Nor All Your Tears (2 page)

In the hall in which Max and I found ourselves, there were rows of desks alternating with rows of chairs; the teachers sat at the desks hiding behind piles of loose-leaf folders, the parents either sat in front of them like nervous applicants for a job or waited on the rows of chairs, the women gossiping, the men looking as if they were hacked off that they were missing that night's
Starsky and Hutch
, scattered pupils resembling zombies on the point of attack. All of which found me appalled and intrigued in equal measures. Wherever I looked, the faces were uniformly bored and I found myself wondering just what, precisely, was the point of this ritual? I remembered it from the point of the children, but the memory was no happier than the vista before me; it was one of ennui leavened by slight trepidation that one or more of the teachers (usually the geography teacher, I recall) was going to tell my parents exactly what he thought of me. Through this whole melange stalked the tall, slightly stooped figure of Mr Silsby, his face bearing a mask of worry, clearly terrified that something could go so easily wrong.

We pushed through the hall, heading for the small garden at the back of the gymnasium that Dad had spent the last three months preparing and planting with the help of a dozen or so of the less academically bright final year children. He had become really enthusiastic about the project, telling us over Sunday dinners (always a joint of meat or a chicken, accompanied by roast potatoes, roast parsnips and two green veg, together with a side order of enough saturated fat to cause his drains to clog up regularly) how the sprouts were doing, that the soft fruits had blight or that the runner beans were a beauty to behold. During these eulogies, he would wave his eating implements around, depositing small flecks of gravy and minuscule servings of vegetables around the table; we had learned long ago never to wear our best when breaking bread with Dad.

In the gymnasium, children of assorted shapes and sizes performed various gymnastic manoeuvres with greater or lesser skill and success, supervised by a tall but thin woman of about forty or so with short dark brown hair, big eyes and a slight pout; she wore tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt. There were perhaps thirty parents looking on.

As we walked past, Max murmured, ‘Bet she's a lesbian.'

I was shocked. ‘Max! I didn't know you knew of such things.'

‘My old PE teacher was definitely one. She used to wander around the changing rooms and the showers, pretending she was there to make sure that we weren't whipping each other with wet towels, but in reality she was perving on the naked girls. Makes my flesh crawl.'

‘They all prowl the changing rooms,' I pointed out. ‘They're supposed to. It's in the job description that they have to make the pupils feel inadequate, terrified and slightly sick.'

‘Then they're all homosexuals and lesbians.'

It seemed that there was no arguing with her.

On the far side of the gymnasium, a side door had been opened and it was through this, at the rear of the school, that we found Dad. He was talking animatedly to a small group of parents, explaining, no doubt, the intricacies of pricking out, how to make your carrots grow straight (one of his favourites) and the evils of parsnip canker. Half a dozen youths – large boys and pubescent girls – were variously showing off some of the produce that had come from the garden; impressive looking lettuces, juicy red tomatoes, salad onions and baskets of new potatoes. Both Max and I were impressed and I felt pleased for Dad that he had made such a success of the venture; I had the impression that this was probably something of a triumph over the odds. Certainly the location was not totally what I would have called hospitable; the vegetable plot was situated at the base of a brick wall that was five feet high and topped with broken glass; it was heavily and garishly graffitied, not something I found particularly pleasant on the eye. One good thing about the plot was that it was south-facing, although the slight problem with that was that for most of the day the sun was blocked out by the edifice of the gymnasium on the other side, about twenty yards distant, and also badly defaced by graffiti; in the intervening gap was a cinder running track, as well as areas for the long jump, the high jump and the shot put; the grass around these was browned and weed-strewn. It all had something of the air of a prison backyard.

THREE

D
ad spotted us and came over as soon as he could. ‘Sorry about that,' he said. ‘They wouldn't let me get away. Most interested, they were, in how we get the carrots to grow straight.'

I forbore to comment that the body language had suggested that it had been a captive audience rather than a captive lecturer. Max said brightly, ‘This is very impressive, Dr Elliot.'

