Dangerous Things Page 16

  He took her to a dark brown fug of a pub just off the Highway and she settled herself in the corner seat he found her with her head resting back against the richly engraved glass behind her, her eyes closed, as he fetched their drinks. He brought the gin and tonic and a plate of ham sandwiches too.

  ‘I’m hungry, so I assume you are too. Food is what people eat when their companion’s missed his lunch. Today’s lunch was more than usually repellent.’

  Hattie, remembering the very salty and clearly elderly fish that had been put in front of them, agreed, ate the sandwiches gratefully, and felt a lot better.

  He nodded at her approvingly. ‘That’s more like it. Now you look like yourself again rather than a harridan who’s been crossed in hate.’

  ‘Charming!’

  ‘You didn’t see yourself.’

  ‘Well, I was angry. It was like talking to a jellyfish, or a cloud on legs. You can’t get hold of him.’

  ‘Ah! All is as crystal. The Head, our esteemed Lord and Master.’

  ‘I thought he’d give me the push, you know.’ She was feeling better by the moment as the gin lowered in her glass. ‘If he’d had any sense he would have.’

  ‘Dear me, what can you have done?’

  She giggled. ‘Told tales out of school. Literally.’

  ‘Am I allowed to know what they were?’

  She told him, waxing more and more angry as she did so. ‘I know everyone on the staff was asked to keep quiet about what happened, and I know we agreed. I mean, the last thing we want is a spate of copycatting, which we might get if all the boys knew that Daniel Spero had done it on purpose. And I have to say it was impressive the way he handled it. No one apart from the boys who were with Tully seemed to have the remotest idea that anything at all had happened and even they didn’t seem to realize it wasn’t just an accident. But it was all so … I don’t know, I was livid. And worried. No one was doing anything about Daniel, you see. He got a hell of a telling off and Tully made his life misery for the rest of the week and then — well, nothing. It just wasn’t good enough. Someone had to help the poor lad. I tried to get out of him what he wanted but it wasn’t any good, so I asked him if I could talk to his parents, get them to take him away, send him somewhere better suited to him.’

  He drew a long soft breath. ‘Now I see why the Head and you had a set-to. You went to see them?’

  ‘Daniel was so — I had to. He thought I could do it. Persuade them, I mean.’ She stared down into her glass, broodingly. ‘He — after that evening, when I pulled Tully off him and everything — well, he seemed to think I was all right.’

  ‘Got a crush,’ Sam interpreted, and she flushed.

  ‘Something of the sort. I had to do something for him, didn’t I? And I thought his own parents — I can’t imagine I’d knowingly put either of my two through that sort of hell if I knew how they felt about it. I couldn’t believe they’d be the way they were.’

  Sam made a twisting movement of his lips. ‘I’m never surprised any more by the parents who use this school. Some of them are — oh, just as they should be. The sort I’d be, given the chance, I hope. Interested in their kids first and foremost. But there are a hell of a lot of them who make me want to — well, I’m not surprised, shall we say, that you met a pair who were less than agreeable.’

  ‘Agreeable! Absolute bastards, both of them. Well, maybe she wasn’t that bad, but who could tell? She said she had to leave it to him, she’d agreed it was something his father knew most about, and went away to make coffee. And didn’t come back. She shook her head. ‘I can’t imagine being like that.’

  ‘Stop using yourself as the yardstick for everyone else. You’ll just get confused.’

  ‘I did get confused! All his father could go on about was what it might have cost him if the fire had taken hold and what people would say if it got out, and how he’d have to give the boy a lesson he’d not forget and — oh, it was awful. I got him to say he’d think again about keeping Daniel at the school, since he was so miserable, and I said it’d help him, Daniel, I mean, to talk to someone, a counsellor, maybe, or a doctor, but he just showed me out and the next thing I know is the Head’s sent for me, and isn’t at all happy. And it’s still nothing to do with Daniel or what he needs or how he feels. It’s all how much the school’s losing in cash from Spero senior, who’s been a benefactor, I gather, and how the Head had to expel the boy as the only way of dealing with it, now I’d let the cat out of the bag. I ask you!’ She ended indignantly. ‘How can anyone be so stupid?’

