More Than Love Letters (18 page)

I’d really like to share my good fortune with Margaret, but with Nasreen still missing, I don’t know . . . I don’t want it to look as though I am contentedly enjoying the political side-benefits of the situation that led to her friend’s misery. Even though, of course, that is exactly what I am doing! Oh, dear.

Richard.

 

PS. Do books count as culture? I read books.

 

Richard Slater (Labour)

Member of Parliament for Ipswich

 

 

From:
Michael Carragan
[[email protected]]
Sent:
6/6/05 16:58
To:
Richard Slater [[email protected]]

 

I see my advice goes unheeded, as usual. Call me about that beer.

Michael.

 

Michael Carragan (Labour),

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West.

ST EDITH’S PRIMARY SCHOOL

St Edith’s Lane, Ipswich IP3 5BJ

7 June 2005

 

Hello everyone, and welcome back from half term, as we enter the final straight of this school year. I hope that you and your families managed to take advantage safely of the beautiful weather last week.

 

This brings me on to the first important notice of this newsletter. With warmer weather on the way, will parents please note that ALL children must be provided with a sun hat, a small water bottle (named, please!) and a tube of sunblock cream of at least factor 40. I am afraid that any children not suitably equipped will not be allowed outside at playtime if there is less than 85 per cent cloud cover.

 

Sports day will be held on Monday 11July. Please ensure that your child has a sun hat, sunblock cream and plenty of water (see above). I am sorry to have to tell you that there will be no parents’ race this year; following last year’s unfortunate incident, the school’s insurers have informed us that they can no longer undertake to cover the risks involved. Apologies to those mums who I know have been in training for this event since Easter.

Ipswich’s Member of Parliament Mr Richard Slater, who has just this week been appointed to a ministerial position in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, is to visit the school and meet Year 3 pupils on Wednesday 15 June. We are grateful to Miss Hayton for fixing up this prestigious visit.

 

To celebrate Suffolk Book Day on Friday 24 June, pupils are invited, as last year, to come to school dressed as a favourite character from a book. Parents are asked for a voluntary contribution (we suggest that a minimum of 50p would be appropriate) towards the purchase of books, half for our own school library and half for our twin school in Kenya. Please encourage your children to use their imagination. Last year we had eighty-two Harry Potters.

 

We are pleased to say that British Sugar have kindly agreed to arrange for pupils from Years 5 and 6 to tour the factory again, to learn about the amazing journey of the sugar-beet as it is transformed into the sugar on your table. The infants, as last year, will be visiting the Lower Maysley Maize Maze. Please could parents equip their children with a brightly coloured (named) hat, and notify the class teacher in advance of any allergies to cereal crops.

 

This will be held on Thursday 21 July. Would parents, especially of Year 5 and 6 girls, please ensure that their children are appropriately dressed. Underwear and body glitter are not an acceptable alternative to clothing.

 

Mrs E. Martin

Deputy Head

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent:
10/6/05 22:23
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

I had another day tramping round London last Friday, putting up ‘Missing’ posters that Richard had made. He came everywhere with me, took all day off to help, and he even took me to Waterloo to get the train to Gran’s. At the barrier he started trying to apologise for the fact that we had discovered nothing, as if it was his fault, so I cut him off, maybe a bit abruptly, because he went quiet and was sort of staring at me, and then he leaned forward and brushed his lips on my cheek, all dry and soft. And I know it’s stupid of me, Becs, but I couldn’t help wishing that he would kiss me properly. Maybe it was something to do with him finally not wearing a tie. But mainly, I suppose, it’s been so long since Mark, and a girl likes to feel . . . Well, if it goes on too long I always start to think that it’s me. At home, I always put it down to the vicar’s daughter thing: it took me until I was fifteen to even get properly groped in a pub car park! But I’ve never mentioned Dad to Richard, so he can’t know, can he? I mean, you can’t tell, can you? It’s not like there’s the faint aroma of ecclesiasticism hanging about me, or something? Or maybe it’s because I’m a Margaret and Margarets are fundamentally unsnoggable.

Gran was cheerful, but I can tell her ankle is worse than she’s letting on. She was in the sitting room and she’d built a kind of nest around herself, with heaps of books and magazines, and the TV listings by her elbow, and I don’t think she moves from there all day. Cora had made me some gunge to take Gran out of Lord knows what agglomeration of garden greenery – she is really taking this herbalism thing seriously – and I offered to rub some on her ankle for her, but she just told me to leave it on the table. Wise woman. I did get her up and walking around a bit on Sunday, and I helped her with her physio exercises, but I don’t think she bothers with them much by herself – the leaflet was right at the bottom of a pile of library books. I’d really like to speak to Kirsty about getting Gran moving a bit, but I hate to talk about her behind her back, as if she’s a child.

We had a tremendous staff meeting on Tuesday, Becs, you’d have treasured it. Planning for the school trips. We took Years 3 and 4 round a rare breeds farm back in October, so we have nothing on this term for our lot, but the older juniors are going to tour the sugar works, which in this part of the world is referred to in hushed tones, much in the manner in which pilgrims might speak of the shrine at Walsingham. There is a certain amount of tasting of the product, in its various syrupy and solid states, permitted by the factory management, and the main topic of debate was how to set precise limits upon this aspect of the visit. By all accounts, last year’s party behaved like so many Augustus Gloops. The infants are going round a maize maze. With no money, apparently, in actually growing useful things to eat (I have never been able to fathom the parallel economic universe which is agricultural subsidy), there is one of these approximately every five miles up the A12 and A140 during the summer months. There was a very long and serious discussion about how to prevent the little loves from getting lost (which I have to say did strike me somewhat as losing sight of the object of the exercise). It seems that one girl in Reception got separated from the herd last year, and only emerged, weeping in the consoling arms of the staff search party, at 5.15 p.m. when all her companions were back on the coach and into the fifteenth verse of ‘One Man Went to Mow’. Her name, by divine coincidence, was Ruth. I don’t know why it should have been this which did it, but suddenly I could no longer restrain the giggles that had been threatening to break loose from the off – but by the bemused looks I received, none of the rest of the St Edith’s staff can have been nourished upon biblical texts with their porridge like I was at the vicarage.

