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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
Twenty-two brand new short stories which are guaranteed to delight fans and win the author many more. The indefatigable detective Inspector Sloan reappears in many of these stories with his sidekick Crosby. But there are also new characters to be met, such as the mysterious Malcolm Venables of the Secret Service. Full of delicious twists and turns, Last Writes is a collection to curl up with and savour.
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Seitenzahl: 307
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Last Writes
A Collection of Short Stories
CATHERINE AIRD
For Eilidh Macmillan Watkin with love
CONTENTS
LEFT, RIGHT, ATTENTION!
‘That you, Wendy? It’s Henry here. Look here, old girl, can I possibly come down to stay with you in Berebury for a few days?’
‘Of course you can, dear,’ said his sister, Wendy Witherington, without hesitation. ‘The children will be delighted to see you and I know that Tim will enjoy hearing how things are these days in London.’
‘Dire,’ groaned her brother, who worked at the Foreign Office. ‘Absolutely dire.’
‘Then a few days in the country will be very good for you,’ pronounced Wendy briskly. ‘A complete break is what you need.’
‘A complete break isn’t what I shall be getting,’ said Henry Tyler wryly. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to bring some work down with me. No choice, worse luck.’
‘Then don’t expect to do it until the children have gone to bed,’ said his sister practically. ‘They’ll never forgive you if you don’t spend some time with them.’
‘All I can say, Wen, is that their company will be a great improvement on that of some of the people with whom I’ve had to spend my time with lately.’ The upper echelons of the Foreign Office had no time these days for leisurely luncheons or even routine meetings. And hadn’t had ever since Germany had seized the Rhineland.
‘You do need a rest, don’t you?’ Wendy was his elder sister and thus felt able to comment freely. ‘Come down whenever you like.’
‘I’ll come down whenever I can,’ amended her brother in whom the pedantry of the Civil Service was deeply ingrained, even though civilised conversations with most of the ambassadors accredited to the Court of St James were now a thing of the past. ‘But I warn you now, I’ll have some work to do while I’m with you.’
‘Dispatches from foreign parts?’ said Wendy, who knew the term well enough but not what was really at stake in such diplomatic communications in the late 1930s – a notably tense time in European history.
‘You could call them that,’ agreed Henry, adding under his breath that it would be a great help if he could actually read and understand all of them. A capacity to read between the lines went without saying in the Foreign Office but being a linguist was no help with those communications that involved code-breaking.
‘Not Herr Hitler being difficult again?’ asked Wendy, whose understanding of the European political scene was decidedly sketchy.
‘I’m afraid so.’ For one glorious moment Henry envisaged a world in which a young Adolf Hitler had been brought up by his sister, Wendy, and taught his Ps and Qs as firmly as his nephew and niece had been. Considerably sustained by this happy – but alas – imaginary vision he went on ‘And my minister won’t forgive me if I come back to the office without our current conundrum having been solved.’
As he packed his weekend case and tossed his homework into it that Thursday evening, Henry had second thoughts about having used the word ‘conundrum’. ‘Puzzle’ might describe the copy of the typed sheet he was taking with him to Berebury better. Or even ‘riddle’. That it, whatever it was called, was very important indeed there was no doubt whatsoever.
True, that piece of paper in his case did technically fall under the heading of ‘Dispatches’ and was so described at the Foreign Office but it had not arrived in any diplomatic bag. The fact that the usual channels had not been used was only one of the things that underlined its importance.
Instead the message had reached London from continental Europe by a route so devious as to be unrecorded but known to involve a French abbé, a chorus girl coming home from a rather risqué engagement that had not met with the approval of the Third Reich and a somewhat hazardous exchange between anonymous patriots on fishing boats at sea.
The chorus girl had been already so scantily clad as to be considered not to merit further searching – as it happened a great mistake on the part of the authorities. And the soutane of the abbé had been similarly helpful in discouraging overenthusiastic rubbings-down. The fishermen smelt of fish and the sea and anyway no one knew that the message had reached them.
