Mr. TENNYSON

CONTENTS

Unit I. HOME.. 2

Unit II. Community.. 78

Unit III. SOCIAL SECURITY.. 153

Unit IV. EDUCATION.. 208

Unit V. LAW AND ORDER.. 264

Appendix.. 331

Literary Genres. 331

Glossary of stylistic terms. 347

Plan of literary work analysis. 353

A sample of literary work analysis: E. Hemingway “Hills like white elephants” 358

Библиография.. 369

Unit I

HOME

Life is a foreign language:
all men mispronounce it.

Mr. TENNYSON

William Trevor

(1928 – ….)

Born William Trevor Cox in Mitchelstown, County Cork, Irish Free State to a middle-class Protestant family, he moved several times to other provincial towns due to his father's work as a bank official. He was educated at St. Columbia's College, County Dublin and Trinity College, Dublin. He received a degree in history from Trinity College, Dublin.

Trevor worked for a while as a sculptor, supplementing his income by teaching. He married Jane Ryan in 1952 and emigrated to England two years later. His first novel, “A Stan­dard of Behaviour”, was published in 1958, but had little critical success.

After abandoning sculpting he became a copywriter in London before becoming a full-time writer in 1965. Trevor's stories are set in both England and Ireland, ranging from black comedies and sexual deviants to tales based on Irish history and politics. He focused on the tensions between Protestant landowners and Catholic tenants. Trevor maintains that, unlike the characters in his stories, those in his novels “cause everything to happen.” His early books are peopled by eccentrics who speak in a pedantically formal manner and engage in hilariously comic activities, which are recounted by a detached narrative voice. Instead of one central figure, the novels feature several protagonists of equal importance, drawn together by an institutional setting, which acts as a convergence point for their individual stories. The later novels are thematically and technically more complex. The operation of grace in the world is explored, and several narrative voices are used to view the same events from different angles. Unreliable narrators and different perspectives reflect the fragmentation and uncertainty of modern life. Again, Trevor draws increasingly on his Irish background for setting and character, and Fools of Fortune was a new departure in that it was Trevor's first “Big House” novel.

“ Fools of Fortune ” (1983) and “The Silence in the Garden” (1989) won literary prizes.

He is best known for his short stories which have been published in many volumes. The most recent is “Family Sins and other stories” (1989).

He has written several collections of short stories that were well received. The characters in Trevor's work are usually marginalized members of society: children, old people, single middle-aged men and women, or the unhappily married. Those who cannot accept the reality of their lives create their own alternative worlds into which they retreat.

Most of his novels and short stories are set in Ireland. He has adapted much of his work for stage, television and radio.

Trevor is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. He was awarded an honorary CBE in 1977 for his “services to literature”, and was made a Companion of Literature in 1994. In 2002 he received an honorary knighthood in recognition of his services to literature. He was awarded the David Cohen British Literature Prize by the Arts Council of England in 1999 in recognition of his work. Trevor has won the prestigious O. Henry Award three times – for his stories “Sacred Statues” (2002), “The Dressmaker's Child” ¹ (2006), and “The Room”¹ (2007).

“Mr. Tennyson” is taken from the volume “Beyond the Pale and other stories” (1981).

He had, romantically, a bad reputation. He had a wife and several children. His carry-on with Sarah Spence was a legend among a generation of girls, and the story was that none of it had stopped with Sarah Spence. His old red Ford Escort had been reported drawn up in quiet lay-bys; often he spent weekends away from home; Annie Green had come across him going somewhere on a train once, alone and morose in the buffet car. Nobody’s parents were aware of the facts about him, nor were the other staff, nor even the boys at the school. His carry-on with Sarah Spence, and coming across him or his car, were a little tapestry of secrets that suddenly was yours when you became fifteen and a senior, a member of 2A¹, for the rest of your time at Foxfield Comprehensive – for the rest of your life, preferably – you didn't breathe a word to people whose business it wasn’t.

It was understandable when you looked at him that parents and staff didn’t guess. It was also understandable that his activities were protected by the senior girls. He was forty years old. He had dark hair with a little grey in it, and a face that was boyish – like a French boy’s, someone had once said, and the description had stuck, often to be repeated. There was a kind of ragamuffin innocence about his eyes. The cast of his lips suggested a melancholy nature and his smile, when it came, had sadness in it too. His name was Mr. Tennyson. His subject was English.

