by Ruth Thomas
‘Right,’ I said brightly, as if happy – happy about Mrs Baxter’s begonias and the snacks menu and about life in general! – and I went to check on the goldfish in their green tank. Bunty and Bobby and Billy. Hello, fish. They were all still alive. Then I adjusted the weather chart on the wall: Today it is: Sunny. There was not much option anyway as Mrs Baxter and I had lost nearly all the clouds, like distracted TV weather forecasters.
By now it was nearly nine thirty. I could hear the children, back from assembly, beginning to line up outside the classroom door. ‘Monday, Monday, so good to me . . .’ Mrs Baxter hummed as she opened the door and they began to wander in – she was a big Mamas and Papas fan – and now she clasped her hands together, an expression of determined happiness on her face. I stood and watched the children find their places in the room, and wondered if there was anything I could add to Mrs Baxter’s interpretation of Monday. But I’d never particularly liked Mondays. Mine had always been less like the Mamas and Papas’ version and more like the Boomtown Rats’. I cleared my throat and was about to say something – something falsely cheerful about the start of the week – but Mrs Baxter had already started speaking. Really, I was not quick enough at this game.
‘Good morning, boys and girls,’ she said to the children in her optimistic voice, ‘let’s not push and shove.’
‘Hi, everyone,’ I added dutifully as the children began to take their places on their foam mats.
Mrs Baxter strode across the centre of the circle and sat down on the teacher’s chair beside the window.
‘Everyone?’ she remarked, in a questioning kind of way, and there was a sudden hush. ‘Everyone?’ was a kind of command. It meant, We should all be sitting down now. And there I was, Miss McKenzie, standing up: my chair was round the other side of the circle, and I was not beside it. I clomped towards it now, like the last person in Musical Chairs, and sat down opposite Mrs Baxter. Mrs Baxter gave a smile of great fortitude. Then she breathed out and clapped her hands together.
‘Where are people’s Listening Ears this morning?’ she enquired, above a new crescendo of voices.
‘Hush, now,’ I added. And at the sound of my voice, several children looked up at me, as if they’d never clapped eyes on me before.
‘Miss McKenzie,’ said Emily Ellis quietly, ‘why is your hair pink?’
‘Well –’ I began.
But Mrs Baxter already had her finger to her lips. ‘Shush,’ she was saying. ‘Shush. Have you got your Listening Ears, Emily?’
Emily did not respond.
‘Because we haven’t all come to school this morning to talk about Miss McKenzie’s hair, have we? What are we supposed to be saying at the moment? Good . . .?’
‘. . . mooo-rning, Mrs Baxter,’ the children intoned. ‘Good mooor-ning, Miss McKenn-zie,’ they added.
‘Now: is everyone sitting nicely on their bottoms with their hands on their knees? And is our circle nice and neat?’ Mrs Baxter asked. There was a small hiatus of shuffling and rearrangement. ‘Very nice. Good.’ She looked around the circle. ‘Now, over to you then, Miss McKenzie.’
This was my cue. ‘OK,’ I said, standing up, opening a cupboard in the wall behind me – a different one from the mats cupboard – and pulling out a large blue teddy bear. The bear’s name was Talking Ted, and he made an appearance every morning.
‘Good morning, Talking Ted,’ I said to the bear, and I handed it down to Emily, who was sitting nearest me in the circle. He was always passed to the left for some reason, like a bottle of port. He was there, Mrs Baxter had explained when I’d begun the job, to teach children how to converse properly, how not to interrupt: nobody was allowed to interrupt anyone in Circle Time if they were holding Talking Ted. It was like the conch shell in Lord of the Flies.
‘Have you got anything you want to say, Emily?’ I prompted.
Clutching the bear, Emily Ellis peered at me. She had a way of looking at you sometimes – they all did.
‘Yes, Emily,’ Mrs Baxter added from her chair by the colour chart, ‘do you have anything you’d like to tell us this morning?’
Because Emily usually did have something interesting to say. The previous week she’d announced that she knew who the son of God was. ‘Really, Emily?’ Mrs Baxter had asked, looking both uncomfortable and fascinated and leaning forward in her chair. ‘Yes,’ Emily had said. ‘His name is Edith.’ And there had been a pause, a lull – a tiny rending, almost, in the fabric of time – while Mrs Baxter had worked out what to say. She was mute now, though, Emily, as she clutched the bear’s big blue ears. It was funny how Talking Ted could sometimes have a silencing effect.
