30

Dear Mrs Gledloe

My son, who is an undergraduate at Durham University, is planning a sightseeing tour of Europe in September and has agreed to act as chaperone for Frances. In view of the enormous cultural and educational value of such a visit I am entirely in its favour and hope therefore you will excuse Frances from school for the first three weeks of next term.

Yours truly

Alexandra Radley

Dear Mrs Radley

Thank you for your letter of July 12. I’m afraid we would be extremely unhappy for Frances to absent herself from school for the first three weeks of the autumn term. The Upper Sixth year is a crucial one for students and attendance at lessons is taken very seriously. Even if Frances were assured of good grades next June I would be against the idea of her missing so much work, but in view of her uneven performance in this summer’s exams I have no hesitation in withholding permission. I hope on reflection you will accept that we have Frances’ best interests at heart.

Yours sincerely

J. A. Gledloe

Lexi was on the phone straight away. It was a Saturday but this didn’t deter her. ‘There can’t be that many Gledloes in the book,’ she said, finding the page in the directory and forcing it flat with her fist until the spine broke. ‘Glebe, Gledhill, here we are.’

‘You can’t call her at home,’ Frances protested as Lexi shut the hall door on her. ‘Dad, stop her.’

‘Yes, I would certainly be prepared to come into school to discuss it,’ Lexi could be heard saying in her most unctuous voice.

‘As if I could,’ said Mr Radley, twitching the letter open. ‘Narrow-minded old trout,’ he snorted. ‘“Uneven performance”! Bloody cheek – when you’ve gone to the trouble of being a dismal failure in all your subjects.’

Frances pulled a face at him as Lexi came back into the room. ‘I’m going to see her on Monday,’ she said, in a tone which suggested the battle was as good as won.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said her husband. ‘I’d like to ask her what they teach at that place which compares so favourably with the Uffizi or the Sistine Chapel.’ He still hadn’t forgiven the school for failing to pass on the dates of the Battle of the Somme.

‘I don’t want you there,’ said Lexi.

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I always enjoy witnessing a clash between two determined women.’

In the event Lexi went alone. Exactly what passed at the interview is not recorded, but Mrs Gledloe wasn’t the pushover Lexi had predicted. ‘I’m afraid my charms were wasted on her,’ she reported. ‘The woman is so utterly charmless herself, she would be incapable of recognising the quality in anyone else.’ After half an hour of discussion stalemate had been reached. Mrs Gledloe was unmoved by the vision of Frances drinking from the fountain of European culture while the rest of us had our heads down over the Past Historic; Lexi was not persuaded of the relative value of three weeks of classes. Mr Radley, having been violently opposed to the idea of Frances accompanying Rad, was now, at the first hint of institutional resistance, violently in favour.

‘Perhaps she’d be happier if a parent went with them?’ he said, hopefully.

‘No way,’ said Frances.

‘I’ve already told you, you have to be under twenty-six for a railcard,’ said Rad. ‘Why don’t you go to the health farm with Mum? You know you’re overweight.’

‘I’m underheight,’ Mr Radley corrected him.

‘I’m not having him,’ said Lexi in horror. ‘It’s supposed to be a holiday.’

‘I thought we’d agreed we’d go away somewhere together this year,’ he said.

‘We did,’ said Lexi, ‘but I changed our mind.’

The final communication on the subject was a curt note from the headmistress at the end of term.

We look forward to seeing Frances back at school on 6 September. Failure to attend will be taken most seriously and lead to a review of Frances’ continuation as a pupil at Greenhurst.

That settled it.

The only other issue left in dispute was the sleeping arrangements. Rad and Nicky had been intending to share a two-man tent, but Lexi was keen for Frances to have separate quarters.

‘It’s not as if we’d exactly get up to anything with Rad there,’ grumbled Frances.

‘I could lie between them like a sword,’ Rad offered, but this wasn’t good enough for his parents. I was interested to see what would happen here, as I had been wondering for some time whether Nicky and Frances were sleeping together. The way they handled each other in public suggested even greater liberties in private, but I didn’t dare ask. The answer would either be an indignant ‘Of course we haven’t!’ or an indignant ‘Of course we have!’ When we were twelve or so Frances had intimated that she was never going to let any boy ‘muck about’ with her, but her opinions had obviously undergone some revision over the course of time.

A couple of days before the travellers were leaving I casually asked Frances if she was packing her diary and she had admitted that she no longer wrote one. Oh ho, I thought, they’ve Done It all right. Didn’t Lexi say virginity and diary-keeping were related?

Lexi’s solution to the accommodation problem was to present Frances with a brand-new tent of her own. ‘This is for you, and the boys can share the other one,’ she said, fixing Nicky with a meaningful stare.

When they returned from the holiday Frances told me they had unpacked the new tent on the first night for Rad to sleep in and found that Lexi had accidentally bought an upright cubicle tent for enclosing a portaloo. ‘I’ll have to pretend I slept standing up,’ she laughed.