Jenny, arriving one September in 2A, learnt all about him. She remembered Sarah Spence, a girl at the top of the school when she had been at the bottom, tall and beautiful. He carried on because he was unhappily married, she was informed. Consider where he lived even: trapped in a tiny gate-lodge on the Ilminster road because he couldn't afford anything better, trapped with a wife and children when he deserved freedom. Would he one day publish poetry as profound as his famous namesake’s, though of course more up-to-date? Or was his talent lost for ever? One way or the other he was made for love.

It seemed to Jenny that the girls of 2A eyed one another, wondering which among them would become a successor to Sarah Spence. They eyed the older girls, of Class 1, 1A and 1B, wondering which of them was already her successor, discreetly taking her place in the red Ford Escort on dusky afternoons. He would never be coarse, you couldn’t imagine coarseness in him. He’d never try anything unpleasant, he'd never in a million years fumble at you³. He’d just be there, being himself, smelling faintly of fresh tobacco, the fingers of a hand perhaps brushing your arm by accident.

“Within the play, ” he suggested in his soft voice, almost a whisper, “order is represented by the royal house of Scotland. We must try and remember Shakespeare’s point of view, how Shakespeare saw these things.”

They were studying Macbeth⁴ and Huckleberry Finn with him, but when he talked about Shakespeare it seemed more natural and suited to him than when he talked about Mark Twain.

“On Duncan's death, ” he said, “should the natural order continue, his son Malcolm would become king. Already Duncan has indicated – by making Malcolm Prince of Cumberland – that he considers him capable of ruling.”

Jenny had pale fair hair, the colour of ripened wheat. It fell from a divide at the centre of her head, two straight lines on either side of a thin face. Her eyes were large and of a faded blue. She was lanky, with legs which she considered to be too long but which her mother said she’d be thankful for one day.

“Disruption is everywhere, remember, ” he said. “Disruption in nature as well as in the royal house. Shakespeare insinuates a comparison between what is happening in human terms and in terms of nature. On the night of Duncan’s death there is a sudden storm in which chimneys are blown off and houses shaken. Mysterious screams are heard. Horses go wild. A falcon is killed by a mousing owl.”

Listening to him, it seemed to Jenny that she could listen for ever, no matter what he said. At night, lying in bed with her eyes closed, she delighted in leisurely fantasies, of having breakfast with him and ironing his clothes, of walking beside him on seashore or sitting beside him in his old Ford Escort. There was a particular story she repeated to herself: that she was on the promenade at Lyme Regis and that he came up to her and asked her if she’d like to go for a walk. They walked up to the cliffs and then along the cliff-path, and everything was different from Foxfield Comprehensive because they were alone together. His wife and he had been divorced, he told her, having agreed between themselves that they were incompatible. He was leaving Foxfield Comprehensive because a play he’d written was going to be done on the radio and another one on the London stage. “Oh, darling, ” she said, daring to say it. “Oh, Jenny, ” he said.

Terms and holidays went by. Once, just before the Easter of that year, she met him with his wife, shopping in the International Stores in Ilminster. They had two of their four children with them, little boys with freckles. His wife had freckles also. She was a woman like a sack of something, Jenny considered, with thick, unhealthy-looking legs. He was pushing a trolley full of breakfast cereals and wrapped bread, and tins. Although he didn’t speak to her or even appear to see her, it was a stroke of luck to come across him in the town because he didn’t often come into the village. Foxfield had only half a dozen shops and the Bow and Arrow public house, even though it was enormous, a sprawling dormitory village that had had the new Comprehensive added to all the other new buildings in 1969. Because of the position of the Tennysons’ gate-lodge it was clearly more convenient for them to shop in Ilminster.

“Hullo, Mr. Tennyson, ” she said in the International Stores, and he turned and looked at her. He nodded and smiled.

Jenny moved into 1A at the end of that school year. She wondered if he’d noticed how her breasts had become bigger during the time she’d been in 2A, and how her complexion had definitely improved. Her breasts were quite presentable now, which was a relief because she’d had a fear that they weren’t going to develop at all. She wondered if he’d noticed her Green Magic eye-shadow. Everyone said it suited her, except her father, who always blew up⁵ over things like that. Once she heard one of the new kids saying she was the prettiest girl in the school. Adam Swann and Chinny Martin from IB kept hanging about, trying to chat her up. Chinny Martin even wrote her notes.

“You’re mooning”^6’, her father said. “You don’t take a pick of notice these days.’

“Exams, ” her mother hastily interjected and afterwards, when Jenny was out of the room, quite sharply reminded her husband that adolescence was a difficult time for girls. It was best not to remark on things.

