Nine Till Three and Summers Free

by Mike Kent

  ‘Maybe. But I think motivation is the important thing. Showing cubs how to tie a knot or light a camp fire is still a practical teaching experience. If I can do it well for a small group, I’m sure I could be just as successful with a large class.’

  ‘That sounds a little conceited to me, Mr. Kent. Do you consider yourself to be conceited?’

  ‘Yes… no… er… I simply meant…

  Dr Bradley leaned back in his chair, took a packet of Capstan full strength cigarettes from the pocket of his gown and smiled reassuringly.

  ‘Don’t worry, 1 know what you meant, Mr. Kent,’ he said. ‘I am merely testing your patience. Children do it all the time. Now, you were talking about your practical experience, so please don’t let me put you off. Tell me more.’

  His cigarette lit, I talked through a haze of tobacco smoke, which he tried unsuccessfully to wave away. Still smarting a little, I described how, as a sixth former, I had been given plenty of opportunity to work with junior classes. I had found the experience enjoyable, further convincing me that teaching might offer me an interesting, varied career.

  ‘Worthy sentiments, indeed,’ Dr Bradley commented. ‘But are you absolutely certain that you want to come straight into college? You’ve been studying for seven years, and many students find it beneficial to have a break between school and higher education. You could take a year off and try… I don’t know… bricklaying or something.’

  ‘Bricks don’t have minds. And I don’t think I’d be able to build them in straight lines.’

  ‘Bricks don’t answer you back, either, and that is a distinct advantage. They are also somewhat easier to put in straight lines than a bunch of ten year olds. You have cement, for a start.’

  The Doctor smiled to himself and turned the page on my application form.

  ‘You have very neat handwriting, Mr. Kent. That’s supposed to denote a methodical mind. About a third of the applications we receive are unreadable, the spelling chronic and the grammar virtually non-existent. Why do you think that is?’

  ‘Rotten teaching?’

  ‘Possibly. Or poor teacher training, perhaps. Employers tell me that school leavers can’t read, write or add up. These days the secondary school blames the junior school and the junior school blames the infant school. People of my age were taught properly, Mr. Kent. It was different in those days, eh?’

  I knew I was being baited, but I refused to be drawn.

  ‘Not necessarily. Some teachers will always be competent and others ineffectual. It’s the teaching techniques that have changed.’

  ‘Indeed. And the children have suffered. They’re not taught to read any more. Nowadays, children are treated as delicate individuals who shouldn’t participate in competitive sport in case they break each other’s legs. Doesn’t current primary school policy state that children should become… what’s the phrase… agents in their own learning? In other words, please themselves?’

  Dr Bradley puffed hard on his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke across the desk. I coughed and felt vaguely nauseous.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. In the best primary classrooms, the work is suited to the individual child and structured with great care. But it’s still essential for children to be taught to read.’

  ‘Really? We’re into the sixties, and these days I thought children were supposed to learn to read as they jogged along with an integrated project on head lice or something?’

  ‘Not at all. And anyway, it depends on where you are teaching. Children from deprived inner city homes will always need a lot more skill isolation than those from the suburbs. If they can’t read effectively, they won’t be able to do much else.’

  Dr Bradley gestured expansively: ‘Thank God for that. You’ve put my mind at rest. I shall worry no more about the plight of primary education. We could now turn to reading methods, mathematics, calculators in the nursery class and so forth, but I shall have to be brief. Shall we look instead at your own academic achievements? You have a somewhat motley collection of GCEs. English, chemistry, economics… have you been exploring the laws of diminishing marginal utility with the aid of a test tube and a packet of litmus paper?’

  ‘Yes, they’re a bit varied,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘But I’m interested in a wide range of things. And those happen to be my favourite subjects.’

  ‘Surely it would have been more sensible to opt for subjects that complemented each other? I mean, chemistry and English? That’s not a match made in heaven, is it?’

