‘I want me and Tommy to get back together again. Kathy, will you help?’ Then she asked: ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I was just a bit surprised, after what’s happened. Of course I’ll help.’
‘I haven’t told anybody else about wanting to get back with Tommy. Not even Hannah. You’re the only one I trust.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Just talk to him. You’ve always had this way with him. He’ll listen to you. And he’ll know you’re not bullshitting about me.’
For a moment we sat there swinging our feet under our beds.
‘It’s really good you’re telling me this,’ I said eventually. ‘I probably am the best person. Talking to Tommy and all that.’
‘What I want is for us to make a fresh start. We’re about evens now, we’ve both done daft things just to hurt each other, but it’s enough now. Martha bloody H., I ask you! Maybe he did it just to give me a good laugh. Well you can tell him he succeeded, and the scores are all even again. It’s time we grew up and started afresh. I know you can reason with him, Kathy. You’ll deal with it the best way possible. Then if he’s still not prepared to be sensible, I’ll know there’s no point carrying on with him.’
I shrugged. ‘As you say, Tommy and I, we’ve always been able to talk.’
‘Yeah, and he really respects you. I know because he’s often talked about it. How you’ve got guts and how you always do what you say you’re going to do. He told me once if he was in a corner, he’d rather have you backing him than any of the boys.’ She did a quick laugh. ‘Now you’ve got to admit, that’s a real compliment. So you see, it’s got to be you to our rescue. Tommy and I were made for each other and he’ll listen to you. You’ll do it for us, won’t you, Kathy?’
I didn’t say anything for a moment. Then I asked: ‘Ruth, are you serious about Tommy? I mean, if I do persuade him, and you get back together, you won’t hurt him again?’
Ruth gave an impatient sigh. ‘Of course I’m serious. We’re adults now. Soon we’ll be leaving Hailsham. It’s not a game any more.’
‘Okay. I’ll talk to him. Like you say, we’ll be leaving here soon. We can’t afford to waste time.’
After that, I remember us sitting on those beds, talking for some time. Ruth wanted to go over everything again and again: how stupid he was being, why they were really suited to each other, how differently they’d do things next time round, how they’d keep much more private, how they’d have sex in better places at better times. We talked about it all and she wanted my advice on everything. Then at one point, I was looking out of the window towards the hills in the distance, when I was startled to feel Ruth, suddenly beside me, squeeze my shoulders.
‘Kathy, I knew we could depend on you,’ she said. ‘Tommy’s right. You’re just the person to have when you’re in a corner.’
What with one thing and another, I didn’t get a chance to talk to Tommy for the next few days. Then one lunch-time I spotted him on the edge of the South Playing Field practising with his football. He’d been having a kickabout earlier with two other boys, but now he was alone, juggling the ball about in the air. I went over and sat down on the grass behind him, putting my back against a fence post. This couldn’t have been long after that time I’d shown him Patricia C.’ s calendar and he’d marched off, because I remember we weren’t sure how we stood with each other. He went on with his ball-juggling, scowling with concentration – knee, foot, head, foot – while I sat there picking away at clovers and gazing at the woods in the distance that we’d once been so frightened of. In the end I decided to break the deadlock and said:
‘Tommy, let’s talk now. There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
As soon as I said this, he let the ball roll away and came to sit down beside me. It was typical of Tommy that once he knew I was willing to talk, there was suddenly no trace left of any sulkiness; just a kind of grateful eagerness that reminded me of the way we were back in the Juniors when a guardian who’d been telling us off went back to being normal. He was panting a bit, and though I knew this was from the football, it added to his overall impression of eagerness. In other words, before we’d said anything, he’d already got my back up. Then when I said to him: ‘Tommy, I can tell. You haven’t been too happy lately,’ he said: ‘What do you mean? I’m perfectly happy. I really am.’ And he did a big beam, followed by this hearty laugh. That was what did it. Years later, when I saw a shadow of it every now and then, I’d just smile. But back then, it really used to get to me. If Tommy happened to say to you: ‘I’m really upset about it,’ he’d have to put on a long, downcast face, then and there, to back up his words. I don’t mean he did this ironically. He actually thought he’d be more convincing. So now, to prove he was happy, here he was, trying to sparkle with bonhomie. As I say, there would come a time when I’d think this was sweet; but that summer all I could see was that it advertised what a child he still was, and how easily you could take advantage of him. I didn’t know much then about the world that awaited us beyond Hailsham, but I’d guessed we’d need all our wits about us, and when Tommy did anything like this, I felt something close to panic. Until that afternoon I’d always let it go – it always seemed too difficult to explain – but this time I burst out, saying:
‘Tommy, you look so stupid, laughing like that! If you want to pretend you’re happy, you don’t do it that way! Just take it from me, you don’t do it that way! You definitely don’t! Look, you’ve got to grow up. And you’ve got to get yourself back on track. Everything’s been falling apart for you just lately, and we both know why.’
