by Olga Wojtas
More nods.
The pointer changed hands again. “We go in, do our lessons, and come out again.”
I’m always impressed by the pragmatism of country folk, and their lack of sentimentality about animals. These children were off massacring wild boar in the name of nature study, and thought nothing of it.
The pointer had reached the back row. “But we like this sort of lesson better. We like history and geography and Euclidian geometry.”
They could almost be Blainers.
“Do you go home for lunch?” I asked.
Universal shaking of the heads and patting of knapsacks.
“Let’s go and sit outside while you have something to eat, and then we’ll have a lesson,” I suggested.
It would have been nice to sit under a tree, but the only trees were in the forest, which was out of bounds.
“Before we go out,” I said, “we’ll finish the morning with an art lesson. I’d like you all to draw a tree.”
The boys spat on their sleeves and the girls spat on their pinafores in order to clean their slates. Saliva seemed to play a key part in Sans-Soleil life. The ghastly screech of slate pencils started up again.
I walked between the desks with my own pencil, squeakily adding a leaf here, straightening a branch there, always with a word of encouragement so that nobody would feel inhibited from pursuing an artistic career in later life.
And I harboured great hopes for them. It was a pleasure to see that they were already au fait with contemporary trends, and felt no need to create Realist images. There were Expressionist trees, their shapes distorted and exaggerated. There were Pointillist trees made up of a series of dots. There were Symbolist images with the merest suggestion of a tree. There was even a proto-Surrealist tree that looked like a fish.
We went outside, and sat down on the rough gravel of the playground. It was a dreary setting, without a blade of grass or a single flower, so I got them to hold their slates with their tree drawings above their heads.
“There,” I said. “It’s as though we’re sitting in beautiful woodland, shading us from the…” The Sans-Soleil dusk enveloped us. “Sitting in beautiful woodland,” I repeated.
After a while they were getting tired of holding their slates over their heads, so I let them put them down, and they started on their sandwiches.
A small girl was studying me curiously. She got up, ran back into the schoolhouse and returned with the Talking Stick.
“Are you a soldier, madame?” she asked.
“Only for truth and literacy,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re wearing soldiers’ boots.”
I was so impressed by this generation. Not only studying complex mathematics but also free from preconceptions about geography and gender-specific footwear.
“I wear them for comfort and practicality. Now, over the lunchbreak, would you like me to tell you a story?”
Multiple hands seized the pointer. “Yes please, madame.”
“Very well. Let me tell you a strange and disturbing story that has its roots in my country, Scotland. You know the gentleman who lives in the castle?”
“The English milord,” they chorused.
I unconsciously rechannelled the Blaine schoolmistresses. “Never let me hear you say that again! Do you remember the map you looked at earlier? What country was it?”
The hands were still on the pointer. “Scotland,” they chorused.
“Correct. Which means Lord Erroll is not English. He holds the title conferred by James II, King of Scots, in 1453. He is a Scot from the bottom of his kilt to the top of the eagle feathers in his crest badge.”
They let go of the pointer and sat attentively.
“A few years ago, Lord Erroll was visited by a writer called Bram Stoker, who came from London for his holidays because holidays in Scotland are the best holidays. Mr Stoker found Lord Erroll’s clifftop castle so inspiring that he wrote a whole novel as a result. It’s about a very wicked nobleman–”
A tiny hand clutched the pointer. “Lord Erroll? The milord is very wicked?”
The unsophisticated reader so often conflates fiction and real life. It was a salutary reminder that Mrs Spark’s egregious fantasy of precocious schoolgirls and their criminally negligent teacher must not reach the general public.
“This is nothing to do with Lord Erroll. The earl is a perfectly pleasant gentleman. The wicked nobleman Mr Stoker wrote about is called Count Dracula, and he is a vampire. Does anyone know what a vampire is?”
They shook their heads. Euclid and Pythagoras, but no Buffy or Twilight.
“Vampires live for ever,” I said. “They are called the undead. They have eyes that glow red, and very long sharp teeth. And when they feel a bit tired or elderly, they sink their long sharp teeth into the neck of the nearest human and suck out all of their blood.”
The children hugged themselves in delighted terror. If there’s one thing children like more than the scatological, it’s the hideously gruesome.
“Then the people they’ve bitten become undead as well and go around biting people,” I went on.
The pointer was appropriated. “And then do the new human people the new undead people have bitten go undead as well and start biting more people?”
“Yes,” I said, “of course.”
“So, at the end is everyone undead?”
“The story stops before that happens,” I said. “It ends with Count Dracula getting killed properly. The popular belief is that vampires can be killed only by driving a stake through their heart…”
I was going on to explain that this never happened in the novel, and that Dracula had actually been despatched with a Bowie knife, when the child grasping the pointer said, “How long do you think it would take for everyone to be undead?”
“It would depend,” I said.
“Depend on what?”
“The size of the total population, and the frequency with which vampires bite people,” I said. “It’s easier if we pose the question slightly differently. Let’s ask how many people a vampire bites per month. Then we can work out how many vampires there are in however many months have passed after our starting point.”
