The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (8 page)

Go now.

He puts the compositions back in the folder unmarked and leaves at a brisk walk. His car, a fifteen-year-old VW Beetle convertible, starts first time, by no means a courtesy he can presume upon, and he takes this as a good omen. Out onto the lethal main road with its long straight where drivers accelerate and overtake and die. Off again at the defunct petrol station and down the lane into the village of Glynde where he lives. Mrs Temple-Morris coming out of her front door as he emerges from his car.

‘You’re home early, Alan.’

‘Just to check the post.’

‘Oh, the post. It’s all bills these days. I leave all that to David.’ She raises heavily-pencilled eyebrows, delivers a secret smile. ‘Not that he ever makes himself useful.’

She sashays off to drive into Lewes to buy the evening meal for the husband who comes home late and leaves early and plays golf all weekend. Fifty if she’s a day and still flirting like a teenager.

He pushes open the door to the small terraced house, feels the resistance of the mail heaped on the mat. The hall is dark, as surprised as Mrs Temple-Morris to see him at this unconventional hour. He stoops and gathers, moves on into the kitchen, heart pounding. Turns on the kitchen light, the daylight outside dull with cloud. The latest
TLS
, a phone bill, a brochure for discount sofas. And a white envelope with a typed address. This could be it. Has to be it. He opens the envelope at once, ripping the sealed flap with a decisive stroke of his index finger, and takes out the folded sheet of paper within.

The first glance reveals the red logo on the top right. Now that all doubt is ended and he knows he holds his future in his hands he is overwhelmed by fear.

Let it be over. Whatever the verdict let it slide into the past and its power to hurt me be furred over by time. Assume the worst. Reach beyond rejection. Refuse to be defeated.

He turns the sheet of paper so that its typed face is away from him and holds it up to the light. In this manner the words are filtered by the paper’s thickness, and they run backwards, so that the sense will reach him in fragments.

The puzzle has its value. To crack the code is to win. In this way he draws the sting of the waiting words.

command of language

reluctantly

Faster than conscious thought he constructs the sense of the letter from four words. A little praise as an anaesthetic, then the knife.

reluctantly

Well what did I expect who said it would be easy? I will not let this defeat me. I will persist.

Oh but it would have cost them so little to believe in me and for me it would have been the breath of sweet life itself

reluctantly

The dull clog of disappointment forms round his heart or maybe his lungs. He feels breathless. Everything now takes a little more effort. Tiredness rising up within him. How long must I endure? For I am bound upon a wheel of fire.

Oh give it a rest. It’s only a radio play, only a shot at finding a patron and a public. Plenty more fish in the sea. But only one sea. Only one sea.

reluctantly

He turns the paper over, looks first at the signature. Lorraine Jones, Script Editor, Radio Drama. Then he scans the letter with extreme rapidity. My colleagues and I. Considerable ingenuity. Impressive command of language. Lacks the dramatic quality. Reluctantly concluded.

Who are you to reluctantly conclude, Lorraine Jones? Just a pushy little graduate eager to show your editorial skills to your boss so you can get promoted out of the crap job you’re in writing fuck-off letters to sad no-hopers and move up into the sweeter air where the real writers live and breathe.

Oh but I had hoped I had hoped I had hoped so much what do I do now what now?

Read the letter. Can’t get any worse.

Dear Alan Strachan.

Thank you for sending us your play
Tunnel
. My colleagues and I have now read it, and while we were struck by the considerable ingenuity of the central concept, and by your impressive command of language, we felt that the piece lacks the dramatic quality that makes for compulsive radio listening. Therefore we have reluctantly concluded that it is not for us. If you wish to have your manuscript returned please send a stamped addressed envelope to the above address in the next fourteen days.

Yours sincerely

Lorraine Jones,

Script Editor, Radio Drama.

Right, then, fourteen days and you bin it. Go ahead. What do I care? I’ve only been getting up at six in the morning to steal two hours before the working day for the last six months to refine my impressive command of language so that I can write something real and strong and true, and to hell with you all it’s good, I know it’s good, I know it’s better than good. How dare you tell me it lacks dramatic quality? Would you tell Harold Pinter his work lacks dramatic quality? Dear Mr Pinter if you wish to have your manuscript returned please send a stamped addressed envelope in the next fourteen days.

I had hoped I had hoped

* * *

He pulls the front door shut behind him and drives back to school, the letter folded in his breast pocket. The classroom still empty as he left it, pretending nothing has changed. Only five minutes of break remain. He has not marked the Year Six compositions.

He sits down at his desk and takes out the next one. My Journey, by Jack Broad.

My journey was in a dream in my dream I had to go a long way on a path only the path was thin I had to walk very carfully soon I saw I was walking on the top of a wall there was a drop on both sides I was afraid I must walk on because it was my journey there were walls everywhere I didn’t know where to walk the drop frihgtened me it was so far down there were clouds there after a while I didn’t mind any more I liked walking on walls and below only clouds I thought if I fell off the wall the clouds would be soft but I didn’t fall

The boys and girls drift into the classroom in twos and threes. Alan Strachan looks up and crooks a finger at Jack Broad. The boy approaches.

