Desperate Measures

by R. B. Baxter

  Chapter 4 - The Preparation

  You didn’t see many lay-teachers in Catholic schools in the sixties but Saint Joseph’s in Barclay had two of them. Mrs Handley, a dangerously cranky woman who taught the third-class was infamous. Her volatility was legend and stories about her accuracy with the metal whistle she kept on a long key chain struck fear into the heart of any who went near her. With the speed of a striking funnel-web spider she would swing this chain and whack you hard on the knuckles with the whistle. She swung it with such sudden viciousness that often the only warning you received was the ominous warble the whistle made the instant before it struck. That warble was made by the wind rushing by the whistle’s mouthpiece as it cut through the air at lightning speed. Mrs Handley, exuding always an aura of pernicious intent, was definitely a woman to stay well clear of.

  The other lay-teacher was my teacher, Mrs Payne. Mrs Payne was nice and although she had her homicidal moments, she normally refrained from trying on a daily basis to maim children. Because of that, and the fact that she was remarkably predictable and unflappable, she was not particularly well-known within the school for anything much at all. But by the end of the day of the Archbishop’s visit things would be very different.

  For the six weeks leading up to the great man’s visit the school had been in an uproar. Unlike other visiting dignitaries before him the Archbishop was not satisfied with simply meeting our local priests at the presbytery and then enjoying tea and bikkies with the nuns later on. He was driven by entirely different forces. Expressing a desire to plumb the depths of these young people’s knowledge and to ensure that they were being well indoctrinated into the teachings of the Catholic Church, he had expressed a desire to walk about and chat with all the students in their classrooms.

  His request had been made innocently enough and to the uninitiated it would be perceived as such, but the nuns knew otherwise. The Archbishop’s keen interest in how well the kids of his diocese were being educated made him quite famous and word of his predilection for visiting every classroom on his scholastic tours and holding small spontaneous quiz sessions raced around the Catholic school system at supersonic speed and threw every principal into a teeth-gnashing frenzy.

  Because of that, an enormous militaristic operation swung into action at St. Jo’s. First of all a great shuffling of desks took place as those students thought most likely to offend through ignorance, appearance, or objectionable personal habits—or in the case of Clive Barnett, all three—were moved into the less conspicuous corners of the classroom.

  The nose-pickers in particular were herded so far into the back of the room as to be almost invisible. The principal visited every room checking to see that everything was as it should be. Casting her eye over the new seating arrangements in our room, she was nodding her head in satisfaction until she noticed Clive. You could see her confidence immediately dissolve. Regardless of where Mrs Payne put him, Sister Francis was never going to be happy. The mere presence of Clive Barnett was a cause of major concern to her.

  Sister Francis stood and thought for a long while and then placing her hands behind her back, strolled slowly among the desks, wending her way to and fro between them until she had made her way up to the far corner of the classroom to where Clive had been relegated. Upon arrival she turned to see just how far he truly was from the front of the classroom and you could tell by the way she furrowed her brow and bit her bottom lip that she felt it wasn’t far enough. The other side of town wouldn’t be far enough for Clive as far as the principal was concerned.

  Turning around she looked down at her nemesis who was sitting there staring cow-eyed back up at her. Then letting her gaze slide off him she ran her eye along the back wall of the classroom finally stopping when it lit upon the tall storage cupboard situated midway along its length. After a slight pause she strolled across and began appraising it up close.

  It was a large cupboard, more of a wardrobe really, designed to hold a lot of stuff. In fact, even now it held most of the school’s meagre supply of sporting equipment. It was big enough to hold anything you might turn your mind to and it was not hard to see Sister Francis’s train of thought as she stood there stroking the varnished timber of the battered old door:

  “It’s a large cupboard, nice and roomy, certainly big enough for a young boy. Perhaps if he were made to lie down? Why, we could even put in some blankets and possibly a pillow or two. I’m sure he’d be quite comfortable...”

  But then she shook her head, gave a deep sigh and moved slowly back out to the front of the classroom. The reason for her behaviour was simple. Clive Barnett was anathema to the nuns of St. Joseph’s school in Barclay and especially to its principal.

  Clive’s parents owned a small lump of dirt on the edge of town and were market gardeners. At this they barely survived and were it not for their young son, imbued as he was with a work ethic completely foreign to the Barnett elders—both of whom liked a drink—they would have lost everything and been in the poorhouse long ago.

  As it was Clive rose every morning at five and put in three hours of backbreaking labour among the carrots and cauliflowers, slogging away at the sort of work that would give a man twice his age and three times his size reason to groan and moan. Then he would run back to the house, scoff a quick breakfast consisting of pretty much anything he could lay his hands on and take himself off to school. After a full day of scholarly pursuit he would tear back home and throw himself upon the rows of vegetables with a vengeance until it became too dark to see anymore.

  Because Clive was always pushed for time he cut back wherever he could. He eliminated from his routine those things he considered unimportant and likely to clutter up his already hectic day. Since he saw little value in bathing, a regular shower was the first thing to go. He lived with a constant grey smudge of grime across the back of his neck and his fingernails did not bear looking at.

  Clive had to sit with Arnie Grace because Arnie had failed to get his head out of the way of a six-stitcher that was in the process of travelling to the boundary at the speed of a bullet. It hit him plumb in the face and the resultant broken nose had never healed properly. Because of this Arnie had lost his sense of smell. He was therefore the only kid who could sit beside Clive in our two-seater school desks and not whinge constantly about the smell.

