The Peppered Moth (6 page)

Miss Heald spoke sternly of the necessity of deferring pleasure. Work hard now, she said to her young people, and reap the rewards later. Do not grab the instant, like the sluts of Bednerby. The reason why those people live in such squalor is because they have not learned to defer pleasure. They cannot plan. They spend, they borrow, they waste. They are bad managers.

Can one defer pleasure for too long, so that it withers and dries up and tastes sour? No, said Miss Heald. That is the lesson we learn from the Brownings. There shall be a reward on earth, not the martyr’s heavenly crown of gold. Work hard, and pass your examination, and it shall be yours. You too shall be happy and serene, like that wise Minerva, the clearskinned, clear-eyed, bespectacled Miss Heald. Your pleasures will mature, like fine wine. A good education is never wasted. Poetry and prose will never fail you. A foreign language will never desert you. You will inherit the earth.

Did they believe her? The diligent and clever ones listened and believed. Their pleasure, she assured them, would be her pleasure. How proud she was of Keith Badger (do not titter, Badger is a good Yorkshire name, and not to be ridiculed)—of Keith Badger, who took a top County Scholarship and matriculated last year at the University of Northam. He will do well.

Certificates, matriculation, examinations, graduation. Difficult words, difficult concepts, a hill of difficulties, a ladder of steep steps, reaching upwards. Climb, climb, do not look backwards, do not stumble, do not lose heart, do not freeze with fear. Ignore the grazed knee, the scabs, the vertigo. Never look back, and never, ever look down.

Ada and Bessie turned a corner, ducking under a green branch that bowed heavily towards the water, and surprised three naked boys swimming in the murk. Little white frogs splashing. Ada and Bessie backed and froze, hiding in the dense leaves, but the boys sensed them, and giggled and hooted and waved cheekily, knee deep in the dirty river, splashing and flapping, throwing out showers of water drops, and through the water drops Bessie could see their little winkles, their chickenmeat legs, their white bodies streaked with black. Dirty water, filthy water. Too small to be frightening, but boys, naked boys. Carrot-topped little Saxons, white-skinned, underexposed, undeveloped. Escaped from underground, and frisking briefly in the sunlight. Bessie had never seen a naked boy, and hardly saw one now, through the sparkle and the confusion and the leaves. Ada, who had brothers, had seen many, and anyway, was she not a doctor’s daughter? She was not to be turned back. ‘Shoo!’ she cried, advancing from her leafy retreat, waving her hands before her, protected by the striped carapace of her school shirt. ‘Shoo, you boys, shoo, scram, shoo!’ And the boys dog-paddled their way to the far bank, where their boots and heaps of grey garments lay, and waved and whistled and sniggered, hopping like little savages in sooty warpaint, as Bessie and Ada, eyes averted, themselves on the edge of nervous laughter, gathered themselves together, and braved the gauntlet, and marched on with their noses in the air.

Little doomed free spirits, coal babies, urchins.

‘Whatever next?’ said Bessie, demurely, maturely, once they were out of earshot of treble catcall and piercing wolf whistle.

‘You can’t blame them, it’s hot,’ said Ada, fanning herself with a swatch of long grasses. She was perspiring and her school shirt was scratchy.

Bessie, who did not perspire, shuddered slightly. ‘But still, the filth in that river,’ she objected. ‘How could they? They’ll catch diseases.’

Bessie, on her first day trip to the seaside resort of Mablethorpe, had declared that the sand was ‘dirty’. Which in those days it was not.

Now, on the banks of the Hammer, she was finding it hard to find a suitably hygienic picnic spot: those wild boys had disturbed her. But she agreed that they had walked far enough, and allowed Ada to select a clearing under a willow tree, where they spread out their cardigans as groundsheets. A marbled white butterfly settled on a tufted purple blossom and spread its wings for them. And there they sat, eating their doorstep sandwiches, watching the flow of the water and the dance of the insects, keeping an eye open for intruders and passersby, while they tested one another on French irregular verbs. ‘Fear, Doubt, Shame, Pleasure, Regret, Surprise,’ chanted Ada dutifully, as they revised the subjunctive. And so they were discovered, prettily disposed, by Joe Barron himself, who was wheeling his new Hercules bicycle from Gurney’s.

He was accompanied by Alice Vestrey.

