This week we have an excerpt from Maggie Redding's The Education of Mattie Dobson.
It is 1950, and Mattie has won a place at the local Grammar school. This has raised anxieties in the family and caused conflict for Mattie, the second child of a working class family. In 1953, when in the Fourth Year at school, she has saved enough money to go on a (subsidised) school exchange visit to the south of France. Her best friend cannot afford to go. On the coach to Dover, she befriends Conor Flynn who is in her form. After a few days, the French hosts are arranging for bicycles to be loaned to the visitors. Mattie and Conor set off on their own, avoiding both English and French pupils ('les autres').
MATTIE IN FRANCE
Bicycles appeared on Friday morning. Aline provided one for Mattie. Conor, she saw, had acquired one from Gilbert. Mattie abandoned a group who wanted to visit a convent out in the wilds, and went to meet Conor.
“I've seen enough convents in my lifetime," she told him. "We went to school at one, didn’t we?”
"What d’you say to a cycle ride this morning?" he said as she approached him. "Looks like being a nice day, warm even."
"Who else is coming?" she said.
"I’ve only asked you so far. A lot of them are too scared to venture further away."
"I'll come. I don't see the point of coming all this way if I’m going to sit drinking coffee every morning. Once you've done that, you do something else, don't you?"
Conor stood grinning at her over his bicycle. "You seen Barbara Ellington this morning?"
"No, why?” It was a comfort to perceive that he didn’t like Barbara any more than she did. She moved with Conor a short distance from the main group, wheeling her bicycle.
"She's got the letter-box mouth since she got here. She's grizzling every time I see her.”
“She doesn't like it here, does she? She’s staying out in the wilds."
"Reckons she's homesick this morning."
"I knew she was unhappy because they don’t have a toilet, not at all, where she's staying. Just out in the field."
"No?" Conor chortled. "Is that right, now?"
"She told us. Her Mummy can't sort her out now, can she?" Mattie knew this was being catty, but she was talking to a boy and it didn’t feel that wrong.
"Big baby.” Conor dismissed Barbara for a more interesting topic. “Have you learned any swear words? It's the first thing most of us asked about."
"The ones I know sound rude, without even knowing what they mean. Aline taught me some in patois. I think it's the Languedoc language, you know?"
Aline joined them, wheeling a bicycle and Gilbert came over when he saw where Conor was.
“Aline,” Mattie addressed her pen friend. “Je voudrais aller avec Conor, au velo, ce matin. Que voulez vous faire? Non, pardon-moi, ce n’est pas correct. Tutoyer! She’s asked me to call her ‘tu’, the familiar. Aline, ou vas-tu ce matin?”
“Crikey,” Conor said, under his breath, “you are taking it seriously, aren’t you?”
Aline responded to Mattie with a tidal wave of French this time. Mattie turned to Conor. "I'm not sure, but I think she wants to come with us. She’s asking Gilbert. They most likely want to keep an eye on the bikes."
"Tell her we’re off.”
"Aline," Mattie said turning to the other girl, "nous allerons."
"Crikey. Future tense as well," Conor said admiringly. Mattie smiled to herself and they set off.
Every morning, the host families provided lunch, a French stick of bread and garlicky sausage, for each of their guests and to their own offspring, often with a bottle of water or diluted red wine. Mattie balanced her own lunch bag on the handlebars of her borrowed bicycle.
The sides of the valley rose above the road and river; trees, some leafy, crowded over them. The ride was exhilarating. If Rosemary had come, they would have both have been too nervous to do anything like this. Conor was supporting Mattie's adventurous streak. In his company she could allow herself to feel bold.
"Remember to ride on the right," she yelled to him. He was ahead of her. The valley road was quiet, traffic slight. Most of the time there was a silence that Mattie might have experienced as disturbing had it not been for Conor’s robust approach.
After some distance, he dismounted and waited for her to catch up.
"Manourgue, eight kilometres," he said, indicating a road sign. "I don't know what that is in miles."
"I'm no good at maths," she said reaching him with a squeal of brakes. "About five miles?"
“No good at maths," he grinned. "Let's have a break. We’ve got all day." She looked around them. There was a bank of grass and shingle beside the river. Conor laid his bicycle down on this. "I want a really good look around, instead of whizzing past everything."
"We can sit down here, we can paddle." Mattie rested her bicycle on the ground beside his.
"It’ll be icy cold," he said. "It's only April even though it feels like July. The water has had to come down from the mountains."
"They're not mountains with sharp peaks, are they? It’s more like one great mass of high land. I think it's a huge plateau."
They sat on the grass and listened to the burbling river, strange bird calls and a whispering breeze. The sound of young voices reached them from the road as Aline, Gilbert and some others flew past.
"Les autres," Mattie said.
"The French kids,” Conor said. “They didn't see us."
"I'm hungry," Mattie said. "I’m going to eat some of my picnic."
They sat on the bank of the river, on some small boulders, to eat their petit dejeuner.
"An awful lot of bread, isn't it?" he said.
"But it's lovely. I'm enjoying the whole thing, aren’t you, the whole experience? I'm so glad I came. It's much more interesting and exciting than I thought it would be."
"I should think we both smell of garlic by now."
"Have you had frogs’ legs yet? I have. Crispy and meaty but not very substantial. I’ve eaten moorhen, too. That’s what it translated as in my French dictionary. All sorts of duck and fish, as well. Things unnamed. Madame keeps a stock-pot on the old-fashioned range in the kitchen. For soup. The range keeps the kitchen warm. It's very small. I expect it’s cold here in winter."
"The wine’s good," he said and Mattie had to laugh. Had her conversation been too domestic?
