by Amanda James
Sarah unlocked the door to her classroom. She shuddered when going over what she’d said. The personal workings of the female body, what was she thinking? That sounded practically Victorian. She’d called him sexist too, but it served him right; he was, and he was long overdue a slap down.
Setting her bag on the desk she drew out her planner. Flicking to lesson one, to her extreme delight she saw that it was in fact a free lesson and not Year 9. She must have got the weeks mixed up. Thank you, God! Some good news at last. And lesson two was … oh, good, Year 10. They were her favourite group and they were about to start a topic on why the homesteaders moved to the American West in the 1860s. Great stuff.
Sarah snapped the planner shut and then her legs turned to mush. She sat on the desk. Palpitations raced through her heart, her whole body trembled like an aspen leaf and her hands grew clammy. Homesteaders in the American West? Damn, didn’t John say she’d have to save a homesteader? There was no way she was ready to jaunt off on another adventure yet. She needed a rest and time to get used to the idea.
The door opened and Robert, her head of department, popped his head round. The young, dynamic leader of history was normally chatty and full of some new idea he’d like to share with her, but today he seemed reluctant to even make eye contact.
‘Good to see you back. Need anything?’ he asked, already inching the door closed. Sarah realised he didn’t know what to say to her. She felt her anger surfacing again – John had a lot to answer for.
‘Hey there, Robert, yes I’m much better now, thanks. I would like a word with you about Danny Jakes, though. I think we need to think of a few strategies for managing his behaviour.’
‘OK, can we do it Monday? Shouldn’t bother yourself with it today, not with your err … problem. Have a nice rest at the weekend.’ Rob smiled sympathetically, as if she had some incurable disease, and then ducked out.
Sarah put her head in her hands and gave a heavy sigh. God, how embarrassing! As if her life wasn’t stressful and depressing enough, now it was going round that she was in the menopause and couldn’t handle dealing with unruly kids. Well, to be honest the latter was the truth at the moment. OK, Sarah, snap out of the self-pity mode. You’ll need your wits about you if you’re suddenly catapulted into nineteenth-century America!
It’d just be her luck to find herself on the back of a runaway horse. That’s how her life felt at the moment – as if she were galloping towards a ravine and she’d lost control of the reins. Sarah sighed, jumped off the desk and began to set up a PowerPoint presentation for lesson two.
‘OK, then, Year 10, what do you think that is?’ Sarah pointed at the projected slide depicting a tiny sod-built construction half-buried into a hillside. The endless plains of Nebraska rolled away as far as the eye could see on one side, and on the other, a bedraggled family posed for the camera. A man proudly held the rein of a bony horse and a woman and three children gazed woodenly into the distance. The smallest child clasped a pumpkin almost as big as himself.
‘Is it a toilet, Miss?’ Jamie Albright asked hopefully.
‘A toilet!’ Kirsty Grimshaw snorted. ‘Duh! Of course not, you idiot, it’s too big and it’s got a chimney sticking out of it. It is a chimney, isn’t it, Miss?’
‘It is a chimney, Kirsty, yes, but please don’t be rude to Jamie. Remember the rule: class-discussion is for everyone. Everyone should be made to feel as though they have important contributions to make.’
‘So the whole family lived in that shack thingy, then?’ Kirsty asked in disbelief.
‘Indeed they did, Kirsty, and that shack thingy was called a sod dugout, and those people there are called homesteaders, or farmers.’
‘Sod? Isn’t that swearing, though?’ Jenny Holdsworth giggled. One or two others joined her.
‘It’s mild swearing yes, but sod is also another name for earth. If you look closely you can see the grass sticking out of the sod bricks that they cut from the earth. They let them bake hard in the sun and then built this house.’
‘Why didn’t they use ordinary bricks or wood?’ Billy Cardale asked.
‘Does anyone know the answer to Billy’s question? Look at the kind of environment they lived in. What seems to be missing?’ Sarah looked round the class and could almost hear the cogs turning in their curious minds.
