A Lesson in Dying

Chapter Two

They strung fairy lights along the outside of the school, so it looked from the village like a ship, stranded in a sea of brown fields. There was a full moon which rose behind the square tower of the church and made the playground as light almost as day, so they could see the printed squares for hopscotch on the concrete and the football posts in the field beyond. The yard was full of cars. The committee had sold more tickets than they ever expected. The village saw the party as a victory of the parents over Harold Medburn, and the women especially wanted to see him in defeat. They came dressed as witches with crepe-paper shirts and gaudy hats bought at the co-op in the village, harridans set to gloat over him. The men were embarrassed and soberly dressed and headed straight for the bar. They would rather have been in the club.

A small, unofficial sub-committee had been at the school for most of the day. It was a Saturday. There was Paul Wilcox, impractical and rather in the way, Angela Brayshaw who had surprised the committee by volunteering to supervise the catering for the event, and Jim and Patty Atkins. Patty had persuaded Jim to run the bar, but he was grumbling and ungracious because Newcastle United were playing at home. Patty was annoying the others with her arrogant assumption that she was in charge and the morning was chaotic and bad-tempered. When Miss Hunt arrived the mood changed.

Patty was prepared to relinquish control to her. They had been surprised when the teacher had volunteered to help decorate the hall – she was so dignified and stately, and Patty was unsure whether she would approve of the occasion. Yet she walked in at lunch-time, strange and unfamiliar in casual clothes, so they hardly recognized her, and she worked with them all afternoon.

They were amazed by her skill. She transformed the hall, not into a witch’s cavern but a haunted house. In a rare moment of communication about her past she said that she had once had ambitions to be a theatre designer. She stuck ghosts and skeletons and a frieze of ravens on the walls and hung strings of paper bats from the ceiling. Most of the work was the children’s, she said when they congratulated her on the effect. Witches had become rather clichéd and turnip lanterns would be impossible. Think of the fire risk, she said, and the smell of burning turnip always reminded her, for some reason, of scorching flesh.

In the afternoon Matthew Carpenter wandered in quite unexpectedly. He had taken no part until then in the arrangements. He seemed in desperate, almost hysterical good spirits and Patty suspected that he had been drinking. By then most of the work had been completed and there was little for him to do. The parents did not know how to talk to him. He was too young to receive the respect with which they approached the other teachers and yet they could hardly use the amused bantering tone in which they spoke to their older sons or nephews.

During the course of the afternoon he changed and became subdued and so preoccupied that he hardly seemed to notice them. He sat on the edge of a trestle table set up to form the bar and swung his legs like a moody teenager.

Harold Medburn’s arrival late that afternoon was an anticlimax. They had been prepared for it, frightened that he would demolish their efforts with his words, but there was nothing, after all, to be worried about. He arrived, like visiting royalty, with smiles and congratulations. It was true that he seemed a little disappointed to learn that Angela Brayshaw had already gone home and when Paul Wilcox asked nervously if he might have a word in private, the headmaster said imperiously that he was far too busy, but that was only in character. When Medburn made his tour of inspection, Matthew Carpenter left the school with an abruptness that was obvious and rude. But the remaining committee members felt that the headmaster seemed pleased to have provoked such a reaction. He left after half an hour, jovial and beaming, promising to see them all later.

They all went then to eat and change and prepare for the evening.

Jack Robson spent the evening in the small room which was hardly more than a cupboard where the cleaner kept her mops and buckets. It was his retreat. He had a kettle in there and a spare packet of Number Six in case he ran out, and a book. Although he had come to books late in life he needed them now as much as he needed cigarettes. He hoped the party would be a success for Patty’s sake. She hadn’t seemed settled since the bairns had started at school, and he found it hard to understand her recent aimlessness. He wished she were happier. When she was younger they had had their differences. She had been wilful and opinionated, and he had expected the same unquestioning respect which he had given his own father. Since his wife’s death he and Patty had become very close. His friends had pitied his lack of sons, but he was pleased with his two daughters. He would have found it hard to express his love to boys. Susan, his eldest daughter, was clever and rarely came home. She worked as a secretary for an international company in Geneva. He admired her independence and was proud of her, but Patty was different. He was close to Patty. She was very like her mother.

