After the Storm (34 page)

‘This won’t do, you know, Ann.’ The pencil jabbed again into the back of her hand. ‘Two mistakes in that piece and no heart at all.’

Miss Hardy flicked over the pages of the book, her gold charm bracelet rattling as she did so.

‘Try this one and remember the “F” sharp.’ She pencilled round the note with a flourish.

Annie stumbled over the ‘F’ sharp as she always did; somehow her fingers just did not make that lift to the black note cleanly. Miss Hardy’s voice was rising nicely, she thought, a little earlier than usual perhaps and she braced herself for the tirade. Annie knew she provoked this woman, always had done and she felt it was something to do with Sarah but did not know what.

‘I blame the home of course.’ Miss Hardy was rocking in sharp movements and Annie was ready for the jab when it came. The kettle was boiling on the small table in the corner and Annie noted that the outburst was rather more powerful than usual. She lurched into an arpeggio, also in ‘C’ and the kettle was allowed to continue boiling; the lid rattled and Annie could see the cup out of the corner of her eye and wished Miss Hardy would have her usual tea-break. It always calmed her down.

‘I suppose,’ Miss Hardy went on with her voice like a coiled spring, ‘it’s boys, making you tired, making you rude and obstinate.’ She jabbed again and Annie felt the first stirrings of anger.

‘Now “The Skater’s Waltz”, if you please.’ She reset the metronome. The tick was faster.

Still the kettle rattled. ‘Shall I turn off the kettle, Miss Hardy?’ The steam was drifting across the ceiling now.

‘You see, I do not go out at night.’ Miss Hardy was staring at her, her glasses glinting and her face screwed up as though she was about to cry.

‘I live with my friend, hardly ideal, is it? We don’t really get on but it’s better than being alone. No men left you see, all killed you see. It’s not that we were unattractive, you know, it’s just that there was no one left from the trenches.’ Her voice was shrill and unpleasant. ‘It’s not out of choice that I’m teaching, spending hours with girls like you who do not wish to be here.’ She was shaking now and Annie left her seat and turned off the
kettle. ‘We’re all wasted women aren’t we, dried up, all wasted.’ Miss Hardy was ranting now.

‘Well most of them are nuns,’ Annie replied.

‘Not just here, you obdurate girl,’ she raged on. Her face red now, her breathing rapid almost as though she was choking. Jenn said she got like this when she’d had a row with her friend.

‘Stupid, stupid girl, get out of here. I refuse to teach such impertinence, such appalling lack of talent.’ She sat straight-backed, her lips pursed. ‘And there are those that throw marriage out of the window as though it were of no value. Trollops and scarlet women as you know only too well.’

Annie looked at the woman, at the sweat that lay in a sheen on her top lip. This was a new line, she thought.

‘Divorce is a sin, and to think that she was once at this school and now sends you here. It’s a disgrace. I saw her fetch you yesterday in her smart little car. I hadn’t seen her for years until then and she looks so young still; it’s not fair.’

Annie felt her jaw set and picked up her music book and placed it in her case; anchored the metronome so that there was silence in the room and left. She was sure that she would never touch a piano again.

‘How was your day?’ Val asked her over dinner.

‘Is Georgie well?’ Sarah spoke before Annie could reply.

‘Yes, he is, Sarah,’ replied Annie as she cut up the beef which she had come to accept as normal. ‘And yes, Val, it was interesting.’ She kept her voice carefully neutral. ‘Miss Hardy went barmy.’

The runner beans were stringy; Val must have cooked the edges again. Keeps you regular, all this roughage is what she would say if you dared complain.

Val looked up, then laughed while Sarah wiped her mouth carefully with her napkin. ‘Would you care to improve on that remark?’ she asked.

‘After she started to prick my hands she went off into hysterics about not being married and those that were pushed it out of the window and became scarlet women. That divorce was a disgrace.’ Annie drew a deep breath and grinned. ‘And that she would never teach me again.’

Val banged down her knife and fork. ‘Well, I never did, and
she was at school with you as well, Sarah; always a mouse though, never any admirers.’

