Chapter 24 An Education
Ned shook the rain off his trench coat as he turned the door’s handle into his flat.
It had been another gruelling day at the office, full of annoying machinations for power between men who should have known better.
All he wanted to do now was to put on his fanciest dressing gown and collapse into the nearest armchair.
“Evening, Ned.” He turned around to find Betty headed towards the door, her working day only about to begin.
He and Betty often went days without seeing each other, so, despite his exhaustion, Ned plastered on a smile and made an effort to be social. “Hope you are surviving the night shift well.”
“Did the night shift in the last war. Didn’t sleep through the night for years when the children were little. Doesn’t matter much anymore.”
Sleep was for those of weaker stuff than Betty Villiers, apparently.
“Hopefully you can have a bit of a lie-in on Sunday,” Ned tried again.
“Hardly likely with the children banging about and Sunday lunch to make,” Betty answered as she pulled on her coat, and then continued, “All’s well with Charlie, then?”
Ned nearly swallowed his tongue at the blunt casualness of the question. Charlie had been clear that Betty had no problem with their affair, but still, he hadn’t expected her to tackle that elephant in the room.
“Stop looking at me like that, it makes you look ten years older than you are.” Betty’s expression reminded him of a headmaster berating a particularly stupid schoolboy. Coat affixed, Betty uncharacteristically turned to fuss with her hair in the hall mirror. “Charlie is happy. He deserves that.”
“Yes.” Ned cleared his throat. Was that the right thing to say? Oh God. But if Betty could be blunt, so could he. “To answer your question, we’re well. Even if I do end up freezing to death in the middle of the night because he took all the covers.”
Betty snorted in knowing laughter, a peculiar moment of shared intimacy.
Betty reached for the doorknob. “Supper’s on the stove, Charlie will just need to turn on the gas. Don’t let him burn the pot.”
Ned closed the door behind her and looked up at the hideous grandfather clock long ago relegated to the hall.
Almost as soon as Ned had understood the implications of being attracted only to men, he had decided that he would never deceive a wife.
Equally, he had no intention of being alone or burying his desires.
A family would never be in the cards him, and instead he would live a life of passionate, secret affairs without the constraints of a family.
A life that many of his peers who were attracted to women would envy.
Yet, his lover’s wife had just wished him a nice evening, told him to put the supper on, all the while with the chatter of children coming from the living room.
The clock’s large hand dramatically shuddered forward another minute.
Ned had somehow stumbled into his own personal No Man’s Land, with no idea where the mines were buried.
???
Several nights later, Ned found himself reading in his den with the two Villiers children.
Ellie was sprawled out over his sofa with some cheap comics, while her brother was hunched over some papers at the corner desk.
Ned was sitting in his favourite armchair, reading the boring but unremarkable Conan Doyle.
His focus on Sherlock and Watson wasn’t improved by the constant fidgeting from Frank.
The boy somehow managed to be half doubled over the desk and still taking up half the room with his overstretched legs.
One knee bobbed up and down, while his left hand gripped his hair.
From this angle, it was like watching Charlie from twenty years ago—the same nervous energy and vibrating frustration.
After a particularly loud sigh from Frank, Ned glanced over to Ellie, who rolled her eyes and sighed in the disgusted way only truly mastered by a child of twelve.
“Can’t you be quiet?” Frank snapped at his sister.
Ellie didn’t bother to look up from her comics. “It's not my fault you don’t understand maths.”
Frank was working on maths problems? Now that was unexpected.
When the Villierses moved in with Ned, there had been much anxiety to find Ellie a place at a Kensington school, but no mention had been made of Frank’s education. He’d moved from working in Villiers Automotive to being a shopboy in his uncle’s butcher shop.
Yet here he was, working on maths problems in the evening. Not the most eccentric hobby Ned had ever come across, but not a typical way for a sixteen-year-old boy to spend his evenings.
Ned flipped the page in his book. Should he enquire about what Frank was up to? It was hardly his business, yet Ned had an honest curiosity about the boy. Even if he hadn't been Charlie’s son, Ned had seen enough of Frank to know he had a quick wit and a good heart.
In the end, Ned determined that it would only be polite to ask, and if the boy didn’t want Ned to know, they would leave it at that.
“I don’t think I would have the courage to tackle mathematics after a day of work. What’s got you working on these problems?” Ned asked, hoping his tone was friendly.
Frank didn’t look up from his papers. “I’m not an idiot.”
“You most certainly are not,” Ned answered crisply. “The books you keep borrowing from my library are proof enough of that.”
“Frank’s studying for the Higher School Certificate,” Ellie interjected from where she was now dangling her head off the sofa, legs swinging back and forth in the air against the back.
Ned felt a burst of pride. Never let it be said that Charlie’s son lacked ambition.
Meeting Frank’s eyes he said seriously, “Good for you.”
Frank grumbled something back under his breath that Ned hadn’t been able to fully make out, but guessed included phrases that the boy shouldn’t be saying to his little sister.
“I might write the exam. They aren’t even running them during the war. And a lot of what they ask is useless. What good is algebra ever going to do me?”
Ned closed his book and put it on the table beside his chair. “I said that about my German classes, you know.”
“And?” Frank twisted in his chair so that he was facing Ned.
“Saved my life more times than I could count. So you never know. You might have an algebra emergency one day.” Ned paused.
His thoughts returned to the conversation with Betty earlier in the week, the possibility it hinted at of perhaps being part of the family living with him, as opposed to existing alongside them.
