Read Online No Talking after Lights by Angela Lambert - Free Book Online

good girl…’ Even though I’d been so quiet I heard his step on the landing. I opened my eyes and saw the wedge of light widening as he came through the door.
    â€˜What are you doing, Sylvy? Naughty Dada, did we forget your prayers?’
    I don’t know why I felt guilty. I scrambled to my feet and was climbing hastily into bed.
    â€˜Well, we’d better have another good night kiss, then.’ He walked back to the door and closed it, so the room was dark, a line of light from the landing showing up the texture of the lino. He was still in his schoolmaster’s suit, only he’d taken the jacket off and was wearing an old Fair Isle knitted waistcoat. The waistcoat crossed the room towards me, stretched across his chest. I wasn’t in bed; I was still sitting on the edge with my legs dangling down.
    â€˜Haven’t I been a good girl?’
    â€˜Oh, yes, a good girl, such a very good girl. Quickly now, into bed, quickly, under the sheets.’
    I stared very hard at the drawn threads along the hem of my calico sheet, at the neat little squares they made, like the edge of a stamp, and I looked at the fat,faded roses on my bedroom wallpaper, because you know how it is, after a while a dark room seems to become quite light. That’s because your eyes adjust.
    Walking down to the beach one day by myself, through the tall sea-grass, slippery to the hand like chives, I overheard two boys as they passed me, whipped by the wind.
    That’s just love innit?’ the big boy said to his pal.
    â€˜Oooh-er …’ said the other, smaller boy, screwing up his nose and stamping on something in the sand.
    â€˜Did you killed it?’ the first boy asked.
    I walked along the beach looking down at my feet where brownish, visceral ropes of seaweed coiled, glistening wetly on the sand. They felt squelchy if you trod on them, like something dead and putrefying, like the sheep I sometimes found in ditches, all slimy inside and covered with flies and maggots.
    I still have the photograph taken of us that summer: all the village children lined up in forms outside the school. The teachers are in the middle of the group, my dada in the very middle. Some of the more daring boys have pulled a face, but most of us, conscious of the click that would freeze us for ever, are still and serious. If you made a face and the wind changed, you’d stay like that, and it was the same with the camera. My eyes are just two dark triangles - the sun is overhead and it blanks out my expression. I look like my father: the same thickset body and broad face, the same swarthy Celtic colouring. I was Dada’s girl all right. My mother, who had come back from hospital pale and dry, moving slower than before, was cross when she saw the photograph.
    â€˜What were you glaring like that for? Like a real black dog was sitting on your shoulder.’
    I didn’t answer.
    Sylvia returned from that long-ago time and place tofind the Head still speaking, as though mere seconds had passed.
    â€˜â€¦ Girls need discipline, yes. But even more than discipline, they need kindness. I assume you entered the teaching profession because you felt, if not a vocation…’ Miss Parry smiled in acknowledgement of the irony ‘… at least a sympathy for girls; some understanding of their problems.’ Mrs Birmingham leant back, her eyes tender and reminiscent, and continued, ‘Until they’re ten or thereabouts, twelve if they’re fortunate, little girls are privileged beings. Those years are the nearest we ever come, perhaps, to the Garden of Eden.’
    â€˜I grew up in Gower,’ said Sylvia, seeing she had to say something.
    â€˜Land of our fathers, land of the free,’ quoted the Head obscurely. Then, getting back to the point, ‘But adolescence, on the other hand, is not always an easy time. How are we to teach them, other than by precept and example? Being seen to lose your temper is