The Rye Man (7 page)

He knelt down beside her and eased the roller out of her hand, then rested it on the paper. ‘I'll be able to help at the weekend. It'll not take long to get it in shape with two of us working at it.'

‘I wanted to have it finished for you coming home, but it's a bigger job than I thought – the walls don't take the paint very well.'

He took her hand and felt the paint stick their palms together. ‘After you've finished I want you to bring your magic roller and give the school the once-over – staff included. Everywhere and everyone from top to bottom.'

He
coaxed her now, eased her out of her depression by talking to her about his day, making things seem funny, exaggerating and colouring, leaving out the bits that lingered even now like a bad taste on his tongue. He wanted to tell her about assembly and the rows of sun-washed faces, about break and the undulating waves of play but knew he did not have the words, and was unwilling to risk damaging the few warming memories he had salvaged from the day.

Things would get better. She herself had instigated the idea of buying a house in the country, of leaving their suburban Belfast semi and the social set she had lost interest in. At that time he had gone along with all her ideas – giving up her administrative job in the Arts Council, going back to her painting, setting up a studio and small gallery at home. Even if it did not work, in the long run it would occupy her time and energy, help salve the pain.

Inspired by months of looking in magazines devoted to soft-focussed pictures of country life, all washed in a kind of pastel-coloured pastoralism, she had plumped at first sight for the old rectory, and he had been prepared to subdue his more prosaic concerns about practical matters with the knowledge that the price was reasonable, and the location brought him back to his old heartland. Familiar territory carried with it a feeling of security, of re-entering that safe world he identified with his childhood, and if sometimes it made him uneasy to think of how close the rectory was to a darker place in his past, he shrugged it off. Really the only doubt in his head was whether she would sustain her new-found enthusiasm for country living. As much as she loved his mother, she had always found anything longer than a short stay an obvious strain.

He thought of the first time she had met his family which, despite his best efforts, had assumed all the rituals of a formal
introduction
– best table-cloth and china, his mother bullying his father into his Sunday best, the dog ousted from the kitchen, his two older, bantering brothers dispatched to jobs in far-off corners of the farm. Even in the most subdued of her art college outfits she had looked startling amidst the staid and sombre tints of the parlour. He remembered the gaping lulls in the conversation, extenuated by the ponderous tick of the clock, his father's persistent rubbing of his finger round the rim of a tight collar. Just when he was worried they would mistake her quiet self-containment for something worse, his mother had taken her into the kitchen. He had strained in vain to hear what was being said over his father's insistent poking of the fire, the rustling of his newspaper, the gush of water into a kettle. And then, through a side window, he saw them walking in the garden, his mother linking her arm and pointing across the field. They both were laughing.

‘Aye well that's that then,' his father had said, glancing up from the paper, relief evident in his face. A few minutes later the paper dropped to the floor and he headed off to find his working clothes.

His mother's open acceptance of her helped to bridge the gap between their two families but could never totally blur the distinctions. She was an only child of well-off parents who had sold their family business, taken early retirement and spent their time playing golf or enjoying frequent holidays abroad. Affable, generous parents but a world away from his own background. He got on well with them and listened politely to their advice about good investments even when he didn't have two pennies to rub together. Emma tried hard too, but never fully unravelled the intricate web of relationships which bound an extended rural family – the pecking order, the taboos, the standing jokes. She was a private, shy person and she found it hard to enter into the small-talk centred on
local
trivia which was the main medium of personal exchange. He knew several of his aunts thought she had ‘airs and graces', but his mother understood her best and tolerated no open criticism.

They had been married for five years. She was six years younger than he was. There was still time to have children. They would try again and maybe they would get lucky. They had not made love since it had happened. She showed no sign of wanting anything other than the simplest forms of affection and he preferred to suppress his desires rather than appear insensitive. When he thought of sex it made him feel guilty, predatory.

By the time the evening meal was over and cleared away she had slipped into better spirits and asked him questions about his day. He hid all his negative feelings from her and was up-beat and optimistic in his responses, talking about Mrs Haslett and making her more of an ogress than she really was, sharing the intimacy of the creaking car seats. He told her about the missing jotters and as he talked his flippant, humorous tone soothed some of his own apprehensions. The future would be what he would make it. Everything would work out the way he had always conceived it.

As they walked in the garden together he listened with concealed amusement to her plans.

‘I thought we'd have a mixed border in front of the hedge and a border sweeping up to the house with herbaceous plants – maybe shrub roses as well,' she said, gesturing with her hand as if focussing it in her imagination was enough to make it a reality. ‘Do you think we should try to grow something up the front walls of the house?'

He nodded and suggested she should draw out her plans, translate some of her ideas into small sketches, but restrained
himself
from commenting on the potential cost of the practicalities involved.

Afterwards he did some school-work, reading some of the new proposals for assessment. They depressed him in the same way the school foyer or Haslett's classroom had depressed him. They were written in the language of the new mandarins, smugly self-confident, full of bland vagaries, an acronymic cant printed on glossy paper. He tried to wade through it, underlining sentences in fluorescent pen, wondering how he would be able to translate it into any kind of recognisable reality for his staff. But his mind grew increasingly tired and like wheels stuck in sand the words went nowhere, spinning endlessly round in his head. He found he had read the same paragraph two or three times without taking it in and he tried finally to focus his full concentration on it. Still it made no sense and the more he read it, the further removed it seemed to be from the world of teaching children.

