by Susan Hill
‘Why did you come here?’
She looked sideways at her father but his expression was hidden.
‘Oh, we thought we’d like to be somewhere new to us – have a change. And of course it’s easier to manage. We didn’t need all that space. Or the stairs.’
‘You’re not old.’
‘Looking old age in the face, Livi.’
‘That’s rubbish. I loved our house.’
‘So did I, my dear, so did I. Never think otherwise.’
‘Then are you happy?’
‘Of course. Yes, yes.’
Was he? She stopped to look at a ship on the horizon, and as she did so, it occurred to her that she had a choice – now, here. She could fret about whether her father had done the right thing, marrying again, coming to this town, confining his life to a small space, and whether he would be able to grow old here in some sort of contentment – and she was right, he was not old yet, only in his early sixties. Or she could simply leave him – them – to it, let them carry on with their life as they would have done if she had not existed. Trying to discover how happy he really was, if he had regrets, was pointless because his life was not hers. She had no need to concern herself.
She turned away from staring out at the ship.
‘Dadda?’ She surprised herself. How long was it since she had called him that? Ten, fifteen years?
He looked at her, and his expression was tender.
‘You seem fine,’ she said, taking her father’s arm. ‘It all seems fine. I’m glad you’re happy.’
And so she chose. She felt a burden lift not from her shoulders but from her heart, so that it was free again and no one’s but her own, after all.
They did not mention James. He had not existed for them. She did not feel disapproval or distress, but an emptiness. James would not know this grandfather.
The college had not allowed her back to finish her degree, and so she had applied elsewhere and found Keele, a new university anxious to attract good students. She wanted only to keep her head down, to work. Literature was her lifeline and her solace once again. The English tutors were modern with, to her, bizarre critical theories, but if she had confidence in nothing else, she had it in her own ability and power of independent thought, and these, allied to her enthusiasm, carried her through, past postmodernism and deconstructionism, past Marxist interpretation and the debunking of much of the literature that she held sacred.
She wrote the finals essays in a white heat. At the end of every exam her wrist burned and her neck muscles ached, and she leaned back in exhaustion, emptied of words, quite unable to judge her own performance, other than that she knew she had not been floundering, had written without pause.
The university was mixed and she had got on perfectly well with the rest of her year but made no close friendships, because she felt a hundred years older than them, and on the other side of a great divide. She had borne James and given him away and the experience separated her, and marked her out – though the marks were not visible to others.
20
SHE HAD ANSWERED two advertisements for teachers of English. Beechway College was four miles outside Tunbridge Wells and had a reputation for educating the daughters of the county well-to-do, and those of military and diplomatic families serving abroad. She faced a handsome building, surrounded by mature parkland. The rooms smelled of good furniture polish, the Head was imposing, immaculate and perfectly friendly in a formal way, and she asked searching but not prying questions before handing her over to a sixth-form prefect to show her round. The girl was well mannered, well spoken, well briefed.
She was given coffee and biscuits and the opportunity to ask her own questions, the atmosphere of the school was calm, orderly and well presented, and when Olive was shown out, she wanted not to walk but to run down the tree-lined drive to the gates. She felt a desperate, churning panic to get away and not only because the place reminded her of a smarter St Jude’s. She found it hard to work out exactly why she had felt so anxious, as if she might be trapped there and never allowed to emerge into the normal, messy, confusing world again. A bus took her slowly, bumpily into the town, where she found a corner to herself in a tea shop with a view of the square, of people moving briskly about, shopping, stopping to talk, queuing for buses, queuing for fresh bread and fish. Her anxiety faded. If Beechway College offered her the post she would not accept, and if they did not she would feel no disappointment.
There had been no mention of literature, books, reading, the English syllabus or even their preferred style of teaching. She had been told about the daily routine, sporting attainments, the background of the pupils, even the uniform, as well as where she herself would live if given the post, about the staff quarters, the washing facilities, the school bicycles which could be borrowed. Nothing about why she had studied and wanted to teach literature, what had formed her and what fired her. The good furniture polish had brought up a shine and a pleasant smell not only on the banisters and the parquet floors but on the rows of pristine books in the library, set spine precisely to spine, not only on the gleaming shoes but on the shiny faces of the girls she met and the eager politeness with which they stood back against the wall to let her pass and opened doors for her. There was an absence of rush, no apparent trouble or discomfort, nothing but an orderly and cheerful existence. It was a school lifted from books she had read at the age of eleven. She had longed for such schools to exist but never quite believed that they did. She had yearned to be sent away to such a boarding school while secretly glad that she was at her own girls’ grammar, where everyone left at four, to stream down the hill to the bus station.
She shivered. A woman went past the window, pushing a new pram. Olive turned her head and mind away, in a reflex she had perfected over the past year and a half.
