At Freddie’s. Simon Callow
Читать онлайн книгу.
did you teach to the deaf and dumb?’
‘Craft subjects and carpentry, Miss Wentworth, there and at the Church of Ireland Remedial School.’
‘What kind of personal response did you get?’
‘I’m not sure that I expected any.’
Freddie shifted her ground a little. ‘Are you interested in the theatre?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say so.’
‘But in Shakespeare?’
‘I don’t know Shakespeare well. I must disabuse you of that idea from the start.’ He looked up at the faded canvas. ‘Those are some lines from his works that you have written there on your wall.’
‘Are you fond of children?’
‘I am not, Miss Wentworth.’
‘Or of teaching?’
‘It seems to me right that they should be taught,’ he said. All the time he remained quite still, sitting there attentively in a suit of the greenish tweed that is produced for those from Northern Ireland visiting London. Long pauses seemed natural when dealing with Carroll. Indeed, his absolute slowness produced an unaccustomed peace. Freddie returned to the subject of crafts and carpentry. That might be quite a good idea for the boys, who grew restless when they didn’t get work. ‘There’s a good deal of materials needed for anything of that kind,’ said Carroll.
‘What makes you think that I haven’t got a quantity of material?’
Carroll looked carefully, but not critically, round the office. ‘I get the impression that there’s not much money to spare here,’ he said. ‘But that’s nothing to me, I’m used to all sorts.’
‘So am I,’ said Freddie. ‘You’re sure, are you, dear, that you want to apply for this post? The salary is quite low, and it will stay low. I am offering Miss Graves more, but then she has the diploma.’
‘It’s very low, I should describe it as exploitation, but it’s as much as I can expect with my qualifications. I don’t think I shall do any better if I stay in Ireland. When you’ve reached the point, as Wordsworth says, that you can no further go, then you must try something else.’
‘I’ve never read any Wordsworth.’
‘Is that right?’ Carroll asked politely.
He had no ability to make himself seem better or other than he was. He could only be himself, and that not very successfully. Meeting Carroll for a second time, even in his green suit, one wouldn’t recall having seen him before.
He appeared to be musing on what had passed between them. ‘I hope you didn’t think I intended any discourtesy just now in saying that there didn’t seem to be much money in the place. Looked at in a different way, that wouldn’t be impolite at all. There’s nothing discreditable in strict economy, particularly in anyone who’s well advanced into old age.’
‘Perhaps you think it’s time I gave up altogether,’ Freddie suggested.
‘Not at all, we should never give up. That was the point of my allusion to Wordsworth. And if we find that one difficulty is solved, then we shouldn’t rest, but look round for another one. It’s a great mistake to live with the past victories.’
‘You’re telling me this, I suppose, from your own experience.’
‘Ah, not at all, Miss Wentworth, I’ve never had any successes of any kind. But I know that victory is a matter not of scale, but of quality.’
Freddie tried to imagine him instructing Mattie in some craft, but could not. Still, he might pass for a teacher. She suggested a contract, three months’ notice to be given on his side, one month on hers, and renewable the following July.
‘I’m doing you down, dear.’
‘That’s right, Miss Wentworth.’
Freddie felt some interest in Carroll, more, perhaps, than in Hannah. She had heard in his remarks the weak, but pure, voice of complete honesty. She was not sure that she had ever heard it before, and thought it would be worth studying as a curiosity.
FREDDIE’S was in Baddeley Street, in the middle of Covent Garden, which in itself is in the exact middle or heart of London. In the old Garden of the 1960s the market was open every weekday and in consequence the Opera House and the Theatre Royal rose majestically, beset with heavy traffic, above a wash of fruit, flowers, and vegetables. The world’s most celebrated singers had to pick their way to their triumphs through porters’ barrows, and for the great performances, when the queue formed at night for next morning’s tickets, every empty barrow was full of sleeping Londoners. You could find a niche, too, on the piles of netted carrots which were often waiting in the colonnade of the Opera itself. Evangelists of various religions patrolled the queues late into the night, calling on them to repent, and distributing tracts which lay with the other rotting debris about the Garden. When morning came the starlings woke there earlier than in any other part of London.
This was the world of the Temple children, who had no playground, and no particular place to eat their school dinner. When the midday break came Miss Blewett unlocked the front door and stood back to let them out. The better-off got themselves something to eat at Tito’s Cafe, or at the twenty-four-hour coffee-stall outside St Paul’s, the actors’ church. The others ran, like little half-tame animals on the scavenge, through the alleys of the great market. By that time most of the warehouses had rolled down their shutters, and the ground was littered with straw and cardboard and crushed baskets, of the kind called frails. But round one corner or another there would be a wholesaler who hadn’t locked up yet, or a van loading up for the return journey. Far from wanting to sell cheap, the Garden defended their damaged and unsold fruit, declared they were only allowed by law to sell in six dozens, denounced the children as pests, muckers and bleeders and only grudgingly, on the point of departure, released in exchange for ready money a few misshapen apples or carrots. In this way every dinner-hour was a drama. To cajole the unwilling traders, in fact to Freddie them, was better than bargaining for a stale bacon sandwich from the back of the market public houses, which opened at seven o’clock in the morning and closed at nine. Whatever they got, they ate it at once, sitting on the empty floats. Yet in all those years the police never had to record a complaint against them. Doubtless they were regarded as one of the hazards of the market, like the rats, like the frails.
The children in their turn were perfectly used to the dilapidation of their school. Maintenance was supposed to be in the hands of Baines, the odd job man, who had once stood in as doorkeeper at the Old Vic, and now called himself a schoolkeeper, but in fact only gave a casual glance twice a week at the boiler and the incinerator. Baines also understood what might be called his dramatic role, as age and mortality’s emblem, muttering at the kids’ antics and hinting at the heartbreaks of a stage career, which would soon cut them down to size. He was not a skilled handyman and couldn’t have undertaken the repairs in any case; that was why he suited Freddie. Although he would never have admitted it, Baines also did whatever cleaning was allowed to take place. With Miss Blewett he constituted the permanent staff. Others, like those two who’d just been taken on, came and went with the seasons.
CARROLL and Hannah did not meet until the beginning of term, by which time both of them had found somewhere to live. Hannah had gone straight from her interview with Freddie to the Petrou Shoe Bar at the end of the street. The interior smelled powerfully of feet. Still she hadn’t come to London for the fresh air there, there was enough and to spare of that at home. She took off her shoes and handed them over the counter, saying that she would like the heels done at once as she had to walk round the district till she found accommodation. The Cypriot glanced at her and after affixing the new Phillips