Peter Seldon got into the London taxi cab in Shaftesbury Avenue and caught a brief glimpse of the billboards for his new play, "The Middle Man", before setting off for Victoria Station. Once there, he bought himself a Times, a large Cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso, a spicy chicken wrap and a Danish pastry, before settling down in the First Class carriage on the 11.48 express train to Newbourne. Taking a bite out of the chicken wrap he cursed wordlessly as a blob of mayonnaise landed down the front of his anthracite Cashmere polo neck.
"I can't eat or drink anything on trains without getting a map of the menu down my front!" volunteered a plump, cheerful looking woman in the seat opposite him. Seldon frowned. The woman went on: "I never could get the hang of eating on the hoof without cutlery!" Seldon managed a grunt before getting grease all over the packet of paper handkerchiefs he had pulled carefully out of his jacket pocket and was now attempting to open the flap of. The train lurched slightly, depositing the Danish pastry on the rather grubby looking carpet of the First Class carriage. Lifting his ample behind, Seldon turned quite red in the face as he bent down to retrieve it. The plump woman returned to her book of Sudoku puzzles, clicking with her tongue as she took the eraser end of her yellow pencil and erased a number she had just written in one of the squares. "I don't know," she said, "my son Rusty can do about twenty of these things in an hour! I'm lucky if I finish two before I get to Newbourne!"
Seldon got up and retreated to the WC, where he worked for five minutes with liquid soap until he was satisfied that he had removed the mayonnaise from the Cashmere. He then returned to his seat with a wet patch on his polo neck. Hoping it would dry soon, he adopted a cautious posture with legs akimbo, reminiscent of a peasant woman giving birth in a field, in a second attempt to consume the chicken wrap without further damage. More of the mayo dripped on to the carpet and he wiped it up with another of the paper tissues. Taking the Cappuccino in his right hand, he discovered it was barely tepid by now, but drank it all in three gulps anyway. It seemed to turn instantly sour in his stomach. He wished he were alone in the carriage.
A shrill burst of Mozart made Seldon and his companion jump. He retrieved his ultra thin cell phone from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was Emma McKinley, his 'source'.
"Just a second," said Seldon, walking swiftly to the far end of the carriage, which was fortunately empty.
"Got a possible idea for you," said Emma. "Blue eyed first effort from a no name in Bradford. Plot about young Asian woman setting up community centre for Muslim girls. Touching love interest with local young doctor. Forbidden but true love and all that. Kitchen sink, but could be a go commercially and good for your image, goes without saying. Remember those critiques about your plays always being set in WASP territory? This could be an astute move. Blue eyes hasn't sent it to anyone else yet, so no problem there. And Gurinder Raychaudhury would be ideal for the role, by the way. She fancies a crack at London Theatreland. Could be a real crowd puller. Sort of Seldon goes Bollywood, but on stage."
"Got a synopsis you can mail me?" asked Seldon furtively, casting a cautious glance at the other end of the carriage.
"Sure."
"Usual fee?"
"Right."
"Good. Talk to you when I get back from Newbourne. Bye."
This was how Peter Seldon got the ideas for most of his plays these days. He paid under the counter for no name plots. He had no idea how Emma found the material, as he made a point of not asking. He even sometimes managed to convince himself that he was following in the tradition of Alexander Dumas, who had operated a writing workshop; only Peter Seldon's workshop was for plays, rather than novels. The fact that his plots came from no name manuscripts, of course, kept the risk factor of exposure down. He would always alter the storylines just enough to make them seem authentic. And the scam kept Emma's bank balance nicely topped up. Seldon made a mental note to find out if Gurinder would be interested. That had been a good idea of Emma's.
By the time he got back to his seat, the plump woman had put away the Sudoku book and now appeared to be cheerfully engrossed in a book bearing the title "The Denial of Death: Youth Cults and Marginalization in Postmodern Society". The incongruousness of plumpness juxtaposed with evident intellectual interests made Seldon, almost in spite of himself, take a closer look at the woman, until he realized with an unpleasant jolt that he himself, the famous playwright, was hardly slim and lithe any more, nor had he been for many years. He wondered what it was about plumpness (actually she was quite fat) in people that made other people tend to assume that they were, well, lightweight? As if they could not possibly be intelligent or interesting and, of course (he found himself thinking) certainly not desirable. Eva herself, meanwhile, remained immersed in her book until just before they pulled into Newbourne station.
Then, in the practiced, deft manner that was typical of her she disposed of her discarded packaging and wrappings and gathered up her books and bag. Although they were among the first passengers to alight from the train, having been in the first class carriage nearest to the station exit, there was only one taxi standing at the rank outside the station. The plump but oddly nimble Eva managed to bustle up to it before Peter Seldon puffed up behind her.
