I think Iโd have felt better about what had happened if Ruth had held it against me in some obvious way. But this was one instance when she seemed just to cave in. It was like she was too ashamed of the matterโ tooย crushedย by itโeven to be angry or to want to get me back. The first few times I saw her after the conversation under the eaves, I was ready for at least a bit of huffiness, but no, she was completely civil, if a little flat. It occurred to me she was scared Iโd expose herโthe pencil case, sure enough, vanished from viewโand I wanted to tell her sheโd nothing to fear from me. The trouble was, because none of this had actually been talked about in the open, I couldnโt find a way of bringing it all up with her.
I did my best, meanwhile, to take any opportunity to imply to Ruth she had a special place in Miss Geraldineโs heart. There was the time, for example, when a bunch of us were desperate to go out and practise rounders during break, because weโd been challenged by a group from the year above. Our problem was that it was raining, and it looked unlikely weโd be allowed outside. I noticed though that Miss Geraldine was one of the guardians on duty, and so I said:
โIfย Ruthย goes and asks Miss Geraldine, then weโd stand a chance.โ
As far as I remember, this suggestion wasnโt taken up; maybe hardly anyone heard it, because a lot of us were talking all at once. But the point is, I said it standing right behind Ruth, and I could see she was pleased.
Then another time a few of us were leaving a classroom with Miss Geraldine, and I happened to find myself about to go out the door right after Miss Geraldine herself. What I did was to slow right down so that Ruth, coming behind me, could instead pass through the door beside Miss Geraldine. I did this without any fuss, as though this were the natural and proper thing and what Miss Geraldine would likeโjust the way Iโd have done if, say, Iโd accidentally got myself between two best friends. On that occasion, as far as I remember, Ruth looked puzzled and surprised for a split second, then gave me a quick nod and went past.
Little things like these might well have pleased Ruth, but they were still far removed from what had actually happened between us under the eaves that foggy day, and the sense that Iโd never be able to sort things just continued to grow. Thereโs a particular memory I have of sitting by myself one evening on one of the benches outside the pavilion, trying over and over to think of some way out, while a heavy mix of remorse and frustration brought me virtually to tears. If things had stayed that way, Iโm not sure what would have happened. Maybe it would all have got forgotten eventually; or maybe Ruth and I would have drifted apart. As it was, right out of the blue, a chance came along for me to put things right.
We were in the middle of one of Mr. Rogerโs art lessons, except for some reason heโd gone out half way. So we were all just drifting about among the easels, chatting and looking at each otherโs work. Then at one point a girl called Midge A. came over to where we were and said to Ruth, in a perfectly friendly way:
โWhereโs your pencil case? Itโs so luscious.โ
Ruth tensed and glanced quickly about to see who was present. It was our usual gang with perhaps a couple of outsiders loitering nearby. I hadnโt mentioned to a soul anything about the Sales Register business, but I suppose Ruth wasnโt to know that. Her voice was softer than usual when she replied to Midge:
โI havenโt got it here. I keep it in my collection chest.โ โItโs so luscious. Where did you get it?โ
Midge was quizzing her completely innocently, that was now obvious. But almost all of us whoโd been in Room 5 the time Ruth had first brought out the pencil case were here now, looking on, and I saw Ruth hesitate. It was only later, when I replayed it all, that I appreciated how perfectly shaped a chance it was for me. At the time I didnโt really think. I just came in before Midge or anyone else had the chance to notice Ruth was in a curious quandary.
โWe canโt say where it came from.โ
Ruth, Midge, the rest of them, they all looked at me, maybe a little surprised. But I kept my cool and went on, addressing only Midge.
โThere are some very good reasons why we canโt tell you where it came from.โ
Midge shrugged. โSo itโs a mystery.โ
โAย bigย mystery,โ I said, then gave her a smile to show her I wasnโt trying to be nasty to her.
The others were nodding to back me up, though Ruth herself had on a vague expression, like sheโd suddenly become preoccupied with something else entirely. Midge shrugged again, and as far as I remember that was the end of it. Either she walked off, or else she started talking about something different.