As she was about to tell them the answer, Harriet Summers, who was a bright, enthusiastic, but shy girl, suddenly blurted, ‘Trees! They didn’t have many of them so they didn’t have wood. They didn’t have bricks ’cos they moved west from the east and couldn’t carry heavy stuff like that overland on their wagons. Sometimes, they had to dump their prized possessions on the journey, if the horses were too weak to pull the weight. People got lots of horrible diseases on the journey, too, and lots died. There was terrible lack of water, Miss, and droughts killed crops, people and animals off, left, right and centre.’ Harriet stopped abruptly as if realising where she was. She put her hand to her mouth and went very red.
Jeremy Greer, one of the least attentive of the class, started to slow hand clap Harriet, until Sarah silenced him with her best contemptuous glare. She turned back to Harriet, and gave her a wide smile. ‘My goodness, Harriet, you seem to know quite a bit about this subject already.’
‘That’s nowt, Miss. See what she’s done for independent research,’ Harriet’s friend, Stacey Lombrook said, nudging Harriet encouragingly. ‘Go on, show her.’
Harriet shuffled in her seat and shook her head, no.
Sarah had set them homework to find something out about the homesteaders. They would be a little bit prepared for the new subject and more confident as a result. ‘What did you find, Harriet, a book on the homesteaders?’ Sarah asked.
‘No, she made a model, didn’t you, Harry?’ Stacey said.
Harriet sighed. ‘I was going to show you it at break time, Miss. Everyone else will think it’s lame.’
‘Lame? They won’t, and if they do, then they are lame themselves, Harriet,’ Sarah said, shooting a warning glance at Jeremy.
Harriet pulled a carrier bag out from under the table and placed it carefully in front of her. Reaching in, she gingerly drew out a model made of lollipop sticks, matchsticks and rubber bands. Sarah walked over and carefully picked it up and held it for all to see. She had to swallow hard as she realised the hours that must have gone into the light construction in her hand.
This is why she’d gone into teaching in the first place, to inspire a love of history, learning and to make a difference to the hopes and aspirations of her students. She cleared her throat. ‘Does anyone know what this brilliant model of Harriet’s is?’
‘Looks like a windmill to me.’ Kirsty shrugged and studied her nails. She was obviously disgruntled at the praise Sarah was giving to Harriet.
‘Nearly, but not quite, Kirsty. It’s a wind pump. Harriet, would you like to tell the class what wind pumps were used for?’
‘Not really, but I will. They have sails like a windmill, as you can see. The wind blew them round and they drove a pump which pumped water from deep underground. They could then use the water to feed the crops and animals.’ She looked at Sarah. ‘If you wind that matchstick up tight with that rubber band and let go, it should spin the sails, Miss.’
Sarah handed the wind pump back to Harriet. ‘You do it, Harriet; I don’t want to break it.’ Harriet came to the front of the class and balanced the model on the front desk. She wound up the matchstick and released it. The sails whizzed round once and everyone clapped. It was genuine applause this time and everyone started asking Harriet questions about it. Sarah was amazed at the transformation of the shy girl who never normally spoke out in class. She even handled a facetious question from Jeremy.
‘So these wind pumps, yeah, they must have been, like, thousands of ’em in one field?’
‘No, there would only be one or two. They didn’t need lots, and anyway they were expensive,’ Harriet said, looking at Sarah for confirmation. Sarah nodded.
‘Oh, ha ha, very funny, Jeremy. No, the pump I made is not to scale obviously; they were about 5.5 metres high.’ Harriet smiled, shaking her head.
Sarah whistled a happy tune and picked two ready meals from the chilled cabinet in Sainsbury’s. Hmm, chicken madras or beef stew and dumplings? Well, it’s Friday night so it has to be curry – curry on Friday, it’s the law.
On the way to the checkout she thanked her lucky stars again. The lesson on homesteaders had been one of the best she could ever remember and, most importantly, she’d not been transported back to the Old West. The rest of the day had been uneventful and much better than she could have hoped for.
Sarah had decided to cut down on her drinking, but on nearing the wine aisle, was pulled like a magnet to a shelf of half-price Californian zinfandel. Oh well, can’t ignore such a good offer. She shrugged, placed two bottles in her basket and set off for the checkout again, but the checkout she had her eye on seemed to get further and further away. The more she walked, the further away it got.
