Song at Twilight (4 page)

In addition to being an oafish bully where boys were concerned, this man had a dreadful reputation for ogling the girls and for being a past master of the
double
entendre
so that no self-respecting girl could bear to be taught by him or to have anything to do with him. He was the sort of small-minded, rather stupid, dissatisfied person who sees himself as a ‘real man’ and acts accordingly.

"He can be a little insensitive at times," I remarked hesitantly. I had to be very careful how I spoke to pupils about my colleagues.

"Did you know," Timothy asked, looking at me with his head slightly on one side and with the same green-eyed stare, "about the poem I wrote which they pinned on the notice-board?"

I was again amazed by the boy's frankness.

"Yes," I said, "I did. It was a beastly thing to happen and I'm very sorry."

"First of all," said Timothy, "I'm not a poof. I just write a lot of poetry. That was an experiment. Didn't Shakespeare write all his sonnets to boys?"

"Some people say he did," I agreed.

He couldn't explain that to anyone in his house so he just had to live with what had happened. Anyway it was best not to go on about it because the housemaster was as bad as most of the boys who thought that anyone who wrote poetry must be a 'poof' anyway. They were all horrible.

"Let's not talk about it anymore," he said and averted his gaze.

I felt strangely relieved by Timothy's explanation, not that it mattered to me in the least if the child had homosexual tendencies, and glad that he had spoken to me. I also hoped ardently that he knew I believed him.

"Well, I believe you," I said as I got up to add some more water to the teapot. "Help yourself to another biscuit."

He did so and as he said, "Gosh, these are really delicious. Did you make them?" the tension in the room gave way to a feeling of more relaxed normality.

He stayed for quite a long time and we talked pleasantly of one thing and another. He didn't hate rugby although he couldn't imagine why as to be good at it you really had to be a thug. He had a friend – the boy I had seen about with him before – but they were neither in the same house nor the same form so they didn't manage to see very much of each other. I had the vague feeling that the friendship had never really got off the ground.

I asked him where he lived.

London. The holidays were usually boring.

No, he didn't have any brothers or sisters.

He mentioned his mother once or twice, casually, but not his father. I wondered if I dared probe any further on this first meeting. He had already abandoned the frank open gaze and reverted to his former, rather hang-dog, apologetic manner with his chin almost touching his chest.

I hadn't even broached the subject of work. I glanced at my watch. He would soon have to go if he was to be in time for evening prep.

The hour or so that he had been with me had passed extraordinarily quickly. He seemed to have only been there for a few minutes.

"I think," I said, "you will have to be going or you'll be late."

He got up awkwardly and stood in an ungainly way, staring at the floor.

"Look," I said suddenly and rather brusquely, "I did mean to talk to you about your work, but the time has flown. You must get down to it. You will put your mind to it, won't you? You should have handed something in to me yesterday."

"Yes, yes," he said. "I've done it. I mean… Well… that is, I haven't quite finished it… "

I couldn't bear to witness his confusion. I patted him on the shoulder.

"Come on, it's time to be off," I said.

At the door he turned, his head still on one side, a lock of red-gold hair flopping across his forehead, and I was treated to another of those frank green-eyed looks, and this time, a dazzling smile.

"The biscuits were delicious," he said. "Thanks." And away he went.

When he had gone I thought: there is something quite extraordinary about that boy.

The something had to do with honesty. I felt that Timothy was basically an honest person. By which I do not mean that he was incapable of telling a lie. No child has ever been born who was incapable of telling a lie and it has always seemed to me that children have far more reason for lying than adults. Unless they lie occasionally they are in danger of being stripped of all privacy by the grown-up world which surrounds them.

When Timothy had left and as I tidied away the tea things, I went over every detail of our conversation in my mind. I wondered, too, why he had come for what could have amounted merely to a confrontation about his work. It was quite brave in a way to come, and to come all alone. I was reconfirmed in my awareness of his loneliness. But I also thought, with a certain amount of gratification, that he must have quite liked me.

He certainly liked my biscuits, I thought with smug satisfaction as I tidied away the box. I picked up the coat which I had left lying so messily over a chair and hung that where it belonged. I must be getting silly, I thought with a wry smile to myself.

I hoped, as I finally sat down to correct a mountain of papers, that Timothy might make a habit of coming to tea with me. Perhaps I would be able to help him with his problems, not that I was yet sure what they were. But he certainly had them.

