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  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Shame On You

  Clara Salaman is best known for playing DS Claire Stanton in the long-running ITV drama The Bill. She has written for Granada Television, and Shame On You is her first novel.

  Shame On You

  CLARA SALAMAN

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2009

  Copyright © Clara Salaman, 2009

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-191604-0

  To Clement and Juliet Salaman,

  with love

  1

  Mr Steinberg was young and fresh and beautiful, and we were all dumbfounded by him. On his first day at school, he had stood before us at the front of Room 8, holding his black briefcase up in front of him with both hands, like a shield.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. And with that one word, we knew that he was different. We could almost smell the outside world on his breath.

  Everything about him didn’t belong: his perfect teeth, his modern round glasses, his smile, the biro sticking out of his pocket, the ring on his middle finger, the word ‘Hi’. He clearly didn’t know that biros, jewellery and slang were not permitted here. Someone asked him how old he was and he had blushed and run his hands through his thick, dark, wavy hair and said, ‘Twenty-two.’ Only he hadn’t said that, he’d said, ‘Twenny-two,’ because the best thing about Mr Steinberg was that he was an American. I had never met an American before, but I knew that most things that Americans did were forbidden.

  I wondered how on earth he had ended up here with us, all the way across the ocean. They had probably told him he was saving the world or something; us children, this new school, we were the future. One day, they’d have told him, it would be down to these children to spread the word. (Which was ‘Om’, by the way. And personally, I wouldn’t be spreading it; I’d be keeping quiet about the whole thing. We attracted enough unwanted attention as it was.)

  Mr Steinberg had come to teach Ancient Greek, which was a modern language to us. We only learnt Sanskrit, the oldest language in the history of the world. I imagined it was what the cavemen spoke, ‘bahbah dahdah gahgah’ sort of thing. That’s what it sounded like; all breathy and primitive. Thousands of years ago, the Sanskrit people had written the first ever book of rules called the Vedas, and Miss Fowler told us that the mysteries of the universe were held in just the Sanskrit alphabet alone. Which was why we had to chant it endlessly, hoping they’d slip in by osmosis, I suppose. We were sick to death of the mysteries of the universe. Greek would make a pleasant change.

  We could listen to Mr Steinberg’s beautiful voice all day long, and sometimes we did. He taught us to chant the first three chapters of the Odyssey from memory, and boy, oh boy, did we chant. We’d mimic his accent as we did so, and at first he wouldn’t notice but, when he did, he would laugh so hard that he would have to take his glasses off and wipe his eyes. Watching him do that would make the whole day worthwhile.

  Everyone wanted to get betrothed to Mr Steinberg. Everyone was in love with him, so, naturally, everyone was good at Greek. Even the thickos were excelling themselves. But for me, Greek was more than a subject; I wasn’t just good at it, I was the best at it. I didn’t even have to try; it all just stayed in my head as if I already knew it.

  It was, therefore, most upsetting to be stuck in the cupboard at the back of the classroom when Mr Steinberg was out there taking the Greek class. I had been hiding from Fowler but had mistimed my exit and when I’d attempted to reappear, it was too late; they had already started ‘pausing’. Eyes tightly shut, chins up, palms facing upwards like curling leaves on their laps, clearing their minds, making space for something new.

  I carefully closed the door and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to stay in the cupboard until the end of the lesson.

  ‘Om paramatmanaynama attah.’ As one, they mumbled the beginning-of-anything prayer.

  For a while, I listened in the darkness as Mr Steinberg handed out the homework, blindly picking the paint off the back of the door, still annoyed with myself for getting stuck.

  ‘Where’s Caroline?’ I heard him ask and I stopped picking; it felt good to hear him say my name and notice my absence.

  ‘She’s ill,’ said Megan.

  It was cramped in the cupboard. There was only room enough for two people standing up, although we did once go for a record and squeezed six of us in, piled on top of each other like Smarties in a tube.

  I felt around for some jumpers and decided to make myself a little bed. I sank to my bottom and leant against the pegs. I must have been leaning against Kate’s blazer, I could smell her. She’d smelt the same since we were tiny, musty with a hint of mothball. I leant to my other side and inhaled an aertex shirt, doughy and milky. Easy peasy japoneesy, that was Megan. I moved my nose along the row. Pears soap, that’d be Jane. I tugged at a jumper above me and pressed it to my face; grassy with a touch of pee, Anna’s without a doubt.

  Whenever my parents were away on retreat, I always made a point of staying the week with as many people in the class as possible, just to compare notes. I’d pretty much stayed with everyone, but our houses were all much of a muchness; functional, minimal and holy. However, one thing I had noticed was that whole families smelt the same, even houses. The moment you entered Anna’s house there was a whiff of wee. I wondered what smell my family gave off. I sniffed my knee – chlorine from the swimming pool. I licked it then sniffed it again. It was rather nice.

