This Year It Will Be Different

  She didn’t need to tell Maggie why she did all these things. Maggie knew. And Maggie was a good friend, she never mentioned it. Not once, not even in the middle of her own air letters about teaching in the bush, about having killed a kangaroo and thinking everyone would be furious but in fact they had congratulated her; about how the school seemed to empty at sheep-shearing time, about Pete the fellow she had a De Facto with. De Facto meant a real proper live-in relationship, it counted if you wanted to become an Australian citizen.

  Maggie never inquired why Penny didn’t leave if it was all so wearying. Maggie knew about Jack. And she knew enough about Jack not to ask any questions about him. In the first days of the romance Penny had written flowingly about him, about the way Jack had come into her life, suddenly and surely. Knowing that he loved her, knowing that he needed her. Jack had been so sure of everything, Penny felt foolish in her doubts. Doubts about his being married for one thing, about his not leaving home, about his wanting to keep it all quiet.

  Jack loved everything about Penny that was funny, he said. Funny, lively, and free. She was so different from the predictable women who all came up with the same self-centered line over and over.… Penny felt that this line had something to do with wondering when, if ever, the man would be free. So that was a road which she had never gone down in the early days. She had sworn to him that she, too, wanted to be free, she couldn’t bear the idea of being tied down, she couldn’t change her horses in midstream now, she couldn’t suddenly, when she passed her quarter-of-the-century mark, tell this man that she wanted a little security. She had picked up Germaine Greer’s book The Female Eunuch and read again the chapter which said that there is no such thing as security. She willed herself to believe it, and refused to read any articles suggesting that Germaine Greer herself might have had a change of heart.

  Because of Jack’s position and the fact that he and his wife had to go out to a lot of functions, even though it was all meaningless, of course, and the smiles they had for the cameras were phony and empty … Penny could tell nobody about their relationship, about how he came to the little flat whatever evenings he could steal and how she had to be there most of the time just in case, and not complain on the many evenings that he had not been able to steal time. She had hinted a little of that to Maggie at the start, but Maggie, secure in her De Facto, had been too kind to pursue it. Maggie had simply said that if you loved someone you did, and that was it. You took the package. You couldn’t break down the kit and reassemble it, much as she would like to reassemble Pete without his insatiable thirst for ice-cold beer! It had been heartening, and Penny hugged the notion to herself when things were bleak, which was more and more of the time.

  There had been three years of Christmas Days of loving Jack, and now a fourth was upcoming. They had been the saddest days of her life. Sitting watching gleeful television shows, telephoning her mother and stepfather miles and miles away, assuring them she was happy and thanking them for all the gifts. Fingering whatever scent bottle Jack had given her, and waiting all the time until he could steal the minutes. Last year he had only come for a quarter of an hour. He had pretended he needed to pick something up from his office, he said. The children had insisted on coming, he had left them in the park to play. He couldn’t stay.

  She had cried for two hours after he had gone. She had put on her dark raincoat and walked past his house later in the afternoon. It was full of lights and Christmas trees and cards on the wall, and mistletoe on the light. Who was that for? The children were too young. But don’t ask him. Never let him know that she had seen it.

  It had been so very lonely that this year she had decided to go away. To somewhere where there was sunshine, and preferably no Christmas. Morocco she had thought of, or Tunisia. Somewhere Moslem and warm. But Jack had been appalled. Hurt and even a little shocked.

  “You must think very little of me, and how I have to go through this facade if you just run away,” he had said. “We could all do that … run away from things. I thought you loved me and that you would be here. Have I ever failed to come and see you at Christmas? Answer me that.”

  Penny realized it had indeed been selfish of her. But now that it was the season of fuss and school hysteria, now that the shops had been playing Christmas songs for weeks already and her eyes felt tired from looking at so many pictures of domestic bliss, Penny wished that she had been firmer, wished that she had told Jack in level tones without any catch in her voice that going away for eight days did not mean an end to the love that had consumed her for almost four years and would continue to be the center of her being forever. She should have been strong enough, and found the words that didn’t make it look like a gesture, a hurt little reaction.… Something from the I-can-stand-on-my-own-feet brigade. But now it was too late. He was going to take her to supper on Christmas Eve, in a new place, very simple, no one he knew or his wife knew would go there. It sounded like a cafe from what he said, Penny thought glumly. She could imagine herself having sausage and beans and a nice cup of milky tea.

  Still, it was better than … She stopped and racked her brains to think what it was better than. She looked over at Miss Hall, fifty-five possibly, same old jumper and skirt for years and years, same old shabby briefcase, sitting tucked away in a corner reading her newspapers, face gray, hair gray, outlook gray. Yes, it was much better than being Miss Hall, with her big house that must have been worth a fortune in the square and her lack of interest in anything except being left alone with her precious papers. Penny often wondered what, if anything, she ever read in them, she seemed to have no interest in current affairs, in politicians or in gossip columns. She had not been seen doing crosswords.

