Tommy and I leaned on the rail and stared at the view until the others had gone out of sight.
“It’s just talk,” he said eventually. Then after a pause: “It’s just what people say when they’re feeling sorry for themselves. It’s just talk. The guardians never told us anything like that.”
I started to walk—the opposite way to the others—and let Tommy fall in step beside me.
“It’s not worth getting upset about,” Tommy went on. “Ruth’s always doing things like that now. It’s just her letting off steam. Anyway, like we were telling her, even if it’s true, even a little bit true, I don’t see how it makes any difference. Our models, what they were like, that’s nothing to do with us, Kath. It’s just not worth getting upset about.”
“Okay,” I said, and deliberately bumped my shoulder into his. “Okay, okay.”
I had the impression we were walking towards the town centre, though I couldn’t be sure. I was trying to think of a way to change the subject, when Tommy said first:
“You know when we were in that Woolworth’s place earlier? When you were down at the back with the others? I was trying to find something. Something for you.”
“A present?” I looked at him in surprise. “I’m not sure Ruth would approve of that. Not unless you got her a bigger one.”
“A sort of present. But I couldn’t find it. I wasn’t going to tell you, but now, well, I’ve got another chance to find it. Except you might have to help me. I’m not very good at shopping.”
“Tommy, what are you talking about? You want to get me a present, but you want me to help you choose it…”
“No, I know what it is. It’s just that…” He laughed and shrugged. “Oh, I might as well tell you. In that shop we were in, they had this shelf with loads of records and tapes. So I was looking for the one you lost that time. Do you remember, Kath? Except I couldn’t remember what it was any more.”
“My tape? I didn’t realise you ever knew about it, Tommy.”
“Oh yeah. Ruth was getting people to look for it and saying you were really upset about losing it. So I tried to find it. I never told you at the time, but I did try really hard. I thought there’d be places I could look where you couldn’t. In boys’ dorms, stuff like that. I remember looking for ages, but I couldn’t find it.”
I glanced at him and felt my rotten mood evaporating. “I never knew that, Tommy. That was really sweet of you.”
“Well, it didn’t help much. But I really wanted to find it for you. And when it looked in the end like it wasn’t going to turn up, I just said to myself, one day I’ll go to Norfolk and I’ll find it there for her.”
“The lost corner of England,” I said, and looked around me. “And here we are!”
Tommy too looked around him, and we came to a halt. We were in another side-street, not as narrow as the one with the gallery. For a moment we both kept glancing around theatrically, then giggled.
“So it wasn’t such a daft idea,” Tommy said. “That Woolworth’s shop earlier, it had all these tapes, so I thought they were bound to have yours. But I don’t think they did.”
“You don’t think they did? Oh, Tommy, you mean you didn’t even look properly!”
“I did, Kath. It’s just that, well, it’s really annoying but I couldn’t remember what it was called. All that time at Hailsham, I was opening boys’ collection chests and everything, and now I can’t remember. It was Julie Bridges or something…”
“Judy Bridgewater. Songs After Dark.”
Tommy shook his head solemnly. “They definitely didn’t have that.”
I laughed and punched his arm. He looked puzzled so I said: “Tommy, they wouldn’t have something like that in Woolworth’s. They have the latest hits. Judy Bridgewater, she’s someone from ages ago. It just happened to turn up, at one of our Sales. It’s not going to be in Woolworth’s now, you idiot!”
“Well, like I said, I don’t know about things like that. But they had so many tapes…”
“They had some, Tommy. Oh, never mind. It was a sweet idea. I’m really touched. It was a great idea. This is Norfolk, after all.”
We started walking again and Tommy said hesitantly: “Well, that’s why I had to tell you. I wanted to surprise you, but it’s useless. I don’t know where to look, even if I do know the name of the record. Now I’ve told you, you can help me. We can look for it together.”
“Tommy, what are you talking about?” I was trying to sound reproachful, but I couldn’t help laughing.
“Well, we’ve got over an hour. This is a real chance.”
“Tommy, you idiot. You really believe it, don’t you? All this lost-corner stuff.”
“I don’t necessarily believe it. But we might as well look now we’re here. I mean, you’d like to find it again, wouldn’t you? What have we got to lose?”
