At Freddie's

by Penelope Fitzgerald

‘Ah my dear, I was no good at being young.’

  She stood there frowning, or trying to, because she was still at an age where the skin fits the body exactly and wrinkles with difficulty. And watching her, Carroll remembered how she had been at the beginning of their-short walk, full of bounding relief at the end of a hard day’s work with her whole evening opening up before her in brilliance, simply because it was free time, while now he could see nothing in her face but bewildered pity.

  ‘I’ll be going when I’ve finished the one cup,’ he said. ‘Hannah, I’ve spoiled your evening. I deserve to be crucified for that.’

  There was always something of the countryman about him, even the way he looked carefully round him now to make sure he had left nothing behind. The great umbrella, proof against the Irish rain, stood propped against her ironing-board. He was entirely absorbed in worry on her account, and once again she recognised obscurely in him some talent, raised to the point of genius. She had an unaccountable sense, too, of the freshness of air and water that were commonplace in the hard country from which both of them had come.

  ‘You can stay if you like, Pierce,’ she said. Goodness knows, he might as well as not.

  ‘I should like to very much, Hannah.’ He had been about to pick up the umbrella, but now left it where he was, and began to take off his jacket and tie.

  Hannah was somewhat surprised. She had expected him to ask her whether she loved him at all or not. It was the first time he had surprised her. Then she realised that Pierce would never ask a question if he did not want to hear the answer.

  13

  HANNAH had never much cared for having a name chosen from the Bible. It wasn’t even a saint’s name. Hannah was the mother of Samuel the prophet, and for many years she had been barren, and she went to the Temple to pray that she might conceive, and the priest Eli had seen her lips moving without words and assumed that she was drunk. Of course he had realised his error and after receiving his blessing Hannah had become pregnant and borne a son, but then this son had had to be dedicated to the Lord, so that she only had the chance to see him once a year when she went up to Shiloh with a little child’s coat she had made, one size larger than the year before.

  Warm between sleeping and waking, Hannah sometimes found this example of industry and self-sacrifice drifting through her mind and gave thanks that she was far in time and place from Shiloh. It wasn’t so much the false accusation of drunkenness that distressed her; it was the sad waiting for next year’s visit. How could that ever be compensated for?

  When Hannah woke that next morning she found that Pierce was gone. She felt relieved, because although it would have been consoling to wake up together she thought he might not be the sort of man with whom you could eat cornflakes (if there were any left) in these circumstances without embarrassment, and then she would have had to find her clothes and stand waiting with him, with what looked like rain set in for the day, in a situation where both speech and silence seem out of place, that is, at the bus stop. And yet last night, after all, he had not been much embarrassed.

  Not a trace of him anywhere. In the kitchenette she found that he had helped himself to nothing, but had washed up and set all straight from the night before. It would be a trial to live with a fellow who liked everything as tidy as that. But the cups ranged neatly on their hooks reassured her, because they meant that Pierce had returned to the predictable.

  ‘Where’s Mr Carroll?’

  ‘He’s not come in today,’ the class chanted, fixing their gaze on Hannah.

  ‘What’s the matter, is he ill?’

  The opinion of the class was that he had cut his throat for love, or perhaps drowned himself. They meant no harm by this, she knew. They needed a diversion, there were so few of them here – Gianni gone, Jonathan at an understudies’ rehearsal. Alarmed in spite of herself, Hannah went down to Miss Blewett.

  The Bluebell was making up the fees and commissions book in the outer office. Nice woman as she was, she couldn’t help radiating the quiet satisfaction of those who know more, but have less reason to care.

  ‘That’s right, dear, he won’t be in today.’

  ‘Is he ill or what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did he ring up at all?’

  ‘He phoned me at four in the morning, dear. It’s fortunate that I’m used to broken nights from having done so much sick-nursing in my life – pets as well, of course.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Just that he would have to ask for twenty-four hours’ unpaid leave, because he had to go home. Some people would have pretended to have a cold, but Pierce is very straightforward. Yes, he’s gone home for the day.’