They were away for the whole of September. I had never realised a month could last so long. There had been no question of my accompanying them. My mother would never have allowed me to miss even a day of school and was scandalised by the Radleys’ encouragement of their daughter’s truancy. I had, anyway, offered to look after my granny for the last week of the holidays to give my parents a break. This piece of selflessness on my part had presented them with a dilemma: anxiety at leaving me behind unguarded, against desperation to escape.

The situation at home was becoming intolerable as my grandmother’s demands grew more exacting. She expected everything and was grateful for nothing. It was impossible to perform a one-off act of kindness like reading to her, taking her out, setting her hair or bringing her breakfast in bed without her interpreting it in the most malevolent light. ‘It’s about time someone read to me. Do you know, I sat here yesterday from seven o’clock in the morning until suppertime without seeing a soul? Talk about bored: I’ll be glad when I’m dead. So will you, I dare say.’ What might begin as a favour soon became a duty. A treat was in no time considered a Right. And, such is human nature, though the performance of this duty would appear to bring no pleasure, its neglect would occasion the most bitter complaint.

Not content with being a most ungracious invalid by day, Granny had developed acute insomnia and would while away the hours before dawn listening to the radio at full blast. Fortunately my bedroom was at the far end of the landing, but my parents, whose room adjoined Granny’s, had to suffer this nightly bombardment. They had tried various dodges to reduce the noise. Father bought an adaptor with its own earpiece which Granny was supposed to wear like a hearing aid, but she would fidget in bed and get tangled up in the wire and finally rip it out of its socket in frustration. He then bought a special speaker attachment slim enough to fit under a pillow, but Granny, who seemed to have developed the sensitivity of the heroine in The Princess and the Pea, claimed that it was like lying on a brick.

My parents had looked into the possibility of putting my grandmother into a home for a week so that the three of us could go away together, but a very brief look indeed sufficed to persuade them that this wouldn’t be a successful arrangement.

‘It wouldn’t be fair on the staff, or the other inmates. Residents, I mean,’ mother said to us one evening on her return from an inspection of some of the local establishments. ‘There seemed to be a sing-along in progress at the last one. I can’t see her co-operating with that somehow.’

The cheaper places were too depressing, had shared bedrooms, ITV on all day, bingo, and catatonic occupants, and reeked of urine. The expensive ones smelled better and had nicer wallpaper but were, well, expensive.

‘A pity,’ said father, scanning a glossy brochure with pictures of well-groomed, smiling elderly women and well-groomed, smiling nurses sitting in what looked like the gardens of a stately home. ‘You obviously get a better class of dementia at these places.’

‘I’m not going to be dumped in the kennels,’ grandmother retorted when the subject was broached. ‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. For a week,’ she added, in case they got the wrong idea.

‘We’re not leaving you on your own. Suppose you had a fall?’ said mother.

‘I’ve said I’ll stay. I’m quite happy to look after Granny,’ I said. ‘For a week.’

Accepting this as the best solution, mother and father went off for their walking holiday in Snowdonia. With the guilt at leaving Granny and the worry over leaving me they were guaranteed to have a rotten time.

‘Here’s our phone number for the first night,’ said mother, handing me a full A4 sheet giving minute details of their itinerary, from which it would be possible to track them, hour by hour. ‘The cottage hasn’t got a phone, but you can leave a message at the Post Office during the day. And if you need to get hold of us in the evening there’s a pub opposite, and you ring this number and ask for Mr Pollitt and he’ll come and get us.’

I nodded, not really listening. Over her shoulder I could see father staggering out to the car with a box of provisions. They always did this: bought everything beforehand, leaving nothing to chance, in case muesli or Earl Grey might be hard to come by in Wales. ‘I’ll ring you from the callbox every night at five past six if you can be in. If there’s no reply I’ll try again at ten.’ Mother’s voice droned on. ‘… There’s some money in the bureau for emergencies. Don’t forget to water the roses if it’s dry – don’t use the sprinkler because it will make the petals go brown. The hanging baskets need doing every day. Oh, and there’s some mince in the fridge which is nearly off, so it’ll need eating. Have a good time.’

The week was enlivened only by a crackly phone call from Frances. She barely had time to impart the information that they were in Rome, having a brilliant time, it was baking hot and she had just been thrown out of St Peter’s for wearing shorts, before the line went dead. This was my only communication from the European travellers apart from a postcard which arrived the day they were due back. Each of them had scribbled a line.

Although my sainted namesake was supposed to be an animal lover, there are No Dogs Allowed in the basilica. Growth wouldn’t approve. Frances. XXX

We have paid our respects to the ossified remains of Saints Clare and Francis. Very keen on bones these Catholics. Growth would approve. Rad.

We are writing this in the local ristorante. Veal excellent. Nicky.

On Frances’ return her reception at school was no warmer than it had been at the Vatican. Mrs Gledloe’s threat had not been an idle one, and the Radleys were invited to withdraw Frances from Greenhurst so that she might avoid the distinction of being the first girl in the school’s history to be expelled. She was duly transferred to the local sixth form college – a sixties glass and concrete block in the centre of town – where she was allowed to wear jeans, smoke in the canteen, and attend classes if and when the fancy took her. The second of these liberties was of no interest to her, but of the first and third she took every advantage, and her jeans-clad figure was only the most occasional presence in those graffiti’d halls.