Sarah halted, aware of a leaden feeling dragging her feet to the floor, as if she were wearing concrete boots. Looking down, she could see the supermarket floor disintegrating, breaking up and swirling around, as if made of gas. Misty tendrils drifted over her shoes until her feet were totally immersed in it. And then she began to sink.
Sarah tried to open her mouth to scream but an unseen pressure sealed it shut. She tried to open her hand and let go of her basket, raise her hand to the other customers in an attempt to attract their attention from their two-for-one offers and Friday night curry, but her hands remained immoveable – tightly clasped. The customers were slowly lost from view as she descended. She looked up. Sarah could see the bright lights and hear the noise and bustle of the supermarket, but after a few seconds the noises faded and the light grew smaller, until it was no bigger than a manhole cover.
Down, down she sank, trapped in an invisible, but tightly wrapped cocoon, into the thick gas. No, not gas … she realised it was fog. Her skin was coated with moisture and her nostrils were invaded by the fog’s smoky, leafy smell. And then at last her feet touched down on something solid. Rigor mortis released her body, and the fog drifted away.
Sarah blinked rapidly and rubbed her eyes. The something solid was a highly polished wooden floor. She was standing in the middle of a grand Victorian drawing room. Heavy oak chairs and settees upholstered in sumptuous crimson hulked around a marble fireplace. In high purple-painted arches either side of the fireplace stood alabaster full-sized sculptures of semi-nude maidens, arms raised above their heads with cherubs at their feet. An imposing grandfather clock marked time at one side of a floor-to-ceiling window, heavily draped in navy velvet curtains, and on the other side, a mahogany grand piano postured on lion-clawed feet.
Sarah, wide eyed and open mouthed, tried to register and process what she was seeing in her panic-stricken brain. She felt her stomach roll and her heart assume an irregular rhythm as her attention was directed towards what she held in her right hand. The basket containing a ready meal and wine had miraculously changed into a metal bucket full of coal and a box of matches.
Before she had time to think coherently, the door flew open and a tall, beady-eyed, horse-faced woman of around her own age bustled in. She wore her dark hair parted down the middle and swept into a loose bun, a high-necked, long-sleeved, lemon, calf-length dress and on her feet highly polished laced boots.
‘There you are,’ she said, pointing her finger at Sarah imperiously. ‘Get that fire made up, girl. We have the Pankhurst visit in a few hours. This room is old fashioned enough; she mustn’t be cold into the bargain.’
Sarah gawped, her stomach rolled again and she feared she may vomit. Bollocks! Just when I thought I’d got away with not being dispatched to the American West, I end up in Edwardian England!
‘Chop-chop; stop staring like an imbecile, you silly ninny, and do it!’ The woman turned on her heel and flounced out.
Sarah ran to the fireplace, tipped out the bucket of coal and then knelt. With her hands on the rim of the sooty bucket, she vomited.
Chapter Nine
Trembling like a whippet in a strong wind, Sarah pushed the bucket away and sat with her back to the fireplace. Brushing a strand of hair from her eye, she took deep breaths and tried to quell her turbulent gut. Focus on one point and concentrate, her dad had always told her when she’d been carsick as a child. Replacing the nausea for an instant, a pang of sadness twisted her belly; God she missed her dad. Was it really seven years since he’d died? She could do with his strong, dependable, eyes-front support right now.
Sarah focused on her feet. They wore the same style boot as the woman in the lemon dress, though much rougher and heavier. As her eyes travelled along her body, she found she was wearing the black dress and long white apron of a traditional maid, and, patting her hand on the top of her head, felt a cloth hat of some sort. Sarah closed her eyes. A mop cap. Oh God, I must look like an extra in Upstairs Downstairs.
Her eyes snapped open at the sound of quick, light footsteps approaching outside. The door opened and a young blonde-haired maid, dressed in an identical uniform to Sarah’s, came in. She carried a bucket and made a beeline for the window. Humming a merry tune, she set the bucket down and dipped a cloth into it. After wringing it out, she stood upright again, and that’s when she saw Sarah.
‘Bleedin’ ’ell, Sarah, you gave me a start! What’s happened?’