Now, for much the same reasons Iโd not been able to talk openly to Ruth about what Iโd done to her over the Sales Register business, she of course wasnโt able to thank me for the way Iโd intervened with Midge.
But it was obvious from her manner towards me, not just over the next few days, but over the weeks that followed, how pleased she was with me. And having recently been in much the same position, it was easy to recognise the signs of her looking around for some opportunity to do something nice, something really special for me. It was a good feeling, and I remember even thinking once or twice how it would be better if she didnโt get a chance for ages, just so the good feeling between us could go on and on. As it was, an opportunity did come along for her, about a month after the Midge episode, the time I lost my favourite tape.
I still have a copy of that tape and until recently Iโd listen to it occasionally driving out in the open country on a drizzly day. But now the tape machine in my carโs got so dodgy, I donโt dare play it in that. And there never seems enough time to play it when Iโm back in my bedsit. Even so, itโs one of my most precious possessions. Maybe come
the end of the year, when Iโm no longer a carer, Iโll be able to listen to it more often.
The albumโs calledย Songs After Darkย and itโs by Judy Bridgewater. What Iโve got today isnโt the actual cassette, the one I had back then at Hailsham, the one I lost. Itโs the one Tommy and I found in Norfolk years afterwardsโbut thatโs another story Iโll come to later. What I want to talk about is the first tape, the one that disappeared.
I should explain before I go any further this whole thing we had in those days about Norfolk. We kept it going for years and yearsโit became a sort of in-joke, I supposeโand it all started from one particular lesson we had when we were pretty young.
It was Miss Emily herself who taught us about the different counties of England. Sheโd pin up a big map over the blackboard, and next to it, set up an easel. And if she was talking about, say, Oxfordshire, sheโd place on the easel a large calendar with photos of the county. She had quite a collection of these picture calendars, and we got through most of the counties this way. Sheโd tap a spot on the map with her pointer, turn to the easel and reveal another picture. Thereโd be little villages with streams going through them, white monuments on hillsides, old churches beside fields; if she was telling us about a coastal place, thereโd be beaches crowded with people, cliffs with seagulls. I suppose she wanted us to have a grasp of what was out there surrounding us, and itโs amazing, even now, after all these miles Iโve covered as a carer, the extent to which my idea of the various counties is still set by these pictures Miss Emily put up on her easel. Iโd be driving through Derbyshire, say, and catch myself looking for a particular village green with a mock-Tudor pub and a war memorialโand realise itโs the image Miss Emily showed us the first time I ever heard of Derbyshire.
Anyway, the point is, there was a gap in Miss Emilyโs calendar collection: none of them had a single picture of Norfolk. We had these same lectures repeated a number of times, and Iโd always wonder if this time sheโd found a picture of Norfolk, but it was always the same. Sheโd wave her pointer over the map and say, as a sort of afterthought: โAnd over here, weโve got Norfolk. Very nice there.โ
Then, that particular time, I remember how she paused and drifted off into thought, maybe because she hadnโt planned what should happen
next instead of a picture. Eventually she came out of her dream and tapped the map again.
โYou see, because itโs stuck out here on the east, on this hump jutting into the sea, itโs not on the way to anywhere. People going north and southโโshe moved the pointer up and downโโthey bypass it altogether. For that reason, itโs a peaceful corner of England, rather nice. But itโs also something of a lost corner.โ
Aย lost corner. Thatโs what she called it, and that was what started it. Because at Hailsham, we had our own โLost Cornerโ up on the third floor, where the lost property was kept; if you lost or found anything, thatโs where you went. SomeoneโI canโt remember who it wasโ claimed after the lesson that what Miss Emily had said was that Norfolk was Englandโs โlost corner,โ where all the lost property found in the country ended up. Somehow this idea caught on and soon had become accepted fact virtually throughout our entire year.
