by Gee, Maurice
‘Yeah, I guess. Where’d he get a opy?’
‘Oh, he does his homework, our Mr Stanley.’ She takes the letter. ‘I’ll have to write to him. Is there anything you’d like me to say?’
‘Tell him to jump off a cliff.’
‘Something a bit more constructive than that.’
‘I’m not going to stop using that poem if that’s what you think.’
‘I don’t want you to, Sandra. As far as I can see it’s a very good poem for girls of that age. It’s intelligent and witty and – sentimental.’ She blushes lightly at Sandra’s contempt. ‘But it doesn’t hurt to know how other people feel about it.’
‘Wanker Stanley doesn’t get a vote.’
‘I’m afraid he does. This time though, he’s in a minority. I’m only telling you, Sandra, so you’ll know what’s going on if you hear about it. He’s sent copies of this letter to the board.’
‘Another bunch of Soapy Sams.’
Norma kept her temper. ‘They’re fairly reasonable people. Well, I’ve taken enough of your time. I’ll let you get back to your Tom Round.’
‘What you should do,’ Sandra said, ‘is back me up. Write to him and tell him we’re educating people here, not locking them in little rooms and trying to pretend there’s nothing outside. These girls have got bodies, they’re not made of bloody scented soap. There’s hormones rushing round in there. They menstruate. And they’ve got ideas in their heads, I mean ideas. They’re ready to get outside and live and we lock them up with a set of rules. Shit, what’s the use of talking to people like you? You let bloody Stanley in your school. And you’ve got Muir clucking round measuring the length of skirts and snipping off leather bracelets. What’s the use?’ She threw herself back in her chair with a rattle of bells.
Norma stood up. ‘Well, I hope that makes you feel better.’
‘For Christ’s sake, I mean it.’
‘I know you do. We’ve had this argument before. I agree with some of what you say. If it’s any consolation I’ll be telling Mr Stanley that he’s wrong. But in my own words, if you don’t mind.’
‘All palsy-walsy.’
‘He’s no pal of mine. In fact he’s a silly little man. But none of us are free from silliness.’
‘Meaning me?’
‘None of us.’
‘God, you’ve got a face for everything. Who are you, Mrs Sangster? I’m not too sure there’s anyone at home.’
Norma blinked. ‘My word, you do go at things. Haven’t you heard of moderation?’
‘I’ve heard of copping out if that’s what you mean.’
I mean, Norma thought, a middle way, but could not say it. The language she must use was soft and wet, rather like a jellyfish, no bones. She knew the realities of her position – compromise was in there, certainly – but found no way of stating them. Nobody at home. It made her tremble. John Toft had said something similar. ‘You see this side and that, it is a condition. How can you have a job where decisions are made? You should be paralysed, Norma. Frozen like a statue, eh?’ He made a pose. ‘Not able to throw the discus far away or put it down.’
It’s true, but only half, Norma thought; and seemed, with that, to illustrate their judgement. She shrugged it off, bristled at their cheek. ‘Well,’ she said, standing up – and knowing that in spite of her uncertainty and anger she managed to look unconcerned – ‘I’m sorry we seem to be at cross purposes. I’d like you to be happy here, Sandra. But you have to fit in with us not us with you.’
‘Is that a threat? And what do you mean “us” anyway? You and Muir and the governors? I’m in this school because of the girls.’
‘Come and talk to me when you cool down. We can’t go on like this I’m afraid.’
Norma left the staffroom. She heard a jingle of bells and hard little steps in the corridor, then a wheeze from the lavatory door. She wondered if Sandra had gone to have a cry. That would be a good thing. Something in her needed weeping out. Aggression and anger on that scale were a sickness; and one of her own questions would have to be what damage it might do to the girls. On the other hand there was life and bite in Sandra Duff …
Norma gave a short laugh. ‘You see this side and that.’ John knew what he was talking about.
She went into Phyllis Muir’s office.
‘Ah,’ Phyllis said, ‘I was coming to see you. Lex Clearwater hasn’t turned up.’
‘Have you rung him?’
‘There’s no reply.’
‘I hope he isn’t sick.’