“I didn’t mean a criticism, Ellie, Jenny’s father protested, aggrieved.

“They take it as a criticism. Every word. They’re edgy, see.

He sighed. He was a painter and decorator, with his own business. Jenny was their only child. There’d been four miscarriages, all of which might have been boys, which naturally were what he’d wanted, with the business. He’d have to sell it one day, but it didn’t matter all that much when you thought about it. Having miscarriages was worse than selling a business, more depressing really. A woman’s lot was harder than a man’s, he’d decided long ago.

“Broody⁷, ” his wife diagnosed. “Just normal broody. She’ll see her way through it.”

Every evening her parents sat in their clean, neat sitting-room watching television. Her mother made tea at nine o’clock because it was nice to have a cup with the News. She always called upstairs to Jenny, but Jenny never wanted to have tea or see the News. She did her homework in her bedroom, a small room that was clean and neat also, with a pebbly cream wallpaper expertly hung by her father. At half-past ten she usually went down to the kitchen and made herself some Ovaltine. She drank it at the table with the cat, Tinkle, on her lap. Her mother usually came in with the tea things to wash up, and they might chat, the conversation consisting mainly of gossip from Foxfield Comprehensive, although never of course containing a reference to Mr. Tennyson. Sometimes Jenny didn’t feel like chatting and wouldn’t, feigning sleepiness. If she sat there long enough her father would come in to fetch himself a cup of water because he always liked to have one near him in the night. He couldn’t help glancing at her eye-shadow when he said good-night and she could see him making an effort not to mention it, having doubtless been told not to by her mother. They did their best. She liked them very much. She loved them, she supposed.

But not in the way she loved Mr. Tennyson. “Robert Tennyson, ” she murmured to herself in bed. “Oh, Robert dear.” Softly his lips were there, and the smell of fresh tobacco made her swoon, forcing her to close her eyes. “Oh, yes, ” she said. “Oh, yes, yes.” He lifted the dress over her head. His hands were taut, charged with their shared passion. “My love, ” he said in his soft voice, almost a whisper. Every night before she went to sleep his was the face that entirely filled her mind. Had it once not been there she would have thought herself faithless. And every morning, in a ceremonial way, she conjured it up again, first thing, pride of place.

Coming out of Harper’s the newsagent’s one Saturday afternoon, she found waiting for her, not Mr. Tennyson, but Chinny Martin, with his motor-cycle on its pedestal in the street. He asked her if she’d like to go for a spin into the country and offered to supply her with a crash helmet. He was wearing a crash helmet himself, a bulbous red object with a peak and a windshield that fitted over his eyes. He was also wearing heavy plastic gloves, red also, and a red windcheater. He was smiling at her, the spots on his pronounced chin more noticeable after exposure to the weather on his motor-cycle. His eyes were serious, closely fixed on hers.

She shook her head at him. There was hardly anything she’d have disliked more than a ride into the country with Chinny Martin, her arms half round his waist, a borrowed crash helmet making her feel silly. He’d stop the motor-cycle in a suitable place and he’d suggest something like a walk to the river or to some old ruin or into a wood. He’d suggest sitting down and then he’d begin to fumble at her, and his chin would be sticking into her face, cold and unpleasant. His fingernails would be ingrained, as the fingernails of boys who owned motor-cycles always were.

“Thanks all the same, ” she said.

“Come on, Jenny.”

“No, I’m busy. Honestly. I’m working at home.”

It couldn’t have been pleasant, being called Chinny just because you had a jutting chin. Nicknames were horrible: there was a boy called Nut Adams and another called Wet Small and a girl called Kisses. Chinny Martin’s name was Clive, but she’d never heard anyone calling him that. She felt sorry for him, standing there in his crash helmet and his special clothes. He’d probably planned it all, working it out that she'd be impressed by his gear and his motor-cycle. But of course she wasn’t. Yamaha it said on the petrol tank of the motor-cycle, and there was a girl in a swimsuit which he had presumably stuck on to the tank himself. The girl’s swimsuit was yellow and so was her hair, which was streaming out behind her, as if caught in a wind. The petrol tank was black.

“Jenny, ” he said, lowering his voice so that it became almost croaky. “Listen, Jenny − ”

“Sorry.”

She began to walk away, up the village street, but he walked beside her, pushing the Yamaha.

“I love you, Jenny, ” he said.

She laughed because she felt embarrassed.

“I can’t bear not seeing you, Jenny.”

“Oh, well − ”

“Jenny.”