Not long ago, when Tommy and I were reminiscing about all of this, he thought weโd never really believed in the notion, that it was a joke right from the start. But Iโm pretty certain he was wrong there. Sure enough, by the time we were twelve or thirteen, the Norfolk thingย hadย become a big joke. But my memory of itโand Ruth remembered it the same way
โis that at the beginning, we believed in Norfolk in the most literal way; that just as lorries came to Hailsham with our food and stuff for our Sales, there was some similar operation going on, except on a grander scale, with vehicles moving all over England, delivering anything left behind in fields and trains to this place called Norfolk. The fact that weโd never seen a picture of the place only added to its mystique.
This might all sound daft, but you have to remember that to us, at that stage in our lives, any place beyond Hailsham was like a fantasy land; we had only the haziest notions of the world outside and about what was and wasnโt possible there. Besides, we never bothered to examine our Norfolk theory in any detail. What was important to us, as Ruth said one evening when we were sitting in that tiled room in Dover, looking out at the sunset, was that โwhen we lost something precious, and weโd looked and looked and still couldnโt find it, then we didnโt have to be completely heartbroken. We still had that last bit of comfort, thinking
one day, when we were grown up, and we were free to travel around the country, we could always go and find it again in Norfolk.โ
Iโm sure Ruth was right about that. Norfolk came to be a real source of comfort for us, probably much more than we admitted at the time, and that was why we were still talking about itโalbeit as a sort of jokeโ when we were much older. And thatโs why, years and years later, that day Tommy and I found another copy of that lost tape of mine in a town on the Norfolk coast, we didnโt just think it pretty funny; we both felt deep down some tug, some old wish to believe again in something that was once close to our hearts.
But I wanted to talk about my tape,ย Songs After Darkย by Judy Bridgewater. I suppose it was originally an LPโthe recording dateโs 1956โbut what I had was the cassette, and the cover picture was what must have been a scaled-down version of the record sleeve. Judy Bridgewater is wearing a purple satin dress, one of those off-the- shoulder ones popular in those days, and you can see her from just above the waist because sheโs sitting on a bar-stool. I think itโs supposed to be South America, because there are palms behind her and swarthy waiters in white tuxedos. Youโre looking at Judy from exactly where the barman would be when heโs serving her drinks. Sheโs looking back in a friendly, not too sexy way, like she might be flirting just a tiny bit, but youโre someone she knows from way back. Now the other thing about this cover is that Judyโs got her elbows up on the bar and thereโs a cigarette burning in her hand. And it was because of this cigarette that I got so secretive about the tape, right from the moment I found it at the Sale.
I donโt know how it was where you were, but at Hailsham the guardians were really strict about smoking. Iโm sure theyโd have preferred it if we never found out smoking even existed; but since this wasnโt possible, they made sure to give us some sort of lecture each time any reference to cigarettes came along. Even if we were being shown a picture of a famous writer or world leader, and they happened to have a cigarette in
their hand, then the whole lesson would grind to a halt. There was even a rumour that some classic booksโlike the Sherlock Holmes onesโ werenโt in our library because the main characters smoked too much, and when you came across a page torn out of an illustrated book or magazine, this was because thereโd been a picture on it of someone smoking. And then there were the actual lessons where they showed us horrible pictures of what smoking did to the insides of your body. Thatโs why it was such a shock that time Marge K. asked Miss Lucy her question.
We were sitting on the grass after a rounders match and Miss Lucy had been giving us a typical talk on smoking when Marge suddenly asked if Miss Lucy had herself ever had a cigarette. Miss Lucy went quiet for a few seconds. Then she said:
โIโd like to be able to say no. But to be honest, I did smoke for a little while. For about two years, when I was younger.โ
You can imagine what a shock this was. Before Miss Lucyโs reply, weโd all been glaring at Marge, really furious sheโd asked such a rude question
โto us, she might as well have asked if Miss Lucy had ever attacked anyone with an axe. And for days afterwards I remember how we made Margeโs life an utter misery; in fact, that incident I mentioned before, the night we held Margeโs face to the dorm window to make her look at the woods, that was all part of what came afterwards. But at the time, the moment Miss Lucy said what she did, we were too confused to think any more about Marge. I think we all just stared at Miss Lucy in horror, waiting for what sheโd say next.
