Time of Hope (6 page)

When I was eleven, it was time that I was sent to the secondary school, if ever I were to go. There was no free place open for me, since my mother had not budged from her determination not to let me enter a council school. The fees at the secondary school were three guineas a term. My mother sat at the table, moistening a pencil against her lip, writing down the household expenses in a bold heavy hand; she kept the bills on a skewer, and none of the shopkeepers was allowed to wait an hour for his money; she had developed an obsession, almost an obsession in the technical sense, about debt. My father’s salary had only gone up by ten shillings a week since the war began. It was now 1917, the cost of living was climbing, and my mother was poor to an extent she had never known. Later I believed that she welcomed rationing and all the privations of war, because they helped to conceal what we had really come to.

She could invent no way of squeezing another nine guineas out of her budget. She had to turn it into shillings a week, for those were the terms in which she was continually thinking. ‘Three and eightpence about, it comes out to,’ she said. ‘I can’t manage it, Lewis. It means cutting out the Hearts of Oak, and then I don’t know what would happen to us if Bertie goes. And there will be other things to pay for beside your fees, There’ll be your cap, and you’ll want a school bag and – I don’t know. I’m not going to have you suffer by the side of the other boys.’

My mother swallowed her pride, as she could just bring herself to do for my sake, and went to remind Aunt Milly of her promise to pay for my schooling. Aunt Milly promptly redeemed it. Her husband was doing modestly well out of the war, and with the obscure comradeship that linked her to my mother she was concerned about each new sign of penury. But Aunt Milly found it hard to understand the etiquette my mother had elaborated for herself or borrowed from the shabby genteel. My mother would accept the loan of the maid, or ‘presents’, or ‘treats’ at my aunt’s house; she would have accepted more if Aunt Milly had been careful, but she could not take blunt outright undisguised charity. This ‘bit of begging’ – as she called it – for my fees was the first she had descended to since she was faced with the expenses of my brother Martin’s birth and her illness afterwards. Those would have crippled us entirely, and she let Aunt Milly pay.

Aunt Milly even spared my mother any exhortation when she agreed to find my fees. She saved that for me an hour or two later. She was never worried about repeating herself, and so she gave me the same warning as on the afternoon of my father’s bankruptcy, three years before. I was not to expect success. It was likely that I should have a most undistinguished career at this new school.

‘You’ve got too good an opinion of yourself,’ said Aunt Milly firmly and enthusiastically, with her usual lack of facial expression. ‘I don’t blame you for it altogether. It’s your mother’s fault for letting you think you’re something out of the ordinary. No wonder you’re getting too big for your boots.’

To the best of Aunt Milly’s belief, I should find myself behind all other boys of my age. I should, in all probability, find it impossible to catch up. Aunt Milly would consider that her money had been well invested if I contrived to scrape through my years at school without drawing unfavourable attention to myself. And once more I was to listen to her message. My first duty, if ever my education provided me with a livelihood, was to save enough money to pay twenty shillings in the pound on my father’s liabilities, and so get him discharged from bankruptcy.

I was practised in listening silently to Aunt Milly. Sometimes she discouraged me, but for most purposes I had toughened my skin. My skin was not, however, tough enough for an incident which took place in my first term at the new school.

Several of the boys there knew that my father had ‘failed in business’. They came from the same part of the town, they had heard it gossiped about; my father might have passed unnoticed, but my mother was a conspicuous figure in the parish. One of them twitted me with it, saying each time he saw me, ‘Why did your dad go bust?’ in the nagging, indefatigable, imbecile, repetitious fashion of very small boys. I flushed at first, but soon got used to him, and it did not hurt me much.

Curiously enough, until the incident of the subscription list, I was more embarrassed by the notoriety of no less a person than Aunt Milly. Her vigour in the cause of temperance was well known all over the town. During the summer she had organized a vast teetotal procession through the streets: it consisted of carts in which each of the Rechabite tents staged its own tableau, usually of an historical nature and in fancy dress, followed by the Templar lodges on foot and carrying banners. My aunt, and the other high officers, made up the end of the procession; wearing their ‘regalia’ of red, blue, or green, according to the order, with various signs of rank, something like horses’ halters round their necks, they sat on small chairs on a very large cart.