They were passing the petrol-pumps, the Orchard Garage. Mr. Batten was on the pavement, wiping oil from his hands with a rag. “How’s he running? ” he called out to Chinny Martin, referring to the Yamaha, but Chinny Martin ignored the question.

“I think of you all the time, Jenny.”

“Oh, Clive, don’t be silly.” She felt silly herself, calling him by his proper name.

“D’you like me, Jenny? ”

“Of course I like you.” She smiled at him, trying to cover up the lie: she didn’t particularly like him, she didn’t particularly not. She just felt sorry for him, with his noticeable chin and the nickname it had given him. His father worked in the powdered milk factory. He’d do the same: you could guess that all too easily.

“Come for a ride with me, Jenny.”

“No, honestly.”

“Why not then? ”

“It’s better not to start anything, Clive. Look, don’t write me notes.”

“Don’t you like my notes? ” “I don’t want to start anything.”

“There’s someone else, is there, Jenny? Adam Swann? Rick Hayes? ”

He sounded like a character in a television serial; he sounded sloppy and stupid.

“If you knew how I feel about you, ” he said, lowering his voice even more. “I love you like anything. It’s the real thing.”

“I like you too, Clive. Only not in that way, ” she hastily added.

“Wouldn’t you ever? Wouldn’t you even try? ”

“I’ve told you.”

“Rick Hayes is only after sex.”

“I don’t like Rick Hayes.”

“Any girl with legs on her is all he wants.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I can’t concentrate on things, Jenny. I think of you the entire time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh God, Jenny.”

She turned into the Mace shop just to escape. She picked up a wire basket and pretended to be looking at tins of cat food. She heard the roar of the Yamaha as her admirer rode away, and it seemed all wrong that he should have gone like that, so noisily when he was so upset.

At home she thought about the incident. It didn’t in the least displease her that a boy had passionately proclaimed love for her. It even made her feel quite elated. She felt pleasantly warm when she thought about it, and the feeling bewildered her. That she, so much in love with someone else, should be moved in the very least by the immature protestations of a youth from 1B was a mystery. She even considered telling her mother about the incident, but in the end decided not to. “Quite sprightly, she seems, ” she heard her father murmuring.

“In every line of that sonnet, ” Mr. Tennyson said the following Monday afternoon, “there is evidence of the richness that makes Shakespeare not just our own greatest writer but the world’s as well.”

She listened, enthralled, physically pleasured by the utterance of each syllable. There was a tiredness about his boyish eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. His wife had probably been bothering him, wanting him to do jobs around the house when he should have been writing sonnets of his own. She imagined him unable to sleep, lying there worrying about things, about his life. She imagined his wife like a grampus beside him, her mouth open, her upper lip as coarse as a man’s.

“When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, ” he said. “And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field.”

Dear Jenny, a note that morning from Chinny Martin had protested. I just want to be with you. I just want to talk to you. Please come out with me.

“Jenny, stay a minute, ” Mr. Tennyson said when the bell went. “Your essay.”

Immediately there was tension among the girls of 1A, as if the English master had caused threads all over the classroom to become taut. Unaware, the boys proceeded as they always did, throwing books into their briefcases and sauntering into the corridor. The girls lingered over anything they could think of. Jenny approached Mr. Tennyson’s desk.

“It’s very good, ” he said, opening her essay book. “But you’re getting too fond of using three little dots at the end of a sentence. The sentence should imply the dots. It’s like underlining to suggest emphasis, a bad habit also.”

One by one the girls dribbled from the classroom, leaving behind them the shreds of their reluctance. Out of all of them he had chosen her: was she to be another Sarah Spence, or just some kind of stop-gap, like other girls since Sarah Spence were rumoured to have been? But as he continued to talk about her essay – called Belief in Ghosts – she wondered if she’d even be a stop-gap. His fingers didn’t once brush the back of her hand. His French boy’s eyes didn’t linger once on hers.

“I’ve kept you late, ” he said in the end.

“That’s all right, sir.”

“You will try to keep your sentences short? Your descriptions have a way of becoming too complicated.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“I really enjoyed that essay.”

He handed her the exercise book and then, without any doubt whatsoever, he smiled meaningfully into her eyes. She felt herself going hot. Her hands became clammy. She just stood there while his glance passed over her eye-shadow, over her nose and cheeks, over her mouth. “You’re very pretty, ” he said. “Thank you, sir.”

Her voice reminded her of the croak in Chinny Martin’s when he’d been telling her he loved her. She tried to smile, but could not. She wanted his hand to reach out and push her gently away from him so that he could see her properly. But it didn’t. He stared into her eyes again, as if endeavouring to ascertain their precise shade of blue.