  There was a knock on the staff room door, it was Lassie Clark. Lassie was one of the pupils that Penny liked least, a big sulky-looking girl with hair deliberately arranged so that it covered most of her face. She had a way of shrugging her disapproval and boredom without even seeming to move her shoulders. Without bothering to move the curtain of hair that hid her eyes and mouth, Lassie muttered that she had been told to report here at three-thirty.

  “What was it for this time?” Penny asked. Lassie was one of the familiar faces reporting because of essays not done, excuses not given in by parents, homework unfinished.

  “Don’t know,” Lassie said. “Something about an old school pageant, I think. Or else it was something else.”

  Penny longed to give her a good hard smack. She must remember to tell Maggie in her next letter that teaching in an all-girls school, working in an all-female staff room, was definitely not natural. It made you mad, sooner rather than later. And in Penny’s case, now.

  She controlled her urge to attack the girl.

  “How old are you, Lassie?” she inquired, her voice overpleasant.

  Lassie looked out from the mane of hair suspiciously, as if this were a trick question.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Come on now, it’s not one of the hard ones.”

  “I’m fifteen,” Lassie admitted without any pleasure.

  “Good, well by that age I’m sure you know what you were asked to report here about, was it the bloody pageant or was it some other goddamned thing. Say which it was and don’t have us all here all night.”

  Lassie looked up in genuine alarm. The teacher seemed to have lost control.

  “It was the bloody pageant,” she said with spirit, knowing she could hardly be corrected about the word since the teacher had used it first.

  “Well, what did you do? Not go to rehearsal?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a fool you are! What a stupid, foolish girl who can’t see further than her own foolish face. Why didn’t you go to the rehearsal and get shut of it? Now you have to stay in and spend a half an hour in the classroom writing for no reason, and they’ll be looking out for you tomorrow, and they’ll probably insist you dress up as a shepherd or an angel or something. Why the hell couldn’t you have just gone along with i
t and stood there like the rest of us have to year after bloody year just because it’s easier.”

  Penny had never seen Lassie’s eyes before—they were quite alert, interested and frightened at the same time.

  “I suppose so,” she said grudgingly.

  “You can be sure of it. Right, come on, it’s my day to take all the rebels, the burning young women protesting against the system.”

  “What?” Lassie asked, confused.

  “Forget it. I’m as bad as you are. I’ll see you down in the hall.”

  She went back into the staff room to collect her books and saw Miss Hall. The older woman was looking out of the window at the wet branches.

  “Sorry for that outburst,” Penny said.

  “I didn’t hear you. What happened?”

  “Oh, I shouted at Lassie Clark,” Penny explained.

  “I wonder why her parents had a child if they wanted a dog,” Miss Hall said unexpectedly.

  “Perhaps she made it up herself as a name.”

  “No, she was always called that, for the last nine years anyway. I remember when she was in Juniors thinking how silly it was.”

  Penny was surprised. Miss Hall wasn’t noted for remembering anything about the children.

  “Lord, but she’s a troublesome child anyway, no matter what she’s called,” Penny said. Her voice was down and unlike her normal cheer.

  “It’s just Christmas,” said Miss Hall. “It brings everyone down. If I had my way I’d abolish it totally.”

  Penny, who had been feeling precisely the same way, didn’t think she could agree.

  “Oh, come now, Miss Hall, it’s lovely for the children,” she said.

  “It’s not lovely for people like Lassie,” Miss Hall said.

  “Nothing would please her, spring, summer, autumn, or winter.”

  “I think Christmas is particularly hard, we have such high expectations, and it never lives up to them.”

  “You sound like Scrooge,” Penny said with a smile to take the criticism out of her voice.

  “No, it’s true, whoever felt as happy on Boxing Day as on Christmas Eve? Child or adult.”

  “That’s too gloomy.”

  “What about you, you’re a cheerful little soul. Since you came here you have always been able to see the bright side, even when there is no bright side. But isn’t it true what I say? You will have a happier day before Christmas looking forward, than after it looking back.”

  Penny had never had a conversation like this with the crabbed Miss Hall before. Definitely Christmas brought out if not the best in people, at least something different.

  “Funnily enough, in my case Boxing Day will be better, because then Christmas will be over and I won’t have to sit on my own worrying and waiting for it to be over. But I do take your point for other people.”

  Miss Hall’s eyes rested on her, and she thought she saw tears in them.

  Penny had been so brave for years that she bristled at the thought of pity or even a hint of sympathy. “No, no, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me,” she said hastily.

  “I don’t have time to feel sorry for you, Penny, I feel so sorry for myself there isn’t room for anyone else in my sympathy.”

  The older woman looked so wretched that Penny, with her hand on the door and about to leave to supervise those girls who had been kept in after school, paused.

  “Is there anything I could do …?” She was hesitant. Miss Hall was always so sharp and caustic. Even now, having admitted she felt miserable, she would surely somehow turn against any warmth that might be offered to her.

  But Miss Hall looked not her usual confident self, she looked as if she were teetering on the brink of saying something, of giving a confidence.

  “No … thank you … you are very kind to ask. But it’s not something anything can be done about really.”