And now Henry had this precious piece of paper in his hands and could not read it.
Neither could the code-breakers at the Foreign Office, or even those at British Naval Intelligence’s celebrated old Room 40 of the Great War. That their departments were about to be considerably beefed up was no immediate help to Henry. It was no consolation either that various other assorted patriots had probably also risked life and limb to get the piece of paper to him. All that meant was that the message was important. It wasn’t something that he had ever doubted but it greatly added to his feeling of responsibility.
His sister, Wendy, duly met him at Berebury station and bore him off to a strenuous playtime with his nephew and niece. This was followed, after their bedtime, by a leisurely supper with his sister and her husband, Tim.
‘Things not too good in London, eh?’ surmised Tim Witherington, pouring Henry a generous nightcap.
‘Not good at all,’ admitted Henry. ‘Damned tricky, in fact.’
‘Not surprised,’ said his brother-in-law, whose limp dated from the March Retreat of 1918. ‘Even though you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.’
‘Of course, things are a bit different these days …’ Speaking in generalities was taught at the same time as speaking in tongues at the Foreign Office.
Tim Witherington started to knock out his pipe on the hearth, caught his wife’s eye and used an ashtray instead. ‘I can see that. More undercover, I daresay.’
‘More political, anyway,’ said Henry vaguely. There were those in France – and some said in England, too – who held what his minister called ‘doubtful views’. But who they all were in both countries was not always immediately clear – which was a big headache just now.
Wendy tactfully put an end to their conversation by putting her knitting down and getting out of her chair. ‘You’ll be wanting an early night, I’m sure, Henry. I’ve told the children to be extra careful not to wake you in the morning …’
It was an unnecessary warning. Henry had very little sleep anyway, having spent the night tossing and turning between bouts of staring at the scrap of paper and its short typewritten message. Bleary eyed, he stared at it once again in the morning and still made no sense of it.
NP AY YT FR BY LH WM RL BP QM LD SS UD TO AS RT LO RP ER BY UT WJ YO AD WA IY AR XY UP BS RT UD J
Henry Tyler didn’t come downstairs that morning until after the children were safely at school and Tim Witherington well on his way to his office in the little market town.
‘Coffee,’ ordained Wendy, taking one look at his face. ‘And toast.’
Wearily, Henry pulled a chair up to the table. ‘Thanks, Wen. Has the newspaper come yet?’
She handed it to him and waited while he scanned the headlines. ‘Nothing new,’ he said, laying it down beside his plate.
‘Is that good or bad?’ she asked.
‘You can’t really tell these days,’ he sighed. ‘That’s the trouble.’ He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt quite as tired as he did now.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can understand that but you’re really worried this time, aren’t you?’
‘All I’ve got to do this weekend,’ he responded lightly, ‘is break a code.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ she said calmly. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult. The children won’t be home from school until quarter past four.’
He laughed aloud for the first time in weeks. ‘That’s what you think, old girl.’
‘You mean you can’t do it?’
‘I do indeed mean just that.’ He was quite serious now. ‘I’ve been working on it for quite a while already. And I’m not the only one to have had a go.’
‘Can you actually read it? I mean, it’s not in numbers like that funny thing from Russia, is it?’
‘The Zimmermann Telegram and its threat of “unrestricted submarine warfare”?’ divined Henry without difficulty. ‘No. That was a series of numbers and numbers and it usually means you need a code book before you can decipher anything.’
‘Wasn’t that a fake, anyway?’
‘It was political,’ said Henry with feeling.
Wendy frowned. ‘So how do you know that what you’ve got isn’t, too?’
‘I don’t,’ said Henry. ‘It’s quite possible that it isn’t a genuine message, which, were we then to act upon it, it would mean that we would all be deep in the mulligatawny.’ He paused. ‘And people might die.’
‘And it’s not in hieroglyphics or anything like that, is it?’ said Wendy, ignoring this convolution.
‘Nor in Cyrillic,’ said Henry.