  ‘But he’s from Portmoyle, fifteen miles out of Derry,’ Hannah cried. She saw in her mind’s eye the ploughed fields with outcrops of rock and the strand washed clean by the sea, and Pierce toiling with his suitcase along the roads where no bus ran.

  ‘Yes, I think that was the name. He said he was taking the first ferry from Stranraer. Some of us you know don’t care for flying and the difference in cost is very great. He didn’t tell me anything more, dear, I hope it’s all right because it doesn’t seem like him and it’s so sudden.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything sudden, except accident or illness.’

  ‘They may have won the pools.’

  ‘But they wouldn’t need him for that. If it was a bit of luck they’d had they wouldn’t want him.’

  Meanwhile, what about the children waiting in their classrooms? The Bluebell had a message from Miss Wentworth, who wanted Hannah to take them all together for the day, just for general subjects, you know.

  ‘Where is she?’

  And Freddie, on cue, came in.

  ‘Is something amiss?’

  She glided and loomed past Hannah to the armchair, and the two of them followed her.

  ‘I hope you haven’t frightened Mr Carroll away, dear.’

  How could she guess, with such cheery malignity, at what might just possibly have happened, without the slightest hint? It was true that she had had seventy years’ practice in gathering information for profit, but no one can practise the impossible.

  ‘Miss Wentworth doesn’t mean it,’ the Bluebell put in. ‘It was only a joke.’

  ‘The bell will be going soon,’ Hannah said. ‘I hope it’s quite clear that I won’t undertake to teach increased numbers for more than a day without a corresponding increase in pay.’

  Freddie seemed to surge up in her chair. The light caught her array of brooches.

  ‘You must allow an old woman to take things rather slowly. Who can have suggested that you should teach more than your fair share of pupils? It can hardly have been me, I think, dear. After all, this is the first time I’ve seen you this morning. And yet I don’t know who’s responsible for the administration here if I’m not. In time, I suppose, my memory may fail me. I don’t know what everyone would feel then.’

  ‘Deeply grateful,’ said Miss Blewett, with an upward glance at the ceiling, for she had been told during her brief career in variety that whenever you have a dirty line, you should look upwards. In fact, the limits of her patience were narrower than was generally known. But Freddie did know them, and the sensation that both her auxiliaries had turned against her and were even in some kind of mild alliance filled her with a tactician’s joy.

  Bluebell could be left for the moment; after all, the Temple was her only means of livelihood and she was not likely at her time of life to find another job. Freddie smiled at Hannah, the smile of a kindly eccentric, priceless, indulgent and indulged.

  ‘I hear they all liked you very much at the Nonesuch. I think I shall really have to ask you to go there and do the tutoring more often.’

  ‘I thought you’d got someone from outside to do it regularly. I thought it was only because she couldn’t make it the other day –’

  ‘Mrs de Bear, dear, yes, but she’s suffering from a bout of deep melancholia. I’m terminating he
r contract.’

  ‘Won’t that make her worse?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘It will cure her. She won’t be able to afford it.’ Freddie turned, with a different smile, one of easy complicity, to Miss Blewett. ‘You agree with me about Bruin, don’t you? You’ve known her as long as I have.’

  Miss Blewett, reconciled, nodded slightly. ‘I do, but fortunately if she loses her position she can always fall back on her psychic powers. I remember there was an incident when she recovered a lost season ticket, and another one to do with a rhinestone bracelet.’

  They were settling back together to talk about the unknown and despondent Mrs de Bear. Hannah tried to cling on to her sense of affront. ‘Who’ll be on duty here, then, if I go to the theatre more often?’

  ‘Mr Carroll, dear. He took both the classes together the other day, you know. He didn’t make any objection.’

  ‘He may not be coming back.’

  ‘He will be coming back.’

  There was no kind of bargain; Freddie never made them. To make a bargain is not to be at an advantage. Hannah simply went off to start the classes feeling slightly in the wrong, and as though she owed Freddie something, though she could not tell what.

