Rosie Meadows Regrets...

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Oh! Oh, I wasn’t really expecting – um, Annabel, it’s Rosie.’

  ‘Rosie.’ She said my name slowly as if she was considering it carefully, mulling it over, getting ready to truss it up and toss it around the room.

  ‘Um, is Joss there?’

  ‘No. No, he isn’t, Rosie.’

  I felt her settle down, cross her sheer stockinged legs and prepare to deliver a mighty piece of her mind, so I rushed on dramatically, ‘Annabel, it’s Toby. He’s in trouble I’m afraid.’

  She sighed expansively. ‘Oh, what now? And anyway what’s that got to do with you? Where’s Martha?’

  ‘Er, out shopping, but the point is –’ I hurried on, giving a long impassioned plea on Toby’s behalf, and when I’d finished I could have sworn I heard her exhale a cigarette.

  ‘So what d’you expect me to do hundreds of miles away? Spank his bottom?’

  ‘No, it’s just – well, he’s begging to be taken away. He says he can’t bear it here and to be honest,’ I lowered my voice, ‘I can quite see why. The head’s a bit of a cold fish and I think Toby’s being bullied, which is bad enough at a day school but at a boarding school, away from home –’

  ‘Oh Rosie, don’t be silly, it’s just teething trouble, these things happen! They’re bound to, especially in the first week. You surely don’t expect Joss to take him away because of a silly little fight, do you? It’s an absolutely marvellous school, I chose it myself and the headmaster is a darling man, a big fan of my books, incidentally, and so keen to please. No, it’s out of the question, Rosie. We worked very hard to get Toby in there, it’s terribly academic – and let’s face it, Toby’s not the brightest pixie in the forest – and it’s got a terrific sporting record too, quite the best feeder around for Eton. God, he doesn’t know how lucky he is, there are parents out there who’d kill to have their children at Stowbridge House. The trouble is, that boy’s been spoiled, and a little discipline is just what he needs. Do him the world of good, show him he can’t go around bashing other kids’ heads in. Good heavens, I’m appalled actually. That poor little boy! Do send my sincere apologies to Jerry and Simone, it’s too distressing for them to have to deal with this in the first week of term.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s a poor little boy so much as a great big bully who deserved to be slugged. He’s at least two years older than Toby, and yes, I know boys are always unhappy at the beginning of boarding school, it’s just that I don’t think Toby will ever be happy here. He’ll just retreat further and further into his shell, even more than he does at home. He doesn’t have the emotional resources to draw on to get through a school like this, he –’

  ‘Rosie, how dare you. How dare you tell me Toby’s emotional status and what’s right and wrong for him! It’s none of your damned business.’ There was a silence. ‘He stays there and that’s final.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Right,’ I croaked. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I should think so! Now, have Martha call me the minute she gets back. Goodbye.’ She hung up.

  I sat for a second staring dazedly at the blotter on the desk. Then I got up and went out to inform the headmaster and his wife, who were waiting in the hall, of what they already knew. Their eyes were gleaming confidently, faces smug. Actually, I didn’t even bother. I just said, ‘I’d like to see Toby again.’

  I went slowly upstairs, followed just by Mrs Archer this time, Simone to her friends. Mr Archer, sensing the battle had already been won, hastened away to attend to more important business, like preparing his apologetic spiel for the M5 travellers, no doubt. Toby was still sitting on his bed, staring at a space on the floor somewhere between his black lace-up shoes. I sat down beside him.

  ‘Annabel says you have to stay.’

  ‘Did you talk to Dad?’

  ‘He wasn’t there.’

  ‘You can’t leave me here, Rosie, I’ll kill myself.’

  Simone gave a tinkly laugh. ‘Oh, believe me, dear,’ she winked at me, ‘we’ve heard that one before!’

  Well, that’s nothing to be proud of, dear, I thought, but I didn’t utter.

  ‘I should go now, Miss Garfield, if I were you,’ she said in a low, cajoling voice. ‘He’ll be fine. I’ll see he’s all right.’ She raised her voice shrilly. ‘Say goodbye to nanny, Toby, there’s a good boy!’