‘What the children say to that is “Nice work, Cyril”,’ said their mother.
‘Oh, I can read it all right,’ said Henry, smiling at last. ‘That’s not the problem. It’s typed.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why was your message typed? I mean, if it was urgent and private you’d think it would be handwritten. Typewriters make a fearful clatter. You can’t really be private about it.’ Before being swept off her feet by a young and handsome Tim Witherington, his sister had worked as a secretary in the offices of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, solicitors of Berebury, and thus knew about such things.
‘I’d never thought of that,’ he confessed. ‘I suppose it could actually have been written in an office if no one was watching what you were up to.’
Wendy knitted her eyebrows. ‘Do you know who it’s from? I mean, has it been written by one of those honest men sent to lie abroad for the good of their country?’
‘An ambassador?’ said Henry. Sir Henry Wotton’s definition of an ambassador as such was famous. ‘I doubt it. More likely, I’m afraid,’ he added gloomily, ‘it’s been written by a good man sent to die abroad for the good of this country – or even perhaps his country, which might not be the same thing.’
‘Current affairs aren’t very good just now, are they?’ she said quietly.
‘No.’ Henry shook his head. ‘Especially in France.’
‘La belle France,’ said his sister, who’d honeymooned in Paris.
‘The country is all right,’ growled Henry. ‘It’s the politicians who aren’t. You just don’t know where you are with them.’ Absently, he helped himself to some more coffee while he considered the likely consequences of showing the message to his sister and thus breaking the Official Secrets Act. If he did and anyone found out that he had done he’d probably be sent to the Tower – or worse still, lose his pension.
‘Politicians never are all right,’ said Wendy Witherington, thus summing up world history in a nutshell.
‘Look here, Wen,’ he said impulsively, ‘you were the confidential secretary to old Mr Nunnery, weren’t you?’
‘I was. For years. He was ever so upset when I got married …’
‘I didn’t mean that. I mean that you were used to handling very private matters in his office.’
‘Naturally,’ she said, bridling a little. ‘Do you mean did I ever tell anyone anything I shouldn’t? Because if so …’
‘No, no,’ he interrupted her hastily.
She gave a reminiscent smile. ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of people who tried to pump me about what was in old Mrs Wilkins’ will. All three nephews and that young girl she was so fond of.’
‘I do believe you, old thing. Where’s there’s a will, there’s a relative.’
‘And in the end when she died it all went to someone else.’
‘Served ’em right,’ said Henry.
‘This message,’ she said, deflecting him. ‘I thought that since e is the commonest letter, that you had to look for that first.’
‘You do if it’s in English,’ said Henry, who had been through this before in London.
‘Will it be in English?’ she asked.
‘It should be,’ he said carefully, ‘because I am hoping that it’s from an Englishman.’
‘Were you expecting it?’ asked Wendy Witherington intelligently.
‘Yes and no,’ he replied slowly. ‘You see, we have a number of our people established in strange places.’
‘What you call sleepers?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Don’t be silly, Henry. Everyone knows that.’
‘And that’s only all right if no one knows who they are …’
‘And only if they are all right,’ she said again.
‘That’s part of the trouble,’ he admitted. ‘If they aren’t all right, then we’re all in trouble.’
‘Especially,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘if you don’t know if they’ve been turned.’
‘Who have you been talking to?’
‘Me? No one, but I do read, you know.’
‘There’s something else,’ he said. ‘If they have been turned, we need to know exactly when.’
‘I can see that. So you have tried looking for the commonest letter in other languages, too?’
‘The one that’s most likely to be their equivalent of e, you mean? Yes, that’s all been done.’
‘And?’
‘There wasn’t any letter that stood out as being used much more than any other.’
‘That’s quite odd.’
‘That’s what they said in the office, too.’ Henry reached for the toast rack. ‘Apparently it’s the first thing the code-breakers look for.’
‘What about every fourth letter or something like that?’ she asked, automatically passing him the butter dish.
