Other People E-Book

Celia Dale

• Herausgeber: Daunt Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 368

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

It is summer in small town Havenport. Protected from the world by her devoted mother, fifteen-year-old June is content and completely self-absorbed. Her biggest concern is where she will be holidaying this year. When June's father reappears after twelve years in Australia, she is thrust abruptly into a different life: new house, town, school. She soon suspects that she does not know the full story about her father, and when she meets Tony Townsend, he and his London life suddenly promise a glamorous and alluring alternative . . . Other People is a compelling coming-of-age novel, told with Dale's trademark wit, observation and canny dissection of relationships.

Leseprobe

‘Dale remains one of my favourite writers.’ Jenn Ashworth

‘The atmosphere is smoky with incessant fry-ups.’ Sunday Times

‘The best kind of mystery … incisive about mothers and daughters, and addictive reading. I had a physical reaction to the twist.’ Sheena Patel

‘The queen of suburban horror.’ The Times

iii

OTHER PEOPLE

CELIA DALE

DAUNT BOOKSiv

v

In memory of guyand forsimonvi

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONONETWOTHREEFOURFIVESIXSEVENEIGHTNINETENELEVENABOUT THE AUTHORABOUT THE PUBLISHERALSO BY CELIA DALECOPYRIGHT

1

ONE

THE SCHOOL VERSION ended at a gallop. They had cut Malvolio’s last scene (too cruel) and most of Fabian, so that the play ended with the general joining of hands and the cast lining up behind Frances, stocky in her cap and bells, for ‘The rain it raineth every day’. To June this was always almost more than she could bear. Frances was a creep but her voice really was pretty and the plaintive tune, the strange half-mad words closing the rich, scented hysteria of the end-of-term play, made June want to cry – but honestly, tears brimmed her blue-rimmed lids and if she’d had to utter one of her speeches again she couldn’t have done it for the lump in her throat, not even if Sir Larry himself had asked her. 2

Then the curtains swished together and all the audience clapped like mad, for even if their own ewe lambs weren’t in it a lot of the parents seemed to have more team spirit, more sense of unity (‘Jervis’s is a Unity, girls; we are all members one of another’, see Miss Chatham’s end-of-term speech this year, last year, amen) than the pupils. If Jervis’s High School for Girls didn’t rank quite with Roedean it was only because at Jervis’s you didn’t pay fees – at least, that was how a lot of the parents seemed to feel, and there they all were out in the hall beyond the footlights, clapping away and showing team spirit and some of them, like Mum, making the palms of their hands sting with genuine pride because up there on the stage, encased in archaic and awkward costumes, masked in greasepaint on which sweat beads were standing, were in fact their own daughters, their ewe lambs.

As the curtains ebbed and flowed a smell of canvas, cloth and the cloying perspiration of girls came mildly over the footlights as far as the first row or two of seats. Miss Chatham and her staff had long ceased to notice it, fathers and the few brothers who had been coerced into coming wrinkled their inward noses, mothers ignored it. The girls themselves, squeezing hands as they curtsied (or bowed, if playing male roles – preserve the reality, preserve the reality!) staring outward now through the light to find the parents, the clan, the 3buttressing personal applause, grew slightly drunk on their own bouquet. Bubbles of hysteria, checked only by the astringent notes of God save the Queen, rose within the unnatural bottles of heavy gowns, tights, wimples, burst and foamed backstage after the final curtain. Their voices rose to parrot-house strength, they hugged each other, breathing each other’s smell, someone fell against a piece of scenery and it fell on somebody’s head, someone was in tears, the stage manager and stage hands pushed about crying ‘Clear the stage, please – oh, do get off!’ and gradually, still entwined, still chattering or in tears, still half out of their own bodies and blossoming in the maturity of men and women, wombs and tosspots, horns and cuckolds (bowdlerised but not excised) and in the heady beauty of language never at other times heard, not even now totally comprehended, they dispersed to the three dressing rooms and reluctantly, as slowly as possible, put off their costumes and came back into the world.

