, Tom Hanks would get to play Mallory.

  How would his life have gone, Mallory wondered now, if he had got the very first job he had applied for? The one in the comprehensive. From the beginning Kate had understood and sympathised with his ambitions; they would have been just as happy. There would still have been Polly. And he would have been of some real use in the world.

  It was this observation that truly struck home. For Mallory was aware that, if he left his present job, no child would lose out by one iota. The school’s reputation was such that he would be quickly and easily replaced by someone at least as good, if not better. But there were places where his presence could make a huge difference.

  Understanding this Mallory immediately saw himself embroiled in situations of high drama where not only his teaching skills but his heart, soul and every scrap of his considerable energy would be tested to the limit. Suddenly, at three o’clock in the morning in an empty, totally silent room, he felt the reawakening of a faith that he had almost forgotten had ever existed. Once more fizzing with ambition and feeling incredibly alive, his mind became crammed with exciting possibilities.

  Later, cooking breakfast before the others were properly awake, Mallory started to think things through. It would be a hell of an upheaval, an awful lot to ask of his family. In fact, looking back at the ease of their life so far, he recognised that this would be the first time really serious demands had been made on any of them, including himself.

  The Ewan Sedgewick School in South-East London was always advertising in The Times Educational Supplement and The Guardian for staff. Presently they were not only seeking teachers in nearly every department but also a headmaster. Mallory sent away for an application form. After all, it committed him to nothing. When he had filled it in and sent it back he tried to feel detached. In any case, such brief experience that he had as a deputy head would hardly qualify him to take over and run a large inner-city comprehensive. But within a fortnight of his application he was invited for an interview at which the board politely attempted to conceal their bafflement at his application in the first place. Barely a week later he was offered the job.

  Kate, previously a source of support and encouragement for anything her husband and daughter undertook, struggled to conceal the depths of her dismay at the seriousness of this new situation.

  Polly surprisingly, given the friendships she had made and her enjoyment of several aspects of country life, was immediately enthusiastic. Everyone knew London was cool and where it was all at. With the confidence bordering on rashness that was to lead her into so much trouble in later life she could not wait to get down there and start hanging out.

  Money was going to be the real problem. Their current mortgage was by no means paid off and they knew that prices in the capital were horrendous. A pathetic London weighting allowance of just under three thousand pounds showed as nothing more than a blip on the Abbey National screen. To make matters worse, Kate insisted that Polly would not pay the price of her father’s sudden resurgence of idealism by attending a bottom-of-the-league school. This meant the few comparatively cheaper areas were out of bounds. Mallory, ashamed of cutting his cloth before even starting his new job, brought up the time-worn argument that poor schools would never improve if the middle classes abandoned them. Kate would not budge. For the first and last time in their marriage the Lawsons came close to out-and-out war.

  In the end Kate won. They found an excellent all-girls school, the Lady Margaret, at Parsons Green, and bought a two-bedroomed terraced house in the area by putting down the modest profit made from the sale of the Cheltenham house, borrowing double Mallory’s annual salary and an extra fifty thousand against Kate’s earnings, which left them with a combined mortgage of a hundred and seventy thousand pounds. Kate returned to work full time and, early in September, Mallory took up his post at the Ewan Sedgewick.

  His appointment coincided with a modest lottery grant. Repairs had been carried out, buildings were painted, new desks arrived. The gym was refitted and some musical instruments had been bought. Five new teachers were appointed to join the weary cynics on the permanent staff. Many of these, due to their rackety state of physical and/or mental health, were frequently absent. Not infrequently, supply staff outnumbered the regulars.

  Gradually Mallory came to understand what he had taken on. Bullying, present to some degree wherever he had worked, had at the Ewan Sedgewick an organised savagery that was truly frightening. Drugs were everywhere: bought, sold or swapped with a defiant lack of concealment. The previous term a teacher had tried to interfere. The next night her teenage daughter had arrived home covered in bruises, her clothes ripped apart. Shortly after, petrol was poured through their letter box followed by some matches with the words “Next Time” scrawled on the box.

  All of this Mallory gradually discovered. He discovered violent children, children who were mentally ill, children who sold themselves, pregnant children, children who were not children at all – who perhaps never had been. Frequently he confronted one or the other of the parents and marvelled that their offspring were still alive. He talked to more police officers during his first month at the Ewan Sedgewick than in the rest of his life put together.

  Other pupils – the majority, though it often didn’t feel like it – struggled on, taught by worn-out, disenchanted teachers or visitors who knew nothing about them, didn’t wish to and disappeared almost as soon as their faces became vaguely familiar.

