At Freddie’s. Simon Callow
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were being made about Hannah’s annual increment and pension, also were there any men at all on the staff, men teachers of course she meant, well, Carroll was a common enough name, he might be something to Mrs Carroll over at Mullen who had three sons two grown, one an undertaker one in the bank, but of course there was no need to settle anything in a hurry and she took it Hannah was only having a look round her before she got placed in a decent grammar school.
‘Pierce, do you know any undertakers?’ she asked him idly now. He began to deliberate. ‘Don’t worry, it was only my mother was on at me.’
After tea Carroll showed her down the stairs, indicating for the second time the worn portions of the carpet. ‘There’s one more thing I’d thought of saying to you, and that is that you have the real Northern Irish complexion. I think we really only see it at home, very radiant, very fair. I consider that it’s produced by the damp prevailing winds, and by the cold draughts inside the houses themselves. I hope it won’t disimprove over here.’
‘You must tell me if it does, Pierce. You must tell me the moment I start going to pieces.’
There was a possibility that he might smile at this, but Hannah felt she couldn’t spare the time to see whether he would or not. She left him standing in the dark hall, piled with other people’s letters, and took the bus back to the Temple School.
There was no need for her to go back, she was off at four-fifteen and the time was long past that. Indeed it was probably a mistake, and might give Freddie the notion that slave-driving encourages slavery. But Hannah wanted to put the next day’s work on the blackboard. This would mean that she needn’t turn her back on the class first thing, which is as unwise in junior teaching as in lion-taming.
She had to give up this idea, however, when she found the lights on, and Jonathan still occupying his dormouse space at his desk. Pale, unfathomable, and compact, he raised heavy blue-veined lids from bluer eyes to watch her. Mattie was also there, messing about with the switches.
‘You’re my teacher,’ Jonathan finally said.
‘That’s love,’ Mattie interrupted with peculiar eagerness. Hannah was about to reproach them both for insincerity, but after only a week she had learned how little the word meant here.
‘Jonathan’s a genius,’ Mattie went on. ‘He’d have been in Dombey before I was, only he was too short. He’s grown one and five-eighth inches this year, though.’
He pointed to a series of ink marks, perhaps measurements, on the wall. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, either of you,’ Hannah said. ‘Mattie, you ought to be getting down to the theatre.’
Both of them listened with keen attention.
‘What are you doin here, young Jonathan,’ said Mattie suddenly. ‘Why don’t you g’wan home?’
Hannah recognised immediately her own Belfast accent.
‘I’m just waitin, mister.’
‘And what are you waitin for, little man?’
‘I’m not waitin for annythin, mister, I’m just waitin.’
‘You have to be waitin for somethin I’m tellin you, what are you fuckin well doin then?’
‘I’m trainin to be a waiter.’
She was not self-conscious and never listened to herself, but surely if she did she wouldn’t sound like that, not as hard as that, not at all like that really.
‘Have we hurt your feelings?’ they asked, delighted.
‘I don’t want your pity,’ she said.
Mattie offered her a cigarette. ‘They’re American. I get given these things. They’re Peter Stuyvesants.’
Hannah did not correct his pronunciation of this word. Mattie took out his little silver lighter.
‘Jonathan isn’t really allowed to do imitations. They’re bad for his acting.’
‘You have your dialect classes,’ said Hannah coldly.
‘Ah, holy smoke, those same dialect classes is no good at all,’ cried Jonathan, ‘you want to see the lines she’s givin us, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph [falling inflection], is it a star you’re wanting to make of me, why I’m thinkin that if I crossed the ocean to Hollywood that does be in America by the time I got there I’d surely be drowned. Talk is it? In the length and breadth of the Old Country, Miss Graves, I’m asking you did you ever hear talk the like of that?’
‘I haven’t been over the length and breadth of Ireland,’ she said, ‘but I’ve certainly never heard anyone talk like that.’
Jonathan nodded serenely. ‘We’ll refuse to do it. We’ll tell her you said she was an old fraud.’
He broke away from Mattie, whose arm was round his neck, and without a single glance behind him, walked backwards out of the room.
‘He’s been practising that,’ Mattie remarked. ‘He’ll go on until he gets it right.’
‘Hasn’t he got it right now?’
‘Not that time, he wasn’t exactly in the middle of the doorway. I can do it, though, I’ll show you some time.’
‘Show me now and then go off home, I’ve had quite enough of you.’
‘No, not now.’
He pulled the door to, and began in a low confidential tone to explain everything. He had no parents alive, or, if he had, he didn’t know them and had never known them. He was run by an agent who had a place the other side of the Garden and there was a room of sorts there for him, this agent collected all his fees and paid the school and he didn’t know if anything was being put aside for him or not. He got one pound ten a week spending money, but the agent, well, anyone could call themselves that, kept putting it to Mattie that he could earn a sight more if he left the Temple and went in for commercials, that is, if he could fix himself up with some freckles. Hannah was given to understand that it was impossible to get work advertising cornflakes without freckles. But there was some stuff you could use to bring freckles on, Mattie said. It was like the stuff blacks used to use in New York in the days when they wanted to look lighter, only in reverse. You had to grease up and let it work through a bit here and there, like acid. They mustn’t be too regular, you wanted more across the nose. The pain screwed you up. Of course some people minded pain more than others. That was called your pain threshold. – Hannah asked how the freckles could be removed when no longer wanted. Mattie rolled up the white of his eyes and spread his hands out; no idea. His whole manner changed as he spoke; he sounded tired to death, close to the gutter.
‘Who looks after you when you get back, Mattie?’
‘What looking after, Miss?’
She had meant his dinner, of course, and his clothes, though he always looked as smart as a child could.
‘That’s part of the job, that’s all part of the agent’s put-on, Miss. He’s got a Hoffmann presser in the basement.’
Hannah would not ask what or who this was.
‘We have to go out looking okay,’ Mattie pursued, ‘I don’t know what he’d do to us if we didn’t go out looking okay.’ Perhaps a Hoffmann presser was an instrument of torture. ‘I’m really in his hands, you see, Miss. Until I get a bit older, I’m helpless.’
Hannah, feeling the tears of indignation rise, turned away to clean the blackboard. She wondered how Mattie had dared to let himself get into trouble at the Alexandra. All his freaks, and in particular his extravagant affection for Jonathan, were excusable from a waif. Something might be said to that effect. However, when she looked round he was gone.
THERE was something