Parents were still dotted about the hall among chairs now pushed awry, talking to other parents or to members of the staff, when June came through the passdoor, and she saw with the little thump of the heart she could never control at contact with authority that Miss Chatham was in conversation with Mum down at the far end of the front row. Miss Chatham was tall and regal, Mum was short and unremarkable, 4yet they were alike in their composure as they stood together. Miss Chatham was talking and Mum was listening and on both their faces was respect and friendliness, which perhaps might not remain if they noticed June had left some make-up on her eyelids and mouth. Still, she would risk it; the pain of relinquishing her other, glamorous self with the tights and tunic of Sebastian had been lessened by keeping the blue eyelids that gave her fledgling face a mystery and depth one could not normally display when one was fifteen and at Jervis’s – although of course it was all right to use a little lipstick (natural colour only, one of the awful girls in 6B had come to school with pale mauve lips and been sent home).

‘Ah, here’s June.’ Miss Chatham smiled permission to advance.

‘Good evening, Miss Chatham. Hullo, Mum.’

‘Hullo, dear. What a lovely show it was.’

‘And as far as I could see,’ said Miss Chatham, ‘there were no mishaps.’

‘I couldn’t get my sword back in the scabbard.’

‘I didn’t notice, dear. You’ve left some blue on your eyelids, if you’ve got a hankie.’

‘I was just telling your mother how pleased we have been with your progress this term. I think, Mrs Baxter, she’s almost certain of O-Level passes in every subject next year if she’s able to keep on working 5steadily – except perhaps Geography. For some reason Geography,’ she smiled at the girl, ‘fails to strike a chord in June’s bosom.’

Geography! Wiping some of the make-up off her eyelids with a handkerchief, June sneered at Geography. Rainfalls and crops and mountains – who cared about that? She smiled diffidently, lowering her head so that the two flat wings of fair hair concealed the corners of her mouth, where the smile would not have deceived Miss Chatham.

Miss Chatham was not deceived. ‘Still, the shores of Illyria are all that interest us tonight, aren’t they?’ she said, and without change of voice or expression conveyed, with no diminution of regard, an intimation of dismissal. At her back were gathering a clump of parents, like sheep seeking courage to bolt through a gateway. ‘You spoke your lines splendidly, June. I hope you’re not too excited to sleep. There will be a lot of heavy eyes at Dismissal tomorrow, I’m afraid.’

Turning slightly, she enabled the new group to advance (they belonged to a Second Former who hung back, unwilling to support her parents’ obstinate bravado in seeking speech with the Headmistress) and June and her mother to withdraw. The hall was fairly empty now and there was no one whom Mrs Baxter knew more than to smile to, while the girls, absorbed into their family groups, ignored each other. 6

June and her mother went out onto the main steps. Twilight had only just gone and the distant chill of the sea was beginning to creep up on the summer air.

‘Do your blazer up, dear, the wind’s cold.’

On the dark tarmac drive between the rose bushes June clasped her hands round her mother’s arm. They were almost the same height, the girl slight with a swansdown fairness, the woman thickset, quiet.

‘Was I good, Mum? Did you like me?’

‘I thought you were lovely.’

‘Could you hear me? Miss Garth always keeps on about speaking up, speaking out, throw your voice to the back of the hall …’ She imitated the English mistress, drawing herself up, jutting her chin and her small breasts in a mimicry that made her mother laugh. ‘What did you think of Maureen? She was Malvolio. Did you think she was good? Her hair kept coming out under her wig, did you notice? I hate wigs, I’m glad I didn’t have to wear one.’ She tossed her hair and gave a skip.

‘Don’t drag on my arm, dear. I thought you all took your parts splendidly.’

‘They gave Malvolio to Maureen because of her accent. She’s ever such a good actress but she’s got a real Hampshire accent, did you notice? They try and do that with all the accents, you know, give them the clowns or the common parts. I’d hate to have an accent 7and be tied to always playing that sort of part. Think of never being able to play Juliet!’ It was a serious thought and they walked to the bus stop in silence. How did you know if you had an accent? Did Maureen know or did she think she was given Malvolio simply because she was good at it? Had June herself got an accent without knowing it? She could imitate Julie Andrews doing The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain on the My Fair Lady record so that she couldn’t tell the difference. But perhaps someone else could? Had Mum got an accent, because if Mum had, then probably June had too?

‘What’s for supper, Mum?’ she asked, in order to hear her mother speak.

‘I could make you an omelette. Or there’s baked beans. Or I could open a tin of ravioli.’

‘Ravioli.’ Mum had no accent that June could discern, just a quiet ordinary sort of voice, not quite like Miss Chatham’s but ordinary. So June’s must be ordinary too, so that was all right. Of course it was all right or she wouldn’t have been given the part of Sebastian.

