by MARY HOCKING
‘I’m going to Crossgate School,’ he said when his secretary came in with the coffee. ‘Give the Head a ring, and tell him I’m on the way, will you?’ But by the time she reached the door, he had changed his mind. ‘No. Don’t telephone. I ought to be able to turn up in my schools unexpectedly from time to time.’
‘I would have thought you had earned that right,’ she agreed.
Miss Deane had worked for Chatterton ever since she came to the office thirty years ago and during the greater part of this time she had been his mistress. In her view he had a right to anything that he asked and over the years she had done her best to meet all his requirements. She was devoted to him and forgave him his many infidelities. Lately, she had begun to worry about him.
He was a big man, but in the last year he seemed to have shrunk. The flesh hung loosely on the broad frame, and with the shrinking of the flesh had come a more subtle change in the mind. His choice of words was not so exact, his grammarian’s instinct sometimes deserted him and his prose was less austerely precise; the implements were beginning to wear and no longer cut so fine an edge. She noticed how quickly his store of energy ran dry, by the afternoon he had nothing left to give. His face, which had been devastatingly handsome in a rather donnish way, still retained its sardonic attraction; but the seams and furrows which had once added to its distinction now bit too deep and beneath the eyes the shadows of pleasure had sickened and grown rotten. He was beginning to look much older than his sixty years.
‘Debauchery!’ This was the way in which some members of his staff commented on the change in him, albeit with affection. Privately, Miss Deane thought, not debauchery, that would never wear him down!
Chatterton in the meantime drove slowly to Crossgate Primary School which was situated on the edge of the town, at the meeting place of the old and the new. The school was a pleasant old brick building, squat in the style of late nineteenth century school architecture, but with a bright modern extension. Immediately opposite the school was a council housing estate built some distance from the busy link road which circled the town. Rows of dun-coloured houses and three-storey blocks of flats had been set down incongruously in fields not yet reduced to neat lawns and smooth grass verges; the result was that the whole estate looked like something left over from war-time occupation. It was very quiet at this time of day. The only movement was the ripple of washing hanging on a line; the whirr of traffic from the distant road came from a world which had neglected to connect with this little island. No wonder the people were not happy, they missed the easy comradeship of the overcrowded slums from which they had come. It was lucky for Drew that the school also served one of the expensive new private developments. At least he had the opportunities offered by a mixed school population, even if he had the problems that went with it. Problems wouldn’t worry Mylor Drew; he was the kind who likes a challenge. Chatterton wasn’t. He got out of his car reluctantly.
Drew saw him from the window of his room and came out to welcome him. This enthusiasm was typical of most heads; by the nature of their work they were cut off from other adults, if they were wise they did not invade the staff room too often and they seldom had an opportunity to meet heads of other schools. They received few visits from members of the Education Committee whose time was occupied by their own work and County Council meetings; the education office staff, with the exception of the indefatigable Punter, were too concerned with the mysterious business of administration to find out what actually went on in the schools and on the rare occasions when they did venture forth it was usually the secondary schools which claimed their attention. Chatterton always felt guilty when he saw the childish delight with which his heads hurried to welcome him.
‘What have we done?’ Drew greeted him. A certain astringency here; normally it would have appealed to Chatterton, but now he winced.
‘My dear chap, I usually come to your school when I want to impress someone. You know that.’
‘H.M Inspector wasn’t impressed,’ Drew told him as they walked towards the building. ‘She said that it was intolerable that any school should have to use the same hall for dining, P.E., music, dancing and any other activity work.’
‘H.M. Inspectors are very remote from Whitehall,’ Chatterton reminded him. ‘Just try getting a separate hall for dining into a building programme!’
He stopped on the school steps. It seemed a pity to cut short Drew’s recital; all heads used the precious time when the Chief Education Officer visited them to air their grievances, it was the only chance they had.
‘There’s room on the site for one,’ Drew followed his glance.
‘It’s your climbing frame at which I’m looking,’ Chatterton said wryly.
Drew stared at him, not merely incredulous, but with an expression which Chatterton thought was very near to contempt. The man’s face was far too expressive for his own good, the older man thought ruefully.
‘Don’t tell me Miss Cathcart has got through to you now!’
‘No. To the Chairman of the Education Committee.’
Drew laughed. ‘She’s a complete neurotic. Couldn’t he see that?’
‘Apparently not.’
Drew said, ‘I can see I’m not going to get a dining hall today. Come in and I’ll tell you about Miss Cathcart.’
He was not in the least worried. In the case of some heads this would have been a good sign, but with Drew, Chatterton could not be so sure. Drew, he sometimes felt, was wasted in teaching, he should have been a Napoleon of industry; he had very broad shoulders, a flexible conscience, and a massive indifference to public opinion.
Drew said to a little girl who was walking along the corridor, ‘Emily, do you think you could find Mrs. Holman for me?’ Mrs. Holman was the welfare assistant: the little girl thought she could find her. ‘Then would you ask her if she could manage two cups of coffee? Tell her I have a visitor.’