It took me hours to mark those papers that night. I seem to remember that my mind kept on and on returning to Timothy.

*

It is now Thursday and I think that nearly a week had gone by without my having seen Eric when he turned up this morning.

I suppose I should really have gone to call on him and I cannot think why I didn't. I spent Monday writing, on Tuesday I went shopping in our local town and yesterday I had a visit from an old friend who came for lunch and stayed for most of the afternoon. I was pleased to see her and to catch up with her news. So what with one thing and another I have been quite busy and the week has flown by.

"Eric," I said as I opened the door to him this morning, "What have you been up to? I haven't seen you for days. Come in and have some coffee."

He looked rather grey and even frailer than before as he shambled into the kitchen. His clothing was messier than usual, thrown onto his skinny body in the most haphazard of fashions. Why is it, I wondered with a certain amount of distaste, that old men seem, with monotonous regularity, to forget to do up their fly-buttons? Or perhaps they just can't be bothered.

'Bitterly cold, isn't it?" said Eric rubbing his hands together and hunching up his scrawny shoulders.

"What have you been up to then, this past week?" I asked as I put the coffee on the table.

The poor man had been in bed with bronchitis. The doctor had called a couple of times, put him on antibiotics and told him to keep warm.

I felt very ashamed. If I had been in bed for a week, Eric would have been doing my shopping, making me soup, bringing me flowers and, for all I know, sitting by my bed reading out loud to me.

"Oh Eric," I said lamely, "you should have given me a ring, I could have come in to look after you. Or if you wanted anything from the shops I could have got it for you."

"Nothing to worry about," he said. "I just kept warm, stayed in out of the cold. I'm much better now."

"You don't look it," I heard myself remark tartly.

He smiled wanly into his coffee cup, and I decided that the least I could do was to offer the poor man some lunch. I wondered if anyone had been in to see him during the whole week.

Chapter 4

March 18th

We have been having a lovely spell of early Spring sunshine for the past few days, so that I have rather abandoned my writing and have spent most of the time tidying up my garden or taking Pansy for little walks.

Yesterday morning I was in the garden when Eric came by. He was quite elated by the sunshine. It made one want to get out and about, he said, and then, to my surprise, asked me if I would like to go for a drive with him that afternoon. He fancied a trip across country to Porlock and Lynton. We might stop for a stroll on Exmoor. Pansy would probably enjoy that.

To tell the truth I was delighted. My back was beginning to ache from gardening and it is many, many years since I last went to Porlock, so I found the idea quite enticing. Besides, I warmed to the cheerful, almost animated expression on Eric's frequently all too lugubrious face.

We had a delightful afternoon. The wide, clear sky above Exmoor was cloudless, the air was bright and clean and when we reached Porlock the sea sparkled as blue as the Mediterranean.

When we returned home in the early evening I realised that I had not been irritated by Eric once during the whole afternoon. The fact that he had made himself look quite tidy for a change and even managed to do up his fly-buttons may well have contributed towards my feelings of good will.

But, I have to admit that beyond that he was companionable and pleasant. Besides which Eric has the most exquisite, old-fashioned good manners. He is the sort of man who will always walk on the outside if he is accompanying a woman along a pavement – and good manners, of course, never fail to please.

We came home via Minehead where we stopped in a dingy little cafe for a cup of watery tea and a couple of stale biscuits, but we had had a good time so I was not displeased when Eric suggested that we should go on more such outings. He had lived in Somerset only since his retirement, four years earlier, but he was remarkably unfamiliar with the county and loath to go sightseeing alone.

Next week, if the weather is fine, we are thinking of making a day of it and going to Wells.

I was mildly surprised to learn that Eric had only lived in Somerset for so short a time and surprised, too, to realise that despite the frequency of our meetings over the past months, I know very little about him. I don't know where he has spent most of his life, nor indeed do I really have any idea how he has spent it. All I seem to know is that his wife loved flowers and was a good cook. I wonder if I have been very remiss in not asking him about his life, or if he is just someone who does not naturally talk about himself. The more I think about it, the more I realise that his conversation is rarely at all personal.

When we go to Wells I shall make a point of asking him a few questions. Perhaps he even longs for someone who will take a genuine interest in him.