The bus did not go through the centre of the town but round the streets where people actually lived, away from the holidaymakers, hotels and fairy lights of the Marine Gardens and the Hippodrome. Here behind hedges and rose trees grown lush in the moist mild air were houses and villas and bungalows which were 8suburban rather than seaside, and clustered shops that sold food and hardware rather than souvenirs, sunglasses, beach shoes, plastic spades. The people who lived here did not let rooms except perhaps to single men and women who also worked in the town. These roads were inhabited by those who kept the town functioning, who worked at the Town Hall, in the banks, supplied the gas and electricity, managed the cinemas, the garages, the shops, taught in the schools and in the Technical College. Often they went from week to week without a glimpse of the sea, would have forgotten it was there save that the saltiness of it tasted sometimes on their lips if the wind were blowing in towards the land, and everything kept very clean. Those who were able to went out of town during the summer weekends, or stayed behind their hedges.

June and her mother lived over the corner shop of half a dozen that served such an area. The shop was painted cream, with E BAXTER in black and gold lettering along the top. The door faced the corner at an angle, and the window on one side displayed stationery, magazines and paperback books, that on the other small toys and china animals, greeting cards of many kinds and a board of advertisements. When the shop was open a rack of newspapers hung at one side, with a tin for the money underneath. Most of Mrs Baxter’s customers were regulars and all of them were honest. 9

Beyond the shop was a dark hall with a door out into the garden, and stairs leading to the flat above: three rooms, kitchen and bathroom. Here they had lived as long as June could remember, since she was three. Mrs Baxter ran the shop alone, save for the part-time aid of a series of youths between training, girls between jobs and housewives wanting to help out with their HP payments. Weekends and holidays June helped; indeed, when she was ten and eleven she had done a paper round, but when she had moved up to the High School her mother had stopped that. June had homework, dancing and drama and swimming and the film club after school, she grew taller, her periods started early, and Mrs Baxter said she needed her sleep and not to wear herself out when there was no need. June slept so soundly she never heard her mother go down into the shop at half past five every morning to receive the morning newspapers and get the orders ready for the first customers at eight o’clock (she had discontinued house deliveries, it was too much for one person to cope with as well as the shop. In any case most of her regulars passed on their way to the bus stop, and liked her well enough to continue their custom).

For June, her mother in the morning was simply a hand smoothing away hair and sleep, a voice warning of passing time, cereal, the smell of frying, milky tea already sweetened, an aide-memoire for what June’s 10day would need. School was the real day, although June liked the shop. It was pretty and sold pretty things, she could look at all the magazines and choose cards for her friends’ birthdays and Christmas. She liked dressing the windows, examining and pricing the toys with which, nostalgically but without regret she would play a little, bouncing rubber balls, moving the stiff joints of the dolls, arranging the miniature cars and railway furnishings into streets and towns. So many mothers worked nowadays, for fun or because for some reason they had no husband, but to have a mother who actually owned a shop where some of one’s friends came to buy and consult about cards and presents, distinguished one from all the others, gave one something the others didn’t have. Perhaps it would have been nice to have a father who was home at least some of the time, but then she and Mum wouldn’t have been so snug together. She couldn’t imagine a man fitting into their lives, even into the flat.

She sat at the kitchen table eating the ravioli, talking about school and the play, while her mother moved about, tidying up, and watching the milk heat for their two cups of Nesquik. Mum never said very much but she was the background to everything; what she did say was always to the point and it was no use arguing. June always did argue but only for the exercise. Mrs Baxter was not like some mothers June knew 11of, always exclaiming and carrying on, forbidding this and urging that. Mum let you use your own intelligence and didn’t treat you like a child of two years old and when you asked her something she would tell you and you could be sure that it was true, just as you could be sure that if she decided something was to be so, then it truly was. You knew where you were.

