by Ruth Thomas
‘Gemstone names?’ said Mrs Crieff. Mrs Crieff was known, amongst the parents, to be one of the best Heads in Edinburgh. It was just a fact. It used to make me think of the French Revolution, and all those heads tumbling into baskets. ‘Gemstones?’ she mused.
‘Yes,’ I said, my voice strangely high and upbeat suddenly; it did not seem to belong to me.
Mrs Crieff considered for a moment, her expression a little pained. She sometimes looked as if she couldn’t imagine ever having a real reason to speak to you. Maybe only if you were someone offering her something, like a shop assistant or an air hostess: maybe she’d ask you for a box of matches in a corner shop, or a packet of peanuts on a flight to Bruges.
‘Yes, I suppose we have got quite a few gems this year,’ she conceded after a short pause. ‘Quite a little jewellery box . . .’
Beside me, John Singer sighed wearily. Mrs Crieff ignored this.
‘Morning, Morag,’ she observed instead to Mrs Baxter, who was standing a few feet away, a box of Octons in her hands. And without waiting for her to reply, she swept back out of the Portakabin.
There were no Beryls in the class, of course, I thought, as I watched the door close behind her. No berylliums. Or even Agates. It was funny, how some gemstones could fall right out of favour.
*
I’d been sacked from the only other job I’d ever had, the previous spring: I’d been booted out of a gift shop called Moonchild. And along with various other things that had happened to me that past year or so, I’d found this a difficult thing to take on board. Moonchild had only been a gift shop, after all! It had only been a hippy gift shop located in a basement off the High Street and it was supposed to have been a doddle, working there – the kind of job girls like me were supposed to do with their eyes shut. I’d worked there Tuesday to Saturday, from two in the afternoon to six in the evening, and sometimes we only got seven or eight customers the whole afternoon; tourists, mainly, who would stroll in with their cameras and hats and rustling rain macs, look slightly baffled and stroll out again. I’d imagined, briefly, that I might have been happy there; that I might have found the place that was right for me. All day I would be submerged beneath a gently forgiving fog of patchouli and rose oil and joss sticks, and it would follow me, that scent, even after I’d locked up for the night; it would trail after me, like Pig-Pen’s little dust cloud. The shop had been filled with soothing, forgiving sounds, too: with the jangle of silvery wind-chimes and the clatter of bamboo ones; with the splashing of the little stone fountain my boss Sondrine switched on every morning; with 70s folk music on tape. I spent my time standing behind the counter listening to Joni Mitchell and Steeleye Span (‘All around my hat,’ Steeleye Span sang in their robust way, ‘I will wear the green wi-hi-llow . . .’), and occasionally selling a tie-dyed blouse or a mood ring or a sea urchin. The sea urchins stood in a display cabinet, behind a small handwritten sign:
Pretty to look at,
Lovely to hold,
But if you break it,
Consider it SOLD!
There was something ironic about that sign, but I didn’t like to think about it too much.
‘Hi there,’ I’d say to the people wandering in, and I’d let them browse. I was discreet, as shop assistants go. Un-pushy. The main problem was, I’d kept over-ringing the till: there was always a discrepancy at the end of the day between what was in the till and what it said on the receipt.
‘I can’t understand how you can be doing this, Luisa,’ Sondrine had mourned at the end of one afternoon, her wide, smooth brow furrowed with concern. ‘I don’t get how you can be so . . .’ – and she paused – ‘. . . unfocused about everything.’
‘I’ve not always been unfocused,’ I replied. Because I hadn’t. I’d once had a mind that operated with clarity and purpose. It was just that something, during my last few months at high school, had begun to unravel. ‘Well, I’m sorry, Luisa, I really am,’ Sondrine had continued, her frown deepening. ‘There were also’, she added regretfully, ‘those two . . . breakages the other week. Those sea urchins you broke . . .’ Which was quite true. In the three months I had worked at Moonchild, I was the only one who’d actually broken any of the sea urchins. None of the customers had broken anything. ‘I mean,’ Sondrine continued sorrowfully, ‘I just can’t really overlook things like that any more.’