Emily repeated ‘two cups of coffee’. She did not glance at Chatterton; Drew was the most important person in the whole field of education as far as she was concerned. He sent her on her way with a light pat on the shoulder. Many heads would have made a laborious performance of telling Emily that the school had a very important visitor. Drew never did this kind of thing.
‘My secretary is at the dentist’s this morning,’ he explained to Chatterton as he led him into his room.
Drew’s room, like that of many other heads, was a poky place with barely enough space for two people to sit comfortably one on either side of the desk. It had curtains which had been made by Miss Freeth for Drew’s predecessor, but since Drew’s arrival her inspiration appeared to have dried up and there was no other evidence of a gracious feminine touch.
‘Miss Cathcart.’ Drew got down to business, relentlessly refusing to wait until the arrival of coffee could add a civilizing touch to the proceedings.
‘This is just as tiresome for me as it is for you,’ Chatterton intervened. ‘Unfortunately, there were one or two minor irregularities in the way it was dealt with at the office—we’re none of us perfect.’
He had meant to convey to Drew that they were in this together; but he realized as soon as he had spoken that he had made a mistake.
‘I don’t think your office comes into it,’ Drew said, a shade too forcefully. ‘Your folk there seem to have behaved with the utmost propriety.’
Damn these young people! Chatterton fretted; why can’t they manage their affairs better? I never got myself into this sort of state.
‘I am ready to be convinced that everyone has behaved with perfect propriety,’ he murmured. ‘That, in fact, is why I am here.’
The coffee arrived at this moment, and Drew had to wait while Mrs. Holman poured it out and asked after Mrs. Chatterton whom she knew slightly. When she had gone, Chatterton settled comfortably back in his chair, and said, ‘Now, let’s have it.’ Drew gave a quick, concise account of what had happened.
‘Did you see the child yourself?’ Chatterton asked.
&
nbsp; ‘Unfortunately—as it now seems—no. But there appeared to be no reason to bring me into it at the time. His knuckles were a bit bruised but that was all. But this morning . . .’
‘He’s here, then?’
‘Oh yes, he’s here all right! Mother would have to give up another day’s work if she kept him at home, and she wouldn’t do that if he’d been battered black and blue.’
‘You were saying, this morning . . .’
‘I took care to have a look at him without drawing too much attention to it—he’s a child who thrives on drama. So I paid a visit to his class and examined a few of their books, that sort of thing. I had a good chance to see his hands. Not a bit of sticking plaster even, and only a faint bruise on the right hand. You can see for yourself, if you want to.’
‘Certainly not.’ If one couldn’t trust one’s head to this extent, things had come to a pretty pass.
‘Of course, he created a scene when he slid off the thing. But that was because he thought he was going to be lectured for disobedience. By the time the school broke up, ten minutes later, they had calmed him down but no doubt his face was still puffed with tears. Mother would demand a full account; she always does.’
‘You’ve had trouble with her before?’
‘Constantly. Usually telephone calls and letters, though.’
‘Life is hard for the woman, I suppose.’
‘Harder still for the child. He gets all the material things, because her pride demands that he should stand comparison with “more fortunate children”. Her own words. She makes him well aware that he is not fortunate. He is also made aware of his rights; no injustice, however small or unintentional, ever passes without notice. Life was hard for mother, so her son must be given the tools to fight for himself. But she gives him no affection, never plays with him, or talks to him—apart from lecturing him. She never buys him anything that isn’t strictly useful. She’s completely unrelaxed herself, and this has a bad effect on the child; he’s a bundle of nerves. I’ve tried to suggest to her that he needs to play with other children, indeed he could play with my own. But she won’t have it. She’s too proud to mix with married women, so Peter has no playmates.’
‘Is child guidance a possibility?’
‘It’s mother that needs guidance, and she wouldn’t hear of that! We tried to suggest it tactfully once, because his tantrums are a trial and tend to get other children over-excited. But it was obvious that this was only going to add to her feeling that she is constantly singled out for humiliation.’
‘What’s the answer?’
‘There isn’t one. Years later, when he’s a damn sight worse and too old to help, authority of some kind or another will step in and he’ll be sent to an expensive boarding school for maladjusted children.’
Chatterton put his cup down on the desk and said, ‘Well, it doesn’t sound as if we can resolve that one.’ He was glad his subject was history. Drew watched him, the contempt was even more apparent this time but Chatterton was looking the other way. Drew said dryly:
‘But you’re satisfied that you can find an answer for the Chairman?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘Then that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
‘Just one other thing. There was no question of this young woman. Miss Smith, actually pulling the boy off the frame?’
‘None at all. She assures me that he loosed his hold the moment she came towards him. And knowing Peter I can well believe it.’
‘Well, that’s all right then.’ Chatterton toyed with the idea of seeing the boy after all, but decided against it; from what had been said about both the boy and his mother it was probably advisable that there should be as little drama as possible.
‘What about Miss Smith?’ he asked. ‘Would it upset her if I had a word with her?’
‘She’s upset as it is,’ Drew said. ‘She’s only been teaching for a short time and she has taken this incident as a proof of failure. I don’t think it would hurt if you saw her.’
