I now felt awful, and I was confused. But as we stood there together staring at the fog and rain, I could think of no way now to repair the damage I’d done. I think I said something pathetic like: “It’s all right, I didn’t see anything much,” which hung stupidly in the air. Then after a few further seconds of silence, Ruth walked off into the rain.
CHAPTER SIX
I think I’d have felt better about what had happened if Ruth had held it against me in some obvious way. But this was one instance when she seemed just to cave in. It was like she was too ashamed of the matter—too crushed by it—even to be angry or to want to get me back. The first few times I saw her after the conversation under the eaves, I was ready for at least a bit of huffiness, but no, she was completely civil, if a little flat. It occurred to me she was scared I’d expose her—the pencil case, sure enough, vanished from view—and I wanted to tell her she’d nothing to fear from me. The trouble was, because none of this had actually been talked about in the open, I couldn’t find a way of bringing it all up with her.
I did my best, meanwhile, to take any opportunity to imply to Ruth she had a special place in Miss Geraldine’s heart. There was the time, for example, when a bunch of us were desperate to go out and practise rounders during break, because we’d been challenged by a group from the year above. Our problem was that it was raining, and it looked unlikely we’d be allowed outside. I noticed though that Miss Geraldine was one of the guardians on duty, and so I said:
“If Ruth goes and asks Miss Geraldine, then we’d stand a chance.”
As far as I remember, this suggestion wasn’t taken up; maybe hardly anyone heard it, because a lot of us were talking all at once. But the point is, I said it standing right behind Ruth, and I could see she was pleased.
Then another time a few of us were leaving a classroom with Miss Geraldine, and I happened to find myself about to go out the door right after Miss Geraldine herself. What I did was to slow right down so that Ruth, coming behind me, could instead pass through the door beside Miss Geraldine. I did this without any fuss, as though this were the natural and proper thing and what Miss Geraldine would like—just the way I’d have done if, say, I’d accidentally got myself between two best friends. On that occasion, as far as I remember, Ruth looked puzzled and surprised for a split second, then gave me a quick nod and went past.
Little things like these might well have pleased Ruth, but they were still far removed from what had actually happened between us under the eaves that foggy day, and the sense that I’d never be able to sort things just continued to grow. There’s a particular memory I have of sitting by myself one evening on one of the benches outside the pavilion, trying over and over to think of some way out, while a heavy mix of remorse and frustration brought me virtually to tears. If things had stayed that way, I’m not sure what would have happened. Maybe it would all have got forgotten eventually; or maybe Ruth and I would have drifted apart. As it was, right out of the blue, a chance came along for me to put things right.
We were in the middle of one of Mr. Roger’s art lessons, except for some reason he’d gone out half way. So we were all just drifting about among the easels, chatting and looking at each other’s work. Then at one point a girl called Midge A. came over to where we were and said to Ruth, in a perfectly friendly way:
“Where’s your pencil case? It’s so luscious.”
Ruth tensed and glanced quickly about to see who was present. It was our usual gang with perhaps a couple of outsiders loitering nearby. I hadn’t mentioned to a soul anything about the Sales Register business, but I suppose Ruth wasn’t to know that. Her voice was softer than usual when she replied to Midge:
“I haven’t got it here. I keep it in my collection chest.”
“It’s so luscious. Where did you get it?”
Midge was quizzing her completely innocently, that was now obvious. But almost all of us who’d been in Room 5 the time Ruth had first brought out the pencil case were here now, looking on, and I saw Ruth hesitate. It was only later, when I replayed it all, that I appreciated how perfectly shaped a chance it was for me. At the time I didn’t really think. I just came in before Midge or anyone else had the chance to notice Ruth was in a curious quandary.
“We can’t say where it came from.”
Ruth, Midge, the rest of them, they all looked at me, maybe a little surprised. But I kept my cool and went on, addressing only Midge.
“There are some very good reasons why we can’t tell you where it came from.”
Midge shrugged. “So it’s a mystery.”
“A big mystery,” I said, then gave her a smile to show her I wasn’t trying to be nasty to her.