  ‘I do have others,’ I pointed out, wondering why my choice of subjects should matter so much when I wanted to teach primary children, not lecture in a university.

  There was a light knock on the door. A secretary entered with a pile of letters on a small tray, murmured an apology for the interruption and withdrew cautiously. Dr Bradley glanced briefly at the envelopes and then looked up at me, changing the course of the conversation.

  ‘Now, what about your personal qualities?’ he asked. ‘Have you the patience of a saint, the stamina of a horse, the staying power of a pair of braces, a delicate sense of humour like my own?’

  ‘Yes. Fortunately I have all those qualities,’ I said, throwing caution to the winds and hardly believing this interview wasn’t a dream.

  ‘Jolly good. Well, I’m convinced you could cope with a rowdy class, so let’s see if we can sum up your chances. Your place here is naturally dependent on your exam results. If you do come, you’ll be required to study two subject courses, as well as the primary education courses. We have a strong science department, but we also do a combined sciences course, which you may prefer. That counts for two subjects. Place all your eggs in the same test tube, as it were. I hope you pass your English, because we tend to specialise in that. What are you reading at the moment… Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Orwell, Milton, Scouting for Boys?’

  ‘Mickey Spillane,’ I answered.

  ‘Mmm. Are you indeed? His poetry, prose or critical essays? Oh well, don’t let me catch you reading Mickey Spillane in class. Not to the under fives, anyway. Good Lord, look at the time…’

  He stood up, took my arm, and ushered me to the door.

  ‘Mr. Kent, rest assured that I shall consider your application very carefully. You seem to be able to read and write, and that counts for a lot these days. You just might have a promising career before you in the teaching profession. Your own headmaster has endorsed this view.’

  ‘You know him?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘Oh yes, we play golf together. A second opinion is always valuable. Can’t judge the calibre of students just by reading bits of paper or talking to them, you know. They often lie through their teeth. Now, back to school and pass those exams. Economics, chemistry and English. Dear God!’

  He shook my hand and strode off down the corridor. I was shaken and a little bewildered, but I had the distinct feeling that this interview just might have gone rather well…

  SEPTEMBER

  ARRIVAL, FIRST FRIENDSHIPS… AND MILLY

  The tube train clattered to a halt and I peered through the crowd of rush hour passengers to glimpse the name of the station. Victoria. Two more stops and I would be there.

  Pushing an elbow into the person crammed up against me, I forced enough room to take the letter out of my pocket for the umpteenth time. I still couldn’t quite believe that I’d been accepted at St. James’s. My exam results, although satisfactory, were not as good as I’d hoped. Perhaps, after all, it had been the interview and my headmaster’s report that had clinched things.

  For a couple of days I’d basked in the euphoria of success before my mother reminded me I’d need to buy some new clothes, the textbooks of educational theory prescribed by the college, a new suitcase and all the bits and pieces I’d need for my first year in college as a resident student. Although I was eligible for a government grant, my parents were required to contribute
a sizeable amount too, but, unknown to me, my mother had been putting money aside for just such an occasion.

  The doors of the train slid open and I heaved my case towards the exit escalator, battling with a cold September wind as I hurried towards the nearest taxi. The driver peered at me and chewed on the matchstick in his mouth.

  ‘Where to, mate?’

  ‘St. James’s, please.’ The driver watched, frowning, as I wrestled with the suitcase, but offering no assistance.

  ‘St. James’s what, mate? St. James’s Church, St. James’s Hotel, St. James’s Hostel, St. James’s Street, St. James’ Infirmary…’

  ‘St. James’s Training College,’ I interrupted. ‘It’s a teachers’ training college in Merton Road.’

  ‘Oh, right. New student, are you? It’s not too far from here. You can walk it from the station. Don’t suppose you felt like walking with that case, though.’

  He turned back to the wheel, nudging the taxi into the early evening traffic. Commuters were hurrying from the station, their faces set with a grim determination to get home as quickly as possible and out of the wind, which seemed to be warning another early and very cold winter. The taxi edged across the traffic lights and turned into the main road. The driver half turned his head towards me.

