Song at Twilight (5 page)

I put on a light green dress which had always been a favourite of mine as I felt it gave me a softer, more feminine look, making me, I hoped, a little less school-mistressy, and a pair of nice black court shoes. I fastened my jade beads around my neck, thinking as I did so, that one should always try to look one's best, whatever one's age, as much as anything for reasons of good manners. The boys would certainly have made themselves tidy. So indeed should we.

Timothy arrived first, very punctually. The doorbell rang shrilly, causing my heart to pound unexpectedly.

'You go,' said Joan.

I hurried down the passage to the door, my high heels tapping emphatically on the Marley tiles. Through the dappled glass pane on the front door I could discern the shape of a head, but could not tell if it was Leo's or Timothy's.

When I opened the door and saw Timothy standing there with a quizzical expression on his face as though he wondered if he had come to the right house, I again felt the urge to kiss him. But then I decided against it. He might not like it and besides, I had to remember that before very long we would be back in the world of school. I had to remember, too, that I was not Timothy's mother, nor even his aunt, but his French teacher.

Timothy looked delightfully fresh and clean and was wearing a green jersey – a little darker than the green of my dress – which perfectly suited his eyes. I wondered if it was an accident, or if he was perhaps a little vain or if his mother had chosen the jersey for him with care.

Joan and he and I were nervously sipping sherry when flamboyant Leo arrived. Seeing Timothy away from the familiar surroundings of school certainly made me a little awkward at first.

Joan opened the door to Leo whom she already knew and he came bursting into the sitting-room with cries of "My favourite un-married auntie!" and threw his arms around my neck and gave me an enormous kiss on both cheeks. So vehement was his greeting that he nearly threw me off my balance.

Leo looked his usual splendid self. His mane of fair hair was, I noticed, carefully and, no doubt, expensively, coloured with streaks of silver and mauve. I wondered what on earth Victor would have to say about that when he saw his son at Christmas.

I need not have worried about the conversation flagging for, just as I had hoped, Leo kept us entertained all evening with excited chatter about his drama school.

Timothy was rather quiet at first but a combination of Leo and a little wine soon helped him to relax. He became slightly flushed in the face and laughed loudly at Leo's stories. In fact I had never seen him so uninhibited.

The only problem with the whole evening was that we seemed to have prepared far too much food so that Joan and I were both horrified at the thought of all the left-overs.

Timothy didn't eat as much as I had expected and Leo announced as we sat down to supper that he was on a diet.

"I can't imagine why," I said. "You have a lovely slim figure."

"It's all on account of the aardvark," he said gesticulating wildly.

None of us knew exactly what an aardvark was although Timothy had a theory that it might be some sort of a pig. In fact he was not far wrong. It is, according to my dictionary, a termite-eating, nocturnal African mammal. We were at a loss to understand what this termite-eating mammal could possibly have to do with Leo.

It was merely, he explained, that he had to perform the part of an aardvark in class at college the following week. He had spent all weekend at London Zoo, studying the creature's habits.

I was a little disappointed as I had fondly imagined my nephew cast in the role of Hamlet – or if not Hamlet, at least Hotspur.

Timothy was delighted and revealed to my amazement that he too had occasional aspirations to go on the stage.

He ought, I suggested, to join the drama group at school, but he turned away and rather pointedly changed the subject. 

The boys went away together quite soon after supper and although I was sorry to see them go so early I was happy to note that Leo seemed to be taking Timothy under his wing and hoped that perhaps they would see more of each other over the holidays.

As the boys left, I slipped a little packet into Timothy's hand.

"Just a little something for Christmas," I whispered in his ear.

He blushed and I felt ashamed at having caused him this embarrassment.

"It's only very little, nothing really," I said, making matters worse.

"Well, thanks a lot," he said, stuffing the packet into his pocket. "And thanks for the supper. It was great."

I closed the door behind them with a pang. All that work, I thought, all that laughing in the kitchen, all those nerves, all that food left over and the evening gone in the batting of an eyelid. I felt let down and a wave of sadness engulfed me. I wouldn't see Timothy again for over three weeks. Perhaps he would write to me to thank me for the little diary I had given him. He probably wouldn't. Children aren't very good at writing letters unless they are reminded.

It was silly of me to have given him that diary. What a dull present for a boy – and I had wrapped it up so carefully in such pretty Christmas paper.

