Free The Boy I Love by Marion Husband Page B

Year to interview him. He raced a few steps ahead of Paul, his shoes squeaking on the parquet floor of the corridors and from time to time he flung open an empty classroom door, briskly shouting out its form number. To Paul each room appeared identical to the last: rows of desks facing a huge blackboard, the teacher’s desk raised on a low platform. He tried to picture himself behind such a desk, controlling thirty or so boys. Half of them would be on his blind side. Perhaps he could rig up a mirror.
    In the headmaster’s study Paul watched him shuffle through his references before tossing them down on his desk. The reference Adam had written was on top and he tapped it with his index finger, smiling at Paul.
    â€˜Our Mr Mason thinks very highly of you. He seems to think you’ll make a very good teacher.’ He sat back in his chair, putting on a show of studying him. At last he said, ‘In the army for how many years?’
    â€˜Three, sir.’
    â€˜And you’re quite well, apart from …’ He waved his hand vaguely around his own left eye.
    â€˜I’m fine.’
    â€˜Well, that’s good. A lot of my staff are past retirement age – certainly not as fit as they used to be. But with so many of you youngsters away … to be blunt, we need fresh blood pretty desperately. I’ve got classrooms full of boys with no one to teach them.’ He got up and went to the window that looked out across the playing field. ‘You were in university for a short time, before the war?’
    â€˜I was taking a medical degree.’
    â€˜Yes, quite. Well, you’re certainly educated. In normal times, of course, I would expect more, but these aren’t normal times …’ He sighed as though the seriousness of the decision he was about to make weighed heavily. At last he said, ‘I’m sure we can work something out, come to some arrangement … term begins again on January sixth.’ He looked at Paul over his shoulder. ‘Shall we see if we suit each other?’
    They had been married five days. Every night Margot lay stiffly in bed, waiting and listening. Every night Paul sat downstairs, reading and endlessly smoking until midnight or later when she would hear him climb the stairs. As he reached the landing her heart would pound so hard she imagined he could hear it. She wondered if he would stop and tap on her shut-tight door and she would tense, listening intently as she slowly counted to ten. It usually took around ten seconds before she heard his bedroom door close behind him. It seemed sometimes that he listened, too, standing outside her door as shy and awkward as she was, so that idiotically she had begun to imagine ways to seduce him, knowing she was too clumsy and gauche to make a success of such absurd plans. She remembered how tightly he had held her that evening in his father’s house; she should have kissed him then and got it over with.
    He had gone out that morning in his wedding suit, washed and shaved and shoes polished. As he’d combed his hair in the mirror above the sitting room mantelpiece he’d caught her watching him and smiled at her reflection.
    â€˜How do I look?’
    She had blushed, caught out in her act of spying, wondering if he realised how beautiful she thought he was and whether he would be offended by her use of such an unmanly word to describe him.
    The house still smelt of paint. She wandered from sitting room to kitchen and back again, half-heartedly dusting the furniture Paul had brought from Parkwood: a table that dominated the little room, a sideboard intricately carved with bowls of fruit and flowers, empty apart from a cheap, wedding-present tea-set. The furniture was even more depressing than the dark, poky house and she trailed upstairs, only to pause outside the closed door of Paul’s bedroom.
    Telling herself she didn’t want to intrude on his privacy, she hadn’t been in his room,