He looked around, a man seeing success wherever his eye rested. ‘I'm fairly happy with it,' he said airily, much as the bloke who built the Great Pyramid at Cheops had probably once been quoted as saying in
Ancient Egypt Today
. ‘They're a good bunch of kids, too.' Max clearly had that innate survival instinct that makes you automatically afraid of large school children en masse, for her face suggested that she might need a little persuasion on that subject. Dad continued with characteristic unregard, ‘Would you like to meet my star pupil?'

It was one of those questions that have only one answer. He led us over to a rather tall, clearly well-muscled lad with sandy coloured hair, light-blue eyes and high cheekbones. He was over six feet tall and his whole demeanour suggested that he thought he was the bee's knees. ‘David? I'd like you to meet my son and his girlfriend.'

David turned and gave us a smile. Of its type, it was a fine example. It stretched his cheeks, it reached to his eyes and his body language opened up. ‘Of course,' he said. His voice was standard South London, not ugly, not refined. He held out his hand; I was interested to see that he held it out to Max first. ‘How do you do?' he asked of her with an expression that I thought was a tad too rakish for my liking. Max smiled nervously. To me, the hand was accompanied by a rather more perfunctory, ‘Hi.'

All sorts of primeval mating instincts whispered in the back of my head and I told myself not to be stupid.

Dad said, ‘David is Ada's grandson.'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘And where is she?'

‘Providing refreshments in the dining room. She'll be along shortly when she's finished her shift.'

In an effort to be sociable, I said to David, ‘You've done a wonderful job here, David.'

It took him a moment to respond, perhaps because he was staring rather more than I liked at Max. ‘Yes, yes,' he said eventually, seeming to bring himself back from somewhere. ‘Not bad.'

‘David's got green fingers,' proclaimed Dad, as if David had recently had the Légion d'honneur bestowed upon him. ‘I gave him the beetroots, and look how they've turned out.' He indicated two rows of dense and luxuriant green and purple foliage, neatly arrayed and impressively weedless. David bowed his head as if overcome with pleasure at this praise but, cynical old git that I am, I had the feeling that he was taking just a little bit of the urine at the same time. Dad smiled at Max. ‘I know how much you like them.'

Max smiled nervously. ‘Thank you so much.'

‘Don't thank me, thank David.'

Whose smirk widened whilst into his eyes there came a certain gleam, one that perturbed me a tad; I was starting to have my suspicions about this metaphysical heir of Percy Thrower.

At this point, we were approached by a middle-aged couple and an adolescent girl who, it transpired, were David's family. Pater was tall, completely bald, dressed in jeans and a black shirt and extravagantly tattooed; mater was somewhat shorter, with knee-high leather over jeans that she could only have got into by oiling up first, a T-shirt that probably had the nicest job in the world and the kind of make-up job that Michelangelo would have swooned over. Between them was what I assumed was their daughter, who was also carrying a considerable weight of cosmetics; it was difficult to judge her age and could have been anything from sixteen to twenty-two. The body language – I have read
The Naked Ape
, so I'm fairly adept at this – was fascinating. The father stayed with the girl, whereas the mother split off immediately to go to David and begin cooing at the vegetables.

Dad made the introductions – Mike and Tricia Clarke were the parents, Joanna the daughter – but then there followed one of those pauses I know so well; conversation is a tender plant and, unlike the Clarke filius, I do not have green fingers. It didn't help that Mike Clarke seemed to be an angry man and Tricia Clarke a woman with little to say. Inevitably we were reduced to asking about jobs, but that didn't help because Mike, it turned out, was a Fleet Street printer – which in those days meant that he earned substantially more than I did whilst doing considerably less; I am not a bitter man, but then I am not a saint either, and I have seething resentments against members of NATSOPA, the printers' union. To make matters worse, Tricia apparently whiled away the long days by . . . well, whiling them away not doing anything much at all.

‘Are you a pupil here?' I enquired of Joanna in some desperation but with little confidence that it would open a vein of dialogue rich in conversational possibility; for one thing, she seemed obsessed with her patent-leather shoes and had rarely raised her eyes from them. She was dressed in widely flared jeans and a bright yellow crop top that left little to my imagination. Her father replied for her immediately. ‘Yeah.'