Emma came into the study. She had been watching television. He put the marker down and stretched in the chair. She rested her arm across his shoulders and, glancing at the document he was reading, simulated a yawn of boredom, then kissed him on the top of his head and went on up to bed. He sat on for a few minutes before packing it all into his briefcase, then turned off the silent television she had been watching and went to check that the doors were locked. He stood staring out into the dusk for a few minutes. Years of city living had made him forget the peculiar patina of country light, the way the dark rolled in across the fields to beach soundlessly against the lines of the house, the feeling it brought of being isolated from the rest of the world but secure and solid in the sanctuary of the shadows.

A black pulse of speed quivered in the sky. A bat? The last swallow of summer? He was not sure, but it made him shiver
and
he locked the door and climbed the stairs to the bathroom. A bedside lamp shed an arc of light on to the landing. He entered, closed the door and sniffed. He could smell it, the faint septic scent, not pronounced or intrusive but lingering somewhere, hidden, waiting to unwind itself and filter silently into the vents and crevices of the house. If only they could find the source they would be able to do something about it. He got down on all fours and sniffed round the outflow pipe at the back of the toilet, his hand unwilling to touch the webbed and leprous skin of paint behind the washhand basin, around the tiled base of the shower. He felt like a dog sniffing round a lamp post but he kept going, lifting his head from time to time and holding it alert in the air. He moved up and down along the side of the bath and then, taking a screwdriver which Quinn had left on the window ledge, unscrewed the panel and looked at the new trap which had been fitted. He pulled at it gently but it sat snugly, wearing a tight collar of sealant. Then, screwing the panel back on, carefully using the same screws in the same holes, he stood up and dusted his knees.

When he entered the bedroom he could tell that his wife was already asleep. Turning off her light, he undressed in the dark and quietly got in beside her. He lay still and silent for a few moments then got up and went back to the bathroom. The cistern moaned and water spurted through buckled pipes. He closed the door tightly and went back to bed and hoped he would not dream.

*

‘Mr Cameron, you understand that Mr Reynolds clearly promised me that I could have the use of the hall on a Friday
afternoon.
I don't know where Miss McCreavey got the idea that she had booked it.'

School had not started. Outside his window he could see the children being left off by their parents. ‘Perhaps she got the idea from Mr Reynolds,' he suggested.

‘But he clearly told me I was having it.'

He had to spell it out for her. ‘Perhaps he promised the same thing to both of you.'

‘Mr Reynolds wouldn't have done such a thing.' Her tone suggested that he had just accused her former headmaster of the grossest impropriety.

‘I think, Mrs Haslett, we'll have to find some sort of compromise. You appreciate better than I do how limited space is.'

‘Could Miss McCreavey not use her classroom?'

It was possible the conversation would stretch into infinity. He had better things to do – an assembly to prepare for a start. ‘I'll tell you what, Muriel, leave it with me and I'll let you know by the end of school what's happening.'

Like a dog with its teeth in a bone, she seemed unwilling to let the matter go, but he'd had enough and, standing up from behind his desk, began to look through his filing cabinet. He did not turn round until he heard the door close behind her.

It was a poor start to the day and it set the tone of what was to follow. A clatter of post had subsided across his desk by the time assembly was over: two circulars from the Board; an update from the Curriculum Council; book publishers' catalogues; a brochure from a school travel company; a miscellaneous mess of advertising material; letters from parents. His whole morning seemed to be consumed by bitty fragments of administration that prevented him doing any of the things he had intended. He telephoned again about the hole in the roof and was told the matter was now in hand, but was given no
assurance
as to the date of completion. He had a difficult fifteen minutes with Mrs Craig when he broke the news about her classroom assistant, but promised that when financial delegation passed into the school's hands, he would make it a priority. She was unimpressed and he could not really blame her. She also pointed out that the mother who helped in that capacity might not find it financially worthwhile to continue in the job. She was paid little enough as it was.

A parent telephoned to enquire where she could purchase transfer tests for her eight-year-old daughter. Another, on the strength of a couple of lessons, queried the way Miss Fulton was teaching maths, pointing out that her methodologies seemed to be different from her predecessor. Some salesman wasted twenty minutes of his time trying to get him to agree to a demonstration of a colour photocopier which he knew he could not afford. Unannounced and without any coherent explanation, two men arrived from the Board's architects' department and proceeded to measure the school then ask technical questions about the building for which he did not have the answers. There was a query from someone in the pay branch about what hours Eric had worked during the six-week summer scheme. He felt increasingly frustrated, pushed from one petty task to the next. The only saving grace of the day was P7 history. It was his main subject and while Vance took Miss Fulton's class for music he would take P7 for their year's history. He had instructed Mrs Patterson that he was not to be disturbed during the lesson except in an absolute emergency, and as he entered the classroom as a teacher this time he felt as though he was finally pitching on home ground, back where he belonged.

He had planned to follow a unit of work springing from local history and centred on the Celts. It had struck him, too, that it was a project which would easily become part of the
EMU
scheme, proposed by Liam Hennessy, with the two schools going on joint field trips to visit local sites. After showing the class slides of the Book of Kells he got them to decorate the covers of their history notebooks as ornately as they could. Emma had cut out stencils for him, including decorative lettering, so that even the weaker children were able to produce something that was pleasing to the eye. He got them to move their desks and work in groups of four. They used tinfoil and the insides of chocolate wrappers to create the impression of silver and gold leaf. They worked well for him, enjoying the novelty of the degree of freedom he offered, not bold enough yet to talk openly but whispering conspiratorially and looking at him guiltily to see if they had infringed some rule. And though he felt the urge to do something to free the children from the tight parameters which bound them, he knew he could not undermine Vance's relationship with his class, so he held himself in check, restricting himself to encouragement and a smile.