She's Leaving Home (61 page)

That sort of wedlock sounded more like a trap, Helen reflected, something to flee, not to seek. A flicker of memory brought back Gertie’s remark about her mother as a martyr. Annie’s normal expression was hardly one of unalloyed satisfaction nor had it ever been. A touch of panic was more characteristic, tinged with discontent. Gertie had hinted that her mother did not like sex and did not believe it could be a source of joy. On that Helen already had her own views. Perhaps sex was the problem: but it was hardly a matter one could raise, now or in the future. Talking intimately with your own mother was virtually impossible.

‘I am not Roseanne Nixon, and I don’t want to be her,’ the girl responded firmly. ‘And you don’t want me like that, surely. She’s lazy, and sly, and a tease. She plans to live off her husband’s earnings – and if it’s Jerry Feinstein she might find that tougher than she expects because he’s as idle as she is. Not a fine example to hold up, Mum, sorry.’

The noise behind Daniel’s paper might have been a chortle but he said nothing. Annie gave him a despairing tap with her tea towel. With or without her husband’s assistance her duty as a mother was still uppermost. She tried one more time.

‘This stuff about education can be risky, Helen,’ she urged. ‘Fills you with ambitions above your station that could leave you restless and miserable. You’ve got to realise, as your Dad had to, that people like us don’t do things like that – Parliament and such. We’re ordinary folk, working class and proud of it. There’s nothing wrong with being working class, you know. Salt of the earth, we are.
And you want to turn your back – but it won’t bring you happiness, you mark my words.’

Daniel folded the newspaper. ‘You should listen carefully to your mother,’ he concurred. ‘She’s seldom wrong. People like us have no capital, nothing to back us up. If you get into trouble – in debt or whatever – I can’t help you, I don’t have it. Oh, I know those who have it, but at a price. And part of our family pride is not to have to ask. So stay small, don’t stick your neck out and you won’t fall over.’

‘That is a very restrictive philosophy, Dad,’ Helen countered, then wished she hadn’t as she saw the spark of annoyance in Daniel’s eyes. She hurried on, ‘But it won’t work for me, or my future. I have to take risks, but if I’ve got the backing of a good education – the finest I can get – the risks diminish, don’t you see?’

Her parents glanced at each other rather than at Helen who rushed on regardless. She tried desperately to keep her tone calm but her voice trembled. ‘An education is the one thing that was denied to both of you, wasn’t it? So you don’t see its benefits. What you’ve never had, you’ve never missed – you can’t appreciate. It’s intellectual capital, see. It’s – it’s like training a racehorse for the Grand National. Whatever its natural inheritance if it’s well trained it can jump higher and more cleanly, can’t it? Then it’s more likely to be a winner.’

‘It won’t make you happy,’ her mother repeated slowly. Helen wanted to scream at her that Annie’s way of life seemed to have brought in its wake only dismal acquiescence. There had to be something better than this, this living room with its cheap furniture, the remains of an ill-cooked dinner, her father slumped tired in his chair, the newspaper propped up on the salt cellar, her mother in her apron. There had to be.

Helen rose and came to Annie’s side and put her arm round her mother’s thin shoulders. ‘But you’ll wish me well, won’t you, Mum? I know Dad does, though he doesn’t say much. I’d far rather go to the interview with your blessing than without it.’

‘You will be lost to us,’ her mother muttered. ‘It will be goodbye.’ But she set her mouth square. ‘Of course I wish you well. You’re my only daughter. Even if I don’t agree with what you’re up to.’

The college board room had been built in the 1930s in a minimalist style long regretted. The starkness of its plain cream walls was barely alleviated by portraits of former Principals, stern females with hair in buns and voluminous academic gowns. Outside its tall small-paned windows a grey rain was falling. At the far end mackintoshes dripped and umbrellas stood open like cartwheels.

The main furniture was a massive mahogany table donated by a brother college. Around three sides were eight women. Dr Edith Swanson, her grey hair cut severely short for the occasion, the man’s watch on its black strap prominent on her wrist, sat to the Principal’s right. Then the delicate Mrs Rossotti, so pretty, clever and shy. Opposite her the philosophy tutor, a wraith-like figure, twisted her thin limbs around the back of her chair in an agony of self-expression. Further down came the maths tutor, on loan from another female college since St Margaret’s did not have one of its own; then the Honourable Maud Sheppard, President of the Senior Common Room, a bag of boiled sweets before her, whose father the Earl of Westmorland had been a substantial donor when his third and plainest daughter had to his relief immersed herself in the College; and finally two younger research fellows so overawed at the honour of representing the junior teaching body that they said very little.

