Free Miss Carter's War by Sheila Hancock Page B

much freedom breeds selfishness, vandalism and ultimately personal unhappiness. As you have witnessed at the secondary modern.’
    Marguerite wanted to dispute this opinion, but she would be challenging a woman who ran a successful school, liked by parents and pupils, from the standpoint of a teacher of a mere two years’ experience. Instead she arranged to meet Tony in the pub and bombarded him with her confusion. He was an invaluable safety valve.
    ‘Of course you can’t leave the grammar and go and teach there. It’s a dump. You would be wasted. Miss Scott is an excellent head, but she can’t turn it round. It’s the tripartite system. Grading them as successes or failures at eleven is absurd. It stinks.’
    ‘Well what can we do?’
    ‘Keep on doing the good job you are doing here. You are transforming lives because you are a brilliant teacher. Stick to what is possible.’
    ‘I can’t get those kids out of my mind. It’s so unfair. I’m really upset, Tony. Come back to my place, please. I need you.’
    Up to now they had met in public, but seldom had any privacy. She knew that he was frightened of compromising her reputation, and therefore her job, by letting their friendship become too intimate; Miss Fryer would never tolerate that sort of carry-on between staff members. Then there were his weekends away, which she presumed involved a woman, maybe married, but certainly ‘complicated’. Marguerite was not even sure what she wanted from Tony but, of late, she was feeling the need for a deeper understanding between them. Her Catholic guilt had always prevented her from having the sort of promiscuous sex life her fellow university students had had. In any case the bond with Marcel was difficult to break. She had been his, body and soul, in tempestuous circumstances, and no trivial affaire de coeur could compete with that. Other than the one fleeting episode when she lost her virginity, before she met Marcel, he had been her only sexual partner. At twenty-seven she was beginning to wonder if she would suffer the fate so dreaded by her age group of being ‘on the shelf’. She was panicked by a statistic in The Times : 96 per cent of adult women were married. But her work did not bring her into contact with, or allow her much time to meet, available men. Her ­colleagues seemed content to sublimate any urges by pouring their energy into their work. Maybe that would be enough for her too.
    But Tony unsettled her. Occasionally she felt the need for more than fun and chat with him. Dancing close to him at the Festival of Britain she had felt a surge of desire, which she suspected was mutual, but he had insisted that they get the last train home. In retrospect she was grateful that he saved her from the squalid business of a borrowed wedding ring and signing a hotel register as ‘Mr and Mrs’; that would have been no way to start a romance. Since then, she had got pleasure from the sight of him, brown and lithe and tousle-haired, playing tennis with the girls. She wondered what it would be like if their chummy hugs turned into something more satisfying. As for the scandal, with her need for comfort, Marguerite was past caring.
    She grasped his hand.
    ‘Please, Tony, come back with me.’
    He stared at her long and hard. He didn’t reply. The chatter and clink of glasses in the bar were the only sounds.
    ‘Best not, lovey.’
    Then he said, ‘But I tell you what, we’ll have one of our treats. Next week, Judy is appearing at the Palladium. I’ve got two tickets.’
    ‘Judy?’
    ‘Garland, woman. The one and only. It’ll be a night to remember.’

Chapter 9
    On the night they went to the West End of London there was a pea-souper of a fog, which made it difficult to see more than a few feet in front of them. Even inside the theatre it was faintly misty, and people were coughing and wiping their eyes. There was an atmosphere of excitement. Marguerite was surprised at how many of the mainly male audience