The others were nodding to back me up, though Ruth herself had on a vague expression, like she’d suddenly become preoccupied with something else entirely. Midge shrugged again, and as far as I remember that was the end of it. Either she walked off, or else she started talking about something different.
Now, for much the same reasons I’d not been able to talk openly to Ruth about what I’d done to her over the Sales Register business, she of course wasn’t able to thank me for the way I’d intervened with Midge. But it was obvious from her manner towards me, not just over the next few days, but over the weeks that followed, how pleased she was with me. And having recently been in much the same position, it was easy to recognise the signs of her looking around for some opportunity to do something nice, something really special for me. It was a good feeling, and I remember even thinking once or twice how it would be better if she didn’t get a chance for ages, just so the good feeling between us could go on and on. As it was, an opportunity did come along for her, about a month after the Midge episode, the time I lost my favourite tape.
I STILL HAVE A COPY OF THAT TAPE and until recently I’d listen to it occasionally driving out in the open country on a drizzly day. But now the tape machine in my car’s got so dodgy, I don’t dare play it in that. And there never seems enough time to play it when I’m back in my bedsit. Even so, it’s one of my most precious possessions. Maybe come the end of the year, when I’m no longer a carer, I’ll be able to listen to it more often.
The album’s called Songs After Dark and it’s by Judy Bridgewater. What I’ve got today isn’t the actual cassette, the one I had back then at Hailsham, the one I lost. It’s the one Tommy and I found in Norfolk years afterwards—but that’s another story I’ll come to later. What I want to talk about is the first tape, the one that disappeared.
I should explain before I go any further this whole thing we had in those days about Norfolk. We kept it going for years and years—it became a sort of in-joke, I suppose—and it all started from one particular lesson we had when we were pretty young.
It was Miss Emily herself who taught us about the different counties of England. She’d pin up a big map over the blackboard, and next to it, set up an easel. And if she was talking about, say, Oxfordshire, she’d place on the easel a large calendar with photos of the county. She had quite a collection of these picture calendars, and we got through most of the counties this way. She’d tap a spot on the map with her pointer, turn to the easel and reveal another picture. There’d be little villages with streams going through them, white monuments on hillsides, old churches beside fields; if she was telling us about a coastal place, there’d be beaches crowded with people, cliffs with seagulls. I suppose she wanted us to have a grasp of what was out there surrounding us, and it’s amazing, even now, after all these miles I’ve covered as a carer, the extent to which my idea of the various counties is still set by these pictures Miss Emily put up on her easel. I’d be driving through Derbyshire, say, and catch myself looking for a particular village green with a mock-Tudor pub and a war memorial—and realise it’s the image Miss Emily showed us the first time I ever heard of Derbyshire.
Anyway, the point is, there was a gap in Miss Emily’s calendar collection: none of them had a single picture of Norfolk. We had these same lectures repeated a number of times, and I’d always wonder if this time she’d found a picture of Norfolk, but it was always the same. She’d wave her pointer over the map and say, as a sort of afterthought: “And over here, we’ve got Norfolk. Very nice there.”
Then, that particular time, I remember how she paused and drifted off into thought, maybe because she hadn’t planned what should happen next instead of a picture. Eventually she came out of her dream and tapped the map again.
“You see, because it’s stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, it’s not on the way to anywhere. People going north and south”—she moved the pointer up and down—“they bypass it altogether. For that reason, it’s a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But it’s also something of a lost corner.”
A lost corner. That’s what she called it, and that was what started it. Because at Hailsham, we had our own “Lost Corner” up on the third floor, where the lost property was kept; if you lost or found anything, that’s where you went. Someone—I can’t remember who it was—claimed after the lesson that what Miss Emily had said was that Norfolk was England’s “lost corner,” where all the lost property found in the country ended up. Somehow this idea caught on and soon had become accepted fact virtually throughout our entire year.