Where June had always been was in the world of her own skull, curtained by soft straight hair, windowed by the dark hazel eyes of her mother set in a pointed face, full-mouthed. She knew this face better than that of anyone else; she could not have given details of what her mother looked like (darkish going grey, short, pleasant, quiet – what else? She was Mum) but there was not an enlarged pore, a recalcitrant eyebrow hair that she was unaware of in her own face, nor a feature of it that she had not at some time wished were different or considered rather nice. Her eyes, for instance: their darkness with her fair hair was really striking; but why could she not have inherited the blue eyes of her father? Her nose was awful, just a nothing and it had blackheads where the nostrils met the cheeks; yet these did not show under a little powder and Mum said she would grow out of them, and was not the nose really rather delicate, aristocratic? Hair now: oh to have strong dark hair like Sophia Loren that would take and keep a 12real big bouffant! And yet there was Bardot with fair flat hair – only at school one was not allowed long hair unless it was in pigtails or one was old enough to put it up, and then nothing extreme, only perhaps a small French pleat, rather insecure. If she were to be an actress like her grandmother, who had died when Mum was a little girl, or her great-grandmother who had brought Mum up and whom June could just, very faintly, remember, a tiny old woman huddled up in an armchair (where? It must have been London before they came to Havenport, for she knew they had moved here when Great Grandma had died), if she were to be an actress … Her thoughts lost their way, dispersed, meandered. She would be on television with her own programme, The Moon and June, A Night in June; or at the Old Vic or Stratford playing Cleopatra. Or she would be a hairdresser and create her own styles and open a place in London where all the smart people like Princess Alexandra would come, try the June Dew Rinse. Or be a fashion designer, wear the Baxter Line. Or marry a Society photographer who’d been to Eton and played the guitar …

This skull, this world was inviolate. There had never been any occasion for its bubble thinness to be breached, for all her life she had been loved and guarded as though she were still in the womb. Calmly, confidently, day succeeded day. Way back in 13history things may have happened: Daddy going to Australia, Great Grandma dying and Mum bringing baby June here and starting the shop; but these were all before June was conscious of them and therefore hardly existed. Perhaps things had happened here at Havenport too, but not of importance to the child and then the girl; she could remember Mum being ill and Auntie Norah, Mum’s friend who was a nurse, coming from London to look after them both. She could remember Mum telling her Daddy was ill, would be ill for a long time out in a sanatorium in Australia, but his letters had gone on coming once a month with Mum’s and June had continued to write him the half-dozen lines that Mum had helped her with when she had first learned how to write. June could not remember him. Ill or well, it was impossible to visualise this man on the other side of the world whose short letters could not bring to life the hackneyed words: ‘My own precious little June’; but she was not his, she was herself, her own. ‘You are always in my thoughts’: how could she be, she did not know him. ‘You and your mum are all the world to me’: but all the world lay between the man who wrote this and the schoolgirl who received it. Her answers were as unreal as school essays: Write two hundred words to your ideal father.

When she was younger she used to ask about him, what he looked like, when was he coming home? To 14the last her mother could give no answer except, ‘One day, dear, when the doctors say he can,’ and to the first she would describe him, thus and so, and bring out the photograph taken of them on their wedding day.

‘Can I have it, Mum? Can I put it up to show?’

‘You don’t need photos to remember those you love,’ and Mrs Baxter had put the picture back in the japanned deed box with the other things she treasured: the picture of her own mother holding a tambourine in the chorus of The Gondoliers, a pair of glass earrings that had belonged to Great Grandma, a baby tooth of her own with a big hole in it and one of June’s, enamelled and pure as that of a doll, a lock of Great Grandad’s hair like a coil of wire and a curl of June’s like silk, letters and documents. About these June was never curious for they belonged solely to her mother, whereas the pictures and mementoes were part of June too, all that was left of people who now had no significance save that through them she herself was here.

She could remember when Mum had been ill seeing her lying in bed, with tears running out of the corners of her eyes and soaking into the brown hair and the convolutions of her ears, too weak or too indifferent to wipe them away. She had dreamed about it sometimes afterwards, but not for long, for even then, with the tears coming down, her mother had smiled at 15her and said something loving and reassuring, so that the child had not been frightened, only surprised and curious. The absolute security of her mother’s presence, that fed, clothed, provided, loved, had made it unnecessary for June ever to fear anything, even to concern herself with anything outside the absorbing world of her own interests. Nothing filled the foreground but herself, for the background was always tranquil: the fresh light of seaside skies, the shop, school, Easter, birthday, Christmas; Auntie Norah for two weeks in June, a holiday with Mum in August, in Wales perhaps or the Lake District, never the sea, but only a week because the shop had to be closed while they were away. Twice June had been to Clacton with Allison, her great friend at school, but Allison’s family had moved to the north of England now. She did not know where she and her mother were going this year, although it was the end of term and breaking up tomorrow.

‘Mum,’ she said, ‘where are we going on holiday?’