“All right. You’re a complete idiot, but all right.”
He opened his arms out helplessly. “Well, Kath, where do we go? Like I say, I’m no good at shopping.”
“We have to look in second-hand places,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “Places full of old clothes, old books. They’ll sometimes have a box full of records and tapes.”
“Okay. But where are these shops?”
When I think of that moment now, standing with Tommy in the little side-street about to begin our search, I feel a warmth welling up through me. Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn’t a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid. Not long ago, when I was caring for Tommy, and I brought up our Norfolk trip, he told me he’d felt exactly the same. That moment when we decided to go searching for my lost tape, it was like suddenly every cloud had blown away, and we had nothing but fun and laughter before us.
At the start, we kept going into the wrong sort of places: second-hand bookshops, or shops full of old vacuum cleaners, but no music at all. After a while Tommy decided I didn’t know any better than he did and announced he would lead the way. As it happened, by sheer luck really, he discovered straight away a street with four shops of just the kind we were after, standing virtually in a row. Their front windows were full of dresses, handbags, children’s annuals, and when you went inside, a sweet stale smell. There were piles of creased paperbacks, dusty boxes full of postcards or trinkets. One shop specialised in hippie stuff, while another had war medals and photos of soldiers in the desert. But they all had somewhere a big cardboard box or two with LPs and cassette tapes. We rummaged around those shops, and in all honesty, after the first few minutes, I think Judy Bridgewater had more or less slipped from our minds. We were just enjoying looking through all those things together; drifting apart then finding ourselves side by side again, maybe competing for the same box of bric-a-brac in a dusty corner lit up by a shaft of sun.
Then of course I found it. I’d been flicking through a row of cassette cases, my mind on other things, when suddenly there it was, under my fingers, looking just the way it had all those years ago: Judy, her cigarette, the coquettish look for the barman, the blurred palms in the background.
I didn’t exclaim, the way I’d been doing when I’d come across other items that had mildly excited me. I stood there quite still, looking at the plastic case, unsure whether or not I was delighted. For a second, it even felt like a mistake. The tape had been the perfect excuse for all this fun, and now it had turned up, we’d have to stop. Maybe that was why, to my
own surprise, I kept silent at first; why I thought about pretending never to have seen it. And now it was there in front of me, there was something vaguely embarrassing about the tape, like it was something I should have grown out of. I actually went as far as flicking the cassette on and letting its neighbour fall on it. But there was the spine, looking up at me, and in the end I called Tommy over.
“Is that it?” He seemed genuinely sceptical, perhaps because I wasn’t making more fuss. I pulled it out and held it in both hands. Then suddenly I felt a huge pleasure—and something else, something more complicated that threatened to make me burst into tears. But I got a hold of the emotion, and just gave Tommy’s arm a tug.
“Yes, this is it,” I said, and for the first time smiled excitedly. “Can you believe it? We’ve really found it!”
“Do you think it could be the same one? I mean, the actual one. The one you lost?”
As I turned it in my fingers, I found I could remember all the design details on the back, the titles of the tracks, everything.
“For all I know, it might be,” I said. “But I have to tell you, Tommy, there might be thousands of these knocking about.”
Then it was my turn to notice Tommy wasn’t as triumphant as he might be.
“Tommy, you don’t seem very pleased for me,” I said, though in an obviously jokey voice.
“I am pleased for you, Kath. It’s just that, well, I wish I’d found it.” Then he did a small laugh and went on: “Back then, when you lost it, I used to think about it, in my head, what it would be like, if I found it and brought it to you. What you’d say, your face, all of that.”
His voice was softer than usual and he kept his eyes on the plastic case in my hand. And I suddenly became very conscious of the fact that we were the only people in the shop, except for the old guy behind the counter at the front engrossed in his paperwork. We were right at the back of the shop, on a raised platform where it was darker and more secluded, like
the old guy didn’t want to think about the stuff in our area and had mentally curtained it off. For several seconds, Tommy stayed in a sort of trance, for all I know playing over in his mind one of these old fantasies of giving me back my lost tape. Then suddenly he snatched the case out of my hand.
“Well at least I can buy it for you,” he said with a grin, and before I could stop him, he’d started down the floor towards the front.
I went on browsing around the back of the shop while the old guy searched around for the tape to go with the case. I was still feeling a pang of regret that we’d found it so quickly, and it was only later, when we were back at the Cottages and I was alone in my room, that I really appreciated having the tape—and that song—back again. Even then, it was mainly a nostalgia thing, and today, if I happen to get the tape out and look at it, it brings back memories of that afternoon in Norfolk every bit as much as it does our Hailsham days.
As we came out of the shop, I was keen to regain the carefree, almost silly mood we’d been in before. But when I made a few little jokes, Tommy was lost in his thoughts and didn’t respond.
We began going up a steeply climbing path, and we could see—maybe a hundred yards further up—a kind of viewing area right on the cliff edge with benches facing out to sea. It would have made a nice spot in the summer for an ordinary family to sit and eat a picnic. Now, despite the chilly wind, we found ourselves walking up towards it, but when there was still some way left to go, Tommy slowed to a dawdle and said to me:
“Chrissie and Rodney, they’re really obsessed with this idea. You know, the one about people having their donations deferred if they’re really in love. They’re convinced we know all about it, but no one said anything like that at Hailsham. At least, I never heard anything like that, did you, Kath? No, it’s just something going around recently among the veterans. And people like Ruth, they’ve been stoking it up.”
I looked at him carefully, but it was hard to tell if he’d just spoken with mischievous affection or else a kind of disgust. I could see anyway there was something else on his mind, nothing to do with Ruth, so I didn’t say anything and waited. Eventually he came to a complete halt and started to poke around with his foot a squashed paper cup on the ground.
“Actually, Kath,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’m sure we’re right, there was no talk like that when we were at Hailsham. But there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense back then. And I’ve been thinking, if it’s true, this rumour, then it could explain quite a lot.
Stuff we used to puzzle over.”
“What do you mean? What sort of stuff?”
“The Gallery, for instance.” Tommy had lowered his voice and I stepped in closer, just as though we were still at Hailsham, talking in the dinner queue or beside the pond. “We never got to the bottom of it, what the Gallery was for. Why Madame took away all the best work. But now I think I know. Kath, you remember that time everyone was arguing about tokens? Whether they should get them or not to make up for stuff they’d had taken away by Madame? And Roy J. went in to see Miss Emily about it? Well, there was something Miss Emily said then, something she let drop, and that’s what’s been making me think.”
Two women were passing by with dogs on leads, and although it was completely stupid, we both stopped talking until they’d gone further up the slope and out of earshot. Then I said:
“What thing, Tommy? What thing Miss Emily let drop?”
“When Roy J. asked her why Madame took our stuff away. Do you remember what she’s supposed to have said?”
“I remember her saying it was a privilege, and we should be proud…”
“But that wasn’t all.” Tommy’s voice was now down to a whisper. “What she told Roy, what she let slip, which she probably didn’t mean to let slip, do you remember, Kath? She told Roy that things like pictures, poetry, all that kind of stuff, she said they revealed what you were like inside. She said they revealed your soul.”
When he said this, I suddenly remembered a drawing Laura had done once of her intestines and laughed. But something was coming back to me.
“That’s right,” I said. “I remember. So what are you getting at?”
“What I think,” said Tommy slowly, “is this. Suppose it’s true, what the veterans are saying. Suppose some special arrangement has been made for Hailsham students. Suppose two people say they’re truly in love, and they want extra time to be together. Then you see, Kath, there has to be a way to judge if they’re really telling the truth. That they aren’t just saying they’re in love, just to defer their donations. You see how difficult it could be to decide? Or a couple might really believe they’re in love, but it’s just a s*x thing. Or just a crush. You see what I mean, Kath? It’ll be really hard to judge, and it’s probably impossible to get it right every time. But the point is, whoever decides, Madame or whoever it is, they need something to go on.”
I nodded slowly. “So that’s why they took away our art…”
“It could be. Madame’s got a gallery somewhere filled with stuff by students from when they were tiny. Suppose two people come up and say they’re in love. She can find the art they’ve done over years and years.