Not long ago, when Tommy and I were reminiscing about all of this, he thought we’d never really believed in the notion, that it was a joke right from the start. But I’m pretty certain he was wrong there. Sure enough, by the time we were twelve or thirteen, the Norfolk thing had become a big joke. But my memory of it—and Ruth remembered it the same way—is that at the beginning, we believed in Norfolk in the most literal way; that just as lorries came to Hailsham with our food and stuff for our Sales, there was some similar operation going on, except on a grander scale, with vehicles moving all over England, delivering anything left behind in fields and trains to this place called Norfolk. The fact that we’d never seen a picture of the place only added to its mystique.
This might all sound daft, but you have to remember that to us, at that stage in our lives, any place beyond Hailsham was like a fantasy land; we had only the haziest notions of the world outside and about what was and wasn’t possible there. Besides, we never bothered to examine our Norfolk theory in any detail. What was important to us, as Ruth said one evening when we were sitting in that tiled room in Dover, looking out at the sunset, was that “when we lost something precious, and we’d looked and looked and still couldn’t find it, then we didn’t have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.”
I’m sure Ruth was right about that. Norfolk came to be a real source of comfort for us, probably much more than we admitted at the time, and that was why we were still talking about it—albeit as a sort of joke—when we were much older. And that’s why, years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didn’t just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts.
BUT I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT MY TAPE, Songs After Dark by Judy Bridgewater. I suppose it was originally an LP—the recording date’s 1956—but what I had was the cassette, and the cover picture was what must have been a scaled-down version of the record sleeve. Judy Bridgewater is wearing a purple satin dress, one of those off-the-shoulder ones popular in those days, and you can see her from just above the waist because she’s sitting on a bar-stool. I think it’s supposed to be South America, because there are palms behind her and swarthy waiters in white tuxedos. You’re looking at Judy from exactly where the barman would be when he’s serving her drinks. She’s looking back in a friendly, not too sexy way, like she might be flirting just a tiny bit, but you’re someone she knows from way back. Now the other thing about this cover is that Judy’s got her elbows up on the bar and there’s a cigarette burning in her hand. And it was because of this cigarette that I got so secretive about the tape, right from the moment I found it at the Sale.
I don’t know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham the guardians were really strict about smoking. I’m sure they’d have preferred it if we never found out smoking even existed; but since this wasn’t possible, they made sure to give us some sort of lecture each time any reference to cigarettes came along. Even if we were being shown a picture of a famous writer or world leader, and they happened to have a cigarette in their hand, then the whole lesson would grind to a halt. There was even a rumour that some classic books—like the Sherlock Holmes ones—weren’t in our library because the main characters smoked too much, and when you came across a page torn out of an illustrated book or magazine, this was because there’d been a picture on it of someone smoking. And then there were the actual lessons where they showed us horrible pictures of what smoking did to the insides of your body. That’s why it was such a shock that time Marge K. asked Miss Lucy her question.
We were sitting on the grass after a rounders match and Miss Lucy had been giving us a typical talk on smoking when Marge suddenly asked if Miss Lucy had herself ever had a cigarette. Miss Lucy went quiet for a few seconds. Then she said:
“I’d like to be able to say no. But to be honest, I did smoke for a little while. For about two years, when I was younger.”
You can imagine what a shock this was. Before Miss Lucy’s reply, we’d all been glaring at Marge, really furious she’d asked such a rude question—to us, she might as well have asked if Miss Lucy had ever attacked anyone with an axe. And for days afterwards I remember how we made Marge’s life an utter misery; in fact, that incident I mentioned before, the night we held Marge’s face to the dorm window to make her look at the woods, that was all part of what came afterwards. But at the time, the moment Miss Lucy said what she did, we were too confused to think any more about Marge. I think we all just stared at Miss Lucy in horror, waiting for what she’d say next.
When she did speak, Miss Lucy seemed to be weighing up each word carefully. “It’s not good that I smoked. It wasn’t good for me so I stopped it. But what you must understand is that for you, all of you, it’s much, much worse to smoke than it ever was for me.”
Then she paused and went quiet. Someone said later she’d gone off into a daydream, but I was pretty sure, as was Ruth, that she was thinking hard about what to say next. Finally she said:
