Octavia's War

by Beryl Kingston

  She got an answer at break the next morning and it came from the new art teacher, Fiona Fitzgerald, who wandered over to find her while she was pouring herself a cup of tea.

  ‘About this flat you’re looking for,’ she said, putting out a paint-smeared hand to pick up a cup. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in sharing with me, would you? I live over the newsagent’s. Mr Pearson’s. You put a card in there yesterday.’

  Lizzie was a bit surprised. She hadn’t thought of sharing with another teacher. But it was a possibility. ‘Well, I might,’ she said. ‘Could I see it?’

  ‘You could come back with me this afternoon, if you like. It’s a bit of a mess but it would give you an idea.’

  So they cycled to the newsagent’s together. It was a small flat and it was in a bit of a mess with the breakfast things left on the kitchen table and milk bottles and letters on the floor at the top of the stairs but it had two bedrooms on the second floor and a sizeable kitchen.

  ‘I use the front room for painting,’ Fiona explained, ‘so I live in the kitchen. I used to share with another student before the war but I live on my own now and – well – to tell you the truth, I don’t like it on my own. Not with the rockets. I’d rather have some company. What do you think?’

  ‘Could we give it a try perhaps?’ Lizzie asked. ‘For a week or something. See how we get on.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Fiona said. ‘A week sounds fine to me. We could go halves on the rent, couldn’t we?’

  ‘I ought to warn you, though,’ Lizzie said, ‘I’ve got rather a lot of books.’

  ‘I ought to warn you I make a pig’s ear of the place at Christmas,’ Fiona confessed. ‘That’s my muckiest time because of the decorations and making cards. But you know the sort of chaos there is when there’s a lot of artwork going on. You must have seen it when you were a pupil. You’d better take a look at my workroom though before we decide. You ought to know what you’re in for.’

  It looked like an extension of the art room at Roehampton. There was an old kitchen table in one corner, covered in paint pots and piles of paper and brushes standing in old jam jars, an easel set to catch the light with a large unfinished work on it and canvases stacked against the walls.

  Lizzie laughed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see what you mean.’ And she walked over to look at the work on the easel. It was a study of a row of weary-looking women standing in line outside a butcher’s shop. There was something about it that reminded her of Henry Moore’s picture of people sheltering in the underground during the Blitz. ‘It’s good,’ she said. ‘You’ve caught their weariness.’

  The compliment pleased Fiona but she didn’t comment on it. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked.

  Lizzie and her books moved in at the end of the week, courtesy of her father’s wheelbarrow, and by Sunday evening she and Fiona had kept one another company through several explosions, all of them fairly distant, had exchanged life histories and had told one another about their love affairs, which in Fiona’s case were plentiful and entertaining. On Monday morning Lizzie put their dirty dishes in the sink and left them to soak and they went cycling off to school together like old friends. By the time Tommy finally came home, the move was complete.

  He was rather put out. ‘I know she’s not been home for very long,’ he said to Octavia, ‘but it seems most peculiar to be in the house without her.’

  ‘She’s got to live her own life,’ Octavia told him. ‘You knew she wouldn’t stay with you forever.’ And she changed the subject. ‘How was the conference?’

  ‘Sensible,’ he said. ‘They’re going to call the new organisation the United Nations and it’s going to have an army, you’ll be pleased to know. There are forty-six nations involved in it already and if they sign up to it they will have to pledge to supply armed forces in the event of any crisis.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘We should have thought of that when we set up the League and then we wouldn’t have had all this terrible trouble.’

  ‘How have the rockets been?’

  ‘Bloody awful,’ she told him. ‘Croydon’s been really hammered, so Dora says. But at least we haven’t had any in Wimbledon yet.’

  Dora had been a full time warden ever since the doodlebugs began. There’d been no work for her at the estate agent’s for a very long time apart from arranging the occasional let and she was useful and in demand as a warden. For the last six weeks she’d been on duty six days out of seven.

  ‘My David’s having to look after himself,’ she told her mother. ‘Just as well he’s sensible.’

  ‘He could come here and stay with me, if you like,’ Emmeline offered. ‘I’d look after him for you. I don’t like to think of him being on his own.’

  But Dora said it wasn’t necessary. ‘I leave him things to heat up,’ she said, ‘and he has his friends in to keep him company. He’s a big lad now.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Emmeline complained to Octavia later that evening. ‘He is a big lad, there’s no denying that, but he’s still young. He still needs looking after, especially with these damned rockets. Dora can be very hard sometimes. Maybe I ought to go over in the afternoons now and then, and give him his tea when he comes in. Only she’ll probably say I shouldn’t. I don’t know what to do for the best.’

