Miss Purdy's Class

by Annie Murray

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Gwen asked sharply.

  ‘It’s Ron, Miss,’ one of the girls volunteered. ‘His pocket’s got an ’ole in and his sweets ’ve fallen out.’

  Ron Parks’s face was split in a black-toothed grin.

  ‘Ron, come up here.’

  The boy got up. As usual he was wearing a thick wool jumper, which covered his shorts reaching almost to his knees, and was trying to clutch at the hole in his pocket, but as he came up to the front a trail of several more sugar-coated pellets dropped to the floor, red, yellow and green, rolling away under the benches.

  ‘What are those?’ Gwen asked.

  ‘Liquorice comfits, Miss.’

  ‘And what are they doing in your pocket?’

  ‘I was going to eat ’em after school, like.’

  Gwen stared at Ron, trying to suppress at smile at the artless cheekiness of his face.

  ‘No wonder your teeth are the colour they are, Ron,’ she said severely. ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life sucking soup off a spoon because you’ve got no teeth?’

  ‘Dunno, Miss Purdy.’

  ‘Why do you eat so many sweets?’

  Ron looked bemused. ‘That’s what there is. I live in a sweet shop, like.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ At this, Gwen could no longer prevent herself smiling. An image came into her mind of Ron’s entire family settling down in the evening with their knives and forks poised over platefuls of liquorice comfits, dolly mixtures and coloured marzipan. ‘You do know sugar rots your teeth, don’t you?’

  ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘Well, it does . . .’ She was about to enlarge on this when there came another crash to her left. Lucy Fernandez had toppled off her chair and into the space between the desks. Gwen rushed over to find the child lying rigid on her side, hands clawlike, her body convulsing.

  ‘Oh my goodness!’ Gwen cried. The child’s face was tinged with blue. Her eyes were half closed. She saw immediately that Lucy was suffering from some kind of fit, but she had no idea what to do.

  ‘Stay in your places!’ she cried, and ran next door. She was about to hiss ‘Miss Dawson’ to get Millie’s help, when to her horror, instead of Millie’s friendly face, she saw the severe features of Miss Monk. The woman’s head whipped round.

  ‘Yes?’ It was almost a snarl.

  Gwen went up close. ‘Could you please come and help me a moment? One of my girls seems to be having a fit.’

  Miss Monk turned to the class. ‘If any of you move or speak it’ll be straight to the headmaster’s office.’

  ‘Looking for attention, I expect,’ she said to Gwen. ‘Soon sort her out.’

  To Gwen’s relief most of her class were still seated at their desks. One or two were in a huddle round Lucy Fernandez, but the others all looked frightened.

  ‘Out of the way! Sit down! How dare you block the aisle?’ Miss Monk roared at them. She cuffed one of the boys round the ear as he moved away, then stood looking down at Lucy. Peering over her shoulder, Gwen saw that the child’s face had returned to a more normal colour, but she was still convulsed, her body in spasm.

  ‘Hmm. Seems genuine,’ Miss Monk acknowledged grudgingly. ‘Need to get something in their mouths, stop them swallowing their tongues. Give me that rule.’

  Taking the ruler which Gwen used to point at the blackboard, Miss Monk squatted down, flustered, a lock of hair working itself loose from her bun and hanging over one ear. She rammed the edge of the ruler between Lucy Fernandez’s lips, forcing it back as if she was taming a horse to accept a bit. Gwen winced.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’

  Miss Monk’s brawny complexion turned even redder. ‘Are you questioning my judgement, Miss Purdy?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Did you, or did you not, ask for my help?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gwen agreed. She clenched her hands to stop herself pulling Miss Monk away. To her relief she saw that Lucy Fernandez was beginning to lie still, her muscles more relaxed, but then she saw a pool of liquid spreading out from under her. Miss Monk noticed it a few seconds after and recoiled in disgust, backing away from Lucy’s prone body.

  ‘She’s wee’d herself,’ Gwen heard one of the children whisper.