‘Do you? Well … I’ve got his classes covered. But I’ll need to know what’s happening tomorrow.’
‘Keep on phoning.’
‘And if there’s no reply? I can’t afford the time to be traipsing up there.’
‘I’ll go, Phyllis. Let me know at lunchtime. I need to have a talk with Lex.’ But she counted Phyllis Muir a more serious problem and wanted her out of the school as badly as Phyllis wanted Lex. ‘You must behave as if you feel His hand upon your back,’ Phyllis told the girls, ‘urging you along.’ She went about the corridors with a forward lean and darting steps and elbows jutting sharply out behind. She changed direction like a huntaway. ‘You! Girl! You with the red hair. Is that a T-shirt under your blouse?’ She terrified new girls, but as they went up the school they learned to see her as a joke. There was a case, Norma thought, for having a man as deputy principal in a girls' school – and a woman in a boys’.
‘Anyone in the sickroom?’
‘One girl with cramps and one with a migraine. A lack of intestinal fortitude in both cases.’
‘Has Mrs Parr seen them?’
‘Of course. Cramps and migraine are part of her holy writ.’
Norma sighed. ‘Anything else?’
‘Hayley Birtles. I caught her with leather bangles on her wrist and she refused to let me cut them off.’ Phyllis dived her hand into her pocket and brought out a pair of nail scissors, which she snipped several times in the air. ‘Said her father gave them to her, one for every home run she hits and he’d be “mad” if she took them off. I can’t have girls defying me like that, in front of the others.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I’ve stood her down from the softball team for the rest of the year. I’d like you to back me up on that.’
Norma closed her eyes, steadied herself. ‘No,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘No, I said. I won’t back you up.’
‘Why not?’
‘It sounds to me as if you set a confrontation up. And then, it seems, you over-reacted.’
‘The girl defied me. In front of her friends.’
‘Knowing Hayley Birtles, you shouldn’t have done it in front of her friends.’
‘I don’t take kindly to that. I’ve been managing girls for thirty-five years.’
Norma would have liked to say, And doing it badly. She held the comment back. ‘I think this girl is on a knife-edge, Phyllis. Her sister’s in trouble, as you know. So I’m not going to take away the only thing she’s good at.’
‘You’ll undermine my authority.’
‘Oh no. I’ll get those leathers off, you leave it to me. But Phyllis, please, try not to be so rigid in these things. A little give and take …’ and Norma could not prevent a smile – this side and that, no doubt about it. And yet it seemed that she could make decisions.
Back in her office, she sent for Hayley Birtles. The girl came in boldly, mutinous, but, for all her weight of thigh and arm, with a bounce and lightness Norma found appealing. Scuffed shoes, fingernails inked in different colours, and skirt, surely, an inch or two shorter than regulation. The leathers on her arm had a martial appearance.
‘Sit down, Hayley.’
She plumped into the chair and met Norma’s eye, no sliding away. Norma took a tissue from a packet in her drawer and walked round the desk. ‘Gum in here.’ For a moment Hayley seemed to consider defiance – touch and go. Then she took her gum out and dropped it in the tissue. Nor
ma put it in the waste-paper basket.
‘Well Hayley,’ she sat in the other chair instead of going back behind her desk, ‘you had a bit of trouble with Mrs Muir.’
Hayley shrugged.
‘Tell me about it.’ Get them talking, don’t let them go dumb – Norma’s rule.
Hayley made a jab with her shoulder as though warming up to pitch a ball. ‘It was just the way she shouted. “You there! You! Come here!”’ She had Phyllis Muir’s bark and head-jut exactly. The secretary opened the door and looked in.
‘It’s all right, Jane. You think she was rude to you, Hayley?’
‘I’m not a dog, Mrs Sangster. I didn’t come here to get shouted at.’
‘You know we do have rules though?’
‘Yeah, well, some of us can’t work out what they’re for.’
‘I sometimes can’t work it out myself. But there they are, and changing them would be like trying to shift Mount Everest. The one about uniforms and ear-rings and so forth isn’t going to change Hayley, not in your day and probably not in mine, though I’m working at it. If I say you can wear those leathers – and they don’t seem harmful to me, in fact I like them – but if I say you can wear them I’ll be in trouble. I’m principal, Hayley, but there are things I can do and things I can’t.’ I’m talking too much, get her to talk. ‘Does your father really give you those or did you make that up?’
