Miss Carter's War (16 page)

‘What on earth are you talking about, you idiot?’ Pauline was incandescent with rage, yelling at Helen Hayes.

‘How can you possibly say that Tommy Steele is better than Elvis?’

Helen quailed but stood her ground.

‘I think “Rock With The Caveman” is very with-it.’

‘With
what
? Are you mad?’ The ardent Hazel threw in her twopenn’orth. ‘Have you actually heard “Heartbreak Hotel”? It’s to die for.’

Anxious to join in, Wendy, her chubbiness having developed into voluptuousness, said, ‘Well, I’ve got a pash on Bill Haley. He’s smashing.’

This was greeted by a chorus of vomiting noises.

‘That horrible kiss curl. How can you?’

Marguerite laughed.

‘Well, girls, this is a truly erudite discussion you are having. I am glad that education has not been wasted on you and that you are going out into the world with your critical faculties well trained for cultural matters.’

‘This is
our
culture, Miss Carter. It’s an interesting phenomenon, don’t you think?’

The brilliant Miranda was eager to demonstrate the academic approach that had won her a state scholarship to Cambridge.

‘We have even got a sociological-group name – teenagers.’

‘I think you’ll find that word has been around for some time, Miranda.’

‘But now it’s used for commerce. Records, make-up, magazines – all for us teenagers.’

‘Yes, well, we ancients buy records as well.’

‘Yes, Beethoven and stuff.’

‘I’ll have you know I bought a Lonnie Donegan LP the other day.’

This was greeted by silence.

‘Oh dear, does that make me old hat?’

‘Well, a bit, but he’s great too,’ exclaimed Hazel and broke into a spirited rendering of:

‘ “Now the Rock Island line

She’s a mighty good road . . .” ’

Some were now jumping and clapping and jiving. Marguerite reflected on how they had all blossomed from the cowed girls they once had been, and how she wished Irene and Elsie were here to join in the fun.

Suddenly the dancing and singing stopped. Miss Fryer was standing by the entrance.

Marguerite blew her whistle.

‘All right, girls, break is over. That was very entertaining. The grammar of the song leaves something to be desired, but I can see the attraction. Get in the queue now.’

Silently they formed into class formation, and filed back into the building. Helen Hayes’ voice rang out, ‘See you later, alligator.’

‘In a while, crocodile,’ a bold chorus replied.

As Marguerite walked down the corridor to the staff room, Miss Fryer appeared at her study door and asked to speak to her.

‘Miss Carter, you are a teacher who is naturally gifted with children. Therefore I am curious as to why you allowed a situation to develop that caused such a rumpus that I was forced to come out of my office to investigate.’

‘I’m sorry you were disturbed, Miss Fryer. They were only singing and dancing.’

‘The break periods should be used for them to rest and gather their thoughts for the next session of study.’

‘But they are young and exuberant, trapped behind their desks all day. Don’t you think perhaps it does them good to let off steam?’

‘Miss Carter, it is not all that long since the end of the war. The eighteen-year-olds who started this commotion in the playground, as far as I could see from my window, have had disrupted childhoods. The younger ones too. Many of them have been rendered dysfunctional by the instability they have had to cope with in their families. What these children need to be given is order.’

‘But Hazel and Helen and Pauline and their friends are no longer children, they are young women.’

‘And is that really how you think young women should behave?’

‘But you make it sound as if they have done something dreadful. They were just having fun.’

‘Fun? You may think I am an old dodo, Miss Carter, but I do keep up with what is going on in the world. I have heard this new music that is being sold to them. What about taste and judgement? Are those hip-swivelling ignorant creatures really worthy of their devotion?’

‘Some of the lyrics are not entirely without merit – “Heartbreak Hotel” for instance. But popular music has, down the ages, always been banal.’

‘Miss Carter, I have been a teacher for many years now, and I have never felt quite like this before. I am fearful of the future for my girls. The old order changeth, and I am not sure where the new one is heading.’

‘Miss Fryer, I truly believe the world is becoming a much better place. You have to trust that good will prevail.’

‘Sadly, I do not share your optimism. You see, and this will sound harsh, but I believe it to be true, I do not think children are naturally good. They have to be taught proper standards and values.’ Marguerite thought uneasily of Mrs Schneider’s sons. ‘That to my mind is the duty of teachers, and above all parents. If we allow the wrong people, the merchants, the unprincipled, the ignorant, to set the standards, we are in for trouble. Mark my words.’

‘I will think about what you say, Miss Fryer, and I’m sorry that the incident, which I thought was quite innocent, has so disturbed you.’

‘I will be retiring soon, Miss Carter, and not before time. Truth be told, I am no longer relevant.’

Marguerite was saddened by this usually confident woman’s declaration, because, in her heart, she knew it to be true.

Chapter 15

Something was stirring. By the late 1950s London was full of iron balls lunging into bomb-damaged buildings, which crashed down, making way for construction of the new. It felt exciting, although as they walked round the city not everything pleased Marguerite and Tony. They were upset when an ancient mews near Trafalgar Square with gas lights, and ghosts, was flattened to make way for a bland office block, and they were angry that the indestructible dome of St Paul’s, that had been such a comfort during the Blitz, was gradually being hemmed in by buildings not worthy of it. After years of choking smogs they were delighted that the air was now cleaner, so that the buildings they had come to believe were black emerged revealing white stone, or in the case of the Natural History Museum, terracotta tiles in an amazing palette of various creams and pale blue, with sculpted animals and flowers.

Now that she had nearly ten years’ experience behind her, Marguerite was confident she was a good teacher. All her pupils had done as well as they were able, and she was learning to accept that the circumstances that could hinder their progress were beyond her control. Her failure to persuade Elsie and Irene to fulfil their potential still pained her, but it taught her to resist being too emotionally involved in her pupils’ lives. She gritted her teeth, and followed Miss Fryer’s advice to allow them to ‘fly the nest’ unassisted, concentrating all her energy on making the most of the time she had with them. An increasing number of her girls were getting into universities and, gently prodded by her, considering a career rather than just any old job until they fulfilled their destiny as good wives. She once saw Irene, in the distance, walking along Bexleyheath Broadway, with three young children in tow. The rush of rage Marguerite felt towards the shiftless mother who had apparently landed her brilliant pupil with yet another debilitating burden made her turn and walk in the other direction, knowing that she would not be able to contain her frustration if she spoke to Irene; she would be tempted to say things that would only unsettle her.

She heard through Pauline that Elsie had a very good job in London, though she didn’t know what it was, or what had happened to the baby. Pauline and Hazel had obtained coveted places at the London School of Economics, from where they inundated Marguerite with leaflets and invitations to various meetings. She was proud of her ex-pupils’ continued activism and wanted to encourage them, especially now that she could no longer be accused by Miss Fryer of political influence. One meeting in particular she decided to attend.

Since the test explosion by the Americans of the hydrogen bomb, even more ferocious in destructive power than the two atom bombs that had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Marguerite was convinced that this was the biggest issue of the age, probably the biggest since the start of civilisation. The human race was now capable of wiping itself out.

His head explodes. The blue eyes blown away. The three other men in the car sprawl grotesquely like her childhood dolls thrown into the toy box. Yet the grenade had fitted into the palm of her hand and all she had done was pull out the small pin and throw it like a ball.

Tony, too, who had been at that first anti-bomb meeting of the United Nations Association in Dartford, was deeply concerned about the legacy of this admittedly amazing scientific achievement. The two of them were in accord that the world must rid itself of these weapons, before it was too late. The problem was how. Tony had been for the unilateral option, particularly when he heard Margaret Thatcher opposing it, but when he came back from a Labour Party conference he told Marguerite how his idol Aneurin Bevan had made a typically brave speech, saying that, if the Party voted for Britain alone to ban the bomb regardless of other countries, they would be ‘sending the next Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber’. He derided their idealism. ‘I call it an emotional spasm.’ Although he was outvoted, many people, including Tony, saw his point.

‘If all the big boys have a bomb they’re not going to listen to a little squirt with no weapons.’

‘We are not “a little squirt”. We are a much respected force in the world,’ Marguerite argued.

‘Marguerite, we are a tiny country that is losing its empire, and has already lost its credibility since the Suez nonsense.’

‘We stood alone and virtually unarmed against the Nazis.’

‘We were just lucky that Hitler didn’t have the sense to cross the Channel.’

‘But if he’d had a hydrogen bomb, don’t you think he would have used it? You talk about having to negotiate from strength. You overlook the odd madmen that crash into history. You can’t negotiate with them. Once they get one, we’re done for.’

‘Even madmen will realise that, if they drop one, they too will be annihilated. It will stop them.’

‘It didn’t stop the Americans.’

‘That’s just my point. It would have done, if Japan had had the bomb.’

‘But it was wicked, wicked. We cannot be compliant in such criminal acts.’

‘It is war. Appalling crimes always have and always will be committed in the name of “a just war”.’

‘Tony, I can’t believe this is you saying these things. What’s happened to you? What happened to us “not doing nothing”? We have to make a stand.’

‘Oh, you mean like the people in Hungary? Slaughtered by Russian tanks? Khrushchev turns out to be as bad as Uncle Joe Stalin.’

‘And, yes, imagine if he gets the bomb. We can change things, Tony. We can. Please come to this meeting at Westminster Hall. There are all sorts of people speaking who can put the case better than me.’

‘No, my love—’

‘Tony, please. This is so important for me. I can’t bear not to have you with me.’

‘Oh my dear little cockeyed optimist. When you look at me like that, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I can’t resist you. I’ll be there.’

And there Tony was, among the four thousand others crowded into Central Hall and spilling over into three extra rooms, with a stage full of the great and the good from all walks of cultural, political and religious life. The atmosphere was electric to begin with, but some rather overlong speeches began to dampen the fervour and people started drifting away. Then the historian A.J.P. Taylor stood on the platform, gesturing only occasionally with relaxed hands, calmly describing in minute detail the horrifying injuries and agonising death caused by atomic radiation.

He ended by saying quietly, ‘So now, which of you will press the button?’

Silence. ‘Is there anyone here who would want to do this to another human being?’

Again silence.

Then for the first time in his speech, showing passion, he shouted, ‘Then why are we making the damned thing?’

The crowd erupted into cheers.

Marguerite hugged Tony.

‘Wasn’t he wonderful?’

Tony looked solemn amidst the rejoicing.

‘An emotional spasm, I fear.’

He did not go with Marguerite and her two protégées on the spontaneous march to 10 Downing Street after the meeting, and when they met the next day at school, he tried to explain his reticence.

‘I’m truly frightened, Mags. These are perilous times that need pragmatism rather than idealism.’

Marguerite covered her ears.

‘Don’t, Tony, don’t. I don’t want to hear this from you. I would rather we were blown to smithereens than take part in this obscene arms race. We must do what is
right
. Never mind the consequences. Remember, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” ’

‘Well, I’m not particularly good, and it’s a case of tactics, not doing nothing. Anyway I seem to remember in one of A.J.P. Taylor’s television lectures he said Burke didn’t actually say that. It’s a misquote.’