  Mallory got himself dug in. For the next four years, although the hope took a tremendous battering, he somehow found the willpower and energy to continue. Not to succeed, not even to cope, but to go in day after day and wrestle with the job. Overwhelmed by floods of nitpicking paperwork, quarrelling teachers, incompetent administration and inadequate finance, he somehow held at bay the great flood of despair that constantly threatened to overwhelm him. And struggled to remain open to the troubled children in his care, even the one who had plunged a screwdriver into the back of his hand. But then something truly dreadful happened.

  Two men, one describing himself as the uncle of a twelve-year-old boy at the school, had turned up saying the child’s mother had had an accident. The uncle explained they had come to take him to the hospital. The Office let the boy go. When he did not arrive home his mother contacted the school. Mallory rang the police. Later that night the child was found wandering at the side of the road several miles away, traumatised, naked and bleeding.

  Mallory took full responsibility for this appalling incident even though he was not on the school premises at the time. It was right that he should but the effect on him was profound.
He felt he could not bear to continue in his post yet knew he must. He had uprooted his wife and child, dragged them halfway across the country and plunged the family into heavy debt on the strength of what seemed to him now a maudlin, sentimental dream. Bitterly he recalled how, buoyed up by waves of naïve vanity, he had seen himself fighting for and transforming a school supposedly beyond hope of reclamation. Had even pictured himself addressing conferences at home and abroad. Becoming famous as the man who…

  Sickened now by this former posturing Mallory started to apply for other posts: headships, for he could not afford even the smallest decrease in salary. His applications were acknowledged but that was usually the end of it. The two interviews he did obtain were fairly quickly concluded, for the truth was by then he stank of failure and neuroticism. And so Mallory was forced to stay on at the Ewan Sedgewick. To keep sane he withdrew from all but the minimum contact necessary to do the job, hardening his heart against any emotional involvement with either staff or children.

  But the cost of maintaining this stance was high. Aware always of what was pressing against the prison walls Mallory could never relax. Soon he was unable to sleep without medication. For the first time in his life he had violent headaches and intense back pain. Sometimes he felt unable to breathe. He was prescribed tranquillisers, drank too much and his libido sank without trace. Recently, in the middle of the night, his whole body had gone into spasm and he was unable to move. Unaware then he was merely days away from delivery Mallory had wept with fear.

  Though he had always known he would inherit Appleby House, Mallory had never thought to rely on this or take it into any of his calculations. It was his aunt’s home, not a counter to play with in the property game. In any case, he loved her far too much to anticipate her death. But when she did eventually pass away Mallory, even while still in shock, could not help being aware of the difference this would make to him and marvelled that a window had opened at last in the hellhole that was his life, admitting light and hope.

  In the middle of the week after the funeral he and Kate were sitting in the walled space behind their terraced house drinking Meursault and watching the sun go down. Kate had painted the walls a soft, washed-out blue. Some Greek pots holding honeysuckle and clematis and a tiny lion’s head wall fountain prettified the area somewhat, but failed to disguise the fact that it was basically a very small brick and concrete back yard. She still found it hard to believe their property was on the market for four hundred thousand pounds.

  Rock music thudded away next door, Big Lucy was belting out “Nessun dorma” on the other side and planes roared overhead. To Mallory, chaos permanently raging both inside and outside his head, neighbourhood noise had barely registered. But Kate, especially when Polly had still been living at home, found it hard to handle and frequently resorted to foam earplugs. She used to long for the time when they would visit Forbes Abbot again. Sometimes she dreamed about the place. Bathed in sunlight she would be walking in the still, calm air through cornfields or avenues of May blossom. Once, in a vision, she had seen herself crossing Sawyer’s Lake on foot. The water had felt cool and slightly springy, like soft grass. That she would be going to live there always now, growing old with Mallory, filled Kate with happiness. Of course it wouldn’t be tomorrow or even next week. Lots of things were still to be sorted and it would all take time, but soon…

  They had spent the last three hours talking about money. Mallory was retiring early so could not expect to receive a full pension. Even so he had worked for twenty-six years, the last seven at the top of his profession, and could expect to pull in around twenty-three thousand per annum. Hardly untold wealth but it would cover their basic expenses. The money from his aunt’s estate would remain sensibly invested. The rent from the apple orchard would be put towards Polly’s maintenance in her final year. After that she would be on her own and, fortunately, far from penniless.

  As for the house, if they got the asking price, and Kate had been assured that they would, the mortgage would be cleared and they would have made a profit of almost a hundred thousand pounds.

  “So with that,” she was presently explaining, “and my savings, such as they are, we’re in business.”

  “And on rent-free premises!” exclaimed Mallory. “The experts would be impressed.”