And then she’d sacked me. She was less of a hippy than her appearance suggested. And for a while after that, my downward spiral had gathered pace. I’d returned home that evening in my invisible cloak of patchouli and incense, gone up to my bedroom and just sat looking out through the Velux window at the sky. I don’t know how long I sat there. Hours, maybe. Days. All around my hat, I thought, I will wear the green willow. It was only when my mother, a few weeks later, suggested I do some sort of course – something vocational in nursery nursing, teacher training – ‘Something, sweetheart,’ she’d said heavily, ‘that might get you back on track’ – that things had begun to alter. Not necessarily, though, in the way she’d imagined.
*
I’d had to report to Mrs Crieff’s office mid-morning, I remember, on my first day in post. It was the same morning we’d had our discussion about gemstones; a Monday, November, and raining a cold grey rain.
‘Ah: Luisa,’ she’d said when I turned up at her door. And she seemed oddly pleased to see me, as if our earlier conversation had never happened; she’d already moved on from that conversation. ‘So: welcome!’ she proclaimed, somewhat hammily, and she stepped back and ushered me into her office.
‘Thanks,’ I said, feeling quite cowed, all over again, by the slightly military green of the blouse she was wearing, and also by that silvery-grey hair, cut with such precision and as coarse as a badger’s pelt.
We both headed across the room and sat down at either side of her desk. Mrs Crieff adjusted the angle of her chair and smiled across at me.
‘OK,’ she said.
And then she proceeded to go over what was expected of me in the job. The dos and the don’ts. It was like a sort of presentation, the kind you might use an overhead projector for. She used a lot of words like positive, upbeat, role model, happy, nurturing.
‘Yes,’ I interjected occasionally, ‘I see . . .’
Although I didn’t, really. I didn’t think any of those words applied to me. And Mrs Crieff did not refer to my predecessor at all, not once, the whole time I was sitting there: Susan Ford appeared to be persona non grata. I supposed that I represented a clean slate.
‘Super,’ Mrs Crieff encouraged from time to time, after I had begun to speak about the many ways in which I was hoping to excel in the role of classroom assistant. ‘Smashing.’ But I couldn’t help thinking of all the ways in which I might not be super or smashing (or perhaps only in a sea-urchin sense); of all the ways I might, in the coming months, fail to impress. And I regretted the fact that I was not a girl who threw herself into things: I’d never been that sort of girl. I wasn’t going to be like the resilient Mrs Baxter with her songs and games; or the metropolitan Mr Temple in P6, whose merry innuendos I’d already encountered at my interview; or the lollipop man with his jokes and his mad yellow jacket. There were plenty of people like that at St Luke’s, I could see; people who knew the words to things; who cracked jokes and who knew who they were. But I was not going to be one of them.
‘Now. This’, Mrs Crieff said somewhere towards the end of our conversation, and handing me a green piece of paper, ‘is an information sheet Mrs Baxter and I have drawn up.’
‘Right’
‘It should hopefully give you some idea of what’s . . .’ – she paused, and looked briefly and regretfully at the blank rectangle where I suspected Miss Ford’s picture had been – ‘. . . expected of you, in the role.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the paper from her and looking down at it. The information it contained appeared in the form of a grid – a kind of spreadsheet involving a lot of elongated rectangles, with headings shaded in pal
e grey. Some of the words on the far right of the sheet had disappeared, or been chopped in half.
Classroom Assistant Post
St Luke’s Primary School
The role of Classroom Assistant is many and vario
One day you may be planting seedlings in our wildlif
garden
[this was, I already knew, a set of wooden barrels in the playground]
the next you might be preparing costu
for the school nativity play. Life here a
St Luke’s is a –
– and here the text ended abruptly, and was replaced by three columns of words
Classroom Assistant: Daily Tasks.