She had always known that she would teach, not because it was her best available option but because she had the passion of an evangelist for winning converts to literature. Books had been all to her. They had saved her and she longed to explain how, and what. The idea of spending her working life dedicated to what she knew and loved best was powerful. She knew instinctively that she would only be any good at teaching those who wanted to learn, who were clever, enthusiastic and willing. Controlling the badly behaved or trying to force an interest in books into uninterested, unreceptive heads would break her. She would only respond to them with impatience and frustration. She imagined that the girls at Beechway College would be well behaved, dull, dutiful, and impervious to a real passion for any book, author, play or poem. They would be attentive but with opaque minds and little imagination.
The Barr School for Girls was in the middle of Salisbury, and had been founded in the late-nineteenth century by one of the admirable fighters for the female right to education. Its core of Victorian buildings had been extended to east and west as far as it could be before it came up against other houses, now mainly converted to offices. Entrance to Beechway College was via an interview and sufficient income. To the Barr it was via a challenging exam. A few scholarships and bursaries were awarded to those of academic excellence but also to those from families with modest means. The girls flew high, music and drama flourished, sport was kept in its place.
The day she walked up the flight of stone steps to the front door, she felt intimidated, challenged, and desperate to be accepted.
‘Our daily lives here are not ruled by bells.’
The head, Miss Avril Dauncey, smart, pleasant. Formidable. Olive knew she had to prove herself. At her first college interview she had felt as if she were a performing animal and that the panel of four were only waiting to catch her out, fail her and move on to the next girl. Today she might, probably would, fail but not before she had been given every opportunity to show herself at her best and succeed.
As they stood in the entrance hall, the hands of the Waterloo clock moved to eleven.
Ten seconds later, doors started opening along the corridor ahead and girls streamed out,
carrying books and bags, and the noise and the laughter and the sound of footsteps catapulted her back ten years. If their Head had been in sight they, like the Beechway girls, had pressed themselves against walls to let her pass, eyes lowered. These girls smiled, said ‘Good morning’ and went on their purposeful way, confident, friendly, respectful but not deferential. A minute later, as she was shown into the Head’s office, the corridors had fallen silent again. One pair of running footsteps. A banged door. Silence again.
A pot of coffee, milk, sugar, biscuits on a side table. Two cups.
‘Please help yourself – no rush, enjoy your biscuit.’
But she did not risk one, embarrassed that she might choke, spill crumbs, be unable to swallow because she was so nervous.
‘Tell me about yourself. I have all your qualifications and so on here of course, but I want to know why you have decided to teach. What is it that makes you want to spend your days imparting knowledge of English literature to adolescent girls? What is it that appeals to you – as a way of life? Because that is what teaching is, you know.’
Half an hour passed. What she felt. How literature had affected her since childhood. Excited her. Formed her. Saved her – though she did not say that. The books, the poems, the writers, the words, the words. She almost tripped over herself, she stuttered in her determination to express it. Miss Dauncey leaned back, fingertips in a steeple, eyes steady on Olive. Listening. Listening and not once interrupting.
She wound down. Faltered and took a deep breath. Felt her face flush. But she had meant it, all of it, it was what she believed – no, knew, and if it was not acceptable, she could not help that or change or retract a word.
She finished her cold coffee.
‘It is a joy to hear you talk with such passion. A real joy. I’m a historian and I love my subject, Miss Piper, but a Head is caught up in a lot of administration. I was so afraid of losing touch with history, losing that love, that I decided to make time to teach two classes a week – a first year and a sixth form. It isn’t a lot but it keeps me grounded in teaching and thank you for reminding me that a passion for one’s subject is nothing to be coy about. Now, have some more coffee? In a couple of minutes, Miss Pengelly, the Head of English, and Miss Neale, her Deputy, will come in. I shall stay but remain silent. Are you happy with that?’
She warmed to Miss Neale, the Deputy, and turned to her with relief after the Head of English had finished questioning her – not that the questions were difficult to answer. They were an attempt to get her to reveal her best side.
‘You do not have to love it to teach it well but it gives you a tremendous advantage, and you certainly have to know it.’
‘It is far better not to pretend … they will always find you out in any case. What you have to do is come clean – say that this or that book or author is not to your personal taste but still explain why it is regarded as great literature. Reading between the lines, I gather you are not particularly enamoured of Keats? Don’t worry … but his poems are almost always on the O-level syllabus. How do you think you would tackle them?’
Thea Pengelly. She was a woman whose age it was almost impossible to guess. Later, Olive discovered a shy, gentle and very private person beneath the cool exterior, shrewd, sensitive to others and understanding of their needs and weaknesses, and able to win and retain their loyalty and trust – and affection. Somewhere hidden was also a sadness, perhaps a loneliness, to which no one was ever allowed access and with which no one could tamper.
Sylvia Neale was easy, straightforward, or so it seemed this first day, a small woman in a tweed skirt and a blouse with a bow, smiling encouragement. Olive felt herself looking to her instinctively for reassurance and approval and receiving both.
When they left the room, she felt warmed by Miss Neale’s friendliness, given out with smiles and nods. Miss Pengelly’s reserve made her more difficult to read. She could only wait.
Another prefect. Another tour of a school.
