Miss Purdy's Class (10 page)

Alice nodded.

‘You know you’ve got some nits in your hair, don’t you? I’ll have to send a note home to your mother so she can help you get rid of them. But the rest of the class don’t need to know. All right?’

Alice’s heart sank. It didn’t matter about the other children. Whatever would Mummy say!

‘You know, Alice – you can check your own hair for nits. Either get your mother to look, or you can sometimes see in the mirror if you look carefully.’

Alice shook her head dejectedly. ‘No – I can’t.’

Miss Purdy smiled into her face.

‘Why can’t you?’

Desperately she looked into her teacher’s eyes.

‘I can’t see. I can’t see anything, hardly.’

‘Would you believe it?’

Gwen threw herself down in a chair beside Millie at dinner time. ‘Some of these poor children. I’ve just discovered that Alice Wilson in my class is practically blind and nobody seems to have noticed – including me, come to think of it! I thought she was just slow, but no wonder the poor girl can never answer any of the arithmetic sums when she can’t see the blackboard.’ She pulled a ham cob out of a paper bag. ‘I’m
ravenous
. Heavens, what a morning. It feels as if the day ought to be over by now. Is there any tea in the pot?’

‘Think so,’ Millie said quietly.

Gwen got up and fetched them each a cup. She and Millie had become good, comfortable friends during these weeks of teaching. They always spent their dinner times together sharing groans and jokes about the day. Millie had invited Gwen to her home a few times, where her mother and younger sister Joanna had made Gwen welcome.

‘Here you go.’ Gwen handed Millie her tea and sat down. ‘Have you had your dinner already?’

Millie shook her head and it was only then that Gwen saw what a state she was in. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, fighting tears.

Gwen put the cup down on the floor. ‘Millie? Whatever’s wrong?’

Millie shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you. Not here,’ she whispered. The tears began to run down her pale cheeks.

‘Come on – finish your tea and we’ll go out,’ Gwen suggested. She fetched both their coats.

‘Off for a walk, dear?’ Lily Drysdale said to her. ‘Good idea – it’s a lovely day.’

They walked through the watery February sunshine, all along Canal Street past the end of the prison wall, to the bridge which crossed the canal, and stood looking down into the long line of murky water. A pair of boats slid away from them in the distance, their bright colours cheerful against the sombre banks and trees.

Millie could hold back no longer. She burst into tears.

‘Oh dear – do tell me what’s the matter,’ Gwen said, worried. Millie was usually such a jolly soul.

‘Oh, what am I going to do?’ Millie cried desperately. ‘I’m so ashamed.’

It took her some time even to begin.

‘I feel so ill. I keep being sick.’

Gwen frowned. She was ignorant enough not to put two and two together.

‘Perhaps you’d better go and see a doctor.’

‘I’ve
been
to the doctor,’ Millie sobbed. ‘And he said . . . I’m . . .’ It came out in a great rush of emotion. ‘I’m going to have a baby!’

Gwen struggled to know what to say. She had only the haziest idea of how babies came about. ‘Well,
how
? Whose is it?’

‘Lance’s of course! What d’you take me for?’ Millie turned to her passionately. Her freckly face was blotchy from crying.

‘Does he know about it?’

‘No – I only found out yesterday. Oh, what
am
I going to do?’

Gwen was almost speechless. Once again she realized what a sheltered life she had led. ‘Well . . . surely he’ll marry you, won’t he?’

‘He’s going to have to, isn’t he?’ Millie sounded angry now. ‘I never meant for it to happen, Gwen. I didn’t even know what he was doing until it was too late. It was one afternoon when Mummy and Joanna were out. Lance came round and we were talking and having a cuddle and gradually . . . well, we got carried away. Or at least he did. I mean it was . . . it was quite peculiar to begin with. I never knew it would be quite like that. Lance got so excited and I couldn’t really stop him . . .’ She spoke haltingly. ‘I felt . . . afterwards I felt almost, sort of
dirty
. . . And now this.’

Gwen tried to digest this information. She thought of Edwin’s embraces.

‘Don’t you want to marry him, Millie? I thought you were mad about him.’