Last night the WITCH crew all decamped to the pub after the meeting, and I discovered that Alison’s husband has moved out. By mutual agreement, she said – though I wonder if that can ever be really true. Is the end of a relationship really something about which there can ever be a meeting of minds, when the loss of that common ground is usually part of the problem? All I know is that I’d be a wreck if I were Alison, left on her own with three boys, including Edward who is autistic and quite a handful, by all accounts. But she actually said it is a relief. She realises that she has been protecting her husband from the worst of Edward’s behaviour, and at the same time trying to shield the boys from her husband’s frequent over-reactions, and she is fed up with being caught in the middle. Her only worry seemed to be how she will manage the mortgage by herself.

The rest of the group didn’t seem all that surprised to hear about the split-up. And it is true, now I come to think about it, that I have never once heard Alison mention her husband. I found out his name for the first time when she told me he had gone. (Derek. Never a name which bodes well. There are no good Dereks in any books – or indeed any Dereks at all, that I can recall.) Of course, there can be a bit of a thing in women’s groups about not mentioning husbands or boyfriends overmuch, not wanting to seem to be joined at the hip. Do you remember Celia Jones at college, who used to bring that boyfriend of hers from home into every other sentence, and how it used to have the rest of Women’s Action gritting their teeth and shuffling their Doc Martens in aggravation? But in WITCH, Susan talks about her boyfriend sometimes, and even Persephone refers to her ex now and again (though mainly, I must admit, to cast aspersions upon either his sexual prowess or his oral hygiene. And bad-mouthing men always goes down OK in a women’s group). I’ve never been keen on women who constantly go on about their marvellous husbands, even when they are in a professional situation. It can come over as irrelevant and jarring, even self-belittling, as if they are not independent, whole people in their own right. But for a married person like Alison
never
to mention Derek’s name, when she had talked quite a lot about her sons, well, I suppose I did wonder . . . I mean, Cora’s married, and she talks about Pete. He just crops up, in the normal way of things. When I first moved in, in fact, she talked about little else – though with Cora I never found it irritating, more sad than anything. And people at school tell the occasional funny story in the staffroom, or their partners come up in conversation, you know, when they tell you what they did at the weekend. Mrs Martin the deputy head, for example, has a husband who is a conjuror. Having ready access to all the kids’ dates of birth, she keeps him well supplied with bookings for children’s parties – a flagrant misuse of corporate opportunity, ripe for referral to the Office of Fair Trading. Mind you, he hasn’t been getting quite so many gigs since he produced a fluffy white rabbit out of Timothy Burgess’s mother’s piano stool too soon after the death of his beloved Thumper, reducing Timothy to howling inconsolability and transforming the rest of his birthday celebration into a wake.

But sorry, I’m rambling appallingly as usual. There is still no news of Nasreen. I’m going to go to London again at the weekend. We’re going to try putting up some of the posters round the Tube stations. Richard has kindly said I can stay at his flat again on Saturday night. But tell me about Frankie. I trust he’s got your system flowing freely?

Love,

Margaret xx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
10/6/05 22:45
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Margaret, hi. Don’t talk to me about staff meetings. Some of the old guard here could quibble for England. Last week there was a sweepstake among the younger staff after we saw the agenda. At 14 minutes, my pick was hopelessly short of the 26 and a half minutes spent discussing where to route the ducting for the new smartboard in the ICT room.

About Frankie: it turns out that he really does seem to believe that his life is a cheap porn movie, and I am not prepared to appear only in every third scene. So I have told him to take his plunger and get out.

I have looked up your Richard on the House of Commons website, by the way. He’s not bad at all – I don’t know what you are waiting for! I tell you, when things start to turn sour between me and Quentin or Quincy, you’d better watch out, hon!

Love and hugs,

Becs xx

 

 

Flat 6
14 Charterhouse Square
London EC1 9BL

 

12 June 2005

Dear Margaret,

I loved this weekend. I have felt more . . . useful, more engaged, more purposeful, more alive, these days that I have spent with you in London, even though our search hasn’t yet produced any results, than I have felt since my early days in politics, when it still seemed like one individual could make a difference, just by caring enough.

You looked so beautiful in your too-big shirt and your old combat trousers, like something fragile and exotic that the florist has just casually wrapped up in old newspaper. We must have visited nearly every Tube station in central London, and you would have carried on all evening, but your eyes looked unnaturally bright and there were bluish smudges appearing beneath your lower lashes. I wanted to take my thumbs and softly brush all the worry and fatigue away from your eyelids. I hailed a taxi and took you home, and this time I had remembered to shop, and there was salad as well as pasta, and it did not seem so inappropriate to open the wine.

You were too tired and drained to talk, so I suggested you choose a video from the shelf, and you said, ‘What’s
Gregory’s Girl
?’ I went to see it when it came out, in the summer of 1981, with Ellie Shaw; you told me you were not born then. Not born – and I was old enough to be feeling up Ellie in the darkened cinema! That blazing summer, when discontent spilled over into rioting in every major British city. Even Ipswich’s half-heartedly disaffected youth managed their own token skirmish. In that crucible, in the burning hatred of Thatcher and all that she stood for, my political convictions were forged. You were not born; your formative years had none of that bitterness and entrenched division and sharp-edged certainty. And yet you have such passion, for the things in which you believe.