  ‘Come from London?’

  ‘The outskirts. Ealing, actually.’

  ‘Ealing? Queen of the suburbs they used to call it. I was born there, but it’s changed a lot now. Are you going to teach, then?’

  ‘I’m going to try.’

  ‘Kids don’t want to learn these days. I wouldn’t teach them if they paid me ten times what I make as a cabby.’

  Nothing like encouragement and enthusiasm for the noble teaching profession, I thought.

  ‘Trouble is,’ said the driver, gesticulating with one hand and steering with the other, ‘half of ‘em know what a rough time they’ll have trying to find a job anyway, so they don’t bother. They expect it on a plate these days. And the teachers don’t have any control. I mean, what hope have you got if you can’t control the kids? In the old days, they’d get a good clout round the ear. Seems crazy to me.’

  I’d heard the same opinion many times, but I listened politely while the driver outlined his own methods of running the educational system, which seemed roughly on a par with the conditions existing a century ago. The taxi suddenly executed a sharp right turn and slowed down.

  ‘The gates are just a bit further along here. Might see you again, eh? After all, you’ll be here for a year or two.’

  He made it sound like a prison sentence, I thought, as the taxi pulled neatly into the kerb outside the huge wooden gates of the college, which lay concealed behind them. On an impulse, probably motivated by the possibility of missing out on a tip, the driver lifted my case from the back seat and stood it by the gates. I paid him, added a fair tip, and then turned my collar up against the wind.

  Once inside the gates I was reminded of the shock I’d had when I’d attended for interview. It was as if I’d been magically transported back several hundred years. Although the building was only a hundred years old, it had been constructed in the neo-Gothic, perpendicular style and was obviously modelled on the Oxbridge colleges, oozing a long heritage of learning and scholarship. A fortress-like gatehouse led from the main road into a front quadrangle, flanked by a chapel on the left and a large dining hall on the other. To the rear of them were the lecture rooms and theatre, practical workshops, gymnasium and the assembly hall. The cracked paving stones that made up the footpaths beneath the sprawling arches seemed to be engaged in a constant struggle with the weeds, although I noticed that since I’d last visited part of the west wall had been shorn up with immense wooden pillars, ready for yet another repair to the fabric.

  In the centre of the quadrangle was an immaculately manicured lawn bordered by precisely tended flower beds that seemed distinctly out of character with the surroundings. Since the lawn provided the quickest route to the main entrance, I heaved my suitcase across it until an agonised cry brought me to a halt. A thin, suntanned man in caretaker’s overalls and a battered trilby was waving both arms and gesticulating wildly at me.

  ‘Off! Get off! Bloody get off!’ he shouted, his voice ricocheting around the buildings. ‘Get off! I’ve spent all day spraying and trimming, and what do you do? Bloody well walk all over it! Can’t you bloody read?’

  My inclination was to leave the suitcase and run for my life, but a glance at the caretaker’s face suggested that if the case so much as touched one blade of grass, all my belongings would be hurled into the nearest dustbin.

  ‘Sorry, but I didn’t see a notice…’

  The caretaker waved an admonishing finger at me.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you bloody did. I’ve had fifty pairs of boots buggering every blade growing on this lawn, and none of ‘em saw the notice. Every year it’s the same. I dunno why I bother. When I retire in two year’s time you lot can grow your own bloody lawn, but while I’m still here, use the bloody pathway.’

  He strode off, still muttering, and throwing caution to the winds I hurried across the rest of the lawn and climbed the steps to the main door. I was met by an older student who smiled a greeting and took the case from me.

  ‘Welcome,’ he said warmly. It was the first encouraging word I’d heard all day. ‘Just put your case over here for a moment while I cross your name off the list. Now, who are you?’

