Miss Purdy's Class (38 page)

‘I’ve been patient, haven’t I? But you never come home, you barely tell me anything of substance in your letters. My mother keeps asking for you, yours keeps making excuses for you! What the hell’s going on? Don’t you see that makes me feel a proper fool?’ His anger subsided for a moment. ‘Darling, we’re getting married in a month’s time and you’re never there. I know you’d never be deliberately cruel, but you don’t seem interested – in me or in our wedding. I feel as if you’re . . . you’re lost to me.’ This last sentence was said with desperation.

Gwen found it impossible to speak. If she told him, she had to make it real: Daniel, all that had happened, how she couldn’t possibly go back to her old life. Now she knew starkly, seeing poor Edwin, that she couldn’t marry him. Everything had changed. Yet putting it into words would be momentous. She stared back at him, at the open collar of his shirt, his pink neck, unable to look him in the eye.

‘Where have you been?’ He spoke quietly, but she could hear the swell of emotion underlying the question.

‘To Wales. With some friends.’ She pushed herself away from the door, picking a white thread off her sleeve.

‘So you can go to Wales for a day, but you can’t manage Worcester?’ He was barely able to contain his hurt and anger now.

‘We went for a special reason.’

‘Well,
what
reason?’

‘A demonstration – against the UAB and the means test.’ She looked into his eyes for a moment. ‘It’s breaking people, Edwin – it’s persecuting the poor, the people who are already barely able to live. It’s bad enough here, but in the Welsh valleys . . .’ Her voice rose with excitement for a moment before she remembered that they had to be quiet. ‘You should have seen all the people there – thousands and thousands all together! There was another demonstration in London as well.’

Edwin took another step towards her. Every line of his body was tensed.

‘What are you getting involved with, Gwen? You’re keeping secrets from me: you’re like someone else! For God’s sake, tell me what’s going on!’ He looked as if he was going to lay his hands on her shoulders, but he held back, clenching them at his sides. At last he began to lose his hold on his emotions. ‘Tell me, Gwen. You’re miles away from me. I don’t know you any more and I don’t know what’s happened.’

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. It felt impossible to make the stride, in words, across her changed feelings. She barely knew herself either, she felt as if she’d left herself behind.

‘You’re not . . . a Communist, are you?’

‘I am, yes.’ She had to seize the moment, to carry this through. Holding herself strong inside, she said, ‘Edwin, I’m so very sorry. This is awful. You’re a kind, good man and you don’t deserve this. But I can’t go on pretending. I can’t marry you next month. I should have told you before and I . . . I couldn’t.’

She saw him start to crumple, but then he held firm. He turned away from her and moved across the room until he could go no further. He stood with his knees pressed against the little coffee table.

‘Truth at last, then. May I ask why?’

‘I . . . I love someone else. Edwin, I’m sorry.’ She knew she was hurting someone who didn’t deserve it. She wanted to go to him, to offer comfort, but how would that help?

There was a long silence.

‘And when exactly did you think you might get round to telling me, had I not come here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her weeping, suddenly, took her by surprise. ‘I kept putting it off . . . It affects so many people. After term finishes on Tuesday, I was going to come home . . .’ She knew she would have had to, but she had not even faced that yet. ‘I’ll have to tell Mummy . . .’

‘And how long have you been
pretending
, as you put it?’

‘Don’t, Edwin—’ She went closer to him, wiping her eyes.

‘Don’t what?’ He turned to her, his face taut with hurt and anger. ‘Don’t ask for the truth? Don’t expect to be treated with a bit of straightforward decency when my fiancée’s run off with some blasted Communist agitator! D’you think I like being deceived and made a complete fool of?’

He picked up Lance’s glass ashtray from the table and hurled it against the wall behind her. It smashed in halves on impact and clattered to the floorboards. There was nothing else on the table but the day’s newspaper, so he threw that as well and it fluttered into a scattered mess. He stared round the room in contempt.

‘Look at yourself! You don’t belong here with these people. With all this political stuff. God, Gwen, that’s what I loved about you when I saw you – when I walked into that schoolroom! You were so sweet and fresh, so unspoilt. I’d never seen anyone quite like you. You’re so beautiful, and you belong there – with me – not here. Can’t you see that? It’s as if someone’s put a spell on you!’ He sank into a chair.

