they needed was to be noticed, and to be seen not to care whether they were noticed or not. In the lunch break Gianni was rattling about the lockers. He had a top-hat-and-cane class at two o’clock, now his hat was missing out of his locker, also his cane. ‘Robbery!’ he sang, dancing rapidly, for Hannah’s benefit, between the desks. He hoped before too long to start in Dombey & Son. His feet prattled and flashed in elaborate practice steps.
‘I can do all my pick-ups,’ he called, gyrating.
Joybelle appeared and remarked, quite automatically, that Gianni was a pick-up himself, only she’d been told he came expensive.
‘She can’t help talking double,’ Gianni explained. ‘Her parents are in the licensed trade, they have to drum up custom.’
Joybelle gave Hannah a smile, as between two understanding women. ‘I’m everything to my mother. She would have loved me to have a little sister.’
‘Called off by popular request,’ said Gianni.
Joybelle came close and leaned her brightly crisp head against Hannah’s breast.
‘When he heard my mother was carrying again my father got something to terminate it. He made mum swallow it out of a spoon. She showed me the spoon afterwards in case I had to come to court and swear to something. The metal had gone all black. It was black, Miss.’
Joybelle had little talent, and although she would not reach the age of ten for another few weeks, it was not difficult to predict her future. She had, as it turned out, concealed Gianni’s hat and cane in order to offer them to him later, because she wanted to feel like his slave maiden. Hannah called the afternoon class together and gave out some outline maps which she had brought with her, and on which the children were to fill in the capitals of Europe. She felt indignation come over her, because when they were bent down, with the round tops of their shining heads towards her, they looked like any other class.
Rightly or wrongly, she saw them at that moment as taking their place in the whole world’s history of squandered childhood, got rid of for fashion or convenience sake, worked into apathy, pressed into service as adults, or lost in some total loss, photographed as expendable and staring up with saucer eyes at the unstarved reporter. All that she managed to say to Carroll was that it might in some ways be a pity for the children to turn professional so young. He was mildly surprised, and reminded her that she had only taken the post, wasn’t that so, because she was fond of the theatre.
True for you, she thought, although she might have managed to suppress the fondness if her mother hadn’t suggested so often that she ought to do so. It was hard to explain, a matter perhaps of the senses. One of her younger sisters felt the same way about hospitals and had said that at the first breath of disinfected air she’d known she wanted to work there. Yes, the scent of Dettol had worked powerfully on Bridie. The convent, too, came at those with a vocation through its fragrance of furniture polish. In the same way Hannah felt native to the theatre, and yet she had never been backstage. She had only lingered outside and wondered in passing. It was all guesswork for her.
Her mother had phoned to ask about her new appointment. What sort of a place was it, a stage school sounded more like a half and half to her, and was this Miss Wentworth anything to the Wentworths of Ballymoyle whom her mother had known quite well as a girl, and if the school was privately run what kind of arrangements were being made about Hannah’s annual increment and pension, also were there any men at all on the staff, men teachers of course she meant, well, Carroll was a common enough name, he might be something to Mrs Carroll over at Mullen who had three sons two grown, one an undertaker one in the bank, but of course there was no need to settle anything in a hurry and she took it Hannah was only having a look round her before she got placed in a decent grammar school.
‘Pierce, do you know any undertakers?’ she asked him idly now. He began to deliberate. ‘Don’t worry, it was only my mother was on at me.’
After tea Carroll showed her down the stairs, indicating for the second time the worn portions of the carpet. ‘There’s one more thing I’d thought of saying to you, and that is that you have the real Northern Irish complexion. I think we really only see it at home, very radiant, very fair. I consider that it’s produced by the damp prevailing winds, and by the cold draughts inside the houses themselves. I hope it won’t disimprove over here.’
‘You must tell me if it does, Pierce. You must tell me the moment I start going to pieces.’
There was a possibility that he might smile at this, but Hannah felt she couldn’t spare the time to see whether he would or not. She left him standing in the dark hall, piled with other people’s letters, and took the bus back to the Temple School.
There was no need for her to go back, she was off at four-fifteen and the time was long past that. Indeed it was probably a mistake, and might give Freddie the notion that slave-driving encourages slavery. But Hannah wanted to put the next day’s work on the blackboard. This would mean that she needn’t turn her back on the class first thing, which is as unwise in junior teaching as in lion-taming.
She had to give up this idea, however, when she found the lights on, and Jonathan still occupying his dormouse space at his desk. Pale, unfathomable, and compact, he raised heavy blue-veined lids from bluer eyes to watch her. Mattie was also there, messing about with the switches.
‘You’re my teacher,’ Jonathan finally said.
‘That’s love,’ Mattie interrupted with peculiar eagerness. Hannah was about to reproach them both for insincerity, but after only a week she had learned how little the word meant here.
‘Jonathan’s a genius,’ Mattie went on. ‘He’d have been in Dombey before I was, only he was too short. He’s grown one and five-eighth inches this year, though.’
He pointed to a series of ink marks, perhaps measurements, on the wall. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, either of you,’ Hannah said. ‘Mattie, you ought to be getting down to the theatre.’
Both of them listened with keen attention.
‘What are you doin here, young Jonathan,’ said Mattie suddenly. ‘Why don’t you g’wan home?’
Hannah recognised immediately her own Belfast accent.
‘I’m just waitin, mister.’
‘And what are you waitin for, little man?’
‘I’m not waitin for annythin, mister, I’m just waitin.’
‘You have to be waitin for somethin I’m tellin you, what are you fuckin well doin then?’
‘I’m trainin to be a waiter.’
She was not self-conscious and never listened to herself, but surely if she did she wouldn’t sound like that, not as hard as that, not at all like that really.
‘Have we hurt your feelings?’ they asked, delighted.
‘I don’t want your pity,’ she said.
Mattie offered her a cigarette. ‘They’re American. I get given these things. They’re Peter Stuyvesants.’
Hannah did not correct his pronunciation of this word. Mattie took out his little silver lighter.
‘Jonathan isn’t really allowed to