Patty brought him a can of beer early in the evening. She wanted to thank him for his help and show off her costume. She saw him through cigarette smoke, a small grey man with big boots, squatting on a kitchen stool, buried in a biography of a First World War general. He wore baggy trousers which were too long for him and a hand-knitted jersey – the same sort of clothes his father had worn in the thirties. She bought him other clothes as presents but even when he put them on he always looked the same.

‘It’s a canny outfit,’ he said, as if he had noticed her costume for himself and had not needed her to swing around to show him the long skirt and cloak. ‘Is it a good evening?’

‘It seems to be,’ she said. She looked straight at her father. ‘Medburn’s not here yet. He promised he’d come.’

‘He’ll come if he said he would,’ Jack said. ‘He’ll be late. He’ll keep you all guessing.’

‘It’ll be a disaster if he doesn’t come,’ she said. ‘ Everyone’s expecting him.’

‘Away!’ he said. ‘ By now everyone’s enjoying themselves so much that they’ll not notice.’

‘I want him there,’ she cried. She had been drinking wine and was excitable, showing off for him. ‘I want him to see how well it’s going. Otherwise he’ll never admit I made it a success.’

‘He’ll be there,’ Jack promised. He winked at her. ‘I’ll make sure he’s there.’

Medburn owes me that much, Jack thought. He owes me enough to put in an appearance tonight to make my daughter happy. Jack was a year older than Medburn, but they had been to school together, to the school where Medburn was now headmaster. They had sat in different rows of the same classroom. Harry had been a fat, stodgy child, son of a clerk in the shipping office in Blyth, better off than most of them. He had been easily bullied but vicious when provoked to retaliation. No one had particularly liked him even then. And Jack had been at school with Kitty, Medburn’s wife. He had loved Kitty Richardson with a passion which had astounded him as a young man and continued to catch him unawares. She had been a slight, small girl with the colouring of a red tabby cat and narrow green eyes. Perhaps Kitty had been a nickname, suggested by her appearance, though he could never remember her called anything else. He had a sudden picture of her in the school playground, ginger plaits dancing as she skipped with concentrated intensity, small red tongue gripped between her teeth. Jack was not sure how Harold Medburn had persuaded Kitty to marry him. He had been away on National Service; Harry for some forgotten reason had been exempted. But Jack was sure it was a kind of theft.

As soon as he opened the door to go into the corridor he could tell that the party was going well. Patty had hired a group of local musicians and he could hear the thumping rhythm of the music and laughter and talking. He was angered by the injustice of Medburn’s absence. If none of the parents had turned up, if Patty had forgotten something important, the headmaster would have been there to gloat. Now he would stay away and pretend that it was beneath his dignity to join in.

In the hall Hannah and Paul Wilcox told each other that it was the best evening they had enjoyed for years. This was one of the reasons why it was so good to live in the north-east, they said self-consciously, drinking Newcastle Brown Ale from plastic mugs. There was a sense of community to be found nowhere else. How they pitied their friends who still lived in the Home Counties! The conversation made Paul uneasy. It was a complacent charade. When they first met they would have been more honest. It would have been easier then to tell Hannah about Angela Brayshaw. Hannah’s fierce directness had once taken his breath away; she had been tactlessly truthful. Now they were like the middle-aged couples they had despised.

‘I need to have you around more,’ he said suddenly, staring into the thick brown beer. ‘ I can’t manage on my own.’

‘Nonsense,’ Hannah said. She sounded amused. She was trying to ignore the desperation in his voice. He wanted to make some grand outrageous gesture to show her how depressed he felt. ‘Nonsense. You’ve managed fine. Lizzie will be at playgroup soon. Then you’ll have more time to yourself.’

‘I don’t want more time to myself,’ he cried. ‘I need company. I need your company.’

‘How sweet you are!’ she said. She bent over the table to kiss his forehead. He could tell that she was still tired and did not have the energy to take him seriously. It was no time for revelation.