  Octavia said she didn’t know what to advise, which was more or less true, because Em would go her own way no matter what anyone said. But in the event the LCC solved her problem for her. At the end of October, Edith had a letter offering her one of the prefabs on Clapham Common. She was scatty with excitement, making lists of all the things she would need, and all the things she would like but probably couldn’t afford, examining her post office book to see how much money she’d got, collecting tea chests and cardboard boxes so that she could start to pack.

  ‘Not that we need all that much,’ she said. ‘That’s the beauty of a prefab. It’s all built in. It’ll only be beds and bedding and a few pots and pans and things.’

  ‘And china and cutlery and a door mat and chairs and curtains,’ Emmeline said. ‘You’ll need nets being on the common or you’ll have everybody looking in at you. You can take the bedding you’ve been using here, if you like. That’ll be something to get you started and I shan’t need it. We could go to Arding and Hobbs for the china. I’d suggest Ely’s but they’re a bit pricey. What do you think?’

  They were so happy shopping and packing that it was several days before Emmeline realised that Edith would be living just along the road from Dora and David. ‘What a bit of luck,’ she said. ‘He can come home to you when our Dora’s out. That’ll be much better.’

  ‘He’ll eat all the cake,’ Joan warned.

  ‘You and your cake,’ Edith said. ‘Put that tablecloth in the tea chest for me, there’s a good girl.’

  They moved a month later and the house was very quiet and very empty when they’d gone. Emmeline spent the rest of the day drifting from room to room like a ghost, picking things up and putting them down again, tweaking the curtains and brushing up imaginary dust.

  ‘Now it’s just us,’ she sighed, as she and Octavia sat down to dinner on their first changed evening. ‘I shall miss them.’

  ‘And Tommy,’ Octavia said. ‘When he’s not gadding about the planet. What’s in the evening paper?’

  ‘They’re going to lift the blackout,’ Emmeline told her. ‘Lights are going on again in all our railway stations, it says here. And about time too. I’m sick to death of being in the dark. Those damned rockets will get here no matter what we do, so why not have a bit of light?’

  It was certainly cheering to think that they wouldn’t have to stumble about in the dark any more and, like her cousin, Octavia felt in need of a bit of cheer. The Normandy invasion had been four months ago and yet the Allied armies were still battling their way towards Germany and had suffered a costly defeat at a place called Arnhem: the rockets were still causing far too many deaths and far too much destruction:
the rations were as small and the food as dull as ever, the city as run down and dusty. If change was coming, it was coming very slowly.

  ‘Concentrate on the future,’ Tommy advised. ‘That’s what Tubby and I are doing.’

  But the future seemed too distant for concentration and the present crowded it out. It wasn’t until she had an unexpected phone call that there was any indication that her life would change in any way.

  Emmeline was out visiting Edith and the girls and Octavia was alone in her study, marking books and drinking yet another cup of tea, when the phone shrilled into her thoughts.

  A cultured voice asked if she could speak to Miss Octavia Smith.

  ‘Speaking,’ Octavia said, putting down her red pencil.

  ‘Kathy Ellis,’ the voice said. ‘We met when you gave evidence to the Parliamentary Committee on the future of education.’

  ‘I remember it well,’ Octavia said. And waited.

  ‘We were wondering whether we could tempt you into meeting us again,’ Miss Ellis said. ‘There’s an old friend of yours on the committee now and he’s very keen to meet up with you again and we have one or two proposals we would like to put to you.’

  Octavia opened her diary. ‘It would depend on what day you had in mind,’ she said. But although she was being cautious, excitement was bubbling in her chest, making her feel warm and hopeful and useful, and she knew she would meet up with Miss Ellis and this mysterious ‘old friend’ and listen to their proposals no matter what date they suggested.

  They met at County Hall in a panelled room overlooking the grey and choppy waters of the Thames, on a cold, inauspicious day in the middle of December. The papers that morning were full of bad news. The Germans had started a sudden counter attack through the Ardennes forest and had advanced thirty miles into Belgium. Octavia had read the paper on her way up to Waterloo and she was still frowning as she walked into the room. There were only two people there: Miss Ellis, looking exactly the same as she remembered; and a middle-aged man in a battered brown suit and horn-rimmed spectacles with a lot of thick fair hair, worn in a cowlick over his forehead. There was something vaguely familiar about the cowlick but she couldn’t really say she recognised him.

  ‘Brian Urquhart,’ he said, holding out his hand towards her. ‘We met at the College of St Gregory and All Souls. Rather a long time ago, I’m afraid. You came to give us a talk about how children learn. Best thing I ever heard. I’ve never forgotten it. I don’t suppose you remember me.’

  She was remembering as he spoke. There was something about the earnestness of his voice. That and the cowlick. ‘You were one of the ones who came up to talk to me afterwards,’ she said. ‘You said you wanted to teach in a Dalton School. Did you ever manage it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I went to an elementary school where they were very repressive.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  ‘Come and sit by the fire,’ Miss Ellis said, leading the way, ‘and let me tell you what we have in mind.’