  He referred to the authors of a pile of glossy packages crammed with advice from assorted banks and financial advisors: “How to Start Your Own Business,” “You and Your Future,” “Be Your Own Boss,” all stacked up on the computer table. Though assured of Dennis’s help and advice, Kate wanted to show that she had made at least some effort on her own behalf.

  Alas, though all the banks and advisors seemed keen to lend her money, the brochures harped boringly on about the necessity of being sure to find a gap in the market for her product first. She was only too aware that it was thought, and by people who knew the business inside out, that there was no gap for the type of literary novel she hoped to bring out.

  This was not to say they were never published. There were always a few in every successful firm’s catalogue. And, very occasionally, one would astonish the trade by making money. The whole world now knew about Captain Corelli and his mandolin. But this was extremely rare. Most were published for the kudos and invariably made a loss, though this would be more than recouped by sales of the latest Tom Clancy or Danielle Steel.

  Kate did not doubt that good stuff was out there. She had read three manuscripts over the previous year that seemed to her absolutely outstanding. She had fought for them all but, with one exception, they had been turned down as hopelessly uncommercial. The one that did get through was already winning prizes. Now she recalled her first shock of pleasure when scanning the first pages and her excitement when told it would definitely be published.

  “You’re not listening.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not listening, Kate.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “What did I just say?”

  “You’re not listening, Kate.”

  “Before that?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “This is important.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I said, don’t forget that the first viewing is eleven thirty tomorrow.” Mallory nodded at the telephone message from the estate agents that lay between them on the round zinc table. “So don’t wander off.”

  “As if.” Kate picked up the notes. There were three appointments and she had only taken the details in a couple of hours ago. “I can’t believe what they’re asking. These used to be workmen’s cottages.”

  “Now the chap who reads the news on ITV lives round the corner.”

  “Does he?”

  Kate hardly knew a soul. People came and went, bought and sold. The idea that London was actually made up of lots of little villages had not proved to be the case in her experience. Or perhaps she had just not made the effort to mix.

  She said, “Do you think I should get some of that stuff you can spray about?”

  “What stuff?”

  “Smells like fresh-baked bread or bacon sandwiches. Supposed to make people long to move in.”

  “What if they’re vegetarians?”

  “We want to sell it, Mal.”

  “It’ll sell. And then we shall move down to Forbes Abbot and live in the peace and quiet of the English countryside, eating apples and publishing wonderful books—what could be nicer?”

  He poured some more wine. Kate took up her glass and drank deeply of the greeny-gold liquid. Then she rested her head against the striped cushion of her chair, closed her eyes and slipped back into lazy daydreaming. The words, peace and quiet…English countryside…eating apples…wonderful books…running through her mind, twisting and twining, a golden thread of pure delight.

  “Don’t say no.” Mrs. Crudge, having rinsed through the final tea towel, was draping it on the airer. “Say maybe.”

  “Mmm.” Benny was constantly recognising habits and rituals of half
a lifetime that could now be honourably broken. The other day she had thrown away the screaming kettle. Now it would be all right just to put tea towels in the washing machine instead of soaking them overnight and simmering them for hours in the little zinc boiler. This understanding gave her no pleasure.

  “Woof…” Mrs. Crudge heaved on the nylon rope, hand over hand like a sailor doing a hornpipe. The airer creaked up to the ceiling. She wound the cord tightly around a peg on the wall, calling over her shoulder, “All done and dusted.” Then, “How about a cuppa, Ben?”

  Five minutes later the two women sat facing each other, stirring freshly made tea. Mrs. Crudge returned to the attack as Benny had known she would. But attack was the wrong word. She genuinely wanted to help. It was just unfortunate that her suggestion was outrageous. Quite impossible. And not only impossible but rather frightening.

  Benny said: “But I’m C. of E., Doris.”

  “A person’s religion is immaterial,” insisted Mrs. Crudge. No pun intended.

  “Not if we’re talking about heaven, surely?”

  “We’re talking about the world of spirit.”

  “Carey said it was all in the mind.”

  “Mrs. Fawcett in the Gardening Club, what does that meditation,” Doris sniffed the final word with great scorn, “she reckons the mind’s a void.”

  “That can’t be right,” said Benny. “There must be some backing. Otherwise how would you see all the pictures?”

  Mrs. Grudge poured Twining’s Breakfast into her mouth. She didn’t seem to swallow like other people. Just opened her mouth and tipped the stuff in. Apart from a very occasional gulp it could have been water disappearing down a drain. Even after twenty years Benny was still impressed by the strangeness of it. Doris seemed quite unaware of this unnatural proclivity. She put her empty cup down and leaned forward. Benny held her ground.

  “You’ll meet some lovely people, Ben. Very sincere.”