Miss Carter's War by Sheila Hancock Read Free Book Online Page B

stronghold. Being married to a rich man probably helped as well. Her hair was several shades lighter, and her frock, a vivid blue to match her eyes and her politics, was short enough to reveal shapely legs, enhanced by elegant shoes, the high heels of which improved her previous clomping walk. She spoke with vigour of the danger of unilateral disarmament at which Tony groaned only very quietly, so as not to disrupt the meeting so efficiently organised by the young activists.
    As they left the hall, Tony linked arms with Marguerite and muttered, ‘Dear God, what have we done to these children – we so-called grown-ups? What kind of future have we given them?’
     
    She and Marcel creep through the lavender field, the perfume makes her head swim; or is it the fear? The house seems deserted but the door is wide open. They enter cautiously, guns at the ready. There is a whimpering sound. As they go into the parlour the little boy clings to his mother, lying dead on the floor in a lake of blood.
    ‘Please don’t hurt us,’ he says.
     
    ‘I think a stiff drink is in order.’
    Several beers and whisky chasers later, Tony blamed his mood on a headache brought on by suppressing his natural instinct to shout at politicians in deference to Pauline and Hazel. And ‘complications’ in his personal life. Plus ‘the slight worry that we may be about to blow our world out of the solar system’.
    Marguerite offered him a Veganin, ignored the ‘complications’, and insisted that things would change for the better.
    ‘The stakes are so high now – total annihilation – the world will have to come to its senses.’
    ‘Give or take the odd bomb-owning lunatic that may not have any senses to come to.’
    ‘They will be defeated. Good will prevail.’
    ‘Ever the bloody optimist. Little Lizzie Dripping.’
    ‘Who’s she?’
    ‘Dunno. It’s what we people oop north call people we love.’
    When he said things like that she sometimes wondered how much he meant it. She half hoped that their warm relationship would develop into something more serious if he sorted out his ‘complications’. But she was content to leave things as they were. Her working life was all-consuming.
    Her pupils were her raison d’être. They were the future. Forget about the past.
    Yes, for pity’s sake, forget that.

Chapter 6
    From the window of the tower Marguerite would often feast her eyes on the girls’ lithe bodies as they leapt around in their skimpy gym skirts doing PT outside in the sun. She earnestly hoped that their beauty would not be drained away, as it had been from the careworn mothers she met on Parents’ Day, nor their bright eyes dimmed by disappointment with their lives, scarred by war and want. She did everything she could to build their confidence; if they achieved something or amused her with their giggly humour, she would give them a hug. It would be no exaggeration to say that she loved them. The more unprepossessing, verging on hopeless they were, the more she endeavoured to transform them. Her Messiah complex, Tony called it.
    She was never bored. She relished the challenge of changing her teaching techniques according to age group. Her relatively stylish clothes and slight accent made her the target of many a schoolgirl crush, which she learned to handle with tact. She gave equal energy to all her classes but she could not help having a soft spot for her very first pupils.
    Irene Brown perplexed her. In the class situation it was well nigh impossible to deal with chronic shyness, as drawing attention to it only made the sufferer more withdrawn. Because Irene never joined in discussions, it was difficult to get to the bottom of her problem. Marguerite could forge no bond with the girl. The breakthrough came of its own volition. It was not part of the syllabus, but after the United Nations Associations meeting, which many of them had attended, motivated by Pauline and Hazel, it seemed apposite for the girls to look at the