  He looked up at me, pleading silently with his eyes. I hugged him hard but knew better than to kiss him. The Judas kiss. ‘’Bye, Toby, see you at half-term.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ he muttered.

  I didn’t answer, just got up quickly and walked from the room. I didn’t look back and ran down the four flights of wooden stairs with Simone prattling away behind me about the awesome responsibility of looking after so many boys and ‘Gosh, if you’d only heard half the empty threats I have in my time!’

  I shook her cold, heavily ringed hand at the door and looked into her calculating, pale blue eyes. Then I turned and walked to the car. As I got in, I shivered. God, I’d thought boarding schools like that had gone out with the Dark Ages. I thought they were all cosy bedtime stories and relaxed uniforms and jolly housemasters and weekends at home now, but trust Annabel, with all her hypocritical pretensions to enlightened education, to find one that was still firmly entrenched in the cold shower tradition of the nineteenth century. To find one that, quite simply, allowed Toby as little freedom as possible.

  As I drove to the end of the drive, I suddenly stopped the car. I turned round in my seat and stared through the rear window. High up, behind the bars of a top floor window, was Toby, watching me. He looked frail, pale and very young. I turned back quickly and put the car into gear again, but as I did, I suddenly remembered a story of my brother Tom’s. He’d told us about a boy called Parsons who every day for a whole term had tried to run away from school. He always stuffed his pockets full of fried bread before he went – for some extraordinary reason the boys were given this to eat at break time – and then he’d pound up the long drive, half a mile apparently, through a wooded area, across a stream, and try to get to the gates. Every time, though, the headmaster would drive slowly up in his car, wait for him, and bring him back. It was a bit of a laugh, by all accounts, because the word would get about, ‘Parsons is making a break for it!’ and all the boys would rush to the windows, cheering him on up the drive, then booing the headmaster as he brought him back. But one day, Parsons fell out of a fourth-floor window and died. No one ever really knew whether it was an accident, but his pockets, which every day were stuffed full of fried bread, were found to be empty.

  My hands rested on the wheel. I looked back. He was still there. Slowly I got out of the car. At first I walked, calmly, and then it seemed to me I was running, running fast, the huge Gothic building bearing down on me, until I reached the front steps, leapt up them, and burst through the huge oak door. As I ran through the hall, Simone popped her head round an adjacent door. ‘Miss Garfield, can I hel –’ but I’d gone. Up the stairs, one flight, two, three, four, then down the empty corridor, coat flying, and into the dorm. Toby was standing now, waiting for me, eyes shining.

  ‘Pack your things,’ I panted. ‘Quick! Where’s your trunk?’

  ‘In the basement,’ he sang, ‘but I don’t need it, just my books and pictures!’ He had those in his hand. I grabbed the other one.

  ‘Come on!’

  Together we clattered back along the corridor, then down the flights of stairs, making a hell of a racket. Jerry and Simone were waiting for us at the bottom.

  ‘You have no right!’ Simone screamed as we reached the landing above them. ‘His mother –’

  ‘She’s not his mother and I’ll take full responsibility while his father’s away. Send his trunk on, please. Come on, Toby!’

  We had the advantage of the stairs and a flying start, and together we jumped the last few steps and flew between the pair, scattering them in our wake, bursting through the front door, down the steps and out into the sunlit drive.

  ‘Freedom!
’ squealed Toby. ‘It’s like Escape From Colditz!’

  ‘And there’s the wooden horse!’ I cried as we ran for my beaten up Volvo at the end of the drive. We arrived panting, glancing back over our shoulders, and piled in, laughing hysterically now, very high on adrenalin and full of emotion. I plunged the car into gear and we roared off, whooping away. I threw back my head and laughed out loud, glancing across at Toby. His happy, shining eyes and pink cheeks were enough for me, and at that moment I cared about nothing. Not about the police, not about Harry, Tim, Boffy, Joss, Annabel or the shit that now must most surely hit the fan – nothing, save that Toby and I had made it, and that in my heart I was sure I’d done the right thing. I gripped the wheel. The blood was storming in my veins and I felt very much alive, very ready to take on anybody. Toby was still bouncing around beside me, squeaking gleefully about the looks on the Archers’ faces, but gradually, as we ate up the miles and got nearer to home, we both grew silent. As the fields became more familiar and we whizzed past the road leading to the twins’ school, reality began to rear its ugly head. Toby slipped Fauré’s Requiem into my cassette player. We sat in silence and let the wistful, mournful arias wash over us.

