Something that wasn't allowed

We're so pleased to have a further instalment of The Incident by Maggie Redding to share with you today. If you'd like to read the preceding episodes, just check for Maggie's tag and they'll show up in the archive. Intriguing stuff is developing over coffee in the staff room of Hill Common School...

Elin Lewis Jones was visiting Hill Common School again the following morning. Vida saw her as soon as she went into the staff-room.  With that hair, she was recognizable from far away and wearing a turquoise top, she could hardly be missed..  Vida’s instinct was to withdraw but she was too late.  She’d been spotted.  Elin strode over to greet her.

‘Good to see you again,’ she said. ‘Shall we sort out some coffee and continue our chat?’

‘Our chat?  What about?’  Vida frowned.  She was less than eager.

‘You were telling me how you came into teaching.’

‘I don’t recall telling you much.’

‘Exactly. I’d like to hear more, about your mother wanting you to be a teacher, for instance.’

Elin spotted the two upright chairs, in a corner, unoccupied.  She led the way over to them. 

‘My mother,’ Vida began as she sat down, ’she was a machinist, in the fashion industry, in north London.  She and her friend were fast, highly skilled, much in demand, well-paid, too.  That was some time ago. We weren’t poor, but life was difficult for her.’  

She looked at Elin and had to look away again, not knowing why.  ‘Mum wanted a better future for me, you see.  A job that’s non-manual, she used to say. Actually, me being mixed race, she wanted to be able to show off about me, not be ashamed, as I think she was.  But she wasn’t prepared to make the required effort.’ 

‘But, teaching?  Was she right?’  Elin leaned forward a little. ‘Was it a good move?’ She seemed not to want to know the reason for her hardly veiled bitterness about her mother’s ambitions for her.

‘I have grave doubts now.’  She gazed out of the tall window. An unblemished blue sky evoked memories of past late spring days, free of all that trapped her now.  Yet there had been other traps in those days.  She preferred not to dwell on those. ‘It breaks my heart, at times,’ she said, all caution dismissed in the presence of someone who understood, ‘the way the pupils are spoken about. And spoken to.  I don't know whether it's ever too late to help anybody.’    She glanced at Elin shyly.  Could she trust her with confidences?  Would Elin laugh at her ideas?  This was an intense conversation to have with a complete stranger.   She hoped none of the staff around them heard the exchange. She guessed that Kelly would have little sympathy for her views. They seethed, her colleagues, they floundered in the staff-room, like a restless sea, their repressed rage justified by a confidence, an arrogance. The room was stuffy. The windows were all closed to keep out the noise of unconstrained pupils yelling in the grounds.  

‘You're an optimist about the pupils, then,’ Elin said.  ‘Or maybe the whole of humankind?  However, in my case, with my job, the gesture of helping them, trying to remove impediments to learning, has to be made. The poor little sods are thoroughly fucked up by both parents and teachers by the time they get to secondary school, if not before that.  Then it’s too late to help, I think.’  Elin turned to look at her with a relaxed, friendly expression. ‘What do you think?’

‘Not being a parent myself, I don't feel qualified to blame them.  I’m frankly not impressed with the way some teachers treat pupils.’  

‘I have never wondered where bullying in schools originates.’  Elin spoke with satisfaction before taking a sip of coffee. 

‘You mean with us, with the teachers?’

  She nodded then made an impatient movement with her whole body. ‘I've a good mind to bugger off to Wales, to live on fresh air and views.  Starvation can't be worse than the expectations put on me.’  She glanced at Vida, smiling again.  Her eyes were soft, warm, a pale green, interesting, interested, all-seeing eyes. Her eyelashes, paler than her hair, were barely visible.  

‘Excuse the language,’ Elin was saying, ‘frustration, poor vocabulary plus a healthy dose of your previous Head of Department‘s cynicism.  How long have you been teaching?’ 

‘Nearly ten years in total.  It feels like a lifetime.  I had a break when I looked after my mother before she died.  But what else can I do?’

‘Become an Ed. Psych?’

‘You’ve just put me off that.  Besides, I like the kids.’

Elin was kind, she encouraged her to talk.  She understood her attitude to teaching, to the school, to the pupils.

‘You could always foster children,’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Vida said as an image of Peter rose in her mind. Peter was not keen on children. To her relief, further discussion was avoided by the bell for the end of break, destroying the peace of mind of anyone in the room who had that rare commodity. Harassed faces with set jaws were sucked to far reaches of the campus, as the staff abandoned mugs, biscuit crumbs, strewn papers, and books on every surface. Chairs were left in disarray.

