SOMEONE FROM THE PAST

In Hinterland, the book I’m currently writing, I wanted a character to be Daisy Drake’s mentor. Daisy is a very intelligent young woman although woefully educated. She can’t read or write but has a wonderful vocabulary and I wanted her mentor to be instrumental in helping her develop her language skills.

Daisy knows her own worth and can be stubborn so any mentor needs to be an equally powerful person. I still had to find a way of having the mentor educate her but without teaching her to read. In the end, I decided that the woman would read books to her. Daisy, however, would not be happy having this happen so I hit upon the idea of her accidentally meeting a woman who reads books for the blind and asking to be part of the group.

The next question was the mentor’s name. I was going to name her after one of my friends but after some research realised that her first name was not common in the nineteenth century so I had to think again.

And then I remembered Miss Hobson, my English teacher who was also the school librarian. She was completely right for the part. And being right for it, she’s inevitably shaping it.

Miss Hobson (the original) taught us in our second year of Secondary School. Many of us were annoyed by this as we liked our first, inspirational teacher Mr Johnson. Hobbo, as older kids taught us to call her, was very different. She was of indeterminate age, I guess in her early forties, with no concession to fashion. She looked like an Italian or Greek with olive skin and eyes which were almost black. She wore no makeup, her glasses looked like she had borrowed them from Buddy Holly and she sported harshly cropped hair. She was austere, demanding and rather old fashioned. She had spent the previous year on sick leave. Older boys nudged us when they said she was not married.

One of the books we read that year was King Soloman’s Mines.

Miss Hobson told us to write a summary of how Allan Quartermain and his friends arrived at the capital of Kukuanaland. Greatly excited I wrote it in the first person, as if I was Quartermain. When I got it back she had scored through every part of the sentence containing the word I and replaced it with Quartermain or he. At the end of the essay was the cryptic comment, I didn’t realise you had journeyed to King Soloman’s Mine. As I suspect you didn’t, please complete all the corrections.

I was frustrated and annoyed but had a grudging admiration for the fact that she had so assiduously corrected my errors. It must have taken ages. It sums up her approach to teaching and to me.

She was never soft-hearted and could be spikily intimidating. She was strict in class, never letting anyone get away with anything. Even the most difficult kids were wary of her. But during lunch times, when we went to the library, she was a different person. No longer the abrasive teacher but someone who welcomed me to her realm and encouraged me to read widely and adventurously. She led me to read myths and science fiction, stories from different cultures and to my everlasting gratitude, insisted that I read The Lord of the Rings.

What better person to be a mentor for Daisy Drake?

MISS HOBSON

Miss Hobson lived in in a sturdy stone cottage in Union Street, a few doors down from the pub. There were two windows on each floor, which seemed to observe the street and all who wandered there with a pitiless gaze.

Daisy still felt slightly intimidated by the windows but she knocked loudly on the door and immediately heard the scraping of a chair across the flagstone floor.

The door was flung open. ‘I was expecting you last Sunday,’ Miss Hobson said, gesturing her in.

‘I know. But I’ve got a day off so I thought I’d come early.’ She held the bag of custard tarts up for her inspection.

Miss Hobson peered inside and smiled. ‘You little temptress, Daisy. How did you know they’re my favourites?’ She gestured to the comfortable chair, in front of the fire, with a cup of tea on the table beside it. ‘Settle down, I’ll bring you a cup of tea and we can have a natter. If you want you can join me in a bit of soup later. I’m reading Mr Blackmore’s book novel Lorna Doone this afternoon. It’s set in the West Country so I think it will be very popular with Somerset ladies.’

She went into the kitchen and returned with a cup and saucer, a jug with milk oozing through a crack, two plates and dessert forks.

‘Delicious,’ Miss Hobson said, after shovelling into her mouth half of her custard tart. She washed it down with a deep swallow of tea, her little finger crooked in the air. Daisy had long ago become accustomed to her strange mix of habits and behaviour. She could be boisterous and crude, delicate and refined, speak as soft as a librarian and as loud as an alehouse drunkard.

Her attitudes were similarly varied. On some occasions she was incredibly solicitous of the blind ladies who visited her, on others mean-spirited and demanding. Daisy hoped that she did the latter out of a misguided attempt to toughen the ladies up but feared it might be a display of a harsh and vindictive nature.

She had experienced both and more over the years. Miss Hobson had made her cry in despair, laugh until her sides ached and, just occasionally, touched her as gently as a lover might.

‘So,’ she said when she had swallowed the last of her tart. ‘Tell me how you’re getting on as a wage-slave?’

‘I’m not a slave —’

‘Really. So what do you do to earn your pittance.’

Daisy sighed, realising this might be a difficult morning. But she had learnt that it was folly to try to appease Miss Hobson by agreeing with her, it only sharpened her tongue still more.

‘I clean the house, cook the meals, answer the door and even, as I did last week, serve at table.’

‘For the bishop and his crew of rogues, I gather.’

Daisy looked at her in surprise. ‘How do you know that?’

Miss Hobson shrugged. ‘There’s little that goes on in this benighted town that I don’t know.’

‘Through spying, no doubt.’

‘Don’t stick your little nose up at the notion. Spying is the best way to avoid being ambushed by vengeful people.’

Daisy was about to argue but realised the pain in her friend’s voice suggested a bitter experience which should not be treated lightly. But the very notion had sparked some disquiet in her mind and she frowned.

‘What’s the matter child?’ Miss Hobson said. ‘Is someone spying on you? Your employers perhaps or those blood-suckers from the cathedral?’

‘Mr and Mrs Makepiece are lovely,’ she said. ‘And so is the bishop and his wife…’

‘But not his piratical crew. The canons in particular.’

‘Not the canons. Especially Canon Mews; he’s got it in for Mr Makepiece.’

‘His sort cannot exist without warring on others. Is it him who’s spying on you?’

‘I didn’t actually say that anyone was spying.’

‘You can’t keep such things from me,’ Miss Hobson said, crossing her arms in a mixture of triumph and aggression. ‘Tell me who it is.’