‘I made it up. He knows I wear them though. He says tell you lot up here to mind your own business.’
‘Does he?’
‘He reckons people tell people what to do just to get a buzz.’
‘That’s not exactly true.’
‘I reckon Mrs Muir gets a buzz.’
‘Well, I do agree she shouldn’t shout.’
‘And these are for home runs anyway. But not from Dad. I put them on myself.’
‘They’ll be up to your elbow before the season’s over.’
‘Yeah.’ Hayley grinned.
‘Are they really so hard to untie?’
‘I can do it. Takes a bit of time.’
‘Well, why don’t we reach a compromise?’
‘What?’
‘I give a bit, you give a bit. Nobody wins and nobody loses.’
‘Sure. OK.’ She sounded uncertain.
‘I won’t cheat you, Hayley. But how about this. We’ll treat those leather bangles as a softball thing –’
‘Am I still in the team?’
‘Yes, of course. You can wear them when you play but you’ll have to take them off in school time.’
Hayley frowned. ‘Wear them in school matches? Midweek matches?’
‘Yes, that’s all right. But it’s not a start for other decorations. You’re not a ninny, you know how a little thing can lead to something bigger, and so on. In fact you and your mates are expert at it.’ Hayley grinned. ‘So, we play fair. You and I don’t want to bang our heads.’
‘Yeah, all right.’
‘An agreement?’
‘Sure. A deal. Do I have to say I’m sorry to Mrs Muir?’
Norma almost said yes. It would make things less difficult. But surely Phyllis should apologize too. Her shouting was assault and battery. ‘I’ll handle that. You just take those leathers off now. And when you go stop in the lavatory and clean that stuff off your fingernails.’
‘It’s just felt-tip. Comes off easy.’
‘Good. The leathers first.’
Hayley unpicked the knots. Several were too tight for one hand and Norma helped.
‘Hey Mrs Sangster, why doesn’t Mrs Muir have her wart cut off?’
‘It’s not a wart, it’s a mole.’
‘Well, whatever. They do it with a little thing like a teaspoon, sort of scoop it out. Doesn’t hurt.’
‘I don’t think it’s something we can very well suggest. I really don’t think it bothers her.’
‘I bet it does. My aunty had a wart cut off and it was bigger than that. On a worse part of her face too. I reckon it would make her less bad tempered.’
Norma picked at the knots in silence. She could not work out whether Hayley was being malicious or compassionate and though the problem, the subject too, intrigued her, decided to get away from it. ‘I was talking to your father on Saturday. He says he’s got to teach you to pitch slow.’
‘Yeah, the drop ball. I can do it. But it kinda seems like, I dunno, running scared.’
‘It’s taking a bigger risk, I’d have thought.’
‘Getting belted, sure. It makes you feel good when you just kind of – drop one over the edge. Real sneaky. But you could get hit over the fence.’
‘So it’s not really running scared.’
‘No, I don’t s’pose so. Thanks, Mrs Sangster, that’s real good. I would’ve got real mad if she’d cut them.’
‘Don’t forget those fingernails.’
‘I won’t. They’re good colours, eh? Don’t you reckon?’
‘Very nice. Good for out of school.’
Hayley stood up. ‘I don’t suppose I can have my gum back?’
‘No Hayley, you can’t.’
‘OK. Bye, Mrs Sangster. Thanks a lot.’
That skirt is still too short, Norma thought. But that could wait for another day. In fact the skirmishing would never stop, it was part of school life and although it was maddening, and ugly some of the time, you had to learn to live with it. Now and then you worked your way round the edge and came upon another person there – Hayley Birtles. But very likely Hayley would change back to her other self tomorrow. Norma did not expect good times every day.
Driving out at lunch-time, she stopped at the Amnesty cake stall by the oak tree.
‘Is there anything left? Oh, those look nice.’ She bought three bran muffins, three rolled oats cookies – three of everything not sold: cup-cakes with shocking-pink icing, cup-cakes with green icing and hundreds and thousands, and sticky squares made, it seemed, of puffed rice and icing sugar.