Mrs Baxter took away the empty plate. ‘I don’t know that I’ll be able to get one this year, dear. Would you like some fruit?’

‘We must have one, Mum! We can’t just stay here.’

‘Will you finish up this banana, it’s going black?’

‘I don’t like them black.’

‘It’s perfectly good inside. We always have the same argument, don’t we? There.’ She peeled the banana 16and put it on June’s plate, pushing forward sugar and milk.

June picked up her spoon, ‘I hate the smell. Why can’t we go away?’

‘I never said anything about you not going, did I? All I said was I didn’t think I could.’

‘Then where am I going?’

Mrs Baxter went over to the stove and took the saucepan off the flame, pouring the milk into two mugs. ‘Would you like to go to Auntie Norah in London?’

‘London!’ She was dismayed.

‘Yes, London. You were born there, you know.’

‘What would I do in London?’

Mrs Baxter stirred the Nesquik briskly, with a jingle of spoon. ‘I should have thought there were plenty of things to do in London. Museums, Buckingham Palace, the Zoo – theatres, shops …’

June softened slightly. ‘But Auntie Norah’ll be working. I’ll be all alone.’

‘No you won’t, she’s having some time off.’

‘How long?’

‘Ten days.’

‘Can’t you come too?’

‘Not this time, dear.’

‘When did you fix it up? You might have told me.’

Mrs Baxter brought the mugs to the table and sat down, cupping her hands round the warm pottery. A 17waft of night air, scented with dew and grass from the garden, stirred the curtains and sent the steam from the milk misting into her face. The overhead light set her eyes in sockets of darkness.

‘I only heard from her yesterday, about her time off. She’ll love to have you, she says. It’s time you got to know her on your own, your godmother and all, without me.’

‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I was going to tomorrow.’

‘Why tomorrow? Why not discuss it with me like you always do instead of fixing it all up behind my back as if I was a child of two?’

‘I know, dear. I know. Only it’s all been so uncertain. I didn’t know definitely, not until last week. And I didn’t want to unsettle your last days at school.’

‘Oh honestly, Mum! It’s only end of term and exams were over weeks ago.’

‘It’s not just that.’ She was silent a moment, then raised her head so that the shadows left her eyes, showing them steady. ‘Listen to me, Junie. Something we’ve thought about for a long time is going to happen. Daddy’s coming home.’

June’s hand with the spoon in it sank to the table; she sat staring at her mother, her mouth open. Mrs Baxter went on: ‘I haven’t known very long and then it wasn’t definite. They couldn’t give him a definite date. 18I didn’t want to get you all excited and then find it was going to be longer than they said. I had to think what was best to do.’

‘When’s he coming?’

‘The end of August. The 28th.’

‘That’s over a month.’

‘Yes. But there’s a lot to do.’

June looked round the kitchen. It was a small room with everything in it arranged as the two of them found most convenient: the airer hung with their underclothes, the hair-dryer on its stand next to the small radio, the miniature oak tree grown from an acorn standing in its pot on the window-sill over the sink with a zoo of china animals disposed about its trunk, the two chairs, hers and Mum’s, with their check cushions tied on with tape, their two big cups, hers and Mum’s, one pink, one blue …

‘There isn’t room for him,’ she said.

‘Well no, there isn’t,’ Mrs Baxter agreed, sitting back from the table and rubbing her finger-tips over her brow. ‘That was another thing I had to think about. We’re going to move, Junie.’

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere quite different. Somewhere where we can start off as a proper family again, right from the start. We’re going to Bristol.’

‘Bristol!’ 19

‘It’s a lovely city. There’s the river and ships, and the country round’s lovely. It’s a real city with lots of things going on all the time, shops and theatres and the University. You might go to the University, you never know, you heard what Miss Chatham said about your GCE chances …’

‘Miss Chatham …!’ Her eyes filled with tears and suddenly she was crying, resting her head on her hands so that the hair swung forward and the tears dropped down into the plate of half-finished banana.

‘June. Junie. Ah don’t – don’t, dear!’ Mrs Baxter rose and came round the table, putting her arms about her, smoothing and kissing the soft hair. ‘I know it’s a shock, dear, but you’ll like it there, I know you will. It’s a lovely city and ever such a nice school, just as nice as Jervis’s. And we’ve got a little house, dear, up near the Downs, you can go and look over the Gorge to the suspension bridge down below, and all the grass and trees, it’s like being in the country. And we’re near the buses, you can get the bus to school just like you do here, and a little bit of front garden and a bigger bit at the back with an apple tree in it – think of that, we’ll be eating our own apples. They’re on the tree now, you can see them, they’ll be ready for eating before we’ve been there long. And if you liked you could have a cat – or a dog. With all that lovely grass and trees round there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a dog …’ 20

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Her voice was muffled in hands and hair and running nose.