‘I thought I was.’ Millie stared along the cut with a desolate expression. ‘I don’t suppose I really have a choice now, do I? That’s if he’ll do the right thing. It’s just . . . oh, Gwen!’ Her tears began to flow again. ‘I’m such a silly fool. I’ve been in love with the idea of love but I don’t really want to marry Lance – not yet anyway. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher so much, and I shan’t be able to now. Lance can carry on being a teacher for his whole life if he wants to, but I can’t, can I? My life’ll be all babies and housework. Oh, I wish I’d never let him come anywhere near me!’

Eight

‘Gwen, darling!’

Edwin was waiting on the platform as the train chugged slowly into Worcester Foregate Street. Even in the gloom, under the dim lights, she easily spotted his pale hair. Seeing her through the window, he strode alongside her carriage beaming with delight. Gwen felt as if she had returned suddenly to another, childhood existence.

She stepped down into his arms, his cold cheek pressing against her warm one.

He drew back and looked down at her, full of merriment.

‘At last! How’s my brave little woman? It feels as if you’ve been away for months!’

‘It does to me too,’ Gwen said. ‘It’s another world.’

‘Well, I think it’s
marvellous
. Well – except that I have to do without you, of course. Come along, let’s get you home.’ Edwin picked up her case with his left hand and kept his other arm round her as they moved through the crowds on the platform. She could feel his hand between her shoulder blades, steering her. Gwen looked round. It did feel good to be home! Birmingham had already receded like a dream and now here she was back in her real life again, or at least for the half-term holiday.

‘Your father let me bring the Austin,’ Edwin told her.

‘Thank goodness,’ Gwen said, surveying the rainy dark outside the station.

‘You wait here – I’ll bring her up.’ Edwin ran zestfully out into the rain. Gwen smiled at the sight of his eager form, wrapped in his huge black coat, a trilby perched on his thick hair. There was something about Edwin that was somehow inevitable.

They drove from the middle of Worcester to her parents’ house, right on the edge. It felt cosy in the car, spots of rain on her coat, Edwin’s large, capable hands steering them along as they chatted. She gave him a fond sideways glance. She waited for her heart to leap in some way, to feel excited. It didn’t happen, but she felt safe, and at least affectionate. Surely even those two things were more than most people had in marriage?

‘How’s your mother?’

Edwin’s mother was in a wheelchair. Year by year her state degenerated and Mr Shackleton, a retired clergyman himself, battled on, looking after her as his own health faded. Edwin’s one sister, Judy, lived nearby with her family, and Edwin tried to visit as often as he could since they lived in a village a few miles away. Gwen knew they would visit sometime over the next few days. Edwin was a very dutiful son.

‘Well . . .’ He sounded gloomy and she felt for him. They paused at a junction, then pulled out, turning right. She could see the rain falling slantingly in the light from the headlamps. ‘I managed to get up there in the week. Dad’s arthritis is getting worse and his chest is bad. The nurse comes in, but of course he’s lifting Mum far more than he should be.’ He paused again. ‘It’s hard to watch. I feel pretty helpless.’

Gwen reached over and squeezed his arm. ‘They know you do all you can. And they’re so proud of you.’

‘I know. Almost makes it worse.’

In a moment he was cheerful again – Edwin was never cast down for long – and he was asking her more about things she’d told him in her letters, laughing at her description of Ariadne.

‘“Come into my parlour,” said the spider to the fly!’

‘Yes – just like that! And creepy Mr Purvis looks as if he’s going to explode with nerves every time she goes near him!’

‘What a pair!’

‘He scoots off to his room and plays the trumpet – same tune, over and over again.’ She was giggling now. ‘I think if I hear it again I’ll go mad. And he never gets any better at it!’

They both laughed. Gwen had decided not to tell Edwin much more about Harold Purvis. She tried to avoid any encounter now which could involve being alone with him. One evening, when Ariadne had left the room to fetch something from the kitchen, Mr Purvis had leaned over and placed his plump white hand over hers, gazing soulfully into her eyes.

‘Please,’ Gwen reprimanded him sharply, ‘don’t do that. I don’t like it and, as a matter of fact, I’m sure I’ve mentioned that I’m engaged to be married.’

She almost had to laugh at herself, at how prim she had sounded. But she knew she hadn’t imagined him fondling her on the stairs, and what with Ariadne drooling over him and the endless renditions of ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls’, she was finding the household a trial. This was not, however, something she needed Edwin to know.

