Charles Snow - Time of Hope

Brookman was a surly, untidy boy, who lived in the town’s one genuine slum. Peck stared at him, still smiling. ‘You’re not interested in our little efforts, my friend?’ said Peck.

Brookman did not reply. Peck stared at him, began another question, then shrugged his shoulders and passed on.

‘Buckley.’ ‘A shilling.’ ‘Cann.’ ‘Five shillings.’ The form cheerfully applauded. ‘Coe.’ ‘A shilling.’ ‘Cotery.’ ‘Three shillings and twopence.’ There was laughter; Jack Cotery was an original; one could trust him not to behave like anyone else. ‘Dawson.’ ‘Half a crown.’ There were several other D’s, all giving between a shilling and three shillings. ‘Eames.’ ‘Five shillings.’ Applause. ‘Edridge.’ ‘Five shillings.’ Applause. My name came next. As soon as Peck called it out, I was on my feet. ‘Ten shillings, sir.’ I could not damp a little stress upon the ten. The class stamped their feet, as I went between the desks and laid the note among the coins in front of Peck.

I had just laid the note down, when Peck said: ‘That’s quite a lot of money, friend Eliot.’ I smiled at him, full of pleasure, utterly unguarded; but at his next remark the smile froze behind my lips and eyes.

‘I wonder you can afford it,’ said Peck. ‘I wonder you don’t feel obliged to put it by towards your father’s debts.’

It was cruel, casual, and motiveless. It was a motiveless malice as terrifying for a child to know as his first knowledge of adult lust. It ravaged me with sickening shameful agony — and, more violently, I was shaken with anger, so that I was on the point of seizing the note and tearing it in pieces before his eyes.

‘Let me give you a piece of advice, my friend,’ said Peck, complacently. ‘It will be to your own advantage in the long run. You’re a bright lad, aren’t you? I’m thinking of your future, you know. That’s why I’m giving you a piece of advice. It isn’t the showy things that are most difficult to do, Eliot. It’s just plodding away and doing your duty and never getting thanked for it — that’s the test for bright lads like you. You just bear my words in mind.’

Somewhere in the back of consciousness I knew that the class had been joining in with sycophantic giggles. As I turned and met their eyes on my way back, they were a little quieter. But they giggled again when Peck said: ‘Well, I shall soon have to follow my own advice and plod away and do my duty and never get thanked for it — by teaching a class of dolts some geometrical propositions they won’t manage to get into their thick heads as long as they live, But I must finish the collection first. All contributions thankfully received. Fingleton.’ ‘Two shillings, sir.’ ‘Frere.’ ‘A shilling.’

I watched and listened through a sheen of rage and misery.

At the end of the morning, Jack Cotery spoke to me in the playground. He was a lively, active boy, short but muscular, with the eyes of a comedian, large, humorous, and sad.

‘Don’t mind about Pecky,’ he said with good nature and a light heart.

‘I don’t mind a scrap.’

‘You were as white as a sheet. I thought you were going to howl.’

I did not swear as some of the boys in the form habitually did; I had been too finically brought up. But at that moment all my pain, anger, and temper exploded in a screaming oath.

Jack Cotery was taken aback. ‘Keep your shirt on,’ he said.

On the way to the tram stop, where we travelled in different directions, he could not resist asking me: ‘Is your old man in debt, really?’

‘In a way,’ I said, trying to shield the facts, not to tell an actual lie — wanting both to mystify and to hide my own misery. ‘In a way. It’s all very complicated, it’s a matter of — petitions.’ I added, as impressively as I could, ‘It’s been in the solicitor’s hands.’

‘I’m glad mine’s all right,’ said Jack Cotery, impressive in his turn. ‘Of course, I could have brought a lot more money this morning. My old man is making plenty, though he doesn’t always let on. He’d have given me a pound if I’d asked him. But’ — Jack Cotery whispered and his eyes glowed — ‘I’m keeping it in reserve for something else.’

When I arrived home, my mother was waiting for me with an eager question.

‘What did they think of your subscription, dear?’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘Did anyone give more than ten shillings?’

‘No. Not in our form.’

My mother drew herself up and nodded her head: ‘Was ours the highest?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘What was the next highest?’

‘Five shillings,’ I said.

‘Twice as much,’ said my mother, smiling and gratified. But she was perceptive; she had an inkling of something wrong.

‘What did they say , though, dear?’

‘They thanked me, of course.’

‘Who was the master who took it?’ she asked.

‘Mr Peck.’

‘Was he pleased with you?’

‘Of course he was,’ I said flatly.

‘I want to hear everything he said,’ said my mother, half in vanity, half trying to reach my trouble.

‘I can’t now, Mother. I want to get back early. I’ll tell you everything tonight.’

‘I don’t think that’s very grateful of you,’ said my mother. ‘Considering what I did to find you all that money. Don’t you think I deserve to be told all about it now?’

‘I’ll tell you everything tonight.’

‘Please not to worry yourself if it’s too much trouble,’ she said haughtily, feeling that I was denying her love.

‘It’s not too much trouble, Mother. I’ll tell you tonight,’ I said, not knowing which way to turn.

I did not go straight home from school that evening. Instead, I walked by myself a long way round by the canal; the mist was rising, as fresh and clean as that morning’s mist; but as it swirled round the bridges and warehouses and the trees by the waterside, it no longer exalted me. I was inventing a story, walking that long way home through the mist, which would content my mother. Of how Mr Peck had said my contribution was an example to the form, of how he had told other masters, of how someone said that my parents were public-spirited. I composed suitable speeches. I had enough sense of reality to make them sound plausible, and to add one or two disparaging remarks from envious form-mates.

I duly repeated that fiction to my mother. Nothing could remove her disappointment. She had thought me inconsiderate and heartless, and now, if she believed at all, she felt puzzled, cast-off, and only a little flattered. I thought that I was romancing simply to save her from a bitter degradation. Yet I should have brought her more love if I had told her the truth. It would have been more loving to let her take an equal share in that day’s suffering. That lie showed the flaw between us.

There were nights that autumn, however, when my mother and I were closer than we had ever been. They were the nights when she tried to learn French. She saw me with my first French grammar, and she was seized with a desire to follow my lessons. French to her was romantic, genteel, emblem and symbol of the existence she had so much coveted. Her bold, handsome eyes were bright each time we spread the books on the front-room table. Her health was getting worse, she was having frightening fits of giddiness, but her interest and nervous gusto and hope pressed her on as when she was a girl.

‘Time for my French lesson,’ she said eagerly when Saturday evening came round. We started after tea and she was downcast if I would not persevere for a couple of hours. Often on those Saturday nights the autumn gales lashed rain against the windows; to that accompaniment, my mother tried to repeat my secondary-school phonetics.