  Years ago, when I was about five, before Miss Fowler and I hated each other, I would ask her every lunchtime if she could butter my bread for me. She would get up from the head of the trestle table and come round and put her arms over mine, and I’d sit there as she buttered the bread, inches from my face. I could actually butter my own bread, but I did so love the smell of her hands; they smelt of Dettol. Now, of course, I can’t bear the stink of disinfectant.

  When I got bored of sniffing clothes, I lay on my back and stuck my legs up against the boiler and waited whilst the rest of them did a vocabulary test. I marked myself with hardly any cheating. Nineteen out of twenty.

  Every now and then at the end of a Greek lesson, if we’d been especially good, Steinberg would make his way arou
nd the table, rubbing his hands, a crafty smile on his face, and he’d perch on the edge of the table, right at the front of the classroom and say, ‘Well, Form Two, would you like to hear the story of Medea?’ or ‘Who knows the story of Theseus and the Minotaur?’ or ‘Did I ever tell you about Oedipus?’ Immediately, we would all shut our books and sit on the edge of our seats in anticipation, hanging on to his every word. He’d tell us stories full of gore, murder, incest, sex and death, and our tongues would hang out. None of us would breathe a word about these stories out of class, at home. They were our secret. Mr Steinberg never quite got the hang of the Organization, and we weren’t going to enlighten him.

  When I heard the class hush excitedly, I knew exactly what was happening. This just wasn’t fair, to be stuck in the cupboard on a storytelling day! Oh, how I wished to be out there! I sat up as quickly as I could and pushed the door a little so that I might catch a glimpse of him. You had to watch him telling his stories.

  There he was in all his easy elegance. He was wearing his grey suit with a blue shirt. He pushed his glasses up his nose, the way he always did when he was excited.

  ‘Who knows the story of Orestes?’

  ‘Not me, not me!’ I heard everyone say, shutting their books and sitting to attention.

  ‘Not me!’ I said in the cupboard, shuffling forward, pushing the door a little more so that I could see all of him. I turned my ear towards the gap. His voice was almost a whisper as he began. I had to really strain to hear him.

  ‘Orestes, which by the way means “mountaineer” or “he who can conquer mountains”, was the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. He had one brother and two sisters, Iphigenia and Electra.’

  I could see Kate’s knees jiggling on the edge of her seat.

  ‘Now, when Orestes was about your age, twelve, thirteen or so, Agamemnon went off to fight the Trojans. And in order to secure victory, he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia. Which I guess his wife was none too pleased about. Now, beautiful women by their very definition attract a lot of attention…’

  God I hoped I was a beautiful woman.

  ‘… And I suspect Clytemnestra was a beautiful woman because Agamemnon entrusted his finest voiced singer to take care of her in his absence, chiefly to distract her from any suitors.’

  What’s a suitor? Someone ask!

  ‘What’s a suitor?’ It was Amy.

  ‘An admirer,’ he continued. ‘Sure enough, when Agamemnon was away, Clytemnestra took a lover.’

  He said the words ‘took a lover’ so lightly and sweetly in his lilting American voice that he made it sound like the most delightful thing in the world.

  I pushed the door a little wider; I didn’t want to miss a thing. I needed to see Steinberg’s whole body.

  ‘What sort of a singer?’ asked Deborah. She was always quite particular about things.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I guess it’d be the equivalent of having a radio. Instead of turning on the radio, you’d say, “Hey singer! Sing!”’ Then Steinberg clicked his fingers and let his glossy, American hair fall in his eyes and he sang, ‘I love rock and roll, put another record on the jukebox, baby…’

  The class broke out into laughter. We loved it when Steinberg did things like that and you really knew he was an outsider, that he’d come from the normal world. We weren’t allowed radios. Pop music created chaos in the mind. It was strictly banned, and we were banned from any places that played it.

  ‘Oh! Sing us some more!’ I wanted to say and I would have said it if I’d been in the classroom, and, guess what, he might have done it. He liked me.

  But then Steinberg remembered who he was talking to and that he must put his past behind him. You could almost see the shadow cross his face, the corners of his mouth dropped slightly.

  ‘Anyway, girls,’ he said, gently, and it sounded like pity in his voice. ‘Agamemnon gets back from war…’

  Steinberg pretended to look all exhausted, nursing a broken arm. ‘With, might I add, a new mistress, Cassandra. You remember Cassandra?’

  Yes, of course I remembered Cassandra. She had the gift of prophecy but the curse that no one would ever believe her.

  ‘Anyone?’ he said, looking round the room with mock disbelief. ‘Anyone remember Cassandra?’

  ‘Prophecy!’ I whispered loudly in the cupboard.

  ‘Hey, you guys! Cassandra? The gift of prophecy?’

  I sighed. Damn it. I wanted to be out there. I wanted him to know that I knew. I wanted him to be impressed by me, his eyes unable to hide his delight. I shuffled in the cupboard, making a paper bag scrunch, and missed the next bit. I pressed my face into the small gap between door and cupboard.

  ‘Well… Agamemnon’s lying in the bath!’ Steinberg whistled and mimed washing his back with a backscratcher. Everyone laughed. I laughed in the cupboard.

