You Must Be Sisters

  ‘Daphne well?’

  ‘Oh, fighting fit, Jock. You know Daphne, always on the go.’

  ‘Beats me how she manages it, what with her old mum and all.’

  She couldn’t bear it any longer. She took his hand and felt each of his fingers in turn, the nails, the tips. Wherever had she been as bold as this before?

  ‘Must be toddling.’

  ‘Rightio, Alec. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’

  Laura watched the two men leave. Despite herself she couldn’t help feeling fond of them, for hadn’t they shared this charmed space?

  ‘I’m starving,’ she said.

  Mac got her a hot pie with a dollop of brown sauce. ‘Aren’t you eating?’ she asked.

  ‘Plenty of protein in this.’ He held up his new brimming pint. She was to discover that he seldom ate, saving his energies for booze, cigarettes and when he was rich enough (which was seldom), hash.

  She munched her pie; he swallowed his beer. ‘Isn’t it funny,’ she mumbled between mouthfuls, ‘I don’t know anything about you. You might be an escaped convict for all I know. And you don’t know a thing about me.’

  ‘Doesn’t worry me. It’s nice like this.’

  ‘Oh, but I want to know all about you! Every detail.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He scratched his head. ‘I’ve got a rhinoceros skull; found it in a junkshop.’

  ‘Yes, but what about your parents, things like that? Do they live in Bristol?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Hmm.’ A silence. ‘Do you want to hear about me, then? I have two sisters and a dog.’

  ‘Wow, a dog.’

  ‘He’s all of ours, really.’

  ‘I like dogs.’

  On this pronouncement they got up to go. It was true; he wasn’t concerned with the things around and behind her, her past, her background. Only – for he was taking her hand and smiling at her – only with her. She hoped. How could she tell?

  It had turned into a mellow, sunny afternoon. They wandered through the streets, past terraces and crescents, and after a while found themselves outside the university buildings. Students were everywhere – emerging from the library, gossiping in the road, disappearing into the Berkeley Café. It surprised her, seeing them. How irrelevant they looked, as irrelevant as the fact, now she remembered it, of her double seminar this morning and practical this afternoon. How senselessly busy they seemed! They resembled the mice in the lab going round and round on their little wire wheels.

  Arm in arm, she and Mac left them behind. Down the hill of shops they wandered, and through the little park she had crossed only yesterday on her way to the clinic. Not yesterday, a hundred years ago. Passing some flowerbeds she asked: ‘Shouldn’t you be at work today?’

  ‘Yep.’

  He smiled at her, collapsed on the grass and, a neat package, rolled down the bank. He lay at the bottom, bundled up She went down and sat beside him.

  ‘I’m an artist, really,’ he said, his face still hidden. ‘An undiscovered genius. You should see me masterpieces.’

  So he wasn’t just a gardener. There was much to discover. A chink opened; she glimpsed vistas.

  He lay back, hands behind his head, and gazed up. Suddenly she went cold.

  Had he just stopped like this because it was the end of their day? Was this charmed feeling, this timelessness, something that she alone felt? He looked so very self-sufficient lying there, gazing beyond her at the sky, the limbs she’d touched clothed now and no longer hers. Was this it; just his casual way of coming to a full stop?

  He wasn’t moving; it was late, the sun slanted across the grass. She didn’t know whether to move or not, and sat gazing at a nearby bush which was already sprouting; on its branches veined bundles had split, and from them hung tassels and damp young leaves. Painfully green, those leaves.

  Just then he got to his feet, looked around, stretched and started walking away from her. Her heart froze.

  But now he was stopping beside the bushes and stooping down. Picking something up, then something else.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she called.

  He straightened up. In his hand she could see a bunch of sticks. ‘Nicking some kindling,’ he called. ‘Don’t want to freeze tonight, do we?’

  He filled his arms with sticks, and then straightened up again. ‘Why are you smiling, my sonner?’

  Then he smiled too.

  thirteen

  ONCE SHE’D BECOME a teacher, Claire thought that her childhood feelings towards school would change. But after a whole year there was still that same mixture of dread and excitement, mostly dread, that settled on her as she walked through the gates each morning, through the entrance hall and into those chilly corridors that smelt of disinfectant and murmured with the hum, always the hum, of children. Metaphorically, she could hear the gates clanging shut behind her, closing her into this big grimy building. Behind walls, scuffling feet, the sudden mass scraping of chairs and the single sad note of a piano.

