Meeting Lydia Page 8

  She quickly composed herself, used to giving the pretence of being in charge of a situation. She put her files down on the work surface, took off her coat and smoothed her skirt.

  “You’re very brave taking on the kids of Cedarwood.”

  “They seem nice so far.” Charmaine smiled, exposing a row of rather obvious crowns.

  “Do you live locally?”

  “About two miles away. Not too far.”

  Not next door then, thought Marianne with some relief.

  “Has Johnny offered you something to eat? I’m always ravenous after teaching.” She went to the bread bin and began making a honey sandwich with thick slices of wholemeal bread.

  “Not for me thanks,” said Charmaine breezily. “I should be going.” She turned to Johnny. “Thanks for looking after me today, John. Appreciate it.” She placed her mug on the work-surface, bright pink nails manicured to perfection, gleaming in the light.

  John! Hmph! thought Marianne. She had watched their every move and glance, looking for tell-tale signs of attraction. A more securely confident woman might have thought little of it, but all the hurt and inadequacies from her childhood and teenage years – largely under wraps during her marriage thus far – resurfaced with a clarion call loud enough to shake her usual composure.

  Later that evening she couldn’t help saying, “I wish you hadn’t invited that woman here without asking me?”

  “Charmaine? Why?”

  “You’re too nice sometimes, Johnny. People take advantage.”

  “She’s only just moved into the area and doesn’t know anyone round here. No big deal. Thought I’d make her feel welcome.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “She doesn’t know people. She’ll get dependent.”

  “Mari … I don’t think so.”

  “You wait. I know women like that.”

  “You don’t know her at all. She’s nice—”

  “Typical man. All you see is ‘blonde’ and ‘chest’ and you come over all chivalrous.”

  “Where’s all this coming from, Mari? You’re not usually like this.”

  She wasn’t. Usually. For over twenty years she hadn’t been jealous or felt threatened. It must be her age. Even if Johnny thought she was beautiful when she was young, he wouldn’t think so as she got older. And rather than creeping up on her slowly, all she had to do was take the lid off her Brocklebank experience and unleash the monster that was her early-life inadequacies.

  Johnny had reached out to touch her arm as he often did in rare times of tension, but she pulled away, her eyes pricking with tears from long ago. And later that night when he tried to cuddle her, she uncharacteristically turned away.

  After this, their once idyllic marriage took a turn towards that dark place of self-destruction. This was when she started writing her journal again, detailing events of emotional significance so she could remember what he said and how it was and how she felt. Whenever she confronted him, he said she was over-reacting, but the evidence lay between the covers of her journal.

  The mention of Charmaine’s name sent Marianne into hedgehog mode and Johnny, who plainly didn’t believe that he was doing anything wrong, returned from his weekend excursions and sought solace at the pub. Since getting married, he never used to drink much at all, but she knew things had changed by his manner when he came home. Even during the week he began to have a pint or two after work, and when he didn’t go out, a bottle of wine was all it took to render him tactless.

  It was Charmaine this and Charmaine that and Marianne wanted to say, ‘fuck Charmaine’, although not meaning it exactly. But she kept quiet and merely sighed.

  Now it was September and outside the sun still shone but inside there was a grim game being played.

  Transactional analysts might have called the game The Goddess. Transactional analysts would say that when the husband makes advances to his wife and is rejected for reasons he cannot fathom, he designs a strategy to justify this in order not to feel humiliated. The game might involve talking about a perfect woman as if she exists somewhere out there, and intimating that his wife doesn’t measure up. He can then interpret rejection as being a result of his belittling comments rather than due to a reason he cannot understand.

  Marianne knew that because she had reached an age where she felt less worthy of love, she felt threatened by another woman entering her husband’s life. Every time she went spiky at the mention of Charmaine, Johnny misbehaved all the more. They were playing the roles of parent and child, preventing any form of reasonable adult discussion and resolution of the issue.

  Transactional analysts know a thing or two about relationship games. They even know how to solve the problems. Trouble is, even though Marianne knew all the theory, she was far too immersed in the problem to act rationally and take a different path.

  In the morning, she was up and dressed before Johnny – still in his clothes – began to stir.

  He stretched and grimaced and wandered bleary-eyed to the bathroom where he was soon heard showering.

  Marianne was shaking the duvet and plumping the pillows when he came back into the room naked. She couldn’t help but notice and appreciate, but there was sadness in her eyes.

  “You were late last night,” she said, trying not to accuse, but knowing that was how it would sound.

  “I popped in for a quick pint on the way home. There were a few mates from school. Rosie’s not coming back and Charmaine has been offered a permanent contract.”

  So that means Charmaine was in the pub. Marianne paused, leaning over the bed, glad that he couldn’t see the expression of despondency on her face.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” was all she could manage, knowing she didn’t sound convincing and sure that after all she had said about Charmaine, Johnny wouldn’t believe her.

