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.