Uneasy, now that she’d revealed herself in a way she’d never done before, Vida wandered to a classroom full of, as yet, mostly unspoiled, twelve-year-olds. She’d opened-up, to Elin.  She was as comfortable as if she had been naked. She wished she hadn’t spoken so freely. Her own opinions were disturbing to her, as though she’d said something that wasn’t allowed.

Despite this private angst, the exchange with Elin Lewis Jones was the most pleasant encounter since she’d joined the school. Kelly was lovely, but someone to be wary of when it came to views on education. Elin wasn’t part of the staff-room politics that so bothered Vida.  She had an easy-going manner, Elin did. 

An emptiness

Today we're delighted to share more of Maggie Redding's The Incident. New teacher Vida is gradually settling into her job and making friends. A chance encounter with a fellow teacher's lively family life takes her by surprise - and brings her to acknowledge discords within her own marriage.

    At the end of every day Vida was glad to escape. The school served an area known for its ‘social problems’. She lived a safe distance away, in a three-bedroom, detached house which she and her husband, Peter, had purchased a year ago. He was a graphic designer and worked from home.  The house had been furnished and decorated with love and care, mostly hers. The home, however, did not always provide the sanctuary she needed.

‘How was your day?’

He asked that question every afternoon, when she arrived home.  As soon as she went into the living room, furnished in white and cream, a colour-scheme that only a childless couple would choose, he put a cup of tea in front of her and sat down opposite her to listen.  This he saw as his duty. Little of what she told him was retained. Despite his questions, he was less than interested.  She knew and accepted that.  But how she yearned for support, for understanding from her husband, a real interest in her life, a huge part of it which was not shared by him! Every day, she had to fight her feelings of irritation with him.

* * *

One Friday, Kelly came in to school late. Vida met her in the staff-room, halfway through the morning. She looked fraught. They stood in the middle of the room, people milling around them, tension tangible.  Kelly’s face was white except for two high spots of colour on her cheeks.

‘The car,’ she said, ‘it wouldn't start.  I had to walk and get the bus, with Ben and Tim in tow.  They complained all the way.  We missed the first two lessons.  Never mind.  They’ll have to catch up.’

‘Didn't you think to get a taxi?’ Vida said.

Kelly was clearly unwilling to explain.  ‘No cash,’ she said after a hesitation. ‘Two credit cards well over their limit already.’

Vida was as much distressed by Kelly's honesty as by her poverty.  That a teacher, a professional person, could be in that state financially, had never occurred to her.  She had made it difficult for Kelly not to explain. 

‘I'm so sorry.  I didn't understand.  I tend to assume everyone's as well off as Peter and I are.  And I'm not showing off, Kelly, just sheltered.  Another time, phone me.’

‘No kids, see.  You have two incomes to yourselves.  We have one and a half incomes for six people.  And yes, I’ll phone you if I find out in time that the car’s gone wrong.  Thanks a lot.’

‘I'll give you a lift home tonight.’ Vida was eager to make amends for her lack of awareness.  She headed for the door because she was already late for the next lesson.

‘Oh, you are a saint,’ said Kelly, grabbing a pile of books and rushing to the door after her.

At the end of the school day, Kelly waited in the car park, with her two boys, Ben, aged sixteen who appeared to topple off his long legs and Tim, fifteen, who was quiet.  They hovered at a distance they deemed to be respectable.  As Vida reached her car, Kelly came over to her.

‘Wow, Lexus.  That's what two incomes and no children do for you.  You lucky thing.’   She said it with a smile and no resentment.  Clearly, four children were worth any car, any day. Vida dismissed an unsettling feeling about to surface in her.

Ben and Tim sauntered over trying to look as though the last thing they would ever do would be to accept a lift in a teacher’s car, even if it was a Lexus. Kelly, piles of books and her laptop on her knees, sat in the front passenger seat.  The boys wriggled down on the back seat, heads as low as possible in order not to be recognised by their peers.

The Bedfords lived beyond the edge of the town, down along a lane just before the village of Milton Stanwick.  With Vida’s uncertainty combined with the Friday evening traffic, the journey took well over half an hour.  The house, a modern detached one with no character at all, set back from the lane in a large, vegetable garden.  The situation was elevated, had views over the countryside, with fields and woodland surrounding it.  Kelly invited Vida in for a cup of tea and to meet her husband, Simon.

Inside the house, the chaos could have appalled Vida had she not been able to see beyond it to identify the warmth, the sheer joy of the family together.  An unsettling feeling stirred in her.