The maid hurried over and knelt at Sarah’s side. ‘Well, cat got your tongue?’
Sarah shook her head and shrugged. ‘No, just came over a bit funny,’ she whispered, wondering if Albert would suddenly pop up and nod, knowingly.
‘Well you’ve got more soot on your face than all the sweeps here in London.’ The maid dabbed at Sarah’s forehead with the damp cloth. ‘And I can smell sick … have you chucked up in that coal bucket?’
Sarah flushed and nodded, though why she should feel embarrassed about it she didn’t know. It’s not every day you’re in a supermarket going about your business one minute, and then getting sucked down a time tunnel or whatever the hell it was, and dumped in Edwardian London, the next.
‘ … because if you have, Sarah, you’ll be in right trouble and no mistake. She’s sacked people for less.’
Sarah was aware the maid had said something but in her confused state, half of it hadn’t registered. ‘Who sacked people?’
‘Who do you fink? Queen Victoria, of course, she came back from the grave and sacked the footman last week.’ The maid tutted, and shook her head at Sarah, but she did have a twinkle in her pretty blue eyes.
‘What did you say I had to do?’ Sarah ventured and managed a little smile.
‘Oh, lumme! I said get yourself up, empty that sick and get that fire lit before Mrs Pankhurst gets here. If you don’t, Lady Attwood will have your guts for garters!’
‘I expect you mean Mrs Pankhurst the suffragette?’ Sarah asked, getting slowly to her knees.
‘No, I mean Mrs Pankhurst the music-hall actress.’ The maid shook her head in disbelief. ‘Now, take my hand and let me pull you up.’
With grim determination Sarah struggled to her feet and immediately felt much better. She sighed and pushed her hair back under her cap.
‘Stop touching your face with them hands; you keep smearing more soot all over you.’ The maid took Sarah’s hands and scrubbed at them with the cloth.
Sarah sighed again and wondered who the hell she was supposed to save this time. Perhaps Mrs Pankhurst would visit and slip on a blob of Sarah’s sick. In her mind’s eye she saw a slow-motion scenario of Mrs P falling, her head inches away from brutal contact with the edge of the marble fireplace. But then, in the nick of time, Sarah would launch a rugby tackle at her. Mrs Pankhurst would land heavily, but unharmed, upon Sarah’s prone body.
Valiant hi
story teacher provides a soft landing for the heroine of women’s rights. Hurrah!
‘What are you smiling at?’ The maid was looking at Sarah as if she’d lost her marbles. Not a bad assessment to be honest, my dear maid. The girl picked up the sick bucket. ‘Look, come on, I’ll take you down to the kitchen, you’ll have a glass of water and wash your hands, then you must get back to the fire, alright?’
The house was massive. As Sarah trotted after the slight figure down stairs and along corridors, she admired the beautiful but faded grandeur of the old building. Tapestries adorned oak-panelled halls, portraits, presumably of previous Attwoods, sneered down at her from high balustrades and landing walls and, in the main hall, suspended crystal chandeliers winked in the natural light cast down from a stained-glass domed ceiling.
The journey turned past a main hall, a dining room and down two flights of stairs. Sarah noted that the predominant smell of beeswax and old books gave way to boiled cabbage and cake. Scrubbed flag stones replaced polished floors and, entering under a stone arch, she found herself in a large kitchen.
A plump woman stood at a long wooden table. She wore a green candy-striped dress and white apron and sweat rolled from her brow, almost as fast as she rolled pastry on a floured board. A few other servants dashed here and there, carrying pots, jugs and plates, and a smartly dressed butler-type sat by a range reading a newspaper.
The plump woman glanced over at Sarah and the maid. ‘Did you remember to bring the milk in, Rose?’
‘Yes, Cook, I’m just going to sort Sarah out and then I’m back up to do the windows.’
‘Sort Sarah out, why what’s the matter with you?’ The cook stopped, frowned over at Sarah and placed her meaty hands on her hips.
‘I just felt a little dizzy, Cook. I’m alright now, thank you for your concern,’ Sarah said, hoping she’d done the right thing leaving the vomiting episode out of her explanation.