‘I was going to – after tomorrow. I wanted you to have the end of term happy and settled. I didn’t want you all upset for the play and everything.’

June pushed away, wiping her eyes on the table napkin. ‘You ought to have told me. I’m not a child.’

‘Here.’ From an open box of Kleenex on the shelf Mrs Baxter took a couple and gave them to her. ‘I told you as soon as you asked me.’

‘And if I’d never asked?’

‘Then I’d have told you tomorrow, after school was over. Junie darling …’ She stood looking down at her daughter, her arms hanging at her sides. ‘I did what seemed the best way. I had to decide what was best.’

‘You’ve been planning and scheming, you’ve got the house and everything …’

‘I thought it was best. I wrote to some house agents and then went there for the day. Remember? I said I was going to see to some business? It was your late day at school, I don’t expect you even noticed, and you went back with Shirley for supper. It was a bit of a scramble to fit it all into one day, but luckily I found what was needed and then it all went straight through without a hitch. We’ll go there next week for a day, dear, and you shall see it. Nothing’s been done, no decorations or anything. You can help me 21with wallpapers and paint and things. You’re so much better at that than I am.’

‘Why do we have to move away?’

‘This is too small.’

‘We could move to a different house. Why do we have to leave Havenport and the shop and school?’ She began to cry again but more quietly.

Mrs Baxter lifted a lock of her daughter’s hair and laid it gently back. Her arm went around the girl’s shoulders again, drawing her close. Leaning sideways in the chair, her cheek against her mother’s body, June could hear the gastric juices chasing each other about inside and despite herself she was lulled by this intimacy, by the comfort of Mum’s voice saying sensible things.

‘We need to be somewhere new,’ she was saying, ‘somewhere where the three of us can start off again together. If Daddy came here he’d feel – he might feel an outsider, that he didn’t belong. This is where you and I came, Junie, when we had to be on our own, make our own way as if Daddy was dead almost. We’re known here on our own, if Daddy joined us he’d feel like a stranger trying to fit into someone else’s life. We have to start out, all three of us together, as if we’d never been apart. In Bristol no one need know we haven’t always been together.’

‘Is he still ill, Mum? Is it catching?’ 22

She smiled, pressing the fair head close. ‘No, it’s not catching, you silly. And he’s not ill anymore. He wouldn’t be coming home if he was, would he?’

‘Was it his lungs, Mum?’

‘You know it was. His lungs – and complications. We must feed him up – take care of him. It’s not going to be easy for him, after all this time.’

‘When are we leaving?’

‘In just a month.’

She thrust herself free. ‘So soon? We’ll never be ready. What about the shop?’

‘I’ve sold that. I’m giving it up at the end of next week but the new people will be taking it over so it won’t be closed.’

‘Mum! You did all that without telling me? How could you!’

Mrs Baxter turned away and began to clear the crockery, stacking it and taking it to the sink, brushing away the crumbs, replacing the used utensils with clean ones ready for breakfast next morning. As she worked she spoke quietly. ‘How else could I do it? Where would have been the sense of getting you all worked up before you need, before I was even certain it was going to happen? You had the school play to think about and the exams. I didn’t want you flying around not knowing where you were, perhaps not even bothering with the exams if you knew you weren’t staying on at school. And that would 23have been silly, wouldn’t it, because your marks are what matter, they carry on wherever you go, so if you’d lost interest this term it might have held you back in the future. I decided that getting your schoolwork done well was your job and dealing with all the other was mine. It’s not right that children should have to share their parents’ worries and problems. Time enough when they’re grown up and have them of their own. Till then it’s their parents’ job to keep them happy and safe.’

‘You could have prepared me. You could have warned me we wouldn’t always be here …’

‘How? How could I know?’ Mrs Baxter stood still, staring out of the dark window. ‘How could I know whether he’d ever come back? You can plan and dream but you can’t ever know how things will really be. You can only go on as best you can, trying to do what’s best.’ She turned away, drawing her fingers over her brow and cheek again as though her skull ached. ‘Don’t let’s go on about it, dear, there’s a good girl. We’re both tired and you ought to get to bed. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I ought to have told you earlier, even though there was nothing definite to tell. I don’t know. I did what I thought was best for you.’