Chatterton’s influence on young women was reputed to be reassuring, if anything.
Chatterton had a brief word with Miss Smith who arrived blinking back tears; the tears soon cleared, however, and she gave Chatterton a smile as bright as a May morning when she departed. She had added little to what Chatterton had already heard, but he was now quite convinced that she would not have touched the child. She might well have panicked, but in that case her reaction would have been to run away for help; Miss Smith was never going to be the kind that advances to meet trouble, she was a nice little nonentity for whom teaching was going to be a long martyrdom.
Thank God it isn’t any worse than this, he thought as he drove back. He went to his office and dictated two letters which went out under his own reference.
The first letter was to the Chairman, to whom he wrote:
‘I have looked into this matter thoroughly and I have seen both Drew and the teacher concerned. Briefly, what happened was that the class was in the playground for organized games. Peter, who is a difficult child, had already attacked three other children, and was told to stand to one side until he could behave better. He immediately went away and mounted the climbing frame. When the teacher saw this, she told him to get down at once and he loosed his grip and descended rather precipitately. The teacher at no time touched him. He created quite a scene, but I gather that this is a frequent occurrence with this particular child. He was not, in fact, hurt apart from bruised knuckles and a slight graze on the knee.
‘I can see no justification whatsoever for the complaint made by Miss Cathcart. I gather that the home circumstances are not all they might be and the mother herself has problems of personality which do not help the child. In the circumstances, the attitude of the Head and his staff seems to me to be remarkably forbearing. Incidentally, I note that in spite of a number of differences with the school. Miss Cathcart has at no time asked for the child to be transferred to another school, and I think this speaks for itself.
‘I am enclosing a copy of a letter which I have sent to Miss Cathcart and I hope you will agree that this should close the incident.’
To Miss Cathcart, he wrote:
‘Dear Madam,
‘I understand that you visited this office yesterday to make a complaint regarding an incident which occurred at Crossgate Primary School.
‘This matter has now been carefully investigated and I do not find that the staff of the school have been in any way negligent. In fact, I am satisfied that they are genuinely concerned with your son’s welfare.
‘It may be that you received a rather misleading account of what took place from Peter himself; young children are not always very accurate recorders of events, especially when they are overwrought. I think it is always wise to talk matters over with the Head on such occasions, and I understand that Mr. Drew has already offered to see you. I suggest that you should accept this invitation and make an appointment to see him at a date and time convenient to you. I am sure you will find him most helpful.
Yours faithfully,
He sent a copy of Miss Cathcart’s letter to Drew. And that, as far as he was concerned, was an end to the affair.
Chapter Five
Maggie told her mother about the climbing frame woman. It was evening and she had just returned from a meeting of the Governors of the Convent of the Sacred Heart School. She was eating her supper in the stone-flagged kitchen of the cottage; they tended to eat there because it was convenient and they were not much concerned with social niceties. Maggie found something comforting about the room which was a useful, hard-working place, solidly and sensibly furnished. She was not at ease in rooms set aside for gracious living which always seemed to her to be chill and self¬conscious, lacking as they did the warmth of everyday comradeship. She liked to listen to the whine of the gas under the kettle, to smell the apples stored in crates in the larder, to see the clutter of pots and pans with brightly coloured handles which she herself had painted. Most of all, she li
ked the nearness of the countryside, waiting there on the far side of the doorstep. It was very hot tonight and the door was open wide. She could see that the sun still shed its light on the distant hills. The hills, being Kentish hills, were well-cultivated with wheat, barley, and a profusion of market gardening crops on the lower slopes; Maggie grumbled about this in the daytime, but in the strong light of the evening sun the patchwork quilt effect was pleasing. Below the hills, the land was already misted purple and close by the cottage the orchard was engulfed in deeper shadow, the trees closing their ranks against the night. Here and there, bats began to flicker. Nothing else. A still time; a time that touched the heart. For years after her father’s death Maggie had wanted to cry for him at this hour, and she would keep close to her mother who was the only person who could keep the terror of his loss at bay. But tonight, her heart was full of someone else. She did not really care about the climbing frame woman, but she must, oh she must, at this hushed, breathless hour, speak Mylor’s name. She had not told her mother about him, but it gave her the sense of sharing him to speak his name now.
‘It’s difficult to imagine anyone being so vindictive, isn’t it?’ she said when she had finished her tale, and her supper.
‘She would resent talking to a younger woman,’ her mother said. ‘I can understand that.’
It seemed to Maggie that everything she had said had been related to Mylor; in fact, she had only mentioned him twice in passing and her mother had concerned herself with another aspect of the story.
‘If you can do your job, why does it matter how old you are?’ Maggie protested automatically, not really caring.
‘It’s nothing to do with that. This woman wouldn’t have been interested in whether you worked well or not. She would feel humiliated at having to talk her story over with someone so much younger, who hadn’t anything like the same experience of life. That’s why she was so unpleasant to you.’
‘You’re supposed to fly to the defence of your young,’ Maggie told her.