‘Anything to say, poppet?’ Mrs Baxter asked, her head slightly to one side. ‘Hmm? Nothing to . . .’
‘Yes,’ Emily said abruptly, just as we were all ready to move on.
‘Oh, good,’ Mrs Baxter replied, sounding a little rattled. ‘What’s your news then, Love?’
‘I’ve got a new Barbie!’ Emily announced.
‘Ooh,’ said Mrs Baxter.
‘My dad gave me her. I’ll go and get her,’ Emily added, suddenly excited. And she chucked Talking Ted face down onto the floor, got up, broke out of the circle, hurried across to the plastic tray she’d been allocated in the corner of the room, removed something from it and returned to her place.
‘Here she is,’ she proclaimed, holding out a small plastic doll. We all peered at it.
‘Well,’ Mrs Baxter said unsurely, ‘she’s very nice.’
‘She’s my bestest ever,’ Emily said. ‘My dad gave me her,’ she said again.
The doll was one of the smaller Barbies, and she was sitting, I saw now, in her own little plastic car. Her arms were holding the steering wheel in an alarmingly rigid way. If she was driving that car in real life, Emily, I felt like saying, she’d leave the road in seconds.
‘Well, she’s lovely,’ Mrs Baxter said chirpily. ‘Is she your new favourite, sweetheart? What’s her name?’
Emily smiled and considered her doll.
‘Her name’s Jenny,’ she said.
‘And where did your dad get her from? Somewhere on his travels?’
‘No. He bought her in Jenners.’
‘Ooh,’ said Mrs Baxter.
‘We went there on Saturday,’ Emily confirmed. ‘Me and Daddy. We bought her in Jenners and that’s why she’s called Jenny. She doesn’t have hair that pulls out, though. There weren’t any of those left.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, my voice coming out louder and more cynical than I’d intended. I peered at the Barbie. She was immaculate and blonde, with a retroussé nose and perfect bust. She reminded me of Stella Muir. I couldn’t help thinking that.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Baxter, ‘that was very kind of your dad. Wasn’t it, everyone?’ she continued, addressing the rest of the circle. ‘To buy Emily a brand-new doll.’
And we all fell silent in contemplation of Mr Ellis’s kindness. Though he’d never struck me as the sort of man who would buy anyone a Barbie doll. He’d always looked to me like somebody who wouldn’t tolerate cheap tat, just as he barely liked to acknowledge the existence of nineteen-year-old classroom assistants, or the need for sympathy when his wee girl fell and grazed her knees. And why would you want a doll, anyway, I felt like saying to Emily, with hair that pulled out from the top of her head? A Barbie doll is as plastic as the box she’s packed in.
‘So,’ Mrs Baxter said, breaking our reverie like a minister coming to the end of silent prayer; and Talking Ted was passed on. He stopped briefly at a boy called Jamie, who informed the class that his mother had just had a baby weighing 10lbs 8oz – ‘Goodness gracious me!’ Mrs Baxter said – and at Zoe Jacobs, who was going to Florida on a plane on Thursday. And then the bear reached Mrs Baxter.
‘So, now I’ve got Talking Ted,’ she said in her big, educational way, ‘I’m going to remind everyone about an exciting event that is happening tomorrow. Now,’ she continued, peering down at the children, ‘can anyone tell me
what that is?’
The children looked at her. There was no response. Then Solly Calman put his hand up.
‘Yes, Solly?’
‘A wizard’s coming, with a rabbit.’
‘Haa,’ said Mrs Baxter, deflated. Already, it seemed, her Monday was not quite panning out. Nobody was meant to be getting Barbie dolls out of their trays or talking about wizards and rabbits. I hardly knew about the wizard myself: I hadn’t been paying much attention when Mrs Crieff had told the staff her plans for the week. All I knew was that he was part of some end-of-term celebration – some jamboree she’d decided to have.