"Good? Miss Dixon said that what we’re drinking at meals is rough wine. It tastes it, too, rough on your tongue. I have two glasses every night. It sends me to sleep. Monsieur traipses down to the cellar every evening to fill a bottle from a barrel. It's all so – you know, so primitive."
"Life in the raw," and again Mattie was slightly amused at this schoolboy trying to be manly.
"Where I am, there’s one tap, on the landing. I was surprised. When we were in the old house, back at home, we had one tap in the scullery and I thought that was shameful. But at least we had a proper toilet."
"Where d’you live now?" Conor’s teeth tugged on the bread.
"Hill Common. It's a new house." How faraway it all was, unreal almost.
Conor put away the uneaten portion of his bread. He stripped off his jumper, spread it on the ground and lay back on it, stretching out, with his hands behind his head. Mattie did the same with Delia’s ghastly flower-covered cardigan, not caring about mud or debris on it.
"This is the life," Conor sighed. "Forget mod cons and that.”
Mattie gazed up at the bluest sky she had ever seen, against which stood out white rocks and green foliage. The steep sides of the valley rose behind them and across the river.
"It's bliss," she said. "Mountains. I love mountains."
"Funny, isn't it?" Conor said after a long silence, "how coming abroad makes a difference."
Mattie gave this comment serious attention. She had had similar sentiments but needed him to elaborate, in order to check that he was talking about the same kind of reaction as she had been experiencing.
"What d’you mean, funny? The difference to what?"
"Strange. Unexpected. A difference to how I see my life back home from here. Things get you down, don't they?"
"Why, do things get you down?"
“Yeah. Coming all this way, you get things in perspective."
"The world’s a big place, isn't it?"
"My problems looks small, from here."
Mattie wanted to know more. "Do you have problems at home then?"
"Do I have problems at home! I'm glad to get away."
"Is it a big problem?"
Yeah." He hesitated lifted his head to give her a quick glance and then laid back and shut his eyes again. "Me Da’s an alcoholic."
Mattie took a deep breath. "Poor you."
"Don't tell anyone."
"I won't. Does it cause trouble?"
"Rows. No money. And it's scary. When it's real bad, it's scary, I don't mind telling you. Don't tell anyone, will you?" His voice was flat.
"I won't. How do you manage, with school and that?"
"It's my way out, my escape, my reason for living, except there's a lot of snobs there. I love me science. I focus on me work. I think about the future, a good future, my own future. I keep out of me Da’s way." He glanced over to her again. "I've never told anyone this."
She raised herself up on one elbow and turned to look at him. He had his eyes closed, against the sun, against the facts, and against her to whom he had told his dire secret. The cheeky schoolboy was no more. She saw him differently, in a new light. The humour, the cheekiness, they were covers for a serious young person who knew trouble, who fought it, who had developed strategies for dealing with it and who had aims for getting away from it.
She scrambled to a sitting position on Delia's cardigan. "I'm going to tell you a secret of mine. I have kept it to myself for nearly four years, well, three years, really, because I didn't understand what was happening for the first year or so."
Conor remained perfectly still, eyes closed. "Go on," he said.
"My older sister had a baby. And she’s not married."
"Crikey. I bet your parents made a to-do about that."
"My Mum did. Libby had to go away. Four years ago. Four years next month. She wasn’t allowed to be in touch with me. I think Mum thought, and still thinks, she – you know – got rid of it. Or had it adopted. I don't know what she thinks. But Mum and Dad haven’t seen Libby since, they don't know where she is. I do though. I go to see her, in London, every couple of months. And the baby."
"She kept it?"
"She did. And that's not all. The baby's father was black."
Conor’s eyes opened. He sat up. "Crikey. Black. That's worse than being Irish, isn't it? ‘No Irish, no coloureds, no dogs’."
"Mum wouldn't like it if she knew."
"I bet. Crikey, Mattie, you’re strong, aren’t you, keeping all that to yourself for so long and coming top in French all the time."
"Not all the time. My results last summer were bad."
"For you. You know, my work slips at bad times. But I’m damned if I’m going to let that toffee-nosed lot at the Grammar School know what goes on at home. They love a bit of scandal."
"I feel a bit like that, too. My Mum’s ill. I won't use that as a reason for not doing well at school."
Conor turned a softer face to her, a face that had abandoned its usual bravado. "Any time you wanna talk, I'm yer man."
She giggled. "I’ll do the same for you."
"You’re a real friend." He said that to the sky.
Mattie went pink. "So are you."
"Good grief!" He jumped to his feet. "See that the bird up there?" He pointed to a large raptor circling overhead. "Bloody hell, it's a vulture. Quick. Let's go."
Rooted to the spot, Mattie watched the bird. Then she squealed, jumped to her feet, stumbling towards her bicycle. A lack of frenzy on Conor’s part, made her turn to look at him. The familiar, cheeky Conor had returned. He was standing, shaking with silent laughter. She leapt towards him and pounded him with her fists
"Beast. You know it's not," she said, subsiding into laughter herself.
"No. There aren't any vultures in these parts. I think it's an eagle of some kind. Wonderful isn't it? Kind of majestic."
"I'm keen on birds as well," she said shyly.
"Are we going on to Manourgue?"
"Why not? We’ve come this far."
“Five miles, you reckoned.”
"About that. I haven't ridden a bike for about five years. I'll hurt all over tomorrow."
"And no bath to soak in. Come on. Let's catch up with the French kids and teach them some more swear words, even invent ones that aren't real, just for fun."
"They're probably all in Manourgue now, eating ice cream and drinking lemonade."
“Or drinking coffee and smoking. I can't stand that horrid little Gaston. Let’s pull his leg."
A peal of laughter escaped Mattie. Having unburdened herself, there was room in her for fun and Conor had a wealth of that on offer.
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