  Clive’s disdain for personal hygiene was bad enough but it wasn’t that that upset Sister Francis the most. Clive was a chronic nose-picker and it was this more than his general state of filthiness that gave Sister Francis pause. Gouging away at his nasal passages with a filthy index finger was a practice that Clive Barnett took seriously and he could be spied more often then not with a digit buried deep inside one nostril or the other.

  Even more unsettling for the principal and the other nuns was the fact that Clive didn’t seem to care one bit where he was or who he happened to be around when he did it. If the urge struck, up went Clive’s finger and to hell with the social niceties.

  Many of us could never understand why the principal did not request that Clive’s parents find him another school. There was always the local government primary school on the other side of town. A perfectly acceptable school, albeit one populated by hundreds of non-Catholics and other assorted heathens, but they had to accept him there. They had no choice. It was the law. They had to take anyone who applied. But Mum reckoned that Sister Francis tolerated Clive because she admired the way he dealt with his difficult lot in life. Mum was probably right. The principal certainly was more patient with him than she was with many of the other kids.

  But the mere thought that Clive might suddenly get the urge to start tickling his sinuses while in full view of the Archbishop was too much for Sister Francis and she began to formulate a plan to get Clive out of the way for the day. I heard she had even considered telling Clive’s parents to keep him home from school that day which I thought was horrendously unfair. If the simple act of picking your nose could score you a day off school I would have been di
gging away like a goldminer long ago.

  But I need not have worried. Instead of taking such a drastic step the principal decided Clive should simply go and sit in the church for the duration of the Archbishop’s visit. In there he could pick his nose to his heart’s content and with the possible exception of our Lord, Jesus Christ, no-one would see him.

  With all the undesirables moved up to the back of the room, the presentables were then moved into the front rows and while I had no desire to be placed amongst the nose-pickers, I had even more fear of being cast amongst the brainiacs at the front of the class. Anyone sitting up there would fall directly under the Archbishop’s gaze as soon as he walked in. And stuck up there in such a prominent position he may even ask you more than one question!

  My qualifications on the academia front were obviously lacking however because when the dust settled I found myself nicely situated somewhere around the middle of the room.

  For a fortnight beforehand we practised rising from our desks to stand at attention and chant in perfect unison: ‘Good morning your Grace and may God bless you.’ A sharp rap on the knuckles with a ruler could be expected if you were even the tiniest bit out of sync.

  It was during these practise sessions that I realised with spleen-chilling horror that when we stood to attention I was taller than many of the kids around me. This of course made me all the more conspicuous and that was not a situation I was happy with. I had to do something.

  At home, with nobody watching, I experimented with various postures in an effort to make myself as small as possible while standing and as a result, perfected the ability of crouching to attention. Now when we rose to bellow our greeting I caved in my chest, hunched my shoulders forward and bent my knees slightly. It made me look like a constipated Quasimodo but it reduced my height by a good half a foot or so. It was murder on my back, thighs and knees but I didn’t care. If it made me less noticeable and less likely to be singled out by the Archbishop then a few sore muscles and a stiff back was a small price to pay.

  The amount of time we spent on our daily recitations of the times-tables doubled and the length of the boy’s hair and the girl’s hemlines were microscopically studied. A boy’s hair had to be a least an inch from the top of his collar. This created all sorts of problems for Fatty Parker who, while endowed with a generous surplus of chins, had no neck at all to speak of.

  Fatty adored Mrs Payne and the nuns in general and he always did whatever they told him to do promptly and without question. But no matter how hard he tried he could not come up to the mark on this occasion. Regardless of how many short-back-and-sides he got that week from a bemused Mr Plumpton, the local barber, the hair on the back of his neck would always touch the top of his collar. He solved the problem by shaving the back of his neck almost up to the crown of his head which, with his pasty red face, made him look like a fat, pink toilet brush. When Mrs Payne first saw him, she stared for a long time before finally shaking her head and muttering to herself; “Stupid, stupid boy”.

  The girl’s were made to kneel on the floor as their hemlines were scrupulously measured. The hemline had to touch the floor or else it was home to mum with a note demanding that the offending garment be lengthened immediately. Although they were not directly in the firing line our parents grew to dread the long and detailed notes, blistering in their criticisms, which were sent home regularly with their children. Hardly a day passed without some sort of missive being dragged out of a bag or lunch-box and handed across to a pale and apprehensive mother.

  One note from Sister Francis reminded all who read it that every child without exception must be in full school uniform on the day of his Grace’s visit. This of course meant wearing a tie, the absence of which the nuns, even the stiff and school-proud Sister Francis, normally turned a blind eye to.

  I hated my tie and had not worn it for ages and there was a moment’s panic when it couldn’t be found. I tracked it down eventually however. It was wedged deep down behind my wardrobe and emerged all mildewed, cobwebbed and wrinkled. It was in such dreadful shape it looked as though the cat had wiped its bum on it. It took some serious sponging and a concerted effort with a hot iron to get it looking half-way decent.

  Over the final week we were given the task of memorising the names of all the saints just in case the Archbishop asked something unanswerable like “Who was St Francis of Assisi and what was he famous for?”

  It was an odious task and mind-numbingly boring. I had no hope of ever remembering even a handful of them. The only saint I had no trouble remembering was Saint Jude and that was only because he turned out to be the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes. If ever there was a hopeless cause when it came to remembering any of this stuff it was me so I made sure that any of the daily prayers I had to say at school in the lead up to the Archbishop’s visit were pointed squarely in this bloke’s direction.