  ‘In his shoes it wasn’t at all stupid. It was a very clever thing to have done. Now he’ll tell the school,’ Sam said slowly. ‘Poor little devil. Everyone’ll know — it’ll probably even get to the local papers, and the Authority’ll be in on it — poor little sod! It would have been better if you hadn’t gone to the parents, you know, Hattie —’

  ‘Don’t you start!’ she flared. ‘I was thinking of Daniel, dammit. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel! No one else seemed to give a damn for him —’

  ‘I know. But I have to say it won’t be any easier for him now. The Head’ll tell the school he was a bad boy and had to be expelled and they’ll tell their parents who’ll be very approving and see Roscoe as very good news — the smack of firm Government and all that stuff. That’ll put a spoke in the Town Hall’s wheel, too. He’ll come across as brave and wise, damn his eyes.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said, and he laughed and put a hand over hers.

  ‘Don’t sound so dispirited. You did the best you could. You were right to try, from the boy’s standpoint. Write to Daniel or phone him, why don’t you? Tell him direct how to get the sort of help he needs. You can get him to see someone and talk about his problems, can’t you?’

  She lifted her chin. ‘I think perhaps — yes, I could do that. Will he go, though, that’s the thing.’

  ‘He’s got a crush on you, you said.’

  She reddened. ‘Well, yes, I suppose he would. All right, I’ll do that. Thanks. I feel better. Not a lot, but better.’

  ‘It’s a free service,’ he said lightly. ‘Any time.’ And he took his hand away, and that made her suddenly uncomfortably aware of his physical presence, and she couldn’t look at him.

  There was a little silence and then she said, ‘I must go. Those hamburgers’ll be thawing and the girls will want their supper.’

  ‘And I had you down for a sensible vegetarian lots-of-fibre-and-fresh-fruit sort of mother,’ he said lightly and she grimaced.

  ‘On paper I am. In practice, hamburgers fill in a hell of a lot of holes.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. I’ll see you to the station. No, don’t argue. You’ve got more than hamburgers in this bag. It’s heavy.’

  ‘Potatoes and corn,’ she said a little absently and got to her feet. ‘I should stay here, shouldn’t I? At the school, I mean.’

  He looked startled. ‘Has he fired you? You didn’t say —’

  ‘No. He should have. I was dreadfully rude. If I’d spoken to any of the people I’d worked under at the hospital that way, I’d have been crucified, let alone sacked. He seems to like it though.’

  He nodded sapiently and held open the door of the pub to let her out into the dank thin fog of the dark Highway. ‘I can understand that. With you there as his token someone to look after the little darlings, he’s safer.’

  ‘I can’t stand that.’ She stood still in the street and stared ahead of her. ‘It’s hateful.’

  ‘Of course it is. But think of the alternative. No one like you at the Foundation.’

  She looked at him, glad it was dark so that he couldn’t see her face clearly, because she knew she was pink again. ‘You think that would matter, then?’

  ‘I do. To a lot of people.’ He paused and then said deliberately, ‘Including me.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I really must go. It’s getting awfully late.’

  Fifteen

  Christmas came and went in its usual flurry of too much
of everything, and Hattie enjoyed the chance to be with the children all day and every day, though somehow it wasn’t as absorbing as it had been in the old days when they’d been small. Then she had needed to hurry through housework in order to play with them a good deal, working out complex daily itineraries involving parks and swings and ducks, but they’d become a great deal more sophisticated in the last term at school. Now it was a case of wanting to go to the library for more books, to a friend’s house for a chance to see some megabrill videos (and that involved Hattie in tactful checking with the relevant mothers that the videos were the sort she’d be happy for Sophie and Jessica to see; megabrill could mean anything) and filling their own home with visiting friends. There would be coteries of shrill little girls in the children’s bedrooms or the living room, all squealing and hooting over the doings of various of their number, and Hattie listened and watched and was a little melancholy. Oliver would have enjoyed this stage of their lives, she found herself thinking, and was then struck with remorse, for she had hardly thought of Oliver at all for weeks.

