Miss Carter's War (10 page)

‘I didn’t dare.’

‘But you could have trusted me.’

‘I don’t trust anyone. I can’t. The punishment for being what I am is too great.’

‘You’re being melodramatic.’

‘You think so? Have you not read all the stuff about Guy Burgess? Everyone is much more concerned about his being homosexual than about his giving away state secrets. Did you see the
Sunday Mirror
this week? A warning to avoid “these evil men”, with a handy guide – “How to Spot a Homo”?’

‘Please stop. I don’t know what to say. I’m lost.’

The ticket collector slid the door across and Tony sat up straight and showed him his ticket, saying chirpily, ‘All right, mate? Awful weather.’

The man left, and Tony again pushed the door tight.

He lowered his voice. ‘I can’t risk telling anyone outright. Even you. My whole life and my job are in jeopardy.’

‘Does Miss Fryer know?’

‘She’s probably guessed, but doesn’t discuss it openly, apart from saying occasionally, “Take care.” She’s a good woman, and knows her own living arrangements could be questioned, although I’m sure nothing much happens between her and Miss Yates. The police and the Home Office are flummoxed by lesbians anyway. And homosexuality, come to that.’

‘Me too.’

‘Exactly. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.’

Marguerite felt sullied by his news. Tony was suddenly a stranger, who had a secret life that she didn’t dare to think about. She felt foolish, and revolted by his prancing friends at the Palladium.

‘Have you been using me as a cover?’

‘I swear to you on my mother’s life that I haven’t. I love you with all my heart.’

Marguerite began to cry.

‘How can you say that? You’re a homosexual.’

‘My being homosexual does not in any way alter what I feel for you. In fact it makes it more important, because I’m not permitted to have the sort of relationship I should have. That’s probably why I was so frightened to tell you. You are everything to me.’

‘Except for sex.’

‘Sadly, yes. It’s my huge loss.’

‘And mine. Oh Tony, and mine.’

He crossed to her seat.

‘May I?’ he said.

She nodded and he folded her in his arms, where she sobbed into his Fair Isle jumper saying, ‘We’ll be all right, my darling. You’ll see, we’ll be all right.’

The ticket collector tapped on the window.

‘All right, miss?’

She turned her tear-stained face towards him.

‘He’s just told me—’

She felt Tony stiffen.

‘That I don’t understand him.’

‘That’s what they all say, miss. You watch out.’

Chapter 10

After Tony’s revelation Marguerite felt foolish and bereft. Foolish that she had thrown herself at him, foolish that she had beguiled herself into believing that they could have a proper relationship, and bereft at the possibility that they would now have no relationship at all, for to do so would necessitate her accommodating to a world she preferred not to acknowledge.

She was vaguely aware that such perversion went on, but it was not discussed. Even in France, when she and her group of résistants were forced to live closeted together in hiding for months on end, the bawdy talk she overheard was always about women. When she was at Cambridge, there was a group of epicene students who affected devotion to Greek male love, but most of them were now respectably married. She had once been deeply embarrassed by an Army officer friend, in a pub, expressing loud disgust that a couple of men in his regiment were ‘poofs’, ‘pansies’, ‘queers’, but until now it was not a subject she had dwelt on. Marguerite could not get out of her head the overexcited squealing men at the Palladium. She could not adjust her version of Tony as a strong amusing partner, and, yes, potential lover, to fit that image.

For Marguerite, sex was something that came from love between a man and a woman, which ideally led to marriage. She was brought up as a Catholic to believe that you remained a virgin till your wedding night. She had sinned, but war had turned the old morality upside down – not without risk for women, who were still cast out of respectable society should they fall pregnant. Fear was a woman’s bedfellow. But during the war, another fear took precedence. Fear of loss and death. In those dramatic years passion ran rampant. Love could be dangerous, if wrongly bestowed.

The roaring mob manhandles the girl down the narrow, ancient road, her head brutally shaved, a swastika carved, bloody, on her naked breast. They pass the church. The screams of hatred disturb the congregation’s celebration of the Stations of the Cross.

How could she relate to this new Tony who had lied to her by omission about something so pivotal to their lives? Fortunately Tony, whether from fear or resignation, kept his distance. There was no need for their paths to cross except in the staff room, where they had always downplayed their closeness to avoid gossip. So the change in their relationship was not noticed. Marguerite decided to take on even more responsibilities at school to occupy her mind, and drive out any necessity for a private life. She wanted no more emotional complications. That way disorder lay. She considered contacting Miss Scott to strike up a friendship with a like-minded woman but decided even that would be a distraction. Her work was all she needed.

Elsie and Irene and their contemporaries had just finished their General Certificate of Education exams. Most had done well, with many getting distinctions in English. Marguerite allowed herself some pride, but was immediately focused on pushing them to achieve top A level results at eighteen, which could gain them entry to university.

She was shocked when Miss Fryer announced at a staff meeting after the exam results that eight girls would be dropping out of school, one of whom was Irene Brown.

She protested, ‘But the girl is brilliant. She must go to university.’

Miss Fryer smiled.

‘I’m afraid it is not your decision, Miss Carter. It is her parents’.’

‘No, it is Irene’s. Surely?’

‘I have spoken to Irene and she intends to leave.’

Irene was sitting in the corner of the hockey field with Elsie.

‘Can I join you, girls?’

Marguerite sat on the sweet-smelling newly cut grass. Elsie offered her a piece of the sliced Mars bar they were sharing.

