Raising Arcadia Read online

  It is only a second before the girl leans back and looks her teacher in the eye.

  “You should buy your wife some flowers.”

  “I beg your pardon?” The teacher removes his spectacles as if they have somehow compromised his ability to see as well as to hear.

  “I said you should buy your wife some flowers. Jewellery would be best, but at your salary you probably can’t afford anything adequate.”

  “Young woman, you —”

  “I say this,” the voice slows, a concession that may be seen at patronising but she is beyond caring, “because she appears to be thinking of leaving you. Flowers are a customary token of affection, and sometimes serve as an acceptable form of penance for marital indiscretions.”

  Father clears his throat again, uncomfortably turning in the plastic moulded seat to catch his daughter’s eye but it is too late.

  “From the beginning of the year you typically arrived at school with a faint lipstick mark on your cheek. Some kind of upmarket brand, I’m guessing, from the matte finish and the fact that it remained visible for several hours. It’s quite sweet, I suppose, the wife who gets made up prior to sending her husband off to work and gives him a goodbye peck. But one week ago the marks stopped appearing. Two possible explanations: either she stopped wearing makeup or she stopped kissing you. I’m assuming that your wife works — it’s hardly likely that you could afford a car like yours on a teacher’s salary — so she’s still wearing makeup but not kissing you. That may be why you are now rushing to get ready in the morning and leave the house, evidenced by the patchy job of shaving today. Now one week ago was when you returned to school with something of a suntan, though you claimed to have been at a conference on educating today’s youth. What kind of teacher feels compelled to explain to his students — and their parents — that he’s been at a conference and that’s where he got his tan? Someone who is trying very hard to stick to his story. Add to this the fact that just now when you were fiddling with your wedding ring one could see that the tan extends all the way under your ring. My limited experience in this area is that men tend to keep their wedding rings on in most situations, either due to fear of losing the ring or being accused of hiding the fact that they are married.” The briefest of smiles at Father, who is now covering his face with his hands. “In any event, it is now clear that you spent last week in the sun without your wedding ring and are very keen to maintain your story that this was for a conference. No wedding ring plus lie equals affair. So, on the assumption that you are having an affair and your wife has found out about it, she is likely to leave you. Given that you depend on her financially, and taking into account any sentimental attachment you might have to her, you probably don’t want her to leave you and so I suggest, once again, that you consider buying her some flowers.”

  The silence hangs once more.

  “There’s no need to thank me,” the girl says. “Oh and you might want to re-read your Kant because you’re misquoting him. What Kant actually said was that out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. Setting your goal as straightening all of us out puts you in direct opposition to one of the more influential philosophers of the second millennium. Though I suppose the fact that you’re pitting yourself against a German may go down well with some of the school’s more conservative alumni.”

  A tremor in the teacher’s fingers and a clenching of his jaw muscles indicate an effort to remain in control of his temper. The gold-rimmed glasses return to the bridge of his nose. He clenches the pen so tightly that it is possible an act of violence is being considered, but then the fingers relax. It would be the end of his career and the start of a prison term to attack a student. “My dear young lady,” he says at last, “your concern for my personal life is touching. But it is about the last thing that you should be worried about. What we are here to discuss this evening is your continuation at this school, the foundation of your education, and the prospects for a meaningful life. Does any of that register in your bizarre little head?”

  The meeting is becoming tedious and Mother’s shifting in her seat indicates that she would like to leave.

  “It does,” the girl lowers her head slightly in a pose of contrition. “I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed you.” She looks from one parent to the other: “Mother, Father, I shall try harder.”

  The teacher is clearly unconvinced, but it is an opportunity to end the meeting on a more positive note. “That’s better,” he says. After a pause he closes his file. “You know, it is good that you have passions. But you need to bring some discipline to all your work and try to get along better with those around you. No one likes a smart aleck.”

  “Yes, Mr. Ormiston.”

  The teacher turns once more to the parents. “Do ensure that she reads the books on our list — and no more tobacco at school please?” He moves to stand up and the formal meeting is concluded. “I look forward to seeing you again soon,” he says to the parents with a forced smile. “But not too soon, I hope!” He looks at the girl and is about to speak, but confines himself to a curt nod.

  Hands are shaken and Mother, Father, and daughter step outside where the sun has set. They walk in silence along a paved path flanked by manicured lawns. Even in the lamplight, gentle indentations are still discernible where a student — the prints are too small and too light to have been a teacher — has ignored the “Keep off the grass” signs and taken a shortcut from the dormitory across to the woods that adjoin the school grounds.

  They reach the car and climb inside. Father turns the key, but as they pull out onto a suburban street the girl asks for a favour.

  He sniffs. “I’m not sure that tonight is the best time to be asking for latitude, my dear. It’s late and we should get home.”

  She is loath to manipulate her parents, but does not want to let go — cannot let go — of the one interesting aspect of the evening. “I am sorry that you had to come in this evening, and I will try harder,” she says. “But please do this for me?”