  There was the childhood feeling, too, of being in a different world, sounding differently, smelling differently, even divided differently, with its five periods before lunch and three after, from the outside world. All sealed in. Ordinary outside sounds, street sounds, lorries changing gear as they turned into Clapham Junction, the hoarse chant of the Evening Standard mid-day edition man, motorbikes revving up outside the Honda showrooms – all drifted into the classroom with a peculiarly intense normality, rather as they drift into the windows of a sick room. Lost, weekday world. When at lunchtime she crept out, as she sometimes did, for a bar of chocolate, she felt the thrill of the truant in this place of housewives and noisy cars, a place which, in her non-school hours, she took so amazingly for granted.

  And, most simply of all, once she was inside school she never had time to think of anything else. Even Geoff – it was four days since the Eastbourne outing and still he hadn’t phoned – even Geoff could only be dwelt on in a snatched moment as, with the other teachers, she paused in the Staff Room at nine o’clock. Once she was in the classroom signing the register –

  ‘Please miss is that a new sweater miss?’

  ‘Please miss it’s ever so nice. Did yer buy it down at Dawlins miss?’

  ‘Miss! Clive’s pinched all me crisps!’

  Desk lids banged, chairs scraped, children shouted, and underneath it all was the furtive rustle of sweet bags. Poor stammering Victor sidled up, urgent with words, but she couldn’t hear.

  ‘SHUT UP!’ she yelled, helplessly watching desks being pulled across the floor. Every night the cleaners made them symmetrical; every morning they were ruthlessly shoved into the same groups, the same faithful huddles – Roy, Clive and Kevin’s huddle, Tracy, Susan and Maureen’s huddle.

  ‘Look what I’ve brought miss. Special for you miss.’

  ‘Miss ’e won’t give ’em back. ’E’s eatin’ ’em miss!’

  ‘Please miss you’ve got a ’ole in yer tights’.’

  ‘ONE AT A TIME!’ she yelled.

  She was still trying out new theories because that was what teachers were supposed to do and anyway she was only just out of college. Occasionally still, in backward flashes, she caught glimpses of those intelligent seminars. Occasionally.

  ‘Today,’ she said to her first class; they were twelve-year-olds, ‘today we’re going to have slow-worms.’

  It was an idea she remembered from one of those seminars, and probably wouldn’t work. Those sorts of ideas, she was discovering, didn’t. Still, as a teacher of English shouldn’t one try? Words, sensations, communication, that sort of business. They were always going on about that in those seminars.

  She’d brought the slow-worms in from the biology lab where they spent their days lying lethargically underneath their vivarium straw. The biology master had been surprised and then gallant when she’d asked for them.

  ‘I beg your pardon. Did you say you were going to handle them?’ Then he’d rallied. ‘Well, Miss Jenkins, it’s nice to see on
e of the lady teachers with a bit of spirit.’ He lived a lonely life amongst his fauna and test tubes.

  She looked at the expectant faces. ‘Now, I’m going to give them out. There are only four, and I want each of you to feel them, so don’t hold them for too long.’ She looked at them brightly. ‘Really feel them. Close your eyes. Are they smooth or rough, warm or cold, hard or soft? Then pass them on – gently – to your neighbour.’

  She held out the limp amphibians. Hands grabbed. One boy, chin jutted, snatched the nearest and pushed it down Maureen’s neck.

  ‘Clive!’ Claire shouted. Maureen screamed. It dropped down her dress and out at the bottom. Six boys lunged for the floor.

  ‘Gently, I said!’ Hector, author of Jap Doom, picked up the slow-worm and took it to his desk. She could see him carefully taking out his penknife.

  ‘HECTOR!’

  Goody-goody Jonathan, author of My Hamster, glanced at her, understood and scrambled across to rescue it. Shrill-voiced, the familiar sweat breaking out, she groped from child to child. Easier with old theories. Definitely easier. ‘Just feel them!’