‘Well, you’re quite right, Solly,’ Mrs Baxter said now, ‘because, yes, we are going to be having a wizard here this week, on Thursday. A magician, in fact. He’s coming to our end-of-term party, isn’t he? Which is very . . .’ she added flatly, ‘exciting. Because the wiz— the magician is going to be very special, isn’t he? But’, she continued, raising her voice above the renewing volume, ‘I actually wanted to tell you about something else, this Circle Time. What have we got happening before the wizard?’
She was virtually shouting now. The children stopped talking and regarded her. Positioned directly behind Mrs Baxter’s head was a poster depicting a happy worm in an apple, exhorting children to Eat Fruit. Outside the window a mean-eyed herring gull hovered and squawked in the purest summer sky. I could have been living in London now, I thought, glancing up at the gull. I could have been living a completely different life. And I tried not to mind that I was, instead, sitting in a Portakabin in my home town, surrounded by five-year-olds.
‘I’m not going to ask people who click their fingers at me,’ Mrs Baxter cautioned, ‘or anyone who is not . . .’
And then Emily, still holding the Barbie doll, put her hand up. Emily was as sharp as a tack.
‘I know what we’re doing, Mrs Baxter: we’re going to the Scottish Waterways Visitor Centre,’ she said in a quick little voice.
‘Yes, Emily, that’s right,’ Mrs Baxter replied, relieved. ‘You can put your hand down now. Because we are indeed, children, going to the Scottish Waterways Visitor Centre.’
Yesss, some of the boys hissed, as if somebody had just scored a goal in football. Though I suspected they might not actually know what the Scottish Waterways Visitor Centre was; that they might have confused it with Waterworld at the far end of Great Junction Street – a very different kind of place, involving flumes and a wave machine.
‘Settle down,’ Mrs Baxter called. ‘Now, the reason I’m telling you about the trip is so you can remind your mums and dads to make you a packed lunch tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ I confirmed to the children sitting near me, and they all looked up at me again in surprise.
‘Are you going to bring a packed lunch, Miss McKenzie?’ Emily asked. ‘Are you going to bring crispspsps?’
‘Well, maybe not crisps,’ I whispered back, ‘maybe . . .’
‘Miss McKenzie, where are your Listening Ears?’ Mrs Baxter asked.
*
After Song Time that morning it was Undirected Play, the part of the morning I was supposed to supervise. Nearly all the boys went straight to the boxes containing the Hot Wheels cars, while the girls headed for the Home Corner. That was just how it was. At the sand tray two boys, Mungo and Zac, were creating a kind of cliff like the white cliffs of Dover and tipping cars over its edge.
‘Hello,’ I said, going over to them, ‘what are you two doing here?’
Mungo and Zac ceased their work in the sand for a moment.
‘We’re pushing the cars over the cliff,’ Mungo said.
‘And the cows. This cow has just died,’ Zac added, pointing to a small plastic cow, its four legs as stiff as pokers.
‘I see,’ I replied. Sometimes, I felt about as far away as I could possibly be from the mind of a five-year-old. But then something would remind me. The toy cows we had in the Portakabin were exactly like the ones I’d used to play with at home when I was little. They stood on identical patches of pretend grass. And when I looked at them, time seemed to fold up, like a telescope.
‘That’s a shame, that it died,’ I said to Zac. ‘Maybe it can come back to life later.’
Zac frowned.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s dead. It was meant to die. It was part of the game.’
‘I see,’ I said, feeling bleak and standing up straight again. And then I moved away, in the direction of the Home Corner, which seemed at least a kinder place to be, that morning. Although, as I approached it now, I noticed that Emily Ellis’s new Barbie doll was lying prone and bare-breasted on top of the cooker. Her little car was nowhere to be seen.
There were five girls in the Home Corner, making pretend biscuits at the table.
‘You look busy in there,’ I said, stooping down at the gingham-curtained window. Sometimes, I felt like Mr Jackson in The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse, too big to squash through the door.
‘We are very busy,’ said Emily Ellis, who was standing at the table, a plastic mixing bowl in her hands. ‘We’re making biscuits. Would you like a biscuit?’
‘Oh: yes please!’ I said, with the kind of enthusiasm I had learned to perfect.
‘Here you go, then,’ she said. And she passed me an invisible biscuit through the window.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Yummy.’ It was like standing at the school serving hatch at dinner time.
‘Is your mummy coming with us on the bus tomorrow?’ I heard Jade asking Emily as I was pretending to eat.