  By the time Johnny had dressed and left the room, her head was spinning. All she could think of was Johnny and Charmaine together – at work, in the pub, in her kitchen – Charmaine calling him ‘John’ … There was no escape now. The assumption that everything would return to normal when the maternity leave ended had, in a few short words, been upturned, and the ghosts of Brocklebank Hall were ready to wreak havoc once again.

  12

  Lydia

  Marianne and Edward wait side by side on the miniature stage at the end of the Hut. For years this has been the preserve of the teachers during assembly and it is strangely empowering being so elevated. They are each clutching paperback booklets and looking earnestly at Mr Russell, the Headmaster, standing on the floor below them.

  Beyond a nod of acknowledgement, there is no communication between them, but nor are there any hints of the hostility that crackles in the air when she is with many of the other boys. Marianne trusts Edward completely and knows that even if she makes a mistake, he won’t use this as ammunition to taunt her at a later date as some of the others might. She also knows that he will be able to do whatever is asked of him and all she has to do is try to match his excellence in the scene they share.

  Mr Russell is directing the action, telling them where to move and where to place emphasis in delivering the complicated language of a bygone age.

  “Now Edward,” he says. He is a kindly man and saves the surname tags only for the classroom. “If you sit there on what will be a proper eighteenth century style seat when we do the real performance,” he gestures to the two classroom chairs that are in the middle of the stage, “and look as if you are reading … that’s right … Marianne comes rushing in with a pile of books. She’s been to the library … She’s breathless … She comes across the stage to here and turns. Edward, that’s when you close the book, put it on the seat and get up. Each book that Marianne gives to you, look at it dismissively and drop it on the seat. We’ll go from the beginning.” He points to the wings and Marianne skips offstage with her copy of the play and a pile of imaginary books.

  “Action!”

  The children were now
in the fifth form and had moved back into a room in the main school building. Marianne was almost eleven and a prefect with responsibility for supervising the younger forms during wet breaks, and for ringing the bell at lesson changeovers every third Friday. She could even give lines to misbehaving pupils, though she never did.

  Sadly, Abi and Susannah – and Sam Rycroft too – had left Brocklebank at the end of the previous school year. Abi had gone to Africa with her parents and although she and Marianne communicated endlessly via pages and pages of tissue thin airmail paper, it wasn’t the same as being able to pretend to be The Seekers – standing on beds in long nightdresses with hair-brush microphones performing ‘The Carnival is Over’; or giggling over the latest escapades of Ilya and Napoleon and arguing over who was the most fanciable secret agent; or singing at the tops of their voices in Abi’s mum’s little white Daf as they motored round the country lanes between their respective homes. Marianne missed her terribly.

  She missed Susannah’s zany and infectious humour too and her no-nonsense attitude with the boys. But for the arrival of Sally Mainsford, she would once again have been the only girl in the class. Sally had shiny brown hair and a quietly mysterious aura. Now it was Marianne’s turn to make decisions and lead the way.

  When Mr Russell announced at assembly that there was going to be another school play – Sheridan’s melodramatic comedy, The Rivals – and read out a list of fourth and fifth formers who should report to the Hut for auditions that afternoon, Marianne was enthusiastic. She liked reading aloud in class and thought this might be something she would enjoy. Abi and Susannah had left her with some confidence and she was no longer afraid to speak up for herself.

  The choice of play was an ambitious undertaking for a group of eleven-and twelve-year-olds, and with due concern for their tender age, several abridgements had been made and many of the longer speeches pruned.

  There were four female parts in the play: Mrs Malaprop and her niece, Lydia; Lydia’s cousin, Julia; and Lydia’s maid, Lucy. Marianne thought that with only two girls asked to go to the auditions, there was a high probability that she would soon be treading the boards.

  Lydia Languish devoured masses of the equivalent of today’s bed-hopping, corset-busting blockbusters and played tortuous games with her suitor in the hope of being loved to madness. In her teenage years Marianne was to become like Lydia – empty headed when it came to matters of love, as stuffed full of romantic nonsense from watching black and white movies as Lydia was from reading trashy fiction.

  The upshot of the auditions was that Marianne was the only girl to be given a female role: that of Lucy. Ian Dangerfield, small of stature and with an aptitude for English was, perhaps ironically, to be Mrs Malaprop, while Richard Zammit, freckled and red-haired, would be Cousin Julia. And Lydia? The charming and beautiful Lydia was to be played by Edward Harvey.

  Edward, who Marianne had almost forgotten existed since the arrival of Sam Rycroft.

  She hadn’t noticed how self-assured he had become, and how while still keeping a wide berth from involvement with the likes of Barnaby Sproat and Billy Colquhoun, he certainly wasn’t short of friends. Waverley Grossett in particular, was a gentle and friendly boy who had arrived in the fourth form at the same time as Abi, and thought nothing of chatting enthusiastically to the girls in between lessons, ignoring the disparaging glances from many of the others.

  The rehearsals took place during the end-of-day games lessons and because the abridgements had cut completely the first scene of the original play, at first it was only Edward and Marianne attending as they shared the first part of scene two alone together.

  And how Marianne looked forward to those sessions.