Like all Aunt Milly’s activities, the procession had been organized with extraordinary thoroughness and clockwork precision. But some of my form-mates who had seen it – perhaps some had even taken part – discovered that she was my aunt and decided that to have such an aunt was preposterously funny. I then found out that shame is an unpredictable thing. For I should have said that I could take any conceivable joke against Aunt Milly without a pang: in fact, I was painfully ashamed.

The incident of the subscription list took place in November, a couple of months after I first attended the school. Each boy in each form had been asked to make a donation to the school munitions fund. The headmaster had explained how, if we could only give sixpence, we should be doing our bit; all the money would go straight to buy shells for what the headmaster called ‘the 1918 offensive – the next big push’.

I reported it all to my mother. I asked her what we could afford to give.

‘We can’t afford much really, dear,’ said my mother, looking upset, preoccupied, wounded. ‘We haven’t got much to spare at the end of the week. I know that you’ve got to give something.’

It added to her worries. As she had said before, she was not going ‘to have me suffer by the side of the other boys’.

‘How much do you think they’ll give, Lewis?’ she inquired. ‘I mean, the boys from nice homes.’

I made some discreet investigations, and told her that most of my form would be giving half a crown or five shillings.

She pursed her lips.

‘You needn’t bother yourself, dear,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to have you feel out of it. We can do as well as other people.’

She was not content with doing ‘as well as other people’. Her imagination had been fired. She wanted me to give more than anyone in the form. She told herself that it would establish a position for me, it would give me a good start. She liked to feel that we could ‘still show we were someone’. And she was patriotic and warlike, and had a strong sense of wartime duty; though most of all she wanted me to win favour and notice, she also got satisfaction from ‘buying shells’, from taking part in the war at second hand.

She skimped my father’s food and her own, particularly hers, for several weeks. After a day or two my father noticed, and mildly grumbled. He asked if the rations were reduced so low as this. No, said my mother, she was saving up for the subscription list at school.

‘I hope you don’t have many subscriptions,’ said my father to me. ‘Or I expect she’ll starve me to death.’

He clowned away, pretending that his trousers had inches to spare round his middle.

‘Don’t be such a donkey, Bertie,’ said my mother irritably.

She kept to her intention. They went without the small luxuries that she had managed to preserve, through war, through the slow grind of growing poverty – the glass of stout on Saturday night, the supper of fish and chips (fetched, for propriety’s sake, by Aunt Milly’s maid), the jam at breakfast. On the morning when we had to deliver our subscriptions, my mother handed me a new ten-shilling note. I exclaimed with delight and pressed the crisp paper against the tablecloth. I had never had one in my possession before.

‘Not many of them will do better than that,’ said my mother contentedly. ‘Remember that before the war I should have given you a sovereign. I want you to show them that we’ve still got our heads above water.’

Under the gaslight, in the early morning, the shadow of my cup was blue on the white cloth. I admired the ten-shilling note, I admired the blue shadows, I watched the shadows of my own hands. I was thanking my mother: I was flooded with happiness and triumph.

‘I shall want to hear everything they say,’ said my mother. ‘They’ll be a bit flabbergasted, won’t they? They won’t expect anyone to give what you’re giving. Please to remember everything they say.’

I was lit up with anticipation as the tramcar clanged and swayed into the town. Mist hung over the county ground, softened the red brick of the little houses by the jail: in the mist – not fog, but the clean autumnal mist – the red brick, though softened, seemed at moments to leap freshly on the eye. It was a morning nostalgic, tangy, and full of well-being.

In the playground, when we went out for the eleven-o’clock break, the sun was shining. Our subscriptions were to be collected immediately afterwards: as the bell jangled, my companions and I made our way chattering through the press of boys to the room where we spent most of our lessons.

Mr Peck came in. He taught us algebra and geometry; he was a man about fifty-five who had spent his whole life at the school; he was bald, fresh-skinned, small-featured, constantly smiling. He lived in the next suburb beyond ours, and occasionally he was sitting in the tramcar when I got on.