‘Come and dance,’ he said. He took her hand and they joined the crowd under the flashing lights at the centre of the hall. The crowd parted to let them through, then gave them room to move because they danced so well. Everything we do is a sort of performance, Paul thought. We pretend to be a perfect couple. Why can’t we be natural with each other any more? Why can’t we say what we think? At one time he had always known what she was thinking. Now, even when they were making love he could tell that her mind was elsewhere, perhaps with her accountant or at the next sales conference or with her smart, grey-suited partner. If only he were brave enough to talk to her, he thought. That might bring them closer together again. But Medburn was right. He was too scared to take the risk.

Jack looked through the glass door into the hall. He was reminded of the old days when Susan and Patty had been allowed to youth club dances and he had been sent by Joan to walk them home safely. There was the same feeling of being excluded from their pleasure. ‘I can’t get no satisfaction,’ the group sang and he supposed that this noise held the same sentimental associations for Patty and her contemporaries as big bands did for him. He saw Angela Brayshaw sitting at a small table by the bar drinking a glass of wine. She was alone and seemed quite detached from the general good humour.

She held the glass daintily to her mouth like some amateur actress portraying a duchess drinking tea. She saw him looking at her and smiled, flattered as she was by any male attention – even that of someone as unlovely as Jack Robson. He turned away, reminded suddenly and unreasonably of Kitty Medburn.

Jack pushed open the heavy arched door into the playground. Outside it was very cold. Through the uncurtained window he could see the shapes of dancing witches and ghosts, their costumes becoming more bedraggled as the evening went on. Suddenly the new, young teacher stumbled out of the door behind him. He stood still, bent double, his hands on his knees as if he might be sick.

‘Are you all right, lad?’ Jack said. Matthew straightened up, pulled himself together.

‘Yes thank you,’ he said, forming the words with unnatural and forced precision. ‘ It was just a bit hot in there.’

And he fled back to the hall and the bar. He’ll have to be careful, Jack thought. Medburn’s only looking for an excuse to sack him. If he shows himself up tonight he’ll be in real trouble. He hesitated, wondering if he should follow Matthew and offer to take him home, but he continued over the playground to the school house where the Medburns lived, his boots ringing on the tarmac in the clear air.

He could still hear the music and it annoyed him to think that Medburn, in his living room, must be able to hear it too. He had never been in the Medburns’ house. He had lived in the same village as Kitty for sixty years, yet since her marriage he had scarcely spoken to her. She had come occasionally to nurse his wife. Even in her anonymous uniform and despite his anxiety and guilt, he had been intensely aware of her, but she had seemed not to recognize him. After her marriage to Medburn they had moved in different circles and he had given all his loyalty and affection to his wife.

He knocked at the door of the school house. There was no light in the living room and the curtains were still undrawn. Standing there, as he had stood many times, waiting for instructions about light bulbs to be replaced or lavatory paper to be ordered, he tried desperately to maintain his anger. He knocked again, more loudly and impatiently, and stamped his boots on the step. A light went on in the passage and a door was opened. Kitty was standing there and he could tell at once that something was wrong. She was still wearing her district nurse’s uniform and she was expecting someone else.

‘Jack?’ she said. ‘Jack Robson. Is it you?’ She peered at him, though she must have been able to see with the light from the corridor thrown out onto the yard.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to see why you and Harold aren’t at the Parents’ Association Hallowe’en party. I thought something might be wrong.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘The party. I wondered what that music was. I’d forgotten all about it.’

‘Can I come in?’ Jack said. She seemed so vague and so different that he thought she must be ill.

She stood aside and let him walk past. She must have come in from work hours before but the house was cold. He walked into a small back room where a fire was laid in a grey tile grate. It was a shabby, miserable room, he thought. There was a dark wallpaper and heavy furniture.

‘Where’s Harold?’ he asked. She had followed him into the room without a word. Her hair was shorter and curled softly about her face and it still had traces of copper in the grey. Her face was blank, but there were tears on her cheeks. He had never known her cry, even as a girl.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He went out earlier. I don’t know if he’ll be coming back.’

He went up to her and put his arm around her. It was a friendly gesture of comfort but as he touched her he knew he would never be satisfied with friendship.