She can see if they go. If they match. Don’t forget, Kath, what she’s got reveals our souls. She could decide for herself what’s a good match and what’s just a stupid crush.”
I started to walk slowly again, hardly looking in front of me. Tommy fell in step, waiting for my response.
“I’m not sure,” I said in the end. “What you’re saying could certainly explain Miss Emily, what she said to Roy. And I suppose it explains too why the guardians always thought it was so important for us, to be able to paint and all of that.”
“Exactly. And that’s why…” Tommy sighed and went on with some effort. “That’s why Miss Lucy had to admit she’d been wrong, telling me it didn’t really matter. She’d said that because she was sorry for me at the time. But she knew deep down it did matter. The thing about being from Hailsham was that you had this special chance. And if you didn’t get
stuff into Madame’s gallery, then you were as good as throwing that chance away.”
It was after he said this that it suddenly dawned on me, with a real chill, where this was leading. I stopped and turned to him, but before I could speak, Tommy let out a laugh.
“If I’ve got this right, then, well, it looks like I might have blown my chance.”
“Tommy, did you ever get anything into the Gallery? When you were much younger maybe?”
He was already shaking his head. “You know how useless I was. And then there was that stuff with Miss Lucy. I know she meant well. She was sorry for me and she wanted to help me. I’m sure she did. But if my theory’s right, well…”
“It’s only a theory, Tommy,” I said. “You know what your theories are like.”
I’d wanted to lighten things a bit, but I couldn’t get the tone right, and it must have been obvious I was still thinking hard about what he’d just said. “Maybe they’ve got all sorts of ways to judge,” I said after a moment. “Maybe the art’s just one out of all kinds of different ways.”
Tommy shook his head again. “Like what? Madame never got to know us. She wouldn’t remember us individually. Besides, it’s probably not just Madame that decides. There’s probably people higher up than her, people who never set foot in Hailsham. I’ve thought about this a lot, Kath. It all fits. That’s why the Gallery was so important, and why the guardians wanted us to work so hard on our art and our poetry. Kath, what are you thinking?”
Sure enough, I’d drifted off a bit. Actually, I was thinking about that afternoon I’d been alone in our dorm, playing the tape we’d just found; how I’d been swaying around, clutching a pillow to my breast, and how Madame had been watching me from the doorway, tears in her eyes.
Even this episode, for which I’d never yet found a convincing explanation, seemed to fit Tommy’s theory. In my head, I’d been imagining I was holding a baby, but of course, there’d have been no way
for Madame to know that. She’d have supposed I was holding a lover in my arms. If Tommy’s theory was right, if Madame was connected to us for the sole purpose of deferring our donations when, later on, we fell in love, then it made sense—for all her usual coldness towards us—she’d be really moved stumbling on a scene like that. All this flashed through my mind, and I was on the point of blurting it all out to Tommy. But I held back because I wanted now to play down his theory.
“I was just thinking over what you said, that’s all,” I said. “We should start going back now. It might take us a while to find the car park.”
We began to retrace our steps down the slope, but we knew we still had time and didn’t hurry.
“Tommy,” I asked, after we’d been walking for a while. “Have you said any of this to Ruth?”
He shook his head and went on walking. Eventually he said: “The thing is, Ruth believes it all, everything the veterans are saying. Okay, she likes to pretend she knows much more than she does. But she does believe it. And sooner or later, she’s going to want to take it further.”
“You mean, she’ll want to…”
“Yeah. She’ll want to apply. But she hasn’t thought it through yet. Not the way we just did.”
“You’ve never told her your theory about the Gallery?” He shook his head again, but said nothing.
“If you tell her your theory,” I said, “and she buys it… Well, she’s going to be furious.”
Tommy seemed thoughtful, but still didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until we were back down in the narrow side-streets that he spoke again, and then his voice was suddenly sheepish.
“Actually, Kath,” he said, “I have been doing some stuff. Just in case. I haven’t told anyone, not even Ruth. It’s just a start.”