It was not until I arrived to stay with Victor and Patricia on Christmas Eve that I heard from Leo about the final outcome of that evening.

Timothy, according to Leo, was a nice kid and Leo had taken him back to the flat which he shared with several other students, and there they had had more to drink. Suddenly it was rather late and when Timothy realised that he had missed the last tube he decided to stay the night. No one had enough money for a taxi.

The next morning they all slept until lunchtime so that when Timothy finally reached home his mother was in a terrible state. She had no idea where he was.

Timothy saw Leo again a few days later and told him all about it. He hadn't supposed that his mother would notice his absence, or care if she did. She was usually out herself with one of her young men. Apparently she had a liking for boys. Timothy thought it disgusting.

I felt a curious twinge of jealousy at the thought of Timothy confiding in Leo as he never had in me. Then, I thought, children often don't confide in their parents. In any case I was delighted to think that the boys had made friends which, after all, had been my intention in the first place, and that I would to some extent be able to keep an eye on Timothy through Leo.

We talked a good deal about Timothy over Christmas, Leo and I. Leo liked him very much and I thought what a kind young man he was to bother about someone so much younger than himself.

*

Yesterday was the day when Eric and I were supposed to be going to Wells, but it was pouring with rain.

He rang me in the morning to say that it hardly seemed worthwhile setting out in such weather. We could always go another day.

"After all," he said, "we've got our whole lives in front of us," and laughed.

I agreed that the outing should be postponed and was pleasantly surprised to hear Eric say:

"Let's have a different outing today. Cheer ourselves up in this filthy weather. Would you like to come out to lunch? We might even go to the cinema afterwards. There's quite a good film on I'm told."

I was really quite touched.

So instead of going to Wells Cathedral we had a delicious Chinese meal in our local town, and spent the afternoon in the cinema watching what I suppose was quite a good film although I find it extremely difficult to cope with the ever-increasing amount of sexual activity to be seen in films these days. I was acutely embarrassed sitting there next to Eric, watching naked bodies writhing about on a celluloid bed.

Eric, on the other hand, didn't seem to mind at all.

Chapter 5

March 28th

In a funny sort of way I find that lately I have begun to be quite disappointed if Eric doesn't come to see me fairly regularly. I can't think why, really, as he is not particularly stimulating company, and as I often find him remarkably irritating. Besides, as I never cease to remark, he frequently has his fly-buttons undone which to my mind is a sign of rapidly approaching senility. As often as not he tells me the same story over and over again – perhaps a story of no account concerning his wife and her prowess at housekeeping – or he merely resorts to the weather as a topic of conversation. To be fair though, I have to say that he does sometimes surprise me with an unexpected piece of esoteric knowledge about this plant or that bird, or some unexpected book which he may have read. But even so, I ask myself why am I so glad to see him shambling up the garden path? I am not, as I have pointed out, lonely; I am well able to cope with my own company, and, anyway, he invariably comes just when I am fully engrossed in some time-consuming operation such as writing or gardening.

I must admit that I am always grateful to him for his willingness to mend things for me – from the electric iron to the lavatory cistern – to carry in my coal and even to do the heavier jobs about the garden. Perhaps I also value the feeling of being needed and I suppose I feel that as a lonely widower, used to the permanent companionship of a woman, he does in some way need my company. He certainly seems to appreciate the little meal which I cook for him in return for all his kindness to me, not to mention the ginger cake I made for him last week.

And we do have some nice times together, bowling around the countryside in his old Ford Cortina and visiting little churches in hidden villages all over the county. Somerset is richly varied and although I have been connected with it for most of my life, there are still many lovely churches and glorious stretches of countryside as yet unknown to me. It is indeed a great pleasure, in later life, to have a companion with whom to explore these beauties.

On Monday afternoon we visited Isle Abbots where there is a gem of a church, quite outstanding in its simplicity and lightness. We were both moved by the peaceful beauty of this little church which stands among old cottages in an unspoilt village and so returned quietly contented to an early supper at my house.

Eric is clearly enjoying our forays into the countryside just as much as I am. At supper we pored over maps and books of local history in an attempt to decide where our next outing should take us.

It had been a nice day but as the evening drew in it became cold. There was surely a frost, I remarked, as we took our coffee over to the fireside. We had been sitting at the table for far too long.

One of the most irritating things about Eric is the way in which he eats. I have never ever known a man eat so slowly, with the result that I, who eat quite quickly, find myself sitting for hours over a meal with Eric, impatiently waiting for him to finish.