  When she came downstairs to set off for work the next morning, Carroll was waiting for her outside the shop door, still with his suitcase, his face whiteish-grey with fatigue. Of course he’s come back, she thought, unexpectedly pleased to see him. It didn’t much matter what he’d been away for, they could have a good laugh about it now. After all that’s what both of them had got out from under their families for, to take life a bit more as it comes.

  ‘I’ll walk to the school with you,’ he said. It was as if their lives were being played over in reverse.

  ‘There isn’t much time, Pierce, I’m going by bus this morning.’

  When she’d first known him she had thought him restful to be with, and she had hoped he would be the same again now, but he was not.

  ‘I have to talk to you, Hannah.’

  ‘If it doesn’t take too long.’

  ‘I don’t know how long it will take.’

  Could there ever have been a worse place to talk things over? The Italian grocer’s had formerly been a hairdresser’s, and just inside the entrance where they were standing there remained a full length mirror with the words A CUT ABOVE THE REST in gilded letters. The street was filling up now and very few of the passers-by had the strength of mind to ignore it entirely, some snatched a sideways glimpse at their reflection, some straightened and patted themselves, and all of them in doing so had to look past Hannah in a disconcerting manner, so that behind poor Pierce, standing there with his suitcase at a serious crisis in his life, she could see a procession of figures slowing down, glancing and hurrying on. Some evidently knew that the mirror was there and were relying on it to check their appearance before they went any further to face the rest of the day.

  ‘I want you to look at this, Hannah. It’s only a rough sketch, but I think you’ll be able to make it out.’ She took the bit of paper, praying she had it the right way up.

  ‘Is it a map, then?’

  ‘It’s just a rough map of Muckla.’

  ‘Is that where you’ve been?’

  ‘It’s the family farm near Portmoyle. I didn’t bother to put all the buildings in. That’s all old pasture, then the other side of the lake you’ve got the stony ground where there used to be sheep but now it’s not fit for much. A hundred and ninety acres and my eldest brother has it with one of my cousins, but now the cousin’s married a girl with a diploma from agricultural college that wants him to go in for milk and she’s prepared to take on all the dairying. You can see there’s nothing there for us, no room at all. But I had a letter not long ago from my sister on the subject of our case, I’ve never mentioned this to you, Hannah, because I hadn’t realised it would be of interest, but it’s our family law suit over this land here to the south-east.’

  ‘But you’ve marked that as a golf course,’ Hannah said.

  ‘But then our case sets out that these twenty-five acres have never been legally acquired by the golf course and hence they’re still our property. Well they’ve been contesting it so long that it’s treated more or less as a joke in the district, but it’s always been said that if it came to anything I was to have an interest in it.’

  ‘Is that what you went over to Portmoyle for, just to find out about that?’

  ‘I did.’

  He was so incomprehensibly hopeful, so trustful suddenly of the intentions of his family who’d always sounded mean enough to take the bits out of your mouth, that Hannah felt bemused.

  ‘Well, if there’s anything in it for you, Pierce, I’m very glad. It’s just that we were a bit surprised when you went off like that leaving all your classes.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve got my meaning yet, Hannah. I can’t support you by teaching. Teachers have wives, of course, and they support them, but I think we should admit that most teachers are a good deal more competent than I am. Promotion would pass me by. And while I was turning that over in my mind a scheme came to me as it were out of the blue. If there were to be two houses built on the golf course land, one for us to marry and live in and one to let, that would be a start for the two of us. I put it to the family so that they’d waste no time but begin talking it over between them at once. I didn’t get an answer from them yesterday but it’s my belief that anything that’s wanted as much as I want this must carry everything before it. It took time mind you to convince them that there was a girl let alone a pretty one – pretty’s not the word but it’s one they understand – who cared enough to trust herself to me, but let that one sink in first, then let them go on to the next thing. The way I see it we could go on to build a third house on the land – I’ve a sketch here of how the cupboard space would be – and we could think of selling that and getting a good price for it too. You see I wouldn’t want you to have to be at the farm all day talking about milk yields with the cousin’s wife, no, we’d be in business on our own account. I know there’s nothing you can’t do well. Hannah. Wherever you are, people take notice. Just when you walk into a room, you make a difference. But then I’d thought too that when we were married we might in time grow more like each other. I’ve heard of such things happening. All the alterations would have to be on my side, of course.