That was when I first heard about his imaginary animals. When he started to describe what he’d been doing—I didn’t actually see anything until a few weeks later—I found it hard to show much enthusiasm. In fact, I have to admit, I was reminded of the original elephant-in-the-grass picture that had started off all Tommy’s problems at Hailsham. The inspiration, he explained, had come from an old children’s book with the back cover missing which he’d found behind one of the sofas at the Cottages. He’d then persuaded Keffers to give him one of the little black notebooks he scribbled his figures in, and since then, Tommy had finished at least a dozen of his fantastic creatures.
“The thing is, I’m doing them really small. Tiny. I’d never thought of that at Hailsham. I think maybe that’s where I went wrong. If you make them tiny, and you have to because the pages are only about this big, then everything changes. It’s like they come to life by themselves. Then you have to draw in all these different details for them. You have to think about how they’d protect themselves, how they’d reach things. Honest, Kath, it’s nothing like anything I ever did at Hailsham.”
He started describing his favourites, but I couldn’t really concentrate; the more excited he got telling me about his animals, the more uneasy I was growing. “Tommy,” I wanted to say to him, “you’re going to make yourself a laughing stock all over again. Imaginary animals? What’s up with you?” But I didn’t. I just looked at him cautiously and kept saying: “That sounds really good, Tommy.”
Then he said at one point: “Like I said, Kath, Ruth doesn’t know about the animals.” And when he said this, he seemed to remember everything else, and why we’d been talking about his animals in the first place, and the energy faded from his face. Then we were walking in silence again, and as we came out onto the High Street, I said:
“Well, even if there’s something to your theory, Tommy, there’s a lot more we’ll have to find out. For one thing, how’s a couple supposed to apply? What are they supposed to do? There aren’t exactly forms lying about.”
“I’ve been wondering about all of that too.” His voice was quiet and solemn again. “As far as I can see, there’s only one obvious way forward. And that’s to find Madame.”
I gave this a think, then said: “That might not be so easy. We don’t really know a thing about her. We don’t even know her name. And you remember how she was? She didn’t like us even coming near her. Even if we did ever track her down, I don’t see her helping much.”
Tommy sighed. “I know,” he said. “Well, I suppose we’ve got time. None of us are in any particular hurry.”
By the time we got back to the car park, the afternoon had clouded over and was growing pretty chilly. There was no sign of the others yet, so Tommy and I leaned against our car and looked towards the mini-golf course. No one was playing and the flags were fluttering away in the wind. I didn’t want to talk any more about Madame, the Gallery or any of the rest of it, so I got the Judy Bridgewater tape out from its little bag and gave it a good look-over.
“Thanks for buying this for me,” I said.
Tommy smiled. “If I’d got to that tape box and you were on the LPs, I’d have found it first. It was bad luck for poor old Tommy.”
“It doesn’t make any difference. We only found it because you said to look for it. I’d forgotten about all this lost-corner stuff. After Ruth going on like that, I was in such a mood. Judy Bridgewater. My old friend. It’s like she’s never been away. I wonder who stole it back then?”
For a moment, we turned towards the street, looking for the others.
“You know,” Tommy said, “when Ruth said what she did earl-ier on, and I saw how upset you looked…”
“Leave it, Tommy. I’m all right about it now. And I’m not going to bring it up with her when she comes back.”
“No, that’s not what I was getting at.” He took his weight off the car, turned and pressed a foot against the front tyre as though to test it. “What I meant was, I realised then, when Ruth came out with all that, I realised why you keep looking through those porn mags. Okay, I haven’t realised. It’s just a theory. Another of my theories. But when Ruth said what she did earlier on, it kind of clicked.”
I knew he was looking at me, but I kept my eyes straight ahead and made no response.
“But I still don’t really get it, Kath,” he said eventually. “Even if what Ruth says is right, and I don’t think it is, why are you looking through old porn mags for your possibles? Why would your model have to be one of those girls?”
I shrugged, still not looking at him. “I don’t claim it makes sense. It’s just something I do.” There were tears filling my eyes now and I tried to hide them from Tommy. But my voice wobbled as I said: “If it annoys you so much, I won’t do it any more.”
I don’t know if Tommy saw the tears. In any case, I’d got them under control by the time he came close to me and gave my shoulders a squeeze. This was something he’d done before from time to time, it wasn’t anything special or new. But somehow I did feel better and gave a little laugh. He let go of me then, but we stayed almost touching, side by side again, our backs to the car.