Some boy had written a facetious word on the blackboard. Peck smiled deprecatingly, a little threateningly, and rubbed out the chalk marks. He turned to us, still smiling.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘the first item on the programme is to see how much this form is going to contribute to make the world safe for democracy.’ There was a titter; he had won his place long ago as a humorist.

‘If any lad gives enough,’ he said, ‘I dare say we shall be prepared to let him off all penalties for the rest of the term. That is known as saving your bacon.’

Another titter.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I don’t suppose for a moment that you want to turn what you are pleased to call your minds to the problems of elementary geometry. However, it is my unfortunate duty to make you do so without unnecessary delay. So we will dispose of this financial tribute as soon as we decently can. I will call out your names from the register. Each lad will stand up to answer his name, announce his widow’s mite, and bring the cash up here for me to receive. Then the last on the list can add up the total and sign it, so as to certify that I haven’t run away with the money.’

Peck smiled more broadly, and we all grinned in return. He began to read out the names. The new boys were divided into forms by alphabetical order, and ours ran from A to H.

‘Adnitt.’ ‘Two shillings, sir.’ The routine began, Adnitt walked to the front of the class and put his money on the desk. I was cherishing my note under the lid of the desk; my heart thudded with joyful excitement. ‘Aldwinckle.’ ‘Two and sixpence.’ ‘Brookman.’ ‘Nothing.’

Brookman was a surly, untidy boy, who lived in the town’s one genuine slum. Peck stared at him, still smiling. ‘You’re not interested in our little efforts, my friend?’ said Peck.

Brookman did not reply. Peck stared at him, began another question, then shrugged his shoulders and passed on.

‘Buckley.’ ‘A shilling.’ ‘Cann.’ ‘Five shillings.’ The form cheerfully applauded. ‘Coe.’ ‘A shilling.’ ‘Cotery.’ ‘Three shillings and twopence.’ There was laughter; Jack Cotery was an original; one could trust him not to behave like anyone else. ‘Dawson.’ ‘Half a crown.’ There were several other D’s, all giving between a shilling and three shillings. ‘Eames.’ ‘Five shillings.’ Applause. ‘Edridge.’ ‘Five shillings.’ Applause. My name came next. As soon as Peck called it out, I was on my feet. ‘Ten shillings, sir.’ I could not damp a little stress upon the ten. The class stamped their feet, as I went between the desks and laid the note among the coins in front of Peck.

I had just laid the note down, when Peck said: ‘That’s quite a lot of money, friend Eliot.’ I smiled at him, full of pleasure, utterly unguarded; but at his next remark the smile froze behind my lips and eyes.

‘I wonder you can afford it,’ said Peck. ‘I wonder you don’t feel obliged to put it by towards your father’s debts.’

It was cruel, casual, and motiveless. It was a motiveless malice as terrifying for a child to know as his first knowledge of adult lust. It ravaged me with sickening shameful agony – and, more violently, I was shaken with anger, so that I was on the point of seizing the note and tearing it in pieces before his eyes.

‘Let me give you a piece of advice, my friend,’ said Peck, complacently. ‘It will be to your own advantage in the long run. You’re a bright lad, aren’t you? I’m thinking of your future, you know. That’s why I’m giving you a piece of advice. It isn’t the showy things that are most difficult to do, Eliot. It’s just plodding away and doing your duty and never getting thanked for it – that’s the test for bright lads like you. You just bear my words in mind.’

Somewhere in the back of consciousness I knew that the class had been joining in with sycophantic giggles. As I turned and met their eyes on my way back, they were a little quieter. But they giggled again when Peck said: ‘Well, I shall soon have to follow my own advice and plod away and do my duty and never get thanked for it – by teaching a class of dolts some geometrical propositions they won’t manage to get into their thick heads as long as they live, But I must finish the collection first. All contributions thankfully received. Fingleton.’ ‘Two shillings, sir.’ ‘Frere.’ ‘A shilling.’

I watched and listened through a sheen of rage and misery.

At the end of the morning, Jack Cotery spoke to me in the playground. He was a lively, active boy, short but muscular, with the eyes of a comedian, large, humorous, and sad.