‘Sit down,’ Kelly said, brushing toys off the old-looking sofa so that they were scattered onto the floor.  Two little girls, feet bare, tousled hair, gazed at Vida from a distance.  One had a thumb in her mouth. 

From where she sat, Vida had a view of the rear garden, lilac bushes, the vegetable plot with runner bean canes, roses tumbling over a hedge, birds gathering to a feeding table.  She relaxed into the cosy lack of order, revelling in the fecundity of it. New friends, new experiences, new insights, new thoughts: her life was changing.

Because of the distance between home and work when she had been at her previous school, there had been no time or opportunity for much in the way of friendship.  There had been other factors, of course, like Peter; but rather than dwell on those, she now welcomed the chance to broaden her social life.

Simon bustled in from the garden, festooned with dry washing just un-pegged from a long washing line. He immediately took on tea-making.  Before Vida had developed a proper acquaintance with three-year-old Lucy and Lola, aged twelve months, a mug of tea was thrust into her hand.  Kelly's husband was unlikely, being tall, large, balding but with eyes that crinkled readily in the outer corners.  He had a belly covered by a floppy, faded t-shirt and wore loose shorts with sandals on his feet.

‘Don't put up with those two,’ he said, referring to Lucy and Lola, who were demanding Vida’s attention.  ‘They haven't been to nursery today so they’re craving the stimulation of someone new.  They've been with boring old Daddy all the time.’

‘He's not boring old Daddy,’ Kelly said.  ‘Are you?’  She looked up at him.

He looked down at her with his crinkling smile.  ‘You tell me,’ he said. They both laughed at some shared but secret meaning.

Vida smiled but inside, something unsettled her, causing her to hold her breath for a moment.  A long time had passed since that kind of flirting had been exchanged between herself and Peter, if it ever had to any extent, were she to be honest.  She was glad to focus on Lola's attempts to climb onto her lap.  To enable her to lift the child, she balanced her mug of tea on a nearby bookshelf.  Lola gazed at her in delight. She toyed with Vida’s earrings, touched her teeth, grabbed a handful of her carefully pinned up hair. Vida gazed in delight at Lola, too.

‘Lola, don't,’ said Simon.

‘It's all right,’ Vida said as her hair fell about her shoulders.  ‘She's so lovely.’  She took the child’s tiny hand, pressing her lips against it.  Soft, new, unused, the little fingers curled round her thumb.  ‘She's so beautiful,’ Vida said in wonder. It had been a long time since she had been so close to a child as young as Lola.  There was that feeling once more, unsettling her. She began to feel anxious to leave, to reach home.

 ‘We think so, don't we, Simon?’  Kelly said, sinking into a chair.  ‘But in truth, she’s just like any other baby.’

Lola's hand went back to Vida’s hair, tugging it.  Again Simon remonstrated.  Vida smiled grimly to herself.  She was used to less gentle tugging than this. She held the child against her, leaning her cheek on top of the fuzzy little head.  A great emptiness welled up inside her.  

‘Peter!’ she said suddenly.  ‘I’ve lost count of time.  He’ll be concerned if I'm very late.’

‘It's half past five,’ Simon said.

That was very late to Peter. Vida fumbled in her handbag for her phone.  She always switched it off in the classroom, a good habit as an example had to be set for the pupils: there were enough problems with phones ringing and texting messages under the desks.

‘Peter, I'm on my way.’

‘Where have you been?’  

She hoped Kelly and Simon could hear neither Peter’s words nor his tone.  

‘I gave a lift to a colleague.  Her car had broken down.’

‘Well, I hope you won't be much longer.’

‘I'm on my way.’  She snapped the phone shut.  ‘I should be going.  He is the anxious sort.’ 

As she left, Kelly came out to the car with her, explaining that the garage had said her own car would be ready the next day, which was a Saturday.  The two women exchanged phone numbers.  ‘Any time you're stuck,’ Vida said.

‘You and your husband, you should come round for a meal one evening,’ Kelly said.

Vida looked straight ahead of her.  ‘You're very kind, Kelly.  Peter is a bit of a geek, he loves his work.  He doesn't socialise much but I'd love to come and visit your beautiful family on my own, especially during the school holidays.’

She drove off.  Her vision was misty, her mind agitated by another stirring of that something on which she could not afford to dwell.   

New Teacher Nerves

We're delighted to have an extract from The Incident by Maggie Redding today. Nervous new teacher Vida Hartley is trying to navigate life in a rough school. She starts the day with a significant encounter.