  ‘Oh, really,’ Miss Monk exclaimed. ‘Filthy little beggar!’ She stood up, and to Gwen’s horror swung her leg, and with her flat, brown shoe delivered a hard kick into the small of Lucy Fernandez’s back. The child let out a grunt, as if air had been expelled from her lungs. Gwen gasped.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she burst out. ‘I don’t think that was necessary, was it?’

  Miss Monk looked as if she was going to explode. She seized Gwen’s wrist.

  ‘Come with me, Miss Purdy.’

  She forced Gwen out into the hall.

  ‘I’ll thank you not to question my judgement, Miss Purdy. Especially in front of a class of children. What do you know? Coming in here all dressed up like a fourpenny rabbit! You’ve only been a teacher for five minutes and don’t you forget it. It was no more than she deserved.’ Her face twisted with disgust. ‘Trying it on like that. Messing on the floor.’ She went to go back into the class, but turned for a second. ‘You needn’t go running to Mr Lowry. He’d never believe you.’

  She marched back into the room.

  ‘Go and fetch a mop,’ she ordered a plump boy, Kenny Campbell. ‘And hurry up about it! Miss Purdy, make that girl get up now and stop malingering. That’s quite enough!’

  Gwen was trembling with shock and rage, though she tried not to let the class see. Once Miss Monk had swept out of the room, she took a deep, emotional breath. She was appalled by what she had just witnessed. She had never before seen a teacher treat a child with uncontrolled viciousness. For a second she felt violently homesick for her old school, with its homely ways, and Edwin popping in from the church to help with assemblies. But she became aware of her class watching all this in cowed silence and tried to compose herself.

  ‘We must look after Lucy,’ she said, and was surprised she could sound so calm. Avoiding the pool of urine, she went to kneel beside the girl, laying a hand on her head. Lucy’s hair felt thick and wiry. She was lying still and appeared to be asleep, her pale face composed. She was not as strikingly pretty as Rosa, the sister who had brought her to school, but the slender line of her cheeks, her almost translucent skin and, when they were open, large dark eyes, combined to give her face an overall sweetness, and Gwen felt tender towards her, especially in the light of all the physical burdens she had to bear. She looked up at her silent class, sensing that in some way they had drawn closer together through sympathy with what had happened.

  ‘Jack – go and find Mr Gaffney for me, please.’ She knew the gentle assistant headmaster would help arrange to get Lucy home.

  She would have liked to pour out all that had happened to Millie Dawson, but Millie had apparently been taken ill, which was why Miss Monk had taken her place. The staffroom felt lonely without Millie to chat to. Gwen went in at dinner time, dreading having to see Miss Monk again. The woman’s cruelty and bitterness horrified her. She must be unhinged, Gwen thought. Of course the children were aggravating and a trial at times, but there was no need for that!

  Miss Monk was in the staffroom, but had settled herself in the corner with her back to the world and was reading a book in a manner that forbade anyone to come near her. For a moment Gwen felt like doing something childish to release her feelings – sticking her tongue out or thumbing her nose at the woman’s forbidding shape.

  ‘Would you like to give me a hand, dear?’

  Lily Drysdale was in the corner near the scullery, kneeling in front of what looked like a pile of old rags, sorting through them. Seeing Gwen, her face lit up under its frame of soft, white hair. Looking at her, though, Gwen realized that despite her white hair and spectacles, Miss Drysdale was not as old as she had supposed. She was wearing an unusual dress with a large-buckled belt at the front, in a fabric of
a thick, loose weave in a rich green, a colour she seemed to favour. She shifted back on her knees a little with a grimace, then gave a rueful smile.

  ‘Legs aren’t what they used to be!’

  Drawn in by her, Gwen knelt down. ‘What are you doing?’

  Lily spoke quietly. ‘I do what I can to give a bit of extra to some of the little ones. You’ll have seen the state of their clothes. Some of these families are living under such terrible strain. I ask around for contributions, you see. People have got to know – my neighbours and so on.’

  ‘How kind,’ Gwen said, touched. ‘There are certainly a few in my class whose clothes are in shreds.’ She thought of Joey Phillips. His filthy, ragged state was not the only thing that had struck her. She found her gaze often drawn back to Joey’s intense, frowning features. Just occasionally, when he was playing with Ron, or when his face relaxed, she saw that his pinched, wide-eyed face had a real beauty.