‘What year are you in?' asked Max.

‘She's in the third year.' That Mr Clarke should once again respond was strange; that he said what he said was surprising; she was no more than fourteen. Max's surprise was as great as mine, I think, leading to yet another awkward lull in the social niceties. It lasted until Tricia asked Max if she had ever stuck her hand up a cow's bottom, and then followed it up with the inevitable corollary, ‘What does it feel like?' I think we were all grateful when Dad suddenly said, ‘Here comes Ada.'

I turned to see a woman of average height, greying hair and bright, sparkling eyes who, thankfully, bore little resemblance to her son. She was smartly dressed and had a smile that was, perhaps unfortunately, formed of thin lips giving it an underlying hint of cruelty; when she came up to Dad, she seemed genuinely pleased to see him, though; I am ashamed to admit that I had been starting to wonder if there was more to her affection for him than just a love of loony pensioners with beards. They held hands and it seemed that Ada's slight faux pas a few months before (when her loyalty to Christ had outweighed all else, including her passion for Dad) was a thing of the distant past. She then turned to her son. ‘Hello, Michael.' She give him a peck on the cheek for which he bent down obediently, then managed to exchange smiles with her daughter-in-law that struck me as a trifle strained on both sides, then turned to David, who was enveloped in the kind of hug that only grandmothers know how to give. David's expression was difficult to read; he might have been enjoying it, might only have been enduring it. ‘Gran,' he said noncommittally.

For a few moments I was dreadfully afraid that Max and I were going to be required to spend the rest of the evening making polite but entirely meaningless conversation about typesetting and fonts, hair dyes and blusher, but then Ada said to Dad, ‘I've got to be going now, Benjamin. Michael said he'd give me a lift home.'

Dad looked devastated. ‘But I thought . . .'

‘I know, but I'm rather tired, and you're going to be here for a good hour longer, aren't you?'

Dad nodded sadly; the call of love being trumped by the call of duty is not an easy thing to swallow. ‘Of course.'

A quick peck on both cheeks for Dad (I admired her fortitude and pluck in not flinching before she buried herself in the Brillo pad that is Dad's beard), a smile for Max and me, and Ada was gone with her family.

‘Isn't she wonderful?' murmured Dad as he watched them go.

‘She seems like a nice lady,' I said carefully and Max concurred.

It was just the rest of her family I wasn't so sure about.

FOUR

W
e stayed with Dad until the parents' evening began to wind down at about eight thirty. During all this time the weather had stayed fine and warm and although the numbers coming to view the efforts of the Horticultural Club had gradually dwindled, Dad had still managed to spread the word on the arcane rituals necessary to entice asparagus to grow to at least a dozen more ever-so-slightly interested parties. The pupils were well behaved and most of them helped him clear away the tools and, as a reward, had been given a selection of vegetables to take home; they even managed to look slightly delighted. The shed locked, Dad clapped his hands together and asked, ‘Well? What did you think of her?'

I said with genuine honesty, ‘She seems very nice.' Thankfully he didn't ask me to comment on her son, daughter-in-law or grandchildren. Max agreed enthusiastically, and Dad was satisfied. Max added, ‘And you've achieved a lot here.' She indicated the neat rows of vegetables and soft-fruit bushes.

‘Mr Silsby's very pleased,' admitted Dad. ‘Some of the lads and lasses who've been working here were quite troublesome, but this seems to have given them a bit of focus in life.' He lowered his voice, although we were outside and unless there was a hidden microphone amongst the runner beans, it was unlikely that we would be overheard. ‘Ada's grandson, particularly so.'

‘Really?' I said, I think quite convincingly hiding the fact that I was not in the least bit surprised. ‘How come?'

‘Well . . .' Another glance around, but he failed to spot the hordes of spies and eavesdropping equipment he evidently believed might be arrayed around us. ‘He's got into quite a lot of trouble over the past couple of years. Very disruptive in class, truanting, threatening behaviour; he's been caned on several occasions and once he even physically assaulted someone. Beat them up quite badly, actually. It was only because the poor chap didn't want to press charges that nothing further came of it.'