Joe, when he saw Bessie and Ada, blushed red under his freckles to the roots of his red hair. Alice Vestrey, in contrast, remained unnaturally cool, and pretended that there was nothing out of the way going on. And maybe there was not, for both Joe and Alice lived in Cotterhall, and there was no reason why he should not be walking Alice home on a fine summer afternoon. The four young people greeted one another: they were obliged to do so, for a couple of hours earlier they had all been studying Robert Browning in the same room, and therefore could hardly pretend not to know one another. Nevertheless, there was a mutual embarrassment. Perhaps Ada and Bessie thought that Joe might think that they had been lying in wait for him. Perhaps Joe felt that he should not be walking alone with Alice Vestrey after offering earlier that day to teach Bessie to ride his new bike. It was strange that they were all so confused, for Breaseborough Secondary School prided itself on its coeducational Yorkshire common sense. It did not go in for innuendo, flirtation or ‘smut’. Yet confused they were, for a few moments, before bold Ada took the lead, and offered Alice a bite from her bun. No, no, demurred Alice, she had to get home, her mother would be wondering. So on upstream went Joe and Alice, at a slightly faster pace, and at a slightly greater distance from one another, separated by the shining chrome antlers of the Hercules, and after a while Bessie and Ada gathered themselves together and shook off the crumbs and thoughtfully made their way back to Breaseborough. Fear, doubt, shame, pleasure, regret, surprise ... tentative half-feelings, subdued subjunctive feelings, rose and fell in their tentative half-grown bodies and undeveloped hearts. O poor young girls in flower, you poor frail darlings, who will watch over you, who will guide and protect you, and will you ever safely reach the happy bourn? Happy you have been this afternoon, but with so tentative, so frail, so pedantic a happiness, and now you are confused and disturbed even by that small happiness you have enjoyed. What chances have you of survival? Will the wind blow you away? Will you land on stony ground?

Ada will survive, we may feel sure, for she is robust, and she has confidence and courage: had she not, even in extremity, offered Alice a bite of her bun? Well may she dare and risk and conquer and multiply. But Bessie is delicate and she may wilt and fade before she reaches her goal. Is there enough persistence in her for the hard road ahead, for the steep climb and the airless altitudes, for the as yet undreamed of perils of those heady upper reaches?

They walk home, along the riverbank and the towpath. And the weeks pass, and the months pass, and the summers pass, and their bodies bloom: see them as they walk, the school blouse lifting, the ankles narrowing, the hips swaying, the lips reddening through art or nature, the little bead necklet added to the throat, the butterfly brooch to the lapel, the bracelet to the wrist, as they walk through the seasons of their young life and their young hope (does hope too take the subjunctive?) towards whatever it is that awaits them—fame, love, loss, triumph, distress. And still it takes no shape as they walk towards it, it will not show its features to them, they wonder if it will ever show its features. Maybe it will for ever vanish out of sight, just ahead of them, around the corner, beyond the branches, behind the trees, lost in the reeds and the willows. What is it, what will it be, will they ever see it face-to-face? Along this stretch and other stretches they will walk in constant flux towards it: their glands secrete and betray and settle, they lose weight and gain it and lose it again, they tan and they pale, they skip, they loiter, they recite Virgil and Verlaine and Lamartine, they quarrel and are reconciled, they laugh and they weep and they sulk, they crop their hair and then try to grow it again, they experiment with hemlines and covet forbidden nail varnish and lipstick and smart sandals, they break out in spots and are suddenly smooth again, they blow hot and they blow cold, they catch trolley buses and trains and see silent movies and go to a theatre matinée and appear as Helena and Hermia in the school play and they write verse and join a debating society and win prizes and honourable mentions and receive decorous floral valentines. See them now, as they walk into view again along the banks of the Hammer, as they pass the clearing where two long years ago Joe Barron and Alice Vestrey surprised them at their French verbs.