Supervising individual/group activity
Observing individual/group activity
Talking with individual/group
Referring to teacher’s plans
Recording observations
Housekeeping tasks
Preparation of resources, materials
Preparing snacks
Displaying children’s work
‘How does that look to you?’ Mrs Crieff asked, her head cocked to one side. And, briefly, she closed her eyes. She was one of those people who closed their eyes at crucial points in conversations.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it seems . . .’
It seemed to me like a cross between being a secret agent and an overbearing mother. I moved on to the next list.
Ideal Classroom Assistant Responses and Strengths
Responses:
Give support
Explain
Praise
Smile
Encourage
Listen
Strengths:
Diplomacy
Ability to work on own initiative
Mediating skills
Punctuality
I was aware of Mrs Crieff opening her eyes again and looking at me. This list seemed a little more normal at least – I could smile, I could say ‘Well done’ – although the third and final column, entitled ‘Managing Behaviour’, was more worrying:
In instances of pupil dissent, the following methods should be applied.
Return pupil to task in hand
Intervene
Ask for quiet
Reprimand
Refer to teacher
Remove from room
‘Hmm,’ I said.
I couldn’t recall when I’d ever intervened. I’d certainly never removed anyone from a room! It was the sort of thing I could only imagine bouncers and police officers doing.
‘You see, one of the things Mrs Baxter and I thought would be important this year,’ Mrs Crieff said, smiling her curious smile, ‘– because we felt this would provide a better sense of the children’s own learning experience – is to give you your own set of tasks. Your own challenges. Your own project, if you like . . .’
‘Right,’ I said, a small wisp of apprehension flickering up my chest, like a tiny plume of smoke.
Mrs Crieff stopped talking and looked at me. I looked down at her desktop. It was the sort you might imagine a Newton’s Cradle perched upon, and an intercom for communicating with your secretary. It seemed to represent achievement, in some way.
‘So, tell me,’ she prompted. ‘Looking at this list, Luisa: can you tell me if there are any particular skills here you would like to develop? To improve upon? Which could be your first, if you like, goal?’
I refocused on the piece of paper.
‘A goal . . .’ I said. I thought of the netball posts at my old high school, the school I had left under a cloud, and the words seemed to lift off the page and float around.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘my housekeeping skills could probably do with a bit of . . .’
‘Ha!’ Mrs Crieff interrupted, a little mirthlessly. ‘Now, when we say housekeeping skills, Luisa, we’re not expecting you to do the hoovering and mop the floors! That’s the janitor’s job, of course. That’s Mr Raeburn’s job.’
‘Mr Raeburn?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Crieff, sternly. ‘Housekeeping skills,’ she continued, ‘in a classroom context, are things like tidying up the work areas. Making sure the scissors go back in the box: that sort of thing. No, Mrs Baxter and I were thinking more in terms of personal skills. Things that can be developed in your work as a classroom assistant. That we can perhaps . . . help you to foster, Luisa. Professionally.’
‘Of course. Well . . .’
I could feel my heart beating. I wondered about the things Miss Ford might have highlighted as personal skills. I cast my eyes down the list again.
Diplomacy
Ability to work on own initiative
Mediating skills
Punctuality
Well, I was already being diplomatic: being diplomatic seemed to be more of a hindrance than a skill. And I didn’t know what was meant by mediating skills. And I was not a punctual person: I seemed, lately, to have lost that ability.
‘Ability to work on my own initiative?’ I suggested, like someone querying a dish on a menu.
‘OK,’ Mrs Crieff replied in an upbeat voice, and writing this down. ‘Super. So, could we make that your first goal? Your first little aim in the post? Your project, if you like, for the rest of term, leading up to Christmas? Which will be upon us, I’m afraid to say, in the blink of an eye.’