Tommy was looking puzzled. When he was sure I’d finished, he said: ‘You’re right. Things have been falling apart for me. But I don’t see what you mean, Kath. What do you mean, we both know? I don’t see how you could know. I haven’t told anyone.’
‘Obviously I don’t have all the details. But we all know about you splitting with Ruth.’
Tommy still looked puzzled. Finally he did another little laugh, but this time it was a real one. ‘I see what you mean,’ he mumbled, then paused a moment to think something over. ‘To be honest, Kath,’ he said eventually, ‘that’s not really what’s bothering me. It’s really something else altogether. I just keep thinking about it all the time. About Miss Lucy.’
And that was how I came to hear about it, about what had happened between Tommy and Miss Lucy at the start of that summer. Later, when I’d had time to think it over, I worked out it must have happened no more than a few days after the morning I’d seen Miss Lucy up in Room 22 scrawling over her paperwork. And like I said, I felt like kicking myself I hadn’t found out from him earlier.
It had been in the afternoon near the ‘dead hour’ – when the lessons were finished but there was still some time to go until supper. Tommy had seen Miss Lucy coming out of the main house, her arms loaded with flipcharts and box files, and because it looked like she’d drop something any moment, he’d run over and offered to help.
‘Well, she gave me a few things to carry and said we were headed back to her study with it all. Even between the two of us there was too much and I dropped a couple of things on the way. Then when we were coming up to the Orangery, she suddenly stopped, and I thought she’d dropped something else. But she was looking at me, like this, straight in the face, all serious. Then she says we’ve got to have a talk, a good talk. I say fine, and so we go into the Orangery, into her study, put all the stuff down. And she tells me to sit down, and I end up exactly where I was the last time, you know, that time years ago. And I can tell she’s remembering that time as well, because she starts talking about it like it was only the day before. No explanations, nothing, she just starts off saying something like: “Tommy, I made a mistake, when I said what I did to you. And I should have put you right about it long before now.” Then she’s saying I should forget everything she told me before. That she’d done me a big disservice telling me not to worry about being creative. That
the other guardians had been right all along, and there was no excuse for my art being so rubbish …’
‘Hold on, Tommy. Did she actually say your art was “rubbish”?’
‘If it wasn’t “rubbish” it was something like it. Negligible. That might have been it. Or incompetent. She might as well have said rubbish. She said she was sorry she’d told me what she had the last time because if she hadn’t, I might have sorted it all by now.’
‘What were you saying through all this?’
‘I didn’t know what to say. In the end, she actually asked. She said: “Tommy, what are you thinking?” So I said I wasn’t sure but that she shouldn’t worry either way because I was all right now. And she said, no, I wasn’t all right. My art was rubbish, and that was partly her fault for telling me what she had. And I said to her, but what does it matter? I’m all right now, no one laughs at me about that any more. But she keeps shaking her head saying: “It does matter. I shouldn’t have said what I did.” So it occurs to me she’s talking about later, you know, about after we leave here. So I say: “But I’ll be all right, Miss. I’m really fit, I know how to look after myself. When it’s time for donations, I’ll be able to do it really well.” When I said this, she starts shaking her head, shaking it really hard so I’m worried she’ll get dizzy. Then she says: “Listen, Tommy, your art, it is important. And not just because it’s evidence. But for your own sake. You’ll get a lot from it, just for yourself.”’