"Ransom's please!" he heard her say to the driver. Decades of aloof disdain were unceremoniously shunted aside in an instant of enlightened self-interest as Seldon shambled up to her side and boomed in the theatrical version of a friendly voice behind her: "I say!" (She fancied afterwards she almost heard him say "my good woman"). "Would you mind terribly if we shared? I'm heading for Our Lady of Ransom's too!"
There was a nanopause before he added: "We could share the fare!"
"Yes of course," Eva replied, equally to both propositions. She got into the taxi and edged herself with some difficulty over to the other side. Seldon landed heavily beside her, displacing a gush of fragrant air made up of car seat leather combined with Hermes after shave for men.
"Are you a parent?" he asked, to make conversation.
"I'm sorry?" she replied, resurfacing from a private reverie.
"Are you a parent?" Seldon repeated. She looked blankly back at him with a look that she suspected made her look obtuse and even slightly disabled to those who were unfamiliar with the workings of her inner mind, which insisted on leading a life of its own that often took her far away from what was in front of her. Two, perhaps three full seconds passed before she grasped the meaning of his question.
"Oh, you mean a Ransom's parent?" she replied at last. Seldon nodded, pleased to have elicited some sort of intelligible response.
"No, no, I teach at Ransom's."
"Ah!" he retorted, not adding: "That explains everything." As a mere teacher, after all, she may have been perfectly satisfactory for all he knew, but as a Ransom's parent she would not have sent the desired go getting, "look, we have arrived" message to the outside world. She was too comfortable, too oblivious to appearances and style. Had he pursued his thought to its logical conclusion he would have had to admit that she just did not look, frankly, enough of a bitch.
The taxi sped importantly up the impressive gravel driveway to the main entrance of Ransom's. Seldon felt massaged by the school's reassuringly disdainful facade, which exuded an effortless patina of success and kudos. Under the circumstances, therefore, it was rather unfortunate that the Head chose this precise moment to pull up in her brand new, disconcertingly nouveau riche sports cabriolet. It was incongruous. Seldon had somehow envisaged the Head of Ransom's owning something rather more low key and substantial, a Volvo estate perhaps. As it was, her car seat was so close to the ground that she could not extract herself from the depths of the vehicle without treating the observer to the unsolicited privilege of two spindly, flailing legs, reminiscent of a large spider trying to wriggle out of a crack in a wall. The indignity was enhanced on this occasion by an unexpectedly generous viewing of white cotton gusset. Not so much Volvo estate as vulva in state, chuckled Eva to herself, although she was practiced in keeping her humour well hidden from parents, even prospective parents, such as Seldon.
With the detached resignation with which Eva by now approached her role as unofficial walking signpost at Ransom's, she offered to accompany Seldon to the School Secretary's office on the first floor to meet the student who would be giving him his tour of the school. Since he was an important celebrity this offer did not elicit any show of gratitude from him. Dr. Styles had by now recovered the use of her limbs and strode importantly into the school entrance a few paces behind him and Eva. Her status antenna was fully functional, despite the gusset interlude, and she recognized Seldon as a celebrity whose daughter would be a feather in the Ransom cap.
To this end, a show of audible warmth was instantly manufactured in the form of a cheery "Hello, Eva!" This was intended to indicate in one short phrase what an empathic and caring community Ransom's was. Simultaneously it allowed the Head without further ado to join the two of them on their way up the stairs, so that she could then make a democratic "Look, I'm just one of the girls, look how my people love me" gesture. This in turn enabled her to beam a bright, caring smile at her perplexed PA, with the words: "Don't worry," (her PA had not been at all worried up to this point) "I'll show Mr. Seldon round the school!" The heart of the Upper Sixth girl, who had been excused from a chemistry practical that afternoon, sank in the PA's office as she realized she would have to go to her lesson after all. The hopes of Dr. Styles were high at the prospect of a celebrity's daughter enrolling at her school. Eva just smiled knowingly at the PA and made herself scarce in the direction of the promise of afternoon coffee with Carol in Martyrs' Complex. Carol was going to love this. It was vintage Styles.
At Ransom's, several thousand pounds a year of the total boarding house budgets were regularly siphoned off at the end of the summer term in July. Among the Head and her inner circle this was jokingly known as the Fiddle Factor. These funds partly paid for supplies for the Ransom's limited company that earned income for the school during summer lets, a tax dodge, and partly went to subsidize well-deserved holidays for the senior management team in the Maldives.