‘We’ve all done every second, third and fifth letter as well until we’re squiffy-eyed,’ said Henry, ‘and we still can’t make any sense of it.’
‘And put them in groups? Don’t they do that, too?’
‘They do,’ said Henry wearily, ‘and no, that didn’t work.’
‘What’s the next most popular letter in English after e?’ she asked.
‘Probably a,’ said Henry. ‘And, no, that doesn’t work either.’
‘Marmalade, dear? It’s home-made.’
‘I’d better enjoy it while I can,’ said Henry gloomily, helping himself to a good spoonful. ‘I doubt if you’ll be getting any Seville oranges next year. And not only because of the rain in Spain falling mainly on the plain.’
‘Poor Spain,’ said Wendy. ‘The news isn’t good from there either, is it?’
‘The news from nowhere is good,’ said Henry, consciously parodying Samuel Butler. ‘And Spain has its troubles, too.’ That they tended to compound those of the United Kingdom he left unsaid.
But his sister wasn’t listening. Instead a little smile was playing round her lips. ‘You won’t remember Mr Benomley, will you? He was the Chief Clerk at Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery …’
Henry shook his head, and gave his attention to the marmalade.
‘He was ever so fierce. He really frightened all of us in the office. Wouldn’t let us talk while we were working …’
‘Quite right, too,’ mumbled Henry, his mouth full of toast. ‘Young girls need keeping in order.’
‘So, when we wanted to say something to each other without him knowing, we would type the message in a code of our own and pass it over to the next typist.’
‘You did, did you?’ said Henry. ‘What if he saw what you’d written?’
‘We’d say it was only the office junior practising.’
‘Adding lying to deception,’ said Henry in mock solemnity. ‘Girls will be girls, I suppose. And what was this great wheeze of yours?’
‘We typed the next letter along to the one we meant.’
He stared at her, produced the message he’d been poring over most of the night and asked, half in fun, ‘So what letters are next to N and P?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘From memory M and N?’
‘That’s no good then.’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute. If it was the last letter on the line that we wanted to use, we would go back to the beginning of the line. That would make N mean M.’
‘And what about P?’
‘Oh, dear, that’s no good. That’s the last letter on the top row so you’d have to come back to Q at the beginning. “MQ” doesn’t mean anything.’ Wendy Witherington looked quite crestfallen.
‘Wait a minute, Wen. Suppose whoever typed this message knew this little game and was afraid other people might know it as well, what would he …’
‘Or she.’
‘Or she do to make it more secure?’
‘Well, she could alternate right and left, I suppose …’
‘Or left and right,’ said Henry, seizing a pencil. ‘Let’s see … Left first would still give us M, right would give us O, then it’s A and Y.’
‘That would give you S and T,’ said Wendy with growing interest.
‘That’s “most”…’ said Henry.
‘Stay where you are, Henry, and I’ll go and get my old typewriter.’
‘At least that’s an English word,’ said Henry.
‘Go on,’ she urged, as soon as she came back with an elderly Imperial machine.
‘Y and T,’ he said.
‘U and R,’ said his sister, scanning the keyboard. ‘I bet that’s going to be “urgent”.’
‘Quick,’ said Henry with mounting excitement. Forgetting all about the Official Secrets Act, he pushed the piece of paper in front of her. ‘Do these letters, too.’
It did not take her long. ‘Once a typist, always a typist,’ she said, hitting the keys, first to the left and then to the right of the letters on the paper.
Henry stood behind her, looking over her shoulder as a message appeared. He read aloud.
Henry pushed the marmalade to one side and made for the telephone in the hall.
He was back in minutes. ‘Sorry, Wen, but I’ll have to go straight back to London.’
She nodded her understanding.
‘Tell the children it was a case of “Left right, left right, attention …” and that I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
THE HARD LESSON
‘That was Brenda Murgatroyd ringing from the hospital,’ said Mrs Watson as she replaced the telephone receiver on its cradle. ‘It’s just as we thought. Poor Mrs Burrell has broken her wrist after all …’
The headmaster groaned aloud.