  “Something can be done about everything,” Penny said with false cheer, as if she were talking to a child.

  “Then why can’t you do something about your Christmas and make it a day to be happy about instead of sitting wishing it was over?” The old teacher spoke with concern, not with malice. There was no way the question sounded offensive.

  “I suppose because, in my case, there are things I don’t want to change. And I have to take what goes with my having made this choice.”

  “Yes, that’s reasonable, if you know it’s something you can cure by choice, then I agree you’re right in saying that something can be done about everything.” Miss Hall nodded, as if pleased to have teased out the logic of the thing.

  “And in your case?” Penny felt very bold, as if treading on dangerous ground.

  “It’s not a matter of simple choice, there’s something I should have done years ago, or rather not done years ago. But let’s leave me for a moment. That poor sulky child, Lassie, I don’t suppose she has much choice.”

  “She could make herself a bit more pleasant,” Penny complained.

  “Yes, but it’s not going to affect her Christmas. Pleasant or unpleasant it will still be the same.”

  “How do you know?” Miss Hall had never been heard to speak a word about the children, as if they had no lives outside the school wall.

  “Oh, the usual way, through the gossip. Her parents are divorcing, her mother is already pregnant by the new chap, her father has already moved into a flat with his girlfriend. The last thing any of them want for the festive season is the big gloomy face of the child they called Lassie lurking around them.”

  “So what’s she going to do?”

  “What can she do? Demand as much attention in each place as she can, make them all feel miserable and guilty. That looks like the form. No amount of being charming is going to bring about what she really wants, which is her old home back again as it was. Solid and safe.”

  There was such sympathy in Miss Hall’s voice, such understanding. Penny dared to speak again of personal things.…

  “I am on my own at Christmas, as I told you. If there’s any way I could come and see you or meet you … or …” She couldn’t ask the woman to her flat in case she would be there when Jack found his stolen half hour. He would be speechless with rage to find an old schoolmarm on the premises. But at least she could offer to go to the old woman’s huge terraced house later in the evening, when Jack had gone back to what she considered the bosom of his family and what he described as an empty charade which he had to stay in for the sake of the children until they were old enough to understand.

  “No, no, you are very kind.”

  “You said that already. Why not? Why can’t I come?” Penny sounded bad-tempered now.

  “Because I won’t be there. My house is no longer mine. It has had to be sold.”

  “I don’t believe you. Where are you living now?”

  “In a hostel.”

  “Miss Hall—is this a joke?”

  “It would be a very unfunny one if it were.”

  “But why? That was your home for ages I heard, your father and grandfather lived there. Why was it sold?”

  “To pay my debts. I’m a gambler, a compulsive gambler. I would like to say I was a gambler, but like alcoholism, we must always use the present tense.”

  “You can’t live in a hostel … forever.”

  “I may not have to. When the sale of the house is completed I shall probably have enough to get myself something small.”

  “But how terrible for you. I had no idea.”

  “No, nobody has any idea, nobody except my group … you know, the support group, and of course the people I owe money to, they know only too well. It would be disastrous if at this stage the school were to know. I don’t think the Head would extend a great deal of seasonal charity and understanding, I’d much prefer if she weren’t to find out.”

  “No, no, of course,” Penny gasped.

  “There can always be some cover story about my selling the house and the pictures, and all the lovely furniture because it was too big for me, too
much to manage.”

  “Was it horses or cards, Miss Hall?”

  Miss Hall smiled. “Why do you ask?”

  “I suppose it’s all so unlikely, and I wanted to keep the conversation sort of down to earth rather than getting upset on your behalf.”

  Miss Hall approved of this. She gave a wry sort of smile.

  “Well, to make it even more unlikely still, let me tell you it was chemin de fer.”

  “In a club?”

  “Yes in a plush club an hour’s journey from here by train. Where nobody knows my name. Now you’ve heard everything.”

  Penny realized that she must leave. This minute.

  There were no parting shots. No sympathetic reassurances. Just close the door behind her.

  In the hall, sitting sulkily at her desk, was Lassie. Alone.

  “Leave it and go home,” Penny said.

  “I can’t, I have to do it. You said yourself it was silly not to have gone to the thing, I’d better not be done twice.”

  “True. I just thought you might like to get home.”

  “No point really, no one there,” Lassie said.

  “Like me,” Penny said with a grin.

  “Yeah, but you chose it, and you’re old.”

  “No, I didn’t choose it, and I’m not old.”

  “Sorry.” Lassie managed a half smile.

  “Get on with it then, I’ll just think something out.”

  Penny sat in the big classroom they used as a detention hall. In front of her Lassie Clark struggled with a page and a half of essay, “Changes in the Neighborhood,” which nobody would read once it was written. Its only function was to be a punishment.

  Penny thought about her mother and stepfather and how it was too late now to come home to them for Christmas even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. It would startle them, it would bring back too many memories of the house when Daddy was alive, when she had been a little girl, when there were no problems ahead.

  It was too late to go on the trip to a country where there would be no Christmas, only swimming pools and palm trees and buffets in the sun.