When she did speak, Miss Lucy seemed to be weighing up each word carefully. โItโs not good that I smoked. It wasnโt good for me so I stopped it. But what you must understand is that for you, all of you, itโs much, much worse to smoke than it ever was for me.โ
Then she paused and went quiet. Someone said later sheโd gone off into a daydream, but I was pretty sure, as was Ruth, that she was thinking hard about what to say next. Finally she said:
โYouโve been told about it. Youโre students. Youโreโฆย special. So keeping yourselves well, keeping yourselves very healthy inside, thatโs much more important for each of you than it is for me.โ
She stopped again and looked at us in a strange way. Afterwards, when we discussed it, some of us were sure she was dying for someone to ask: โWhy? Why is it so much worse for us?โ But no one did. Iโve often thought about that day, and Iโm sure now, in the light of what happened later, that we only needed to ask and Miss Lucy would have told us all kinds of things. All it would have taken was just one more question about smoking.
So why had we stayed silent that day? I suppose it was because even at that ageโwe were nine or tenโwe knew just enough to make us wary of that whole territory. Itโs hard now to remember just how much we knew by then. We certainly knewโthough not in any deep senseโthat we were different from our guardians, and also from the normal people outside; we perhaps even knew that a long way down the line there were donations waiting for us. But we didnโt really know what that meant. If we were keen to avoid certain topics, it was probably more because itย embarrassedย us. We hated the way our guardians, usually so on top of everything, became so awkward whenever we came near this territory. It unnerved us to see them change like that. I think thatโs why we never asked that one further question, and why we punished Marge K. so cruelly for bringing it all up that day after the rounders match.
Anyway, thatโs why I was so secretive about my tape. I even turned the cover inside out so youโd only see Judy and her cigarette if you opened up the plastic case. But the reason the tape meant so much to me had nothing to do with the cigarette, or even with the way Judy Bridgewater sangโsheโs one of those singers from her time, cocktail-bar stuff, not the sort of thing any of us at Hailsham liked. What made the tape so special for me was this one particular song: track number three, โNever Let Me Go.โ
Itโs slow and late night and American, and thereโs a bit that keeps coming round when Judy sings: โNever let me goโฆ Oh baby, babyโฆ Never let me goโฆโ I was eleven then, and hadnโt listened to much music, but this
one song, it really got to me. I always tried to keep the tape wound to just that spot so I could play the song whenever a chance came by.
I didnโt have so many opportunities, mind you, this being a few years before Walkmans started appearing at the Sales. There was a big machine in the billiards room, but I hardly ever played the tape in there because it was always full of people. The Art Room also had a player, but that was usually just as noisy. The only place I could listen properly was in our dorm.
By then weโd gone into the small six-bed dorms over in the separate huts, and in ours we had a portable cassette player up on the shelf above the radiator. So thatโs where I used to go, in the day when no one else was likely to be about, to play my song over and over.
What was so special about this song? Well, the thing was, I didnโt used to listen properly to the words; I just waited for that bit that went: โBaby, baby, never let me goโฆโ And what Iโd imagine was a woman whoโd been told she couldnโt have babies, whoโd really, really wanted them all her life. Then thereโs a sort of miracle and she has a baby, and she holds this baby very close to her and walks around singing: โBaby, never let me goโฆโ partly because sheโs so happy, but also because sheโs so afraid something will happen, that the baby will get ill or be taken away from her. Even at the time, I realised this couldnโt be right, that this interpretation didnโt fit with the rest of the lyrics. But that wasnโt an issue with me. The song was about what I said, and I used to listen to it again and again, on my own, whenever I got the chance.
There was one strange incident around this time I should tell you about here. It really unsettled me, and although I wasnโt to find out its real meaning until years later, I think I sensed, even then, some deeper significance to it.
It was a sunny afternoon and Iโd gone to our dorm to get something. I remember how bright it was because the curtains in our room hadnโt been pulled back properly, and you could see the sun coming in in big shafts and see all the dust in the air. I hadnโt meant to play the tape, but since I was there all by myself, an impulse made me get the cassette out of my collection box and put it into the player.