With her energy and wild, red hair, the woman appeared like an avenging angel pouncing on poor Dudley Waters.  He had just run in front of Vida Hartley’s car in the staff car park.  The woman was unknown to Vida.  She did, however. vaguely recognise Dudley Waters.  Everyone at Hill Common School knew of Dudley Waters, Year Nine and difficult.  Now he was being marched rapidly up to Vida.  The red-haired woman held onto him by the collar of his blazer. 

‘Say sorry to this lady,’ this vivid stranger instructed him. ‘You gave her a fright.  Look how white she’s gone.’

‘White?’  He grinned up at Vida, who, conscious of her colour, was not sure if his query was a cheeky reference to it.  ‘Sorry’, he added.

Vida thanked him.

‘Off you go and in future, take care around cars,’ he was told by the woman.  He scampered off as though triumphant. She turned to Vida.  ‘Saucy little devil,’ she gave a laugh.  ‘White!  Hello, I’m the newly assigned Ed. Psych. to this school, Elin Lewis Jones. You teach here?’

Vida took the proffered hand.  There had been talk of the new Educational Psychologist in the staff room, with sniffs of disdain, but no one had referred to her striking appearance nor to her Welsh accent. 

‘Yes, I do.  I’m Davida Hartley, always known as Vida, new this term.  Must hurry. I’m late.’

‘Maybe we’ll meet up in the staff room.’

Not if she could help it, Vida told herself.  Elin Lewis Jones was not the route to the acceptance of her colleagues that Vida needed. She’d already found the staff room unfriendly.

At break, she was helping herself to coffee when a quiet voice behind her said, ‘Mucky lot, teachers.’

She turned, mug in hand, to see Elin Lewis Jones reaching past her to lift a tea towel from the countertop and proceed to mop up spills with it.  She then dumped it on the counter.  

‘Are you sitting with particular friends?’ Elin said as she helped herself to coffee. 

‘I don’t sit with anyone.’

She gazed at Vida.  ‘You are a Nervous Nelly, Vida.’  Her voice was surprisingly kind. Vida could have become tearful at that gentle tone in this otherwise hostile place.  Elin surveyed the prospect of a seat, or two seats, in the room, overcrowded and, to Vida, daunting.

‘I still feel very new here,’ Vida said, relenting because of the soft voice. 

‘Look, there are two upright chairs over there,'' Elin said, as she took Vida’s elbow to steer her across the staff-room.

‘Are you Welsh?’ she said as they both sat down.  ‘I ask because of your name, Davida.’

‘Everyone calls me Vida.’

‘Not Welsh, though?’

‘No. Just a boring Londoner.’

‘Being a Londoner, that's not boring. What’s your subject?’

‘History.  And cynicism.’ 

Elin smiled. ‘Oh, a wit.’

‘It's not original.  My previous Head of History used to say it.’ 

‘It can save some angst, though, can’t it, a little cynicism?’

Vida looked at the woman properly for the first time. Her hair was auburn, wild and curly and there were hints of freckles on her creamy skin. She was enviably slender, in a white blouse and black culottes. Her Welsh voice was devoid of harshness. ‘I agree,’ Vida said. 

‘What made you want to be a teacher?’  

  ‘My mother, I suppose.’

‘It was her idea? Was your mother a teacher, then?’ 

‘No. She wanted a daughter who was a teacher. I was an obedient daughter. She died some years ago.’ Vida told Elin a little about her life as an only child of a single mother in North London.

‘Have you settled in at Hill Common?’

‘I have not.’  Her own vehemence surprised her.

‘I can imagine you haven’t. There are many problems in this school and in the estate around it. I am thinking you could maybe ratify my opinions about this place.’

The signal for the end of break sounded throughout the school.  

‘Back to the grindstone,’ Elin said, rising. ‘I’ll see you again.’

The following day, at break, by the time Elin Lewis Jones strode into the staff-room, Vida was already engaged in a conversation with Kelly Bedford. Elin’s presence seemed to be a focus in the room and to have a tug on Vida’s awareness, perhaps because of her eagerness to avoid her. 

Kelly had introduced herself: ‘You’re new, aren’t you?  How are you coping? I’m Kelly Bedford. Maths.’

Vida smiled - with relief as much as anything.  She had been so aware of her isolation in the staff-room. 'Vida Hartley, history. I’m coping in fear and trepidation, most of the time,’ she said. 

‘I know. I came in January. You’ll soon get used to it.’

‘I’m not sure that I want to.  In my worst moments, I hesitate at the car park entrance and I’m tempted to go back home.’ Vida felt her gaze drawn to the corner where Elin stood, tall, elegant, aloof and alone, without any apparent concern. 

‘Oh, we all feel like that, all the time,’ Kelly was saying.

