King Henry’s was an excellent training ground. Carrie Macleod taught me that: behind her brash exterior there was a quick and subtle mind. She had joined the English Department at a time when Drama was seen as an indulgence; a trivial addition to a serious academic subject. Thus, as a Junior Mistress, Carrie ended up with the lower sets, and the tasks her Head of Department had seen as unimportant. But in time, her influence grew. She organized the School play. She led trips to the theatre, and encouraged her boys to dream of careers in acting and directing. Finally, came recognition – one of her pupils, Sam Noble, achieved success via a popular TV show; another moved to America and directed a series of movies. Suddenly, King Henry’s had a reputation for nurturing the creative arts. It was largely undeserved; but Carrie was happy to let the rest of the Department – and, by association, the rest of the School – reap the benefits. In 1968, the Head of English, Dr Foulstone, was awarded an MBE and an honorary degree in Performing Arts from the University of Sheffield, and the following year, Carrie Macleod finally got a designated teaching space.
King Henry’s Little Theatre was the result of this development. Replacing the Old Refectory, left redundant after the construction of the New Cafeteria, it now houses a good-sized stage, some three hundred velvet-upholstered seats, four dressing rooms, two bathrooms, a rehearsal space, a stunning stained-glass ceiling dome and a sizeable wardrobe facility for the storing of costumes and props. Paid for by the Sam Noble Foundation, it was officially opened by Margaret Thatcher in the winter of 1970, among protests from the State sector over the impending withdrawal of free milk. For Carrie, it was the start of a golden age at King Henry’s. The Little Theatre was her new domain, and she had extended her empire, slowly but surely, ever since.
‘It was a small enough victory,’ she told me in the Common Room. ‘But for a woman, a room of one’s own is essential in a place designed to serve men. I even had my very own glass ceiling to look up at.’ She shrugged. ‘Still no ladies’ toilets, though. The Head has a private bathroom, but women have to ask the School Secretary for the key to the disabled loo. They literally think being female is a disability.’
I thought of the Upper Corridor, and the sink, and the boy with the Prefect’s badge. Over a fortnight had passed since then and nothing unusual had happened. The outfit I’d worn on that first day – the trouser suit and the silk shirt – had been put to the back of my wardrobe, to be replaced by a series of twin-sets and skirts in line with King Henry’s dress code.
I did not tell Dominic about my clash with Philip Sinclair. His disapproval of King Henry’s was already a source of tension between us, and I didn’t want to give him any further cause for comment. I hadn’t told him about the boy in the Prefect’s badge, either, or the boys’ toilets. Instead, I racked my brains to find funny, light-hearted anecdotes to tell him and Emily – how Scoones had mistaken me for a boy; the stories Carrie told me at Break. I thought that if I could make Dom see that I was settling in, then he would relax his attitude.
He didn’t. ‘It isn’t healthy,’ he said. ‘Being in Conrad’s old school. It’s bound to be full of sad memories.’
‘It’s not.’ That was a lie, of course, but I knew that if I told him, he’d worry. Dominic was protective. I was so much younger that he sometimes thought of me as a child. No matter that I had a child of my own, no matter what I’d already survived, he thought of me as delicate. I wasn’t – or not in the way he thought. And the memories weren’t exactly sad. There was something I needed there, something that would put Conrad to rest, if only I could find it.
Dom, however, remained unconvinced. He’d made no secret of the fact that he thought I’d made a bad choice, and by the time I’d reached the end of my second week, his disapproval was almost oppressive. However much I tried to be amusing and light-hearted, he always seemed to go out of his way to seek out a negative angle. On several occasions I walked in to find him on the phone, speaking in a low voice that altered as soon as I came in. Of course, he was close to his family, and often spoke to his sisters by phone. But I wondered just what he was telling them about our domestic problems. And, of course, none of this was helped by the fact that Emily had acquired a new, imaginary friend she persisted in calling Conrad.
Conrad wants pancakes for breakfast. Conrad doesn’t like broccoli. Don’t disturb me, I’m in my room playing dolls with Conrad. It was a phase, I told myself. Children have imaginary friends for all kinds of harmless reasons. But, needless to say, Dominic blamed my new job for that, too. Emily’s behaviour, he said, was a classic cry for help, from a child in need of attention.
‘At her age, she needs stability,’ he said one day when I came home late. ‘I don’t like her spending so much time alone. Look at that picture she brought home from school. And now all this business with Conrad –’
‘It was only a picture, Dom.’
‘I saw how much it frightened you.’
‘It didn’t. I was surprised, that’s all. All it means is that we need to be more careful what we say around her. That’s why I stopped taking her to visit my parents. That’s where she must have picked up his name. And lots of children have imaginary friends. There’s nothing unusual about that.’
Dominic looked unconvinced. ‘You’ve been different since you started working there. Distant. Hardly sleeping. Obsessed. Staying up till three every night.’
‘You’re exaggerating, Dom. I have to prepare my lesson plans.’
‘I thought you said the lesson plans were in a departmental file.’
‘They are, but –’ I paused, feeling suddenly annoyed. ‘Dominic, you don’t understand. French isn’t my main subject. I have to read the set texts. I have to know what I’m doing. I can’t just turn up and teach, like you.’
‘I’m just a Sunnybanker. Right? Just a grunt with a palette knife.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
He turned away. ‘And this is how it begins,’ he said. His Trinidadian accent – which was dormant most of the time, but which sometimes emerged when he was upset or excited – was suddenly, startlingly prominent. ‘Being around them bastards with their Masters’ gowns and their Oxbridge degrees. Before long you’ll be right at home.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s going to change.’
‘Really?’ He turned back to me with anger in his dark eyes. ‘Because you haven’t worn your trouser suit since that first day. Did anyone tell you it wasn’t appropriate? One of those snobby old men, maybe?’
I felt a flush rise to my cheeks. ‘I’m trying to settle in, Dom.’
He laughed, not quite unpleasantly. ‘That’s what you tell yourself,’ he said. ‘You try very hard to be invisible. You think that if you follow the rules, and do everything you’re supposed to do, then someday you’ll be accepted. Well, take it from me, Becks. Some of us have already learnt that lesson the hard way. A square peg won’t fit a round hole. And it never will.’
That night, as he slept beside me, I went over and over what he’d said. He was right about one thing, I thought: a square peg won’t fit into a round hole. Carrie was living proof of that, although she’d paid her dues, and more, in over twenty years at the school. Young as I was, how could I expect to change the shape of King Henry’s? And as for my brother, what did I hope to discover after all these years?