‘No, I won’t take of your ration. I want to talk to you.’

Irene concentrated on the daisy chain she was making, cutting a slot in the stem with her fingernail, and threading through the next flower.

‘Is it true you want to leave at the end of term, Irene?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Why, for heaven’s sake? You’re doing so well at school.’

‘I want to get a job.’

‘But you’d get a better job if you’d got a university degree.’

‘I’m sick of school.’

‘University is not like school, Irene.’

Marguerite tried to explain the freedom, the fun, the excitement of her experience at Cambridge, but it was a losing battle with someone who knew no one apart from her teachers who had experienced it. She contemplated taking Irene on a trip to Oxford or Cambridge, but decided that could overwhelm a girl who she knew had never set foot outside Dartford except for her trip to the Festival of Britain.

‘What about your parents?’

Irene shrugged.

‘My mum wants me to leave.’

‘She can’t understand what it would mean for you, or she would want you to go to university. Like Elsie’s parents.’

Elsie laughed.

‘Oh, mine couldn’t care less, miss. I didn’t even discuss it with them. I might as well stay on. But I won’t get into any university. I’m not posh like you and the other teachers.’

‘Nonsense. You can do anything if you set your mind to it. Both of you. I’m disappointed in you, Irene.’

Marguerite went to rise from the ground. Irene stopped her and, kneeling in front of her, put the daisy chain around her neck.

‘I’m so sorry, miss.’

Seeing Irene’s defeated expression made Marguerite determined not to give up.

After lessons, knowing that Irene would be staying for Poetry Club, Marguerite made her way to the girl’s home. She knew that this engagement with pupils beyond the school gate was frowned on by Miss Fryer, but her belief in Irene’s talent overrode her qualms. She could not believe that the parents would not want the best for their daughter and was sure that, given the facts, they would encourage her to improve her prospects.

This was even more obvious to her when she saw where they lived. The council estate sprawled over several acres, and consisted of identical red-brick two-storey terraced houses. In front were tidy gardens, mainly monotonously composed of neatly mown lawns, with privet hedges behind the low garden walls. There were few flowers, but the houses were well maintained. Except for No. 210. The garden in front of this house was littered with bicycles in various states of repair. A clothes horse had blown over, scattering a load of washing over the neglected grass. Marguerite noted that the curtains were drawn over the front-room windows.

She started to pick up the washing, when the front door flew open.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing? Get out.’

A scarecrow of a man stood in the doorway. As she approached slowly to explain, he went inside, slamming the door behind him.

A man appeared in the next-door garden.

‘Take no notice of him. He can’t help it, poor soul. He won’t hurt you. What did you want?’

‘I am Irene’s teacher. I want to talk to her parents about something.’

‘I’ll go round the back and tell his wife.’

The man went through an archway between the houses.

Marguerite stood her ground, and a few minutes later, a woman in an overall came to the door, holding a baby in her arms. Clinging to her skirt was a small child, who Marguerite guessed was the baby Irene had mentioned in that first sonnet class.

The woman looked terrified.

‘What is it? Is Irene in trouble? Has something happened? Has she done something wrong?’

Marguerite assured her that the opposite was true. After a lot of reassurance, the woman reluctantly let her into the house.

In the living room was a scrubbed table with two wooden chairs pushed beneath. A battered armchair stood by an unlighted single-bar electric fire and an old pram was pushed into a corner, where Irene’s mother now laid the screaming baby and rocked it to quieten its cries. And that was it. No ornaments, no rugs on the cracked lino floor, no signs of comfort, apart from a bottle of HP sauce on the table. The half-shut curtains were made of blackout material. Marguerite wondered where on earth Irene had managed to do her homework. Presumably at the table, where the man who shouted at her was now poring over a football coupon. When he saw Marguerite, he snatched it up, and rushed into the scullery.

‘I’m sorry. You scared him. He thought you were from the council. Come about the state of the garden or something. They’re always round here.’

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Marguerite waited as the woman rocked the pram until the baby’s weeping subsided, and there being no obvious place to sit she stood talking to the woman, loud enough for the man to hear. She could see him clinging to the handle of the back door, staring at her. He was wretchedly thin and wild-eyed.

Marguerite explained why she had come. How clever Irene was, what a future lay ahead of her if she persevered with her education. How it was possible to get a State Scholarship that would pay her university fees, and something towards her maintenance.

‘Will she have to go away then?’

‘Well, yes, of course.’

‘But I need her here. I’d be at my wits’ end coping with the two kids and him on my own. And I need help with the rent and everything. When she gets a job.’

‘But that shouldn’t be Irene’s responsibility, surely? What about your husband?’

The woman lowered her voice.

‘He can’t do anything. He was in a Japanese camp, worked on the Burma Railway. Didn’t speak for a year after he returned. His mind is hurt. He tries. He takes in bikes to repair, but he can’t concentrate.’

Marguerite looked through at the man, who was staring into the room. She could understand why Irene had been so distressed by the Siegfried Sassoon poem. There, in her father’s eyes, was ‘the hell where youth and laughter go’.

Suddenly his face lit up. He rushed into the room to embrace Irene, who had come in behind Marguerite.

‘Don’t leave me, girl, don’t let them take you away. Let me keep you safe.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not going anywhere.’ She took his shaking hands firmly in hers.

Over his head, she looked at Marguerite.

‘You shouldn’t have come here, Miss Carter. But perhaps it’s just as well. Now you see why I have to stay. There are more important things than education, miss. There’s real life. This is mine.’