Do they remember that distant afternoon? Perhaps they do, for it is towards Joe Barron’s house that they now are walking, where he now awaits them. They are grown girls now, and they no longer wear striped school shirts. They have just taken their School Certificate, in History, Latin, English and French, and school may no longer be their refuge and their sole field of endeavour and display. It is summer still, and the sun still shines, and the water curls and the midges hover, and spikes of foxglove lean to the water in this semi-rustic semi-industrial hinterland between townships, in this pause between past and future. The marbled white survives, and so does the friendship of Bessie and Ada. They have survived coolnesses and rivalry and the increasingly relentless ratcheting of Bessie’s superior intellectual performance. They have chosen their own paths, and those paths will now diverge. Ada, obligingly, has an out-of-town admirer: she has met a young man down south with whom she corresponds. She will go to teacher training college in Saffron Walden. She will teach for two or three years, then she will marry her admirer. This is what she plans. Her future has a face. If her exam results are adequate, which they will be, she will cut free from Breaseborough, and rear her children in a more pleasant environment. She will do well in her School Certificate. She has not worked as hard as Bessie, but who has? Ada has worked hard enough. She has worked for freedom. She can parse and prose.

The Barrons still live in Cotterhall, of course, and will remain there for decades to come. And it is towards Laburnum House, the home of the Barron family, that Ada and Bessie now make their way, not as shy schoolgirls, but as invited guests. Mrs Barron has invited them to tea. It is a Saturday in late June. The weather is uncertain: as they walk, the sun clouds over. Perhaps it will rain. The girls are walking to Cotterhall by choice, but it is understood that one of the boys will escort them back. Perhaps they will be offered a lift in the new Morris Minor. (It has been rumoured that Elsie Scrimshaw has been seen on the back of Phil Barron’s brand-new BSA motorbike: can this be true?) The girls are honoured by this invitation, and are dressed in their best: Ada colourful in a bright floral pink frock, Bessie ladylike in a pale blue and cream two-piece.

The Barrons are one of the most important families in unimportant Cotterhall. This is a neighbourhood without an aristocracy, and with very little of a middle class: there is a public house in Breaseborough called the Wardale Arms, and the hospital, built in 1906, is called the Wardale Hospital, but nobody ever spares much of a thought for the mythical and absent Lord Wardale, whereas there is much talk in town and roundabout about the Barrons. They have done well for themselves. Old Grandpa Bill Barron, recently deceased, had started work at the age of fourteen at Gospel Well Brewery, owned in those days by the Clarksons: he had become a foreman, married a Clarkson, and set up his own little bottle-making business in a warehouse and yard behind the stone quarry. It was long known as Barron’s Yard. The business had prospered, and at this period prospers still. Under Bill’s son Ebenezer (Ben) Barron the firm had diversified from beer and pop bottles to a range of cheap fancyware: cake stands, jugs, fruit dishes, sugar bowls, tumblers. These are attractive, tubby, friendly pieces, pleasing and familiar to the eyes of most of the locals, and the range does well. Should Ben think of introducing new lines, or should he stick with the old faithfuls? Eldest son Bennett Barron is keen on innovation, but so far he has not had much clout. Bennett has gone into the family business with vigour and ideas, and now he is beginning to get a little impatient with the old man, who is stubborn and will not listen to anything new. Bennett has been to London, to a trade fair at Wembley, where he has fallen in love with the new celluloids and phenolics, and with a magical semisynthetic milk stone which he longs to manufacture and develop. He is sure it is the thing of the future. His father thinks celluloid is trash, and will not last. He will be certain that polymers are a dead end.

There are four boys in the family. There is go-ahead, industrious Bennett, a chip off the old block. Then comes philandering Phil, in theory in partnership with haulage contractor Stan Lomax, but in practice in love with his motorbike; he spends too much time roaring around the country lanes and over the moors and drinking in the Fox, the Three Horseshoes, and the Ferry Boat Inn. Alfred works for Castle Confections, for a maternal uncle: they specialize in liquorice toffee. Then comes Joe, the afterthought, who hopes, unlike his brothers, to be allowed to go to university. There are two sisters, Rowena and Ivy. Rowena works as bookkeeper for Ben and Bennett, having volunteered to replace a character known as Ratty Red who had been fiddling the figures. She is not very good at figures, but she is much better at them than Ben. She sits in a dark little office filling in ledgers, and is said to be saving up her earnings for a trip to the Holy Land. Ivy left school two years ago, and has done nothing much since, although she reads a great deal, writes poetry, has corresponded with Vita Sackville-West, and published radical verses about colliery disasters in the local paper. She would like to have gone to university, but nobody even thought of it. She intends to make something of her life, does Ivy, but when? How long, O Lord, how long?