‘Hold on. What did she mean, “evidence”?’
‘I don’t know. But she definitely said that. She said our art was important, and “not just because it’s evidence”. God knows what she meant. I did actually ask her, when she said that. I said I didn’t understand what she was telling me, and was it something to do with Madame and her gallery? And she did a big sigh and said: “Madame’s gallery, yes, that’s important. Much more important than I once thought. I see that now.” Then she said: “Look, there are all kinds of things you don’t understand, Tommy, and I can’t tell you about them. Things about Hailsham, about your place in the wider world, all kinds of things. But perhaps one day, you’ll try and find out. They won’t make it easy for you, but if you want to, really want to, you might find out.” She started shaking her head again after that, though not as bad as before, and she says: “But why should you be any different? The students who leave here, they never find out much. Why should you be any different?” I didn’t know what she was talking about, so I just said again: “I’ll be all right, Miss.” She was quiet for a time, then she suddenly stood up and kind of bent over me and hugged me. Not in a sexy way. More like they used to do when we were little. I just kept as still as possible. Then she stood back and said again she was sorry for what she’d told me before. And that it wasn’t too late, I should start straight away, making up the lost time. I don’t think I said anything, and she looked at me and I thought she’d hug me again. But instead she said: “Just do it for my sake, Tommy.” I told her I’d do my best, because by then I just wanted out of there. I was probably bright scarlet, what with her hugging me and everything. I mean, it’s not the same, is it, now we’ve got bigger.’
Until this point I’d been so engrossed in Tommy’s story, I’d forgotten my reason for having this talk with him. But this reference to our getting ‘bigger’ reminded me of my original mission.
‘Look, Tommy,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to talk this over carefully soon. It’s really interesting and I can see how it must have made you miserable. But either way, you’re going to have to pull yourself together a bit more. We’re going to be leaving here this summer. You’ve got to get yourself sorted again, and there’s one thing you can straighten out right now. Ruth told me she’s prepared to call it quits and have you get back with her again. I think that’s a good chance for you. Don’t mess it up.’
He was quiet for a few seconds, then said: ‘I don’t know, Kath. There are all these other things to think about.’
‘Tommy, just listen. You’re really lucky. Of all the people here, you’ve got Ruth fancying you. After we leave, if you’re with her, you won’t have to worry. She’s the best, you’ll be fine so long as you’re with her. She’s saying she wants a fresh start. So don’t blow it.’
I waited but Tommy gave no response, and again I felt something like panic coming over me. I leaned forward and said: ‘Look, you fool, you’re not going to get many more chances. Don’t you realise, we won’t be here together like this much longer?’
To my surprise Tommy’s response, when it came, was calm and considered – the side of Tommy that was to emerge more and more in the years ahead.
‘I do realise that, Kath. That’s exactly why I can’t rush back into it with Ruth. We’ve got to think about the next move really carefully.’ Then he sighed and looked right at me. ‘Like you say, Kath. We’re going to be leaving here soon. It’s not like a game any more. We’ve got to think carefully.’
I was suddenly lost for what to say and just sat there tugging away at the clovers. I could feel his eyes on me, but I didn’t look up. We might have gone on that way for a while longer, except we were interrupted. I think the boys he’d been playing football with earlier came back, or maybe it was some students strolling by who came and sat down with us. Anyway, our little heart-to-heart was at an end and I came away feeling I hadn’t done what I’d set out to do – that I’d somehow let Ruth down.