“Okay, there’s no sense in it,” I said. “But we all do it, don’t we? We all wonder about our model. After all, that’s why we came out here today. We all do it.”
“Kath, you know, don’t you, I haven’t told anyone. About that time in the boiler hut. Not Ruth, not anyone. But I just don’t get it. I don’t get what it’s about.”
“All right, Tommy. I’ll tell you. It may not make any more sense after you’ve heard it, but you can hear it anyway. It’s just that sometimes, every now and again, I get these really strong feelings when I want to have s*x. Sometimes it just comes over me and for an hour or two it’s scary. For all I know, I could end up doing it with old Keffers, it’s that bad. That’s why… that’s the only reason I did it with Hughie. And with
Oliver. It didn’t mean anything deep down. I don’t even like them much. I don’t know what it is, and afterwards, when it’s passed over, it’s just scary. That’s why I started thinking, well, it has to come from somewhere. It must be to do with the way I am.” I stopped, but when Tommy didn’t say anything, I went on: “So I thought if I find her picture, in one of those magazines, it’ll at least explain it. I wouldn’t want to go and find her or anything. It would just, you know, kind of explain why I am the way I am.”
“I get it too sometimes,” said Tommy. “When I really feel like doing it. I reckon everyone does, if they’re honest. I don’t think there’s anything different about you, Kath. In fact, I get like that quite a lot…” He broke off and laughed, but I didn’t laugh with him.
“What I’m talking about’s different,” I said. “I’ve watched other people. They get in the mood for it, but that doesn’t make them do things. They never do things like I’ve done, going with people like that Hughie…”
I might have started crying again, because I felt Tommy’s arm going back around my shoulders. Upset as I was, I remained conscious of where we were, and I made a kind of check in my mind that if Ruth and the others came up the street, even if they saw us at that moment, there’d be no room for misunderstanding. We were still side by side, leaning against the car, and they’d see I was upset about something and Tommy was just comforting me. Then I heard him say:
“I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. Once you find someone, Kath, someone you really want to be with, then it could be really good.
Remember what the guardians used to tell us? If it’s with the right person, it makes you feel really good.”
I made a movement with my shoulder to get Tommy’s arm off me, then took a deep breath. “Let’s forget it. Anyway, I’ve got much better at controlling these moods when they come on. So let’s just forget it.”
“All the same, Kath, it’s stupid looking through those magazines.” “It’s stupid, okay. Tommy, let’s leave it. I’m all right now.”
I don’t remember what else we talked about until the others showed up. We didn’t discuss any more of those serious things, and if the others
sensed something still in the air, they didn’t remark on it. They were in good spirits, and Ruth in particular seemed determined to make up for the bad scene earlier on. She came up and touched my cheek, making some joke or other, and once we got in the car, she made sure the jovial mood kept going. She and Chrissie had found everything about Martin comical and were relishing the chance to laugh openly about him now they’d left his flat. Rodney looked disapproving, and I realised Ruth and Chrissie were making a song and dance of it mainly to tease him. It all seemed good-natured enough. But what I noticed was that whereas before Ruth would have taken the opportunity to keep me and Tommy in the dark about all the jokes and references, throughout the journey back, she kept turning to me and explaining carefully everything they were talking about. In fact it got a bit tiring after a while because it was like everything being said in the car was for our—or at least my—special benefit. But I was pleased Ruth was making such a fuss. I understood— as did Tommy—that she’d recognised she’d behaved badly before, and this was her way of admitting it. We were sitting with her in the middle, just as we’d done on the journey out, but now she spent all her time talking to me, turning occasionally to her other side to give Tommy a little squeeze or the odd kiss. It was a good atmosphere, and no one brought up Ruth’s possible or anything like that. And I didn’t mention the Judy Bridgewater tape Tommy had bought me. I knew Ruth would find out about it sooner or later, but I didn’t want her to find out just yet. On that journey home, with the darkness setting in over those long empty roads, it felt like the three of us were close again and I didn’t want anything to come along and break that mood.