  So she set herself to a strenuous round of cupboard- and drawer-cleaning and rearranging that left her exhausted and irritable and annoyed the girls so much they chose to spend more time next door with Judith’s Petra and Jenny, leaving Hattie alone and lonely. She found herself welcoming the start of the new term at both the girls’ school and the Foundation with far more warmth than she would have expected.

  Not that she hadn’t enjoyed her first term at the Foundation. She had, in spite of the way it had thrown up unexpected problems, had been harder work than she’d imagined it would be and disappointing in terms of relationships. It had been one of the good things she’d hoped to get from the job, new friendships with new people, and in the event the misogynism she had met had been disagreeable. But for all that she had ended the term happily enough in a flurry of school parties and sherry drinking in the staffroom; and of course, there was Sam Chanter. But again, she wouldn’t let herself explore the way thinking about Sam Chanter affected her, and she still wouldn’t. However, she was more than happy to drop Sophie and Jessica off at their own school, where they were swallowed into their mob of equally shrill little girls with every sign of delight, and go on to the City on her own. This term, surely, should be easier. She was an established resident now, after all.

  There was no fuss at all when she went into the staff common room this time. The people who were already there, and who included Ian Bevan, paid no attention to her whatsoever, treating her as invisible, and that was a comfort. Much less strenuous than fighting, she told herself philosophically as she stacked her few books and register into the cubbyhole she had managed to win for her own use. This term she had decided she would try to run for the boys similar classes to those she had initiated for the girls, on living skills and similar issues, and she had prepared, with considerable optimism, a full term’s syllabus. She put her notice offering the sessions during the lunch breaks on the main notice board, and prowled the school looking for extra chairs and stools to spirit away to her own small room to accommodate the comers she hoped to get. A dozen wouldn’t be bad, she told herself hopefully, and arranged her room accordingly.

  And was delighted to find that she had almost half as many again. There was some ribaldry and guffawing as the boys shoved at each other and nudged and pushed, but the important thing was they came and she used the first session very carefully, determined not to lose them. A modicum of talk about sex, she decided, and a good deal more about them as people, should bring them back eager for more; and she settled down on the first Friday of term to see how she’d cope.

  They were mostly fourth-formers who came, boys of fourteen or so, gangly, often touchingly fragile about the wrists and ankles, which were all too apparent in outgrown clothes, or gawky in too-large clothes bought by parents determined to get a little more for their uniform pounds. They were all battered, of course, clearly going to considerable length to look the same as each other, only more scruffy; and she sat in the small room which was already taking on a distinct smell of boy, so very different from the faintly Body Shop fruit and floweriness the girls gave off, and looked round at them in their shabby blazers with an apparently casual glance but which missed little.

  ‘It helps to know something about you all,’ she said as easily as she could. ‘Not just names and ages, but more interesting details. Sport for example. Who does what?’

  That helped a lot. She flushed out a couple of hearty footballers and a fencer as well as several swimmers and was fulsome in her praise of their healthy lifestyle.

  ‘There’s some evidence,’ she said offhandedly, ‘that exercise of the sort you do take on regularly strengthens bones and increases body size in general. Not fat, of course’ — she carefully didn’t look at the rather plump boy who was sweating gently in the back row — ‘but the bits that count. Muscles across the shoulders and so forth. Buttocks and things.’ She risked a look up at them and a grin. ‘The sexy ones.’

  A loud guffaw greeted that and she took courage. ‘Do you know which bit of a man women notice first?’ she said. ‘Someone did some research. It certainly surprised me, and I’m a woman and supposed to know.’

  ‘Faces,’ someone said, and a more daring voice from the back murmured, ‘Crotches,’ and she laughed.

  ‘Not faces. Not crotches. Bottoms.’

  There was a loud, ‘Whay, hey!’ from all of them and she looked round and grinned even more widely.