  ‘Kent. Michael. I…’

  ‘Kent. Let’s see… Ah yes, here we are. Room nineteen, top corridor. A long way to drag your case, I’m afraid. Sign this, and then I’ll show you where to go. I suppose I couldn’t interest you in some second hand course books? Rock bottom prices. What are you studying?’

  ‘The sciences.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ he frowned, ‘unless you fancy changing your subject to the philosophy of religion. Have you bought your books on educational theory? I can do you Dewey, Plato, Rousseau… all for the price of a pint. Well, several pints, actually.’

  I explained that I’d already bought everything recommended on the college booklist, courtesy of my mother’s insistence. He gave a disappointed shrug.

  ‘The perennial problem. Freshers rushing off to buy their books before they even get here. Well, if you find anyone who wants some stuff on religious philosophers… Plato, Aquinas… or well thumbed copies of Motorcycle Monthly or Naked As Nature Intended, point them in my direction. I’ll be around for a couple of days.’

  He pinned the list of names back on the notice board, among details of football fixtures, societies wanting members, meetings wanting attendances and a brief note urging the bugger who’d nicked all the bathplugs from corridor five to return them immediately. The fact that the paper had turned brown suggested that the inhabitants of corridor five had gone without baths for some time.

  ‘Okay. If you follow me, I’ll take you upstairs.’

  The weight of my case made this difficult, especially as he set an alarming pace. After climbing stone stairs for what seemed an eternity, we reached the third corridor. It was narrower than those below, and much darker due to the lack of windows. The air had a slightly musty smell, probably due to the deteriorating state of the roughly plastered walls. My guide came to an abrupt halt halfway along the corridor and I put my case down with great relief.

  ‘Here we are then. This one’s yours. Make yourself at home. There’s a short welcome meeting for all the new students in the main hall at six-thirty. You can see the hall from your window. I’m sure you’ll soon find your way around the building.’

  Summoning my remaining strength, I pushed the door open and shoved the case forcibly into the room. There was a strangulated cry from behind the door and a very large lady in a dirty green overall leaned round the door. I apologised humbly.

  ‘That’s all right, cock,’ she grinned, revealing teeth that
might have been inherited from a pirate. ‘Let yer off this time. I’ve finished up in ‘ere anyway. New, are yer?’

  ‘Yes. I arrived half an hour ago.’

  She leaned on her broom handle and pushed strands of black hair up inside the duster tied round her head. Her tiny bright eyes were inquisitive but friendly, and the healthy pink glow of her cheeks suggested that she’d never worried about anything in her life. A podgy hand scratched around in a pocket of her overalls, and pulled out a packet of tobacco and some liquorice papers. Fashioning a skinny cigarette with the expertise of a cowboy, she looked me firmly in the eye.

  ‘You’ll like it ‘ere, love. They never do a stroke of work. ‘Ard enough job I ‘ave just gettin’ ‘em out of their beds in the mornin’.’ She sniffed loudly and wiped the dust from her face on part of a sheet that doubled as a handkerchief.

  ‘Luvly view from the window. Got one of the best rooms, you ‘ave, at least as far as the view is concerned. Feller killed ‘imself in ‘ere a couple of years ago. ‘Lectrocuted ‘imself. ‘E was worried about ‘is exams.’

  ‘Oh dear. That’s awful.’

  ‘They all worry, sooner or later,’ she went on pessimistically. ‘I says to ‘em, if you did a bit more work you wouldn’t ‘ave to worry. Don’t you be one of ‘em, love. ‘Avin’ a bit o’ fun’s all right, but you got to do the work as well. Stands to reason, don’t it love.’ She flicked her half finished cigarette into her dustpan and then picked up a duster from the bed.

  ‘You know what?’ she continued ominously. ‘They say ‘e still wanders about, but I wouldn’t worry if I was you, love. I ain’t never seen ‘im yet. Mind you, I ain’t bin ‘ere after dark.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if I see him. Now I really should get my things unpacked.’

  ‘Of course, love, don’t let me stop yer. What’s yer name, then?’