William Boyd - Sweet Caress

But she was smiling now as she waved me to a chair. I was disarmed, for a second or two.

‘Evening, Miss Ashe,’ I said, trying to regain the upper hand. ‘That’s a beautiful bracelet.’

She looked at the heavy silver and Bakelite bracelet on her wrist as if she’d forgotten she’d put it on.

‘Thank you, Amory. Do sit.’

She sat down herself and reached for a cardboard file and opened it on her knee. She was wearing an emerald-green afternoon frock, trimmed with a lemon-yellow scarf at the neck. She flipped up the lid of a silver cigarette box on the table beside her chair, took out a cigarette, searched for a lighter, and lit her cigarette, all the time keeping her eyes on the open file. We’d noticed how Miss Ashe pointedly smoked in front of the older girls — it was a provocation. Thus provoked, I spoke.

‘I suppose that’s my dossier.’

She looked up. ‘It’s your file. All pupils have a file.’

‘All the facts.’

‘All the facts we know. .’ She cocked her head, as if she were taking me in better. Pale blue eyes, unblinking. I didn’t want to start a staring match with Miss Ashe, so I lowered mine and picked invisible fluff off my skirt.

‘I’m sure there are many more “facts” we’re unaware of.’

‘I don’t think so, Miss Ashe.’ I smiled, sweetly. ‘I’ve nothing to hide.’

‘Really? You’re an open book, are you, Amory?’

‘For those who can read me.’

She laughed, seeming genuinely amused at my remark and I felt the beginnings of a blush creep up my neck and warm my cheeks and ears. Stupid Amory, I thought. Say as little as possible. Miss Ashe was scrutinising my file again.

‘You passed all subjects at School Certificate with distinction.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you decided to drop maths, science and Greek.’

‘I’m more interested in—’

‘History, French and English. What’s your subsidiary?’ She turned a page.

‘Geography.’

She made a note and then closed the file, looking at me directly again.

‘Are you happy here at Amberfield, Amory?’

‘Would you define “happy” for me, Miss Ashe?’

‘You’re answering a question with a question. Playing for time. Just be honest — but don’t say you’re bored. I don’t care if a girl is stupid or bad but to be bored is a defeat, un échec. If you’re bored with life you might as well die.’

Something about Miss Ashe’s absolute assurance stung me. Without thinking I blurted out an answer.

‘If you want me to be honest, then I feel I’m disintegrating, here. I’m not a groaner, Miss Ashe — I know you hate groaners as much as you hate boredom — but I feel. . lifeless. Everything’s insincere, sterile and spineless. Sometimes I feel inhuman, a robot—’ I stopped. I was already regretting abandoning my usual poise.

‘Goodness me. I’d never have guessed.’ Miss Ashe very carefully stubbed out her cigarette.

You fool, Amory, I said to myself, angry. You’ve let her win. I stared at a book on the stool between us: The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler.

‘Interesting language you use,’ Miss Ashe said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Disintegrating, lifeless, spineless, inhuman, robot. It’s just a school, Amory. We’re trying to teach you, to equip you for your adult life. We’re not some kind of autocratic regime trying to crush the life from you.’

‘I feel I’m stagnating. Trapped in this gutless, antisocial jungle—’ I stopped for the second time. I’d run out of words.

‘Well, you can certainly express yourself, Amory. Which is a gift. Very colourful. Which brings me to the point of this delightful encounter.’ She stood up and went to her desk to pick up a slip of paper.

‘I’m very pleased to tell you,’ she said with a certain formality, turning and crossing the carpet towards me, ‘that you’ve won the Roxburgh Essay Prize. Five guineas. I’ll make the announcement at prayers this evening. But you may tell your closest friends in the meantime.’ She handed me the slip of paper — that turned out to be a cheque. I failed to conceal my surprise as I took it from her. I wasn’t sure why I had spontaneously decided to enter the competition. Perhaps it was because this year’s subject had intrigued me: ‘Is it really “modern” to be modern?’ In any event I had entered, written the essay, and here I was, the winner.

Miss Ashe sat down and studied me. I stared at the cheque, realising I could now buy the new camera I coveted, the Butcher ‘Klimax’.

‘I was thinking, Amory, about Oxford.’

‘Oxford?’

‘After Higher School Certificate, you come back for a term and prepare for Oxford entrance. The Senior History Scholarship at Somerville, to be precise. I think you’d stand an excellent chance, judging by your work — and the essay you wrote.’

Miss Ashe was a graduate of Somerville College. I was aware that I was about to become a protégée, now this suggestion had been made.

‘But I don’t want to go to Oxford,’ I said.

‘That’s a very stupid remark.’

‘I don’t want to go to any university in particular.’

‘You want to “live”, I suppose.’

I could sense Miss Ashe was now quite irritated. The tide in this confrontation was turning my way.

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘It’s entirely possible to “live” while you’re at university, you know.’

‘I’d rather do something else.’

‘And what do you want to do, Amory?’

‘I want to be a photographer.’

‘An intriguing and rewarding hobby. Miss Milburn has told me about your darkroom.’

‘I want to be a professional photographer.’

Miss Ashe stared at me, as if I were mocking her in some abstruse way. As if I’d said I wanted to become a professional prostitute.

‘But you can’t do that,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re a—’ She managed to stop herself saying ‘woman’. ‘Because it’s not a reliable profession. For someone like you.’

‘I can try, can’t I?’

‘Of course you can, Amory, my dear. But remember that going to university doesn’t preclude a career as a “photographer”. And you’ll have a degree, something to fall back on. Give Somerville some thought, I urge you.’ She stood and crossed the room again to place my file on her desk. The meeting with God was over. I made for the door but she stopped me with a raised palm.

‘I almost forgot. Your father telephoned me this morning. He asked if he could take you out for tea tomorrow afternoon.’

‘He did? But it’s Wednesday tomorrow.’

‘You can have an exeat. I’ll gladly waive the usual rules. Consider it as a bonus to the Roxburgh Prize.’

I frowned. ‘Why does he want to take me out to tea?’

‘He said he had something to discuss with you, face to face. He didn’t want to put it in a letter.’ Miss Ashe looked at me, almost with kindness, I felt, sensing my puzzlement shading quickly into alarm. ‘Have you any idea what he wants to talk to you about?’ she asked, her hand briefly on my shoulder.

‘It must be some sort of family matter, I suppose. I can’t think what else.’

Miss Ashe smiled. ‘He sounded very positive and cheerful. Maybe it’s good news.’

I STOOD AT THE front door of Gethsemane, my boarding house at Amberfield, waiting for my father. I was in the full humiliating walking-out uniform: the long black gaberdine raglan coat with attached cape trimmed with cherry-red piping, the straw bonnet, the sensible buckled shoes. Half Jane Austen spinster, half Crimean War veteran, we thought. The rude boys of Worthing had great scurrilous fun with us whenever we walked in phalanx through the town.