Dr. Styles' lifelong agenda of upward social mobility invoked in her an abhorrence of anything she perceived as career threatening. She would have been loath to admit it as the Head of a girls' school staffed mainly by women, but she felt profoundly uncomfortable around any of the activities traditionally performed by women, such as all forms of domesticity, either in the workplace or out of it. Her career so far had been that of a surrogate man, rather than of a woman living her own life. In the almost mystical way in which the mindsets of leaders percolate down into the fabric of the institutions they lead, this sense of leading someone else's life at Ransom's, and for the women the sense of being a surrogate man, or even a failed man, was an integral aspect of the culture.
Barbara Styles therefore found it existentially important to distance herself from the boarding facilities at Ransom's and the people who worked in them, just in case their gendered humanity were to rub off accidentally and contaminate her career. In order to achieve this, she had always contrived to think of Ransom's, which was roughly 50% day school and 50% boarding, as a day school with a boarding facility. In her worldview, this designation allowed her to absolve herself of all responsibility or concern for those aspects of school life that she was inclined to regard as being beneath her.
There was no denying, as Styles and Seldon passed from room to room on the ground floor corridor of Martyrs, that the school was looking less than its best. Teenagers are rough with furnishings and decor, and comfy sofas have a short lifespan in boarding schools. As a result, the first two communal rooms which Dr. Styles now opened for Seldon's inspection were a rather sorry sight and would certainly have failed dismally as the outward signs of the thriving, reputable, forward looking, empathic community that Ransom's purported to be. The floors were covered with an ancient, much varnished layer of dark cork, there was no carpeting anywhere, the faded, dirty curtains were coming off their rails, the walls were drab and stained, there were a couple of battered armchairs dating from the sixties, an old standard lamp in one corner with a crooked lampshade with a hole in it, and an old (untuned) upright grand piano behind one door.
In this sense, the material refurbishments on view to Seldon that afternoon in Martyrs' Complex were not the innocent side effect of fiscal economies, or even of a zealous investment in state of the art classroom equipment, which was also conspicuously lacking at Ransom's, but rather a statement about the management mind set. The message that was bound to be picked up by any discerning parent being shown round the school that afternoon was that the comfort and well being of people in residence at Ransom's, whether they were staff or students, was simply not a priority considered worth investing in. That was, indeed, a statement.
Seldon could not have known it, but this was the first time that Dr. Styles had ever entered any of the rooms on this corridor. Whereas her predecessor had made a point of walking through the house several times a week on her way to lunch, greeting girls and staff she happened to meet, Dr. Styles' contempt for domesticity had always led her to avoid this sphere. There was no denying that it showed. The state of the furnishings and decorations in the Complex was an embarrassment.
Seldon, whose own sense of self-importance certainly precluded sending his daughter to a school where there were holes in the lampshades, developed a brusque, busy air with Barbara Styles, whom he had now inwardly dismissed as a cheapskate upstart, and called for a taxi on his mobile, mentally making a note to find the time to visit Benendon and Cheltenham Ladies' College as soon as possible. Sensing that she was about to be dismissed, and in order to spare herself an impending commentary on the state of her boarding houses, Styles fabricated a suddenly recollected appointment back in the main building and stalked off back down the corridor where they had just been, hands behind back, head down, frowning. The only question now occupying her mind was: who to blame?
Back in her study, she wasted no time and picked up the phone, dialling Carol's number. Carol and Eva were on their second cup of coffee and still gleefully dissecting the gusset incident. Carol picked up the phone.
"Hello Carol," said Styles in her friendly tone, "It's Barbara." ("Ah, using first name!" thought Carol, instantly going into brace yourself mode, as with Styles an intimate tone was invariably a bad omen. She wasn't wrong. Barbara went on: "I've just been showing a prospective parent round the school, and I have to say I was appalled at the state of the two small common rooms on the ground floor."
There was a pause, intended to allow Carol to take responsibility.
But Carol was learning. Without missing a beat she kicked the melody straight into the next movement: "I understand, Dr. Styles. I'll get right on to the Domestic Bursar and see what we can do to bring them up to standard." Putting the phone down, and then pulling the line out of its socket on the wall as a precaution against a potential backlash, she sat back down and filled Eva in on the brief exchange.
"That'll make a hole in this year's trip to the Maldives!" Eva grinned, sitting back down and wordlessly accepting Carol's offer of another top up of coffee.
"It almost makes you feel sorry for them, doesn't it?" grinned Carol.
"No!" said Eva, grinning back. "For all the waving of the Narcissi there seems to be nowhere for the grass to grow."
