Chapter 10
Helen yawned and gazed out over the London skyline. The room was stuffy, the number of bodies crammed into it and the old gas heater making the air unpleasant to breathe.
What had she been thinking, signing up to do a business course?
It had all been a terrible mistake. She was finding the coursework impossible and was aware she was falling behind.
The sums were okay, but then they always had been.
She’d already decided she’d leave at the end of this term and rethink her future.
‘Miss McCarthy, could I ask that you give me the answer to the question sometime today? The class is hanging on your every word. Miss McCarthy?’
Helen suddenly became aware the tutor was addressing her. Blushing, she glanced down at the figure, neatly written at the bottom of the page.
‘Yes, I’m sorry. The company would be left with approximately thirty-five thousand, having paid seven thousand, five hundred pounds and fifteen shillings to the Revenue.’
‘Well done. Okay, class, for your home assignments this weekend, I want you to answer the questions on page forty-seven of the Bookkeeping Practices for Beginners textbook. I’ll see you on Monday at nine thirty sharp. Have a nice weekend.’
There was an audible sigh of relief as the fifteen students packed away their pens, notepads and textbooks and began chatting about their plans for the following two days.
Helen put away her things, stood up and moved towards the door.
‘Miss McCarthy, can I have a word?’
She nodded resignedly and walked towards the tutor. He waited until the last student had left the room, shut the door behind him, then perched on the table he used as a desk.
‘Sit down a minute, would you, Miss McCarthy.’
Helen sat, her mind slipping back to the days when the nuns had held her back and castigated her for her dreadful work.
‘I wanted to talk to you about the work you’ve been handing in.’
‘I . . . I know it’s sometimes not up to scratch. I’ll try harder in future, Mr Bryant. I . . .’
A well-rehearsed litany of excuses and promises to do better poured out of her. Mr Bryant held up his hands.
‘Helen, please – may I call you Helen?’
‘I . . .’ She looked up at him. His eyes were kind. She realised for the first time that he didn’t look at all cross. ‘Yes.’
‘First of all, I think you should remember that you are no longer at school. Myself and the other tutors here are paid by the students. How much or how little work you actually do while you’re here is really up to you.
We are salaried to teach, advise and assist you.
Therefore, any comments I make are only meant as constructive criticism, to help you attain the qualification you are paying the school to receive. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ It all amounted to the same thing, whichever way he chose to cloak it. He was about to tell her that her work was terrible.
‘Helen, some of your written work is abysmal,’ he chuckled. Helen could not help visibly shrinking away from him. ‘But your work with numbers is, frankly, absolutely superb. You are by far and away the brightest in the class.’
She looked up at him, puzzled.
‘Helen, do you ever read books?’
‘Sometimes. I . . .’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because . . .’ Her hands twisted round on each other.
‘Because you find it almost impossible to make out the words on the page?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and burst into tears.
‘Okay, okay. Here, take this.’ Tony Bryant offered her a hanky.
‘Thank you.’ Helen blew her nose hard. ‘I do try, Mr Bryant, really I do. I’m just stupid and that’s all there is to it.’
Tony Bryant shook his head. ‘Is that what the teachers at your school led you to believe?’
‘It’s what you believe, isn’t it?’ she snuffled.
‘God, no. I’ve been marking your homework for almost two months now.
Your written work is virtually unintelligible .
. . and yet I’ve never corrected a single sum.
Therefore, you clearly have a very mathematical brain.
This leads me to deduce that you are not in the least bit stupid.
Far from it, in fact.’ Helen was hanging on his every word.
‘However, all this does make me think you might have an issue that requires attention.’
‘What kind of issue?’
‘Helen, have you ever heard of something called dyslexia?’ Helen shook her head. ‘It’s a learning difficulty which means that one finds it very tricky to make out words on a page.’
‘Oh. Well, that does sound a bit like me.’
Tony held his hands up. ‘Now, I’m no expert, but I have had a couple of students with similar struggles. Both were diagnosed with dyslexia.’
