It seemed to Jenny that the girls of 2A eyed one another, wondering which among them would become a successor to Sarah Spence. They eyed the older girls, of Class 1, 1A and 1B, wondering which of them was already her successor, discreetly taking her place in the red Ford Escort on dusky afternoons. He would never be coarse, you couldn’t imagine coarseness in him. He’d never try anything unpleasant, he’d never in a million years fumble at you. He’d just be there, being himself, smelling faintly of fresh tobacco, the fingers of a hand perhaps brushing your arm by accident.
‘Within the play,’ he suggested in his soft voice, almost a whisper, ‘order is represented by the royal house of Scotland. We must try and remember Shakespeare’s point of view, how Shakespeare saw these things.’
They were studying Macbeth and Huckleberry Finn with him, but when he talked about Shakespeare it seemed more natural and suited to him than when he talked about Mark Twain.
‘On Duncan’s death,’ he said, ‘should the natural order continue, his son Malcolm would become king. Already Duncan has indicated – by making Malcolm Prince of Cumberland – that he considers him capable of ruling.’
Jenny had pale fair hair, the colour of ripened wheat. It fell from a divide at the centre of her head, two straight lines on either side of a thin face. Her eyes were large and of a faded blue. She was lanky, with legs she considered to be too long but which her mother said she’d be thankful for one day.
‘Disruption is everywhere, remember,’ he said. ‘Disruption in nature as well as in the royal house. Shakespeare insinuates a comparison between what is happening in human terms and in terms of nature. On the night of Duncan’s death there is a sudden storm in which chimneys are blown off and houses shaken. Mysterious screams are heard. Horses go wild. A falcon is killed by a mousing owl.’
Listening to him, it seemed to Jenny that she could listen for ever, no matter what he said. At night, lying in bed with her eyes closed, she delighted in leisurely fantasies, of having breakfast with him and ironing his clothes, of walking beside him on a seashore or sitting beside him in his old Ford Escort. There was a particular story she repeated to herself: that she was on the promenade at Lyme Regis and that he came up to her and asked her if she’d like to go for a walk. They walked up to the cliffs and then along the cliff-path, and everything was different from Foxton Comprehensive because they were alone together. His wife and he had been divorced, he told her, having agreed between themselves that they were incompatible. He was leaving Foxton Comprehensive because a play he’d written was going to be done on the radio and another one on the London stage. ‘Oh, darling,’ she said, daring to say it. ‘Oh, Jenny,’ he said.
Terms and holidays went by. Once, just before the Easter of that year, she met him with his wife, shopping in the International Stores in Ilminster. They had two of their four children with them, little boys with freckles. His wife had freckles also. She was a woman like a sack of something, Jenny considered, with thick, unhealthy-looking legs. He was pushing a trolley full of breakfast cereals and wrapped bread, and tins. Although he didn’t speak to her or even appear to see her, it was a stroke of luck to come across him in the town because he didn’t often come into the village. Foxton had only half a dozen shops and the Bow and Arrow public house even though it was enormous, a sprawling dormitory village that had had the new Comprehensive added to all the other new building in 1969. Because of the position of the Tennysons’ gate-lodge it was clearly more convenient for them to shop in Ilminster.
‘Hullo, Mr Tennyson,’ she said in the International Stores, and he turned and looked at her. He nodded and smiled.
Jenny moved into 1A at the end of that school year. She wondered if he’d noticed how her breasts had become bigger during the time she’d been in 2A, and how her complexion had definitely improved. Her breasts were quite presentable now, which was a relief because she’d had a fear that they weren’t going to develop at all. She wondered if he’d noticed her Green Magic eye-shadow. Everyone said it suited her, except her father, who always blew up over things like that. Once she heard one of the new kids saying she was the prettiest girl in the school. Adam Swann and Chinny Martin from 1B kept hanging about, trying to chat her up. Chinny Martin even wrote her notes.
‘You’re mooning,’ her father said. ‘You don’t take a pick of notice these days.’
‘Exams,’ her mother hastily interjected and afterwards, when Jenny was out of the room, quite sharply reminded her husband that adolescence was a difficult time for girls. It was best not to remark on things.
‘I didn’t mean a criticism, Ellie,’ Jenny’s father protested, aggrieved.
‘They take it as a criticism. Every word. They’re edgy, see.’
He sighed. He was a painter and decorator, with his own business. Jenny was their only child. There’d been four miscarriages, all of which might have been boys, which naturally were what he’d wanted, with the business. He’d have to sell it one day, but it didn’t matter all that much when you thought about it. Having miscarriages was worse than selling a business, more depressing really. A woman’s lot was harder than a man’s, he’d decided long ago.
‘Broody,’ his wife diagnosed. ‘Just normal broody. She’ll see her way through it.’
Every evening her parents sat in their clean, neat sitting-room watching television. Her mother made tea at nine o’clock because it was nice to have a cup with the news. She always called upstairs to Jenny, but Jenny never wanted to have tea or see the news. She did her homework in her bedroom, a small room that was clean and neat also, with a pebbly cream wallpaper expertly hung by her father. At half past ten she usually went down to the kitchen and made herself some Ovaltine. She drank it at the table with the cat, Tinkle, on her lap. Her mother usually came in with the tea things to wash up, and they might chat, the conversation consisting mainly of gossip from Foxton Comprehensive, although never of course containing a reference to Mr Tennyson. Sometimes Jenny didn’t feel like chatting and wouldn’t, feigning sleepiness. If she sat there long enough her father would come in to fetch himself a cup of water because he always liked to have one near him in the night. He couldn’t help glancing at her eye-shadow when he said good-night and she could see him making an effort not to mention it, having doubtless been told not to by her mother. They did their best. She liked them very much. She loved them, she supposed.
But not in the way she loved Mr Tennyson. ‘Robert Tennyson,’ she murmured to herself in bed. ‘Oh, Robert dear.’ Softly his lips were there, and the smell of fresh tobacco made her swoon, forcing her to close her eyes. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, yes.’ He lifted the dress over her head. His hands were taut, charged with their shared passion. ‘My love,’ he said in his soft voice, almost a whisper. Every night before she went to sleep his was the face that entirely filled her mind. Had it once not been there she would have thought herself faithless. And every morning, in a ceremonial way, she conjured it up again, first thing, pride of place.
Coming out of Harper’s the newsagent’s one Saturday afternoon, she found waiting for her, not Mr Tennyson, but Chinny Martin, with his motor-cycle on its pedestal in the street. He asked her if she’d like to go for a spin into the country and offered to supply her with a crash helmet. He was wearing a crash helmet himself, a bulbous red object with a peak and a windshield that fitted over his eyes. He was also wearing heavy plastic gloves, red also, and a red windcheater. He was smiling at her, the spots on his pronounced chin more noticeable after exposure to the weather on his motor-cycle. His eyes were serious, closely fixed on hers.