The Road to Lichfield

by Penelope Lively

  The Splatt’s Cottage Preservation Committee (‘It’s awfully cumbersome,’ said Sandra, ‘as a name. We need something snappier than that. Anyone got any ideas?’) met at the Pickerings. It would be so nice, Mary Pickering had said, now that we’ve at last got rid of the builders, we thought perhaps after dinner, if that suits everyone, and we can talk about it over a drink, nice and informal, I hate committees, actually, don’t you?

  ‘She paints, you know,’ said Sandra, turning the Renault in at the Pickerings’ gates. ‘And he lectures in something at the Poly. Design, or graphics or whatever. Is that right? You know about that kind of thing, Anne.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Actually,’ said Sandra, ‘he’s a bit hard to pin down, if you see what I mean.’ The car slowed, awash in newly-laid gravel. They got out, and waded across to the front door. Sandra went on, ‘They’ve done wonders with this place, apparently.’

  The committee sat on low long sofas and immense patchwork cushions and drank a wine cup thick with borage and lemon balm from the garden. Old Miss Standish, having arrived, it seemed, inconveniently early, sipped gingerly and eyed Mary Pickering’s long, patterned dress and sandalled feet.

  ‘Gorgeous batik,’ said Sandra. ‘I suppose you did it yourself, Mary? I do envy you – how lovely to have time for that sort of thing. So restful.’

  The forge, bellows and anvil which had once been the house’s raison d’être were cunningly incorporated into the design of the living-room. The bellows, renovated and softly lit from some concealed source behind, looked like a piece of controversial sculpture. The anvil, polished to a sharp glitter, stood against a background of copious indoor plants. The forge itself made up one wall of the room, its awkward angles smoothed out by built-in shelves and cupboards housing bright paperback books, pieces of pottery and displays of dried leaves and flowers. An open-tread staircase rose to the floor above. The ceiling beams, recovered and exposed, carried spotlights angled towards the bare white wall on which old agricultural implements were displayed – sheep– shears and sickles and flails and a scythe.

  ‘I say,’ said Sandra, ‘what an awfully good idea.’

  ‘They’re such super shapes, aren’t they?’ said Mary Pickering. ‘Lovely clean lines.’ She pointed out the old bread-oven, restored and with a glassed-in front, making a display cabinet for some choice pieces of china.

  Sandra, still intent on the agricultural implements, said. ‘Now what would that have been for?’ They all looked at a piece of iron neatly pinned beside the door.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Brian Pickering, ‘I couldn’t exactly tell you. It’s a thing we picked up in Wales once. But it’s rather nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s a dibble,’ said Miss Standish suddenly, ‘for planting seeds. Making the holes, you see. You had a man or a boy go along the rows sticking it in ahead of the man who was sowing.’

  ‘Really?’ murmured Mary Pickering. ‘I had no idea.’

  Miss Standish, encouraged, went on, ‘I know because of course I remember it as a child. They still did it like that then, you see, and there were horses in the fields, not tractors. I can see it now,’ she said, ‘as though one were still there. Silly, isn’t it, the way that kind of thing stays with you …’ her voice trailed away.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sandra. ‘Fascinating. Now had we better get on, I wonder?’ She shuffled the papers on her knee. Brian Pickering went round filling up glasses. He had a beard, and wore denim trousers and checked shirt. ‘Top you up?’ he said to Anne, leaning across her, and she nodded, reminded somehow of Graham. A muted, more settled Graham, she thought, what Graham might have been if he’d done one thing rather than another, fancied girls like Mary Pickering instead of the kind of girl he does fancy. Brian Pickering, sitting down cross-legged on one of the patchwork cushions, smiled at her, a wet, pink smile from the recesses of his beard. Like a sea-anemone, she thought, in seaweed, not nice really, and jumped to find Sandra looking sternly at her.

  ‘The Planning Officer’s attitude,’ said Sandra. ‘I think you’re going to tell us about that, Anne, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes’ she said, and paused, thinking: I’ve got to be careful about this, this is awkward, I don’t know how to put this, really. She saw Mr Jewkes again, framed by his maps and predictions, charting the future of Berkshire, with official backing.