  ‘You know, you still have to go to school, Toby,’ I ventured at length.

  ‘I know.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘If you could have chosen, where would you have gone?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Where have your friends gone?’

  ‘Dunno. Don’t have any really.’ He stared out of the window. This was classic Toby.

  ‘Well, where’s Sam gone?’ Sam was a quiet, shy boy who’d come for tea once or twice.

  ‘Westbourne Park. It’s just back there.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Well, does he like it?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  I bit my lip but persevered doggedly. ‘So why didn’t you go there?’

  He shrugged again. ‘Dad quite liked it but Annabel said it was for pansies. Said I’d grow up all arty-farty and poofy.’

  Ah, right. As opposed to emotionally crippled and anally retentive.

  ‘But Sam goes there?’

  ‘Yes, I said so, didn’t I?’

  I studied him sideways for a moment, then drew into the side of the road and stopped the car.

  ‘Don’t do this to me, Toby.’

  ‘Do what?’ His face was blank.

  ‘This don’t know, don’t care routine. This clam up and then no one can get to me act. You owe me, mate. I’ve just rescued you from that horrendous school and it’s pretty inconceivable they’ll have you back now, so you owe me, and I want you to talk to me.’

  ‘What about?’ His voice was still truculent, but quieter. More subdued.

  ‘About you. About what makes you tick. About what you want to do, what you like doing, about what makes your heart beat faster. Come on, Toby, give us a clue, for God’s sake!’

  He turned his head away from me and stared out of the window.

  ‘I know you love animals, nature, birds, but is there anything else?’

  Silence.

  ‘When I was about your age,’ I persevered, ‘we went on holiday once, me and my family, and we stayed with some friends in Cornwall. They lived in a beautiful old house, perched on a cliff top overlooking the bay, and they ran a restaurant there. Every day, while all the other children were playing outside, I hung around in the kitchens, persuading them to let me watch, even occasionally to let me help. It was just polishing the knives and forks, stirring the odd sauce, that sort of thing, but I loved it. I loved the hustle and bustle, the excitement of the customers arriving, the glorious smells, the fresh vegetables coming in from the garden, a fisherman coming through the back door with his catch, the rabbits hanging up, the smell of the herbs, and then afterwards, when the food had been served and eaten, relaxing in the kitchen and chatting about how the day had gone, which recipes had worked, which hadn’t. I vowed that one day I’d have a restaurant like that. Well, I haven’t got it and I probably won’t have it now, but it gave me a direction, Toby. I saw at once that this was something I wanted to do, something I could aim for.’

  He stayed staring out of the window, gazing into space. But after a while, he began to speak tentatively. I had to strain to catch the words.

  ‘I’d like to learn the clarinet. I’d like to learn to play that concerto in A by Mozart and I’d like to meet other people who like music.’ There was a long pause.

  ‘Go on,’ I said softly.

  ‘I’d like to play in an orchestra. Maybe even …’ he frowned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe sing in a choir.’ He blushed.

  ‘And do they do all that at Westbourne Park?’

  ‘Sam’s going to learn the flute and the viola.’

  I turned the key in the ignition, glanced over my shoulder and with a certain amount of aplomb performed an astonishingly immaculate but highly illegal U turn in the middle of the road. As we roared back, Toby looked amazed.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  Two minutes later we swung into the gates and up the drive. Well, let’s face it, I had to have some sort of alternative plan of action available to Joss, even though he was bound to shoot it down in flames, and this at least was a start. I looked up at the building in front of me. Westbourne Park was a modern, purpose-built school with a large playground at the front and playing fields behind. We drove up and parked at what I assumed was the main entrance.

  ‘Come on,’ I said cheerfully, getting out.