Maybe the volume had been turned right up by whoever had been using it last, I donโt know. But it was much louder than I usually had it and that was probably why I didnโt hear her before I did. Or maybe Iโd just got complacent by then. Anyway, what I was doing was swaying about slowly in time to the song, holding an imaginary baby to my breast. In fact, to make it all the more embarrassing, it was one of those times Iโd grabbed a pillow to stand in for the baby, and I was doing this slow dance, my eyes closed, singing along softly each time those lines came around again:
โOh baby,ย baby, never let me goโฆโ
The song was almost over when something made me realise I wasnโt alone, and I opened my eyes to find myself staring at Madame framed in the doorway.
I froze in shock. Then within a second or two, I began to feel a new kind of alarm, because I could see there was something strange about the situation. The door was almost half openโit was a sort of rule we couldnโt close dorm doors completely except for when we were sleeping
โbut Madame hadnโt nearly come up to the threshold. She was out in the corridor, standing very still, her head angled to one side to give her a view of what I was doing inside. And the odd thing was she was crying. It might even have been one of her sobs that had come through the song to jerk me out of my dream.
When I think about this now, it seems to me, even if she wasnโt a guardian, she was the adult, and she should have said or done something, even if it was just to tell me off. Then Iโd have known how to behave.
But she just went on standing out there, sobbing and sobbing, staring at me through the doorway with that same look in her eyes she always had when she looked at us, like she was seeing something that gave her the creeps. Except this time there was something else, something extra in that look I couldnโt fathom.
I didnโt know what to do or say, or what to expect next. Perhaps she would come into the room, shout at me, hit me even, I didnโt have a clue. As it was, she turned and the next moment I could hear her footsteps leaving the hut. I realised the tape had gone on to the next track, and I turned it off and sat down on the nearest bed. And as I did so, I saw through the window in front of me her figure hurrying off towards the
main house. She didnโt glance back, but I could tell from the way her back was hunched up she was still sobbing.
When I got back to my friends a few minutes later, I didnโt tell them anything about what had happened. Someone noticed I wasnโt right and said something, but I just shrugged and kept quiet. I wasnโt ashamed exactly: but it was a bit like that earlier time, when weโd all waylaid Madame in the courtyard as she got out of her car. What I wished more than anything was that the thing hadnโt happened at all, and I thought that by not mentioning it Iโd be doing myself and everyone else a favour.
I did, though, talk to Tommy about it a couple of years later. This was in those days following our conversation by the pond when heโd first confided in me about Miss Lucy; the days during whichโas I see itโwe started off our whole thing of wondering and asking questions about ourselves that we kept going between us through the years. When I told Tommy about what had happened with Madame in the dorm, he came up with a fairly simple explanation. By then, of course, we all knew something I hadnโt known back then, which was that none of us could have babies. Itโs just possible Iโd somehow picked up the idea when I was younger without fully registering it, and thatโs why I heard what I did when I listened to that song. But there was no way Iโd known properly back then. As I say, by the time Tommy and I were discussing it, weโd all been told clearly enough. None of us, incidentally, was particularly bothered about it; in fact, I remember some people being pleased we could have sex without worrying about all of thatโthough proper sex was still some way off for most of us at that stage. Anyway, when I told Tommy about what had happened, he said:
โMadameโs probably not a bad person, even though sheโs creepy. So when she saw you dancing like that, holding your baby, she thought it was really tragic, how you couldnโt have babies. Thatโs why she started crying.โ
โBut Tommy,โ I pointed out, โhow could she have known the song had anything to do with people having babies? How could she have known the pillow I was holding was supposed to be a baby? That was only in my head.โ
Tommy thought about this, then said only half jokingly: โMaybe Madame can read minds. Sheโs strange. Maybe she can see right inside
you. It wouldnโt surprise me.โ
This gave us both a little chill, and though we giggled, we didnโt say any more about it.