‘How much have you made?’
‘More than forty dollars, Mrs Sangster.’
‘It’s a very good cause.’
‘They torture people, Mrs Sangster. They cut off their hands and hold their heads under water and drop them out of aeroplanes,’ Belinda Round said.
‘We’re very fortunate we live in New Zealand.’
Sometimes I’m too bland, she thought, driving out the gate. Her heart seemed to fill her breast and throat. Why didn’t I just scream? She checked a spurt of vomit in her throat and drove through town and along the valley. There was no connection she could make between those sticky cakes on paper plates, riding beside her in the passenger seat, and torturers and victims and the bleeding stumps of arms. Her girls might be victims one day, it was possible, and did that mean torturers were among them too?
She stopped her car and stood by the roadside, holding her handkerchief to her mouth. Below her the river ran in glossy undulations over tan gravel and variegated stones. Green weed pointed downstream and made a fishy movement at the point. I suppose all this is beautiful, Norma thought; but could not respond. She felt soggy, malodorous, filled with heavy tissues and sticky blood. The air she breathed out seemed wet and bad and left a scum on her mouth.
It’s a kind of hysteria, she thought; I don’t want this, go away, I’m only me. She tried to call up all the good people she had known but they were shadows. Burning, tearing, gouging, filled her mind.
A car stopped behind hers and Josie Round appeared in front of her. A hand like a coloured insect settled on her arm.
‘Are you all right, Norma?’
‘Yes … I felt a little sick … that’s all.’
‘It’s no wonder if you’ve been eating those.’
‘Oh. I bought them. At a stall.’
‘You’re sure you’re all right? You’re pale as anything.’
‘I don’t know, Josie.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Sometimes I just can’t stand being alive.’
‘Man trouble?’
‘No, no. Oh Jo
sie.’ Norma laughed. ‘I’m all right. Really I am. These things pass. I was just driving up to see Lex Clearwater.’
‘With half a ton of cakes it looks like. I seem to recognize some of those.’
‘They’re from Belinda’s Amnesty stall.’
‘Yes, I thought so. Puffed rice nothings, that’s Belinda. She gets all concerned but five-minute monstrosities are all she can stretch herself to. Are you sure? Sure it’s not a man? I’ll organize a squad and we’ll de-bollock him.’
Norma laughed and closed her yes. De-hand, de-bollock. Josie was a good person, she supposed. ‘I’d better get on, Josie. I’ve got to see Lex.’
A car swept by. ‘Someone’s beaten you to it. You know all about them, I suppose?’
‘Sandra Duff? Lex and Sandra?’
‘Oh, you don’t. Well, no harm done, they’re over sixteen. They play games on the lawn, according to Stella. A wee bit careless, if you ask me. I’ve got to go, if you’re all right. Good grief, it isn’t Lex? No, of course not. One thing you’ve got, Norma, is standards.’
One felt this edge of malice in Josie. It seemed quite undifferentiated so the best thing was not to take it personally. Norma was more concerned about Lex and Sandra – and not pleased. Wanted, she understood, to have her staff something less than human in that quarter. They had been discreet though, she admitted. And Stella Round had been discreet. Or was it common knowledge among the girls? Norma felt in less than full control. Her hands, she noticed, putting them on the car door, trembled a little. Now she could not be sure of the cause.
‘Life isn’t all affairs,’ she said to Josie.
‘I know that. The best part’s got nothing to do with men. Oh Norma, thanks for being nice to Duncan. He came home all lit up the other day. Jesus, Jesus, don’t I choose my words. I can’t get used to it. I can’t get used to seeing him like that.’ She beat a tattoo on Norma’s car roof. ‘You’re a teacher, tell me what to do.’
‘Norma could not find anything to say. Treat him the way you treat the girls.’
‘Oh how easy. Thank you very much.’
‘I enjoyed seeing him the other day. He’s a very interesting boy. Do you know –’ She was about to describe his mind but stopped. Duncan unveiled what he chose, to whom he chose, she was sure of it; and Josie might have been shown something else.