Like most people who eat slowly, he seems to devote a remarkable amount of concentration to the process. I have watched him dividing his food into neat little piles on his plate, frowning frantically lest each pile is not just as it should be, and carefully moving a Brussels sprout from one part of his plate to another. He will put one sprout, some potato and a piece of meat on his fork and lift the fork half way to his mouth before deciding that the balance of this particular mouthful is not exactly right, at which point he will slowly put down the fork, take the food off it and start again with a slightly smaller sprout or perhaps a little more potato. Once the food is finally in his mouth he chews it at least as many times as Gladstone would have done, making meanwhile a most unpleasant noise which is more reminiscent of a washing machine than anything else. When I think of what happens to my carefully prepared food when it is in Eric's mouth, I feel quite ill. Sometimes I wonder how I can bear ever to share a meal with the man.

So I was glad when we could at last leave the table.

As Eric sat down comfortably in the large armchair by the fire, I decided that the time had come for me to find out a little more about him. Something which I have been meaning to do for a while now.

"Eric," I said, "I think I have some brandy. How about a drop to keep out the cold?"

It is strangely difficult to get Eric to talk about himself. Perhaps he has some dark secret which he is frightened to divulge. But on the whole I think it would be nearer the truth to say that he is a naturally diffident man and one who perhaps thinks it ill-mannered to speak too much about himself. All that I really discovered from our fireside chat that evening was that he had spent a large part of his life working for Metal Boxes and, in so far as I could make out, living in various parts of the country. He had spent some years in Nottingham, others in Worksop and Ipswich. As a child he was brought up in Hertfordshire. I do not know at what age he married, nor what he did during the war and I was, of course, far too bashful to ask him where he went to school. But then there will be many more opportunities for questions of that nature.

Not only is Eric a diffident man who finds it perhaps distasteful to talk about himself, but he is extraordinarily incurious about others, or if not incurious, at least too well-mannered to enquire.

He knows, of course, that I am a retired teacher, and he knows that my brother and sister-in-law, Victor and Patricia, live nearby. He knows, too, I think, that I was brought up in Somerset. But he knows these things only because I have volunteered them. I doubt that he has ever asked me a question which even vaguely touched upon the personal, and yet, for all that, I feel that he has a strong liking for me and a warm sympathy. He has a gentleness of manner which is not entirely unpleasing and which seems to betoken such a liking. He also has a peculiarly direct way of looking at me so that I hold his gaze with an unusual intimacy which leads me to suppose that he may feel that our friendship perhaps goes just beyond the bounds of humdrum, everyday casual companionship.

As far as I am concerned this is not true. I see the friendship precisely as a humdrum, casual companionship and I hope that Eric realises this, as the last thing I would wish to do would be to encourage him or to offend him.

When Eric left on Monday evening after drinking two glasses of my brandy, he stood at the front door and so, so gently, almost imperceptibly, squeezed my hand.

"You are very kind to me, Prudence," he said. "Thank you so much."

I was moved in a way and remained there in the lighted doorway, watching his unsteady figure lurching down the path to the garden gate.

*

After Christmas I returned to my house with a strange feeling of anti-climax. Two or three days with Victor and Patricia are enough so that I am usually glad to go home, to be my own master and to be among my own things. But on this occasion I felt somewhat loath to leave them. I decided that it was because of Leo. I was, and still am, very fond of Leo and he and I spent a good deal of time together over that Christmas.

Patricia was amazed that we had so much to say to each other.

Leo, she complained, rarely had a moment to spare to talk to his mother.

"What on earth do you two talk about?" she asked me. "And I do wish you would persuade him to stop doing such dreadful things to his hair. Victor is very upset about that." 

Patricia lived in constant fear for her children. Perhaps all mothers do, but Patricia wore her fear on her sleeve.

"If Leo goes around looking like that," she said, "he will be mistaken for a criminal and be arrested – and you know the reputation the police have these days? They'll probably beat him up.'

I did my best to explain to Patricia that this was unlikely and that young people in the eighties no longer looked like they did when I, or indeed she, was young. But she appeared not to be listening.

Funnily enough it was not until that very moment that it occurred to me, with heart-stopping certainty, that Leo might have homosexual leanings so that his clearly very keen interest in Timothy surely had a side to it which had hitherto entirely escaped my notice.

For an instant I was horrified.