  Really, she thought, with my subtle ideas it’s like trying to cover a volcano with tissue paper … or tying a bull down with cobwebs … or …

  She sat down heavily. Curiously enough, as so often happened, the children suddenly all subsided too and started looking quite thoughtfully at the slow-worms. She leant back in her chair.

  And at that moment there was a tap at the door and on the threshold stood Geoff.

  GEOFF.

  She stared. Her heart lurched.

  He stood there, hesitating. She jumped to her feet. In a flash she thought Am I wearing one of my dowdy schoolmistressy outfits today?

  Thirty pairs of eyes were glued on her; four slow-worms dangled, forgotten. She felt a blush spreading as she made her way to the door.

  ‘Come outside,’ she murmured to him, and closed the door behind them. ‘Fancy seeing you here!’ Her voice sounded quite calm, really; calm and confident, she thought. ‘No one ever visits me at school.’

  ‘How are you?’ he asked. He really was extraordinarily handsome. ‘I happened to come by this way so I thought I’d give you a surprise.’

  ‘You did.’ Soon she’d start trembling or something silly.

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ he said. ‘How about coming out on Saturday?’

  She controlled her face. ‘Oh, that would be lovely!’ Then she remembered. ‘Oh, bother. What a bore. Holly. She’s got a long weekend home and I said I’d take her to “Twelfth Night”. It’s one of her set books, you see.’ Heavens, he must be sick of Holly.

  ‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘Well, I must say, I wouldn’t mind seeing some Shakespeare myself.’

  ‘Ah, why don’t you come, then?’ She was trembling now.

  ‘Would you mind? I mean, would I be butting in?’

  ‘Geoff! Of course not!’

  Admonishing him like that suddenly relaxed them; perhaps it was the use of his name. They both smiled and then they hovered. Unthinkable to touch in this echoing corridor, as unthinkable as in church. Yet some sort of gesture seemed essential. So, surprising themselves, they shook hands.

  After its initial stunned silence the class had worked itself up into a busy hum. It stopped dead as she opened the door. In a deathly hush she walked back to her desk, thirty pairs of fascinated eyes fixed on her.

  She stood at her desk and after a moment remembered what she’d been doing. ‘Now!’ she said, with something of the old briskness. ‘How many of you have not touched the slow-worms yet? Put up your hands.’

  Silence. She met their multiple stare. No one moved. Then Roy, who was the boldest, spoke. ‘Who was that, miss?’

  ‘Who has not touched the slow-worms yet? Hands up, please. Come along.’

  ‘Is he your boyfriend, miss?’

  ‘Come along, hands up. Karen, have you held one?’

  ‘Are you going to marry him, miss?’

  ‘Gloria, have you?’

  ‘Are you, miss?’

  ‘Right. Everyone stay sitting except the four people with the slow-worms. Those four bring them up here. Quickly now! I haven’t got all day.’

  Three of them got up and came to her desk clutching their dangling slow-worms. ‘Where’s the fourth?’

  Blank looks. ‘Children, where’s the fourth?’

  Nobody seemed to know. They all started vaguely to look under their desks. She joined them, hunting around on the floor, trying not to listen to the words which, now they were bending down, they dared whisper to each other.… ‘I betcha they was kissin’; yer, betcha they was snoggin’ out there’ … ‘think he was givin’ ’er the old feel, you know, feelin’ ’er up?’ … ‘yer, ’course ’e was, you see ’er face when she comes back? Red as a bleedin’ brick, ’course ’e was touchin’ ’er up …’

  ‘Miss, here we are!’ It was Jonathan, always ready to oblige. He picked the slow-worm out of the wastepaper basket and carried it over to her, holding it in front of him as though it were going to burst into flames.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Jonathan!’ At moments like this goody-goodies were a support.

  It was not until four o’clock that she had a moment to think of Geoff, and by then it was difficult to believe he had come at all. The very incongruity of an outsider – let alone him – appearing within the high school walls lent the whole episode a dream-like air.