Gwen’s mother was listening for the car, and had the door open, waiting as they ran in through the rain in her usual tense stance.

‘Come on in, dears! That’s it. Thanks so much, Edwin.’

Gwen’s mother was always terrifically nice to Edwin. She stood back to let them in, holding her thick cardigan round her. Mrs Purdy was a slim, neat woman in her late forties. Mr Purdy, a few years older than his wife and with a permanent air of anxiety, was also hovering in the hall.

‘Hello, Gwen dear,’ he said.

‘Hello, Mummy, Daddy.’ Gwen kissed each of them briefly, struck by the fact that even after an absence of a few weeks they seemed different. Didn’t the remaining hair round her father’s bald head look greyer? And her mother seemed smaller, somehow, and more compact.

‘Come along.’ Ruth Purdy hurried down the hall. ‘The kettle’s boiled. I’m sure you must need a good cup of tea. Morris – take Gwen’s case up will you, dear? It’s cluttering up the hall.’ Her tone managed to imply that he was cluttering up the hall as well.

They sat by the fire in the back room with tea and biscuits. The table at the far end had a huge jigsaw puzzle on it, partially complete, and on the mantelpiece were pictures of the three children: Gwen’s two brothers in a rowing boat off the Welsh coast as children, and one of Gwen when she was nine, a rounded, healthy-looking child with a wide smile, standing by the apple tree they had planted in the garden.

Though they didn’t say so, Gwen sensed, rather to her surprise, that her parents were pleased to have her home. As the youngest, she had left them with an empty nest, as Johnny was married and Crispin off in the RAF. Poor old Crispin, Gwen thought, looking at the younger of the boys in the rowing-boat picture. Never could do anything right compared with Johnny. No wonder he left home as fast as possible.

They exchanged news about the past few weeks. A neighbour had died a few days ago, a school friend of Gwen’s was moving away. Gwen asked her father whether everything was all right at the pharmacy.

‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded. ‘Everything’s going along nicely. Yes – ticking along.’ She could see him struggling to think of something else to tell her. ‘I, er—’

‘So,’ Ruth Purdy cut him short, staring appraisingly at Gwen, who thanked heaven that Edwin was there – he acted as an excellent buffer against her mother. ‘Your manners don’t seem to have deteriorated too much.’

She made a great joke out of this, eyeing Edwin to encourage him to join in and Edwin laughed with her, oblivious as ever to the undercurrents in the room.

‘Oh, I think I can still remember how to eat with a knife and fork,’ Gwen said. She suppressed a smile at the thought of meals in the smoky Soho Road house.

‘Well –’ Ruth Purdy gave another light laugh – ‘I’d think by now you’d have had enough of this silly little experiment of yours. You’ve proved your point, and Mr Jenkins said they’re missing you.’ Mr Jenkins was the head of the parish school where Gwen had met Edwin. ‘He’s very keen for you to come back. I don’t know if you realize how disappointed they were when you left.’

Despite her mother’s antagonism, Gwen felt temptation tug at her. In a way it was nice to be home, and it would be so easy to stay, to slip into the old routine, comfortably surrounded by the familiar, then slip easily into marriage. She thought of Millie Dawson, who wasn’t coming back to school any more. But already Gwen could feel the old claustrophobia coming over her. There was something about this house, about her parents’ marriage, that was so static, so
dead
.

‘Actually, I’m rather enjoying it where I am,’ Gwen replied evenly. She felt very tired suddenly. Her mother was keeping her criticism mild while Edwin was present, but was she going to carry on like this for four days? ‘Can we drop the subject now –
please
?’

‘It’s only that we’re missing you,’ her mother said tetchily. ‘That’s all. And Birmingham sounds so
grim
.’

Gwen watched her parents as her mother asked after Edwin’s family. Her father sat silent as ever, in his slippers. He leaned forward to poke the remains of the fire. She could sense him longing to be able to settle down with the newspaper. Her mother had evidently had a cold, which had left her nose pink and sore, and she looked tired. She was such a
good
woman, Gwen thought guiltily. At least as far as everyone else was concerned. She had a strict sense of propriety, and always did the right thing for her children with little thought for herself. That was how a virtuous woman was supposed to be, wasn’t it? Mummy must love her and Crispin because of all she did for them. So why didn’t it
feel
as if she did? And why did this kind of virtue feel so tyrannical?