  Not only was anything preferable to scampering about on a hockey pitch in the cold, damp air of a northern winter late afternoon, but she took to acting like the proverbial duck to water. And then there was the added bonus of Edward, who day by day began to resume a position of favour in her eyes. But not in the same way as Sam had been.

  Drooling over Sam the previous year had been bubble-gum pink, frivolous and fun. With Edward it was the same innocent admiration as before but with a touch more intensity. It was a feeling of respect, of trust; of intuitive understanding.

  When it came to acting, he was supremely competent for someone so young. Like Marianne, he learnt his words quickly such that real progress could be made as they were unencumbered by books – except for Lydia’s.

  When those playing female parts were summoned to try on their costumes by the Headmaster’s mother, known to all affectionately as Grandma, they met in the sanctity of the Russells’ drawing room, with its imposing high ceiling and ornate cornice. Now it was taken over by wigs, fabrics, dresses and 18th century costumes hired from a local theatre. Red jackets with gold buttons were strewn around over the furniture, and the floor by the wall was lined with long black boots and square-toed shoes with clumpy heels and silver shining buckles.

  Marianne had changed in the staff cloakroom next door and was now wearing a pale blue full-length pinafore dress with three-quarter length white puffed sleeves. Mrs Russell was attempting to tie a crisp white apron around her tiny waist.

  “What you need is a mop cap,” said Mrs Russell. “And we could have a strand of hair sticking out of the front in a corkscrew curl.”

  Marianne didn’t understand about mop caps or corkscrew curls and remained unblinking and silent. Her hair had always been very reluctant to wave or curl and she doubted even Mrs Russell’s ability in persuading it to be anything other than straighter than straight.

  Grandma was fussing around Edward, pinning him into a voluminous mass of pink chiffon, cunningly gathered to imply a bosom. Ian Dangerfield and Richard Zammit were still in their grey school uniforms and looked on with more than a little apprehension.

  “Oh my!” Mrs Russell looked up from tying the apron bow. “Edward, you look magnificent! And once we add the wig, noone will ever guess.” She rubbed her hands together in obvious delight.

  Ian Dangerfield fluttered Mrs Malaprop’s fan, eyes glinting mischievously, but Edward remained impassive as if dressing in a frock was merely another of life’s interesting challenges that he would rise to with alacrity.

  Marianne had never looked at him properly without his glasses before – despite the fact that he never wore them on the games field – and she was immediately struck by his beautiful brown eyes. They were eyes that drew her into unfathomable depths, and beyond to a kaleidoscope soul.

  Dear Edward … when she remembered how their lives had touched at that special time, and yet they never talked. If she could turn back time, if she could have been as forthcoming as she became in later years, she would have made more effort to speak; to find the common ground she knew was there.

  On the day of the dress rehearsal, a dark brown wig with the hair in a ponytail, and the addition of stage make-up, completed Edward’s transformation. Marianne was awestruck. He looked so … pretty! Gone was the boyish intellectual, and in his place, achieved with cool confidence, was, unquestionably, Lydia.

  They performed their dress rehearsal in the afternoon in front of the rest of the school. Mr Jenks’s creativity and talent with the paintbrush had transformed the stage from bare and spartan into something resembling a theatrical backdrop. Four steps had been constructed in the middle leading down to the main floor, and small extensions had been built out on either side. The dusty old floorboards were painted in a chequerboard of brown and cream, and a false wall at the back depicted panelling and windows with long blue curtains hanging down. Flats had been added, decorated with a painted stonework design and 1723 written on one of the bricks.

  It was a little chaotic without Mr Russell guiding the action from the front. Mrs Malaprop was taken to task afterwards for chewing gum in his opening scenes and for nibbling the ends of his fan when others were delivering their lines. The curtain got stuck at the beginning of Act 2 and Captain Absolute almost fell backwards off the stage du
ring the sword fight.

  “It’ll be all right tomorrow night,” said Mr Russell optimistically at the end.

  All afternoon Marianne felt strangely at ease with so much ‘female’ companionship. Afterwards, when the man from the local newspaper came to take photographs, she tried to talk to Lydia.

  But Edward responded with a shrug, seeming puzzled by her friendliness.

  The photographer looked like an owl and was so surprised to discover that Lydia was not a girl that he singled out Lydia and Lucy to be pictured on the settee.

  The two children sat side by side and Marianne tried again to talk to Edward. All she achieved were monosyllabic replies.

  Why won’t he talk to me? She thought. We have things to say, I know we have. We could be friends …

  “The caption could read ‘Guess who’s the Real Girl’,” said the owl to Mrs Russell who was acting as chaperone. “It-is-remarkable!”

  Perhaps that’s why Edward seems cross, mused Marianne.

  Clearly the photographer thought better of his idea because the only picture to appear in the paper was one of the whole cast.

  On the night of the performance – the only performance in front of an adult audience – the atmosphere about the corridors of Brocklebank was hot with excitement and nerves. The day pupils stayed on for supper and it was as if they were being offered a privileged view of the usually private and more intimate world that existed after four o’clock.