‘I did belong there – but I don’t any more.’ She spoke gently. ‘I feel terrible about this, Edwin. I haven’t been able to face it because of how much it would hurt you . . . But even when I was there, I felt . . .’ She shrugged. Felt what? Stifled? Hemmed in? It was hardly fair to tell him that. ‘I’ve changed. I needed to branch out. To grow into myself.’

Edwin looked up at her as she spoke. Seeing her determination, he put his head in his hands and let out a long groan.

‘Was I holding you back? Can’t you come home, grown and changed, and still let me love you?’

She had to hold herself very strongly against his expression as he looked up at her. His boyish face was full of hurt and longing.

‘Oh, Edwin—’ She knelt beside him. ‘I can’t. Because of Daniel.’

Steam was pouring out of the kettle. She made tea for them both, but found there was no milk. She could hear Edwin’s defeated weeping in the other room. He was sitting back in the chair as she came in, and took the black, sweet tea she handed him, wiping his face. Gwen moved the eiderdown and sat opposite him.

‘Why are you here today? It’s Sunday.’

‘Bernard gave me the day off. Said he was fed up with me mooning about and I should go and get myself sorted out.’

Gwen tensed. The reality of what she was going to have to face at home, everyone knowing, was awful to think about.

‘Did you tell him then?’

‘Not exactly, though it was pretty obvious. You haven’t been near the place for weeks, have you? He’s no fool.’

Gwen looked down into her cup. She thought about telling her mother. After a long silence, in which Millie’s clock ticked, Edwin said very sadly, ‘Don’t you think you could come home and, well, give it a try? I mean, if you got away from here. Couldn’t we recapture something?’

‘Oh, Edwin.’ Her eyes filled with tears again. Why was Edwin so decent? It might have been easier if he’d stormed and raged more, made demands on her. ‘No. I really don’t think we can. Well, I can’t, anyway.’

‘Tell me something.’ Edwin spoke in a hard, distant way, looking into the empty grate. ‘When you told me you loved
me
– were you . . . pretending? Lying?’

‘
No.
Of course not. I just . . . I mean I do love you, Edwin. And I care very much about what happens to you. I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself for causing you so much pain and trouble. But things change.
I’ve
changed. Because I’ve found that you can . . .’ She was groping for the words. ‘You can expand and discover that you can love more deeply than you ever realized.’ Edwin nodded. ‘I see,’ he said bleakly.

He left early to catch a train the next morning. Lance was up getting ready for school as well, so they said their goodbyes down in the hall.

‘You will have to come home and face up to it all.’ Edwin was distant now and on his dignity, not allowing the sadness of the evening before.

‘I know.’ They stood just inside the front door. ‘Edwin, I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘So am I. You really haven’t behaved very well, Gwen.’

‘No.’ There was nothing else to say.

He leaned down and gave her a quick, impersonal peck on the cheek, and then he was gone. She stood on the step in the mild, wet morning, watching him walk away, his strong, steady walk, the light hair. Every line of him gave off reliability. She knew how good he was, yet even now in her guilt and sorrow for him there was something about the sight of him that made her feel earthbound and restricted. She couldn’t go back.

‘You be happy,’ she whispered after him. Tears ran down her cheeks. ‘Someone else’ll make you happier than me.’ A moment later he turned the corner and was out of sight.

‘Settle down now for the afternoon register, please!’

Gwen watched fondly as Form Four settled, wriggling in their chairs, or turned from chattering to face the front. After the emotions of the night before she felt a sudden lightness, a relief that it was over at last. She had done wrong, she had hurt Edwin terribly, and she would have to face the wrath of her parents. But she was free! She didn’t have to go home, she was earning her own living, and she could be with Daniel, her beautiful Daniel. Ron Parks’s cheek was still bulging with something, even though the dinner hour was over. Gwen looked sternly at him.

‘Ron? You’re not eating sweets are you?’

‘No, Miss Purdy.’

The boy hurriedly swallowed whatever was in his mouth. The whatever-it-was was rather large and Ron gulped. Gwen was reminded of a snake swallowing an egg. She tutted.

‘Do you need a drink of water?’

‘No, Miss Purdy,’ Ron gasped, eyes goggling.

‘All right. Well, don’t come in here with your mouth full again. You’ll choke.’

She opened the register.

‘Donald Andrews?’

‘Yes, Miss Purdy.’

‘Joan Billings?’

‘Yes, Miss – Purdy,’ Joan said absentmindedly. The thought flashed through Gwen’s mind that she would never, now, be Mrs Shackleton.

‘Lucy Fernandez?’ Mrs Fernandez? Would she be that instead?

‘Yes, Miss Purdy.’

Tomorrow they’d be handing out a few prizes for achievement to some of the children. Lucy was outstandingly the top child in Form Four. No one took the rise out of her or called her ‘cripple’ any more. She could run rings round most of the others in class.

Gwen passed the place in the register where Joey Phillips’s name was crossed out. She could still see his ghostly little face looking at her from the empty space where he used to sit. The memory came to her of the half-seen figure pressed against the railings of the playground that spring day. Had that been Joey? What on earth could have happened to him?

When she had reached the last name she put the register away.

‘Now, all of you, I’ve got something to tell you.’ Her heart beat faster. ‘When I came to teach you this year, I thought it was only going to be for a little while. But things have changed. I went to see Mr Lowry this morning and it has been decided that next year, when you come back into Form Five, I shall be your form teacher again.’

She heard a little gasp from Lucy Fernandez and saw the child’s face light up with delight.

Thirty-Four

‘Joey – come on. Let’s get back.’

John’s high, wooden-sounding voice came to him over the barrows, all packing up for the night in the Bull Ring, which they were passing through on their way back. Joey dived under one of the stalls, seeing the murky orange of half a dropped carrot no one else had spotted and crunched into its earthy sweetness. There was still a long walk ahead and his belly was gurgling with hunger.

‘You again!’ the stall owner called after him with mock annoyance. ‘You’ll put me out of business you will, young nipper!’ He watched Joey scurry after John. ‘Poor little bleeder,’ he remarked.

The Bull Ring was full of late-afternoon activity on this mild summer evening. There was a whiff of ale coming from the pubs in Digbeth, and the faint aroma of meat cooking on the breeze with the smells of rotting fruit and vegetables, cauliflower stalks and crushed apples trampled underfoot. Someone was singing loudly as he shut up shop for the night, shop awnings were being put away and someone was playing a slow, idle tune on the accordion by Nelson’s statue. A newspaper seller was shouting about Spain. The working day was over and most of the men were heading off to the pub. They were passing one man when Joey saw a little head pop out of his breast pocket and tiny, bright eyes fixed on him. Joey jumped, startled.

John chuckled. ‘That’s old Ted with his ferret – he’s the rat catcher at the station.’

Fascinated, Joey turned and watched the man go by, and almost collided with a market trader.

‘Oi – watch where you’re going, will yer!’

Ignoring him, Joey took another bite of the carrot, staring into its orange core.

‘We’ve had a good day today,’ John said. They’d spent the day filling boxes with metal brackets at the back of a warehouse. The gaffer had turned a blind eye and let Joey stay and work as well. Now they were well set up with a bag of taters, cabbage and scrag end. ‘We’ll stop for a drink.’

They went to a pub in Digbeth that Joey remembered going to once before, called the Royal George. John went in while Joey sat on the step outside with a glass of lemonade. It tasted delicious. He listened to the rumble of male conversation inside, amid the wafting smells of beer and cigarette smoke. He still had the little stalk of the carrot in his hand and he threw it under the wheels of a tram as it came up the sloping street. Now and then someone passed him, going in or out. One or two men spoke to him, but the rest ignored him. Sitting down now, he noticed the soreness of his feet. His socks were in tatters and what was left of them had almost grown to be part of his feet. The boots, which had been so big, now almost fitted. He looked down at his grimy legs, bare between his short trousers and the boots. It felt strange seeing them. His body was something he took no notice of normally. His hands came into focus, bony, gnarled, with long nails, dirt scraped under them, cupped round the glass, which although scratched and murky, felt like a jewel in his hands. He held it up to the light and saw blurry shapes through it. Slowly he sipped the lemonade, making it last.

The voices inside grew louder: men shouting, drunken and quarrelsome. At first he took no notice. In a few seconds something in the sound started to vibrate inside him. He began to shake. He didn’t know what was happening. The voices came closer, two men brawling in the pub doorway. They were coming out and they passed him, dark trousers and boots. One of them shouted a final oath and stormed off along the road. The other stood swaying, calling after him, slurred and loud. The voice sank into Joey. He looked up at the beaten-looking man standing with his legs braced apart to steady himself, at his pale, pinched, familiar face.