A small ray of hope was beginning to illuminate Helen’s world. ‘You . . . you really think this may be my problem?’
‘I do. I’d like you to go and see an acquaintance of mine. He’ll be able to tell you if my theory is right. The only thing is . . . he doesn’t come cheap.’
‘Money’s no problem,’ Helen replied quickly.
‘Fine.’ He wrote a name and address on a pad. ‘Dr Allen’s based in Harley Street. I don’t know his telephone number offhand, but why don’t you drop by on your way home tonight? It’s only a ten-minute walk from here. His receptionist can book you in for an appointment.’
Tony Bryant smiled at her. Helen began to understand why the other girls in her class found him so attractive.
‘Thank you.’ She took the piece of paper and stuffed it into her coat pocket.
‘Don’t thank me, Helen. I hope I’m right. I just wish someone had picked up on this before now.’ He gave her a warm smile. ‘It must have made things very difficult for you.’
Helen swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘It has.’
‘Right then.’ He stood up. ‘Time to go. Doing anything nice over the weekend?’
‘No, I—’
‘Good, good. Do let me know the upshot of your meeting with Dr Allen.’
‘I will.’
With a small wave, he disappeared down the steps.
It was fifteen minutes before Helen was composed enough to leave the Baker Street school and make her way to Harley Street.
The address that Tony had given her turned out to be one of the many white stucco-fronted houses in Harley Street.
She rang the bell by the door several times to no reply, then saw a notice that Dr Allen’s surgery was closed at five every evening.
It was now twenty past. Helen scribbled down the telephone number on the front of one of her exercise books, walked back down the steps and made her way into Oxford Street.
Christmas lights had been erected in the past few days and there were shoppers scurrying in and out of the big department stores.
She found the right bus stop to take her home to Wimbledon and walked to the end of a very long queue.
Forty-five minutes later Helen let herself in to number seven Wimbledon Park Grove.
The building was a double-fronted Victorian house which had been divided into flatlets some years ago.
Helen’s was on the top floor. She checked on the table to see if there had been any post. Aunt Betty wrote every two weeks and Seamus O’Donovan kept in contact about her finances.
Today there was nothing. She looked at the mail for the other residents, none of whom she had managed more than a brief ‘hello’ with.
As she climbed the stairs, Helen mused how different people here were from those in Ballymore.
Four of them all living under the same roof, sharing the same front door, and yet knowing nothing about each other.
At home, you could live five miles up the road from someone but they would still know your business before you did.
She turned the key in the lock and switched on the light in the tiny corridor, before hanging up her coat and making her way into her sitting room-cum-bedroom.
The room was cold. Helen went across to the electric fire and plugged it in. Then she closed the curtains around the big bay window.
Although she had seen several larger flats when she’d been looking for somewhere to live, Helen had chosen this one for two reasons.
First, there was a beautiful cherry-blossom tree outside her window.
She knew in the spring it would bloom into a riot of pinky-white.
And secondly, the flat included that most rare of private modern conveniences, her own bathroom.
An hour later, Helen emerged from the en suite wrapped in her cosy new velour dressing gown. She emptied some baked beans into a saucepan and put two pieces of bread underneath the grill, then switched on her prize possession: a new black-and-white television.
‘Timed perfectly,’ she smiled, as the theme music to The Avengers played from the small speaker. This was Helen’s favourite programme. Emma Peel was her heroine and she thought Diana Rigg the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen.
After sitting glued to the screen, Helen looked down as the credits rolled and realised she’d forgotten to eat her beans on toast. Hungry, but without the energy to make herself anything else, she tipped her congealed supper into the bin, brushed her teeth, then threw back the candlewick bedspread and climbed into bed.
It was only half past eight, but it didn’t matter. She was tired and, besides, she wanted to think about Tony Bryant. Tony . . . Helen shuddered involuntarily at the thought of his name. He’d been so kind . . . and the way he’d looked at her with his big brown eyes . . .