‘All right,’ he said.
They walked through the dank mist, back to the school buildings, which were mostly of red brick, some with a straggle of Virginia creeper on them. The new classrooms, presented a year ago by the father of a boy who had left, were of pinker brick than the rest. The old classrooms had been nicer, Michael’s father said: they’d once been the stables.
There were several entrances to the house itself. The main one, approached from the cricket pitch by crossing A.J.L.’s lawns and then crossing a large, almost circular gravel expanse, was grandiose in the early Victorian style. Stone pillars supported a wide gothic arch through which, in a sizeable vestibule, further pillars framed a heavy oak front door. There were croquet mallets and hoops in a wooden box in this vestibule, and deck-chairs and two coloured golfing umbrellas. There was an elaborate wrought-iron scraper and a revolving brush for taking the mud from shoes and boots. On either side of the large hall door there was a round window, composed of circular, lead-encased panes. ‘Well, at least they haven’t got rid of those,’ Michael’s father had said, for these circular windows were a feature that boys who had been to Elton Grange often recalled with affection.
The other entrances to the house were at the back and it was through one of these, leading her in from the quadrangle and the squat new classrooms, past the kitchens and the staff lavatory, that Michael directed his mother on their way to the dormitories. All the other places they’d visited had been outside the house itself – the gymnasium and the changing-rooms were converted outbuildings, the carpentry shop was a wooden shed tucked neatly out of the way beside the garages, the art-room was an old conservatory, and the classroom block stood on its own, forming two sides of the quadrangle.
‘What a nice smell!’ Michael’s mother whispered as they passed the kitchens, as Michael pressed himself against the wall to let Miss Brooks, in her jodhpurs, go by. Miss Brooks was carrying a riding stick and had a cigarette going. She didn’t smile at Michael, nor at Michael’s mother.
They went up the back stairs and Michael hoped they wouldn’t meet anyone else. All the boys, except the ones like Swagger Browne whose people lived abroad, were out with their parents and usually the staff went away at half-term, if they possibly could. But A.J.L. and Outsize Dorothy never went away, nor did Sister, and Miss Trenchard had been there at prayers.
‘How ever do you find your way through all these passages?’ his mother whispered as he led her expertly towards his dormitory. He explained, in a low voice also, that you got used to the passages.
‘Here it is,’ he said, relieved to find that neither Sister nor Miss Trenchard was laying out clean towels. He closed the door behind them. ‘That’s my bed there,’ he said.
He stood against the door with his ear cocked while she went to the bed and looked at it. She turned and smiled at him, her head a little on one side. She opened a locker and looked inside, but he explained that the locker she was looking in was Carson’s. ‘Where’d that nice rug come from?’ she asked, and he said that he’d written to Gillian to say he’d been cold once or twice at night, and she’d sent him the rug immediately. ‘Oh,’ his mother said dispiritedly. ‘Well, that was nice of Gillian,’ she added.
She crossed to one of the windows and looked down over A.J.L.’s lawns to the chestnut trees that surrounded the playing-fields. It really was a beautiful place, she said.
She smiled at him again and he thought, what he’d never thought before, that her clothes were cheap-looking. Gillian’s clothes were clothes you somehow didn’t notice: it didn’t occur to you to think they were cheap-looking or expensive. The women of Elton Grange all dressed differently, Outsize Dorothy in woollen things, Miss Brooks in suits, with a tie, and Sister and Miss Trenchard and Miss Arland always had white coats. The maids wore blue overalls most of the time but sometimes you saw them going home in the evenings in their ordinary clothes, which you never really thought about and certainly you never thought were cheap-looking.
‘Really beautiful,’ she said, still smiling, still at the window. She was wearing a headscarf and a maroon coat and another scarf at her neck. Her handbag was maroon also, but it was old, with something broken on one of the buckles: it was the handbag, he said to himself, that made you think she was cheaply dressed.
He left the door and went to her, taking her arm. He felt ashamed that he’d thought her clothes were cheap-looking. She’d been upset when he’d told her that the rug had been sent by Gillian. She’d been upset and he hadn’t bothered.
‘Oh, Mummy,’ he said.
She hugged him to her, and when he looked up into her face he saw the mark of a tear on one of her cheeks. Her fluffy hair was sticking out a bit beneath the headscarf, her round, plump face was forcing itself to smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Sorry? Darling, there’s no need.’
‘I’m sorry you’re left all alone there, Mummy.’
‘Oh, but I’m not at all. I’ve got the office every day, and one of these days I really will see about going back to the West End. We’ve been awfully busy at the office, actually, masses to do.’
The sympathy he’d showed caused her to talk. Up to now – ever since they’d met the day before – she’d quite deliberately held herself back in this respect, knowing that to chatter on wouldn’t be the thing at all. Yesterday she’d waited until she’d returned to Sans Souci before relaxing. She’d had a nice long chat with Mrs Malone on the landing, which unfortunately had been spoiled by a man in one of Mrs Malone’s upper rooms poking his head out and asking for a bit of peace. ‘Sorry about that,’ she’d heard Mrs Malone saying to him later. ‘Couldn’t really stop her’ – a statement that had spoiled things even more. ‘I’m ever so sorry,’ she’d said quietly to Mrs Malone at breakfast.
‘Let’s go down now,’ Michael said.
But his mother didn’t hear this remark, engaged as she was upon making a series of remarks herself. She was no longer discreetly whispering, but chattering on with even more abandon than she had displayed on Mrs Malone’s stairs the night before. A flush had spread over her cheeks and around her mouth and on the portion of her neck which could be seen above her scarf. Michael could see she was happy.
‘We’ll have to go to Dolores’ wedding,’ she said. ‘On the 8th. The 8th of May, a Thursday I think it is. They’re coming round actually, Dolores and her young chap, Brian Haskins he’s called. Mr Ashaf says he wouldn’t trust him, but actually Dolores is no fool.’
‘Let’s go down now, Mum.’
She said she’d like to see the other dormitories. She’d like to see the senior dormitories, into one of which Michael would eventually be moving. She began to talk about Dolores Welsh and Brian Haskins again and then about Mrs Malone, and then about a woman Michael had never heard of before, a person called Peggy Urch.
He pointed out that the dormitories were called after imperial heroes. His was Drake, others were Ralegh, Nelson, Wellington, Marlborough and Clive. ‘I think I’ll be moving to Nelson,’ Michael said. ‘Or Marlborough. Depends.’ But he knew she wasn’t listening, he knew she hadn’t taken in the fact that the dormitories were named like that. She was talking about Peggy Urch when he led her into Marlborough. Outsize Dorothy was there with Miss Trenchard, taking stuff out of Verschoyle’s locker because Verschoyle had just gone to the sanatorium.
‘Very nice person,’ Michael’s mother was saying. ‘She’s taken on the Redmans’ flat – the one above us, you know.’
It seemed to Michael that his mother didn’t see Outsize Dorothy and Miss Trenchard. It seemed to him for a moment that his mother didn’t quite know where she was.
‘Looking for me?’ Outsize Dorothy said. She smiled and waddled towards them. She looked at Michael, waiting for him to explain who this visitor was. Miss Trenchard looked, too.