Playing for the Ashes (19 page)

I loathed him. Who wouldn’t have done? He was everything I wasn’t and he’d managed it all without having a single Social or Economic Advantage.

“His father’s a docker,” Mother informed us. She seemed all agog at the fact that the son of a docker could possibly be what she’d always claimed the son of a docker could be: successful. “His mother’s a housewife. He’s the eldest of five children. He gets up at half past four to do his prep for school because he helps with the children at night. He gave the most stunning presentation to the class today. The one I was telling you I’d assigned them on the self. He’s been studying—What is it? Judo? Karate?—and he paced back and forth at the front of the room in that pyjama-thing they wear. He talked about the art and the discipline of mind and then…Gordon, Olivia, he broke a brick with his hand!”

My father nodded, smiled, and said, “Good Lord. A brick. Fancy that.” I yawned. What a bore it was, she was, he was. The next thing I would learn, no doubt, was that darling Kenneth walked across the Thames without aid of a bridge.

There was no doubt that he would fly through his O-levels. Or that he’d put his name in lights. He’d make himself the pride of his parents, my mother, and the entire comprehensive. And he’d doubtlessly do it all with one hand tied behind his back, standing on his head in a bucket of vinegar. After which he’d go on to the lower and upper sixth, distinguishing himself in every area possible to a single pupil. After which he’d go to Oxford for a first in an arcane subject. After which he’d bow to civic duty and become prime minister. And through it all, no doubt, the name on his lips most frequently spoken when it came time for acknowledging the secret of his success would be Miriam Whitelaw, beloved teacher. Because she was beloved to Kenneth, my mother. He made her the keeper of the
fla
me of his dreams. He shared with her the intimate parts of his soul.

That’s why she knew about Jean Cooper long before anyone else did. And we learned about Jean—Dad and I—at the same time as we learned about Kenneth.

Jean was his girl. She’d been his girl from the time they were twelve-year-olds when having a girl doesn’t mean much more than knowing who’s going to lean against the school-yard wall with whom. She was Scandinavian pretty, with light hair and blue eyes. She was slender like a willow branch and quick like a colt. She looked on the world from an adolescent’s face, but with adult eyes. She went to school only when the mood was upon her. When it wasn’t, she did a bunk with her mates and went through the footway tunnel to Greenwich. When she wasn’t doing that, she’d pinch her sisters’ copies of
Just 17
and spend the day reading about music and fashions. She’d paint her face, shorten her skirts, and style her hair.

I listened to my mother’s tales of Jean Cooper with considerable interest. I knew that if anyone was going to put a cog in the works of Kenneth Fleming’s unstoppable rise to glory, it was going to be Jean.

From what I gathered over the dinner table, Jean knew what she wanted, and it didn’t have anything to do with O-levels, going on to the lower and upper sixth, A-levels, and university. It did, however, have to do with Kenneth Fleming. At least that’s the way my mother told it.

Kenneth and Jean both took their O-levels. Kenneth passed his brilliantly. Jean
flu
ffed hers. That outcome was a surprise to no one. But it gratified my mother because I’m sure she believed that the intellectual imbalance in the relationship between Kenneth and his girlfriend would finally become apparent to the boy. Once it was apparent to him, Kenneth would act to remove Jean from his life in order to get on with his education. It’s rather an amusing idea, that, isn’t it? I’m not sure how Mother ever reached the conclusion that relationships between teenagers are about intellectual balance in the
fir
st place.

Jean went from the comprehensive to a job at the old Billingsgate Market. Kenneth went on a governors’ scholarship to a small public school in West Sussex. There he
did
play on the cricket first eleven, shining so brightly that on more than one occasion scouts from one county side or another stopped by a school match to watch him hit fours and sixes, without apparent effort.

He came home at weekends. Dad and I heard about this as well because Kenneth always stopped by the comprehensive to give Mother an update on his progress in school. It seems that he played every sport, belonged to every society, distinguished himself in every one of his subjects, endeared himself to the headmaster, the members of the staff, his fellow pupils, his housemaster, the matron, and every blade of grass upon which he trod. When he wasn’t bent upon either achieving greatness or having it thrust upon him, he was home at the weekend, helping out with his brothers and sisters. And when he wasn’t helping out with his brothers and sisters, he was at the comprehensive chatting up Mother and posing as an example, for all the
fif
th formers, of what a pupil could achieve once he set his sights on a goal. Kenneth’s goal was Oxford, a blue in cricket, a good fifteen years playing for England if he could manage it, and all the benefits that can accompany playing for the England team: the travel, the notoriety, the product endorsements, the money.

With all this on his plate, Mother concluded happily that he couldn’t possibly have time any longer for “that Cooper creature,” as she called Jean with a curling of her lip. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Kenneth continued seeing Jean in much the same way as he’d been seeing her for the past several years. They merely moved their meetings to the weekend, every Saturday night. They did what they had been doing since they were fourteen years old with two years of getting acquainted behind them: they went to a film or they found a party or they listened to music with some of their mates or they took a long walk or they had dinner with one of their families or they made their way by bus to Trafalgar Square and wandered in the crowds and watched the water stream from the fountains. The prelude never made much difference to what followed, because what followed was always the same. They had sex.

When Kenneth came to Mother’s classroom that Friday in May of his lower sixth year, her mistake was not giving herself enough time to think the situation through after he told her that Jean was pregnant. She saw hopelessness mix with the shame on his face, and she said the first thing that came into her mind: “No!” And then she followed it up with, “She can’t be. Not now. It’s not possible.”

He told her it was. It was far more than possible, in fact. Then he apologised.

She knew what the apology was going to precede and she sought to head him off, saying, “Ken, you’re upset but you must listen to me. Do you know for certain that she’s pregnant?”