‘Jack. Your composition. It’s about a dream.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Haven’t I told you before that there is nothing in the world more boring than telling other people your dreams?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘A psychoanalyst will listen to your dreams. But you have to pay him a great deal more than you pay me.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘How many full stops have you used in this composition, Jack?’

He holds the sheet of paper before the boy. The boy squints at it and seems to be counting in his head.

‘None sir.’

‘Is it all one sentence?’

‘No sir.’

‘No sir.’ Alan Strachan sighs, takes out his red marking pen, and writes on the bottom of the page,
You can do better than this.
He gives the composition back to the boy. The bell rings for the new period.

‘Alice. How do you start a new sentence?’

‘Capital letter sir.’

‘So why haven’t you done it?’

‘Don’t know sir.’

‘Do any of you hear a single thing I say to you? Am I talking to myself here?’

They stare back at him, mute but unthreatened. They have no respect, he knows it well enough. His job is to get them into the expensive schools that will equip them for a life of privilege, that’s what their parents are paying for. He’s only another kind of servant, like the nanny and the gardener.

Why must it be so hard? Why so lonely and so hard?

Life must go on

Reluctantly

10

The way he looked at me, thinks Marion Temple-Morris, easing her car round the tricky corner by the Trevor Arms. The way his eyes look and then look away, he wants to look but he daren’t look, it’s so sweet. But what can I do? David would get into one of his rages. He’d say it was all my fault, he’d say I’d led him on. Then it would be, ‘You do it to yourself, Marion. I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself, Marion.’ But I’ve done nothing to encourage him. These things just happen sometimes. No more than a crush, of course, he’s still almost a boy, but he’s lonely, anyone can see that. Curious the way he was coming in as I was coming out. You’d almost think he’d been waiting for me. Not that he’s anything but the perfect gentleman, which if I’m being honest is more than I can say about David.

In the Tesco car park there’s a space free in the row nearest the river, and not far at all from the store. Marion takes this as a good omen. Sometimes you have to walk miles bumping your trolley over uneven tarmac, dodging the incoming cars. Everyone lives in the hope of a newly vacated space near the set-down. Of course it’s silly to think this way but she does have a belief, call it a feeling, that there are good days and bad days. On the good days it’s as if the world is on your side. As for the bad days, well, we all know about them. We’ve heard quite enough about them, thank you very much, as David used to say.

She picks out one of the shallow trolleys. The deep ones are hard to unload, you have to bend right over to reach the bottom, and whoever needs that amount of shopping? Just an organic chicken breast, some broccoli perhaps, a bottle of Cinzano. A vermouth at the end of the day does no harm, though strictly speaking alcohol is not on the agenda. One must have one’s little pleasures or life wouldn’t be worth living.

Perhaps, she thinks, I should ask Alan over for supper one day. He lives in that house all on his own, heaven only knows what he eats, it would be a kindness to the boy. But what if he really is sweet on me? Would it be fair to show him what he might take to be encouragement? After all it’s not as if I can give him what he wants. The way he can’t even look at me, you can tell he’s got it bad. He must have been sitting in his car waiting until I came out of the house so he could jump out and pass me on the path. Such a tiny moment, you’d hardly think it was worth it, but of course it’s not how long it lasts, it’s how intensely you feel. People can fall in love in one second, bang, just like that. They meet and they know it. And what do you do then? Well, it’s tragic, really. Some people pine to death. Love is so rare. It’s like an endangered species, the nest of a rare bird where the hen-bird is sitting on a clutch of precious eggs. You have to protect it. You have to tread lightly as you go by, or the bird takes fright and then the eggs grow cold.

The woman in front in the checkout queue has a large family, to judge by the load in her trolley. Nobody seems to have told her that Coca Cola and Honeynut Cheerios are a kind of poison for her children. Also eating that sort of diet is far more expensive, which only goes to show that the working classes aren’t poor at all any more, just stupid, or perhaps I should say uneducated. But you can’t tell them. If I so much as tried to point out the dangers of such a high-fat diet the woman would abuse me, might even use obscene words. David did that once. He shouted an obscene word. I just stared at him, as if to say, So that’s how low you’ve descended. Then he said, ‘I can’t help you any more, Marion.’ This was news, that he’d been helping me. Yes, quite a news flash that was. Hold the front page, David cares about someone other than himself.

Alan is quite another breed. He has a gentleness, a sweetness, that is altogether unusual. If he does have a little crush on me I must be sensitive about it. A clumsy rebuff could dash his confidence for ever. It should be possible to respect his feelings without leading him to expect more than I can give.

No, I don’t want any cashback. Yes, I could have taken advantage of the Ten Items or Less checkout, but I’m in no hurry. David won’t be coming back until – well, truth to tell, I don’t even know. So if he’s away so much he could hardly blame me if I showed a little kindness to a lonely neighbour.