‘I know,’ I said, and we both fell silent. I thought of Christmas – of the roast turkey my parents and I would be sharing with my grandmother and my Uncle Rob and Aunty Doreen and all their successful children – and I suddenly felt very tired, as if I could just lie down on Mrs Crieff’s wiry, pan-scourer floor tiles and go to sleep. Mrs Crieff was rising from her seat now, though. ‘So . . .’ she was saying, moving forwards and upwards and knocking together her plastic files and bits of paper, like a newscaster coming to the end of a bulletin. I took this as my cue to stand up and pull my coat on; to begin my return back down to the Portakabin. ‘So, I’m intrigued,’ Mrs Crieff said as we both approached the door. ‘What was it about working in a school, Luisa, that particularly appealed to you? I didn’t get a chance to ask you at our interview because it was all such a . . . rush. However.’
And she stopped talking.
‘Well,’ I replied. I was aware of all the thoughts in my head taking off and scattering into the air, like a flock of startled birds. I felt bereft of anything to tell Mrs Crieff about my interest in the job; anything that was not, in some way, a lie. It appeals to me because it fills an absence, I felt like saying; it’s an alternative to doing what I was supposed to have done. I looked out through the window and down at the school playground, at the flimsy grey-walled Portakabin to which I would be returning. The lollipop man was slowly battling past it in his fluorescent yellow jacket, defying the November winds with his Stop! Children sign.
Mrs Crieff was peering at me. The smile on her face had become slightly stiffer.
‘Well,’ I heard myself say, ‘I suppose I thought, for one thing, that it might be a way I could use my interest in . . . art’
‘Your interest in art?’ Mrs Crieff repeated, bug-eyed, making me instantly regret what I’d just said. Why had I mentioned art? I’d not intended to mention it at all! I might as well have dragged in all kinds of other ambitions I’d once had and had managed to screw up in some way! – Love! Freedom! A career! Life in another city! There are any number of reasons why I’m sitting in your office talking to you, Mrs Crieff, I could have told her, and none of them bear any relation to the job.
I began a new tack.
‘I was going to do geography, you see, at university,’ I said. ‘That had been the plan for quite a while. And then . . . I changed my mind again, at the last minute, and thought I’d do . . .’
Mrs Crieff’s eyes seemed circular with amazement. My voice: my voice was like a dried-out reed stem, small and hollow and thin. I thought of my days spent working in Moonchild, and of my days at school before Moonchild. And I felt like apologising for wasting everyone’s time and ru
nning out to catch the bus home.
‘Thought you’d do what?’ asked Mrs Crieff.
Oh God.
‘I just realised’, I whispered, ‘that I’d rather do something, y’know, more real and . . . grounded . . . and . . .’ – I could feel myself sweating – ‘. . . something . . .’ I floundered.
‘. . . more grounded than art?’ Mrs Crieff boomed. Because really, what was there that was more grounded than art? What was more real than a pencil and a piece of paper and drawing what was in front of you? Art was the ground! – it was the patch of ground I never should have left!
‘Yeah,’ I said. I gulped, and quickly wiped the palms of my hands against my thin cotton skirt. It was a new working-girl skirt I had chosen with my mother in Topshop, and I didn’t know now why I’d bothered. Clothes I bought for special occasions had a bad habit of letting me down. ‘Yes,’ I continued. ‘More grounded, in some ways, anyway. I thought working with children would be more . . . real.’
‘Oh well: fair enough,’ Mrs Crieff chirruped, oddly content with this mangled explanation, ‘And I’m delighted to hear you have an artistic streak, Luisa! That’s just what we need in our classroom helpers! I also think’, she added, ‘that you’ll find working with the children here is very real.’
‘Whe—’ I began.
‘Very good,’ Mrs Crieff concluded. ‘Super. So: back to work! And we’ll meet up again in a couple of weeks, at the beginning of December.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Ha ha. Thank you very much.’
‘By the way,’ Mrs Crieff added, as a kind of afterthought – like Columbo turning in the doorway before dropping some bombshell about a murder – ‘did you know we’re neighbours?’
‘Sorry?’
‘We live on the same street. I’m at number 25.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I live on the same street as you,’ Mrs Crieff articulated, patiently. ‘At number 25 on our street.’
‘Really?’ I said.
This information filled me with a new kind of despair. I tried to think which house was number 25, but I couldn’t: all the houses on our street had suddenly merged into a kind of blur in my head.