He said that Jean had told him as much.

“But have you spoken to her doctor? Has she even seen a doctor? Has she been to a clinic? Has she had a test?”

He didn’t reply. He looked so miserable that Mother was sure he’d run from the room before she had the chance to clarify the situation. She went hurriedly on. “She may be mistaken. She may have miscounted the days.”

He said no, there was no mistake. She hadn’t miscounted. She’d told him it was a possibility two weeks ago. The possibility had turned to reality this week.

Mother rallied carefully with “Is it at all possible that she’s trying to trap you because you’ve been gone and she’s missed you, Ken? The tale of a pregnancy now to get you out of school. A false miscarriage in a month or two should you marry.”

He said no, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t Jean.

“How do you know?” Mother asked. “If you haven’t seen her doctor, if you haven’t yet read the results of her test for yourself, how on earth do you know she’s telling you the truth?”

He said she’d been to the doctor. He’d seen the test results. He was so sorry. He’d let everyone down. He’d let his parents down. He’d let Mrs. Whitelaw and the comprehensive down. He’d let the board of governors down. He’d let—

“Oh God, you mean to marry her, don’t you?” Mother said. “You mean to leave school, throw everything away, and marry her. But you mustn’t do that.”

There wasn’t another way, he said. He was equally responsible for what had happened.

“How can you say that?”

Because Jean’d run out of pills. She’d told him as much. She hadn’t wanted…And
he
was the one—not Jean—who said she’d not get pregnant the very first time they did it once she’d stopped taking the pills. It’ll be okay, he’d told her. But it wasn’t. And now…He lifted his hands and dropped them, those skilful hands that held the bat that hit the ball, those very same hands that held the pen that wrote the wonderful essays, those hands whose one blow cracked through a brick as he calmly talked about a definition of self.

“Ken.” Mother tried to stay calm, which wasn’t easy considering all that appeared to be riding on this one conversation. “Listen to me, dear. You’ve got a future ahead of you. You’ve got your education. A career.”

Not any longer, he said.

“Yes! It’s still there. And you mustn’t even think about throwing it away for a cheap bit of stuff who wouldn’t recognise your potential if she had it explained to her point by point.”

Jean was more than that, he said. She was all right, he said. They’d known each other for next to forever. He’d see to it they muddled through somehow. He was so sorry. He’d let everyone down. Especially Mrs. Whitelaw, who’d been so good to him.

It was clear he meant the conversation to be over. Mother played her trump card carefully. “Well, you must do as you see
fit
, but…I don’t wish to hurt you. Still, it must be said. Please think about whether you can be sure it’s your baby in the first place, Ken.” He looked stricken enough for Mother to continue. She said, “You don’t know everything, my dear. You can’t know everything. And you especially can’t know what goes on here when you’re in West Sussex, can you?” She gathered up her belongings and placed them gently into her brief case. “Sometimes, dear Ken, a young girl who sleeps with one boy is only too willing…You know what I mean.”

What she wanted to say was, “That nasty little tart’s been sleeping around for years. God only knows who put her in the club. It could have been anyone. It could have been everyone.”

He said in a low voice that of course it was his baby. Jeannie didn’t sleep around and she didn’t lie.

“Perhaps you’ve just never caught her,” Mother said. “Doing either.” She went on in the kindest possible voice, “You’ve gone off to school. You’ve risen beyond her. It’s understandable that she’d want to bring you back somehow. One can’t malign her for doing that.” And she ended with, “Just think things through, Ken. Don’t do anything hasty. Promise me that. Promise me you’ll wait at least another week before doing anything or telling anyone about the situation.”

Along with a blow-by-blow description of her encounter with Kenneth, we heard Mother’s thoughts on this new Fall of Man over dinner the very night he came to see her. Dad’s response was, “Oh dear. How dreadful for everyone.” My response was a smirk. “End of the reign of another tin god,” I remarked to the ceiling. Mother shot me a look and said we would see who was tin and who was not.

She went to see Jean the very next Monday, taking a day off from school in order to do it. She didn’t want to see her at home, and she wanted the advantage of surprise. So she went to the old Billingsgate Market where Jean was working in some sort of caff.

Mother was fully confident of how her meeting with Jean Cooper would play itself out. She had had many such meetings with unwed mothers-to-be before, and her track record of orchestrating those encounters to a successful conclusion was a stellar one. Most of the girls who had fallen within Mother’s purview had seen reason in the end. Mother was expert in the art of gentle persuasion, her focus always fixed on the baby’s future, the mother’s future, and a delicate division between the two. There was no reason to think she would have any difficulty with Jean Cooper, who was her mental, emotional, and social inferior.

She found Jean not in the caff but in the Ladies’ where she was having a break, smoking a cigarette and flicking its ash into the basin. She wore a white smock brindled with grease spots. She’d haphazardly bunched her hair beneath a cap. A ladder in her stockings shot up her right leg from inside her shoe. If comparative appearances were anything to go by, Mother had the upper hand from the
fir
st.

Jean hadn’t been one of her pupils. Streaming was very much the vogue at that time, and Jean had spent her years at the comprehensive swimming among the lesser
fis
h. But Mother knew who she was. One couldn’t know Kenneth Fleming without knowing who Jean Cooper was. And Jean knew who Mother was as well. No doubt she’d heard enough from Kenneth about his teacher to have had her
fil
l of Mrs. Whitelaw long before their encounter at Billingsgate Market.

“Kenny looked dead grey in the face when I saw him Friday evening,” was the
fir
st thing Jean said. “He wouldn’t talk. He went back to school on Saturday instead of Sunday night. I expect you had a hand in that, didn’t you?”