‘She’s been X-rayed and …’ finished the school secretary, ‘now she’s waiting to have a plaster put on.’
‘Go on,’ he urged. ‘Tell me how long …’
‘Brenda said that the Accident and Emergency Department is particularly busy today …’
‘How long?’ he asked again, running his hands through what was left of his hair.
‘Brenda reckoned they’d be at the hospital for another three hours at least for the plaster to be put on – let alone dry – and then she’ll have to take Mrs Burrell home before she comes back into school.’
The headmaster groaned again and pulled a copy of the school timetable across his desk towards him. He studied it for the dozenth time. ‘Mr Collins …’
‘Leading a school party over at the Greatorex Museum,’ said Mrs Watson. She cleared her throat and said, not for the first time, ‘If you remember Mrs Martindale and Mr Legge are with him there, too.’
The headmaster roundly anathematised all school visits.
‘Yes, headmaster,’ said Mrs Watson kindly, aware that it was the absence of staff from the school and not the presence of their pupils at the Greatorex Museum that was causing the problem today.
‘Mr Fletcher …’ said the headmaster with the air of a man clutching at straws.
‘Mr Fletcher is looking after all the lower forms which aren’t at the Museum,’ the secretary reminded him. ‘I don’t think there’s anyone else left in the school who could do that.’ She paused and added significantly, ‘Or would.’
‘Ms Dilnot?’ He suggested tentatively.
‘Certainly not, Headmaster.’ Mrs Watson pursed her lips. ‘Ms Dilnot would be a most unsuitable person to take Mrs Burrell’s Relationships class at the present time. Not only is she herself in an advanced state of pregnancy but I understand that it is quite widely known both in and out of the staffroom that she is not prepared to name the father of her baby.’
‘Really?’ said the headmaster. ‘She’s very pretty, too, of course.’
Mrs Watson said distantly that she didn’t see what that had to do with it and in any case that just left Miss Wilkins free to take Mrs Burrell’s Relationships class, which she was sure the headmaster has known all along, hadn’t he?
Miss Wilkins was the oldest member of his staff and quite the most strait-laced. It was a brave colleague who swore in the staffroom when she was there, let alone told a doubtful joke.
‘For two pins,’ he said wildly, ‘I’d take it myself.’
‘The governors would think there was something about their meeting that you wished to avoid, Headmaster,’ the secretary said at once. She looked out of the window at the car park. ‘And they’re already arriving for it.’
‘I’m afraid the governors would put an even worse construction on my absence than that,’ said the headmaster realistically. ‘They’re a worldly-wise lot. All right, ask Miss Wilkins to come and see me, will you? Although heaven only knows what Mrs Burrell’s class will say when they hear that it’s Miss Wilkins who’s going to take them for Relationships instead of her. If Miss Wilkins is prepared to do it, that is.’
‘I understand,’ said Mrs Watson astringently, ‘that Mrs Burrell’s class have already worked out that she’s the only member of staff free to take them this afternoon.’ Not being on the teaching staff gave the secretary better links with the politics of the playground than anyone else at the school except the caretaker.
‘They’re not slow at calculation when it suits them.’ A lifetime in teaching had turned the headmaster into a cynic.
‘I don’t know how Miss Wilkins will feel about it,’ went on the school secretary, ‘but I am told that they are positively looking forward to her taking the class.’
‘That must be a first,’ said the headmaster, a bitter man, too, by virtue of his profession.
‘Mathematics is not a subject that lends itself to popularity,’ said Mrs Watson moderately. ‘Not in the ordinary way – now “Relationships” is a different cup of tea altogether.’
‘Let us just hope,’ said the headmaster piously, ‘that they don’t try to teach Miss Wilkins anything that they know already and she doesn’t.’