*

As time progressed Timothy became a more and more frequent visitor to my house. To begin with he used to drop in for tea, perhaps once a week, but then he started to come even more often. Sometimes he would look in during a free period in the hopes of finding me at home, so that in fact, it was not long before we began to have a pretty clear picture of each other's timetables. He had, for instance, two free periods between break and lunch on a Tuesday morning which coincided with my not teaching. 

To begin with Timothy did not turn up every Tuesday morning, but towards the end of the term when he had begun to come more regularly, I noticed that if he wasn't there by half past eleven I would be anxiously looking at my watch and wondering whether or not I dared to go out. It would be a shame to go and leave the poor boy to find the house empty, even though I would be seeing him again on Thursday, the day on which he always came to tea. It was obvious to me that if he came, he came in search of something and the last thing I wanted to do was to let him down.

I had grown quite fond of Timothy and although, never having had any children, I cannot speak with authority on the matter, I assume that the affection I felt for him was not far removed from what I might have felt for a son of my own.

What he felt for me I could not tell although I spent hours and hours wondering. I worried whether or not I was a disturbing influence on him. By providing some sort of a second home or at least an escape from school, was I perhaps encouraging him to cut himself off from his peers, not to participate fully in school life? I thought not, on the whole. And at least the standard of his work had marginally improved during the term, which was in itself a good thing.

Timothy, I was sure, needed me. He had, I gathered, a more or less unsatisfactory home life and what was more natural under the circumstances than that he should come to look on a well-disposed middle-aged woman as a substitute mother figure? If I could help or comfort him in any way, nothing could make me happier. I had of course to be careful not to allow my concern for him to interfere with the normal course of my work. There was no real reason why it should, except that I did notice that I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the child.

When he was late for tea, I worried lest he had had an accident, or sometimes it occurred to me that I might have offended him and that he no longer wished to see me. When he said goodbye on Thursday evenings, in time to return to school for prep, I found myself idiotically counting the days until Tuesday. Since I taught Timothy French every day of the week, except Sunday, I really cannot imagine why I was so anxious. It was, or so it seemed to me at the time, as though I had a terrible haunting fear that something awful might happen to him if I didn't watch over him; and almost as great a dread that he might reject me, as children have been known to do to their parents.

I began to realise the agony that some mothers must suffer over their children. Yet, for all the anxiety, I would not for the world have been without Timothy. My affection for him had brought an added intensity and excitement to my life which I would have been more than reluctant to forego.

All I could hope was that in some way I might bring something to him in return.

On the last Thursday of term I was expecting Timothy to tea as usual. I was half looking forward to his coming and half saddened by the awareness that I would not be seeing him again for four weeks over the Christmas break.

I had made a special cake as a concession to the Christmas season and was ready for tea at least half an hour before Timothy was due. Toasted, buttered crumpets were being kept warm in the oven. I hoped they would not dry out.

For some reason I felt hot and flustered and inexplicably nervous. Perhaps if I went upstairs and brushed my hair and powered my nose, I might feel a little calmer. It had been a long term. The Autumn Term was always the most trying so I suppose that what I really needed was a well-earned rest.

I peered at my face in my bedroom looking-glass. I was in my mid-fifties at the time – seven years have passed since then – and my hair was not white as it is now. I had always thought that I bore my years well and that, as is often the case with spinsters and childless women, I had retained a certain youthful vigour. Suddenly I looked a hundred years old. Timothy's mother, I realised, was probably young enough to be my daughter. To Timothy I probably seemed like a very old woman.

A surge of panic welled up inside me. What on earth did that matter? Of course Timothy could see exactly how old I was – to within a year or two. And what did Timothy's opinion of my age have to do with anything so long as he liked the cake and the buttered crumpets?

I brushed my hair neatly and put on a little lipstick. My face looked grey, there were bags under my eyes and the skin under my chin was beginning to sag noticeably. I dabbed some lavender water behind each car and decided to change my fawn shirt and brown cardigan for a new, raspberry pink jersey which I had bought only a few days earlier. In fact I hadn't yet worn it as I had half a mind to give it to Patricia for Christmas. But I definitely needed brightening up so I put it on. I would find something else for Patricia.

My nerves were hardly any calmer by the time Timothy turned up, but when I saw his eyes brighten at the sight of the cake, I relaxed a little.

Apart from being pleased by the cake and the crumpets, Timothy was a little on the glum side. He was not looking forward to the Christmas holidays at all.