  ‘It’s not,’ she said, ‘quite as simple as we thought. It isn’t just a straightforward application by a spec builder. Apparently what this man has applied for is planning permission for a group of bungalows for old people, and the idea is to keep the price low and give first option to Cuxing people.’

  Sandra said, ‘Huh! We’ve all heard that before.’

  ‘Bungalows,’ said Mary Pickering. ‘But that’s horrible. I mean, at least the Span houses look nice.’ Her husband nodded.

  ‘Actually,’ said Anne, ‘I did feel he’d gone into it all pretty thoroughly, this Mr Jewkes. He wasn’t somehow the villain of the piece I’d been expecting.’ She smiled, but no one else did. ‘The truth is, I felt a bit silly. In the first place for not having looked at the application properly – so that he was one jump ahead as it were – and then …’ she wavered, ‘and then because I must admit when he put the case it did seem to make sense. I mean, there is a desperate need for housing for old people in the village. For housing at all. And apparently the cottage is in the most appalling condition – he’s had the council people look at it and apparently it would be almost impossible to put right, to restore.’

  There was a pause. Then Sandra said, ‘I wish I’d gone to see this chap myself.’ She did not look at Anne. ‘I’ve been snowed under just recently, that’s the trouble.’

  The retired professor, silent hitherto, said ‘There are several points that are murky, to say the least of it. In the first place, what guarantee is there that these bungalows go to the deserving elderly of Cuxing?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Sandra.

  ‘What is meant by an intention to keep the price low? How low? And what if there are no takers at that price? And in the second, as Mrs Pickering pointed out, there are important aesthetic and environmental considerations. Any development down there goes beyond the present boundaries of the village – is this the thin end of the wedge, as it were? The next step is ribbon development all the way to Barton.’

  Anne said, ‘Oh, I don’t think … I did feel this was an isolated case. That they’d looked at it all very carefully, and weighed up the pros and cons, not been irresponsible, in the way that I suppose we imagined …’ She hesitated.

  ‘Well,’ said the professor drily, ‘he must be a very persuasive fellow, this Planning Officer. He seems quite to have won you over, Mrs Linton.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Anne, irritated. ‘I still think there’s a case for preserving the cottage, but I did feel perhaps we’d rushed in a bit fast without looking at it from every side, as it were.’

  Brian Pickering got up and went round with the jug again. Back on his cushion, hands clasped behind his head, he said, ‘I must say I think a rash of bungalows down there would be quite disastrous. Actually these old people would be far better off in flats in Reading, nearer to the shops and hospital and all that, anyway.’

  Mary Pickering said ‘Yes, it’s all quite unrealistic.’

  ‘Frankly,’ said Sandra, ‘I smell a rat. I don’t blame you, Anne, being taken in – I know these people can be most awfully convincing, but one simply does have to take a stand. I’m prepared to bet this builder’s just putting one over – no doubt he’s in cahoots with your Mr Whatsit. This kind of thing crops up time and again and one simply must not let oneself be sidetracked from the main point which is to save a fine old building. I mean, do we or do we not, want to see Splatt’s Cottage bulldozed out of existence?’

  A murmur ran round the room. ‘That’s what we’re here to stop,’ said the professor. He held out his glass. ‘Thanks very much – er, Brian – yes, I will.’

  Anne thou
ght: Oh God, I wish I hadn’t come. She sat staring at the Pickerings’ array of rusting tools, some of them, she now saw, sandpapered and polished up, like the anvil. The scythe had a chaste gleam, picked out by the spotlights, that reminded her of a vast Victorian oil-painting of Old Father Time wielding just such an implement in a field of, she thought, fleeing people. Where on earth had that been? At school – yes, she remembered with satisfaction, at school, that’s it, in the dining-hall. One sat looking at it every day, over the spuds and watery cabbage.

