was a nice-looking girl of twenty, with too much sense, one would have thought, to consider a job at eleven pounds fifteen shillings a week. But Freddie had instantly divined in her that attraction to the theatre, and indeed to everything theatrical, which can persist in the most hard-headed, opening the way to poetry and disaster. Hannah had no stage ambitions; backstage was the enchantment. Once sure of this, Freddie attacked on another front. Some of the pupils, she pointed out, were little better than waifs, needing only kindness and a firm hand. Of course, the job wasn’t an easy one. While the children were working, someone from the school had to go down to the theatres and see that they were getting the amount of education the law demanded.
‘That wouldn’t be what you’re used to, dear.’
When Hannah had undertaken to take the junior class in all subjects for at least one year, Freddie offered the other post to a Mr Pierce Carroll. Carroll, who must have been about thirty, and came from Castlehen, a short way out of Derry, was a much more doubtful investment, but Freddie detected in him the welcome signs of someone who was never likely to earn much money, or even expect to.
‘Sit down, Mr Carroll,’ she said, without looking round, as he came sadly in. And he folded his long thin legs and sat down.
There was his letter open on the desk, so that he could see, upside down, the pale grey product of his own typewriter.
‘Now, let me see, you didn’t go to university, no specialised training, no diploma.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ he replied.
‘I’m afraid you don’t look particularly attractive either,’ Freddie went on, glancing at him to see how he took this. He was quite unperturbed, but acknowledged the truth with a nod, almost a slight bow.
‘But of course you’ve done some teaching?’
‘I’ve taught in the deaf and dumb school at Castlehen. They say that teaching the deaf makes you into a good actor, but it didn’t have any effect of that kind on me. I’ve no ability at all that way.’
Freddie waited for him to add ‘I’m afraid’, but he did not. Perhaps, indeed, he never was.
‘What did you teach to the deaf and dumb?’
‘Craft subjects and carpentry, Miss Wentworth, there and at the Church of Ireland Remedial School.’
‘What kind of personal response did you get?’
‘I’m not sure that I expected any.’
Freddie shifted her ground a little. ‘Are you interested in the theatre?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say so.’
‘But in Shakespeare?’
‘I don’t know Shakespeare well. I must disabuse you of that idea from the start.’ He looked up at the faded canvas. ‘Those are some lines from his works that you have written there on your wall.’
‘Are you fond of children?’
‘I am not, Miss Wentworth.’
‘Or of teaching?’
‘It seems to me right that they should be taught,’ he said. All the time he remained quite still, sitting there attentively in a suit of the greenish tweed that is produced for those from Northern Ireland visiting London. Long pauses seemed natural when dealing with Carroll. Indeed, his absolute slowness produced an unaccustomed peace. Freddie returned to the subject of crafts and carpentry. That might be quite a good idea for the boys, who grew restless when they didn’t get work. ‘There’s a good deal of materials needed for anything of that kind,’ said Carroll.
‘What makes you think that I haven’t got a quantity of material?’
Carroll looked carefully, but not critically, round the office. ‘I get the impression that there’s not much money to spare here,’ he said. ‘But that’s nothing to me, I’m used to all sorts.’
‘So am I,’ said Freddie. ‘You’re sure, are you, dear, that you want to apply for this post? The salary is quite low, and it will stay low. I am offering Miss Graves more, but then she has the diploma.’
‘It’s very low, I should describe it as exploitation, but it’s as much as I can expect with my qualifications. I don’t think I shall do any better if I stay in Ireland. When you’ve reached the point, as Wordsworth says, that you can no further go, then you must try something else.’
‘I’ve never read any Wordsworth.’
‘Is that right?’ Carroll asked politely.
He had no ability to make himself seem better or other than he was. He could only be himself, and that not very successfully. Meeting Carroll for a second time, even in his green suit, one wouldn’t recall having seen him before.
He appeared to be musing on what had passed between them. ‘I hope you didn’t think I intended any discourtesy just now in saying that there didn’t seem to be much money in the place. Looked at in a different way, that wouldn’t be impolite at all. There’s nothing discreditable in strict economy, particularly in anyone who’s well advanced into old age.’
‘Perhaps you think it’s time I gave up altogether,’ Freddie suggested.
‘Not at all, we should never give up. That was the point of my allusion to Wordsworth. And if we find that one difficulty is solved, then we shouldn’t rest, but look round for another one. It’s a great mistake to live with the past victories.’
‘You’re telling me this, I suppose, from your own experience.’
‘Ah, not at all, Miss Wentworth, I’ve never had any successes of any kind. But I know that victory is a matter not of scale, but of quality.’
Freddie tried to imagine him instructing Mattie in some craft, but could not. Still, he might pass for a teacher. She suggested a contract, three months’ notice to be given on his side, one month on hers, and renewable the following July.
‘I’m doing you down, dear.’
‘That’s right, Miss Wentworth.’
Freddie felt some interest in Carroll, more, perhaps, than in Hannah. She had heard in his remarks the weak, but pure, voice of complete honesty. She was not sure that she had ever heard it before, and thought it would be worth studying as a curiosity.
FREDDIE’S was in Baddeley Street, in the middle of Covent Garden, which in itself is in the exact middle or heart of London. In the old Garden of the 1960s the market was open every weekday and in consequence the Opera House and the Theatre Royal rose majestically, beset with heavy traffic, above a wash of fruit, flowers, and vegetables. The world’s most celebrated singers had to pick their way to their triumphs through porters’ barrows, and for the great performances, when the queue formed at night for next morning’s tickets, every empty barrow was full of sleeping Londoners. You could find a niche, too, on the piles of netted carrots which were often waiting in the colonnade of the Opera itself. Evangelists of various religions patrolled the queues late into the night, calling