The Principal opened her folder. Lady Donington was a large woman with a soft body which had spread relentlessly since her thirties. Wispy hair framed a broad forehead, pink cheeks and a generous mouth. Marriage had produced four children on or about the same dates as her First, her doctorate and publication of the standard tome which had led to her appointment at St Margaret’s. However unconfined she might be physically there was nothing ill disciplined about the Principal’s brain, while her heart brimmed with affection for her students, her staff and humankind in general.

‘Good morning. Natural sciences next. Edith, you’ll lead.’

‘Thank you, Principal, but I don’t quite see why. My discipline is English. Mrs Rossotti, surely?’

The chemistry don shook her head and twittered dissent. Barely thirty with fluffy hair, her combination of brilliance and femininity perpetually confused her colleagues. Dr Swanson did not encourage the discussion to continue; it suited the Dean perfectly to dominate the event. At least this way one might ensure that one’s own preferences, honed by careful consideration of test papers and personal contacts up and down the country, would be selected for admittance.

The Principal referred to jottings on a notepad. I should remind you that we have about one hundred places to offer and a thousand candidates from throughout the world. We also have certain – ah, obligations, which so far, I regret, we have failed to meet.’

Every face around the table turned respectfully. ‘Obligations? What do you have in mind, Principal?’ Dr Swanson inquired. She was familiar with the answer.

The notepad was tapped. ‘Governing Body wished us to increase the uptake of state-educated girls. Our applications are running at eighty per cent private and public school. If you count the girls from private academies overseas it’s higher. And to date, ladies, the offer rate is about the same. If we want to satisfy the governors we need more state school pupils.’

‘But that implies discrimination, Principal,’ the Hon Maud observed frostily. Her long nose twitched in distaste. ‘Surely that could not be justified – to turn down better candidates in favour of some from – shall we say – a more dubious background – merely to meet the latest fashion?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t put it that way,’ the Principal replied. She leaned back in her chair which creaked alarmingly and put her fingertips together. The other dons watched the contest with open pleasure. ‘The view is taken that discrimination has already occurred – that it has been endemic for years. So the grammar school girls are deterred from applying. It is up to us to put the balance right.’

‘So what do we do if we have two applicants of equal merit, but one is from Christ’s Hospital or Benenden and the other from –’ the Hon Maud consulted her notes ‘– an obscure city-centre grammar school in Liverpool?’

The Fellows shuffled their papers. The maths don, being from another college, smiled in private amusement. The Principal leaned forward and her chair creaked once more. This time she planted podgy elbows on the polished table and gazed magisterially at each in turn. But it was the Dean of Admissions who spoke.

‘We will make no special allowances. That would be quite unfair and the President of the SCR’s reservations would be correct. But we must bear in mind that our offer to that young northern girl might be her chance of a lifetime. The scion of a wealthy family could do quite as well at – ah – Nottingham.’

The Hon Maud sniffed loudly but was silenced by the Principal’s lifted eyebrow. The philosophy don murmured something indistinct which might have been a Sanskrit proverb then clutched her chair for reassurance. The Hon Maud subsided, took a boiled sweet from the packet, unwrapped it noisily and popped it into her mouth while glaring over the Principal’s head.

‘It might nevertheless’, the philosophy tutor continued in English, ‘help the women’s movement hugely if vigorous strident northern girls were admitted. Amazons indeed! Did you see the Cambridge Union has at last admitted women as full members? I went to the debate last week. Only twenty-eight have joined so far, but just think! The
Daily Telegraph
wrote that we might even see “over the blown-up hairdo of an earnest young female debater the misty aura of a future woman Prime Minister”. I confess I didn’t see one. But the very next girl to come into this room could be that person.’

She paused for breath, eyes shining. Dr Swanson pursed her lips. Their job was to educate the girls, not to elevate them.

‘None of us like it,’ the Principal sighed. ‘But we must give these young women their chance. It will change the nature of College, I grant you that. Fresh blood and what-have-you. But we should be prepared for the unexpected, and welcome it when it surfaces.’ She nudged the Dean for reassurance and was gratified to receive several vigorous grunts. ‘Fine. Then we have fifteen this morning, and another eighteen this afternoon. Onward!’