  ‘Well, that’s what they’re for, dear. Have a fudge through and see if you can find anything that fits, and take it to them. I’m just trying to sort them into different piles for size.’

  Dinner time flew past. Gwen had found a bakery near the tram stop, from where she bought her lunch every day. She munched on one of her cheese and onion cobs, and when Lily Drysdale said she had forgotten about bringing in food, Gwen gave her the second one.

  ‘That’s so kind,’ the other teacher said, holding the bread with one hand and continuing to sort through clothes with the other. ‘I’m really so disorganized about food . . .’

  Gwen stored Lily Drysdale up as another thing to tell Edwin. To her Lily seemed more alive than most people she met, but then she wondered if Edwin would really appreciate Lily. He could be quite dismissive about some of the older ladies of the parish, as if in the nervous fussiness of widowhood or spinsterhood they didn’t quite count as people. She decided to keep Lily to herself.

  Some of the clothes were threadbare, but among them she found a pair of short trousers and a slate grey jersey with patched elbows which she thought might fit Joey Phillips. She wouldn’t humiliate him in front of the class. She’d call him aside to wait until after the others had gone. She imagined the austere face of the withdrawn little boy lighting up at the sight of some new warm clothes.

  Folding them into a small bundle, she put them away in the teacher’s high desk as the children came in chattering from their dinner break.

  ‘Quiet now!’ she commanded. ‘Time for register.’

  Down the list of names she went again, to the mumbles and whispers of ‘Here, Miss.’

  ‘Speak up a bit, do,’ she urged them. ‘Joseph Phillips?’

  There was silence. His place was empty.

  ‘Does anyone know where Joey is?’

  She saw a couple of the boys exchange glances.

  ‘Jack? Eric?’

  ‘No, Miss. Dunno where he is.’

  Gwen frowned and continued calling out the names. It wasn’t the first time Joey Phillips had gone missing from afternoon school. In fact it was happening with increasing frequency. She found herself feeling disappointed at not being able to give him the clothes. But where was he? Why had he not returned to school?

  His hands were warm and sticky from the gravy seeping through the rag. Joey had tipped his school dinner into it in his lap, and the moment he was free to go outside he tore home along the street, cradling it in his hands.

  Dora was hunched up close to the dying coals of the fire Joey had built that morning, hugging the blanket round her with her thin arms. Joey had replaced the soggy cardboard over the broken window with a piece of orange box, propped up inside.

  ‘Here y’are, Mom. Brought you some dinner!’

  He tipped the cooling stew and potatoes onto a plate. His mother struggled for breath. Her cheeks were red and she was obviously feverish.

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ she whispered once she could speak. ‘Oh, Joey – that’s not your dinner, is it?’

  ‘Eat it, Mom,’ he ordered, feverish himself in his feelings. He handed her the plate and a fork. ‘It’ll make you better.’

  Dora’s features twisted. ‘No, Joey. It’s for you.’ It won’t make me better, she could have said. Nothing will now. The sickness and the baby inside her were taking every last ounce of her energy. How would she ever find the strength to bring the child into the world? She had nothing left, no courage, no feeling, only instinct seemed to keep her alive. A force which drove her to survive for this unborn child, no matter how hopeless it was. She’d given up her two babies to the home. Loss and shame were eating away at her from the inside. Shame had been her life’s companion, but now it was worse than ever. Joey and Lena would have to go to Barnardo’s too when her time came, and it couldn’t be long now. When she was alone, she slipped down into complete despair, lying for hours with her eyes closed or rocking back and forth in distress. But now Joey stood mute before her, holding out the plate. She sighed, ashamed, and took it, picking at the tepid stew.

  ‘That fire needs seeing to,’ he said gruffly.

  No, don’t go, she wanted to beg him. Don’t leave me.

  But he’d gone, ignoring the harsh comments of the women he passed in the yard, along towards the coal wharf to stuff his pockets. Once he’d built the fire, he was off again to beg some orange boxes. He walked tall, swaggering. School be damned. That was for babies. He was a man. And he had work to do.