  Mother turns to look at her for a moment. “Oh go on, Ignatius, humour the girl. Dinner can wait a few more minutes.” Has Mother guessed what she is doing? No, but she knows something is afoot.

  Father is not amused but also not in the mood for further argument. They follow the street until they reach a main road and the girl asks him to park opposite a row of shops. “Please turn off the lights — it’s wasting battery power.”

  His daughter rarely displays an interest in conservation, but he simply asks: “And what are we waiting here for?”

  “Just a couple of minutes.”

  He is nonplussed: “I mean why are we waiting here?”

  The girl is peering out the window and does not reply.

  Mother stifles a yawn. “I liked your drawing,” she says. “It was quite lifelike. Well, deathlike. Ignatius, did you see her drawing?”

  He did not but doesn’t want to admit this. He is considering his response when a red sports car drives past them and parks on the opposite side of the street. A man emerges from the car, straightens his tweed jacket, and walks quickly past a fish and chip shop to the corner store, which doubles as a newsagent and a florist.

  A minute passes before the man returns with a dozen roses. He pauses to adjust his gold-rimmed glasses and run his fingers through thinning brown hair, glancing only briefly in the direction of the car in which three figures sit in silence. Then he gets back into his own vehicle and drives off.

  Inside the other car, the girl allows herself a smile of satisfaction. “OK,” she says. “Now we can go home.”

  2

  CODES

  At dawn the next morning she, Arcadia Greentree, opens her eyes to regard the ceiling for a moment before swinging her legs down onto the carpet. Feet easily find a path between piles of magazines, books, and specimen jars to the bathroom. A stack of cosmetics samples — all unopened — balance precariously on the edge of a glass shelf. She moves a handful into the rubbish bin to resto
re the balance before sitting down. Nature’s call answered, she quietly pads downstairs in a pair of fake Persian slippers, a dressing gown wrapped around her thin frame.

  The house is silent. The last remnants of dinner have been cleared away, but the arrangement of the cushions suggests that Mother and Father sat on the couch to watch television after she retired to her room. A faint circle indicates that Father had one — no, two whiskies. A high probability that the programme was Mother’s choice, then.

  Later, perhaps while Mother bathed, Father went onto the patio for a secret pipe. A black smudge on the railing shows where he cleaned up ash that spilled while tipping it into an ashtray. The ashtray itself has been washed and dried, but a slight residue of detergent suggests that it was he who washed it, and did so quickly in the hope of finishing before Mother concluded her ablutions.

  As she moves towards the kitchen, an envelope stuck to the corkboard reserved for family notices catches her eye. Premium off-white bond paper. No stamp, no return address, the front merely displays a large “A” written in blue fountain pen. The flourish of the “A” indicates female penmanship even if she had not recognised Mother’s handwriting. More interesting is that there are half-a-dozen unused thumbtacks in the cork. Others hold up postcards from Aunt Jean and Uncle Arthur’s travels, a calendar from her school indicating holidays and a forthcoming concert, and a photograph of her elder brother Magnus. Rather than using one of the tacks loosely pressed into the cork on the left side of the board, whoever affixed the letter decided to do so with a steak knife — applying it with such vigour that the blade has pierced the cork and lodged in the plasterboard behind it.

  She looks more closely at the handle, the angle of which is consistent with Mother’s right-handed thrust. Small abrasions on the butt explain the force of its insertion: Mother removed a shoe with which to hammer it into the corkboard. All this was, presumably, to get her attention. It succeeds.

  She eases the blade out, undamaged, and gives the knife a wipe before returning it to the cutlery drawer. The envelope she opens, peering inside before removing a single sheet of notepaper. The message has been typed on an old manual typewriter with a Courier font that now looks archaic. She examines it from different angles but it is the same bond paper as the envelope: reasonably high quality stationery though not particularly distinctive. The same bond paper in the same type of envelope as always — though the steak knife is new. The fingerprints on the envelope are probably Mother’s, but unlikely to be part of the test. She dusted for them once, to be sure. Yet she did not find any prints on the note inside. Curious. On some occasions there has also been a faint rectangular-shaped residue on the envelope from some kind of adhesive, as there is on this occasion.

  In any event, the first order of business is the words on the page. Eight sentences, seventeen lines:

  Dear Arcadia, today’s challenge will exceed others. Real geniuses should have no trouble with it. Code breaking impresses no one: lies buried within lies! In the end, the only thing that anyone cares about is who won the war. Second place is equal to last from the standpoint of history. Column inches shape that first draft of history as we often see in great men and women’s rise and fall. Of course the days are over when a trusted scribe could seek to mould the way that your adventures or reputation reached the public. This highlights the way in which your every deed lives on after your words and especially punctuation. Message ends.

  She studies the text, holding it up to the light as the message was once written in invisible ink. Not on this occasion. Lips move in silence, not reading words but proposing answers to questions that have not been asked. Code. Column. Ivory? A minute passes, lost in thought. She moves to the piano and opens the lid. A ten pound note and a sheet of lined paper, on which a short list has been written. It is only as she is picking them up that she notices another person entering the room.