  ‘In comes Clytemnestra and Aegisthus and they throw a net over him and kill him with an axe!’ He said it crisply, murderously, his eyes glinting behind his glasses. He was totally fantastic. Steinberg moved out of my sight line, so I had to stand up.

  ‘So when Orestes returns, ten years later, he’s a man now, he’s like my age now.’

  And Steinberg swaggered, and everyone laughed again. I laughed in the cupboard. He was a man, he was a real man.

  ‘And Orestes first kills his mother’s lover and then murders his own mother! Now, there is no crime greater than matricide. And murder cannot go unpunished! So here come the Furies! Now get this, girls. The Furies, although acting within the law, are three mad, terrifying women…’

  Ah! Furies? Furious. Infuriated. They must be connected. Someone ask him, please, someone ask him about the word. I bite my tongue.

  ‘… They are the most scary, demonic beings with claws for nails and serpents for hair. They have blood dripping from their eyeballs.’

  ‘What do they want?’ That was Amy.

  ‘They want to drive you insane! They’ll scratch you and claw you until they do so. Then you’ll kill yourself!’

  Wow!

  Steinberg looked at his watch, and the whole class gave a groan of disappointment as he did so.

  ‘No!’ I said to the cupboard. He mustn’t stop now! Did the Furies drive Orestes insane? What happened?

  ‘We’ve run over, guys! Got to stop!’ he said, jumping off the table, clapping his hands.

  I knew that, in a moment, he would take his seat at the chair and shut his eyes, and everyone would fall silent as they paused, then he would chant the end-of-the-lesson Sanskrit prayer, and we wouldn’t hear the end of the story.

  ‘Okay, let’s pause, everyone,’ he said, sitting in his chair, straight back, all pleasure gone from his face. He was just like all the others when he did that.

  I couldn’t help myself. I pushed open the door, ‘No! You can’t stop, Mr Steinberg! You haven’t finished! What happened to Orestes? Why was he called a mountaineer?’

  Everyone turned around. Mr Steinberg looked most surprised.

  ‘What are you doing in the cupboard, Caroline?’

  ‘I…’ I floundered. ‘I was hiding… earlier… and then you arrived, um, sorry… please don’t send me to Miss Fowler.’

  I couldn’t tell whether he was going to send me to Fowler or whether I was going to get away with it. He stared at me, and I stared back, trying to beseech him with my eyes.

  ‘You’ve been listening in the cupboard?’

  I nodded.

  ‘The whole class?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Did you do the vocabulary test?’

  I nodded. ‘Nineteen out of twenty.’

  ‘Which word didn’t you know?’

  ‘Threshold.’

  He carried on staring at me, undecided which path to take. Please, God, please don’t send me to her. Then I could see the half smile appear. Slowly, he began to shake his head, looking at me all the time, trying hard to get rid of that smile on his lovely lips.

  ‘Shame on you, Caroline Stern!’ he said.
‘Shame on you!’

  Those were the most thrilling words in the entire English language, and whenever he said them, it never felt like shame. It felt like the best feeling in the whole wide world.

  It was Amy’s thirteenth birthday, and Mr Baker, for a treat, had sent us out into the streets of South Kensington to observe trees. We weren’t allowed paper or pens, we just had to find a tree and look at it for forty minutes. But really look at it until we felt ourselves merging with it. Then later, we’d have to return to number 50 to paint it.

  Mr Baker, who was normally very strict about the Organization rules, must have forgotten that Megan and I weren’t allowed to be partners, that we were always meant to be separated. He had let Amy chose two people to be in a group with, and, of course, she had chosen Megan and me, and we were sent out into the early spring sunshine.

  Once we got over the initial and familiar horror of being stared at by normal people as they passed us at the end of Onslow Gardens, ‘pausing’ en masse in our stupid bright purple uniforms, we began to enjoy ourselves.

  The three of us wandered up and down the streets, feeling quite free and merry until we came across a nice tree. It was on the sunny side of the road outside a big, white house with a basement flat behind black railings.

  We sat on the little wall, our legs swinging, Amy and I on one side of the trunk and Megan on the other, and we looked up at it. None of us had any idea what sort of a tree it was, but it had just started blossoming, maybe eighty per cent there; pale pink flowers had either stretched themselves awake or were tightly folded and just about to. You felt that, if you kept staring at the little closed pink buds, they might suddenly burst open like a firework. The leaves around them were auburn red, exactly the same colour as Megan’s hair; her face was just the same pale pink as the petals and the way sun shone on them both, Megan was almost invisible except for the stupid purple uniform, of course. She was on the other side, looking up. She caught my eye and smiled at me.

  ‘Isn’t it lovely?’

  It was, especially so, because it was framed by the pale blue sky beyond. The colours would be fabulous to paint. High, high up, the tracks of an aeroplane were disappearing behind the pink petals. On street level, over Megan’s shoulder I could see Mr Baker striding towards us.