  ‘And then, allow me one more word, you mustn’t think I’d want to put you through all the upset of a mixed marriage over there. Here in London, you know, Hannah, it’s not a difficult matter.’

  He paused, not for breath, but for reassurance that he had been understood. He had taken away the piece of paper from her and was folding it up and putting it away in one of his many pockets as though it constituted an agreement in itself.

  ‘But, Pierce …’ Hannah began.

  Both of them had to work through the day in their separate classrooms, divided by the unsound partition wall for which they felt grateful. In the lunch hour they avoided each other, and meeting by chance on the way in they exchanged a smile, without any illusion that the Temple children would not have noticed anything. At four-fifteen Carroll did not wait to clear up, but Miss Blewett, encountering him outside the washrooms, looked at him archly, indeed, with her upward glance.

  ‘Hannah has been called to the phone, dear. I daresay she won’t be long.’

  ‘I shan’t be waiting for Hannah this evening,’ he told her, in his flat, deliberate tone. ‘It might not be appropriate, I think. You see, I asked her to marry me this morning.’

  Although he could not bring himself to look at her directly Miss Blewett caught his expression and without hesitation folded him, as he stood there in his second best homegoing tweed, in her arms.

  ‘Oh, Pierce, Pierce … you must believe what I’m going to tell you … even Sorrow has its uses. My fiancé – I always called him that – died suddenly ten years ago, in 1952. Grief changed my appearance completely. And yet that led to the only position I’ve ev
er been offered at Harrods … Saturday salon model for white hair …’

  Carroll’s grief, on the other hand, had the dignity of total uselessness. But the two of them clung together. ‘I’m born to be pitied,’ Carroll thought. ‘I must remind myself that it’s better than nothing.’ Yet knowing that in practice it was much worse he determined not to give up hope, not quite yet.

  14

  AMONG the strange symptoms of hopefulness in the early nineteen-sixties, of which Carroll’s proposal to Hannah was perhaps one, was the foundation of a National Theatre on the South Bank of the Thames. From the very beginning this magnificence threatened the existence of the shabby tiny hopelessly outdated Old Vic, where Freddie had learned her business and Lilian Baylis had toiled to the end remarking: ‘My work will kill me, but I don’t see why it should be otherwise.’

  During the planning stages of the National Theatre very many suggestions were made and discarded, and one of them, which of course came to Freddie’s ears long before anything was put on paper, was the endowment from public funds of a National Junior Stage School, with particular attention to training in Shakespeare. Accommodation could be found in the vast complex of South Bank buildings, or purpose-built classrooms might perhaps be sited at the very edge of the river. Rigorously selected, the talented youngsters would do the new post-war Britain credit and show that the tradition had kept true to itself. Shakespeare himself might have been pleased – but when this phrase appeared on the Committee’s recommendation it was a mere coincidence, innocent of any reference to Freddie; none of the Committee had heard of her. None of them, in fact, were connected with the theatre at all. They were civil servants with responsibility for the arts, experts in educational outreach, intelligence quotient specialists, lecturers on the Jacobean drama, and speech therapists. However, the NJSS, once it got off the ground, must surely make the Temple School superfluous.

  The Bluebell, coming in with the evening post, found her employer collapsed on the floor. Slowly reaching out to each side of her to ascertain her position and raising a vast wrinkled forehead, like that of the White Whale itself, but with spectacles still in place, in an attempt to see all around her, she lay at an angle of forty-five degrees to her armchair.