There was a mass seizing of the pointer.
“Please may we have a sum?” asked Cart Woman’s daughter.
“Yes, please, madame!” said her neighbour.
“A sum?” I said. “This isn’t a maths lesson. This is your lunch hour. I’m telling you a story.”
“We like sums.” It was the wee scone this time. “We haven’t been able to do any sums for ages.”
Who was I to say that stories were superior to sums? The children looked at me expectantly, their half-eaten baguettes discarded beside them. I appropriated a spare slate and wiped it clean with my lace-trimmed cotton handkerchief.
“Very well. Let v represent the number of vampires and B represent the number of people who are bitten. Let’s suppose that Dracula, and all other vampires, bite B new people every month, and these people all turn into new vampires by the next month. If at the start of the month you have v vampires, then at the end you have the original v, plus v times B. So, altogether you have …” I wrote carefully on the slate, trying not to let the pencil squeak too horribly. “… v x (B+1). And a month later, you have?”
There was an outbreak of spitting as they cleaned the tree drawings off their slates, followed by a screeching of pencils. The wee scone and Cart Woman’s daughter scribbled like the clappers. And in a photo finish, they both held up their slates, with identical formulae: v x (B+1) x (B+1).
“Exactly,” I said. “Everyone clear how we got that?”
A few of the other children looked baffled, and the next thing, the wee scone and Cart Woman’s daughter were talking them through it until their brows cleared.
“Let’s start with Dracula on his own,” I said, writing v=1 on my slate. “After n months, we have…” I wrote (B+1) x (B+1) x … x (B+1) n times vampires.
The wee scone’s e
yes were shining. “Madame,” he whispered, “what is the population of the world?”
Cart Woman’s daughter grinned at him. “Oh yes,” she said.
They were both way ahead of the others.
I made a quick estimate of the world population in 1900. “About two billion,” I said, and they nodded. I wondered whether the Founder had a scheme through which one could become an honorary Blainer.
“Let’s say the vampires are very restrained and only bite one new person every month,” I said. “Then it’s not just v=1, but B=1 as well. In that case—”
Suddenly all the children dropped their slates and scrambled to their feet. The schoolmaster was approaching.
“What is the meaning of this?” he shouted. “You’re all late for your practical biology lesson!”
I got up as well, standing head and shoulders taller than the tallest pupil. I had the satisfaction of seeing the schoolmaster’s eye twitch when he caught sight of me.
“Madame,” he stammered, “I thought you said you would only be an hour or so.”
I had, and I had gone well over, but I wasn’t going to apologise.
“Time is irrelevant when one is imparting knowledge,” I said, even though the Marcia Blaine school day was divided into precise fifty-minute periods. “But, in fact, I’ve finished teaching and we are merely amusing ourselves with a little light algebra over the lunch break.”
“So I may take charge of the pupils again?”
“For the moment. They’re bright little things, quick learners. There’s a lot more I can do with them.”
The children were still standing to attention, apparently deaf to the exchange, but the wee scone and Cart Woman’s daughter gazed wistfully at their slates.
“Get the slates back in the classroom and go and find your buckets,” the schoolmaster snapped. “These cows won’t milk themselves.”
I wondered if I should tell him about robot milking parlours, but I knew he wouldn’t believe me.
He set off like a non-musical Pied Piper, the children trailing after him. I was left alone in the playground, surrounded by bits of filled baguette. I was still quite hungry. It was too late to invoke the five-second rule, but it’s also important to eat a peck of dirt over one’s lifetime, so I ate my way through them.
It was beginning to prey on my mind that I still didn’t know what my mission was. There was so much talk about the forest that it must surely be a place worth investigating. The children showed no fear of it, and while perhaps I wasn’t as fleet-footed as they were when it came to evading wild animals, I could think more strategically and I packed a punch.
Not that I could investigate yet. It was crucial to avoid getting into any more trouble with the law in case I was jailed again. I would wait until it was dark, and then sneak in unobserved. But first I would have to go back to Madeleine’s to retrieve my head torch. It would be dangerous, given the likelihood of her being a cold-blooded killer, but that meant I was already on my guard and in the right frame of mind to go into the forest.
I set off in the direction of Madeleine’s, in unobtrusive mode, and was thrilled to see a group of elderly men congregating around my Jane Avril poster and chattering excitedly. I strolled by them to hear what they were saying.
“They’re right racy, these can-can dancers.”
“You’re telling me. You get to see their drawers.”
“I wasn’t planning on going, but if there’s going to be drawers on show–”
I stopped being unobtrusive. “How dare you talk like this about a distinguished performer? In fact, how dare you talk like this about any woman? This casual sexism is outrageous, and I want you all to apologise right now.”
“She’s the one showing her drawers,” said one of the elderly men, pointing at the poster.
“No, she’s not,” I said. “That’s her petticoat.”
“It looks like her drawers.”
“I’m the one who painted it, and I can assure you, it’s not her drawers, it’s her petticoat. Really, I despair – seeing drawers where there aren’t any.”
“Where there aren’t any?” repeated another elderly man in a hopeful sort of way.
