A Terrible Kindness(20)

There she is. Right next to the choir stalls on the left. Her hair has been set and it’s longer than it used to be. She’s ramrod-straight, holding her order of service level with her chest. She’s spotted him.

When it comes to it, when he’s so close they could nudge elbows, William can’t bring himself to look at her. He feels the brightness of her smile on him, registers the scarlet fabric of a new dress and smells her L’Air du Temps but can only stare straight ahead. Charles, he notices, turns his head the slightest fraction to the right to meet his mother’s eye, and smiles lightly, briefly. Before he has even got to the choir stalls, William is filled with regret and guilt for not having done the same.



‘So, Master Lavery, tell me everything!’

William is relieved that none of the other probationers has chosen the Copper Kettle on King’s Parade for their lunch. He wonders where they have gone. This is the only place he knows about. Martin comes here with his family. On his china plate lies ham, egg and chips; huge, luxurious and shockingly greasy.

There’s a hint of lipstick on his mother’s front tooth, and where once he would have reached over and rubbed it off, he points at his own teeth and rubs. Instantly she lifts her napkin to her mouth.

Having spent the last six weeks adjusting to the shock of her leaving him at the school, simply walking away and not being there, he now finds it just as strange to be sitting opposite her, with the comfort and the responsibility of being the centre of someone’s world again.

‘So?’ She grins. ‘I’m waiting.’

How does he even begin?

‘Martin, who did the solo this morning, is my friend. He’s my age, been here three years. I like Phillip. I like Mr Atkinson – he gave me this.’ He pulls the exeat from his pocket and dangles it over his mother’s meal. ‘I couldn’t have come out with you if he hadn’t given me this.’

‘I’d have clouted him round the head with my handbag if he hadn’t! What about the singing?’ Her eyebrows arch in expectation. William notices they are softly coloured in.

‘The chapel makes us sound amazing.’

‘And?’ It’s the excited look she has when he’s about to open a present from her. A waitress squeezes past their table, holding a tray level with her plump face.

‘Every morning, I have to line up by the bath,’ he says, with a sudden desire to shock her, ‘put my hands on the bottom of it and get cold water poured over my back.’

It works. Her brow collapses. ‘What on earth do they do that for?’

‘Make men of us.’ He wants to sound nonchalant.

‘When you say cold, do you mean cold, or just not very warm?’ The worry on her face for some reason pleases him.

‘Ice cold,’ he says.

She spins her ring on her slender finger and frowns.

‘And Mrs Potts, our school cook, smokes over the food.’ He doesn’t tell her that he’s quite fond of Mrs Potts, and if he gets to the kitchen early enough she lets him watch her work.

Evelyn wipes her mouth with a napkin. ‘Oh dear,’ she murmurs, two worry lines at the bridge of her nose.

The waitress comes and refills Evelyn’s teacup. In less than two hours he will be saying goodbye to her until Christmas. His insides soften.

‘But she’s kind to me,’ he adds, ‘just not as good a cook as you.’ He reaches across his plate to touch her hand. The smell of egg yolk makes him feel full, and if he doesn’t keep his elbow high it will drag over his chips.

Her smile is back. ‘And?’ she says. ‘Anything else to tell me?’

He swallows a chip and looks at the length of gristle running through the ham on his plate. So she knows already.

‘Who told you?’

‘No one important, only your headmaster.’ She leans towards him. ‘I’m waiting to hear it from you.’

The headmaster’s always telling them they have to stand on their own feet now, look after themselves, but he’s been talking to his mother behind his back all along. His indignation is too weak though, her excitement, directed at him, too strong, and a smile sweeps his face. He gives himself up to the joy of having good news for someone completely on his side, whose happiness depends on nothing more than his own. Evelyn puts her cutlery down.

‘Come on, tell your mother how bloody marvellous her son is!’

‘Naughty!’ He wags his finger at her and she laughs.

The clatter of voices, the chink and scrape of cutlery, the waitresses in their black and white uniforms, all recede. Him and her, back in their bubble. He tells her – even though she already knows – that because Martin was sick, he sang a solo and did so well that Phillip wanted him in the choir by half-term, helped by Porter’s voice breaking.

‘So from next week, I’ll be sitting with the choristers, next to Martin.’

Evelyn has picked up her cutlery and is struggling to chew her food because of the smile splitting her face. William wants to keep her happy.

‘At practice yesterday, Phillip asked me to sing on my own and afterwards he said, “That’s the sound I want, boys! Sing like that.”’

And it is wonderful that those words, the same words that brought a brief but thick silence over the choir, now make his mother clap her hands and laugh. ‘I knew it! Your Uncle Robert can put that in his pipe and smoke it. You’re headed for the auditorium, William, not the gloomy funeral business!’