“You look like a girl we had here once, ” he said. “Called Sarah Spence.”

“I remember Sarah Spence.”

“She was good English too.”

She wanted something to happen, thunder to begin, or a torrent of rain, anything that would keep them in the classroom. She couldn’t even bear the thought of walking to her desk and putting her essay book in her briefcase. “Sarah went to Warwick University, ” he said.

She nodded. She tried to smile again and this time the smile came. She said to herself that it was a brazen smile and she didn’t care. She hoped it made her seem more than ever like Sarah Spence, sophisticated and able for anything. She wondered if he said to all the girls who were stop-gaps that they looked like Sarah Spence. She didn’t care. His carry-on with Sarah Spence was over and done with, he didn’t even see her any more. By all accounts Sarah Spence had let him down, but never in a million years would she. She would wait for him for ever, or until the divorce came through. When he was old she would look after him.

“You’d better be getting home, Jenny.”

“I don’t want to, sir.”

She continued to stand there, the exercise book in her left hand. She watched while some kind of shadow passed over his face. For a moment his eyes closed.

“Why don’t you want to go? ” he said.

“Because I’m in love with you, sir.”

“You mustn’t be, Jenny.”

“Why not? ”

“You know why not.”

“What about Sarah Spence? ”

“Sarah was different.”

“I don’t care how many stop-gaps you’ve had. I don’t care. I don’t love you any less.”

“Stop-gaps, Jenny? ”

“The ones you made do with.”⁹

“Made do? ” He was suddenly frowning at her, his face screwed up a little. “Made do? ” he said again.

“The other girls. The ones who reminded you of her.”

“There weren’t any other girls.”

“You were seen, sir –”

“Only Sarah and I were seen.”

“You car –”

“Give a dog a bad name¹⁰, Jenny. There weren’t any others.”

She felt iciness inside her, somewhere in her stomach. Other girls had formed an attachment for him, as she had. Other girls had probably stood on this very spot, telling him. It was that, and the reality of Sarah Spence, that had turned him into a schoolgirls’ legend. Only Sarah Spence had gone with him in his old Ford Escort to quiet lay-bys, only Sarah Spence had felt his arms around her. Why shouldn’t he be seen in the buffet-car of a train, alone? The weekends he’d spent away from home were probably with a sick mother.

“I’m no Casanova, Jenny.”

“I had to tell you I’m in love with you, sir. I couldn’t.”

“It’s no good loving me, I’m afraid.”

“You’re the nicest person I’ll ever know.”

“No, I’m not, Jenny. I’m just an English teacher who took advantage of a young girl’s infatuation. Shabby, people would say.”

“You’re not shabby. Oh God, you’re not shabby.” She heard her own voice crying out shrilly, close to tears. It astonished her. It was unbelievable that she should be so violently protesting. It was unbelievable that he should have called himself shabby.

“She had an abortion in Warwick, ” he said, “after a weekend we spent in a hotel. I let that happen, Jenny.”

“You couldn’t help it.”

“Of course I could have helped it”.

Without wanting to, she imagined them in the hotel he spoke of. She imagined them having a meal, sitting opposite each other at a table, and a waiter placing plates in front of them. She imagined them in their bedroom, a grimy room with a lace curtain drawn across the lower part of the single window and a washbasin in a corner. The bedroom had featured in a film she’d seen, and Sarah Spence was even like the actress who had played the part of a shopgirl. She stood there in her underclothes just as the shopgirl had, awkwardly waiting while he smiled his love at her. “Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface, ” he whispered. “In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled¹¹. Oh Sarah, love.” He took the underclothes from her body, as the actor in the film had, all the time whispering sonnets.

“It was messy and horrible, ” he said. “That’s how it ended, Jenny.”

“I don’t care how it ended. I’d go with you anywhere. I’d go to a thousand hotels.”

“No, no, Jenny.”

“I love you terribly.”

She wept, still standing there. He got down from the stool in front of his desk and came and put his arms about her, telling her to cry. He said that tears were good, not bad. He made her sit down at a desk and then he sat down beside her. His love affair with Sarah Spence sounded romantic, he said, and because of its romantic sheen girls fell in love with him.

They fell in love with the unhappiness they sensed in him. He found it hard to stop them.

“I should move away from here, ” he said, “but I can’t bring myself to do it. Because she’ll always come back to see her family and whenever she does I can catch a glimpse of her.”