What had I done? Had I introduced an innocent child to a far from innocent young man who was about to seduce him – corrupt him – alter the course of his life for ever?

I felt a surge of panic. I was a school-teacher, a supposedly responsible member of society, entrusted with the care of young people; I should respect that trust, not play around with tender lives. But then as the panic ebbed away I realised that I was being quite ridiculous. Whatever Leo's tastes, he was unquestionably a nice young man and would certainly never dream of corrupting Timothy of whom he was obviously genuinely fond.

When I reached home I searched eagerly through the post which lay scattered on the floor in the hall. There were a couple of bills and a few late Christmas cards. Nothing else. Timothy had obviously not considered it worth his while to thank me for the diary. I could hardly blame him. It was a depressing little present, the thought of which embarrassed me. And yet, as day succeeded day, I found myself anxiously awaiting the postman just in case there was something from Timothy. I was so concerned to know if he had seen Leo again and, if so, how they were getting on. Besides I was worried about the boy lest he was unhappy, what with the troubles he had at home. 

Finally, to my surprise, a letter did come on the last day of the holidays. Timothy was such a dear boy. So well-mannered and thoughtful. He need not have written for I would not have minded at all and was indeed quite touched to think that he had bothered.

He thanked me for the supper at Joan’s, for the dreary little diary and told me that the Christmas holidays hadn't been too bad in the end. That was all. No mention of Leo.

I could hardly, I thought, write to Leo enquiring about Timothy. It might seem a little peculiar, particularly as I would be seeing Timothy as soon as term started. In any case Leo would probably never get round to answering my letter. Neither did it occur to me to telephone Leo. I think I would have been rather tongue-tied ringing him merely to ask after Timothy.

The next day, in the late afternoon, the boarders began to reassemble for the Spring Term. I was not sure whether Timothy would be coming on the school train from Paddington which would be met by a coach at 4.30, or if he would be coming down by car with his mother – or perhaps even with his father. I had the impression that he usually came back to school on the train.

At half past four I chanced to find myself sorting tapes in the language laboratory whose windows looked out over the car park where the coach from the station would be arriving.

Every so often, out of idle curiosity, I would stroll over to the window and glance out, just to see what was going on.

I was standing, with a pile of tapes in my hands gazing out across the yard at the red brick monstrosity beyond, which was the main school building, and wondering if it was going to snow, when all of a sudden, and with a panache not usually associated with Blenkinsop's, a brand new Porsche, as I later discovered it to be, swept up the drive and came to a sudden halt just below the window where I stood.

My spectacles were a little misty so I put down the tapes, took off my glasses and polished them on my skirt. I was quite amazed when I put them back on my nose to recognise the young man who stepped out of the driver's seat as my nephew, Leo. 

"Good Lord!" I thought on realising it was he. "What can be going on?"

Next the front passenger seat door opened and an extraordinarily elegant leg appeared, followed by another and Timothy's mother, clad in furs, emerged from the car.

"Where do we go now, darling?" I heard her piping tones.

Timothy himself was just clambering out of the back of the car, struggling with a duffle bag and a hockey stick.

"Well I never!" I thought to myself, and, with a sense of pique: "They might have told me!"

Leo glanced around him and, as he did so, I stepped back from the window not wishing to be seen by any one of them.

I watched as the three of them walked away across the yard towards the red brick monstrosity. Then I went and sat down at a desk. I took off my spectacles and leaned back in the chair, wondering what to do next. I decided that Leo would obviously want to see me and would be bound to call at my house, so I had better go home. I could not think why he had not warned me of his coming since he might easily have missed me altogether.

As soon as I reached my house I closed the curtains, stoked up the fire and tried to make the sitting-room as welcoming as possible. Outside it was bitterly cold.

I looked at my watch. It was half past five. I decided to make a pot of tea while I waited. Perhaps Leo would arrive in time to share it with me. I wondered if he would bring Timothy's mother and Timothy with him. He might well. I did not like the thought of Timothy's mother, but I have to admit that I was extremely curious to meet her.

By half past six no one had appeared. I thought that perhaps they had called earlier on their way to school, but imagined that, even if they had, they would be bound to come back again. I was beginning to feel restless. I had finished my tea a long time ago and didn't know what to do next. I fed Pansy. I tried distractedly to read the newspaper but found that I was hardly concentrating on anything I read, so I eventually turned on the television. Nothing there seemed to hold my interest.