The tape disappeared a couple of months after the incident with Madame. I never linked the two events at the time and Iโve no reason to link them now. I was in the dorm one night, just before lights-out, and was rummaging through my collection chest to pass the time until the others came back from the bathroom. Itโs odd but when it first dawned on me the tape wasnโt there any more, my main thought was that I mustnโt give away how panicked I was. I can remember actually making a point of humming absent-mindedly while I went on searching. Iโve thought about it a lot and I still donโt know how to explain it: these were my closest friends in that room with me and yet I didnโt want them to know how upset I was about my tape going missing.
I suppose it had something to do with it being a secret, just how much it had meant to me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that
โlittle private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the timeโlike somehow we were letting the side down.
Anyway, once I was quite sure the tape was gone, I asked each of the others in the dorm, very casually, if theyโd seen it. I wasnโt yet completely distraught because there was just the chance Iโd left it in the billiards room; otherwise my hope was that someone had borrowed it and would give it back in the morning.
Well, the tape didnโt turn up the next day and Iโve still no idea what happened to it. The truth is, I suppose, there was far more thieving going on at Hailsham than weโor the guardiansโever wanted to admit. But the reason Iโm going into all this now is to explain about Ruth and how
she reacted. What you have to remember is that I lost my tape less than a month after that time Midge had quizzed Ruth in the Art Room about her pencil case and Iโd come to the rescue. Ever since, as I told you, Ruth had been looking out for something nice to do for me in return, and the tape disappearing gave her a real opportunity. You could even say it wasnโt until after my tape vanished that things got back to normal with usโmaybe for the first time since that rainy morning Iโd mentioned the Sales Register to her under the eaves of the main house.
The night I first noticed the tape had gone, Iโd made sure to ask everyone about it, and that of course had included Ruth. Looking back, I can see how she must have realised, then and there, exactly what losing the tape meant to me, and at the same time, how important it was for me there was no fuss. So sheโd replied that night with a distracted shrug and gone on with what she was doing. But the next morning, when I was coming back from the bathroom, I could hear herโin a casual voice like it wasnโt anything muchโasking Hannah if she was sure she hadnโt seen my tape.
Then maybe a fortnight later, when Iโd long reconciled myself to having truly lost my tape, she came and found me during the lunch break. It was one of the first really good days of spring that year, and Iโd been sitting on the grass talking with a couple of the older girls. When Ruth came up and asked if I wanted to go for a little stroll, it was obvious she had something particular on her mind. So I left the older girls and followed her to the edge of the North Playing Field, then up the north hill, until we were standing there by the wooden fence looking down on the sweep of green dotted with clusters of students. There was a strong breeze at the top of the hill, and I remember being surprised by it because I hadnโt noticed it down on the grass. We stood there looking over the grounds for a while, then she held out a little bag to me. When I took it, I could tell there was a cassette tape inside and my heart leapt. But Ruth said immediately:
โKathy, itโs not your one. The one you lost. I tried to find it for you, but itโs really gone.โ
โYeah,โ I said. โGone to Norfolk.โ
We both laughed. Then I took the tape out of the bag with a disappointed air, and Iโm not sure the disappointment wasnโt still there on my face
while I examined it.
I was holding something calledย Twenty Classic Dance Tunes. When I played it later, I discovered it was orchestra stuff for ballroom dancing. Of course, the moment she was giving it to me, I didnโt know what sort of music it was, but I did know it wasnโt anything like Judy Bridgewater. Then again, almost immediately, I saw how Ruth wasnโt to know thatโ how to Ruth, who didnโt know the first thing about music, this tape might easily make up for the one Iโd lost. And suddenly I felt the disappointment ebbing away and being replaced by a real happiness. We didnโt do things like hug each other much at Hailsham. But I squeezed one of her hands in both mine when I thanked her. She said: โI found it at the last Sale. I just thought itโs the sort of thing youโd like.โ And I said that, yes, it was exactly the sort of thing.
I still have it now. I donโt play it much because the music has nothing to do with anything. Itโs an object, like a brooch or a ring, and especially now Ruth has gone, itโs become one of my most precious possessions.