14

When mother returned from her week in Bognor Regis acting as nursemaid to my grandmother, she announced her intention of learning to drive. The inconvenience of walking everywhere to pick up prescriptions, fetch shopping and run errands, and her inability to ferry her mother to the doctor’s surgery had convinced her that it was time she mastered what was sure to be a simple task. My father was horrified; the car was his refuge. In it he could slip off, without warning, who knew where. Another driver in the family would mean consultation, negotiation: it was unthinkable.

‘But why?’ he asked. ‘You don’t need to drive. I can take you anywhere you want to go. Any time. I’ll worry if I think you’re out on the road somewhere. It’s not safe.’

There was a little flash of triumph in mother’s eyes. ‘Got you,’ it said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she replied. ‘It’s ridiculous that I’ve gone all these years without learning. Everyone drives nowadays. I’d be no use to anyone in an emergency if I don’t drive.’

‘You’ll probably be the emergency if you do,’ said father. ‘Can’t you persuade her, Abigail?’

I hesitated. Although I was bothered by the apparent pleasure mother was taking in her obstinacy, I could see no good reason for her not driving.

‘Think how much easier that journey to Skye would have been if we could have shared the driving,’ she went on, ignoring his last comment.

‘I didn’t mind,’ said Dad. ‘I’d be more nervous as a passenger. There’s no need for you to drive. If you ever want me to take you anywhere you know you’ve only to ask.’

‘That’s not the point. I’d like to be able to drive myself.’

‘I can’t see what you’d have to gain.’

‘Freedom.’ At last the word was out in the open. Two different freedoms, and only one car. My mother won of course. Not because she shouted or ranted or had the better argument, but because in certain situations, where she could see the possibility of victory, her inflexibility was absolute. My father’s protestations were like drops of water bouncing off a great lump of jade: it wouldn’t be worn down in his lifetime. Sensibly he relented, even offering to teach her himself, but she was determined to do the thing properly, and twice a week the little red hatchback with its white dunce’s cap bearing the driving school’s insignia would glide up to the house to collect her, and bunny-hop away again with mother at the wheel. Gracious in defeat, father coached her on the Highway Code, took her out for practice drives around likely test routes, and bit back any words of advice that might be misconstrued. Her first two test failures left her rattled but not broken. After the third she said, ‘It looks as though I’m not destined to drive,’ devolving responsibility for her predicament upon a higher authority, the L-plates disappeared from the car and the subject was never raised again.

It was father’s turn a few months later. This time it was his job that was the source of domestic tension. Having heard the chequered employment history of Mr Radley, I had never imagined that teaching Latin was anything other than a fine and admirable occupation. Nor had it occurred to me that there was anything wrong with staying in the same job for an entire career. It seemed the sensible thing to do. I was happy at school and had no inclination to leave; I couldn’t see why any teacher might want to. But about the time I had left Saint Bede’s, father’s Grammar School had become a Comprehensive. Naturally the technicalities of this were lost on me, but I was left in no doubt by my parents’ despondency and dark mutterings that this was a Bad Thing.

‘You see at the moment,’ father explained one morning, while laying bacon under the grill for breakfast, ‘the Grammar School only takes clever children like you – and heaven knows some of those are stupid enough.’ He switched on the gas which fanned out over the bacon while he hunted for the matches. ‘But when it turns Comprehensive,’ he struck a match, ‘we’ll have to take children who are very dim indeed,’ the gas ignited with a boom, ‘and teaching Latin to the very dim is much less agreeable than teaching it to the clever.’

There was more to it than that, of course. Once the spirit of modernisation was on the march other changes followed. Latin and Greek, it was felt, were no longer as relevant as they had been, say, five years ago. Father and the Greek master would continue to teach the upper school, but the new intake would instead be taught a subject called Civics by a member of the History department. Father was happy to be relieved of his duties towards the very dim, but depressed all the same, and suppertimes, formerly an opportunity to recount the significant events of the day, became gloomy affairs presided over by the ghost of Civilisation, whose passing father would lament nightly.

‘It seems Shakespeare may be the next to go, poor fellow,’ he once said, as though referring to a member of staff. ‘There was quite a long meeting on the subject at lunchtime today – I always eavesdrop on these things to pick up the latest fatuity – and the conclusion was that the English department must find ways of making Shakespeare relevant.’ He sighed.

‘What I don’t understand,’ said mother, ‘is what is going to happen as each successive Grammar year leaves. I mean, there will come a time when there’s nobody left doing Latin. Then what happens to you?’

‘Ah,’ father said. ‘With each year that passes I am slowly being erased. Then what? Good question.’ But he didn’t have an answer, and the meal proceeded in uneasy silence.

‘Tony Inchwood has got a deputy headship,’ father reported over supper a few months after that conversation. ‘First person to be promoted out of the place in years.’

‘Tony Inchwood? What was he?’ said mother.

‘Head of languages.’

‘So his job will be vacant then.’

‘Not for long – the advert goes in the paper on Friday.’

‘You could apply for it – you teach a language. Of sorts.’

‘Oh, not me,’ said father, cutting a wedge of white bread from the end of the loaf and dipping it into his goulash gravy. ‘Wouldn’t have a hope.’

‘Why ever not?’ asked mother indignantly.

‘Too old.’

‘You’re not old – you’re only forty-nine.’

‘Fifty-one.’

‘Well, what’s two years?’

‘It sounds worse.’

‘But you’ve got nearly fifteen working years ahead of you. You can’t be expected to hang around in the same job all that time.’

‘Only recently you were worried that I wouldn’t be staying in the job for much longer,’ father pointed out, sweeping his bread around the plate, leaving a clean china trail. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to be head of languages – planning the German syllabus and stocktaking and running endless meetings. All that has nothing to do with teaching Latin.’

‘But you must apply for it,’ mother insisted. ‘Surely they’d be glad to give it to you after all you’ve done. And it would solve their problem of what to do with you.’ And before he’d finished his last swab of bread she had produced a pad of writing paper from the bureau. ‘Here you are.’

‘I don’t need to write – I’ll just mention to Roger that I’m vaguely interested. Not that I am,’ he added.

‘Oh no,’ mother said firmly. ‘We’re going to do this properly.’

He didn’t get it of course. Having put himself to the trouble he was more disappointed than he’d expected, but stoical and magnanimous nevertheless. ‘It wasn’t a complete waste of time,’ he pointed out. ‘I’d been meaning to get this suit dry-cleaned for ages.’

Mother’s sense of justice was outraged. ‘How could they?’ she shrilled, furious at the implied slight and that, after all, father should have been proved right. The victorious candidate was only thirty-two.

‘Looks even younger than that,’ said father. ‘He’s been in one of those big inner-city comprehensives. Terribly nice fellow. Just what we need, really.’

‘But don’t all those years of service count for anything?’ mother complained.

Father gave a little smile. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Loyalty never goes unpunished.’