  Toby sat still and licked his lips.

  I popped my head back in. ‘Toby. Come on, you’ve got to go somewhere, let’s at least go and see,’ I coaxed.

  He got out. I took his hand and we walked up to the double swing doors, but as we attempted to open them, they rattled and my heart sank. They were locked. I looked up at the plate-glass windows and the empty classrooms above us. ‘Doesn’t look like they’ve even started yet, Toby.’

  ‘Not till Tuesday week,’ said a voice behind us. ‘We’re quite a bit later than all the other schools around here.’

  I swung round. A middle-aged woman with curly brown hair and tortoiseshell glasses smiled. ‘It all comes out in the wash though, just means we finish term a bit later. I’m Anne Perkins, the headmistress here, and although work might have stopped for the children, it doesn’t seem to have done so for me!’ She indicated the huge stack of papers in her arms. ‘Just popped in to see to this little lot. Can I help?’

  I took a deep breath, and began. She wasn’t gushy, and she didn’t beam with delight as I outlined the reasons for Toby being so swiftly disenchanted with his previous school and so keen to become a member of hers, but she listened carefully, looking from me to Toby, and no doubt taking in the tear-stained little boy in his flannel shorts and the somewhat frazzled-looking woman beside him. When I’d finished, she nodded.

  ‘Well, obviously it would be up to his father, but as it happens we do have a place in the first year because one little boy’s family has just been posted to Germany. I’d be delighted to offer it to Toby, but as I say, I’d have to speak to his father.’ She frowned. ‘But haven’t we met before, Toby?’

  ‘Yes, I came round with my dad. He liked it but my – my stepmother wanted me to go to Stowbridge.’

  ‘Ah.’ She frowned. ‘Well, if that’s the case, we may not suit, I’m afraid. We’re two entirely different schools, you know, and your stepmother may think us a mite too relaxed in comparison.’

  ‘It’s not her who counts,’ said Toby hotly. ‘It’s my dad’s decision.’

  This was said with feeling, and she could easily have exchanged a grown-up raised eyebrow with me, but she didn’t. She regarded him solemnly.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, Toby. Why don’t you speak to your father this evening and ask him to give me a ring, and then we’ll see if we can’t sort
something out.’

  ‘He’s all over Europe at the moment, I’m afraid,’ I explained breathlessly, sensing a ray of hope here. ‘He’s the sculptor, you see, Joss Dubarry,’ I threw in shamelessly, ‘and he’s travelling around a bit. I may not be able to get hold of him for a few days.’

  She smiled. ‘Doesn’t matter, there’s no rush. I won’t fill the place now seeing as it’s so close to the beginning of term, so we’ll hold it open for Toby for, what? Say three weeks? How would that suit?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I beamed, ‘just perfect. Thank you so much!’

  ‘Not at all.’ She smiled and walked with us back to the car. As we got in, she looked thoughtful. ‘I really must stress that you’ll find us very different to Stowbridge. We’re co-ed, you know, and we only weekly board and we don’t spend quite so much time on the playing fields as they do. We also ask that right from the word go you take up at least one instrument, did you know that?’

  ‘Yes,’ breathed Toby. ‘I’m going to play the clarinet.’

  She smiled. ‘Perfect. We could do with another clarinettist in the orchestra.’

  Toby and I drove home in companionable silence. He was rather like me in that respect. Didn’t always feel the need to talk. But as we came into the village, I glanced at him sideways and suddenly realized he was on the verge of tears.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, aghast.

  There was a silence as he struggled with his face. ‘I want to say something to you,’ he gasped eventually, ‘only I can’t!’

  We were drawing up to some red lights. As we stopped, I took his hand and smiled. ‘That’s all right. I know what it is, and actually, as long as I know, it doesn’t really matter whether you say it or not, does it?’

  He turned brimming eyes on me. I saw them widen with recognition. I smiled. So that was all right then. As we took off from the lights, I hunted around beside me, then snapped a rather joyful concerto into the cassette player. It just happened to be Mozart’s clarinet concerto in A. I glanced at Toby slyly as his mouth opened in astonishment.