I knew from our former conversations that Timothy's parents were in the process of divorcing. He didn't talk much about the divorce, but it was clear that his father had 'another woman' to whom Timothy occasionally referred with a sneer as 'her' or 'she'. As for his mother, he said nothing about her private life, but merely complained about the smallness of the mews house into which she was moving. The approach of the holidays seemed to have cast him into a terrible gloom.

What, I wondered, could be done to help him.

"I hate Christmas," Timothy said with venom as he helped himself to a third crumpet. He had long tapering fingers. Like mine, I thought.

It was sad, I felt, to hear a child saying that he hated Christmas.

"Perhaps your mother will have arranged something nice for you," I said brightly.

Christmas Day itself would be spent with his grandparents in Hampstead. They were all right, but terribly boring. There would be nothing to do for the rest of the holidays but hang around. 

I felt disconsolate. It was a shame that a boy who didn't like school should feel even more negative about home.

Suddenly I had a bright idea. Leo, who was then eighteen and had just started acting school, would certainly not be spending the entire holidays with his parents. Of that I was sure.

Leo was a kind and amusing boy and I would introduce him to Timothy. Of course Timothy was much younger than Leo, but I didn't see why that should prevent Leo from being occasionally kind to him. I would go to London next week and arrange for the two to meet.

Joan, one of my oldest friends, lives in London. She was widowed some years ago and although her two children have left home, she still lives in a substantial house in Putney. She and I were at school together and have never lost touch throughout the years. Whenever I go to London, I stay with her in Putney and am always made to feel welcome. She would not in the least bit mind if I asked Leo and Timothy to supper one night. I decided to invite myself to stay for a couple of days before going on down to Somerset for Christmas which I planned to spend, as usual, with Victor and Patricia. I could finish my Christmas shopping in London and perhaps go to the theatre with Joan.

I was thrilled with the idea. It would give me a chance, apart from anything else, to check that Timothy was going to be all right during the holidays.

With my new plan afoot I began to look forward to the holidays, not just for the break but because I was looking forward to my jaunt to London.

When I told Timothy of my plan he seemed delighted, perhaps not so much by the idea of seeing an elderly school mistress during the holidays as by the lure of an older, grownup young man at acting school. He gave me his address – a very smart one, I thought, in South Kensington – and telephone number and I promised to ring him as soon as I got to London.

Despite these plans I felt a foolish constriction of the heart as we said goodbye and a somewhat unsuitable urge to put my arms around him and give him a kiss. He looked so forlorn standing there, so lanky and so
distrait
.

When I reached London, Joan and I gave a great deal of thought to our menu for the evening. She sadly missed the company of young people since her children had gone away and
so
was quite happy at the prospect of entertaining Leo and Timothy.

Leo, when I telephoned him, accepted with alacrity. I rather suspect that he was more tempted by the prospect of a square meal than by the idea of spending an evening with his spinster aunt and her middle-aged friend.

But he would have been surprised had he seen his spinster aunt and her middle-aged friend preparing the supper. We had done the shopping the day before and managed to spend almost the entire day in the kitchen, giggling and joking like two schoolgirls. It seemed impossible that so simple a plan as ours for the evening could engender such childlike high spirits and so much excitement.

I have to admit that I was more than curious to see what Timothy would be like away from the environment of school, and not a little nervous lest the flow of conversation should dry up and there be awkward silences. I just hoped that Leo would keep the ball rolling. He is a naturally talkative and ebullient sort of person – not to say something of a show-off.

By the time everything was ready for the boys, Joan and I were fairly exhausted. The table was laid. We had bought a pâté for first course. It looked quite inviting on a large green plate surrounded by olives and gherkins. There was white bread and brown and pitta bread; the enormous chicken, stuffed with ham and onions and celery, was cooking away in the oven. The potatoes were mashed, the carrots and Brussels sprouts ready and keeping warm, and the jam roly-poly steaming gently on the hob. There was cream in a jug and the coffee was made so that it only needed to be heated up. We hoped there was enough to eat. Boys have such dreadfully large appetites. But then there were cheese and biscuits to fill the gaps at the end if they were still hungry. 

For my part I had begun to feel nervous and knew that I would hardly want to eat any of it. I needed to go and have a wash and change and to get rid of the smell of cooking which seemed to be clinging to my hair and clothes.