  ‘It was a great comfort to me,’ she said. ‘I thought I was a bit of a freak till then.’

  The group visibly relaxed and she stretched her own shoulders slightly and thought smugly, I haven’t forgotten how. There had been times in the past, on the wards, when she’d had to work very hard to get the trust and attention of a group of young ones. She’d learned a lot then and still had the old skills.

  ‘Right then, a few more questions. How about alcohol? Can we talk about that?’

  There was an uneasy silence and she smiled. ‘My tipple’s gin and tonic. Bit old-fashioned I suppose …’

  ‘My mum likes that,’ someone said. ‘Rather well,’ and laughed a little awkwardly.

  ‘Well, it’s what women go for, isn’t it? That and sticky lickers. There’s a ghastly concoction of advocaat and cherry brandy my mum likes. Sweet as all get out and looks like pus and blood. When I say that she gives me hell.’

  There was a murmur of approval and someone else volunteered, ‘If you put that advocaat with brandy and whip it up with cream it’s fantastic. It’s called an Alexander. It’s sweet, but I like it.’

  They settled into a happy discussion of various drinks and Hattie listened and registered and said nothing. But it was depressing to see just how knowledgeable they were about the various alcohols that were available and how obvious it was that they got through a good deal of it, especially at weekends.

  ‘Getting rat-arsed on Saturdays,’ as one of them said, ‘is what it’s all about.’

  She stood leaning on the desk and said then, ‘What about smoking? Got any views on that?’

  ‘Oh, no you don’t!’ This was a boy in the middle of the group, tall and rather more self-confident than the rest, possibly because he still had some of the prettiness of his younger years, and was weathering through it on to adulthood less awkwardly than some of the others. ‘The word’s gone round, you know. You’re dead anti cigarettes.’

  She put her hands up in mock self-surrender. ‘I can’t deny it. I can’t help it, it’s my experience, you see.’ And she looked up at them under her lids and went into a graphic account of the people she had looked after with lung cancer, ending with a most sanguinary tale of a man who had suddenly suffered the puncture of a major artery in his throat from a tobacco-induced cancer of the larynx, which had sent a great jet of blood shooting up into the air, and who had ended up as white and flaccid as a piece of elderly tripe. She spared no details and they listened in silence and when she had finished still
remained quiet, not looking at her.

  It was again the boy in the middle who broke the silence. ‘For my part, I’m not into cigarettes,’ he said with a heavily casual air that alerted her at once to the fact that this was something important. ‘But I’m interested in the matter of risks. How does tobacco compare with other things as a killer? Like alcohol, say?’

  She obliged with what facts and figures she could, trying to lull him into thinking she took his question at face value, but knowing there was more to come. She’d seen that sort of elaborately relaxed air before in someone who was bursting with a question he didn’t quite know how to ask.

  He managed it. ‘And what about cannabis?’ he said. ‘You know … pot. Is that as risky as tobacco?’

  They all seemed to hold their breaths, and she looked up with her face as smooth and relaxed as if they were discussing the weather.

  ‘Cannabis. Interesting stuff. I have to say there’s a lot less evidence around about it than there is on tobacco. I haven’t any facts or figures here, but I could get them for you if you wanted them.’ I’ll have to phone Barbara Davis, she thought almost frantically, her mind going like a whirlwind behind her placid expression. She’ll know. ‘Not that it really matters, does it?’

  ‘Well, I’d have thought it was quite important,’ the fat boy said. ‘I mean, the way people go on and on about it. You’d need to know if it was true, all the things they say, wouldn’t you? If you were to make your own mind up.’

  ‘But it’s illegal,’ she said. ‘So isn’t that the end of it?’

  ‘It’s illegal to park on yellow lines, but I bet you do it,’ someone said, and she shook her head.

  ‘Don’t drive. But I take your point. There’re a lot of things that people do that are illegal. Still and all, I wouldn’t have thought this was the sort of lawbreaking that ought to be encouraged. What do you think?’