  Five

  The School Board man turned down the entry off Canal Street. There were two women in the yard, busy with a maiding tub full of washing and a mangle. They looked up and stopped work, arms self-righteously akimbo, and as he went to number three and knocked, they rolled their eyes at each other.

  ‘Huh. Might’ve known it’d be that whore’s lad.’

  ‘You don’t want to go near ’er,’ the other one called to him raucously. ‘You never know what you might catch!’

  The man waited, tapping his pencil on his notebook, taking in the state of the house. The door looked about to fall off its hinges, the window frames were all rotten and half the downstairs window was smashed and blocked off with a flimsy bit of wood. What a bloody awful state to live in, he thought. And why was no one answering? He peered through the top part of the filthy pane and saw a shadowy movement inside. A second later the door squeaked open a few inches. The man felt the shock of what he saw register on his face. Flaming hell, the woman was no more than a living skeleton!

  She was stooped, as if very old, though he could see that in truth she could not be more than a young woman. Between matted strands of hair her face was a yellowish colour except for two burning spots high on her cheekbones. Her eyes, which bulged unnaturally in her gaunt face, held complete hopelessness. She stared at him without speaking.

  ‘I’ve come about your lad. He’s not been to school when he should. Keeps running off of an afternoon.’

  There was no reaction, as if she couldn’t hear or make sense of his words. A sickening stench came from the house.

  ‘Joseph Phillips? He is your lad?’

  She nodded, opening the door a little further. The man’s sense of horror increased. The woman was wearing an off-white, soiled garment which looked as if it had been stitched out of an old sheet, and made her look as if she was already clad in a shroud. She was obviously heavily pregnant and the bulge of the child looked grotesque against her wasted body. For a second he caught a glimpse in her features of someone who might once have been pretty, but then her face took on a sly, aggressive look.

  ‘My Joey goes to school. I seen him go off every morning, like.’ Talking made her cough alarmingly and she pressed a rag to her lips. The man looked at the ground until the fit passed. The cough looked as if it might split her body apart. In his revulsion he found some pity.

  ‘You might think so, but the school says he hasn’t. Goes some days, half the day. Some days he stays away all day. You need to make sure he attends. It’s the law.’ For some reason he found himself adding, �
��I’m only doing my job, Missis.’

  He felt the eyes of the two neighbours boring into him as he left.

  ‘You won’t get nowt out of her!’ one of them called to him. ‘Too busy whoring for the rent money to care about her kids.’

  ‘She hands ’em over to Barnardo’s when she can’t be bothered with ’em no more! Bloody disgrace, that woman.’

  The man didn’t turn his head. Christ, he’d seen everything now. This job was the limit at times – the way some folk lived! It was a relief to hurry past the slimy bricks of the entry and out into the street again.

  Joey’s name was read out in assembly. The first time, Mr Lowry stood on the little stage at the far end of the hall, looming over them all, tall and forbidding in his tweeds, and read out a short list of names, among them Joseph Phillips. Heads turned. Form Four whispered to each other. Joey wasn’t there. But the next day he was.

  Mr Lowry’s office was a small, austere room upstairs with a desk and chair and a bookshelf behind them. On the desk lay his two canes. The small, thin boy kept his eyes on them as he stood before the headmaster. They were all he was aware of, mixed with the smell of Mr Lowry’s shoe polish. You could almost see your face in his black shoes every day.

  ‘Joseph?’ Mr Lowry stood up and came round the desk. Joey didn’t look up at him, but he knew that, as usual, the headmaster was holding the riding crop, fingering it. He could see the bottom edge of the man’s jacket, his legs. ‘You haven’t been attending school.’

  Joey didn’t answer. He was numbed by exhaustion. His mind floated off elsewhere. School, Mr Lowry, all of it, was as nothing.

  ‘Have you gone deaf, boy?’ Mr Lowry spoke in his commanding, Scoutmaster tone. ‘If I ask a question, I expect the courtesy of a reply.’ He bent lower and looked into Joey’s face. Joey felt forced to look back into Mr Lowry’s large, pebbly eyes. They were cold and frightening. He had hairy nostrils and his breath smelt of stale tea.