Miss Wilkins accepted the assignment in her customary calm, neutral way. ‘Of course, Headmaster. I can quite see the difficulty. Poor Mrs Burrell. Naturally, I don’t know what she had in mind for today’s lesson …’
‘The prevention of teenage pregnancy seems high on everyone’s agenda these days,’ offered the headmaster, unusually tentative.
‘I take it you mean its avoidance?’
‘Yes, Miss Wilkins, of course I do.’ The headmaster seldom welcomed the arrival of the Chairman of the Governors as he did then. ‘Now, you must excuse me.’
If Miss Wilkins noticed the preternatural silence obtaining in the classroom as she entered she gave no sign of having done so. Nor did she react to the banana placed conspicuously on the desk before her. Instead, she regarded it for a long moment and then reached in silence for her handbag on the floor beside her. As she bent down, her head for a moment out of sight, a look of pure glee appeared on the face of he who had put the banana there, an unruly boy called Melvin. His boon companion, a gawky lad named Ivan, could not resist a titter. The girls remained quiet but watchful.
Miss Wilkins took something that was now in her hand and placed it on the desk beside the banana.
It was an apple.
‘I trust the symbolism of the fruit I have brought with me will not be lost on the class,’ she began in her usual hortatory manner. ‘We will come back to it presently when we discuss the undesirability of teenage pregnancy.’
‘And the banana, miss?’ said Melvin cheekily.
‘A valuable source of potassium,’ said Miss Wilkins, failing to blush as Melvin had hoped. ‘Now, there are two things I wish to say first – one to the boys and one to the girls.’
‘Girls first, miss, please,’ said Tracy, a precocious blonde. She twirled the ends of some strands of her hair across her face, peeping out behind them in a provocative manner somewhat beyond her years. ‘We’re more important now.’
‘The most valuable thing, then, that all girls need to know and remember,’ said Miss Wilkins, adjusting her glasses, and leaving aside the question of the improvement in women’s rights for the time being, ‘is that the human male is not a monogamous animal.’ She swung round in her chair and pointed. ‘Perhaps Ivan will tell us what the word “monogamous” means.’
Ivan stumbled with some inaudible words for a while before having to admit that he did not know.
‘I have met very few men who do,’ said Miss Wilkins briskly. ‘Perhaps Marion can tell us?’
Marion was a sentimental little girl, inclined to think well of everyone and everything. ‘Like it says in the Marriage Service, miss, keeping only to each other.’
‘Not having it off with anyone else,’ amplified Melvin.
‘Swans mate for life,’ offered Harry, the class swot.
‘It’s the other sort of birds that we want to know about, Harry,’ Melvin sniggered. ‘The two-legged sort.’
‘Swans only have two legs,’ began Harry combatively.
‘Swans have relationships, too, don’t they, miss?’ an earnest girl called Dorinda put in. ‘We had that in Classical History. There was someone called Leda and she …’
‘So it is said, Dorinda,’ said Miss Wilkins firmly, ‘but I am afraid we are not dealing with myth and legend this afternoon. We are talking about established fact.’
‘I’ve had three fathers,’ said a pert girl at the back of the class. She paused for a moment’s thought and then added, ‘That’s up to now …’
‘I saw Swan Lake at Christmas,’ put in another girl. ‘The swan died. It was ever so sad, but lovely if you know what I mean.’
‘Ugh, that’s ballet for you,’ said a boy at the back.
‘But then he turned into a prince.’
‘A poofter …’ said the same boy.
‘No,’ said the girl seriously. ‘A prince.’
‘What I myself have also noticed,’ said Miss Wilkins, leaving aside the distinction, ‘is something that you girls will find very hard to take when it happens to you in later life, as it probably will.’
‘Middle-aged spread?’ offered a plump girl called Maureen. ‘My mum says it’s having babies that does it.’
‘Although,’ proceeded Miss Wilkins as if the girl had not spoken, ‘it is not what I could call a natural law in the sense that the human male not being monogamous is one.’ She coughed. ‘I think I should call it more of a personal observation, though I understand it has been recorded in cats, too.’ Her head shot up. ‘Yes, Melvin, I am well aware that some men and some alley cats have a lot in common. You don’t have to tell us.’