Vida and Kelly sipped coffee. ‘They’re all so angry, aren’t they?’ Vida said.

‘I suppose it’s not their fault.  They don’t choose to live on Hill Common estate, do they?’

Vida glanced at her, trying to hide her alarm. Kelly picked it up, though. 

       ‘Or did you mean the staff?’  She threw her head back and gave a gurgling laugh. ‘In another week, you’ll be the same.’

Vida laughed sheepishly. ‘Perhaps I am now.’ Oh, she hoped not.

‘Who do you have next lesson?’

‘A Year Eleven. For the Civil War. They are quite a decent crowd.’

‘My son, Ben Morrison, is in year Eleven.  But you don’t have him, do you? Oh, that’s the bell for the end of break, already.  Peace doesn’t last long, does it?  Keep your pecker up, Vida.’

He hated war, did my Dad

It's Remembrance Sunday here in the UK. Maggie Redding has shared this poem for the occasion.

War

The stories that my father told about the war

to end all wars, were tales of mud and wet and cold,

of fags, of bully beef, the roar of guns and bursting shells.

He spoke of gas, of mates, some killed or wounded

maimed.  Places listed, Arras, Ypres and Vimy Ridge.

There was a soldier boy, a German prisoner.

He fetched water for the British men in Flanders.

My father noticed that he had a limp. He moved

as though in pain.  ‘What’s up, then, mate?’

a homely phrase, so ordinary.  No hostile words,

no hate, no dread, only concern, humanity.

The fear that froze the prisoner’s face betrayed

the stories he’d been fed, that Brits they were a cruel,

 wicked race, they’d kill sick prisoners, they’d said.

The leg was wounded, bad and black. ‘Gangrene,’ Dad told us.

He had taken the lad for care.  Dad didn’t know if he went back

to Germany and lived on there.

He hated war, did my Dad.  Twenty years after that

He heard declared a new World War.

‘It makes you wonder,’ he would say.

‘Was it worth it?  What’s it for?’

Maggie Redding             

The Gleaners

As there is a hint of Autumn in the air, it seems appropriate to post this poem by Maggie Redding. It was inspired by her first sight of the painting Le Rappel des Glaneuses by Jules Breton, which depicts peasant women returning from fields where they have picked and sifted the leavings of grain. This back-breaking labour was allowed only until dusk on the last day of harvest, representing a substantial contribution to the diet of desperately poor families.  

                                                          

                                                            The Gleaners                                                                        

 by Maggie Redding

For the poor, the leftovers, the gleanings.

The rich call, not merely the tune, 

But whole symphonies of greed.

For one day, the stubbled fields are yielded to

Desperate women, broad-faced, broad-shouldered,

Scrabbling for ears of wheat for their winter bread.

Daylight fades. The pace increases.

Only till dusk permission is granted

To gather their meagre harvest.

The uncouth summons of the landlord’s man

Straightens bent backs, releases aching arms.

Women and children move to the gate.

Sharp stalks prickle bare feet.

With sun- and breeze-burned faces,

They carry home, gratefully, their gleanings.

Resigned, wistful glances are cast

Towards the last glimpse of light.

Now let winter and landlord do their worst.

I didn't know I looked cross

This week Maggie Redding has given us a little lyric dialogue between young and old. Hope you enjoy it!

P.S. It has to be said that sometimes Weird Sisters in general do look a bit cross, but only when pondering deeply.

Why do old ladies look cross?

‘Why do old ladies look cross, Grandma?

Tell me, why do they always look grim?’

‘I didn’t know, Annabel, that I looked cross.

Is it the lines from my nose to my chin?’

‘You don’t know you look cross, Grandma?

You are old and will die before long.’

‘It isn’t the thought of dying, Annabel,

that’s the cause of the frowns to be strong.

It’s the sadness of living.

The world is all wrong

With hatred and greed

The hungry to feed

It’s been going on for so long.’

‘Is there nothing that’s good in the world?

Is it all helplessness and despair?

Please give me some hope in my life, Grandma.

Don’t tell me it’s beyond repair.

Is there something you’re forgetting?

There’s my generation to ask.

You can leave it to us.

We’ll make no fuss.

But just get on with the task.’

‘I had hoped, Annabel, to leave the world

better than when I was  born.

I feel that I’ve failed, although I have tried.

It turned out to be a false dawn.’

‘I think you see it all wrong, Grandma

Judging’s not really for you?

‘I don’t think it’s for me,

We don’t need to see

and measure the good that we do.’

Maggie Redding

January 2018 

My problems look small, from here

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.  

Maggie Redding