  “A full minute?” Mother asks, reaching the bottom of the steps. Although she is being playful, Arcadia has to suppress irritation at the implied criticism. “I thought thirty or forty seconds at most.”

  “Yes, well, piano keys haven’t been made of ivory since well before I was born.” She is sounding defensive.

  “That’s all right, dear.” Mother plants an affectionate kiss on her forehead.

  “But I do compliment you on the layered nature of this week’s code,” Arcadia smiles. “The use of the second column was a nice variation on an acrostic, but somewhat given away by the use of Courier font. A typeface with identical spacing that puts every letter in precise columns invites scrutiny for such a hidden message. In some ways it was redundant to point me to the second column with the message in the text itself. And as for the cipher text highlighting that one should pay particular attention to what comes after punctuation — well, I assume that step was more for symmetry than guidance.”

  “I thought you might appreciate it. A code within a code, within a code. Take each word after a punctuation mark and you get: ‘Today’s real code lies in the second column of this message.’ And the second column of letters encourages you to ‘Examine the ivories.’ I thought it was quite neat.”

  “Well, technically it was a code hiding a cipher that revealed an obscure cultural reference.” She is still irritated that Mother thought she had taken too long. “But yes, I concede that it was ‘neat’.” She glances at the notepaper, on which a short list is written — also in Mother’s hand. “So, croissants, milk, fruit. Do we need anything for lunch?”

  After breakfast she returns to her room and removes a violin from its case. She has told her parents that she must practise for Wednesday’s concert, which is true, but she also plays the instrument to relax. As her bow moves across the strings, she loses herself in one of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words — notes in their perfect order filling the room. Music is so much neater, so much cleaner than the world around her: it is possible to focus on one, just one thing, a pure note, and not the cacophony of reality.

  As she plays she closes her eyes. Magnus once mocked her violin playing, back when she was screeching away on a quarter-sized fiddle laid across her knees. Over time she has improved considerably and is now preparing for her first solo performance in front of an audience at school. Naturally, Magnus soon found other qualities to deride, whether it was vocabulary or mathematical skills. Or there were games. In years gone by, her elder brother would occasionally summon up the energy to play chess in order to see in how few moves he could defeat her. Since the first time that she fought to a bitter stalemate, there has been no more chess.

  On one occasion, only one, Magnus made fun of her appearance. It was soon after their final chess game and he had been eyeing the last cookie on a tray. Presumably to deter her from taking it, he had casually observed that she was becoming fat. She knew that many of her female classmates indulged in self-loathing over their weight, but also that her own was perfectly within the range of normality. At the time, she had simply smiled at him and eaten the cookie.

  The only thing that does bother her about her appearance is her height. Having stopped growing at five feet, four inches, it is difficult to reach the highest shelves, where items of importance are often hidden. But she does not dwell on this. Her even-featured face, pretty enough, along with her long dark hair is of still less consequence. It has not brought her any admirers, which is a relief. In any case, boys who might contemplate flirting with her are generally frightened away the moment she opens her mouth. This is another thing on which she does not dwell.

  Earlier that year, she had accompanied Mother to a shopping centre. Typically, she was left to roam the bookstore unless Mother needed her to help carry something. On this occasion, however, they were on the way back to their car when Mother realised that she needed some lipstick. So it was that they found themselves at the cosmetics counter purchasing a tube of Chanel’s Gourmandise No. 76 lipstick. Mother tried to pay in cash and leave, but the nineteen-year-old sales assistant was sizing up her daughter
as a potential customer.

  “How about you, Miss? Can I interest you in something? Perhaps a little lipstick for you too? We have some lovely new colours that are just in.”

  Women and girls have been painting themselves in this way for several thousand years, so the chances of genuinely new colours seemed remote. The basic constraints are physiological: redness applied to the lips emphasises fertility and sexual availability. Any other colour — black, for example — strikes an uncanny note, and is therefore the colour favoured by goths in search of shock value.

  “This is a lovely new Rouge Allure Velvet.” The woman was still talking and offering her a chance to try out the lipstick — yes, the matte lipstick favoured by Mrs. Ormiston. She politely declined, while Mother waited for her change.

  Many animals use colours to attract a mate, but more often it is the male that must do the attracting. Peacocks, for example, have brilliant iridescent plumage on their tails; peahens, by contrast, are fairly drab in appearance. How is it that the gender roles came to be reversed in humans? A subject for later study.

  “Or how about some nail polish? I bet your friends would love this new lustrous blue flecked with gold.”

  Peer pressure? The sales assistant got points for perseverance if not for perception. Nail polish is more purely decorative and so the colour palette is wider. The Chinese, who may have invented it, favoured gold and silver until that became passé. The arc of fashion is long, but it bends toward repetition.

  “What about lip gloss? We have some new glosses that are subtle and perfect for a first date.”

  This had become tiresome and Mother was worried that she might say something to make the sales assistant upset.