I never got to assess what kind of impact my talk with Tommy had had, because it was the very next day the news broke. It was midway through the morning and we’d been in yet another Culture Briefing. These were classes where we had to role play various people we’d find out there – waiters in cafés, policemen and so on. The sessions always got us excited and worried all at the same time, so we were pretty keyed up anyway. Then at the end of the lesson, as we were filing out, Charlotte F. came rushing into the room and the news about Miss Lucy leaving Hailsham spread through us in an instant. Mr Chris, who’d been taking the class and who must have known all along, shuffled off guiltily before we could ask him anything. At first we weren’t sure if Charlotte was just reporting a rumour, but the more she told us, the clearer it became this was for real. Earlier in the morning, one of the other Senior classes had gone into Room 12 expecting Music Appreciation with Miss Lucy. But Miss Emily had been there instead and she’d told them Miss Lucy couldn’t come just at that moment, so she would take the class. For the next twenty minutes or so everything had gone quite normally. Then suddenly – right in mid-sentence, apparently – Miss Emily had broken off from talking about Beethoven and announced that Miss Lucy had left Hailsham and wouldn’t be returning. That class had finished several minutes early – Miss Emily had rushed off with a preoccupied frown – and the word had started to go round as soon as the students had come out.
I immediately set off to look for Tommy, because I desperately wanted him to hear it first from me. But when I stepped into the courtyard, I saw I was too late. There was Tommy, over on the far side, on the edge of a circle of boys, nodding to what was being said. The other boys were animated, maybe excited even, but Tommy’s eyes looked empty. That very evening, Tommy and Ruth got back together again, and I remember Ruth finding me a few days later to thank me for ‘sorting it all out so well’. I told her I probably hadn’t helped much, but she was having none of that. I was most definitely in her good books. And that was more or less the way things stayed throughout our last days at Hailsham.
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
Sometimes I’ll be driving on a long weaving road across marshland, or maybe past rows of furrowed fields, the sky big and grey and never changing mile after mile, and I find I’m thinking about my essay, the one I was supposed to be writing back then, when we were at the Cottages. The guardians had talked to us about our essays on and off throughout that last summer, trying to help each of us choose a topic that would absorb us properly for anything up to two years. But somehow – maybe we could see something in the g
uardians’ manner – no one really believed the essays were that important, and among ourselves we hardly discussed the matter. I remember when I went in to tell Miss Emily my chosen topic was Victorian novels, I hadn’t really thought about it much and I could see she knew it. But she just gave me one of her searching stares and said nothing more.
Once we got to the Cottages, though, the essays took on a new importance. In our first days there, and for some of us a lot longer, it was like we were each clinging to our essay, this last task from Hailsham, like it was a farewell gift from the guardians. Over time, they would fade from our minds, but for a while those essays helped keep us afloat in our new surroundings.
When I think about my essay today, what I do is go over it in some detail: I may think of a completely new approach I could have taken, or about different writers and books I could have focused on. I might be having coffee in a service station, staring at the motorway through the big windows, and my essay will pop into my head for no reason. Then I quite enjoy sitting there, going through it all again. Just lately, I’ve even toyed with the idea of going back and working on it, once I’m not a carer any more and I’ve got the time. But in the end, I suppose I’m not really serious about it. It’s just a bit of nostalgia to pass the time. I think about the essay the same way I might a rounders match at Hailsham I did particularly well in, or else an argument from long ago where I can now think of all the clever things I should have said. It’s at that sort of level – daydream stuff. But as I say, that’s not how it was when we first got to the Cottages.
Eight of us who left Hailsham that summer ended up at the Cottages. Others went to the White Mansion in the Welsh hills, or to Poplar Farm in Dorset. We didn’t know then that all these places had only the most tenuous links with Hailsham. We arrived at the Cottages expecting a version of Hailsham for older students, and I suppose that was the way we continued to see them for some time. We certainly didn’t think much about our lives beyond the Cottages, or about who ran them, or how they fitted into the larger world. None of us thought like that in those days.