‘Have you enjoyed it here?’ The girl, who planned to study medicine, smiled and said that she had, ‘and I’m proud to have been here as well’, and made it sound quite without primness or priggishness, but simply honest.
‘Is there anything else you would like to know before you leave?’ But there was nothing and she would hear within a week. If she was not offered the post, she knew, as she went back into the street, that she would be disappointed, she wanted it a great deal, for reasons not all of which were immediately clear. She had liked and respected the Head but she would not have a great deal of everyday contact with her. She would be able to relax with Miss Neale, and in Miss Pengelly she recognised a dedicated teacher with high standards, and a rather private woman. But reserved people interested her.
21
A STRETCH OF the town’s medieval wall was still intact, inside which courts and alleyways and narrow traffic-free streets were clustered, and there, to her surprise, she found a flat to rent. She had to climb three steep flights of stairs, but once at the top, she had three rooms that might have been in a house in Paris. There were two sloping roof lights, a small sitting room, curtained-off kitchen area, a bedroom overlooking the park, which was lined with horse chestnut trees still heavy with dark green leaves when she moved in but soon to flush golden brown and spatter conkers down onto the paths, a sound she could sometimes hear at night. She could barely afford the rent, on her probationary teacher’s salary, and the flat was unfurnished save for an elderly gas cooker and some oak shelving but she had money which her father had sent to her almost two years previously, for James. When she withdrew the first £50 she felt as if she were stealing from her son and half wanted to ask her father’s permission to spend any of it. But she did not. She went out and bought a small, old sofa with dusty blue velvet covers, a work table and chair, a bed and some lamps and a few kitchen utensils. It was not a great deal but because the rooms were so small with thick walls and deep sills even this much furniture transformed them into a living space that wrapped itself round her and made her feel safe. She thought of the contrast between this and her father and Peggy’s bright flat without character, overlooking the restless sea.
She had got the letter inviting her to take up the teaching post within two days of the interview, after which she had spent part of the summer with Margaret and her husband and small son, in York, a similar medieval-walled city. She got a job selling ice creams outside the Minster during the day and working in a coffee bar on four evenings. She gave Margaret rent, because they struggled on inadequate money, and saved the rest. When she was not working she read and made notes on forthcoming lessons and occasionally remembered her lack of experience and training and panicked. It seemed vaguely wrong that the simple possession of a degree, however good, qualified her to teach clever girls. But she was grateful that it did.
22
THE FIRST SIX weeks drained her of energy and concentration though not for a moment of her enthusiasm. She went straight from school to her flat, and slept for an hour or more, before eating, marking and preparing for the next day. Then she went to bed and woke every morning in need of another two or three hours’ sleep. But the pleasure she got from teaching came immediately. The first year, uniform still too big, hair neatly tied back or plaited, were like young animals waiting to be fed by hand, shiny, eager, and so she began by asking them to find a poem – one they already knew or had discovered, which they liked so much that they wanted to learn it by heart, and did so, reciting it to the rest of the class before explaining their choice.
Childhood verses would come to the fore, because surely they had read little poetry beyond them. ‘The Highwayman’, ‘The Listeners’, ‘A Smuggler’s Song’. All of these came, but also ‘The Way Through the Woods’, several poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses, ‘Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat’, and from one girl, a haunting, bleak little poem by Thomas Hardy – ‘At the Railway Station, Upway’. Another had found Yeats’s ‘Innisfree’, because her mother had often talked
about ‘a bee-loud glade’.
They enjoyed themselves. So did she.
‘Have you got a poem, Miss Piper?’
They sat up, expectant, bright-eyed.
‘You might find this difficult the first time you hear it but I’ve made a copy for each of you so you can read it as often as you like, and then write me a page about it for next week please.’
She read them Donne. ‘Death be not proud’. They listened. Solemn. Intent. Puzzled. When she handed out the copies, they all began to read it at once. She was lifted up by the way they were engaged by it, however difficult.
She was brought down to earth that afternoon by having to introduce a selection of Gerard Manley Hopkins to her A-level class. She had barely known any Hopkins herself but had been keen to grasp, to learn. To love.
She hated. Overblown. Overwrought. Filled with misery which tipped over into self-pity. She anticipated an hour of trying to analyse, sympathise, explain. Defend. There were only fourteen in this English set and when she walked into the classroom her immediate realisation was that she was not many years older than them. They were like the first years, willing to engage, serious, frowning with concentration, ready to take Hopkins to their hearts.
They hated him too. She knew after a few minutes that she was floundering, failing, doing injustice to the man and his verse by allowing her own prejudice and distaste to show themselves.
The class were uneasy, took dutiful notes, asked no questions and filed out of the room at the end of the lesson looking both baffled and bored.
Olive sat on in the empty classroom, staring down at her book, ‘No worst, there is none …’, and felt despair. They had chosen her to teach here over several – perhaps many – others and she was out of her depth and dreading the next lesson, although it was Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, a play with meat on it, about which they could argue and scrap for the whole period. She felt judged, as if the clever, beady-eyed A-level pupils had seen through her and recognised an impostor.