  ‘Look, Anne’ said Sandra. ‘If you feel like this would you rather step down as secretary? I mean, it’s a bit awkward if you’re not one hundred percent convinced.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better,’ she said.

  ‘Possibly Mrs Linton would feel happier off the committee altogether,’ said the professor.

  Good lord, she thought, amused, they’re ganging up on me now. And, examining her feelings, found none, even that earlier flare of irritation snuffed out now, quiescent in the comforting, comfortable atmosphere of the Pickerings’ living-room. The old railway clock on the wall said nine. Monday evening, she thought, Tuesday. Wednesday. Then Thursday.

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Sandra. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. But of course Anne’s on our side, aren’t you, Anne? Naturally she wants to help but if we’re going to have a tough campaign then we’re going to have to be a bit aggressive. Now what I think we’ll have to do is …’

  Anne sat silent and acquiescent as the professor, with token reluctance, emerged as her successor. Tactics were discussed, letters drafted, a time-table of events drawn up. Mary Pickering, leaving the room, unobtrusively, returned with a plate of pizza. She handed it round, smiling that warm, unaltering smile, the same for everyone, a helping each, like the pizza.

  They broke up. Getting into the car, shouting at the Pickerings’ closing front door, ‘Thanks for an awfully nice evening,’ Sandra humped herself behind the driving wheel and shot a sideways glance at Anne.

  ‘I hope you don’t feel miffed about that, or anything. He seems an efficient sort of chap, this professor person.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Anne, ‘and absolutely not. Not miffed, I mean.’

  ‘Good. Actually I daresay you’ve got quite a bit on your plate, with your pa and all that.’ Struck by a sudden thought, she crashed the gear-change, turning out onto the main road. ‘I say, do you think your brother could pull strings and get us a bit of telly time? You know, one of those interviews about how awful it is. That sort of thing?’

  Anne said, ‘I doubt it. That isn’t really what he does.’

  ‘Oh, pity.’ Sandra was silent for a minute, taken up with a forward move in the chain of red lights that winked ahead of them. Then she said, ‘They’re awfully interesting, the Pickerings, aren’t they?’

  ‘Are they?’ don’t feel I know them all that well.’

  ‘He’s – well, he kind of gets you a bit, doesn’t he? I rather like these artistic types. By the way, did you have a nice weekend?’

  ‘Mmn. Very nice.’

  ‘Marvellous to be able to just take off like that. I can never get James out of the garden at weekends. Well, I’ll put you off here if that’s all right.’

  The comprehensive school had been built, fifteen years before, as a secondary modern. Now, its function redefined, it was in the throes of extension and addition. Contractors’ vehicles had ploughed the dirt of the car park into mud. Anne, picking her way through it, thought again of Mr Jewkes, and wondered what strokes of his pen had allowed the new language laboratory, pushed the frontiers of the games field across the lane and up to the edge of the housing estate. And did those projections on his wall, those maps for 1990, know already, to the nearest round number, how many children would be spilling out of its plate-glass doors in ten years’ time? Presumably they did, or claimed to. What an odd job, she thought, providing statistics for what has not yet happened.

  She walked down the empty corridors to the headmaster’s room and knocked at the door. Going in, she was surprised to find him alone.

  ‘I’m sorry … Have I got this right, I thought it was a staff meeting?’

  Farrer said ‘No, Anne – just you. Sorry – I didn’t make myself clear.’

  It was all christian names now – even with impermanent people like herself, teaching just a few periods a week. Farrer was new. He had come three months before, from some big London comprehensive, to succeed the retiring Head. Anne had seen little of him; he was said to be a big wheel in the educational world, full of new ideas, very radical.

  ‘Do sit,’ he said. ‘Look, I’d better come straight to the point, I think. As you’ve no doubt heard, we’re making quite a few changes in the school. To be frank, I’ve had to take a new broom to the curriculum. It just didn’t stand up to inspection in this day and age. Far too much dead wood.’

