Bilgewater by Jane Gardam Read Free Book Online Page B

organisers of loony bins and so on—that I would be all right in the end.
    I had never thought I’d have to do any English again after O level and my writing is still very bad. Also the A level English teacher is Miss Bex—need I say!—and the books she was doing with the English lot were lovely ones and I didn’t want them to be spoiled. I have always preferred thinking about a book to writing about it and I have always assumed that English was the subject along with Scripture meant for the duds or those who do things just for enjoyment. But for a General Paper—?
    â€œOh well,” I said, “All right. I’ll do some English.”
    â€œIt’s your decision,” said father. Paula went prancing off like the triumph of Jerusalem.
    Miss Bex however did not. “Really?” she said. “English? For the General Paper for Oxbridge?”
    â€œFor Cambridge.”
    I felt absolutely dreadful saying it. I knew I hadn’t really got a hope of Cambridge although my Maths and Physics were all right.
    I began to blush dreadfully and Miss Bex gave a little sardonic laugh. “Well,” she said. “I suppose we might let you have a
try
. I think I had better have a word with your parents. Will you ask them to contact me?”
    â€œIt’s only my father,” I said. “My mother died.”
    â€œOh. Oh. I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I hope it wasn’t—?”
    â€œSome time ago,” I said bravely.
    â€œOh dear. Did the Headmistress—?”
    â€œI didn’t talk about it,” I said. (I couldn’t have talked about it. Having just been born it was before I coold talk. I am not proud of this conversation and I ought not to be pleased that she looked so terribly embarrassed.)
    â€œI’ll write to your father,” she said. “Perhaps he would let me come and have a little talk with him?”
    â€œThat would be better,” I said, “than his corning here. He doesn’t go out of the House much. He lives a very quiet life.”
    She said, “Ah.”
    A week later I looked out of my bedroom window and sure enough there she was walking around the garden yacketing away at father, her head wagging, very earnest, and father leaning courteously towards her with his lovely absent-minded smile. As I watched he picked her a late rose—or perhaps just picked it and held it out for admiration, but she took it with great exclamations and stuck it into her big check tweed suit.
    â€œWhoever’s that?” asked Paula over my shoolder.
    â€œThat’s Miss Bex. I’m doing Hamlet and Hardy with her.”
    â€œGod save them,” said Paula.
    â€œOh go on,” I said. “she’s clever. She knows a lot.”
    â€œShe’d have to,” said Paula. “I wonder what Hamlet and Hardy would have thought of
her
.”
    I had never heard Paula unkind like this. She’s usually so unconcerned about looks.
    The next Monday when I met Miss Bex in a corridor she gave me a wide emphatic smile showing both rows of teeth and the little dampness that collects at each end of her mouth and causes a slight noise as she talks like a singing tap—a tap whose washer isn’t quite gone but will not last much longer. Remembering Paula’s unattractive attitude however, which I had found shocking, it being so very unusual, I didn’t give her the basilisk lens contortion I reserve for our chance encounters.
    â€œ
There
you are,” said Bex, “You’ll be joining us this afternoon?”
    â€œWill I?” I said, “What exactly—?”
    â€œMy Wordsworth and my Hamlet class.”
    â€œAm I in it?”
    â€œWell of course my dear. Didn’t your father tell you?”
    â€œHe must have forgonen.”
    â€œ
Such
a dear,” she said. She could hardly be meaning me so presumably it was father. “We don’t see each other all that much,” I