‘Do the girls at school know?’

‘Of course not. I told Miss Chatham, naturally, because of giving notice. She thought I did right, in the middle of term and all.’ 24

‘Perhaps I won’t tell them either. And next term they’ll look round and say Where’s June and no one will know. They’ll talk about it for a time, it’ll be a nine days’ wonder, and then they’ll forget. It will be as if I’d never been.’

‘You haven’t drunk your Nesquik and now it’s cold. Get along to bed, dear, and I’ll heat it up for you.’

‘When am I going to Auntie Norah’s?’

‘August 23rd. Then while you’re away I’ll see to the move and everything and when you get there Daddy and I will be all settled in ready to welcome you.’

They looked at each other for a moment in silence, then Mrs Baxter repeated gently. ‘Go to bed, dear.’

She slept, as usual, instantly and deeply and in the morning found her thoughts had arranged themselves into a more pleasing shape. She did not broach the subject with her mother; time was short in the mornings, Mrs Baxter busy in and out of the shop, and June did not want her mood of delicate euphoria unbalanced by discussion. Given a little time and no interference she would be able to transform the shock of uprooting into the excitement of adventure. Already, as she dressed and had her breakfast, she realised that Havenport was really only a dull seaside town. And how had she never before realised that the flat was much too small? Now she knew that really she had always 25wanted to live in a house; and really most of the girls at Jervis’s were pretty dim. Bristol would be entirely different – a city of ships and steeples, masts nodding at the bottom of each street, wine merchants and the Old Vic training company where Dorothy Tutin had her first chance and Salad Days began, and great big aeroplane factories if you wanted to do Science, which she didn’t although most of her friends did, and the University … English, French, maybe History there, the best student of her year, and then not quite the lead but a lovely little part at the Theatre Royal which led to the Old Vic wanting her in London …

How had she endured Havenport for so long?

She told Marilyn and Joyce and Shirley in the locker room under a promise of secrecy as they got themselves ready for Dismissal. Why the secrecy she was not quite sure save that it fitted her mood and, ‘I don’t want everyone in 5D coming up asking questions.’ She described the new house and the parkland round it, told them of selling the shop. ‘We don’t want a shop now my father’s coming home. He was in the Air Force before he was ill, so he’ll probably work for one of the big firms in Bristol – you know, de Havillands or something.’

‘Gosh, a test pilot?’ Shirley marvelled.

‘Perhaps. Or something in Research. His health may not be good enough for a test pilot. He’s been ill for years.’ 26

The bell began to sound and the shuffle of feet turned to a thunder as the school pushed out of its cloakroom down the corridors into the Assembly Hall. Voices echoing above the screech of chairs and benches shifting, the sibilance of feet on parquet, the hush and rustle as they all stood for Miss Chatham and the staff, the piano striking the opening chord of the school song, somebody dropping something at the back of the hall (they always did), and all their voices, beautiful by reason of their quantity and vigour, swinging through the words they all derided but which now – or perhaps it was just the sound, like fanfares or bagpipes – brought tears to June’s eyes so that she stood up straight, singing full out to Miss Chatham and the staff without blinking, for a blink would spill the balanced tears. Goodbye, goodbye – goodbye my childhood, goodbye my youth, tomorrow to fresh woods, it sinks and I am ready to depart, the moving finger writes and having writ, the end of a chapter. Book One: The Awakening; Book Two, what? Daddy. Daddy had been in the Air Force and had blue eyes. He had gone to Australia when June was a baby as sales representative for his firm and had been going to send for Mum and her as soon as he had a house and everything ready for them. Then he had got ill and nearly died and his savings had dwindled and he’d had to stay in the sanatorium for years and years, with his 27lungs getting better and then worse again, and now at last his will to live had pulled him through and he was coming home …

He had been in the Air Force and had blue eyes. He had fair hair like her own, but in the wedding picture with Mum it had waves in it, while her own was straight. In the picture he had his arm through Mum’s and their hands were clasped together so that it looked like a double fist, welded together. He had a flower in his buttonhole with a big bit of fern on it, and he looked serious. Mum was smiling; her hair was longer then and she was slimmer but she was still just like Mum, and the hand that wasn’t welded into Daddy’s held a small bouquet with more of the same fern and she wore a fur cape. She hadn’t got one now, perhaps the moths had got it …

‘… Jervis’s, Jervis’s,

Throughout the years we’ll be your WIT-nesses!’