I didn’t even speak. I just turned my prefect’s gaze on them.
“Sorry, madame,” he gabbled. “I spoke out of turn.”
“Sorry, madame,” they all mumbled. “Very sorry.”
“All right,” I said. “Now stop leering at a work of art that you’ve completely misinterpreted and move along.”
They backed away, but one whispered to another, “I’m still going, just in case.”
“Oi!” I shouted. “I heard that! I’ll be checking people at the door.”
I waited to be sure they weren’t returning to do more leering, and spotted the mayor trudging up a lane, looking thoroughly entangled with the cares of this world.
“Hello,” I called, making my way towards him. “I’ve had a great morning in the classroom with the schoolchildren.”
He looked aghast. “In the classroom? What about the milking?”
This anti-intellectualism was disturbing.
“They’re away to do that now,” I said, hoping that he would pick up on my disapproval. “We achieved a great deal in the classroom through cross-curricular studies designed to create successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors. We also sang. Yes, I meant to ask you about that. They sang me their cheese song for your Cheese Day.”
The mayor let out a terrible groan.
“Gout?” I said facetiously. “It’s all that cheese you French eat.” I sacrificed accuracy for the sake of humour. It has long been thought that gout sufferers should avoid dairy products, but the latest studies suggest that these can actually reduce the levels of uric acid and hence the risk of an attack.
“The cheese,” he moaned. “What if …” His words tailed off.
“What if what?” I asked curiously.
“No – nothing – it would be too dreadful. There’s still another full day. It will be fine. The celebrations will go perfectly.” It was as though he was talking to himself.
“It’s the celebrations I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. “I wondered if you could clarify them for me a wee bit.”
“Of course. They will be great celebrations. The best celebrations ever.”
A real politician’s answer.
“I have to say, I’m confused,” I said, which was something I rarely had to say. “The fourteenth of July is Bastille Day. France’s national day. Celebrated across the country. But apparently not here.”
“Bastille Day!” The mayor looked as though he was about to spit, but fortunately didn’t. “Madame, we in Sans-Soleil have had a cheese festival on the fourteenth of July since the Middle Ages, when the monks of Sans-Foi took up cheese-making at the behest of the Unknown Abbot.”
He genuflected in the direction of the main square with its sacerdotal statue. “And then, as always, Paris dictated to the provinces and told us that from now on, the fourteenth of July would be called Bastille Day. The villagers tried it for a year – they made a model of the Bastille and threw cheese at it, except nobody was quite sure what the Bastille looked like. It got squashed by the cheese anyway, so the next year things just went back to normal, and so they’ve continued.”
“And what exactly is normal?” I asked. “What happens?”
The mayor looked nonplussed. “We celebrate cheese.”
“What kind of cheese?”
“Every kind. But in pride of place is our own unique local cheese.”
“And how do you celebrate?”
“The usual way. We look at it, we examine it, we discuss it, we throw it, we eat it. Not the bits we’ve thrown, obviously.”
“For a whole day? There must be a lot of cheese.”
The mayor ran his fingers distractedly through his thick, lustrous hair leaving it attractively tousled. “Yes,” he muttered, “there must be. There must be!�
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“And it’s not just cheese. You’ve got the international singing star,” I reminded him in the hope of cheering him up.
It worked. “Yes, that’s right,” he said. “That was my idea, to expand the events in order to draw a bigger audience.”
“A bit like the Edinburgh Festival and the Fringe,” I said.
He looked blank.
“I mean it’s a really good strategy, and I’m sure it will keep getting bigger and better,” I said.
“Yes,” he agreed, “that’s exactly what’s happened. When the teacher found out I’d hired the singer, he said he would write the song for the children.”
“I was quite surprised by that,” I said. “The teacher is so obsessed with manual work that I didn’t have him down as a lyricist.”
The mayor grimaced. “Not the current teacher. The previous teacher.”
That made more sense. The teacher who had taught them English, history, geography and Euclidian geometry. “The one who was torn to death by wild animals.”
“Perhaps,” muttered the mayor, staring at the ground.
Perhaps?
“You mean he wasn’t torn to death by wild animals?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how he died. I just know he’s dead. I wonder how I’ll die.” He gave a bitter laugh.
“I’ve already told you, if you want to minimise your chances of heart attack and stroke, cut back on the booze and the cheese,” I said.
“Ah yes,” he said, laughing again. “Such good advice. Advice I fear I shall have to follow.”
He glanced down the road and gave a despairing exhalation. “I must go. I have no work to give her. How can I give her work when…” He disappeared back down the side lane without saying goodbye.
It was Cart Woman who had caught his attention. Now I caught hers. She indicated that she wanted to talk to me, so I stayed where I was.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” she called as she got within earshot. “She’s got work to do.”
More anti-intellectualism.
“She’s off milking cows,” I said.
Cart Woman rolled her eyes. “She should have finished doing that ages ago.”
“Sorry, I think that might be my fault,” I said in a tone that contained not a trace of apology. “I was teaching them. She’s smart, your wee girl. Particularly in maths.”