‘What is it that we’ll find hard to take, miss?’ asked Dorinda anxiously.
‘That when your husband of many years leaves you for a younger woman …’
‘My father called it trading Mummy in for a younger model,’ said Charlene, ‘like you do with cars. I don’t like her. He sells them anyway.’
‘Cars or models?’ asked Melvin.
‘Model cars, I expect,’ chimed in Ivan.
‘Cars, silly,’ said Charlene with composure.
‘When he does that,’ continued Miss Wilkins smoothly, ‘I think you will find that what you are pleased to call the newer model will also be a woman rather further down the social totem pole than the one whom he married.’
‘That fits my father’s new wife to a T,’ said Charlene, looking up at Miss Wilkins, surprised and respectful. ‘My mum says she’s just a toerag.’
Miss Wilkins paused and said pedantically, ‘I cannot explain this phenomenon except that it is also noticeable in the behaviour of tomcats. They will mate first with a pedigree queen, have a litter or two …’
‘Or four …’ put in a boy.
‘And then mate with any old stray tabby cat,’ said Miss Wilkins calmly. ‘I understand that having this second string to your bow is to do with the preservation of the species on the grounds that the progeny from the lower-scale alliance is likely to be tougher than that of the pedigree match.’
‘Survival of the fittest,’ said Harry. ‘We did that in biology.’
‘Hybrid vigour,’ said a boy at the back.
‘Darwin and the descent of man,’ said a girl.
‘We did that in religious studies,’ somebody contradicted her.
‘The Creation and all that …’
‘My dad hadn’t better have any more children …’ exploded Charlene suddenly, light dawning. ‘We’re poor enough as it is.’
‘However,’ said Miss Wilkins firmly, ‘your desertion by your husbands is still in the far future. Today we are concerned with the more immediate …’
‘What is it that boys need to know?’ interrupted a copper-haired boy, known throughout the school as Eric the Red.
‘You won’t like it,’ said Miss Wilkins.
‘Go on, miss,’ urged a tall youth, grinning. ‘We can take it.’
‘Very well.’ Miss Wilkins swept the class with her steady gaze. ‘Boys need to know that in the mating game, in spite of what they think to the contrary, it is the girls who choose them.’
‘No, they don’t.’ Melvin cast a glance in the direction of Tracy. Eyes cast down behind her long blonde hair, she responded only with an enigmatic smile. He said, ‘I choose the girls I want.’
Miss Wilkins smiled, too. ‘You think you do, Melvin. That’s all.’
‘And then you try to get them in the club,’ said Charlene, regarding the boy without affection.
Harry glanced anxiously at Miss Wilkins, but she was leaning forward, looking interested. ‘So what do you do then, Melvin?’ she asked. ‘After you’ve chosen them?’
He pushed his chest forward and his shoulders back and opened his mouth to speak.
‘He tries to have his own way,’ muttered a girl in the class first. ‘More’s the pity.’
‘You don’t have to let anyone do that,’ said Miss Wilkins. ‘It’s a free country.’
‘I show them who’s boss,’ bragged Melvin.
‘But if you have a baby,’ said another girl, ‘you can get a council flat.’
‘And benefit …’ said Marion.
‘That is not enough to see you through twenty years of solitary motherhood,’ said Miss Wilkins. ‘Financially or emotionally.’
‘But they can’t make you marry the father, can they, miss?’ asked Dorinda.
‘Would you want to?’ enquired Miss Wilkins with interest.
Charlene favoured Melvin with a cold stare. ‘Me, I wouldn’t.’
‘And would the marriage last if you did?’
‘Not with some people it wouldn’t,’ said Charlene with spirit.
‘You could be right there,’ agreed Miss Wilkins. ‘A boy who would do that to a girl isn’t likely to cherish her for long, is he?’
Tracy came out from behind her hair long enough to take a cool look at Melvin.
‘So what about the baby then?’ asked Miss Wilkins.