Sarah rang the school after dinner and said that Annie would no longer be continuing with the piano since it would appear that she had no appetite for the subject. Another victim of the war, she had sighed, and Annie half knew what she meant. She would write to Georgie tonight, he would be glad her piano lessons were over.

‘Should I know about divorce, Sarah?’ she asked as her cousin poured the after-dinner tea with a steady hand. The cups were the white bone china which made the tea taste quite different.

‘I was married during the war but my husband left me two years after the armistice.’

It was simply said and there was no tremble as she passed Annie her cup. Her face was quite calm, though her voice was very careful.

‘Why did he leave you?’

‘I suspect because I failed him. Now finish up your tea and do your homework or is it time for another letter to Georgie?’ Her smile was gentle as Annie nodded and told Sarah all his news.

The drive out to the country was unexpected and so had been Annie’s excellent end-of-term school report. She had felt a smile grow and stay as Sarah read it to her.

‘We both deserve a treat, especially as the conservatory has seen you only once this term,’ she announced. ‘Look, one punishment mark, that’s all. Come on, put your jacket on, we’re off for some lunch.’

They pulled into a country inn with a sweeping drive and a garden at the rear with a small patio on which tables were set; more spilled on to the lawns. Red and white cotton umbrellas shaded diners from the sun. As they sat down, Sarah pointed to the river running slowly past the bottom of the terraced lawn.

‘I’m told they catch trout here, but so far I’ve never seen any signs of success.’

Annie sat back. They had no umbrella and the sun was hot. She raised her face and all she could see through closed lids was a blaze of yellow which distanced all sound. She thought of Georgie showing Tom how to tickle trout and how Tom had
told her that the beck was now so dead with black sludge that the fish were gone.

A man’s voice said ‘Good afternoon, Sarah. How are you?’

Annie shaded her eyes and looked in the direction of the voice. The back of the inn was a glaring white, with dark beams sharply exposed and much nearer, standing by their table was a well-built man, rather like Georgie except that he was fair and had a pale moustache. Georgie was clean-shaven, or had been when she last saw him; she must ask him whether he still was.

‘Very well, thank you, Harold,’ Sarah was replying. ‘You haven’t met my ward, Annie Manon, have you? Mary’s child, of course.’

Annie felt a quietness sitting on Sarah who turned to Annie.

‘This is Mr Beeston, Annie. Shall we order?’

The tables were filling up now and Annie looked at Sarah as she sat against the sun.

‘May I have chicken salad, please?’ Annie asked. It sounded quite normal and Sarah ordered the same. The man smiled tightly and left.

Sarah said nothing as they waited for their meal, just smiled with her mouth until Annie asked, ‘Why did you come?’

Sarah did not answer immediately but sat thinking quietly, then said, ‘Oh Annie, I don’t know really. A need to beard the lion in his den perhaps. To assure myself that I have a full life which gives me great pleasure, especially now that I have you. I suppose it’s a laying of ghosts and besides, my dear, they do have such excellent food.’ She turned and thanked the waitress as she brought their meal.

They both sat back in their chairs and Annie did not taste her food, she was too busy with her thoughts. A laying of ghosts, Sarah had said, and she envisaged her own ghosts as they trampled through her room at night. Don who seemed intent on stirring up hatred, Tom who sank down into the pits each day and had so far come up each time, but for how much longer? She almost hoped he would lose his job like the rest of the poor buggers. She thought of Georgie and wondered if he had moved to the Himalayas yet, of her father who had begun all this. She stirred restlessly. She was still not free of memories and fears and remembered how she had clung to Betsy and told her that she would be free, would not be like her. Annie rubbed her eyes; thank God she had written to poor Betsy, but she had not heard
back because Grace said she could no longer write with her hands as they were.

Sarah spoke again. ‘I rather fear I emasculated poor Harold. I had changed you see from the girl I was before the war when he knew me through my family. I had wanted female suffrage and I fought for it. I then drove an ambulance during the war. I was financially independent even before my father and mother died. I was a person in my own right and I thought we married on that basis. What I did not realise was that he had in his mind this picture of me as I was when I was your age and living in Gosforn; an age when I did not even know he existed other than as a friend of the family.’ She sighed and then continued. ‘He, poor man, had a vision of me soft and malleable. He’d had the bad war that everyone had and came home to a wife that he soon found threatening.’