With a triumphant thunder and rustle the three hundred and fifty girls reseated themselves to listen to the speeches and watch the giving of awards.

Miss Chatham interviewed all the girls who were leaving. They waited in the corridor outside her study, where a light over the door burned red if she were engaged, leaning against the wall and whispering together, longing to be gone yet conscious of importance. Apart from one moron from 5B who was leaving 28at fifteen, the others were Sixth Form girls, women really with their busts and dignified voices, one of them with her long hair up in a knot. Two of them had University places, and another was going straight into a big chemical firm. These three talked together self-consciously while the other leaned against the wall, pushing the cuticles down her fingernails. This was Hilary Sanford who wore eyeshadow and had once been sent home for having her hair done up so high – it had a sort of sausage inside it with the real hair brushed over it, and people said she never took it down, not even at night. She was wearing nail varnish now, although that was forbidden, but as she was leaving there was nothing Miss Chatham could do about it. June studied her surreptitiously, for although Hilary Sanford was awful (in the winter holidays she wore black stockings and white shoes like skewers) she did actually look rather smashing, especially in contrast with the other three, with their queenliness and their ties a little crooked.

‘Ah June, come in. Sit down, my dear.’ This was special, you always stood if Miss Chatham sent for you during the term, even if it was about something nice. Across the honey-coloured width of the desk she smiled at June. Although it was fashionable to criticise Miss Chatham, June had always liked her. She smiled back now, despite her nervously thumping heart. 29

‘Well, June. I’m very sorry this is your valedictory. Your mother telephoned me this morning and told me she had broken the news to you.’ June nodded. ‘I’m glad she did because otherwise I should have had to let you leave without an opportunity of talking to you, and that would have been a pity. You have done very nicely while you have been with Jervis’s and I’m sure you will do equally well at your new school if you make up your mind to it.’

‘Thank you, Miss Chatham. I’ll try.’

‘Do, June. Apart from the responsibility of making the best of the brains that God has given you, it means a great deal to your mother – to your parents,’ she corrected herself.

June began to blush. It took a long time and she stared down at the clasped hands in her lap waiting for the embarrassment of it to finish.

Miss Chatham leaned forward on the desk. ‘How do you feel about your father’s return?’ she asked bluntly.

‘Well – nothing really. I mean, it’s hard to take in …’

‘Your mother said you were upset last night.’

‘It was such a surprise. I mean, I think she ought to have warned me. She’s gone and got a house and everything and never let on one word to me. Honestly, I couldn’t believe it.’

‘But you must have known that your father would return one day and that you would all be together again?’ 30

‘I never thought about it.’

‘You can hardly blame your mother for your own lack of thought.’ Miss Chatham’s smile robbed the words of rebuke. ‘It’s a terrible truism, but there really are always two points of view. The same set of circumstances can always be approached in two different ways. Perhaps she should have told you as soon as it became possible that your father might be coming home, but think how unsettling that would have been – especially for you, with your rather romantic imagination. And how disappointed you would have been if, in the end, his plans had fallen through. Don’t you think that then you might have turned round to your mother and said, “Why did you tell me if you weren’t certain it was going to happen?”’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Your mother came to see me as soon as she knew it was definite and asked me what I thought. It was just before the examinations were due and I advised her to wait. It’s unfortunate that there’s so little time now before you actually do leave Havenport and go to your new home, but it can’t be helped. In fact, it should act as a challenge. “Act, act in the living present” – who?’

‘Wordsworth.’

Miss Chatham sighed. ‘Longfellow. Of course, it’s all rather a shock to you. You will all three of you have to make tremendous adjustments and allowances for 31one another. That’s really what I wanted to say to you, June. It’s going to be difficult for you to get used to sharing your life with a father you hardly remember but think how hard it is going to be for your parents.’

‘But they’re married.’

‘But a long time ago. Twelve, thirteen years’ separation. People change. In many ways it will be easier for you, not having known him before, than for your mother.’

‘But how can it? I mean, she knows what to expect. And she’s had letters all the time.’

‘So have you.’

‘Yes, but they never said anything.’

‘Perhaps hers didn’t either.’

‘But they’re married.’