I was happy in this school, Patty thought, longing for the contentment of childhood. But she knew that even then she had been unruly, a fidget, a delinquent. She had never been able to concentrate on school work but had stared out of the window towards the sea, dreaming of adventure.
She had volunteered for the Parents’ Association with a rush of enthusiasm when her second child had joined the school, and was already regretting it. The meetings were formal and boring and the Association had none of the power she had imagined. It had been a rush to make a meal for Jim and the children and get to the school in time. Six o’clock was a most inconvenient time for a committee meeting, but Mr Medburn had insisted that it was the only time when he and his staff could attend. The committee knew that his object was to be as inconvenient as possible and had suggested that Mr Medburn’s presence was hardly necessary. He, after all, had shown no enthusiasm for the formation of the Association. But he had stated that it would be impossible for them to use school premises without him, and the time had been agreed. As Patty entered the hall her depression deepened and she prepared to be bored.
Paul Wilcox was washing up and listening at the same time for the sound of his wife’s car. From the living room came the voice of the television and occasionally the children’s voices raised in argument. He supposed he should go into them and put an end to the quarrel. He should switch off the television and persuade them to play something constructive, but he was grateful to be on his own for a while.
They lived in a big house, converted from an old water mill, with a garden and a paddock by the stream. He had never expected to live in a house like that and it would have been impossible if he and not Hannah had been working. He loved the house, but it shamed him. It was a reflection of his incompetence. The kitchen, where he was hiding from the children, had a gloomy unfinished quality. It had a red quarry tile floor and a large dresser they had bought at an auction before the children were born, but some of the units were still without doors and it needed more light. Hannah thought that as he was home all day he should be able to turn the house into the dream property they had imagined it could be, but it was not that easy. He had worked as a nurse. He had never been a practical man. Besides he did not have Hannah’s energy, her vitality, her ability to do three things at once and still do them all well.
He scraped remnants from Elizabeth’s plastic plate into an already overflowing wastebin and wondered when he would have the courage to admit to Hannah that the experiment of role reversal had been a mistake. It had been his idea.
‘You have a far greater earning potential than me,’ he had said. She was a graduate, a mathematician. ‘I’ll enjoy being home with the children. It’ll be exciting.’
Hannah had been unsure. She took motherhood seriously. She read books about it. Then an old colleague from the computer firm where she worked came to see her. He was considering setting up on his own, he said. A computer consultancy. There was a gap in the market in the north-east. Was she interested in joining him? For the first six months Paul worked nights while she struggled to make a go of it. She worked from home in the small terraced house where they lived. Elizabeth was a tiny baby and Joe a serious three-year-old. Then she started making money and to celebrate they moved to the old mill in Heppleburn and there was no longer any need for him to continue working.
At first it had been fine. It had been a joy to escape the routine of work. Joe was at nursery school and Elizabeth slept a lot. He planned the things he would do with his new free time. He would read, perhaps join a band again, decorate the mill, plant the garden. Then Elizabeth changed, almost overnight, into a kicking, screaming, demanding monster who drew in wax crayon on his books, broke the strings of his guitar and washed her hair in wallpaper paste. Their friends, said she was a normal toddler. Joe, they said, had been exceptionally good. They couldn’t expect to have the same luck twice. For Paul the shock was enormous.
It would have been easier perhaps if they had family who lived locally, but they were both southerners and had no one to support them. Paul loved Heppleburn. It fitted in with all his romantic notions of the north. He liked the seamen’s mission on the coast, the miners’ welfare hall, the leek shows and the racing pigeons. He liked to talk to shop assistants and to old ladies in bus queues to show that he was friendly too. He and Hannah often told their friends from Kent about the day Hannah took Joe out in his pram as a new baby and the pram came back jingling with coins – the lucky money given by people in the street to celebrate his birth. But despite all that they had no real friends in the area. There was no one he could talk to.
As Hannah’s business succeeded she came home later and stayed away more often. She was running courses, attending conferences, selling her skills. Some weeks Paul hardly saw her and at the weekends she was exhausted, kept awake only by nervous energy and her desire to have time with the children.
He joined the Parents’ Association because it seemed the right thing to do. Some of his ideals about being the perfect parent still remained. He wanted to prove his commitment to Hannah but thought that she hardly noticed. He seemed to be losing her. She was slipping away from the family and he felt inadequate to take her place. Thousands of wives must feel like this, he thought as he looked at his watch again. He was so tight, so full of resentment, that he felt he should cry out to relieve the pressure. Perhaps then, magically, the self-pity would leave him like air from a balloon. It’s my only night out this week and she’s late.
Then he heard her car on the drive and the clang of the garage door and she was in the kitchen, her hands full of papers and files and a bulging briefcase. She was wearing a long, gaberdine mac which was crumpled because she had been sitting too long in the car. Her face was drawn and her eyes were grey and tired.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said, dropping everything in a heap on the kitchen table. ‘It’s those bloody road works on the A1. I’m so glad to be home.’
‘Sit down,’ he said, because it was impossible to be angry with her when she looked so small and ill. ‘I’ll make some tea.’
But as he filled the kettle he still wanted to cry or to scream as she started telling him about an awkward customer who had purposely misread the contract. He wanted to say that he had had a bad day too. He wanted to tell her about Lizzie wetting herself in the supermarket trolley and pulling the washing from the line into the mud, but he said nothing and pretended to be listening. Thousands of wives must feel like this, he thought again, but it was no real comfort.
‘I’ll have to go out now,’ he said at last. She turned to him with a hurt bruised expression, so he realized he must have interrupted her.
‘It’s the Parents’ Association,’ he said defensively. ‘ I’m chairman. I’ll have to go.’ He would have liked to say something more to her, something intimate, fun even, telling her to be ready for him when he came home, but he knew she would not want to make love to him. She was too tired and would fall asleep as soon as they were in bed.
Outside the house he composed himself. He was determined to maintain the illusion that their life together was a success, that he enjoyed his role as a parent. Harold Medburn’s remarks about his inability to support his family would not be allowed to hurt him this evening. He hurried up the lane towards the school and was the first one to arrive. When the others came into the hall he was already sitting in his place at the head of the table, studious, bespectacled and calm.