Annie looked at her. ‘Threatening, what do you mean?’

Sarah laughed. ‘I mean that I was independent in thought as well as means. I didn’t need him in those ways but what he could not understand was that I loved him dearly and needed him emotionally. I was distraught when he left and I lost the child I was carrying.’

Annie felt a flood of feeling; she wanted to rush round and hold this woman tight and instead she covered her hand with hers and looked at the face which seemed softer now than when she had first known her, her hair was in gentle waves round her face, her clothes were less severe.

‘Did he know about the baby?’

Sarah nodded. ‘Oh yes, he knew, but he didn’t care. I repulsed him with my personality, I suppose, and that is something that I hope will never happen to you.’

She gripped Annie’s hand and looked hard at her.

Annie smiled, her face was older she knew, more mature and her hair suited her cut shorter. Her eyes were more considered in their glances. She felt absolutely sure, as she said:

‘Georgie would never treat me like that. He would know I needed to be free.’

‘But it might not be Georgie, Annie. It could be so long before he is back that you find someone else.’

Annie shrugged. ‘It might be a long time and there might be others before he comes but it will always be him in the end.’

‘Oh my dear, don’t be too set on that. You should always
remember that choice is going to be there for you. It is a great freedom.’

‘Freedom to me is leaving all the darkness behind, forgetting everything you want to forget, releasing yourself from responsibility for others being, oh, I don’t know, unmarked, I suppose.’ Annie leant forward, a frown drawing up between her eyes. She could talk to Sarah now, trust her because with her job, with her hens, she felt almost without debt to her; almost but not absolutely, but that would come. But here she sighed. There was still the business course after her exams to be paid for and she felt a flash of frustration as Sarah laughed and tapped her hands. A slight wind was drifting up from the river and the frill of the umbrella on the next table was wafting in the breeze.

‘That freedom is a dream, Annie.’ She gathered up her handbag and smoothed down her skirt where it had creased as she sat. ‘Come along, it’s time we were on our way. I do so enjoy tipping that pretty little blonde thing at the till.’

They walked arm in arm in the weakening sun to the counter, the breeze chilling the coffee of those who still remained.

‘Thank you so much, Mrs Beeston.’

Sarah smiled sweetly. ‘Another culinary delight. Do give my compliments to the chef, Mr Beeston.’ And she walked past, her eyes full of something which looked like defiance, Annie thought.

Tom shut the backyard gate behind him and joined the stream of men walking down to the pit. It was a warm morning and would be a fine day, not that he would know about it until this afternoon when his shift was finished. He sank his hands deep down into his pockets, his boots making the same noise as those walking in front and behind. Uncle Henry was on the afternoon shift at the same pit and was still asleep and Davy had started work at Lutters Pit yesterday; he too was on the late shift but if Tom and Henry had been able to do anything about it he would still be going to the library and kicking a ball around with his mates.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want him to work; they did, anywhere but bloody Lutters. Tom kicked a stone hard against the wall as he turned into the cobbled street that led down the hill to the pit. That Lutters wasn’t safe, he knew it wasn’t safe. It had been unworked for far too long but Davy had insisted. It was the only pit that would take him with his reputation and the means test that the government had just introduced to try and cut down money given to the long-term unemployed had made him take the risk.

Tom nodded to two of his mates, shambling on past him.

‘See you tonight then, Tom, at the meeting.’

He nodded. He would be there because they needed to talk more about this new test but before he went there he had Don to sort out.

He pulled his scarf round his throat and stuffed it down inside his jacket. He didn’t need the warmth of either now but he would when he came up out of the heat and dark when the hooter blew for the end of the shift.

There were too many curtains still drawn on the houses he passed, too many men still in bed, still without jobs. Too many
starving bairns and again he thought of Don. He’d have to go and try and knock some sense into the bugger. Annie had spoken to him but he just called her a bloody bolshie. Tom scowled as he passed through the colliery gates and rubbed the back of his head. If what he’d heard in the pub was anything to go by, our Don was going to get told good and proper about overcharging on loans but it wouldn’t be with words.