  They sat in a semi-circle round the limited warmth of a reluctant fire. ‘I suppose you’ve heard that free secondary education is going to be given to all our children as soon as the war is over,’ Miss Ellis said. And when Octavia nodded, ‘Yes. I thought you would have done. What you will not have heard, as the news hasn’t been released yet, is that the government plan to set up emergency teacher training colleges for returning servicemen to provide all the extra teachers we shall need for the expansion. We were wondering whether you would consider a post as a principal of one of these colleges. We are only talking about colleges in the London area you understand, although there will be others in other parts of the country.’

  ‘I’m honoured that you should think of me,’ Octavia said, ‘but I must tell you straight away that my answer has to be no. I couldn’t leave my school and all the good work we’re doing there, no matter how tempting these colleges might be.’

  ‘We rather feared that was what you might say,’ Miss Ellis told her. ‘Then perhaps we could tempt you into a post as a visiting lecturer to spread the word about how children learn.’

  ‘That would be possible.’

  ‘With visits to your school?’

  ‘That too,’ Octavia said. ‘We had a lot of visitors before the war. It was quite a regular thing. I would have to ask the staff of course, but I think they would be happy about it.’

  ‘So far so good,’ Miss Ellis said. ‘Your turn now Brian.’

  ‘You will probably think I’m being presumptuous,’ Brian Urquhart said, brushing the cowlick away from the top of his glasses, ‘but I was wondering if you’d write us a sort of booklet as a teaching aid. How children learn and what gets in the way of the natural learning process and how you see the future of education in this country. That sort of thing. I know it’s a lot to ask but it would be invaluable to us. I’ve never met anyone who explained it as clearly as you did. No. Correction. I’ve never met anyone else who explained it at all. There are still far too many teachers who think teaching is a matter of shouting at children and bullying them and telling them what to do and mocking them if they can’t do it.’

  ‘Put like that,’ Octavia laughed, ‘how can I refuse?’

  The coals shifted in the grate and one of them began to hiss. ‘I think we should go down to the canteen and have a spot of lunch,’ Kathy Ellis said. ‘It’s warmer down there and we’ve got something to celebrate.’

  ‘What do you think of that?’ Octavia said to Emmeline over supper that night.

  ‘Just so long as you don’t go working all the hours God sends,’ Emmeline warned. ‘I know what you’re like when you get a bee in your bonnet. And don’t forget it’s Christmas.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Octavia said. ‘I’m going to buy a gramophone.’

  But Emmeline was right about bees and bonnets. Her new-old friend’s request had been perfectly timed and cunningly expressed. It upset her to think that there were still teachers who knew nothing about the art of teaching and believed that all they had to do was stand up in front of a class and tell the children what to do. That idea should have been shown up for the stupidity it was long, long ago. After school next day she got out her files and started to reread the notes she’d made for the talks she’d given before the war. It took her three evenings to sort them all through but on the fourth she was ready to write. She made up the fire in the drawing room, settled herself in her armchair with a note book on her knees and a pencil in her hand and began.

  ‘I shall begin at the beginning,’ she wrote. ‘The first and most important thing for any intending teacher to understand is that learning is a natural process. We are all capable of learning and, if we are not impeded or made fearful or despondent, we learn throughout our lives. So let us start by looking at the process.

  ‘It begins with something that is inborn and natural to all living creatures, namely curiosity. The child (or adult) wants to find out, to know how something is done, to discover a new skill, to follow an idea, as you are doing as you read this. Like all appetites it needs feeding. A good teacher will provide the ‘food’ as and when it is needed but he won’t offer it before the child is ready for it and his initial appetite for it has been roused. Rousing the appetite is the first and most skilled part of our job as teachers and it can be done in a variety of ways, which I will deal with later.

  ‘The second stage I shall call discovery. The child takes whatever food he needs and uses it. It is a time of trial and error and thought and effort and children vary in their approach to it. Some plunge into it happily, others need to be sustained and encouraged. A good teacher will praise whenever praise is truly earned. He will never scold a mistake, however silly it might appear to him. The golden rule is to remember that a mistake is not a sin or stupidity or deliberate naughtiness. It is one of the ways in which we all learn. In other words, it is a natural part of the process.

  ‘The third stage comes when the child has acquired his new skill or found the
answer to his questions. If the first two stages have gone well it is marked by serenity and satisfaction. Then there is a fourth and resting stage when the child moves on to a new topic and the completed investigation seems to be forgotten. It may surprise you to know that there is a fifth stage when the child returns to the skill he has learnt and he is still a complete master of it, remembering everything that is important about it with ease. Teachers who subscribe to the chalk and talk method of education are always surprised when they see this happen. Their surprise is an indication that they do not understand the natural process.’

  ‘Are you still at it?’ Emmeline said, appearing in the door. ‘It’s half past eleven. I’m off to bed.’