  He sat on the edge of his desk, looking past her and out of the window. Taking a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, he offered her one and lit one for himself. ‘I don’t blame my predecessor, of course,’ he went on, ‘not entirely. It’s all too easy to get out of the mainstream of educational thinking – not have much idea of what the innovations are. But there’s a lot to be done – this curriculum’s cluttered up with outdated concepts and the kids need a chance to get their teeth into some of the new projects. The fact is,’ he said, ‘that History’s one of the things I’ve had to rethink. We’re not going to do a History O-level any more, which means, I’m afraid, that unless you’d like to switch to something else we can’t offer you those five periods in future.’

  Anne said, ‘History’s an outdated concept?’

  ‘Quite. Or at least history the way it’s been taught hitherto. Narrative history. The fact is, Anne, there’s been the most extraordinary amount of ignorance about the effect of this kind of teaching on kids. Have you looked at the Halliday Report?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you really should. That’s a most interesting piece of research which proves fairly conclusively that children under fifteen just aren’t ready for a chronological approach to history. And yet here we are teaching them history as narrative, one thing after another.’

  ‘That’s what it is. One thing does happen after another.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s a very sophisticated concept, Anne. They simply aren’t ready for it at the O-level stage.’

  Anne said, ‘I entirely disagree.’

  He dropped one foot on the desk, hooking his arms round his knee and looking at her over the top of it, seeing her, apparently, for the first time.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I certainly do. As far as I’m concerned children of ten or eleven can grasp quite clearly that the Saxons come before the Vikings who come before the Normans. And I wouldn’t know how otherwise to teach history.’

  Farrer said, ‘Oh, dear me.’ He unhooked his arms, got off the desk, went round and sat behind it. He flicked open a file on the blotter and stared into it for a moment.

  ‘You’re a graduate, I see.’

  Anne said nothing.

  ‘No Dip.Ed., though. Have you ever thought of something in that line now? An in-service Degree Course or something of that kind?’

  Anne said, ‘What are you going to teach instead of History?’

  ‘Sociology. And there’s this new Social Science subject some of us have had a hand in planning. It’s going to make a very nice option.’

  ‘Not an option.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Not an option if there’s no alternative. No History.’

  Farrer closed the file and tapped its blue surface with his finger nails for a moment. It said, she saw: Linton, Ms A.

  ‘Look, I’m really very sorry about this, Anne. I know how you must feel. But that’s how it is. Times change. You’re a historian, you’d be the first to appreciate that’ – he smiled persuasively – ‘and the educational system of all things must bow to change. Move with the times. We have to keep re-thin
king what kids need. What’s relevant.’ He got up, and came round the desk, holding out his hand. ‘And of course I don’t even need to say there’s nothing personal. Your work here has been much appreciated. And I don’t have the slightest doubt you’ll pick up something else in Berkshire easily enough. The Training College. One of the private schools.’

  ‘Somewhere more relevant?’

  ‘Quite so.’

  She left him, and walked out into the sunshine, where yellow bulldozers were busy rearranging a few more acres of Berkshire for a useful and productive future.

  She said to Don, ‘History’s an outdated concept.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘What are you going to do about it? The chap’s right, this headmaster, you could easily enough find something else.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll bother,’ she said. ‘Quite frankly. I just don’t think I’ll bother. Maybe I need to do some re-thinking. About history. And by the way I’m going up to Lichfield tomorrow, did I tell you?’

  Six

  James Stanway dreamed he was playing football. His bare knees ached with the cold; he charged up and down a pitch. He slipped, and felt silken mud and grass under his hands. He got up, wiping his hands on his shorts, and the other players had all gone. He stood now in the classroom of a school, looking at a board on which were chalked the declensions of a French verb; he studied the back of his hand and listened to the headmaster explain his staffing problems. ‘Quite,’ he said, ‘quite. I think you’ve a case for an extra part-timer, at least – I’ll certainly support you there’; outside the window children clamoured. He was seized with restlessness; work, he thought, I must work, there is no end to what can be done.

  He woke, and knew that this was reality, however improbable it might seem, this bed and this room seen indistinctly through unspectacled eyes and these hands, these veined and knotted hands held in front of him in a basin of water. Old hands.