Helen leaned against the wash basin in the ladies’ toilet on the main corridor of St Margaret’s. It was only Thursday but it felt like a year since she had left home.

She was the washroom’s sole occupant. Slowly she washed her hands and wiped them on the towel hanging on a hook. The striped fabric was not particularly clean. Her hair was wet but there was no way to dry it, nor was there time to change her blouse. The maroon lino on the floor was in need of a scrub and the mirrors were marked with splashes. One cubicle was locked with an old dogeared notice pinned to the door proclaiming it out of order. Her mother would have disdained using such facilities. Helen bit her lip. Cambridge life so far was not nearly as glamorous as she had hoped.

That was not the only illusion discarded. The journey had been an endurance test of alternately chilly and overheated carriages laden with smoke from tobacco and diesel engines, infused with damp clothing and buffeted by repeated contact with too many bodies. Once she had glimpsed Brenda and Meg on a windswept distant platform and had called but to no avail. To the bewildered girl who asked for assistance – which platform, what time, how much – blank faces were turned, heads shaken. The result for Helen was exhaustion and disorientation. Added to the growing sense of not knowing where she was going – or rather, her awareness that this was her mother’s criticism – the girl had arrived at St Margaret’s as dishevelled as her fellow travellers and with a bleak and disordered air.

Her own distinctly grubby hands had left a mark on the towel. Cross with herself, she rewashed them thoroughly till the soapy water ran clear, then combed her hair tidily and picked lint off her navy-blue skirt. It was good not to be in school uniform. One tap was marked ‘Drinking Water’; she found a glass nearby, rinsed it and drank.

Slowly her good humour returned. Washing of the hands: the effort to keep clean soothed her. She was not about to succumb to the debilitating pressures of the weather or the journey, nor to the nagging desire to run away, straight back home. The flow of tepid water and the drink was refreshing. Wherever she planned to go the voyage would be arduous. A little accumulated dirt would not deter her. It could be washed off. She would arrive her own person. She would go into the interview as respectable as usual. She would be a credit to her mother, to her upbringing.

The face in the mirror half smiled back at her through the streaks. She straightened her shoulders. Daft, really, that her mother’s prejudices on personal appearance should fortify her daughter in a place where such priorities would be derided as keeping people down, especially women. Annie relished her home comforts precisely because their acquisition had been so hard won, their lack so acutely remembered. The central heating installed two years before meant no more frozen mornings clearing the grate. Hot tap-water in kitchen and bathroom was a reminder of black-leaded ranges and boiled kettles. A washing machine was still cooed over, while the house had no fewer than two toilets, one upstairs, the other outside, both spotless and smelling of daily Harpic.

Was it possible to hold both sets of values at once? To be both working class and an intellectual, to be both a Liverpool girl and an aspiring Cambridge undergraduate? At home most people believed these were contradictions in terms, mutually exclusive.
Most
people, most of those she knew, especially the older ones, in all honesty would not have started out on her journey even if given a push. They’d happily win the pools: that was an acceptable route to success, as was luck in business. Academia was despised where it was understood, but mainly it was dismissed with a wave of the hand as impossibly airy-fairy and pointless.

Was she going too far – being altogether too ambitious? An Icarus flying too near the sun? Maybe Annie was right. Yet surely one did not have to exchange one philosophy for another – it must be possible to meld the best of both, of the past and of what St Margaret’s could offer.

The solemn brown eyes in the mirror pondered. Why not? Those old work ethics and traditions of cleanliness, graft, a whiff of materialism were leavened with a powerful sense of community. A place like Liverpool had a grand history not least because, however ragged a family, there were neighbours willing to help. At least, that had been true in her parents’ childhood. It had to be admitted that such traditions were under threat. Colette in her dirty flat came to mind forcefully and Helen sighed. The fight in the pub which had cut short her evening with Michael was more typical than the prizegiving at the Philharmonic.
Brighton Rock
had displaced
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
. And she herself, sprung from one of the most ancient cultures, could upbraid its Minister with fundamental challenges, as she had done with Reverend Siegel. When she had left the synagogue that afternoon, her questions confirmed by his inability to answer them to her satisfaction, it had felt as if she had closed a door on more than just a consecrated house. She had shut it on a part of herself for ever.