Perhaps it was just the bright and focused way that Frank looked at him, the defensiveness of adolescence dropped for one blessed minute, but Ned threw caution to the wind and pushed forward.
“Although German wasn’t the worst of my problems, to be honest. Almost lost my Oxford place due to my poor mathematics marks. I had a horrible time.”
“How did you get better?”
“I was very, very, very stubborn.”
“Frank wouldn’t have any trouble with that.” Ellie giggled.
“I also learned some tricks that helped me keep track of it all in my mind. It was a fair while ago, but happy to let you benefit from whatever knowledge still exists in the attic of my brain, if you’d like.”
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“You would do that?”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Immediately Ned’s mind began sprinting to what old books he still had floating around from his school days, and what he might be able to borrow from colleagues. Wasn’t Reginald Hopper’s son studying for the HSC? He would need to find out when the next exams were. However, first things first.
Ned left his armchair and pulled up a seat beside Frank. “What’s got you muddled tonight?”
???
“But why do I need to care about the isthmus of Gibraltar?” Frank looked as exasperated as Ned felt.
Teaching was proving to be both more rewarding and more frustrating than he had anticipated.
Frank was an eager student, determined to learn everything Ned could throw at him, but had an equal amount of impatience.
“Dishes, please?” Charlie came into the dining-room-turned-classroom to gather the plates and bowls interspersed amongst books and paper.
He met Ned’s eyes for a moment. As always, it made Ned happier than it should.
Juggling bowls, Charlie turned to his son.
“Gibraltar is home to Europe’s only species of monkeys. ”
Frank sighed and returned to his geography reading, and Ned fought the urge to search Charlie’s face for his opinion. Ned wasn’t entirely sure what Charlie, or Betty, thought about his educational intervention.
Later, after Frank and Ellie had retreated to bed, Ned stood in the kitchen sipping port, watching Charlie wash the dishes.
Charlie was scouring a frying pan as Ned mulled about the day’s affairs at the office. “And then Miss Forbes threatened to debone me with a letter opener.”
“Sounds like you deserved it.”
“I thought you were supposed to have my back.”
Charlie turned and lifted an eyebrow at Ned. “Not against Helen Forbes, I don’t.”
“Fair enough,” Ned replied. “She also lent me two of her sister’s geography books to use with Frank.”
“I can’t help but think he’s getting a better education with you than he ever got at school.
” Charlie let a plate soak at the bottom of the sink.
“I was hoping to send them to school for as long as we could, maybe even to eighteen. But when the schools closed after the Blitz, we didn’t have much choice in the matter. ”
Ned knew that Charlie hadn't gone past the mandatory schooling to twelve.
His friend did well, read without hesitation, and could rapidly do figures in his mind, but Ned would still sometimes find Charlie frowning when Ned made a reference to literature or mathematics.
“You have taught him everything that matters. Schooling between twelve and eighteen is only to keep boys from breaking things anyway.”
“You’re teaching him Latin.” Charlie rinsed the last of the cups, placing them on the drying rack.
“The universities will reopen at some point. Some of them require exams where knowledge of Latin will be tested.” Ned knew it was hugely presumptuous to think of such things, but he wanted Frank to have any opportunity he aspired to.
“Do you think living in Kensington, talking to you all the time, do you think it will make Frank and Ellie sound better? Not like me.”
“They speak well.” Ned wanted to take Charlie in his arms and tell him that any child would be lucky to sound like London itself, like home.
Charlie was staring at a plate soaking at the bottom of the sink. “You look damn tired.”
Ned rolled his shoulders and leaned back into his palms that were braced against the counter beside Charlie. “I’m not very popular with the War Office at the moment.”
“Have you convinced them? About the gas?”
“For the time being.” Ned had taken unpopular stances before, but this was the first time he’d worried he might have burned bridges permanently.
“I keep meaning to apologise.” Charlie’s statement jolted Ned back.
“About what?”
“I know from… before… that your flat is where you can be all of yourself.”
Of course Charlie would remember that Ned had liked to wear pretty things and let himself explore the edges of femininity in the privacy of his home. “With Betty and the children here,” Charlie continued, “it must be hard. It’s not fair to you.”
“Having you all here keeps me on my toes. I was getting too set in my ways.”
“I know the look around your eyes when you can’t relax.” Charlie reached out to touch Ned’s arm.
Ned’s instinct was to deny Charlie, to pull away from the gesture and from the understanding, wanting to be perfect for his lover. “I’ll get used to it.”
Charlie’s mouth twisted. “I don’t want you hiding. I saw what it did to you before—during the war.”
“I was very young.”
“Bullshit.” Charlie took his hands, still clammy from the dishwater.
“It means more to me than you’ll ever know to see you work to be part of my family, gossiping with Betty about the fashions, teaching Frank and teasing Ellie.
But let us be part of your family too. Bring us somewhere new.
Somewhere fabulous. Wear your silks, read your radical books. ”
Ned clenched back at Charlie’s hands. “What if the children ask?”
“Then we tell them,” Charlie said with conviction. “Betty would agree with me on this.”
“I don’t want them carrying the weight of secrets.” Ned was surprised about his strength of feeling about this, and there was a significant part of him that was worried about a hateful response. Not everyone could be as unaffected as Betty Villiers.
“We will wait for them to ask.” Charlie glanced out towards the hall and then leaned in for a tender kiss. “My point is, let them love you.”
Around the time Ned was battling with German grammar and mathematical equations, he decided he would never have a family. Now, at the age of forty-seven, he was being presented with one with bells on. What a wonderful gift life could be.