The plump girl called Maureen shrugged her shoulders. ‘You get to keep it if you want to, though I don’t want to get fat …’
‘You can always have it adopted,’ said Tracy nonchalantly.
Miss Wilkins picked up the apple between her two cupped hands and held it out in front of her. She looked down at it without speaking for so long that the class began to get a little uneasy. Then she said softly, ‘What do you suppose happens to you, Tracy, if you have a baby and then have it adopted – not what happens to the baby – but to you?’
‘Dunno, miss.’
‘Think.’
‘Well … nothing, miss.’
‘Can anybody else think of what happens to a girl who has a baby and then never sees it again?’ Miss Wilkins looked round expectantly.
‘You can always get to see it if you want to,’ said Charlene.
‘No,’ Miss Wilkins corrected her. ‘He or she can get to see you but only if it is their wish. Not if you want to.’
‘Not never?’
‘Never,’ said Miss Wilkins, trying to remember who it was on the staff had the misfortune to be trying to teach the English language to this class. ‘So how do you imagine you are going to get through the years aware that your son or daughter is growing up without even knowing what you look like?’
‘I read a book where that happened,’ remarked Dorinda. ‘It was ever so sad. When the lady said “Dead and never called me Mother”, I cried.’
‘And,’ went on Miss Wilkins, ‘not knowing what your child – your own child – is called afterwards either …’
‘You can name it, miss,’ said another girl. ‘They can’t stop you doing that.’
‘Adoptive parents can give a baby a new name,’ said Miss Wilkins. ‘You may call your daughter Belinda but they can change it to whatever they like.’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Dorinda. ‘I’m going to call my first baby Heather.’
‘We’re not talking about the baby, Dorinda. We’re talking about you and just how you’re going to feel as that baby grows up without you.’
‘I wouldn’t feel nothing, miss,’ said Tracy.
‘Oh, yes, you would,’ declared Miss Wilkins energetically. ‘Let me tell you that your heart will ache forever over that child. You will celebrate her every birthday in secret because you won’t be there and because you won’t like to tell your husband or other children or friends about her.’ There was a distinct catch in her voice when she added, ‘You, of all people, won’t be there to see her grow up. You won’t be there when she first goes to school, when she wins a race on sports day, when she goes to her first disco …’
Dorinda looked uncomfortable. ‘Wouldn’t you get a photograph, miss?’
‘Not even when she got married,’ said Miss Wilkins brokenly, beginning to cry. ‘And she was such a lovely baby …’ She got out a handkerchief and blew her nose. ‘I called her Belinda, you know, and I never saw her again after the day she was taken for adoption.’
‘Not ever?’ asked Dorinda, beginning to cry, too.
‘Never,’ sobbed Miss Wilkins, stooping to pick up her handbag as a clanging sound reached them. ‘Is that the bell? I-I must go now …’
The headmaster encountered Miss Wilkins as he came out of the governors’ meeting. ‘How went it?’ he said, being a man well versed in asking open-ended questions.
‘Quite well, I think, Headmaster, thank you,’ said Miss Wilkins composedly.
‘Good, good,’ he said, no wiser, but still curious.
‘Although, of course, in the nature of things one never knows with teaching what has stuck and what hasn’t until much later.’
‘True,’ he said, adding delicately, ‘Might I ask how you handled the subject – just out of interest, you understand?’
‘If I had had a text,’ mused Miss Wilkins, ‘you might say it was that old nursery rhyme “Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry”.’
CARE PLAN
‘It may be something or nothing, Inspector.’
Since there was no sensible reply to this statement Detective Inspector Sloan waited in silence for his superior officer to continue.
‘And it’s a very delicate matter, too,’ added his superior officer. Actually it was a very superior officer who had called Sloan to his office: the assistant chief constable to boot.
Detective Inspector Sloan assumed an expression designed to project at one and the same time dispassionate interest and total discretion.
‘A family matter, actually,’ vouchsafed the assistant chief constable.