‘What do you mean,’ he said gently, ‘that Harold won’t be coming back?’

‘We had a row,’ she said. He could imagine her in bitter arguments. She would be a fighter. In the playground she had kicked and punched as hard as the boys. ‘We have a lot of arguments.’

‘He’ll be back,’ Jack said, easy, reassuring. ‘He would never leave you.’

‘He’s got another woman,’ she said. ‘He told me when he was angry. He said he wanted to live with her, not with me. Then he had a phone call and he went away.’

She spoke simply. He could not tell if she were angry or unhappy.

‘But what about the party?’ Jack cried. ‘What about Patty’s Hallowe’en party?’

‘Perhaps he’s forgotten about it too,’ she said.

She released herself from his arm and sat on an overstuffed settee.

‘I was jealous,’ she said. ‘We’ve had our rows, but I didn’t want anyone else to have him. Especially someone younger. I’m used to him. I’m too old for change.’ She hesitated and he thought she was going to say something more.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re not too old at all.’

She stood up.

‘You’d better go,’ she said. ‘ You’ll miss your party.’

He had been surprised that she had confided in him. He realized now that she was already regretting it. More than anything he wanted her to trust him.

‘You’ve no idea,’ Jack said, ‘where he is?’

She shook her head. ‘I thought it must be his woman friend on the telephone’, she said quietly. ‘I presume he’s gone to her.’

No, Jack thought, remembering Angela Brayshaw’s smile. That’s impossible. She’s in the school.

Kitty opened the front door to let him out. He could hear the music again and saw dark silhouettes of people swirling against the spotlights inside. He was reminded of the Titanic, of the passengers who laughed and danced and drank champagne, unaware of imminent tragedy. He turned to say something else to Kitty, but she was gone and the door was firmly closed. He was disappointed – he’d thought he might take her hand before he went, to remind her of his support – but he could understand that she was too proud to share her unhappiness with him.

On the way back to the school across the short space of the playground he was as confused and excited as a boy. There had been, between him and Kitty, an intimacy which he would never have thought possible. He was thrilled because she had not treated him as a stranger – she had chosen to tell him about Harold Medburn’s affair when there had been no need to. At the same time he felt guilty, as if this excitement were a betrayal of his affection for Joan, his wife, a rejection of the calm support she had given him throughout their marriage.

At the door into the school he paused. He wanted more time to savour the memory of the conversation with Kitty, to assess for himself if the significance he had given to it was real. He needed to be alone, away from the noise of the party. There was a small walled playground at the side of the school, used exclusively by the younger children, so they would not be frightened by the rowdiness of the older boys. It was as bleak and sunless, he always thought, as the exercise yard of a prison, a depressing place for the infants to play, but he knew he would be private there. The wooden door set in the wall opened by a latch. He was surprised by how silently and smoothly it opened, and walked through.

Set in the wall at one end of the yard was a rusting netball hoop. It had been there as long as he could remember, and when the school had taken pupils until the age of fourteen it had been used by the older girls. It was too high for the younger children. As he walked into the yard, trying again to conjure Kitty’s face, her voice, her presence, the moon was directly above him and filled the walls with its white light. It left little shadow. The only shadow was on the concrete under the netball hoop and it moved as the figure above it, which hung from the loop and threw the shadow, swung very gently.

At first Jack thought it was some tattered remnant of the party, a giant bat with folded wings, discarded as being too grotesque even for Hallowe’en. Then, as the figure turned on its axis, he saw it was Harold Medburn, wrapped in his academic gown, hanging from a noose made of white pieces of cloth. The contrast of black and white and the gloss of the moonlight turned the picture into a strip of negative film, just pulled from the photographer’s fluid. He shut the door on it and stood for a moment in the playground.

The party was over. There were loud shouts of farewell and the noise of banging car doors and engines.

At least Medburn didn’t spoil Patty’s evening, he thought, before he even wondered why the headmaster had hanged himself or realized that now Kitty would be free.

It was only much later, when the police came with their questions and cars and spotlights, that he was told that Medburn had been murdered.