  Back in the Staff Room she sorted out her books against the usual chorus … ‘less bloody able, ha bloody ha’ … ‘motivation, motivation’ … ‘socially disadvantaged, ha bloody ha’ … ‘behind the counter at Woollies’ … ‘those IIIb’s, I ask you’ … ‘filling the dole queue’ … ‘not surprised, seeing his father’ … ‘that Roy, could anyone be like Roy?’ … ‘theories, theories’ … A chorus of monologues, identical but for the names of their villains. By four o’clock nobody listened to anybody else.

  Claire sat down for a moment. She heard nothing of the voices. The biology master approached her. ‘Well, Miss Jenkins, and how did you get along with my – ha, my charges?’

  ‘Oh hello!’ She focused. ‘Not too well, actually. I don’t think my lot is really up to them yet. Or perhaps I’m not.’

  He unlocked his cubbyhole and brought out his special tea-bags. His using them rather than the large staff canister spoke of many years of solitude; a bedsitter finickiness, a painstaking self-absorption. But today, due to his tenuous connection via slow-worms with Geoff, his dreariness fell from him. The other staff faded away; she was drawn only to him.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ she said warmly, ‘for letting me borrow them.’

  Walking down to the cloakroom she found that the injection of Geoff into the school had changed it; he had walked through the door, spoken to the secretary and then passed along this same corridor with its cream-above, chocolate-below walls. It was unsettling, how it had changed.

  Going past the boys’ cloakroom she saw a familiar group standing in a circle. From the noises, they were engaged in a belching competition. Roy, she could hear, was the best. He would be.

  In the staff cloakroom she shut the door behind her; the coats that hung on it rustled and swayed. In the mirror she inspected her face. All aglow, it was. Then she pulled on her woollen school-teachery beret she’d bought herself the day she’d heard her exam results. She paused, listened to the comfortable murmurings of the hot-pipes, thought for a moment of her utter joy, and opened the door.

  As she passed the boys’ cloakroom the belchings stopped and were replaced with perfect timing by unmistakable kissing noises. As she hurried up the corridor towards the outside world, towards that glimmering rectangle of daylight, they echoed behind her mockingly. Roy’s, she knew, would be the loudest.

  fourteen

  FAR FROM FINDING her a bore, Geoff actually found Holly rather a help. For a start she did most of the talking, so he didn’t have to think of anything clever to say as they sat waiting for ‘Twelfth Night’ to beg
in. Even though Claire was separated from him by the intent figure rustling through the box of chocolates he’d bought (90p, what a con!), somehow he felt much easier than if she’d been sitting next to him, touching. He might look relaxed; he was quite good at that. Someone once had even called him suave. Suave. But no one knew, of course, how very inadequate he so often felt underneath it. All in all, wooing was better with a sister there to loosen things up.

  ‘Do find me a coffee cream,’ Claire said to Holly, leaning towards the small bent head that was studying the chart like a gourmet studying the wine list. ‘I don’t want any dreary hard ones.’ She turned and looked at him with a dazzling smile. Lovely, she looked. ‘Perhaps you like hard ones. Can we fob you off with a nut crunch?’

  ‘My favourite,’ he said, and held out his hand. It wasn’t true of course, but how he wanted to fit in somewhere amongst those bent sisterly heads!

  ‘And a montelimar?’ asked Holly hopefully.

  ‘Yes please. I like that too.’

  ‘Wow,’ she said, turning to Claire. ‘He’s useful. Perhaps he likes the ones wrapped in gold stuff. Nobody likes them.’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘The harder the better for me.’ He examined the box with them. This was rather fun. Much better than saying ‘Er, do you think “Twelfth Night” the best of the comedies’, or something like that. ‘That looks like a hard one,’ he said.

  Claire laughed. ‘How convenient you are!’

  ‘And here’s another!’ he said.

  But just then the lights dimmed and they had to sink back into their seats. He lost sight of Claire.

  They were sitting in the front row because Claire’s father had insisted on paying for the tickets, and the curtain towered above them. Geoff took a breath. He must concentrate so that he could think of something original to say in the interval; it was difficult, because as far as he remembered he’d never actually seen any live Shakespeare. Not since school, anyway.

  ‘Look, there’s Viola!’ he heard Holly whisper to Claire. ‘Still looking like a lady.’

  ‘Isn’t she pretty,’ whispered Claire. ‘With her elfin face.’