‘No, my mum’s going to be busy tomorrow,’ Emily replied insouciantly, returning to her mixing bowl.
‘Didn’t you want your mummy to come, then?’
‘I don’t mind,’ Emily said.
‘Is your mummy going to be making cakes for the end-of-term party? My mummy’s going to be making butterfly cakes for the end-of-term party. Is your mummy going to make some cakes?’ Jade persisted, like some looped recording.
‘No,’ Emily retorted. ‘My mum’s going to be making sausages on sticks.’
‘Ha!’ I laughed. I quite liked the sound of Mrs Ellis.
‘Oh, it’s just like a little life, isn’t it? Like a little version of real life,’ Mrs Baxter exclaimed, sweeping past at that moment and glancing in through the window. And I stopped laughing. I looked through the door of the Home Corner. Everything inside it was made of wood. There was a wooden cooker, a wooden sink and wooden pots and pans. There was a wooden food mixer and a wooden toaster and wooden slices of toast.
‘I suppose it’s a bit like The Little House on the Prairie,’ I said.
And Mrs Baxter looked at me. She looked, and glided on.
‘Miss McKenzie,’ Emily Ellis called out now, from inside the little house, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Have you, Poppet?’ I asked; and Emily appeared again at the window. She leaned right through and propped her elbows against the painted-on flowers. The gingham curtains were like some in Mrs Crieff’s house, it occurred to me; her house at 25 Salisbury Crags Rise. I could never resist gawping at them on my way home in the afternoons.
‘What I have to say’, Emily said, ‘is: Mindy Moo is here today.’
‘Is she?’ I asked.
‘She just got here,’ Emily continued. ‘She just arrived. Her car broke down this morning, which is why she’s late.’
‘I see.’
Mindy Moo was Emily’s imaginary friend, and she was quite a character. She was a bit disaster-prone, which made me feel a bit better, somehow. Also, she had an imaginary getaway car – a little blue one – which she secretly parked right beside Mrs Crieff’s Rover in the staff car park. I would have liked a getaway car like that. Sometimes she drove to England in it to visit her grandmothers, and sometimes she went to Tesco’s and sometimes she just thought sod it and got a car ferry and headed off to Africa or America. She was quite a feisty girl. Usually, though, she just hung loyally around school with Emily. She would go for a wander, ending up in the school
kitchens with the dinner ladies or upstairs in Mrs Crieff’s office. I have no idea why she was called Mindy Moo. When I imagined her, though, I thought of someone Betty Boop-ish – sassy, with big round eyes and perfectly styled, jet-black hair. Like me, on my good days. Not the sort of girl to screw things up.
‘So how’s Mindy Moo today?’ I asked; and Emily considered, gazing clear-eyed through the Portakabin window.
‘She was a bit wild today,’ she said. ‘She tied a knot in my shoelaces and I fell over. I said: “Mindy Moo, untie my shoelaces at once, or there’ll be no pudding and no stories.”’
‘Really?’
‘My dad says that sometimes, too.’
‘Does he?’ I said. ‘What – when he talks to Mindy Moo?’
‘No!’ Emily retorted, exasperated. ‘I mean, he says that about pudding and stories.’
‘Oh.’
‘He doesn’t know about Mindy Moo.’
‘Ah.’
But then I supposed he wouldn’t, Mr Ellis being far too uptight, as far as I could see, to believe in people like Mindy Moo. In invisible things, like spirits and spooks and fairies. He looked like the sort of person who would not clap his hands at a Peter Pan panto; who would just let Tinkerbell die.
‘My dad’s got a new mobile phone,’ Emily continued, apropos of nothing.
‘Has he?’ I said. But I wasn’t inclined to talk about Mr Ellis any more. He was just a man I didn’t like much. He had an important job and wore a pair of brogues with a spiral of dots on the toes, and that was all I really wanted to know about him.
*
The first hour of the day always went quite quickly. There was a pleasing kind of routine to it. We chanted the two times table at ten and read a story at half past, and by the time it was quarter to Mrs Baxter had already begun roaming around the room like a weary buffalo on a prairie, bellowing something about Tidy-Up Time. I looked at my watch. It was ten to eleven. Ten minutes until my meeting with Mrs Crieff.
